Divided Souls

by Toby Clements

John Brunt cannot help but smile.

  ‘You are as if cloistered up here, aren’t you? You hear of nothing.’

  ‘But the Earl of Warwick?’ Thomas says. ‘He is King Edward’s right-hand man.’

  ‘He was King Edward’s right-hand man,’ Brunt agrees. ‘But not now. They’ve fallen foul of one another on divers matters. You know what they are like, these gentles. They spend such moments they are not out hunting or practising in the tilt yard squabbling over lands in distant parts of the country, or fighting over who their sons and daughters will marry. The energy they have! It is all the sugar, and the spiced wine. It makes them hot.’

  At that moment the floppy-haired boy appears, sent from Lord Hastings. He bears a family resemblance to Hastings, and shares some of his mannerisms, too. He tells Thomas that Hastings would like to have a word with him, were he to have time to spare, before they make their leave. It is as if he has a choice.

  Thomas looks to Katherine.

  ‘What does he want, I wonder?’ he asks.

  Katherine says nothing. She feels a strange creeping warmth spreading through her, a strange sort of thrill, as if something is happening, and she wonders if this is one of those moments she’ll look back on and think that was it: the moment after which nothing was ever the same again.

  ‘My wife will come as well,’ Thomas says, making up his mind, as if he too recognises the moment, and the boy shrugs. Nettie arrives to take Rufus to see if there is something he might like to eat among the leftovers, and he takes her hand and leaves with a long sombre look over his shoulder, as if trying to fix his mother in his mind’s eye, so that he remembers her exactly like this.

  Hastings is standing a slight step back from Isabella’s two sons, both of whom are talking and languidly gesturing, the feathers in their caps swaying in time. One of the boys is wearing thin chains on his legs to hold the points of his shoes in place, curled halfway up his shin. Hastings has changed back into riding boots, and he cuts a more modest figure, though on his saddle rests a pale fur-lined travelling cloak. All three turn to look at Katherine and Thomas as they approach, each with different expressions.

  ‘My lord,’ Thomas says. ‘May God give you good day.’

  ‘And you too, Master Everingham.’ Hastings smiles. ‘You too, Mistress Everingham. It has been some time since we last met!’

  It is the first time either has been addressed so respectfully, and by such a man as Lord Hastings; it makes the two brothers – bearded and beardless – flinch, and their suspicions are made worse when Hastings asks them if they will step back and let him have a moment with his old friend and brother-in-arms, with whom he has shared an adventure or two, and his wife, whom he describes as trusty and right well beloved. The two brothers have no option, but remain resenting and watchful.

  ‘Walk with me, Thomas, please, and you too, Mistress Everingham,’ Hastings says. ‘Lunch was filling, and I do not wish to sit astride a horse with a belly full of meat, however delicious it was on the first time of passing. Please, if you have a moment, show me the estate.’

  He paces slowly, a tall man, almost as tall as Thomas, and nearly as broad, though without the archer’s heft, and he remains always elegant as he saunters, hands behind back, through the long shadows thrown by the hornbeams, noting with interest the improvements Isabella and Sir John have undertaken to the estate, delighting in the little details: the chimneystack with its straight lines and clean stones; a new hovel in which green ash logs season; Thomas and Katherine’s house with its low eaves.

  ‘I have an idea for a home of my own,’ Hastings says. ‘New built and not of stone, but of brick, such as they use in Flanders.’

  ‘Flanders!’ Thomas says.

  Katherine wonders what kind of house Hastings has in mind that might in any way resemble their own, built over the last three years by Thomas with help from whoever, with whatever he has found, whenever there has been time.

  After that they talk of the weather, and the prospect of the rain that is perhaps to come later that day, and the best road to Doncaster, where Hastings is hoping to spend the night, and Thomas is gruff but helpful while they circle the point. Katherine has forgotten how charming Hastings can be. His face is very mobile and his teeth oddly white: they flash when he smiles; he bends his head as all tall men do when they listen to small women, and his eyes flit with pleasure from one thing to the next. He is immaculately shaved, too, with indoor skin, and he wears a dark velvet collar, emblazoned with a flaming white rose built up in gold and silver thread with a pearl as its heart, fat as a thumbnail. After a while he engineers a moment’s awkward silence, then breaks it.

  ‘So, Thomas,’ he says. ‘As you know I have many more miles of road today, and so I will be brief.’

  Thomas grunts his assent.

  ‘Lady Fakenham,’ Hastings starts. ‘She is in a difficult position. As you must know her sons have been pressing her to have you all turfed off her land, which she says she has resisted out of goodwill towards yourselves, as well as love and loyalty to the memory of Sir John, but since you killed their hounds, those boys have been pressing her harder yet, and want proper justice – as they see it – and so putting you off the land is now the very least of the punishments they are urging, and she feels she cannot further resist their demands.’

  The shock is not unexpected, of course, but even so it comes like a punch. Or something more solid: like the swing of one of the oxen’s heads perhaps, catching you in the guts while you are trying to place a harness over its neck. Katherine feels a familiar slick of fear, dank and almost odorous, and, despite the sunshine, despite the songs of the linnets and the yellowhammers in the branches and the distant bleat of a newborn lamb in search of its dam, she clutches her cloak and pulls it tight around her, for she is remembering what it is like to be out on the road at dusk, with one shoe, little food, and no prospect of shelter for the nights to come.

  Thomas too is aghast: his face pale, his cheekbones somehow sunk, his eyes very round.

  ‘She cannot,’ he says, his voice more breath than sound.

  Hastings dismisses that objection with a wave, the rough sympathy of someone who has had to endure similar setbacks, and he walks on, down the track towards the church, leaving them to follow. Katherine sees little point in it now, and wonders if their time might be best spent packing up their scant belongings as John Stump has always said they’d have to one day anyway, before making their way wherever it is they might.

  Instead, though, they walk on to rejoin Hastings in silence, appearing at each shoulder, not knowing where to start.

  ‘When was the last time I saw you, Thomas?’ Hastings asks after a moment, just as if this has anything to do with it.

  Thomas has to drag his thoughts back from the dark.

  ‘It was after Bamburgh fell,’ he says.

  ‘And before that?’

  Thomas turns his mouth down at the edges.

  ‘Towton Field,’ he admits.

  Hastings nods.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘You were leading men, then, weren’t you?’

  Thomas shrugs. He does not give a damn about that now, Katherine can see.

  ‘And didn’t that feel good?’ Hastings goes on.

  Thomas looks at Hastings as if he is insane.

  ‘May God have mercy,’ he says. ‘No. Had it not been so cold it could have been hell itself.’

  Hastings is taken aback.

  ‘Well, it was not precisely a pleasure, Towton Field, I grant,’ he says. ‘But look, Thomas, that day, we saved the kingdom, didn’t we? Do you remember? We were there, and we did what we did, and we saved the kingdom. And we did it – we succeeded – only because of good men, men such as you.’

  ‘I could not do it again,’ Thomas says.

  Hastings frowns.

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I suppose no one would, if they did not have to. But no one is asking you to do quite that again.’

  There is a moment.

  ‘Then wha
t are you asking of us?’ Katherine cannot help interjecting.

  Hastings turns to her, and smiles.

  ‘You were always sharp, mistress,’ he says.

  And now she blushes, distracted by not quite knowing how he would know this about her.

  ‘The truth is,’ Hastings continues, all falsely confiding now, as if he has been caught out hiding some truth about which he will now be frank. ‘The truth is that we – King Edward, that is, is uneasy. You will have heard the rumours. Even here. By Christ, what am I saying? They are not rumours. They are facts. There have been riots. Up north, and in Kent, too. And the west. In Wales. Everywhere, I suppose.

  ‘Just this last year five hundred men turned up outside my lord of Warwick’s great fortress in Middleham, accoutred for war and ready to ride down to London to unseat King Edward, if only Warwick would lead them, which by the mercy of God, and for whatever other reasons of his own, he would not do. But he might have, you see? He might have. And then, Christ—’

  ‘But how is it King Edward and the Earl of Warwick are become enemies?’ Thomas asks.

  Hastings sighs as if at the beginning of a long story, and tells them of King Edward marrying his queen against the Earl of Warwick’s wishes.

  ‘Sir John was right pleased to hear King Edward had married an Englishwoman,’ Thomas says.

  ‘Yes,’ Hastings says vaguely, as if this has nothing to do with it. They are passing the sty where the red rough-backed little piglets are just now squealing and tussling.

  ‘Ha!’ Hastings says, pointing at them. ‘Look at them! They are just like us! That one: that is the Earl of Warwick. That muddy one is the Earl of Pembroke, and that one – very fine – he is Anthony Woodville, the Queen’s brother. Look at him! Sly boots!’

  ‘But what has King Edward’s marriage to do with the Earl of Warwick?’ Katherine asks.

  Hastings turns to her again, and she can see him wondering how much to tell her, how much he needs to explain.

  ‘My lord of Warwick hoped to use King Edward’s marriage to seal an alliance with France,’ he starts. ‘King Edward, however, shares a dislike of France with the mass of his subjects, but did not remind my lord of Warwick of this, and instead of just telling him he was not interested, he played along, at first to keep him quiet, I suppose, and to please him, only then he married Elizabeth, Elizabeth Grey, old John Woodville’s daughter, who is now much elevated of course, and he only told Warwick after it was blessed and consummated.’

  Why is he telling us this? Katherine wonders. But Hastings goes on.

  ‘Well,’ he shrugs. ‘It was an unwise thing to do, perhaps. It left Warwick feeling the fool, and he is not a man to enjoy such a sensation, especially before foreign princes, but Edward is Edward, just as Warwick is Warwick. Edward is the King, isn’t he? Nothing like the boy he was when Warwick first took him on. And as for the Queen – well, you have not met her yet perhaps, but she is no weak-willed thing either, and it seems to Warwick that she has spent the intervening months working to undermine him at every stage, putting her people – her brothers, sisters, mother, father – where he should have his, and though, when all is said and done, all she has been doing is what anyone would do, the fact remains that her people have supplanted his own.’

  Katherine sees Hastings is flattering them. Why, though? Why bother? What can he want from them? What can he want from Thomas? Surely he is no different from a thousand other men on whom King Edward’s Chamberlain might call?

  They are in the village now. The church is on the left, and further on the butter cross and the bake oven, and gathered around are all the cruck-built village houses from the eaves of which smoke gently sifts into the afternoon sky. Birds are loud in the trees, and somewhere a dog is barking.

  ‘No,’ Hastings says, as if they are in some conversation, ‘the truth is that things have not gone smoothly since Bamburgh fell. Back then – do you remember? – King Edward promised to live on his own income, and to take back Normandy, and whatever else was ours in France. As yet of course he has managed neither, and so people are naturally disappointed. But they have been so quick – too quick – to show it and now the land is just as lawless as ever it was in the old King’s reign. Worse perhaps, since old King Henry’s adherents are using people’s grudges – a silly tax levied by an almshouse in York, for the love of Jesus – to take to harness and ride as if they mean to rid the kingdom of its king.’

  Hastings is now pretending to be talking more to himself than to her or Thomas, Katherine sees as they stroll on, and he tells them about Lord Montagu, Warwick’s brother, who has been made the Earl of Northumberland, and is charged with keeping the peace in the north, and has so far done so.

  ‘But he is Warwick’s brother,’ Hastings repeats. ‘You understand? And now, with this schism between King Edward and Warwick, which way will he jump? If push comes to shove? He has such power up there that it is not too much to say that the fate of the kingdom turns on him and his decision. Tcha!’

  He bangs a frustrated fist on the churchyard gate, and then they enter, and walk between the stones through long green grass. Sir John lies here, in the crypt. They enter the church, where the priest is overseeing the collecting of the candles – beeswax this time, and expensive – and they stop on the worn oxblood tiles before the painting of St Christopher that Sir John commissioned, and came to see most days, even when his eyesight failed him.

  All this while Hastings talks, telling them of King Edward’s other brother, the Duke of Clarence, until it is too much even for a man with Thomas’s patience.

  ‘Is there some way – I cannot imagine how – in which we can help?’ he asks.

  And Hastings turns from the St Christopher.

  ‘Well,’ he says. ‘It is more a way in which I might be able to help you.’

  They wait.

  ‘Yes,’ Hastings goes on. ‘I have been gifted a small property, up in Ryedale, to the north of York. Called Senning. A small manor. Not – not unlike this one.’

  He gestures in the direction of the unseen hall.

  ‘At least, I believe it is so, though in truth I have never laid eyes on it. It belongs – belonged – to a man named John Appleby, who served Lord Hungerford. After Hexham he was attainted, and so lost all claim to the property. His son – also John Appleby – has been contesting the attainder but this last month was finally confirmed as unsuccessful.’

  Hastings looks slightly ashamed of himself.

  ‘And King Edward, in his generosity, has awarded the property to me. I’m told it is well set up, with its own hall, and a mill, and stables. There is a tanner, a smith, a priest and a brewer. All the essentials. Its demesne is large, mostly upland grazing, and there is some spectacular hunting to be had up there, and last year the reeve – Evans, a Welshman, though why he is there I do not know – sold eight sarplers of best-grade wool at Scarborough for thirty marks apiece.’

  Thomas, who knows about these things, murmurs appreciatively.

  ‘Crucially, though,’ Hastings continues, ‘there is an inn, with horses to hire, run by a tenant of the manor, who pays his rent on time, and it is set on the road that runs from the port of Scarborough in the east, all the way over to the town of Thirsk in the west, and after that: parts beyond.’

  There is some significance to this last piece of information that Katherine does not yet understand.

  ‘What are you saying?’ Thomas asks.

  ‘I need someone to occupy the place,’ Hastings says. ‘To keep the buildings sound. Shear the sheep. Collect up and then pay its rents.’

  ‘Us?’ Katherine asks.

  Hastings eyes her.

  ‘Why not?’ he asks.

  ‘Because . . . Because . . .’ Thomas begins. But it is clear that he can think of no good reason why not, and Katherine can see the smile blooming to fill his cheeks, irresistibly pulling his mouth up and out. His eyes shine with a hesitant, hopeful pleasure.

  Hastings nods once at the St Christopher
and then, watched by the priest and his boy, places a coin in a sconce, and turns and leads them back out of the church into the sinking sun.

  ‘What must we do in return?’ Katherine asks as they fall into step beside him.

  And Hastings arches his eyebrow at her and feigns shock.

  ‘Mistress Everingham! There is no quid pro quo. I am a devoted friend of your husband here, who has done me many favours in the past, and when I find him down on his luck, through no fault of his own, and I find I can help, I do. That is all.’

  But he is smirking.

  ‘Then why tell us all this about Lord Montagu? About the Duke of Clarence? Is that of any use if we are farming sheep and collecting rents?’

  Hastings actually snickers with pleasure.

  ‘You are too sharp, Mistress Everingham!’ he says again. ‘Too sharp! And that is why you are so perfect for what I have in mind. I have gone on too long, too indiscreetly, about such things as need not concern you, and yet knowing them might help if you were . . . if you were prepared to take over this manor and, in addition to the usual duties, if you were to act as my ears and eyes on the land? From this distance it is hard to gauge the temper of the Northern Parts, to know what weight to accord the rumours we hear. If I had someone there, someone whom I could trust to guide me – informally, as it were, someone who was not in the pay of the Earl of Warwick, well . . . You can see the help that might be.’

  ‘So we are to be spies?’ Katherine asks.

  Hastings drops the pretence.

  ‘It is hardly that,’ he says. ‘Merely keeping an eye out. Setting a boy in the inn to summon you should – should anyone of interest appear. Asking the keeper to ask a few questions of your own device, though none more probing than appropriate. Is that such a hardship, when you consider the alternative?’

  He gestures again towards the hall as they approach it, and there ahead are gathered Isabella and her two sons, and even from this distance it is possible to see the unhappy tension in Isabella’s face and the satisfaction in those of the two men.

  ‘But what are we to look for?’ Thomas asks. ‘How will we know if they are of interest, as you say?’