Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims (60 page)

‘Where are those other bloody surgeons?’ he asks. He has a spray of blood over his freckles now, and his leather apron resembles that of a butcher. ‘Taking their leave until the nobs get involved, I dare say,’ he answers his own question.

A priest has come from Pontefract and is moving quietly among the wounded, guided by one of the friars, and now more friars have come and they begin taking the bodies of men out of the barn as well as bringing them in. The men are mostly archers, brought in by their friends, but now and again a few men-at-arms appear, brought on horses by their squires and servants, who linger to help remove the plate armour, and who try to get them preferential treatment – ‘My master is a personal friend of Sir Humphrey Stafford,’ one will say – and always Katherine ignores them in favour of the most needy, thinking of Thomas and who might bring him in if he were wounded.

A little after noon a surgeon does appear and within moments he has reorganised everything and everybody, so that a large area is set aside for the quality, while those without the appearance of means are set outside in the bitter cold. He is not a surgeon, he says, but a physician. He wears a long coat and a pointed oily fur hat that he never removes. He stands in the centre of the room next to the fire and sets Mayhew the task of bleeding those from whom they have spent all morning removing arrows.

‘It is a mercy the commons can’t afford it,’ Mayhew mutters, nodding at the poor archers and footmen who are banished to the cold.

The physician turns to Katherine, confused by her presence.

‘Who are you?’ he asks.

‘I am Lady Margaret Cornford, daughter of the late Lord Cornford, personal friend of William Hastings,’ she says, looking him in the eye. ‘I am here at the request of William Hastings, and I will not be party to the bleeding of any man, nor the cauterisation of wounds, nor to the application of any of your sow-gelder’s creams.’

Hunger makes her hands tremble, but she means it.

‘I will however wash wounds,’ she continues, ‘where I can, with warm wine and fresh urine, and I will suture them afterwards with hemp or silk, and then I will dress the wound with clean dry linen. No more. No less.’

He is taller than she by a head, with a long rough-skinned nose from which hair erupts in two damp explosions. He stares down at her, calculating her worth and so her power. After a moment he licks his thin lips. ‘Very well, my lady,’ he says. ‘But you keep your ministrations to the commons. I shall deal with the gentles.’

‘They’ll not thank you, you know, for killing them.’

The physician looks bitter and turns and walks away, his long coat a soft half-turn behind. Mayhew chuckles, watching the physician leave the barn, but he carries on with his knife and bowl, cutting into a man’s hand between his fingers and holding him while he bleeds into a clay bowl.

The boy with the arrow in his stomach dies in the early afternoon and by then Katherine is bloodied up to her elbows and across her skirts and she is nearly faint with hunger. She supposes she might have treated a hundred wounds, and she is hopeful for them all, for when he is not bleeding the gentry, and when the physician is not there, Mayhew is everywhere, making instant judgements on whether a man will live or die, and assigning them accordingly, so she finds herself treating the lightly wounded, while the friars deal with those whose grasp on life looks unsustainable.

At about four o’clock, as the daylight begins to leach away, there is a let-up in those thought likely to survive, and for the first time since waking she thinks of Richard. She finds him sitting where she left him that morning. The moon-faced simpleton is staring at him from a distance of only a few inches, and Katherine chases her away.

‘Did you know she was there?’ she asks.

He shakes his head.

‘I thought I sensed something,’ he says, ‘and I shouted out, but there has been so much coming and going, so many different sounds, that I could not be sure. Your man Mayhew has just asked me to piss in a cup for him, which I do gladly, but is there any other way I can help? I am frozen to the marrow out here.’

Before she can think of some soothing answer there is a thunder of hooves. A great party of men is coming towards the barn. They ride under a saltire flag.

‘Dear God,’ she breathes. ‘The Earl of Warwick.’

‘He is here?’ Richard asks, struggling to his feet.

‘He comes now.’

‘Is he wounded?’

‘It may be.’

‘Don’t let that bastard of a physician see him. Save him yourself. It will be the making of you.’

She glances at him. Whatever does he mean?

Warwick’s household men tear across the fields to the barn and the first arrival leaps from his horse before it has stopped moving.

‘A surgeon!’ he cries. ‘My lord of Warwick is wounded.’

The physician is still absent. Mayhew appears.

‘Is it bad?’ he asks.

‘An arrow. In his thigh.’

‘Is he bleeding?’ he asks.

The man looks at him. He has lost his helmet and has blood on his livery coat.

‘Of course he’s fucking bleeding, begging your pardon, my lady.’

‘Is he bleeding a lot?’ Mayhew emphasises.

The man-at-arms gestures with exasperation.

‘Here he comes. Look for yourself.’

Warwick is on another man’s horse, leaning back in the saddle, the broken stub of an arrow sticking from the inside of his right thigh. His proud face is screwed up in pain and with every jounce of the horse he winces and mutters something ungodly.

Mayhew is struck dumb by the sight. It is as if he is looking at a saint or a martyr and not only does his touch desert him, but his voice too.

Katherine intervenes.

‘Get him down,’ she says.

The men-at-arms help their lord down off the horse and he puts his arms around two of them and hobbles into the barn.

‘Where’s my physician!’ he shouts, his voice rising into a scream on the last syllable. ‘Get him!’

‘Lay him here,’ she says, kicking aside the bowls of blood. They lower him on his back in the space the physician has reserved for those able to afford bleeding.

‘Get his armour off,’ she orders. The man-at-arms bends and cuts through the leather laces and the straps. He frees the plate and tosses it aside. The arrow has broken through the rings of the mail skirt and lodged itself in the meat of Warwick’s thigh, just below the groin.

‘Don’t just stand there,’ Warwick mutters. ‘Do something.’

Warwick’s hose is soaked with blood but there is not too much. She cuts through the material and rolls it down to his knee. The arrow is in the soft part of his thigh, lodged in the muscles at the back of his leg. Great God he is lucky.

‘Have you the rest of the arrow?’ she asks.

The man-at-arms looks at her as if she is a fool.

‘Can we have someone here who is not a juggler or a clown?’ he says. ‘This is my lord the Earl of Warwick, for the love of
Jesu
, not some nameless peasant. Get on and cure him.’

She returns to the wound. This is difficult. How far has the arrow gone in? She collects one of the silver-snouted needles, a long one, rinses it in a jar of warm wine and then probes the wound beside the shaft, inserting the sliver of metal into the lips of the wound and letting it trace the path of the barb. Warwick grimaces.

‘Wine,’ he demands.

She shakes her head.

‘We need it for other purposes.’

He is unused to being denied anything he requires and he looks at her properly for the first time.

‘The devil are you?’ he asks.

Instead of answering she presses the needle farther in. She wants to distract him with the pain, and it works. Her fingers are in the wound now. It means the arrow is deep and it will be easier to push it through, just as she has seen Mayhew do earlier. She withdraws the needle and wishes Mayhew were not suddenly so shy.

She will have to make a short shunt with the heel of her hand on the broken shaft and hope that she can force it out in one move. But what about the wound on the other side? She has an idea, looks up. A crowd has gathered, nine or ten men including a herald in the quartered livery of the King. All are in plate armour and the man-at-arms is on his knees. He is wearing thick leather gloves.

‘Give him the wine,’ she orders the friar.

The friar holds the jug of wine to the Earl’s lips.

‘Wait,’ Katherine says, and she leans forward and swirls the surgeon’s knife in the jug.

‘All right,’ she says, removing the blade. ‘He can drink it now.’

They watch as Warwick drains the wine. He grimaces and spits something out.

‘Roll him on to his left side, will you?’

The friar and the man-at-arms take him and move him, complaining, on to his left side.

‘Hold him steady. And fetch a candle.’

One of the friars brings an altar candle of good beeswax, casting a true light. In it she can see the Earl has large spots on the cheek of his backside, and she thinks of Sir John and his fistula. Is that how such things start?

‘You,’ she says, addressing the man-at-arms. ‘Push on the arrow. Slowly.’

He is horrified.

‘Do it,’ Warwick says.

The man shuffles forward. He looks around, seeking approval.

‘Come on,’ Warwick says.

‘Slowly,’ she adds.

He bends and grasps the arrow. Warwick gasps.

‘Sorry, my lord.’

‘Just do it.’

He pushes the arrow through the Earl’s flesh. The Earl stiffens. Clenches his teeth.

‘The candle!’ she calls.

The friar leans over her.

She watches the growth swell on the back of Warwick’s thigh, sharpening, turning pale. She snicks it with the blade. She feels a tick of the knife against the arrowhead. Blood seethes from the wound and the arrow comes slithering through. Warwick bucks and shouts with the pain. Mayhew and the friar hold him tight, the man-at-arms taken by surprise. There is blood all over the ground. A great pool of it, expanding fast. Katherine feels a grab of panic. She’s cut the artery! She panics, doesn’t know what to do, where to turn. Then she calms herself.

‘Sponge,’ she demands. ‘Linen.’

She pulls the arrow free and tosses it aside, then she presses the urine-soaked sponge into the wound and then the wine-soaked linen. She holds it until it is blood-soaked. ‘More,’ she says. Mayhew passes her a new piece. She presses that down on the first and when that second piece is sodden, she finds a third. By the fourth pressing the wound is no longer bleeding.

She almost collapses. She has not cut the artery.

‘Well?’

This is from the man-at-arms, and he speaks for everybody.

‘He’ll live,’ Mayhew says. ‘He’ll live.’

WHEN THE BRIDGE
is finally taken, in the gloom of the early evening, after Fauconberg’s mounted archers have forded the river upstream and come around behind the defenders, Thomas sits on the bank and opens his bag to see if he has any food. The ledger is in there. He opens it again, and looks at all the embellishments he has added since he first acquired it. There is the window of St Paul’s, the name of Red John, the drawing of Katherine he made while she was ill in Brecon. She looks like the Virgin herself.

He wishes he did not have to carry it with him, but now that he is separated from the wagons, there is nowhere to leave it. He slings it over his shoulder and goes in search of Hastings’s men. There is no sign of Hastings’s standard, but across the blood-slicked stones of the bridge, Thomas finds the Welsh captain, looking as pleased with himself as if he personally put the northerners to flight.

‘Came through a ford up the way,’ he laughs. ‘Unguarded it was. Old Fauconberg’s a fox. He’s riding up the north road with his lances and hobilars now, chasing after the rest of those bastards.’

Ahead the fields are grey with snow. The wind gusts in their faces. Thomas feels nothing but dread. He should not go any further: none of them should. Nothing good waits for them. Of that he is sure.

‘Well,’ the Welshman says. ‘We’ve got to get moving at any rate. A village called Saxton. Up there somewhere. Hastings’s orders.’

‘How far is it?’ Thomas asks.

‘Three or four leagues?’ the Welshman guesses.

Thomas turns and studies the army filtering across the cinch of the bridge.

‘What about the wagons?’

‘They’re to come through the ford.’

‘So we didn’t need to take this bridge at all,’ Thomas says.

Across the river, through the trees, they can see men digging burial pits in the fields.

‘No,’ the Welshman says.

They watch the men digging for a while, and the priest shivering by the graveside.

‘Got any sons?’ the Welshman asks.

Thomas shakes his head.

The Welshman grunts.

‘Lucky,’ he says. ‘I’ve got two girls; Kate and Katherine, named after their mother. I used to want boys, you know? I used to imagine how that would be. Doing this kind of thing together. But now, maybe, maybe it is better not to. They’d only end up like that.’

He gestures across the river and Thomas nods and then they turn and join the road where the column is moving north through the slush. As they go trumpets sound and drums are taken up, and all around them captains do their best to organise and encourage the men who move slowly, with cramped and weary expressions on dirty faces. They follow the road northwards to the village of Saxton, and arrive in the dark. No wagons have caught them up, so they face a night without food or shelter, and while the captains cram themselves into the church and the surrounding houses, the men are left without.

Before curfew Thomas strides to the edge of the village to relieve himself. Men are gathered there, doing the same thing, staring northwards, to where the sky is tinged orange with the light of a thousand fires.

‘It’ll be tomorrow then,’ one of them says. ‘So say your prayers and get some sleep.’

Thomas lays his head on his ledger under the eaves of a nearby cottage, and prays. He prays for Katherine and Sir John. He prays for himself. He prays he will find Riven and that he will not lack the courage to fight him, or his giant. He prays that he will not lack the courage to kill both.