‘Ahh,’ Campbell says, ‘that is the question we must all ask ourselves, isn’t it? If Northumberland does go against him, then it is all over for Robin. His head’ll be on a spike in York before the week is out, but what if Northumberland does nothing? What if he sits on his hands, and lets Robin of Redesdale past? Lets him run? What will happen then? Who knows?’
Hastings is right, Katherine thinks. An inn is where you discover most. But Campbell is going on, gossiping really, like a woman wringing laundry, repeating conversations he has heard many times before.
‘But there is a third scenario, isn’t there?’ he is saying. ‘What if Warwick persuades Montagu to join this new Robin, eh? Then we’d have the Earls of Warwick and Northumberland, combined with Robin of Redesdale, rising up against King Edward, and there is only one way that will end. Save I don’t suppose they’ll leave Edward rotting in the Tower as he has with old King Henry, will they? They’ll chop his head off and have it on a spike just as quick as you like.’
Thomas looks at Katherine again, and then back at Campbell.
‘How many men has this Robin of Redesdale?’ he asks.
Campbell shrugs.
‘Enough, as is told, and growing more numerous by the day.’
‘And where are they mustering?’ Thomas goes on.
Campbell shrugs.
‘It is as I say,’ he says. ‘Somewhere in the vale, the Vale of Mowbray, over there, through which the west road runs, you see? Which is why I say you must take the east.’
He is pleased with the circularity of his argument.
‘And you have no idea of their disposition? Who they are? If they have guns and so on?’
Campbell frowns.
‘Disposition? That is a very specific word, master. You begin to sound like a spy yourself now. Ah. I forget. You are Lord Hastings’s man, no?’
Thomas actually blushes.
‘It is not that,’ Katherine lies for him. ‘We are looking for some friends. Who may be involved.’
‘Oh yes?’ Campbell says, thinking perhaps he has her now. ‘Who?’
‘John,’ she says. ‘John Horner.’
She remembers Horner as a good man; he was not seen after Hexham, so he is probably dead, since he was not the type to desert. Campbell has never heard of him, and remains unconvinced.
‘Well,’ he says, reverting to his theme, ‘he is not so bad a man, Edmund Riven, despite what my daughters say. But if you are determined to go, remember: the east road.’
Katherine looks at him carefully. It is hard to tell, in this gloom, whether he is telling the truth, or sending them into a trap. It strikes her that Campbell himself is not sure either. Perhaps it is a bit of both?
‘Very well,’ he says. ‘I will leave you now. We will cook that pork at first light, to send you on your way with our blessing.’
When he is gone Thomas asks if she thinks he can be telling the truth about the mustering, about Robin of Redesdale. She cannot see why he would lie.
‘But we need something more than just rumours to take to Hastings. We need . . . I don’t know. Facts. Names. Numbers. Ordnance. That sort of thing. Where they are, where they are going and so on. We can’t just go there and say a man called Robin, who may or may not be related to the Earl of Warwick, is gathering men somewhere.’
Katherine watches Campbell for a long moment as he busies himself with the inn’s other customers, nudging the fire on, moving from board to board, placing his hand on men’s shoulders in the gathering gloom, leaning over them; she sees them turning to look at him, and she sees him laughing and making his own jokes to delight them, and she sees him sending his daughters to and fro, and she thinks he is probably as good a man as most, better than some, worse than others. Yet there is something about him that she does not quite trust, some filament of doubt that remains.
And so she should not have been surprised when in the short hours of the next morning Sir Edmund Riven, with a dozen liveried men, harnessed and arrayed as if for war, came clattering into the inn’s yard by the pale blue wash of the waxing moon.
7
But by then they are gone.
It was the third aproned girl – the one with the same colour hair as Rufus – who saved them. She’d come to John Stump in the cold, clear moonlight, just as he was returning from the privy by the river, trying to tie his points with his one hand, so he did not notice the girl until she was upon him. He’d gasped when she caught his arm, and then he had thought: Well, why not, after all, because . . . but she was not after that. She’d told him that her father was lying, and that Edmund Riven was not at Middleham Castle, as he’d said, but at Pickering Castle.
‘Which is half a day’s ride east,’ she’d said.
‘East!’ John had said. ‘So your father was sending us towards him!’
‘You are missing my point,’ she’d said. ‘Pickering is half a day’s ride. Half a day’s ride. If Riven is coming, he will be here before morning.’
And John had understood her then, and had come running, and they’d climbed off their beds and tied up their clothes and pulled on their boots, and in the light of rush lamps they’d saddled their horses and they’d wheeled the cart out into the yard, still loaded with the coffers, and when Campbell appeared crying out about the fear of fire, Thomas had raised a fist and told him that they ought to kill him, and the innkeeper had almost crumpled in the mud, weeping, so that in the end Thomas could not even kick him.
They’d hitched the cart to the bemused pack horse and Katherine had bundled Rufus up on to the seat they’d made there, and Nettie took him, and they’d turned for the road when the third aproned girl appeared again and this time she had a thick cloak she must have stolen from her father and a bundle with her, and she’d said: ‘Take me with you.’
After a moment’s hesitation, when John had looked first at Thomas and then at Jack, as if for permission, he had nodded, and she had swung up on to his horse, and so here they were now, riding as fast as they dare along a pocked road westwards, the cart’s wheels jumping and grinding on the grit below, their fading moon-shadows flitting across the pebbles and rocks of its surface, and already there is the palest suggestion of dawn in the sky.
The third sister shouts out that they will never get clear.
‘Not with that cart. Riven’s men will come too fast.’
Thomas knows she is right. They should have left the cart, but then how would they have managed with Rufus? With pregnant Nettie? This girl in her apron and her father’s coat? He looks around.
‘Can we fight them off?’ he wonders. ‘Shoot one or two of them? Shoot Riven himself?’
John frowns.
‘D’you think you could pick him out?’
Both turn to look speculatively at dawn blooming in the east. The sun will shine on them at first, as they wait, but they could let Riven and his men past, and then shoot them in the back. That would work, but only if Riven rides on. And only if there are not too many of them.
‘Don’t be fools,’ Katherine says, appearing alongside. ‘You can’t shoot ten men – or perhaps you can, but there would be a hundred more where they came from. They will follow us to the gates of hell.’
‘But you could try,’ the third sister says.
‘Where does this road lead?’ Katherine asks her.
‘Kirby,’ she says. ‘Then on to Thirsk and whatnot.’
‘Would we be safe in Kirby?’
The girl thinks so, but Katherine is not convinced.
‘Are there any drovers’ tracks?’ she asks, directing a pale hand at the hills to the north. ‘Anything we could take to get us off this road?’
The girl does not seem to know. She thinks not. Thomas can see the white of her eyes as her gaze flits about the road and the looming hills to the north. The sky above is paler now, a shade of dirty lavender perhaps, so that he can see the hillcrests. Surely, he thinks, there must be some way off this road.
Around the bluff they find one: an unherald
ed break in the gorse where already the birdsong is growing loud. Through it is a pale stripe of gritty earth, worn by the passing of many thousands of sheep over the years, that subsequently vanishes into the shadows of a narrow defile between the hills. It is easy to imagine it winding its way to the top and over.
‘We’d never get the cart up there,’ Jack says.
‘No,’ the girl agrees. ‘Exactly.’
‘Forget the cart,’ John says.
‘It’s everything we own,’ Jack says. ’And Nettie’ll not get far without it. Not on foot.’
Thomas looks over at Nettie. She’s been weeping pretty solidly since she was woken up and now she is grizzling.
‘We could find her somewhere in Kirby,’ the girl suggests.
‘How far is it?’ Thomas asks.
Again the girl is vague.
‘I’ll not leave her,’ Jack tells them.
‘No,’ Thomas agrees.
‘But Riven is looking for a party of seven,’ Katherine supposes. ‘And if we are not a party of seven—?’
‘Split up?’ Thomas asks.
‘No,’ the girl says. ‘That’d be stupid. He’d still find you.’
But Jack talks over her.
‘You’re right,’ he tells Katherine. ‘Riven doesn’t know me from Adam. I could go on to Kirby. Me and Nettie. You and Thomas can take the path. It’s you he wants, after all.’
Thomas thinks Jack’s right.
‘And John? Would you come with us?’ Jack asks.
John thinks a moment before he agrees.
‘Will you be all right?’ he asks Thomas.
‘I don’t like it,’ the girl says.
Thomas is still not sure. Perhaps the girl is right? Should they not just try to get to this Kirby? Find a yard or something? Raise the townspeople to help them? But what has it to do with this girl? And anyway, what choice do they have? He does not want to drag Jack into this any more than he has already. Let them go free.
‘All right,’ he tells Jack. ‘Take the cart. Go on to this Kirby. And then south, yes? Get to York if you can. Go all day. As long as the horses hold out. We’ll meet you there. Three days from now. At noon, say, under that gate where they spike the heads. If we’re not there, or you’re not there, then try the next day. After that . . . I don’t know. But wait for us.’
He thinks perhaps they should wait for as much as a week. Jack and John look at one another. After a moment they both nod. They look as if they too feel guilty, and seeing them so, Thomas feels less guilty himself. Perhaps he and Katherine are undertaking the riskier venture?
Katherine slips from her saddle and gathers the sleeping child from the bed of the cart.
‘Are you sure about this?’ he asks.
Of course she is not, but what choice do they have?
The girl is peering anxiously back into the rising sun. Any minute and Riven will be there. John is still looking grim.
‘What if he catches you?’ he asks. ‘What if he does not fall for this? It is just you and Katherine, against him and his men. He’ll – you know?’
Thomas thinks of Rufus and of Katherine, of their skin blistering under a glowing coal, and he is lucky not to be able to picture it.
‘Go on,’ Thomas says. ‘Stop worrying. We’ll be fine. It is you I worry for.’
Thomas collects his bow from the cart. After a moment’s hesitation, he leaves his pollaxe. But Katherine shakes her head. She is suddenly very certain.
‘You must bring it,’ she says. ‘It is ill luck to be parted from it again.’
So he slides it out, and is once again almost nervous in its company. It is an astonishing thing, he thinks, designed for one terrible purpose, with an aura of its own, and every eye is drawn to it, even now, in the grey-blue gloom. He slides it across the back of his saddle, almost with a shudder, alongside his bow and the bag of arrows.
‘Hurry,’ Jack calls.
Before he goes, Thomas scoops a palmful of coins from his purse and presses them on Jack.
‘No,’ Jack says. ‘I have enough.’
‘Take it,’ Thomas insists.
It is blood money, a salve for Thomas’s conscience, and he is pleased to do it. He mounts up again, and he lifts his hand to the others, and they lift theirs in return, their faces just pale discs, and for some reason they are whispering as they wish one another well, and Godspeed; and he is grateful the parting must be swift, and that it is still dark, for he feels fear stroke his spine at the thought of Warwick’s hard-faced men riding grimly through the night, led by Riven, and then he feels the nauseating grip of guilt.
The girl is still casting about, looking anxious. She is studying him closely, he feels, as if she is trying to decide with whom she should come. Thomas does not want to have her on his conscience too.
‘Go with them,’ he tells her. ‘Go with Jack.’
She makes a face he does not understand, and with one last lingering look at his horse, as if that of all things was what she most wished for, she turns and crosses to where Jack is now waiting.
‘Can we really just leave them?’ he asks Katherine.
‘We must,’ she says. ‘And quickly. Riven will not want them. He will only want us.’
She turns and heels her horse off the road, and after a moment watching the cart roll down the track, Thomas follows her down into a dark dip that from above looks as if it might never end, before rising up again to find the old drovers’ path, narrow where the sheep have scoured the soil from around the stones just as a stream might. It is not good for horses in the dark, and they must dismount again, but soon he is grateful for its twisting ways, and for the wind-shriven hawthorns that rise up on either side, sheltering them from view.
They carry on upwards for a while, away from Jack and John and Nettie and the aproned girl, and ahead Thomas can hear Katherine encouraging Rufus, who is nodding off, almost falling from the saddle.
‘I’ll take him if you like,’ he says.
Thomas takes Rufus in his arms. He weighs nothing. He is like a shrimp. Rufus buries his face in Thomas’s shoulder and throws his little arms around Thomas’s neck, and he is almost still asleep, so Thomas holds him for a bit, as any parent might, in happier circumstances. In the dawn’s light he sees Katherine’s cheeks are glazed with tears. He feels a deep wrench of shame.
‘They will be all right,’ he says.
She nods and sniffs.
‘I know,’ she says. ‘I know.’
‘Come on, then,’ he says. ‘Let’s keep moving.’
And nothing more is said for a while but as they continue north, hurrying up the moorside, away from Riven, and away from their friends Thomas feels ashes in his mouth. At the top of the first hill they stop again where the path levels and where the birds are loud, lifting and fluttering in alarm. They can see the road again, but there is no sign of Jack and John Stump and their women, or of Riven and his men either.
‘Perhaps they have made it to this Kirby place?’
‘Let us pray to God,’ she says.
They stand watching a moment, and the sun rises so quickly you can see its cloud-softened rays reach out, slicing through the dawn, illuminating the pouches of mist that hang among the trees and in the hollows below. It shines flat across the hills and catches Katherine’s high-boned face; and, seeing the tilt of her chin, the angle of her head, and the defiance of her expression, despite everything, despite every reversal, Thomas cannot imagine standing here in the rising sun, with disaster all around, without her. He smiles at her, and she almost smiles at him, and he feels Rufus wriggle against his chest, and he thinks back on something John Stump said what seems like months ago, about how this amount of happiness – these five years – might well be a man’s allotment for one life, and he supposes that if after all that’s right, then he cannot complain of his luck.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Riven could be anywhere.’
So they carry on up the hill, until at last, at the top of the steepest incline,
the path emerges from the stunted hawthorns and dissolves into a plateau of broad upland pasture; there are sheep everywhere, with brown faces and tight curled horns, and this is home to skylarks that take wing, and other flying insects, bright spots where they catch the sun. Rufus wakes, and wriggles around to watch, and is enchanted. Thomas puts him back in the saddle.
‘Pipes,’ Rufus says.
And sure enough a little later they can hear the thin whistle of a shepherd’s pipes playing a simple little tune and they look around for him, but he’ll be in the shadow of some rocks perhaps, and they never see him, and so they set off again, and the grass is long, silvered with dew, and it whips against their legs as they continue north. They ride all morning among the sheep through the long grass, up and down, seeing no one, not a soul, save those sheep.
Eventually they can look back and see where they’ve come from. The path is empty. They are not being followed. Riven has gone after Jack and John Stump and Nettie and the aproned sister. Thomas feels his guilt redoubled, and he can hardly look at Katherine, and neither says anything, so they ride on in silence.
The sun’s heat becomes heavier with each step. It is like a warm palm on the back of Thomas’s neck. Rufus is hungry and Thomas has a little dried bread in his bag that he gives the boy, but it is probably not enough. He wishes he had a straw hat instead of this woollen cap. He wonders how Katherine can stand those skirts, but she is probably used to them by now. Rufus is sneezing already with the hay fever, an explosive little plush that sets his horse’s ears twitching.
They find another path, down into the beginnings of a valley that runs northwest to southeast, at the bottom of which is a lively trickle of cool clean water where they let the horses drink and they wash themselves and also drink, wishing they had some more bread. Thomas can see his skin is burning in the sun’s heat, becoming pink and hot, and out of the sun, the water is good, but saints! It is so hot! Even down here.
Katherine remains quiet and thoughtful, watching Rufus wander a little way off, exploring the stream’s pools where there are some tiny black fish. Behind them the horses crop the grass, their lips blue-black and amazingly mobile.
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