‘By all the saints,’ the old man murmurs when he is settled, ‘have I not suffered enough? They said take a medicinal bath. They said that would suffice. So I sent a servant, a good girl, to drown a litter of puppies for me: fox terriers. Then I had her gut the little things, Jesu Christe, and boil them up to make a soup. Yes. A soup. Dog soup. Enough to fill a bath. In which I sat for four hours with two—’
He retches again, a long fruitless spasm.
‘Two newly cut goat-kid skins – one on my head and the other on my chest – so that I shouldn’t catch a chill. They told me that would be enough, that that would cure me, but no. No. God wants to kill me this way. With seasickness.’
The ship’s boy is lingering in the cabin door, glad to be out of the rain for a moment.
‘Master Cobham says no one ever died of seasickness,’ he pipes.
‘The thought of dying is the only thing that keeps me alive,’ the pardoner groans.
The boy laughs and hurries off, balancing against the slant of the deck, letting the door bang behind him.
‘A good lad,’ the pardoner says. ‘Reminds me of my own boy.’
‘You have a son?’
The pardoner shakes his head.
‘Buried him three years ago,’ he says. ‘Plague.’
The weather lasts for two more days. They are not wrecked and when it is over, life on deck begins again. Gulls resume station, their wings snowy against the blue sky, and the sun shines, warming the skin if not the bones. The cook lights a fire on his stone and makes soup from fish the boy catches with a hook. Though the ship still dips and surges, the crew set about repairing the sails and everything wet is hung out to dry, including the pardoner.
The next day the land recedes to their right, and there are boats on the horizon. The water under the ship’s prow changes colour, becomes a choppy brew littered with broken barrels, scrubby feathers, filthy rushes, a dead dog.
‘Crossing the estuary,’ the boy explains, gesturing westwards. ‘Up there to London.’
Master Cobham is more watchful and the boy is sent to climb the ratlines and sit on a spar lashed to the mainmast’s crown.
‘Worried about pirates,’ the pardoner murmurs. ‘Something else we have to be watchful of these days.’
Thomas hears himself grunt absently. It seems to him that he has not slept since leaving the priory, for every time he closes his eyes, he sees Riven, or the giant in that moment before he felt his thumb press on his eyelid; or he sees the Dean being killed in the cloister, and all these images come afresh, just as if they are still happening, not things that have happened, and every time he lurches into wide wakefulness, his heart racing and his fists clenched.
He has tried to pray for release, and he asks God to take vengeance on his behalf, but as he prays, he cannot help but imagine himself as God’s chosen instrument. He imagines that it is he seeking Riven out, just as the pardoner suggested, and he imagines it is he landing the blows on the man, cutting him, pounding him, breaking bones, gouging flesh. Each time he must catch himself, calm himself, and return to prayer.
He hears the pardoner sighing on the bale beside him.
‘It must be hard,’ the old man is saying, gesturing to Katherine in the boat’s bow, her back turned on them. ‘Thrust from her cloister to be among us rough-skinned men.’
Thomas looks at her again: her straight back, stiff shoulders. He says nothing.
‘And what about you, Brother Thomas? Will you return to the cloister?’
‘One day,’ he says. ‘It is a good life.’
‘It’s a good life,’ the pardoner agrees, ‘though I cannot see that it will last too much longer.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The monasteries are too rich,’ the pardoner starts carefully, gesturing towards the shore. ‘Think of the ends to which our dukes and earls go to find their children advantageous marriages, and yet the finest match in all England would be that between the Abbot of Westminster and the Abbess of Sion. With wealth like that, such men as your man Giles Riven, well, they will find a way to get hold of it, by hook or by crook, and when they do, all the monasteries and convents and priories and friaries will be snaffled into someone’s hunting bag before a single summer is out.’
The pardoner is interrupted by a shout from the mast. The boy has seen something. All the sailors stop what they are doing.
‘What is it?’ Cobham shouts up.
‘Balinger,’ the boy calls down. ‘Moving fast, maybe ten oars, maybe more. Mainsail up, making for the foreland.’
Thomas rolls to his feet and joins Katherine at the bow. Across the water one of the boats is moving fast, with a bank of oars that dip rhythmically and propel the craft forward in definite steps. Cobham shouts orders and the sailors run to new tasks, easing the sails to let them slip the wind. The ship relaxes under their feet. They wait.
‘Changed course,’ the boy shouts down. ‘Coming towards us.’
Cobham swears again and shouts more orders. The crew reset the sails and the carrack lurches. Cobham jams the tiller over so that she slews eastwards, out to sea.
There is another long silence. The sailors are tense.
‘Well?’ Cobham shouts.
‘Coming on after us,’ the boy cries.
There is a groan.
‘Bloody pirates,’ Cobham says. ‘No good, this. Th’Earl of Warwick’s supposed to be keeping the seas clear and look at this. Unless . . .?’ An idea strikes him. ‘Who are they?’ he calls up to the boy. ‘You make ’em out?’
‘Sun’s shining on a quantity of metal.’
‘Harness?’
‘Could be. Helmets, anyway.’
‘Might even be Warwick’s men,’ Cobham supposes.
They look up at the patched sails, and the next minute they watch them sag as the wind dies. The carrack loses way. Cobham swears once more and begins pumping the tiller as if this might speed them on their course.
‘You!’ he shouts. ‘Cook! Stop eating your bloody biscuits and whistle up the bloody wind!’
The cook – the pardoner says he is a Genoese – begins whistling. A light air riffles the heavy sail.
‘Keep whistling, you whoreson! Keep whistling!’ Cobham storms around his deck. ‘Saxby! Saxby there! Let go what we don’t need.’
Saxby is the master’s mate, a bully with dark curly hair and a gold hoop pressed through his ear. He grasps the cook’s still warm firestone and hefts it and staggers with it to the ship’s side. He shunts it over and it hits the sea with a kerplunk that shoots a fountain of green water above the ship’s rail. The cook doesn’t pause in his whistling. Then Saxby and three others tip the anchors over, each one disappearing with a deep booming splash.
‘Christ on His cross,’ Cobham mutters. ‘Cost me more than a penny.’
‘Gaining on us, master!’ the boy cries down.
‘Right,’ Cobham says. ‘We need to lose all this if we are to get clear. You there! Master Daud and your boys! Lend a hand. Everything overboard.’
Thomas and Katherine set to, joining the sailors as they begin hauling bales and packages overboard, tipping them over the carrack’s side into the sea below. The pardoner can hardly stand to watch but mews ‘no, no, no, no’ as his bags go over with the rest. Some sink, others float. Cordage, sailcloth, buckets, bales, boxes, anything not fastened down goes over. In the carrack’s wavering wake they leave a stream of bobbing wood spars and planks and canvas-wrapped bags.
One of the men emerges from the cabin with the pardoner’s sack-covered pack.
‘Master!’ the pardoner cries, springing into action. ‘Not that one! That is all I own!’
The sailor looks at Cobham, who narrows his eyes.
‘All right,’ he nods. ‘Put it back.’
The sailor lobs the pack back in the cabin, but everything else goes over. The cook’s pots and pans, a wooden chair, every scrap of rope, every lump of tar, all the food, all the ale. All that remains are the men, the sails, th
e pardoner’s bag and the weapons: four rusted swords, a long-handled bill, a hammer used for breaking chains and the giant’s axe. Each member of the crew has a knife on his belt and one hidden in his clothes. Thomas has the pollaxe and one of the sailors passes Katherine a length of rope with its end tied off in a knot that looks like a large fist. Within is a weight and together they make a lethal club.
‘I am expected to fight,’ she whispers to Thomas. She swings the weight and flinches as it flies past her nose.
‘Foof!’ Thomas says. ‘Be careful.’
She stares at the knot. He moves to stand in front of her, to protect her from whatever will happen next.
‘Still gaining, but slower now,’ the boy calls down.
He need not have bothered. Every sailor is ranged along the ship’s side watching the balinger come battering across the water. Cobham watches from the stern deck.
‘Fuck,’ he says. ‘Should’ve kept the firestone. Drop it on ’em from up here, it’d take the whole stinking lot of ’em with it.’
Thomas sees something flicker in the sky. Then there are two sharp thuds in the carrack that make every man jump.
‘Christ Jesus!’
Two fat arrows quiver in the deck. Both a yard long and as thick as his forefinger. One instant they aren’t there, the next they are, buried in the deck in a corolla of grey splinters. Dust rises from each like smoke from a candle wick.
‘Christ!’ Cobham shouts. Then he calls up to the boy. ‘Oi! Boy! Warn us when they’re about to loose those bloody arrows, will you, you little—’
He breaks off and shields his eyes from the glare. He stares up into the rigging.
‘—bastard,’ he concludes quietly. An arrow pins the boy through his chest to the mast. He looks around. Then: ‘Saxby! Saxby there!’ he shouts. ‘Stop your fuckin’ gawkin’ and get rid of the dead wood.’
He nods his head and Saxby leaves off his post at the ship’s rail with something like a leer and on quick feet he crosses to where the pardoner stands, pale and old and frightened. Before Thomas can move, Saxby grasps the old man around his arms and rushes him backwards, toppling him over the ship’s rail and into the sea. The old man has no time to cry out.
Saxby steps back.
Thomas runs to the ship’s side. There is nothing there, just the green sea, peaking, troughing, frilled with foam, unreadable to the horizon. There is no sign of the old man. The pardoner is gone. Thomas cannot believe it.
Next to him Saxby smirks, self-satisfied.
‘He was slowing us down, mate,’ Cobham calls out. ‘And didn’t look able to fight none.’
Thomas wants to lash out, to hurt Saxby.
Saxby sees his expression change. A blade appears in Saxby’s hand and he is quick with it. He flicks it at Thomas’s face and makes a grab for the pollaxe. Thomas throws his head back, feels the knife pass.
Saxby is laughing, coming at him again. But Thomas thrusts the spike of the axe at him. He means to fend Saxby off but Saxby is too fast, and is not expecting it. There is a gristly crunch. Thomas feels resistance give and something soft slip. Saxby gasps; his eyes turn round as pennies. Thomas cannot help himself. He pushes. Saxby’s face changes colour and his tongue sticks out. He gasps for breath.
Thomas steps back. There is a neat sleeve of dark blood on the axe’s poll. Saxby falls to his knees, his eyes rolling back into his head.
It is so quick.
‘Oh Christ!’ Thomas cries. ‘Oh Christ! Forgive me!’ He drops the murder weapon and grabs Saxby’s arms, as if holding him up might save his life. ‘I didn’t mean it. You saw! By all the saints I swear to you!’
But Saxby is already gone. His dead weight passes through Thomas’s grasp to slump on the deck.
‘Dear God!’
Thomas steps away from the body, looking around for help, for credence. Katherine is staring at him, her mouth open, her face pale. It has been so quick. So sudden. So easy. There are dark ropes of blood across the deck and on Thomas’s boots, and a pool of it is forming under Saxby’s body.
‘Christ’s sake!’ Cobham roars from his deck. ‘What’re you doing? You lot! You lot! Kill him. Kill ’em all, by Christ! Kill ’em and then bloody put ’em overboard!’
Thomas’s vision seems to waver. Sound is muffled. Time slows. All he can do is look at those hands of his, those murdering hands.
Dear God! He has killed a man.
Then Katherine slaps his shoulder.
‘Thomas!’ she shouts. ‘Thomas!’
Sound and light come back to him with a roar. Men are running at him. Running at Katherine. He stoops for the pollaxe and pulls her behind him. The first sailor is on them with a rusted blade. Thomas catches it with the axe. He staggers back under its weight. The sailor is red-faced and ugly, spitting with fury. Thomas shoves the butt end of the pole up into the man’s groin. It seems light in his hands and such an easy thing to do. The axe seems to move for him.
The sailor shouts something, drops the sword and throws himself back. He trips on his heels. Without thinking Thomas steps after him and drops its blade into the falling man’s face. The man screams and clamps his hands to the mess of his nose and teeth. He writhes on the pitching deck; a moment later he is choking on his own blood.
The second sailor is there already, big with a wind-burned nose and a thick leather jerkin. He’s behind Thomas and aims a slash at Katherine with a chipped cleaver. She flinches out of the way. The blade whistles past but snags her sleeve. Thomas turns and drives the crown of the axe into the sailor’s armpit, breaking his ribs and sending him staggering over to the ship’s rail where he collapses on his backside, blood all over his hands and his chest, his bare feet scrabbling on the deck. He is gasping; then he too is dead.
‘Oh God Oh God Oh God.’ Thomas’s face is very pale.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ Cobham bellows.
There are still three sailors left: men with scarred knuckles and expressionless eyes. One takes up the rusted sword from the deck. Thomas watches him circle to his left, just as the other comes from the right. He wonders how he will fight two at once.
But then another flight of the arrows from the balinger hits the ship’s deck like a ripple of thunder. Five shafts, suddenly there, like a fence, buried up to their shoulders in the deck. The last one catches the sailor’s heel, nailing it to the boards. He throws up his sword, bellowing, flailing at the arrow’s fletch.
Just as the second digs his blade at Thomas. Thomas catches it against the steel languet of the pollaxe, steps into him, and, copying Riven, smashes his left fist into the gristle of the sailor’s nose. Two fangs of blood sprout on his face and Thomas wheels around to drive the axe into the sailor’s knee. The sailor goes down in a tangle on the deck. Thomas drops the fluke on him. It is a wound that won’t kill him for days yet.
The third man comes at Thomas, circling, his blade held low, but he is half-hearted now, and backs off as soon as Thomas levels the axe at him.
‘Help me!’ the sailor with the arrow in his heel keeps crying. ‘Help me! For the love of God! Help me for the love of all that’s holy!’
Now Cobham has had enough. He abandons the tiller, storms down the ladder. He scoops up the rusted sword and advances on the sailor with the arrow in his heel. The sailor looks at him imploringly, then changes expression and tries to scrabble backwards. He holds up his hands.
‘No!’ he screams.
Cobham chops the blade through the meat of the sailor’s throat. There is a spray of blood and the sailor goes down with an awkward bounce, as if he has fallen from a tree, still pinned by the heel while blood seethes across the planks.
‘That’s how you do it, by all that’s bloody holy,’ Cobham roars. ‘That’s how you bloody well do it, see?’
He turns on Thomas.
‘I had you for apostates,’ he spits. ‘I should’ve handed you over to the friars when I had the bloody chance.’
Even before he’s finished the sentence, he lunges at Thoma
s. Thomas smashes the blade away. Then Cobham darts at Katherine. Thomas jabs at him. Cobham catches the axe on the blade of his sword, a clash of sliding steel. Cobham is strong, stronger than Thomas, stronger than Riven maybe. He pushes Thomas back, then spins and crashes his elbow into Thomas’s cheek. Thomas’s knees ooze, his vision wavers and the axe seems too heavy to hold.
Cobham smiles. He is about to hit him again when Katherine catches him with the rope maul.
Now it is Cobham who staggers. His hand flies to his collar where she’s struck him. He checks for blood. Only a little. He tries a quick underhand thrust at her body. Thomas drops his axe on the blade, knocking it from Cobham’s hand. Cobham shouts in pain and the blade rattles across the deck towards Katherine. She bends to pick it up. A knife appears in Cobham’s hand. He leaps at her, catches her collar, pulls her to him, bends her around, shielding himself and exposing her neck to his blade. Thomas recovers.
He swings the axe, just missing Katherine. There is a dense thunk of steel on bone, and he buries the long spike of the axe into the flesh under Cobham’s chin. Cobham dies instantly, his body converted to dead weight that pulls the axe from Thomas’s grip. Together axe and man crash to the deck. The stink of blood is ferrous and intimate.
Katherine staggers free, her knees weak. She is holding her throat. Thomas bends and twists the axe from Cobham’s body, ready for the next attack. He is breathing heavily, hardly able to see straight. He holds out the axe and stares at the men gathered on the deck.
They do not move. They stand watching him, pale-faced, incredulous. Then they drop their weapons and step back. Thomas can scarcely believe what has happened either. Katherine is looking at him as if he is someone else.
‘I must sit,’ he says. He drops the axe and sits just before his legs give out. He cannot stop his face from creasing and the tears silently pouring down his cheeks. He grips his hands together to stop them from shaking.
‘What now?’ Katherine asks. Her face is also pale, a smudge of blood above her lip.
‘We wait,’ the Genoese cook answers for Thomas. ‘Hope they don’t kill us.’
Thomas has almost forgotten the pirates.
Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims Page 10
