Kingdom Come

by Toby Clements

  Jack will come with them, it is decided, and they are on the road early the next morning, while it is still cold, ready to intercept the sly-eyed carrier on his way to Lincoln, this time with a cargo of broadcloth, two falcons in a wicker cage and a leaking barrel of bad-smelling wetfish.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ Thomas asks Katherine.

  ‘The child is two months away,’ she reminds him. ‘I will be fine.’

  She still moves comfortably and, hidden under her travelling cloak, it is not obvious she is so many months with child, but the sly-eyed carrier knows they’d not be stopping him and asking him for a ride unless they needed to, so the starting price is already pitched high. Then he tells them that since there is only so much room on his creaking cart, he must yield his place and walk, and so that will add a bit more, for his labour, and then he tells them that he is already fretful that he will miss the weekly market, and him walking – he is a slow walker, he reminds them – will mean he is now guaranteed to miss it …

  Thomas counts out the coins without a quibble, watched by Katherine, and Jack, who shakes his head in wonder, and the carrier taps his mule with his switch and they set off, grinding slowly along the track south. The carrier sniffs constantly, despite the season, and sighs breathily with the effort of walking, and Thomas, already impatient enough, rides on ahead for a few moments, and then stops to let them catch him up.

  Spring is giving away to summer now, in mid May, and shade is deep. Crowfoot fills the meres and there are turtle doves calling from among the flowering candles of a horse chestnut above.

  ‘Got it, have you?’ Jack checks.

  Thomas pats the ledger, slung over his back just as it once always was. It is a comforting weight.

  ‘Will you miss it?’ he asks.

  ‘Miss it?’ Thomas wonders. ‘No, not really. There was a time when it was … when it kept us going – the thought of its value anyway – but there have been times too when … well, I’ve wished I’d never set eyes on the bloody thing.’

  Jack nods. Him too, of course.

  ‘Jack—’ Thomas begins, but Jack holds up a hand. He has heard it before, a hundred times already, and Thomas can apologise no longer.

  ‘I’ll just be glad when it’s gone,’ he says.

  ‘Amen,’ Thomas says. ‘Amen to that.’

  ‘Got any ale?’ the carrier asks when he catches up. ‘You usually have ale.’

  His piggy little eyes search their saddle bags.

  ‘Shame,’ he says. ‘For I’ve heard some interesting tidings of the Earl of Warwick? You usually like to hear about him, don’t you, mistress?’

  Thomas is tempted but Katherine remains steely.

  ‘We’ll soon be in Lincoln,’ she says, ‘and besides, we’ve already paid you more money than you’d earn in any normal week.’

  The carrier tells them to suit themselves, which they do in pent-up silence while he continues his sweaty huffing and puffing. In the end he cracks, and tells them his news. It is exactly what Hastings’s messenger told them, with the added nugget that the Earl of Warwick’s little fleet has attacked some Burgundian merchantmen before sheltering in a river mouth near the town of Honfleur. None of them have heard of Honfleur so they are glad they did not give up any ale to learn it.

  They’ve made this journey countless times, in countless states varying from elation to trepidation, but this time it feels very different. This time it feels as significant in its way as any birth, or death, because it is perhaps a bit of both. It is the end of something, and the beginning of something else. Thomas knows that when he rides back this way again, this afternoon, he will be a different man, with different prospects and a different relationship to the world. He supposes he will ride lighter, easier, higher. Less encumbered, maybe, but also less accoutred, since he will no longer have the ledger, and the weight of responsibility that comes with it. When he thinks about it he feels joy, but it is not untainted by loss.

  They soon see the spire of the cathedral – ‘The tallest in Christendom, let me remind you, mistress’ – and are at the gate just as the bell for sext sounds, and the usual cloud of pigeons is sent flying.

  ‘You’d think they’d be used to it by now,’ Jack says.

  At the Newport Gate the Watch are back up to strength and refilled with their usual bullies’ swagger. Thomas, Katherine and Jack leave the carrier to his business and they walk under the arch and along the road past the apothecary towards the cathedral precinct where the traders are busy selling things off cheap prior to packing up their stalls, and the gutters are filled with brown cabbage leaves and pearly pink offal, and the blue stones are stained with butchers’ waste and God knows what else.

  The news from across the Narrow Sea is on most minds, and the mood among the townspeople is uncertain. Some are pleased to have heard of the Earl of Warwick’s difficulties, and are happy to say so, but other voices are raised in regret, and there is sorrow that the Duke’s child – a boy, it turns out – died in such circumstances, and there is widespread sympathy for the Duchess.

  They stop at the top of the hill and look down towards the pardoner’s widow’s house. Thomas feels a great pang of anxiety.

  ‘Are you sure this will work?’ he asks.

  Katherine nods. She looks determined.

  ‘If the widow is unchanged,’ she says, ‘and the books are still there as they were, then yes, I am certain of it.’

  ‘What will you say?’ Jack asks.

  ‘Thomas is going to ask if he can buy one of her books,’ she tells Jack. ‘He found one he admired. A psalter from somewhere. Utrecht, I think.’

  This is their plan.

  ‘I – I have not enough money to buy such a thing,’ he tells her.

  ‘She need not know that,’ Katherine says.

  Jack stops at the top of the hill, before they come into view of that jettied storey, and he wishes them luck. Thomas feels they ought not to need it, since all they are doing is tricking an old widow, but he is unaccountably nervous about this now. Perhaps it is the thought of parting with the ledger? He has spent ten years guarding it, keeping it hidden, nurturing it almost, so that it has become something more valuable to him than any mere object. Perhaps it is also because he is relying on Katherine, and on her memory of the last time they came here together? She told him the women – both the servant, and the mistress – were astonishing and peculiar, and she is relying on nothing having changed since then.

  He shakes Jack’s hand for some reason, and then he and Katherine walk down the hill, angling towards the house. Time and neglect have softened its lines. Roof tiles have slipped and new weeds sprout from cracks in the green-tinged daub, but somehow you know it is still inhabited. Thomas’s mouth is dry and his limbs are heavy, and he finds himself dawdling, pretending to be waiting to see if the widow appears at her window. My God, he thinks. Is this it? Is this the solution to the problem that has plagued them for ten years? It feels suspiciously easy, suspiciously obvious, even slightly cowardly. To foist the thing on an old woman. But what if she does not know that she has it? What then? No blame can attach to her, surely. If Wilkes finds – when Wilkes finds it, he can’t blame her for possessing it.

  ‘Come on,’ he says, more to himself than to Katherine.

  She nods, takes a deep breath and wraps the travelling cloak around her, and they cross the road with only a quick stolen glance up into the window where last he saw the widow, and walk up the steps to knock on the door.

  A moment later the door is opened by a round-faced maid, broad-hipped and about thirty years of age, who steps back, and it is just as if they are expected.

  ‘Is Mistress Daud within?’ Thomas asks.

  The girl says nothing; she only bends her knees slightly and then steps further back to admit them.

  Thomas crosses the threshold. The house smells of autumn in the woods. Christ! He does remember being here! He remembers it. That smell! And the dust and the cobwebs festooning everything. And the b
ooks! Yes. At least a hundred of them. They are through there! A psalter from Utrecht! A Life of Julius Caesar! He remembers. He remembers.

  He feels Katherine push him forward towards the room.

  ‘Shall we wait in here for Mistress Daud?’ Katherine asks, indicating the darkened room.

  ‘Oh yes,’ the woman says, her voice all breathy. ‘I will let her know you have come again.’

  She smiles at them knowingly, as if they are all three in on some curious scheme together, and she starts to climb the steps up to the solar, looking neither left nor right, but straight ahead, still with that faint smile on her face. Thomas crosses the rush-strewn hall to the other doorway through which is the room with the books, shrouded and gloomy.

  ‘It is just the same as last time we were here,’ Thomas tells Katherine. She looks at him, surprised.

  ‘You remember it?’

  ‘I do. Yes.’

  She blows air out of her nose. There is no time to discuss this. But Thomas’s mind reels and spins.

  ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Quickly.’

  The smell in the room with the books is sharper still – of mice, and of paper and leather and wood turning to dust – but it is otherwise just as it was, and here are the books, piled up on trestles, of all shapes and sizes, laid out and piled up, and covering everything is a thick layer of grey fibrous dust, tracked over by a thousand paws and speckled with mouse shit.

  ‘Should have brought a cat,’ Thomas says.

  He slides his bag around and digs out the ledger. With fumbling fingers he takes it from its cover. It is best it is done quickly. He approaches a pile of the books that is topped by a large, badly damaged psalter. Katherine comes to his side. She lifts two of them, holding them up from below, and Thomas places the ledger on the book below. She replaces the books so that they cover the ledger and hide it completely, and they step back into the middle of the room. Thomas lets out his breath. He is about to look again at the other books, and then back at the ledger to see that it looks undisturbed, or to see it for one last time, when he realises the light in the room has changed and there is a shape filling the doorway.

  The widow.

  Has she seen what they’ve done?

  He is about to open his mouth to offer a conventional greeting when something makes him stop. The widow’s eyes are round, and – expressionless. They do not register what she sees. For a moment he thinks she may be blind. But no. She is an idiot.

  He breathes a plume of relief.

  Widow Daud walks into the centre of the room. She smells strongly of urine, and they have to step aside to let her take the space and she stands there, breathing loudly through her mouth as if she cannot stand the smell of herself. She is in a dress the colour of sage leaves in winter, the hem of which is faded and fraying with age. No one says anything for a moment. Thomas slides the empty bag around so that it hangs across his back.

  She looks at Katherine, and when she speaks, her voice is as whispery as two dry palms crossed.

  ‘Have you come from him?’

  ‘Him?’ Katherine asks.

  ‘I have been waiting. So long. He said he would send word for me.’

  ‘Who said they would send word for you?’ Katherine asks.

  ‘He said he would come. He said he would send a litter covered in cloth of gold, carried by four fine palfreys, each whiter than the next, and a retinue of forty Knights of the Garter, and that there would be a wedding banquet that would last a twelvemonth or more.’

  ‘Who? Who said this?’

  But it is too late. When she sees they are not sent by the man for whom she waits, her face falls. Tears wink in her eyes and then ooze like oil to splash her dusty cheeks, and she clutches herself and starts keening a wavering, high-pitched note, a lament as tuneless as wind in a crook.

  The maid appears in the doorway.

  ‘You’d best go,’ she says.

  Thomas and Katherine nod and begin their retreat, circling around the widow who stands there still, ignoring them as they pass, and Thomas feels the beginnings of a smile lifting his lips, and he thinks they’ve done it, they’ve secreted the ledger where it will be found, and it will never come back to them, and he begins to think warm thoughts about the poor widow, when suddenly she stops her crying and turns on Katherine, now with one clear eye. She extends a finger, pointing at Katherine’s face.

  ‘You,’ she says. ‘You are hiding something.’

  Katherine steps back. The widow steps after her.

  ‘You are hiding something. But what? What are you hiding?’

  Katherine cowers and turns her cheek. The widow extends both hands towards her face. Her papery hands are blotched and snaked with veins. Then she drops them and opens Katherine’s cloak. Katherine tries to hide herself. But the widow gasps when she sees her belly, and then once more her face folds into an expression of terrible, distraught sorrow. She mews and sobs and tears come rolling down her cheeks again.

  But then her expression changes suddenly, as if a cloth has passed over her face, and it hardens from sorrow to bitterest spite. Her fingers become like talons and she pulls them back, as though she might suddenly plunge them into Katherine and rip out the baby. Thomas steps between them and moves Katherine aside.

  The widow takes a pace backwards.

  ‘I curse you!’ she hisses. ‘I curse you!’

  Katherine rears away as if bitten.

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘I damn you! I damn your child! I pray you wither before you are brought to term. I pray your bones melt and the child becomes a stone in your womb! I pray he is born a beast, with horns and a tail!’

  Katherine is aghast. She pulls herself further back, and grasps her cloak together at the throat, but she cannot seem to tear her gaze from the now drooling madwoman. It takes Thomas a moment to react, and he takes Katherine’s shoulders and turns her away, into him.

  ‘Come!’ he snaps. ‘She is out of her wits. She knows not what she says. Come. Come on! Don’t listen.’

  The maid returns, running.

  ‘You’d best go,’ she says again.

  ‘Be gone!’ the widow calls. ‘Be gone, you whore, to whelp your monster in a ditch!’

  The maid slaps her mistress. Thomas gathers Katherine up and guides her out into the fresh air and the sunshine.

  ‘Oh Christ, Katherine,’ he says. ‘She means nothing. She is out of her wits. Come. All is well. All is well.’

  He guides her quickly up the street, away from the house, and she trips and stumbles and he must support her, but she says nothing, and all the joy of accomplishment is turned to ash in his mouth.

  By the time they reach the brow of the hill and are among the crowds in the cathedral precinct, Katherine has recovered herself.

  ‘It is done,’ she says. ‘It is done, and that is all that matters.’

  He hopes she feels that way, but she is shaking as if she has a fever, and her whole body is stiff. It is done. It is done, yes. But – at what cost?

  They find Jack waiting anxiously with the horses.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘A misunderstanding,’ is all Thomas will say.

  ‘But it worked?’

  Thomas nods. He can’t say any more.

  They pay another carrier to take Katherine, and the trip back is quicker, with Katherine able to sit atop a sarpler of finest wool bound for Gainsborough and thence Hull, to be shipped to Calais, the man tells them with a tap of his nose to indicate no such thing. He says little and asks less and they are back at Marton before the swifts have risen into the night. Katherine goes straight to bed.

  ‘I’d expected that to be more fun,’ Jack admits when they are currying the horses. Thomas grunts. He tells Jack what happened. Jack crosses himself.

  They both know how bad this is. A curse before childing. There can be nothing worse, really.

  ‘Damn her,’ Thomas says. ‘Damn her. I’ve a mind to ride back – and – and kill her.’

  Ja
ck says nothing. He does not think that will help. Nor does Thomas.

  ‘Christ, Jack, what am I going to do?’

  ‘Nettie always swore that jet was the answer.’

  ‘Jet?’

  ‘You wrap a pebble of it in a cloth that is blessed by a priest, or a bishop is better, and you wear it around your belly when you are in childbed.’

  It will need more than that, Thomas thinks, and now he feels worse because Jack has not tried to encourage him by telling him that at least they’ve got rid of the ledger, and saved themselves a visit from Wilkes. It means Jack thinks it is bad, too.

  It is the second week before the Ascension, in the middle of May, 1470.

  13

  In the next week, Katherine starts to double in size, and she is able to do less and less. She watches them all go off into the fields at the dawn of each day, and then she slowly moves through the garden, weeding in among the skirrets and the fat hens to remove the stray dead nettles and corn cockles. Or now that the lambing season has ended, she helps Anne and Joana milk the sheep for the cheese, and she spends long afternoons on her feet in the dairy with them, listening to their chatter, helping them churn the butter while the netted cheeses drip down on them from the rafters above. She helps Anne with the ale, too, and then she helps cook supper until the others come back again, sunburned and tired, for a dinner of eggs and herbs from the garden. John Stumps is always about, a dark frustrated little presence, and Thomas has given them a hunting horn that they can use to summon help if needed.

  Haymaking begins. The weather stays fair, and it is a good crop this year, the best anyone in the village can recall. This bodes well for the coming winter, when they will be able to keep more of the pigs and sheep alive for longer, and so have fresh meat just when they need it most. Then the sheep shearing begins. The work is harder still than haymaking, and the men return exhausted and stinking at the end of long days, and they don’t even have that many sheep to shear. It is good to get it over and done with early though, because the fleece are better at this time of year, and because the next month, July, will be the one without bread.

  And still no one comes. They hear news of the Earl of Warwick: he is still at large, his fleet still sheltering in some estuary in France, as Hastings’s messenger said.