Kingmaker: Broken Faith (37 page)

‘This is it,’ he says. ‘It is now or never, do or die. This is the time when King Henry will count on his loyal friends, and in the future, he will remember us. You should hear Sir Ralph talk. He thinks that by the end of this not only will he be castellan of Alnwick, Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh, he will be the Earl of Northumberland, rising higher than the Percys and the Nevilles! He has great plans for a new livery the like of which – well, it sounds fantastical, that is all I can say.’

And still Edmund Riven does not come.

‘Where is he? When will he come?’ Thomas keeps asking Katherine, but she does not know.

‘And where is the ledger? Why has that not surfaced? Do you believe he can really have it still?’

He knows he is letting his frustration grow, but after the long hibernation through the winter, the Duke of Somerset is preparing his army to fight, and Thomas’s vague anxiety at the thought of it, of going to fight Montagu’s men, solidifies into fear. He does not want to go anywhere, not just with these men, who do not fill him with any confidence, but with
any
men. More than that, he does not want to have to ride out and fight anyone, least of all Montagu’s men, whom he vividly recalls manning the gates of Newcastle. He does not mention this to anyone, not even Katherine, lest she thinks him a coward, but he never came here to fight alongside men he might even have fought in the past, and he values his life more than he values this cause. Christ, he thinks, he values his bootstraps more than he values this cause.

But they are caught, still, again, as ever they were, in the same trap that has held them fast since they arrived at Alnwick, months ago. It is not just the question of getting over the walls, though that is hard enough, nor is it merely the question of finding horses when they’ve done so, though again, that would be hard enough too. It is really the question of getting past the patrols Somerset sends out, ridden by men who are more like the men they call the prickers, who roam a battlefield’s rear and whose job it is to strike more fear into a man than his known enemy, whoever that enemy might be.

‘What are we going to do?’ Katherine asks, divining his unspoken thoughts. ‘We can’t join this lot in their fight, can we? I mean, do you want to? I don’t. I don’t want you to. I know I will be left at the rear, and I will do my best to stitch men up, but look at them. They are not good archers, even I know that. They are farm boys, pretending. That one. Look at him. He has no bracer. He will be shouting with pain after he has loosed ten arrows. And that one – he has a hunting bow! You will be against trained archers, equipped with proper bows loosing proper arrows.’

He gets Horner to call the men to the butts once more and they spend the next few days there, loosing, collecting, loosing, collecting, sending the arrows in precise waves, each time faster and further than before. But it is only his men he can make do this. The others – Hungerford’s men and Roos’s men – watch from behind, and they admire or laugh at their exertions, but that is it, until one of Horner’s men gets into a fight with one of theirs and has to be dragged off while both are still struggling to free their daggers from their belts, and that is depressing in its own way.

And then Humphrey Neville of Brancepeth returns from setting his ambush for Montagu with not a single casualty and it is possible to imagine how, for a moment, the guards on the gates might have thought he had set his ambush so cleverly that he must have annihilated Montagu’s men, but then it emerges that Montagu’s scouts disturbed the ambush, and that consequently Montagu went around it, and reached Newcastle unmolested.

Somerset is said to be furious, and so now he has decided that they must risk everything, and so St Ambrose’s day, in early April, is the appointed day, and they gather in the bailey in their companies, in their livery coats, ready to march out of the castle to intercept Montagu on his way north, and there is great excitement and even a sense of purpose and for the first time Thomas is able to see this beleaguered little army as a fellowship, one forged by the common endurance of hard times, and he can see that they share a feeling of togetherness, camaraderie even, when most suspicions are laid aside and men in red-and-black livery might stand happily with men in yellow-and-blue, or even white with clumsy approximations of ravens on their chests, and there are mentions of King Henry’s father, who took his own beleaguered little army through France, and, in the thin spring sunshine, one might almost think anything were possible.

But this camaraderie does not include Thomas. He is thinking of only two things, the first of which is the chance this venture will offer to send a stray arrow where it should not be sent: into the back of Giles Riven. And the second, that must necessarily follow on the first: escape. He does not know how or when, but he knows the chance will come. He will seize it, when it does, and loose the arrow and then ride, just as he should have done months ago. He has spoken to Jack and John Stump about leaving – he did not call it deserting – and they will come with him and Katherine. Four are better that two. It is true he is giving up on the ledger, but realistically, what chance is there that it has not been burned? He cannot imagine why anyone would ever steal it in the first place, let alone keep it, other than for lighting a fire. Nevertheless he watches Riven’s men now piling their wagon high with all sorts of odd-shaped sacks and bags and boxes.

Could the ledger be on there? Or would they leave it behind?

‘Is Riven himself coming?’ he asks.

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I have not seen him for a month. I doubt he could have become so strong as to ride a horse, though, let alone fight.’

He thinks about Sir Ralph Grey’s bet with William Tailboys: how many nobles was it if Riven could mount a horse?

But then there is a thin trumpet blast from the merlons of the keep, and from its doorway come, of all things, two columns of Sir Giles Riven’s men. They emerge from within to part – ten men going one way, ten the other – until they form a line, a backdrop, either side of the doorway, and then, after a pause, King Henry comes out, wearing a helmet with an open face and a coronet attached, studded with what look like gemstones – red and green.

‘He could sell that,’ someone mutters. ‘Buy us all a round of ale.’

King Henry acts as if there ought to be a cheer now, but there isn’t, and Thomas can see from the King’s expression that he is merely following orders from – probably – Somerset, whom Thomas can imagine is waiting inside, barking through the doorway, and that King Henry would rather do anything but this, would rather creep quietly to prayers.

Apart from the helmet, he is wearing what looks like a monk’s cassock, and the men in the bailey are struck silent. They are not complicated men, Thomas supposes, and all they need to see is something they think worth following. King Henry is not that something. He looks miserably uninspiring, and he knows it, and he mumbles something apologetic that can only be heard at the front of the crowd, and there is a limp sort of cheer and then from the keep comes Sir Giles Riven, and even so diminished as he is by his wound, he still exudes something, something King Henry is lacking. It may not be what the men in the bailey want, though, since there are hisses when he appears, as when Beelzebub appears in a mummers’ play.

He glares at the crowd below him, looking to find someone to dare to stand up and say something, but no man catches his eye, and once the hissing has died down, silence resumes, grows, and King Henry shifts from foot to foot and then says something again and a ruddy-faced Grey is there at his shoulder, as well as that beardless capering priest, and they both laugh as if neither has heard anything so funny and Riven turns slowly to them and in a moment they fall silent.

Riven stands waiting, neither patient nor impatient, more tolerating what must be tolerated, and under his travelling cloak he has a sword belt wrapped around his waist, and he is in riding boots, folded down to the knee, and gloves and a hat pulled down over his ears, and it seems he has been within for so long that he is unused to the cold, and that his eyes are watering in the chill breeze.

So he is coming too, Thomas sees, and he watches his fingers grip his new bow, just as if it were they who hate Riven, just as if his body remembers why he hates the man so, even if his mind has forgotten, but he knows this time he will have a chance, and this time, it will be easy, and at least when they return to Marton they will have achieved one thing. An arrow. In that moment of chaos, if they manage to find Montagu’s men, and if they manage to draw them into a fight, and if not, then – some other way. But a chance will come, he is sure, out there, and he will save an arrow for that moment. He has a sheaf of the best with his few possessions on a cart, guarded by John Stump, and he can almost see the one he will send flying into Riven’s back. He thinks it is even slightly funny, that he will be replacing one arrowhead with another, but as he is laughing, he unearths a different image, a memory, of standing on a hillside in the falling gloom, and of bending a bow to loose an arrow across a snow-filled valley, and of hitting a man, and knocking him down, and feeling he’d somehow missed. He shudders as if at the cold, and then finds Katherine’s hand on his shoulder blade, and she is concerned. Others have turned too. He must have cried out.

But now King Henry is talking again, saying something Thomas cannot hear for King Henry does not have a voice that will carry. But as he speaks a steward emerges to lead a saddled horse up the steps to where Riven stands with a curled lip, and a mounting block is brought up made of a broad log, and placed beside the waiting horse, and for a moment no one can see what is happening because King Henry and Sir Giles Riven are hidden behind the horse, but it seems that King Henry himself is helping Riven to step up on to it, with a servant and the steward nearby, their hands ready to catch either if he should fall. Nearby all the King’s men look on with mixed expressions. Grey is there, grinning and hopping from foot to foot, while Tailboys is thunderous.

‘Hope the fucker falls off,’ one of the men next to Thomas mutters.

When Riven is mounted he turns to the crowd, and stares at them as if he has done this to spite them, and then uses his heels to nudge the horse forward, and with that, Grey has won his bet, and Tailboys lost his, and John Stump looks around for Katherine.

‘Kit!’ he shouts. ‘It was Kit!’

And Katherine looks over from her place by the cart and a frown pinches her forehead but John goes on shouting about how she – he – was the one who should take the credit. Horner interrupts and calls that they were lucky to have such a God-gifted surgeon to ride with them into battle, and that if by any ill luck they should find themselves wounded or injured, then they know that they will have the services of the man who taught the King’s physician a thing or two, and what could be better than that? Did Montagu have such a resource? No!

It is hardly stirring, Thomas thinks, but the men seem mildly reassured, even if they are reassured more for their friends, for no man goes into a fight thinking he will be the one to need a surgeon, and it shows that Horner is at least considerate, not just of his men, but where credit was owed. Katherine flushes, even up to the point of her half-ear.

And so, led by King Henry and Sir Giles Riven, and then by the Duke of Somerset and the other lords – Roos and Hungerford – and Sir Ralph Percy and Sir Ralph Grey, and Sir Humphrey Neville of Wherever it is, they march out through the dank shadows of the barbican and then finally into the spring sunshine, and the Duke, who has found some newish harness, lets the sunlight catch on its polished parts, and his horse is good, and eager for exercise, and the King’s long banner is made to stir by his standard-bearer and they ride down the hill and away from the castle and the long trail of marching men unwinds behind them, with every man there wishing he had a horse of his own.

They walk all morning, moving at the speed of the slowest cart, and though no one except Somerset seems to have a very clear idea where they are bound, or how long it will take to get there, they all agree it had better not be too far, and it had better be well-provisioned, for they are not over-encumbered with baggage. There are a few carts carrying barrels of ale, a few laden with sacks of oats that do not look wholly dry and give off the taint of spoil, and each company has a cart piled with arrows and personal baggage and weapons, but that, more or less, is that. It is not enough to keep them in the field for very long, however few they may be.

‘Saints,’ Horner says, ‘it is good to be out, isn’t it?’

It is that. Castle walls begin to loom up over you after a while. Their shadows are long and cold and deep, even on a spring day such as this, but now they are out in open moorland, following a gritty track through rolling plains of heather, sedge, gorse and broom even, and men take sprigs of it and put them in their hats like the first Plantagenets, but as they walk on, the relief of being out of the castle fades, and Thomas’s anxieties begin to bloom.

He looks around him at the men he’s walking with, and all he really wants is to be away, to duck into the trees at the side of the road, to take Katherine with him and to return to a normal life, the one he imagines he is owed, with a house by a stream with some acres to call his own, with oxen, sheep, beehives, a pond. Christ! A spinning wheel and a few pigs.

A man begins playing a flute and another joins him, and then one takes up a song that suggests a plaintive desire to be elsewhere, and it speaks of home fields as the summer comes in, and of sweethearts, and of warmth and plenty, and pretty soon others have joined in, until the word comes down that it is to stop, and there are vintenars on horses threatening men to get them to hold their tongues, and the boys are told to get drumming, and so they do, and their tambours or whatever they are, are beaten in a driving rhythm and the home fields and sweethearts are all forgotten as men pick up their pace and forge ahead.

‘Is it always like this?’ Thomas asks Katherine and she shakes her head.