Roseblood

by Paul Doherty

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Mysteries; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

1455, and as war approaches, each must choose their allegiance... Master historian Paul Doherty brings to life the brutal world of London in 1455 as he tells the epic story of the advent of the Wars of the Roses. Perfect for fans of C.J. Sansom and Susanna Gregory. 'Deliciously suspenseful, gorgeously written and atmospheric' - Historical Novels Review England, 1455: a kingdom on the brink of civil war. The Red Rose: King Henry of Lancaster's days are numbered. Deemed unfit for rule, even by his own mother, he surely cannot last on the throne for long. Simon Roseblood - London lord, taverner and alderman - is one of few loyal servants left to fight his cause. The White Rose: Ruthless Richard of York has his eye firmly set on the crown - and plenty of powerful allies who will do anything to help him win it. Henchman Amadeus Sevigny makes no bones about enforcing his own authority and asserting law and order at York's command. When Roseblood is summoned by Sevigny to stand trial for a crime he knows he didn't commit, their paths cross in ways that alter them both for ever. And as the Wars of the Roses looms, an even greater foe is poised to rock the foundations of England, and wreak horror in a hotbed of political unrest. What readers are saying about Roseblood : 'Paul Doherty is a synonym for quality and entertainment ' 'A compelling tale of historical fiction that exudes accuracy and detail ' 'The book is as entertaining as it is fascinating [and] satisfying as intricate plots and plans are revealed. The author takes the reader deep into this world of squalor and colour, stench and gore, death and deception, introducing characters whose strengths and weaknesses keep the tale alive and compelling '

Release date: June 5, 2014

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 352

Sample

The reign of King Edward III of England (1327–77) sowed a dragon seed that came to bloody fruition generations later. At first, everything seemed fair and prosperous. Through his mother Isabella, Edward could exercise a claim to the throne of France; he ruthlessly pursued this, and so began that long season of strife known as the Hundred Years War. Edward’s wife, Philippa, presented her husband with a gaggle of healthy sons. However, the eldest boy, the famous Black Prince, died before his father, leaving his ten-year-old son Richard as the English heir apparent.

When he acceded to power, Richard II proved to be autocratic and despotic, which led to an escalating crisis with his great lords, in particular his uncle, John of Gaunt. In 1399, John of Gaunt’s son, Henry of Lancaster, deposed Richard and imprisoned him in Pontefract Castle, where he died. Henry succeeded to the throne as the fourth king of that name, claiming descent from Edward III through his father. The only problem was that the House of York also had a claim to the throne, through Gaunt’s elder brother, Lionel, Duke of Clarence.

The House of Lancaster, however, crushed opposition at home, whilst Henry united the country in an all-out war against France, which reached its climax in his son’s outstanding victory at Agincourt in October 1415.

Henry V died in 1422, to be succeeded by his nine-month-old son, Henry VI. As he developed, it became clear that the young prince was not of the same calibre as his father and grandfather. Henry VI was pious, a recluse, a man of peace rather than war. At times he experienced what were referred to as fits of madness, a mental condition he inherited from his mother, Katherine of Valois.

The war in France now proved to be a disaster that only increased unrest at home. The House of York, under its leader Richard, openly demanded control of the Council and the kingdom when Henry VI was judged incapable of ruling. Secretly, Richard of York, supported by his Neville allies, hungered for the crown, emphasising his rights both in fact and in law.

Henry VI’s position was defended not so much by himself as by his charismatic and energetic young wife, Margaret of Anjou. The kingdom became divided. Margaret depended upon a faction of nobility, men like William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, but even more on her husband’s cousins, the Beauforts, John and Edmund, first and second dukes of Somerset. The Beauforts claimed descent from Edward III through John of Gaunt and his mistress, Katherine Swynford; the Beaufort faction remained passionately devoted to the House of Lancaster.

By 1450, with defeat in France and growing unrest at home, the kingdom was slipping towards civil war . . .

London, 22 May 1450

London was burning. The rebels had stormed the gatehouse on London Bridge, killing the redoubtable Captain of the Tower of London, Matthew Gough, before retreating to fire the suburbs and brighten the smoke-filled night sky with shooting flames of sinister red. Corpses lay piled on the approaches to the bridge, whilst the Thames, as it gushed towards the sea, shooting past the city docks and wharves, carried its own grisly harvest of cadavers, severed heads and shattered limbs. In the city churches, frightened congregations crouched before the soaring carved rood screens as their priests chanted the solemn words of the sequence from the requiem mass: ‘Oh day of wrath, oh day of mourning, now take heed the Prophet’s warning, heaven and earth in ashes burning.’ No one dared leave the candle-flamed darkness. The aisles and transepts were crammed with the dying and the wounded. Women and children wailed piteously, their cries rising above the feverish ranting of those slipping into death. Everyone accepted that disaster had befallen the city.

The preachers were correct. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had swept out of Kent, with Lord Death, on his pale horse, no less a person than Jack Cade, an Irishman and former soldier. Cade also rejoiced in the name of Jack Amend-All, and sometimes Mortimer, to show his kinship with the allies of the Duke of York. A man of blood, this self-proclaimed Captain of Kent was many things to many people. He had served in the retinue of Sir Thomas Dacre of Suffolk until forced to abjure the realm for killing a pregnant woman. He’d fled to France and fought against the English when they lost at Formigny and had to surrender Normandy. He later assumed the name of Lylner, married the daughter of a squire and posed for a while as a physician. Yet mischief does what mischief is. The Devil always comes into his own, and Cade certainly came into his. Lord Jack, as his henchmen called him, was Satan’s own evil envoy, Hell’s mist-strewn messenger. He was a sign of the times, the season of murder, theft and rapine.

An eerie, sinister figure, Cade first prowled the roads of Kent and Essex. Sometimes he called himself King of the Faerie Realm and preached hotly against the powers-that-be. On occasion, he would slip into the city. Rumour had it that he’d murdered two Hanse merchants from their enclosure at the Steelyard, who were found floating face down in the Thames. Others claimed he used to beg around St Paul’s graveyard when he lived in Pie Powder Alley just off the Crutched Friars. He had even tried to trade musty velvet in a stinking dark shop; when this failed, he sold face washes of hog’s gristle mixed with oil of cloves, to remove flushes from the face and prevent pimples from erupting. The lotions did more harm than good, so Cade turned to pimp and pander.

Nobody perceived Cade as a danger to the Crown until he allegedly received secret monies and the support of a cohort of mysterious French mercenaries whose livery was a dark red coat and a badge depicting a flying crow against a light blue field. Ragged mercenaries were flocking to England, but this cohort was special, well financed and armed. They called themselves LeCorbeil, and were reputed to be master bowmen, very skilled with the arbalests hanging by leather cords from their saddle horns. LeCorbeil were seen here and there, but mostly in the wastelands of Essex, north of London, lurking on the fringes of the dense sprawling forest of Epping. No one dared accost them. Rumour claimed they were here to support the Duke of York, and what could local levies do against such well-armed, professional mercenaries?

Nevertheless, Cade and LeCorbeil were not the root of the present evil; merely the offshoots of a deeper malignancy. The chroniclers in the monasteries and abbeys sat at their lamp-shrouded desks and described the true cause of the growing chaos: the King. They pricked the point of how Henry V, of not so blessed memory, that great punisher of the French, had died, his bowels turned to a filthy fluid amongst the marshes of Meaux, screaming into the darkness, ‘No, no, my lot lies with the Lord Jesus.’ Those present around the royal deathbed believed that the myriads Henry had slaughtered in northern France must have assembled to greet him on either side of that broad thoroughfare sweeping down into Hell.

Henry left a baby son, christened with the same name, born of tainted Valois stock; his mother was Queen Katherine, daughter of the mad Charles VI of France, who believed he was fashioned out of glass. Henry VI grew and matured, more sinned against than sinning, a holy man, living proof of the words of scripture: ‘That the children of this world are more astute in dealing with their own kind than the children of the light.’ Certainly a child of the light, who sat closer to the angels than many, Henry could not deal with the great warlords who snarled around him, though his beautiful, hot-tempered wife-queen, Margaret of Anjou, certainly could. Their marriage was one of milk and wine. Margaret was passionate in her pursuit and defence of her rights and those of her husband and family. She gathered to herself three great lords: William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk; John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset; and the latter’s brother Edmund. This precious trinity served as a living shield for Margaret, her husband and the entire House of Lancaster against the fervent ambitions of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, who believed himself to be the King’s heir if Henry died without male issue. York also secretly considered that he had a better claim to the throne: the House of Lancaster only descended from the third son of Edward III, whilst the House of York claimed descent from the second son, Lionel of Clarence.

The Year of Our Lord 1450 swept all of England’s troubles to full bursting, and the putrid mess of failure, frustration, defeat and incompetence seeped out to taint the entire kingdom. When John Beaufort lost Normandy, the archers who’d proudly garrisoned the great castles and towns of northern France were shipped home humiliated, miserable and poor. Bishop Moleyns was sent by the Exchequer to meet these returning soldiers and pacify them. He took with him their long-overdue wages, but the archers thought the good bishop had not brought enough. They fell on Moleyns and cruelly murdered him. Worse came, swift and hard like the charge of a warhorse. The English were defeated at Formigny, and all of France except Calais was lost. The Commons at Westminster turned in fury on Suffolk and Somerset, determined to kill both. Dark souls steeped in malice plotted to seize the two dukes and sever their heads on Tower Hill.

Queen Margaret, who loved the Duke of Suffolk to distraction, urged him to flee abroad. On 30 April 1450, Suffolk, in disguise, embarked at Ipswich, but his flight was discovered by Richard of York. The French mercenary troop LeCorbeil suddenly appeared outside Dover. They hired a pirate cog, The Nicholas of the Tower, to stand off Dover Head and wait. Suffolk’s ship was intercepted, and Queen Margaret’s good duke resigned himself to death. A witch had prophesied that he would die at the Tower. Suffolk had always thought the allusion was to London’s great fortress, but when he learnt the name of the ship bearing down on his, he lost all will to fight. He was arrested and taken aboard the cog, and after a brutal court-martial was thrust into the vessel’s bumboat and made to kneel before a block. LeCorbeil gave a rusty sword to one of the pirates, who took the duke’s head with a dozen hacking strokes. Suffolk’s corpse was then left on the sands beneath Dover Castle, his severed head impaled on a pole, beside it the corpse of a crow.

LeCorbeil were not finished. Once Suffolk’s grisly execution was known, rumours spread throughout the Kentish villages that the Sheriff of Kent and his father-in-law, Lord Saye, Treasurer of England, both Lancastrians body and soul and favourites of the Queen, were plotting revenge. They maintained that Kentish folk were responsible for Suffolk’s murder and so should face devastation by fire and sword. According to a report coursing swiftly as a breeze through the shire, both Saye and the sheriff had sworn that Kent would be reduced to nothing more than a royal deer park. Alarmed by such vicious rumours, the country people of Kent flocked to the shire’s May Day celebrations, which rapidly changed into commissions of array when all men capable of bearing arms were assembled. A deep fear descended. The black banners of anarchy were hoisted. Shouts of ‘Harrow! Harrow!’ echoed across the mustering grounds as the hue and cry was raised against so-called traitors ‘intent on murdering the common people’.

It was at these May Day celebrations that Cade, taking the name of Mortimer, emerged, with the support of LeCorbeil, that mysterious company of French mercenaries. He and his army swept through Kent, camping at Blackheath and publishing their grievances. The rebel army denounced the King’s advisers who had persuaded the royal mind against true lords such as the Duke of York, as well as against the King’s faithful commons. They proclaimed how false councillors had lost royal land. How the King’s merchants were greatly despoiled on both land and sea, and how the French were now raiding the southern coasts of England. They spread their message by proclamation and charter.

Armed bands from Surrey, Suffolk and Essex marched to join them under great flapping standards of red and black. In London, Queen Margaret mustered royal troops and sent them south against the rebels. Cade immediately withdrew to Sevenoaks. The royal vanguard under the two Stafford brothers hastily pursued him, intent on bringing the rebels to battle and utterly destroying them. Instead they clattered into an ambush, and both leaders and a host of their retinue were cruelly slaughtered. The rebels poured back into London. They forced the Constable of the Tower to hand over Lord Saye, who was immediately arraigned at the Guildhall and charged with treason.

The following morning, at eleven of the clock, Cade, along with some of LeCorbeil and others of his retinue, rode into the city. The self-proclaimed Great Captain, clad in a blue gown of velvet with sable furs, a straw hat on his head and a naked sword in his hand, ordered Saye to be dragged from the Guildhall and taken to the Standard in Cheapside. He was not even allowed to finish his confession to a priest before his hair was grabbed and his head severed and placed on a pole. Afterwards, his blood-soaked trunk was stripped, tied by the legs to the rear of a horse and dragged around the city, the poled head carried before it. Now and again the macabre procession would pause so that Saye’s severed head could kiss that of his son-in-law, the Sheriff of Kent, whom the Essex bands had also caught and executed.

Such blasphemous desecration provoked opposition to Cade. On the night following Saye’s murder, the mayor and certain aldermen decided to resist. Once Cade had withdrawn to Southwark, the city council fortified London Bridge. Fierce, resolute street fighting took place. Old grudges and grievances were settled. Householders opened their doors to find corpses dangling from shop signs and the eaves of their gabled homes. Murder prowled the streets; revenge, hatred and curdling resentment followed in its retinue. Long-buried blood feuds, their tangled roots deeply embedded, came to full poisonous flower.

Edmund Roseblood recognised that as he knelt on the filthy shale left by the retreating river tide. He moved on his knees, the small, sharp stones biting into his flesh. Hands tied behind his back, he stared up at the ripe summer moon and the glorious flowers of heaven. He wondered how his brother, Simon, and the rest of the family would be dealing with the malice of Cade, LeCorbeil and others of that coven. He himself had been tricked and betrayed. Guilt about the past and a desire to begin again now held him fast, and the hunter’s snare could not be broken. Edmund Roseblood was about to die.

They had promised to be swift. He gazed at the three sinister figures before him, cowled and visored; their eyes, hard and cold, reflected their hate-filled souls and marble hearts. They had invoked a blood feud that was almost fifteen years old, ignoring his pleas of innocence. According to them, he had been at LeCorbeil when that French town was put to fire and sword. Others had paid; now, they claimed, so must he. They had provided a priest, some wretched hedge-parson shivering with terror, to shrive him before he died.

‘You have one request, one favour.’ LeCorbeil’s voice was harsh.

Edmund stared at that sombre figure who had trapped him with such sweet promises. LeCorbeil was the name of a village, of a hideous massacre, and of a group of vengeance seekers. Each who sought revenge took on the LeCorbeil name in waging their blood feud. Edmund could only distinguish the leader of the coven by the snow-white coif beneath the deep hood. He closed his eyes and breathed in. Simon would avenge him; Simon always did, in his own time and in a place of his own choosing.

‘You have one last boon, a final favour,’ LeCorbeil repeated. ‘More than you gave my people.’

‘I am innocent.’

‘No one is innocent. Well?’

Edmund indicated with his head. ‘Untie my hands. Where can I go? To whom can I flee?’

LeCorbeil whispered an order. One of his company approached, boots crunching on the shale. Edmund felt the knife sawing at the bonds about his wrists. He shook these free, drawing himself up. He made sure his shirt collar was clear of his neck and caught a sob in his throat. Eleanor had sewn that collar. She had been there when he had put this shirt on.

‘I’ll stretch out my hands,’ he shouted over his shoulder. ‘Do it then.’

Edmund closed his eyes and summoned up Eleanor’s sweet face, so perfectly formed: the arching brows, the lustrous grey eyes, the full lips he’d kissed so merrily. Yet Eleanor was the reason he was here. She had persuaded him to try and escape from the past, as well as from his own brother. Now all that was gone . . .

‘May you walk the rest of your life in peace and friendship.’ he whispered. ‘May your path stretch long and straight before you. May the sun always be on your back. May you drink the cup of life in all its richness. May you see the length of days, and when your day is done, the shadows lengthen and the hush descends, come out to meet me as I will always wait for you.’

Edmund opened his eyes and stretched out his hands, and LeCorbeil’s great two-handed sword severed his head in one clean cut.

London, April 1455

Smithfield was in gloriously hideous turmoil. Executions always drew the crowds, especially when the sun burnt strong and a swift breeze wafted away some of the more pungent odours. The beggars had assembled in all their tawdry glory, with their lank bellies, hemp-like hair, hammer heads, beetle brows and bottled noses, their cheeks festooned with warts and carbuncles, their jagged teeth turning yellow or black. One of these ancient beauties, Pannikin, who styled himself a story-teller, perched on an overturned barrel to report the wondrous news from Oxford. According to Pannikin, a monster had been born with only one hand, one leg and no nose, with one eye in the centre of its forehead and its two ears sprouting from the nape of its neck. The crowd laughed this to scorn, as Pannikin was regarded as a born liar, twice as fit for Hell as any Southwark rogue.

A more enterprising character, Lazarus, named because of the multitude of black spots that mottled his shrivelled face, was closely studying the clerk who stood next to the barber’s stool under the sprawling ancient elm tree formerly used for hangings. A court clerk, Lazarus decided, scrutinising his intended victim’s expensive dark robes and snowy-white cambric shirt, yet he had the shorn head, shaven face and harsh look of a soldier. Lazarus noted the war belt strapped around the clerk’s slim waist, as well as the clinking silver spurs on his high-heeled Castilian riding boots. The scavenger’s real quarry, however, was the bulging coin purse hanging by cords from that belt. Lazarus, a skilled foist and nip, drew his needle-thin dagger and edged closer.

The barber was shaving the head of a greasy kill-calf, a butcher from the Newgate shambles who had shuffled into Smithfield to walk among the cattle pens as well as see the condemned dancing in the air. Deep in his cups, he lashed out with his bloody fingers against the strings of false teeth the barber had tied to a overhanging branch that danced and clattered close to the flesher’s face. Nearby, a Friar of the Sack thundered against the evils of drink, especially the London beers known as Mad-Dog, Angel’s Food, Dragon’s Milk and Merry-go-Dance. Unlike the hapless Pannikin, the friar had drawn a good audience, eager to be diverted in their wait for the execution carts. They stood and listened as he pointed out the many drunks staggering across the great open expanse before St Bartholomew’s church, dismissing them as ‘tosspots, swill bowls, drunken swine who’ll end their day sleeping, snorting in their vomit, more fit for the dunghill than the house’. His makeshift congregation loved that. They would recall such rich language and use it themselves when they caroused to the chimes of midnight in some Cheapside tavern. The barber, however, roared for silence when his customer began to curse the friar, threatening to slice the butcher’s nose and hang it alongside the dangling teeth.

A quiet did descend, even the dust billowing away, as a funeral cortège appeared on its way to St Andrew Undershaft. Sir Richard Workin, knight and merchant tailor, recently departed, was being escorted to his requiem mass with torches, tapers, pennants and glorious banners all festooned with the insignia of his guild and carried by squires clothed in black worsted livery and blood-red hoods. A priest, garbed in a black and gold chasuble, preceded the coffin, carrying a cross. Beside him walked two altar boys, one carrying a lofty beeswax candle whilst the other lustily swung a thurible, which incensed the air with the most fragrant smoke. Every so often the procession would pause so that one of the livery men could bawl out, ‘Rest be to his ashes. He tailored well and served God and his guild.’ As if in answer, a distant church bell began to toll.

Once the mourners were gone, the tumult across Smithfield broke out even more stridently. Lazarus seized his opportunity. He scuttled closer to his prey, who turned, deep-set eyes watchful. Lazarus prided himself on both his patter and his skill. He held his cutter very close to his side as he began his beggar’s chant.

‘For the love of God . . .’ His left hand, all scabbed and wrinkled, went out to distract his prey. ‘Look at me, Lord, with merciful eye, so lamed by a cankerous worm that gnaws the flesh from my bones—’ He stopped abruptly as the clerk brought up his cleverly concealed Italian stiletto with its long, wicked-looking blade and sharp dagger point. He pressed its serrated edge against Lazarus’s neck.

‘Sir,’ the clerk’s voice was soft, ‘I recognise you. You are Lazarus, leader of a pack of scavengers who prowl Queenhithe ward. You are known for your thievery and your brutality. You see, sir, I have been there and watched you.’ He pressed on the dagger. ‘Because I am Amadeus Sevigny, nephew of Sir Philip Malpas, sheriff of this city. A former schoolman of Balliol Hall in Oxford, serjeant of law, trained by the Crown and now principal clerk in the secret chancery of Richard, Duke of York. I am here to watch the execution of one gang of malefactors and go hunting for another. You, sir, have a knife in your right hand. You intend me harm. I have introduced myself, so when you enter Hell, you can inform Lord Satan who sent you there.’

Lazarus lunged, but he was too slow. Sevigny’s dagger opened the beggar’s throat in one swipe, and the blood spurted out like juice from a split ripe plum. Sevigny took a step closer, watching the soul light die in Lazarus’s eyes. He caught the beggar as he slumped to his knees, and laid him gently on the mud-strewn cobbles. The sight of blood drew in the crowd. A woman screamed. Someone shouted, ‘Harrow!’ even as Sevigny rose to his feet, hands extended, one holding his own knife, the other that of the dying man.

‘Self-defence!’ he cried. ‘I am a clerk, tonsured and protected by Holy Mother Church, henchman of his Grace the Duke of York.’ He pointed down at Lazarus, still jerking slightly in his death throes. ‘This man attempted murder.’

‘I was witness to that.’ A group of serjeants, all wearing the red and white livery of the city, now pushed their way through. Their leader, Skulkin, a burly, pig-faced man, grasped the thick leather belt attached to the collar of a great war mastiff; its huge jaws were tightly muzzled, though the fury raging in its red-brown eyes was frightening enough. ‘I witnessed that,’ the chief bailiff repeated, his words being chorused by his companions.

No one objected. Those sharp-eyed and keen-witted enough glimpsed the chancery ring on Sevigny’s left hand, as well as his silver-gilt-embossed sword in its embroidered scabbard. The crowd drifted away. Black-robed members of the Fraternity of the Hanged moved in to place Lazarus’s corpse on a stretcher and take it to the waiting paradise cart for burial in some poor man’s lot. Sevigny went back to studying the thronging crowd. He lifted a gloved hand, beckoning the chief bailiff closer.

‘I cannot see our quarry,’ he murmured, ‘but he must come here. Sir Philip is sure of that.’

‘And the scavenger?’

‘Lazarus?’ Sevigny wiped the blade of his dagger on Skulkin’s sleeve. ‘He may have intended to kill me, or just rob me. I have recently arrived here, Master Skulkin. My reputation is not yet known.’ He grinned boyishly. ‘Though it is time it was. Lazarus was a help in that. He drew a dagger and crept up on me. You, Master Skulkin, were sent to guard me. Next time,’ Sevigny leaned down and patted the mastiff on its huge bony head, ‘next time it may be your throat. Now tell your comrades to keep strict watch. Four of the gang are to be executed as traitors; however, their leader Candlemas and two of his henchmen escaped.’

‘And the Lord Sheriff thinks they will come here to w. . .