‘He fought with Lord Stanley.’
‘Who will be right-hand man to the new King.’ He rallied, his face smug once more.
‘Only because he betrayed the old one.’
‘Old Dick had no right to be King. Everyone knew it.’
‘That’s not true,’ I retorted. ‘King Richard had more right than Tudor ever will. Even he knows he must marry Princess Elizabeth before the people will accept him.’
‘He’s doing it to unite the houses of Lancaster and York and put an end to all these wars.’
‘Is that what you truly believe?’ I asked. ‘What war has there been in our lifetimes – until Tudor came?’
He was silent, his eyes hooded, the flickering shadows from the lantern playing across his stony features.
How strange was this talk, in a dark alley, between two such enemies? But I forced myself to speak on, to gain time to decide what to do.
‘Why are you here anyway? Why did you follow us?’
‘We have our orders. They come from King Henry himself.’ Pride was blazoned across his face and voice.
‘Which are?’
‘I don’t have to tell you.’
I pushed on again, thinking desperately.
‘Why did your cousin try to kill us?’
‘What? Where is he?’
He flicked his gaze from side to side, chary of taking it away from my sword, but seeking into every shadowy, mist-shrouded corner of the score.
‘Don’t worry, he’s still alive,’ I said. ‘But he won’t be coming to help you. He shouldn’t have tangled with Alys.’
‘Alys? What’s she doing here?’
‘She rode with us, of course.’
‘We thought she’d stayed at Tyrell’s place. Our informants said five boys. That her companions had ridden on just with the princes and a guide.’
My insides lurched at his words.
‘So you know who they are.’
‘The princes? Of course. Why do you think we’re here? To hunt you down and kill you? You’re not worth the effort!’
Despite all I’d heard from King Richard and Master Ashley, and repeated to Edward and Richard at Gipping, until that moment I had perhaps only half believed it myself – that Tudor really would seek to murder Elizabeth’s brothers in cold blood. But Hugh’s mocking face didn’t lie.
I forced myself to carry on.
‘And you knew they were at Gipping?’
‘Not until we got there. Then we put two and two together. As Ralph said, what other two boys would Yorkists go to so much trouble to hide – and then smuggle away when Henry Tudor came.’
‘And it’s just you and Ralph here then?’
He didn’t answer with words, but his expression as he realized that he was now alone was reply enough for me. My decision was made.
I hurled myself at him so suddenly that he could do no more than roughly parry my blade, and then I had a chance to pivot and land a blow on his body before he had recovered.
But my heart sank at the crunch as my sword struck him. He was wearing chain mail beneath his doublet. I had hoped to take him by surprise, that it might give me an edge. But instead he had the edge – of being armoured while I wore only a jack.
Yet my blow had at least winded and bruised him, if it had done no more damage. It gave me a little time to think again as we circled each other warily in the narrow score, he grimacing with the pain.
‘You wretch!’ he snapped. ‘Think you can best me, eh? You never have before.’
That I knew well. But my mind had to stay in the present, not the past, if I were to have any chance at all.
He flung himself at me with a snarl, but I skipped out of the way, at the last moment twisting and striking out as he passed. The flat of my blade caught him hard on his upper arm. His flinch told me he wore no mail there.
He was stronger than me, more skilled, better armed. But was I more agile, lighter, quicker? Might his greater height and weight work against him – however unlikely that seemed?
These thoughts flitted through my brain as we circled once more, slowly, carefully, watching one another, each with heaving chest, catching our breath. All talking was now over. Silent again, Hugh fixed his eyes on me, no longer scouting for his cousin, for help, focused only on me, searching for any warning sign, for any movement, any action. And I did the same – quietening my breathing, ignoring the pounding of blood in my ears, praying I would be ready for his next move – forgetting who else was there in the score with us.
With a flurry of deep red, glinting in the lamp’s glow, Murrey darted in to snap at Hugh’s ankles, then danced away, yapping sharply as he lashed out with his boot. A growl, a twirl around, then another swift, scarlet rush into the fray.
As Hugh kicked again at my hound and she spun away, I took the chance she gave me. I catapulted myself at him, lunging with my sword and aiming this time for his unprotected, bull-like neck.
He roared in anger as he drove his own blade up in response and our swords clashed and sparked. My blade snagged on his hilt and, with a fierce twist of his wrist, he forced it down and then away, wrenching it from my hand. It clanged as it hit the wall while I, thrown off balance, sprawled to the floor.
As my hand flailed in a grab at my sword – too far! – he whipped round and followed through, and I rolled to the side just in time for his sword to smash down on the cobbles instead of my head. I tried to scramble to my feet, but wasn’t quick enough. He kicked me back to the ground, winding me, and before I could rally, his heavy boot was on my chest, pinning me down.
I struggled for breath, and writhed to left, to right, but he only stamped down harder until I could not move for the crushing pains in my ribs. And as I stared up at him, helpless, he brought his sword down, down, until the tip almost touched my nose.
Motionless now, but for my straining chest, I gazed along the shining blade, its point unwavering between my eyes, its polished length reflecting flickers from the lantern flames on to the dark, looming walls of the score. Into my terrified mind crept unbidden a memory from our time at Middleham. Weapons training, two years or more ago. When Hugh had beaten me like this before. Then the sword had been wooden, not tempered, sharpened steel – but the hate in his eyes was the same.
Those eyes narrowed now, black slits in the devilish red of the flaring lamplight.
‘Runt!’ he taunted. ‘Upstart!’
I had never felt so alone, so defenceless. A gaping hollow yawned inside me like the mouth of hell, a pit of sheer terror so deep I would never fall to its end. The faces of my friends, my family – my long-dead mother – images of my short life, all chased through my head as the cool sword point traced across my chin and down the length of my neck.
It rested there a moment, its razor edge against my skin, then he lifted it and delicately tapped it on my throat – once, twice, three times – as though playing with me.
Then his eyes and mouth tightened, and he clasped both his hands upon the hilt, raising his sword high to plunge the point deep into my neck.
But before he could ram it down, a ferocious snarl rang out, and Murrey, in a flash of red, launched herself at his sword arm, sinking her teeth deep into the flesh.
Hugh screamed, dropped his sword and thrashed at her with his other hand. But she would not let go and hung there, teeth clamped on his upper arm as he hit her and hit her to no avail.
His falling sword missed my head by no more than an inch and I plucked it up and flung it to the far side of the score before I rolled over and over, out of the way of his now tramping boots. I grasped the wall and hauled myself back to my feet, gasping one pain-filled stabbing breath after another. How many ribs had Hugh’s boot broken?
One hand pressed to my side against the pain, I bent to reclaim my own sword. Hugh’s curses were echoing round the alley together with the clatter of his boots, and my only thought now was to dash back to help my loyal hound.
But as I swung round, Hugh’s left hand dragged the dagger from hi
s belt. The lamplight flashed on its upraised blade, then he jabbed it sharply down, thrusting it deep into Murrey’s flank.
I heard her strangled yelp, saw bright blood gush from the wound, saw her grip loosen. Though Hugh’s face was contorted by pain, a smirk lurched across it. He shook her from him before slumping to his knees, his hand clutching his arm.
A howl of rage smote my ears and before I realized it came from me, I had charged the half-dozen paces to where Hugh knelt and dealt him such a blow on his jaw with my sword hilt that he toppled to the ground.
In an instant, all was reversed.
He lay sprawled on his back on the cobbles, gulping in great gasps of air, staring at my sword point lined up unwavering between his eyes.
Such hate had never seized me before, or such fury. As I stood there, enraged, with Hugh at my mercy, Murrey whimpered once, twice, a gurgling breath, then she was silent. And I knew my loyal, royal hound would never dance again, or come back to life at a whistle.
My eyes stung, but I dared not tear them away from Hugh. A moment’s distraction, a split second’s indecision, and for all his bites and bruising, he would throw me off him and finish what he had begun.
Yet, staring down at him now, I sensed fear in him for the first time – fear of me, of what I, a runt and an upstart, would do. And power surged through me, the power of life or death over a fellow human being.
‘Traitor!’ I hissed at him. I saw again the stab. First one, then another. ‘Coward!’
And in that instant I wanted to hurt. To hurt that cringing cur at my feet.
Murrey had never cringed, never once in all her life. In all her oh-so-short life. My loyal, courageous hound. What had King Richard called her? A brave little thing? Little she may have been, a runt even, but she had always been brave. Never a coward like this creature before me, pleading for his life.
For out of his mouth came choking sounds, barely words, entreating.
‘Please, Matthew... please... I beg you... My uncle... Lord Stanley... They will...’
But those words were not the ones to help him. He must have seen it in my face. His voice faltered, died away.
For again into my mind came the sights and sounds of that fateful day, the banners whipping in the wind as the traitors charged, the screams, the horror, the stench of blood – in my nostrils again now. The jeers, the insults – the stab.
And I wanted to inflict pain on him as he had on Murrey, on me. To stab him as he had her – as he had my King.
And my sword point edged closer to his throat.
‘Matthew!’
Alys’s voice broke into my thoughts.
‘Matt! What —’
Roger’s too.
Hugh’s eyes darted to the sound, but mine didn’t move, didn’t dare leave his.
Into the darkness on the fringe of my vision, the pale ghost of a hound trotted, bent its head, nudged the unmoving dark shape that lay there. Shadow.
Roger, raising a ship’s lantern above his head – casting light upon the whole scene.
Alys, her cropped hair stark in the harsh light. Clutching – what? A sword. Glinting. A glimpse of scrollwork inscription on the blade. Edward’s.
‘Matthew. What happened?’
Her voice was soft, softer than I’d heard it before. Before...
‘He stabbed...’ A croak. Me? ‘He killed...’
Roger peeled away, moved further up the score.
‘I’ll go check the main street. See what —’
He disappeared into the murk, the swirling mist.
Alys’s hands clasped mine, still clenched upon the sword hilt. Warm fingers on my cold.
My eyes didn’t waver. The sword point inched closer.
‘He —’
‘I know, Matt, I know.’ Her words were barely a murmur, so close to my ear. ‘I see her. I see what he did.
‘I have to —’
‘No, Matt – no, you mustn’t.’
‘But – but he would...’
He would do it, wouldn’t he? Finish it. He wouldn’t flinch from it – wouldn’t stay his hand – if this were reversed.
‘But, Matt – you’re not him. You never will be.’
Her hands pressed tighter, closed over mine. Her voice as firm.
‘Matt... Matt, tell me. What – what would King Richard do?’
And I knew then. That was all it took.
Those words. Those memories.
Of all those times when I had watched, listened, learnt.
All that the Duke, the King, had ever said to me, done for me. His half-smile, his gentle mockery, his firm handshake in farewell, the final promise I had made. And when I had betrayed his trust and his memory. Once. But not now. Never again.
I knew then that I wouldn’t kill Hugh – wouldn’t thrust the sword home. Wouldn’t do to him what he would have done to me without a second’s thought. I couldn’t. No matter what he had done.
And Hugh saw it.
His eyes narrowed, his lip curled, his face relaxed. The fear had fled. Now only contempt remained.
But the tip of my sword pressed still against the soft base of his throat. As I unbuckled my sword belt with my other hand and passed it to Alys. As she slipped it out of the scabbard and threaded it beneath his booted legs, strapping it round them as tight as she could. As I ordered him to turn on to his face and raise his wrists behind him.
Next Alys held her sword to his neck while I unfastened his own belt and, ramming my knee into the small of his back – ignoring his cry of pain – I pulled his injured arms up to tie them fast. Then Alys’s deft hands tore a strip of cloth from his cloak, fashioning a gag.
Soon we had finished, and Hugh lay trussed and helpless on the cobbles in the guttering light cast by his smashed lantern. He struggled and strained against his bonds, but he could scarcely move, and not so much as a whimper escaped from his stopped-up mouth.
I brushed the dust and grime from my doublet as best I could, before slipping my own old belt through Lord Lovell’s scabbard and resheathing his sword. I silently offered up my thanks to his lordship for his gift on that dread day that now seemed so long ago.
Footsteps pounded down the alley towards us. Shadow crouched low, a small growl in her throat. Alys stood ready, her sword raised, though I had no heart to draw my own again.
The glow of a lantern approached the corner and rounded it. It was Roger, of course. Out of breath,
‘They’ve found Ralph. The villagers. They’re untying him. We must go.’
Hugh recommenced his writhing with renewed hope. But a swift kick in his ear from Alys’s booted foot quietened him.
She leant down close to his face.
‘Count your blessings, Hugh,’ she whispered. ‘You’re still alive. Next time you may not be so lucky. We all had a good master, a good teacher. Not everyone is so ready to forgive. And lessons don’t always last.’
She stood back up and collected one of the discarded bundles, while Roger scooped up the other two.
‘Come, we must be off. We’ll be safely away long before they find him. All of us. Long before – and far away.’
I gathered up Murrey’s lifeless body. She weighed heavy in my hands as she had never done in life, and her bloodied head lolled against my chest.
Alys, calling Shadow, slipped her free arm through mine. And, with Roger raising his lantern to light our way, together we three walked down the score towards the midnight harbour, to where the ship awaited us and the tide had begun to ebb.
Here ends The King’s Man, the second book in the sequence called The Order of the White Boar. The third book will continue Matthew and his friends’ adventures in the years that follow.
Author’s note
Within days of the battle at which King Richard III died (which came to be known as the Battle of Bosworth), members of the council in Matthew’s home city of York wrote that ‘King Richard late mercifully reigning upon us was through great treason . . . piteously slain and murdered
to the great heaviness of this city’ and called him ‘the most famous prince of blessed memory’. Two years earlier on his coronation tour of England, the Bishop of St David’s had said of him: ‘He contents the people where he goes best that ever did prince’ and a Scottish ambassador remarked that ‘Never has so much spirit or greater virtue reigned in such a small body.’ Dominic Mancini, reporting back to his French master on events in England in 1483, said of the new King, ‘The good reputation of his private life and public activities powerfully attracted the esteem of strangers.’
But more than a hundred years later, in a play by the great playwright William Shakespeare, King Richard was described as ‘deform’d, unfinished, sent… Into this breathing world, scarce half made up… that bottled spider, that foul bunch-backed toad… determined to prove a villain… the bloody king’, being portrayed as a tyrant with a hunchback and withered arm.
It’s often said that history is written by the winners. This is perhaps particularly true in the case of the history that was created during the Tudor dynasty after the first Henry Tudor was victorious in battle and took the crown from King Richard. He reigned for twenty-four years as Henry VII, his son for more than thirty as Henry VIII, his grand-daughter for more than forty as Elizabeth I. And it was under her rule than Master Shakespeare provided the most famous condemnation of King Richard – and the one that sticks in most people’s minds more than four hundred years later.
This book is one of an increasing number seeking to roll back those centuries of misinformation by going back before the creation of the Tudor myths about King Richard, to the records of his time, and considering them with an open mind. The first to do so was written by Sir George Buck in the early 1600s, almost as soon as the last Tudor monarch was dead – and no longer had to be reassured of her rightful place on the throne by slandering her dynasty’s predecessor.
I’ve tried to stay as close as possible to the scant information we do have from the months of turmoil after the death of King Edward IV – the period from April to June 1483 that is covered in the first chapters of this book. Scant information, but major events and conflicting views on them. These first few chapters may be confusing to some readers – but no more confusing than they must have been to the people living at the time. Some of this confusion I’ve tried to communicate through Matthew and his friends in the Order of the White Boar, themselves trying to make sense of it all, perhaps without much success. If you’ve reached as far as this note, I hope that means you’ve read all the way through that – and beyond – to where I was able to focus again on the relative simplicity of Matt’s own story – and how it touches and weaves more closely again about that of ‘his’ Duke – now ‘his’ King.
The King's Man (The Order of the White Boar Book 2) Page 25