Free Revenge by David Pilling Page A

Cathedral came in sight. “Take the prisoners, as agreed,” he ordered, “and put Deeping in the stocks in the town square. Let the men loose on wine-shops and taverns and do as they will. I am for Malvern Hall.”
    Henry nodded obediently. Richard took thirty men and galloped away west, leaving his brother-in-law with the task of distracting the Sheriff by raising hell in Lichfield.
    Malvern Hall lay four miles to the west, surrounded by parkland and forest. Unlike Heydon Court, the hall had stood since the Conquest, and proclaimed age and dignity in the weathered grey stone of its walls, its tall tower built in a square style at least two centuries out of fashion, and the sprawling layout of the grounds. Here, the hall declared to ambitious upstarts like the Boltons, is a pride and permanence worked in undressed stone that you, for all your new money and red-brick pretensions, can never hope to achieve.
    Richard’s father had hated the place, almost as much as he had resented and envied its owner. Richard reined in as he crested the ridge overlooking the hall. He savoured the sight of his enemy’s home spread out below, blissfully unaware of the storm about to descend on it.
    “Smash, burn, pillage and destroy,” he ordered, twisting in the saddle to address his men, “and hunt out Sir Thomas and his kin. Twenty shillings and a silver ewer to the man who brings me Sir Thomas, dead or alive.”
    He raised his sword, and with cries of “A White Hawk! A White Hawk! On them, on them, a Bolton, a Bolton!” the riders swept down the hill.
    Malvern Hall was more a palatial residence than a fortress, and the outer walls had long since been allowed to fall into decay by the arrogance and neglect of their owners. Richard led his followers at the gallop through a great rent in one wall and into the grounds. The hall itself was to the north, flanked by a kitchen wing and private apartments, while the rest of the enclosure was a mess of outbuildings including a dovecote shaped like a giant beehive, a barn, stables and a forge.
    Servants wearing Malvern livery scattered and fled for cover. A few were brave or foolish enough to stand their ground, and Richard shouted for joy as he rode down a stout, red-faced man wielding a rake. His followers scattered and charged about the grounds, spearing and cutting down the fleeing servants, men and women, while others dismounted to smash in the doors and windows of the hall.
    Four men carrying swords and bucklers tumbled from the door of one of the outbuildings, shouting “A Malvern! A Malvern!” They pulled one man from the saddle and hacked at him as he lay helpless on the ground. Richard’s riders turned on the swordsmen and made short work of them, spearing and riding them down.
    The ground-floor windows of the hall had once been arrow-slits, back in the distant days when Sir Thomas’s Norman ancestors had valued security over comfort, but Sir Thomas had widened them and put costly tinted glass in the frames. That now proved to be a wasted investment, as Richard’s men gleefully smashed the glass with the butts of their lances. One of them staggered back with a crossbow bolt protruding from his thigh, but his mates clambered over the sill, eager as bloodied mastiffs.
    Richard dismounted, cursing at the brief burst of pain from the scar in his back. He climbed gingerly through the wrecked window, careful to avoid the shards of broken glass.
    Inside was a large, spacious chamber with a handsome fireplace decorated with the Malvern arms, tapestries woven in silk hung about the whitewashed walls, and comfortable furniture.
    Two of Richard’s men were holding a screaming man in Malvern livery down on the bare stone floor, while a third knelt on his chest and stabbed his eyes with a poniard. They ignored Richard as he stumbled over a fallen crossbow and hurried out into the hallway. There he encountered an old man in a grubby black gown crouched by the wall, his rheumy eyes wide with