She points upwards.
‘You two should stay,’ she says. ‘Many a young widow aching for a man.’
But they carry on, along the road, over another series of ridges and valleys, until they find their way blocked by a looping river flowing east, its current so sluggish in parts that its brown water might be ale in a barrel. Unable to cross they turn upriver, and follow it until they find a ford where the water froths amid jumbled rocks. They remove their boots and roll up their hose and he helps her across, hopping from rock to rock. Then when they are dressed again, on the northern bank, they follow the track until they find a deserted hamlet where the houses have been ransacked and pulled apart for firewood.
‘We must be close now,’ Thomas supposes. He loosens his sword in his scabbard, and she does likewise.
‘Remember,’ Thomas reminds himself, ‘it is King Henry, not Henry of Lancaster. King Henry. King Henry. Remember that.’
And that is when they hear the horses. They look at one another one last time. He takes her hand.
‘We can always just run, you know? We don’t have to do this?’
But he thinks, we’ve come this far …
She squeezes his palm.
‘No,’ she says, ‘because then, what else?’
He nods. There really is nothing else for it.
The riders, soldiers all, come down the road ahead, and they pull up and spread out across the road on their shaggy-coated ponies. It is not easy to see their livery, since they wear a mismatched motley of begged and borrowed coats, with scarves around their faces like bevors and wool caps pulled low over their ears. Their leader – a thin-faced man, not shaved for a while – wears thick mittens, one of which he removes to flex the pale fingers beneath.
‘God give you good day,’ he says.
Thomas takes a breath. Here we go, he thinks, and he walks forward, the slightest swagger in his step.
‘Who are you?’ he asks, brimming with a feigned confidence. ‘I don’t recognise the livery.’
The captain is slightly taken aback.
‘I am John Horner,’ he says. He fishes in his coat and pulls from it a flap of cloth on which is a silver badge. He holds it up to Thomas, who cannot see it.
‘I am captain of the Watch at Alnwick,’ Horner says, ‘and serve Sir Ralph Grey of Castle Heaton, who also serves King Henry. Who are you, sir, and whom do you serve?’
‘No one,’ Thomas says. ‘Or no longer, anyway. We used to serve in the retinue of a gentleman of Lincolnshire, whose name I will not repeat, who was of the Duke of Somerset’s affinity, but he – like the false Duke – has since gone over to the treacherous Earl of March, now calling himself King Edward the Fourth.’
One of the men spits, but another spurs his horse forward to Horner’s side.
‘I know this man,’ the second rider says.
Horner looks at him. So does Thomas.
Oh, Christ, Thomas thinks, it is him. That boy, the one from the farm. The one who hid in the orchard. What is he doing here? He should never have let him go. He should have killed them both. Is it too late to run?
‘You do?’ Horner asks. ‘Who is he?’
‘I don’t know,’ the boy says. ‘Never gave a name but he is useful with a bow, I will give him that. He killed five men before one of them managed to loose a shot or lay a glove on him.’
‘I – it was in defence,’ Thomas says, his confidence destroyed, the part he is playing much changed. He tries to signal to Katherine to run.
‘One of them was my uncle,’ the boy goes on.
Thomas can only repeat it was in his defence.
The boy gets off his horse. They look at one another, eye to eye. There is a long moment. Thomas stares at the boy, but is counting the others. How many are they? Ten. Too many for any one man.
But then the boy extends a hand.
‘I hated my uncle,’ he says.
And Thomas can only take the hand. He feels a ripple of surprised hope.
‘And you saved me from that woman,’ the boy adds.
Thomas smiles. So does the boy.
‘My brother’s wife,’ Thomas says, shaking the hand. ‘You had just killed her son.’
It is the boy’s turn to look abashed.
‘I was aiming at you,’ he says.
Thomas almost laughs.
‘I slipped in shit,’ he says.
The boy laughs too.
‘God damn it!’ he says. ‘I thought you had some God-given power! I’d’ve never given up if I’d known it was shit!’
The men smile. Tension dissipates, slowly like smoke in a still room.
Then one of the men at the back speaks.
‘You got any food?’ he asks.
Thomas has the pie, bought to ease exactly this sort of situation, and Katherine acknowledges his foresight as the men – even Horner – dismount and cluster about to break it up. When it is shared out and crammed into grateful mouths, Horner remembers his purpose.
‘So?’ he asks. ‘What is your business here?’
‘We are come to join the real King,’ Thomas says, resuming some sort of authority.
‘We?’
Horner glances at Kit.
‘This is Kit,’ Thomas says. ‘He is a surgeon. Able to patch any wound.’
‘Save those that are fatal,’ she adds.
The men look at her doubtfully. Thomas’s grin is fixed. She is not good at this kind of thing. After a moment Horner says:
‘Really? Good. Good.’
Then he turns back to Thomas.
‘Our surgeon – he ran off. He knew his astral charts and the healing properties of divers stones, all right, and he was a bugger for taking urine, but he was cock-all use in a pinch.’
‘He can have a look at Devon John,’ one of the men says.
Horner agrees.
‘You’d best come with us then.’
And they remount their shaggy ponies and let Thomas and Katherine walk beside them. Thomas sees that the horses are not in good condition, and when he looks carefully at the men, they are pinched, scrawny even, and their clothes are worn and their metalwork matt with rust.
‘What is your name?’ the boy asks.
Thomas tells him.
‘Yours?’
‘John Bradford, of Dorset. My friends call me Jack.’
‘I’m sorry about your uncle,’ Thomas says.
‘He was a bastard,’ Jack says. ‘No one mourned him. Not even his dog. I’m sorry about your nephew.’
‘Yes,’ Thomas says. ‘Well. And what about your brother? Is he well?’
Jack shakes his head.
‘Dead,’ he says. ‘Just the other day. May God rest him. We had a run-in with some of Montagu’s men.’
‘Montagu?’
‘Lord Montagu holds Newcastle for the false King Edward. He is the Earl of Warwick’s brother, did you know? And no friend to King Henry, or us.’
Thomas thinks of those men on the gate at Newcastle. He would not like a run-in with them.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘There is much to be sorry for, isn’t there? These days.’
They walk up through a forest of spindly ash trees above which they can see dark crenellated towers and a little while later they come out on to moorland bearing traces of past camps, where trees have been hacked down for firewood and where the grass is yet to grow back through the sooted circles of old fires. Ahead is the mass of the castle, hulking in the distance, filling the skyline.
‘Christ,’ Thomas says.
‘Yes,’ Jack says. ‘Welcome to Alnwick.’
Katherine is staring at the standard that flies from the keep.
‘There is no royal standard,’ she says. ‘Is King Henry not here?’
‘King Henry?’ Horner says. ‘No. King Henry is in Scotland.’
As they enter the shadow of the castle walls, Thomas looks about as if for an escape route, but there is none, and behind from the forest comes another picket, the leader of which rais
es his arm in salute, and is recognised by Horner and his men, and so it is too late. The castle’s drawbridge is down and in a moment they are on it, their footsteps ginger on the slippery spars, and the great gates are opened and they are drawn into the gloom of the barbican, and the men of the other picket ride in behind and join them as if in a queue for something, and Katherine looks up to see they are being watched through the arrow slits and the murder holes and over the crenellated walls by four or five pinch-faced men in helmets. Behind them the gates close up again with a deep boom, sealing them in.
After a long moment the next set of gates opens before them, and they process out into the broad spread of the first bailey where miserable-looking sheep are penned in and guarded from thieves by poorly shaved men you would not think were Christians, carrying billhooks. Large parts of the rest of the bailey are given over to the frilled tops of root vegetables, and they get hungry stares from the few sallow-faced wretches and their desperate women and children. Dogs are chained to walls and the place smells of wet stone, frowsty clothes, rotting meat, unclean garde-de-robes.
‘You think this is bad,’ Jack mutters to Thomas. ‘They’re already eating toads in Dunstanburgh.’
Ahead is the mass of the keep. It is huge, like a cliff, raised above them on a flattened motte, breasted with crenellated towers on which he can see only one guard resting his elbows.
‘Who is castellan here?’ Thomas asks Horner.
‘Sir Ralph Grey,’ Horner says, nodding to the multi-towered keep. ‘He is my lord.’
Horner has left his horse with the ostler, and he now walks with his coat open to reveal a pale jacket quartered by the red cross of St George, and on his belt a ballock dagger and a purse that is obviously empty. The soles of his riding boots clack with each step as if he were on his way to the cordwainer.
‘Is he the man who deserted at Northampton?’ Katherine asks.
‘No,’ Horner answers. ‘That was Grey of Ruthyn. This is Grey of Castle Heaton. He didn’t swap sides until last year, and he swapped the other way – from Edward to King Henry. Some slight, it is said. He was overlooked for a command and couldn’t stand being in the other man’s shadow. So. You’ll see how it is.’
‘Hmph,’ Thomas grunts.
Horner leads them through a muddy gateway and into the second bailey where more of the grey-woolled sheep graze on the sparse grass. A few men traipse around the muddy acre, but there is no sense of urgency, or of multitude.
‘Sir Ralph will be in his chamber,’ Horner says, looking up at a sweep of glazed windows that must be the keep’s solar. ‘Never likes to stray too far.’
‘You do not seem to have many men,’ Katherine says.
‘No,’ Horner agrees. ‘There are more at Bamburgh. And we have other castles, too, along the way.’
He opens a door on shrieking hinges and stops in the malodorous gloom of the stairwell.
‘A warning,’ he says. ‘Sir Ralph Grey is – well, he can be unpredictable.’
He believes he’s said about as much as he dares, and now he leads them into the darkness and then up some turning stairs from which they emerge into a solar, occupied by a small barrel-bodied man, fierce-looking and dressed in black. He stands – slightly unsteadily – with his back to a small greenwood fire hissing in a chimney, holding a small earthenware beaker. He looks up, his eyes blazing.
‘Horner!’ he cries. ‘Where in God’s sainted name have you been? And who for all His love are these with you? By Christ! Beggars? Beggars! You dare bring me beggars?’
‘Sir,’ Horner replies. ‘These two have come to join our company.’
‘Oh, they have?’ Grey scoffs, as if this sort of thing happened every day. ‘Well, I don’t want them, do you hear? Take them away. Though not that big one. He looks useful. Ever loose a bow? Course you have. Course you have. But what about the runt? Damn you, Horner, can you do nothing right?’
‘He says he is a surgeon,’ Horner ventures.
‘A surgeon, is he? Looks like a stable boy. Bet he’s had his ear clipped.’
Katherine restrains from touching her ear.
‘He’s saved many a life,’ Thomas says.
‘Has he?’ Grey says, slightly mollified. ‘Has he now?’
Then he takes a sip from his beaker and crosses to the board under the window where he places it clumsily and pours into it something from a jug. My God, Katherine thinks, he is drunk. Now he advances crabwise across the rushes, kicking at them impatiently, until he is a couple of paces away. He smells strongly of something sweet, and flammable, too, and there is an unsettling brightness in his eye. He looks at her for a long moment, then smiles as if he has a secret, and taps the side of his nose.
‘Ahah,’ he says, and Katherine tries to shrink, to make her body pull away from the shell of her clothes. He will see, she thinks. He will see. Not because he is clever, but by accident, because he is a drunk. He grins at her sideways, his teeth crooked, his eyes sky blue, watery and red-rimmed. He has been poorly shaved.
‘So,’ he says with a smile to suggest he knows her game. ‘A surgeon, is it? A surgeon. Hmmm. Now. Tell me. What does a surgeon actually do, eh? I mean. A surgeon, eh? Saved lives, you say? Lives of men? Men I might know?’
Katherine stares ahead. It would be dangerous to catch his eye, she thinks.
‘I have, sir, yes. I am not sure if you—’
‘Well, look,’ Grey interrupts. ‘Look here. I’ve an idea. An idea. How is this for one?’
They remain silent, waiting. She can hear him breathing. Then he looks away, and turns to Horner.
‘Horner,’ he says. ‘Horner, Horner, Horner. What are we to do with you, eh? Look. I tell you what. Let us – you and me – have a little wager.’
Horner rolls his eyes.
‘I’ve got nothing with which to wager, sir,’ he says.
‘Oh, it needn’t be much,’ Grey says. ‘It needn’t be much. No no no. Not much. A noble?’
Horner swallows. A noble is a lot.
‘On what are we to bet, sir?’
Grey holds his finger up and beams craftily at Horner for a moment. Then he stumbles back across the room, through the rushes to the board under the glazed window, and finds some scrap among the papers spread there.
‘Who was that boy?’ he asks over his shoulder. ‘The one wounded in the run-in with Montagu’s men?’
‘John, his name is,’ Horner tells Grey. ‘John from Devon.’
Grey is still for a moment, head cocked in thought.
‘John from Devon,’ he mutters. ‘John from Devon. John of Devon? John de Devon? Either way, a name to conjure with, eh? John from Devon. Still alive, is he?’
‘Far as I know.’
Grey turns and sits back against the board.
‘Good,’ he says. ‘Now. Take this surgeon to him, will you? For me? Take him along to this John. This John of Devon. This John de Devon. And, well, let us put it this way – if he can save the boy’s life, then he is a surgeon, isn’t he? Hmmm? Bloody good one, I daresay. Needs to be.
‘But if the boy dies, well, then, perhaps this surgeon of yours, perhaps he is not a surgeon after all? Did you ever think of that? Perhaps he’s some sort of spy, sent by Montagu? It’s just the sort of thing that bastard might do, isn’t it? What do you think? I don’t know. I don’t know. D’you know? Eh, Horner? D’you know? No? No? Of course you don’t. No one does. You see? That’s the thing. No one knows anything. But if he isn’t. If he isn’t a surgeon, I mean, then we’ll – what? – I tell you what! If he isn’t a surgeon what we will do with him is we’ll hang him! Can we hang him? I don’t know. But we could do, couldn’t we? They say hanging’s too good for them, you know, don’t they? But I don’t know. I don’t know.’
‘Kit is not a spy,’ Thomas says. ‘For the love of God. We came here to help.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Grey says. ‘Of course you would say that. I’d say the same, in your place. If I was standing here. Any Christian man would, wouldn’t
he? But look. Forget all that. Go on, Horner, make the wager. We said a noble, didn’t we? Even if nothing comes of it, eh? It’ll be a little fun, won’t it? You and me? A wager? Why not? It’ll be fun. And – and don’t we, you know, don’t we need a little of that? Around here? Now? We do. We do. Don’t we?’
He screws up his face, looks imploring. Then he takes another drink.
‘Let’s say, if the boy lives to see what? All Saints? Or wait! All Souls? No. You’re right. All Saints it is. If he is alive for All Saints then we’ll assume you know what you’re doing, that you’re a surgeon, as you claim, and I shall give you, Horner, a noble. How does that do? Eh? Seems fair, doesn’t it? More than fair, that, I’d say.’
Horner nods. His face is a mask.
‘Go on then,’ Grey says. ‘Scuttle off. Scuttle off and do whatever it is you do.’
They leave the keep and recross the outer bailey, along muddy paths between the sheep pens, past the hawk mews, which smells grim, toward an isolated guerite in the northern wall.
‘Is he serious?’ Thomas asks.
‘Well, he has a point,’ Horner says. ‘You have turned up as if from nowhere. And he likes a wager, too.’
He indicates the gibbet to one side of the bailey.
The door to the stubby stone-built tower is heavy on its hinges, and within it is dark, but there it is again: that stench. It seems to slide out, cold and pungent and thick enough to coat your tongue, so they all three take a step back, and they all clap their hands across their faces.
‘By Christ!’
‘He’s started to smell a bit strong,’ Horner admits.
A guard laughs from the parapet above.
‘Won’t be long now, poor old bugger.’
The guerite is one room, square, about ten paces wide, with no windows, but a wooden ladder leading up through a hatch into another identical room on top, save this one has two arrow loops on the hugely thick outer wall, and two doors on either side opening on to the parapet walkway of the crenellated curtain wall. There are four or five of these towers on the walls here, each placed between the corner towers, in which guards might shelter in very poor weather.
This John of Devon has the whole of the lower room to himself. When her eyes become used to the dark Katherine sees, in the light from the door, that he is on a pile of straw and, despite the cold, he is wearing only his braies and yet his skin is dewed with sweat. He has a linen sheet bunched over his face, and by his side his left arm lies as if it is not his, but the property of someone else. The wound – just above the wrist – is tied with a bandage crusted black with dried blood, but above it, the boy’s arm is swollen, the skin tense, and it is dark red, almost black. It extends to the elbow.
Kingmaker: Broken Faith Page 19
