Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims (40 page)

‘Lovely place it is,’ he says, when he is given a drink and sits with them at the board. ‘Always warm, as if the seawater’s heated or something.’

Sir John looks at him sceptically.

‘Did you serve Lord Cornford in his household?’

Dafydd scratches his head.

‘Not likely,’ he says. Certainly, in his sleeveless jerkin and shaggy hair, he looks too wild to be invited inside.

‘D’you remember Lord Cornford’s daughter?’

‘Margaret? Never saw her. Heard all about her, though. Always ill, wasn’t she? Gwen worked in the castle, used to have to boil her water and so on.’

‘Gwen?’

‘My sister.’

‘Cornford had a castle in Wales?’ Richard asks.

‘No,’ Dafydd says as if Richard is a simpleton. ‘Cornford had a hall, up in the hills, didn’t he? Well, it is his wife’s, as a matter of fact. But whenever Cornford was away he moved his household into the castle, in Kidwelly, for safety’s sake, like. Gwen worked for the Dwnns.’

Sir John is at a loss.

‘What are the Dwnns?’ he asks.

‘The Dwnns? You don’t know the Dwnns? The Dwnns live in Penallt. Well, that’s their house. Old John Dwnn is constable of the castle. Proper castle, that one. Kidwelly. Towers and a drawbridge and everything.’

‘And that’s where Margaret Cornford would be?’

‘Well, I don’t know about that. She was when I left, at any rate.’

They all stare at him. Thomas almost laughs, so simple is the solution to their problem of Margaret Cornford’s whereabouts.

‘What?’ he asks.

Sir John offers him another drink.

‘So how far is this place, Kidwelly, from here?’ Richard asks after a moment.

Dafydd looks into his drink for a moment, then looks up.

‘I don’t know,’ he says.

‘Well, where is it?’

‘On the sea. Near Carmarthen.’

Everyone looks blank. None of them have heard of Carmarthen.

‘Where’s that?’

Dafydd opens his mouth to say something. He thinks, then closes it again. He looks stricken.

‘Dear God,’ he says to himself. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know where it is. I don’t even know how to get home.’

‘It’s all right, Dafydd,’ Richard says. ‘Someone’ll know. Someone in an inn. A friar perhaps.’

Dafydd nods dumbly and gets to his feet.

‘I’ll just go and find Owen,’ he says, and he stumbles out, leaving the hall door open. Thomas closes it and comes to sit down again.

‘We can’t just send those two to look for her, can we?’ Sir John asks. ‘Can we?’

Richard actually laughs.

‘Those two? They’d never find her, and if they did, they wouldn’t make it back here to tell us they had.’

‘We can send Thomas and Kit with him,’ Sir John suggests. ‘And Walter. And maybe one or two of the others.’

‘But what of the summons to Sandal?’ Richard asks, still needing to be convinced.

‘There will be no fighting until next year now,’ Sir John assures them. ‘Eastertide at the earliest. So there’s no point going to Sandal until then. All we’ll do is sit around in that wretched keep, freezing to death if we don’t starve, waiting for the spring to come.’

‘And in the company of Salisbury and York,’ Richard admits.

Sir John shudders and turns to Katherine.

‘Would you go to this Kidwelly?’ he asks.

She is alarmed.

‘If you think it would help, of course,’ she says. ‘But what should we do if we find her?’

It is a good question.

‘It is all a matter of judgement,’ Sir John says. ‘If she is safe with these infamous Dwnns of Dafydd’s, then leave her be, but if you think there is a danger of . . . Well, I am not sure what. Of Riven’s men finding her, I suppose. If that should be the case, or she would take our help, then bring her back here. Five of you should be enough, and if you leave after Childermas you’ll be back by Candlemas. Neat symmetry, that.’

And so it is agreed.

They spend the next few days preparing for the journey and on Adam and Eve Day, while Richard and Walter buy more horses from a dealer, Thomas and Katherine and the others make the journey into Lincoln to buy clothes from the tailor and fripperer, another bag of arrows, some new shoe leather. While repairs are being made to their boots, Little John Willingham takes the others to an inn to celebrate the start of Christmastide.

‘We’ll never see them again,’ Thomas says as they part.

‘I only hope they do not wag their mouths off,’ Katherine says. ‘Imagine if Riven discovered what we are about and where we are going?’

‘He would not, surely?’

Katherine frowns and they walk on. A paradise play is being performed outside the cathedral and they stop to watch and to ask around. How to get to Carmarthen? No one has heard of Carmarthen. Where is it near? Neither knows. Wales? Wales everyone knows. That way. To the west. Eventually they find a wool merchant who knows the country around Gloucester, where he says the best wool is to be found, and which lies that way. He knows of Wales, or at least the south of the country.

‘The most direct route is along the Fosse Way,’ he tells them in return for a jug of ale. ‘From there, you might press on down the road to Cirencester until you find the drovers’ route that will take you across the country to Gloucester. Or, some leagues south of High Cross, the road fords a river. Avon it is. Might hire a boat to take you to the port at Bristol.’

Thomas thanks the man and by the time they have found Dafydd and the others it is near dark and the walk back to Marton involves numerous delays as one after the other stops to relieve himself. Little John Willingham passes out and there is only Thomas sober enough to carry him.

When they reach the hall they find a horse waiting to be unsaddled and, within, Fournier: returned, he says, to collect the instruments he’d carelessly left when called away so suddenly on his last visit.

‘And his fee, of course,’ Katherine mutters.

Fournier is surprised to hear they are setting out on a journey at this time of year, but is glad to catch them before they leave.

‘Because I find myself witness to something of a minor miracle,’ he says from his usual place at the head of the table, a new boy behind his shoulder, a cup of hot wine in his hand. ‘I find that Sir John is cured.’

He is talking loudly for show, and Thomas can see Katherine stiffen on the far side of the hall where she sits in the shadows.

‘It is no miracle,’ she says, leaning forward into the light.

‘No? An untrained boy with no experience conducting a complex and usually fatal procedure such as that? Come now. Something must have guided your hand. What was it? The Holy Spirit?’

Fournier is sitting very still, and his boy is staring very hard at the back of his master’s head. There is silence in the hall now, and every man leans in, each aware that something has been said. Richard throws a piece of bread on the table.

‘What talk is this, Master Fournier?’ he says.

‘I only say’, Fournier replies, ‘that it is not possible for a mere boy to do what this one has done without some intervention. The only question that remains is whether the intervention is divine, or diabolic.’

THEY LEAVE AT
dawn on the day after Childermas. The sky above is a perfect scrim of pale cloud that promises snow and under their horses’ hooves the earth rings hollow.

Sir John watches them go.

‘We shall miss you,’ he calls, and: ‘We shall expect you back by Candlemas.’

By the time they are through the trees and have raised the spire of Lincoln, Katherine has lost all feeling in her fingers and toes. Dafydd rides alongside, smothered in his travelling cloak with a baggy cat-fur hat on his head. The only way of telling he is a living thing is the smudge of his breath.

‘Least it’s not snowing,’ he says, just as the first fat wet flakes begin to swirl around them.

They ride on, passing up through the grey stone city just as the cathedral bells ring out for sext. Walter leads the way on Richard’s horse, Thomas behind on his palfrey, the other three on their ponies with their rough winter coats newly grown. Each man carries his pack and his bow. Walter has a sword, Thomas his pollaxe, Dafydd and Owen a fifteen-foot spear each, Katherine a short sword in a leather scabbard, which she likes wearing. Sir John offered her a crossbow with a goat’s foot winding mechanism, but she has rejected it.

‘You might need it more than me,’ she said, and he took it back and put it by the front door.

‘Just in case,’ he’d said with a laugh.

They do not talk much, not even when they find the turning on to the Fosse Way and set off down its length. Snow dusts the ridges far off to the north and west but otherwise the road runs straight and level until they reach Newark just as the gates are closing for the night. The Captain of the Watch lets them through and directs them to the Castle Inn, where there is rabbit pie and ale around the fire.

‘Not much else I can serve you,’ the innkeeper tells them. ‘Duke of York’s men took it all and paid me bugger all for the pleasure. A turd in his teeth.’

‘Have they come through already?’ Walter is surprised.

‘About five thousand of them, heading north. Not all of them stayed here, but before that we had the Earl of Devon and his men, didn’t we? It isn’t Christian to be in the field this time of year.’

The next morning there is black pudding for breakfast and the unpopular parts of a pig, long pickled in brine. They linger in the warmth while Walter pays the innkeeper and then it is out into the cold. The soldiers on the Mill Gate watch them pass without a word, and beyond the landscape is softened by fog.

‘We’ll ride into the sea before we know it,’ Dafydd complains.

‘Wonder what they’re doing in Marton Hall right now?’ Thomas asks.

‘Probably sitting on their fat arses by the fire getting through another gammon pie,’ Walter suggests. ‘Christ, I wish I was there. This horse is making me feel seasick, you know? Like crossing the sea. How’re you feeling, Kit? Not too cold?’

It is interesting to see how Walter’s tone has changed. He has become almost respectful, and she cannot decide if this change is since the operation on Sir John’s fistula, or since Fournier’s accusation that she was in league with the devil, and her reaction to it.

She mutters something, and huddles down into her cloak.

The odd thing is that when she’d heard Fournier accuse her of sorcery, the blood had rushed to her face and she’d been at a loss for words, but then, when the pushing and shoving started, and she found herself with a knife in her hand, it occurred to her that this was what she had been waiting for ever since the operation. Because it struck her, just as she pushed Fournier back off the bench, that she had been wondering the exact same thing herself.

Thomas had pulled her off before she’d ever really been a threat to Fournier, and she had been relieved of course. She would not have wanted to kill a man, not even Fournier, but she is sure that in attacking him she’d done the right thing. It had been an instinctive thing, a human thing. A witch would have waited, bided his time. A boy with a knife was something to which they could all relate, and it only increased their liking of her.

They reach the city of Leicester that night and find boiled mutton at the inn but the straw for the mattresses stinks as if something has lain dead on it for a week or more and the next morning they can’t shake the smell from their clothes.

‘Sorry about that,’ the innkeeper says, but gives them no explanation.

They ride on, heading south and westwards. Jackdaws clack in the hawthorns and there is an empty gibbet at a deserted crossroads. Owen lags behind, twisting in his saddle.

‘What’s up with him?’ Walter asks.

‘Thinks someone’s following us,’ Dafydd announces.

‘Honestly?’

Dafydd nods.

‘He’s normally right,’ he says.

Walter glances at Katherine.

‘Reckon you can keep up if we ride for it?’

She nods.

They canter along the road and then pull their horses over a ditch and in between the trunks of a clutch of trees close to the roadside. Overhead the branches knock and scrape and meltwater patters on their shoulders. They wait, leaning forward in their saddles, shivering while the horses steam.

Nothing.

‘You sure, Owen?’

Owen nods fiercely.

‘Not just travellers?’

He shakes his head.

They wait under the trees until the horses begin to shudder in the cold. Still nothing. After a long while Walter tuts and forces his horse back over the ditch to rejoin the road. They go on, descending a slope, but still Owen keeps turning in his saddle.

‘Someone’s still there,’ Dafydd calls out.

‘Kit,’ Walter says, ‘go back and have a look, will you? Welsh bastard’s got me all spooked.’

She drops back to the rear, but Owen’s nerves are contagious and she is frightened now, not wanting to drop too far back. She keeps up, touching the handle of the little sword. They ford one river, then another, and ride up the far bank, their horses scrabbling on the stones. Moments later she hears something and they both turn in their saddles. This time they are sure.

‘There’s someone there,’ she calls.

‘Christ,’ is all Walter says.

Again they stand up in their stirrups and force the horses to gallop. Katherine’s pony, cold and wet and hungry for so long, is blown. She sees a priory ahead and, beyond, a dark wood and some sour-looking yews.

‘Under them,’ Walter calls, gesturing. They ride harder still for a few hundred paces, past the priory, then jump from their saddles and pull the horses under the straggling spread of branches.

‘Keep going,’ Walter says. They push on through, weaving between the sweet-scented trunks until they are well off the road, sunk in the gloom. They hobble their horses and hurry back towards the road. Katherine leans against a rough-barked trunk and waits.

She tries to think who might be following them, and can only think of one name.

Beyond the priory is the long vista of dead straight road, deserted. The wind soughs through the branches. One of the horses snorts and they hear some movement. Katherine peers back but can see nothing in the gloom.