With secrets around every corner, can the truth ever be uncovered? The turbulent times of the Wars of the Roses are explored in Paul Doherty's unputdownable novel, Dove Amongst the Hawks. Perfect for fans of C.J Sansom and Susanna Gregory. A physician in London during the Wars of the Roses, Dr Luke Chichele becomes well acquainted with royalty. Part of a plot instigated by the Pope, he is tasked with investigating the death of King Henry VI in the Tower of London. Was it suicide or murder? The Pope wants to prove Henry as worthy of beatification, while the new King, Edward IV, claims he died witless and incapable. The closer Luke comes to the truth, the more his life falls into danger... What readers are saying about Paul Doherty: ' Thoroughly enjoyable story written in Doherty's inimitable style... a new angle on the mysterious death of a king' ' I would read a cornflake box if Paul Doherty had written it ' ' Five stars '
Release date:
June 6, 2013
Publisher:
Headline
Print pages:
156
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Mysteries of Alexander the Great (as Anna Apostolou)
A MURDER IN MACEDON
A MURDER IN THEBES
Alexander the Great
THE HOUSE OF DEATH
THE GODLESS MAN
THE GATES OF HELL
Matthew Jankyn (as P C Doherty)
THE WHYTE HARTE
THE SERPENT AMONGST THE LILIES
Non-fiction
THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF TUTANKHAMUN
ISABELLA AND THE STRANGE DEATH OF EDWARD II
ALEXANDER THE GREAT: THE DEATH OF A GOD
THE GREAT CROWN JEWELS ROBBERY OF 1303
THE SECRET LIFE OF ELIZABETH I
THE DEATH OF THE RED KING
Fifteenth-century England was the scene of a violent feud between the houses of York and Lancaster. Its origins lay in the
deposition of the last Plantagenet, Richard II, in 1399 by his cousin, Henry of Lancaster. However, matters only came to a
head when the strong warrior King, Henry V, died in 1422 whilst campaigning in France. He left a young queen and a nine-months-old
baby boy. For almost the next two decades England was ruled in the name of the young Henry VI by powerful factions of the
nobility. When Henry VI came of age, however, the crisis did not pass: although Henry was a good man, he proved to be a weak
king. In 1453 he succumbed to a sudden fit of insanity and ceased to be king in everything but name. The fortunes of the House
of Lancaster would have been ruined had it not been for Henry’s ruthless and energetic French Queen, Margaret of Anjou. Surrounded
by her Lancastrian warlords, Margaret tried to beat off the challenge to the throne posed by Henry’s cousin, Richard, Duke
of York.
The political tension between these two eventually erupted in bitter civil war. At first the House of York was severely checked
at the Battle of Wakefield when Richard of York and one of his sons were defeated, captured and executed. The fortunes of
the House of York now lay in the hands of Richard’s three sons, Edward (later Edward IV), George, Duke of Clarence and Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later Richard III). Edward claimed the crown in 1461 but not until the early spring of 1471
did he finally defeat the Lancastrians; first the Earl of Warwick at the battle of St. Albans and then Queen Margaret, her
principal lieutenant, Somerset, and Margaret’s only son, Prince Edward, at Tewkesbury. Somerset and the young Edward were
killed, Margaret was captured and later sent back to France and, on the eve of the Ascension 1471, the hapless Henry VI, so
long a prisoner in Yorkist hands, died mysteriously in the Tower of London.
To many observers it looked as if the House of York was established for ever (the only remaining Lancastrian claimant was
Henry Tudor hiding in exile) but it had already sowed the seeds of its own destruction. In 1464 Edward had fallen in love
and secretly married the young widow, Elizabeth Woodville. A beautiful but grasping woman, Elizabeth flooded Edward’s court
with her own retainers and cousins. Clarence, Edward’s brother, openly detested her. Richard of Gloucester, more stable and
secure, supported his brother though it was obvious that there was little love lost between himself and Elizabeth Woodville.
The court of Edward IV became embroiled in a sinister power struggle which permeates these letters of Luke Chichele.
I see the brother write this down beneath the date January 1491. He has two days. Two days the abbot has given both him and
me to write my story down. And why not? The good Lord created the world in seven days, so why should my tale take any longer?
Perhaps they are frightened that I may go, slip back into the black pit of madness, where the demons lurk. Great black shadows
with the bodies of women and the faces of monkeys leaping and dancing above the flames. I have spoken about them to Brother
George but he says they are phantasms of my mind, a sickened soul. I see from his grey eyes, sad and gentle, how he thinks
I am mad. Well, why shouldn’t he? I tell him I have lived in Hell but he replies I am foolish, witless but what does he know?
I have wandered around Hell’s burning streets, across its icy hills and I have never seen him there. So, what does he know?
Not as much as I do. Murder, treachery, treason, men on fire with ambition, bodies gashed, public murder and secret assassination.
The screams of the dying are carried, encouraged, pampered by the black ooze of treason, that’s why I am here in this abbey
on the edge of London, brought by King Henry VII’s agents from across the seas. Henry Tudor, who is now King. The rest have
all gone, shadows dancing across the fields. Edward IV, York’s son, with his golden aureole of hair and ivory-white face,
clothed in silks of blue, silver and samite. Oh, yes, I laughed when I heard the ‘Golden Boy’ was dead. His brothers too and the Woodville woman, his beautiful witch of a wife.
I see Brother George flinch at my words but who cares? For if I am mad, then it’s due to grief. Brother George crouches over
his writing-tray, shaking his head. A faithful monk, a careful scrivener, he puts down all he hears. Perhaps he is right.
I rave on like a maddened wolf does at the golden full moon. Let me be calm. My name is Luke Chichele, a native of Newark
in Nottinghamshire, born in one of the not-so-great houses in the cobbled square under the tall, spired church. A stone’s
throw from the castle where King John died, his rotten guts running out like water after eating foul or poisoned fruit. I
suppose that’s where it all started. My father used to take us into the castle. He was a draper and the seneschal or keeper
always wanted fresh cloth for the ladies of the garrison. Father, in his guttural English, for he was a Fleming born and raised
in Ghent, would tell us about King John’s death and take us to the chamber where he perished. My brother Stephen and I would
stand open-mouthed in the room and speak in hushed tones about the death of kings. Poor Stephen! He would go home and pray
in our garret beneath the eaves and beg the good God to have pardon on the soul of King John. God curse the entire brood of
Plantagenets, be they York or Lancaster! St. Bernard was right when he said, ‘From the devil they come and to the devil they
can go.’
I was different from Stephen, spending the night wondering how and why rotten fruit could turn a man’s innards to water. I
used to go down to the fleshing-place, the shambles in Newark, where the butchers had their stalls. I would stand transfixed
as the carvers slashed the innards of cows, bulls and sheep. Knee high to a buttercup, I would squat, ankle deep in the offal,
not bothered about the orange blood or light-blue innards, the smell or the dirt but just marvel at God’s unbelievable creation. Each corpse a world of its own.
I became a student, an excellent one, God forgive my pride. My horn book was always neat and I excelled in numbers and writing.
My mother wept for joy, my father beamed at the very mention of my name, his thin, sallow face a veritable beacon of love.
‘I thought so,’ he would announce in broken English. ‘I thought my boy would be clever. Flemish blood will out. Like his father
he will go far in life.’ And, ignoring the embarrassment of my mother and brother, down he would sit and tell me for the hundredth
time how he had once served in the household of Richard of York and his wife Cecily, the Rose of Raby, providing them with
materials, samite, velvets, the best wool grown in England and the finest cloth woven in Flanders.
My father, a wealthy man, hired the best of teachers. I studied hard, learnt fast and entered the schools at Oxford, staying
at Exeter Hall in Turl Street, the one built by Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter. He had been Treasurer to King Edward II,
until he was pulled off his horse outside St. Paul’s, murdered, slashed and cut open like a pig. Murder. It seems to touch
every aspect of my life. Brother George shakes his head.
‘You must not do that,’ he reminds me gently. ‘Let matters unfold slowly like a roll of cloth being displayed by a draper.
Slowly, carefully, so all the texture and colour is caught.’
So, after my studies at Oxford in the Trivium and Quadrivium, I entered the universities of Paris, Salerno and, finally, Cordoba
in Spain. My speciality was not theology or philosophy, rhetoric or logic but medical care. I had read my Dioscorides, Hippocrates
as well as John of Gaddesdon’s Rosa Mystica. I liked the latter, although I do not believe a magpie’s beak hung round our neck would cure toothache; or goat’s cheese
a pain in the eyes, or leeches the evil humours of the blood.
My real teachers were disease and battle, the great plague which swept the flat surface of the world with its poisonous vapour.
Sweet Christ, I have seen the sights! Towns deserted as if pillaged by Death himself as he stalked the streets and stinking
alleyways. Behind him the plague manifesting itself like some putrid rotten flower with its angry abscesses and black pustules.
All life was gone. No crops were sold. No animals slaughtered and so starvation rode behind on its death-grey horse. In France,
already ravaged by a bloody war, out of every wood and glen, people crept upon their hands for their legs could not bear them,
to eat the corpses of animals lying dead in the fields. When these were gone they opened the graves and churchyards to eat
the corpses of those who had gone before. Some blamed the Jews, God help that blighted race! Others, more simple, unripe cherries
or the putrid fat of mutton.
De Chanillac, professor of medicine at Salerno, announced, ‘The plague was caused by Jupiter sucking in bad air and spitting
it out which caused the great sea near India to boil. Reptiles crawled out and spread the disease.’ He recommended Theriac,
the powder made from the chopped bodies of snakes which had been dead more than ten years. Other doctors maintained you should
inhale over a pot of steaming turds. What nonsense! In Cordoba I found the truth. In the encyclopaedias of Rhazes and Avicennas’
“Canon of Medicine”. No one believed them but I did; the pestilence which walks in darkness and the sickness that destroys
at noon-day comes from our own filth. Look at any house now. The floor is strewn with clay and rushes which are left lying
for twenty years to nurse a collection of spittle, vomit, dog turds and other excrement. So, the disease will return. Brother
George looks frightened but I tell the truth. I am a physician, no quack. I always remembered the epitaph of some poor unfortunate ‘I died of too many physicians’ and I came to hate many of my colleagues with
their astrological charts and smelly urine jars. In my arrogance I wanted the truth and to be sure I found some of it.
I came home and joined the armies of either Lancaster or York as they moved like two swordsmen around the throne of England.
One battle after another, bloody fights in misty valleys or in dank green woods. The same sorry tale, men hanged, cut, gibbetted.
Sweet Christ, I saw the insides of many bodies. God’s creation opened by mace, dagger, club, sword or speedy gallow, and I
was there. I studied the folds of skin, the arrangements of tubes in the stomach and how wounds healed and others did not.
Gradually my ideals fell away like a snake sheds its skin. My father died suddenly, hacked to death in one of those stupid
little affrays between York and Lancaster. You see, he had never forgotten the House of York and when Duke Richard made his
bid for the crown, Father, like the generous fool he was, gave him money and joined his armies.
He got himself knighted by Richard of York himself in th. . .
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