Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims

by Toby Clements

  And so it is agreed.

  They spend the next few days preparing for the journey and on Adam and Eve Day, while Richard and Walter buy more horses from a dealer, Thomas and Katherine and the others make the journey into Lincoln to buy clothes from the tailor and fripperer, another bag of arrows, some new shoe leather. While repairs are being made to their boots, Little John Willingham takes the others to an inn to celebrate the start of Christmastide.

  ‘We’ll never see them again,’ Thomas says as they part.

  ‘I only hope they do not wag their mouths off,’ Katherine says. ‘Imagine if Riven discovered what we are about and where we are going?’

  ‘He would not, surely?’

  Katherine frowns and they walk on. A paradise play is being performed outside the cathedral and they stop to watch and to ask around. How to get to Carmarthen? No one has heard of Carmarthen. Where is it near? Neither knows. Wales? Wales everyone knows. That way. To the west. Eventually they find a wool merchant who knows the country around Gloucester, where he says the best wool is to be found, and which lies that way. He knows of Wales, or at least the south of the country.

  ‘The most direct route is along the Fosse Way,’ he tells them in return for a jug of ale. ‘From there, you might press on down the road to Cirencester until you find the drovers’ route that will take you across the country to Gloucester. Or, some leagues south of High Cross, the road fords a river. Avon it is. Might hire a boat to take you to the port at Bristol.’

  Thomas thanks the man and by the time they have found Dafydd and the others it is near dark and the walk back to Marton involves numerous delays as one after the other stops to relieve himself. Little John Willingham passes out and there is only Thomas sober enough to carry him.

  When they reach the hall they find a horse waiting to be unsaddled and, within, Fournier: returned, he says, to collect the instruments he’d carelessly left when called away so suddenly on his last visit.

  ‘And his fee, of course,’ Katherine mutters.

  Fournier is surprised to hear they are setting out on a journey at this time of year, but is glad to catch them before they leave.

  ‘Because I find myself witness to something of a minor miracle,’ he says from his usual place at the head of the table, a new boy behind his shoulder, a cup of hot wine in his hand. ‘I find that Sir John is cured.’

  He is talking loudly for show, and Thomas can see Katherine stiffen on the far side of the hall where she sits in the shadows.

  ‘It is no miracle,’ she says, leaning forward into the light.

  ‘No? An untrained boy with no experience conducting a complex and usually fatal procedure such as that? Come now. Something must have guided your hand. What was it? The Holy Spirit?’

  Fournier is sitting very still, and his boy is staring very hard at the back of his master’s head. There is silence in the hall now, and every man leans in, each aware that something has been said. Richard throws a piece of bread on the table.

  ‘What talk is this, Master Fournier?’ he says.

  ‘I only say’, Fournier replies, ‘that it is not possible for a mere boy to do what this one has done without some intervention. The only question that remains is whether the intervention is divine, or diabolic.’

  PART FIVE

  To Kidwelly Castle, Wales,

  January 1461

  24

  THEY LEAVE AT dawn on the day after Childermas. The sky above is a perfect scrim of pale cloud that promises snow and under their horses’ hooves the earth rings hollow.

  Sir John watches them go.

  ‘We shall miss you,’ he calls, and: ‘We shall expect you back by Candlemas.’

  By the time they are through the trees and have raised the spire of Lincoln, Katherine has lost all feeling in her fingers and toes. Dafydd rides alongside, smothered in his travelling cloak with a baggy cat-fur hat on his head. The only way of telling he is a living thing is the smudge of his breath.

  ‘Least it’s not snowing,’ he says, just as the first fat wet flakes begin to swirl around them.

  They ride on, passing up through the grey stone city just as the cathedral bells ring out for sext. Walter leads the way on Richard’s horse, Thomas behind on his palfrey, the other three on their ponies with their rough winter coats newly grown. Each man carries his pack and his bow. Walter has a sword, Thomas his pollaxe, Dafydd and Owen a fifteen-foot spear each, Katherine a short sword in a leather scabbard, which she likes wearing. Sir John offered her a crossbow with a goat’s foot winding mechanism, but she has rejected it.

  ‘You might need it more than me,’ she said, and he took it back and put it by the front door.

  ‘Just in case,’ he’d said with a laugh.

  They do not talk much, not even when they find the turning on to the Fosse Way and set off down its length. Snow dusts the ridges far off to the north and west but otherwise the road runs straight and level until they reach Newark just as the gates are closing for the night. The Captain of the Watch lets them through and directs them to the Castle Inn, where there is rabbit pie and ale around the fire.

  ‘Not much else I can serve you,’ the innkeeper tells them. ‘Duke of York’s men took it all and paid me bugger all for the pleasure. A turd in his teeth.’

  ‘Have they come through already?’ Walter is surprised.

  ‘About five thousand of them, heading north. Not all of them stayed here, but before that we had the Earl of Devon and his men, didn’t we? It isn’t Christian to be in the field this time of year.’

  The next morning there is black pudding for breakfast and the unpopular parts of a pig, long pickled in brine. They linger in the warmth while Walter pays the innkeeper and then it is out into the cold. The soldiers on the Mill Gate watch them pass without a word, and beyond the landscape is softened by fog.

  ‘We’ll ride into the sea before we know it,’ Dafydd complains.

  ‘Wonder what they’re doing in Marton Hall right now?’ Thomas asks.

  ‘Probably sitting on their fat arses by the fire getting through another gammon pie,’ Walter suggests. ‘Christ, I wish I was there. This horse is making me feel seasick, you know? Like crossing the sea. How’re you feeling, Kit? Not too cold?’

  It is interesting to see how Walter’s tone has changed. He has become almost respectful, and she cannot decide if this change is since the operation on Sir John’s fistula, or since Fournier’s accusation that she was in league with the devil, and her reaction to it.

  She mutters something, and huddles down into her cloak.

  The odd thing is that when she’d heard Fournier accuse her of sorcery, the blood had rushed to her face and she’d been at a loss for words, but then, when the pushing and shoving started, and she found herself with a knife in her hand, it occurred to her that this was what she had been waiting for ever since the operation. Because it struck her, just as she pushed Fournier back off the bench, that she had been wondering the exact same thing herself.

  Thomas had pulled her off before she’d ever really been a threat to Fournier, and she had been relieved of course. She would not have wanted to kill a man, not even Fournier, but she is sure that in attacking him she’d done the right thing. It had been an instinctive thing, a human thing. A witch would have waited, bided his time. A boy with a knife was something to which they could all relate, and it only increased their liking of her.

  They reach the city of Leicester that night and find boiled mutton at the inn but the straw for the mattresses stinks as if something has lain dead on it for a week or more and the next morning they can’t shake the smell from their clothes.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ the innkeeper says, but gives them no explanation.

  They ride on, heading south and westwards. Jackdaws clack in the hawthorns and there is an empty gibbet at a deserted crossroads. Owen lags behind, twisting in his saddle.

  ‘What’s up with him?’ Walter asks.

  ‘Thinks someone’s following us,’ Dafydd announ
ces.

  ‘Honestly?’

  Dafydd nods.

  ‘He’s normally right,’ he says.

  Walter glances at Katherine.

  ‘Reckon you can keep up if we ride for it?’

  She nods.

  They canter along the road and then pull their horses over a ditch and in between the trunks of a clutch of trees close to the roadside. Overhead the branches knock and scrape and meltwater patters on their shoulders. They wait, leaning forward in their saddles, shivering while the horses steam.

  Nothing.

  ‘You sure, Owen?’

  Owen nods fiercely.

  ‘Not just travellers?’

  He shakes his head.

  They wait under the trees until the horses begin to shudder in the cold. Still nothing. After a long while Walter tuts and forces his horse back over the ditch to rejoin the road. They go on, descending a slope, but still Owen keeps turning in his saddle.

  ‘Someone’s still there,’ Dafydd calls out.

  ‘Kit,’ Walter says, ‘go back and have a look, will you? Welsh bastard’s got me all spooked.’

  She drops back to the rear, but Owen’s nerves are contagious and she is frightened now, not wanting to drop too far back. She keeps up, touching the handle of the little sword. They ford one river, then another, and ride up the far bank, their horses scrabbling on the stones. Moments later she hears something and they both turn in their saddles. This time they are sure.

  ‘There’s someone there,’ she calls.

  ‘Christ,’ is all Walter says.

  Again they stand up in their stirrups and force the horses to gallop. Katherine’s pony, cold and wet and hungry for so long, is blown. She sees a priory ahead and, beyond, a dark wood and some sour-looking yews.

  ‘Under them,’ Walter calls, gesturing. They ride harder still for a few hundred paces, past the priory, then jump from their saddles and pull the horses under the straggling spread of branches.

  ‘Keep going,’ Walter says. They push on through, weaving between the sweet-scented trunks until they are well off the road, sunk in the gloom. They hobble their horses and hurry back towards the road. Katherine leans against a rough-barked trunk and waits.

  She tries to think who might be following them, and can only think of one name.

  Beyond the priory is the long vista of dead straight road, deserted. The wind soughs through the branches. One of the horses snorts and they hear some movement. Katherine peers back but can see nothing in the gloom.

  ‘Are the horses all right?’ she asks.

  ‘Shhhh!’ Walter hisses.

  She turns back and peers down the road. Her eyes begin conjuring shapes that cannot possibly be and after a while she has to pinch the bridge of her nose and shake her head. Around her the others are crouching behind the trees, pale faces tense, fingers clasping and unclasping their bows. Each has an arrow nocked. Time inches on.

  There is nothing. And yet. So they wait. Still nothing. In the end they give up and gather themselves together and walk back to the horses.

  Katherine’s pony lies on its side, its flanks unmoving. She cannot stop herself letting out a cry and running to him, but there is nothing to be done. Green-flecked drool coats his black lips and though his eyes are open they are sightless. She kneels and shakes her head. She cannot stop the tears.

  ‘These’re graveyard trees, aren’t they?’ Dafydd asks, looking up into the branches. ‘Supposed to be poisonous to cattle, like.’

  They look at the remaining horses, out on the edge of the wood, pulling at the dead grasses under the hedge, then back at Katherine’s horse, lying under the yews.

  She’d not even given it a name.

  ‘Only a horse, Kit,’ Walter says. ‘Here, come on.’ He helps her unload her pack, yanking the leather straps from under the dead weight of the horse. ‘You’ll go with Thomas then?’ he asks. She nods, and he begins loading her pack on to the back of his saddle to spread the weight. Then they lead the four remaining horses back through the yew trees and over the ditch on to the road.

  ‘What shall we do?’ Dafydd asks. ‘Can’t ride all that way with five on four horses, can we? Even with Kit so skinny.’

  ‘We’ll have to do as the wool merchant suggested,’ Thomas says. ‘Take a boat down the river.’

  ‘Which river?’

  They look around.

  ‘We can ask at the priory.’

  But the Prior won’t open the beggars’ gate, and one of the brothers shouts instead that they should ride on three more leagues, through a ford and then, a little way downstream on the far bank, they will find a port.

  Why had no one told her about the poisonous trees?

  They ride up and over a hill and as they are coming down the far slope she hears something again. Owen stops and turns in his saddle.

  This time even Walter hears it.

  They all look at one another and then press on. It is getting darker, and the temperature is dropping. Whorls of ice are forming on the puddles. Katherine sits with her arms around Thomas’s waist, and when no one is looking she rests her head against his back. She closes her eyes. She could sleep if every time she tried she didn’t see her dead pony.

  At length they find the river, marked by willow trees, and hard by the ford a small hamlet gathered around a siding in the river. Tied at both ends to a mud-slicked platform of logs are three flat-bottomed boats, the same as those that ply the Trent behind the hall in Marton, carrying God knows what where.

  A man comes out from one of the cots. He is holding a rusted kindling cleaver. Behind him is a sad-eyed boy with a long stick.

  ‘What d’you want?’ he asks. His voice is cracked with fear and his eyes are perfect dark circles.

  Walter dismounts.

  ‘The Prior sent us,’ he lies. ‘We mean no harm. Just want to hire your boat, if she’ll float.’

  The man lets out a gust of relief.

  ‘She’ll float all right,’ he says. ‘But she might not be for hire. Depends where you want to go.’

  Walter looks around for some guidance. No one knows.

  ‘Kidwelly,’ Dafydd says. ‘Know where that is? Wales.’

  ‘Wales? She’s not going to get you there, is she?’

  They look at one another in consternation.

  ‘Why not?’ Walter asks.

  ‘I’ll take you to Stratford,’ he says, putting the cleaver aside, but not so far aside that he cannot reach it. He has an accent like Geoffrey. ‘You can get a barge from there, downriver to Bristol. Or Gloucester. Last bridge on the Severn. Or first, depending on how you look it at.’

  ‘Can we stay the night?’ Katherine asks. ‘Or is there an inn nearby?’

  The man looks them over. What choice does he have? He gives them what little ale he has and they share some pottage with him and his boy and then they sit crammed together on the ground by the fire in his cottage, watching the smoke rise from damp logs until there’s nothing left to burn. Behind them the boatman’s goat and dog stare at them, the dismal flame hardly reflected in their eyes.

  ‘You think someone’s really following us?’ Thomas asks in the darkness.

  Walter shrugs.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘Course not. Why would they?’

  But although no one knows the answer to this, they do not believe him and they sleep only fitfully that night, and in the morning there is a sour gruel flavoured by a badger’s bone. The boats’ ochre sails are gathered in sagging rolls on their booms and there is an ankle-deep soup of leaves and river water in the bottom of each.

  ‘Not getting in there,’ Dafydd says. ‘Sink soon as you look at it, that one.’

  But they force the horses up the gangplank and in with a barrage of hooves on the hull’s thin boards. Ice slicks everything and the boatman gives them each a long pole with which to push against the bank or the riverbed and then he sets the sail just as the boy unhitches the aft rope and loops it in.

  Katherine catches Thomas’s eye, knowi
ng what he is thinking.

  ‘I half expect to see the giant appear,’ she says.

  ‘This time we’re ready.’ Thomas smiles, and he nods to where Owen sits with his bowstring nocked and a bag of arrows at his waist. The current takes them westwards. After a while Katherine sits in the bows of the boat and her thoughts turn to that evening with Fournier again.

  Once Thomas had calmed her down and taken the knife from her, she had left the hall and gone to sit in the yard with Liz Popham, who was having trouble trying to decide whom she should take as a husband: Little John Willingham or John Brampton. Katherine had said nothing. She did not – still doesn’t – suppose it mattered which one Liz chose, since both were so similar, but afterwards she spent an anxious night unable to sleep for fear of what Fournier might do next.

  The next morning, Fournier had been up before first light. He’d collected his horse and his tools and had ridden south, pausing only by the gate to look back at her, and she had thought he was about to say something when Walter chased him away.

  ‘Good riddance,’ Walter had said.

  But what had he been about to say, and where was he going? As he’d hauled himself up into his saddle and turned his horse south, he’d sent her a particular knowing look.

  The only sound around them now is the dipping of the boy’s paddle and the gurgle of the waters.

  ‘Still thinks someone’s there, Owen does,’ Dafydd calls. ‘A boat.’

  ‘What?’ Walter bellows. ‘For the love of Christ!’

  They gather in the stern and stare back along the river. Nothing.

  ‘Kit?’

  She can’t see anything, but she trusts Owen and as one they find their boat poles to send the boat surging forward, a shunt that makes the horses stagger.

  In a little while the horizon becomes dominated by the looming bulk of a bluff-walled castle, flags at every buttress, chimneys leaking coal smoke.