Kingmaker: Broken Faith

by Toby Clements

  Thomas looks at Katherine. For once she seems equally confused. Why is he here? Why is Sir Giles in Bamburgh?

  Thomas thanks the guards and he leads Katherine and Jack and John Stump out of the gatehouse and up in the gathering dark of the deserted and empty stables, where they unsaddle their horses and feed them the very last scraps of hay in the manger.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ Jack asks. ‘Do you suppose this is it?’

  ‘Could be,’ John Stump says. He needs help with his saddle. ‘Least we’ll have our old quarters. Was getting used to them, before we left.’

  So they go on foot up through the inner bailey where there are still very few men to be seen, many fewer even than before, and there are no lamps lit, save on the first solar of the keep and in the church, nor are there fires in the watchtowers, and there is a single solitary man at the inner postern gate which is open anyway, and beyond, in the outer bailey where the sheep used to graze and there were smithies and arrow makers, and men and women under canvas, there is nothing.

  ‘Christ,’ Jack says. ‘There’s nobody here.’

  ‘They must have just run home,’ John Stump says. ‘And who’s to blame them?’

  They walk in silence.

  ‘You’re awful quiet,’ John Stump tells Thomas. Thomas grunts.

  What is Riven’s scheme? Why is he not with his son and with Montagu? What is he up to.

  ‘He is trying to take the castle,’ Katherine says suddenly. ‘That is it. While his son takes the king, the father takes the castle.’

  There is a moment before Thomas sees this, and once it is seen it is so obvious it becomes impossible to imagine any other thing. After all, if Giles and Edmund Riven delivered King Henry and Bamburgh Castle into the lap of King Edward, then they might reasonably expect such rewards as would make Cornford Castle seem like a kestrel mews. They would be made earls at the very least, and given the estates of men like Grey and Roos and Hungerford who would have no further need of them, surely, for being dead.

  ‘So what to do?’ He says, to himself more than Katherine, because he knows of course what he must do. It is what he has almost always wanted to do: to kill Giles Riven. He cannot help but give Katherine a tight smile. Giles Riven has delivered himself into their hands. And if they can retrieve the ledger at the same time – well, that is all the better.

  ‘And now he is waiting,’ she says. ‘That is what he is doing. After Bywell, he has had to adapt his scheme, but it leads to the same end anyway.’

  Thomas groans with the frustration of it.

  ‘At every turn,’ he says. ‘That bloody man.’

  For a long moment he imagines himself perched in a tower’s top with his bow and a handful of shafts, and he can see Riven so clearly in the bailey, standing alone in his livery, and he imagines nocking the arrow and then loosing it – a difficult shot downwards into a space – but he will do it. He will do it. And there will be no mistake this time. No one says another word as they cross down to the familiar arch of the outward postern gate where there is a faint glow from the window. Thomas strides ahead, gathered now, ready for what must come. He does not look at Katherine again. He is thinking only of killing Riven. He shoves open the lower door of the Great outward Posten Gate and the four of them file in, into the dark, and they make their way up the familiar worn steps to the room above, the one with the bread oven.

  As they climb the steps in the dark, Thomas cannot help but recall all the times they coupled together, in secret, with his feet pressed to the door above, and now Katherine is paying the price, he supposes, while he – well, he is weary beyond belief, and he can hardly lift his feet, but at least there is a light in the room above and he steps up and shunts open the door, then stops.

  There are three men gathered in the glow of the mouth of the bread oven, playing dice. All look up. All are bearded. None he recognises. One stands. He is in a white livery tabard, and in the light spilling from the oven, Thomas can see he is wearing the badge of the crow. Of the raven. He is one of Riven’s men. They are all three Riven’s men. Two are the men who promised to cut Thomas from gut to gizzard.

  ‘Fuck me,’ one of them says. ‘If it isn’t the mad cunt.’

  The fight is very quick. The three men come at them while they are still in the doorway, but they are not armed so well as Thomas, or as Jack, and they must first reach for their knives, and two of them are in linen shirts, and as they converge on the door they crowd themselves. Thomas backs out, up the steps. Jack steps back down the steps, but he pulls his sword out and up, and his is really sharp, and it slices straight up through one of their outstretched wrists and there is a cry and suddenly the air is filled with that terrible, shaming smell of blood. Jack throws himself forward, he is cutting and slashing, One of the men throws himself against the door. Jack is knocked back. Thomas kicks the door. It hits one of the men. Thomas shoves it wider, sending the man staggering. The wounded one wheels away, gripping his arm, and Thomas surges into the room using him as a shield. The two others cannot get at Thomas, but Thomas can at them, and he slashes and catches one. He pushes the wounded man away just as one of them swings at Thomas’s eyes, but he is knocked off balance by the wounded man, and after that it is simple. Thomas closes and thrusts his blade up under the man’s armpit. His sword is held sideways. It slides between the man’s ribs. He pushes in. A double handspan. The man chokes, stutters. He and Thomas are eyeball to eyeball, the man looking at Thomas from the tail of his. A bubble of blood grows and pops under his nostril. There is no change in his appearance, but Thomas knows the man is dead. The point of Thomas’s blade is right in his throat. Thomas pulls it out and it’s as if it was the only thing holding the man up.

  The room feels very small now, and the wounded man is shouting loudly. He is clutching his arm in just the way Eelby clutched his when Katherine hit him with her washing beetle, and he’s shouting at it to stop it bleeding, but the wound won’t, and it’s spraying black blood everywhere and he knows as well as anyone that he is a dead man standing.

  And now the last live, fully whole man has gathered himself, and he moves his blade quickly, darting forward, always balanced, as if he is playing at this, and Thomas can see how expert he is, and he feels clumsy and leaden-limbed before him. The man darts forward and there is a quick movement and a tug on Thomas’s sleeve and he feels burning pain at his wrist and before he can tell what has happened warm blood drips from his fingertips.

  ‘Come on then, simpleton,’ the man says. ‘Spared you once, won’t do it again.’

  And then from the side Thomas sees the wounded man gathering up his own knife in his clumsy left hand, and he is about to come at Thomas, when Jack intervenes, almost lazily, as a precaution, extending his sword to hold the man back, but it becomes a backhanded slice that stops within the man’s neck, maybe against his spine, and he drops on his knees with a truncated scream and a frothing mess. But the distraction is enough, and the last of them comes at Thomas again, and Thomas is too slow. His arms are heavy, his body too large, and he is not a fighter, not like this man, however lucky he has been in the past, and he feels a punch in his chest that makes him cough and step back. He looks down to see the man’s pinched little face peering up at him with a savage grimace of pleasure and victory, but then the man’s expression changes as he realises he has not caught Thomas below the ribs as he’d hoped, but he has slid his knife against one of the metal plates in Thomas’s jack. And Thomas wraps his arms around him in an embrace that pins him tight so that he cannot pull the knife from where it is stuck in the tow, and he turns him so that he has his back to Jack, and Jack stabs him, short and sharp.

  He stiffens in Thomas’s arms, and Thomas finds it repellent, and he does not want to be so close to him when he dies, and so pushes him away into the corner of the room where he twists, and falls on his front and lies with his toes scuffing irregularly in the bloody puddles on the rough stone flags.

  After a moment there is nothing to hear except th
e sigh of burning wet wood in the oven, and his own heavy breath. Then Jack laughs without opening his mouth. They say nothing for a bit. Thomas wipes his blade on the first corpse and then slides it into his scabbard. He watches Jack wipe his own blade clean, then cross it, muttering a blessing, and then slide it away for next time. His skin is pale against the blood and now he is trembling.

  ‘Thank you, Jack,’ Thomas says. Jack waves his hand: it was nothing. Katherine and John Stump are at the doorway. Katherine has her mouth covered against the smell. She takes the knife that is still stuck in his jack and she cuts a section of linen from a cleanish shirt. Then she passes him one of the ale jugs.

  ‘Piss in it,’ she says from behind her hand.

  Thomas does so.

  ‘All right, all right. That is enough!’

  She gets him to pour some of it over the wound on his wrist, and then binds it tight with a wad of urine-soaked linen pressed against the cut. She slices the ends of the bindings with the blade that would have killed him and then slips it into her own scabbard.

  ‘Don’t think we’ll be wanting to stop here tonight after all,’ John says. There is blood on the ceiling, all over the walls, pooling on the tiles. Thomas searches the men’s belongings, rummaging around in the falling dark, going through their worn clothes, their meagre possessions: mugs, bowls, eating spoons, rosary beads. Only one of them has a spare shirt. He did not expect to find the ledger, of course, nor does he, but still …

  ‘Thomas,’ John Stump says, nodding at Katherine. She is drooping with fatigue, and he puts his good arm around her, and she flinches, but then remembers, and she allows herself to be helped, and he must almost carry her.

  ‘Is she quite well?’ John Stump asks.

  ‘No,’ Thomas says. ‘We must find Master Payne first.’

  ‘And before we meet anyone else who takes exception to us,’ Jack adds.

  ‘He will be in the keep,’ John Stump says, and Jack shoots Thomas a look and they nod at one another. They – he – must now face Giles Riven. He eases the sword in its scabbard again and wonders if this will finally be the moment. He feels his heart flutter. He knows he is in no fit state to fight Riven, and he sees that he himself will probably be cut down by Riven’s men either before or after he has killed him, and he wonders where that will leave Katherine. But then – what choice does he have? He must find Payne. He must get her treatment, or at least a bed, and if that requires confronting Riven, then – he ends in a mental shrug. Christ, he thinks, I am almost dead on my feet anyway.

  There are lights burning within the keep, and Thomas pictures the great hall with a fire burning and every sort of pie and other dish spread on the boards, and he can almost taste the ale that he imagines will be flowing. It is dark now and they have no idea how well they have done in getting rid of the blood, until they try to negotiate their way up the steps of the keep, past the guard, where the captain, one of the King’s men, is having none of it.

  ‘By all His saints!’ he says. ‘I’m not having you in there. Rightful King of England’s in there, you know? And you turn up looking like butchers from the shambles? Have you come fresh from Hexham?’

  ‘We met some of Montagu’s prickers down the road,’ John says. ‘Which is why we are after Master Payne.’

  The captain looks warily southward as if he might see Montagu’s horsemen through the curtain walls.

  ‘Christ,’ he says. ‘They here already?’

  And he turns and begins up the steps, on his way to report the news to someone within, gesturing to two other guards that Thomas is not to be allowed in.

  ‘But what about Master Payne?’ Thomas calls. ‘The physician? Is he within?’

  One of the two guards shakes his head.

  ‘Try the east gatehouse,’ he mutters. ‘He is with Sir Ralph Grey, beacuse neither of ’em like the company in here.’

  So they turn and troop across the darkness of the inner bailey to the east gatehouse, a smaller version of the keep, built into the curtain wall, from where a track leads down towards the beach and the sea beyond. Here lights also burn, and the guard – one of Grey’s men this time – recognises them and lets them through and they climb the steps toward the brightest source of light in the solar on the first floor until they are intercepted by Sir Ralph Grey himself, who comes weaving towards them along a passageway, accompanied by a man with a glass lantern. He is clutching a cup and a bottle of something.

  ‘Ho ho!’ he cries. ‘Who have we here?’

  He is at the capering, eloquent stage of drunkenness, and he hones in on Katherine, raising his swaying cup in her direction.

  ‘Goodwife Everingham!’ he calls. ‘Goodwife Everingham! I am delighted to see you again, here in our castle. I feared for your safety after the tidings of my Lord of Somerset’s latest debacle! I feared your abundant physical charms would prove too much of a temptation for my Lord of Montagu’s common soldiery, and the usual indiscriminate intimacy would be forced upon your person, but no! Here you are, eh? Safe and sound in the arms of your – your – your husband here.’

  It is still not clear if he believes Katherine is Thomas’s wife, and now he stares at her with no restraint while taking another nip of his drink, and after Thomas asks if he knows Payne’s whereabouts, it is as if Grey’s lips are numb, and he cannot form the word ‘physician’, so after trying it a few times, he stops, and he grins at them glassily, and he bows, and gestures that they are to pass on their way up the steps to the solar beyond. As they pass him, he makes a clumsy grab for Katherine, but Thomas shelters her, and Grey misses and staggers and they leave him smiling delightedly at the wall, propped against it with one arm, just as if he might be pissing upon its footings.

  They find Payne in the solar above, sitting alone at a board, in the dim light of a rush lamp.

  ‘Who is it?’ he asks, and then: ‘God save us,’ when they enter the lamp’s radius and he sees who they are. ‘What have you brought me this time?’

  ‘She is – I don’t know.’

  ‘Make a bed,’ he says. ‘Carefully.’

  And Thomas and Jack and one-armed John Stump set to, finding and unrolling a straw mattress from the corner and placing it by the low-burning fire in the chimney place. They watch as Payne leads Katherine to one of the mattresses and she follows and he lies her down with her boots over the far end so as to keep it clean.

  ‘Come,’ he tells Thomas, ‘and take this.’

  He passes him a rush. Thomas holds it up over Katherine and in its sombre glow, she looks ready to be washed for her winding sheet.

  ‘She will be all right?’

  Payne grunts. He starts touching parts of her body.

  ‘What have you been doing with her?’ Payne asks.

  ‘We had to get away from Hexham,’ he says.

  ‘You rode? She stinks of horses. You all do. And Christ, what have you been doing? You are covered in blood. Look at you.’

  ‘We met a man who felt we had an imbalance of humours,’ Jack says, and Payne looks up at him from under his brows.

  ‘Phlebotomy is not something to trifle with,’ he says.

  Jack laughs.

  Payne presses an ear to Katherine’s breast. When he kneels and lifts his head he sees her new knife, there in her belt, and he takes it and holds it up.

  ‘Mine,’ he says.

  ‘We took it from the man who tried to kill us,’ Jack says.

  ‘One of Riven’s?’ Payne asks.

  Thomas nods.

  ‘Why is he here?’ he asks. ‘Why has he not come out for King Edward?’

  Payne shrugs.

  ‘Biding his time, I suppose.’

  ‘Christ,’ is all Thomas can say.

  ‘When we reached here the King was mightily pleased to see Riven, you know? He embraced him and called him his right well-beloved subject and so on, and his men – he had but a few of them – stood staring. They were keeping the castle almost alone then, and it would have been obvious to leave Riven
as castellan of this place, but Grey had extracted a promise from King Henry on the road up here that he would be made castellan, and for once King Henry kept his word, so now Grey is castellan, which I thought would be a bitter blow for Riven, but Riven just laughed, which made Grey reach for his dagger. You know what he is like. He did not actually draw it, of course. King Henry soothed him, as best as he was able, but now Grey keeps himself here, while Riven is ensconced with the king in the keep.’

  ‘How many men has he?’

  ‘Riven? I cannot say. Neither has enough to hold the castle on his own against the other. I think that is the only thing that keeps the peace.’

  ‘They could kill each other,’ Jack says, ‘Riven and Grey, and then we could all be off.’

  Payne scoffs.

  John Stump asks if he has any tidings from Hexham.

  ‘Well, the Duke of Somerset has run his final race,’ Payne tells them. ‘He was caught in the woods fast by the field, and this time there was no mercy. Montagu had his head from his shoulders the very next day, in Hexham marketplace.’

  ‘Ha!’ John says, proved right.

  Then Payne turns to Thomas, while his fingers feel under Katherine’s jaw. He sniffs her breath. He frowns.

  ‘When did she last eat?’

  Thomas shrugs.

  ‘It has been hard,’ he says.

  Payne grunts.

  ‘Hungerford and Roos were taken, too, you know?’ Payne says. ‘They will seek King Edward’s grace, of course, and probably get it too, for all the advantage they’ve afforded Montagu.’

  ‘And Tailboys?’ Thomas asks.

  ‘Tailboys? I have heard nothing of him since last I saw him at Hexham, but he was always lucky, wasn’t he? Knowing him he has probably been carried south in a litter covered with cloth of gold. Now. Listen. All of you. Get out of here. I need to take Goodwife Everingham’s urine and she will not thank me if I make a public show of it.’