‘A fine, fine shot,’ King Edward calls.
They stand there a long moment. Thomas feels nothing for what he has just done. He feels none of the exultant pleasure the others seem to enjoy. All he can think of is the scene in the tower, with his friends all chained and dying in their own filth. You’d not even treat a bear like that.
‘What will happen to it?’ he asks when they are gathered around it. Its tongue is extended and blotted with dark blood, and there is moss or something growing on its antlers. It looks almost peaceful. The biggest thing Thomas has ever killed.
‘There will be the unmaking of the animals, and then the curée,’ Flood says, ‘when the best parts will go to the constable’s larder, naturally, and the rest will be given out to the men and the dogs.’
King Edward joins them. He has a costrel of wine and he offers it around.
‘A fine shot,’ he repeats.
Thomas thought it was like a butt coming at him. He could not miss. Though King Edward did, so he does not say as much.
While the hart is tied to a pole and the hounds are rounded up, King Edward asks Thomas and Flood to ride with him. The chinless priest and the two guards follow behind.
‘We shall make of this what we can,’ King Edward supposes. ‘The hunting is fine, and look: plenty for our falcons. Otherwise the castle is – what would you say? Comfortable enough?’
Flood mumbles something appreciative.
‘Yes,’ King Edward goes on, ‘he has certainly done himself well, my lord of Warwick.’
As they ride towards it, Thomas cannot take his gaze from the southeast tower.
‘There is something about it though,’ King Edward goes on, talking to himself more than to Thomas or Flood, perhaps. ‘Some odd atmosphere.’
And Flood catches Thomas’s eye. Now is the moment.
‘It is Edmund Riven, sir,’ Thomas says. ‘The man with the missing eye.’
King Edward looks at him from under a raised eyebrow. He is a handsome man, but his mouth is very tight, and curls up at the ends, as if he is constantly suppressing a smile. There is something irritating about this: it suggests he is amused by all he sees, and that the better, more serious part of his life is lived elsewhere.
‘Ah yes,’ King Edward says. ‘Bellman was complaining of him last night.’
Flood asks why Bellman might complain of Riven.
‘Apparently my lord of Warwick has ordered him to offer this Riven every assistance, but he does not know why, or what he is up to, and as you might imagine he does not like this overmuch.’
‘He is torturing people,’ Thomas blurts. ‘He has a dying man up in that tower, and a woman, about to child, and a one-armed man he’s burned half to death, all of them chained to a wall.’
King Edward breathes out in disgust.
‘Which eye is gone?’ he asks.
‘The left,’ Thomas tells him.
He is unsurprised. ‘The philosophers tell us that the right eye offers understanding,’ he says, ‘whereas the left offers affection.’ King Edward enjoys philosophy.
‘A woman about to child?’ Flood asks.
Thomas nods.
‘What has she done?’ King Edward asks. ‘Apart from the apparent?’
‘Nothing,’ Thomas says.
‘Then – why is she shackled so?’
‘I cannot tell.’
King Edward is thoughtful. There is a growing glimmer in his eye though, as if he has seen some opportunity.
‘I will tell Bellman,’ he says. ‘He is not so bad a fellow, considering everything, and he might welcome some kind of intervention, I think. Also, a first test as to the whereabouts of his loyalties, hmmm?’
Thomas does not pretend to understand this last remark. They leave their horses at the stables in the outer bailey and cross back into the castle through the east gate. Thomas is hungry, he realises, and there is dinner in the great hall: cinnamon and milk soup, roasted rabbit, a dish of sweet spiced vegetables, a soft cheese, a hard cheese, a piece of one of the harts they have just killed and more bread and ale. Again King Edward takes the board on the dais, sitting next to Bellman, and Thomas is aware of glances his way, and then heads bent together.
Afterwards Bellman leaves the hall and King Edward raises his eyebrows, but nothing then happens and Thomas is left pacing until Flood asks for help writing a letter to his wife. She cannot read, Flood tells him, and, in all honesty, Flood can hardly write, so Thomas draws him a picture of a tiny, extravagantly handsome knight in harness on a horse.
‘Oh, she will like that!’ Flood says. ‘You are as good as any monk I ever knew.’
‘How will you get it to her?’ Thomas asks. He has assumed communication with the outside world would be limited. Flood tells him he has found a company-starved white monk who comes and goes from nearby Jervaulx monastery, and who will happily bring and take anything, in return for alms and conversation. So Thomas writes a letter to Katherine at Marton, telling her where he is and what has happened. He leaves the letter with Flood and he borrows some blunts from the sergeant and spends the rest of the afternoon in the butts, stripped down to his hose and pourpoint. He just does not know what else to do, and every so often his gaze slides across the castle walls to where the guard watches him from the battlements by that southeast tower. Katherine would know what to do next. Yes. She would know.
And how long has John got before the rot kills him?
And Nettie? Surely she cannot have long to go?
He sends his arrows singing down the range thumping into the dampened earth mounds a hundred paces away. When he has shot twenty-four arrows, he walks down and collects them. He does it time and time again. It is a way of controlling his ferocity, he knows, and he wonders if he should not be aiming this temper elsewhere?
After a while others come out to join him, and they lend him a proper bow. Spending time in their company, he finds they are men not unlike many he has known before; but each wishes he were with the rest of Warwick’s men in the south, where they believe there is a chance of loot. There is talk of how Lord Montagu’s men once stumbled upon a fortune, and what a good man he was for letting them share it out among themselves, without taking any for himself. They imagine his brother the Earl of Warwick might do the same, should such an opportunity arise, for he is fond of gestures.
Thomas asks them about Riven.
One of them crosses himself.
‘Nasty, nasty piece of work,’ he says.
‘Don’t get on the wrong side of him,’ another laughs. ‘He is like to have that giant of his sodomise you to death.’
They discuss the giant and agree that he is simple, and from Ireland, though there is no evidence for this.
‘He is like one of those boarhounds that never leave their master’s side,’ one says.
‘Never says a word,’ another adds. ‘Just grunts.’
The afternoon grows cool. A wind picks up. Thomas shrugs back into his jacket and after a while they pack up and troop back down through the east gate again. As they come through, they catch a trace of the rot blowing from the south wall, or the southeast tower, and the men all groan and cover their mouths and noses, and Thomas looks down through the passageway under the chapel that seems to frame the door of the southeast tower, and it is open, and he thinks of John again, and he offers up a silent prayer for the man.
As it grows dark, he wanders with Flood to the great hall in the keep from which the smell of food and the sound of voices emanate, but instead of joining them, he climbs to the steps to the covered bridge that would take him across the bailey into the chambers on the southern range, where Bellman the constable and his family lived. The door is shut, of course, and Thomas stops on the bridge and looks down at the doorway to the southeast tower. That too is shut, yet the stench of the rot is all-pervasive. It seems to stain your clothes like a dye. He rests his elbows on the hoarding and looks down into the courtyard, lit by faint light coming from the windows of the tower, as there is a c
ommotion at the door of the passageway. Three men emerge, guards they look like, leading what might be a woman in a travelling cloak. They are hurrying. One thumps the door of the southeast tower, just as Thomas had earlier in the day. They step back to wait. One of them turns to the woman and asks something. She replies sharply, dismissively, and while the man she’s speaking to does not laugh, the other two do. There is something about the woman . . .
Then the door is opened. A lamp is held up, splashing light on to the upturned faces. Thomas thinks: By Christ, is that . . .? No. Surely. He does not hear what is said. The woman goes halfway up the steps, and then covers her nose. She says something and the man within grunts something back and shuts the door. The light goes. The three guards and the woman – it is definitely a woman – wait. The woman moves anxiously. A moment later the door is opened again and this time it is Sir Edmund Riven. He is pulling on his jacket. He asks a sharp question of the woman: ‘Where?’ and the woman replies, ‘In the inn.’
There is a moment’s stand off, when no one says a thing, then, after a moment Edmund Riven pushes past her. Then the giant blocks the light from the doorway as he emerges, and, together with the first three guards, all exit the courtyard by way of the passage under the chapel. The man holding the lamp stands at the doorway a moment longer, and then closes it.
It has all taken about the time it might to say the paternoster.
Thomas waits a moment, and then he returns to the great hall, where King Edward is already ruby-faced with drink, but there is no sign of Bellman. Thomas is about to slide in next to Flood, who is discussing the day’s hunt with the chinless priest, when one of the servants nudges his back, and he tells him he is wanted without. There is something covert about the man’s manner, as if a favour is being asked, rather than it being an official summons, and so Thomas comes quickly, following the servant down the turning steps and into the heat-blasted kitchens, which smell of frying onions or human sweat, and out through the low doors in the bailey; it is quite dark there, and he is awaited nervously by one of the men from the southeast tower, one of those who had looked so shamed by their treatment of Jack and Nettie and John Stump. He is holding a rush lantern, which casts a low glow, and he touches his cap in salute.
‘You are a surgeon, you said?’ he asks.
Thomas does not deny it.
‘We think – we think the woman is about to birth,’ the man goes on. ‘And we think the other one – with the . . . you know? – we think he is not much longer for this world.’
‘Is there no midwife? No . . . other surgeon?’
‘Both have gone south,’ the man tells him. ‘They are with the Earl in London or wherever. You are the only one versed in any kind of medical matter.’
‘But what about Edmund Riven?’
‘He is called out on one of his – his raids, or missions, or whatever he calls them. He will soon drag in some poor flightless bird or other, but – before then? Could you come? You might at least offer them some comfort.’
Thomas knows he cannot do a thing, and that the man should find the priest, but it is the very least he can do. He has helped many a ewe give birth, and if he can help Nettie, then that at least is something.
‘I do not have any instruments,’ he says. ‘Knives and so forth.’
‘Oh dear God, we have knives,’ the man says. ‘But hurry! There is no telling when he will return.’
At that moment Flood of all people steps out from the kitchens. He has followed Thomas.
‘Are you well, Thomas?’
Thomas tells him what he is about. Flood is astonished.
‘You are a man of many parts,’ Flood says.
Thomas agrees.
‘Come on,’ the guard urges.
‘Can you bring water? As hot as you can, and linen, clean, if possible, and – and wine. Plenty of that? Ask in the kitchens.’
‘Of course,’ Flood says.
Thomas follows the guard around the keep and up into the top room of the tower, the lantern’s glow guiding the way. He pinches his nose and closes his mouth. That smell. He can feel his heart in his chest, beating against its bone walls. He feels it may force its way out through his mouth. Christ. What is he going to do? There is a sudden scream in the darkness above. Harsh, and wounded. He thinks of tearing flesh. He stumbles, catches himself.
He hears Jack calling for Nettie.
‘All will be well, Nettie! All be well!’
When they reach the top floor the door is open and the sweet foul smell billows within, and there is a lamp on the table, but the guard is crouched in the shadows next to Nettie, and Jack is on his knees at the full extent of his chain, his face wet with tears, and he is calling her name over and over again.
‘Unchain them!’ Thomas shouts.
‘We cannot!’ the guard calls back. ‘We have not the key!’
‘Where is it?’
‘In Edmund Riven’s purse! On his belt.’
‘Break them! Break them!’
Nettie shrieks like an animal. Her cry echoes around the chamber. Both guards are almost mad with their shame and sorrow.
‘How? How?’
‘Run for the smith! Find him! Bring his hammers and – and whatever. A tool to break the rings!’
‘Thomas!’ Jack cries. ‘Help her! Help her!’
Thomas is frozen for a moment. He looks at Nettie. There is blood everywhere. Her hands are like claws. She is pulling on her sodden skirts. The smell of John’s wound is still unbearable. He hurries to her. He tries to be calm. He holds her. He talks to her in the same way he used to soothe sheep. He speaks in a low burr and calls her ‘girl’.
‘It will be well,’ he murmurs. ‘All will be well. Come now. Come now. That is it. Caterwaul if that helps.’
Nettie grips his hand with both hers, a bond sealed with her own blood, and she squeezes it and cries out, full-lunged. She’s kicked away her stool and sits against the wall with her legs straight out before her and her hands are chained above her head. Thomas cries out that he is so sorry and she swears on the body and blood and bones of Christ and Jack calls over to say that she does not mean it and the other guard is weeping and Thomas knows that John Stump is dying just through the door there and he knows he has passed beyond forgiveness for what he has visited upon these three.
Just then he hears footfall on the steps, and the guards look at one another in naked fear.
Riven is back.
20
Katherine stands in the shadows of the entrance to a dyer’s yard, where the stench is enough to make a nightwatchman redundant, and she prays she’s wrong. She prays Liz will come traipsing back from the other inn, straightening her laces, with the news that Jack and Nettie and John Stump have been set free, and that Edmund Riven is no longer looking for the ledger. She’s holding Rufus in her arms, and he’s a hot deadweight with his face pressed snuffling against the bare skin of her neck, and the words of her prayer spill from her lips in a mewl of miserable desperation.
‘Please, Lord, make it so,’ she entreats.
But she knows her prayers are in vain. She knows she has been betrayed, tricked, traduced and even condemned to certain death when, after a long moment, she hears shouts from behind the houses up by the castle, and then, striding purposefully into the marketplace in the dusk of the late-summer’s evening, comes Edmund Riven. He is unmistakable, with a patch of linen pressed to his face, on horseback, leading a party of ten or fifteen men, each carrying a lantern and billhook. They are making for the White Swan, and the giant is with them, head and shoulders above all the others, loping next to Riven with unnerving and inhuman fluency, like some stag-hunting dog.
She must move, she knows. She must be away, but where is there to go? She’ll never get far along the roads she’s come in on, or across the country. Riven and his men will hunt her down in moments. Where can she hide? Nowhere for very long.
There is nothing else for it. She needs sanctuary.
She slips back int
o the deepening darkness of the yard, where after the heat of the day the rotting stench is like uncooked egg white at the back of her throat. Rufus murmurs and shifts as she makes her way past the curdling vats and the drying racks where the skins hang and out through the back of the yard following a well-worn path to the stream where the dyer must tip his waste. There’s a slippery plank across it and beyond are the shacks of his boys, where there’s a chained dog yapping.
She crosses the plank and cuts away up the slope, away from the shacks, following the stream back towards the bulk of the church tower that blots out the moon-backed clouds. It is desperate, but it is all she can think of. She scrabbles over a low hazel fence, one leg at a time, and a larger dog sets to barking, and then she comes to the churchyard wall, above which black branches of yew sway and dance in the freshening wind. The dusk is filled with bats. She follows the wall around to the left, thanking God the day has been long, but now at last the darkness is closing behind her.
Rufus is awake again, so she can put him down a moment, and swing the ledger back over her shoulder with her other bag. She leads him on, and finds the church gate and fumbles with its locking bar before she can get it open.
‘Come on,’ she says.
‘Where’s Liz?’
‘She – she has gone to find help.’
Rufus’s accepting, anxious face reflects the faint moonlight. He is bone-weary, slumped, as if he were made of dough rather than flesh, and there is precious little of that on his bones anyway. She puts a hand on his narrow shoulder.
‘We’ll sleep here tonight,’ she tells him. ‘Then in the morning—’
Divided Souls Page 29
