Free Revenge by David Pilling Page B

terror. At the sight of Richard the man fell on his face.
    “Mercy, sweet lord,” he whined, weeping into his beard as he clutched at Richard’s legs. The heavy door behind him rattled and shook under the blows of the men outside. Richard spied a bundle of heavy iron keys hanging from his belt.
    “Give me those,” he snarled. The greybeard hastened to obey, his arthritic fingers trembling as he fumbled to get the key-ring off his belt. Richard snatched the keys and pushed him aside.
    “Wait a moment, lads,” he shouted, trying one key after another in the lock until he found the right one. He lifted the heavy bar and the door swung inward to admit four men, led by a savage knight of Chester named Sir Ralph Basset.
    The next half-hour witnessed the shame and destruction of Malvern Hall. Richard’s followers broke tables and benches into little pieces, beat and robbed Malvern’s terrified servants, and ransacked every room. They forced open chests and destroyed the court-rolls, deeds and other valuable documents they found inside– some relating to lawsuits against the Boltons. The intruders then found pieces of tapestry hanging in the hall; these bore the Malvern arms and so were torn down and hacked into quarters.
    “The Malverns are traitors,” declared Basset, “so let their arms be quartered, as befits traitors.”
    A kind of madness was let loose. Six men broke into the bedchambers and raped the serving-maids they found hiding there before slashing the furnishings with swords and daggers. They destroyed three feather beds and two of worsted, scattering the sheets, coverings and blankets over the floor. They broke into the wine-cellar and liberated pipes of red wine and barrels of ale and wine. Men were soon staggering drunkenly about the corridors, their bodies draped with blood-stained sheets, laughing and singing with the joy of unbridled robbery and violence.
    Meanwhile Richard hunted through the rambling corridors, sword in hand, calling for the Malverns to come out of hiding and face him. None did. Had his quarry escaped?
    Boiling with rage and frustration, he put his boot to a random door and stormed into a bedchamber. He pulled open the door of the wardrobe to find a young girl crouched in the shadows, one tiny fist stuffed into her mouth. Her eyes were tightly closed and tears glistened on her cheeks.
    Richard stopped dead. He closed his eyes and forced down the rage inside his breast, willing himself to be calm and relent from committing a murder that would haunt him all his days. Breathing hard, he rammed his bloody sword back into its sheath.
    “You are Malvern’s grand-daughter, are you not?” he said, panting. “His son’s whelp, or one of his daughters – I forget which. Your folk breed like vermin. Speak!”
    The girl remained mute, and with a curse Richard grasped her stick-thin arm. “Let’s go in search of your grandsire,” he said, ignoring her cries and feeble struggles as he dragged her out into the passage.
    A brawny man-at-arms appeared. “We’ve found Sir Thomas, lord,” he shouted, his face flushed with stolen wine. “He was hiding in the cellar. We have him outside!”
    Richard ran down the passage, almost dropping the girl in his excitement. The greybeard doorkeeper who had given him the keys was crouched under the stair, and cried out when he saw the girl in Richard’s arms.
    “No!” he wailed. “Not Kate! Not my darling… Harm not her, I beg!”
    Richard ignored him and hurried outside. Smoke was billowing from the door of the barn, where his men had fired the grain sacks within. The yard was strewn with bodies and piles of loot. Grim blood-spattered figures moved about, cutting throats and stripping the dead of valuables.
    For a moment Richard hesitated, a worm of doubt creeping into his mind. Had he really meant to bring about this shocking ruin?
    All doubts were driven from his mind as he saw his enemy. Sir Thomas Malvern, a stocky, broad-chested man with a