Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims (55 page)

‘Sir John,’ Katherine says. ‘It is an honour, though what is . . .?’ And she hesitates nicely, her gaze flickering across the house’s façade, the arrow in the jamb, Sir John’s wild appearance.

‘Yes,’ Sir John admits. ‘You find us somewhat unprepared. For guests, I mean.’ He laughs weakly, but then he tails off. He is staring at her openly, rudely, and he starts crying again. His eyes screw tight and the tears flow into the silver threads of his beard. He begins to sob, and Katherine looks at Thomas for guidance.

Thomas takes the old man’s shoulders.

‘Sir John,’ he says. ‘What is wrong?’

Sir John cannot speak.

‘Where is Richard?’ Katherine asks, her tone sharp and urgent, out of her new role.

‘Here.’

A new voice joins them. Coming from the doorway.

Both turn.

Standing there, gripping the lintel with both hands, is Richard Fakenham. He is in soft leather boots and a rough blue jacket and wrapped around his eyes is a long length of grubby linen bandage.

‘He is blinded,’ Sir John says in a low voice. ‘In both eyes.’

IT IS AFTER
dark and they are sitting in the hall by the damped fire.

‘It was that giant of his,’ Sir John tells them. ‘They caught him and Little John Willingham by means of trickery. They killed Little John. With an axe, Richard says, and then when he was dead, they took Richard and they held him down and – well.’

Sir John cannot go on. There is a long silence.

‘Is he asleep?’ Katherine asks.

Sir John shakes his head.

‘I hear him crying sometimes,’ he says. ‘In the night. It is not a sound a father wants to hear.’

‘Why did they do it?’ Thomas asks.

Sir John shrugs.

‘Because they could,’ he says, ‘and to send me a message, I suppose.’

Katherine sits and listens, unable to contribute, seeing again how awkward this pretence will be. Sir John glances at her now and then, and she imagines he thinks her shy, but in truth she does not know what to think or where to put herself.

When Richard had first emerged from the house, she had stood rooted while Thomas fumblingly reintroduced himself. They’d hugged and kissed and Richard had said that it was good to see him and a silence had fallen and then Richard had said it was good to know that he was alive anyway, and he had asked about Walter and then Kit. Thomas had glanced her way without moving his head and, after a moment’s hesitation that might have been mistaken for misery, he’d told them that both were dead, and that of the five men who had set out for Wales, only he remained alive.

She saw how much the lie cost Thomas. She wishes she could somehow undo all this, and go back, and deal straight with the world – or as straight as she ever had – and have Thomas as he was.

Richard had wailed when he’d heard the news and had taken himself off, fumbling up the steps.

‘Should we try to help?’ Katherine had asked Sir John.

Sir John had shaken his head.

They’d heard him thump around in the chamber above and then it had gone quiet.

Now Sir John pours himself some of the ale, and speaks of the past month.

‘We didn’t go to Sandal,’ he says. ‘Didn’t want to spend all winter in a castle with so many men cooped up behind those damned walls that it’d be a job to find somewhere to shit without another man doing the same on your lap. And thank the Lord I didn’t go. I suppose you heard? York and his men went charging out of the castle gates – leaving the bloody things open, can you believe it, and the drawbridge down – to relieve a foraging party that had, quite against the rules of the Christmas truce, been attacked by some of Somerset’s men.

‘The next thing they know the woods are heaving with more of the bastards. It was over in minutes, I heard, and anyone of any quality whom we had on our side – gone. The Duke of York, of course, and that young fool Rutland – do you remember him at Westminster? Arguing with Warwick, he was – he was murdered by Clifford after it was all over, with the lad trying to get into Wakefield. As for the Earl of Salisbury, well. He was taken to Pontefract. I thought they were going to ransom him to Warwick. Can you imagine? An Englishman paying another Englishman for the return of his own father? But in the end one of Exeter’s bastards dragged the poor old sod from his rooms and chopped his bloody head off. Right there and then. The Earl of Salisbury!’

He asks Thomas about the battle Edward of March has won – he cannot stop calling him the Earl of March – and what he thinks will happen in London.

‘I have it from William Hastings,’ Thomas says, ‘that since King Henry’s adherents killed Richard, the old Duke of York, at Wakefield, then the Act of Accord is void and that Edward, the new Duke of York, is free to claim the throne as his right.’

‘Then what will happen to King Henry?’ Sir John wants to know. ‘Will he resign?’

Thomas does not know.

‘Not if he is with the Queen,’ Katherine cannot stop herself answering.

Sir John squints at her, then tugs on his beard. It sounds raspy. She takes a sip of the ale, which is disgusting, and she tries to do it delicately. There is a silence until Sir John turns to Thomas.

‘You know Giles Riven has switched sides again?’ he asks. ‘Gone back to the Queen after Wakefield. By Christ, I’d love to have one last try at him. For all that he has done to me, for all that he has done to mine, I wish he were dead and already enjoying his time with the devil in hell. Do you suppose he will be there? With the Queen, I mean?’

Of course Thomas has no idea.

‘He has cost us sorely.’ Sir John goes on. ‘Sorely. But we have taxed him too. His men came to surround the house, you know, to drive us out. As soon as we heard the news from Sandal, we knew those northern bastards’d be coming our way, so we were ready, we thought. Then they went through Newark instead, and they were so keen on plundering the south they didn’t bother to ford the river. We thought we were safe. Life was getting back to normal, or as normal as it could be.

‘And then they came. They caught Goodwife Popham. Down in the village.

‘Geoffrey and Brampton John and Little John were here in the hall, and Elizabeth, you remember her, Thomas? Geoffrey’s daughter. She came running to fetch help. I reckon now that they’d let her go just to come and get us. We snatched up whatever we could, thinking it was just a party of latecomers gone wild on their way south.

‘We didn’t bother with harness or anything, and Geoffrey, well, of course he was worried. It was his wife they had. So we ran down to the village. We could hear her screaming in one of the cottages, but there wasn’t anybody about, so, well, I suppose we should have seen it for what it was. The first arrow knocked Brampton John off his feet. The second went straight through Geoffrey’s eye. Dropped him just like a bull. Christ. He’d been with me forever, you know? And they killed him, just like that.’ He snaps his fingers. ‘Bastards,’ he says.

There is a long silence. Katherine wipes away a tear. She knows she is not supposed to know these people Sir John speaks about, but she cannot help herself.

‘I killed one,’ Sir John goes on. ‘The bowman, thank Christ, before he could loose another arrow. And Richard got another. The others rode away. Richard took the bowman’s horse, Little John the other horse. They went after them. Then I thought, too late: My God, it’s a trap. To get us out of the house. I ran back. Fast as I could.’ Sir John’s face is grey with shame and regret. ‘I got back just in time to see them riding off with Liz over a saddle. They’d set a fire in the roof and one in the stables and the horses were screaming. I had to make a choice.’

There is silence in the room. A log on the fire lets out a long sigh.

‘I have that girl’s life on my conscience,’ Sir John says. ‘And God will be my judge in the next world.’

Both murmur amen.

‘I let the horses go, and I put out the fire. Then I waited. I thought when Richard and John got back I could send one of them to Lincoln to raise some more men. I heard horses in the yard and I ran out. But it wasn’t them. Or rather, it was. It was Riven’s men. They dropped Richard in the muck and rode away laughing. He was screaming and kicking and there was blood in his eyes, and I knew straight away what they’d done.’

There is a long silence. Sir John pinches the bridge of his nose.

‘But what about the dead men outside?’ Thomas asks.

Sir John seems to brighten.

‘Them? Riven’s scouts. They were taunting us, shouting the foulest things. About the things they’d done to young Liz, and to Richard. Thank God for that crossbow. D’you remember Kit left it when he went? He said I’d need it before he did, or something. The boy was usually right, wasn’t he, Thomas? Anyway, I wounded one or two more over the course of the next day and by Christ I hope they died miserable deaths. Then they said they’d just wait. Starve us out. But their hearts weren’t in it. I think once they’d done that to Richard they knew they needn’t worry any more.’

It made sense, Katherine supposes. Once Riven heard he’d missed the chance to take Margaret Cornford in Wales, he must have changed tactics. He must have thought she’d never marry Richard if he was blind. She wants to ask why Riven had not simply killed Richard, but she cannot betray her knowledge. She wishes Thomas would ask, but perhaps he is too sensible to ask a father why his son hasn’t been killed, only blinded.

Sir John turns to address her.

‘I’m sorry you find us this way, my lady. I’m sorry my boy is the way he is now. He was a wonderful young man before this. A wonderful swordsman, wasn’t he, Thomas? And a fine huntsman. He had such a love of life. To know him was to love him. I know every father says that, but . . . Had you met him properly, I am sure you would have admired him. He was kind, too, of course, wasn’t he, Thomas? Hmmm?’

Thomas nods but cannot lift his gaze from the table.

‘Will he not join us?’ Katherine asks.

Sir John shakes his head. They are silent for a long time. Katherine is aware of Sir John’s gaze on her, but when she looks up he is smiling with tears in his eyes.

‘Where is Riven now, d’you know?’ Thomas asks. His voice has taken on that hard flat tone. Sir John shakes his head.

‘He has not bothered us for days. Weeks even.’

‘Then he must be with the Queen’s army,’ Thomas says.

Sir John nods as if to allow it.

‘Then this time I’ll not fail,’ Thomas says. ‘This time I’ll go and find him and I’ll put an end to it. Put an end to him. He cannot be left to live after this, not now, and we cannot go on living like this either.’

Katherine wonders if anything is ever that simple.

She sleeps that night in Sir John’s bed, Sir John sharing with Richard on the smaller truckle bed by her side, Thomas downstairs by the covered fire, keeping watch. The sheets are filthy and there is dog hair everywhere. She’s forgotten the dogs. Talbots, they were, absurd-looking things. She supposes them dead now. At some point Richard gets up in the night and fumbles his way downstairs.

What must it be like, to be blind? she wonders. To be constantly in the dark? She tries to imagine what Richard must be feeling, even apart from being left blind. She recalls Thomas’s face the moment the giant pressed his thumb into his eye on the ferryman’s skiff. It had been filled with naked terror, a sensation that surely no man would ever forget. And for someone like Richard, who thought himself a soldier, it must be doubly difficult.

Would it have been better for Richard to have been killed? Probably, she thinks. Which is why the giant didn’t do it.

Dear God! Thomas has talked of the mistake of sparing Riven’s life, but what of the giant? Even at the time she’d known they should have killed him, when he was lying stunned by the boat that morning, but they’d never have been able to do it. They were too innocent then. Now, though, she would happily crash that pollaxe into the giant’s face, happily cut his throat. For a moment her body is thronging with energy.

She feels the constriction of her shift, wrapped tight around her legs and her waist, and she wishes she were wearing a shirt and braies as she used to when she was Kit. She thinks of Thomas downstairs by the fire, wrapped in solitude, and she feels a flare of anger. He is a stubborn fool, she thinks. If he’d said just one thing, or if he’d tried for a single moment to dissuade her from pretending to be Margaret Cornford, then she would have thrown off her cloak and swapped it for some ragged boy’s clothing, and she would have resumed the life of Kit in an instant.

But now it is too late.

And the tears come, silently sliding down to her temples, when she thinks about how they are betraying Sir John and Richard, people who have only ever offered them kindness, and she curses herself for ever thinking to remain Margaret Cornford.

And so what is to become of her? she wonders. To what life has she condemned herself? A life that serves as its own penance? A better life than she might have expected at the priory, perhaps, but one shot through with deception and heartbreak, one in which anything she does to serve herself will wound those whom she most loves.

And it is just as she is drifting off, gripped by the sorrow of these thoughts, that her eyes fly open and she is suddenly wide awake.

She thinks she can see the way out of this. She thinks there is a way.

The next morning they are up before cockcrow. Thomas is away all morning, burying Geoffrey’s body in the churchyard, dragging the others away from the house, and it falls to Katherine to resuscitate the fire and to make soup with such supplies as remain. She knows her way around the buttery and the kitchen and she knows how to haul the bucket up from the well. She is about to start shovelling the excrement from the back, just as she used to when she was Kit, when she sees Sir John squinting at her, and she leaves the shovel where it is, and she wipes her hands on her skirts and comes to sit at the board where Richard is grinding his fists into his eye sockets.

‘Do they hurt?’ she asks.

Richard grunts.

‘Let me see,’ she says. His bandages are grubby and stained and since the bleeding must have stopped, she wonders what they are really for? She moves close. Richard stiffens but she places a hand on his shoulder and a moment later he relaxes. She is conscious that Sir John is watching as she unwinds the filthy linen.