Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims

by Toby Clements

  ‘Sit by the fire,’ she says.

  She hurries to get Richard, who is sitting over his father.

  ‘There is an archer by the fire’, she whispers, ‘who has Thomas’s ledger.’

  ‘Have you asked him where he got it?’

  ‘No. He can only have stolen it.’

  Richard nods.

  ‘Take me to him,’ he says, ‘and get Mayhew.’

  Katherine waves Mayhew over and together they lead Richard to the archer’s side.

  The archer glances up as Richard sits next to him.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m blind,’ Richard says. ‘But I have a good sense of smell.’

  ‘Really.’

  The archer goes back to staring at the fire. He is clutching his foot.

  ‘Yes,’ Richard goes on. ‘And I can smell a thief.’

  Now the archer looks up. He has been in situations like this before, that much is clear.

  ‘A thief is it, blind man?’

  Suddenly there is a knife in his hand, but Mayhew kicks his wrist and the knife flies across the stone floor of the nave. And now Mayhew has his own knife out, and he threatens the archer with it, though he looks confused. Then Katherine steps on the archer’s wounded foot.

  He cries out.

  ‘What is this? What’re you doing?’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘John. John Perers. County of Kent.’

  ‘Where did you get that book?’ Katherine asks.

  Perers looks mutinous. Katherine applies some pressure.

  ‘On the field,’ he says. ‘All right? I took it from a bloke.’

  ‘Which bloke?’

  ‘Just some bloke.’

  ‘Is he dead or alive?’

  ‘I don’t know. Dead, for God’s sake. Probably. Everybody is up there.’

  ‘Take me to him.’

  ‘What? No. Don’t be so stupid. I’m not going back up there.’

  ‘If you do not get treatment for that wound you’ll die. Death will take you bit by bit, starting with the foot, which a surgeon will have to cut off, with a saw, but that will not stop the putrefaction. The surgeon will have to take more off your leg, piece by piece, and each time the saw bites, it will feel as if you are being roasted by the fires of hell.’

  Perers is pale with all he’s been through, and now the pain is great, and here is this woman, a blind man and physician’s assistant trying to force him back up to the field.

  He moves to leave. He’ll find another surgeon, easy, with all the money he’s picked up.

  Richard moves like a ferret and his hands are suddenly on the archer’s neck. The archer tries to scream and lash out, but Richard’s thumbs dig into his throat.

  ‘Take us, now,’ he says.

  Perers waves his arm to suggest that he will.

  ‘Bloody hell fire,’ he says, rubbing his throat after Richard has let go. He is too terrified to look at him.

  ‘Give me the book,’ Katherine says.

  He hands it over.

  ‘It’s a long way,’ he says. ‘Can’t we wait until morning?’

  ‘He is still alive,’ Katherine says. ‘I am sure of it.’

  She cannot stand to think of him out there, just one more man dead or lost. She does not want to number him among men like Dafydd, or Walter, or any of the Johns, whom she has known and now – are gone.

  ‘Look,’ the archer goes on, ‘I’m sure he’s dead. One night isn’t going to hurt him any more than he already is, is it?’

  ‘I will cure you if we go now. Tomorrow may be too late, for both of you.’

  Mayhew will come with her, carrying a torch, and Richard too.

  ‘What difference will the dark make to me?’

  They follow the hobbling archer up the road and on to the dale. The wind has died and the snow has settled and the stars are out, and it is cold enough so that touching metal strips the skin from fingertips. All across the field men have lit fires, burning old arrows and bows and anything else they can find to give them the light with which to see, and everywhere shadows flit as they go about their business. Even now there is still the noise of men hitting other men.

  ‘It was over there,’ the archer says. ‘Mind out for the bloody caltrops.’

  The field stinks like a shambles, and underfoot it is soggy and still warm with the spilled blood. Katherine walks with her hand over her mouth and nose. When she becomes aware the banks she thought were earthworks are jumbles of corpses, ready to be interred in pits, she is glad Richard cannot see. After a moment, Mayhew lowers the burning torch so that none of them can.

  ‘Dear God,’ she says. ‘How will we ever forgive ourselves for this?’

  ‘Are there many?’ Richard asks.

  ‘I can’t tell you. Thousands. Many thousands.’

  They carry on up towards the fires on the plateau.

  ‘I never did fight in battle,’ Richard says quietly. ‘All that training. All those hours in the tilting yard and at the butts. It was all I ever dreamed of.’

  ‘Why?’ Katherine asks. She wonders why she has not asked before.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘It is what you do.’

  ‘Here we are,’ the archer says. ‘About here.’

  They stop by the side of the road, near a broad barrow of corpses. Blank faces stare at them from the pile, and men are twisted among one another, like the frayed edges of a carpet.

  ‘He was sitting here,’ the archer says, gesturing in the dark. ‘His head was bleeding.’

  ‘You are lying.’ She just knows.

  ‘No, as God is my witness.’

  ‘Remember your foot.’

  There is a long moment. The dead seem to be letting slip some kind of miasma, thick, like breath, but cold.

  ‘All right,’ he says. ‘A little bit along.’

  She gathers her cloak around her and they make their way along a pathway that has been made between the corpses. Mayhew is reduced to silence. Her shoes are letting in liquid. She does not want to think what. Richard stumbles and someone cries out in the darkness.

  ‘Hurry,’ she says.

  ‘All right, all right. My foot. It’s hurting.’

  ‘It will only get worse.’

  ‘Christ.’

  They go on. At one point Katherine trips and steadies herself by clutching a man’s face. It is cold and gelid. She wipes her hand on a man’s tunic, but it comes away even darker with gritty blood.

  ‘Where is he?’

  They have moved beyond some trees where the land slopes sharply and, over the lip of the dale, dead bodies are piled in acres, three or four deep, and in among them, walking above them, are parties of looters, crouching over the corpses, each one lit by a boy holding a flaming torch as they burrow among the dead. She watches a man twisting at something and chopping at it with a hatchet and she feels a great sorrow.

  ‘May God forgive us,’ Mayhew whispers.

  Beyond is a river, emitting mist, and there is a weir down there over which the water flares and seethes. Bodies choke the valley. It is unbelievable. They stare so long that they do not notice the archer slip away.

  When she does so she can think of nothing good to say.

  ‘We will never find him now,’ Richard laments.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘He is here. He is not dead. I know it.’

  There is a long silence. All they can hear are the furtive rustlings of the looters and the sighing of the dead, the rush of the beck below, and the wind luffing across the dale.

  ‘He is here,’ she says, but her voice is no more than a whisper.

  ‘Come,’ Richard says. ‘Come.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘My lady,’ Richard says. He fumbles for her arm. She tries to resist but he is firm.

  ‘He must be gone, my lady,’ Mayhew says. ‘No man would willingly stay out here if he could leave.’

  ‘I know he is here.’

  ‘Then he must be dead,’ Mayhew say
s.

  She cannot believe it. She cannot believe this is what the Lord had in mind for Thomas when he survived all that came his way before.

  ‘Come,’ Mayhew says. ‘We cannot stay here. The miasma—’

  ‘He is not dead,’ she says.

  She pulls free, grabs the torch from Mayhew and holds it high above her. She illuminates only more corpses.

  ‘Thomas!’ she calls. ‘Thomas Everingham!’

  There is nothing. Only the wind and a flurry of blows in the distance, short and sharp, where the looters are finishing off yet one more.

  ‘Thomas!’ she cries again. ‘Thomas! Thomas Everingham!’

  But still nothing.

  ‘Where is he?’ she demands.

  There is another long silence.

  ‘I know what he was to you,’ Richard continues. ‘I know.’

  She does not wonder what he means. She thinks only of Thomas. Of how they left one another.

  ‘He was . . .’ She is going to say ‘everything’. She bites back a sob. Tears are pouring down her cheeks. She feels she could catch them and fill her palms.

  ‘Perhaps it is right that we don’t find him, do you think?’ Richard goes on. ‘That he is buried with the men who died with him? A sort of fellowship?’

  Katherine nods in the dark, but she snivels. She remembers burying Red John and she knows how that felt. Then:

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘No. He is here. Thomas!’ she shouts. ‘Thomas!’

  ‘My lady . . .’ Richard begins.

  She wipes her eyes, her cheeks, her nose, her chin. Tears are everywhere.

  Again: ‘Thomas!’ and her shout is racked by a sob. ‘Oh God, Thomas!’

  And this time, nearby, there is a movement on the edge of the pile of corpses. A man holds up a bloodied hand. He is hidden, half buried by another man’s body, and they cannot see his face.

  ‘Katherine,’ the man whispers.

  At first she does not hear it.

  ‘Katherine,’ he says again, louder, calling.

  And this time she hears him, and she turns.

  Acknowledgements

  This novel has taken a shamefully long time to finish, and in that time I have been shown so much kindness by so many people that it would almost be quicker to list the people who haven’t helped me (you know who you are . . .) but I particularly want to thank some of you – and mention you by name – for putting up with me, encouraging me, lending me money and an ear, for buying me lunch when we all knew it was my turn. I’d like to thank you, Kazzie, first and foremost, for continuing to bear with me through uncertain times, remaining cheery and lovely while doing so; Marth, for being a very weird, but very perfect, early reader; Mum, for absolutely everything; Dad, for you know what (the cheque’s in the post), and Nick and Lil for all your amazing kindness and support over the years. I’d also like to thank Tom and Max, too, for being so special, in every way. You have all been marvels of patience and generosity – I could not have managed it without you.

  I’d also like to say a huge thank you to each of Rooster Clements, Nick Clements, Justin Thomson-Glover, Kate Summerscale, Sinclair Mckay, David Allison, Jake Werksman, Alex Sarginson, Wayne Holloway and Tessa Dunlop, too, for your tolerance, guidance, generosity and support in so many varying guises, the less said about which, perhaps the better. You have been top friends in this matter and I can’t thank you enough.

  In addition, I’m also very keen to thank Timothy Byard-Jones for reading the manuscript and for picking me up on my many fifteenth century-based mistakes; Graham Darbyshire of the Towton Battlefield Society for walking me around and for sharing his knowledge all those years ago, and the expert and enthusiastic bowyer Les Wigg for his advice on bows and arrows and the mysterious craft of loosing them. All are founts of knowledge, and each has tried his best to teach me what I didn’t know. If any mistakes have crept in, they are mine and mine alone. I’d like to thank Toby Mundy, too, perhaps oddly, for letting me dance on his dollar for a time (and HMRC as well, who have shown inexplicable but blessed patience in the matter of my return for the tax year ’10-’11, not to mention ’11-’12), David Miller for all his help, and Laura Palmer for her early guidance in the story of Thomas and Katherine. I’d like to thank my terrific agent Charlotte Robertson who helped me finish the book and then got it onto the desk of my terrific editor, Selina Walker – thank you Selina – and I’d like to thank Richenda Todd for her almost unbelievable detail and plot juggling skills. This is a much better book for their input, for which I am very grateful indeed, eternally so.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781448183333

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by Century 2014

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  Copyright © Toby Clements 2014

  Toby Clements has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders. The publishers will be glad to correct any errors or omissions in future editions.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between these fictional characters and actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  First published in Great Britain in 2014 by

  Century

  Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

  London SW1V 2SA

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781780891699