Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims

by Toby Clements

  Thomas takes it.

  ‘Thank you, Brother.’

  ‘I must go now. Riven’s men are camped in the fields beyond and are demanding what little food we have and the Prioress has sent word that one of the sisters has absconded.’

  Thomas is gripped by the fear that he is saying goodbye to the Dean, that this will be the last he sees of him.

  ‘You have been kind, Brother,’ he says, ‘and may God go with you.’

  ‘You too, Brother. I fear you will have need of Him more the soonest.’

  He leaves the door unlocked, but Thomas does not move. He has made his mind up. He will face whatever he must, and with God’s grace, he will come through it.

  Sometime later, when the chapter meeting is ended, the door is opened again and Brother John and Brother Barnaby stand there, pained to see Thomas has not fled.

  ‘You are to come with us,’ John says. ‘The Prior has sent for you.’

  The bell begins a slow clap, a rhythm like that of the passing bell, and for a moment Thomas considers refusing. Already he feels nostalgia for the time he has spent in the stable. But then he follows them out across the cobbled yard into the north arm of the cloister proper. The rain has melted away the snow, leaving the world lichen-grey.

  The rest of the canons are gathered in the eastern arm, a knot of black cassocks and white scapulars against the grey stone walls. Giles Riven stands bare-headed in the middle of the square as if he owns it. He is exercising, flashing his black-bladed sword this way and that, stretching his powerful shoulders, working the heat into his right arm, the sword’s tip a thrum in the confines of the garth.

  Thomas is pleased to see his cheek is livid and his eye sealed with the swelling from yesterday’s fight.

  Next to Riven, a little way off, is the giant, that dreadful axe in one hand like a child’s stick, and in the other two newly stripped quarterstaffs. He is a head and a half taller than any man there, and twice as broad. His grey-streaked hair falls in long hanks down the shoulders of his greasy leather coat and he is still bare-footed, like the meanest sort of peasant. When he sees Thomas he begins to laugh, a deep chesty boom that makes Riven stop and turn.

  ‘Brother Monk,’ he calls, his crooked smile apparently genuine. ‘Good news.’

  ‘What is that?’ Thomas asks. He will not call Riven ‘sir’.

  ‘The good news is that my boy will live,’ Riven replies. ‘The bad news is that you will not.’

  The giant laughs louder, and two others sitting on the wall join in. One of them is wearing a white jacket as Riven’s son had been wearing, with a black bird that looks like a crow as a badge. The hem is made up of black and white checks, and the same device is repeated on a square banner that the other man has propped against the cloister wall. This other is in a thick padded coat, dyed blue, with long boots and a dark cap. Both have swords at their hips. Both are drinking from leather tankards, and Brother Jonathan stands by with a pitcher of something that steams.

  The Prior and the Dean are together on the far side of the garth with Brother Athelstan. Athelstan is telling them something to which they continue to listen even while their eyes follow Thomas. The Dean looks angry – that Thomas hasn’t fled the priory perhaps – while the Prior looks haunted, as if he has not slept, and his owlishness, which Thomas had once taken as a sign of learning, now looks like weakness. The old man turns back to Athelstan, who is waiting for an answer to some question he has asked.

  The Dean leaves them and crosses the garth to intercept Thomas, taking responsibility where the Prior is too ashamed to do so.

  ‘Your accuser has chosen the weapon with which you are to fight,’ he says.

  Riven interrupts.

  ‘The quarterstaff,’ he says, motioning to the giant to pass one of the staffs to Thomas. ‘You’re broadly familiar with it, I believe, Brother Monk? An uncomplicated sort of weapon. Two ends. A middle.’

  The giant tosses Thomas one of the quarterstaffs. Thomas catches it and places its end on the ground and waits. He is familiar with the quarterstaff from long hours fighting with his brother when they were children, then adolescents. He knows the tricks, he thinks, and, looking at Riven’s swollen eye, he permits himself to wonder. Without thinking he removes his cowl and hitches the skirts of his cassock as the men working in the fields do.

  ‘Begin then, shall we?’ Riven says, passing his sword to the giant and taking the other staff in return.

  ‘A prayer first, sir, surely?’ the Prior pleads, finally finding the strength to divert if not resist Riven’s will.

  Riven sighs.

  ‘Very well, Prior. But make it quick.’

  All kneel in the mud as the Prior begins the prayers with a paternoster. When it is over Riven stands, just as the Prior is drawing in breath to continue with an Ave.

  ‘Thank you, Prior,’ he says, ‘that will be all. Now, let’s get to it, shall we? In the absence of any formal arrangements, I suggest we clear this area and assume no quarter. Before I kill you, though, I shall permit the Prior here to administer the viaticum, so you’re provided for on your final journey. Agreed? Anything to add, Brother Monk?’

  ‘Only that this is not justice,’ Thomas tells him.

  Riven pretends to be shocked.

  ‘Not justice, Brother Monk? Not justice? Yet here we are, quite equal before the Lord.’

  ‘You are a trained knight.’

  This is what the Dean had called him. Riven is sidling towards him across the grass, weighing and measuring the staff, testing its properties.

  ‘Perhaps the good Lord knew I’d be called on to face this sort of thing, hey? Perhaps He instructed my father to instil in me a skill at arms? Perhaps that’s it. Perhaps He knew you’d turn out to be a miserable sinner and so made your father a cowardly little runt who would rather teach his son to fuck a pig than fight a man?’

  ‘My father died in France, facing the French, at Formigny.’

  Riven straightens.

  ‘Did he? Well, I am sorry to hear it, but you are not alone in losing a father in battle. My own died at St Albans.’

  As Riven mentions St Albans he flicks his wrist and the tip of his quarterstaff flashes past Thomas’s nose. Thomas remains motionless.

  ‘I am a canon of the Order of Gilbert of Sempringham,’ he says. ‘If I am to be tried for a crime that I did not commit then it should be done in Court Ecclesiastical, not this mockery.’

  Riven lowers his quarterstaff and looks comically disappointed. The giant laughs again.

  ‘I cannot fight you, Brother Monk,’ Riven says. ‘Unless you strike me first. Now what will it take to get you to fight? I have impugned you and your father already, so now what about your mother? What can I say about her? A whore whelping in a ditch? No, no. I sense I am on the wrong track here.’

  Thomas shakes his head, not in denial but in pity, and the gesture instantly brings the tip of Riven’s staff within a finger’s breadth of his right eye. Thomas blinks. Riven lowers the staff.

  ‘Still nothing,’ he says, and he turns his back and walks away. Then he clicks his fingers.

  ‘Of course,’ he says, turning back. ‘I know! I have it! Louther!’

  ‘Aye?’ one of the men sitting on the wall answers.

  ‘The beads,’ Riven says, clicking his fingers again and holding out his cupped hand. ‘Hand me the beads.’

  Louther digs in his coat and pulls out a string of beads. He tosses them over. Even before Riven catches them Thomas knows what they are.

  ‘Where did you get them?’ he asks. His throat is blocked. He can hear pounding in his ears.

  ‘Oh, I think you know, don’t you, Brother Monk? Found them this morning. Just after sun-up, and only after a struggle, I’ll admit, but they often start out that way, don’t they? She enjoyed it for a bit, but Morrant here is a passionate creature, aren’t you, Morrant? Tend to take things too far, don’t you?’

  The giant laughs and nods his head in cheerful agreement.

&nb
sp; Now the quarterstaff feels light in Thomas’s hands, just as it had the day before, and he feels a surge of energy, an empowering rage. He steps forward and flicks the staff up.

  Riven steps back, avoiding the blow. He laughs and tucks the rosary inside his shirt.

  ‘So,’ he says. ‘Now you’ll fight.’

  The first blow comes in low and hard and fantastically fast from the right. It clips Thomas’s staff aside and cracks into his knee. Pain shoots up his leg. Before the next blow comes, Thomas throws himself backwards and Riven’s staff hums through empty space.

  ‘Ha!’ Riven laughs. ‘Not bad, Brother Monk. Quicker than your father, hey?’

  Before Riven has even finished speaking, Thomas has to fling his staff up to catch the next blow. He grunts with the effort, but his clogs slip under him. He falls to his knees. Riven leaps forward and kicks him in the chest. Thomas falls back. Then Riven is on him. Thomas gets his staff up in time to stop Riven pressing his own across his throat. He is pinned to the mud though. Riven is a bulky man, his skin pitted, his breath smelling of salted pork and wine. His eye is puffed and purpled, the eyeball, barely visible, red. Thomas bucks and crashes an elbow into Riven’s bruise. He brings his knee up with a jerk that makes contact.

  Riven grunts and rolls clear.

  Thomas is on his feet fast but Riven is faster still. Before Thomas has grounded himself, Riven charges. Thomas shoots his staff out, but Riven’s move is a feint. The next second Thomas is face down in the sodden grass with his head ringing.

  ‘Too easy,’ he hears Riven say and then he feels the sole of the knight’s boot on the back of his neck. For a moment he can do nothing about it, does not know what to do about it. He looks across at the Prior whose mouth is open in the shape of an egg. The Dean is frowning and his fists are clenched.

  Then Thomas thrashes smartly, like an eel in the mud. He catches Riven’s other heel and pulls. With a bellow of surprise Riven goes sprawling on to his backside. Thomas is up on his feet but Riven is still the faster and Thomas feels a blinding pain above his ear and he crashes to the grass again.

  This time he rolls. He picks up his staff and is on his feet to use it to block the next blow, a simple chop delivered from above, and the next, a swing that comes from the other end of the staff that would have caught him between his legs.

  Riven is still smiling as he makes another move, but Thomas sees it coming and steps inside. He takes the sting out of the blow with the tail of his own staff and then manages a glancing rake across Riven’s fingers.

  Both step back.

  Riven’s smile has gone. Thomas can smell his own blood.

  Riven comes at him again, a flurry of feints, then two blows. Thomas stops the first but is too slow with the second. Riven brings his staff up under Thomas’s arm and in a practised move he turns him, stamps on his clog and smashes the heel of his hand into Thomas’s throat.

  Thomas sags, drops his staff, and for a moment he cannot breathe for the pain. He falls backwards but lands with a jolt that rouses him in time to duck. Riven’s staff passes over his ear. Thomas snatches it and uses Riven’s strength to right himself, jerking Riven off balance. In one move he collects his staff from the mud and swings it around in a short sweep that Riven does not see it through his half-closed eye. It catches Riven behind the knee and he leaps backwards with the pain.

  ‘Not bad, Brother Monk,’ Riven says, ‘but this has gone on long enough, hasn’t it?’

  He makes a feint that Thomas sees, then another that he does not, and then the full weight of his staff whirls around in a blurring arc and crashes across Thomas’s skull as he tries to duck.

  He is face down in the mud again and with the pain comes the blood. It is hot and blinding. He gets to his knees and wipes the blood with his sleeve in time to see Riven come at him again. He manages to parry the first blow and evade the next, but then he takes a short arm punch that rattles his teeth. He feels sluggish and his sight blurs.

  The fight is leaving him and Riven is circling him, ready for the end.

  He blinks the blood from his eyes, triggering another attack, a rolling series of blows that would have killed, but this time Thomas trips on his sodden cassock, drops on one knee, and ducks his head as Riven’s staff passes over. Then he lunges. Again Riven is blinded in the malfunctioning eye and Thomas gets through the mêlée of Riven’s pumping arms and into the soft area below his sternum. He feels the contact, doughy and soft. He rams the staff up.

  Riven stops, gasps. His eyes bulge, then swim, then roll. He staggers, falling back, tipping on his heels, powerless. He drops his quarterstaff and thumps to ground and lies there with his tongue out; his face is grey-green, his breath a groaning wheeze.

  Thomas gets to his feet and pulls his muddy cassock down.

  He glances across at the Prior who has still not moved, his mouth still gaping. The Dean is urging him to do something with his staff. Bring it down.

  Thomas plants his legs either side of Riven’s body. He raises his staff vertically. He can bring it down now directly into Riven’s unguarded face and it will be the end. God’s will be done. He pauses. Blood drips from his wounds on to Riven below. Riven’s face is puckered with the pain and almost babyish.

  Thomas leans in to lend weight to the blow, bunches his muscles, lifts the staff and plunges it down, driving it with all his might, deep into the mud, a finger’s width from Riven’s ear.

  Then he turns and walks away, leaving the staff upright in the ground.

  The Dean meets him with a cloth and a smirk.

  ‘You are wasted here, Brother Thomas,’ he says, mopping his face. ‘Fooling about with your psalter when you should be fighting the French. But why didn’t you kill him?’

  Thomas can think of nothing to say. He flinches when the Dean touches the weal on his skull.

  ‘Probably wise,’ the Dean mutters, ‘but then I wish you’d let him kill you. We’ve a pretty problem now.’

  Riven’s three retainers are gathered around him, helping him to his feet while the infirmarian hovers. Riven is hacking something up and cannot stand straight.

  ‘Brother Stephen,’ Thomas asks, ‘when you brought me food this morning, did you say one of the sisters has gone missing?’

  The Dean nods. He looks grim.

  ‘Found her now, though.’

  ‘Is she well?’

  The Dean lowers his voice.

  ‘Dead,’ he says. ‘So the Prioress says. We’ll bury her tomorrow.’

  It takes a moment for this to settle in.

  ‘Riven has her rosary beads,’ Thomas says.

  The Dean stares at him, calculating the value of the news, then he lunges suddenly, shoving Thomas aside.

  ‘Look you!’ he shouts. A sword blade hums through the space where Thomas had been standing, and the man Riven called Louther staggers among them, off balance. The Dean grabs his padded coat and hauls him onwards so that he crashes over the cloister wall, dropping his sword as he goes. Thomas turns, sees the giant lolloping towards them with that axe, a cruel confection of pick, spike and blade that might have been better employed to murder an ox.

  ‘Run!’ the Dean bellows at Thomas. ‘Run, Brother Thomas.’

  He snatches up Louther’s sword and charges at the giant, aiming a savage cut to his face.

  The giant bats the blade away with a simple chop of his axe and the sword is wrenched from the Dean’s grip. The giant raises the axe to kill him, but Thomas has found Riven’s staff and runs at him. The giant sees him and diverts his axe to catch Thomas’s clumsy blow. He flicks his wrist, catching the staff under the steel pick, smashing it from Thomas’s grasp. Then he swats Thomas with a backhand punch that sends him scrabbling in the mud. Strange whirling lights fill his vision. The giant moves towards him.

  The Dean takes up the staff, cracks it against the fourth man’s skull, who reels away, and then he flies at the giant, diverting him while Thomas rolls out of his reach. Riven is up, but still bent and clutching
Thomas’s planted staff for support. Thomas shoves him backwards, unplugs the staff and turns back, just in time to see the giant block another of the Dean’s attacks. The giant takes the blows on the fleshy part of his arm without even flinching.

  The Dean steps back, looking up at the giant with something like awe.

  ‘Run, Brother Thomas!’ he shouts over his shoulder. ‘For the love of God, just run!’

  Then he wades in again, hacking at the giant, and again the giant parries the blows with ease. The giant has a blank smile on his lips as he aims a swipe that would have taken the Dean’s head off. But now the fourth man is up again, coming at the Dean from behind. Before Thomas can move he smells wine and feels something touch the skin below his ear. The point of a knife.

  Riven.

  ‘See what happens, shall we, hey?’ Riven says. ‘Against the law to kill a bull without first baiting it, you know?’

  It is over soon enough. The giant feints. The Dean doesn’t fall for it. The fourth man swings at him and the Dean blocks it and even pushes him back, but then the giant feints again. This time the Dean is drawn. He dives forward, aiming his staff at the giant’s throat, but the giant steps aside and swings his axe blade down and there is a noise like that of a shovel in dirt.

  The Dean’s bellow of rage turns into a wailing scream. He staggers forward with blood guttering from a gash from throat to sternum. He manages a few steps before dropping to his knees in a slew of blood. His wrist hangs to his knees. Blood is everywhere. He falls forward into it, and it seethes on to the muddy grass where he lies twitching. A moment later he is still, the blood slows and its smell drifts in the breeze.

  There is silence. The canons stand in a row, their faces a line of pale coins.

  ‘Well, that went all right,’ Riven says. ‘Now it’s your turn.’

  Thomas feels the knife prick his skin, but he no longer cares. If he is to die then let it be now, and let it be quick. He brings his wooden clog crashing down on the toe of Riven’s boot. Riven roars and Thomas turns and crashes his elbow into his open mouth. Riven tumbles back, his shirt open, the rosary beads sliding into the mud. Thomas bends to take them.