Kingdom Come

by Toby Clements

‘He’s no guns, did you see?’ Jack says.

  Just then Wilkes appears with a roasted pigeon on a skewer.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ Flood asks.

  Wilkes holds up the pigeon as if this is the answer, and offers it to Flood, who hesitates, but then yields.

  Nothing more is asked or said, and they share out the little bag of baked bones and it flavours their bread and ale, and they sit in silence for a moment, until someone raises their voice in the council of war on the other side of the fire, and Thomas and the others stare through the dying light, trying to gauge who is likely to win the argument.

  ‘But he cannot hope to beat King Edward with these men?’ Thomas wonders aloud. ‘Surely? I mean, look at them.’

  They look more like armed pilgrims than an army. There are no liveries that he recognises, and there’s little order, and none of the noise Thomas associates with these sorts of camps. Where are the smiths? The bowyers? The drummer boys? No one is up to much, and you can see clumps of fat, elderly men gathered to sit and talk about the weather or the stiffness of their backs. Still, there are enough of them, Thomas thinks, and if those reports from Yorkshire are to be believed, there are a great many more yet to come.

  ‘The bearded man still favours passing on to Leicester,’ Wilkes observes, nodding at the war council.

  ‘Isn’t that where Clarence intends meeting Warwick?’ Thomas asks. ‘In Leicester? With all his men-at-arms?’

  Flood tilts his head in assent.

  ‘But can he really be serious?’ Thomas goes on. ‘Can he really be thinking of using King Edward’s own men to go against King Edward? His own brother?’

  ‘What do you think, Wilkes?’ Flood says. ‘You know Clarence, don’t you?’

  This is a surprise. They lean forward and wait for Wilkes’s answer. For some reason Thomas is certain Wilkes would rather Flood had not told anyone of his connection with Clarence.

  ‘Clarence,’ he starts after a moment, ‘is a puzzle. On one hand, he is the least serious man you will ever meet, for he believes that nothing he can do will ever have consequence, good or ill. But on the other he is no fool, either, so his intentions, such as they are, can only be understood with reference to which planet happens to be in the ascendant on any given day.’

  ‘But that is true of us all,’ Flood objects. ‘We are all influenced by the stars.’

  ‘I mean,’ Wilkes explains, ‘that Clarence is influenced by those around him, and so to divine his intentions, one must first look to the intentions of others in his vicinity, in this case: the Earl of Warwick.’

  ‘So the question should be,’ Thomas suggests, ‘does the Earl of Warwick intend to use King Edward’s own troops against King Edward?’

  Wilkes nods. ‘The Earl will use anyone against anyone,’ he says. ‘He’s using these men here just as he is using Clarence, and this Clarence knows full well, only he chooses to ignore it.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Clarence half wishes to be made king.’

  ‘But I thought Warwick wished to be king?’ Jack says.

  Thomas cannot tell if he is being a simple countryman for show.

  ‘Well,’ Wilkes says, less contemptuous than Thomas might have supposed. ‘If he could he would, perhaps, but he cannot be. No man would permit it, not just in this land, but elsewhere – across the Narrow Sea in the royal houses of France and further afield too. The right of kings is self-serving, of course, and so is fiercely protected.’

  ‘But King Edward is still king,’ Thomas points out. ‘Removing him would be still be removing the rightful king and replacing him with someone – in this case Clarence – who should not be king. It is the same thing: a rightful king deposed.’

  ‘Ah,’ Wilkes says, ‘but what if it could be proved that King Edward ought not to be king?’

  ‘How could that be done?’ Flood asks.

  And now, in the perplexed silence that follows, Thomas feels his face warming and he turns away to inspect the underside of his boot. He already knows how it might be done. Wilkes remains silent and Thomas is certain he is watching him, noting his reaction, and so after a moment, Thomas picks out a tiny pebble from the leather of his sole and tosses it on the fire. He is grateful for the falling dark.

  ‘There are ways,’ Wilkes then says. ‘There are always ways.’

  When Thomas looks up, he glances first at Flood, who is looking very serious, and then at Wilkes, who is, indeed, looking at Thomas. Thomas stares back. It is all he can do.

  ‘So – I have heard rumours,’ Flood is saying. ‘Rumours that—’

  ‘Rumours that should not be spoken of,’ Wilkes says, breaking eye-lock with Thomas and quickly turning on Flood, shutting him up instantly. Flood nods and swallows whatever he was about to say, but he is rebuked, and there is a long period of silence.

  ‘In the meantime,’ Wilkes says, adopting a more discursive tone, ‘what are we to do about our friend young Welles over there?’

  There is another silence while they ponder this. If Wilkes is right about Clarence never being serious, then the same cannot be said for the Earl of Warwick, whom they know to be serious in all things, and whom they know to have a great number of men at his command, many of them well trained and well accoutred.

  ‘So if this lot join up with the Earl of Warwick’s men,’ Jack starts, ‘and also with Clarence’s household men and his levies, and with those coming from the Northern Parts then – they will number, what? Twenty thousand? Thirty thousand? A hundred and thirty thousand?’

  ‘As many as fifty,’ Wilkes says.

  Jack whistles.

  ‘King Edward’d never come close to matching that number,’ Flood says.

  ‘No,’ Wilkes agrees.

  ‘So we need to ensure they do not combine,’ Thomas says.

  Wilkes turns on him. ‘How would you do that?’

  ‘Get the little pipsqueak to bend his bloody knee,’ Jack says.

  Wilkes nods. ‘That might do,’ he says, ‘but it is merely postponing the reckoning, surely, and it leaves the threat alive. No. We need an engagement. Something decisive.’

  Thomas has an idea.

  ‘Persuade Welles to do as those two boys wish,’ he says. ‘Persuade him that his army can beat King Edward’s without the help of Warwick, and so he should turn his army on King Edward.’

  Wilkes nods, pleased.

  ‘How, though?’ he asks. ‘The bearded one seems to be carrying the day.’

  It seems obvious to Thomas.

  ‘Suggest to Welles that the bearded man lacks courage. Or not to Welles. Suggest it to one of the brothers.’

  Wilkes looks speculatively at Thomas, as if he is revising an estimation.

  ‘You want to provoke a battle?’ he asks.

  ‘It is what you want, isn’t it?’ Thomas replies. ‘King Edward’s army will rout this lot as it stands. If the defeat is decisive then those from the north will want no further part of this rebellion, will they? And Clarence’s men will surely waver.’

  ‘As will Clarence himself,’ Wilkes supposes.

  At that moment, one of the brothers gets to his feet and steps out of the circle of light, presumably to relieve himself, and Wilkes is on his feet in an instant. He spills some ale down his chin, pats Thomas on the shoulder as he passes, and wanders vaguely around the fire, staggering slightly, feigning drunkenness, but also unerring in his pursuit of the boy.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Jack mutters. ‘He’s quick.’

  They sit in silence for a while, watching, waiting, until both men return. Wilkes has his hand on the boy’s back, and they are laughing about something. Wilkes has removed his hat and the fire gleams on his close shaven head. They part, and Wilkes replaces his hat and comes over and sits next to Flood, and takes up his ale again and drinks more, and Thomas watches the activity on the other side of the fire as the boy whispers something in his brother’s ear, and the brother turns and stares at Wilkes across the fire, and Wilkes laughs at something no one
has said and raises his cup in a show of ale-softened bonhomie.

  ‘The seed is planted,’ he says, from the corner of his mouth, and there is nothing more of consequence said that night.

  In the morning, the birdsong wakes Thomas as the darkness fades and the world begins to take on its daylight form. He is lying under his travel cloak, below the dirty canvas canopy of the borrowed tent, between Jack and John Flood, and beyond is Wilkes, already awake, scratching his bristling head and listening carefully.

  When he sees Thomas is awake, he looks over at him, and raises his eyebrows twice.

  ‘And sprouted,’ he says, just as if there have been no ten hours of sleep since last they spoke.

  When they are all awake and emerged from the tent, there is no sign of the bearded man.

  ‘Do not ask,’ Wilkes warns.

  The other men in the camp are getting ready to move out, and are forming like bees around their hives as Thomas and the others set out to find Sir Robert Welles, who gives Flood a letter for the King, sealed with a similar imprint as that from his father. Thomas tries to gauge his mood, but the boy is as vague and slippery as ever. One of the two brothers is with him, though, harnessed in the scuffed and scratched plate of a man who has fallen on harder times than he might have been brought up to expect. He looks secretive, and pleased with himself.

  ‘Sir Robert will parlay with King Edward at his castle at Fotheringhay,’ the boy says. ‘Where they will have much to discuss.’

  ‘In the meantime,’ Welles chips in, ‘I trust in King Edward’s goodness to keep my father from harm.’

  Flood suggests prayer might be the most effective defence.

  ‘So your men are disbanding?’ he then asks. ‘They will return to their shires?’

  All turn and watch the vaguely organised churn of roughly dressed men. They seem to be gathering, rather than dispersing, but that is perhaps just an impression. Wilkes, though, looks cheerful.

  They mount their horses and ride out on to the road, retracing their exact steps back towards Stamford, and throughout the countryside the bells are ringing in every parish to summon all to Mass. Wilkes, who has now fully emerged from the shadows and revealed himself as the true captain of their party, tells them they do not have time for Mass, but must ride on to find King Edward.

  ‘Do you think it worked?’ Thomas asks.

  ‘Who can say? Welles is fickle, and might change his mind the moment we are out of sight, but the bearded man was the only one of them who spoke with any sense, and after they had accused him of cowardice, he told them he would take his men – all twenty of them! – and ride to Leicester himself alone, since he owed no allegiance to such as Welles. They wished him well of it.’

  Thomas turns to look over his shoulder, imagining Welles’s army traipsing along the roads after them.

  ‘It seems wrong, though,’ he says. ‘To have provoked them into their destruction.’

  Wilkes sighs. ‘If they come,’ he says, ‘and there is no surety that they will, then we will have saved many lives with this piece of work, Master Everingham, may all the saints and martyrs and God above be my witnesses.’

  He is so certain, he repels doubt, but Thomas cannot be sure. He feels he has engineered a fight that will see Englishmen kill Englishmen, and he knows that if it comes to pass, it will weigh heavily on his conscience.

  They ride all morning, reclaiming their own horses at Stamford and riding on to find King Edward with his army at Fotheringhay. They come in over the drawbridge mid afternoon, and are shown straight to King Edward’s solar where he is dining alone with William Hastings and three surprisingly rough young women, of the sort who expect sumptermen to wave at them on roadsides. Stewards and servants stand in the shadows, waiting, and there is a pork pie in the centre of the table as big as a drum. King Edward is still having nothing to do with Lent. Perhaps he never has to?

  When it is known Flood has brought back Welles’s reply, the women are sent from the room, and more candles are brought.

  ‘Well?’

  After a deep bow, Flood passes Robert Welles’s letter to King Edward, who breaks it and reads it with a frown.

  ‘He trusts I will not kill his father,’ he tells Hastings.

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘He wishes to parlay at a mutually agreed location, so long as, in advance, I issue a pardon to him and his followers for all acts of rebellion so far committed, and that I release his father and the other one.’

  ‘What is he offering you?’

  King Edward turns the parchment over, as if he may have missed something.

  ‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘That’s it.’

  Hastings looks up and catches Wilkes’s gaze. Wilkes cocks an eyebrow, Hastings nods, and after a moment Thomas, Flood and Jack are dismissed with a steward to find something to eat and drink in the kitchen. Wilkes remains.

  The steward guides them down to the kitchens. It is the first time Thomas has been alone with Flood since meeting Wilkes.

  ‘Who is he?’ he asks. ‘Really?’

  ‘Wilkes? I don’t know. I am not sure if that is even his name. But he’s one of Lord Hastings’s men of business,’ Flood tells him what he already knows, then goes on: ‘He was a cleric, I believe. A friar. I am not sure why he is no longer. Perhaps he strangled his abbot? Or got his abbot to strangle himself? I know he was involved with reforming the Mint, but more than that – nothing.’

  Thomas nods. He is not reassured, but he is too tired from two days in the saddle to think much about it, and the next day, after a night spent in a corridor, he is up at dawn with the rest of the inhabitants of the castle to hear the news that after Mass to celebrate St Gregory’s Day, King Edward and his army will move northwards, to Stamford.

  Once again, Hastings requires Thomas’s presence.

  ‘Sorry, Thomas,’ he says, ‘but if what Wilkes says is true, you are partly responsible for the way the coming days will unfold, and so you should be here to see it done, whatever it is, good or ill. Also King Edward has issued his usual demand for your presence.’

  ‘But my wife—’

  ‘Can look after herself better than any man I’ve yet to meet, so do not try that one on me, Thomas. And look at you! Better accoutred now than ever you were when we went into battle at Mortimer’s Cross, or Towton!’

  Thomas only knows what he is talking about because Katherine told him what happened before those battles.

  ‘I’ve not heard from her in a week,’ he says. ‘I had hoped there might be a message?’

  ‘Another day or two’ll make no difference, Thomas,’ Hastings says.

  Jack agrees, and Thomas has no choice, so he sends Katherine a message by one of Hastings’s men, to ask if all is well and to tell her that with God’s blessing he will be home soon, and that Jack sends his love to Nettie and the baby, trusting that the Holy Trinity hold them safe; and then he and Jack reclaim their horses, saddle them again, and clamber back up into their saddles in time to watch King Edward ride out, accompanied by his household men, the Duke of Gloucester and William Hastings. Trailing behind them are Welles and Dimmock, in pourpoints, hose and bare feet.

  6

  Thomas and Jack join the line of men on the road to Stamford. Both of them have been wearing the same linen for a week now, and there is nothing more Thomas would wish for than a change and a bath, but in this they are hardly alone, and as they march out the smell of unwashed bodies, leather, horse sweat and black powder is thick in the air. A drum beats and there are pipers ahead, and Jack tells him that this is what a real army looks like.

  They move at the speed of the wagons carrying the guns. There are a dozen of these, not of the fearsome size that sent stones to blow apart the walls of the Bamburgh Castle, but field guns, each perhaps five paces long, mounted on two wheels, capable of sending stones and iron balls the side of a child’s head at astonishing speeds and hard enough to blow through the very finest plate.

  ‘Thanks be to God Welles has non
e himself,’ Jack says, and he crosses himself at this, because he only has his jack, a helmet and a small buckler for defence. Not enough to face a gun. Not enough to face anyone, really. Thomas feels the luxury of his brigandine, though he wishes he had leg armour – vambraces, cuisses and sabatons – as once he had.

  ‘It is the noise that will do for them,’ Jack says, for the guns are the loudest thing imaginable. ‘Like putting your head in a church bell.’

  With them roll carts laden with arrows, bound in sheaves ready to be bagged up by bowmen’s boys. There is bread too, and great roundels of cheese, and King Edward’s men have managed to get hold of pies of dense-packed pork that must be guarded by a watch of their own, as must the ale wagons, for no one could be expected to fight without ale.

  Thomas watches them all pass and Jack asks him what it is they are supposed to do if it comes to a fight.

  ‘Lend our bows, I suppose,’ Thomas says. He remembers the last battle he fought, when he and a few others – now dead – made up the entire number of bowmen fighting for the Earl of Pembroke.

  Just then Wilkes appears at his shoulder. He is freshly washed and shaved, in a dark green brigandine and wonderful leg armour. He smiles but doesn’t say anything, and they sit together, the three of them, watching the guns roll past. After a while he speaks.

  ‘King Henry the Fifth had guns in France, did you know?’ he starts. ‘They were old-fashioned things, iron-hooped, and clumsy by comparison with these. Each took a day to load, prime and then fire, and they were so inaccurate as to be more a danger to those firing them than those being fired at. But King Henry had a master gunner who could sometimes hit what he was aiming for. One day this master gunner set up two guns side by side, and he fired them one after the other. The first brought down one tower of the town they were besieging; the second hit the other tower and the gates fell. He hit the thing he was aiming at. Twice. Twice in one day. Imagine.’

  ‘Pretty good,’ Jack admits.

  ‘His men thought it miraculous, and he was a great favourite with the King, but in those days, we were all very suspicious of the guns, weren’t we? So the others – archers and billmen and some men-at-arms and I dare say a few of the knights, too – they thought the master must be in league with the devil, so they burned him to death.’