Kingmaker: Broken Faith (50 page)

The captain looks warily southward as if he might see Montagu’s horsemen through the curtain walls.

‘Christ,’ he says. ‘They here already?’

And he turns and begins up the steps, on his way to report the news to someone within, gesturing to two other guards that Thomas is not to be allowed in.

‘But what about Master Payne?’ Thomas calls. ‘The physician? Is he within?’

One of the two guards shakes his head.

‘Try the east gatehouse,’ he mutters. ‘He is with Sir Ralph Grey, beacuse neither of ’em like the company in here.’

So they turn and troop across the darkness of the inner bailey to the east gatehouse, a smaller version of the keep, built into the curtain wall, from where a track leads down towards the beach and the sea beyond. Here lights also burn, and the guard – one of Grey’s men this time – recognises them and lets them through and they climb the steps toward the brightest source of light in the solar on the first floor until they are intercepted by Sir Ralph Grey himself, who comes weaving towards them along a passageway, accompanied by a man with a glass lantern. He is clutching a cup and a bottle of something.

‘Ho ho!’ he cries. ‘Who have we here?’

He is at the capering, eloquent stage of drunkenness, and he hones in on Katherine, raising his swaying cup in her direction.

‘Goodwife Everingham!’ he calls. ‘Goodwife Everingham! I am delighted to see you again, here in our castle. I feared for your safety after the tidings of my Lord of Somerset’s latest debacle! I feared your abundant physical charms would prove too much of a temptation for my Lord of Montagu’s common soldiery, and the usual indiscriminate intimacy would be forced upon your person, but no! Here you are, eh? Safe and sound in the arms of your – your – your husband here.’

It is still not clear if he believes Katherine is Thomas’s wife, and now he stares at her with no restraint while taking another nip of his drink, and after Thomas asks if he knows Payne’s whereabouts, it is as if Grey’s lips are numb, and he cannot form the word ‘physician’, so after trying it a few times, he stops, and he grins at them glassily, and he bows, and gestures that they are to pass on their way up the steps to the solar beyond. As they pass him, he makes a clumsy grab for Katherine, but Thomas shelters her, and Grey misses and staggers and they leave him smiling delightedly at the wall, propped against it with one arm, just as if he might be pissing upon its footings.

They find Payne in the solar above, sitting alone at a board, in the dim light of a rush lamp.

‘Who is it?’ he asks, and then: ‘God save us,’ when they enter the lamp’s radius and he sees who they are. ‘What have you brought me this time?’

‘She is – I don’t know.’

‘Make a bed,’ he says. ‘Carefully.’

And Thomas and Jack and one-armed John Stump set to, finding and unrolling a straw mattress from the corner and placing it by the low-burning fire in the chimney place. They watch as Payne leads Katherine to one of the mattresses and she follows and he lies her down with her boots over the far end so as to keep it clean.

‘Come,’ he tells Thomas, ‘and take this.’

He passes him a rush. Thomas holds it up over Katherine and in its sombre glow, she looks ready to be washed for her winding sheet.

‘She will be all right?’

Payne grunts. He starts touching parts of her body.

‘What have you been doing with her?’ Payne asks.

‘We had to get away from Hexham,’ he says.

‘You rode? She stinks of horses. You all do. And Christ, what have you been doing? You are covered in blood. Look at you.’

‘We met a man who felt we had an imbalance of humours,’ Jack says, and Payne looks up at him from under his brows.

‘Phlebotomy is not something to trifle with,’ he says.

Jack laughs.

Payne presses an ear to Katherine’s breast. When he kneels and lifts his head he sees her new knife, there in her belt, and he takes it and holds it up.

‘Mine,’ he says.

‘We took it from the man who tried to kill us,’ Jack says.

‘One of Riven’s?’ Payne asks.

Thomas nods.

‘Why is he here?’ he asks. ‘Why has he not come out for King Edward?’

Payne shrugs.

‘Biding his time, I suppose.’

‘Christ,’ is all Thomas can say.

‘When we reached here the King was mightily pleased to see Riven, you know? He embraced him and called him his right well-beloved subject and so on, and his men – he had but a few of them – stood staring. They were keeping the castle almost alone then, and it would have been obvious to leave Riven as castellan of this place, but Grey had extracted a promise from King Henry on the road up here that he would be made castellan, and for once King Henry kept his word, so now Grey is castellan, which I thought would be a bitter blow for Riven, but Riven just laughed, which made Grey reach for his dagger. You know what he is like. He did not actually draw it, of course. King Henry soothed him, as best as he was able, but now Grey keeps himself here, while Riven is ensconced with the king in the keep.’

‘How many men has he?’

‘Riven? I cannot say. Neither has enough to hold the castle on his own against the other. I think that is the only thing that keeps the peace.’

‘They could kill each other,’ Jack says, ‘Riven and Grey, and then we could all be off.’

Payne scoffs.

John Stump asks if he has any tidings from Hexham.

‘Well, the Duke of Somerset has run his final race,’ Payne tells them. ‘He was caught in the woods fast by the field, and this time there was no mercy. Montagu had his head from his shoulders the very next day, in Hexham marketplace.’

‘Ha!’ John says, proved right.

Then Payne turns to Thomas, while his fingers feel under Katherine’s jaw. He sniffs her breath. He frowns.

‘When did she last eat?’

Thomas shrugs.

‘It has been hard,’ he says.

Payne grunts.

‘Hungerford and Roos were taken, too, you know?’ Payne says. ‘They will seek King Edward’s grace, of course, and probably get it too, for all the advantage they’ve afforded Montagu.’

‘And Tailboys?’ Thomas asks.

‘Tailboys? I have heard nothing of him since last I saw him at Hexham, but he was always lucky, wasn’t he? Knowing him he has probably been carried south in a litter covered with cloth of gold. Now. Listen. All of you. Get out of here. I need to take Goodwife Everingham’s urine and she will not thank me if I make a public show of it.’

As they move towards the door, Thomas asks once again if she will be all right.

‘I cannot say, Thomas,’ Payne tells him. ‘But she is with child, and whereas she should be living carefully, nursing her strength for what is to come, she’s been living badly these last few months. These last years even. Have you seen the scars on her back? No. Well. Anyway. She is strong in spirit, we have all seen that, but she is much depleted in body, and she needs to regain her strength. She needs ale, and bread, and meat. Things to nourish her. We will not find them here.’

‘I will do what I can,’ Thomas says, and Payne nods.

‘Good,’ he says. ‘Good.’

But Thomas can see he is doubtful.

‘Come back in the morning,’ he says, and they look at one another, and Thomas remembers what Payne said, that everyone has something to hide, and he nods and he walks away, trusting Master Payne in all matters.

SHE RECALLS ALMOST
nothing of how she comes to be under a blanket in linen sheets under the smooth white plaster of a curving ceiling, and it is only when she sees Thomas standing at the tall narrow window, looking southwards, the sun on his face, dark red hair with its white patch, freshly shaved, in cleanish clothes he might have borrowed from another man, that she remembers much of anything at all.

She says nothing. She wants to lie still and watch him, to remember him like this, remember him calm, and apparently at peace. He is watching something with interest. Time passes. She can hear birds, and men chattering not too far away, and then the slow shush of the sea against the beach. There is a gentle breeze through the window, and the sun slants down across the floor to light a slice of one of Payne’s coffers and on it is a mug and a spray of dried herbs bound at the stems by another stem. She wonders what they are, but only vaguely.

‘What is happening without?’ she asks. Her voice slips and slides. It has not been used in an age.

He turns to her with a great smile.

‘You are awake,’ he says, smiling at the stupidity of the comment.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Fooof. How long have I slept?’

‘A while,’ he says.

‘I am hungry,’ she tells him.

‘We have fed you ale only,’ he says. ‘Nothing solid.’

She tries to remember. She sees only vague interludes, peopled by vague shades, Payne and Thomas, perhaps, pushing her, pulling her, lifting, lowering, a low susurrus of deep voices and always, until now, warm release back into deepest slumber.

He comes and brings her some ale and there is also bread.

‘No wonder then,’ she says, tearing a piece off. Her fingers feel weak, and her teeth loose. She lets the ale soften the bread before swallowing. Thomas beams at her still, but there is a noise beyond the window and his eye is drawn that way.

‘What is happening without?’ she asks.

He stands and crosses back to the narrow window.

‘The Earl of Warwick is positioning his guns, I believe.’

‘The Earl of Warwick? He is here already? With his guns?’

She tries to sit up but she’s too weak. How long have I been here?

‘He has been bringing them up all this morning,’ Thomas tells her. ‘But stay. Master Payne insists. I will describe them to you. There are two very big ones, monsters, each needing three teams of oxen if they are to be moved, and there are many more besides, smaller but just as long, and like to throw a ball further, I believe. There must be twenty in total, I suppose. And there are many thousand men, and horses, too.’

‘Dear God!’

‘Oh, do not fret,’ he says. ‘They will not be fired. They are here for show. To prove Warwick means business. He will now offer terms, and Sir Ralph Grey will accept them, for he has no choice, and he will be afforded the King Edward’s grace, as will we all, and then the gates will be thrown open, and we can leave this place at last. We can all go home.’

Home. Where is that? She closes her eyes again for a moment. She does not want to think about that.

‘What about King Henry?’ she asks. ‘What will happen to him?’

‘He has already left us,’ Thomas says with a shrug. ‘Three days since. After Dunstanburgh capitulated. Grey insisted he would be safer elsewhere, so he rode away in the night with just a handful of his gentlemen, and those two priests. No one is saying where, but there can’t be many places, can there, in this country anyway, or across the Narrow Sea?’

She is silent for a while, thinking. Trying to imagine the scene.

‘What did Riven say to that?’

‘There was nothing he could do,’ Thomas tells her. ‘He was outnumbered two to one, and King Henry himself – he wanted to go. Riven lacked the strength to be seen to harm him or his interests, so he stood with clenched teeth and watched it happen. The sight of that has sustained me, I can tell you.’

She manages a sibilant chuckle. Thomas returns to looking out of the window. She holds up her arms. They are encased in linen. For a moment she does not know if she is a man or a woman.

‘What day is it?’ she asks.

‘Yesterday was the feast of St John,’ he says.

She cannot believe it has been so long.

‘What have you been doing in the meantime?’ she asks. He is looking well, she thinks, as if he has been eating enough for once.

‘I have been hunting every day, even the Sabbath. Payne has ordered it and Grey lets me, knowing you are here, and that I won’t try to ride south. It has let me avoid Riven, and his men, too.’

‘But the siege? Warwick’s men?’

‘They have just gathered these last days. They have been at Dunstanburgh, and now it is our turn. It is – civilised.’

‘That is a relief. And what of Master Payne? How is he?’

‘He is well. He has been here every day. Tended to you in person.’

She sees, and feels vaguely ashamed. She lets her hand rest on her tummy. It is rounded a little bit, and she who knows her own body best, feels other subtle changes too. Either that or she has been fed March ale for a month. She had thought for a moment, on waking, that perhaps she was not pregnant after all, or that perhaps she had lost the baby, or any number of alternatives, but when they were dismissed, one by one, and she was left with the knowledge that the baby was still there, she felt, for the first time probably, a sense of satisfaction and even pleasure.

She tries to get up again, and Thomas comes to her side and helps her and this time she makes it. She hobbles to the window; her body feels soft and boneless. She rests on the stone of the window ledge and looks out.

‘Good Lord,’ she says.

‘Yes,’ he agrees. ‘There are a lot of them.’

Through the stone arch, two bowshots away, is a sea of men, a tide of them swirling around the rocks of those great guns, and their tents, hundreds of them, stretching almost as far as she can see. At their fore edge are the long bodies of five or six guns, but two are much larger than the others, and they are being canted around by slow-plodding wheeling teams of oxen, and she wonders if she can hear the carters’ whips from here. Men are digging the guns’ rears in, lowering their hindquarters and piling the rock and earth in front, raising their forequarters above breastwork of woven hazel. Soon she will be staring at the guns’ big black mouths.

‘So you see, we are surrounded,’ Thomas says. ‘They even have ships out at sea.’

‘But you say I am not to fret?’

‘Grey says King Edward will not want this castle harmed in any way. He says it is too near Scotland for that, and it is necessary for the defence of the realm, so—’

Thomas shrugs.

‘It is just something they have to do, he says. He says they – the Earl of Warwick and King Edward – will offer terms, just as they have done at all the other castles – Alnwick and Dunstanburgh over there, which have already opened their gates to King Edward – and now King Henry is gone, Grey will accept them. He admits he more or less has to, whatever they are, and then we will have to lay down our weapons, open the gates and walk out, and Warwick’s soldiers will be there to mock us and so on, but after that we will be free.’