‘Leave my wife alone,’ Thomas tells him.
The man turns on him. He is rigid with fury.
‘It ain’t up to you to tell me what to do,’ he spits. ‘So if you fucking well try again, I will split you from your bollocks to your chops. With this.’
A length of rusted blade appears in his hand as if by magic.
‘Got that?’ he asks. ‘Fucking got that, have you?’
Thomas does not let his expression waver, even as the blade passes across his lips.
‘We should do them here,’ the smaller of the two says. ‘Right now. Here. Look – in the ditch. There.’
He is as bright-eyed as a ferret in the rabbit net, and is almost bouncing with the thought of it. The taller one considers it, conflicting thoughts reflected in the twitching, wiry muscles in his face. He looks around: first at the ditch; then at the small crowd that is beginning to gather. Men in russet and brown, all armed with rough bills, and two women in blue dresses with laces as loose as can be. The taller one removes his hat. His hair is shaved off at the side, left long and lank on top, like summer grass gone over.
‘No,’ he says at length. ‘They’ve got a tale to tell, and someone’ll want to hear it first.’
The smaller one is let down.
‘And then we’ll do them!’ The taller one laughs.
‘The kid and all?’
‘No, you fucking fool. Not the kid. No one kills a fucking kid. Christ.’
The crowd parts to let them through into the field where they are setting up camp. The smaller of the two leads the way, the taller one behind with the horses and his knife. Men and women and children look up from their tasks – erecting tents, bringing water, lighting fires, skinning rabbits – to watch the excitement. Katherine clutches Rufus’s hand. Her legs feel very weak. It reminds her of the time she was nearly hanged by the Earl of Warwick’s men for deserting his army, long ago now, only this – this is worse.
‘Don’t say anything,’ Thomas murmurs by her side. ‘Not a word? D’you understand? Rufus? Yes?’
Rufus nods. It is not clear if he knows what is happening.
‘There’s a good boy,’ Thomas says.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ the tall one says.
Thomas stops and turns to him.
‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ he says.
‘Fuck off,’ the other man says.
Thomas looks at him a long moment.
‘What? What?’ the tall one demands of him. ‘Adding me to your list of men you’re going to kill? Is that it? Well, you can get to the back of the fucking queue, sunshine, by God’s fucking truth, because I am on a hundred such lists, and do you know what they all have in common? All these lists? Let me tell you: they’ve all been foreclosed because any cunt who’s crossed me ends up that way, don’t they? So if you want to shit out of one hole tonight, not two, I’d get a fucking move on.’
Another, different, knife appears in his hand. A rondel dagger: a long steel spike with a flat-ended pommel so a man might use his fist to bang it down – or up – into another man’s flesh without feeling any discomfort.
Thomas has no choice. He turns and they all walk on. They have an escort following them now, of men and the two women, calling to their friends in the camp to join them. Ahead are the bigger tents.
‘Listen,’ Thomas says. ‘I am just an ordinary man, trying to get home, trying to get my wife and child to safety. We are no threat to you.’
‘Why’re you wearing this old livery coat, then?’ someone asks.
‘It is as the boy says,’ Thomas tells them. ‘We had it from the charcoalers.’
‘It’s looted,’ another man says. ‘Look.’
They are pointing to the hole in the back.
‘We did not ask where they found it,’ Thomas says.
‘Why’d’you put it on?’
‘Because I hoped it would get us past your picket.’
‘Well, that didn’t work, did it?’
This gets a laugh.
‘You some sort of spy?’ someone else asks. ‘Running to report our numbers to King Edward, are you?’
‘No,’ Thomas lies. ‘I am just as you see me. Simply trying to get my wife and child to the safety of their home.’
‘Don’t pretend you ain’t an archer. Look at you. Spent half your life in the butts.’
‘We’ve all spent half our lives in the butts,’ Thomas answers.
‘I haven’t,’ one of the women says.
This gets a laugh, too.
‘All right, that’s e-fucking-nough,’ the taller of the two pickets tells them. They are come to the larger tents now: simple linen things, each large enough for ten men, stained by use and wear. The taller of the two guards straightens his jack, clears his throat, and then opens the tent’s linen flap and steps in, letting it fall behind. There is talk within. The smaller of the two men leers at Katherine, and she feels faint and grips Rufus’s hand all the tighter. She knows she’s taking more support from him than he from her. Thomas puts his hand on her shoulder.
‘It was a good idea,’ he says, ‘and we are not sunk yet.’
But she thinks: By Christ, we are. We will be swinging from the branches of the trees that fringe this stretch of common land before the curfew bell is rung. She cannot help but place her hand on the soft skin of her throat. What will happen to Rufus? Dear God.
Then the tent flap opens. The tall guard emerges first. He looks pleased. A bad sign. He holds the tent flap open and, after a moment, the commander comes ducking through.
He straightens: a tall man, broad shoulders, long face, no cap, instantly familiar.
It is, of all people, John Horner.
He stares at them, open-mouthed. His eyes widen and Katherine can feel her own hair rippling to stand on end.
‘By Christ!’ he whispers. ‘By Christ!’
He breaks into a face-splitting grin.
‘Thomas bloody Everingham!’ he shouts out. ‘Thomas bloody Everingham! I believed you were dead!’
He steps forward and throws his arms around Thomas. Thomas wraps his own around Horner. Their back thumps are enough to raise dust from up off their cloth. The guard curls his lip in disgust. After a moment Horner pushes Thomas away so that he can look at him more clearly. She can see Horner wears a blue livery jacket with a curious yellow smear over the chest. She has seen a couple of these in the crowd. To whom do they belong?
‘By all that is holy!’ he shouts.
And now Katherine cannot stop the sob in her throat, and the tears splash her cheeks.
Horner turns to her.
‘Goodwife Everingham! There is no need for tears! This is a happy event!’
‘I am sorry,’ she says. ‘I have been this way since – since Rufus was born.’
And Horner pauses before he kisses her; he looks down at Rufus and gives a shout of pleasure.
‘He is the spit!’ He laughs. ‘The spit. But I cannot say of whom! It is a young Kit! That is it!’
Now he kisses her and she sees he has acquired deep lines at the sides of his mouth, and his hair is grey at the temples. She feels his eyes ranging over her face, taking in the changes, and she wonders for a moment if he is still wondering if she is Kit, or Kit is her, but whatever conclusion he comes to, it hardly matters because he can prove nothing, even if he wanted to.
So he crouches down and looks into Rufus’s eyes on the boy’s own level.
‘We are old friends, me and your father,’ he tells him. ‘We spent many a long day cooped up in a huge castle and then we went into battle together, to fight for the right of King Henry to rule his realm. We lost that time, but we will not lose this time. You wait and see.’
Rufus looks concerned but says nothing and after a moment Horner stands and gives him a pat on the head.
‘You are a good boy,’ Horner says. ‘You do look like your uncle, though. Have you met him? He is a fine, fine surgeon. The finest I ever heard of.’
Katherine feels a fl
are of anxiety, but Rufus merely shakes his head slowly, his eyes big and round, and he remains silent, as instructed, and that, for the moment, is enough.
‘We believed you dead after the rout at Hexham,’ Thomas tells Horner, ‘so we made our way back to Bamburgh. We supposed that if you lived, you would come too?’
Horner is cagey. He sees that the audience still waits.
‘Come,’ he says. ‘Let me find you ale. And something to eat perhaps. We will sit and talk. Come. Come.’
He opens the flap of the tent for them and holds it as they file in. There is a coffer, a stool, three sheepskins, a jug of ale. Two cups. A bit of old bread in a bowl, and a boy doing something to a piece of plate metal, and there are a couple of rush lamps, yet to be lit. There are many rolls of paper on a board and trestles, on which are written many names, just as in the ledger, Katherine thinks.
They sit where they may, Rufus on her lap, Thomas on another sheepskin, and they leave the stool to Horner. The moment the tent flap is dropped, the two pickets are cut off, though she can hear them and the others still complaining about something and Horner raising his voice and telling them to take the horses to the lines and that one of them – Taplow? – will be held responsible for anything missing in the morning.
When Horner returns he sends the boy for more ale and cups and settles himself on the stool.
‘So here we are!’ he says. He asks them what happened after the battle of Hexham. Thomas describes the fall of Bamburgh, and how Sir Ralph Grey, who had been Horner’s lord, had been knocked senseless by the stone from a cannon.
‘And that old bastard Neville of Brancepeth, he turned him over, didn’t he?’ Horner asks. ‘My God. My God, I wish I had been there. I would have stopped that.’
Despite everything, Horner still seems fond of Grey. Thomas does not tell him that it was he, Thomas, who tied Grey to his horse and sent him out of the castle, but instead, in a very few words, tells him what they’ve been doing for the last five years, and then he asks again what happened to Horner at the battle of Hexham. When he has more ale in his cup, Horner confesses that he broke with the rest of Sir Ralph Grey’s men, and then simply carried on running. He stripped off his plate and threw his livery coat in the river, and then he sought sanctuary in the abbey in Hexham. He climbed into the belfry, he tells them, and then out on to the roof.
‘Sometime on the second day,’ he says, ‘they brought the Duke of Somerset out into the square, and the headsman killed him.’
After that, he tells them, he became sick. He thought it was something he’d caught from the pigeons, some vapour they gave off. He thought he’d die, and would have been happy to, but a priest found him and nursed him back to health. But by then he was sick of it all, and the thought of going back to find Grey, if he was still alive, which he doubted, was most sickening of all. So he went home.
‘And when I got there, I had nothing. Less than nothing. And then suddenly Lord Montagu’s men came through, each as rich as Croesus, swaggering about the place, buying land and building houses, and then by Christ I knew I’d been on the wrong bloody side.’
Horner stretches out his long, stiff legs. He is thin, she sees, as if deprived during these past years, and his clothes are worn and patched – with little skill, so perhaps he has no wife as yet – and his boots remain in need of a cordwainer’s attention. Food arrives with the boy: fresh baked bread and good bean and bacon pottage, which they eat straight from the communal bowl with their spoons.
‘But how came you to be here?’ Thomas asks, wiping his mouth.
‘When my indenture with Grey ended – because he was dead – I needed the goodlordship of another, and the man whom we are calling Robin of Redesdale was seeking to expand his influence, so . . . I was pleased when the offer came. I thought: Here is my chance. To undo what I’d done, and to get back at Lord Montagu and his swaggering bastards. I tell you, it has been a tough few years.’
That explains the lines in his face, Katherine thinks.
‘And have you?’ Thomas asks. ‘Got back at Montagu’s men?’
‘Well,’ he says. ‘We’ll see. At the moment he is sitting on his hands, isn’t he? Since he’s been made Earl of Northumberland he’s less likely to jump to the Earl of Warwick’s command, but Redesdale has him confused, I think. He’s got everyone confused, really.’
Katherine is happy to learn this is definitely Robin of Redesdale’s army. If Horner does not have them hanged then this is something they can be certain of, if they ever see Hastings again.
‘So where is Redesdale?’ Thomas asks.
‘He’s already moved south,’ Horner tells him. ‘We are the rear, or, more honestly, the stragglers. He is an impatient man is Robin: keen to be off.’
‘And how many men has he?’ Thomas goes on.
Horner shrugs.
‘Four thousand? And we have perhaps slightly less than half that.’ He gestures at the paper rolls on the coffer.
‘So together . . .?’
‘Not insubstantial,’ Horner says with a trace of that old smile. ‘And we are attracting more every day.’
She remembers him in Bamburgh: always so optimistic, always hoping a spark would come to ignite the country against King Edward, never once admitting the cause was hopeless because King Henry was useless.
Rufus is tired, and he lies on the nearest sheepskin to her, and they watch in happy silence, all of them, as he simply drops to sleep.
‘And what of yourselves?’ Horner asks. ‘You are not really riding for the Earl of Warwick, are you, Thomas? You are not on our side?’
‘No,’ Thomas says. ‘It is as Rufus said. We helped some charcoal burners who gave me this. I put it on, hoping it would smooth my passage.’
‘Ah, you reckoned without Taplow. My God, there is a nasty piece of work. I wear gauntlets to handle him, let me tell you.’
There is a moment’s uncomfortable silence.
‘So where were you going?’ Horner asks.
Katherine repeats the story she had told Watkins: that they had ridden north in the hope of finding a place to live.
‘But it came to nothing, so we are returning to Lincolnshire where we will throw ourselves on the charity of others.’
‘Join us!’ Horner says. ‘By Christ! All we need now is Kit and those other two – the one-armed fellow – and it will be like old times.’
Thomas’s flinch turns into a more measured frown. He shakes his head.
‘I would join you,’ he says, ‘but we were lucky to come from Hexham with our lives, and then again, when Bamburgh fell – well. It was only by the grace of God that we were spared, and even then – it was not without cost.’
Katherine feels his gaze slide across her and she closes her mind to the memory of Giles Riven’s kick.
‘It is not for myself that I fear,’ Thomas goes on. ‘I have proved this twice, thrice, four times over, but putting Katherine and Rufus at risk when I need not – I cannot square it with my conscience.’
‘Later, perhaps?’ Horner asks. ‘When you have found them refuge among these people in Lincolnshire? We have not given permission for the men to loot, as Queen Margaret did before Towton, so as not to antagonise the south, but there will be the usual third of everything that comes to us in battle, and afterwards there will be opportunity for such advancement! And this time, this time, we will succeed.’
‘You sound very certain?’ Thomas says, and Katherine starts to feel uncomfortable: they are taxing Horner for information to use against him. Imagine if sometime in the future Thomas were to find himself facing Horner in the field? How would they feel then?
Horner leans forward and becomes conspiratorial.
‘I have spoken to Robin of Redesdale,’ he tells them. ‘And he says the Earl of Warwick is to issue a manifesto from Calais, calling on the whole country to rise up against King Edward. He is going to raise the men of Kent, and a man named Tudor is landing in Wales, to gather troops there. This is it, don’t you se
e? The spark!’
It is unbelievable. She cannot imagine it. It would mean the Earl of Warwick undoing all he has done these last ten years.
‘So he has openly come out against King Edward?’
‘Yes! Although, well, he has not taken the field himself, not yet at any event, because he is in Calais.’
‘But if he is in open rebellion, should he not be here in England?’ Katherine asks.
Horner grins.
‘But this is it!’ he says. ‘This is it, you see! You’ll never guess what he is doing in Calais!’
‘He is issuing this manifesto?’
‘Apart from that. No? Well, let me tell you, though it is not to be spoken of ever until – until later. He is marrying his daughter to the Duke of Clarence! Against King Edward’s specific enjoinder!’
This is too confusing. Katherine opens her mouth to try to tease it apart, but Thomas speaks first.
‘So that is the extent of his rebellion?’ he asks. ‘While you are taking the field, risking life and limb, he is attending the wedding of his daughter to King Edward’s brother?’
Horner sits back with a sly smile.
‘It may not sound much,’ he agrees, ‘but there is something else. Something . . . something I can’t – oughtn’t – tell you: a deeper plan afoot.’
‘What is that?’
‘A rumour afloat—’ Horner begins, and then stops; he turns and sends the boy out. The boy looks like the sort who will only go around the back of the tent to listen from the other side of the linen, but Horner is caught up in this. He so badly wants Thomas to join him that he is made foolish. When the boy has gone, he continues.
‘A rumour that King Edward is a bastard.’
Both Katherine and Thomas feign incredulous shock.
‘No!’
‘Yes,’ Horner says. ‘And there is proof.’
There is a moment’s hesitation before Thomas coughs and asks, ‘What proof?’
And with a gesture at those rolls of paper on the coffer, those lists of serving men, Horner tells them of a record of troop movements from the late days of English rule in Normandy that shows Richard, Duke of York, supposedly King Edward’s father, was not within a month’s travel of Edward’s mother when the boy was conceived.
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