‘A grey friar pulled him off, thank the Lord. Told him there would be richer pickings later, elsewhere, if he would only let this humble fucking archer – me – live. I am grateful to him, whoever he was. He saved my life, dragged the dead bloke off me, and got his robes covered in blood and whatnot for it. When I was up I saw the ground started steaming with all the blood on it. You couldn’t help breathe it in. Christ on his Cross, I must have ale.’
He fetches a wooden ewer and pours himself a beaker and drinks it off as if to wash his mouth out before offering them anything. Thomas accepts the cup, and lets Little John pour him some and then drinks it. It is thin and bitter.
‘There was nothing I could do after that,’ Little John admits. ‘Archers weren’t what was wanted, especially one with my arm like this. I stayed with the ale wagons and then I even helped some friars with the wounded, though all we were doing was taking them from one place where they might have died and putting them in another place where they did die. It was as if they were tidying up, really, that was all.’
He takes another vast swig of ale and doesn’t bother to wipe his mouth afterwards. The words bubble out.
‘By midday we were sure we were going to win, and I was thinking that if only Riven survives, I’ll be all right. I’ll win my share and I can come back home – come here – a rich man, and I can forget about all this shit. The snow slowed around that time, and you could see how far the King’s army had advanced, and all the bodies that were in mounds, piled up everywhere across the field and I thought, bloody hell, there can’t be many more men left in England who aren’t dead or fighting for us, on our side. And then someone said Edward of March was dead, and there was such a cheer, only then it was proved untrue, and then someone said Trollope was dead, and I cheered inside for that, because do you remember? He was the bastard that switched sides before we went to Calais. Or maybe that was before you came to us. Anyway.’
A donkey brays somewhere unseen.
‘Then the Duke of Norfolk’s men arrived, just before dusk, and that tipped the thing the other way, didn’t it? You could feel it, right from where we were, and suddenly the ale carts were spilling their ale and whipping their oxen to get away, just as if they knew it had already been lost, and they would be too, if they weren’t gone soonest. I climbed up on the back of them. I hid in a barrel. Benefits of being small. By the time they found me it was too late. They threw me out on the roadside, but by then the nobs were coming past on horseback. Flying up the road to York, all their weapons and harness gone, horses all mad-eyed, frothing and sweating even in the snow.
‘I ran along as best I could, but then there was a river, and turned downstream. I thought if I could find a boat, anything, then I’d be all right. And I did. A little thing. I stole it. Just pushed off into the river and prayed to God to get away before Edward’s men came through, or any of ours too. They were killing each other just to get past. Anyway. I fell asleep in the boat, as God is my witness, despite my fright and the cold, and by the time I woke up I was – well. I don’t know. West of York, on a gravel bank being watched by two boys and a dog and – well, that was the end of it, really. I got out, staggered on to dry land and slept where I was, and in the morning I could hardly move, my clothes were that stiff with blood.’
There is a long silence. Little John is done, exhausted by the reliving of that day, and he does not ask after them. He is not interested where they have been or how they survived their day. Having spoken for so long he wants nothing but silence.
‘Will you come back?’ Katherine asks.
Little John starts as if he has forgotten who they are. Only then does he ask after Sir John and the men he’s known. When he hears who is alive and who is dead, he is caught between sorrow and relief.
‘Is Riven looking for you?’ Katherine asks.
Little John is startled.
‘I don’t know. Is he even alive? Did he live through the day?’
‘No one knows,’ Katherine says. ‘But the boy is.’
Little John is frightened.
‘Edmund?’ he asks. ‘Edmund Riven’s alive?’
Katherine nods.
‘Oh, good God,’ he says, and he might almost cross himself.
‘So will you come with us? Rejoin Sir John Fakenham’s company?’
‘And go against Edmund Riven? No. No. Not likely. Not a chance. I need to be here with my old mum.’
Thomas is dismayed.
‘Is he so bad?’
‘He is a devil in human form. He has a wound here –’ he points to his eye – ‘that has not healed and yellow stuff comes from it, with blood in it, and the smell is enough to curdle milk, I swear. It makes you retch. He wipes it with a cloth and the smell clings and even pigs stay away.’
John almost gags at the memory of it.
‘And all he talks of is of cutting men – of blinding them, like he is in that eye – and of raping women.’
He shakes his head.
‘I am sorry,’ he says, ‘I will not go against him, not unless there are many of us. He is a vicious bastard.’
When they get back to Marton Hall it is late afternoon and Sir John is out in the yard with Robert. Sir John has a pair of curious brass eyeglasses on his nose, and another letter from Richard in his hand, delivered by the same merchant who then sold him the eyeglasses.
‘He also deals in divers objects that he claims to be rich in natural magic,’ Isabella tells them, and she nods at a small grey stone lying among the pieces of the chessboard. It is unpolished, the size of the ball of a man’s thumb, and pierced with a hole through which someone has thread a loop of bowstring.
‘It cost a groat,’ she says through pursed lips.
Sir John is looking equally wintry, and he raises the letter.
‘It is confirmed,’ he says. ‘Cornford is to be given to that bastard Riven. The son, that is, as you say, Kit, the boy without the eye. Richard says there has been some initial ruling in council. Lord Hastings is trying his best to overturn it, he has told Richard, but he is gloomy about his chances because King Edward is still warm with the Duke of Somerset, and Somerset is still warm with Edmund Riven. The Duke of Somerset has asserted that with Margaret accused of murder, and Richard a blind man, natural justice should run its course, and the castle and its lands should revert to Riven. Natural bloody justice. By the blood of the risen Christ, what does the bloody Duke of Somerset know of natural bloody justice? If he did he’d have hanged himself long ago, and taken that bastard Riven with him.’
Sir John crumples the letter and throws it towards the fire.
‘There is one last, final chance, Richard thinks, and then –’
He makes a pffft noise. There is a long silence.
‘What actually is that?’ Thomas asks. He points to the stone on the chessboard. Isabella sighs.
‘To me it is a wasted groat,’ she says, ‘but to the pedlar it is a lodestone.’
Sir John picks it up and holds it near Isabella’s belt buckle. It swings on its lace and clacks against the metal. Sir John’s smile is distracted.
‘What’s it for?’ Katherine asks.
‘You tell me,’ Isabella murmurs. She plucks it from her belt and then holds it near one of the eating knives. The knife moves of its own accord.
‘It seeks out certain metals,’ Sir Johns says. ‘Attracts them, you see, but the pedlar said it is helpful for finding your way. Something about the North Star and not getting lost at sea.’
Sir John looks at Katherine, and almost laughs.
‘You should have it, Kit,’ he says. ‘Save you getting lost again.’
He passes it to her. She blushes slightly, probably remembering her slim story of being lost in the Irish Sea, and thanks him for it.
‘Put it around your neck,’ he says, ‘and that way you won’t lose it.’
Again she thanks him. It is not something she really wants, Thomas can see that, but it would be wrong to refuse a gift, and she hangs it around
her neck and tucks it into her shirt. Thomas cannot stop himself imagining it hanging between her flattened breasts. He tries to think of something else, anything else.
They slump back into a long strained silence that Sir John breaks by swearing at Riven again, and at the Duke of Somerset, and at King Edward for being such a fool.
‘When you think of all we’ve done for him. All the blood we’ve spilled.’
‘There must be some other way,’ Katherine says.
Sir John turns to her.
‘You were always convinced the wars would start again, Kit,’ he says. ‘And you were right, weren’t you? On more than one occasion, too. But will they come again? Will we have another chance to shake all this up and unseat Riven?’
He gestures at the chessboard where just the two kings and a handful of other pieces remain.
‘I know nothing of them now,’ she admits.
There is another long, disappointed silence. Sir John sighs and begins toying with the chess pieces, clearing them to leave the two kings at opposite ends of the board. He sits back and studies them with a curled lip.
‘Kings,’ he says. ‘Kings and bloody dukes.’
Thomas leans forward and picks up a piece from the discarded pile.
‘Perhaps the Duke of Somerset will prove a false friend to King Edward?’ he says, and he places a black knight next to the black king. ‘Perhaps he will turn back to King Henry?’
‘But why would he,’ Sir John asks, ‘when King Edward is all-powerful?’
And he returns some white pieces to the board, so that they outnumber the two black pieces five to one, and then he moves the black knight that had been under the black king to a square next to the white king, and he turns it so that the horse’s teeth face the black king.
‘And,’ he adds, ‘when all that remains of King Henry’s army is banged up in a couple of useless castles up north?’
He places two black rooks on the board, on the black king’s side. They all stare at the board as if it will reveal the answer. It does not.
‘So if there is no chance of separating the Duke of Somerset’s loyalties from King Edward,’ Katherine ventures, touching the black knight and the white king, ‘is there a way to separate them from Edmund Riven?’
She places a black pawn on the board, next to the black knight, and then draws it away. There is another silence, but one by one they shake their heads.
‘I do not see how,’ Sir John says.
‘If you cannot separate this Riven from the Duke of Somerset and you cannot separate the Duke of Somerset from King Edward,’ Robert says, bunching the black pawn and the black knight under the shadow of the white king, ‘then you must either suffer in silence, or –’
And he moves a white knight from the white side of the board toward the black side, and he turns it to face the white king.
‘Or King Edward becomes your enemy, and King Henry becomes your friend.’
There is another long silence. They can hear Sir John breathing noisily.
‘I remember Richard suggesting the same,’ Katherine says, ‘when the Earl of Warwick awarded the castle to Riven after Northampton. You said you would not change sides. You said you would not turn traitor.’
There is another long silence, and all eyes are on Sir John, to see whether he moves the white knight back toward the white king, and he stretches his hand, and his trembling fingers hover over the piece, and he tries to draw his hand away without touching it, but in the end, he cannot. He moves the knight back.
‘I have bled so freely for the House of York,’ he says, ‘that to turn my back on her now, it seems a betrayal not just of them, of King Edward, but of those I’ve lost in her service – of Walter, of Geoffrey, of all those bloody Johns. I cannot just switch in a moment of rage, however gross the provocation. So let us see. Let us wait to see if this last appeal to King Edward’s good sense brings us Cornford Castle, and Margaret’s freedom, and Richard’s return. We should pray for those things, and if our prayers are not answered, then we shall have to think again.’
And with that he tidies the chess pieces away, and curfew is called.
11
THE HAYMAKING INVOLVES eight of them, working with whetted scythes in a staggered line across the field. Thomas is strongest, and goes first, on the right-hand end of the line, then Robert, to the left, and a little behind him. Katherine starts on the extreme left of the line, since it is thought she is the slightest of them all, but she is faster and stronger than she looks, thanks to her months with the washing beetle, and as the morning progresses, she is moved up the line, until she is to the left of Robert. When the first field is done, they sit in the shade of an ash tree on fat stooks and drink ale, and Robert tells them they must stretch or they will be stiff from the unusual strain that the scythes put on a man’s muscles.
Later she walks with Thomas down to the river, and they follow a stony path worn by horses along the river’s bank, and she thinks they have some of their old ease back again, and are walking as they did before that last terrible winter. Thomas seems less fraught than he was, she thinks, less pent up. Perhaps it is something seasonal? She wonders at him though. The way he gets up in the middle of the night and returns chilled to the bone. If she is awake she will ask him where he has been and he will tell her he has been outside, but his voice will be whispery, as if he is sad, and he will turn his back on her and that will be that. She remembers him pressing himself against her that night in the barn, and once when he got up in the night, she rose and followed him, thinking perhaps he was going to see one of Sir John’s serving girls, and she felt a terrible stab of jealousy, and she thought she might scream if it were true, but no. It was not that. Instead he stood under the eaves in the moonlight, so tense and still it was as if he were waiting for a fox to pass. She supposes it is something to do with his memories fleeting, returning to him in dreams, and sometimes she tries to calm him with a touch, but that only seems to make things worse, and she can feel him lying there like a strung bow, vibrating and so hot under her fingertips she has to withdraw her hand. Though it will be useful in the winter, she supposes.
‘Richard will come from London soon,’ he says.
She supposes he is right, but she does not want to think about Richard. She is just enjoying being with Thomas, when he is happy, and she had supposed he was enjoying it too.
‘What will you do then?’ he presses. ‘When he comes? Will you go to him?’
She sighs. She has been putting off thinking about this for as long as possible, but now Thomas seems determined to be unhappy, and to make her so too.
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘You know that. I suppose – I suppose I will have to go. I cannot stay and be his wife again.’
‘Sir John says Richard is still smitten with you.’
‘Yes,’ she agrees, ‘but he is smitten with Margaret Cornford, who was his wife, not with me.’
‘But you are his wife,’ he says.
‘Am I?’ she asks. ‘Yes. I suppose I am. But Thomas, it is as I say – I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. None of this was— Well, I did not plan it.’
She sighs. She knows flight is the only option. To this end she has been saving money, tiny amounts, a halfpenny here and a halfpenny there, driving a harder bargain at the market than needs be, accepting second best from the stallholder and keeping the difference. Isabella has noticed something is not right in the balance of accounts, she is sure of that, but she has said nothing as yet.
She wonders whether Thomas will come with her when she leaves. Or whether he will stay with Sir John who loves him as a son, and where he is warm and well fed and – except for these odd moods of his – happy.
Suddenly she has to know.
‘If I go,’ she begins, ‘will you come with me?’
He turns on her. He looks haunted by something. Not his usual self.
‘Where?’ he asks.
‘Where? I don’t know.’
She can feel h
erself breathing quickly. She feels hot and very anxious. He takes a solemn step but he says nothing.
‘You don’t have to,’ she says. ‘I am sure you have a life planned for yourself here. Without – without all these complications.’
He stops and squints at her.
‘What do you mean?’
He is being evasive, deliberately obtuse.
‘Forget it,’ she says, and she walks on.
He catches her arm. She tears it away.
‘Wait!’ he says.
‘Look, Thomas,’ she says, turning back on him. She has no idea what she is going to say. The words tumble out. ‘I know I have brought you nothing but trouble. I know without me you would be a – a – a canon, still, happily embellishing your psalter, but I – I – oh, God!’
And now God damn them, the tears fill her eyes and she finds she can hardly breathe and she feels a great heat glowing within her. She cannot bring herself to say that she cannot contemplate life without him by her side. But can she ask him to come with her, to look after her, to keep her from danger as he always has, and in return for what?
He once told her he loved her, but that was then, and this is now, and he is he, and she is she. And that is the problem. She is she.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, sniffing and drawing her sleeve across her mouth.
But now he is looking at her as if she is mad and he steps towards her and envelops her in his arms and she wraps hers around him and she presses her face to his chest and she inhales that dusty smell of his and she can feel his lips pressing on the crown of her cap, and she wishes he would – and then she feels it: the hard knot of him pressing against her and she catches her breath.
She has lain with Richard Fakenham on numerous occasions since the night of their marriage, when she knew what must come, and so forced herself to drink too much wine, and William Hastings was there, among others, and everything seemed preordained. It is to be done like this! Then this will happen, then this. Then the sheet was spread on a broad, feather-filled bed in a private room, something she had never slept in before, and it was sprinkled with holy water and then she was instructed to formally guide Richard to it, but he had had too much wine, too, which one of Hastings’s men said was bad for a blind man, especially on his wedding night, and he had made odd, confusing gestures with his hands and fingers, right before her husband’s face, so she had closed the door on him and heard him laugh beyond.
Kingmaker: Broken Faith Page 16
