Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims

by Toby Clements

  Grylle talks to her as if she is a simpleton, but she is pleased when he explains that Owen Tudor is the man who married King Henry V’s widow – which makes him the current King’s stepfather – and, worst luck for him, also the father of the Jasper Tudor, the Earl of Pembroke, the man who’d raised his banner in Wales and paid for all those Irish mercenaries now lying slaughtered in the fields above Mortimer’s Cross.

  When he is standing there by the log, the old man doesn’t believe they’ll do it.

  ‘Thinks he’s English,’ Grylle laughs.

  But when the guards remove his fur collar to keep it clean for selling on, he realises they will, and he looks wistful, his silver locks and wrinkled skin giving him an almost exotic appearance in a world where few live to celebrate their fiftieth birthday. He mutters something about being used to rest his head in more comfortable places than on the log, and just before he kneels he takes the chance to stand a moment and study the crowd.

  ‘Speech!’ someone in the crowd calls. ‘Come on, tell us a joke, you old Welsh goat!’

  Just then Tudor catches Katherine’s gaze and he stops short. It is as if he recognises her. Katherine can feel her face flush, and next to her Grylle is puzzled and watches her reaction. Tudor shakes his head as if he cannot believe what he is seeing, and he takes a step towards her and gestures.

  ‘Do you know him?’ Grylle asks.

  Katherine shakes her head.

  ‘He seems to know you.’

  Before the old man can say anything more, the men behind him seize him and force him to his knees and the executioner – a butcher by trade – hacks off his head just as if he is killing a turtle.

  Katherine turns away and Grylle laughs and tries to put an arm around her.

  Afterwards someone sets the old man’s head on the steps of the butter cross to general laughter. It is done in revenge, someone says, for the execution of the Earl of Salisbury, and the head is canted around so that it faces the city of York to the northeast, ‘so that they can look one another in the eye’. Later someone tampers with it, a madwoman who washes his face and brushes his hair and lights more than a hundred candles around the base of the cross. No one knows where she’s come by the candles, and since they are expensive, they are quickly stolen, and soon the birds are squabbling over what remains unburied of the late Queen’s husband.

  Over the following days Katherine cannot stop thinking about him, but nor, it seems, can Grylle stop thinking about her. He is around the inn all the time, usually bringing messages summoning Thomas to the castle where William Hastings and the new Duke of York are plotting their next move.

  To escape Grylle’s company Katherine has resorted to assisting with the wounded, who lie in the guildhall and in the hall of the inn. The surgeons are doing what they can for the wounded men of rank whom they think may live, but for the others less fortunate, it is the women who’ve traipsed around the country after them who are called into service, and Katherine assists an elderly, broad-waisted woman who’s followed the army to France, she says, and had to repair her man after a fight more than once. She has a wen on her chin, and she says she knows how to concoct all the cures and salves she needs from hedgerow plants, and those such as yarrow, camomile or lavender. It is February, though, and none of these are available, and in their absence she pours hot wine on smaller wounds and then seals them with dry bindings and prayers.

  ‘Sometimes seems to work,’ she says.

  But other wounds are too serious.

  ‘I have seen surgeons stitch flesh together as a wife might mend her man’s hose,’ the old woman tells Katherine, ‘but I lack the art and these fingers are not so dainty as once they were.’

  She holds them up: they are lumpen and gnarled like tree roots.

  ‘You have a go,’ she tells Katherine and so Katherine tries her hand, stitching together the lips of a wound an archer has made in his own thigh with his knife while drunk.

  ‘Lucky,’ the old woman says, pointing to his inner thigh. ‘Been there and there’d be no stopping the blood.’

  They wash the wound with the archer’s urine and a cup of wine warmed in a pot over the fire. It starts the bleeding again, but it cleanses the wound and then, while the old woman pinches the flesh together, Katherine uses a silver needle and a length of hemp and she stitches the separate parts of him together again. She is surprised at the feel of his flesh. It is firmer than she’d anticipated, and tougher, too, so that when she pulls on the needle the hemp does not cut through it, but rather brings it together in a neat seam.

  ‘Very tidy,’ the old woman says afterwards and Katherine thinks of the hours spent at needlework in the priory. She tries to imagine what she would have done had the Prioress paid her such a compliment.

  But men keep on dying, long after the battle is over. It is those who seem to be drowning in their own blood who go first, those with wounds in their chests. Then the men with wounds in their stomachs follow, usually in great pain, vomiting endlessly or with their bellies horribly bloated. None survive. Then it is the men with no memory of the fight, men who’ve lost their helmets and who are dazed. For a while it seems as if they will recover, but they die anyway, later. And all the while the men with flesh wounds are succumbing, their limbs swelling, turning first purple then black, and emitting such a stink that men gag and prefer the smell of tallow; and there are others who convulse and twitch and cry out to the Lord in rigid terror of what awaits them.

  It is better to be killed on the field, she thinks, and the old woman agrees.

  And again, she wonders about the old man, Owen Tudor. Had he meant anything by the look he had given her? She still cannot decide, and yet she cannot forget it. Why would the old man single her out?

  Some days later a physician in the mould of Fournier appears and sends the women away and turns the surgeons to adjusting the humours of those who can afford it by bleeding them, and soon the room is emptied, one way or the other.

  She finds Thomas returning from the cathedral.

  ‘There is a room’, he tells her, ‘filled with wonderful books, each chained to a desk.’

  She can see the shadow of the fighting still lying over him. There is a hesitancy in his eyes, a distance in his gaze, as if he does not want to look at anything too closely for fear of what he may find. Still, the discovery of the library has given him some way back into the light.

  ‘Is there any news of Sir John?’ she asks.

  He shakes his head.

  ‘The Queen’s army is pillaging the north,’ he tells her. ‘A man has come from an abbey south of Lincoln, near Boston, where he says the monks have buried all their valuables, including their vestments and plate.’

  ‘They are looting churches?’

  ‘And every beggar and pauper in the land has joined them, he says, like rats from their holes, and they’ve been raping women and torturing men to reveal the whereabouts of their valuables. He says they have cut a swathe through the country thirty miles wide in which everything is burned or dead or worse.’

  She thinks of Marton Hall.

  ‘But what of the Earl of Warwick?’ she asks. ‘Where is he while all this is happening?’

  ‘He is raising troops, they say, and is supposed to be keeping London.’

  Keeping London. That is typical of the Earl of Warwick, Katherine thinks.

  ‘But I don’t understand why we are languishing here,’ she asks, ‘instead of moving to stop the northerners?’

  ‘There are provisions to be got,’ Thomas supposes. ‘And men need time to heal.’

  Katherine thinks about it.

  ‘Perhaps if people hear how bad the northerners are, they will be more eager to join Warwick? Or lend him money at any rate. Perhaps he is waiting until word spreads.’

  Thomas is impressed. They walk on through the streets – Katherine is slowly becoming used to the pattens she has bought – and across the marketplace to their inn. Once more she thinks of Owen Tudor’s death, and Thomas i
s just as preoccupied.

  ‘Katherine,’ he begins. ‘I mean, of course, Margaret. What are you going to do?’

  She shakes her head. Her headdress is weighty, awkward, always threatening to come off. Her dress hampers her movement too, and she has no idea how to behave in front of others, and is aware of their gaze, all the time, raking her body, judging her clothes, the way she walks, moves, tilts her head. Even Thomas judges her, she realises when she catches his all-too-rare glances, and she feels she is somehow failing him, and so a distance has opened up between them. She would dearly love to cast aside the dress and find some hose and a jacket and go about as Kit once more.

  ‘I just don’t know,’ she says. ‘I just don’t know. It depends on so many different things. And on what you are going to do.’

  Thomas shrugs.

  ‘William Hastings—’ he begins and then sees her expression and falters.

  They let a cart rumble by.

  ‘I know what you make of him,’ he goes on, ‘and I cannot say I approve of everything that he does, but he has been a good friend to me. To us. Without him, where would we be now?’

  It is an interesting question. Certainly she is grateful for the protection Hastings has advanced, and without young Grylle there is no question that they would be dead. But she is aware of Margaret’s gold coins in her bag. With them they could pay their way without incurring any obligation. They might not have had to witness the slaughter on the fields south of Wigmore Castle, when Edward’s men used the naked Irishmen for archery practice, or forced them into the river with spear thrusts and axe blows and laughed at their clumsy attempts to swim. They might not have had to see men such as Tudor beheaded in the marketplace.

  ‘So I wondered if we ought not to stay with Hastings’s household?’ Thomas is saying. ‘He has shown great kindness, and to be with a household, to have someone looking out for us – well, we need it. We cannot just go about the country on our own again.’

  She feels a flare of anger.

  ‘It is very well for you, Thomas,’ she says. ‘You have cast off your previous life all too well and anyone can see how useful you have become. But what about me? I cannot put aside my sex forever. I cannot join William Hastings’s household just like that and with no purpose. You seem to forget I am Lady Margaret Cornford.’

  And she places one hand on her headdress and enacts the sort of curtsey she has seen other women perform. He stares at her, stricken.

  ‘Great God above,’ he says, ‘you don’t – You don’t believe you can keep up the pretence? No? Surely?’

  She doesn’t know either, and God knows she does not want to, but fury makes her reply:

  ‘I do. I disguised my sex for a year, living among you all and not one of you suspected. Not one. It will be that much easier to pretend to be a woman no one knows.’

  Thomas is astonished.

  ‘What if someone who knew Margaret sees you?’ he asks. ‘You recall Dwnn?’

  ‘Dwnn is just one man,’ she says. ‘And he is back in Kidwelly. So long as I never go back there again, who is there to know I am not who I say I am?’

  ‘And what about who you really are? Have you not thought about that? The family that placed you in the priory?’

  She has thought of them.

  ‘I’ve told you,’ she says. ‘There is nothing for me there. That truth lies beyond me.’

  ‘But it is just so dangerous! What about Riven? So long as you live, he will want you dead!’

  She nods. His concern for her softens her temper slightly.

  ‘I know,’ she says, calmer now. ‘That is why I cannot do this without your help.’

  ‘My help?’ he says. ‘Katherine, you know I’ll do everything I can to protect you from Riven and all his kind. I’d die for you. But . . . it seems to me you are putting yourself in harm’s way and for no very good reason.’

  She looks at him for a long moment.

  ‘If I go back to being Kit, then Margaret Cornford dies.’

  He frowns. This is uncertain territory for him, but she can see he is trying.

  ‘She is already dead,’ he says. ‘You are not keeping her alive.’

  Katherine shakes her head. She is confused and none of this is easy. It does not make complete sense, even to her, and she cannot explain it to him properly. All she knows is that she must save Margaret Cornford and to do that, she must become Margaret Cornford, with all that that entails. It is her task. This way she might redeem herself in part for the girl’s death. She had not deserved to die so harshly, so alone.

  ‘I am, Thomas,’ she says. ‘I am.’

  ‘But don’t you understand?’ he says. ‘Don’t you understand? What it means? If you are Margaret Cornford?’

  He glares at her. For a moment she is frightened of him, the way he looms over her, his ferocity.

  ‘If Richard Fakenham is still alive,’ he spits, ‘then you must marry him.’

  She takes a step back and stands silent for a moment, suddenly unable to speak, as if winded. Dear God. Why had she not thought of this?

  ‘Then I must marry him,’ she hears herself say, though her voice fades to nothing as she speaks.

  Thomas retreats. He no longer glares. Instead there are tears in his eyes. He puts his hand to his hair, pushing back his worsted cap. His face grows pale.

  ‘Marry him?’ he whispers.

  She can feel her own tears welling over her eyelashes. She nods and they splash her cheeks.

  ‘But . . .’ she starts. ‘But we must find out. We must find out if he is alive before we – before we . . . Oh God.’

  But Thomas is gone. He turns and walks away without a backward glance.

  And now the tears really come. They fall from her chin and though she wipes them with her sleeve she cannot help sobbing aloud and so she hardly hears the messenger, mud-flecked, fearful, on a near-dead horse that clatters past her on his way to the castle, though the news, when she hears it from the innkeeper of the White Hart, is a distraction.

  The Earl of Warwick’s army has been crushed, scattered to the wind.

  His troops have been routed by those of the Queen’s army at St Albans, near London. The Earl has escaped with his life, it is said, but the King, whom the archer Henry from Kent had held prisoner after that day outside Northampton, has fallen back into the Queen’s hands, and now there is nothing to stop her retaking London. And if London falls then everything they’ve hoped for will be beyond their grasp. The lords among them – men such as March and Warwick – as well as lower men such as Hastings will be attainted for what they have done. It will mean the legal death of their families. It will mean literal death for them.

  Katherine looks for Thomas at the White Hart, but cannot find him. His pack is still in the hall with his blanket but he is nowhere to be seen. She needs to talk to him, to try to make sense of it all, and to try to devise a plan. She needs to put things right with him.

  She resolves to walk to the castle to find him there. Passing through the faint shadow thrown by the tower of the cathedral, she feels none of that familiar angst when she sees the friars and the priests going about their business. She is Margaret Cornford, in a fine gown, with a cloak about her shoulders, a headdress on her head and pattens on her feet. There is gold in her purse.

  When she catches sight of Hastings himself though, she feels a familiar flutter of panic and her legs cease to obey her. He is on horseback, followed by five or six men in light armour, none of them Thomas, and he looks grimly preoccupied.

  ‘My lady,’ he greets her from the saddle, and she feels his appraising gaze rake across her dress, and he smiles a particular sort of smile, and then, as if he cannot stop himself, he throws his leg over the saddle and slides to the ground to walk with her. He has the disarming habit of talking to women in the same way he speaks to men.

  ‘You have heard the news?’ he asks.

  ‘I have. It has changed things, hasn’t it?’ She feels her voice flutter. She is not so experi
enced an actor after all.

  ‘Somewhat,’ he agrees. ‘But it is not a complete disaster.’

  ‘If the Queen takes London?’

  Hastings is blithe. ‘We have men on the council there,’ he says. ‘The city’ll not open her gates to those robbers and thieves and, hearing the tales of their excesses, more men join us every day.’

  It is just as she’s supposed.

  ‘But still,’ she asks. ‘The loss of the King’s person?’

  Hastings smiles.

  ‘Two things,’ he says. ‘First is that having Henry of Lancaster with them will only slow them down. They’ll have to defer to him now, and he has never yet been known to make up his mind on any matter you care to name. Do I hold it with my right hand or left hand? See? Second thing is that it has forced our hand, shall we say. Henry’s broken with the Act of Accord, which specifically states he must do nothing to harm either Edward or his father, and I think any sane man – or woman – would recognise the breach.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So now he has forfeited his right to the throne.’

  ‘Ah. And in his place, Edward?’

  Hastings smiles.

  ‘Exactly,’ he says. ‘That is as the Act has it. It clarifies things, hmmm?’

  They walk on for a moment.

  ‘Did you delay here waiting to see that exact thing happen?’ she asks.

  He looks at her sharply, but then smiles.

  ‘No, no,’ he says. ‘The army is tired. We have no arrows or food. We cannot march on London so soon.’

  He lies so smoothly, so engagingly, she finds herself enjoying it.

  ‘It seems strange that the Earl of Warwick took the King with him to the battle. Almost as if he wanted him to be taken.’

  Hastings laughs now.

  ‘My lady,’ he says, ‘you suppose us far too clever.’

  ‘And by not coming to his aid when you could, you have not only enhanced your own authority and reputations, you have left the Earl of Warwick looking less than invincible, too.’