Roseblood
Copyright © 2014 Paul Doherty
The right of Paul Doherty to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2014
All characters in this publication – other than the obvious historical characters – are ficitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978 0 7553 9599 6
Cover design and illustration © James Edgar
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
An Hachette UK Company
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
Table of Contents
Author photo © David Headley
Paul Doherty was born in Middlesbrough. He studied History at Liverpool and Oxford Universities and obtained a doctorate for his thesis on Edward II and Queen Isabella. He is now headmaster of a school in north-east London and lives with his family in Essex.
Novels
The Death of a King
Prince Drakulya
The Lord Count Drakulya
The Fate of Princes
Dove Amongst the Hawks
The Masked Man
The Rose Demon
The Haunting
The Soul Slayer
The Plague Laws
The Love Knot
Of Love and War
The Loving Cup
The Last of Days
Roseblood
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
Series
Hugh Corbett Medieval Mysteries
Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan
Sir Roger Shallot Tudor Mysteries
Kathryn Swinbrooke Series
Nicholas Segalla Series
Mysteries of Alexander the Great
The Templar Mysteries
Matthew Jankyn Series
Alexander the Great Mysteries
Canterbury Tales of Murder and Mystery
The Egyptian Mysteries
Mahu (The Akhenaten-Trilogy)
Mathilde of Westminster Series
Political Intrigue in Ancient Rome Series
‘Teams with colour, energy and spills’
Time Out
‘Deliciously suspenseful, gorgeously written and atmospheric’
Historical Novels Review
‘Supremely evocative, scrupulously researched’
Publishers Weekly
‘An opulent banquet to satisfy the most murderous appetite’
Northern Echo
‘Extensive and penetrating research coupled with a strong plot and bold characterisation. Loads of adventure and a dazzling evocation of the past’
Herald Sun
, Melbourne
To the memory of my Grandfather, Billy Clynes, a Durham soldier who fought and survived the Great War, to be the source of so many enthralling stories.
Historical NoteT
he 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…
PrologueLondon, 22 May 1450
L
ondon 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.