Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims (44 page)

‘So what now?’ Katherine asks Dwnn.

‘My John’ll send word of the landing to the Earl of March. The Earl’ll want to stop Tudor joining Somerset’s army up north, I’ll bet. Dear God. If those two get together, I shouldn’t like to be living in London right now. A load of Scotsmen, Irishmen, Frenchmen and northerners? They’ll steal everything they can’t fuck and burn the rest.’ Dwnn frowns at them. ‘You should be gone if you want to make it back to England before midsummer,’ he tells them.

‘Today?’ Walter asks.

‘Today,’ Dwnn agrees. ‘Tudor’s scurriers’ll soon be combing the countryside looking for anything they can get their hands on. We can sell you horses and food.’

‘We’d ride home?’

‘’Less you want to walk, or a ship docks, which I can’t see happening.’

Thomas and Katherine look at one another.

‘We’d best be going then,’ Walter says. Katherine nods her agreement.

‘I’ll inform Margaret,’ Dwnn says.

‘Why?’ Walter stops him.

‘She’ll want to be ready. She’ll have things to pack.’

‘You want us to take Margaret?’

Dwnn speaks quickly before they can change their minds.

‘Of course,’ he says. ‘I thought that was why you were here. And it’s best that way. She’ll come without a servant, if you don’t mind? I cannot send Goodwife Melchyn to England, not with Tudor’s men here. You’ll be able to move faster that way, at any rate.’

Katherine sighs, and the men nod in reluctant agreement. A boy is sent to alert Margaret and they return to the solar to bundle up their possessions again.

‘Do we even know a route home?’ Thomas asks Walter.

‘We’ll take a guide,’ Walter says. ‘One of the local lads.’

‘Where are Dafydd and Owen?’ Katherine asks.

‘They must be about,’ Walter mutters. ‘Probably saying their goodbyes.’

Dwnn sells them three strange-looking horses with large eyes and small heads. The best available, he says.

‘What about Owen and Dafydd?’

‘They can bring their own.’

They look them over in the outer yard while Margaret’s pony is brought from the stables, saddled with a side-saddle that does not look to have ever been used.

‘She enjoys riding,’ Dwnn says, ‘but it is her breathing. She seems to find it hard to be around horses.’

‘Will she have a coughing fit again?’ Katherine asks.

Dwnn shrugs.

‘She may do, but Goodwife Melchyn has given her plenty of medicaments. She will be fine. Only—’ He breaks off with a glance at the grey sky. ‘Only keep her warm, won’t you? Her chest, I mean. The cold seems to make it worse.’

Margaret appears in a blue riding coat, lined in quilted wool, and a hat to match. She is as beautiful as ever and Thomas can hardly stand to look at her. She presses a napkin over her nose and mouth as behind her comes Goodwife Melchyn with three heavy leather bags and a leather flask of something Thomas can only guess is horses’ urine and bats’ blood.

They thank Dwnn and prepare to say their goodbyes.

‘So now where are Dafydd and Owen?’ Thomas asks.

They are nowhere to be seen. After a search through the castle, it emerges that Gwen has disappeared too.

‘Obviously don’t want to leave their family,’ Dwnn says, with a shrug. ‘You can hardly blame them, with Tudor and his Irishmen and so on.’

‘But – But they can’t just not come back, can they?’ Katherine asks. She can’t believe it. And them not saying goodbye.

‘No,’ Walter says. ‘No, they bloody well can’t. They’re indentured to Sir John Fakenham.’

Dwnn shrugs again.

‘They’ll have gone into the hills,’ he says. ‘You’ll never find them now.’

But how will they live in the hills during the winter? Thomas wonders. Dwnn is evasive, can’t quite hold their gaze.

‘Where is their cottage?’ Thomas asks. They can only have gone there.

‘A few leagues,’ Dwnn gestures vaguely.

‘We’ll not take Margaret if we can’t find Dafydd and Owen,’ Thomas says. ‘We’ll have to leave her here.’

Walter angles his head in approval. Dwnn hesitates. He needs as many men as he can get of course, but does he want to keep Margaret? The girl is glaring at him.

‘All right,’ he says at last. ‘I’ll get Little Dafydd to take you.’

This is another Dafydd, another swineherd, on a shaggy little pony with no saddle. Little Dafydd looks so very like Dwnn that Walter laughs.

‘Do you lot do anything else?’ he asks.

Thomas turns to Little Dafydd.

‘Speak English?’ he asks.

Little Dafydd nods vigorously but says nothing to prove it.

‘He understands it, at any rate,’ Katherine observes.

‘Once you find Dafydd, you’re to go east,’ Dwnn explains, ‘towards Monmouth. Dafydd here knows the roads and paths roundabouts, and which questions to ask when he reaches the edge of his world. It should take you three days if you ride quickly, which you must if you wish to avoid Tudor’s men. Dafydd will leave you on the Monmouth road, and from Monmouth you can find your way to the river at Gloucester. Tell those you meet that Tudor is landed, but leave it to them to decide if that is good or bad news.’

They hoick themselves up into their saddles. Goodwife Melchyn and Dwnn help Margaret, who takes a moment to spread her skirts and then her cloak. She sneezes wetly and Thomas notices an exchange of glances between Goodwife Melchyn and Dwnn.

‘So then farewell, Meg,’ Dwnn says. ‘We’ve had some times, haven’t we? Is there anyone you’d like to bid farewell?’

‘No,’ the girl says from behind her linen. ‘I shall be pleased to be elsewhere.’

‘Right,’ Dwnn says, stepping back, raising a hand and smiling weakly. ‘Well, farewell then. Safe journey.’

They follow a drovers’ path winding through the low hills. Black rainclouds reinforce themselves, coming in from the sea, and a kestrel dithers on the lip of a scarp. Little Dafydd is at the front on his sure-footed pony, then Walter, then Thomas, then Margaret and finally Katherine.

She finds she cannot take her eyes off the back of the girl, watching the way she moves on the saddle, the way her cloak masks her body, even the shoes she wears – red leather, slightly pointed, clean – poking from under the hem of her long skirts. They even match her riding gloves.

And the girl keeps glancing back at Katherine, as if she has divined some mystery, some difference. Katherine rips her gaze away and finds herself blushing, yet a moment later she is back, watching.

After they stop to eat – three cold pigeon pies – Thomas lets Margaret go ahead and drops back to talk to Katherine.

‘What woke you in the night?’ he asks.

‘I was dreaming of Fournier,” she says. ‘He has often been on my mind since we left Marton Hall.’

Thomas snorts.

‘Because he accused you of being in league with the devil? You can forget that we all saw you cut Sir John’s fistula. There was no witchcraft there, only a sharp knife, a steady hand and a lot of blood.’

‘It is not that,’ she says, and she tries to describe the look Fournier gave her as she left Marton Hall the next morning, and why it has stuck with her.

‘So what do you think he’s divined?’ Thomas asks. ‘That you are a woman? That you are an apostate? That you have killed a woman? If so, he would have unmasked you to Sir John, there and then.’

‘No,’ she says. ‘It was as if he’d discovered something new and had recently recognised its value.’

‘Such as what?’ Thomas asks.

‘I thought perhaps he knew we were headed here to find Margaret.’

He turns on her.

‘But—’ he begins, then understands her meaning and breaks off. ‘Christ,’ he says. ‘If he knew that, then there is only one man in the kingdom with an interest in Margaret’s whereabouts.’

Katherine nods.

‘Dear God,’ Thomas breathes. He looks at Margaret. ‘And he was riding to Riven’s the morning we left.’

Katherine nods. Thomas stops his horse and turns in the saddle and studies the land all around, though what he is expecting to see she is not sure. The sea has reappeared on their right, a grey smear beyond the mossy flanks of the hills. Ahead is another inlet, another river, sand dunes and mudflats. It is the bay the cog master told them was haunted by the souls of drowned sailors. There is the long spit of rock he’d called the Worm’s Head, frilled with surf where the waves break.

‘But why hasn’t Riven already taken her?’ Thomas asks. ‘If he knew where she is?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ Katherine says. ‘I believe he doesn’t know where she is. He only knows that we know where she is.’

Thomas thinks about this.

‘So it was him following us on the way down? Hoping we’d lead him to Margaret?’

Katherine nods.

‘It makes sense,’ she says. ‘They followed us until the storm, and then . . . well, they lost us, or I suppose we lost them.’

‘Or perhaps they are themselves lost?’

‘Let us pray to God above.’

But still she wonders if she did not see a ship berthed on the sands in the bay Dafydd had said was home. It may have been anything, or it may have been something, she does not know, but now the boy ahead has stopped on the crest of the hill and is pointing at something and they can see the sky beyond is hazed with dark smoke.

They ride up the hill past Margaret and when they get there Walter and the boy are off their horses, crouched like hunters, peering into the valley beyond. Little Dafydd is pointing at a cottage, half hidden in a copse of poplars, smoke sifting from blackened rushes where part of the roof has burned away. In the orchard there is a man lying face down, arms outstretched, and a dog is yapping somewhere.

‘God’s sake,’ is all Walter says.

They watch a while. Nothing moves.

The dog continues barking.

‘Tudor’s men?’ Thomas wonders.

Little Dafydd recognises the word Tudor and nods fiercely, but Katherine wonders. Tudor’s army landed far to the west, only that morning. Could they have come this far so soon?

The cottage is next to a ford where the drovers’ path runs through the river. The river cuts down towards the sea but vanishes into the dimpled mudflats before it gets there. She starts and squints. Settled in the sand is a wreck of a ship, small, distant, and nearby something, a dead horse perhaps, is mobbed by birds.

She nudges Thomas and points. There is something else lying in the mud down there, attracting fewer birds. It is too far to see what it is. Beams and spars and other scraps from a ship lie scattered about, half sunk in the mud.

‘Can it be the ship with green sails?’ Thomas asks.

She nods.

‘We should see if we can go around,’ Walter is saying. ‘This isn’t our fight.’

‘We go around?’ he asks the boy loudly, pointing north and indicating walking with his fingers.

The boy shakes his head and gestures forcefully at the burning cottage. He repeats something. Over and over.

‘What’s he trying to say?’

Katherine suddenly feels cold.

‘It’s Dafydd and Owen,’ she says. ‘That’s their home.’

THEY RETURN TO
the horses. Walter and Thomas nock their bows. Katherine looses her sword.

Suddenly Walter swears.

‘Damn creeping Christ!’ he says. ‘Damn creeping bloody Christ! Some turd’s stolen them! Look! I’ve only got three left!’

He holds up three arrows.

Thomas has also been burgled, and is left with two.

‘Damned creeping Christ,’ Walter says again. ‘Five. Five bloody arrows and we’ve got to get across half of bloody Wales and most of bloody England.’

He stuffs his arrows in his belt and then turns to Margaret.

‘Wait here,’ he says. ‘If we don’t come back, ride back to Kidwelly.’

She looks at him with undisguised disgust. He ignores her, and climbs back up on his horse.

‘Come on then,’ he tells Thomas and Katherine.

They get into their saddles and follow him over the hill and down through the ford. When they reach the orchard they dismount. The dead man is lying on his belly, wearing a russet jack, cheap before it’d become old, and there is a hole in the back through which protrudes the black iron head of an arrow.

‘Bodkin,’ Walter says, tapping it with his bow. He puts his foot under the man’s torso and rolls him over. There is nothing special about him: just a man, now dead, a small scar in among his gingery whiskers, a broken arrow shaft buried in his belly. There is nothing to say who he is or what he did, other than the heft of his shoulders and tell-tale calluses on his right palm.

The dog is still yapping.

‘You go that way,’ Walter tells Thomas. ‘Kit, you stay here.’

Walter goes to the right, Thomas the left, up towards the back of the cottage. Pale smoke floats almost listlessly from the roof. She watches Thomas sidling through the stunted apples, arrow nocked, until he stops at the willow hurdle of a goose pen. He steps back suddenly, as if he’s found something at his feet, and he raises his face to the sky.

Walter has reached the door of the cottage. He pushes it open and steps back as smoke billows out around him. When it has dissipated he steps forward and shakes the frame, wondering if the rushes on the roof will fall in on him. Katherine can smell meat cooking.

A moment later and Walter is out again. He looks grim.

‘Gwen,’ he says, jerking his head.

Katherine approaches. Gwen is inside, on the ground, her skirts pulled up, her heavy thighs marble-white in the gloom, a pattern of blood smeared across each one, the nub of her forearm burned black in a fire still winking. Katherine gags and claps her hand to her mouth as her insides come scorching upwards.

She staggers out and vomits. When she finishes, she starts again until she is retching bile. Thomas comes back. His hands have fallen to his sides and his mouth is opening and closing silently. She forgets her own nausea.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asks.

He gestures. Flaps a hand.

Walter goes over. Katherine follows, her footsteps slow. She does not want to see this.

In among all the shit and the feathers of the goose pen is Owen, thrown on his back, both hands clutching an arrow in his throat. The blood is diluted in the drizzle. More is pooled in the divots in the mud in the pen, in what she now sees are the prints of large bare feet.