Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims (26 page)

But when Fournier turns up, she is still unsure.

‘Master Dominic Fournier,’ his servant announces, holding open the tent flap as the physician steps in. He is wearing a velvet cloak, greasy at the worn lapels, and a sagging fur hat sprouting an array of damp goose feathers. He is poorly shaved and his dark eyebrows meet in the middle. He looks anxious, as if he might be unmasked at any moment.

‘Do you have wine?’ he asks. ‘Any will do?’

‘None,’ she says.

He nods.

‘Very well. Then let us make this short. Boy, expose the wound.’

The boy looks at Katherine for permission. He is grey-faced with a clipped right ear from which for a moment Katherine cannot take her gaze. She wonders absently how strange it is that one rarely sees men with clipped ears. What happens to the boys? Do only a few live long enough to become men?

She does not want the boy to touch the wound, so she bends and peels back the dressing herself. She hears Fournier suck his teeth. Then sniff the air. The wound is black-lipped, and slightly puckered, the skin around it rosy and delicate, fine as silk. Something glistens between its lips. Katherine knows that the wound is healing and she is pleased – no, astonished by what she has managed.

‘Yes, yes,’ Fournier says. ‘It is as I feared. The wound has cured from the outside in. It has sealed in the hot wet humour. It needs cauterising. We’ll need a fire.’

Katherine stands.

‘You are going to burn him?’ Panic makes her voice high.

‘It is the only way,’ Fournier says. ‘We must clean the wound from within, with fire, then we shall bleed him. Such a wound, particularly in such a place, unbalances the humours. We need to make a small incision between the fingers, there.’ He points at Richard’s limp hand with the long point of his patten. ‘It is connected to the functions of the liver. And the moon is in an auspicious quarter for cutting.’

He gestures upwards. Katherine stares at him a moment. Something begins growing within her, a physical force that shakes her narrow frame, fills her skin. It is always this way when she puts herself in harm’s way. The Prioress once suggested it was the presence of the devil within her, and beat her for it, as if that might expel the demon.

Now she crosses to where Thomas has left the giant’s pollaxe against one of the tent bracers. It is lighter than she remembers, but the weight of its head gives it fearsome impetus, and when she picks it up, it levels itself at Fournier’s belly.

He steps back.

‘If you so much as touch him,’ she says, ‘I will run you through.’

Katherine has never been more certain of anything, and yet – what is she doing? She is threatening the Earl of Warwick’s personal physician with a pollaxe. Fournier takes another step back. Spots of high colour have come into his cheeks and his mouth quavers. He slips off his pattens as they catch in the mud.

‘You are mad!’ he squeaks.

She jabs the axe at him.

‘Out,’ she says. ‘Get out.’

‘You have not heard the last of this,’ Fournier cries as he backs through the tent flaps. ‘You have not heard – d’you hear?’

He is away before she can think of anything to say. His boy stoops to collect his pattens and runs out after him.

When Geoffrey comes to find her, Richard is asleep under a rug, breathing steadily.

They say nothing for a moment, but it is clear Geoffrey is exasperated.

‘Sir John is upset,’ he says.

Katherine says nothing. She does not know what to say. The shame weighs on her.

‘Whatever were you thinking?’ he goes on. ‘He is the Earl of Warwick’s personal physician!’

She shakes her head and closes her eyes to stop the tears. She can still think of nothing to say. Why can she not be content to let things pass? But then – he was going to burn Richard. That cannot be a right thing to do.

‘You’re an odd one, Kit, and no mistake. If you haven’t been looking after Richard so well, then – well, I don’t know. You’d’ve had your ear clipped long ago.’

She thinks of Fournier’s grubby boy and nods tightly. She swallows.

‘As it is,’ Geoffrey goes on, ‘keep out of his way for a day or two.’

Later that day the order comes to break camp.

‘Thank the Lord for that,’ Thomas says, but if he thinks breaking camp will mean getting away from Fournier, or Lamn, he is mistaken, for the news comes down that the Bishop is to travel with them.

‘Warwick hopes to persuade him to excommunicate the King’s army,’ Sir John laughs while he watches them start clearing their tents in the rain. When they have the cart loaded, they leave the town of Sandwich and begin up the Roman road towards Canterbury, a thousand years old and still mostly passable. In the fields either side of them water lies in the hollows and anyone who leaves the road comes back with mud up to his knees.

‘Never seen it rain so,’ one of them says.

‘Wheat’ll rot if it goes on like this.’

‘Everything’ll bloody rot if it goes on like this. We’ll bloody rot.’

They cross a river that has broken its banks. Swans sail on the fields. Still the rain comes down. But still men join them. Soon the towers of the cathedral break the skyline ahead.

Katherine is walking next to Hugh just behind the cart. Every step towards the city pains her, but she cannot think what to do. Panic has reduced her to indecision.

‘I can’t stand it again,’ Hugh whispers to her.

She looks up.

‘Stand what?’

Hugh looks about them, down the column, seeing if it is safe to speak. He sees something or someone and shakes his head. They walk on in silence until he stops again. Here the trees have closed in on the road, the bushes are thick with leaf. An archer is squatting over a ditch.

‘Goodbye, Kit,’ Hugh says and he holds out a slim hand. Katherine takes it. It is cool, like holding a fish.

‘You’re going?’ she asks.

He nods.

‘I am not strong enough,’ he says. Then he steps off the road on to the grass verge. A moment later he is gone.

Katherine opens her mouth to call after him, to tell him to stop, to come back or to wait for her. She does not know which.

‘Come on. Come on,’ Dafydd says as he and Thomas push up against her from behind, and she turns again and walks on. Ahead of them the banners are hanging in damp folds. Men huddle within their cloaks.

Walter drops back from the cart. He is carrying four bags of arrows. He gives one to Thomas.

‘Try to keep ’em dry,’ he says. ‘You’ll need ’em first thing tomorrow.’ He looks around for a moment. ‘Where’s that streak of piss Hugh?’ he asks.

Thomas shrugs. Walter glances at her. She shrugs too, but differently, and Walter understands. He steps off the road and peers back along the lines.

‘Silly fucker,’ he says. ‘Hope to God the prickers don’t get him. They’ll hang him from a branch soon as look at him.’

They walk on.

So that is Hugh, she thinks, gone, and will she ever see him again? Ever find out what happens to him?

Some cows in an orchard watch them pass.

‘We should take one,’ Dafydd says. ‘Never know when you’re going to need a cow.’

‘Touch one of them and the Earl of Warwick’ll have you drowned in a puddle.’

‘What about a swan?’

‘Same thing.’

‘But look about you,’ Dafydd exclaims. ‘Look! There’s so much here. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s all orchards, everywhere. Pear trees. Plum trees. Cherry trees. What’s that? A bloody chestnut tree! And all those birds! Partridges and pea-fowls and pheasants – and that’s without even talking about the sheep!’

‘Sheep!’ Owen says.

‘And where is everybody? It’s like it all goes on without anyone looking.’

There are fat chickens loose in every village, and well-kept inns where they serve beer brewed from imported hops and serve it in pewter cups, with cheese pies, and buttered peas, and every step she takes only brings her nearer the gallows.

Just then there is a blaring of trumpets and shouting from behind them.

‘Make way! Stand aside there!’

It is the Earl of Warwick riding past in full armour, his visor up, followed by a body of men in armour, their hooves throwing up the mud as they pass. As they pass, though, men begin to lift their heads. They start to stride forward. Katherine shakes her head. Why they cannot see him for what he is, she does not know. A moment later the Earl of March rides past, languid, with less of the bustle, and then came the others, Salisbury and Fauconberg and their household men, their banners held stiff despite the rain. Then the Bishop Coppini, and last, Lamn.

‘Late for their supper, I bet,’ Dafydd sneers.

That night they camp on the common land outside the silver grey walls of Canterbury and in the still of the night, such as it is, Katherine gathers her things: her knife, her few clothes, the spare hood; and she puts them in her bag, and waits.

THE SOUND OF
trumpets and men shouting in the dawn.

‘Stand to. Stand to. Come on, you lazy dogs. Get up and stand to.’

It is Walter, at the tent flap. Fleeting shadows cross the canvas as men go about their business by the fires’ light, scuffling and cursing in the gloom. Thomas rolls to his feet and straps the bracer on his forearm. He forces his still raw fingers into his blood-stiff glove.

Katherine is already awake, her eyes open in the dark.

‘Good luck,’ she says. ‘And God be with you.’

‘You too, Kit. You too.’

She throws her blanket off and stands, smelling of sleep and warmth.

‘No, Thomas,’ she says. ‘I mean it.’

She grips his hand. He smiles. The way she behaves can still surprise him.

‘Me too,’ he says.

She is unblinking in the dark. He has to pull his hand free of hers and he feels her stare following him as he leaves the tent. Something is wrong, but what?

Outside Geoffrey is shirtless, his hairy belly silvery like a moon in the dawn. He is emptying a jug of ale into his mouth as two boys march past, one hoisting a banner, the other beating a drum like a heart, boo-boom, boo-boom. Men are falling in behind them, their faces black and smoke-smutted from the fires they’ve tended through the night. There is a strong smell of horses.

‘Archers, to the front,’ a man shouts from his saddle, though they all know what is expected of them. ‘Archers to the front! Find your mark. Quickly now.’

Thomas finds his spot. They are in a grass meadow a little way off the road, the ground under their feet soggy, copses of elms and oaks to both sides. Behind them the men-at-arms and the billmen are forming up, rattling in their armour plate, five or six deep. Some of the billmen are carrying just farm tools: a hayfork, a knife lashed to a pole to make a glaive; all of them on the lookout for better weapons for the next time. These are the naked men, the scrapings of the recruitment barrel, the men who make up the numbers for the Commissions of Array.

Others are carrying bills, hammers, axes, swords, mauls, pikes and spears. Most have a helmet, and some have gauntlets. None of it matches and most of it has been looted at least once before, if not twice.

Gathered under their banners are the armoured knights and the men-at-arms, the household men of those who can afford to pay them. The men of the Earl of Warwick take the central division, straddling the road, and those of March take the left flank while Fauconberg’s men occupy the right. It is easy to see March. He is the tallest man on the field, his banner long and fishtailed.

‘A Fauconberg!’

‘Come on! Lively now!’

The day comes slowly. What has been invisible in the dark becomes discernible in the light and they find themselves facing the town walls across a ditch and a stretch of broad water meadows. Before the gates of the city, to one side of the road, is a small hamlet clustered around the squat tower of another church, and beyond are some earthworks from which a man with a donkey and a spade moves off sharply when he sees what is afoot.

In the city men are moving between the battlements of the gatehouse and there are more on the walls too. Thomas imagines them staring back out at the besieging army, trying to estimate their number and deposition, gauging their banners, waiting and wondering.

The bells begin a steady toll.

‘Easy now, lads,’ Geoffrey is telling them. ‘Check your equipment. Take the time to make sure you’ve got everything you need. Check your arrows. Check your bow. Then take a drink.’

Ahead of them in the hamlet they can see a number of men in livery, some of them horsemen. They can hear the slide of harness and the stamp of horses’ hooves.

‘Here they come,’ Dafydd says. He bends and makes a sign of the cross on the mud beneath his feet. Then he takes a piece of earth in his mouth and nocks an arrow. So do all the other archers. A priest walks ahead of them, intoning the paternoster, blessing them as he goes.

They all kneel. Thomas can hardly swallow.

‘I hate this bit,’ Red John says next to him. Even in the gloom Thomas can see John’s eyes are unnaturally bright. He wishes he had a wineskin with him, or a mug of ale. It is easier with drink.

‘Wait for the order,’ Walter murmurs. He licks his finger and checks the wind. There is none.

A party of well-mounted horsemen ride forward from their lines up the road and into the hamlet.

‘Who are they?’ Thomas asks.

‘Heralds,’ an archer at the front says. ‘Warwick Herald, there.’

They relax. Red John stabs his arrow back in the ground. The horsemen, about five of them in different coloured tabards, dismount and leave their horses for a servant.

‘Parley, it is,’ Walter says. ‘See if we’re going to fight.’

Thomas finds his lips moving in prayer. Minutes pass. The light grows stronger. Someone is sick. Men laugh. Thomas holds out his hand and watches it tremble. It will be better when it starts. He wishes he’d had something to eat and he still craves something to drink – anything.

Then, suddenly, instantly, he is no longer afraid: he is bored.

He thinks about Katherine. She has been behaving strangely since they returned to England. Perhaps it is being so close to Canterbury. He looks across at the spire of the cathedral and thinks about returning to orders again. He looks at his hands: how they have changed their shape. They are calloused and square now, firm with muscle, and all that remains to mark his former life is a dent in his forefinger where he held the reed. His arms must have doubled their girth.