Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims (66 page)

On the far bank Riven’s run is clumsy with fatigue as he stumbles through the trees, scrambles along the banks and wades through the river’s broken water where the valley walls press too steeply.

At last Thomas finds an arrow, sticking out of the ground in a rare patch of sodden earth. He pulls it out and runs to a spot between two low trees on the lip of the plateau.

Riven will pass below on the opposite bank any moment.

He notches the arrow and takes his stance.

The wind here is fitful, uncertain, blustering around the valley, gusting up the rise. He will have to be careful. He has but one shot, and then it will all be over.

For a moment he thinks he has lost Riven, but then he comes, a dark shape against the snow, moving like a spider. He climbs over a fallen bough among the trees on the edge of the copse. He seems exhausted, as if he will fall at any moment.

Thomas draws the string with the last ounces of his strength, getting his back into the bow, and he holds the stance for a long moment, and he waits, waits for the perfect moment, concentrating on nothing but Riven, who moves into line.

And then the bow explodes.

The arrow flits into the gloom and a chunk of the bow’s belly lashes against Thomas’s temple.

Darkness swallows him whole.

THEY MOVED UP
to the village of Lead in the morning and took over the little church surrounded by fishponds, and they have had nothing to eat or drink all day, and so when two of Hastings’s men bring in Sir John at dusk, Katherine is exhausted and so hungry that she does not at first recognise him.

His face and beard are crusted in blood. He cannot talk, and no one can tell what is wrong with him. Hastings’s men have removed his harness to lighten their load, they say, and they’d found it dented, but there seems to be no wound.

‘Face down he was,’ one of them goes on. ‘Almost drowning in the soup.’

She recognises him when she peels off his linen cap. He does not appear wounded, yet he lies there with waxy skin and anyone looking at him would have given him up for dead.

‘Let us find him somewhere more comfortable to lie,’ she says.

One of the friars looks up from the other side of the chapel.

‘A space here,’ he calls, and he stoops to close the eyes of a dead boy. Mayhew summons the other friars to take the body away, and they carry Sir John across the blood-smutted straw. In the light of a rush they stare while Mayhew runs his fingers over the body. What is wrong with him? She cannot say. There is no obvious wound, yet his breath is quick and shallow, and when they remove his arming jacket they find his chest is sunk.

‘I have seen something like this once before,’ Mayhew says, though he does not look happy with the thought. He rinses water through Sir John’s white hair, washing the blood away, and then runs his fingers over the skull.

‘Here,’ he says. ‘Feel.’

He stands beside her and guides her fingers. She can feel nothing at first; then there is a slight depression. She wonders if she can feel the slightest sensation of grating bone when she applies pressure.

‘A blow,’ Mayhew says. ‘He came in without his helmet, but he must have been wearing it when he was hit.’

‘It saved his life,’ she says.

Mayhew looks doubtful.

‘Perhaps,’ he says.

‘So what can we do?’

‘There will be a sanguineous swelling within the orb of the skull, I have no doubt,’ he says. ‘It is usually – always – fatal. It is something to do with the brain. It cannot work with the swelling.’

She cannot bear it.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Not Sir John.’ Then she thinks, and asks: ‘How do you treat sanguineous swellings elsewhere on the body?’

‘A leech, sometimes,’ Mayhew says. ‘Or we cut it open and dispose of the blood.’

‘Why?’ she asks.

‘Why? Because. Because we do.’

‘If we cut open the swelling now?’

‘It is – behind the skull,’ Mayhew says. ‘We cannot get to it to cut it.’

‘The bones are broken, I am sure of it.’

Mayhew frowns. He looks down at Sir John.

‘You would have to cut open the scalp,’ he says, ‘which is easy enough, of course, but then you would have to crack the skull if it is not cracked already.’

‘I think it is.’

‘But the swelling might not be where the break is. It might be on the other side of the brain and – no. You do not want to touch a man’s brains.’

‘It is worth a try, surely?’

Sir John looks closer to death than life.

‘It cannot hurt,’ Mayhew says. ‘But let us call a priest first.’

While Mayhew fetches more wine Katherine finds Richard. He is sitting on a step talking to a wounded captain and tearing linen into strips. She touches his shoulder.

‘Richard,’ she says. ‘Your father is here. He will die unless we cut him. But it is not easy and of course the cutting may kill him.’

Richard stands up.

‘Take me to him,’ he says.

Katherine does so and leaves the two together while another man is brought in with a wound in his chest that makes a noise and within a few minutes he is dead. She glances over at Richard and Sir John when she is holding the dying man’s hand and Richard is gently feeling his father’s face, cupping his bearded chin, letting his fingertips play over the nose and eyes and forehead.

‘Will you do it, my lady?’ he asks when the priest is called and she is standing next to him. He is offering her a courtesy, since she knows Sir John.

‘Thank you,’ she says. Mayhew nods and takes a step back.

Richard holds Sir John’s hand and the old man mews in his sleep. She has a blade, taken from the barber surgeon’s bag, which is sharper than anything she has ever seen. She holds it up to the candle that the murmuring friar is holding.

‘Should I shave his head?’ she asks. ‘It will help with the stitching afterwards.’

Mayhew raises his eyebrows.

‘Good idea,’ he says. She turns the knife and slices through the white locks. Underneath there is a silver furze, nicked here and there by tiny scars. She had imagined that people have round heads, but of course they don’t. Sir John’s is long and fluted with angles, slightly asymmetric, with a ridge here and a point there. She clears away the sodden hair and wipes the bristle with some linen soaked in wine. Now that the hair has gone it is easy to see the indentation and there is even a greenish tinge to the skin. Again she presses her fingers to the skin and she can feel the grating of the bones.

‘There is nothing for it,’ Mayhew says.

She nods and cuts, holding her nerve even while blood pours from the wound.

‘Scalps always bleed mightily,’ Mayhew says.

The skin wrinkles around the cut, pulling back. There is a thin veil of pale pink flesh that she needs to slice through. Then there is the bone, the colour of old teeth.

‘Linen,’ she says, and she retracts the blade. Mayhew wipes the wound with wine and for a moment they see thin cracks in the depression, such as on an egg. He nods. With the tip of the knife she touches one of the pieces of bone. Sir John gurgles and moves his tongue.

‘Hold him,’ Mayhew calls and he grabs Sir John’s head to keep it still. Katherine touches the bone again, this time letting the tip of the knife slip to the edge of the fragment. She probes further. Her hands are steady though her heart is fluttering. Then she attempts to lift the fragment away, to prise it from the skull. It comes, but with it comes a splurge of blood, thick and dark, that wells from the wound and pours down into Sir John’s ears.

‘Good,’ Mayhew says. ‘That might be the sanguineous swelling.’

Sir John makes another noise, deep in his throat, more like a dog than a man, and she fears the worst, but Mayhew has placed the clay pot of wine on the old man’s chest, and concentric rings appear in its surface to let them know he lives and breathes. After that there seems nothing else to do but stitch Sir John’s scalp back together. She uses her own hair and makes the smallest stitches she can, taking her time while Mayhew sees to the rest of the wounded as they come limping in. When she has finished she wipes Sir John’s wound with more wine and egg whites and then his face with the last of the rose water.

His eyes flutter and he opens them and for a moment he is terrified.

‘All is well, Sir John,’ she says. ‘All is well, only don’t move.’

She takes his hand and they are like that for a moment, still and silent, and then his eyes focus on her and he smiles.

‘Kit,’ he whispers through dry lips. ‘Kit. Praised be, you are here.’

She feels a jolt, and the blood runs to her face. She cannot help herself glancing at Richard, who is sitting there, his face expressionless. Has he heard? She supposes not.

She bends over the old man.

‘I am Margaret, Sir John,’ she whispers. ‘Margaret Cornford. Do you not remember?’

Sir John opens his mouth in close little gasps.

‘I know what I know,’ he whispers. ‘By my truth, I know what I know. And where is Thomas? Where is he? You should be with him.’

‘Hush now, Sir John, hush now and all will be well.’

He shuts his eyes and drifts away again.

She stands abruptly and walks away.

Her plan! Dear God, in all this she has forgotten her resolve, and now there is no time for it, but Sir John’s words have stirred her again, thickened the brew, decided her. She looks down at her bloody dress and knows she cannot be Margaret Cornford. She cannot be like this. All at once it has become a stupid pretence, as crude as it is dishonest.

But has she left it too late?

And what of Thomas?

She has seen so many dead men this day, how can she believe there are any still living? Yet, somehow, she is certain that he is.

With the dusk the steady stream of wounded that has lasted all day begins to dwindle, but later a man comes in on his own, limping badly. Though he has lost his bow, she can tell he is an archer, and he wears the blue and white livery of Fauconberg.

‘Trod on a caltrop,’ he tells her, ‘just as I was coming off the field. Went through all that, fighting all day, and I slip at the last moment. It hurts, oh Christ it hurts.’

He holds up the sole of his boot for inspection. It is filthy with the manure of every animal she can name, dyed up to the ankle in human blood.

‘There is nothing I can do for you,’ she tells him.

‘I can pay,’ he says.

‘It is not that—’ she begins but he has a leather bag slung behind him and when he tugs it around and opens it up, she feels a flutter in her chest as sharp as a stab.

‘Look,’ he says, pulling out the pardoner’s ledger. ‘Got a hole in it and that, but still. Must be worth a penny or two.’

Her ears are roaring and her hands come up to snatch it from him, but she collects herself. He holds it upside down and back to front so that she can see that the hole does not go all the way through.

‘Reckon it must have saved his life,’ the archer says, exploring the hole with his finger.

Katherine can say nothing for a moment.

‘Come on,’ the archer says. ‘You can have it if you fix me up. Stop it hurting. Make sure it doesn’t go bad.’

‘Sit by the fire,’ she says.

She hurries to get Richard, who is sitting over his father.

‘There is an archer by the fire’, she whispers, ‘who has Thomas’s ledger.’

‘Have you asked him where he got it?’

‘No. He can only have stolen it.’

Richard nods.

‘Take me to him,’ he says, ‘and get Mayhew.’

Katherine waves Mayhew over and together they lead Richard to the archer’s side.

The archer glances up as Richard sits next to him.

‘What’s this?’ he asks.

‘I’m blind,’ Richard says. ‘But I have a good sense of smell.’

‘Really.’

The archer goes back to staring at the fire. He is clutching his foot.

‘Yes,’ Richard goes on. ‘And I can smell a thief.’

Now the archer looks up. He has been in situations like this before, that much is clear.

‘A thief is it, blind man?’

Suddenly there is a knife in his hand, but Mayhew kicks his wrist and the knife flies across the stone floor of the nave. And now Mayhew has his own knife out, and he threatens the archer with it, though he looks confused. Then Katherine steps on the archer’s wounded foot.

He cries out.

‘What is this? What’re you doing?’

‘What’s your name?’

‘John. John Perers. County of Kent.’

‘Where did you get that book?’ Katherine asks.

Perers looks mutinous. Katherine applies some pressure.

‘On the field,’ he says. ‘All right? I took it from a bloke.’

‘Which bloke?’

‘Just some bloke.’

‘Is he dead or alive?’

‘I don’t know. Dead, for God’s sake. Probably. Everybody is up there.’

‘Take me to him.’

‘What? No. Don’t be so stupid. I’m not going back up there.’

‘If you do not get treatment for that wound you’ll die. Death will take you bit by bit, starting with the foot, which a surgeon will have to cut off, with a saw, but that will not stop the putrefaction. The surgeon will have to take more off your leg, piece by piece, and each time the saw bites, it will feel as if you are being roasted by the fires of hell.’

Perers is pale with all he’s been through, and now the pain is great, and here is this woman, a blind man and physician’s assistant trying to force him back up to the field.

He moves to leave. He’ll find another surgeon, easy, with all the money he’s picked up.

Richard moves like a ferret and his hands are suddenly on the archer’s neck. The archer tries to scream and lash out, but Richard’s thumbs dig into his throat.

‘Take us, now,’ he says.

Perers waves his arm to suggest that he will.

‘Bloody hell fire,’ he says, rubbing his throat after Richard has let go. He is too terrified to look at him.

‘Give me the book,’ Katherine says.

He hands it over.

‘It’s a long way,’ he says. ‘Can’t we wait until morning?’

‘He is still alive,’ Katherine says. ‘I am sure of it.’

She cannot stand to think of him out there, just one more man dead or lost. She does not want to number him among men like Dafydd, or Walter, or any of the Johns, whom she has known and now – are gone.