in pain with each tentative step.
The stab-wound had damaged his kidney, and he was condemned to experience intolerable pain if he drank anything stronger than watered ale or wine. Pain was his constant companion during those first few months of recovery, though in time the spasms grew less frequent, and by the spring of the following year he was strong enough to sit on a horse again.
The grace of God restored Richard’s strength, but to Mary’s lasting sorrow did nothing to remove his desire for revenge. Revenge became his obsession, driving him on whenever his failing body confined him to bed and rest – revenge on his treacherous neighbours, on the Duke of York and his adherents, maybe even on God. The Boltons were an unforgiving brood, and Richard had inherited his full share of that trait.
While he brooded and slowly recovered, Mary concentrated on negotiating a safe passage through the first few months of her marriage. Henry was as devoted and loving as she expected, and she was patient with him in return, despite the initial difficulties experienced in consummating their union. When that trial was over, and they had achieved a degree of physical complicity, she had leisure to attend to her new home.
Sedgley manor was pleasant enough, a stone farmhouse and a grange with the little village of Sedgley close by, surrounded by some four hundred acres of forest and good farmland. Local rumour had it that the Duke of Buckingham had given Sedgley to Henry’s mother, a widow in the household of Buckingham’s wife, as the price for keeping quiet about their brief affair. Henry’s mother had died two winters previously. He seldom spoke of his father, whom he had never met and only ever seen from a distance.
The house was rough comfort, a bachelor’s abode with few refinements. Mary found the hall stuffy and in dire need of airing, the chimneys and floors unswept, the larders nigh-empty save for a few stale cheeses, dried-up flitches of bacon, and one or two barrels of head-splittingly strong ale.
“God save us,” she cried when she first entered the hall, clapping a hand over her nose at the stench of rotting rushes and stale beer. “Has this place been aired in a twelvemonth? Open the windows, in Christ’s name, and fetch some sweet herbs to hang about the place. Why is there no fire in the hearth? Leap to it!”
Her heat was directed at an old serving-man, sixty years if he was a day, who gaped stupidly and ducked his head at her. There were also a couple of sluttish maids, who were rather prettier under their layers of grease and dirt than Mary cared for.
She soon had the servants skipping to her tune, sweeping and dusting and mopping, and was satisfied that the house might one day be rendered habitable. The sluts were turned out of doors and replaced with stout, reliable girls from the village whose diligence matched their plain looks.
Henry was grateful for his wife’s attentiveness, if slightly baffled. He was the type of young man who would happily live in a sty, so long as enough beer and meat was at hand. He was often away at Heydon Court, where Richard summoned him for private conferences.
For all their secrecy, they could hide little from Dame Anne, who correctly supposed their intentions and warned Mary of them in one of her frequent letters:
“To my well-beloved daughter, be this delivered in haste .
Daughter Mary, I greet you well, and send you a gift of black hosecloth, to which you may improve your husband’s apparel, and replace the poor and ragged breeks I have oft seen him in.
I write to let you know that Henry and your brother continue their privy meetings, and are much together, and speak in low voices in Richard’s bedchamber, the which I am too proud to eavesdrop. Even so, they hide nothing from me, who was wise and bitter in the ways of this world before either was born.
Daughter, I suspect them of hatching some design against our neighbours, and of intending to mount an assault
The stab-wound had damaged his kidney, and he was condemned to experience intolerable pain if he drank anything stronger than watered ale or wine. Pain was his constant companion during those first few months of recovery, though in time the spasms grew less frequent, and by the spring of the following year he was strong enough to sit on a horse again.
The grace of God restored Richard’s strength, but to Mary’s lasting sorrow did nothing to remove his desire for revenge. Revenge became his obsession, driving him on whenever his failing body confined him to bed and rest – revenge on his treacherous neighbours, on the Duke of York and his adherents, maybe even on God. The Boltons were an unforgiving brood, and Richard had inherited his full share of that trait.
While he brooded and slowly recovered, Mary concentrated on negotiating a safe passage through the first few months of her marriage. Henry was as devoted and loving as she expected, and she was patient with him in return, despite the initial difficulties experienced in consummating their union. When that trial was over, and they had achieved a degree of physical complicity, she had leisure to attend to her new home.
Sedgley manor was pleasant enough, a stone farmhouse and a grange with the little village of Sedgley close by, surrounded by some four hundred acres of forest and good farmland. Local rumour had it that the Duke of Buckingham had given Sedgley to Henry’s mother, a widow in the household of Buckingham’s wife, as the price for keeping quiet about their brief affair. Henry’s mother had died two winters previously. He seldom spoke of his father, whom he had never met and only ever seen from a distance.
The house was rough comfort, a bachelor’s abode with few refinements. Mary found the hall stuffy and in dire need of airing, the chimneys and floors unswept, the larders nigh-empty save for a few stale cheeses, dried-up flitches of bacon, and one or two barrels of head-splittingly strong ale.
“God save us,” she cried when she first entered the hall, clapping a hand over her nose at the stench of rotting rushes and stale beer. “Has this place been aired in a twelvemonth? Open the windows, in Christ’s name, and fetch some sweet herbs to hang about the place. Why is there no fire in the hearth? Leap to it!”
Her heat was directed at an old serving-man, sixty years if he was a day, who gaped stupidly and ducked his head at her. There were also a couple of sluttish maids, who were rather prettier under their layers of grease and dirt than Mary cared for.
She soon had the servants skipping to her tune, sweeping and dusting and mopping, and was satisfied that the house might one day be rendered habitable. The sluts were turned out of doors and replaced with stout, reliable girls from the village whose diligence matched their plain looks.
Henry was grateful for his wife’s attentiveness, if slightly baffled. He was the type of young man who would happily live in a sty, so long as enough beer and meat was at hand. He was often away at Heydon Court, where Richard summoned him for private conferences.
For all their secrecy, they could hide little from Dame Anne, who correctly supposed their intentions and warned Mary of them in one of her frequent letters:
“To my well-beloved daughter, be this delivered in haste .
Daughter Mary, I greet you well, and send you a gift of black hosecloth, to which you may improve your husband’s apparel, and replace the poor and ragged breeks I have oft seen him in.
I write to let you know that Henry and your brother continue their privy meetings, and are much together, and speak in low voices in Richard’s bedchamber, the which I am too proud to eavesdrop. Even so, they hide nothing from me, who was wise and bitter in the ways of this world before either was born.
Daughter, I suspect them of hatching some design against our neighbours, and of intending to mount an assault
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