Kingmaker: Broken Faith (6 page)

Adam’s brother William is the gentler soul, with red hair and the palest blue eyes that come down from his mother, and he can happily sit in the yard helping her spin yarn on the wheel while Adam roams restless about the woods looking for things to kill. William is generous to Thomas, and gives him things Elizabeth would not want him to have: a pair of fulled socks, a salve for his hands made from honey and sage leaves, a shepherd’s cow-horn crook he has made himself.

John let him sleep in the hall when the weather turned at the end of autumn, at about the time they cut and butchered the pigs and the air was filled with the smell of burning hair, and that was when they discovered that he had terrible nightmares, and that he could speak after all, for he would call out in the dark, crying out to the Lord and to someone else whose name they can never agree on.

‘Who was it last night?’ they’d ask in the morning.

‘Dick,’ Adam would say.

‘Azrin,’ William would say.

‘That’s not a word,’ Adam would counter.

‘Doesn’t need to be,’ William would say and Elizabeth would agree with John and Adam would be sent to see if the geese had laid any eggs, or if the malt in the malthouse was likely to sprout that day. After a month or so the family came to accept Thomas sleeping in the house. They came to understand that when he shouted out in the dark and when he screamed and when he was rigid with what John said was terror, it would soon pass. They covered their ears and waited until he slipped back into burbling slumber, only occasionally interrupted by twitches and writhings. John said this was even a comforting sound, better at least than the sound of the mice or the cat chasing them, better than the sound of Adam farting.

As autumn gave way to winter, the soldiers started coming through the valley. They came up from the west and the south, small companies making their ways to join the road that led northwards to the castles in the East March, castles such as Dunstanburgh and Bamburgh, those that were still holding out for the old King. Sometimes they were organised and led by well-dressed men on good horses, with gloves and rings on their fingers, and baggage mules; others were in worse straits, down to their last loaf, horses in need of shoeing. Both sorts and all those between were fugitives, though, always careful about where they went, what they said, and to whom they said it. Some did stop and talk though, in return for bread and ale and hay for their horses.

‘Put off my land,’ one of them told John. ‘His grace’s been attainted and some new man’s arrived, some connection of the Earl of Warwick. Met me with the offer of serving him, or shifting for myself. So.’

The soldier shrugged his big, archer’s shoulders and adjusted his straw hat over his ruddy face. He eyed Thomas, recognising something in him perhaps, and nodded slowly, his hand resting on the hilt of a big knife stuck in his belt.

‘But why don’t you serve this new man?’ John asked.

‘Thought of that,’ the soldier said. ‘But what happens when his grace gets back? He’ll have something to say then, won’t he? That’s for sure.’

‘Will he get back?’

‘Course he will. Can’t keep someone like the Duke of Somerset down.’

‘The Duke of Somerset? You served him?’

‘Aye,’ the man said proudly. ‘And his father before.’

John nodded.

‘So where is he now? The Duke?’

‘Alnwick?’ the man says. ‘Or Bamburgh? Or the other one. There are three of them up there. Three or four. Dirty great big castles, each held against this new King and the Earl of fucking Warwick.’

The man spat but John was surprised.

‘Are there many of the old King’s men left?’

‘Not so many as there were,’ the soldier admitted. ‘Not after Towton Field. But there are some and they’re all making their ways to the castles up there to wait until the Queen comes with her men, from France, you know, or maybe Scotland, and old Tudor comes with his Welshmen, and then we’ll see a clean pair of heels from the Earl of Warwick and this new King of his making.’

‘You mean there’ll be more fighting?’ John asked.

The man barked a laugh.

‘Course there’ll be more fighting,’ he said. ‘There’s
always
more fighting, isn’t there? It won’t stop until everybody gets what they want, and that isn’t going to happen before heaven opens her gates.’

John shook his head at the thought of it. The man took a loaf and filled his flask with ale and left them to follow the causeway that led up over Stanage Edge towards Sheffield and beyond.

When he’d gone, John turned to Thomas and stopped.

‘You all right, you daft bastard? You’ve gone all pale.’

More men came by in the next few weeks, bands of them in riding cloaks, bows and poles slung over their packs, moving furtively through the countryside on hungry horses. Things started to go missing from the farm – a couple of geese, one of the sheep – and Thomas helped bring the animals inside the hazel fence that surrounded the farmhouse and then every night the dogs woke and barked and John would grope for his bow.

That winter they did not go up into the hills to mine for lead as they usually did, and though at night they could see the fires on the hilltops all around where other men were smelting the grey metal, and they thought of the money they were missing out on, they stayed close to the farm, and waited.

Nothing happened all through Advent. Christmastide passed, then Epiphany, and then Candlemas and then Ash Wednesday came and went and still nothing happened. So now it is the season of Lent, when the statues in the church are masked, but the land without is opening up and life is returning to the valley, and it is now that eight men on horses turn off the road and come up the track to the farm, halting their horses before the stockade gates. John watches them come, shading his eyes from the low spring sun. The man who seems to be their leader gets off his horse well before the stockade’s gate and John tells Elizabeth to stay within the house with William and he asks Adam to find Thomas.

‘Quickly now.’

The man who has climbed off his horse is weary, and from his walk it is obvious he has been riding a good while. He relieves himself in the sheep-cropped grass, then turns to John. He has a bitter-set face and is wearing a buff jack with no sign of a badge to show his allegiance. He greets John cordially, but he does not smile.

‘Good country, this,’ he says. He has a thick, soft accent.

John nods.

‘Hard in winter, I’d imagine?’

Again, John agrees.

‘But all right in summer?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hunting?’

‘A little, in the valleys.’

‘Not on the hills?’

‘Not so much.’

‘Still though, eh?’

There is a long silence. It is as if the man doesn’t quite know how to start whatever it is he wants to start. His men are lined up behind him, still mounted. One of them is chewing something – a twig, or a piece of straw. He takes it and throws it down.

‘We are in need of a few things,’ the first man says, as if reminded to get on with it. ‘Something to eat. And ale, of course. But horses too, if you have them.’

‘I have a horse,’ John says. ‘But not for sale.’

‘I was not thinking of buying.’

‘Then?’

Adam comes back.

‘I cannot find him,’ he tells John.

‘Find who?’ the man asks.

‘No one,’ John says, then to the boy: ‘All right, Adam, go in now.’

Adam is uncertain. John gives him a push.

The man smiles, watching him go.

‘Fine boy,’ he says.

There is another moment of silence, then: ‘May I see the horse?’

‘Why?’ John asks.

‘See if I want it,’ the man says.

‘Makes no difference if you want it. You can’t have it.’

‘But I am willing to trade something for it.’

‘Such as what?’

The man smiles and gestures at the hall, the fields, the hills above them.

‘All this,’ he says. ‘You. Him. Her, probably.’

‘They are not yours to trade,’ John says.

The man frowns.

‘Well,’ he says. ‘No. Not for the moment, but there are more of us than you.’

The man pulls half his sword from his sheath. His eyes are unnaturally bright. He stares at John. John stares back. John does not know what to say now. He opens his mouth to say something, when an arrow flits past him and catches the man in the chest with a thump. The blow knocks the wind from him. He staggers back four or five paces, reaching out for John, then he falls on his heels and his backside.

John is as surprised as the man with the arrow in his chest. He stands stock-still for a moment, his mouth open, his arms by his sides. Then he looks up at the other men on their horses who are likewise paused in mid-gesture. Then at once they move, throwing themselves off their horses, and John turns and runs, back to the stockade.

Thomas is there. He has another arrow nocked and he draws and looses without seeming to aim. His arrow hits one of the men, bundles him with a cry from his saddle. Then Thomas nocks, draws and looses again and he hits another who is running with his back turned. A man shouts.

‘Kill him!’

Then there’s another arrow. Another cry. Adam has loosed and caught one of the men. He nocks and looses his practice bow just as he has been taught. The arrow carries less weight, but from this distance it may still turf a man from his horse, may still kill him.

John runs through the gateway and slams the hazel stock gate behind him. It is to keep animals in, or out, and not much good for anything else. Thomas sends another arrow through a gap in the fence but sees it wicker into the distance. Already there is another arrow nocked.

And now the remaining men beyond the fence have scattered. They are circling the farmhouse. Thomas has lost sight of them. Then there is a sudden thunder of hoof beats behind and a man looms over the fence and crashes his horse into it and through it. Thomas turns and looses. The arrow catches the horse below the jaw and the horse rears and the man is thrown back and falls from the saddle and the horse stamps forward into the yard and then thunders past, whinnying and screaming, and out through the other side. Geese scatter everywhere.

John emerges from the house with a billhook just in time to stop the fallen rider getting to his feet. He crashes the billhook down on his head, knocking his helmet off, and as his fear is replaced by anger, he crashes it down on him again and again. The man is dead long before John stops hitting him. There is blood everywhere, splashed on the walls, all over John’s legs, arms and chest, and all over the dead man.

But through the hole the horse made comes another man. He runs at John with a sword and a small round shield, but Adam stands up behind a beehive, scarcely able to see over the wicker mound, and follows the man with his bow, just as if he were out hunting. He looses and the arrow jumps across the yard. It catches the man’s thigh, whipping his leg away from under him. He spins, trips and lands heavily with a bellow of rage. He spills the sword. John takes a step and drops the billhook down on this second man’s head and with three or four more clumsy blows he manages to kill him too.

Thomas doubles back around the hall, stepping through the gap in the goose-pen fence and then out past the wood stack. He thinks there are still two more. Where are they? They will have had time to string their bows by now. He is past the wood stack, into the mess where the privy drains. The smell is foul, but familiar. Where are they? He edges forward. He glimpses something in the orchard, from the tail of his eye. He turns too late to see one of the soldiers among the trees. He has his bow raised and an arrow nocked. Thomas sees him loose the arrow.

Just then his heelless boots slip. His feet go from under him and he falls on his back into the mire with a winding crash. The arrow slaps straight into the wattle and daub of the wall above his head, leaving a neat hole. Thomas recovers his bow, scrambles to his feet and runs ducking around the corner. The last soldier is there, hiding from Adam and his bow. He turns to look at Thomas. He has only a rondel knife, gripped in his right hand, but he is a boy, shaking, and only holding the dagger because he knows he ought.

Thomas stands a moment, looks the boy in the eye, then takes two swift steps and smacks the knife from his hand with the tip of his bow. The boy sucks his breath and clutches his hand. His hat drops over his eyes. Thomas takes another step and punches him in the chest. The boy collapses. Thomas takes the arrow from his belt, nocks it and turns back to the soldier in the orchard.

He is bobbing in and out from behind an apple-tree trunk. He is trying to see who is alive and where his friends are. He calls out. There is no answer. He calls again. It is very quiet when he is not shouting and in the weak sunlight his face is very pale between the trees’ trunks and Thomas thinks it would be easy to catch him.

He lifts the bow, then lowers it. He turns around and steps over the boy on the ground who is still gasping for air, kicking his legs in the dirt, and he comes out into the yard where Adam is still by the beehives, with his bow and an arrow shaft gripped in shaking, white-knuckled hands. His eyes are fixed on his father who is standing over two dead men, staring at the blade of the billhook that is chipped and ruby with blood. John is breathing hard with the effort of having killed the two men. He looks up at Thomas. They are listening to the one in the orchard shouting out. Thomas turns on his heel, rests his bow against the wall of the house and goes to fetch the other boy who is crawling in the dirt, still hardly able to breathe. Thomas picks him up under the arm and walks him back around the corner and out into the yard where he drops him next to the two dead men in the thin sunlight.

‘Water,’ he says, gesturing to the bucket.

Adam puts his bow down and throws the contents of the bucket over the boy, who gasps and sits upright.

‘Go and fetch your friend,’ Thomas tells the boy. ‘Tell him to put his bow down and come and there will be no more of this.’

The boy gets up from the mud. His face is mottled and his breath reedy, and he is sopping wet, and he cannot take his gaze off the dead men as he goes back around the corner and tries to shout to his companion in the orchard. Both John and Adam are staring at Thomas with their mouths slack.