Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims

by Toby Clements

  ‘So,’ March says. ‘There will be fighting tomorrow. I hope you will join us? You are my lucky talisman.’

  Thomas nods, but he is far from certain. He drinks deeply, burning his tongue but hardly caring. Great God, it is good.

  ‘Tomorrow will be a different sort of fight,’ March says, raising his voice, broadening the conversation to include everyone in the room. ‘In the past we have always urged our men to spare the commons and to kill only the gentles, but hereafter . . . hereafter we want them all dead.’

  This sinks in.

  ‘But, Edward – your grace,’ Hastings says. ‘You are talking about the lives of Englishmen. The deaths of Englishmen, I should say.’

  ‘I know that, William. But I want everyone to know that if they take up arms and follow that bastard-born Somerset, or bloody old Tudor, or any man, against us, then they will pay for it with their lives. They have shown us no mercy, and so by God we shall show them none either.’

  Hastings remains doubtful.

  ‘But who among them has a choice?’ he asks. ‘Commissions of Array are one thing, but if you owe your livelihood to a man and that man demands you harness yourself and march with him to war, then what can you do? If you refuse, you’ll be evicted and your goods given to another who will fight.’

  But March is determined. Losing a father and a brother might do that to a man, Thomas supposes. Katherine meanwhile is now sitting with her head lolling on its thin stem. Thomas asks Hastings if there is anywhere he might find for her to sleep.

  ‘Of course, of course. I am sure we can find somewhere. She should take a little wine and then rest.’

  ‘And may I ask if you have news of Sir John Fakenham?’ Thomas asks.

  Hastings shakes his head. ‘I have heard nothing,’ he says. ‘I sent a messenger to command him to come to Shrewsbury with every man he could raise, but the messenger never returned. I don’t know if he was prevented from delivering his message, or waylaid on his way back. All I know is that Fakenham was yet to arrive by the time we marched south.’

  ‘He was summoned to Sandal before Christmastide,’ Thomas says. ‘I was with him when the messenger arrived.’

  Hastings takes a drink and Thomas hears him swallow. There is a telling silence for a moment.

  ‘We can only pray,’ Hastings says. ‘Pray that he still lives.’

  Thomas is not invited to sit at the board, but a servant leads Katherine away to her bed, and she leaves with a wary backward glance, trying to find him, but failing. Thomas finds a spot in a passageway outside the kitchen where a dog lies with his jaws on its paws, the light of the rush lamp catching in its liquid eyes, and the wall is warm from the fire, and as he closes his eyes he wonders where she is, and wishes she were there.

  The next morning it is bitterly cold, and the sky is rose-coloured, fretted with fine white cloud. The bells are ringing for Mass but the air is filled with the clink and shunt of men gathering with sharp-edged weapons. Some are drinking ale in hard swallows, others telling jokes and laughing nervously. They compare pieces of equipment, swords, hammers, axes, helmets and harness. Still others are huddled blowing on their hands in front of the fires. The stink, even in the icy air, is strong: unwashed bodies in wet wool, coal smoke, hot grindstones, vinegar and the smog of their breath. And above it all is the smell of nerves, of fear, of anticipation.

  When Mass is over Hastings and March and the other commanders emerge from the chapel; they are clutching candles. They congregate at the doorway for a moment and later when Hastings sees Thomas, he is still holding a candle but now has a fold of cloth.

  ‘You will wear my livery today?’ he asks, offering the cloth to Thomas. ‘I should like you to be with me.’

  Thomas swallows. Of all the things he’d rather not do, to take the field is among them. But now here is Hastings, a man whom he might well call a friend when almost all his others are dead, asking a favour.

  ‘Gladly,’ he says, taking the cloth, feeling the plinth of the black bull’s head badge. ‘Though I am hardly prepared for it, and I must look to Lady Margaret.’

  ‘Ah. And where is she now? Recovered, I hope?’ Hastings gestures up at the keep.

  ‘I have yet to see her this morning.’

  ‘Does she have any family to speak of?’ Hastings asks. ‘I knew Cornford, of course. A good man. She looks more like her mother, I’d say, though in truth I never met her. She was supposed to be frail, wasn’t she? Died after childbirth.’

  Thomas nods, though he hardly knows. Hastings scratches the side of his nose with the candle.

  ‘Interesting,’ he says. ‘Interesting.’

  He is silent for a long moment, plunged in thought.

  ‘Here,’ he says at length. ‘Take this as well.’

  He passes Thomas the candle.

  A clarion player tries to blow a call but it is too cold to purse his lips and the noise comes out as a curious squeal. Men laugh. Thomas looks at the candle.

  ‘Candlemas,’ Hastings explains. ‘Today. Time flies, no?’

  He walks off leaving Thomas with the candle and the livery coat.

  The footmen are starting to move out of the castle gatehouse to gather in the deer park beyond and in the confusion Thomas finds a loaf and an earthenware ewer of ale that a woman has set aside under a table, and after a moment’s consideration he gives in to temptation and takes it. As he hurries away he feels the black eyes of the woman’s girl fall on him more in sorrow than anger, and he leaves her the candle in recompense.

  He finds Katherine still up in the solar and, with no maid to help her, she is wrestling with her unfamiliar clothes. He gives her the ale and bread and they sit on a chest eating until a messenger sent by Hastings appears.

  ‘You’re to come,’ he says. He waits while Thomas puts his head through Hastings’s fulled tabard and straightens it over his still-damp coat.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he says, lost for a moment as to what he should call her. She looks at him with her calm blue eyes.

  ‘Godspeed, Thomas,’ she says.

  He cannot tell if she is putting on a performance in front of Hastings’s messenger, but then she adds:

  ‘I’ve no fear you’ll not come back. You are immortal. How else to explain it all?’

  He wishes he were so sure.

  When Thomas emerges through the doorway of the keep, the courtyard below is loud with drummer boys and clarion callers and a party of heralds in blue cloaks is gathered by the gatehouse. The Earl of March, now Duke of York, is already mounted, on a destrier. He is wearing harness of fluted plate with a white feather plume on the crown of his helmet, and in the shade of the curtain walls his harness seems to gather all the available light and distil it into something pure, something angelic almost, except that he carries a cruel beaked hammer over his shoulder and a battle axe at his hip.

  Next to him is William Hastings, in less showy armour and no plume, his visor open, his handsome face pale. Behind him a man carries the fishtailed battle standard bearing the picture of a white hairy dog or some such, and behind is a line of perhaps a hundred men in plate armour under their own banners.

  The horsemen move off with a tuneless timpani: clonking hooves, the scrape of iron shoes on stone and of men in harness. They pass through the gatehouse and ride out over the bridge to join the footmen waiting across the road south. Thomas walks behind the messenger. What does Hastings want of him? Whatever it is, Thomas knows he’ll not be able to provide it. His hands are shaking at the thought of what is to come.

  He follows the messenger along the road through the trees and past a little hamlet and a patchy wood of much-coppiced willow, empty pigpens and black mud. Everything is limed white with hoarfrost and breath hangs in the air. Beyond, spilling over into the boggy meadows, are thousands of men: archers, billmen, men-at-arms; their liveries new to Thomas, their flags unfamiliar. Their officers, captains and sergeants are shouting and cajoling men into their places. Drums thunder and trumpets call out and for a fle
eting moment there is a festival atmosphere, as women and children mill around the fringes, selling ale and bread, sausages, soup. One woman still in her nightcap tries to sell Thomas a smoked eel, the skin as golden as the leaf he used to work with at the priory, and ale that smells of marsh water.

  ‘Got anything hot?’ Thomas asks.

  She shakes her head. The messenger returns to his side and almost drags him away.

  ‘Go away now, goodwife,’ he says. ‘We’ve things to do.’

  Steam rises from both man and horse, and from the ditches where the men are relieving themselves. As they progress down the road Thomas feels nothing but growing fear. He cannot go through it again, not without Walter by his side, not without Geoffrey, or any of the Johns. Here he is with strangers. If he falls who will stoop to pick him up? The crack-toothed billman with those stout chains across his shoulders? The boy with a home-made glaive and no boots? He doubts it. They’d go through his purse before they bothered righting him. They’d leave him in a ditch to freeze to death.

  When they catch up with Hastings, the knights have dismounted and their squires are leading the horses back through the lines. Hastings is nervous too. Thomas sees him passing his mailed palm over the pick of his pollaxe, teasing it with his fingers as if he can stroke it into a sharper point. Next to him is Grylle. Grylle nods tightly when reintroduced. He is in a suit of plate armour made for a much bigger man, and seems to be peeking out over his gorget like a creature in its hole. His helmet is painted black. He is, what? Fifteen?

  ‘His first proper fight,’ Hastings confides in Thomas. ‘His mother’ll kill me if anything happens to him.’

  His squire has ale in a tubular leather flask. Hastings offers some to Thomas and watches him as he drinks. A frown gathers weight under the shadow of his raised visor where the fog of his breath has frozen into beads of ice.

  ‘You seem underdressed, Thomas,’ Hastings says.

  All around them are ranged men in full harness, some of it field armour perhaps – the mismatched bits and pieces they’ve scrounged, looted or had adapted for their own purposes – but armour nonetheless. Every man has steel gloves, a helmet, a staff weapon, a hammer of some sort, a sword. Thomas has nothing save a scruffy travelling coat and a blunt sword.

  ‘It is all I have,’ Thomas explains.

  Hastings nods.

  ‘Take my horse,’ he says, gesturing to the squire, a skinny boy whose livery tabard hangs to his knees.

  ‘Won’t you need it?’ Thomas asks.

  ‘Not if we triumph,’ Hastings replied. ‘And if we don’t . . . well, I am in no mood for flight. If we lose today, I’d have nothing to fly to, in any case.’

  ‘But what will I do with it?’

  ‘I want you to act as my eyes on the field. Indulge me, Thomas. March and I have come to think of you as our good-luck talisman. Since that time at Newnham – do you remember? – he will not go happily into battle without you.’

  Thomas nods. Is this normal? He has no idea. He is pleased to lift himself up into the saddle of the horse though, to separate himself from the fighting men. To feel the warmth between his knees. Over their steaming heads he can see the water meadows, still in shadows, all the way down to the marshy acres and the two willows.

  ‘Ride forward and tell His Grace we are in position now, will you?’

  There are trumpeters to do that, Thomas knows, and heralds already riding to and fro, and it would hardly take a moment of Edward’s time to turn his head and look to see where Hastings’s flag is held aloft by a bearded man-at-arms. But Thomas sees this task is extended as a favour, and he thanks Hastings for his unexpected solicitousness.

  ‘Not a bit of it. Not a bit of it. As I say, my lord of March will want to know you are with us.’

  Thomas leaves him and rides forward. Men glance up at him as he goes. Are they envious? He supposes so. He knows he would be. But then these are grim-faced men, shuffling forward as if keen not to miss the chance to swing an axe at another man. He turns the horse southwards just as the sun comes up over the eastern hills, setting the mist that billows among the trees aglow as if on fire.

  He rides on towards Edward’s banner and soon through the mist he sees Tudor’s army. It is spread across the meadows five or six hundred paces away, bulking out, moving slowly up, accompanied by the usual din of drums and pipes. Flags are hoisted above their heads, and there are men in green and white livery but most are in brown and russet. Thomas shields his eyes from the low sun and he searches for Riven’s flag, or men of his livery.

  He has no idea what he’ll do if he sees them. He knows he cannot fight the giant or even Edmund Riven, not now, not this day, but still, when he can see no one in Riven’s white livery, he feels the loss.

  But then, he wonders, where are they? Where would they have gone? Would Tudor – or whoever claimed their free-floating loyalty – have been able to force the giant to fight? Forced Edmund Riven to mount up and ride into battle? Or having lost those men yesterday, would they have absented themselves? Gone back to Cornford Castle.

  He thinks of Cornford. Thinks of Marton Hall.

  He is before the first battle now, and turns and rides across its front. Men stare at up at him, and he cannot help but look back at them, their pale faces, some so young. At the centre is Edward, Earl of March, the new Duke of York, standing under his banner, moving his arms, jumping on the spot to keep warm. Around him are his best men, hard-faced veterans with axes, pikes, billhooks and hammers, all well harnessed. They stand waiting for Tudor to make a move, their hands changing grip on the shafts of their weapons, tongues running across lips, all heads turned slightly to March, waiting to take their lead from him.

  Edward turns to him.

  ‘Everingham,’ he says.

  ‘My lord,’ Thomas says, but the sun is shining in his eyes. He raises his hand to block it, but finds he cannot. He needs his forearm. He is confused. Something is wrong. Instead of one sun, there are three. Each casts a halo of golden light.

  ‘Well?’ March asks. ‘You have a message?’

  Thomas says nothing, He is too confused. He points.

  ‘Look,’ he says. March turns to look. He turns and he too raises his arm against the suns. Thomas notices he is casting three shadows on the frosted ground, just as if he were standing before three altar candles. Around him the soldiers start to turn, and do likewise, all with their arms up, peering into the light in the east.

  ‘God’s blood!’ March mutters, turning to a man next to him. ‘What in the name of Jesus is that?’

  The man has no reply.

  ‘Anyone? Will no one tell me why in God’s name are there three suns!’

  There is a note of panic in his voice. The men behind have noticed and everywhere they are asking the same thing. The movement is subtle, a shrinking, a withering, as the army takes a step back, cringing from the freakish light. Suddenly all thought of the fighting is suspended. There is a ripple of movement as men make the sign of the cross. More than one casts aside his weapon and falls to his knees.

  ‘It’s an omen!’ a man says.

  ‘Of course it’s an omen,’ March says. ‘But an omen of what?’

  March looks around at his troops and Thomas sees that for once he does not know what to do, what to say. Then the two outer suns move closer together, nearer the centre sun, the larger of the three, and an even brighter ring of light springs from that central sun, to extend around each sun. The colours are of a rainbow.

  ‘A trinity of suns,’ Thomas thinks aloud. ‘God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.’

  March stops and stares at Thomas. Then back at the suns, then at his men as they cower before the strange light.

  He starts.

  ‘Off your horse,’ he says, half pulling Thomas from Hastings’s horse. He gives him his pollaxe and swings himself up into the saddle.

  Is he going to run? No. His hands are hard on the reins as he yanks the horse around to face his men. Then he t
akes his hammer from his belt and uses his spurs to get the horse to rise on to its legs and thrash its head and bellow in rage.

  ‘Men of the Marches!’ he cries, his hammer in the air. ‘Men of the Marches! Sirs! Be not afraid! Do not dread this thing! It is a sign from God. Those three suns represent the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost! They are the Holy Trinity, sent as a sign to give us courage, to show us that the Lord God above is on our side, to show us that right will prevail! So let us be of good cheer and let us this day think to acquit ourselves as men, as we go against these His enemies right hard, to drive them from the field, for this is God’s will!’

  There is a momentary pause, almost infinitesimally brief, before the man standing next to March roars, and as he roars, others join him, and still others, and then all through the army men begin raising and shaking their weapons and bellowing, and March throws himself from the horse’s saddle and stalks forward and behind him the army surges forward across the marshes towards Tudor’s battle.

  31

  IN THE DAYS that follow the victory below Wigmore Castle, named by the heralds after the nearby village of Mortimer’s Cross, Thomas and Katherine lodge at the White Hart Inn by the river in the city of Hereford. There are the dead to be buried, wounds to be healed and scores to be settled. All that first week crowds gather in the market square beneath the guildhall to watch as whey-faced wretches are held over a broad green log, already gummed with blood and cross-hatched with axe marks, to have their heads struck off into the bloody straw below. The crowds jeer and whistle and laugh to see it done, but it turns Katherine’s stomach.

  ‘They like to see bears baited and women strangled,’ Thomas tells her. ‘Someone having his head chopped off is nothing to them.’

  It is Grylle who insists she comes. He is intent on her and whenever Thomas is absent, which happens whenever William Hastings wants him for some errand or other, Grylle is there. She says no at first, but then is caught by the thought that perhaps this is what ladies do? Watch executions? Suddenly she fears that if she says no, he will see through her disguise, and so it is that she finds herself standing with him watching as the old man Owen Tudor is dragged to the block.