Loyalty (7 page)

   Geoffrey was not of a gentle or patient disposition. “Out with it, for God’s sake,” he said, clucking his tongue, “or do you want me to send for your mother?”

   That got a reaction. Kate slowly took her hands away from her face, revealing pallid, tear-stained features, all her delicate elfin beauty smeared and washed away. For a moment even Geoffrey was shaken. She looked hideous.

   “You will be angry,” she said in a small voice, looking at him with a mixture of anger and resentment. Her eyes were her most striking feature, luminous green ovals with a deep intelligence at their core.

   Geoffrey shrugged. “I am angry already.Do you think I have no other demands on my time? That I enjoy engaging in these domestic trivialities? England will soon be at war again, and the King will need me by his side. I cannot leave things here unresolved.”

   Kate slowly propped herself up against the bolster. “There is someone,” she said, pushing back the tangled chaos of her hair.

   “Was,” he corrected her, “who?”

   Her eyes lost their fearful look, and gleamed with stubborn defiance. “Martin Bolton,” she said.

   Geoffrey was a deft speaker, and had learned to negotiate the sudden traps and pitfalls of court life with ease, but Kate’s confession left him lost for words.

   For a moment all he could do was gape at her. She had always seemed so compliant, so submissive. Now it turned out that she had been fraternising with his enemies. 

   He fought for speech. “Martin Bolton,” he said, clenching his fists until the knuckles turned white, “you…you took a Bolton to your bed.”

   Kate’s face, already pale from lack of food and sleep, had acquired a sick pallor, but still she gazed back at him without fear.

   “I first met him at Stafford Castle,” she said, “and we arranged to meet, once a week, at the edge of the woods between here and Heydon Court. We are betrothed, uncle.”

   He took a step towards her. Searing heat coursed through his veins. Never a choleric man, a sudden rush of anger threatened to choke him.

   “You lay with a Bolton,” he said through gritted teeth, “you spat on your family, and allowed one of those Lancastrian pigs to smear his muck all over you. What kind of a creature are you?”

   An image flashed through his mind of him striding over to the bed, dragging Kate off it by her hair, and doling out the worst thrashing she had ever suffered. It would be nothing less than she deserved. The bruises on her delicate skin would serve as a painful reminder of the enormity of her crime.

   Geoffrey closed his eyes and let out a long, shuddering breath. It would not do. He had beaten women before, but they were insolent Cheapside whores, not kinswomen and people of quality. Besides which, he was afraid that his rage would get the better of him, and that he might seriously injure his niece. Edmund Ramage would never consent to marrying her if she was disfigured.

   He pointed accusingly at her. “Answer me this one question,” he said, “and God help you if you lie. Has he had you?”

   Kate swallowed, and shook her head. “No,” she replied in a small voice, “we were chaste. He was content to wait until we were married.”

   “The bastard can wait until Judgement Day!” Geoffrey shouted. “He will never lie with you, or set eyes on you again. If he dares cross the Channel with the rest of that pack of traitors and rebels gathering in France, I will see to it that he meets the same fate as his brother.”

   “I will bring you his manhood in a box!” Geoffrey added, his voice rising to a scream, “and it can serve as a token of your shameless treachery, your degraded nature, your lack of honour and respect and all that is becoming in a woman…you whore, you slattern, you filthy wanton bitch!”

   There was much more in this vein, until Geoffrey feared he might have a seizure and Kate was reduced to weeping, terrified submission.

   “You will marry Ramage,” he concluded in a voice hoarse from shouting, “if I have to drag you to Cromford church on a hurdle and nail you to the altar. Breathe a word to your husband of what you have confessed today, and I will kill you. Understand? I will have you hunted down and torn to pieces by my dogs. Be damned to your mother, and anyone else who might care for you. I will not have our family shamed before the world.”

   With that, he had turned on his heel and spent the rest of the evening getting disgustingly drunk in his chamber.

   The faint sound of Kate’s sobs could be heard from upstairs. Geoffrey ignored them. All his thoughts were fixed on Martin Bolton, the youngest of the hell-cursed Bolton brood. Unlike Richard and James, who were of an age with Geoffrey, he had never had any personal dealings with Martin. No doubt he was cut from the same foul cloth as his siblings, brave and smiling without, rotten inside.

   Geoffrey thought his hatred of the Boltons had died with Richard, the man who had murdered his father. Now he had a new Bolton to hate.

   A few days after the miserable and cheerless wedding, a royal herald arrived at Malvern Hall with news that a great storm had scattered Lord Howard’s fleet in the Channel. The Earl of Warwick had taken advantage of the respite, and set sail from France with several thousand soldiers supplied by the King of France. His allies were a roll-call of the exiled and disaffected: the Duke of Clarence, the Earl of Oxford, Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, and the latest Duke of Somerset to take up arms against York.

   “What of the Queen and her whelp?” Geoffrey asked the herald. He sat rigid in his chair in the hall, trying not to show his fear.

   “They have stayed behind in France,” the other man answered, “no doubt to wait until Warwick and his fellow traitors have defeated the King and released Henry of Lancaster from the Tower. His Majesty is still in the north, but has sent word for all loyal Englishmen to take up arms and join him at Nottingham.”

   Geoffrey’s hands tightened on the arms of his chair. He cudgelled his brains for an excuse to remain in Staffordshire.

   Kate had gone to live with her new husband, though she had to be physically dragged by Ramage’s servants from the house she had known all her life. Malvern Hall had been blissfully peaceful since her departure.

   Geoffrey was reluctant to leave the comfort of his country seat, and even more reluctant to risk his life in battle. He had survived the slaughters at Northampton, Saint Albans and Towton, thanks to his talent for hiding and skulking in the rear, but knew that his good fortune couldn’t last forever. At some point he would have to live up to his undeserved martial reputation and fight in the front line. The mere thought of risking his precious carcase in a fight made him shiver.

   The herald was looking at him expectantly. “I will, of course, gather my retainers without delay,” said Geoffrey, hating every word, “though it may take some time. They are scattered about the county. Some may be reluctant to take up arms again, so soon after the last rebellion.”

   “There is no time for delay or malingering,” said the herald, clearly unimpressed, “the rebels may have already landed. His Majesty desires to engage and crush them before they can gather support.”

   “If your men are not ready to start for Nottingham by tomorrow morning,” he added before Geoffrey could gamely improvise more excuses, “then you must go alone, and leave orders for them to follow. Time presses, Sir Geoffrey. The fate of England hangs in the balance.”

   “Again,” Geoffrey replied with as much venom as he dared. He eyed the herald with the same loathing he reserved for the Boltons, but there was no help for it. A direct order from the king had to be obeyed, if he valued his skin.

   Geoffrey valued his skin very highly indeed, and so the next morning saw him ride out to war.

Chapter 8

The royal army force-marched south from Ripon, raising great clouds of dust as the long, straggling lines of footmen struggled to keep up with the mounted knights and men-at-arms. The baggage wagons and artillery train creaked along haplessly in the rear, left to catch up as best they may.   

   Speed, as King Edward well appreciated, was of the essence. He had lingered too long in the north, puzzling over the causes of Fitzhugh and Salkard’s short-lived rebellion. His brother Gloucester was right after all: the rebellion had been a distraction, a mere ploy to draw Edward’s army north and keep it there while Warwick and Clarence launched their invasion from France.

   Edward was furious with himself for being so easily duped, and took his fury out on everyone around him. He lashed the flanks of his labouring destrier and remounts until they bled, and barked out curt orders to his captains, mingled with vivid threats and curses. Every man learned to quail when his eye alighted on them, and performed his duty with an efficiency born of fear.

   Every man, save Gloucester. The slight figure of his brother galloped at the head of the royal vanguard with little sign of fatigue. Disappointed by the easy victory in the north, he seemed fiercely keen to get to grips with Warwick and his host of traitors, mercenaries and exiles.

   “I will bag myself a score of Frenchmen,” Gloucester announced when the army poured into Doncaster, where the King ordered a halt for the night, “and hang nineteen of their heads from my saddle-bow. The last I shall send to our lady mother inside a jewelled box, with my compliments.”

   “Our lady mother will not appreciate the gift,” panted Edward, mopping his streaming face and accepting a drink from his squire, “nor will she appreciate her youngest son behaving like some pagan savage. Be wary, lest the Frenchmen take your head.”

   “Nonsense,” replied Richard, laughing. His usual gloomy, secretive demeanour had lifted, as it always did at the prospect of action. He wandered away to move among Edward’s household knights as they dismounted in the town square, slapping backs and exchanging hearty jokes with a bluff cheerfulness that would have done credit to Edward himself.  

   The King kept a close eye on Gloucester’s performance. He was always unnerved by his brother’s sudden changes in mood, and wondered if it hinted at some mental imbalance.

   God knows there was enough of that in the family already. One wildly unpredictable brother, in the form of Clarence, was quite enough for Edward to deal with.

   The Earl of Arundel had sent messengers tearing up the Great North Road to inform Edward that Lord Howard’s fleet was hopelessly scattered by a storm, and that the rebels in France had put to sea. Their fleet had crossed successfully, and landed on the coast near Exeter. There Warwick immediately raised his standard and declared that he had come to restore Henry VI. The rebels had marched inland, and were said to be approaching Coventry, their numbers swelling with every mile.

   Doncaster was too small to billet the entire army, so Edward dispersed his lesser knights and footmen to the outlying villages, with orders to glean what shelter they could. This meant that many unsuspecting villagers and small farmers suddenly found themselves obliged to house and feed large numbers of armed men for the night. A few scuffles broke out as some of the locals resisted the imposition, but were swiftly quelled at swordpoint.

   One or two complaints reached the King’s ears as he sat down for dinner with Gloucester, Earl Rivers and the Lords Hastings and Say, but he waved them away. 

   “I am sorry for putting the locals to inconvenience,” he said, spearing a roasted capon with his dagger, “but war is an inconvenience. I don’t particularly like having to bump my arse in the saddle all the way from London to Ripon and back, just to chase a few hare-brained rebels back into their nests.”

   “Comfort,” he mumbled through a mouthful of greasy meat, “give me sweet comfort any day, over the hardships of campaigning.”

   “And yet Your Majesty has spent much of his life on campaign,” remarked Hastings, “and now we must fight another battle.”

   “It won’t be much of a battle,” Rivers said dismissively, “even if Warwick and Clarence make a stand, which I doubt, neither of them can compare to His Majesty as a soldier.”

   Edward hated flattery, and silence fell over the table as Rivers’ compliment died a slow and agonising death. The earl was one of the Woodvilles, Edward’s teeming horde of ambitious in-laws, many of whom he had raised to high office and power in the land. Edward’s nobles, including those seated at table, regarded them as pushy, unpleasant upstarts.

   “We will have the advantage of numbers,” said Lord Say, breaking the silence, “especially with Montagu’s troops to aid us.”

   Edward glanced out of the window. It was getting dark. Somewhere out there, a few miles to the north, several thousand men under the command of the Marquis of Montagu should be marching to join the royal army at Rotherham.

   He could not help feeling anxious. Montagu was one of Warwick’s brothers, but so far had remained loyal to the crown. His reinforcements were crucial. Warwick was said to have already gathered some thirty thousand men, twice as many as Edward had with him. The King had little fear of Warwick’s military ability, but sheer numbers alone could carry the day in a pitched battle.

   Dinner proceeded in fits and starts, with stilted attempts at conversation smothered by the general dislike of Rivers and Edward’s irritable mood. A glutton for punishment, Rivers made an ill-advised reference to Towton, and how no previous King of England had won such a crushing victory.