Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims (50 page)

He leads them up some steps in a tower and along a stone corridor to where three soldiers stand with bills at a door. Through it they can hear the flute and the singing. It is quite unlike any of the singing he’s heard in Mass. One of the guards opens the door and ushers them in. A fire is piled scandalously high in the middle of the floor and five or six men are sitting at a board where food and drink are being served by attendants. The flautist and the singer stop and are ushered away behind a screen by a fat man with a linen cloth.

Each of the men at the table looks up from their dishes. One is Edward of March, now the Duke of York since his father’s death; he whom they’d last seen the summer before, that time at Westminster.

When he sees Thomas, he gets to his feet, incredulous.

‘Dear God in heaven,’ he says. ‘You.’

‘My lord,’ Thomas mumbles.

But he can hardly take his gaze off the breasts of the glazed bird that steams on a dish held by one of the servants. The smell makes his mouth water.

‘What in the names of all the saints are you doing here?’

‘It is a long story, sir.’

‘And one best told with wine, I bet, and something to eat.’

This is from William Hastings, who’s risen to his feet and has come around to shake Thomas’s hand.

‘It is good to see you Thomas – ah – Everingham, isn’t it?’ he says.

Thomas nods. Hastings’s gaze flicks to Katherine, and then flicks back again.

‘But tell us,’ he says. ‘Who is this?’

He bows his head in mock salute to Katherine. For a moment Thomas thinks Hastings will recognise Kit, the boy who saved Richard Fakenham’s life. And Katherine says nothing. She is suddenly ill, pale as a sepulchre, with glazed eyes that seem to roll into the back of her head. She does not answer. The silence only deepens as Hastings and March take in her filthy face, the stained dress, the grubby headdress with the linen coif tugged down to cover her cropped ear. The other men at the table lean in on the conversation, even the servers are poised, mouths open, loaded spoons in their hands, staring.

Thomas can stand it no more.

‘Lady Margaret Cornford,’ he says. ‘Daughter of the late Lord Cornford.’

As he says it, he knows he has crossed some line. That there is no way back now. Katherine looks at him feverishly, and he wonders if she is grateful, or fearful.

Hastings blows through his lips. ‘My lady,’ he says, and he lets go of Thomas’s hand and takes hers. He leads her to his chair at the board. The men there – in fur-collared coats, one with a chain of gold around his neck, another a priest – stand.

‘Friends,’ Hastings says, addressing them. ‘My lady has had a long and discomforting journey, so I trust you will not begrudge her a place at our table. There is precious little room in the castle to which she may retire, and for those of us who hold Lord Cornford’s memory dear, we should extend every courtesy to his bloodline.’

The men nod, but frown. A woman at such a table? Katherine takes her place, grateful only to sit on the chair, her narrow fingers shaking as she drinks hot wine and then gnaws at bread. March, meanwhile, takes Thomas to one side.

‘So you have come from Wales?’ he asks. ‘Have you seen Tudor’s army?’

Thomas nods.

‘All the talk is of them being Irish mercenaries,’ March goes on as if talking to himself, ‘with a few Frenchmen for good measure. I cannot decide just how poor they will be when it comes to it. The weather has been bad, I hear?’

‘It has been cold, my lord, with snow.’

‘I hope they have suffered cruelly,’ March says. ‘They are camped tonight just off the road to the south of here, where the Captain of the Watch tells me you were picked up. My sources suggest they are short of food and ale?’

‘There was precious little to be had on the way,’ Thomas confirms.

‘We can thank John Dwnn for that,’ March says. ‘He’s warned everyone in Wales to bury their food and take to the hills.’

Dwnn. Thomas hears the name like a slap. John Dwnn will know Katherine is not Lady Margaret Cornford.

‘Is John Dwnn here now, sir?’ he asks.

‘Dwnn? No. He is out; harassing the enemy, he calls it. Murdering their scouts, I’d call it, and thank him for it.’

He raises his cup in thanks to John Dwnn before drinking. Thomas thinks to ask about the battle outside Wakefield, but how can you ask a man about his father and brother being killed?

‘So,’ March says. ‘There will be fighting tomorrow. I hope you will join us? You are my lucky talisman.’

Thomas nods, but he is far from certain. He drinks deeply, burning his tongue but hardly caring. Great God, it is good.

‘Tomorrow will be a different sort of fight,’ March says, raising his voice, broadening the conversation to include everyone in the room. ‘In the past we have always urged our men to spare the commons and to kill only the gentles, but hereafter . . . hereafter we want them all dead.’

This sinks in.

‘But, Edward – your grace,’ Hastings says. ‘You are talking about the lives of Englishmen. The deaths of Englishmen, I should say.’

‘I know that, William. But I want everyone to know that if they take up arms and follow that bastard-born Somerset, or bloody old Tudor, or any man, against us, then they will pay for it with their lives. They have shown us no mercy, and so by God we shall show them none either.’

Hastings remains doubtful.

‘But who among them has a choice?’ he asks. ‘Commissions of Array are one thing, but if you owe your livelihood to a man and that man demands you harness yourself and march with him to war, then what can you do? If you refuse, you’ll be evicted and your goods given to another who will fight.’

But March is determined. Losing a father and a brother might do that to a man, Thomas supposes. Katherine meanwhile is now sitting with her head lolling on its thin stem. Thomas asks Hastings if there is anywhere he might find for her to sleep.

‘Of course, of course. I am sure we can find somewhere. She should take a little wine and then rest.’

‘And may I ask if you have news of Sir John Fakenham?’ Thomas asks.

Hastings shakes his head. ‘I have heard nothing,’ he says. ‘I sent a messenger to command him to come to Shrewsbury with every man he could raise, but the messenger never returned. I don’t know if he was prevented from delivering his message, or waylaid on his way back. All I know is that Fakenham was yet to arrive by the time we marched south.’

‘He was summoned to Sandal before Christmastide,’ Thomas says. ‘I was with him when the messenger arrived.’

Hastings takes a drink and Thomas hears him swallow. There is a telling silence for a moment.

‘We can only pray,’ Hastings says. ‘Pray that he still lives.’

Thomas is not invited to sit at the board, but a servant leads Katherine away to her bed, and she leaves with a wary backward glance, trying to find him, but failing. Thomas finds a spot in a passageway outside the kitchen where a dog lies with his jaws on its paws, the light of the rush lamp catching in its liquid eyes, and the wall is warm from the fire, and as he closes his eyes he wonders where she is, and wishes she were there.

The next morning it is bitterly cold, and the sky is rose-coloured, fretted with fine white cloud. The bells are ringing for Mass but the air is filled with the clink and shunt of men gathering with sharp-edged weapons. Some are drinking ale in hard swallows, others telling jokes and laughing nervously. They compare pieces of equipment, swords, hammers, axes, helmets and harness. Still others are huddled blowing on their hands in front of the fires. The stink, even in the icy air, is strong: unwashed bodies in wet wool, coal smoke, hot grindstones, vinegar and the smog of their breath. And above it all is the smell of nerves, of fear, of anticipation.

When Mass is over Hastings and March and the other commanders emerge from the chapel; they are clutching candles. They congregate at the doorway for a moment and later when Hastings sees Thomas, he is still holding a candle but now has a fold of cloth.

‘You will wear my livery today?’ he asks, offering the cloth to Thomas. ‘I should like you to be with me.’

Thomas swallows. Of all the things he’d rather not do, to take the field is among them. But now here is Hastings, a man whom he might well call a friend when almost all his others are dead, asking a favour.

‘Gladly,’ he says, taking the cloth, feeling the plinth of the black bull’s head badge. ‘Though I am hardly prepared for it, and I must look to Lady Margaret.’

‘Ah. And where is she now? Recovered, I hope?’ Hastings gestures up at the keep.

‘I have yet to see her this morning.’

‘Does she have any family to speak of?’ Hastings asks. ‘I knew Cornford, of course. A good man. She looks more like her mother, I’d say, though in truth I never met her. She was supposed to be frail, wasn’t she? Died after childbirth.’

Thomas nods, though he hardly knows. Hastings scratches the side of his nose with the candle.

‘Interesting,’ he says. ‘Interesting.’

He is silent for a long moment, plunged in thought.

‘Here,’ he says at length. ‘Take this as well.’

He passes Thomas the candle.

A clarion player tries to blow a call but it is too cold to purse his lips and the noise comes out as a curious squeal. Men laugh. Thomas looks at the candle.

‘Candlemas,’ Hastings explains. ‘Today. Time flies, no?’

He walks off leaving Thomas with the candle and the livery coat.

The footmen are starting to move out of the castle gatehouse to gather in the deer park beyond and in the confusion Thomas finds a loaf and an earthenware ewer of ale that a woman has set aside under a table, and after a moment’s consideration he gives in to temptation and takes it. As he hurries away he feels the black eyes of the woman’s girl fall on him more in sorrow than anger, and he leaves her the candle in recompense.

He finds Katherine still up in the solar and, with no maid to help her, she is wrestling with her unfamiliar clothes. He gives her the ale and bread and they sit on a chest eating until a messenger sent by Hastings appears.

‘You’re to come,’ he says. He waits while Thomas puts his head through Hastings’s fulled tabard and straightens it over his still-damp coat.

‘Goodbye,’ he says, lost for a moment as to what he should call her. She looks at him with her calm blue eyes.

‘Godspeed, Thomas,’ she says.

He cannot tell if she is putting on a performance in front of Hastings’s messenger, but then she adds:

‘I’ve no fear you’ll not come back. You are immortal. How else to explain it all?’

He wishes he were so sure.

When Thomas emerges through the doorway of the keep, the courtyard below is loud with drummer boys and clarion callers and a party of heralds in blue cloaks is gathered by the gatehouse. The Earl of March, now Duke of York, is already mounted, on a destrier. He is wearing harness of fluted plate with a white feather plume on the crown of his helmet, and in the shade of the curtain walls his harness seems to gather all the available light and distil it into something pure, something angelic almost, except that he carries a cruel beaked hammer over his shoulder and a battle axe at his hip.

Next to him is William Hastings, in less showy armour and no plume, his visor open, his handsome face pale. Behind him a man carries the fishtailed battle standard bearing the picture of a white hairy dog or some such, and behind is a line of perhaps a hundred men in plate armour under their own banners.

The horsemen move off with a tuneless timpani: clonking hooves, the scrape of iron shoes on stone and of men in harness. They pass through the gatehouse and ride out over the bridge to join the footmen waiting across the road south. Thomas walks behind the messenger. What does Hastings want of him? Whatever it is, Thomas knows he’ll not be able to provide it. His hands are shaking at the thought of what is to come.

He follows the messenger along the road through the trees and past a little hamlet and a patchy wood of much-coppiced willow, empty pigpens and black mud. Everything is limed white with hoarfrost and breath hangs in the air. Beyond, spilling over into the boggy meadows, are thousands of men: archers, billmen, men-at-arms; their liveries new to Thomas, their flags unfamiliar. Their officers, captains and sergeants are shouting and cajoling men into their places. Drums thunder and trumpets call out and for a fleeting moment there is a festival atmosphere, as women and children mill around the fringes, selling ale and bread, sausages, soup. One woman still in her nightcap tries to sell Thomas a smoked eel, the skin as golden as the leaf he used to work with at the priory, and ale that smells of marsh water.

‘Got anything hot?’ Thomas asks.

She shakes her head. The messenger returns to his side and almost drags him away.

‘Go away now, goodwife,’ he says. ‘We’ve things to do.’

Steam rises from both man and horse, and from the ditches where the men are relieving themselves. As they progress down the road Thomas feels nothing but growing fear. He cannot go through it again, not without Walter by his side, not without Geoffrey, or any of the Johns. Here he is with strangers. If he falls who will stoop to pick him up? The crack-toothed billman with those stout chains across his shoulders? The boy with a home-made glaive and no boots? He doubts it. They’d go through his purse before they bothered righting him. They’d leave him in a ditch to freeze to death.

When they catch up with Hastings, the knights have dismounted and their squires are leading the horses back through the lines. Hastings is nervous too. Thomas sees him passing his mailed palm over the pick of his pollaxe, teasing it with his fingers as if he can stroke it into a sharper point. Next to him is Grylle. Grylle nods tightly when reintroduced. He is in a suit of plate armour made for a much bigger man, and seems to be peeking out over his gorget like a creature in its hole. His helmet is painted black. He is, what? Fifteen?

‘His first proper fight,’ Hastings confides in Thomas. ‘His mother’ll kill me if anything happens to him.’

His squire has ale in a tubular leather flask. Hastings offers some to Thomas and watches him as he drinks. A frown gathers weight under the shadow of his raised visor where the fog of his breath has frozen into beads of ice.