Kingmaker: Broken Faith (35 page)

‘Horner! Horner, there!’ Somerset calls, and Horner is plump with pleasure as he slows his horse to interpose himself between Somerset and his two silent companions, one of whom is a servant, and who has the better clothes for having been sleeping in them when they were disturbed at the inn, and the other, perhaps a lesser knight, a gangling, serious youth with a Welsh accent. Thomas slows his own horse, and is there a pace or so in front of Horner when Somerset asks after the disposition of King Henry’s forces, the provisions of the castles, and the morale of the troops. Horner lies fluently and Somerset is delighted.

‘And I have the assurances of twenty of the chief men in Wales that they will rise up against the false king,’ he says, ‘and there are others in the south and the west who are with us, too. And Bellingham will come, he says, and Neville of Brancepeth, of course, though his presence is more penance than providence. Oh, it is all wonderfully hopeful. If only we can now get support from elsewhere – from France or Burgundy or even those bastards in Brittany, and I have not yet given up on Scotland yet – then we will have them still, tcha!’

Thomas cannot take his gaze from the man. He is dark-haired, broad-faced, with quick blue eyes, and he’s very muscular across the chest, and very abrupt, just as if he is going to be called upon to fight, or perform a tumble, or to leap on to the back of a horse.

But what has he just said? There is something in there that alerts Thomas. That is it. Others in the south and the west. Men who would rise up against King Edward. Dear God! Edmund Riven would be among them, surely? If the Duke of Somerset has changed his allegiance, then surely Edmund Riven will change his too. His loyalty was never to King Edward, only to Somerset. If that is the case, then he will have already jumped from one camp to the other. They no longer need show Henry the Ledger. In fact, dear God, they must not on any account show Henry the ledger! To do so now would only be to help the Rivens, and secure them in their prestige.

‘And once the commons see this,’ Somerset is saying, ‘they will rise up across the country, d’you hear? They will rise up as one to drive out the false king and restore the House of Lancaster.’

He bangs his fist on his saddle and his horse increases its pace up the hill.

‘Not a bad little horse, this,’ he says.

Can Thomas ask Somerset? He cannot see a reason why not.

‘Edmund Riven?’ Somerset says. ‘You want to know if Edmund Riven is among those who would now stand for King Henry against the false King Edward? Can you think of a reason why he might not?’

That hardly answers the question, Thomas thinks, but before he can press, Somerset has turned back to Horner and is telling him of his scheme to attack King Edward at both ends of the kingdom at once: here in Northumberland and also in Pembroke.

And again he bangs his saddle and is delighted that the horse can still trot.

‘Ha!’ he says.

They reach Bamburgh just as the curfew bell is rung, but on hearing Horner is without, and that he has the Duke of Somerset with him, they drop the drawbridge and throw open the gates, and the garrison breathes life into the covered fires, and word is passed back that the Duke of Somerset is here, come to lead them out of the north; the chapel bells are set ringing again, and men line the walls to look down on them as they wait to be let through the gates, and everybody is laughing and waving and shouting: ‘A Somerset!’ and ‘A Beaufort!’ and then they are let through into the bailey which is crowded with more men waving their arms and shouting the Duke’s name, and Somerset gets his horse to stagger and prance, then he brings it under control again and he stands in the stirrups and bows and then he rides on up the hill toward the keep, touching men’s outstretched hands as he passes and Horner looks on with a smile as if he is witnessing – or even responsible for – some great thing.

‘He is our spark, Thomas, our spark!’

He is like the Messiah, Thomas thinks, come to lead them to the Promised Land.

DESPITE PAYNE’S PROMISE,
King Henry has not come to see his gentleman of the bedchamber, though Payne supposes he might the next day, and so the next day Katherine arrives at the keep just as the bell is ringing for Sext, with one thing on her mind: the recovery of the ledger.

‘Looks like snow,’ the captain of guard says. He is the same man who was first so interested in Devon John’s stump, and he is there again, stamping his boots, rubbing his hands, looking up and inhaling deeply, and she tells him she does not doubt it, and he steps aside to let her through and she carries on up the steps, through the doors and along the various passageways she’s come to know reasonably well since she started treating Riven. As she passes the second guard in the passageway, he greets her and asks if she has any news of the outside world.

‘Looks like snow,’ she repeats, and he sucks his teeth.

‘Poor bugger,’ he says. ‘Wouldn’t like to be travelling in that.’

‘No,’ she agrees, not quite understanding his point, and she opens the door. It scrapes on the stones and the room echoes unfamiliarly, hollow and empty. Payne is there, standing in his riding boots and a travelling coat. He is very tight about the face, and she knows he is angry about something.

‘There you are,’ he says.

She thinks she might be late for an appointment but she does not think they have made one. Behind Payne his various things – his dishes, herbs, bags, his jars and ewers, his roll of knives – are packed away and his two coffers are one atop the other. There are some large bags, too.

‘You are going somewhere?’ she asks.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Somewhere my skills are appreciated and my belongings not searched and objects stolen.’

He gestures at Riven, asleep in his bed, face turned to the wall. His dressing needs changing.

‘What has been stolen?’ she asks.

‘That hardly matters,’ he says. ‘It is the fact of it.’

Then it hits her. The ledger.

‘A moment,’ she says.

She opens the door of the garderobe, and it too scrapes too loudly on the stone-flagged floor. His clothes are all taken down and the row of pegs on which they used to hang to take advantage of the ammoniac stink is empty. The ledger is gone.

She goes back into Riven’s chamber. Riven has turned over, but his eyes are still closed.

‘Have you seen a book?’ she asks Payne.

‘A book? I have two.’

‘A particular book. Hung on a peg in there. It was in a bag with a hole in?’

Payne shakes his head. No.

‘Are you sure? It was about this size.’

Again, he shakes his head.

‘I’m sure I would remember seeing that. What was it a book of?’

‘Of – well, it did not have a title. It was a – a list of things. Names mostly. But it had a hole in it. That is what you would remember most.’

She cannot help but glance at the pollaxe in its corner as she says this. She wonders, bets, imagines, knows for certain, that the pick of the axe made the hole.

‘The book had a hole? Or the bag?’

‘Both.’

Payne pulls a face.

‘And you left it here? Why?’

‘For – for safekeeping,’ she says.

‘Ha,’ he says. ‘More fool you. I have lost a cup – of silver – and a knife that I was given by the Duke of Devonshire, as well as a cap lined with marten fur, and – and – and other, divers items the whereabouts of which this villain is unable to pinpoint, despite lying here when the thefts occurred.’

But why the ledger?

And, Christ! What will Thomas say? She feels sick with it. Faint. As if she might fall over at any time. First Payne is going, and now the ledger is gone! The ledger. Oh, dear Christ. She tries to concentrate. Think about Payne.

‘Where are you going?’ she asks.

‘South,’ he tells her. ‘To Bywell in Tynedale. A case of the pissing evil.’

‘The pissing evil? Is that serious?’ she asks. It sounds it.

‘Of course.’

‘Will you come back?’

‘When the illness has run its course, and if King Henry wills it, yes, but not if it is to treat this man.’

He curls his lips at Riven. And now she looks over at Riven, only to see him not looking at Payne, who has just insulted him, but at her, and she knows – she knows – he has the ledger.

Payne says his farewells. Two of the King’s men come for his coffers and bags and there is some good-natured badinage between them and Riven’s guard. When they have gone, and she has said goodbye and thanked Payne for all he has shown her, and he has clasped her to him in a moment of strained emotion, she returns to change Riven’s dressing. His eyes are shut again. She works quickly, tugging the wick a little further from the wound. Her hands are shaking.

‘A book, hmmm?’ he asks.

She pauses for a moment.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Do you know where it is?’

He says nothing. She exposes the wound to the air. It is healing nicely, she thinks, and the wick is drawing clear. She rests her thumbnail on the flesh where it is rosy, and she wonders, for a moment, for a moment, if she could just – cause him pain? Get him to talk that way? But no. She remembers how he faced the pain when she cut him. And besides – it would be pointless. He is lying with his arms by his sides today. They moved the limb down in the week after they had made the cut, and since it had been positioned such for so long, it hurt him enough to make him faint, but he never cried out, except once, to emit a tiny squeak, like fresh rush under foot.

‘What do you want with a book?’ he asks.

‘It is – it belonged to my father.’

‘Your father?’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘He is dead.’

‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Your father is dead. What was he? A barber surgeon likewise?’

And she is briefly caught out. She has never even wondered what he might have been and done.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Likewise.’

‘And how did this book come by its hole?’

She claims not to know.

‘Have you seen it?’ she asks. ‘Have you taken it?’

Riven sighs.

‘It is as I told that bore, Master Payne,’ he says. ‘I sleep. I do not notice men coming and going. And if they take things to sell to buy food—’

‘But you have a guard!’

‘He, too, must eat.’

‘But why a book? Why take that? It is of no value.’

‘Yet you seem exercised by its absence?’

‘It is as I say,’ she tells him. ‘It was my father’s.’

‘Odd,’ he says. ‘I wonder if my son would be so sentimental about such a trifle were it mine?’

‘Your son?’

‘I have one.’

She hardly knows what to say.

‘Tell me,’ Riven goes on, ‘your assistant. Was he ever a monk? A friar or some such?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘Not one of them. Now, listen. For all I have done for you. Where is that ledger?’

‘A ledger, is it?’ Riven says, but in doing so, he closes his eyes and turns his head away, and just then, as if summoned by a secret signal, the guard shunts open the door and waits for her to leave. He is a very big man, she sees. An archer, probably, with those wrists. She can only obey him, but when she has left the room and the door is shut behind her, she asks him about the thefts. He feigns ignorance, but they both know.

‘Look,’ she says, ‘I do not care about the knife and goblet or whatever, I am only concerned for a book.’

But now he is genuinely puzzled. He really knows nothing about it.

‘And has – has Sir Giles been out of bed?’ she asks. ‘Walking and so on?’

‘Oh, yes,’ the guard says. ‘You cannot keep a Riven down, is what he says. He does not go far, mind. I see to that.’

She finds Thomas standing lookout on the tower’s top again. He has his cap pulled very low over his eyes and he is almost shapeless with the clothes he wears under his cloak.

When she tells him, he is unable to believe it.

‘Riven has it? Are you certain?’

‘I am sure.’

He rubs his jaw and looks away into the distance. She cannot hear his palm against the bristles because of the wind and the seagulls that shriek while they play in it.

‘Christ,’ he says. ‘Christ.’

‘I know.’

‘What will he do with it?’

‘I don’t know,’ she tells him. ‘I think he only knows that it is of value to me, so far, and he’ll not necessarily discover its significance, will he? Because – because, well, why would he? He thinks it belonged to my father, which is why I want it back.’

Thomas nods. His eyes are watering in the cold wind.

‘How do we get it back?’

‘I don’t know,’ she admits. ‘It was not there in the chamber, so I cannot simply take it when he’s asleep. And if I show him how much I want it, it will only make him more determined that I shouldn’t have it. He is like that.’

‘But we must find it. Can you imagine what Sir John would say if we were to turn up having lost the ledger, and saved Giles Riven’s life?’

And she looks at him, distraught, since she can see that it is all her fault.

And then he starts to laugh, and he puts his hand over hers.

‘It will be all right,’ he says. ‘Put your trust in me, says the Lord. It will not be what we want, or think we want, but it will be all right.’

And now hearing him talk such reassuring nonsense makes her want to cry.

‘God’s plan?’ she asks.

He smiles again, more broadly still, a row of white teeth in his dark beard, and puts his arm around her shoulder and he pulls her to him, and though at that precise moment snowflakes drift to settle around them, she feels, my God, he may just be right.

The snow does not settle, and the next week it is the feast of St Thomas, when the day is shortest in all the year, and most of those in the castle not called John are celebrating their name day. Horner allows Thomas to come with him and a few of the others and they go out of the walls and after a day searching the countryside they drag in a man-high, man-wide length of green log. They shove it in the bread oven, but they cannot get it to burn, or to give off any heat, and it smoulders wetly, hissing for three days and nights until they finally give up on it, and drag it out and chop it up and burn it with some beams they’ve stolen from a cottage in the village.