Sacrifice

by David Pilling

  What self-respecting man would covet the leadership of this lot? thought Martin, glancing around at his men as they drank and diced and argued, The Company of the Talon. Sixty-seven of the worst evildoers in Christendom. Thieves, rapists, arsonists and murderers of every stamp. We have them all here.

  Good soldiers, mind, even though Martin was careless of their lives. When he first formed the company, three years ago, they had numbered over two hundred. War and disease had whittled them away until he was left with those too tough or stupid to die.

  Martin was resolved to lead these men until his own death. Despite the squalid nature of most of them, he took a fierce pride in being their captain. It was the Company of the Talon that led the charge at Hainburg, driving back the Austrian lancers and routing the infantry. It was they who scaled the walls in the final assault on the castle, braving the arrows, rocks and arquebus fire, hot oil and scalding porridge poured down on their heads from the battlements.

  He was the first man up the ladders, and the first to plant the Hungarian banner on the tallest turret of the keep. Martin had risked his own life, many times over, but God seemed reluctant to take it.

  “Here,” Meurig’s harsh voice broke his chain of thought, “have some of this. You look starved.”

  The Welshman thrust a bowl into his hands. It contained mutton stew, sprinkled with bits of hard biscuit. Martin muttered his thanks and spooned some of the lukewarm stodge into his mouth.

  He gazed into the fire. As ever, something about the flames made him introspective, and his thoughts drifted back to England.

  News of King Richard III’s accession had reached Hungary, weeks after the event. Martin was surprised by the news, and somewhat gratified. It seemed the Yorkists were turning on each other at last, like the beasts they were.

  Still, what happened in England had nothing to do with him. Not any more. He had left it all behind years ago, in a former life.

  Old feelings of guilt and shame rose inside him. Martin still had family in England. His sister, his niece, his one surviving brother. The selfishness of a broken heart drove him to desert them.

  Meurig offered him a flask of wine. Martin seized it, and tossed a good half of the contents down his throat.

  “They will be dead by now,” he gasped, wiping his mouth, “all dead and buried. I’m the only one left.”

  “What’s that?” asked Meurig, startled. Martin shook his head and spat into the fire, making the flames sizzle.

  “Nothing,” he growled, “nothing at all. Nothing important.”

  “I know what it is,” said Meurig, “you’re thinking of home. So was I.”

  Martin silently cursed the night he took the Welshman into his confidence. He had been more than usually drunk at the time, and desolate enough to babble all his secrets.

  Meurig was sympathetic. He had left Wales long before the wars started, but received letters informing him of the death in battle of five of his cousins, slaughtered at Edgecote along with so much of the Welsh gentry.

  He was also aware that Martin had fought on the opposite side, but bore no grudges. War was war, and Meurig, a hardened professional who fought for pay, had changed sides more often than he could remember.

  “I keep hearing things about this King Richard,” he said after a moment, “all kinds of rumours. He has killed men, they say. Great lords and knights. All the men who might have stopped him taking the crown.”

  “Nothing new there, then,” replied Martin, “God grant he massacres the lot of them before falling on his sword.”

  “I saw him, once,” he added, “at Tewkesbury. He drove back the Duke of Somerset’s charge. But for Richard, we might have caved in the Yorkist flank, and I would not be here now. A good soldier. Curse him.”

  Meurig nodded. “To be sure. But what else is he? There is rebellion in England. Maybe civil war soon. All because he won’t produce his nephews.”

  The night was cold, but Martin suddenly felt an extra chill. He snatched up his cloak and draped it over his shoulders.

  “Where are they?” said Meurig, “what has he done with the boys?”

  “I don’t give a damn,” snarled Martin, “give me some more of that blasted wine, and shut up.”

  His men gradually drifted off to bed, but he stayed, staring at the flames as they burned lower and lower.

  I am sick of this war, he decided, sucking down more wine even though his head was already pounding, and of risking my life for King Matthias. Fat swine. To hell with him and his Black Army. To hell with the Emperor Frederick as well. Why don’t they settle the issue themselves, man to man, instead of plunging two kingdoms into misery?

  It’s time I had something for myself. Took something.

  The more he pondered it, the more attractive this seemed. Plenty of mercenary captains deserted their employers and rode off to look for profit elsewhere. A few had set themselves up as minor lords, seized some abandoned castle and forced the local peasants to serve them.

  Martin thought of one captain in particular: another Martin, Martin Schwartz, a famous German mercenary. If the stories were true, Schwartz started life as the son of a poor shoemaker in Augsburg. Capable and arrogant, and frightened of nothing on earth, he had since risen to become an important captain-general, much sought after by the princes of Europe.

  If a German shoemaker’s son can rise so high through sheer guile and strength of arm, why not an English gentleman?

  King Matthias made little effort to stop desertions from his army, or punish them. There were always plenty of soldiers. Most able-bodied men in Hungary, down to the meanest peasant, expected to spend part of their lives doing military service. The kingdom was threatened on all sides by Austrians, Bohemians, Ottomans, Venetians and Poles, and in a virtually constant state of war.

  Lord Martin Bolton. Lord Bolton. Martin thought it had a nice ring. Baron Bolton. Margrave Bolton. Viscount Bolton.

  “King Martin the First!” he shouted drunkenly, and toppled onto his back.

  The next morning he woke up with a thick head, a foul taste in his mouth, and a new resolve.

  It was a damp, grey morning. A very English morning. Groaning, Martin pushed aside all thoughts of England and went in search of Meurig.

  “Up,” he rasped, putting his boot into the slumbering Welshman’s ribs, “get up, you old corpse. We’re moving.”

  Meurig’s hide was hard as teak, and it required three hard kicks to make him stir in his bedroll.

  “God help us,” he muttered, passing a hand over his raddled face, “what’s the bloody rush? The fortress is only a few miles away.”

  “Bugger the fortress. Matthias will have to knock it over all by himself. We’re leaving.”

  Meurig sat up. He had slept out in the open, and his bedroll was soaked, but he took no notice. “Leaving? You mean deserting?”

  “I see the years have done little to blunt your wits. Crawl out of your pit and help me rouse the men.”

  The Company of the Talon was used to sudden alarms and departures, and barely half an hour later Martin was leading them west at the gallop. They pounded through the Hungarian camp, ignoring the cries of the sentries and riding down a few incautious billmen who tried to stand in their way.

  There was no pursuit. Sixty-seven men were small loss to the Black Army, currently near its full strength of ten thousand. Martin experienced a tremendous sense of freedom as he rode across a stretch of grassy plain, with dark forests to the west and the distant peaks of mountains visible beyond. The fair, rich, profitable realm of Austria lay before them, ripe for the plucking.

  Ancient, half-forgotten words rose in his throat, and he started to sing in a deep, tuneless roar.

  “The White Hawk bent a right good bow,

  Carved from a trusty tree,

  He shot the justice in the heart,

  And laid low his enemy,

  “God’s curse be upon this man,” he said,

  “And all who traitors be,”

&nbs
p; “For this hawk stoops to gather you all,

  “That betrayed our good King Henry…”

  Chapter 10

  The Chateau L’Hermine, Vannes, Brittany, October 1483

  “Fight me, curse you! Are you trying to hit me with that sword, or tickle me? Strike harder! Use your reach! Fight!”

  Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, drove his nephew back across the tiltyard, lunging and cutting with all his might.

  They sparred with broadswords. The blades were blunted, but still dangerous, and capable of breaking bones if they scored a hit. The fighters wore padded jacks and face-masks for protection.

  Pembroke’s nephew, Henry of Richmond, ignored the older man’s taunts and let him waste his breath. At fifty-three, Pembroke was still strong, but the advance of age had weighed him down. Henry thought of him as an old bear: fierce, aggressive, slow to react.

  He retreated, parrying Pembroke’s assaults but venturing none of his own. They often sparred together. Pembroke had been the first man to put a wooden practice sword into his little hand, when he was just four years old. His uncle had been the one fixed star in Henry’s turbulent life. Always loyal, always dependable, an able substitute for the father he never knew.

  Now, aged twenty-six, the pupil had become the master. If he really made the effort, Henry might have disarmed his opponent, but preferred not to embarrass him. The old man had his pride, and there were a number of Breton lords watching in the stands. Pembroke enjoyed a deserved reputation as an able warrior, and it would not do him – nor Henry – any good to let the Bretons know his powers waned.

  Their blades clashed and scraped a while longer. Pembroke could make no headway, and Henry took a step back when his uncle started to cough.

  “Damned mask,” Pembroke rasped, “it effects my breathing.”

  He threw down his sword and fumbled with the straps of his face-mask. When it finally came off, he stood coughing and gasping for a full minute, red-faced and bent double, clasping his knees for support.

  “You are ill, sir,” Henry said in a deliberately loud voice, “that summer cold refuses to leave you.”

  Speechless, the other man waved him away. Henry removed his own mask and beckoned at a page, who hurried forward with a flask of watered wine. Pembroke snatched the flask and gulped down the contents.

  “Better,” he panted, rinsing out his mouth, “much better. Let us resume.”

  He reached down for his sword. “No,” Henry said firmly, “I have sparred enough for one day, and so have you. We could fight until Doomsday, but I will never be more than adequate with a sword.”

  Pembroke placed his hands on his hips and took in some deep breaths. He was a heavy man, stocky and broad in the shoulder, and his waist was starting to thicken.

  “Damn this paunch,” he panted, rubbing his belly, “no amount of fasting or exercise seems to reduce it.”

  “Perhaps because your notion of fasting is unique,” Henry said drily, “strong Rhenish wine and roasted meats hardly count as hermit-like severity.”

  Pembroke wiped his streaming forehead and eyed Henry balefully. “Clever answers, nephew. You always have clever answers.”

  He pointed at Henry’s sword. “You must needs be more than adequate. Richard Plantagenet is a born warrior. If you meet in battle, you must be able to match his strength and skill.”

  “The sword is but one kind of weapon,” Henry retorted, “there are others. I mean to make use of all of them.”

  They went into the armoury and gave their gear to the master-at-arms. In spite of the exercise, Henry was not tired, and insisted on traipsing up the steps to the hall to read his latest correspondence.

  The Chateau L’Hermine was a small castle inside the town of Vannes, on the southern coast of Brittany. Henry had been a prisoner here for three years, and was thoroughly bored of it.

  Better bored than dead, he reminded himself as he climbed the stairs, with Pembroke puffing in his wake.

  This was his third prison in twelve years of exile and gentle captivity. Duke Francis regarded him as a useful bargaining aid, and was both gaoler and protector. So long as Henry was in the duke’s custody, Yorkist agents from England could not get their hands on him, much as they would like to.

  They had almost succeeded on a couple of occasions. Henry still suffered nightmares of his near-escape at St Malo, not far from Vannes. He was just nineteen at the time, and a blunder on the duke’s part led to Henry being taken under guard to St Malo, to be handed over to Yorkist envoys sent by King Edward. Only by feigning illness, and then slipping away while his guards argued with Edward’s agents, had he avoided being taken aboard ship.

  Alone, Henry fled through the town’s narrow, cobbled streets, hiding in alleys and doorways while the English hunted him. Heart thumping, sweat pouring down his brow, he managed to reach the shadowy confines of Saint Vincent’s Cathedral, where he claimed sanctuary. Unwilling to break the holy rules of sanctuary, his pursuers gave up and sailed back to England empty-handed.

  They will never stop hunting me, Henry thought, not until I am dead, or beyond their reach. Brittany is not far enough, and the duke is old and sick. Once he is dead, I must find a new refuge.

  It was a bitter prospect, spending the rest of his days as a fugitive, crawling from one foreign court to another to beg his bread. His mother was in England, doing her utmost to persuade King Richard to allow him to come home in peace, swear fealty to the Yorkist regime and be given back his earldom of Richmond.

  Henry appreciated her efforts, but had no intention of placing himself in the power of Richard Plantagenet. The fate of Rivers and Hastings warned against putting any faith in the new king’s promises.

  He entered the hall to find Sir Edward Woodville waiting for him. Edward was newly arrived to Brittany, having fled to Henry’s little court in exile with just two ships and a chest full of gold coins he had liberated from a merchant ship in the Channel. The rest of his fleet had surrendered to King Richard, who also seized Edward’s bases at the Isle of Wight and Porchester.

  Edward stood up as Henry and his uncle came in, and executed a graceful bow. He was a graceful man, about thirty years of age, tall and sinewy and ruggedly handsome, with a tight cap of blonde curls cut in the latest military style. A distinguished soldier and knight-at-arms, just the kind of man Henry needed about him.

  Unfortunately, there was only one of him. Henry sighed, and gestured at him to rise.

  “Your Majesty,” Edward said formally, “I watched you spar in the tiltyard. Most impressive.”

  Your Majesty, thought Henry. He insists on addressing me as a king. I am too vain to tell him to stop.

  Henry crossed to the long table, where a clerk in a skull-cap sat leafing through a neat pile of letters. “Don’t flatter me, Sir Edward,” he said with some asperity, “though today was one of my better days. If I was fighting you in earnest, I might have died a mere three times.”

  Edward gave a polite smile. “There is news from England, sire,” he replied, “just arrived this morning.”

  The clerk handed Henry the letter in question. He took it, broke the plain seal and unfolded the crackling parchment.

  “Well?” Pembroke asked impatiently after several minutes had passed, “what does it say? Out with it, lad.”

  Henry slowly placed the letter on the table and laid his hands flat on the board.

  “It seems the Duke of Buckingham is a more subtle man that I gave him credit for,” he said, “at least he has the wit to send us a letter under a plain seal.”

  Edward and Pembroke exchanged glances. “It’s from Buckingham?” said Pembroke, “what does he have to say?”

  Henry ignored the question and snapped his fingers at the clerk. “Hand me the letter of the fourteenth,” he ordered.

  His correspondence was sorted and filed according to a system of his own devising. The clerk, a pinch-faced fellow with a quietly efficient manner, sorted through one of the piles until he found what his master
wanted.

  The letter of the fourteenth was from one of his mother’s agents in London. Henry quickly read through it to remind himself of the contents.

  “Rebellion in Kent, Surrey and Sussex,” he murmured, “and rumours of further unrest in the south-west, where the Marquess of Dorset has raised his banner at Exeter.”

  “The list of names of known rebels is at the bottom,” he added, squinting at the poor handwriting, “Sir George Brown of Betchworth, Sir John Fogge of Ashford, Nicholas Gaynesford, Sir Thomas Bourchier, Sir William Haute…these men were all committed Yorkists, and served the old king loyally. Brown carried the banner of Saint George at his funeral. Fogge was treasurer of the royal household, and a royal councillor.”

  Pembroke shifted impatiently. “Yes, yes. I’ve read through that letter a dozen times. What does the one from Buckingham say? Have the rebels met the usurper in battle yet?”

  “No. They are too scattered, and lack for a leader. Or they did. Buckingham has retreated to his estates in Wales and put himself at their head.”

  Edward gasped, and Pembroke clapped his hands together. “You mean the whoreson has betrayed Richard?” he cried, “God be thanked! First the princes vanish, and now this. The Yorkists are eating each other.”

  “So it seems.”

  There was no triumph in Henry’s voice. He handed the letter back to his clerk and stared down at the message from Buckingham.

  “Buckingham deals in no half-measures,” he said, “not only has he broken with his former ally, but wishes to make me his friend.”

  He glanced up at his companions. “More than that, he offers to make me king.”

  Chapter 11

  Norfolk, October 1483

  It was many years since Maud had backed a horse, though at least her mother had possessed the good sense to teach her to ride both side-saddle and astride. The autumn roads were poor, thanks to incessant rain, but the white mare supplied by Margaret de Vere was a placid beast, with a broad back even Maud had difficulty falling off.