Kingdom Come

by Toby Clements

  Mostyn is fishing for something and Thomas suddenly feels very vulnerable. He regrets saying anything of this, and shakes his head to change the subject, but Mostyn takes this to mean that Thomas was the other sort of friar.

  ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘An Austin friar, then? And how did you leave them?’

  Thomas knows he has already said too much, and so he ends the conversation more firmly, squaring the pages on the desk.

  ‘In good order, master,’ he says. ‘Much as we leave these papers.’

  Mostyn is brought up short and blinks, reprimanded.

  ‘Quite so,’ he says, and he leans forward to take them for filing, but there is a flicker of some satisfaction at the corners of his mouth, as if he’s glimpsed the inkling of an opportunity, and so the event that Thomas hoped would bring him such satisfaction, which they would celebrate on his return to Marton, is spoiled, and becomes a niggle of worry. Mostyn hums through his smile as he files his copies of the papers in a pigeonhole before handing Thomas his, and then he offers to show him the rest of the house.

  When it is done, and they have seen from cellar to attic, and they find themselves back in the courtyard, Thomas can only agree that it is very handsome.

  ‘Though hard to defend,’ he ventures.

  ‘Defend, Master Everingham? Defend against what?’

  ‘Attack?’

  ‘Attack? Sir Thomas is Master of the King’s Horse, Master Everingham. He is not some – some – some out-of-the-way man with no interests at court. Who would dare attack him? Besides, we have John here, and he is formidable enough to see off any mere bandit.’ He jokingly indicates the man in livery, who has put aside his glaive and is wrapping his arms around his shoulders, letting his hands thump on his back to keep himself warm. He does not look very formidable.

  ‘I dare say you are right,’ Thomas says. ‘I am sorry. It is a preoccupation of mine.’

  Mostyn raises his eyebrows as if to indicate he expected no less, and he walks on. Thomas watches him adjust the hang of a painted wool cloth on the wall, and he sees that Mostyn’s problem is not that he believes himself so very much grander than Thomas – though he does and perhaps he is – but that he believes this hall is everything that the world is to become, while Thomas, with his clumsy heft, his sword and his mud-splattered riding boots, with his fears of attack by God knows whom, is everything the world once was, but is no longer.

  Thomas trails along the corridor a step or two behind, and he finds himself hoping Mostyn is right, and that soon a man won’t have to build a house with arrow slots and drawbridges, or keep a crossbow by the door. He finds himself hoping that soon the world will become dominated by corridor-stalking attorneys and black-coated moneymen such as this John Mostyn.

  Mostyn suggests dinner, but Thomas is anxious to be away. He does not want to be on the road after dark, and he worries about what might be happening back at Marton Hall. He shakes Mostyn’s hand, which is slim and cool, and he goes to find Jack and Foulmouth John in the sort of stables one might expect the Master of the King’s Horses to own.

  ‘They treat horses better than they do any man I’ve yet to meet,’ Foulmouth John says, but this comes as no surprise to Thomas or Jack; nor are they surprised to find the boy has stolen a handful of oats.

  ‘Come on then,’ Thomas says and they walk their horses out and back through the yard.

  ‘Are you right well, Thomas?’ Jack asks. ‘I thought you’d be happy with having got that land at last?’

  Any pleasure Thomas might have felt has been tainted by the bitter thought that he let Mostyn know he was once an ecclesiastic. He was a canon, true, rather than a friar, but that makes no material difference, for everyone knows that to become either a man must take a vow to follow the three evangelical counsels: of chastity, of obedience and, crucially, of poverty. You cannot go around buying land if you are – or once were – an ecclesiastic. You cannot go around owning land. Not if you are holding it for yourself, unless you have a dispensation from, of all people, the Pope in Rome, and who has that? Not Thomas.

  Thomas mounts his horse in preoccupied silence and they begin making their way back though the orchards, following the winding track towards the tree-pruner, who has moved to a new tree and is working away. Thomas tries to think what use Mostyn might make of the information. Something? Nothing? Of course it is going to be something, but what? Thomas looks over his shoulder. He should not leave it at this, he knows. But what can he do?

  The pruner sees them coming and waves his saw at them, but he does not seem to have done much work, Thomas thinks, and if it were not such a frigid spot in which to be working, he might believe he was malingering. But before they reach him, he stops his waving, and he glances back over his shoulder. Then he jerks his head around like an alarmed cock pheasant and stands upright in the branches and stares southwards.

  ‘What’s he up to, the idiot?’

  Foulmouth John laughs.

  ‘Hope the fucker falls.’

  But there is something else odd happening. Jack turns and looks at Thomas. Thomas stares back, incredulous.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ Foulmouth John asks.

  Thomas and Jack both know what it is. They’ve heard it before, but why should they hear it here, now? A low rolling drum that comes from the ground. Horses. Many of them. Coming fast. Why? And the man in the tree can now see what they can only hear. He stands alarmed for a moment, staring. Thomas and Jack both pull their horses around.

  ‘What is it?’ Foulmouth John asks again. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Come on!’

  Thomas snatches the boy’s bridle and hoofs his horse into a gallop, pulling the boy’s pony with him, through the trees, away from the track, away from the house, out of the way of the horsemen. Jack follows. They ride as fast as they can, ducking low branches, through the orchard and out across some ridged furlongs where the horses need to step carefully. Beyond is the line of willows that must mark the river. They ride to them, and then, when they are under their tendrils and the river smell is strong in their nostrils, they slide from their saddles and lead their horses down to the frosted mud and the smooth black waters.

  ‘Hold them,’ Thomas tells Foulmouth John, ‘and wait here.’

  The boy nods. His eyes are as round as pennies. Jack nocks his bow and takes a handful of arrows, of the slim-shafted sort, better for hunting than for shooting at a man, but who keeps the other sort about his person? Thomas loosens his sword and they make their way back through the fields. Ahead is a great commotion of neighing and shouting. Thomas catches a first glimpse of the men coming through the orchard. There are perhaps fifty men, riding fast five abreast, all helmeted, all carrying some sort of weapon, and they are making for Burgh’s new house with only one intent. It seems Mostyn spoke too soon. Thomas wonders what the soldier with the glaive will do. Run? It is what he would do.

  ‘Who in the name of God are they?’ Jack asks.

  They are well organised for mere bandits, and this seems more than mere banditry. This is something planned. They’ve even brought those poles for pulling down walls and roofs. Thomas and Jack make their way through the trees to find a better view of the house. They crouch in some long withered grasses under an old pear tree and watch as the men climb down from their horses and flood through the gates and into the courtyard. They have sent the guard running, and now they are getting to work pulling at the scaffold. Someone has a fire burning. A woman screams and something smashes. There is much rough splintering. Another section of the scaffold teeters and then collapses in a ripple of cracks and snaps. Alarms are shouted. There is another scream. Dogs are barking as they are kicked and horses are skittering as they are dragged from the stables.

  Thomas and Jack see windows knocked out and objects thrown or passed down. The place is being looted. A few men – of the usual sort – are still on horseback, directing the foot soldiers who are now investing the house. There’s more smoke. More window frames are pushed out fr
om the upper floor and lowered to hands raised below. Then someone is thrown out. A boy. There’s a roar of soldierly approval and a woman starts screaming and it’s obvious something bad has happened.

  ‘Lucky we signed for the land when we did,’ Thomas mutters. He swings the leather bag around his shoulder and clutches it tightly. What will happen to the men and women inside? A slim part of him hopes to see the lawyer Mostyn fly from an upper window. Grey and then black smoke begins to billow from another part of the estate, and a moment later the thatch below is cheerfully aflame.

  ‘The stables,’ Jack says. ‘Said they should have used tile.’

  As he says this the men start ripping tiles from the main house, one by one at first, and then there is a great sliding crash of them as they give way together.

  ‘But who are they? Can you see a badge?’

  Jack shakes his head. ‘Could be anyone,’ he says.

  A couple of them wear black and red livery jackets, but what Thomas will have to see is a badge to know if this means anything. Another length of scaffold is levered from its wall and there’s a further crash of masonry or something. A string of horses is brought neighing away from the stables where the flames have caught properly now, and the roofs of the barn and what looks like a dairy seethe with pale grey smoke. In a moment they will catch flame too, and then there’ll be no stopping it.

  They watch as men bring out coffers and furniture from the house and set them down a little distance off. Two or three men remain in their saddles. One of them gestures with his sword and, above the popping of the flames, Thomas can hear him barking instructions and the house Thomas had so recently admired is pulled apart, bit by bit, and everything – all the fine furniture and so on – is dragged out and carried away.

  Two hatless men in hose and pourpoint appear behind the house and go running pell-mell towards the buildings beyond. More follow. Women too, hampered by dresses. One of them is clutching a bowl of something. Another, a babe in arms. More children come after them, scattering to the various folds where once they might have hidden in a game. Three soldiers in red and black come running out after them but after a very few yards they stop their pursuit, laughing, and they return to the house for better spoil.

  At that moment Mostyn emerges, running awkwardly towards them, one hand on his hat, his coat undone, something under one arm.

  ‘We could save him’ Jack mutters. He nocks his bow.

  ‘No!’ Thomas says. He pushes Jack’s bow down. ‘No. There are too many of them.’

  Watching Mostyn floundering towards the men, Thomas feels a sudden leap of hope, but then quashes it. He cannot bring himself to admit for a moment that he would see Mostyn dead, but at least that way – but then the useless soldiers let him go by. They hardly bother with him. It is as if they were meeting one another on the road, and after a moment he is past them and hobbling away into the gardens of the houses.

  Thomas gasps with frustration.

  ‘Look: just red and black. Anyone you recognise?’

  Jack shakes his head again.

  ‘They aren’t all in red and black. Look. That one’s in blue.’

  Then it strikes Thomas. What about Marton Hall? If these men have come up the road from the south, they will have come through Marton. Past Katherine. Past Rufus. Christ! What if they have attacked them too?

  ‘Jack,’ he says. ‘Let’s go.’

  They run, crouched, back to the willows where the horses and John wait shivering noisily and they fumble with the bridles and then lead the horses through the mud alongside the swirling black waters. They grab them and lead them on, keeping as low as they can.

  ‘Ha!’ Foulmouth John croaks. ‘That fucker’s still up his fucking tree. They’ve not touched him! They must think he’s the biggest fucking crow what ever lived.’

  There is no time to ponder this.

  ‘Come on, damn you!’ Thomas shouts. ‘What about Marton? What about Nettie? And Katherine! Think of them!’

  They mount up and ride until they find the track that takes them back on to the road south. Its mud has been much churned up by horses coming north. Seeing the tracks, Thomas knows it is as he feared: they will have come through Marton.

  ‘Come on,’ he urges. ‘Come on!’

  They should never have left the house, Thomas thinks. What good would John Stumps have been in protecting it? He sees dead bodies. Ripped clothing. Naked flesh. Blood. Soot. He can smell it. Hear it. He stands in the stirrups and kicks his horse into a gallop. Jack and John can hardly keep up.

  ‘Wait!’

  But he rides on across the mud stippled with the prints of their horses’ hoofs. There are tears in his eyes. He looks up above the treetops. The sky is grey now, very pale, the colour of smoke and bone, of burning thatch, wood, rush. Jesus!

  They reach the village and still there is nothing. No sign of any robbery. No dead bodies or burning buildings. The village is deserted, as it might well be in this weather, and the tracks run on south, past the track to Marton Hall, back down to Lincoln. All seems as it should. He allows his heart to slow, his fears to abate, his hopes to grow. He kicks on, up the track, past the church. There is a catch of smoke in the air, but once through the trees, he sees it is gusting from the hall’s chimney.

  Thomas reins in his sweating horse. Pats him on his neck. Both man and beast are steaming in the cold.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he breathes. ‘God be praised, it’s all right.’

  His heart slows. He is shaking, though. He had imagined such terrible things. Jack and John come cantering out of the trees behind him. Jack looks grim but relieved. Foulmouth John clings to his pony. They ride together into the deserted yard.

  A face appears at the window, and a moment later the door opens and Rufus comes spilling out, laughing, clumsy, in his robe but no cap, his red hair springing everywhere. Thomas drops to the ground and bends to pick the boy up and hugs him. Rufus squeals and grabs his ears in both hands.

  First Nettie comes to the door, and then Katherine, hand across her belly. They are shoulder to shoulder and they stare smiling at their men in mild surprise.

  ‘That was quick,’ one of them says.

  ‘So who were they?’ Katherine asks.

  They are sitting in the hall at the table where Sir John used to sit and the fire is lit and there is bread and smoked cheese and some very salty ham and Thomas and Jack, still red-faced from their ride, are both drinking ale.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Thomas admits.

  ‘We didn’t stay to find out,’ Jack boasts. ‘We were worried about you.’

  Nettie is nursing their baby at the chair by the fire, and she is merely cross that Jack has been out and got himself involved in something that might endanger him, while Katherine looks more distantly worried. Thomas, whose recent desperate fears afforded him a glimpse of a different future, is so relieved to have returned to find the hall and his family just as he left it, and them, that he cannot take his gaze from his wife, unless it is to look at his son. She wears her dark green dress, which she will soon need to let out over her swelling belly, and she has on a bleached linen headdress that wraps under her chin. Time, or motherhood, or lack of want, has changed her face, and the austere, bird-like ferocity of her youth has softened into something more approachable, and she is to Thomas’s eye ever more beautiful than ever she was. But there is something awry between them, some distance that he cannot cross, however much he tries, and however much he does.

  And now he has said something to worry her, and there is a crease between her brows, and he feels that same old feeling, as if he has missed something.

  ‘But they didn’t look like robbers?’ she asks. ‘As you would imagine robbers to look like?’

  Thomas thinks.

  ‘No, I suppose not. They were like someone’s household retainers, but they were in motley, weren’t they, Jack? And they carried no flags, and wore no badges, or none that we were close enough to see.’

  ‘And they w
ere properly led,’ Jack adds. ‘Did you see their captain? Sat in his saddle all the while, pointing his sword and telling everyone what to do.’

  ‘We can ask in the village,’ Katherine supposes. ‘Ask if anyone saw them passing through. We must find out who sent them.’

  ‘Sent them?’ Jack asks. ‘They were just a band of robbers. A bit better organised than most, I grant, but the sheriff will have them hunted down—’

  ‘But they attacked the sheriff. That is my point. They did not attack anyone else, did they? Not us, and no one in the village. No one as they passed. Only Burgh. Only the sheriff.’

  ‘So? He is the wealthiest man in the county,’ Jack says. ‘And like to have the most things worth stealing.’

  Katherine nods.

  ‘He may do,’ she says, ‘but we have things worth stealing too, don’t we? And yet they passed us by. Any normal band of thieves would have come here first.’

  ‘But it is as I’m trying to tell you,’ Jack says. ‘They were no ordinary thieves.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Katherine says. ‘So who were they? Why would they single out Thomas Burgh and his new house?’

  ‘Because of who Burgh is?’ Thomas suggests when he has finished chewing. He doesn’t know where Katherine is leading them, but he knows her well enough to follow.

  ‘And who is he?’ she asks.

  ‘He is the Sheriff of the Shire, and Master of the King’s Horse.’

  ‘So he is King Edward’s man hereabouts, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ Thomas supposes. ‘Yes. He is.’

  ‘And yet someone gathered, armed and then sent troops to attack his house.’

  Now he sees what she means.

  ‘They attacked him because he is King Edward’s man? So it is an attack on King Edward?’

  She nods shortly.

  ‘Don’t you think?’ she asks.

  ‘But – who would do that?’ Jack asks. ‘Only a man out of his wits.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Thomas says. ‘Do you remember King Edward saying how he had learned his lesson from last time when he was so slack? He’ll not dither this time. He’ll come with thousands of men to find whoever did it, and when he does, each and every one’ll find himself hanging from a tree.’