Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims (45 page)

‘Oh dear God,’ she breathes.

She can hardly believe it. She feels numb. Owen. She cannot stop a sob racking her. Walter puts his arm around her.

‘It’s all right, Girly. It’s all right.’

But it’s not, and his voice cracks too. Thomas stands by Owen. He is holding the broken arrow from the first dead body, inspecting its fletch.

‘Ours,’ he says, showing it to Walter.

‘At least he got one of them,’ Walter says.

Margaret appears. She has run out of patience waiting and has ridden down the hill, but she sees the body and stops before she reaches the orchard.

The dog keeps barking.

‘Where’s that bloody dog?’ Walter asks.

‘Where’s Dafydd?’ Katherine asks.

They look at one another and then follow the sound of the dog, coming from the hovel, around the back of the cottage. There is more wood stored here, carefully cut and stacked in neat piles: logs, faggots, pimps. Another man is lying face down in a leather coat, and then another, lying on his back, his eyes open, arms thrown back, an arrow in his chest. They can smell blood and shit.

Walter steps over them.

Thomas stops.

‘Look,’ he says.

The arrow sticks from a filthy white tabard and on the chest is a dark badge.

A raven.

She sees Thomas’s shoulders sag as he breathes out.

‘He’s here,’ he says.

She nods. She feels cold. Fear grips her.

The dog yips.

Ahead Walter swears.

The dog, a fox terrier pup, is tied to an upright pole and just beyond its reach, in the shadows around the back of the hovel, under the hawthorn where the washing might dry should the sun ever shine, is Dafydd. They recognise his boots, salt-stained, a hole in the sole, and his hose, stitched at the knee after the fight in Kent. He is lying on his back in the dung and the wood chips.

His eyes are shut, the lids folded inwards over empty sockets.

‘It is him,’ Thomas says. ‘That giant. He is here.’

Katherine can only nod. Then she turns and looks down towards the sea where the mud and sand of the beach are only just visible through the twisting valley bluffs. Riven and that giant and the rest of them would have come up here, she thinks, once they’d come ashore. She wonders how many survived the storm? Five? Ten? Twenty? She wonders about their tracks. Surely they’d have left some? She thinks to go down to the sand to see.

‘We’ve no time to bury them,’ Walter mutters. ‘Take whatever we can use and let’s go.’

‘We can’t leave them here like this,’ she says, gesturing.

Walter looks at her.

‘If these bastards followed us from Lincoln, then they’ll be back here by this evening. How far d’you think we’re going to get with the girl here?’ He jerks his thumb in Margaret’s direction.

‘Margaret,’ Katherine says, and turns and runs. She is back in front of the cottage in a moment. Thomas’s footsteps come pounding after her, then Walter’s.

‘Margaret!’ she calls.

And Margaret peers loftily at her from the clearing before the orchard.

‘Yes?’

‘Thank God.’

They stop and look foolishly at one another.

‘Kit,’ Walter says. ‘You keep an eye on her.’

She nods.

‘But at least put them together,’ she says. ‘They’d’ve wanted that.’

Walter grunts in irritation, but Thomas leads the way and they carry the bodies from where they lie and place them together under an apple tree. Then they fetch Gwen from the cottage, Thomas gagging as he goes, and they lay her beside Owen and cover her with a straw mattress, the only thing they can find to do the job, and then they kneel and say the prayers over their bodies, though the smell from Gwen is so bad.

Afterwards they mount up and ride out in silence, following the path as it rises into the hills. Katherine cannot help but stare back over her shoulder, looking for that giant. Thomas does the same and their gazes meet and both nod in understanding.

In a little while the rain starts again. They turn inland, following a valley where dark water froths over a series of rocky falls. Ahead are more hills, barren flanks rising into the clouds, and already the ponies are blowing hard. At one point the boy turns and studies the sky behind them. It is coming on to the evening, and the temperature is dropping.

He says something.

‘What did he say?’

‘Snow,’ Margaret translates. ‘He says it’ll snow on the high ground tonight.’

‘All we need,’ Walter mutters.

Katherine is surprised Margaret understands the language. Hadn’t Dwnn said she had made no effort to do so?

‘We’ll have to find some shelter,’ Thomas says. It is all they ever seem to be doing, Katherine thinks, finding shelter from something or someone.

‘Let’s press on,’ Walter says. ‘More space between us and those bastards the better.’

A while later they join a road with the grass grown high on the berm between the cart tracks. A little farther on, there is smoke in the air and they find a bridge over the river’s fast-running black waters and, beyond, a large village with an inn. They stable their horses and gather around the fire for thin rabbit soup and more baked cheese. There isn’t much straw in the mattresses but in any case Katherine would not have slept much. She lies listening out for Riven’s men, hearing nothing but Margaret coughing.

It snows in the night just as the boy Dafydd said it would and in the morning the hills are capped white and there is ice on the water in the well. More cheese and they set off wrapped around in their travel cloaks, all except the boy, who has nothing, not even shoes.

‘Can’t even look at him, he makes me feel so cold,’ Walter admits.

After a while Thomas can stand it no longer, and they stop and open Margaret’s bag to find the boy something warmer. There is a quantity of dresses, shirts, a coif, some documents, gold coins in a blue leather purse, rosary beads, a pair of oak pattens with leather points, as well as fine-spun wool hose, linen underthings, a woollen jacket, and underneath it all a Book of Hours, probably worth more than everything else put together. They give the woollen jacket to Little Dafydd, and Margaret says nothing but shrugs and ignores his thanks.

They ride all day until in the afternoon when they come to a town dominated by its castle. The boy says something and Margaret translates.

‘Says this is Castell Nedd,’ she tells them. ‘He says it is best we stay here tonight, and in the morning take the road north.’

The inn has a stock pond, and they eat fish soup and bread and yet more roasted cheese and despite the brackish ale no one says much. The innkeeper has heard of Tudor’s landing, but knows nothing of Riven’s party. Katherine sits by the fire watching the steam rise from her clothes and now she misses the solid presence of Owen, the constant jabber of Dafydd.

That night Margaret sleeps on her back, breathing reedily and coughing in her sleep, and Katherine can’t sleep because of it. At length Thomas places an arm around her shoulders to calm her, and it is still there the next morning when they wake before dawn.

‘More bloody snow,’ Walter says.

Outside the snow is a hard crust and as they move off a woman shouts something from the doorway of her house.

‘She says we’re wrong to be taking this road,’ Margaret tells them through her wheezing. ‘She says there’s bad weather on the way.’

But there seems to be nothing they can do. They ride on out of the village, under the church where the doors are closed and the bell is silent and through the gatehouse beyond which the river flows swiftly under a wooden bridge. Plates of frosted ice spin on its surface.

All that morning they ride north with the river at their side, the snow on their backs. The road gets worse the farther they go, rising into the hills. Bushes grow undisturbed in the middle of the track now, and sections seem to have slipped into the river below. The valley sides rise up around them. It gets steeper and they pass waterfalls where brown water churns in peat-coloured pools and mist rises into the air. Icicles hang from the rocks.

‘How much farther, Margaret?’ Katherine asks.

‘Why do you imagine that I should I know?’

‘Ask the boy.’

She does so.

‘He says we ought to reach a place he calls Merthyr tonight,’ Margaret tells them. ‘He says he’s only been this way before, once, with my father when he was going to Ludlow, that last time.’

There is silence and after a while they stop for bread in a village and buy warm cheese from a woman who’ll only part with it for two of Walter’s coins.

‘Daylight bloody robbery,’ Walter mutters, but he pays because they will collapse without it. They feed the horses and then mount up again. It is too cold to linger.

As they are riding out, with the promise of only a few leagues before they stop for the night, Katherine looks back. Her gaze travels from the village where snow lies thick on the thatch, and all the way along the valley side, back along the dark thread of the road down which they’ve travelled.

The horsemen, when she sees them, are obvious enough. They aren’t trying to hide. They are riding fast, flashing through the trees, racing to catch them.

‘Look!’ she cries. ‘Thomas!’

Thomas whips around. Walter too.

‘Can you see him? Is he there?’ Thomas asks.

They are still too far away to know.

‘I don’t know.’

‘How many?’

‘Five? Ten?’

The pollaxe is already in Thomas’s hands.

‘Not here,’ Walter says. ‘There’ll be a better place up there.’

He points ahead to a couple of cottages on the side of the road. Behind them is the suggestion of a path cutting up into the wooded hills behind. They turn and ride hard. Even Margaret jabs her heels and her horse starts a trot. They ride until they reach the cottages and then find the cut through to the trees behind them. It is another drovers’ path, though this one is paved here and there with larger stones as if it might have been one of the old Roman roads. The boy burbles something.

‘This path leads up to something he is calling Sarn Helen,’ Margaret reports. ‘He says it takes you to Brecon, but it goes through the hills, which he fears on account of the weather.’

‘We’ll worry about the weather later. Is Brecon good?’

Margaret talks to the boy and tells them that Brecon is one way to England.

‘Come on then,’ Walter says. He forces his horse through a ford. They all follow and ride up into the trees, tall, silver-barked, with pale leaf mould on the ground and snow whispering through the naked branches above. They follow the path as it cuts across the slope and then doubles back again.

‘Here,’ Walter says, getting off his horse where the path turns. It is narrow here, cinched by tall earth banks. Walter steps aside to let them pass.

Thomas gets off his horse.

‘Give me your arrows, Walter,’ he says.

Walter turns to him, his face oddly placid.

‘No,’ he says, in a voice to match. ‘You give me yours. I’ll stay. You two go. You take the girl, understand? It’s her he wants dead, isn’t it? You saw what they did to Dafydd’s Gwen – can you imagine what they’ll do to her? So whatever happens, she has to live. Understand? Otherwise, all this is a waste, isn’t it?’ He gestures vaguely to take in everything.

‘No, Walter,’ Thomas argues. ‘You always say it yourself. This isn’t your fight.’

‘And it’s yours? A couple of servants from Lincoln?’

‘We were never servants,’ Katherine tells him. She’s dismounted and walks up to where they are talking. She feels her lack of size now, standing downhill from them, but she knows the time has come. Both are looking at her. Walter frowns, curls his lip.

‘What were you then?’ he asks.

‘We were ecclesiastics,’ she says. ‘Thomas is a canon of the Order of St Gilbert.’

Walter swings his doubting gaze on to Thomas. Thomas looks for a moment as if he might try to deny it.

‘And I’, she goes on, ‘was a sister of the same.’

She hadn’t meant to tell Walter this way, on a hillside in the snow, with Riven’s men in the valley below, but once the words are out of her mouth she is glad. This is no time for dishonesty. Walter’s eyes are on her now.

‘You were a sister?’ he says. ‘A nun?’

He cannot believe it. She can see Thomas squeezing his eyes shut.

‘I was,’ she says.

She lets Walter look at her body.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘It was . . . easier.’

Walter takes a pace away and then returns. He’s pushed his hat back and twists a clump of his forelock in his fist.

‘Can’t bloody believe it,’ he says. ‘All this bloody time. Girly! Girly? Ha!’

‘I’m sorry, Walter. I didn’t want to lie to you, but once it started . . .’

Walter nods, collecting himself, trying to make sense of it all.

‘All right,’ he says, nodding. ‘All right. So you’re a girl. A nun. How did you come to be on a bloody boat dressed as a boy, then, surrounded by all those dead blokes?’

‘It is a long story,’ Thomas begins, meaning that he does not want to tell it. But Walter deserves more than that, and Katherine tells him how she came to leave the priory.

Walter grunts.

‘I knew there was something about you. About you two. But bloody hell. A girl. All that time. Holy Christ.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Thomas says. ‘I’ll stay, if you like. If that makes a difference.’

Walter looks at him blankly. He is thinking hard. Then he pats Thomas on the shoulder. Tears ring his eyes.

‘No. No. It doesn’t make a difference. Or, yes, it does. It makes a big difference. It means that I’ll stay. You go.’ He turns to Katherine. He drops his gaze. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘You know. For the things I said. All the times . . .?’

‘There’s nothing to be sorry about, Walter,’ she says, though her throat is tight and she can hardly speak. ‘It’s me. I should be sorry. I am sorry. All the things you’ve done for us.’

Walter looks up sharply.

‘Us?’ he says. ‘So you’re—?’

But before either can answer, the boy shouts something from up below.

‘They’re coming,’ Margaret translates. ‘They’re still on the road, but they’ve found the tracks.’

Walter jumps back down into the path again.