I am very happy to welcome David Pilling to my blog today. David is going to talk about his latest series of books set in The Wars of the Roses which is, I know a favourite era of many of my followers. Over to you, David.
A Bolton, a Bolton! The White Hawk!
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| David Pilling: author |
Judith has kindly allowed me a
guest spot to talk about Book One of The White Hawk, my new series of novels
set during The Wars of the Roses. This
period, with its murderous dynastic feuding between the rival Houses of York
and Lancaster, is perhaps the most fascinating of the entire medieval period in
England.
Having lost the Hundred Years War, the English nobility turned on each other in
a bitter struggle for the crown, resulting in a spate of beheadings, battles, murders
and Gangland-style politics that lasted some thirty years.
Apart from the savage doings of
aristocrats, the wars affected people on the lower rungs of society. One minor
gentry family in particular, the Pastons of Norfolk, suffered greatly in their attempts
to survive and thrive in the feral environment of the late 15th century. They
left an invaluable chronicle in their archive of family correspondence, the
famous Paston Letters.
The letters provide us with a
snapshot of the trials endured by middle-ranking families like the Pastons, and
of the measures they took to defend their property from greedy neighbours. One
such extract is a frantic plea from the matriarch of the clan, Margaret Paston,
begging her son John to return from London:
"I greet you well, letting
you know that your brother and his fellowship stand in great jeopardy at
Caister... Daubney and Berney are dead and others badly hurt, and gunpowder and
arrows are lacking. The place is badly broken down by the guns of the other
party, so that unless they have hasty help, they are likely to lose both their
lives and the place, which will be the greatest rebuke to you that ever came to
any gentleman. For every man in this country marvels greatly that you suffer
them to be for so long in great jeopardy without help or other remedy..."
The Paston Letters, together with
my general fascination for the era, were the inspiration for The White Hawk.
Planned as a series of three novels, TWH will follow the fortunes of a
fictional Staffordshire family, the Boltons, from the beginning to the very end
of The Wars of the Roses. Unquenchably loyal to the House of Lancaster, their
loyalty will have dire consequences for them as law and order breaks down and
the kingdom slides into civil war. The ‘white hawk’ of the title is the sigil
of the Boltons, and will fly over many a blood-stained battlefield.
In the following excerpt, one of
the protagonists is introduced to his first taste of real combat at the Battle
of Northampton:
“The Lancastrians still had their archers,
and the unseasonal rain had turned the ground between the two armies into a
quagmire. Geoffrey lost a shoe in the soft, sucking mud, and cursed as he was
forced to hobble onward with one naked foot.
Then the skies darkened, and the man
beside him squealed and went down with an arrow protruding from the eye-piece
of his sallet. Geoffrey lowered his head and stumbled on, gagging at the stench
of excrement and split gut that filled his nostrils as more arrows strafed
Fauconberg’s division, cutting men down and breaking up their carefully ordered
ranks.
Geoffrey was breathing hard, his limbs
seized with weariness as he laboured through the mud. His heart rattled like a
drum. The Yorkists were being murdered by the arrows, and still had to cross a
deep ditch, defended by a wall of stakes and thousands of determined, well-fed
and rested Lancastrian infantry. They would surely be repelled, panic would set
in, and men would start to run. Then the Lancastrian knights would mount their
destriers, and the real killing would begin as they pursued their beaten foes
across miles of open ground.
Geoffrey’s courage and desire for
vengeance shriveled inside him. He desperately wanted to turn and run, but the
press of men forced him on, towards the bristling line of stakes. He glanced
ahead, and saw that March’s division had stormed right up to the barricades on
the right flank of the Lancastrian position. These were defended by men wearing
badges displaying a black ragged staff. He recognised the livery as that of Lord
Grey of Ruthin, a powerful Welsh Marcher lord.
He expected March’s advance to grind to a
halt as his men came up against the stakes and Grey’s well-armed infantry, but
then something extraordinary happened. The men wearing the badge of the ragged
staff laid down their weapons and stood aside, allowing the Yorkists to pass
through their lines. Some even stooped to help their supposed enemies over the
ditch.
Lord Grey had turned traitor. Geoffrey had
no idea why or how it had been arranged, being too unimportant to be made privy
to such deals, but his heart sang at the result. That one act of treachery
would surely reverse the tide of battle. The Lancastrians were doomed, trapped
like rats inside their improvised fortress. More to the point, Geoffrey’s chances
of survival had just improved dramatically…”
If
all this whets your appetite, then please check out the paperback and Kindle
versions of Book One below...
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