Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims (43 page)

A woman in a russet sackcloth dress and filthy coif shouts something, and comes pushing her way through the camp, clearing a path to Dafydd and Owen, still yelling and gesticulating with powerful, heavily freckled arms. She greets Dafydd with a soft cuff and then is folded into a hug by both men.

‘Is that Gwen?’ Walter asks out of the corner of his mouth. ‘She looks like a murderess.’

Katherine asks Dwnn if they might find a vantage point from where they can see the sea.

‘Fine view of the sea from up there,’ Dwnn tells her, with a sideways glance. He points her to a low doorway in the side of the gatehouse. Thomas follows her up the spiral steps past a doorway into a tapestried hall and on up.

‘You don’t think it can have followed us here?’ Thomas asks. ‘It’d be witchcraft, after that storm.’

‘I don’t know,’ Katherine says. ‘I just want to make sure.’

After another few turns they emerge out on to a stone-flagged walkway where the wind ruffles the hair of a barefoot boy in a kilt and a leather jerkin keeping watch on the sea. At the very periphery of the broad sweep of the bay, the little cog is just slipping around the headland into the mists that shroud the western horizon.

Thomas feels a twinge of sadness at their departure. He wonders if the cog master knows about Tudor and his army of Irishmen coming from across the sea. Perhaps he does? Perhaps the wine was destined for Tudor in the first place?

Of the other ship though, the one Katherine believes has followed them, there is no sign. The sea is empty, only a sweep of turbulent blue-grey water, and in the far distance, the doughy bulk of some flat-bottomed clouds bringing more rain.

‘Seen any boats out to sea?’ Thomas asks the boy.

The boy gabbles in his language.

‘We’ll need Dafydd,’ Katherine says.

Thomas peers over into the ward. Dafydd is fending off questions and pats and pinches from a small group of women in rough-sewn kirtles. When Thomas calls down to him about five boys hear their names and look up. Even a dog barks.

While they wait for him to climb the stairs they study the land. The hills here are sodden, fissured with streams, covered in bracken and swathes of vivid green grass. There are stands of wind-twisted hawthorns and small black and white sheep and everything is smudged and mossy.

Dafydd arrives breathless and questions the boy in gasps. The boy confirms the impression that he has seen no ship except the Easterlings’ cog.

‘Says there’s been a storm,’ Dafydd says, glancing at them and raising one eyebrow.

‘Is the girl even here, Dafydd?’ Thomas asks.

‘Oh, she’s here all right,’ Dafydd says.

‘What do you mean by that?’ Katherine asks.

‘Nothing. Nothing. Come on. Let’s go and find her.’

They find Walter two storeys below, in the tapestried hall, warming himself over a slate hearth, drinking ale with Dwnn and a bearded man who can’t speak English. When Dafydd sees them, he continues down the steps, leaving them to go in together. The smoke has stained the rafters above their heads, and the tapestries, rough woollen things, are the colour of peat water. There is ale in a hooped wooden ewer on a round pewter tray and a boy pours them each a cup. Walter is tearing at some bread.

‘Your man is just telling me how it is you came to fall into the company of Dafydd the Sheep-Stealer,’ Dwnn begins. ‘I’d heard about Cornford being killed, of course, but I’d thought he was killed in battle, not murdered.’

‘One of the murderer’s many sins,’ Thomas says. ‘And with God’s grace one of his last.’

‘Amen to that,’ Dwnn agrees, raising his cup. ‘I was fond of old Cornford. He had foreign ways of looking at things, perhaps, but we appreciated his company in these parts. In the meantime though, I have his daughter here. He entrusted her to me when he went off to serve the Duke of York last year, as was usual, though I was given to understand she is Sir John Fakenham’s ward? I have to say, I expected to hear from him sooner. It has been more than a year since Cornford’s death.’

‘Been a bit busy,’ Walter mutters.

‘Well, I am glad you are here, at any rate,’ Dwnn says. ‘You’ll take the girl with you?’ There is a hopeful catch in his voice.

This was not the plan. But then: what was the plan? Thomas doesn’t know.

‘Is she so troublesome?’ Katherine asks.

Dwnn looks caught out.

‘Not troublesome, no,’ he says, not quite quickly enough. ‘She is easy on the eye, that I will grant, but she—’ He stops.

‘What is wrong with her?’ Katherine presses.

Dwnn is uncomfortable.

‘Her breathing,’ he says quickly, alighting, even Thomas can see, on something, anything, other than the real reason. ‘It is. Difficult. And. Well. She is – She has a strange temperament. You’ll see. She will be beside herself with joy to see you.’

Thomas wonders why.

‘Come,’ Dwnn says. ‘Let us go and find her. You may see for yourselves.’

They put aside their cups and troop down the stone stairs and out into the ward.

‘We were not intending to take her with us, were we?’ Thomas asks Walter.

‘I don’t know,’ Walter says. ‘I thought you knew?’

They both look to Katherine.

‘She does not rest with you in your apartments?’ Katherine is asking Dwnn. She is surprised.

‘No,’ Dwnn admits. ‘She rests with the priest. On account of the smoke of the fires, and of the villagers themselves. She has not made a point of endearing herself to them.’

They cross into the shadow of the towers that make up the inner keep. Once again there is a gate and a portcullis that can be closed, but in the inner ward there are no tents or fires, only a priest in his robes sitting on the grass hulling dried beans with a pregnant woman and a small child who is obviously his son. Dwnn ignores them and takes Walter, Thomas and Katherine through another low-lintelled door and up a twisting flight of stone steps.

Margaret Cornford stands at the far end of a long unheated solar. She is wearing a dress of indeterminate colour, cinched at her narrow waist, and a close-fitting green headdress with a castellated fringe. She does not move when she sees them, but stands there, waiting. No dust motes swirl in the slices of grey light that fall from the windows and it strikes Thomas that she has been standing still for a very long time.

‘Margaret,’ Dwnn announces. ‘The visitors are from England. They have come from Lincoln. To see you.’

Margaret’s face is spectrally pale and her eyes empty, but she is astonishingly beautiful. Thomas holds his breath. He can hardly stand to look at her and he tears his gaze away for fear of betraying himself. Walter opens his mouth to say something and then shuts it again with a dry tick. Even he removes his hat. The girl stares at them and Thomas risks another glance. Christ, she is lovely. She reminds Thomas of the representation of St Mary Magdalene painted on the rood screen in one of the chapels at the priory. She has fine curving brows, high cheekbones and wonderfully smooth, creamy skin, and her lips are plump and seem to promise something he cannot identify.

Then she speaks.

‘Finally,’ she says.

‘
I HAVE HAD
enough of this place,’ she says, ‘and these people.’

Margaret Cornford gestures first at the stone walls and the narrow windows with their sliding shutters, then the truckle bed in one corner, the linen sheets and rough woven blankets, the earthenware pots, the chest, the table, the tapestries. As she singles out each item she seems to expect her visitors to agree that her life has been hard. Yet here they stand in bloodstained, salt-crisp, sodden clothes, famished and exhausted.

Gruffydd Dwnn raises his eyebrows fractionally. He is obviously used to such displays of ingratitude.

‘Are you strong enough to travel, Margaret?’ he asks. ‘It is winter, and the cold – you know?’

His tone is ambiguous: half-doubtful, half-hopeful.

‘Of course I am strong enough,’ she says.

But with this she begins to cough and once she’s started she doesn’t seem to be able to stop. The cough never catches in her throat, and after a moment her cheeks are aflame and she is hunchbacked and gasping for breath. Katherine steps towards her but Dwnn shakes his head.

Another woman – older, shorter, a nurse of some sort – bustles from a door hidden in the gloom of the far end of the room and takes her and guides her back towards the bed.

‘Come,’ Dwnn says, gesturing back towards the doorway through which they came. ‘It’s best we leave her now. These fits come on her for no reason, but they pass, and Goodwife Melchyn makes her drink horses’ urine – and bats’ blood if she can find it – mixed with some herb or other.’

Thomas half expects to hear Katherine say something about the treatment bringing more harm than the illness, but for once she bites her tongue. She looks worried though.

They spend the night in the hall above the gatehouse, on benches gathered around the board in front of the fire. Dafydd and Owen are not asked to join them, for they have reputations, and they stay with their women out in the ward, but Thomas and Katherine and Walter eat buttery pies filled with some fishy-flavoured seabird. They eat roasted cheese, plenty of it, and drink sweet dank ale until their eyes become pouchy and Dwnn orders his servants to fetch straw for their mattresses.

Thomas shares his blanket and warmth with Katherine as usual, while Walter shares his with the bearded man who can’t speak English on the other side of the covered fire. Dwnn retires to his private rooms above.

Thomas usually lets Katherine sleep nearest the fire, but tonight she does not want to and they swap.

‘Kit?’ he whispers.

She nudges him with a knee to show she is listening.

‘Are you all right?’

He feels the straw shake as she nods. She turns over, moves her back towards him, and a moment later he can hear her steady breathing. He lies awake a while longer, his head on the pardoner’s ledger, perhaps too tired to sleep, just able to hear Dwnn snoring through that mangled nose of his on the floor above. He isn’t thinking of the storm or the horses, but of Katherine. He wants to put his arm around her and touch her. He wants to feel her skin under his fingertips. He cannot sleep. He can hardly breathe.

In the night he feels Katherine stiffen and he wakes instantly but doesn’t move. He feels her roll across the straw and hears her getting to her feet among the rushes. Is she going to relieve herself? She crosses the room on careful feet and draws the bar on the window shutters. A band of moonlight bisects the room. A dog is barking in the distance.

What is she doing? She climbs up on to the bench and presses her face into the aperture and stays there, perfectly still, for a long few moments before climbing down again and closing the shutter.

‘What is it?’ he whispers when she returns to the blanket.

‘It’s just . . . No. Nothing,’ she says, but he doesn’t feel her ease before he goes back to sleep himself.

The next morning she is gone. He searches for her and finds her on the walkway in the tower, with the boy still asleep just inside the doorway, cramped into an impossible position. She is in her still-damp travel cloak, her hat pulled around her ears; long strands of hair that have escaped from its brim lash her face.

Over her shoulder the sea has turned green in the rain, and comes right up so that there is now no mud to be seen in the bay. They can hear the waves on the shore from all this way, and even the river below them is full.

She is peering westwards, shielding her eyes from the rain. When she hears him she turns, and then turns back and points. Thomas stares. Away beyond the headland to the west there is the suggestion of something, a long trail in the sky.

‘What is it?’ he asks.

‘Smoke, I think.’

‘Have you told Dwnn?’

She shakes her head.

‘He is at Mass.’

Thomas rouses the boy with a vigorous shake. He babbles something, still half asleep, so Thomas takes him by the arm and points out the smoke. The boy babbles more, excitedly, and then disappears through the door. They can hear him running down the spiral steps. A moment later they see him threading his way through the outer ward, shouting something as he goes. Thomas recognises the word Tudor. Behind him the women and children come scrambling out from under their shelters. They stare up at the tower. Thomas turns back to Katherine.

‘Is it this Jasper Tudor? Has his army come ashore?’

‘It must be,’ she supposes.

Thomas feels nauseous. An army of men coming this way. He is not sure he can endure anything like that afternoon outside Northampton again. A moment later he hears feet on the steps and Dwnn and Walter join them.

‘That’s it,’ Dwnn tells them. ‘Tudor’s ships’re here, full of bloody French and Irish mercenaries. Christ! We’d best get ourselves set.’

They begin clattering back down the steps.

‘I don’t understand it,’ Walter is saying. ‘Why’ve they come now? It’s the middle of bloody winter. Where are they going to get their fodder? Where are they going to sleep? Just doesn’t make sense.’

‘Tudor was always a bit like that,’ Dwnn admits. ‘You know his grandfather thought he was made of glass? Can you believe it? King of France, he was.’

‘And because of this his son is bringing an army here to unseat the Duke of York?’ Katherine asks.

Dwnn shrugs.

‘Seems that way,’ he says. ‘No soft spot for the Duke of York, after what happened to his brother, and he can’t have liked the Act of Accord, can he? His own nephew disinherited.’

Thomas shakes his head.

‘But he probably hasn’t ever met his own nephew,’ he says. ‘Why would he care so much as to – to invade his own country with foreign soldiers?’

Dwnn looks at him as if he is simple.

‘If his nephew’s the king, he gets given positions, doesn’t he? Titles, lands, positions and that. Gets to marry his son to the richest woman in the land. If his nephew’s not the king, he gets what? A kick in the balls and a push down the stairs. That’s why he’s here.’

Put like that, it makes perfect sense.

In the ward the women are already hard at work beating laundry in the rain, marking the passing of time with the steady thud of their beetles.