After a while the plainsong died away, leaving a ghostly echo drifting through the vaulted cloisters. Silence fell.
“Martin.”
Kate’s appearance on the edge of the garden was sudden, and her voice took Martin by surprise. Her slender figure, which he had held in his arms so often, wore the costume of a Benedictine novice: the usual black tunic and scapular, and a white veil over her wimple to indicate her novice status.
In contrast to their last meeting, Kate looked at him without fear or anger, but a tranquil dignity that seemed mature beyond her years.
He slowly rose from the bench, painfully aware of how grotesque he must look.
“The steward at Malvern Hall said you were here, and had taken vows,” he said, “I damned him for a liar, but it seems I owe the man an apology.”
“Yes,” she said after a long pause, “I have taken my vows. Not long after my husband’s death, I decided to withdraw from the world and give my life to God.”
“Kate,” he said, but knowing better than to move towards her, “what is this folly? You have never paid more than lip-service to God. Has your conscience driven you to this? The sin of Edmund Ramage’s death lies on my soul, not yours.”
She gravely shook her head. “You don’t understand me. I doubt you ever did. I need to be at peace, Martin, and have found it here.”
There was a firm, unshakeable quality to her voice. Martin’s hope that he could win her love back started to die inside him.
“We were betrothed, before ever you fastened yourself to God,” he said desperately, “I was meant to be your husband. Don’t you remember our meetings in the woods?”
“I remember. That was my past life, and nothing but a dream now.”
“Am I a dream?” he said harshly, banging his fist against his breastplate, “is this not solid flesh and blood? I love you, Kate. You are the great love of my life. There will not be another.”
“You are young, Martin. Those are foolish words. In five years you will have forgotten all about me.”
She held up one delicate hand when he made to speak again. “You cannot argue me into submission. I am meant for the cloister, and you are meant for the world. These were the roles assigned to us when we were born.”
“I am sorry for you, though,” she added in a kinder tone, “I am sorry that God has turned away from your cause. Is the battle lost?”
“The battle, the war, the whole bloody mess of it,” he said brokenly, “the House of Lancaster is destroyed, all our captains are scattered or consigned to the grave, and the flower of our fighting men lie in rotting heaps on the fields of Barnet and Tewkesbury.”
He attempted one last plea. “I beg you, Kate, cast off this living death you have chosen. Come away with me, marry me, be my wife. That is what God truly intends for us. We cannot stay in England, now the Yorkists have won, but to hell with England! We can leave this benighted isle and find new lives in some foreign land. France, perhaps, or Italy if you prefer – there is nothing we could not do, together!”
His heart leaped as she smiled for the first time, that same impish smile that had first captured his heart in the Great Hall at Stafford Castle.
“You were always gallant,” she said. “Gallantry is the best part of you, I think. You will have great need of it. Farewell.”
Silence reigned in the garden as Martin absorbed this final defeat.
“We shall not meet again,” he said, slowly and deliberately, “but if you should hear tell of me in future years, of the fell crimes and bloody deeds I commit, know this. I am the man you created.”
“What man is that?”
“The one you claim I was always destined to be. I am the last of the Boltons, and shall be known and feared as The White Hawk.”
END
Author’s Note
On the night of 21st May 1471, King Henry VI met his death in the Wakefield Tower inside the Tower of London. According to the official account of his death, approved by his enemy Edward IV, he died of ‘pure displeasure and melancholy’ upon hearing the news of the Battle of Tewkesbury and the death of his son.
There is little doubt that Henry was in reality murdered on the orders of the Yorkist king, killed with a blow to the back of the head. When his body was exhumed in 1910, light brown hair on his skull was found to be matted with blood, confirming that he had indeed died as the result of violence.
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