Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims (27 page)

Now he tries to imagine the Prior of All, just beyond the city walls, seated over some wine in a room very like the almonry. He can see him receiving Katherine back into the order, and then what? Here the picture becomes vague. He cannot imagine her standing before the Prior in her stained jack, her hacked-off hair, with her hose sagging around her ankles. He cannot imagine her bowing her head to some old man.

Perhaps he will have to find her some sort of dress and headgear? It will be the least he can do. And the last thing he can do, for once they say goodbye, that will be the end. He will never see her again. He remembers suddenly her feverish grip that morning, and her heartfelt wishes.

He hawks and spits on the ground. Dafydd has found something to eat and his fingers are greasy with meat juices. He offers a bone to Thomas, then quickly drops it as he sees something moving. He snatches up his bow again.

‘Here we go.’

The heralds emerge from between two cottages in the hamlet and canter across to where Warwick waits with his men under his banner. There is a brief conversation. After a moment, Warwick forces his horse forwards so that he is alone in front of the army. Then he turns and faces them, stands in his stirrups and tips back his visor, so that they can see his face: a pale square. He raises his arm and gestures. Thomas cannot make it out but those who can begin cheering.

‘Bloody hell’s he up to?’

Trumpets and horns begin too, and then the bells in the cathedral begin a celebratory peal.

‘He’s done it!’ someone shouts. ‘They’ve opened the gates!’

Along the line the men begin cheering.

‘A Warwick! A Warwick!’

Another party of horsemen ride out from the hamlet: more heralds. Up the road the city gates are pushed open from within. Canterbury and the Archbishop have declared for the Duke of York. There will be no fighting. Not today at least.

Thomas feels a mix of emotions. Relief, of course, but now he will have to say goodbye to Katherine.

They disperse back to their tents and Thomas goes to find her. His heart is heavy with what is to come, what he must say, but he has imagined this part many times: he thinks he knows what he will tell her, and how.

‘Where’s Kit?’ he asks.

No one has seen her.

He helps Geoffrey with dinner, one eye out for her, but she does not appear. When the food is ready they sit on the earthwork wall, yawning with fatigue, spooning stewed mutton into their mouths. Above them their jacks hang from the branches of a hawthorn tree, drying in the weak sunlight.

‘Anyone seen Kit?’ Geoffrey asks. ‘Richard’s asking after him.’

No one has seen her since they’d been called to stand to.

‘Probably found an inn somewhere,’ Brampton John says, though there are none to be seen.

‘See if you can find him, Thomas, will you? Tell him Richard needs him.’

Thomas nods. In the tent there is no sign of Katherine’s pack.

Trumpets begin blowing in the camp again. Drums are beating. Horses cross the meadows. A Te Deum has been sung in the cathedral and the Earls have paid their respects at the shrine of St Thomas, and now Walter returns to the camp.

‘Come on, come on,’ he says. ‘Let’s get cracking,’ and they get up and begin the wearying process of breaking camp once more.

There is still no sign of Katherine.

Carts are already starting to wheel along the road and in through the city gates when a handful of horsemen come riding through the chaos shouting that they are looking for Sir John Fakenham’s company. They are Warwick’s men, on good mounts.

‘That’s us,’ Walter tells them.

‘Found a boy of yours,’ their vintenar says. ‘Making his way across country. Hardly worth the trouble keeping him, he’s so skinny, but the Earl wants examples set. Anyone slipping away gets theirs.’

He gestures towards a party of men threading their way through the breaking camp. Between them, Katherine, hands bound, dragging her feet. She looks so small, so round-shouldered and miserable, that even Thomas mistakes her for a boy.

Walter stands with his hands on his hips.

‘Christ,’ he spits. ‘What d’you want us to do with him?’

‘Hang him.’

Thomas feels a chill grip him. The atmosphere hardens. Colours spring to life; lines sharpen.

‘Hang him?’

‘What the Earl wants.’

Katherine stares at the ground. She has a bruise under one eye.

‘What were you thinking, Girly?’ Walter asks.

Katherine says nothing.

‘He’s just a boy,’ Thomas tells the vintenar. ‘You can’t – We can’t hang him.’

The vintenar looks down from his horse.

‘Who’re you to say?’

Dear God.

‘Look, he’s right,’ Geoffrey says. ‘Kit, how old are you?’

Katherine will still not talk.

‘He’s fourteen, for the love of God,’ Thomas says.

The vintenar lifts his hand from the saddle.

‘Could be two for all I care,’ he says. ‘The Earl of Warwick wants an example.’

The men look at one another. Others are stopping to stare.

‘Oh Christ!’

‘But there must be some – I don’t know – mistake,’ Thomas says. ‘Kit’s no reason to run.’

‘He’s nowhere to run to,’ one of the men says.

‘Why d’you do it, Kit?’

She will not answer.

The vintenar is growing impatient.

‘You’re not listening,’ he says. ‘There’s nothing I can do about it. Either you do it, or we do it.’

One of the horsemen has a rope. He is surveying the hawthorn for a suitable bough.

‘Thomas,’ Walter mutters, ‘go and find Sir John. He’s the only one can get Kit out of this.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Try the Watch tent. He’ll be near Fauconberg.’

Thomas tries to catch Katherine’s eye before he turns and runs, tries to reassure her that he is doing something, but she remains staring at the ground, acknowledging none. He runs through the camp to its centre. Fauconberg, March and Warwick have all been to the cathedral to hear the Te Deum and are riding north together. No one has seen Sir John.

A bell rings in the city.

Time is passing.

He begins a prayer, his footfalls punctuating the Latin lines. He abandons it halfway through. He is sick with panic. Where is he? Where is Sir John?

He thinks of Katherine. A rope around her neck. Legs kicking in mid-air. Hanging in the hawthorn branches with the laundry.

Oh Christ! He cannot stand it. He runs through the lines and back again, looking where he has already looked. Where is the old man? Surely he cannot have gone far without Geoffrey’s help?

‘Thomas!’ he hears a man cry.

Half the men in the camp are called Thomas, but Thomas recognises William Hastings’s voice. He is at the head of a table with some men Thomas does not recognise. They are drinking wine and there is a pie on a board and a small dish of salt.

‘Thomas Everingham! Hero of Newnham! Come and join us in a drink,’ Hastings calls.

‘I cannot, sir, I am looking for Sir John.’ He explains his hurry.

‘Not because of the surgeon fellow? I thought Sir John’d managed to sort that out.’

‘It’s not that. They’ve caught him trying to run.’

Hastings springs to his feet.

‘But he’s – Christ. What a waste. No. No. We can’t have that. Lead me to him. My word counts for something, enough perhaps to delay the inevitable.’

When they find her again, Katherine is standing under a tree in her shirt with her hat pushed back. She looks pitifully thin and in the watery sunlight her skin is translucent. One of Warwick’s men stands behind her, bending the damp rope to form a noose. Walter is still arguing with the vintenar. Katherine will still say nothing. It is as if she has already left them.

‘Hold fast! Hold up there!’

When he sees Hastings, the vintenar touches his knuckle to his helmet.

‘Sir,’ he says.

‘You can’t mean to hang this boy?’

‘Earl of Warwick’s orders, sir. Caught him the other side of the village over there. Put up a fight. Saved us a deal of time and trouble if we’d killed him there and then but his lordship wants an example made. So.’

Hastings turns to Katherine.

‘Is this true?’

Still Katherine says nothing. She will not even look at him.

‘Kit, you must say something in your defence. Otherwise—’

‘Get on and hang him,’ someone in the crowd jeers. The soldier throws the rope over the tree above her head.

‘Lucky he’s a little’un,’ he says, finding the branches thin.

Hastings holds out his hand.

‘There’ll be no one hanged here,’ he says.

The vintenar is surprised.

‘You’ll take responsibility?’

Hastings nods, but he is anxious. To countermand the Earl of Warwick is no small thing.

‘I will,’ he says. ‘I will.’

Thomas feels his heart beat again.

The crowd is disappointed.

‘Piss off, all of you,’ Walter snarls.

The vintenar nods to his men. The one with the rope pulls it down again and folds it into a sack. It is difficult to read his face: is he disappointed or relieved? The others mount their horses.

‘I don’t suppose this is the last we’ve heard of this,’ Hastings tells them. ‘But keep an eye on the boy and don’t let him wander off again.’

Walter nods.

‘Thank you, sir,’ he says.

‘I’d better find old Warwick before he finds me,’ Hastings says. His gaze lingers on Katherine, who will still not speak, and whose expression has hardly changed. ‘A handsome lad, you are, Kit, if only you’d fill out a bit, but you’ll never do that if you’re hanging by your neck from a tree.’

Again there is nothing from Katherine and with one last nod to Thomas and Walter, Hastings parts the crowd and strides off back the way he has come.

Walter exhales.

‘Christ on His cross, Girly. Christ on His cross!’

A single tear slides down Katherine’s cheek.

‘Don’t do that again, d’you hear?’ Walter barks. ‘If you do, then we’ll all bloody well hang, and I am not hanging for a strip like you. Understand?’

Katherine nods.

‘Thomas,’ Walter says. ‘You keep an eye on him. Find out why the bloody hell he ran and make sure he doesn’t do it again. Understand?’

They sit together on the bank under the branches where the clothes are still drying.

‘Why?’ Thomas asks. ‘After all we’ve been through. When you are so close to Canterbury?’

She shakes her head.

‘I will tell you,’ she says, ‘but first I must sleep. I am so tired I can hardly lift my head.’

She has been watching over Richard for more than a week with no proper sleep, he supposes, and relief at escaping the rope must have diminished her too, and so now she lies on the bank and sleeps so soundly that even the men packing up and taking their still damp clothes from the branches above do not wake her. Thomas fetches her blanket and drapes it over her. He sits by her and stares at her and tears well in his eyes when he thinks how nearly he lost her.

Later Sir John appears. He looks fretful and is leaning heavily on Geoffrey’s arm, in great pain. Geoffrey too looks anxious. They have come from Warwick’s tent and the news is not good.

‘Hastings did what he could,’ he says, ‘but punishment must be seen to be done, or it ain’t punishment. He wants Kit’s ear clipped.’

Thomas closes his eyes.

‘Well, now we’ll see what he’s made of,’ Walter says. ‘Wake him up, will you, Tom?’

Walter never calls Thomas Tom. No one ever has, except his father, and the Dean. He crouches over Katherine. She looks peaceful, snoring gently under her blanket. He rests his hand on her shoulder.

‘Kit,’ he says. ‘Kit.’

She wakes and looks at him for a moment.

‘I was having a dream,’ she smiles. She sits up and stretches, then looks at him again.

The men are gathered around, looking at her.

‘What is it?’ she asks.

‘The Earl of Warwick,’ Thomas tells her.

She is still.

‘What does he want?’

‘Your ear.’

‘My ear?’

She does not look especially frightened.

‘He wants it clipped,’ he goes on, gesturing, in case she has not understood.

Katherine frowns.

‘Ah,’ she says. Then: ‘How do they do it?’

‘Scissors.’

He hears her swallow. Her eyes are wide as she looks around.

‘Will you do it?’ she asks.

‘Me?’

She nods. He stares at her. He feels sick at the thought. He cannot stop himself glancing at the pink tip of her ear.

‘If you want,’ he says.

She nods again.

‘Get plenty of linen, will you? And keep the pardoner’s salve to hand.’

Walter is standing by.

‘Here,’ he says.

He holds out a pair of iron shears still warm from the grinding wheel. Nearby Sir John stands whey-faced.

‘Sorry it has come to this, Kit,’ he says. ‘My lord of Warwick is adamant though, and it is only through the good graces of William Hastings that you are not swinging from the tree. It will make a good story for your grandchildren one day, but I do not suppose it will improve your looks.’

The men watch silently.

‘Do you want to take your shirt off, Kit?’

She shakes her head.

‘Sit then.’

They take away Sir John’s cushion and they sit her on the chest. A group of stable boys appear, summoned to witness the punishment, and one brings a drum he intends to beat until Walter threatens him with a knife.

Thomas looks at the shears in the palm of his hand and squeezes them together and lets them spring apart a couple of times.

‘Put them in the fire for a bit,’ Walter says, passing him a cloth. ‘Get them good and hot. Helps seal the cut.’

Katherine sits there, and he remembers first cutting her hair back on the staithes in Boston. Then he bends and puts the blades over the embers for as long as he can stand it. His hands are shaking. Geoffrey stands behind her, ready to catch her, and over her head, he nods. She tilts her head, exposing the line of her throat and her small right ear. Thomas takes the shears and moves quickly, brushing aside her hair and cutting down across the top of her ear with a sharp snip. He feels the rubbery tag of the ear under the slide of the blades, a moment of toughness, then a give, and then the smooth snick of the scissors. He is through. Hot blood covers his fingers.