Kingmaker: Broken Faith

by Toby Clements

  What happened then was not as humiliating or unpleasant as she had feared it might be. She undressed and then helped him. He smelled loamy and acidic; not very pleasant, but she imagined she smelled the same. He asked if she wanted to blow out the candle and she did, but not before she had seen his penis protruding from its nest of hair, and seeing it, she had felt not the shrieking revulsion she had thought she might, but the onset of a laugh. So this was what those nuns had spoken about with more reverence and veneration almost than the consecrated body of Christ? This thing?

  Richard almost knew what to do. He lay beside her and placed his hand on her pubis, in the wrong place, and then he felt cautiously between her legs. She lay still, her eyes seeing strange shapes in the dark, and he was not so much gentle as tentative and though it was never as pleasurable as Sister Joan suggested it might be, it was not an ordeal. Then when he felt he had done something, or enough of something, though she knew not what, he had clambered on top of her, pressing her into the sheets, his hipbones and frail wand of a penis digging into her body. Then he took some weight on his elbows and he placed his mouth over hers and kept it there, hot and sour, again for what seemed like a pre-planned and requisite length of time – as long as it took to say the Hail Mary, perhaps – and she was sure then that Richard was new to this too, following instructions, or a set of them, as planned as the Mass itself, given to him, she had to assume, by William Hastings. Strange to have him in the room, she thought, almost peering over Richard’s shoulder.

  Then he shunted her legs apart and after a moment of fumbling – and she unexpectedly knowing to raise her hips and part her knees – there was a sharp jolt of pain, nothing she would care to experience again, but equally, not as painful as a thousand things she had endured, before or since, and he pressed himself into her further, a strange, continually sore experience, a chafing probing sensation, and she felt him breathing very fast and then there was a moment of great tension in the air just above her face, and a grunt and a vast gust of exhaled breath. A moment later his head was on her shoulder and he was murmuring the name Margaret over and over while she laboured to breathe until he rolled off, leaving her with an unknown mess between her legs.

  And that was that. Until the next time, the next evening, when the whole thing happened again, though without the solemnity.

  It became marginally more enjoyable with the passing of time, but it was never anything akin to the delights the sisters had suggested while they were whispering in the dorter at the priory. It happened quite regularly, and sometimes she looked forward to it, but eventually, after six, seven months perhaps, of him trying to get her with child and her flowering the next month, Richard seemed to turn in on himself, and would rather be left to drink wine than come to bed, and that was the beginning of his decline, and, before all this, she used to worry that it was her fault; that there was something she was not doing, which is why they were not blessed with a child.

  Now though, here is Thomas.

  She looks up at him through the circle of his arms.

  ‘Thomas?’

  And he pulls away, awkwardly with his hips, and drops his arms, and now it is his turn to apologise.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ he says. ‘I cannot help it. It just happens.’

  He is blushing a wonderful colour.

  ‘It is all right, Thomas,’ she says. ‘I understand.’

  ‘It is just—’

  But she does not let go of him. And after a moment, he stoops to kiss her lips. The kiss lasts a moment longer than it might were they friends, and then, finally, an understanding is reached and their hands are on one another and they are pulling at each other’s points and laces, while all the time their lips are locked, and both have their eyes open and he is moving her off the path and into the longer grass when the sensation of being touched there by another, sympathetic, hand is too much for him. She sees his eyes widen and roll and he breaks away, gasping as if he is being strangled.

  ‘Thomas!’ she says. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  He is shuddering, hardly able to stand upright.

  ‘What is wrong? Christ! Shall I get help?’

  ‘No!’ he says. ‘No! Just. Just. A moment.’

  There is a pause. Then she realises.

  ‘Oh,’ she says, and she cannot help but laugh, but she is also, unexpectedly, furious.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Sorry. I – well, I am not used to it.’

  ‘I thought you were dying. I thought you had stood on a blade, or one of those caltrops.’

  He laughs.

  ‘No, no,’ he says. ‘It was – God.’

  ‘Let us sit,’ she says. She begins to retie her points, hoiking the hose up to lace them to her pourpoint. He does the same. When it is done, she sits on the bank, with her shoes above the sliding brown waters, and she feels a twinge of sorrow. She hardly knows what to say. But he does not seem sad. He sits next to her, closer than he might usually, with his shoulder against hers. She smiles at him. He puts his arm around her. Well, that is nice, she thinks. He laughs.

  ‘Is it always like that?’ he asks. ‘I mean, does that happen all the time?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she says. ‘But perhaps everyone is different?’

  He sighs.

  ‘Did you – did you ever … with Richard?’ he asks.

  And she is silent for a moment, sad.

  ‘I did,’ she says, after a while. ‘I was married to him, so of course we had to.’

  ‘But you never had a child?’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘No. I used to wonder why. I used to tell myself that it was because, because it was not right. Because I was not who I said I was, and so God did not smile on us, Richard or me, or bless the union. I did not mind. Really. Though I sometimes thought, I thought it would be nice. To have a child. I would have called him Thomas.’

  He grips her to him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

  ‘Mmmm,’ she agrees.

  Birds call, a single woodpigeon, and the water flows by, and she is not sure if she understands this thing that she is feeling – this intense emotional sickness – as if her heart is swooping and falling, swelling and shrinking, but she knows it is to do with Thomas.

  ‘But I am glad, too,’ he says.

  ‘Why?’ she asks.

  He looks at her, puzzled.

  ‘Because – because don’t you know?’

  But she does, really, and she sees that his hose is bulging, and she feels she too would like to press against something, and she places her hand on his thigh, and stretches to kiss him again and then once again they are in a rush to get their laces untied, and as she is hopping to remove one shoe, and pull her hose and braies off, he says something about how it would be easier if she were dressed as a girl, and then she is on her back and he is on top of her and this time it is better, and she cannot help gasping with the pleasure of it, and while it lasts it is golden, but it does not last long and he cries her name out as he shudders, and afterwards, while he is lying on her so heavily that she can hardly breathe, she cannot help smiling as she sees a flying wedge of geese pass high overhead, and she feels not just the great warmth of what they have done, but an absence of coldness, and despite his weight pressing her down, she feels lifted up, and that she might like to do that again, very soon.

  But then they hear a cry from the river, and he lifts his shoulders and turns, and now she can see a sail on the water, and Thomas is about to leap up and run, but she holds him tight with her arms and legs, and she looks into his eyes where the sunlight catches them, and she keeps him there, and he smiles down at her and then bends to kiss her and – my God! – they ignore the boatmen who sail by with shouts and jeers and there is something thrown, and he keeps at it and a moment later she feels she might burst with it all.

  When it is over, finally, and they are retying their hose, she asks if he remembers that first time they stood on a riverbank and he smiles.

  ‘“Two are bette
r than one,”’ he quotes, ‘“because they have a good reward for their labour for if they fall the one will lift up his fellow.”’

  ‘“But woe to him who is alone when he falls,”’ he carries on, ‘“for he has not another to lift him up.”’

  Then they turn and they walk together, never not touching one another, and he has a fat smile on his face and she feels that they should have done that long, long ago, and she feels simultaneously full and empty, and for a few blissful moments she does not care who she is and where they are, and what is to come. It is enough that they are with one another and that at last she has made Thomas happy.

  Richard’s second letter arrives a few weeks later, when the hay has been taken in, and there is the first hint of autumn in the air. Sir John stands in the yard with a cup of warmed wine. He is wearing a jacket over his doublet and he has given up the extravagantly piked shoes in favour of polished riding boots, which he wears turned down to the knee, and he is now never without his eyeglasses.

  ‘What have we here, eh?’ he asks, breaking the seal and unfolding the letter. It is short, though not written in any haste from London, but rather composed, considered, and contains three pieces of news: the first of which makes Sir John laugh until tears meet his beard, the second that makes him bellow with rage, and the third that creases his face in grief.

  ‘The people of Northampton rose up and tried to hang the Duke of Somerset!’ he laughs. ‘Dear God! They have not forgotten what he and his men did before the battle there that summer! Do you remember? They fired the place! Just as if it was France! Their own town! Well, I suppose some of them were Scots, so they can hardly be blamed, but oh, my Lord!

  ‘Apparently the townsmen were only persuaded to desist from hanging the bastard by some soothing words from King Edward himself, and a cask of wine opened in the marketplace! Now Somerset has been sent to some castle in Wales where King Edward hopes he will be safe. I hope he’s wrong! You can at least trust a Welshman to do that properly!’

  The second piece of news contained in the letter is the one they have been waiting for, and it is as bad as they feared: Lord Hastings’s final attempt to have ownership of Cornford Castle revert to Richard has failed. Edmund Riven, his family’s attainder reversed, is now free to enjoy the right and title of the said estate, unentailed, and is at liberty to assign it to the heirs of his body or anyone else he chooses.

  Sir John puts the letter on the log where the chessboard is carved and he removes his eyepieces and rubs his face with both hands.

  ‘So,’ he says. ‘It is over. We have been royally fucked. I mean that, Isabella, and I want your girls to hear me say it. We have been royally fucked. Fucked by a royal. Do you see? A royal has fucked us. For his own narrow self-interest, King Edward has gifted our property – our property – to that conniving, murdering, treacherous little shit Edmund bloody Riven.’

  He gestures at the chessboard, recalling their earlier conversation, though today the pieces are put away.

  Isabella sighs.

  ‘Never mind,’ she says. ‘We do not need the castle.’

  Sir John is angry.

  ‘It is not about the goddamned castle,’ he says. Then he apologises and admits that it is about the castle. Isabella forgives him and asks what else the letter says.

  Sir John picks it up. He adjusts his eyeglasses.

  ‘Let’s see, let’s see. Oh, dear God. Listen. This is Mayhew writing on his own behalf. “I have saved the worst news for last,” he writes. ‘Our dear Margaret Cornford is dead. The Prior of St Mary’s has sent message to say she was killed trying to abscond from the priory and that the boat she had stolen was later found drifting, empty, on the river as it runs through the town of Boston in the county of Lincolnshire. He enclosed a bill for the costs incurred housing her, for food and other divers needs, and for the search subsequent to her departure. Richard is inconsolable, and mourns her more than he mourns the loss of Cornford. I am keeping him under close watch, for he is more miserable than a worm, and right likely to take up weapons against one and all, including his own body.”’

  Sir John lowers the letter. He is weeping openly, and Katherine too cannot stop the tears filling her eyes when she thinks of the harm she has caused, and she feels guilt press down on her shoulders like a physical weight. Any happiness she had been feeling dwindles into nothing.

  They sit in silence for a while.

  ‘So what will Richard do now?’ Thomas cannot help asking.

  ‘Come home, I suppose,’ Sir John says. ‘Christ. It will be good to see the boy, but I wish it were in other circumstances. I wish – well, Isabella is right. There is no point going over all this again. It is as it is. There is nothing we can do, nothing we can bring to bear on the situation, so.’

  At that moment Robert returns from the woods where he has been walking. His tonsure has grown out and he has settled into Sir John’s household without a ripple. He is wearing russet from top to toe, and he is carrying a stick and a bag slung over his shoulder. He takes the bag off and opens it to show them a haul of glossy chestnuts within, but Thomas is on his feet instantly.

  ‘Why have you taken my bag?’ he asks. ‘And what have you done with the ledger?’

  Robert is surprised, but then he remembers Thomas’s attachment to the thing.

  ‘I am sorry, Brother Thomas,’ he says. ‘I did not think you would mind me borrowing the bag. I put your book quite safe on the coffer within, where the dogs cannot get at it. I needed a bag, is all.’

  Sir John snorts.

  ‘You didn’t touch his sacred ledger, did you, Robert? He won’t like that.’

  ‘It is safe and sound,’ Robert protests.

  ‘Good thing, too,’ Sir Johns says. ‘He was never separated from it, were you, Thomas? Took it into battle at Towton, didn’t you, though why I never knew.’

  Thomas has no proper idea why either. Robert takes the chestnuts to the kitchen and returns with the empty bag and the ledger. He fits the one inside the other and passes it to Thomas. It sits between them and Sir John frowns at it.

  ‘It was your old master’s, wasn’t it? Old Dowd the pardoner? And he felt it valuable?’

  ‘He hoped to sell it for a fortune in France,’ Katherine says. ‘Though we never knew who to, or why anyone would pay for it.’

  ‘A mystery then? May I?’

  Thomas lets him. He takes the ledger and opens it. He holds it up to the fading afternoon light and peers at it through his eyeglasses.

  ‘It is just a list of names?’ he says. ‘Men who served in France. Some I know. Yes. Yes. Hmmm. Yes. All their movements for those years. But why should it be of any value to anyone at all?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Katherine admits with a shrug. ‘Red John once said it must prove someone was somewhere they shouldn’t have been, or wasn’t somewhere they should’ve.’

  Sir John looks beady. It is the first time he has ever been interested in the ledger. Perhaps because there is almost nothing else left in which to take an interest.

  ‘But you said old Dowd thought it would make him a fortune, didn’t you? So, think on it. There will be nothing of any value in finding that, say, this fellow – Thomas de Hookton – was here, say, rather than there, will it? No one would pay a farthing to discover the whereabouts of a simple archer from Hampshire.’

  Katherine groans. It is so obvious. Of course it could only be someone of wealth! She feels utterly foolish.

  ‘The Duke of York,’ she says. ‘King Edward’s father. He is mentioned.’

  Sir John nods.

  ‘Well,’ he says, wrinkling his nose, ‘he is dead, of course, so your book may be of little or no value now, but let us have a look anyway.’

  And he starts the book at the beginning.

  ‘So where was he then, that he should not have been? Or where was he not that he should have been. Let us begin at the beginning, St Edward’s Day—’

  ‘That is the eighteenth day of the month of March,’ Robe
rt intones.

  They all look at him. He smiles slightly.

  ‘Father Barnaby made us learn them,’ he says. ‘“Knowledge of the lives of the saints and martyrs is what separates us from the pagans and the beasts in the fields.”’

  They stare at him a moment, wondering if this is true. Then after a while Sir John continues.

  ‘Anyway,’ he says. ‘St Edward’s Day, of the nineteenth year of old King Henry’s reign. So, now, what is our old friend the Duke up to then, hey?’

  He reads, moving his lips, but in unnerving silence, and Thomas’s shoulder touches hers and she nudges him back.

  ‘Aha,’ Sir John says after a moment. ‘Here he is. It says the Duke is in the garrison at Rouen, with Sir Henry Cuthbert of Gwent, three companies of men-at-arms and four of archers from Cheshire and other divers parts of the realm. He celebrates Mass with Cecily, Duchess of York.’

  He turns the page and reads its reverse.

  ‘And he is in Rouen until – yes. Here he is there all that month, until here – on the first Thursday after St George’s Day.’

  ‘Which is the twenty-third day of April,’ Robert says.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Sir John agrees, slightly impatient now, ‘when the Duke leaves for La Roche-Guyon – I remember La Roche! Anyway, he doesn’t stay long, because he’s back in Rouen for Mass to mark the Finding of the True Cross—’

  ‘Which is the second day of June.’

  ‘—at the cathedral, again with the Duchess, and he’s still there until – until here, the last week before the Feast of St Peter and St Paul?’

  ‘The twenty-ninth day of June.’

  ‘After which he goes to a place called Pontours, is it? Yes. Pontours. That is in Aquitaine, I think, quite small. Never went there myself. But the Duke is there, why? Ah. “To resist the King’s enemies”, or as we call it, fighting the French. Anyway, he is there in the company of Gui de Something – can’t read that word – a gentleman of Gascony, with one incomplete company of men-at-arms and two likewise of archers, and he’s gone until …’