Kingdom Come

by Toby Clements

  ‘Perhaps,’ he begins, ‘perhaps you are right in what you said about it not being a real attack? Perhaps it was a token, but instead of a lure, as you thought, it was intended as an excuse? To give King Edward a reason to come up here with his soldiers?’

  As he speaks he knows he sounds out of his wits. Katherine nods slowly.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘and remember when we rode to Lincoln, the gate Watch were talking of a friar who had stirred them up? Told them that King Edward was coming with an army of men to hang every man who had risen in rebellion the year before?’

  ‘You don’t think that could have been Wilkes himself?’

  Katherine shrugs. Now Thomas thinks on it, Wilkes made himself very absent while they were in Robert Welles’s camp. He had stood back, hadn’t he? In the shadows, as if he did not want to be recognised.

  ‘By God, you may be right,’ he says. ‘I remember: his forehead and nose were wind-burned, but his jaw was pale, as if he had just been shaved after a long journey.’

  He strokes his own beard, tugging into a near point on his chin. It seems fantastical that a man might do that.

  ‘But why would he do all that?’ Katherine asks.

  ‘To lure the Earl of Warwick out into the open,’ Thomas suggests. ‘At a time of King Edward’s choosing, rather than the Earl of Warwick’s. So that he might get his revenge for the indignities of last year.’

  There is a long silence while they think about this. Jack snores on. John Stumps is likewise asleep in his corner, as are Bald John and his son Foulmouth John; and the skinny new boy, whom Jack will kill if he gets the chance, has somehow crept back in, and is lying curled in a ball at the join between Foulmouth’s and his father’s mattress. He’s like a houseleek, Thomas thinks, or a mushroom.

  ‘I begin to see now why you came home,’ Katherine says.

  9

  The weight of his promise to kill Mostyn lies heavily on Thomas that night, gnawing at him. He lies awake and thinks about the look on Mostyn’s face as he showed Thomas out of the room. The man had been exultant. It must have been the same as Thomas’s expression when he’d heard Katherine’s story of the mule in the mine in the woods beyond Hexham, loaded with enough money to buy Marton in the first place. He thinks about Jack, lying down there by the fire’s embers, gripped with hate for his loss, and he thinks about it being his fault that Nettie is dead, and he thinks about murdering Mostyn, and he cannot sleep.

  What will it be like to kill him? he wonders. He knows that had he been there that night when those men attacked the hall, and had Mostyn been there, he would not have hesitated. He would have happily smashed his face with a hammer, stabbed him in the guts time and time again. But now? Even with the heat such thoughts brew up in him, he knows he will find it hard to stride into Mostyn’s room and yank the man from behind his desk and plunge his sword into his chest. It is not merely the thought of the hot blood, and the noise of gasping and gagging, and the rolling eyes. Nor is it the stench of blood and shit. It is the unholy thickening of the air that happens when a soul passes in violent affray, when it clogs your mouth and fills up your nose, and to breathe it in is to drink in the sin of it, to take it into your body knowing it will stain your soul black until it is your time to go.

  Katherine shoves him awake when the dawn is already a pink band above the still-closed shutter. He swings his feet from the bed and hurriedly dresses with his back to her. He does not want her to see him. His hands are shaking and though he is starving, he knows he will not be able to eat.

  By the time he has said his prayers and is down the stairs, the light is grey and Jack is gone. John Stumps sits hunched at the board, scowling at the fire. He eats like a dog when he is alone, and there’s a scrag of chewed bread on a plate and a bowl of watery ale left over from the night before him. He is morbidly ashamed of himself, eating thus, and he can hardly raise his eyes to meet Thomas’s.

  ‘He’s gone,’ he says, nodding to the space Jack has left empty. ‘While it was still dark.’

  Christ.

  Thomas finds his horse brushed and well tended by Foulmouth John and the skinny boy, who Thomas is interested to see has two black eyes and a gash across the bridge of his broken nose; there’s blood on his shirt, too.

  ‘Jack done it,’ Foulmouth John says.

  The skinny boy says nothing, but keeps his head down and goes on brushing the flank of Thomas’s horse. He seems almost sorrowful, Thomas thinks, and Foulmouth John is outraged on the boy’s behalf. Thomas hefts his saddle over and eases it on to the horse and when they’ve fixed the strap and reins, he ties on his bow and then clambers up.

  There are two routes worth taking to Gainsborough. Jack will have taken the most direct, but Thomas knows that will still be flooded, so he swings down through the village and on to the north road. He has been this way before, of course, many times, most recently with Jack himself, when they were riding that first time to see Mostyn. In spring it is easier going, soft and gritty under his horse’s hooves, though he has no time to stop and appreciate the greening. He looks for tussocks and hoof prints in the damp sod. It is turned here and there, pocked by holes and small lifted curves of dark soil. Ahead on the track is a long scatter of horseshit. He stops above it and he can smell it, so it is fresh. He kicks on.

  What will he say to Jack when he sees him? He doesn’t know how he will persuade him to stand aside and let him kill Mostyn. Is there a way with a man like Jack? In the mood he will be in? Probably not. He thinks he will have to get past him. Overtake him. Get there first and kill Mostyn before Jack comes blundering in with no thought for the future.

  He almost gags at the prospect. He wishes he had forced himself to have something to eat. When he cuts off the road and reaches the first trees in the orchard where they’d seen the grafter back in January, he is splattered with mud, and sweating heavily. His sword thumps against his heel, a constant reminder of what must be done, of what he must do.

  With this in mind, he hardly gives a thought for the other thing Katherine told him the night before: the cache of documents in Canterbury. He accepts it exists, and can see it perfectly – a deep stone shelf like an alcove, piled high with rolls of paper and skin. He probably wrote a few of the letters there himself, he supposes, but the thought is distant, detached, or set aside at least, because he is riding to Gainsborough to kill a man, not to Canterbury to go through an archive looking for traces of Katherine’s past. That will have to wait, he thinks, however Katherine feels about it.

  He plods through the orchard, following the track, feeling some relief. He stops to look at the house from the brow of the slope. The scaffolding he’d seen pulled down is back up and there is a small camp of tents beyond, from which the smoke of more than one cooking fire rises. The Flemish bricklayers must be back, Thomas supposes. He sees the gates to the house are swung open and there is a small crowd of men milling in the yard. A couple of servants, a man in a long leather apron and a boy leading a horse. Two men come from the camp, oddly dressed. They must be Flems, back for the summer. One of them carries a bucket of something heavy. They are ignored as they walk past, and one after the other they swing up on to the ash-pole scaffolding and make their way along planks at well over head height towards a spot where the walls of the house are still half built, and where a pile of pink bricks awaits.

  Thomas rides down the slope, dismounts and walks past the gate, the horse between him and the distracted watchman. He expects a shout at any moment, but nothing comes. The grass is sodden and there are the tracks of many men and horses, coming and going. He walks on towards the camp. He passes a broad woman in a blue woollen cloak, a bonnet of the same and some grey fur wrapped around her shoulders. He touches his cap to her, but does not break stride, and she more or less does the same. He stops in a spot between sightlines, and he fiddles with the saddle while he studies the back of the house, and in particular the window of the room wherein he met John Mostyn.

  He is in luck.


  There is scaffolding both above and below the window, but no one is on it. He walks his horse to the hedge at the back of the house and ties him to a post. Then he eases through the gap between the willowy shrubs and walks confidently towards the ladder that is propped against the lowest run of scaffold. He climbs it swiftly to the first level of planks, and then the second. He follows the planks along, ducking swiftly past two windows that are already glazed with new panes and then he is at Mostyn’s window.

  Odd. A pane is missing and the lead bent, as if it has perhaps been forced.

  Christ.

  Jack.

  He peers through the aperture into the room.

  There is nothing there.

  No desk. No chairs. And certainly no Mostyn. Instead, against this near side, there is an oak coffer on which sits a jug and a dish and some fabric Thomas knows instantly must belong to a woman. He turns to the left. Perhaps Mostyn has gone to a different room? Then he hears the shout.

  ‘Oi!’

  Thomas straightens. It is the watchman. He’s standing foursquare and pugnacious as a mastiff on the grass below, amid the makings of a herb garden. He has his glaive with him. Thomas gives him a wave. Thanks be to God he had not drawn his own sword.

  ‘God give you good day, sir,’ he calls down, his voice wavering but settling into a carefree tone by the last word.

  ‘What in His Holy Name are you doing up there, sir?’ the watchman barks.

  ‘I was hoping – I was hoping to give my old friend’ – he tries to think of the man’s Christian name – ‘John Mostyn a fright! Nothing more. Is he in?’

  The watchman looks up him as if he is chewing a wasp.

  ‘I remember you,’ he says after a moment. ‘You came here the day Welles and his men attacked.’

  Thomas groans inwardly. A witness.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘Though I heard about it. A sorrowful business. I was glad to hear there was so little blood spilled.’

  ‘Aye,’ the watchman agrees, evidently still not sure about Thomas. ‘They were merciful in the end, though they set the works back.’

  There is a pause. Thomas shuffles back along the planks to the first of the ladders.

  ‘Is he here?’ he asks.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mostyn.’

  ‘Mostyn? No. He has left the household.’

  Thomas concentrates on coming down the ladder safely. When he is on the ground he approaches the watchman.

  ‘Left? But where has he gone? Do you know?’

  The watchman regards him suspiciously through small eyes.

  ‘Do you know,’ he says, ‘you are the second fellow who’s been around here asking for him today?’

  Thomas hides his lack of surprise. Jack, he thinks.

  ‘I see. Well. John Mostyn is a popular man. Where’s he gone, can you tell me?’

  ‘Aye. He has set himself up in town. Wonder why he did not tell you himself?’

  ‘Busy, I expect,’ Thomas says.

  ‘Ha!’ the watchman scoffs. ‘He told us he no longer wished to advise Sir Thomas Burgh, and that he wished to make himself town recorder, but was there ever a lawyer happy to hold but one position when two were on offer?’

  Thomas laughs obediently.

  ‘Lawyers, eh?’

  ‘Aye. I think he had taken frit after the attack. Even though no harm was done to him or his, he became chary thereafter, and was constantly worrying about being attacked again.’

  Thomas frowns.

  ‘And have you been attacked?’

  ‘No.’ The watchman smirks.

  In the end it is easy enough to get directions and, according to the watchman, Mostyn’s chambers are hardly any distance.

  ‘Did you by any chance tell all this to the other man asking after him? The one from this morning?’

  ‘I did and all,’ the watchman confirms. ‘He seemed a good Christian sort of fellow.’

  ‘Oh?’

  It is hard to think of Jack being in a ‘good Christian’ sort of mood. Thomas bids the watchman goodbye. He mounts up and rides on into town, following the man’s instructions, and as he rides he prays to God he will not find Jack has beaten him to Mostyn, and already killed the man already killed Mostyn, for then not only will he have done so when Thomas should have done the deed, he will have left a trail of witnesses in his wake who will swear under oath that he was asking after the murdered man the very morning he was murdered. Not even the good offices of William Hastings – even supposing they were on offer – would be able to exonerate him of the crime then.

  And then it occurs to him that he has done the same, only he has made the greater mistake of leaving a witness – the watchman – who knows exactly who he is, even if he cannot recall his name. And now as Thomas leads his horse below the church, he sees he is only making things worse for himself, because now the town is really coming awake, and people are getting about their business. Men and women are coming from the church, and everyone greets one another but they stare at him as he passes, for he is a stranger, unknown in his down-turned cap and spattered riding boots, and he supposes that his travelling cloak is not so long that it hides his sword well enough. Each man who sees him is a witness, likely to be summoned to any inquest, and they’ll be able to condemn him with ease, and that means only the gallows.

  He must stop Jack killing Mostyn. That is all he can do.

  Mostyn’s new chambers are on a road that leads northeastward from All Saints – a humble enough street for a man who wishes to set himself up as town recorder, Thomas thinks – but the watchman had no idea which of the houses is Mostyn’s and Thomas dare not ask, for fear of leaving more witnesses, so he saunters as well as he is able, studying the façades for any clue. A stout woman in green is dusting the front of one of them with a goose’s wing, and she stops to watch him walk past. He touches his cap in salute, but feels her see right through him. Christ, he thinks, now everyone has seen me coming and going.

  He continues. The houses become steadily newer the further on he walks, and at the end, shored up above a stretch of land still given over to teasels, another one is being built, though the carpenters are yet to arrive. There’s a boy, though, perhaps some sort of nightwatchman, keeping an eye on the piles of timber staves.

  Thomas risks asking him.

  ‘The lawyer’s is the third house, down there.’

  Thomas retraces his steps, keeping watch for Jack’s horse, and when he can’t see it, he becomes hopeful. Perhaps Jack too has hesitated? Perhaps fear or caution has got the better of him? Perhaps he is drunk in an inn?

  Thomas nods again to the stout woman with the goose wing and, head lowered, walks very deliberately past the third house on the left, studying it over his horse’s withers. Then he sees it.

  Oh Christ.

  The door. It’s broken in. Was it like that when he passed first? He cannot say. He didn’t notice it; that is certain. He looks around for Jack again. There’s no sign of him.

  Should he walk on? Or should he at least see what has happened inside? He walks to the next house, its beams red with flaking paint, and on to the next. Then he turns the corner and finds another house with a rough-hewed post jammed under the overhang, as if it might slump. He ties his horse and walks quietly back to Mostyn’s road. He is thrumming with anxiety, and now it is as if he is granted some extra sense. He sees deep imprints in the grainy mud underfoot: hoof, wheel, heel and toe. To the side of the door’s frame is a long gash of pale, fresh, splintered wood where the lock or bar has been broken away.

  Thomas hesitates. He can see no one. He pushes the door open. He smells it straight away. The unmistakable grip in the back of his throat, as if his body knows he ought not to be breathing it in: blood. He stands still within the door frame for a long moment, listening. Nothing. In the gloom he sees only a few square feet of spread rushes, the sides of a much-abused coffer on which lies the flattened circle of a cap, and there’s a bundle of feathers, bound, that will make good pens.r />
  ‘Hello?’ he calls.

  There’s a sudden movement. A soft scurry. A careful tap of something. Thomas’s skin crawls and his heart jumps. He holds his breath and eases his sword from its scabbard. A blade such as this is a comfort in every situation.

  ‘Jack?’ he calls again.

  Silence.

  ‘For the love of Christ, Jack. It’s me.’

  There’s a stealthy creak from the boards of one of the upstairs rooms. Thomas steps into the gloom and heels the door shut behind him. It is gloomy and close in the hall, which opens on one side into a buttery and on the other a solar with a fire. Thomas glances into the buttery. He steps back.

  The body lies against the wall in a twist of rumpled skirts, like a big roll of canvas that armies use in the field, her ankles crossed, boot soles facing him. One arm is thrown out and there’s a broken pot on the other side of the room with a few dried lentils scattered among the shards. She’s dead, he knows, but can Jack have killed her? Thomas swallows and takes a long sideways step into the room. The woman’s linen apron is pulled up over her face, by accident or design, and there is blood all over it, still wet. Thomas takes his sword and with its tip he tugs away the linen. He inhales quickly, swaps hands, and makes the sign of the cross. She’s a solid woman, round-faced, with blood all over her breast and a small, glistening gash in the cloth over her heart. Thomas stares at her a moment. Who would have thought such a small cut could end a life, and leak so much blood? He bends. The gore is not only still wet. It is still warm.

  He straightens again.

  There’s a noise above. A slow muffled slide, the grind of something hard against something else that’s hard.

  He steps back out of the room into the hall solar. A board, three stools, a blackened pot and a tripod, a few cooking implements and air that smells of onions. A tendril of smoke still rises from the mound of ashes in the centre of the room, but the sticks are burned through the core, and no one’s touched it since first thing. There are steps up to the upper floor. At the top is a door, closed.