Sacrifice

by David Pilling

  Martin continued to stare dumbly at the carnage. Martin Schwartz was dead, the great captain-general, yet Martin Bolton lived. The lion lay in his own blood, while the wolf flourished.

  He drew himself up. “I am no wolf,” he said, “but a hawk. The white hawk.”

  This met with a baffled silence, broken by another familiar voice.

  “Indeed you are,” said King Henry, “and hawks are noble creatures.”

  The Tudor’s voice was dry and secretly amused. Martin wearily turned to confront the tall, spare figure, clad in an ornate suit of armour, painted black and gold with the lions and lilies of England displayed on the surcoat.

  Henry was bareheaded. He looked as inscrutable as ever, with little apparent joy in victory. His little blue eyes stared hard and unblinking at Martin, who did his best to hold the gaze.

  He may as well have tried to outstare a python. Henry nodded with satisfaction when Martin broke and looked away, and beckoned to his esquires.

  “Sword,” he snapped. One of the esquires stepped forward with the king’s sword, gold-hilted and girt in a black leather sheath.

  “On your knees, Bolton,” said the king, “you will not refuse my gift this time.”

  In his light-headed state, Martin wondered if he dared do it, and set Henry to defiance. After all, his family were in the habit of defying kings.

  There were no more battles left in him. With a sigh, he dropped to one knee and bowed his head.

  The royal sword tapped lightly on his shoulders. “Arise,” the words echoed in his ears, as though from a great distance, “Sir Martin Bolton.”

  EPILOGUE

  Taken from the private journal of Mary Bolton.

  Today is the thirtieth anniversary of the death of my father at Blore Heath, slaughtered in battle by men he considered friends and neighbours.

  His killing set off the chain of deaths that ended with the execution of my brother, James. We are just one of many families who suffered. Oceans of blood have washed England’s fair fields in the last thirty years, but no more. The land sits becalmed in an uneasy Tudor dawn, under the rule of a king who brooks no opposition.

  God has granted the last of my kin a kind of peace. King Henry finally restored us to our lost manors, and added the house and lands of Malvern Hall, once in the possession of our enemy, Sir Geoffrey. Martin burned the hall, declaring it an unclean place to live, and left the blackened shell for local peasants to house their cattle.

  Poor Martin. The death of Kate Malvern sits heavy on his soul. Most days he rides out to the hunt, and I see his figure on the edge of the forest, staring at the walls of Whiteladies. His wife, Diana, informs me that he drinks himself to sleep every night. He may not live long.

  Diana does not love him, I think, but knows her duty. She has borne him twin boys, strong little creatures who, I pray nightly, will never have to lift a sword in defence of hearth and home.

  As for myself, I am content to remain at Whiteladies until the end of my days. God, in His infinite mercy, saw fit to restore my daughter to me. She visits often, and we walk in the gardens together. Still, nothing can penetrate the barrier between us. There are details of her past I do not wish to know, and she will never tell.

  Elizabeth has also done her duty by the family. She is married to a wealthy corn-monger of Stafford, a shrewd man of business, only too eager to drop his family name and call himself a Bolton. Her belly is already swollen with a second child. The first, a daughter, plays in the woods and fields around Heydon Court with Martin’s sons. Their laughter does much to appease the sad ghosts of their forebears.

  The present is more than I could have hoped for, and yet war leaves marks that do not fade. My people shall live on. But they are a damaged people, and walk under a poison rain.

  - Mary Bolton, 23rd September 1489.

  END

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I chose not to add an author’s note to previous instalments of The White Hawk, but thought one was necessary here: mainly due to my depiction of King Richard the Third, possibly the most famous/notorious monarch in English history, especially since the discovery of his remains under a car park in Leicestershire.

  Richard’s life and brief career as king have generated more debate than any of his peers. To many he is a maligned hero, a good man whose reputation was deliberately ruined by Tudor propaganda after his betrayal and death at Bosworth. The first Tudor king, Henry VII, deliberately encouraged a black image of Richard, until the world remembered him as a villainous usurper and murderer of his nephews. Shakespeare’s infamous play, in which Richard appears as a hideously deformed psychopath, gleefully mowing down everyone who stands in his way to the throne, completed this negative picture.

  So far as his physical deformities go, these were certainly much exaggerated. His skeleton revealed evidence of a twist in his spine, a condition known as scoliois, which might have made his left shoulder appear slightly higher than the other. This could have given rise to the story of him being a hunchback, and it is worth bearing in mind that any physical deformity, no matter how slight, was viewed in the Middle Ages as a sign of inner evil.

  I wrote Richard as I saw him: a ruthless medieval aristocrat, raised in a brutal and bloody environment, who acted according to his lights. An able man in many ways, and physically brave, he was forced to act in haste to preserve his own position after King Edward’s death, and committed a series of terrible blunders. The upshot was Bosworth Field, and the unlikely rise to power of the Tudor dynasty.

  Ultimately, this is a story about the Boltons, not Richard, and it is time to leave this generation of the family to repair their shattered fortunes as best they can. The short story that follows, The Devil’s Due, acts as a prelude to the next series of tales of The White Hawk.

  THE DEVIL’S DUE

  By David Pilling

  1.

  In the late summer of 1642 Henry Malvern met the Devil. Or, to be more precise, he met one of His servants.

  It happened thus. Henry lived in the town of Stafford and scraped a poor living as a legal clerk, working for a money-lender named William Audley. Audley was a typical specimen of his breed: cold-hearted, grasping, penny-pinching, and cruel. Some of his notoriety rubbed off onto his clerk, and as a result Henry was not popular in the town.

  He was not helped by being so ill-favoured. A childhood bout of rickets had left him with slightly bowed legs and a deformed spine. These disfigurements, combined with his sharp features and long nose, led to him acquiring the nickname of The Weasel.

  The Weasel may have had weak legs, but he had good hearing. As he walked about the market place during the short midday break Audley permitted him, he soaked up the local gossip and rumour.

  In recent months all the talk had been of King and Parliament, and the great conflict that was brewing between them. By and large, Staffordshire was for King Charles, while those who favoured his enemies were careful to keep silent. In this they were wise, for there were many in the town who made no secret of their desire to strike a blow for the crown. Coarse braggarts, Henry rated them, street drunks and ale-house warriors who would take to their heels at the first whiff of gunpowder.

  “Let Pym or Hampden or any of their crew set foot inside our borders,” Henry overheard one such rascal bellow, standing on the step of The Rose & Crown, an inn near the market, “and I shall break their heads for them with these my bare hands!”

  The speaker was one John Trapnel, a butcher’s apprentice and well-known ruffian. Henry had once bumped into the man when the latter was staggering drunkenly down the street, and suffered a blow from his fist. The blow knocked him into the gutter and set his ears ringing for three days.

  Having no wish for another taste of the man’s dreadful temper, Henry drew up the greasy collar of his old black coat and moved on.

  His acute hearing picked up threads of gossip: dark whispers and mutterings, private conversations held on street corners or in the mouth of alleyways, accompanied by
a knowing looks and shaking of heads.

  Henry’s desire to know the secrets of others was bottomless. Lost in their private fears and scandals, few took any note of The Weasel as he lurked in the shadows and listened carefully to all that passed.

  “...a tall, well-made man,” he overheard one woman whisper to her neighbour, “ugly, with a face like a mastiff and no hair on his skull. That’s not all.”

  Here she leaned in closer to her companion and spoke behind her hand. Henry, who was leaning against the rough brickwork of a nearby alley, strained to listen.

  “...his scalp, and one side of his face is covered in a blood-red birthmark. Akin to a splash of blood.”

  The other woman nodded. “The Devil’s mark.”

  “They say he has met with Joanna Cartwright, and Elizabeth Bell, and made covenant with them. Others too, though I do not know their names...”

  Henry sensed the fear in their voices, and the note of excitement. The presence of evil, he thought cynically, does much to enliven dull, workaday lives.

  At this point one of the gossips finally noticed him, and nudged her companion. They glared at Henry in silence until he slunk away.

  For the rest of that afternoon, while he toiled over account-ledgers in the tiny antechamber to Audley’s office, Henry’s mind was distracted by what he had heard. Fortunately he had long ago mastered the routine of his work, and was able to divide his concentration.

  The room where he spent the daylight hours of six days in most weeks was dark, cramped, and ill-lit by a single dirty window. There was a tiny grate, though Audley only allowed a fire during the depths of winter.

  This time of year was the worst. Autumn was dying, its passing heralded by slate-grey skies and foul weather. Every day was colder than the next. The cold made Henry shiver as he sat hunched on his little stool, squinting at figures by the light of a single candle.

  He had overheard the tale of the man with the birthmark on Thursday noon. At six o’clock his labours ended, and he stiffly rose from his stool and made his way down the cobbled high street to his lodgings, a one-room garret above a baker’s shop. Henry could have afforded better, even on his low wages, but liked to be near the heart of Stafford, where he could listen to its pulse.

  That night, after dark, he donned his scarf and wide-brimmed hat and went out into the streets. He hoped to hear more rumours, and to that end visited several taverns, drinking a cup of cheap ale in each.

  Henry was disappointed. All he heard was commonplace tittle-tattle, some conflicting news on skirmishes fought across the country between Royalist and Parliament forces, and the impeding arrival of a troop of Royalist soldiers to garrison Stafford for His Majesty.

  Some weeks previously Charles had set up his standard at Nottingham. He was now said to be marching west with all of his power to seize the armouries in Staffordshire and drum up recruits.

  “The king wants soldiers,” Henry heard one greybeard say, gazing bleakly into his ale, “he knows there are plenty hereabouts who will raise a pike for him. The folly of young men. Many will be cold in the ground before all is over.”

  “Hush,” said the landlord, glancing nervously around the busy tavern, “some would call that treason.”

  The old man cocked an eyebrow at him. “Treason? For saying young men die in war, even if they fight in a righteous cause? I only speak the truth.”

  “Even so, keep your truth in your throat, if you wish to keep drinking here. There are plenty of young gallants who would march to war for the king, as you say, and a few as would happily break an old man’s head for spreading doubts and fears. Be warned.”

  After some hours in this futile endeavour, Henry returned to his lodgings and fell into an uneasy sleep, haunted by images of a towering preacher-type figure clad in a dark suit, his bald pate and hideously twisted features spattered with blood.

  In his dream Henry met the preacher on a blasted heath, featureless save for one gaunt, leafless tree bowed by screaming winds. He knelt in terror and shuddered as blood dripped onto the back of his neck.

  “Little man,” cried the preacher, his voice sounding through the gale like a trumpet, “know that the Devil will have his due!”

  Henry woke with a start. He sat upright, clutching his sheets in terror and trying to will away the images in his head. Unable to sleep further, he rose, peeled off his night-gown and slowly dressed by the pale light of dawn filtering through the shutters on his window. After a frugal breakfast of bread and milk, he soft-footed down the stairs behind the baker’s shop and went to work.

  His master allowed Henry one Saturday afternoon off a month. The following Saturday happened to be his free time, and he decided to take a ride in the country outside Stafford.

  “I am sick,” he muttered to himself as he untethered the nag he kept at a stable near the Rose & Crown, “sick of the town, and the secrets it refuses to yield up to me. Come, lass, and help me clear my head.”

  Near the outskirts of Stafford lay Doxey Marshes, a wide stretch of low-lying marsh and grassland. The River Sow flowed through it, and when he got the opportunity Henry was fond of following the trail of the river through the wetlands, wallowing in thought.

  The morning was damp and grey. A powerful wind swept the marshes, driving the rain before it. Huddled up in his old coat, Henry ignored the bad weather. His mind was still fixed on the mysterious figure with the birthmark.

  Who is he? A magician, a witch, or a mere ghost conjured up by bored minds?

  He cursed his shy nature. I should have questioned the women in the marketplace, and risked being damned for my impudence.

  Henry had no wife, nor held out much hope of ever acquiring one. Apart from his lack of attractive qualities, he was hopelessly tongue-tied in the presence of women. It didn’t bother him over-much: he preferred to walk the world alone, without someone to bully him into changing his mode of life.

  His horse plodded along at a pace that suited his contemplative mood. She was a stolid, barrel-bellied creature, more fit for pulling carts than carrying a gentleman, but the best he could afford. Along with his pistol, kept in a chest at the foot of his bed, she was his most treasured possession.

  There were few people out on the marsh at this early hour. Henry glimpsed an elderly man crouching behind a hedge to observe a clutch of wading birds, and a shepherd’s boy grazing his sheep in a meadow. Otherwise the world was empty of human life, which was how he preferred it.

  At last he reached a particularly desolate spot, featureless save for a single tree. The tree was much battered by time and weather, yet still clung stubbornly to its patch of earth.

  Henry reined in. Fear stole over him. This was the place of his dream.

  Slowly, as though compelled by some invisible force, his head turned to the left. His heart missed a beat as he saw the man, the preacher with the bloodied face, standing not twenty yards away.

  On second glance the man was not so tall as in his dream, nor quite so forbidding. His suit was made of cheap black cloth, ill-cut by some country tailor, and he was almost as short as Henry. The red colouring smeared over his pate and the left side of his face was not blood, but a livid birthmark: the Devil’s mark, just as the woman in Stafford had described.

  He was ugly, though. A face like a mastiff, the woman had said, but Henry thought him more pig-like than anything. The flattened nose, little eyes, heavy brow and jaw,with its prominent under-bite, gave him the appearance of a wild boar.

  In his right hand he clutched a staff, a stout length of yew, and for a belt he wore a knotted length of rope. He might easily be taken for a preacher, one of the increasing number of fiery radicals wandering the country. Henry chose to identify him as such.

  “Good morning, sir,” he called out, striving to keep the tremor from his voice, “it is not like a clergyman to be out at such an ungodly hour.”

  The little eyes glittered, either with malice or amusement, and the grotesque, thick-lipped mouth hitched into a smile.
>
  “Master Malvern,” he said, his voice deep and insinuating, “let us be honest with one another. I am no more of the clergy than you the gentry.”

  A man possessed of more courage and spirit than Henry might have taken offence. As it was, teeth chattering, he was hard-put not to turn his horse’s head and flee.

  “You know my name,” he said, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the reins for comfort, “might I have the honour of knowing yours?”

  The preacher - as Henry still thought him - leaned on his staff. “You may not,” he rumbled, “but you will know much more, if you come down off that old screw and speak with me. We have much to discuss.”

  2.

  “A soldier?” barked Audley, goggling at his clerk in pained disbelief, “but you’re such a feeble little runt. You can’t go for a soldier. They wouldn’t take you.”

  Henry drew himself up to his full height, such as it was. “The King is taking any man willing to fight for him, provided he is hale of mind and limb. I am both. True, my legs are weak from the rickets, but so are His Majesty’s.”

  He had a point. It was said that King Charles had suffered from the same illness as a child, and was small and sickly in body. These defects were countered, so his most loyal supporters claimed, by his greatness of heart. He and his army had reached Shrewsbury, and were busy gathering recruits and stripping the local arsenals.

  Audley’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. As was his habit in times of stress, he ran his fingers through the bunches of grey hair sprouting at comical angles from the sides of his head.