Can she really be Kit again? Will Sir John accept the boy back? All she can cling to is the strange hope that he already knows she is not who she says she is, and that he does not – what? Care? Think it matters? Or is he too playing some unknown game, some sophisticated scheme, the advantages to which she is yet blind?
She almost cries out with the frustration of it. Perhaps she ought not to have escaped the priory in the first place? Perhaps she should have stayed to face the Prior of All, to hang for the murder of Sister Joan? Then at least she would not be bringing her lies into the lives of others.
But then she remembers the Prioress. The beatings. The cruelties. She remembers gentle Alice, first raped, then left for dead, then murdered in her bed by those sworn to protect her. She remembers Giles Riven, his viciousness both casual and calculated. She remembers that giant who wanted to put Thomas’s eye out, who blinded Richard, murdered Geoffrey. She remembers the boy Edmund who had once hunted her for pleasure, then in earnest. She thinks of Eelby, and his smirking greasy face, triumphant as she was expelled from the world because she tried to save his baby when he himself had not lifted a finger for his wife. And when she thinks of these people, when she thinks of the harm they’ve done, she finds she is so angry that she has overtaken both Robert and Thomas on the road, and that she is banging her beetle on the ground with every step and that her body throngs with pent-up fury and the desire to live, to survive, to thrive, if only to beat them, destroy them, and finally see them all dead. By Christ! She will do anything to see that.
When they arrive at the village it is late afternoon. There are pigs and goats in their pens, a few geese, and a boy with a shepherd’s crook is slinging stones at blackbirds in a furlong by the churchyard.
‘Who is it going to be?’ Thomas asks quietly.
She pauses for a final second, then: ‘Kit,’ she says.
And it is decided.
The last time they surprised Sir John he was barricaded behind his door with a crossbow ready to kill the next man he saw. He was in a foul state, Katherine recalls, smelling like a badger, and the estate was despoiled and Geoffrey lay dead in a field. Already this is better, and as they approach, she sees – with an appreciative eye for having tried it herself – that fences are mended, hedges laid and there is the makings of a new hovel not yet finished among the recently coppiced hazel wood. She smells plum-wood hearth smoke and hears a peal of laughter: a woman’s.
As they approach a dog yaps. It is not the full-throated bark of the talbots that used to run here, but something smaller and a moment later a terrier comes racing through the gateway to the yard and stands before them, yapping fiercely, tongue very pink, eyes very black. Robert swings his stick good-naturedly at the dog and mutters some soothing words. A moment later she hears Sir John’s voice raised in question. Thomas gives her one last nod as she swallows, pulls her brigandine down and her hose up, exaggerating the empty codpiece, and steps forward.
Sir John is sitting in the last golden beam of the afternoon sunlight, on a log by the step on which they used to sharpen knives. Opposite is a woman in a green dress, likewise on a log, and they are both drinking from mugs and looking up from a chessboard. There is a long moment of silence while the old man holds Katherine’s gaze. She feels her bowels liquefy, and tears spring in her eyes. She wants to turn and run. This was a mistake.
‘John,’ the woman says, ‘who are these men?’
Sir John’s mouth opens slack, his face is wiped clean, all expression erased by shock. For a moment he says and does nothing, then he whispers: ‘By all the saints.’
‘Sir John,’ Katherine starts, a lump in her throat, tears in her eyes. ‘I am sorry—’
‘By all the saints,’ he repeats. ‘It is you. And you. Dear God. Kit. Thomas. I— Dear God.’
He stands. He seems uncertain on his feet, lost, clumsy, like her idea of a bear. His teary gaze is fixed on her, then switches to Thomas, then comes back, and she in her turn shifts from foot to foot, and she wishes she could turn and run, but equally she cannot help but grin, and tears tremble on her lids, then spill down her cheeks and then Sir John gives a whoop of delight.
‘Dear God,’ he calls. ‘Dear Blessed God above! It is you. You! Back from the dead! Dear God. And Thomas! Oh, my boys. I never thought – oh, to see you again. I thought they’d rolled you in some hole in Wales, with Walter and those Welsh lads. And you! We were sure you were dead at Towton!’
Tears leak into the deep creases in his face and drops gather in his newly trimmed beard and now he stumbles forward and envelops Katherine in his right arm and Thomas in his left and he pulls them as tight as an old man can and he smells of some sweet herb and now all three have their arms around one another and all three are weeping uncontrollably.
At last Sir John pulls away. He holds her by the shoulders at arm’s length and looks down at her and he is snivelling, but then a frown flickers across his brow.
‘What in God’s name is this?’
He slaps her chest with the back of his fingers. She flinches and now, dear God, she feels as if she might burn up with shame, but then Sir John’s face wrinkles into a laugh.
‘A brigandine!’ he shouts. ‘A brigandine! Great suffering Christ, boy! You’ve still no beard yet here you are strutting around like a fighting cock!’
Sir John looks over at the woman who stands with her hands clasped at her broad waist, a rosary looped over her belt, and a length of linen wound around her head to form a headdress.
‘Isabella!’ he calls. ‘Isabella! This is Kit, this little one here, and this is Thomas, this big lunk here.’
He thumps Thomas on the shoulder and then frowns again.
‘Who are you?’
Thomas introduces Robert.
‘May God bring you joy, sir,’ Robert says.
‘He already has!’ Sir John says with a great, shining smile. ‘Look! This is my wife. Isabella. My wife, do you hear?’
He beams at her, and then at them, plump with pride, and she is smiling patiently at him. She is uncertain of their social rank, and so smiles at them all but makes no move toward them, and why should she, since they appear as beggars, and it is only because of her husband’s reaction to their presence that she looks at them twice.
‘I have told you about them!’ Sir John presses on. ‘Do you recall? About our time in Calais? How this one saved first young Richard when he was caught by an arrow, and then how he cut me? I have even tried to show you the – but anyway! Here they are. Alive. Solid in flesh, though dear God, look at them! In parlous circumstance, just as ever they were. Look at you. Filthy as crows. And what in God’s name has happened to your hair? Did you cut it yourself? By Christ, I shall love to hear how it has come to pass this time!’
‘Sir John,’ Katherine says, ‘we are mortally hungry. Is there anything we might eat before we tell all?’
Sir John defers to Isabella. She smiles.
‘We have some capons,’ she says, ‘and some pike. Peasecod too. Plenty of ale still, and even some red wine from Gascony.’
‘From Gascony!’ Sir John echoes, sitting back on his log, rubbing his hands and rolling his eyes. Katherine’s mouth floods at the thought of meat. Isabella then retreats to the house, calling for someone as she goes.
‘Is she not wonderful?’ Sir John says, watching her back as she departs. Then he lowers his voice. ‘She is old Freylin’s widow, you know. We were married after the Annunciation this last year – sudden you might call it, yes, but I tell you. It was meant to be. And she is rich! As Croesus! Freylin left her manors all over the county – and look.’
He holds out his legs to show them his fine shoes, wiggling their strikingly long toes and laughing delightedly.
‘Nor,’ he adds conspiratorially, grinning and shooting his eyebrows up and down a couple of times, ‘is she unduly observant of feast days after curfew!’
It is astonishingly good to see the old man so happy and well, and the wine is brought by a girl whom
Sir John calls Meg and they sit and drink while Sir John laughs and promises them he has had Mass said for their mortal souls, pointlessly as it turns out, and how he has given some of Isabella’s money for the painting of a figure of St Christopher in the church and how he and Isabella often walk down there to look at it for luck and he burbles on about the estate and how if it were not for having to keep terriers rather than decent dogs, such as the talbots he loved so, then he might come to believe that he was living in an earthly paradise.
‘But sir,’ Katherine says, ‘what of Richard? Where is he? We had hoped to find him here.’
Sir John stops his laughter and stares at her. Thomas shakes his head minutely, regretfully, as if he already knows more than her, and she wonders what she has done wrong.
‘You never did like passing time much, did you, Kit?’ Sir John says.
She thinks that if that is all it is, changing the tenor of an evening, then she does not mind so very much, but now Sir John hunches forward, spreading his legs and peering at the ground between his feet.
‘Richard is in London,’ he says. ‘With his surgeon, named Mayhew. They are seeking help in the matter of his wife – you remember her, don’t you? Margaret? Whom you brought back from Wales? Well, she has got herself caught up in – in something. She is something of a leech, this Margaret. A surgeon more like, with a gift almost as great as yours, Kit. She even saved my life after Towton Field.’
He removes his cap, and points to a bald patch the size of a crab apple within which sits a circular worm of livid scar tissue. Katherine cannot help her hands coming up as if to touch it. She resists.
‘A tonsure almost as good as yours, eh, Canon?’ Sir John laughs before restoring the cap. Robert smiles, but says nothing. He is a comforting presence, like a large dog, happy to sit and listen, just to be with them.
‘Anyway,’ Sir John continues. ‘This last year Margaret cut a woman who was dying in childbed. She saved the child, something of a miracle apparently, but not the woman. So there had to be an inquest, of course. We told her she must seek someone of influence to let the coroner know where his best interests lay, but she is stubborn, this Margaret – even Richard says as much, though he is still so smitten with the girl to find it charming. Anyway, she did not follow our advice. And Richard could do nothing since he is a blind man. Did you know?’
Katherine nods.
‘Yes,’ Sir John continues. ‘So the inquest came and she was caught out. Some other fellow swayed the jury. Packed it, or bribed it, I don’t know. So the coroner found the thing – the intervention, the what-have-you, the cutting – to be murder and so they bound her over. She’s languishing in some closed convent, some blessed hole in that part of the county, waiting on the King’s Justices to troop along and try her case.’
‘And who is Richard petitioning for her release?’ she asks.
‘William Hastings. You remember him? He saved you being hanged that time, the time you had your ear clipped. A good man, Hastings, but busy. He has gone up in the world, like the lark, by God, almost beyond measure. He is Chamberlain to the King, can you believe it?’
At that moment Thomas looks up and glances beyond Katherine.
‘Tell us about it again, Kit,’ he says, a little too loudly. ‘Tell us how it came about,’ and she glances around, sees Isabella standing staring at her, and understands, and she tells them the story of how she tried to run from the Earl of Warwick’s camp that time they came from Calais, and how the Earl’s men caught her and how the Earl wanted her hanged as an example to others thinking of deserting.
‘That’s right!’ Sir John laughs. ‘And Lord Hastings – as he is now – he saved the day! Got the sentence changed to the clipping of Kit’s ear, and no one wanted to do it, so Tom here, he did it. With hot shears! I remember. Ooof.’
Thomas rolls his eyes and shrugs as if to say, well, any man would do the same, and then Katherine brushes her hair back to reveal what remains of her upper ear.
‘That was a close shave!’ Sir John barks. ‘Too close. Ha ha! Bella, my love, come. Come. Did you hear that? A joke!’
Isabella’s gaze remains fixed on Katherine. This is it, Katherine thinks. This is the woman who will find me out. See my secret.
‘May I?’ Isabella asks. She has a soft, husked voice that is kindly, and she is like someone who laughs a lot, but she is no fool. Katherine can only shrug, and Isabella bends over her, and Katherine can smell the same sweet herbs that perfume Sir John, and she can see the knobbly texture of the linen of Isabella’s dress and apron and Katherine’s body shrieks and shrinks as Isabella raises her hand and touches her fingers to her ear’s tip, but she allows it.
‘Does it hurt?’ Isabella asks.
‘It aches in the cold,’ Katherine mutters, brusque with nerves.
‘We all ache in the cold!’ Sir John laughs. Then: ‘Stop fussing, Bella,’ he says, ‘and have some more wine. Kit and Thomas can tell us all.’
Isabella will not sit with them, despite Sir John’s entreaties, and she leaves them to it, and Katherine is relieved, and now she is able to steer the conversation away from her made-up story – that she was on a boat that got lost at sea, trying to get back from Pembroke, and they sailed to Ireland, where again she became lost – without any difficulty.
‘But has Richard sent any news from London?’ she asks.
Sir John actually growls.
‘By Christ,’ he mutters. ‘Richard wrote – or rather his man Mayhew did – a few weeks ago to say that the Duke of Somerset is back in the King’s grace. Can you believe it? King Edward has forgiven the man who killed his father! He has forgiven the man who killed his brother! The man who put their heads on spikes on the gatehouse in York! The Duke of Somerset led King Henry’s forces at Northampton, do you remember? And we beat him then, and he led them again at Towton Field, and we beat him then too, but, by God, only just.
‘And each time he slipped away. And now the bastard’s done it again. He got caught in one of those castles up north, some hole from which not even a practised rat such as he could escape, so he surrendered. And King Edward accepted! If old Warwick had been there, or Montagu, God forbid, or anyone else for that matter, anyone. They’d have chopped his bloody head off. Right there and then.’
He makes a dusty-sounding chopping motion with his hands and imitates the head bouncing twice. ‘Bonk bonk.’
He gulps his wine, bangs the cup down, pours more. Thomas fiddles with a chess piece, doesn’t look up. Katherine is suddenly certain Sir John knows nothing of the return of Edmund Riven.
‘But not King Edward,’ Sir John resumes. ‘No. In fact, not only has he reversed the death sentence he passed on the Duke of Somerset, not only has he restored all his divers lands and titles, he’s even – and you will not credit this – he’s even taken him as a gentleman of the bedchamber!’
Thomas and Robert look blank. Katherine is likewise in the dark.
‘He sleeps with him in the same bed!’ Sir John tells them. ‘In the same bloody bed! Naked! With neither knife nor sword! King Edward and the Duke of Somerset! King Edward’s father killed the Duke’s father, and the Duke killed King Edward’s father, and now they lie, like that!’
Isabella returns, moving quick and soft. She sits beside Sir John and places a soothing hand on his forearm, and he places his hand on hers.
‘He who covers over a transgression seeks only love,’ Robert says.
There is general silence for a moment. Sir John looks at him balefully, but Isabella smiles.
‘Amen,’ she says.
‘I know,’ Sir John says. ‘I know. I know. I know you are right. But I lost friends, and men I admired, and men whose families needed them. Don’t you see? All this – this – this pissing about that men such as Edward of York and the Duke of bloody Somerset do – it doesn’t affect them as it affects the rest of us.’
Having explained himself, he is calmer, but Katherine needs to know:
‘Richard has said no
thing of – nothing of Edmund Riven?’
Isabella is suddenly still, wholly alert, head cocked, eyes as wide as pennies: a deer sensing a hunter.
‘Dear God,’ Sir John whispers, ‘that is a name I hoped never again to hear at this table.’
There is a long moment of silence, then:
‘What of him?’ Sir John asks.
‘We heard that he too is – he is back,’ Thomas says.
‘Back?’ Sir John asks. ‘Back from where? The dead? Giles Riven is dead. His family is attainted. There is no way back for him, unless – what do you know? Why do you say that?’
Katherine hesitates a moment.
Then she says: ‘It is Edmund Riven The son. He has come back with the Duke of Somerset. He has taken the castle at Cornford.’
For a moment Sir John is silent and still. Then he erupts. With a sweep of his arm, he clears the board of chess pieces and mugs and the ewer, sending them bouncing over the ground. The little dog that had settled by his wife’s feet is up and yapping and now all are standing and Sir John is bawling and Isabella is trying to calm him until Robert steps in and takes Sir John by the shoulders and holds him steady and starts talking softly to him. After a few long moments when it seems Sir John remains looking for something to kill, he calms slightly, and is left breathing heavily, his eyes rolling and flecks of foam around his mouth.
Isabella takes him in her arms and guides him inside.
Thomas and Katherine bend to pick up the mugs and the chess pieces. For a moment they cannot find the black king, but then there it is, lying on its side.
Later, when they are in the hall by the fire, and the bones of the birds and the fish lie picked on the board, Sir John comes down again, this time without Isabella, and he sits where he always used to sit. He looks much older than when they saw him first that afternoon, she thinks, and he has lost something too; that sheen of new-found happiness, and she feels shame, and wonders if he’d have preferred to live in ignorance. Then again, though, someone would have told him. The old man does not say anything for a moment, but sits and stares into the flames. Then he stretches a hand to pick up one of the chess pieces they’ve brought in: it is the white king. He begins in a low voice:
Kingmaker: Broken Faith Page 14