‘Whose boat do you suppose this to be?’ Flood asks. ‘We should have left them something.’
‘Such as what?’
He is silent for a while.
‘Where do you think we will end up?’ he then asks.
Thomas looks about them. It is well past noon, and he guesses the river is flowing in a long loop but it still seems to be taking them northeastwards, but only very slowly. He shrugs.
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Just so long as it is not towards Warwick, or Redesdale.’
He thinks about Brunt and Caldwell, who struggled through their lives only to be murdered in a muddy field. Was that God’s plan for them, or were they part of His plan for the men that killed them? Will something come from what those prickers did that day? Will one of them suffer remorse, say, and hold off killing someone else who will go on to found a chantry? Build a bridge? Is that it?
And what about Jack and Nettie and John Stump? Now Warwick has won this battle, what will become of them? He thinks about each individually: about Jack, whom he has failed through no fault of his own, and about Nettie, who is probably childing even as he sits here, and John Stump, who wished to cross the Narrow Sea to fight alongside the Duke of Burgundy, but who will never get that chance now. He sees he has already given up hope of his plan succeeding. He sees that he has given them up, and that they are already, in his mind, dead.
But then he stops himself and sits up. He is looking at this in the wrong way. He is looking at it, he sees, as if they have gone passively to their deaths, when that is not the case. If they are dead it is because they have been murdered. Murdered by Edmund Riven.
Christ! The things for which that man must be made to pay!
For a moment he allows himself to be gripped by a murderous rage, and he imagines himself repeating what he did to the father – with this pollaxe here – to the son. After a while the hopelessness of his situation acts to soothe him. There is nothing, not one thing, he can do while stuck in this punt, on these waters with Flood.
He tries to remain vigilant. Warwick’s prickers could be anywhere, but he is tired. His eyes are closing. He wakes Flood, who does not recognise him for a moment, and tries to climb out of the punt.
When he is calm again, Thomas tells him he must keep watch.
‘Any horsemen, you wake me,’ he tells him.
Flood nods. After a while Thomas finds a comfortable position, feet out of the water at the bottom of the punt, and falls asleep. When he wakes, Flood is asleep too, and they are caught on some shallows under a willow tree where the smell of river mud and fox mix to almost overpowering effect, and the light is shaded green. He parts the fronds and sees they have entered a broad lake. There are the traces of eel farms sticking above the waters, and across it, where dense clouds of insects circle in the thick summer air, are five or six rush farmers, cutting and filling their punts with bundles of fresh green bulrushes until it looks as if they will sink. Thomas watches them for a while. Flood wakes.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I must have fallen asleep.’
He is better this time of waking, though still he groans when he moves to join Thomas watching the rush-cutters.
‘Where does it hurt? Thomas asks.
Flood thinks for a while.
‘The only bit that does not hurt is here,’ he says, pointing to his left forearm.
‘Can you walk?’
‘I’m sure,’ he says, but he can’t.
They watch the cutters at work for a moment in silence.
‘Busy around here, isn’t it?’ Flood says.
Thomas grunts. He is thinking exactly that. He is thinking they ought to stay where they are, hidden by this tree, and carry on only when it is dark. Food and drink will become a problem, but – well, they are on a river, they can drink that, and it is not as if they have not gone hungry before. He closes his eyes again, and is woken just as dusk falls by Flood singing a song about ale. He wants no pies, no stewed mutton, only good ale brought to him and his friends, and he wants it now. He has a nice singing voice.
When it is properly dark, with a newish moon smiling above the willow tops, Thomas pushes them off and out to try and find the sluggish stream that winds through the lake. It is so shallow he can use the pollaxe to push them through the waters, but the current is elusive, and it is hard to see where they must steer. Often their way becomes blocked by the fringes of a massed bank of reeds and they must retrace their non-existent steps. After a long while Thomas gives up; he removes his boots, pourpoint and hose, and drops into the cold waters, up to his waist, and he guides the punt that way, his toes in the mud and the roots.
Flood is touchingly, pointlessly, concerned for him.
At length Thomas finds the river’s exit. By now his teeth are chattering and he is chilled to the marrow. He clambers back into the boat and begins rubbing himself dry as the punt is drawn through the banks of rushes and into a narrow channel between two more willows. He dresses himself. It is not easy in the dark and on a punt. When he is dry and a bit warmer, he realises that he is properly starving.
‘Like Lent in one day,’ Flood agrees.
They drift along all night, until the birdsong starts up and the dawn emerges as a pale luminescence and then as a beautiful flare of magenta and silver, ahead and slightly to the right, so they know they are still going northeast, and Thomas supposes they must soon look for somewhere to pass the daylight hours, but then again, he thinks, surely they have come far enough now? The river remains deserted at this time of day. Its green surface is oily and smooth, but as the sun rises, it begins sparkling. Two swans float past. Their cygnets, still fluffy and grey, follow in line. Thomas thinks of Katherine and Rufus. His hunger is gnawing at him now. Flood looks pale too, and is licking his lips constantly.
They say their prayers.
Then there is a bridge, the first they’ve come to. Where there is a bridge there will be someone to charge pontage, both to cross and go under it, and where there is someone to charge pontage, there is a village.
‘We have to find some food,’ Thomas tells Flood.
‘Christ, yes,’ Flood agrees. ‘I’d kill for a simple bowl of pottage, you know? With some good white bread? And ale. Or wine. And perhaps a rabbit, roasted? Or even woodcock? Two of each maybe?’
Thomas plants his axe in the water and uses it as a rudder to steer the punt to the north bank, where there is even a little jetty. He runs the punt up against the jetty and clambers out. He ties it up and helps Flood. The boy is better, but two nights in the rough cannot have helped whatever ails him, and he is still very tentative. Thomas puts an arm under him and they totter up the jetty on to the path between strips of farmed furlong. It is misty, and across more common land where a single long-horned cow is feeding, is a gathering of low stone buildings gathered under the bodkin point of a church spire.
A boy calls out to them not to go too near the cow. She is like to go for them.
‘Where are we?’ Thomas asks.
‘Olney,’ the boy says.
‘How far are we from Nottingham?’
‘Nottingham? Where’s that?’
The church bells ring from the east.
‘Can we have some food?’ Flood asks. ‘We’ve come a distance.’
The cowherd laughs.
‘Not much of that around here now.’
‘Why not?’
‘Why not? The King’s army’s taken it all, haven’t they? Everything that isn’t hidden’s gone into their gullets. Them fuckers took the rest of my cows. Only saved her because she was being so hard to handle.’
Thomas looks at the cow. He’d’ve just killed it with an arrow. Still could, he’s that hungry. Though he no longer has a bow.
‘When did the King come through?’ he asks the boy.
The boy scoffs.
‘He’s still here,’ he says. ‘Taken over the inn.’
He jerks his head towards the village. Thomas can only think the boy is lying or mad. Flood is
speechless, for once.
They leave the boy and make their way towards the church. Neither speaks. Can King Edward really be here?
They are stopped by two men in blue and murrey, with sallets and bills. King Edward’s men all right.
‘Forgot to get yourself dressed, did you?’ one of them asks.
‘We’ve just come from – from over there,’ Thomas tells them. ‘From the Earl of Pembroke.’
The guards are amused. They think Thomas is simple.
‘Oh yes,’ the elder of the two says, ‘and how is he?’
Thomas is gripped by that same sense of incredulity he felt when he brought news that Robin of Redesdale’s army was thrice the size predicted, and much closer than supposed.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘he’s probably dead by now.’
The guards remain smiling.
‘Dead? What do you mean?’
‘Have you not heard?’ Flood asks.
And again the incredulous shock is the same, and again the same process is repeated as they are passed up the chain of command, but each time they tell the story, Thomas sees they are leaving something in their wake: the men who’ve just heard the news exchange informal glances, covert nods. As he and Flood are conducted from one room to the next, from one building to the next, they leave a trail of men springing into a frenzy of packing up. Coffer lids are slammed. Horses are shouted for.
Finally they are taken before Lord Hastings, who’s taken an upper room in a stone-built inn in the shadow of the church’s spire.
‘What in God’s name is it now?’ he demands to know before he’s seen who they are. He looks tired but not unusually fretful until he recognises them. Then it is: ‘Dear God!’
He sends for ale and bread while Thomas explains about the battle. He tells him about Devon dividing the army by taking his men away, so that Pembroke faced archers with none of his own, and yet how near it had been until the arrival of the Earl of Warwick’s army. Hastings pales and ages before their eyes.
‘Is this – true, Thomas?’ he asks. ‘Not some result of – of I don’t know what?’
Thomas can only nod. Hastings gets up and stalks across to the window. He looks down into the yard. Now they can hear the shouts and hooves of men clearing out.
‘And you told them?’ he asks, indicating the men below.
‘They wouldn’t have let us see you if we hadn’t,’ Flood says.
Thomas joins Hastings at the window. Beneath them men are hurrying about the place as ants might. Hastings sniffs.
‘Christ,’ he says. ‘Where have you been sleeping?’
A servant arrives with a pie and some ale. Flood breaks the pie apart and passes some to Thomas. It is delicious beyond belief. The ale too.
‘What in God’s name will we tell the King?’ Hastings murmurs. He is still at the window, craning his neck to watch the scene below. Thomas senses he is fixing in his memory the names of those he sees discarding their livery coats and badges, packing up their gear and readying themselves to abandon their king.
‘Will they all leave?’ he asks.
‘Most of them. Not that I blame them. Without Pembroke or Devon we haven’t one-fifth of Warwick’s numbers.’
‘So that’s it?’
Hastings nods.
‘We’ve been fools,’ he says. ‘Misjudged the whole thing. We should have realised as soon – Dear God. Even the aldermen in London knew! They stopped any weapons leaving the city last month. And still we did nothing. No, that’s not quite true. We ordered a few jackets and went on a pilgrimage. Meanwhile Warwick was mustering men and marrying his daughter to the Duke of bloody Clarence. He was ten – twenty – steps ahead of us. God damn him.’
‘What about you? Will you go?’
‘No,’ Hastings sighs. ‘I am with and of Edward. All that I have, I owe to him. And besides, it’s the Queen’s family that Warwick’s after. Them and poor old Pembroke. He isn’t a bad sort, really, Pembroke. I wonder if he surrendered or went down in the mêlée?’
‘I did not see him run.’
‘No. Well. For his sake, I hope he went down fighting.’
‘Warwick cannot mean to do anything to him? He was fighting for the King.’
‘Perhaps you don’t know my lord of Warwick? He is not one to forgive, or forget, or overlook a slight. And he feels he has been slighted. So . . .’
‘And what about King Edward? What will he do?’
‘Well,’ Hastings says, ‘Warwick will probably place him in the Tower along with old King Henry. Ha! Two kings under his lock! How he will love that.’
‘Will he make himself king then?’
Hastings bobs his head in thought.
‘No,’ he decides. ‘Not even he would try that, surely? No. He must be thinking of George, his new son-in-law. If he could prove—’
He stops, struck by a realisation, and turns to Thomas.
‘And you are sure you had no luck with that – with that other task?’
It takes Thomas a moment to recall the ledger. He is glad. It makes his denial seem all the more convincing. Meanwhile Flood has sat on the hearthstone and closed his eyes. He is still in his muddy braies. He manages to look even more handsome than usual.
‘Thank you for bringing him back, Thomas.’
Thomas cannot think of anything to say in reply. It was not nothing.
‘Can I go now?’ he asks. ‘My wife—?’ He gestures, as if surely Hastings can understand his need to be with Katherine. But Hastings frowns.
‘You’ll not leave too, surely?’ he asks.
‘Everyone else is.’
Hastings nods.
‘I suppose so, but – someone has to stay.’
Thomas feels panicked.
‘Not me though, surely? King Edward – he has all his gentlemen with him?’
Hastings nods to the window, through which can be seen King Edward’s gentlemen deserting him.
There is a noise at the door.
‘William? By the Mass, where is everybody? I have been shouting for an hour yet no one comes?’
It is King Edward. He is in a nightshirt, standing at the doorway to the other room. He looks puffy, debauched, tousled and red-faced. His focus sharpens when it fixes on Thomas.
‘Everingham?’ he says. ‘What brings you here? Not more bad news.’
At that moment, words desert Thomas.
‘I am sad to say so, your grace,’ Hastings says, and he tells him about Pembroke. King Edward sits down next to Flood. Flood does not open his eyes even when King Edward takes his mug of ale and drinks from it himself.
‘Pembroke?’ King Edward whispers. ‘He is – destroyed?’
Thomas cannot believe he is the first to be bringing this news. And then thinks: My God, Pembroke’s army must have been utterly routed if there was no one to get away to deliver this message.
‘What about Devon? Where is he?’
‘We never saw him again,’ Thomas tells him.
Edward is aghast. He looks to Hastings.
‘Not Devon too?’
Hastings is cautious.
‘We’ve heard nothing,’ he says. ‘He may have arrived too late to help. Is that possible, Thomas?’
Thomas nods.
‘In which case, he will not have engaged, will he?’ Hastings goes on. It is what he wants to believe.
‘You mean he would have scuttled back to that horrible stew in which he lives?’ King Edward demands.
Hastings shrugs.
‘Minehead,’ he says. ‘Yes. It is possible.’
There is a long silence. The noise outside is quietening down. King Edward looks up.
‘Has everybody gone?’ he asks.
Hastings peers out of the window again.
‘It seems so,’ he says.
Christ, Thomas thinks, he is witnessing the collapse of the King’s world. This is a man who until now has had a roster of men to watch over him while he sleeps, to lay out his linens, to pass him a sponge after a shit. And
now he has no one. He has been betrayed by his brother, his erstwhile closest ally, and now his entire army. He is left with – who? Just Hastings, and a few of his men, and Thomas and Flood. Just then the man Thomas recognises as King Edward’s youngest brother, the Duke of Gloucester, comes in. He is looking shaken.
‘Where is everyone?’
‘Fucked off,’ King Edward says.
Gloucester straightens awkwardly.
‘Oh,’ he says.
There is another long silence.
‘Richard,’ the King begins. ‘Now I do not want you to lose your rag, but there has been a something of a reversal.’ He tells Gloucester what has happened.
‘By all the saints,’ Gloucester says. ‘Are we to fight?’
He is pink in the face, furious. King Edward tries to soothe him.
‘I know you like a challenge, but I think there may be one too many ranged against us for that,’ he says.
‘Then what?’
‘Then we shall have to wait and see,’ he says.
They do not have to wait long. Before noon, a party of horsemen in red livery comes swirling into the inn’s yard. Thomas joins Hastings at the window. One of the horsemen is in perfect armour, with a hammer, visor down. Even Hastings has to whistle in admiration as the man dismounts. He has spurs a foot long, a flanged mace, and is encased in steel, yet still he manages elegance as he stops in the yard and looks up at them, and then tips his visor open. It is a form of a salute. King Edward is at Thomas’s shoulder, likewise looking down, and he grunts when he sees who it is.
‘Who’s that?’ Thomas asks.
‘His Grace the Archbishop of York,’ King Edward says. ‘He has come to take us into his care.’
And he turns to the door, and readies himself for captivity.
PART FOUR
Before and After the Assumption, Summer, 1469
17
Thomas stands with Lord Hastings perhaps ten yards from King Edward, slightly behind his right shoulder. It is raining and they are in a place known as Gosford Green, where they’ve been since dawn, standing before a straw-scattered scaffold on which sits a log of green yew. When they first saw it, they all believed it was for King Edward, and Thomas watched the King’s face drain pale, but Warwick’s steward, a plump, elderly little priest with jug ears and no way to say the letter R, assured them it was not. He simpered and capered and laughed at the thought, and his servant offered the King some sweetmeat or other, and a cup of something that the King took and knocked back. Strict order has been maintained since the moment the Archbishop of York – who turns out to be the Earl of Warwick’s brother – took King Edward into his custody in the yard of that inn at Olney. Knees have been bent, praises lavished. Hastings says King Edward has eaten better food and drunk finer wine since going into captivity than before it, and King Edward, now relieved of duty, has joked that imprisonment has much to recommend it.
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