Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims (13 page)

‘You!’ he shouts. ‘Cook! Stop eating your bloody biscuits and whistle up the bloody wind!’

The cook – the pardoner says he is a Genoese – begins whistling. A light air riffles the heavy sail.

‘Keep whistling, you whoreson! Keep whistling!’ Cobham storms around his deck. ‘Saxby! Saxby there! Let go what we don’t need.’

Saxby is the master’s mate, a bully with dark curly hair and a gold hoop pressed through his ear. He grasps the cook’s still warm firestone and hefts it and staggers with it to the ship’s side. He shunts it over and it hits the sea with a kerplunk that shoots a fountain of green water above the ship’s rail. The cook doesn’t pause in his whistling. Then Saxby and three others tip the anchors over, each one disappearing with a deep booming splash.

‘Christ on His cross,’ Cobham mutters. ‘Cost me more than a penny.’

‘Gaining on us, master!’ the boy cries down.

‘Right,’ Cobham says. ‘We need to lose all this if we are to get clear. You there! Master Daud and your boys! Lend a hand. Everything overboard.’

Thomas and Katherine set to, joining the sailors as they begin hauling bales and packages overboard, tipping them over the carrack’s side into the sea below. The pardoner can hardly stand to watch but mews ‘no, no, no, no’ as his bags go over with the rest. Some sink, others float. Cordage, sailcloth, buckets, bales, boxes, anything not fastened down goes over. In the carrack’s wavering wake they leave a stream of bobbing wood spars and planks and canvas-wrapped bags.

One of the men emerges from the cabin with the pardoner’s sack-covered pack.

‘Master!’ the pardoner cries, springing into action. ‘Not that one! That is all I own!’

The sailor looks at Cobham, who narrows his eyes.

‘All right,’ he nods. ‘Put it back.’

The sailor lobs the pack back in the cabin, but everything else goes over. The cook’s pots and pans, a wooden chair, every scrap of rope, every lump of tar, all the food, all the ale. All that remains are the men, the sails, the pardoner’s bag and the weapons: four rusted swords, a long-handled bill, a hammer used for breaking chains and the giant’s axe. Each member of the crew has a knife on his belt and one hidden in his clothes. Thomas has the pollaxe and one of the sailors passes Katherine a length of rope with its end tied off in a knot that looks like a large fist. Within is a weight and together they make a lethal club.

‘I am expected to fight,’ she whispers to Thomas. She swings the weight and flinches as it flies past her nose.

‘Foof!’ Thomas says. ‘Be careful.’

She stares at the knot. He moves to stand in front of her, to protect her from whatever will happen next.

‘Still gaining, but slower now,’ the boy calls down.

He need not have bothered. Every sailor is ranged along the ship’s side watching the balinger come battering across the water. Cobham watches from the stern deck.

‘Fuck,’ he says. ‘Should’ve kept the firestone. Drop it on ’em from up here, it’d take the whole stinking lot of ’em with it.’

Thomas sees something flicker in the sky. Then there are two sharp thuds in the carrack that make every man jump.

‘Christ Jesus!’

Two fat arrows quiver in the deck. Both a yard long and as thick as his forefinger. One instant they aren’t there, the next they are, buried in the deck in a corolla of grey splinters. Dust rises from each like smoke from a candle wick.

‘Christ!’ Cobham shouts. Then he calls up to the boy. ‘Oi! Boy! Warn us when they’re about to loose those bloody arrows, will you, you little—’

He breaks off and shields his eyes from the glare. He stares up into the rigging.

‘—bastard,’ he concludes quietly. An arrow pins the boy through his chest to the mast. He looks around. Then: ‘Saxby! Saxby there!’ he shouts. ‘Stop your fuckin’ gawkin’ and get rid of the dead wood.’

He nods his head and Saxby leaves off his post at the ship’s rail with something like a leer and on quick feet he crosses to where the pardoner stands, pale and old and frightened. Before Thomas can move, Saxby grasps the old man around his arms and rushes him backwards, toppling him over the ship’s rail and into the sea. The old man has no time to cry out.

Saxby steps back.

Thomas runs to the ship’s side. There is nothing there, just the green sea, peaking, troughing, frilled with foam, unreadable to the horizon. There is no sign of the old man. The pardoner is gone. Thomas cannot believe it.

Next to him Saxby smirks, self-satisfied.

‘He was slowing us down, mate,’ Cobham calls out. ‘And didn’t look able to fight none.’

Thomas wants to lash out, to hurt Saxby.

Saxby sees his expression change. A blade appears in Saxby’s hand and he is quick with it. He flicks it at Thomas’s face and makes a grab for the pollaxe. Thomas throws his head back, feels the knife pass.

Saxby is laughing, coming at him again. But Thomas thrusts the spike of the axe at him. He means to fend Saxby off but Saxby is too fast, and is not expecting it. There is a gristly crunch. Thomas feels resistance give and something soft slip. Saxby gasps; his eyes turn round as pennies. Thomas cannot help himself. He pushes. Saxby’s face changes colour and his tongue sticks out. He gasps for breath.

Thomas steps back. There is a neat sleeve of dark blood on the axe’s poll. Saxby falls to his knees, his eyes rolling back into his head.

It is so quick.

‘Oh Christ!’ Thomas cries. ‘Oh Christ! Forgive me!’ He drops the murder weapon and grabs Saxby’s arms, as if holding him up might save his life. ‘I didn’t mean it. You saw! By all the saints I swear to you!’

But Saxby is already gone. His dead weight passes through Thomas’s grasp to slump on the deck.

‘Dear God!’

Thomas steps away from the body, looking around for help, for credence. Katherine is staring at him, her mouth open, her face pale. It has been so quick. So sudden. So easy. There are dark ropes of blood across the deck and on Thomas’s boots, and a pool of it is forming under Saxby’s body.

‘Christ’s sake!’ Cobham roars from his deck. ‘What’re you doing? You lot! You lot! Kill him. Kill ’em all, by Christ! Kill ’em and then bloody put ’em overboard!’

Thomas’s vision seems to waver. Sound is muffled. Time slows. All he can do is look at those hands of his, those murdering hands.

Dear God! He has killed a man.

Then Katherine slaps his shoulder.

‘Thomas!’ she shouts. ‘Thomas!’

Sound and light come back to him with a roar. Men are running at him. Running at Katherine. He stoops for the pollaxe and pulls her behind him. The first sailor is on them with a rusted blade. Thomas catches it with the axe. He staggers back under its weight. The sailor is red-faced and ugly, spitting with fury. Thomas shoves the butt end of the pole up into the man’s groin. It seems light in his hands and such an easy thing to do. The axe seems to move for him.

The sailor shouts something, drops the sword and throws himself back. He trips on his heels. Without thinking Thomas steps after him and drops its blade into the falling man’s face. The man screams and clamps his hands to the mess of his nose and teeth. He writhes on the pitching deck; a moment later he is choking on his own blood.

The second sailor is there already, big with a wind-burned nose and a thick leather jerkin. He’s behind Thomas and aims a slash at Katherine with a chipped cleaver. She flinches out of the way. The blade whistles past but snags her sleeve. Thomas turns and drives the crown of the axe into the sailor’s armpit, breaking his ribs and sending him staggering over to the ship’s rail where he collapses on his backside, blood all over his hands and his chest, his bare feet scrabbling on the deck. He is gasping; then he too is dead.

‘Oh God Oh God Oh God.’ Thomas’s face is very pale.

‘For fuck’s sake!’ Cobham bellows.

There are still three sailors left: men with scarred knuckles and expressionless eyes. One takes up the rusted sword from the deck. Thomas watches him circle to his left, just as the other comes from the right. He wonders how he will fight two at once.

But then another flight of the arrows from the balinger hits the ship’s deck like a ripple of thunder. Five shafts, suddenly there, like a fence, buried up to their shoulders in the deck. The last one catches the sailor’s heel, nailing it to the boards. He throws up his sword, bellowing, flailing at the arrow’s fletch.

Just as the second digs his blade at Thomas. Thomas catches it against the steel languet of the pollaxe, steps into him, and, copying Riven, smashes his left fist into the gristle of the sailor’s nose. Two fangs of blood sprout on his face and Thomas wheels around to drive the axe into the sailor’s knee. The sailor goes down in a tangle on the deck. Thomas drops the fluke on him. It is a wound that won’t kill him for days yet.

The third man comes at Thomas, circling, his blade held low, but he is half-hearted now, and backs off as soon as Thomas levels the axe at him.

‘Help me!’ the sailor with the arrow in his heel keeps crying. ‘Help me! For the love of God! Help me for the love of all that’s holy!’

Now Cobham has had enough. He abandons the tiller, storms down the ladder. He scoops up the rusted sword and advances on the sailor with the arrow in his heel. The sailor looks at him imploringly, then changes expression and tries to scrabble backwards. He holds up his hands.

‘No!’ he screams.

Cobham chops the blade through the meat of the sailor’s throat. There is a spray of blood and the sailor goes down with an awkward bounce, as if he has fallen from a tree, still pinned by the heel while blood seethes across the planks.

‘That’s how you do it, by all that’s bloody holy,’ Cobham roars. ‘That’s how you bloody well do it, see?’

He turns on Thomas.

‘I had you for apostates,’ he spits. ‘I should’ve handed you over to the friars when I had the bloody chance.’

Even before he’s finished the sentence, he lunges at Thomas. Thomas smashes the blade away. Then Cobham darts at Katherine. Thomas jabs at him. Cobham catches the axe on the blade of his sword, a clash of sliding steel. Cobham is strong, stronger than Thomas, stronger than Riven maybe. He pushes Thomas back, then spins and crashes his elbow into Thomas’s cheek. Thomas’s knees ooze, his vision wavers and the axe seems too heavy to hold.

Cobham smiles. He is about to hit him again when Katherine catches him with the rope maul.

Now it is Cobham who staggers. His hand flies to his collar where she’s struck him. He checks for blood. Only a little. He tries a quick underhand thrust at her body. Thomas drops his axe on the blade, knocking it from Cobham’s hand. Cobham shouts in pain and the blade rattles across the deck towards Katherine. She bends to pick it up. A knife appears in Cobham’s hand. He leaps at her, catches her collar, pulls her to him, bends her around, shielding himself and exposing her neck to his blade. Thomas recovers.

He swings the axe, just missing Katherine. There is a dense thunk of steel on bone, and he buries the long spike of the axe into the flesh under Cobham’s chin. Cobham dies instantly, his body converted to dead weight that pulls the axe from Thomas’s grip. Together axe and man crash to the deck. The stink of blood is ferrous and intimate.

Katherine staggers free, her knees weak. She is holding her throat. Thomas bends and twists the axe from Cobham’s body, ready for the next attack. He is breathing heavily, hardly able to see straight. He holds out the axe and stares at the men gathered on the deck.

They do not move. They stand watching him, pale-faced, incredulous. Then they drop their weapons and step back. Thomas can scarcely believe what has happened either. Katherine is looking at him as if he is someone else.

‘I must sit,’ he says. He drops the axe and sits just before his legs give out. He cannot stop his face from creasing and the tears silently pouring down his cheeks. He grips his hands together to stop them from shaking.

‘What now?’ Katherine asks. Her face is also pale, a smudge of blood above her lip.

‘We wait,’ the Genoese cook answers for Thomas. ‘Hope they don’t kill us.’

Thomas has almost forgotten the pirates.

There is a small crump as the balinger hits the side of the carrack, out of sight below the ship’s rail, and a moment later two more men come springing over the ship’s side. They have swords in their hands, steel helmets on their heads and heavy padded coats. The first is tall, and moves lightly on to the deck in high leather boots more suited to a horse than a ship. The second is small, wiry, like a terrier, with ginger whiskers and a big nose, often broken. Both wear red tabard coats, sweat-ringed and salt-rimed.

They stop and look around.

‘Fuck me!’ the second one says. ‘Looks like we’re late for the harvest.’

The first of the two, taller by a head, sheathes his sword and takes off his helmet.

‘Saints,’ he says, disappointed. ‘What’s gone on here?’

He has dark hair cropped short above the ears, like Riven, but he is younger, with an open, handsome face, the sort Thomas trusts. Three more men join them, clambering slowly over the carrack’s sides. They do not look at ease with the swell of the sea, and Thomas recognises their sort from home, long ago: beefy, well-fed, deep-chested boys with backs warped by work in the fields and butts. Each carries a short sword, except for one, who carries a longbow and a bag of arrow shafts. They wear the same red livery coat as the first two, with a small star marked in white cloth on the right side of the chest. When they see the dead bodies each crosses himself.

The first man runs a hand through his hair.

‘My name is Richard Fakenham,’ he announces to the sailors, ‘of Marton Hall in Lincolnshire, and on behalf of my lord the Earl of Warwick, the Captain of Calais who is entrusted to keep the seas, I am claiming this boat for his purposes.’

‘You are not pirates?’ the Genoese cook asks.

Fakenham looks insulted.

‘No,’ he says. ‘We are soldiers. Now, which one of you’s the master?’

One of the surviving sailors – the ferrety-looking one with a widow’s tooth, older than the others – points to Cobham’s body.

Fakenham grunts. ‘His mate?’

The man points again. This time at Saxby.