Kingdom Come

by Toby Clements

‘I’ve always tried to avoid bloodshed,’ Wilkes says, ‘that was all. I was sorry for the men caught up in this, and I was sorry for Lord Montagu in particular, whom I always admired, but if he had not come out for his brother, then there would have been no exile for King Edward, there would have been no battle at Barnet, and the Queen and her son would not be here now, and many, many lives would have been saved. When I come to stand before my Maker, Master Everingham, I will be able to say I did my best for my king and my country, and I tried to save as many lives as I could. What about you, Master Everingham? Will you be able to say that?’

  At that precise moment there is a movement before them, at the bottom of the hill. A flicker of colour in among the trees of the sunken lane where Thomas remembers being lost. Few men can see it, and certainly not those on the other side of the hill, nor any among King Edward’s army.

  ‘What is that?’ Thomas asks, pointing, though he knows it can only be men.

  Wilkes is half-amused, as if this might be some distracting ruse. But when he sees what Thomas has seen he sits back in his saddle.

  ‘Ha,’ he says. ‘Ha.’ He looks at Thomas. ‘They’re Somerset’s men, I think. Clever. They’ve got across the stream and – but how did they get there?’

  ‘It is a lane,’ Thomas tells him. ‘It looks like a wood, but there is a lane through it.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I’ve been here before, many years ago, I think.’

  Wilkes calls across to Flood, who comes over on his beautiful horse and looted saddle. Wilkes points. Flood turns, stares, stares again, then pulls his horse around. He rides quickly to the top of the hill, threading his way through the trees. He talks to a man in very fine harness with a red crown atop his helmet, wearing the white boar badge. One of the Duke of Gloucester’s men. He sends a rider down to King Edward, Thomas must suppose, to warn him of Somerset’s flanking movement. Somerset will catch his culverins and his handgunners, and his poorly armed archers who will have exhausted their stocks shooting over the heads of these men, and he’ll appear right under King Edward’s nose. He may even be aiming to finish the battle by killing King Edward.

  But – is it a wise gamble? Thomas wonders. The lane, he knows, will take them across the face of the Duke of Gloucester’s troops, hidden by the hedges and so on. They may emerge to surprise King Edward on his flank, but Gloucester’s men with their white boar badges will be on their flank, and so what Wilkes says is right: this hinges on how well Somerset has communicated his plan to the young Prince Edward – who someone once said is supposed to be violent in the extreme – because if the Prince has not moved forward to back up Somerset’s flanking attack, then Somerset’s men will be minced between King Edward’s and Gloucester’s. And also, if Thomas has read this correctly, this plump of horsemen that even now is barely able to restrain itself from charging down the hill and catching Somerset’s men from behind.

  Thomas has almost forgotten Wilkes, when the man places a hand on his arm. It is half-confiding, half-arresting. Soft leather and steel.

  ‘We’ve not long, Master Everingham,’ Wilkes starts. ‘So I will get to it. How did you ever come by the thing?’

  ‘The thing?’

  ‘I think, Master Everingham, you know by now not to fool with me.’

  Thomas nods. In a way, Wilkes is showing him some respect too.

  ‘The pardoner,’ he tells him. ‘We got it from the pardoner.’

  ‘The same man who dealt in antique crossbows and pigs’ bones?’

  ‘I don’t remember him,’ Thomas says, ‘but Katherine – my wife – she does. He – We were on a ship. He was killed. Pushed overboard by the sailors who wanted his goods, I think. They were about to do the same to us – to me and my wife, though she was not my wife then – when Sir John Fakenham came to our rescue, and he took the ship, and when we landed – in Calais – we were left with it. The ledger. But we had no idea of its … value. We had no idea of what it meant.’

  ‘So you altered the text recently?’

  Thomas nods.

  ‘It only struck us to do so,’ he says, ‘when we saw the ink my son had made.’

  Wilkes smiles.

  ‘I saw his letters before I saw the ledger,’ he says, ‘but once I had seen what I was looking for, or once I’d not seen what I knew I ought, his ink and his hand came to mind. It was almost brilliant, except, of course, that it was also …’ He blows out.

  ‘But what would you have done?’ Thomas asks.

  ‘Well, the one thing I’d not have done is taken it north to offer it to old King Henry.’

  So that is it. The mask has slipped. There is the accusation, then. The hard, cold incontrovertible truth of the matter.

  ‘We didn’t in the end,’ Thomas says. He feels himself bleating, his voice pitched high and plaintive. Wilkes looks at him. He is disappointed.

  ‘That hardly matters, does it?’ he says. ‘You still did it, and you still must pay.’

  His words are like stones. Old, somehow. The way it always was. The way it always will be. Thomas has no reply. He knows that is true. He knows – they knew – from the moment Sir John Fakenham said the boy was a bastard that it would always end this way. He shrugs and opens the palm of his hand. They are good gloves. He is glad he bought them. Then he looks at the other men around him. Are they somehow Wilkes’s men? There to help in Thomas’s execution?

  ‘I always thought it might be you, you know,’ Wilkes goes on. ‘I was never sure, and then, the year before last, when I came to see you, and you saw me in the woods, I thought it looked as if you had been expecting me, as if you knew I’d come – or someone like me would come – sooner or later, and I thought, well, they’ve got something to hide.’

  ‘That was you? In the woods? Christ, Wilkes. You scared my wife out of her wits.’

  Wilkes shrugs.

  ‘I regret that. She is a good woman. She doesn’t deserve to be caught up in this.’

  Thomas could almost laugh. He could almost tell him that he has the wrong man. He should tell him that Mistress Everingham is the one that he wants, who was the creator of all this, whose plan it was.

  There comes that slithering crash of surf on shingle, the din of men meeting in earnest, but from this distance the noise conveys nothing of the hair-raising terror of being there, of being half-blinded, of being half-choked, in the mad panicking rush to hit someone, anyone, before someone hits you. In a way, though, Thomas powerfully wishes he were there, or anywhere away from Wilkes.

  The guns go silent, save distant pops from the right flank, from Hastings’s battle. Perhaps Somerset has taken the guns and sent King Edward’s bowmen scurrying? Perhaps that is all he wanted to achieve? So that the Prince and his central battle can come forward unmolested to make their numbers count? These thoughts are as distant and vague as the gun smoke itself that floats in the warming breeze.

  ‘So what is it to be?’ Thomas asks. He cannot help but look up to see any number of suitable branches from which to hang a man.

  ‘William Hastings is fond of you,’ Wilkes says. ‘Fond of your wife.’

  ‘Yes,’ Thomas agrees. A tiny flame of hope rekindles.

  ‘And I know you to be a good man,’ Wilkes goes on. ‘I know you tried to declaw the ledger. I know that you are on the side of King Edward, if only for your own sake.’

  ‘Well then?’ Thomas asks. Why not allow this to pass? Why does it have to end this way? He doesn’t ask the question aloud, because he knows what the answer will be. Still, though, his heart picks up.

  ‘Well then,’ Wilkes says, ‘what would Lord Hastings say if he discovered that I had lied to him and spared you? Not only would he have you gutted and hanged, because after all you kept the ledger from him, and tried to sell it to his enemy, he’d also have Mistress Everingham and your boy killed too, because he’d have to, you see, and he’d also have me gutted and hanged, because I would have put a lie in his mouth if King Edward ever heard of this, which he may yet
.’

  The flame dies. Thomas looks at Wilkes carefully. He knows his future does not hang in the balance. It is decided.

  ‘So what are you suggesting?’

  Wilkes nods at the men manoeuvring across the fields below.

  ‘Do King Edward one last favour,’ he says. ‘I’ll see he never forgets you. You’ll get a proper burial, with a carved stone, in full harness if you like, spurs and everything. Would you like that? Ten priests to say Mass for your immortal soul. He’ll knight Rufus. Sir Rufus Everingham. It has a ring about it.’

  Wilkes stares at Thomas without moving. It seems everything is stilled, even his horse, and the sounds of the fighting seem to lull too, and it slowly dawns on Thomas what it is that Wilkes is offering, or asking.

  ‘You want me to get myself killed?’ he asks.

  Wilkes nods minutely.

  ‘Think of Mistress Everingham,’ he says. ‘Think of your boy, of Rufus.’

  The odd thing about it is that Thomas almost accepts what Wilkes is saying as being the right thing. It is not merely that they all, always, knew something like this was going to happen, right from the very moment Sir John discovered the ledger’s secret; it is more Wilkes’s certainty. He is condemning Thomas to this death, and it is just as if he is telling him that the cock will crow at sunrise. It must happen.

  Again, Thomas almost laughs, almost tells him that it was always Katherine who was caught up in this.

  ‘You will act no further?’ he asks instead.

  Wilkes shakes his head.

  ‘As God is my witness, she will go untouched, and this will end with you.’

  But there is something odd here.

  ‘So Hastings doesn’t know?’ Thomas asks. ‘It is just you who has made this decision? Just you? You are – you are my sole judge and executioner?’

  Wilkes returns a level look that brooks no appeal.

  ‘Come, Master Everingham. It is better this way, you know it. Imagine the alternative, and thank your God you are being asked this.’

  Thomas thinks. Wilkes is right, of course. Imagine the alternative. How did Sir John describe what would happen to them if King Edward knew they had proof he was a bastard? They would have their feet burned until they condemned everyone they’ve ever known and then they would be half-hanged, and then taken down, and gutted, and have their intestines wound around a sharpening wheel until they swallowed their own tongues. That is what he had said. Hard enough to think of it happening to yourself, but your wife? Your son?

  There is a stirring among the men at the top of the field. The messenger has returned. A decision has been made. Thomas forces himself to look away from Wilkes to where Flood has raised his mace. He shouts at the men waiting just as if he were their commander, and maybe he is, that they will descend as they are formed. There is a ragged, slightly ironic cheer, and the noise of one or two lowered visors, but most men prefer to see until the very last moment, and they keep them up.

  Thomas’s whole body is throbbing as if he is on the edge of something – a cliff. He remembers now being a child. A boy about to jump from some gritty stones. Someone below, daring him on. Christ. Where do these memories come from?

  The fighting continues away to their right. It must be Somerset’s men, engaging with King Edward or with Gloucester.

  Thomas gives Wilkes one last look, and Wilkes offers his hand. Thomas takes it. It is an odd, incomplete connection, two gauntlets made of leather and steel plates, no flesh. It does not feel sincere or binding.

  ‘So we are decided?’

  Thomas nods.

  ‘Yes,’ he says.

  ‘Well then, good luck, Master Everingham, and may all the saints guide you to the New Jerusalem.’

  ‘You too, Master Wilkes.’

  Wilkes frowns and shakes his head as if he is impatient at Thomas’s irony.

  ‘One thing, though, Master Everingham. If anything should happen to me – should I, God forbid, meet my end in this field – I’ve left word to be delivered into the hands of Lord Hastings.’

  Thomas maintains his faint smile as all hope dissipates.

  Of course he has. Of course he has. Wilkes is no fool.

  ‘Save what if Hastings is killed? What if we lose this battle? What if King Edward is killed?’

  Wilkes looks at Thomas very carefully. For a moment Thomas thinks Wilkes will tell him that in the case of the Queen and Prince Edward taking the field, he has left some condemning word to be delivered into their hands, but no. Wilkes has not considered this.

  ‘Well then,’ he starts, ‘in that case, you would be free of your obligation to the House of York, free, insofar as you could ever be, to live your life in King Henry’s England.’

  Thomas says nothing. Wilkes goes on:

  ‘And Edward of Westminster – they call him the Prince of Wales, do you know? – he is a vengeful man. The worst of them all. How long do you think he’d let you live? How long do you think he’d let any of us live?’ He gestures at the waiting horsemen, and then spreads his arms to indicate the whole county, the whole country, before subsiding into silence, as if his point is proven.

  But there is something he does not know. Thomas wonders whether to tell him, and then cannot resist it.

  ‘I do not think I’d need worry about that,’ he says.

  Wilkes hesitates before taking the bait.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asks.

  ‘Do you know who my wife is?’ Thomas asks him.

  ‘She is – your wife. She has nothing to do with this.’ Again he gestures.

  ‘Well,’ Thomas says. ‘It turns out she does.’

  Wilkes looks at him.

  ‘How?’ he asks.

  ‘Through her parents. Her father is – or was – a man named Owen Tudor.’

  Wilkes starts. Thomas never imagined saying the words aloud either.

  ‘Owen Tudor,’ Wilkes repeats. ‘The Welshman who married old King Henry’s mother?’

  It is gratifying to see Wilkes even slightly disconcerted. Thomas was as thrown when the Prioress told him who Katherine’s family was, in the very last moments before he drowned her.

  ‘Exactly,’ he says. ‘Who is her mother, too.’

  Wilkes chews on this a few moments. His gaze darts about the field. He avoids looking at Thomas while he teases out the implications.

  ‘Your wife’s mother is Katherine of Valois?’

  Thomas laughs.

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘It is – I don’t know.’

  ‘So she is King Henry’s sister?’

  ‘Half-sister.’

  ‘Dear God,’ Wilkes breathes and there is a long silence. Then he tries another tack. ‘Ha!’ he says. ‘Any man might say as much. You have no proof.’

  But Thomas does.

  ‘There is an archive,’ he says. ‘In Canterbury. It contains all the documents. The letters she brought with her when she arrived in her priory.’

  ‘Her priory?’ There is a moment of blankness; then Wilkes makes the connection. ‘Ah! Of course. That is where you knew her from!’

  Thomas nods and then asks:

  ‘Mostyn told you?’

  ‘I – discovered,’ Wilkes admits. ‘Just before you came to kill him yourself.’

  It all makes sense, Thomas supposes.

  ‘Well,’ Wilkes says, trying to dismiss it now. ‘Your wife is a Tudor. So what?’

  Thomas is, in truth, not sure.

  ‘It means she is aunt to the Prince of Wales,’ he points out. ‘That would buy us something.’

  Now that Wilkes has absorbed the knowledge, he seeks to nullify it.

  ‘You are not going to turn on us, are you, Master Everingham?’ he goads. ‘You are not going to have all those men at your command suddenly turn their livery and their blades on King Edward?’

  Thomas feels light-headed.

  ‘I seek only the chance of redemption.’

  Wilkes stops his sarcasm.

  ‘You had that in mind? Redemption?’
/>
  Thomas shrugs. He feels desperate.

  ‘It will make it easier,’ he says.

  Wilkes nods but says nothing. Perhaps he thinks Thomas is making a joke of it. Gallows humour. The sort you are meant to enjoy. But Thomas has seen a glimmer of something – some hint – within that word redemption that gives him strength of purpose. There is, Thomas thinks, a way out of this that, after all, will mean he need not die, he need not leave Katherine a widow and Rufus an orphan, and if he should fail in this, if he should die in the attempt, then at least they will be honoured in his death.

  ‘Wilkes,’ he says. ‘You have done me a fine favour, and I will remember it.’

  Wilkes looks concerned at this new tack, but before he can say anything, before he can verify Thomas’s meaning, Flood drops his mace, and he and Thomas are buoyed up and forced on by the tide of horsemen setting off down the slope, riding ten or so abreast, fanning out as they leave the trees and start across the sloping pasture. Wilkes drops behind Thomas, in about the third rank. Thomas is aware of Wilkes watching him closely, but he doesn’t care. He kicks his horse on. Ahead, hidden beyond the hedges, Somerset’s men in blue and white await with their spears and bills.

  24

  Thomas is knee to knee with Wilkes as their horses reach the flat ground above the lane. It is damp and tussocky but the horses create a thunder and a moment later Somerset’s men see them coming. Men point and heads turn. Then there’s panic, confusion, and men try to run. Back up the lane! Or along the lane! But there is no give either way. The numbers are too great. The space is too tight. They turn and try to scramble away up the far bank, tussling and heaving to get away through the scrubby hedge on that side. Billmen drop their bills and amid the panicked cries no one hears the shouted orders and pleas of the commanders to stay and fight.

  But now Thomas and his comrades must pull up, for the horses cannot be forced through the screen of hawthorns and down on to the fleeing men beyond. Thomas watches the horsemen throw themselves from their saddles and force their way through the thorns and spikes, immune in their plate armour, and drop down on to the poorly armed footmen beyond.

  In the sunken lane, in the shadow of the trees, Thomas can see men are hacking and chopping at the billmen, who try to defend themselves, but their organisation is gone, and already the numbers in the front line are felled by sword thrust, hammer blow and spear jab.