Kingmaker: Broken Faith (44 page)

Thomas does not know what to do or say, but Payne is looking at her carefully, then he turns to Thomas.

‘Thomas,’ he says. ‘Will you leave us a moment?’

And Thomas, who can feel the weight of it all pressing down on him, stopping him thinking, is pleased to do so.

He leaves them, and follows the flight of winding steps up into the dark until he sees the limned outline of a small door that will lead him out on to the tower’s top. He will be alone there, he thinks, and will have space to breathe and to think. He emerges out in the spring day, where cool sunlight shines and the birds are loud. There is a guard, though, a boy, in Riven’s colours, bright and new-made, with a fringe that half-covers his eyes and a prick-shaft bow that will not loose an arrow a hundred paces.

‘Who are you?’ the boy asks.

‘Thomas Everingham.’

It means nothing to him. Why should it? Thomas does not ask the boy’s name in return. He doesn’t care and he doesn’t want to know.

‘What do you want?’ the boy asks.

‘Honestly? For you to be quiet.’

The boy raises his eyebrows and mutters a profanity that might in some circumstances have got him killed, but Thomas is not in the mood for that, and anyway, the boy is just a boy. He seems excited and after a while, he must speak.

‘They have not been sighted yet,’ he says.

‘No,’ Thomas agrees. He looks out across the valley. The mist has lifted and the river’s water slides brown through the funnel of its green-swathed banks. Where the banks are shallow cows have been down to muddy the water, but there are none there now. He looks south, to the little church in its yard, the mounds of graves, the old yew that must have been there two or three hundred years. He wonders if King Henry is back in there, on his knees before the altar. For all his praying, Thomas thinks, this king does not seem to have much luck.

The tower top is small around, only a few paces across, its walls thick stone, its merlons high. It is a good little gatehouse, Thomas supposes. He stands there, and he feels that his socks are gritty and he wonders when he last removed his ill-fitting boots, and when he last changed his linen, and he knows that he needs a wash, too, by God, and a shave and a long sleep in a bed of hay, and he feels the need for something good to happen to him today, but he cannot for the life of him think what. Then there is something else niggling him.

‘Who’ve not been sighted yet?’ he asks, realising that what the boy’s said still hangs between them like an unanswered question, and that this is what’s bothering him.

‘Edmund’s men,’ the boy says.

‘Edmund’s men?’

‘Aye. They’s expected before sundown.’

Who in God’s name is Edmund? Thomas wonders. The boy is looking at him as if he may be simple.

‘They’ll be wearing our livery,’ the boy goes on, tugging on the cloth of his own tabard. ‘Where is yourn?’

‘Below,’ Thomas says. He looks away, across the river to the trees beyond. There is something wrong here, he can feel. Edmund. It is not a name such as Everingham, but a given name. Edmund. In Riven’s livery. Christ. It can only mean one thing. Edmund Riven. Here. Or on his way.

‘What do you think they will do when they get here?’ he asks the boy, and again the boy looks at him as if he is stupid.

‘Well, they will take King Henry – him down there – won’t they?’

‘And where will they take him?’

Back to Bamburgh, he supposes, but the boy scoffs.

‘Not bloody likely,’ he says. ‘Not after all this. No. They’ll take him to Newcastle, and then down to London, I daresay.’

It is as if the flagstones under his feet are shifting and switching places. He knows he will expose himself but he cannot help it. He must know for sure.

‘Edmund Riven is coming here to take King Henry to Newcastle, to hand him to Montagu as prisoner?’

The boy is as proud of the scheme as if he devised it himself. He has evil teeth.

‘They say Edmund Riven’s wound reeks enough to make sheep barren?’ the boy says. ‘Though I do not believe that, mind.’

‘And is that the way they’ll come?’ Thomas asks, coming to join him, standing at his shoulder, staring down the river.

‘Aye,’ he says. ‘From Newcastle.’

Thomas needs to reassure the boy, but he also needs time to think. To think what this means. And then something occurs to him.

‘You are Sir Giles’s man, aren’t you?’ Thomas goes on. ‘And were at Hedgeley Moor?’

The boy allows it. ‘Funny, running like that, weren’t it?’ he says. ‘All the stuff you’re told about never running, about never turning your back. And all the stuff they say about Towton, I mean, and then us, off like rabbits as soon as the first shafts were loosed, and everyone coming after us. Worked though, didn’t it?’

Thomas nods and joins the boy in laughing. So, he thinks, it was as Roos’s men said: Riven’s men broke first, and took the whole line with them. They must have been on Montagu’s side from the beginning, Thomas sees, but then why did they not join Montagu’s men and turn on Roos and Hungerford’s men? Because they were outnumbered? Can that have been it? No, Thomas thinks, it was not because they were outnumbered, or, rather, it was not only because they were outnumbered. It was because that was merely the first part of Riven’s scheme. His men did not want to turn on Roos and Hungerford’s men because there was still something else yet to do, some second part of the scheme, that required them to appear to be loyal to King Henry and his cause.

And that second part is being played out right now, before his eyes: the betrayal and capture of King Henry himself.

Dear God! Thomas wonders what price Riven has extracted for this, or what advantage he will expect, and from whom? One thing is certain; it must be more than merely the retention of Cornford Castle.

The boy finally reads his expression correctly.

‘Who did you say you was?’ he asks, and now he knows he has made a mistake, but it is too late. Thomas should kill him, but he is not able. He turns and steps through the door and draws its locking bar across into the stone holding. He hears the boy’s footsteps and then his shouting and thumping on the door’s thick boards. Thomas hesitates, then slides the locking bar back and steps aside to let the door open. It flies open to crash against the jamb and the boy is suddenly tipping forward. All Thomas has to do is help him past. The boy shouts as he goes sprawling down the winding steps. He cries out in rage and he only stops on the second landing, where he lies stunned, but he is a boy, of course: they can fall down steps. Thomas hauls him up by the tabard and shoves him down the next set of steps. The boy hits his head on the underside of the descending flight with a hollow tonk and his legs fly out from under him and he falls on the next flight down like a dropped sack.

Payne opens the door and looks down at the boy, then up at Thomas coming down the steps.

‘What is wrong?’ he asks.

‘Riven is coming,’ Thomas tells him. ‘Both of them. Father and son. We must go.’

‘Wait,’ Payne says. ‘A moment.’

He will not let Thomas pass into the room.

Then he does.

Thomas pushes open the door, then stops.

Katherine stands by the cold fireplace. She is staring at him, half-anxious, half-challenging, but that is not what it is about her that stops him dead. She is in a dress. It has a blue body and blue skirts with black sleeves and she wears a red belt and laces of the same at the front. She has a long white cloth wrapped around her head and it is almost impossible to see the boy who was Kit. Thomas is suddenly robbed of words. She is beautiful. He stares for a long moment. She stares back. She tilts her chin defiantly.

‘What?’ she asks.

He collects himself.

‘Riven is coming,’ he tells them. ‘Giles Riven has betrayed King Henry, and all of us, and sold him to Montagu.’

There is a moment of silence. Katherine stares at him.

‘You have to tell him,’ Payne says. ‘You cannot let him fall into Montagu’s hands. He will kill him.’

Thomas looks at Payne. He is genuinely upset.

‘You tell him,’ Thomas says. ‘You take him. I am done with this.’

‘What about Jack?’ Katherine asks. ‘We can’t leave him. They will kill him too.’

Thomas looks over at Jack. He does not look so bad, he thinks.

‘Then he must be got ready to ride,’ Thomas tells her. ‘Master Payne can give him some of that medicine, too, and you both can ride.’

Jack slowly rights himself and rolls to his knee and then, still keeping that leg straight, to his feet. He breathes out, swearing in one long incoherent breath. Katherine comes to his side. He is utterly still in her presence, waiting for her to go.

‘It is still only me, Jack,’ she tells him, and though he is thrown by the fact that she is now a proper woman, he yields and lets her help him up. When he is upright, he stands, and she steps away from him and straightens her unfamiliar dress, and Thomas cannot help but let his gaze wander over her, and he sees she now fills it where it should be filled.

‘Wherever did you get that?’ he asks.

‘It was Cecily’s,’ she tells him. ‘Master Payne’s patient.’

Another dead girl’s dress.

‘Can you catch the pissing evil from – from a victim’s clothes?’ he asks.

Payne tilts his head.

‘Not so far as we know.’

Not so far as we know. Christ.

‘And so, who are you now?’ Thomas asks, suddenly angry again. ‘You cannot pass yourself off as another dead girl, can you?’

‘No,’ she says, dropping her gaze. ‘I am Katherine.’

There is a long moment. Payne and Jack are silent, watching.

‘Katherine who?’ he asks.

‘I am Katherine Everingham,’ she says, looking up. ‘I am your wife.’

And he stops, heart-stilled, and they look at one another, and she seems timid, and in search of his favour, as if she thinks he might not give it. And in an instant his world turns again, and he regrets every harsh word, every uncharitable thought, and he thinks he has never loved so much as now.

Then she turns a curious shade. Her cheeks puff, and she hunches and vomits thin grey gruel on to her skirts.

KING HENRY DOES
not believe them at first. He comes from prayers with his gentlemen, looking unusually regal in a blue velvet cloak against the cool of the morning, and he asks questions in that querulous voice, and all illusion of royalty is lost. Details and minor points. He misses the thrust of what Payne is saying, and his men keep interrupting, barking across him, demanding answers of Payne and Thomas, then having to apologise to King Henry for their impropriety. Most think Payne is lying. Only one wants to attack Riven’s men where they stand.

‘We should kill them all now,’ he says.

‘Please, sirs,’ Thomas tells them, ‘we are outnumbered many times over. If we wish to extricate ourselves, we will need guile and speed.’

Thomas cannot help but glance at King Henry. He embodies neither.

‘You have picked that one out for me?’ King Henry asks, indicating the horse Thomas has found for him. ‘He looks larger than – than I am used to, and I was never much of a horseman.’

‘Nor has his grace ever done such a thing as take a ride before,’ one of his men says. ‘Why should he start now?’

‘And if he is such a danger to us, why then is that man wearing Sir Giles’s colours?’ another asks, indicating Jack, who is wearing the tabard of the boy Thomas threw down the steps. He is clutching the reins of his own pony for support while behind him Katherine is already up on a brown mare, her hitched skirts hidden under a long travel coat, and she is hunched over a fistful of herbs that Payne has given against the horse’s smell.

‘My Lord Montagu is a Christian,’ one of them says. ‘He would not dare offend the King’s person. Never in a thousand years.’

Thomas is beginning to lose his patience. He is beginning to think it might be better if Montagu were to take the King, and these men, too, and do with them all as he wished. Drown them like cats.

‘And whither would we go?’ another asks. ‘We are not arrayed for travel. His grace the King will—’

‘His grace the King will no longer be his grace the King if he is still here when Montagu’s men arrive,’ Thomas says, ‘so if his grace the King wishes to stay his grace the King, then he had better get on this horse and ride out of here just as fast as he is able. Begging your pardon, your grace.’

There is a moment’s silence. The men behave as if they should have a monopoly on rudeness to the King, but King Henry is less worried about that.

‘I must fetch my other psalter,’ he bleats. ‘It is within.’

He indicates the small keep.

‘As is the king’s bycoket!’ another exclaims. ‘It is all we have left that is of any value.’

Thomas remembers those jewels on the king’s helmet. Can they get it back? He looks around at the castle gate. Riven’s men are gathering on the steps. About ten of them. One is pointing. A man is being sent to fetch someone else. They have realised something is up.

‘We must leave it,’ Thomas says. ‘And go. Now.’

King Henry is persuaded.

‘My Lord of Montagu was always very – abrupt,’ he trembles. ‘I should not like to fall into his hands and be forced to rely on him for Christian succour.’

It comes to Thomas that he has seen King Henry before, long ago, before all this, and he wonders where, and then he remembers and can even name the place. At Northampton. Before a tent. Thomas was bleeding, in pain. His shoulder. And there were dead men at his feet, a pile of them in bloodied plate, cracked, dented, broken, and more were dragging themselves away into the shadows to die in peace, while others raged about the place with hammers and knives and there was a tremendous din. It seems an age away, yet also, only yesterday.

‘Everingham? Are you all right?’

It is Payne, frowning. Thomas shakes himself awake. They must move fast.

‘May I swap cloaks, sir?’ he asks. ‘Yours for – his?’

He picks a man among them who is the same height and build as the King, wearing a russet cloak and a scarf.

‘Oh, yes,’ King Henry says. He seems to want to rid himself of the blue cloak and take up the humbler russet one. Payne steps behind him and unclasps the brooch and then removes the King’s cloak. One of the men is angry because that should have been his job. The man in russet is quick to take the King’s cloak. It is lined, not just edged, with soft fur. He swings it to get it to spread in a circle as he puts it over his shoulders. So much for guile.