Kingdom Come

by Toby Clements

  16

  Katherine wakes to a cold grey world, full of foul smells. Alice is still asleep, thanks be to God, having exhausted herself crying in the night, and she lies crooked in Katherine’s arm, and for a long while Katherine dare not risk moving, despite the pain that grips her shoulder and her back from lying on the wooden deck and holding her all night.

  ‘Thomas,’ she whispers, but she cannot see him and he doesn’t hear her. She can feel someone – Rufus? – pressing into her back, and she can feel him snoring, even if she cannot hear him above the slap and bang and gurgle of the sea just the other side of the planks. She looks up. The sail above still bulges with the trapped wind, and the ship feels to be surging ahead. Above is a perfect gauze of grey autumn sky. She closes her eyes, and longs to return to her dreams until this nightmare is over, but God does not grant her this release, and so, when she can stand it no longer, she levers herself upright, her numb arms still enfolding the baby as best she can and she leaves Rufus in the King’s wonderful cloak, and she takes a few staggering steps to find relief and Thomas.

  When she has managed the ladder up on to the aft deck, the sea below is heaving, grey-green and endlessly turbulent. Banks of mist shroud any horizon. Thomas is sitting with Wilkes and the alchemist, likewise called Thomas, at the stern of the boat, next to the master, who has been awake all night. The alchemist is telling Thomas something and Thomas is nodding. When he sees her he comes to help. She makes her way over to him and he offers her his place next to the alchemist, and then volunteers to take the baby because she needs to relieve herself.

  When she is back, Alice is awake, blinking and quiet, and Thomas smiles up at her as if he has some wonderful skill with babies, but then Alice starts crying again, and he looks up at her differently, and she thinks: It is always on me, isn’t it? But that is the way God intended it, as a punishment for Eve’s sin, and so she takes the baby and rearranges her dress and tries to feed Alice, who again will not latch on, even while she is sitting there, and the alchemist loses his thread and they sit in silence a moment, before Thomas tells her they are still running east on a good wind, and there is bread and ale for breakfast.

  ‘It is good to see we are not alone,’ she says, ‘even out here.’

  They do not understand her until she points to the ships that lie well to the south, about five of them, sails up. A moment later the watch sees them and shouts something in his odd Easterling tongue. The master swears and an argument ensues between him and the mate, who, Katherine guesses, wishes to drop his sail and come to terms with the boats, but the master, who knows he will only collect the rest of his fare if he can land King Edward and his men, is adamant and he leans on the tiller so that they describe a curve in the water and veer away from the approaching fleet, which numbers perhaps eight now.

  ‘Who are they?’ Thomas asks Hastings, who has joined them.

  ‘A fleet from the Hanse.’

  ‘What do they want with us?’

  ‘They may not want anything with us,’ Hastings suggests, ‘but if they know King Edward is aboard, and they might well, then they will be very eager to lay their hands on him. He has been … inconsiderate, shall we say, as to their persons and goods in the Steelyard.’

  Is there anyone King Edward has not riled? Katherine wonders. She looks down at the rank of faces leaning over the gunwale of the ship, staring south, and there is King Edward, his cheeks mottled by the wind, his hair wet with salt spray. She wonders what she would make of him if she did not know he was King Edward. She would be impressed, she supposes, were she a man. And that is the odd thing. How has it come to this? How have so many Englishmen turned against him? What has he done, or not done, to alienate them so?

  The cog is not fast. They can hear its bow battering against the waves at the front and the crew keep looking at the mast to see if it will hold the press of the sail, and then back to the Hanse fleet that now numbers perhaps eleven and is settling in behind, as if following their wake, predatory, like hunting dogs.

  ‘We are now heading northeast,’ the alchemist tells them as if this matters.

  ‘If we can get into Burgundian waters, we should be – we should be all right,’ Hastings supposes.

  ‘Will they have cannon?’ Thomas asks.

  ‘No,’ Hastings says. ‘No cannon.’

  The first shot is a tiny crack in the distance, a little puff of smoke that is snatched away from the bow of the leading ship behind. They do not even see where the ball goes.

  The master laughs grimly and says something he thinks funny.

  ‘He says it cost them a florin!’ the mate translates.

  The wind is good and strong and the boats batter their way through waters that are the colour of split flint, and only the fleet of the Hanse gives any sense of scale to what they see.

  Men are arguing about which direction they are sailing in, though. The wind is taking them north; they want to go east, to make landfall near Bruges, where they hope to attract the help of Duke Charles of Burgundy, who is married to King Edward’s sister.

  ‘We will have a long walk to find him if we continue north,’ Lord Say calls.

  ‘That is if the Duke will even see us,’ Hastings adds.

  King Edward raises his wet eyebrows a few times.

  ‘He’ll come around,’ he shouts. ‘My sister is persuasive, you know, and if Warwick aligns himself with France, then Duke Charles will do all he can to upset his shitty little apple cart. He’ll give us five hundred écus a month, and all the rabbit we care to eat!’

  Lord Say does not look impressed.

  There is another gunshot, slightly louder. All heads turn.

  ‘They are gaining.’

  ‘Or they have a bigger gun,’ Wilkes observes.

  Then there is a shout from the snub-nosed bow.

  ‘Land,’ the master calls with a tight smile.

  ‘But where is it?’

  No one knows. They gather at the bow to see if they recognise anything. To Katherine’s eye it looks just like the place they have left.

  ‘Have we not done a circle in the night?’ she asks.

  Alice is crying again. Constant on off, on off. The men look perturbed so Katherine takes her away and tries to feed her but she still will not take the nipple. Katherine can feel the girl’s fists pushing her away, and her screams rack her whole body, and everything is stiff, from her toes to her tongue. Christ. What is wrong with her? Katherine lays her down on the cloak and tries to change her linen. Her backside and legs are very red, and the linen is stained bright brown, if that is a colour, and the smell is still of fish. It looks more like snot, though, than baby shit.

  What does it mean? Katherine asks herself. She doesn’t know, but it cannot be good.

  Thomas comes down, hesitant and awkward, as if this has nothing to do with him and he might not be welcome. She shows him the linens. He takes them and washes them in a bucket and when he returns he has some goose fat from the mate.

  ‘It is what he uses on his face,’ he says.

  Katherine wipes it on Alice’s bottom and legs and she howls piteously. Thomas removes his jacket, his pourpoint and then his shirt, just as if he were getting into bed, but then he puts his pourpoint and jacket back on and cuts his shirt into strips and they re-dress Alice with that. When the girl is clothed again, Katherine picks her up and sees the white fur of King Edward’s cloak is stained. She shrugs. Thomas shrugs.

  Alice quietens after a while.

  Rufus sits next to them this whole time, with his knees by his chin, watching, but now he is distracted by something in the shadows that’s probably a rat. Overhead the wind is strong now, and the sail is bowed and the mast creaks where two pieces join and are bound around with rope. They do not talk about what they will do when they land. What is the point?

  Hastings looks down and tilts his head to ask if there is anything he can do. Where is his wife? Katherine wonders. Where are all their wives? Their children? All safe at home, she su
pposes, even the Queen who is in the Tower, though she did hear King Edward say she would take herself to sanctuary. At least they have homes to leave their wives in. What has she? Nothing.

  From somewhere, Hastings has produced an apple for Rufus, and he climbs down and hands it to him apologetically.

  ‘Best I can do,’ he says. ‘We’ll soon make land. Or be taken by those bastards. Either way, something will occur.’

  Thomas gets up and takes the baby from Katherine, just to give her some time perhaps, and he tucks her under his arm and clambers up to the aft rail. Men make room for him. The baby is shrieking in bleats. He tucks her under his jacket and hushes her and the men sort of offer her comfort by patting her and she can hear them murmuring half-hearted advice.

  Katherine could weep.

  After a while, though, she asks Rufus if he’d like to go up and watch what is happening. He bobs his head and then comes with her up the ladder and along to stand next to the men. The deck is greasy. She has the cloak folded over her arms, hiding the stain.

  The Hanse boats are much closer now, but so is the green stripe of land. It is just like Lynn, more to even than before but it vanishes into the wide, wide sea to the north. The master tells the mate something, and the mate tells them that since this boat is shallow, and the Hanse boats are probably not, then he will make for a channel at the southern end of the island.

  ‘That is an island?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He knows these waters,’ the mate says, but he too sounds doubtful. The master waves away their doubts, but it seems they are heading straight for land; a pointed triangular dune of piled sand. They will be beached. The master moves the tiller over and the boat yaws and loses some of its way, but that is the risk of cutting this line.

  ‘You have no bows?’ the mate asks them.

  They look at him as if he is mad. Of course they have no bows.

  ‘Englishmen without their bows,’ he says as if wonders will never cease.

  There is another gunshot. And now they see the ball – perhaps the size of her fist, Katherine supposes, that slushes through the heaving waters behind. Again the master laughs. But then the bigger gun goes off and the ball thrums overhead. The master stops laughing and swears and they all shrink an inch or two and concentrate on prayers that will speed the ship towards those shallow dimpled waters, and the channel the master promised.

  ‘He is mad,’ Lord Say announces.

  And Katherine sees each man look for something to hold on to when the moment of impact comes.

  ‘Drop the sail,’ Hastings mutters. ‘For the love of God.’

  But at the very last minute, sure enough, there is a channel, hidden behind the pyramid of sand, which turns out to be a smaller island.

  ‘Ha!’ Lord Say says, as if he knew it was so, and he claps the master on the shoulder. The master does not like being touched and spits something the meaning of which no one misunderstands.

  The channel is very narrow, though, and they are cutting it very fine, she cannot help think. The mate runs to the bow and pushes aside those gathered there. He shouts back instructions and the master adjusts their line. Then he glances over his shoulder at the Hanse ships, which are still coming on, gaining very quickly now, so that they can see the men fussing around the barrel of the gun in the first boat’s bow.

  ‘Come on,’ Say mutters.

  King Edward stretches out a soothing hand.

  At that moment it seems the ugly little ship is taken by the hand of God, for she moves unnaturally under them, as if cupped from below. The master shouts an instruction, the two crewmen drop the yard and the boat is suddenly no more than a stick in a stream, flowing in, shooting quickly past that first island and into a channel between two more stretches of sand piled in dunes. The master whips his head around to see – and there! The leading boat in the Hanse fleet has headed up; its bow swings around to the north and the others behind swing away too.

  The master roars with pleasure and shakes his fists. ‘You milksops! You cowards! You square headed-bastards!’

  And then they are thrown jolting sideways, and every man is knocked off his feet.

  They’ve run aground.

  PART THREE

  Den Haag, Holland, Before Advent, 1470

  17

  They have been in The Hague for nearly two months now, living mostly all together in the upper rooms of a brick-built house belonging to a gentle whose name none can pronounce to his satisfaction, but whom they call Groot-hoose, and whose servants provide them with a few green logs, lots of rabbits – already skinned and gutted – very bitter beer and very dark bread. All day, each day, they have sat in their quarters, waiting for something to happen, and nothing has, and there is nothing they can do to make it happen, and with each day, as Advent has approached, it has grown ever colder and so now, with Christmastide next week, the earth rings like iron and the wind that comes in off the sea is sharp enough to flay your skin.

  ‘Dank u,’ Thomas says to the woman behind the stall, and he pays for his bread with a tiny coin. She is not noticeably grateful. In fact they are becoming resentful, these Flemings, of having so many ragged Englishmen with not much money and very little to do wandering the streets in their threadbare clothes, not precisely begging but making everyone feel uncomfortable with what they have. And it will only get worse the longer it goes on and the colder it gets, that they all know.

  Thomas hurries back with the bread that is still warm, pressing it to him under his frowsy coat, all the way back to the grand house where they are encouraged not to use the front door unless they are with King Edward, and he stamps up the back steps in his rough-hewn clogs and in through the door where the servants watch him as if he is somehow unchristian.

  Katherine is in one of the upper chambers where there is a chimney hearth, but wood for the fire is scarce and so they rarely manage a fire, and must instead rely on heat rising from the floor below, where the state rooms are, and where there is a fire all the time. It is there that King Edward sleeps with Lord Hastings and often has two beautiful women from the town who are there to warm their bed at night, but are only ever seen in the coming and the going.

  ‘How is he?’ Thomas asks.

  ‘He does fair enough,’ she says.

  She is mopping Rufus’s sticky brow with rose water to keep him cool and there are sweet-smelling herbs strewn about the place, but still, the room smells terrible: of human shit from a very sickly body.

  ‘Will he be able to eat anything?’ Thomas asks. ‘I have bread – here – and I can get soup.’

  Katherine sits back on her haunches and sighs.

  ‘It goes straight through him,’ she says.

  ‘Ale then?

  ‘He finds it so bitter.’

  Thomas frowns.

  ‘But if he is thirsty enough?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she says.

  She looks terrible, he thinks. Her dress, once her best, is puckered with repairs, her face has lost all its accustomed flesh, and the whites of her eyeballs are the colour of old bone. Her hands, too, have become like talons, and her neck might snap with the weight of her head it is so thin. He puts his hand on her shoulder. He can feel her bones. She places her hand over his, her fingers icy, and she tries to smile, but she is so tired.

  ‘You should eat something,’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, and she picks at the bread with those bony fingers.

  ‘I will get soup for dinner,’ he tells her.

  She nods. She does not take her eyes off Rufus, who seems peaceful enough, though his skin has a waxy sheen.

  ‘There is no news from anywhere,’ he says.

  Again she nods. Thomas sits on a stool and tries some of the bread. It is dense, but it has plenty of salt in it, and he does not mind it as the others seem to, or the bitter beer.

  ‘I wish we still had the King’s cloak,’ Thomas says, seeing her shiver.

  She says it is not so bad. At least Rufus is warm. But it
will get worse in February, that is what they all say. They say if you think it is bad now, wait until February.

  He tells her he will go again and see if he can’t find some driftwood on the sea’s shore today.

  ‘Don’t get wet,’ Katherine says.

  He tells her he won’t.

  Rufus moans in his sleep and they both tense, but then he seems to subside, and they ease.

  ‘Do you think it will ever end?’ she asks.

  ‘It has to, some time.’

  She looks sceptical.

  ‘They say Duke Charles will call King Edward to Bruges,’ Thomas tells her, ‘and then things will get better.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, but her voice and conviction are hollow and they lapse into silence again.

  Later that day Thomas leaves Katherine sleeping, and he walks out of the little town and over the ridge to the broad strip of beach. Here the snow is gone, and the wind is strong and cold off the sea, filled with mineral sea spray and fine sand that scours the skin and stings the eyes. He walks down to the line of the curling waves and follows the dark wet sand until he finds a branch of wood stripped clean, like deer antlers, caught in the surf, and he drags it out and a little way up the beach. Then he stops and turns and, after a moment, he sits there next to the branch and stares out across the sea to where he imagines England to be.

  When they first came to this place, whatever thoughts he’d had of what they’d left behind were overshadowed, and almost incidental, and for a long time afterwards he had felt nothing. A blankness. He was in a silent realm wherein there were no feelings save the sensation of passing time, and nor were there any colours but those washed-out shades of goose-feather grey, bleached bone white. He felt muffled, and he recognised it was sent for the protection of his own wits, and he gave thanks to the Lord.

  Since then, though, as the days have become weeks, and now months, something has returned, some distant tingling, but it is not welcome, for now with each passing dawn, with each passing dusk, he feels the world’s disintegration, its erosion, the sense that everything everywhere is breaking apart, fragmenting at the edges into tiny particles that blow away in the wind as cold ash does from an old fire.