Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims

by Toby Clements

  At this far end of the room the Prioress stands hunched like a bird of prey over one of the mattresses. She glances up and then turns back to the mattress.

  ‘Here at last,’ she says.

  Joan pushes Katherine, who hobbles down between the beds, the sound of her clogs softened by the rushes. Someone is lying on the mattress, covered in a linen winding cloth.

  It is Alice. She is dead. Her veil is gone and her pale hair lies in a slack clot on the sheet beside her. Bruises cover her neck and her right eye is swollen. Her chin looks as if it had been rubbed with the same sand they use to clean the floors and there are what look like animal bites across her throat.

  Katherine feels as if something had been pulled from inside her. Her spirit hurts as much as her body. She feels rage bloom within.

  ‘I told you—’ she starts, but the Prioress cuts her off.

  ‘If the child has come to grief it is through her own fault. She was once a fair and virginal example to us all but some corrupting malignity overcame her in the last days of her life, and she chose the devil over the Lord.’

  ‘No,’ Katherine says. ‘You did this. You caused this.’

  ‘Silence,’ the Prioress says.

  Joan hits her.

  ‘Sister Alice was lured away from the path of righteousness by the many-horned legions of the devil.’

  Joan hits her again, harder. Katherine staggers forward and puts the buckets down. The three women look at one another over Alice’s dead body.

  ‘It was you,’ Katherine says. ‘You did this just as much as those men.’

  Before Joan can hit her again, Katherine turns and catches her fist.

  ‘Enough!’ she says and she twists the arm with a strength that surprises her. Joan flushes red and pulls free.

  ‘Anger is a deadly sin, my child,’ the Prioress murmurs. ‘And for your penance you can now wash our sister for burial. I will send some of the lay sisters with a coffin. The sooner she is buried the better.’

  When they leave, Katherine stands over Alice, and, now that she is alone, her tears pour down her cheeks and fall on the rough material of Alice’s winding sheet. At length she takes a cloth from the infirmarian’s table and, kneeling by the head of Alice’s bed, she dips it into the bucket and begins gently to wipe her forehead clean.

  As she does so, she begins to envy Alice. Her time in this world is done. She has journeyed ahead to a place where there will be neither tears nor suffering. Death is a release.

  The bruises and welts on Alice’s face only become more livid as Katherine wipes away the dried blood and spit and tears. She smooths the cloth across her unblemished eye and it is then that the doubt begins. She puts the flannel aside and presses the tips of her fingers against those bruised lips.

  Is it her imagination?

  She puts her ear to Alice’s chest and thinks she hears something but cannot be sure. She hurries to the table where the infirmarian keeps her medicaments in neat rows, the largest jars at the back. She does not know what she wants or needs and the jars and bags are labelled with words she cannot read. She unstoppers one, then another, removing the pig’s bladder seals and sniffing each until in one – a large green glass bottle – a sharp smell brings tears to her eyes, sets her coughing and clears her head. She hurries back to Alice and pours some of the black viscous contents on to the cloth. She reseals the bottle and drops it on the mattress next to Alice’s, then holds the cloth below her nose.

  There is an instant reaction. Alice’s eyeballs flutter.

  Alice is alive.

  A moment later she opens her eyes and stares at Katherine. The clarity of her white eyeballs against the bruising all around is astonishing. Then her hand moves. The fingers creep out to touch Katherine’s.

  ‘Stay here,’ Katherine says. ‘I’ll get Sister Infirmarian.’

  Alice moves her head an inch and coughs.

  ‘Be still,’ Katherine says. ‘Don’t move.’

  She crashes down the stairs and out into the cloister. Beyond, the Prioress stands by the well in conversation with Sister Joan. Both turn.

  ‘She’s alive,’ Katherine says. ‘Alice is still alive. Where is the infirmarian?’

  The Prioress is startled.

  ‘She is in the almonry,’ she says. ‘Quick, girl, summon her.’

  Katherine stumbles across the garth and out across the yard to the almonry. But here the door is locked. She hammers and pulls at the handles. There is no give. She shouts. There is no one there.

  She retraces her steps. The cloister is empty and the Prioress and Joan have gone. Another sister sits in her carrel poring over a page. Katherine makes her start.

  ‘Sister, have you seen the infirmarian?’

  ‘She goes to the library after Mass,’ the sister tells her.

  The library is on the other side of the cloister, up a small flight of steps above a storeroom. Another room Katherine has never visited. The infirmarian is there, standing at the lectern over a large book.

  ‘Sister Meredith,’ Katherine breathes. ‘Come. Sister Alice is alive.’

  The infirmarian looks puzzled.

  ‘I am glad to hear it, Sister,’ she says.

  ‘Then come. She needs you.’

  Sister Meredith leaves the book and follows Katherine out of the library and down the stairs. Katherine holds the door for her at the bottom and guides her across the garth.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asks.

  ‘The infirmary, of course.’

  ‘What is Alice doing there?’

  ‘She has been attacked. I thought you would have known?’

  Something is wrong. The old woman mutters as they make their way up the steps to the infirmary. The Prioress and Sister Joan are there already, beside Alice. When the door opens they both step away.

  Something inside Katherine goes cold.

  Sister Meredith hurries past them and kneels by Alice. Her hands play over the girl’s face and neck. Alice’s eyes are closed again and her hair is messed up on the sheet behind her head. Sister Meredith fetches a small copper bowl from her table, places it on Alice’s chest and pours in water from an earthenware jug. Then she stops to watch. After a moment she turns to Katherine.

  ‘But she is dead?’ she says.

  The Prioress and Sister Joan are both staring at her.

  The infirmarian leans forward and opens one of Alice’s eyelids.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘You see? These marks? A sure sign that she died unable to breathe.’

  But Katherine is not looking at Alice. She is staring at the long scratch on the side of Sister Joan’s neck.

  ‘Your neck,’ she says.

  Joan touches the scratch and then looks at the bloodied tips of her fingers. She smiles nervously, sharp teeth on her thin lips, a furtive expression.

  Katherine cannot endure it. She lunges and before Joan can raise her hands she is on her. She knocks her back over on to the mattress and her hands seek out the neck, her thumbs in the doughy throat. But Joan bucks. She arches her back and screams and after a moment the Prioress grabs Katherine’s shoulders and hauls her off and throws her across the room. Katherine lands badly, but Joan still screams. She is thrashing and scrabbling as if trying to get something off her back. And then there is blood frothing from her mouth and nose. It is staining her teeth, pouring down her chin.

  The Prioress is frozen where she stands, hands clapped to her cheeks. Joan is choking on something. She rolls face down on the mattress and all three women see the shards of green glass driven into her back just as the stench of the medicine rises up and washes over them. It catches in their throats and burns their eyes and sends them coughing back up the infirmary.

  This time there is no one to stop her. Katherine is through the door, down the stairs and across the yard, staggering past the very spot where she’d seen the canon, and out of the beggars’ gate. She has no plan in mind, only flight, and she no longer cares what happens to her next.

  Snow re
mains in patches across the fens, but there is more grass and mud, and there are black fire circles on the fields, and the sweet smell of cold wood smoke and human shit hangs in the air. She limps out across the furlong, making for the hamlet at the river ford. Two lay brothers are there at the river’s edge with shovels. She turns from them to the ferryman’s lighter, on the riverbank below the mill. If she can right it and somehow get it into the water, then she might follow the river’s current wherever it will take her.

  She crosses the furlong and tries to lift the boat, but it is too heavy. Vestiges of ice cement it in place. She finds the ferryman’s pole, a long staff of ash. She is about to try to use it to lever the boat upright when she sees a movement by the canons’ beggars’ gate. Someone running. A man. At first she thinks he is coming for her. She panics and looks for a place to hide in the shelter of the watermill, behind a pile of millstones. It is a canon, she sees, running desperately. Then she sees another man emerge.

  ‘Dear God!’ she says aloud.

  It is the giant from the day before. He is still barefooted, still with that axe. She looks again at the canon. It is him. He runs towards her. He is also making for the boat. He tries to roll it over but gives up just as easily as she had. He goes looking for something and then starts with panic as the giant approaches.

  ‘Why?’ he shouts. ‘Why me?’

  The giant ignores him.

  The canon tries to punch him, but the giant catches his fist and twists his arm. He falls to the ground.

  ‘Why?’ the canon cries out once more. ‘What did I do to you?’

  The giant plucks him up without effort. The canon kicks out but the giant has him by the throat. He is carrying him at arm’s length. The canon struggles, still kicking, tearing at his hands, but he is forced backwards and pinned against the upturned boat. Still he kicks but it is no use. The giant leans forward and switches hands, so that he is holding the canon down with his left hand while his right moves up to the canon’s face. The canon tries to pull away but the giant is too strong. He seems to stroke his cheek and look into his eyes and then he places his thumb over the canon’s eyeball. The canon screams.

  Without thinking Katherine leaves the stones and rushes the last few paces to the boat and, with all her remaining strength, she brings the ferryman’s pole down on the back of the giant’s head. It makes a crack she feels in her knees.

  The giant lets the canon go and stands, as if he has just thought of something he ought to do. He turns and looks down at her. He is confused.

  She takes a step back, lifts the pole again. The giant takes a step towards her. He stretches his hands out. She is about to bring it down on him when his face seems to go blank, his eyes roll up into his head, he cants to one side, staggers, then slips, and finally falls to the ground.

  After a moment he is still.

  The canon is gasping, muttering some prayer, his hands clapped over his eyes. After a moment he stops, removes his hands and now he too looks at her. Then he lifts himself to peer down at the giant’s body.

  ‘Is he dead?’ she asks.

  The canon gets up and looks at the giant more closely.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he says.

  She is only partly relieved. There is a pause. A breeze has picked up. The rainclouds have retreated, and the sky is a scrim of white clouds again. They look to the walls of the priory, then at each other.

  ‘Are you expelled?’ he asks.

  Katherine nods.

  ‘I was seen talking to you,’ she says.

  She looks back at the priory. Three figures have appeared in the canons’ beggars’ gateway, one limping, coming down towards them. All are carrying swords. The men from the day before.

  ‘Brother?’ she points.

  ‘They will kill us this time,’ he says. He stoops for the giant’s axe. It is a fearsome thing: four feet of chamfered oak pole with long steel points at both ends, its axe blade balanced by a vicious pick. It is crusted with dried blood, as if dipped in brown lace, and it looks oddly light in his hands.

  ‘You cannot fight them,’ she says. ‘Not three of them, not even with that thing.’

  ‘God is by my side,’ he says. ‘He will provide.’

  ‘Where was God when he was about to put out your eyes?’ she asks, pointing at the giant.

  The canon flinches. He stares at her open-mouthed.

  ‘Besides,’ she says, hurrying him on past her blasphemy, ‘God has provided. Look. We must take this boat. Come. Help me.’

  She slides the boat pole under the lighter’s edge and tries again to right it. Still it will not move.

  Seeing her struggle, he joins her, pushing the axe under the boat’s side and helping her lever it over, revealing grey grass and a family of dead rats. He puts the axe aside and helps shove the lighter across the mud and down into the water where the river is running high, thronging with brown meltwater, the ice long gone.

  The men from the priory are running now, down across the furlong. They are shouting.

  He stands with his feet in the water and holds the boat steady while she throws in the pole and then clambers in after it.

  ‘Come!’ she says, holding out a hand. ‘Come!’

  Still he hesitates. Is he mad?

  ‘You cannot fight three,’ she shouts. ‘They will kill you! Then me! They’ll kill us both. Come!’

  This decides him. He collects the axe and slides it into the boat. Then he launches himself in after it, sending the boat out into the rolling current. The boat staggers, dips as if it will sink, then rises and spins in the water.

  The men are near now. She can see their expressions. One has blood on his face. They are shouting. They run past the giant and the one in a white shirt comes down the bank and wades into the water up to his thighs. They are too late and they know it. The man in the water smacks its surface in frustration.

  The canon plunges the boat pole into the water and heaves, sending the boat off into the current as the two men on the bank start following them. After a few moments the one in the water wades back on to dry land and shouts after the canon. She cannot make out his words and in a little while the boat crosses the ford and the man in the river is lost to sight.

  Katherine stares back over her shoulder long after, though, watching as first the roofs and then, finally, the priory’s church tower slip away until at last, for the first time in her memory, she is beyond its sight, floating in a land unknown.

  PART TWO

  Across the Narrow Sea,

  February–June 1460

  5

  THE SISTER SITS ahead and keeps watch with the giant’s axe across her knees. She is rubbing her blistered feet and Thomas can think of nothing to say to her.

  Finally she speaks.

  ‘Where shall we go?’

  It is a good question.

  ‘We must make our way to Canterbury,’ he tells her with more certainty than he feels. ‘We must seek redress from the Prior of All. He will hear our case and see that justice is done.’

  The sister turns to him and studies him as he talks. Her eyes are blue, her face paler than vellum.

  ‘Where is this Canterbury?’ she asks.

  Thomas does not know.

  ‘It is where the Prior of All is,’ he says.

  There is a pause.

  ‘So you do not know?’ she says.

  ‘No,’ he admits.

  She nods and turns her back on him again. He feels only confusion. To think that the day before he had been looking forward to rubbing gold leaf over a letter T he’d built up from the page with gesso. She says nothing more and after a while the mist begins to clear and a flock of gulls wheels above them, wings black against the pale clouds.

  ‘More snow,’ he says, and thinks of the night to come.

  Then there is a crash in the rushes, and a shout from the bank.

  ‘Oh Great God above.’

  It is the giant. He comes pushing through a stand of reeds and is almost on them b
efore Thomas heaves on the boat pole and sends the boat lurching across the river.

  ‘Leave us be!’ the sister cries. ‘For the love of the Trinity, leave us be!’

  The giant comes down at them, but stops at the water’s edge. He looks about wildly and shouts something unintelligible. He seems stuck.

  ‘Merciful Mary,’ Thomas breathes. ‘He’s scared of the water.’

  The giant stares at them, deciding what to do. Then scrambles along the river’s edge, ripping his way through the thickets. Ahead of him a bittern takes flight with a slow clap of wings.

  If Thomas can just keep up this rhythm with the boat pole, and if he can stay on the right-hand side of the river, then he need think of nothing else, need think of nothing that has happened and of nothing that might yet happen. His feet throb with the cold and his head rings from Riven’s blow, but he goes on, letting the water run down his arm as he pushes and lifts, pushes and lifts, and all the while the giant crashes along the riverbank beside them.

  Then, suddenly, the giant stops. He stands in the bulrushes and the sedge where the wind makes a tuneless song among the sodden seed spikes. But now Thomas can hear something else. The giant points ahead and shouts. There is something almost sorrowful in his expression. He shouts again and waves his arms.

  ‘Brother?’ the sister says. She is turning and pointing ahead. ‘Have you seen?’

  Ahead of them the banks of reeds part, and the river on which they have been travelling meets another, and this new water is broad, swollen with rainwater and snowmelt, heading south in spate. The lighter joins it and they are sucked into its turbid current. Water laps over the lighter’s sides, pooling under their feet. The sister begins trying to scoop it out with her hands.

  ‘We’re sinking,’ she says. ‘We must reach the other side.’

  But the river pulls them on and the farther they go, the wider apart the riverbanks become. They pass fishponds and eel farms and all along the banks the rushes have been clubbed and harvested. Two men in russet hoods stop digging in a field with a mattock and watch them as they go, as does a third on horseback, who turns and stares, a hunting bird perched on his wrist.