Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims

by Toby Clements

  ‘Lay him here,’ she says, kicking aside the bowls of blood. They lower him on his back in the space the physician has reserved for those able to afford bleeding.

  ‘Get his armour off,’ she orders. The man-at-arms bends and cuts through the leather laces and the straps. He frees the plate and tosses it aside. The arrow has broken through the rings of the mail skirt and lodged itself in the meat of Warwick’s thigh, just below the groin.

  ‘Don’t just stand there,’ Warwick mutters. ‘Do something.’

  Warwick’s hose is soaked with blood but there is not too much. She cuts through the material and rolls it down to his knee. The arrow is in the soft part of his thigh, lodged in the muscles at the back of his leg. Great God he is lucky.

  ‘Have you the rest of the arrow?’ she asks.

  The man-at-arms looks at her as if she is a fool.

  ‘Can we have someone here who is not a juggler or a clown?’ he says. ‘This is my lord the Earl of Warwick, for the love of Jesu, not some nameless peasant. Get on and cure him.’

  She returns to the wound. This is difficult. How far has the arrow gone in? She collects one of the silver-snouted needles, a long one, rinses it in a jar of warm wine and then probes the wound beside the shaft, inserting the sliver of metal into the lips of the wound and letting it trace the path of the barb. Warwick grimaces.

  ‘Wine,’ he demands.

  She shakes her head.

  ‘We need it for other purposes.’

  He is unused to being denied anything he requires and he looks at her properly for the first time.

  ‘The devil are you?’ he asks.

  Instead of answering she presses the needle farther in. She wants to distract him with the pain, and it works. Her fingers are in the wound now. It means the arrow is deep and it will be easier to push it through, just as she has seen Mayhew do earlier. She withdraws the needle and wishes Mayhew were not suddenly so shy.

  She will have to make a short shunt with the heel of her hand on the broken shaft and hope that she can force it out in one move. But what about the wound on the other side? She has an idea, looks up. A crowd has gathered, nine or ten men including a herald in the quartered livery of the King. All are in plate armour and the man-at-arms is on his knees. He is wearing thick leather gloves.

  ‘Give him the wine,’ she orders the friar.

  The friar holds the jug of wine to the Earl’s lips.

  ‘Wait,’ Katherine says, and she leans forward and swirls the surgeon’s knife in the jug.

  ‘All right,’ she says, removing the blade. ‘He can drink it now.’

  They watch as Warwick drains the wine. He grimaces and spits something out.

  ‘Roll him on to his left side, will you?’

  The friar and the man-at-arms take him and move him, complaining, on to his left side.

  ‘Hold him steady. And fetch a candle.’

  One of the friars brings an altar candle of good beeswax, casting a true light. In it she can see the Earl has large spots on the cheek of his backside, and she thinks of Sir John and his fistula. Is that how such things start?

  ‘You,’ she says, addressing the man-at-arms. ‘Push on the arrow. Slowly.’

  He is horrified.

  ‘Do it,’ Warwick says.

  The man shuffles forward. He looks around, seeking approval.

  ‘Come on,’ Warwick says.

  ‘Slowly,’ she adds.

  He bends and grasps the arrow. Warwick gasps.

  ‘Sorry, my lord.’

  ‘Just do it.’

  He pushes the arrow through the Earl’s flesh. The Earl stiffens. Clenches his teeth.

  ‘The candle!’ she calls.

  The friar leans over her.

  She watches the growth swell on the back of Warwick’s thigh, sharpening, turning pale. She snicks it with the blade. She feels a tick of the knife against the arrowhead. Blood seethes from the wound and the arrow comes slithering through. Warwick bucks and shouts with the pain. Mayhew and the friar hold him tight, the man-at-arms taken by surprise. There is blood all over the ground. A great pool of it, expanding fast. Katherine feels a grab of panic. She’s cut the artery! She panics, doesn’t know what to do, where to turn. Then she calms herself.

  ‘Sponge,’ she demands. ‘Linen.’

  She pulls the arrow free and tosses it aside, then she presses the urine-soaked sponge into the wound and then the wine-soaked linen. She holds it until it is blood-soaked. ‘More,’ she says. Mayhew passes her a new piece. She presses that down on the first and when that second piece is sodden, she finds a third. By the fourth pressing the wound is no longer bleeding.

  She almost collapses. She has not cut the artery.

  ‘Well?’

  This is from the man-at-arms, and he speaks for everybody.

  ‘He’ll live,’ Mayhew says. ‘He’ll live.’

  36

  WHEN THE BRIDGE is finally taken, in the gloom of the early evening, after Fauconberg’s mounted archers have forded the river upstream and come around behind the defenders, Thomas sits on the bank and opens his bag to see if he has any food. The ledger is in there. He opens it again, and looks at all the embellishments he has added since he first acquired it. There is the window of St Paul’s, the name of Red John, the drawing of Katherine he made while she was ill in Brecon. She looks like the Virgin herself.

  He wishes he did not have to carry it with him, but now that he is separated from the wagons, there is nowhere to leave it. He slings it over his shoulder and goes in search of Hastings’s men. There is no sign of Hastings’s standard, but across the blood-slicked stones of the bridge, Thomas finds the Welsh captain, looking as pleased with himself as if he personally put the northerners to flight.

  ‘Came through a ford up the way,’ he laughs. ‘Unguarded it was. Old Fauconberg’s a fox. He’s riding up the north road with his lances and hobilars now, chasing after the rest of those bastards.’

  Ahead the fields are grey with snow. The wind gusts in their faces. Thomas feels nothing but dread. He should not go any further: none of them should. Nothing good waits for them. Of that he is sure.

  ‘Well,’ the Welshman says. ‘We’ve got to get moving at any rate. A village called Saxton. Up there somewhere. Hastings’s orders.’

  ‘How far is it?’ Thomas asks.

  ‘Three or four leagues?’ the Welshman guesses.

  Thomas turns and studies the army filtering across the cinch of the bridge.

  ‘What about the wagons?’

  ‘They’re to come through the ford.’

  ‘So we didn’t need to take this bridge at all,’ Thomas says.

  Across the river, through the trees, they can see men digging burial pits in the fields.

  ‘No,’ the Welshman says.

  They watch the men digging for a while, and the priest shivering by the graveside.

  ‘Got any sons?’ the Welshman asks.

  Thomas shakes his head.

  The Welshman grunts.

  ‘Lucky,’ he says. ‘I’ve got two girls; Kate and Katherine, named after their mother. I used to want boys, you know? I used to imagine how that would be. Doing this kind of thing together. But now, maybe, maybe it is better not to. They’d only end up like that.’

  He gestures across the river and Thomas nods and then they turn and join the road where the column is moving north through the slush. As they go trumpets sound and drums are taken up, and all around them captains do their best to organise and encourage the men who move slowly, with cramped and weary expressions on dirty faces. They follow the road northwards to the village of Saxton, and arrive in the dark. No wagons have caught them up, so they face a night without food or shelter, and while the captains cram themselves into the church and the surrounding houses, the men are left without.

  Before curfew Thomas strides to the edge of the village to relieve himself. Men are gathered there, doing the same thing, staring northwards, to where the sky is tinged orange with the li
ght of a thousand fires.

  ‘It’ll be tomorrow then,’ one of them says. ‘So say your prayers and get some sleep.’

  Thomas lays his head on his ledger under the eaves of a nearby cottage, and prays. He prays for Katherine and Sir John. He prays for himself. He prays he will find Riven and that he will not lack the courage to fight him, or his giant. He prays that he will not lack the courage to kill both.

  After he has said his prayers, he lies awake, crouched with cold, listening to the soft sound of the men around him: the occasional snore, the whispers, the prayers, the little movements in the dark. This is when they are at their most honest, he supposes, when they are skinless, and when you learn what sorts of men they are, and they learn what sort of man you are.

  He must have fallen asleep for he wakes shuddering before first light, his hair stiff with ice. Outside the horizon is growing pale, the first birds are starting to sing, and the land is beginning to emerge indistinctly from the milk-grey morning light. Still there is nothing to eat, and one of the sentries tells him that Fauconberg is supposed to be in a little village called Lead, away to the west. His lances and mounted archers caught the Flower of Craven in the dark, in a little valley farther north, a dint in the dale, the messenger says, and killed every last one of them.

  ‘They weren’t looking for that,’ the messenger laughs. He’d been there, he says, and taken part in the ambush, and shows Thomas a little gold ring; its design is that dragon with the curled tail. His face is grey with fatigue, and there is a ring of blood around his nostril where he’s picked his nose with a bloody finger.

  ‘Give it to you for a loaf of bread?’ he asks.

  ‘You’ll be lucky.’

  ‘What about a coat?’

  Thomas laughs. The bells of the church ring and they both instinctively look up. Behind the church’s tower pale snow clouds move south.

  ‘Palm Sunday,’ the messenger mutters, tucking the ring away. ‘Easter next week. Probably never live to see it.’

  ‘Now don’t talk like that,’ the Welshman says, appearing at Thomas’s side. ‘Bad for morale, that is.’

  ‘You seen how many men old Henry of Lancaster’s got?’ the messenger says. ‘No? Well, I have. Went up to the ridge last night. Must be thousands and thousands of ’em. Northern bastards. And I’ll tell you what: they’ve got all the quality. All the lords, the nobles, all the men who can fight. Not like us. Who’ve we got?’

  ‘The King. We’ve got him.’

  The messenger looks at the Welshman for a long moment.

  ‘Do we?’ he asks. ‘Do we really?’

  ‘And God.’

  Now the messenger spits.

  ‘We’ve got Warwick,’ Thomas says.

  ‘Warwick,’ the archer allows. ‘Though I hear he’s wounded.’

  They hear the slow squeal of cartwheels on the road to the south and everyone gets to their feet and they move to meet the carts.

  Arrows. Eight wagonloads of them.

  ‘No bloody food? No bloody ale? How’re we supposed to fight like this? Can’t draw a bloody bowstring with no food in your belly.’

  ‘Kill the oxen,’ someone recommends. ‘Cook them on their own carts.’

  The first carter tries to protest, but his whip is quickly wrestled from his hands and the other seven are glad to leave him to it, and while they unload their carts on the road, one of the men swings his axe and kills the animal and the noise reminds Thomas of the Dean’s murder. Before they can butcher the ox or break up the carts to set them alight, there are more trumpets, the sound curiously thin in the cold grey air, as if it might break at any moment.

  It is one of Fauconberg’s captains and a group of his household men, about twenty of them. There is no sign of Sir John. Thomas wonders where he can have got to. He hopes he is warm, in any event. They pull up in front of the dead ox, their horses shying from the brassy smell of the blood, and begin shouting orders.

  Every eye is on the ox, its fat tongue lolling, but the men are driven away, shuffling, stiff and grey-faced and it only gets worse as they leave the shelter of the village and begin the slog up through the furlongs where the wind scours the land in urgent flurries. Every man walks with one eye on the flags that are stiff in the breeze, like pointers, stretched southwards, telling each one to return whence they’d come.

  Thomas picks his way among the men William Hastings has assigned to his command, checking each has his bow, at least one spare string and a bag of shafts apiece. Most wear tight-fitting helmets, pitted with rust now, and each man has some other weapon hanging from his belt: a maul, a dagger, something like that. They smell damp and fungal.

  They stop again, huddled in the road. The snow starts, tiny balls of it, like hail.

  ‘Will there be many?’ one of his men asks. He is younger than Thomas, with a bow of yellow yew. He reminds Thomas of the boy Hugh, who ran away before Canterbury. He has not thought about him since.

  ‘A few,’ Thomas says. ‘Enough, anyway.’

  He tries to see himself through their eyes, as someone who’s been in battle, who fought at Sandwich, and at Northampton, the man who’d killed the Earl of Shrewsbury, then fought through the rout at Mortimer’s Cross. They look at him as if he knows what he is about, as if he is supposed to lead them, when all he’s done so far is ignore them and leave them to their own devices while he wallows in his own misery.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asks.

  ‘John,’ the boy answers. ‘John Perers, of Kent.’

  Thomas nods. Another John.

  ‘Well, John,’ he says. ‘You got good eyes?’

  ‘All right. I can pick out a target all right.’

  ‘No, I’m looking for a flag. Six ravens, like this.’

  He marks out Riven’s badge in the thin snow on the mud by his feet.

  ‘Black on white.’

  Perers nods.

  ‘On our side?’

  ‘Theirs.’

  A knot of men on horseback is gathered on the hillside directing the companies to their positions. The wind whips the horses’ manes and tails. It plucks at the hems of their clothing, dashes the snow in their faces.

  ‘You lot, over there,’ one shouts. He gestures and they step off the road, following other companies across furlongs where the earth has been left in frozen furrows by the passing of autumn ploughs. Below them, down the slope, filtering in vast numbers through the village, come the men-at-arms, the billmen, the naked men. They make up the mass of the army, roughly organised in companies, gathering in the fields around the village, each one following three or four horsemen under their lord’s flag.

  There must be ten thousand, fifteen thousand. It is impossible to guess. They are uncountable. Boys are leading strings of horses away, back to the rear, and all around them men are manoeuvring up the slope into position.

  They stop when they reach a company already in place.

  They are in the middle of the field. They turn and face up the slope to where a solitary tree crowns the ridge. Thomas spreads his men out, the usual harrow formation, as more companies filter into the line around them, and they stand seven men deep across a broad front.

  ‘I can smell them,’ one of the men says. He is a bitter, bitten old man with grey whiskers. He fiddles with his strings, licking his lips, his gnarled hands shaking.

  No one says anything.

  ‘I can smell them,’ he goes on. ‘I can smell men who’ve slept under roofs by fires. Men who’ve had their bellyful of meat and ale.’

  Still no one says anything.

  ‘I can smell men with the wind at their backs,’ he adds.

  ‘Oh shut up,’ the Welshman snaps. ‘For the love of the virgin Mary, for the sake of her seven bloody sorrows, will you just shut your bloody mouth.’

  There is silence for a long moment. The wind hums and buzzes and the snow softens and starts to fall as fat flakes. The tree on the ridge top is lost to view. Behind them in the village there is a commotion of drums a
nd trumpets. A party of horsemen come slowly through the throng and up the road, heralds clearing their way, three or four of the long-tailed banners above their heads.

  ‘Must be King Edward,’ the Welshman mutters.

  Behind the King’s party come the Earl of Warwick and his men in red, and then Fauconberg, with his own retinue in blue and white. Thomas wonders again where Sir John might be and whether Katherine is safe.

  ‘Heard old Warwick was wounded?’ the Welshman asks. He is sauntering around the ranks of his archers, checking his men are sorted, his nerves seemingly made of ice.

  ‘In the thigh,’ Thomas confirms. ‘An arrow. It must have been a glancing thing, though I saw it, and it seemed well stuck.’

  ‘Probably got the world’s finest physician, hasn’t he, the Earl of Warwick? An Italian gent, I bet, who’s cured the Pope of dropsy.’

  ‘Does the Pope have dropsy?’ another man interrupts.

  ‘Not any more,’ the Welshman says, barks a laugh, and goes on his way.

  Thomas wishes he could be like that.

  There is more shouting from the vintenars and the officers, tough men on good horses, and the men-at-arms begin spreading across the fields to find their places behind the rows of archers.

  ‘Where’re you from?’ a captain of the men behind them shouts. He touches his visor with the plated knuckles of his hand. He is a boy, sixteen perhaps, gangling in his antique plate. He carries a slim and useless-looking sword, but his men are armed with halberds, glaives and hammers and they wear the same red and white livery.

  ‘All sorts,’ Thomas replied. ‘Yourselves?’

  ‘Huntingdon.’

  Thomas has never heard of it.

  ‘North of London,’ the boy says. ‘We could have come up with the Duke of Norfolk, but we came this way instead. Thank God we did. Wouldn’t have wanted to miss this.’

  The boy gives him a smile that is closer to a grimace, and then peers back over his shoulder as if he is expecting someone.

  ‘Still, he should be here soon,’ he goes on, gabbling with nerves now, his touch flitting from his cheek to his neck to the pommel of his sword and back again. Even in the cold he is sweating. He offers Thomas a drink from his flask.