Kingdom Come

by Toby Clements

  ‘Have you seen any more?’ Katherine asks her.

  ‘No, mistress.’

  Foulmouth John still fills the window as she goes back down the steps. The atmosphere below is strange, as if everything has been turned on its head. No one knows if they should be happy or frightened.

  ‘I got one,’ John Stumps tells her. ‘I got one. Sly little fucker ducked but I still got him. Crawling on the ground, he was!’

  ‘But how many more are there?’ Bald John wonders.

  No one knows. So once more they stand poised in silence with their bows cocked, sweating even in the darkness while they wait and she can hear nothing, only the wind around the chimney top and prying at the seams of the house.

  Suddenly Rufus stiffens by her side.

  ‘A light,’ he says. ‘Behind Nettie’s house.’

  Someone with a lamp.

  ‘It will be a parlay then,’ Bald John supposes.

  Now she can see the glow. She listens for a shout from beyond, but nothing comes. The light grows stronger.

  ‘Let’s just give it to them,’ John Stumps suggests. ‘Throw it out to them?’

  He means the ledger, and she thinks: Yes, let’s do that. They’ll take it and then they’ll go, and it will be good riddance. But what about their dead? They won’t leave the dead men unavenged, will they? Regret and fear sit on Katherine’s chest like a weight. Why didn’t they ask for the ledger before their attack? Why didn’t she offer it up before they killed those men?

  ‘Let’s just – let’s just wait to hear what they have to say.’

  She knows exactly where the ledger is. She will throw it to them if they would but ask for it. But she hears no shouted overture, nothing to suggest men interested in talking. The lamp is brighter now, but not moving. Then her heart catches. It’s not a lamp. It’s a fire. They are setting Nettie’s house alight. She cannot help but turn and look at Nettie.

  ‘What?’ Nettie asks.

  Katherine wonders if she should tell her. Will she not try to run out there or something and get herself killed?

  ‘The fuckers’re back!’ Foulmouth shouts from above. ‘They’re burning Jack’s house down!’

  Nettie gets up and brings the baby to the window where the shutter is still raised, but now there’s a bar of light across her headdress and Katherine can see her eyes white in the darkness of the hall.

  ‘Let me see,’ Nettie says.

  The flames have caught, and Katherine can see their reflection in Nettie’s eyes. Nettie starts a low moan.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘No. No. No. No. No.’

  Nettie dumps the baby on Katherine, who takes her in one arm, for she still has the loaded crossbow in the other, and she goes to the door where John Stumps can only watch helplessly as she lifts the drawbar. Bald John comes scuffling towards her.

  ‘No, Nettie—’ he begins, but Nettie ignores him. Katherine passes the baby on to Rufus, who takes her in well-practised arms.

  ‘Nettie, wait!’ she calls.

  But Nettie hauls the door open and steps out into the darkness. Before she can even cross the threshold there is a twang from over the way, a crack as something hits the oak of the door, and then a wet thud, a gust of expressed breath and Nettie staggers quickly back into the hall, arms flailing.

  But there’s another bang from upstairs and a cry of pleasure from Foulmouth John too.

  ‘Got ’im!’ he shouts. ‘I got the cunt!’

  But Nettie lies on her back in the rushes at John Stumps’s feet. The boy at the door forces it closed and drops the bar. Katherine is at Nettie’s side in the darkness.

  ‘A light! Quick, for the love of God! A lamp.’

  The girl – it is Joana again – lights one from the fire and brings it over and she gasps as the circle of light expands to reveal Nettie on her back, one leg bent at the knee and an arrow buried in her right cheek, just by her nose. Her eyes are open, but she lies very still and she does not speak. And she’s looking up the arrow shaft’s length, seemingly just a little surprised, and her hands are wavering in mid-air.

  Upstairs Foulmouth John is still laughing with pleasure.

  ‘D’you hear me?’ he calls down. ‘I got him? Lit up like a fucker he was!’

  ‘Boy!’ Bald John barks. ‘Shut up! Shut up now!’

  Katherine is surprised how little blood there is. That is good, she thinks. She touches the quarrel. It is wooden, which in part explains why it has not gone clean through Nettie’s skull, but it is firmly dug in, probably in the back of Nettie’s skull, Katherine thinks, and now become solidly part of her face, thrumming with her vital force. It is a miracle that she still lives.

  ‘All is well, Nettie,’ she soothes. ‘All is well. We will have this out of you in moments. Joana, stay with her, hold her hand. I will fetch what I need.’

  She takes the lamp and steps through the darkness to the buttery. She knows precisely what she needs and where to find it: a handful of barley seeds from the barrel, rose oil, honey and ale, and then, from a nail on the back of the door, the bag of unguents and powders she bought from the apothecary in Lincoln, including the dwale of hemlock and poppy seeds. She sends Joana up for some lengths of unused linen from the coffer in the bedchamber.

  ‘Keep a good lookout,’ she tells the others. ‘Can you see any more of them?’

  No one can, but everyone is distracted, heads half-turned towards Nettie.

  Katherine pours the ale into a leather beaker and mixes in some of the dwale. Wine would be better but they have not seen that for weeks. She tips it, little by little, into Nettie’s mouth. It is bitter and Nettie resists.

  ‘Please, Nettie, you must,’ she says.

  But Nettie won’t. Katherine asks Anne, Joana’s mother, to help a moment. She steps out of the shadows and holds Nettie’s head so that she has to drink. When the cup is empty she sets it aside. Nettie looks terrified, as well she might. How long do they have before the pain starts? Katherine wonders. Anne stays with Nettie, stroking her face.

  ‘It is all right, Nettie. All will be well,’ says Katherine. Then she turns to the others. ‘Right. Now I need a jug of piss. Each of you. Do what you can. One at a time. Everyone else: keep an eye out.’

  ‘The fire’s really taking hold,’ Rufus says.

  There’s nothing they can do about that for the moment.

  Bald John goes first, untying his codpiece and urinating loudly a few feet from her, so that she can smell it over Nettie’s blood. She takes the arrow shaft, stands it on the hearth and then splits it with her knife, tapping down its length. She does this three or four times until she has a clutch of long stiff slivers, which she dips in rose oil.

  She cuts up some linen into pieces and when the jugful of strong-smelling urine is brought to her, she dabs the linen in and wipes Nettie’s face clean with it, and then sloshes some on to the wound. Nettie flinches. Not surprising, really. There is still not too much blood, but she wishes Nettie would close her eyes, or she could put something over them.

  ‘Can you pull it out?’ Katherine asks Bald John and even in the gloom you can see the thought terrifies him. He nods, though, and gets down on his knees. He holds the quarrel by the end, but it is as if it is a stubborn weed, suddenly sprouted in Nettie’s face, and there’s not much of it to grip.

  ‘Hold her head,’ she tells Anne.

  Bald John is sheened with sweat. He opens his mouth to say something.

  ‘It has to be done,’ she tells him.

  He nods and bends over and tugs the shaft, gently at first, and then with more force. It is stubborn but suddenly it comes with a quick sucking pop. He rocks back, and it is as if Nettie is released. Katherine leans forward with the linen to staunch the blood that rises like black water in a ground spring.

  But then he shows her the quarrel.

  There is no head. Only the bloody black shaft.

  Oh Christ.

  The quarrel head is still in there.

  The blood is coming very str
ongly now, welling up in the wound. Nettie is trying to blink it away. Katherine tries to think. What can she do? What can she do? She remembers cutting an arrowhead out of Richard Fakenham’s shoulder, and out of Giles Riven’s back, but this is different. This is a face. A head. Oh Christ.

  From hope to this.

  She is kneeling with her backside on her heels now. She places her fists on her thighs. Nettie is looking at her through one panicking eye.

  ‘It is fine, Nettie,’ she says. ‘You will be fine.’

  But blood still overfills the wound and the black star on her face is spreading and filling her eye so that she thrashes her head to clear it and then there’s only more blood.

  What to do? What to do?

  Can she leave it in there? No. That will bring on the black rot. She must get it out, but how, now? She must first stop the bleeding and then she can think. She wads the urine-soaked linen into a tampon and then packs it into the wound. Blood is splashed everywhere now, all over her clothes, up to her elbows, all over Nettie, and Katherine’s movements are clumsy and rushed and she is grateful that no one can see her panic. Just then Nettie starts shaking, her whole body convulsing, thrashing like a fish on a riverbank. Heels, backside, shoulders, head, banging on the floor as if she’s overtaken by an evil spirit.

  Katherine’s never seen anything like it.

  She pulls back.

  There is a great wave of heat from Nettie, as if she is on fire, and then – she stops still. She lets out a great woof of air and a strangulated cry and is finally still.

  ‘Nettie,’ Katherine says. ‘Nettie, wake up.’

  She leans forward and places a hand on Nettie’s breast. Then she unties the laces of Nettie’s jack, and she rests her ear against the bloody cloth of her shift. Nothing. No sound. No heartbeat. Katherine sits back. She rests her hands on her knees. The others look at her, waiting for her to do something, waiting for her to give them hope.

  But there is nothing she can do, and she can give them no hope.

  She shakes her head. Her heart aches forcefully, as if it has outgrown its reserved space, and her tears come struggling up and she cannot contain a sob. She cleans her hands on the sleeves of Nettie’s jack. John Stumps snivels and wipes his nose on his stump. The other women in the hall start weeping too, but then the baby starts howling for something, and Katherine thinks the noise is such a small thing but it is also the worst thing and – dear God! They will have to feed her!

  She lifts her hands and they are wet with blood, black in the light of the fire. Nettie’s eye is still open. Katherine closes it, leaving dark marks on her skin. She gets to her feet. Rufus manages to soothe the baby for a moment, but it will only be for a moment. Katherine takes a candle to the buttery to find something for the baby to eat. A pap, perhaps, of bread and ale? She returns the honey, barley and the rose oil to their places and she sets about making it. She remembers doing the same with Welby’s wife’s child, though with him she began with milk from the goat. Kate is older, and must make do with ale until they can find her milk.

  She makes a bowl of the stuff, with Nettie’s blood in the lines of her hands, and takes it, still unable to speak, back to where Rufus dandles the baby in his arms. He is whispering to the child, keeping her head turned from the sight of her dead mother, as if she might understand it, and they’re both lit up by the burning house, the blaze of which they can see through the crack above the shutter. She gives him the bowl of pap and he sets about trying to feed the baby. Weaning is not easy at the best of times, she knows, and now are not the best of times, but the baby is instantly quietened by the very first taste of the food. She wants more. Her little hand reaches for the wooden spoon.

  It is the first good thing to happen to them, she thinks. Then she ruffles Rufus’s hair and returns to the window to take up the crossbow again, and she stands keeping watch out of this window, her eyes gritty, and she tries not to think what they will have to say to Jack if he ever comes back to find any of them alive.

  Flames leap from the house across the yard, buffeted by the breeze, and she can smell the thick stench of the smoking thatch and knows that it will not be long now before it will go up with a dirty dull flare that’ll signal the start of the real danger, when the sparks will take wing and fly, and she thinks of the stable roof, and of the thatch above their own heads, and she remembers Sir John telling her that Giles Riven’s men once set fire to the stables to get the horses to scream so that he would be caught between rescuing them and rescuing young Liz Popham. Sir John had chosen the horses, not believing what they’d do to Liz, and had later told her that this was the single worst thing he had done in his life, a choice that would haunt him to his grave.

  Rufus has managed to get the whole bowl into the baby and she is sitting upright on his knee, trying to peer around him to see her mother. Rufus places his hand over the baby’s eyes to spare her the sight. It is heartbreaking.

  Katherine turns back to look out across the yard at the flames again, and tears fill her eyes so that she can hardly see what she is looking at, and she just wishes Thomas were here. He and Jack. They would have been able to stop Nettie opening that door. She rests her head against the jamb of the window and closes her eyes and she just wishes all this were over, one way or another.

  ‘Why don’t they come?’ John Stumps asks.

  ‘Smoking us out?’ Bald John suggests.

  They stand in silence, and time inches past. Katherine watches the fire burn, and occasionally her gaze sinks to the dead man in the yard, lit up now, but then it springs back up, back to the dancing shadows, and she is always surprised there is no one to be seen. She wonders how long it will be before the oak beams really start to burn, and she wonders why it is the men out there haven’t already set fire to the stables or the barn and whether they will, and she is so absorbed in this that she does not perceive the light is changing until it has done so, and all at once she looks up and she sees the true darkness of the night is passed and the blackbirds and the robins are beginning to sing, and, mercifully, with the dawn comes a thin rain, falling like a benediction.

  ‘Just before dawn’s the time they’ll come again,’ John Stumps says. ‘Thomas always says so.’

  She’s never heard Thomas say such a thing and, even if it is true, she wonders why he would know it anyway, but nevertheless, they gather themselves up and resume their vigilance and wait watching while the birdsong swells and the light grows and first faces then features become distinguishable. She keeps a watch on the shadows, and on the dead man in the yard. He’s prone, face turned away, one arm flung out, the other wrist against the ground, elbow cocked above his back. Who is he? Where’s he from?

  ‘Never short of food, that fucker!’ Foulmouth John calls down.

  They wait until it is quite light before there is a subtle disengagement, as if they all recognise the task is complete and that the next stage in the process must now commence. They each of them turn to look at one another, and then, on her signal, they open the doors and the windows all at once, and then they step back and wait, each ready to shoot at anything that moves. Nothing does. The flames still burn in Nettie’s house. The smell of wet ashes is strong in their noses.

  After a while John Who-Was-Stabbed-by-His-Priest steps out into the yard. Then he steps back in. He grins one of those terrified grimaces: teeth clenched, eyes very round. He is sweating and red-faced. He does it again, and again, each time lingering longer and stepping further. They hear Foulmouth John shouting down at them – something lewd but indistinct – and Bald John, the boy’s father, summons him and tells him to go out himself if he is so sure. The boy says something else that is also mercifully inaudible as he passes John Who-Was-Stabbed-by-His-Priest, and then he trots into the yard, just as if he’d only now been woken up after a good sleep. They watch him standing in the yard, yawning and stretching, and nothing happens.

  ‘One of you’s killed a fucking dog,’ Foulmouth John calls back to them. ‘Look at it
, poor little fucker.’

  Katherine goes out next and sees the dead dog has a bolt smack in the bony dome of its forehead, and its neck is bent at a sharp rake. John Stumps follows and stands over it, stricken, his crossbow hanging by his knees. There are tears in his eyes. ‘Oh Christ,’ he says.

  The others come out after. Bald John lays a hand on John Stumps’s shoulder.

  ‘It was a good shot, though,’ he says.

  The fire in Nettie’s house still burns, hissing and spluttering and spreading choking gusts of smoke and ash into the air above their heads.

  ‘Are they all dead?’ she asks, and she notes how each man makes first for the body of the man he thinks he himself killed. She is no different. She steps around that first dead body in the courtyard, and walks slowly for the side of the stables to find the man she shot at. She still has the crossbow cocked, the string straight and a quarrel in its slot, and she steps quickly around the corner, ready to shoot. There’s no one there, and nothing to show there ever was. Except in the wood chips on the ground is a dark medal of blood. There’s a little smear of it further on, and a bloody scrape, and then more of it – and there, in the shadows of the birches, is a presence. Her heart fills her throat. She levels her crossbow and it wavers in her shaking hands as she takes a step.

  Suddenly Rufus is next to her.

  ‘Rufus,’ she says. ‘Go back to Nettie.’

  He ignores her.

  ‘Is he dead?’ he asks, gesturing.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she says. ‘That is why you must go back. Please, Rufus?’

  The dead man has dragged himself from where he was shot, through the woodchips to the woodstack, and is sitting against the log ends with his legs straight out before him, his head hanging heavy on his chest, hands cupped over a belly punctured and stained dark with blood. From between his laced fingers sticks her quarrel.

  He’s dead.

  Katherine straightens, relieved.

  ‘Come, Rufus, leave him. Leave him. There’s nothing we can do for him.’