Loyalty (29 page)

   It was the final judgment of God, he realised, on a worthless man.   

Chapter 26

Staffordshire

Nestled in the soft heart of rural Staffordshire, the Benedictine convent at Whiteladies was a haven of peace and calm. Rarely visited by outsiders, the sisters were free to devote their lives to God.

   Today was different. A lone horseman galloped through the flourishing orchard that lay south of the convent’s white walls. He steered his horse, a costly destrier, towards the gate. 

   He was clearly a gentleman of sorts, though his armour was smeared with dried blood and spotted with rust. His face was young, but had a drawn and haggard quality.

   The man reined in before the gate, and stiffly dismounted. Leaving his horse, he wearily knocked on the timbers with his gauntleted fist.

   A wooden shutter set inside the door slid open, and a suspicious pair of eyes peered out. “This is God’s house,” said a stern female voice, “men with swords are not welcome here.”

   “I have ridden a long way, sister,” said Martin, “and will not detain you long. I wish to see Kate Malvern.”

   The eyes flickered. “That is impossible. She is sworn to God.”

   Martin leaned heavily on the door. “Please,” he said, “if you have any pity in your heart, let me see her. Just for a short time. We were once betrothed.”

   “Yes, I know who you are. I recognise your sigil. My family are tenants of yours at Cromford.”

   Martin smiled bitterly. “Were. They shall have a new landlord now. All my kin are dead or taken prisoner, and our lands forfeit to the crown. I am the last. Please, sister, grant me this small request.”

   The eyes narrowed in sharp scrutiny, and he thought he heard a sigh.

   “Wait,” she said, sliding the shutter closed. Martin was left alone to enjoy a rare moment of peace. From inside he could hear the eerie sound of female voices raised in devotional plainsong, drifting through the cloisters. It was about the hour of Sext, and a hot noonday sun hung in the sky.

   Martin stood back from the door and rubbed his eyes. He had fought his way clear of the rout at Tewkesbury, as he had from Barnet. God was preserving him, though why was something he had pondered much on the journey back to Staffordshire.

   There was nothing left to him, he had concluded, save the woman he loved. He had come to Whiteladies to sound her out.

   There was the sound of keys jangling in the lock from within, and the heavy door slowly glided open. A stout middle-aged nun stood in the doorway, garbed in the black tunic and scapular and white wimple of her order.

   “Leave your sword outside,” she said, “else you may not enter.”

   Martin left his sword leaning against the wall beside the door. The nun led him down a narrow passage that widened into a paved cloister. The sound of plainsong was louder here, both glorious and soothing, and a welcome balm to his damaged soul.

   “You may wait there,” said the sister, pointing at a stone bench in the middle of a small, well-kept herb garden. Clearly uncomfortable in the presence of a man, especially one of greater than average height and spattered in dried blood, she left him and hurried away down a corridor.

   Martin clanked over to the bench and subsided onto it. He could never recall being so tired or sick at heart.

   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 21
st
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.