Revenge by David Pilling Page B

family estate is now legally turned over to your mother. She is mistress of all, until Martin comes of age.”
    Tanner hesitated, his jowls wobbling as he glanced shiftily at Mary. “Sedgley House and lands are declared forfeit, and will be taken into the Sheriff’s hands,” he added. “Your mother begged leave for a servant of the family to inform you of this, rather than his bailiffs. Hence my coming here.”
    “Well,” she said, laying her hands flat on the table and adopting a mock-cheerful tone, “we must make the best of it. I struggled to love this damp and nasty house, and the servants will not be sorry to see me go. Back to Heydon Court, then, to beg charity and sanctuary from my mother.”
    “Dame Anne sends this assurance, lady,” he said quickly. “You are welcome to return to the family home, and need feel no shame at it.”
    Mary masked her anger with a smile. Despite her flippant words, Sedgley had become her home. Months of shaping and hewing the place to her liking, of forging a life with Henry, all now lay in ruins.
    Her husband was partly to blame. She pictured his fleshy, honest face, and for the first time in her life felt a stab of hatred for him. The fool had helped Richard commit his crimes, and was likely to dance on the gallows for it. Or else spend the remainder of his days as a hunted fugitive, condemning her to a life of loneliness and dishonour.
    Such thoughts were of little use, and Mary was not the sort to wallow in self-pity. “We must pack up my belongings,” she said, rising. “The servants here are a set of handless clowns, and will break every pot and vessel if left without direction.”
    Tanner smiled fondly at her. “There speaks your mother, my lady. Dame Anne never breaks under any strain.”
    “And if we did, who would set things to rights?” she demanded. “My dead father; my outlaw husband? Or perhaps my brothers, one a drunk, the other a murderer, and the last a child? What a foul trick God played, when he set men in charge of this world!”
    Tanner studied the floor and made no answer. Throwing up her hands, Mary stormed away to rouse the servants.
     
    10.
     
    Northampton, 10 th July 1460
     
    Sir Geoffrey Malvern, just sixteen years old and only the previous day dubbed a knight by the Earl of Warwick, was cold, hungry, weary and terrified.
    Rain drummed on his helm, seeping through the joints in his harness and trickling down his flesh, already damp with the exertion of the march from London. His greaves were caked in mud up to the knees, and his muscles ached with slogging over bad roads under the weight of so much metal and leather.
    Geoffrey was standing in Lord Fauconberg’s division, on the left flank or rearguard of the Yorkist army. The Earl of Warwick held the centre, and the Duke of York’s eldest son, Edward, Earl of March, and the Duke of York held the right.
    Some seven thousand men in all stood and waited for death in the rain, with the River Nene ahead of them and the grey silhouette of Delapré Abbey visible to the east.
    Ahead of them, blocking the road to the walled town of Northampton that rose beyond the river, were the Lancastrians under the Duke of Buckingham. King Henry was known to be in the Lancastrian camp – the royal standard could be seen fluttering in the centre of their position – but he was no soldier, and it was rumoured that his suspect wits had deserted him again.
    The Lancastrians were fewer, five thousand or so, but Buckingham had thrown up a formidable wall of defences. He had the Nene to his back, and his front and flanks were well-protected by water-filled ditches fed by a channel from the river, timber palisades, rows of sharpened stakes and cannon.
    The Lancastrian position seemed unassailable. Geoffrey’s guts churned as he imagined his body pierced by arrows, or one of his limbs blown away by a cannon-shot. This would be his first battle, his father having considered him too young – and too precious, being the