Sacrifice

by David Pilling

  6.

  Sir Francis Bolton rarely found peace. One of the few places he found it, if only for a little while, was the old Norman church of All Saints near Cromford.

  Here several generations of his family had been christened, married and buried. Below the church was a vault, built by his ancestor Edward Bolton to house the remains of the more prominent members of their family. The others lay at rest in the peaceful little cemetery outside.

  On a comfortless, wind-blown day in early October, Francis sat alone in the church, head bowed in silent prayer. As a strict Calvinist, he refused to kneel when at his prayers, or remove his hat. Francis was grateful for this new observance, not only because it accorded with his faith, but it spared his ageing knees from the agony of cold stone.

  The plain austerity of the church, stripped of popish ornaments, was his doing. Twelve months previously, encouraged by the fiery sermons of a radical separatist preacher he had taken into his house, he marched into the church and smashed the stained glass in the windows with a hammer.

  The minister, Reverend Shipton, who had since fled Cromford, tried in vain to bar his way. “Move aside, sir,” Francis cried, brandishing his hammer threateningly in the young man’s face, “I mean to break the glass and throw the shards into the river - yea, even as King Asa threw the false images into the brook of Kidron.”

  Shipton refused to budge. “Is it not enough,” he protested, “that you have removed all the crucifixes and pictures from my church, ordered me to leave absolution out of services, and taken the rail from my altar? The glass has adorned the windows since the days of Henry the Fifth. In God’s name, I beg you to leave it be. What harm can a little decoration do?”

  Francis’ face suffused with blood. “Idolator!” he cried, “what you term decoration is popish flummery, and a crime in the eyes of the Lord. I have endured your ungodly presence in Cromford long enough. Jenkin, Taylor, remove him!”

  Jenkin and Taylor, two of his Puritan servants, stepped forward to seize the minister. Terrified, he shrank back against the doorway. While their master went to work inside, they dragged Shipton through the cemetery and tossed him over the hedge onto the road.

  The smashing of the glass was a pleasant noise, and lingered long in Francis’ memory. Afterwards he had thrown the hammer, soiled by its contact with the unholy, into the river along with the shards of glass. Now the wind was free to blow through the high, arched windows behind the altar, mortifying the flesh of the congregation for the good of their souls.

  Francis shifted uncomfortably. Winter was coming on, and the wind had a bitter edge.

  “Give my strength, lord,” he mouthed, “to endure the torments thou chooses to send. Thou knows what a wretched sinner I am, among the worst of men, and how I fully deserve thy chastisement.”

  His words died away in the hollow shell of the nave. Cromford was one of his manors, but he had not yet replaced Shipton. Few of his tenants in Cromford village shared his severe faith, and there had been protests at the removal of the previous minister. Francis planned to let the seething discontent die down before installing the new man, the same radical who had inspired him to smash the glass.

  A church without a minister was a mere barn, in his opinion, and the cold was becoming unbearable. Finding no comfort in his prayers, he got to his feet, wincing at the twinges of gout in his right leg. At forty-nine, Francis was nearing the age when such afflictions started to wear a man down.

  He stumped over to the little black door to the rear of the nave, opposite the porch. It was usually kept locked, and Francis carried one of the only two keys. He turned the key in the well-oiled lock, put his shoulder to the door and carefully descended the short flight of steps beyond.

  They led to the family vault. Francis paused at the foot of the stair, blinking in the musty gloom of the dark, circular chamber. The only light came from the stairwell, and the tombs of his kin made forbidding silhouettes in the darkness.

  Seven recumbent figures, each with their own alcove. Six of then were men, the exception being the tomb of Elizabeth Bolton (1461-1511). Walking as softly as his bulk allowed, so as not to disturb the dead at their rest, Francis approached her first.

  Elizabeth’s effigy, carved with exquisite detail by a local stonemason, displayed her slender form in one of the ugly dresses of her era, hands steepled in prayer.

  Her face, familiar to Francis from many years of visiting the vault, showed a rather severe, thin-featured woman, with the characteristic long nose, pointed chin and high temple of Bolton females. Her eyes were large, and Francis could imagine them burning with fierce vitality in life.

  “Requiesat en pace,” he whispered, touching her hand. Like all the Boltons in the vault, Elizabeth had died in the Catholic faith, before the eighth Henry ended England’s age-old slavery to Rome and the Holy See.

  Soon they will be joined by a ninth Bolton, he thought, one who has died in the true faith, and thus redeems his ancestors.

  He turned away from Elizabeth. There were certain unpleasant tales associated with her, which he preferred not to heed. There was even a local song about them, called My Lady the Whore, the verses of which became lewder as they went on.

  The next tomb contained the remains of Elizabeth’s father, Edward (1412-59). His effigy was of a knight in armour, bareheaded, mailed feet resting on his helmet. Edward had died in battle at Blore Heath fighting for the Lancastrian King Henry VI - slaughtered on the field, so family tradition claimed, by neighbours he counted as friends.

  Next was Martin (1453-1507), Elizabeth’s brother, and the only one of her male siblings to survive the dynastic wars between Lancaster and York. There were stories of him also, how he had fled England in exile to escape the Yorkist supremacy, served as a captain of mercenaries overseas, and finally returned to share in the Lancastrian triumph at Bosworth. The details were vague and contradictory, but his sister Elizabeth was thought to have helped bring about the family’s unlikely restoration, hence her place in the vault.

  Like his father, Martin was represented as a knight in armour. This was fitting, for they had both been fighting men, and the Boltons were a fighting clan.

  Martin had ordered a brass plaque to be erected above his tomb. It read: ALL WE LOST, I REGAINED. REMEMBER OUR FOLLY, MY KINSFOLD TO COME, AND LIVE NOT BY THE SWORD.

  Francis gazed at the plaque, gleaming with polish - to give Shipton his due, he had kept the vault in good order - and sadly shook his head. Martin’s warning was useless. The present generation of Boltons would fain have lived in peace, but the times required otherwise.

  He looked around the vault. There was enough space left for one, maybe two more tombs. All the Boltons since Elizabeth had been laid to rest in the cemetery above ground, having led the mercifully quiet, inconsequential lives of rural gentry, and undeserving of the honour of being buried in the vault.

  Now there was to be a new addition. Three weeks ago the body of John Bolton, Francis’ nephew, had returned to Heydon Court, borne on the back of a wagon. He had ridden off to war to join the army of Parliament under the Earl of Essex.

  Francis was an intensely devout man, but not a hard one. “God forgive me,” he muttered, falling back against the rough stone of the wall beside Martin’s tomb. Tears started to his eyes.

  Few besides his wife ever saw him weep. It was unseemly for the head of the family to display such weakness. Here, among the shadows of his departed kin, it was safe to let the tears flow.

  After the early death of his parents, Francis had paid for John to study at Oxford, where he gained a BA and fell under the influence of various godly tutors. Delighted that the young man had chosen the path of true religion, Francis encouraged him to join Essex’s newly-formed army.

  “One could do no better on this sinful earth,” he recalled advising his nephew, “than fight and die in the cause of God.”

  Fine words, and so easy to say. In the high days of summer, when all England was stirring with martial excitem
ent, and every man was required to declare for one faction or the other, it had seemed a grand and glorious thing to send a man of Bolton blood to war. John had needed little encouragement, and in spite of the protests of his young wife, Susan, eagerly accepted the horse and arms Francis bought for him.

  Live not by the sword. Francis should have heeded his ancestor’s warning. In the first real clash of arms, at Powick Bridge in Worcestershire, the Royalists had the better of it, and John was slain. Shot clean through the heart, a well-aimed musket ball penetrating his steel breastplate and buff coat.

  Susan was wild with grief, and came to Heydon Court to curse Francis with oaths that no respectable woman should know. He was not hypocrite enough to remonstrate with her. Nor did he try and comfort her with the knowledge that John’s soul now sat at the right hand of God. She was a proud, high-tempered woman, of ancient knightly stock, and the fell glitter in her eye warned him to remain silent.

  Finding nothing but grief and shame in the company of his ancestors, Francis limped back up the stair and out into the cold, bright stillness of the cemetery. His servant, Jenkin, was waiting by the gate with their horses.

  “There will be no more such visits,” said Francis, puffing as he heaved his unwieldy guts into the saddle, “the next time I come to All Saints, it will be as a mourner for my nephew, and with the rest of the family in tow.”

  He grimaced. “The whole accursed pack of them. I sat down and did a head-count last night. We Boltons have bred uncommon fast in recent times.”

  He gave his reins a twitch, and his gelding set off at a trot down the familiar winding path through the woods to Heydon Court.

  The two men rode armed, with pistols in their saddle holsters and swords at their hips. Francis was loath to admit it, but he feared being assaulted by his tenants. He was one of the few gentlemen in the county to support Parliament against the King, and had already angered the locals by ejecting Tom Shipton from All Saints.

  Most of his neighbours had already gone to join the King at Shrewsbury. The time would come, and soon, when Francis would also have to obey the call of his conscience and ride to war.

  Heydon Court and its surrounding parkland was less than half an hour’s ride away. Francis spent the journey in silence, brooding. His thoughts centred on his eldest son, Robert. Father and son had been estranged for over two years, since a furious row that ended with Robert riding away to join the King’s army mustering at Newcastle to repel the Scots. An officer in the regiment of Lord Conway, Robert had fought at the disastrous engagement at Newburn Ford, where the ill-prepared English were routed in a few short minutes.

  Robert sent a brief note home, curtly informing his parents that he had survived the defeat. Since then they had heard little from him. The very occasional letters he sent to Heydon Court were all addressed to his mother, Lady Anne, and made no mention of his father.

  The estrangement pained Francis deeply, not least because he feared meeting his eldest son on the battlefield. Always a wilful child, Robert had gone against his father’s teachings and his own Calvinist upbringing, and chosen to remain loyal to King Charles.

  To a tyrant who would rule without consent of Parliament, and his popish wife, Francis thought bitterly, Lord, why did I allow him to take a commission in the King’s army? How can I have been so blind to what would follow?

  In fairness, he reminded himself, Robert had joined the army as a cornet six years previously, when England was still at peace. He was now twenty-four, a man full grown, with a wife and two fast-growing children at Greystones, another of the Bolton manors.

  “A wife he has not visited for two years,” Francis said aloud, “his children will scarce know their own father.”

  He looked around guiltily, suddenly aware of blurting out his innermost thoughts, but there was only Jenkin to hear him. The servant’s craggy, deep-lined face was a careful mask of indifference.

  Francis shrugged. It mattered little what Jenkin overheard. He had been in the service of the Boltons for eighteen years, and his discretion could be relied on.

  They continued in silence, until they left the woods and came to the crest of a rise overlooking Heydon Court. This was Francis’ favourite view, one he had resorted to almost daily since childhood.

  Heydon Court sprawled over the fields to the south-east. Since the restoration of their fortunes under the first Tudor king, successive generations of Boltons had lavished wealth on their principal home. The modest red-brick house first built by Edward Bolton now formed the core of a large, spreading mansion, with two wings and some thirty acres of surrounding gardens, orchards and parkland, enclosed by a double set of walls.

  Francis reined in and looked down at his home. Twilight was coming on, and the skies to the west, over the Marches and the distant border of wild Wales, flared with reddish-gold light from the dying sun. All was peace in the gently sloping valley between Francis’ vantage point and the outskirts of the house, empty save for a handful of red deer peacefully cropping the grass or drinking from a little brook.

  “Jenkin,” said Francis, struck by a sudden fear, “this moment, this blessed moment granted by God, is the last peace I shall ever know on earth.”

  His servant coughed. “Come, master, don’t take on,” he said awkwardly, “there will be a fire in the hall, and Lady Anne is waiting. What greater peace could a man wish for?”

  “War is coming,” Francis went on, ignoring him, “just as it did for my ancestors. God will sweep this land clean from end to end. What shall remain once the storm has passed?”

  The hall, located on the ground floor of the oldest part of the house, was indeed warmed by a fire in the great hearth. Francis took a little comfort from that, and the presence of his wife.

  His spirits plunged again when he saw the expression on Anne’s face. Eight years his junior, she was a solid, homely, brown-haired woman, pliant and easy enough when all around her was just as she ordered it. When times were difficult, she morphed into a different woman entirely. Francis, who years ago thought he was marrying an obedient, sweet-tempered creature, sometimes wondered how his younger self had been so easily deceived.

  “Your prodigal has returned,” she said sharply, nodding at the door to Francis’ private study, traditionally called the Scriptorium.

  Her voice was thick was disapproval, yet Francis allowed hope to light inside him. “Is it Robert, come back to us at last?” he asked eagerly, “has he quit the King’s army?”

  “Of course not. Robert may be a fool like his father, but is at least constant in his folly. We shall never see him again.”

  Francis bowed his head. Anne blamed him for their son’s estrangement, almost as much as he blamed himself.

  “Who, then?” he asked. His wife shrugged and moved to warm herself by the fire.

  “See for yourself,” she replied indifferently, “he is your guest. For myself, I have had a bellyful of his sermons.”

  Now Francis knew who she referred to. Mixed feelings of joy and trepidation warred inside him as he pushed open the door to the Scriptorium.

  Inside was a snug, oak-panelled chamber, smelling comfortably of tobacco and wood smoke and old leather. A fire smouldered in the grate, and the close-packed shelves on the walls groaned under the weight of books. This was Francis’ refuge, where he fled the cares and troubles of the world.

  His refuge had been invaded. A stocky, dark-robed man stood by Francis’ writing desk, the light from the fire reflecting off his bald pate.

  The left side of the man’s face was hideously inflamed. A grotesque birth mark marred his ugly features from jaw to brow. In his right hand he held a thick yew staff.

  “My lord,” said this unsettling vision, bowing slightly.

  “Marshall,” Francis said quietly, pushing the door shut behind him, “you should send word of your coming. My wife has no liking for you.”

  The radical preacher, Matthew Marshall, gave an offhand shrug. “God’s work must be done, my lord,” he re
plied, “regardless of Lady Anne’s opinion of His servants.”

  Francis cleared his throat. The man always made him uncomfortable. Marshall politely stepped aside as he crossed the floor to his writing desk and sat down.

  “Did you succeed in your mission?” Francis asked. Marshall nodded and withdrew a square of parchment from the leather bag at his belt.

  “Eight, my lord,” he said, unfolding the parchment, “five of the women who signed could not read or write, and so made their marks. I have their names, though.”

  “All women, I presume?”

  “Almost. The Devil has the greatest appeal for the weaker sex, but one man also succumbed. A clerk of Stafford. See, there is his signature.”

  Marshall laid the parchment flat on the desk. Francis glanced down at the series of X’s and clumsy signatures scrawled across it, until he reached the last.

  “Henry Malvern,” he said, “written in a neat hand.”

  “Malvern,” he repeated, pulling at his lower lip, “a Malvern of Stafford. Well, well. A descendent of our age-old enemies, no doubt.”

  “An old family feud,” he explained, responding to Marshall’s quizzical look, “long in the past now. We were for Lancaster, they for York.”

  “There is only one Enemy, my lord,” Marshall said, “and Henry Malvern chose to sign away his soul to Him. Or thought he did. The intent is all.”

  Francis drummed his fingers on the desk. The list of names and marks before him was the result of a scheme concocted by him and Marshall, though Marshall had been the driving force.

  In common with many godly men, Francis lived in fear of the Devil’s servants, walking abroad in England.

  Witches. He had heard dark rumours of dark powers rising in the East of England, principally Essex and Sussex: of women (almost always women) meeting the Devil in various guises at night, freely signing away their souls. In return they were given familiars to serve them, imps in the form of pets, and malignant powers. Witches could kill with a thought, make livestock sick, cause food to rot.