Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims (59 page)

Arrows throw them back, the balance tips, they turn and try to run and soon the bridge is empty, swept of life, a peninsula of bloodied armour and dead men, creaking and sliding as wounded men try to move. A man cries short juddering yelps.

There is a long silence.

Thomas sits and waits.

What will happen? No one seems to know. Confidence leaks from them and it is very cold.

Then, behind, there is the sound of trumpets blown and drums beaten. Across the fields the archers start moving aside. A party of heralds, then the banner of King Edward and then the standards of Warwick and of Fauconberg, riding up from the castle at Pomfret.

Edward, lately the Earl of March and the Duke of York, now the King, is gigantic in his plate and a long blue riding cloak with a ruff of some dense-looking fur. Next to him is Warwick, also in full harness, riding a brown horse. Thomas wonders what has happened to his famous black charger. Warwick’s household men are buzzing about him and men everywhere are looking to them for guidance. And there they sit in their saddles studying the terrain, and the cost in men so far. Thomas can see Fauconberg and the King are arguing about something, Fauconberg gestures forcefully one way – to the west – while the King gestures another – down to the bridge – while the Earl of Warwick is setting his horse to pace in tight circles around them.

A new attack is planned, the third of the day. Orders are shouted, trumpets sound, companies of men move up, companies move back. Men in plate arrive on horseback to talk to King Edward. Sometimes he listens, sometimes he doesn’t. Fauconberg keeps gesturing. Eventually King Edward says something and Fauconberg rides off with a few of his men.

Companies of archers under their vintenars are fanning across the fields in the footsteps of those who’d supported that second push across the bridge. Now and then arrows sail at them through the grey sky, lofted on a wind that hums through the trees from the north.

Thomas watches while King Edward says a few words to the men gathered in the roadway. Some encouragement, he supposes. There is a ragged cheer and off they go, down the road towards the bridge. This time there must be a hundred of them, and they move as a woodlouse, left right, left right, in step, shouting messages to one another, keeping close. They must all be of one household, behind one lord under one banner. Who are they? Thomas doesn’t know.

And anyway, after a moment, it doesn’t matter. When they reach the bridge, the arrows thunder down on them and soon there are none alive to return to their estates and their manors. They are all dead, watched as they depart this earth in blank-faced silence by King Edward and the Earl of Warwick and a thousand weary archers hunched over their bows and empty bags. They’d made it farther than the first two attacks, almost to the end of the bridge. One of them had clambered on to a cross beam and even raised his axe, but he’d been pulled forward by one of the northern billmen and it isn’t hard to imagine what they would have done to him then.

No one on the southern bank of the river moves. It is as if they are frozen. Arrows flit from north to south still, and after a moment a lightly armoured man struggles up from the river, water streaming from his creases, only to be sent bowling by an arrow from the opposite bank.

As morning gives way to the afternoon they try two more attempts. Each fares worse than the last. There are too many bodies on the bridge now, blocking the way. Each attack Thomas watches from his vantage point in silence.

Farther back Warwick keeps turning his horse around. His nerves are evident for all to see. Around him men are standing as if resigned to failure. There is no food being passed around, no drink, and men’s faces are dabs the colour of old linen. Starving, frozen, halted by a river crossing they cannot force, confronted by the sight of hundreds of their fellows lying dead in the snow, and with only the prospect of the long march home through an empty countryside, who could be blamed for wishing to be elsewhere?

And now the wind is picking up, gathering weight. Pale clouds scud overhead. King Edward looks up and all of a sudden he is young again, too young for this sort of thing, and Warwick, well, he’s ridden from one battle, hasn’t he? And lost another. Who can put their faith in him now? And he is still on horseback, isn’t he? As if ready for the flight. Would he stay if the northerners came over the bridge now? Or would he fight with his heels again?

A long moment follows. There is no plan for this and Thomas is conscious that in this moment, everything hangs in the balance. Men are stepping back from the fight; some have even turned to look for their horses. More will go soon, and if one goes, then they all will. This is the moment when something must happen.

And it does. Warwick pushes his horse forward into the clearing at the head of the road so that all can see him. He stands in his stirrups for a moment, holding up his sword. Now he has the attention of every man who can see him, and the ears of those who cannot. He is looking about as if coming to some decision of his own.

‘My lords!’ he cries. ‘My lords! Let those who wish to fly, fly. But let those who wish to tarry, tarry here with me!’

Saying this he swings his leg over his horse and drops lightly to the ground. Taking hold of the bridle, he holds his sword to the horse’s neck. Everyone is still. They watch. Warwick is looking at them all. The horse takes a step away, and another. Then Warwick pulls the sword towards him, slicing through the flesh, cutting the knotted veins that run alongside the horse’s throat, setting a torrent of blood seething across his fine plated sabatons. He steps back to let the horse fall in a loud struggling curl on the ground.

Except for the dying horse there is silence.

King Edward, who was Earl of March, stares at the Earl of Warwick. He does not seem to know what to do. He looks about, for Lord Fauconberg perhaps, but he is not there.

Warwick’s own men know what to do. They start cheering and they push to the front of the crowd, and soon they are launching another attack down the road to the bridge.

WILLIAM HASTINGS HAS
assigned Katherine and the barber surgeon’s assistant a rush-roofed barn among some elms, a league or so from the river crossing they call Ferrybridge. The barber surgeon’s assistant has found a moon-faced girl to show them where.

‘It’s a wonder she’s not been strangled as a witch,’ he mutters. ‘But she knows the way.’

His name is Mayhew, and he is nervous around horses and anyone in command. When they get there they find the barn is occupied by men sheltering from the cold and it smells of cow shit and mice.

‘But it’s filthy,’ Katherine says.

‘What did you expect?’ the girl replies. ‘It’s a barn.’

She is about twelve, Katherine supposes, with an accent she can hardly decipher.

Grylle arrives to evict the soldiers, and despite herself Katherine is pleased to see him, though he is shocked to see her.

‘Are you quite well, my lady? You look . . .?’

He tails off with a shrug. She has been crying, and imagines her face smutted with smoke mixed with tears.

‘I am fine,’ she says and Grylle leaves it at that.

‘I am sorry it is so basic,’ he apologises. ‘The hospital in the friary’s already full.’

She imagines this to be false, and that it is being kept as a billet for the better class of commanders.

‘But the friars are on their way,’ he goes on, brightening, ‘and the surgeons from the other companies will be here by the by. They’ll bring more supplies and so on, I suppose?’

He has no idea. She has no idea. No one has any idea. They are so keen on fighting one another they have forgotten to think what to do with the wounded.

‘Is it always like this?’ she asks Mayhew when Grylle has ridden off.

‘Usually,’ Mayhew agrees, staring up at icicles hanging from the roof. ‘Any lord of quality wants a physician, doesn’t he? But only really to fix him up. They’re expensive, you see? No one wants to waste his balms on a dying billman, does he? Be like ministering to a cow, or a dog. Mind you, William Hastings is a good man. Sees to his men, where he can. Hence, me.’

He points at his chest. He has jug ears and a red face, fully freckled like Red John, and his arms hang from narrow shoulders almost to his knees. Katherine cannot help smiling at him.

‘Come on then,’ she says and together they help Richard from the wagon and into the barn.

‘Is there anything to eat?’ he asks.

There is a hunk of hard rye bread and a half-f leather bottle of thin ale, but that is all and when that is gone, they’ll have to think again. Together they help the walking wounded into the barn and then three grey friars from the friary join them, bringing with them long strips of linen, a glass jar of leeches, a selection of balms in clay pots, some rose oil, a tubby barrel of wine, six dozen eggs and a crucifix.

‘You deal with them,’ Katherine tells Mayhew.

At first they regard her with suspicion that only deepens when they see Richard sitting blank-eyed against the low stone course of the barn wall.

But then the wounded are brought in and laid in a line along the barn’s northern wall. Mayhew knocks out some of the crumbling infill in the southern wall to let in the day’s dying light, but it also lets in the cold, with flurries of snow, so they start a fire in the middle of the barn, burning what they can find, and soon the smoke is thick in the air and they are all red-eyed and coughing. They warm the wine and crack the eggs and Mayhew collects as much urine as he can. Then they unpack the surgeon’s instruments and start on the wounded, cutting away the clothing and washing the wounds with the urine and the hot wine.

Katherine’s first patient is a boy with an arrow in the meat of his thigh. He is pale with the fear of pain, and looks up at her with large eyes, soot-black and oily in the orange firelight. She studies the leg and considers him both lucky and unlucky. The arrow has not hit the bone. That is lucky. Nor has it hit the artery that carries all the blood, the one that when it is cut means a man will bleed to death.

But the arrow is buried deep in the muscle and the lips of the wound, now cleaned with a sponge, are pursed around the shaft of the arrow.

A shadow appears at her shoulder and she looks up.

‘May I?’

It is Mayhew. He has put on a blacksmith’s apron and he crouches over the boy and feels along his leg, rolling the sliced hose down to his knee.

‘Hmmm,’ he says. ‘Hmmm.’

‘Will you pull it?’ she asks. She remembers cutting out Richard’s arrow in France.

‘More likely to pull the shaft from the head,’ he says. ‘Seen that happen a thousand times.’

He measures the arrow, or the amount of it that protrudes from the leg. Then he sits back on his heels and looks at the boy’s thigh from another angle. He nods to himself.

‘Only one thing for it,’ he says. He stands up.

‘Ready?’ he asks the boy with a smile. The boy looks up at him with complete fear. His mouth opens and closes but before he says anything, Mayhew crouches again, grasps the arrow with both hands and leans his shoulder on the notch, forcing it through the leg and out the other side with a rush of blood and splitting flesh. The boy screams. He bucks and levers himself up to punch Mayhew.

‘Hold him!’ Mayhew cries. Katherine throws herself on the boy, trying to pin him down. One of the friars hurries over. Mayhew girds himself and breaks the arrow shaft just above the wound while the boy gasps and thrashes on the ground. There is blood all over the place, mixing with the straw and the mud and whatever else. Mayhew runs his fingers over the break in the arrow to remove any splinters, pours a little of the urine he has in the clay pot on to the wound and then asks the friar to lift the boy’s leg.

The black bodkin arrowhead protrudes just below the boy’s buttock, where the blood flows in a thick line. Mayhew takes it between his fingers, rolls it, and then eases it through the wound and out. A sudden rush of blood makes him frown. He nods at a wad of linen soaked with still warm urine.

‘Press it hard,’ he says.

Katherine holds the pad to the wound. The archer has fainted. After a moment the bleeding slows, and Mayhew nods with satisfaction.

‘Hah!’ the friar exclaims. ‘Nicely done.’

Mayhew stands and inspects the tip of the arrow. There is a small cluster of woollen threads, viscous with blood. Again he nods with satisfaction and tosses the arrow on the fire.

‘More fun than couching for cataracts, hey?’ he says. ‘And if we bind him now, I think he’ll live to fight another day.’

The boy is very pale and sweat beads his forehead. Katherine washes the two wounds and binds them with linen strips. Every day: a lesson.

More wounded are brought to the doors: a boy in blue with an arrowhead in his stomach, the broken shaft emerging from a rip in his jack. He is carried on a web of cloaks by his mates, five of them, and his face is also very pale, like alabaster, or ivory, and his lips very red. Once again Mayhew appears. He looks at the boy and shakes his head almost imperceptibly. Together they guide the men to a space on the ground near the fire where they lay him with unexpected gentleness.

‘You’ll be all right, son,’ one says, and Katherine sees from their likeness that he is indeed the father talking to the son. ‘Surgeon’ll soon have you fixed up and we can go back to Mam, hey? Good as new, with a fat purse apiece.’

Tears break from his eyelids though, and he turns away with a final shake of the boy’s hand. His mates take their cloaks, sliding them from under the boy’s body, and they cluster around the older man, guiding him away, back to the field.

There is a lull as the evening comes on. The friars have more bread and ale and they sleep by the fire. She shares a blanket with Richard and in the middle of the night he sits up, but does not move. It is as if he is staring at the moon. She says nothing.

In the morning they come again. It is all arrow wounds. Not a single blade injury. Katherine washes them, and occasionally cuts an arrowhead free when she knows where she is cutting, usually deferring to Mayhew, who’s only ever been an assistant but seems to have a rare gift for his craft.