Divided Souls

by Toby Clements

  When she does, she leads her back into the hall, where Isabella takes her seat in the gloom by a cold fire, and then fetches out a purse that she has hidden under the chair. It looks full. She tells Katherine that the breviary her sons sold has been much on her mind recently, and that reading it again will take her back to happier times. She asks Katherine if she will take the money and go back to Lincoln for her, and perhaps buy back the breviary. Katherine does not remind Isabella that she cannot read, for her eyesight is so bad, because Katherine can understand it is not the actual reading of the breviary that will bring her comfort so much as merely having it in her hands. But she does remind her that the stationer promised only to keep the breviary until the Feast of the Seven Sleepers, now a week past.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ Isabella mews. ‘I feel God will have kept it for me.’

  She holds out the purse and, after a moment, Katherine takes it.

  ‘You will not tell my sons?’ she asks. ‘I should not like them to know that I know they have deceived me.’

  It is heartbreaking, but when she says this Isabella starts to weep, and Katherine cannot stand another moment of it. She leaves Rufus with Liz and rides alone, wrapped in an old travelling cloak, sitting astride the saddle, and she goes fast. She is so indignant on Isabella’s behalf that she does not pause to ask for news from any of those she passes, but still, when she gets to Lincoln the stationer is not there.

  ‘Where is he?’ she asks the man at the next stall, fat-faced, selling bee-related products for which none have need.

  ‘He is gone to London,’ the man tells her. ‘To appeal his father’s arrest.’

  ‘Arrest?’

  The man shrugs.

  ‘No one knows,’ he says.

  She walks her horse back along towards the arch of the north gate. Whatever can it mean? Can it possibly be something to do with this bloodhound of Hastings’s? She still cannot see that a connection can be made between the stationer who once saw the ledger – and did not, as far as she can remember, even touch it – and her and Thomas. She is assailed by fears though. The coincidence, it is too great.

  She is also hungry, she realises, and along the street there are one or two food stalls; she stops for buttered peascod and ale and she sits and eats and drinks from the suspiciously weighted mug and then ambles along past a shop above which hangs a sign cut into the shape of a double-handed ewer. An apothecary. Its hatch is down, and it’s dark within but light enough to see the rows of earthenware jars and stoppered bottles. The apothecary – elderly, with a very round face topped by a curiously small hat and tailed by a thin pointed beard – is crumbling something into a powder with long strong fingers.

  ‘Dried fox lung,’ he tells her. ‘Good for breathing problems. What can I do for you?’

  He has oil of roses, yes. He has gall of a boar, yes. He has the universal salve for all wounds, made up from the exact number of different ingredients as there were apostles, and he lets her smell the jar and it takes her floating straight back to the pardoner, who once dressed a wound in Thomas’s head with something just like this, and may even have bought it from this man all those years ago. He has poppy seed and henbane, and he has a dwale that he swears will render a man senseless for a week with no long-term harm.

  But it all costs money.

  She weighs it up, and then takes out the purse hidden under her dress and passes over the coins. She feels curiously hot and breathless, doing something she knows is wrong.

  ‘May God forgive me,’ she murmurs.

  The apothecary wraps the goods in tiny slips of paper and hands her a small earthenware jar sealed with wax. He asks what her master is attempting and without bothering to correct him she tells him about Isabella’s eyes. He tries to sell her a cream that has come from Russia that is made up of rotting wolves’ carcasses.

  ‘Does it work?’ she asks.

  ‘It is yet to be proven,’ he admits.

  She does not take it. She does take a small knife though, honed so that it cuts through linen even when it is lying in a heap.

  ‘Better than a thorn,’ he tells her. ‘And you will need a needle. This one. It is silver.’

  And almost ruinously expensive, but she buys it anyway, and the small flask of a tincture of henbane which he also presses on her, and by the end of it, she has very little change left from the money that Isabella gave her, and so she rides home with her heart thumping against her ribcage. When she gets there, she is, for once, pleased to see Isabella’s sons are there by the old woman’s side, because it means Isabella cannot ask her for the money or the breviary. The atmosphere is tense though. No words are said.

  ‘They’ve had another row,’ Liz tells her. She is washing Rufus in a bath of warmed water, using the last of the black soap they took north and brought back. ‘They want her to marry some new husband.’

  ‘But she is an avowess!’

  ‘They say she can break the vow in a moment.’

  ‘But why, though?’

  ‘Something to do with getting on in the world. You know what they’re like.’

  ‘But what would a husband get out of marrying her?’

  ‘To sell the place and take the money, I expect.’

  ‘And he would be happy with – with an old blind woman?’ Katherine wonders.

  ‘They said many a man prefers it that way.’

  Christ, Katherine thinks, they are giving their mother away like an old ewe. But how valuable is an old ewe? Not very.

  She tells Liz about the dwale and the oil of roses.

  ‘Blood of Christ, you are not serious! You?’

  Katherine lowers her voice and tells her that she has cut many a patient, saved hundreds of lives.

  ‘But an eyeball? You ever cut one of them?’

  She admits she has not.

  ‘But that is no reason not to.’

  So she does, the next day, when William and Robert and Borthwick and the falconer have left to go hunting for the day.

  ‘You are not even going to tell her?’ Liz asks.

  ‘It will be easier that way,’ Katherine assures her. ‘And it will be over before she knows it. No longer than saying the paternoster.’

  And she is right, she thinks, since Isabella will put up all sorts of reasons why she should not be cured of this. She will say her blindness is sent by God, that the discs that block her sight are a discharge from an impure soul, and that prayer and fasting are the ways to remedy them, and if they are not gone yet, it is only because she has not prayed or fasted enough. Katherine can put the dwale in her ale. It is as simple as that. Liz is still doubtful, but only, it turns out, because putting it in the ale is so easy, since Isabella is blind.

  ‘Hardly seems fair,’ she says.

  They sit with Isabella until her head nods. Liz catches her as she slides from the settle.

  ‘Like a bag of sticks,’ Liz says.

  For a moment Katherine feels almost faint with it all. She is in a sort of heightened state: colours are brighter, sounds sharper. But then she is gripped by a sense of purpose. Suddenly she knows what to do, and is doubtless.

  Together they lift Isabella’s frail old body on to the board and carry her out into the yard. It is the perfect day for it: the sun is bright, and there is no wind. They put the board on the logs where Sir John used to play chess. It is a little low for a table, but Isabella looks comfortable.

  ‘Is she dead?’ Rufus asks.

  Katherine looks at her son. May God forgive me, she thinks, for she had forgotten about him.

  ‘No,’ she tells him. Though she does remember to put the bowl of water on her chest, so that she can at least see if she still breathes.

  He asks what they are doing.

  ‘We are saving Isabella’s eyes,’ she says. ‘So she can see properly again.’

  Rufus accepts this as if she’d said they were mending a basket.

  ‘She will like that,’ he says. ‘Will there be any blood?’

  ‘No.’ />
  He comes over to watch.

  ‘Don’t touch anything,’ Katherine tells him, gesturing to him to stand back from the pot of rose oil and the wine, and the knife and the needle she has laid out on a strip of clean linen. Isabella lies on her back, her mouth open, the loose skin of her face sloughing back towards her ears. Her teeth are long and yellow and she looks impossibly old and vulnerable.

  ‘How shall we do this?’ Liz asks.

  In fact, it is quite easy.

  Katherine stands at the end of the board above Isabella’s head and leans over her, with her shadow falling across her face. Her hands are slippery with the oil and she wipes them on clean linen. Then she takes up the knife.

  ‘Are you sure, Kate?’ Liz asks.

  And there is a moment now, when it is not too late.

  But Katherine nods.

  ‘I am,’ she says.

  ‘Maybe she wouldn’t want you to do it?’ Liz says. ‘Don’t you think it is more – up to her to decide? It is wrong to cure someone like this if they believe their infliction is heaven-sent. You are cutting His work out.’

  Katherine pauses. The knife is perhaps three inches from Isabella’s closed right eye. The fingers of Katherine’s left hand are curled in a soft pinch and she knows exactly what they will do and how they will do it and how it will feel as they cut the soft skin of the eye. But Liz’s words have made her look up.

  What is she doing?

  ‘It is like you are being God,’ Liz tells her.

  Katherine looks down at Isabella lying peacefully in the sun and she is assailed by doubt. What if Liz is right? She straightens. Her knife is held in a steady hand and she looks at Liz and thinks: No. I can do this. I can make her see again. It will be a miracle, but also not a miracle.

  She takes the tincture the apothecary sold her, and she unseals the jar and then, bending over Liz, she peels back first her right eyelid. She watches the murky circle in the middle of the blue circle shrink to a tiny pinprick. So she does as the apothecary advised, and she taps a drop of the tincture of henbane from the puckered mouth of the jar on to the sightless ball of Isabella’s eye. When the drop lands, there is a slight resistance on the lid, as if Isabella were trying to blink. Katherine does the same with the other eye. It feels no less strange to be rummaging among such privacies. She stands back.

  ‘Is that it?’ Liz asks.

  ‘No,’ Katherine tells her. ‘We must wait for as long as it takes to say an Ave.’

  A moment later she checks on the eye, peeling back the lid, and is astonished at what she sees. The dark circle at its centre has become enormous and the blue of the eye is now rendered a tiny thin rim around it. And there, in its dark centre, is the cataract in full view. It looks like a chalky pebble, or very fine ladies’ button.

  Katherine reaches for the needle.

  ‘Oh God,’ Liz says, unable to look at this.

  For some reason Katherine is pleased to find Liz so squeamish.

  She washes the needle in the warm wine and lubricates it in the rose oil. Then she turns and leans over Isabella from the side, so close she can see her breath stirring the fine down on the old woman’s cheek, and her hand is surprisingly steady, given how fast her heart is beating,

  ‘Hold her eyelid,’ she asks Liz. ‘Open, like this.’

  Liz is wary but does so. Then Katherine steels herself, takes the needle and eases it through the front of the eye, just inside the slender rim of blue. It is like pushing the needle through the skin of a grape, or a ripe medlar, and within, under this resistant cover, the pulp is a thick liquid. She was fearful there might be blood but there is none. Isabella surprises her by snoring suddenly but then settles back.

  Katherine advances the needle until she can feel its tip against the solid, opaque lens. She gives a tentative push and the lens recedes but then returns as she eases the pressure. She advances the needle again, now pushing firmly at the edge of the lens where it is attached. She withdraws the needle, re-angles it, and pushes in a similar manner at the other side of the lens. Then, once again, she pushes at the middle of that milky ball; she pushes firmly, and suddenly, to her delight, the lens pops into the back of the eye and disappears down behind the lower rim of the hole which now appears black.

  Katherine very slowly withdraws the needle. She takes a drop of the rose oil and moistens the eyeball, then she lets the lid close.

  She looks up. And breathes.

  ‘That’s it?’ Liz asks.

  ‘For that one,’ she says.

  ‘And it’s worked?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Liz says, and then straightens because they can hear hoof beats approaching on the track beyond, and a moment later William and Robert return, Borthwick and the falconer trailing behind. The four men stop, and stand shoulder to shoulder, staring at them in silence.

  15

  Where is he? Where is he?

  ‘Flood! Flood, you bloody fool!’

  But if there is a sign of him, it is impossible to see. Flood has snatched up his pollaxe and gone running down the hill with the rest of Pembroke’s men and now here is Thomas, standing at the top of this hill, sweating from his exertions, poorly armed and in too little plate, making himself a conspicuous target for any enterprising bowman from the fields beyond the river or at the bottom of the hill.

  ‘We have to go down,’ he tells Brunt.

  ‘Not on your life,’ Brunt tells him.

  They are none of them harnessed for this kind of mêlée. Archers’ jacks and wool hose are almost useless where there are hammers and daggers and bills.

  ‘Leave him,’ O’Driscoll advises. ‘Is he not having the time of his life?’

  ‘I promised Hastings,’ Thomas tells them.

  ‘He’d understand.’ Caldwell is sure. ‘And if he wanted us to go down there and fight it out, he’d’ve given us more than these.’ He raps his knuckles on his sallet.

  Thomas is not sure. He doesn’t want to go down there: that is for sure. He turns and together they watch the fight at the bottom of the hill. The sun is coming up and the mist is sliding back into the river and their view is becoming even clearer. By the looks of it, it is very close between the two sides, but these things are hard to judge. Pembroke did the right thing, coming off the hill when he did, Thomas thinks. He’s neutered Robin of Redesdale’s bowmen, who would have massacred them had they stayed up here, and he’s taken advantage of impetus as his men have come charging down the hill to crash into Redesdale’s line.

  Still, Thomas finds himself collecting all his gear together, and he sees the others have done likewise. If the battle turns against Pembroke, they must be away and fast.

  But what of Flood?

  ‘Can you see him?’ he asks.

  It is just not possible. There is a mob of men, backs turned, the dark lines of their weapons rising and falling, hacking and chopping at the other mob of men, faces towards them but hidden by visors, the dark lines of their weapons cross-hatching with those of Pembroke’s men. You cannot see any individual fight, or any particular combat: it is all one grinding crash, and awful when you think about what the men in those ranks are facing, and what they are doing. The line wavers, bends and buckles. Wounded men drop out of the back and wheel away clutching parts of their bodies: faces mostly. Others need to be dragged out of the fray, while others are simply left where they lie, perhaps already dead.

  Thomas sees a group of Redesdale’s men running along behind the backs of their own men. There are perhaps thirty of them – someone’s household – and they are coming to try to flank Pembroke’s line below where he and Brunt are standing. The fight is so close that something like this will tip it irreversibly in Redesdale’s favour. And there! There he is! Flood! Thomas is sure of it. He is on the right flank. Precisely where these thirty men are now aiming their weapons.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ Thomas says. ‘Come on!’

  He starts down the hill, but then stops and puts his pollaxe aside
. He snatches up an arrow that one of Robin of Redesdale’s bowmen sent over, nocks it and takes careful aim with the first lift of his bow, then looses it with the second, sending the arrow shaft slicing down the hill, a foot above Flood’s head. It cracks into the man facing him, and knocks him reeling.

  ‘Ha!’ Brunt says. ‘You are his guardian angel.’

  He too picks up an arrow and sends it down.

  ‘Jesus, he’s an idiot, that boy,’ O’Driscoll says, ‘and he’ll get us all killed, but you’ve got to love him, have you not?’

  Until he gets us all killed, Thomas thinks.

  But he is grateful the others have come. He scavenges three more arrow shafts and slides them in his belt behind his back. Down he goes, through the long grass. The smell of men fighting drifts to him: the metallic tang of blood and the onion smell of sweat and then the vinegar they use to clean their plate, and the wet wool and the chipped steel and the low faecal waft. Thank God they do not have—

  The first gun erupts with a stilling boom. A sharp stab of smoke in the ranks and a sudden bellying of the line away. In that pulse of nothing as men pause in their thrashing of one another Thomas hears the first roars of pain. Then the noise resumes, like a heavy surf breaking on pebbles. He finds another arrow, nocks and looses it. Flood is only fifty paces away, waving that pollaxe, trying to find someone to hit. Thomas stops and readies himself for the men coming around the side when an arrow buzzes past his nose, coming from the bowmen in the trees to their right.

  ‘Christ’s blood!’ He’d forgotten about them.

  Then a gun’s ball fired from the trees catches O’Driscoll and flips him tumbling across the grass. He lies face down, as if he’s been rubbed in the dirt, and he thrashes and twitches, and they stop to stare at him a moment, but there’s nothing to be done.

  Brunt and Caldwell turn and run, back up the hill.