Thomas knows exactly what will happen next.
He is right. Katherine surges to her feet, her shadow flaring across the beams of the ceiling. Borthwick sees her coming. He flings his cup aside and rises to meet her, pulling his great meaty fist back to punch her, but before he can, Thomas stands, and Borthwick, his fist drawn back, hesitates, and his gaze flicks to Thomas just as Thomas sees Katherine has drawn her blade from her waist.
‘No!’ Thomas shouts.
But she throws herself at Borthwick and he falls back into the settle, elbow cocked, and she presses the blade against his chins and she hisses something in his face. Instantly the alaunt hounds are up, their claws scuffling in the rushes, and they are shoulder to shoulder, deep growls rumbling in their throats, fat ridges of fur stiff on their backs, great yellow teeth bared.
No one moves. Katherine holds the blade at the greasy baffles of Borthwick’s chins, but she’s heard the dogs and now it is her turn to hesitate, and at this Borthwick swallows, his face creases into a knowing smile and Katherine becomes unsure. Her blade, dull in the orange light, presses less hard.
‘Call your dogs off,’ she tells him.
But Borthwick’s leering gaze slides from her and across to Thomas.
‘Call your bitch off,’ Borthwick tells him.
And then he stiffens as Katherine’s knife dimples the fatty swags of his chins.
‘Katherine,’ Thomas cautions. He still thinks this can end without bloodshed. He holds out his hand and takes a step. And then there is a quick change in the pitch of the dogs’ growls, and he knows he cannot do it, and that this is the moment, brief as a heartbeat, before the dogs attack.
But now Lurcher is on his feet. He barks sharply at the three hounds, and they are on him in the instant. One of them has Lurcher’s muzzle between his jaws before Lurcher can pull back. Another sinks a bite into his shoulder, to bring him down that way, while the third attacks his hindquarters.
There is nothing Thomas can do unless he is to kill all three hounds.
So he draws his own knife and slashes at the nearest one. His blade tugs through the flaps of loose skin and the thick pelt, and he is disgusted by it, by the warmth of the blood over his wrists, but the dog dies with a choking, splashy yelp. John Stump is in quickly, too, with his knife, cutting at the third dog, but the second is crushing Lurcher’s pointed muzzle in those powerful jaws and the noise is hideous and Lurcher’s whines are piteous enough to stir stone. Thomas stabs and stabs at the broad-faced alaunt, but it will not let go, and he kicks at it until his foot is half-broken, but the dog seems only to intensify its grip in its death throes.
And now Borthwick has shoved Katherine aside, sending her staggering with a blow, and he is coming at Thomas with his own knife drawn and it is hard to see any other way that this will end other than one of them lying dead.
Thomas catches Borthwick’s wrist. Borthwick may have used a bow in the past, but not recently, and he has no strength in his arms compared to Thomas, who can still bend a bow to loose a heavy arrow over three hundred paces, and Thomas turns the man’s knife away with his right hand and punches him in the throat with his left fist. Borthwick’s knife goes spinning and his legs give out and his stocky body crashes to the floor among the toppled stools and the bodies and blood of the dead and dying dogs.
And now Rufus, who has been too shocked to move, begins to shriek.
Katherine drags herself up from the floor and over to him. A bruise is forming on her cheek and her hands are covered in soot and blood, and seeing her Rufus screams all the louder, but she pushes his hands away and gathers his small body to hers; she buries his head against her breast and hurries him outside into the darkness away from the sight of the blood and the three dead alaunts and Lurcher’s whimpering death throes.
When it is over they stand looking at one another, Thomas and John Stump.
‘Christ,’ Thomas says. He has blood all over his hands, all over his clothes. It is all over John Stump, too, and the dogs.
Thomas kneels next to Lurcher. The hounds have torn him apart, but he raises his eyes one last time to look up at Thomas, and Thomas reads apology in those eyes, and then he does what he must.
When it is over, and the dog is quiet, John says:
‘Christ above, Thomas, what in God’s name are we to do now?’
3
Mass for Sir John’s Month’s Mind falls in the week after Pentecost, and is a solemn, and crowded, affair. By the time the bell has stopped its summons, the little church is crowded beyond overflowing, with men and women pressed shoulder to shoulder against the fresh plastered walls, and there are many more outside. Lord Hastings has come, stopping on his way north with a retinue of over 150 men, all of them carrying polearms, even the archers, including the man who had been there to save Katherine’s life after she had been dragged only half-alive from under the rubble of Bamburgh Castle’s eastward gatehouse.
‘So this is him, eh?’ he’d said when he first saw Rufus. ‘Reckon the shock of his birth must keep his hair on end like that.’
The man – his name is John Brunt – stood as Rufus’s godfather when the boy was born, and today – now – he has brought with him a gift for his godson: a small longbow of butter-yellow yew and a linen bag of twelve tiny arrows with blunts for heads. They are for a boy of ten perhaps and when Rufus is given it, he grounds one end of the bow and holds it at arm’s length, and it is nearly twice his height, and he studies it in solemn silence.
‘You’ll grow into it,’ John Brunt supposes.
Thomas thanks him, and Katherine manages a faint, awkward smile. Rufus says nothing. There is silence, with all four standing in a small knot in the thin spring sunshine, and Katherine does not know what to say.
After a while John Brunt says: ‘Doesn’t say much, does he?’
Thomas shakes his head and mumbles some vague apology.
Rufus has not spoken since the night those dogs were killed. When it had happened Katherine had taken him in her arms and bundled him out of the hall into the dark, towards their own home, all the while feeling his whole hot little body struggling against her, his palms pushing and his little feet in their leather shoes kicking at her. He had been rigid with terror and his limbs did not soften until long after she lit a second rush lamp from the dot of the first’s dying ember, when finally his little bones melted with fatigue, and he allowed her to hold him, and was still. But he would not sleep. He lay awake, staring at her wide-eyed in the rush’s dim light, his sombre gaze never leaving her, not for an instant.
‘All is well, Rufus,’ she murmured. ‘Look. There is nothing here. Nothing to fear.’
But as she spoke, she could feel tears well in her eyes, and she knew that she had brought the violence with her, that she was to blame.
And when at last Thomas came, smelling of blood and ash and turned earth, the boy whimpered and pushed her away again, and since then he has said not one word, only watched them both with eyes that are almost violet in colour, smudged and ringed with exhaustion, and every time she meets his gaze, she feels herself falling.
When Rufus was born, in a welter of blood in a tent beyond the walls of Bamburgh Castle, it turned out he was the second in a pair of twins. The midwife whom Thomas and Jack had found among the camp followers had come with honey and rose water, and other unguents that Sir John Fakenham paid for, and she had delivered the first of the twins – a girl – stillborn, and they had thought that was that, and miserable tears were shed, but Katherine continued bleeding after the birth, and when the midwife tried to staunch the flow, she discovered there was another child within.
This was Rufus, who had been born moments later, very slack, very small, and there was a gasp of laughter when they saw how red his hair was. He was given no chance of life, of course, and nor was Katherine, and because the priest was there already, the boy was swiftly baptised with John Brunt standing as godfather, and then when he was still alive that evening, a wet nurse was found who was
not a prostitute and who would take the red-haired child to her, and so while Katherine lay more dead than alive on Sir John’s sheepskins, with Matthew Mayhew spoon-feeding her strong-tasting liquids, Rufus had suckled on the girl’s breast and together, miraculously, at the end of that first week, they were both still alive.
When eventually they had brought her Rufus, she too was shocked to see the red hair poking from around his linens. He had filled out a little by then, and was pink, and full, and loosely swaddled. They’d placed him on her, and she’d held her breath, so anxious and afraid, but then he’d wriggled, and she’d grabbed him in case he fell, and then she’d kept her hands around him, expecting she knew not what, and had looked down at him, and then he’d opened those dark violet eyes and for a long moment they’d gazed at one another, and she’d felt something give in her, something soften and subside, and she’d felt her limbs glow and then melt and she’d thought this was how it would be forever. Rufus had seemed to burrow into her, to nestle, not just physically but mentally, spiritually, and she’d looked up at them, at Thomas, at Mayhew, and at the midwife and the wet nurse standing there, looming over her, and she’d been unable to stop the tears that broke from within her without restraint, as if from a spring, and she had felt her chin wobbling, and her mouth falling open, and for a long while she was physically helpless with love for this parcel of hot, odd-smelling, linen-wrapped flesh that was her son.
So now she holds him tight, while Thomas thanks John Brunt on Rufus’s behalf again, and John Brunt looks from Thomas to Katherine and then back to Rufus. He senses something is awry and so does not box the boy’s ears, as he ordinarily might, for his lack of manners.
‘Well,’ he says awkwardly, and he moves to pat Rufus on the head with a meaty palm, but Rufus cowers and his eyes have become wide again and Katherine bends to him and gathers him to her, and she murmurs vaguely soothing words to the boy while Thomas takes John Brunt by the arm and turns him, and leads him away, mumbling more apology, saying something in praise of the bow, and Katherine is left with Rufus and his bow and his glistening eyes and she feels bilious with guilt.
After the ceremony for Sir John’s Month’s Mind, there is to be a meal served in the hall. Forty are to sit, and be served on boards hired from Lincoln. There will be cinnamon soup, and then roasted lamb, duckling and spring chickens all served on one dish. Then there is to be crane and peacock roasted in a pepper sauce, then crayfish in a jelly of pounded eel, followed by a sweet pudding of ground almonds, eggs and milk.
Lord Hastings sits on the raised table, and next to him Isabella, and on either side one of her sons. Neither Katherine nor Thomas is invited to sit. They lost that opportunity the night Thomas killed Isabella’s sons’ hounds. But they are invited within to stand and watch the meal being eaten. And so they do, with Rufus puzzled between, watching in silence while the cloths (hired) are laid by the stewards (hired) and the bread is cut by two young men of Lord Hastings’s household, and the dishes (hired) are brought in by more servants (also hired) and laid out on the boards among Sir John’s two prized salt cellars and hired goblets and the beeswax candles that are lit though it is bright daylight without, and a steward passes out spoons, and while two of Isabella’s nephews who have been hurriedly taught how to carve set to on the roasted meats, Isabella, in midnight velvets, watches nervously, hopefully, while her sons are tetchy and impatient, trying to make it clear to all, and especially King Edward’s Chamberlain, that they are used to better things than this.
Lord Hastings meanwhile, sits and watches neutrally, leaning back to let the servants do their work, and it is as if he has no opinion on the proceedings one way or the other, and is only grateful to be fed.
He is modestly dressed, in a dark coat, with blue hose and moderately piked shoes, and though his hat is of damask, or some other expensive cloth, it is restrained enough in design, and he wears only three rings on his fingers, and he does not seem to have changed very much since Katherine last saw him after the siege of Bamburgh Castle. He is a little better padded, she supposes, and there is a hint of grey at the temples, but he remains bright-eyed, and his gaze roves the room, settling on such pretty faces as there are, and of course he looks at her, and he flits past; then he stops, and returns, and stares, and she can see his mind at work. It takes him a moment to recognise her, but even then, it is not absolutely clear exactly whom he thinks he is looking at.
Is it Lady Margaret Cornford he thinks he sees? The woman whom he helped in Hereford all those years ago? But she is surely dead, no? In that case it can only be – can only sensibly be – Katherine Everingham, whom he saw briefly, and in very different circumstances, after the fall of Bamburgh nearly five years ago, the wife of Thomas Everingham, a relatively humble archer whom he once employed as a vintenar to lead his archers at Towton, but who has the habit of appearing at opportune moments, and who has, for one reason or another, come to assume a distant, odd, talismanic importance not only to him, but also to King Edward. Or is she someone else? Another of the many women Hastings is rumoured to have – as Jack would say – ploughed?
She watches his gaze flick to those around her, seeking some context and finding Thomas, and now he knows exactly where to place her, and he raises his finger, as if he has just remembered something, and instantly a floppy-haired boy is at his shoulder; Hastings turns to him and the boy bends his head and Hastings whispers something, and after a moment the boy nods and looks up and over at either Thomas or her, she cannot be sure which, and then Hastings is interrupted by a polite question from Isabella and he turns to her and answers and the boy takes a step back and that, for the moment, is that.
The meal passes slowly. Though wine is poured, and the servants are quick and efficient, and though it is understood everyone is gathered to celebrate Sir John’s life as one that was well lived, if touched by tragedy, no one is yet in the temper for jollity, and despite the efforts and preparations that have been made, the atmosphere remains tentative, as if all are waiting to see what will happen next.
When Isabella returned from Fotheringhay with her two sons and Jack, Jack had been incredulous.
‘You did what?’ he asked. ‘You killed them? You killed those hounds? No! Each one was worth more than you, Thomas, and twice your value, John. By Christ. What will William say? He will have you hanged. Both of you.’
Had Thomas been another man, Isabella’s two sons might well have tried to have him hanged, or to have killed him there and then where he stood, but they are not fools. He is a big man, handy with all sorts of tools that might be turned into weapons, and they know he has a pollaxe and a mighty great bow resting on pegs hammered into one of the beams of his house, and so, Katherine supposes, they may count themselves lucky that Isabella has stayed their hands, and they have not been forced to try to exact revenge yet.
But it is a ‘yet’ and while Thomas has tried to apologise and explain, even to pay some sort of recompense (though he can ill afford it), Isabella has told him he must not seek her sons’ company, and she has instructed them not to seek his, and she has said that it will be she, and she alone, with the help of God, who will decide what is to be done, and when it is to be done. She will communicate her decision, she has said, once Sir John’s Month’s Mind is out of the way.
But for Katherine the truth is obvious. They cannot stay. They must be on their way. She has been salting things away – both literally and metaphorically – for the journey to come, just as she has done in uncertain times past: a joint of pork in a barrel of grey salt, two dozen tenterhooks in a kidskin pouch that will do as a purse, a half-dozen needles, two lengths of still-green oak, a few yards of good thick linen with one rolled edge. A spare shoe. It is pathetic. She knows that. But it is all she can do, for she cannot even begin to imagine where this journey will take them.
When the meal is cleared there are wafers sweetened with honey for the guests and jugs of hippocras are brought in and poured and there are three hired men to play a tune that
begins mournfully but changes to something more cheerful as it proceeds, and by now cheeks are at last becoming rosy with drink, and the buzz of conversation rises with the noise of the rebec and pipes and a drum that has small cymbals attached so that when it is hit, the air seems to shimmer. The musicians’ leader sings a song about St George and then one about the arrival of summer and those standing in the hall start clapping in time, and then stamping, and soon the garlands and greenery they have hung to decorate the room are unsteady with the rhythm, too, and the footfall of the crowd releases the scent of meadowsweet and violets that have been strewn among the rushes.
It is late afternoon when dinner ends. Then the priest says grace and after it they all shuffle out of the hall and emerge blinking into the courtyard in the sunlight to find Hastings’s men ready and waiting to take to the road, among them John Brunt, waiting to say goodbye to his godson.
‘Why are you travelling with so many men?’ Katherine wonders aloud.
They are all mounted, mostly old soldiers in Hastings’s colours, with the black bull badge, all well padded and well armed, with steel helmets, bows nocked and arrow bags loosely tied.
‘There has been more trouble,’ John Brunt says. ‘Up north. And hereabouts, too.’
Katherine looks at him.
‘What sort of trouble?’
He rolls his eyes, but looks grim.
‘Of the old sort,’ he says. ‘But so far it is all rumours and no one is sure what’s true and what’s falsely reported. Old King Henry’s retainers in Wales are said to be gathering for some fresh assault, and it is said the Earl of Warwick is in Yorkshire, raising his army to come and winkle out King Edward’s queen’s brother, whom he has come to hate for some slight. So now King Edward does not ride out without a guard of two hundred or more, and Lord Hastings the same.’
‘Say that again?’ Katherine asks. ‘The Earl of Warwick is raising an army against the Queen’s brother?’
Divided Souls Page 3
