Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims (19 page)

‘A book?’ Katherine asks.

‘A bible perhaps,’ Thomas agrees, feeling the canvas. He is obviously excited. ‘Though it doesn’t feel valuable. There’s no lock or anything by way of ornament. And how to get in? I’ll have to cut the stitches.’

He finds his knife and slides its blade along the canvas. The cloth falls away. It is a ledger, with dangling seals, roughly bound. Thomas opens it. It is a series of what looks like lists written in black ink, in the usual two columns, entirely unadorned.

He is disappointed.

‘What is it?’ she asks. It is frustrating, not being able to read.

He studies the pages.

‘A record,’ he says. ‘A record of service. A muster roll. Or something like that. From a garrison of troops, in a place called Rouen, here in France, I think. From St Aubin’s day in 1440 to the last of August 1442. It’s just a list of the soldiers serving and their movements in the country. Who was there, in which retinue, where they went, how much each was owed. Thousands of them. That’s all.’

Disappointment settles on Katherine so that she feels bitter towards Thomas, as if it is his fault. She has no idea what exactly she’d hoped for, but it isn’t this.

‘Why would the pardoner think it so valuable?’

Thomas shrugs. He reads out a few names.

‘Thomas Rodsam. Thomas Holme. James Lodewyke. Robert Bassett. Robert Barde. Nicholas Capell. Piers Dawn.’

‘Who are they?’

‘I don’t know.’

The binding is cursory, the paper low quality and the lettering little better than functional. Thomas folds it open, hoping perhaps something will fall out. There is nothing. Katherine shakes the canvas wrapping. Again, nothing.

‘And yet do you remember how he reacted when he thought it was going to be thrown overboard?’

Thomas turns it over in his hands again.

She stares at it.

‘Is that all?’

He looks at the pages towards the back:

‘“To Gaillard Castle on St Ives’ Day: Thomas Jonderel with eight archers; Roger Radclyffe with five; William de Beston with six and five billmen. Each paid the sum of two marks.”’

‘There must be something else,’ she says. ‘There must be something of value in it. Perhaps some piece of information that we don’t yet understand?’

It is the only explanation.

Thomas nods. She watches him return the parcel to the pack with the salve and tie it up again.

‘I’ll keep it safe,’ he says. Afterwards they are both quiet, disappointed.

On the following afternoon Richard returns early from the butts.

‘Bring me my harness, will you, Kit?’

Katherine stiffens. She finds being with Richard unsettling. Geoffrey shows her where his armour is kept, wrapped in oiled cloth against rust. Bag by bag she carries it up to the room on the second floor and when she brings the last one, she finds him wearing only his hose and a linen shirt. She has seen all the other men naked, including Thomas, but she has always avoided looking at Richard while he is washing or changing his shirt. She is wary of looking, wary of the feelings he provokes.

She looks away now. Then back again. He is broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted and long-legged and there is something about him and the way he moves that catches her mid-stride. She gathers herself and waits, averting her eyes, confused by the sudden warmth.

‘Come,’ he says impatiently. ‘Help me with this.’

He is crouched over one of the bags, trying to make sense of the intricate jumble of steel pieces, laying out the larger parts on the planks next to him. When they are all organised he stands and picks up a padded doublet, patched at the armpits, elbows and groin with links of chain.

Starting from the sabatons, the interlocking strips that cover his feet, he instructs Katherine how to attach each piece of his harness, carefully naming each part as they go so that she will in future know the difference between a pauldron – the piece of plate that protects the shoulder – and a gorget, the collar of steel that covers the throat. It is a complex business, involving the delicate interplay of many pieces of overlapping steel, each one fastened with leather straps.

As she moves about him, Katherine can feel his breath on her cheek and smell his body, but still she does not look him in the eye. Her head seems to throb as she puts her arms around his chest. At last she straps the sword belt about his hips and then helps him with his armet, the close fitting helmet with a visor that comes down to meet the gorget.

She steps back and watches him moving around the room, reacquainting himself with the feel and weight of the armour. It is unnerving. He looks like a different order of creature entirely, and as he moves the metal slithers and scrapes and jangles.

After a moment he lifts up his visor with the knuckles of his glove.

‘Now go and fetch Thomas, will you, Kit? And tell him to bring that pollaxe of his.’

Thomas is in the butts. He is still always last in any competition, but it is now only by the most slender of margins, often just one arrow, and in the last weeks he has acquired some bulk in his arms and shoulders so that his linen shirt is too small for him. He walks with that curious rolling gait all the archers have. But now he comes up the steps anxiously, the pollaxe in his hand, and when he sees Richard he steps back.

‘Come,’ Richard says, his voice muffled, ‘I need the practice too.’

‘But, sir, I—’

Richard swings his war hammer. It swishes through the air between them.

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘I want you to come at me. With your axe. I’ll not hurt you, I promise. This is practice.’

Thomas doesn’t believe this is possible. For a moment they circle one another. Katherine can see the panic in Thomas’s eye. He is scared. It must remind him too strongly of his fight with Riven, and Riven had not been encased in harness, or armed with anything more lethal than a stick. Richard swings the hammer all the time, slowly backing Thomas into a curve in the wall.

When he can move no more, Thomas raises his pollaxe and blocks the hammer, a ring of steel that reverberates in the low-ceilinged room. Richard spins and mimes a blow that would have planted the hammer’s fluke into Thomas’s back.

‘You’re dead,’ he says.

They step apart and come together again in the same way and this time, when the first blow comes, Thomas brings the axe up to block it and then spins on his heel to catch the next. He takes his top hand off the pollaxe and waves his fingers as if the blow had stung. Gloves, she thinks. That is what he needs.

But Richard has turned again and tries to jab Thomas in the stomach with the handle of the axe. Thomas sways one way, lets it pass, and then pushes Richard back with the flat of his axe.

‘Good,’ Richard says. ‘Now, come at me. Hard as you like.’

Thomas cuts at him, a half-stroke. Richard blocks it with an armoured arm, the blade ringing on the steel vambrace. Now Richard steps back, lifts his visor and looks at the dent in the plate.

‘Damn,’ he says.

But Katherine sees he is pleased with the mark. It makes him look as if he has been in battle. He articulates his wrist and winces. Then he lowers the visor again.

‘Come on,’ he says.

Thomas swings again. This time Richard catches it with his hammer shaft. Thomas tries again and Richard steps into the blow and uses his weight to push Thomas back. The hammer comes around again and stops short of Thomas’s neck.

Again they stand apart. Three more times this happens. The first Richard hooks the hammer behind Thomas’s knee and sends him sprawling, the second he hits him with his fist in the teeth, drawing blood. During the third mêlée Thomas only just manages to stop a chop that might have caved in his skull, even if he had been wearing a helmet. Thomas drops the axe and clutches his hands.

Richard steps back.

Thomas bends to pick up the axe.

Richard steps forward and brings his knee up to Thomas’s face, but this time Thomas rocks forward, grabs Richard’s other calf and then throws himself backwards, pulling Richard’s leg out from under him. Richard crashes to the floor and loses his hammer. Before he can roll away, Thomas is on him, axe held like a spear, the point pressed under the rim of Richard’s helmet.

‘Stop!’ she hears herself cry.

Richard is still for a moment, and then slowly moves his hand to lift his visor. Thomas puts the axe down. He is breathing heavily, his eyes wild. He stands up, shaking with effort, and he smells sour. He helps Richard to his feet and they stare at one another. Katherine stands by, her face held in her hands, all blood drained away.

Richard appears unruffled.

‘Enough for one day, I think,’ he says. ‘Next time, we’ll wrap our weapons.’

The next day there is a repeat of the fight, but this time they each tie long lengths of sacking around the heads of their weapons. Thomas borrows a sallet off Dafydd and a pair of leather gloves off one of the Johns and the fight lasts perhaps twenty minutes. By the end both men are red-faced and sodden with sweat. Again Richard has the upper hand, and not just because he is wearing armour, for though that gives him protection, it hampers his movements and Thomas is able to get behind him. Thomas learns to target Richard’s more vulnerable points too, and though Richard always wears the padded doublet with the mail patches under his plate, soon his elbows and armpits are blue with bruising where Thomas has struck him.

Geoffrey comes to watch the third afternoon.

‘Funny thing about wearing armour’, he says, ‘is that people tend to go for it in a fight. Don’t know why. Seems to attract their blows, so they don’t hit your flesh. Worth wearing a piece of it, just for that.’

The next afternoon Thomas borrows one of the rusted breastplates. It is so large it sits low on his hips and it ends up with a sizeable indentation just over the heart where Richard smashes it with the fluke of his hammer.

By the next week their fights have taken on a different sound: the constant clang and slide of steel on steel and with every hour of it, Thomas becomes stronger. No longer does he lash out or become overheated. He learns anticipation, craft and guile and soon the giant’s pollaxe has come to look like an extension of his arm.

Richard’s armour is scuffed and dented, but he too learns from his bouts with Thomas and by the third week their fights can last an hour or more, swift, vicious and exhausting. At the end of each one Katherine has to undress Richard, removing the armour, cleaning it with sand and vinegar before oiling it and returning each piece to the right bag. He stands by and drinks mug after mug of ale.

‘Thirsty work,’ he says. His eyes are bloodshot. He looks mad.

Then she has to help him with the sweat-soaked doublet. The smell and sight of his hair-covered body still frightens her, and she is glad that Thomas stands by, watching, though she wishes he would not wear that anxious expression.

It is Walter who worries her.

She can tell he is watching her, even across the crowded room. She can look up and find his gaze fixed on her. Sometimes he will look away instantly. Other times he will carry on staring. Every time it happens, her heart lurches. She knows she only makes it worse by tugging her jacket down to hide her hose, since that only emphasises her bosom.

One of the days when it is raining, Hugh’s bow breaks in the butts, and one of the broken pieces nearly takes his ear off. Despite the boy’s tears and the blood that pours from the wound, Walter sends him back up to the fort with a series of cuffs and kicks. Katherine finds him whimpering by the well, and she washes the wound with clean rags and cold water and then applies some of the pardoner’s salve. Hugh rests his head against her shoulder and she puts her arm around him to soothe him as he weeps.

It is not the pain, she understands this; it is the misery of his life, so far from home.

‘There, there,’ she whispers. ‘There, there.’

Just then Walter returns. He stares at Katherine.

‘How come you don’t stroke my hair like that, Girly?’ he asks.

Hugh stiffens and she nearly drops the salve. Her fumble covers her shock, but she still doesn’t know what he means. If he knows she is a woman, why has he not exposed her? And if he thinks she is a boy, then why does he look at her so?

She tells Thomas the next day while they are out on the beach together, scavenging for driftwood. It is St George’s Day, nearly summer, and although a light mist is coming in off the sea, the water is millpond still.

He frowns.

‘Walter knows you are a woman?’

He seems not to believe her and it makes her angry. She turns her back on him. Later she finds a charred piece of ship’s timber, nuzzled by the tide, and she needs his help with it. They are carrying it up through the dunes, consciously not talking to one another. Thomas is leading the way, carrying his end of the spar behind his back.

‘The sooner we reach England the better,’ he says. ‘Then we can go to Canterbury.’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Canterbury.’

They walk on. The timber is heavy and she needs a rest. He gives her some water.

‘Will you miss the world?’ he asks. ‘When you are back in the priory?’

He is making conversation, trying to apologise, but the question makes her stop. She still has not told him the truth about Sister Joan.

‘I will,’ she says cautiously. ‘All this – it has been a revelation.’

He says nothing, and his head is cocked as if waiting for her to go on. A bee bumbles in the still air. The day is already warm and sweat prickles her eyes.

‘Your people will be happy to hear you are returned at last,’ he says. He is probing for something, but what?

‘I have no people,’ she tells him. ‘Or none that I know of.’

‘But everyone knows their people,’ he says. ‘Everyone must know where they come from. You have to. It is the only way to know who you are.’

Katherine is silent. She shrugs and after a while they pick up the log and carry on up the dune. Although she does have a vague memory of something nicer – warmer anyway – she only really remembers the priory and any other thoughts as to who she might be beyond the priory walls are something she’s never had the luxury to pursue.