Kingmaker: Broken Faith (31 page)

‘A generous offer,’ Horner adds.

‘But—’ Thomas starts.

‘Isn’t it? Isn’t it?’ Grey interrupts. ‘So it is agreed. You will see this malingering wretch. You will get him up on his horse. Cure him, I mean, of whatever is wrong with him and then. And then we’ll, we’ll see what we shall see, eh? Hmm? Hmm?’

How can she avoid this?

‘I lack any tools,’ she tells him.

‘Knives and so forth? I thought you had them? No. No. I shall provide them. Have no fear. I shall ask what’s-his-name? The piss sniffer?’

‘Master Payne,’ Thomas tells him.

‘Master Pain?’ Grey laughs. ‘Is that his name? Master Pain! D’you see? Master Pain! Master Pain the piss sniffer. Oh, very good.’

When he is done laughing he shouts for a servant who comes after a moment and waits with no pretence of patience. Katherine sees that already Grey has set everybody against him. He tells the servant to ask – in King Henry’s name – the piss sniffer Payne to lend Katherine his tools.

‘Master Payne is with the patient now,’ the servant tells them.

‘Is he? Is he?’ Grey says, his eyes lighting up. ‘Well then, lead on! There is no time like the present.’

‘Wait,’ she says. Only now she can’t think of anything to say.

‘What for?’ Grey wants to know. ‘By the Mass, boy! Get on with it. We can’t hang about all day. Fellow might die before you make up your mind to save him, and then where will we be? Dangling from a rope with no Masses for your immortal soul! That’s where you’ll be. Could spend the rest of eternity in purgatory. More than that, my purse will wither and we’ll be stuck here for ever. Be the death of us all, that.’

‘Kit needs food, sir,’ Thomas says. ‘He cannot perform without sustenance.’

Grey tuts, then turns to the servant.

‘Bring things, will you? Ale and so forth. That is what you most like, you people, isn’t it, eh? Ale?’

By the end of their conversation, it seems Grey is almost sober, and she wonders how drunk he was to begin with. They follow the servant from the room and along a stone-floored passageway, past small cells with open doors where men are sprawled, or huddled over fires, not up to much, or playing dice, and then first up and then down some steps until they are deep within the keep. He takes them up a spiralling set of steps worn uneven over the years, where it is so dark there are rush lamps alight in sconces.

‘At least it’s warm, eh?’ Grey says over his shoulder. ‘Horner pointed out your billets. Should not fancy them myself. Especially not this time of year.’

The servant is silent until they reach the third storey, when he leads them from the steps along another passageway, and then another tighter, danker, with rougher, undressed stones, and there at the end in the deepest gloom is a blur of something pale – a man, turning to them, in a white jacket – and Katherine is seized by the sudden absolute certainty that she does not want to go down there. She finds herself backing away, and Thomas collides with her, and then he sees what she has, and he too draws a breath. Neither says a word.

Grey and the servant block the passageway until she cannot see the man, but he is there, she knows, and she knows what he is wearing. He is in Riven’s livery, and with a sudden rush, she is certain without a doubt, at last, just who the King’s patient is.

‘My God,’ she says. ‘It is Giles Riven.’

And Thomas’s eyes widen in the gloom and he gasps: ‘No!’

And as they stare up along the passage a terrible thought comes to her mind. What if that man is the giant?

‘Come on!’ Grey calls. ‘By Christ!’

And now Horner is there behind, pushing them forward, and it is as if he has never trusted them either. She wonders whether she can turn and get past him and just run, back to the tower, and then, somehow – though she knows it is not possible – somehow, away. But she can’t get past Horner, and Thomas is blocking her way too, fumbling in his brigandine to find that blade, and now he is trying to get past her, to get to the giant, and she knows the giant will kill him if he tries, and so she is then caught between them all, and she grabs his arm.

‘No,’ she tells him. ‘No. Don’t try. Don’t try. Just pass him by.’

And he tears his arm free, and he is breathing fiercely, and he looks mad.

‘Thomas,’ she says. ‘Thomas.’

And he seems to snap out of it, to subside, and after a moment he nods and returns the blade to his jack, and Grey is calling them and Horner is looking at them as if they are both mad. So she turns, and she gathers herself and takes a deep breath and tries to stop the shaking, and she steps forward and as she walks the passageway seems to narrow, closing in on her, her view constricting as if entering a hole, and her pulse booms and she can hardly breathe, and then there he is, only, thank God, it is not him: it is not the giant. It is another man. Not as big, though still too tall to stand straight in the passageway, and he looms over the small forms of the servant and of Grey and they are talking up to him, demanding he open the door, but he will only do it once reassured that they are on the King’s business, ‘come to save his lord and master’.

He opens the door and grey light seeps into the passageway. The guard steps into the room beyond, then the servant and Grey follow and she hears two men speaking and she stands there, and in that moment, her mind seems to go blank and she finds herself concentrating on the incidentals, the things that don’t matter, such as the construction of the door, which is thick and studded, with crude iron hinges and a locking handle, when she knows that she is mere paces from the man who once tried to kill her, and has done more harm to her than any man alive, the man whom she hates more than she loves her own life, and she finds she cannot move, she can hardly breathe. He is there. In the chamber, not ten paces away. She can probably smell him.

‘Come on, come on,’ Grey calls from within the chamber. She can hear Thomas breathing quickly behind. She does not want to go in, but now it is Thomas’s turn to calm her down, and he places his hand on her shoulder. He does not push her, but just keeps it there a moment, and his palm’s warmth is enough. She draws breath, and enters the little chamber.

And, after all that, there he is. Giles Riven. On a mattress, raised on a carpented wooden bed frame. He lies on his front. With his head turned away, facing the wall, but still, she knows. She knows it is him. He has blankets pulled up to his waist, and a linen sheet to his shoulders, but from it his right arm is thrust out awkwardly, over the bed’s edge, resting on a milking stool. His hair is brown, unclean, cut above the ears, as if he were wearing a woollen cap. He does not move. He could be asleep.

Thomas is beside her, behind her, likewise staring, likewise stiffened, open-mouthed. She glances at him, and after a moment he at her. Christ, it is absurd. The man they have been looking to kill for so long, the man whom they have both promised to kill, lies helpless, with his back to them, naked as a worm, and Thomas has that blade hidden in his brigandine. But Payne is there, holding up a glass jar to the thin window’s wan light, and the guard, with a short sword and his knife, and Grey and the servant, too, and the room is so crowded that they are nearly touching one another and outside Horner waits with his head ducked, trying to peer past, to see the King’s patient.

‘Ah,’ Payne says, ‘so here he is – the famous barber surgeon of the outward postern gate.’

Katherine says nothing, but she cannot help smiling slightly. Thomas frowns. Grey likewise, and he is probably about to say something when he hears the servant addressing Riven as if he were deaf, or stupid.

‘Sir Giles?’ the servant says. ‘Sir Giles? King Henry has sent his surgeon.’

So now Grey turns on him. ‘
His
surgeon?’ he shouts. ‘
His
surgeon? He is
my
bloody surgeon! D’you hear? God damn it, man! What’s your name? He is
my
surgeon. He belongs to
me
. To Sir Ralph Grey of Heaton. D’you hear? I will not tolerate this a moment longer. By all saints! I am overlooked at every turn! Wherever I go.’

The servant waits for the storm to pass, with one eye on Grey’s belt where his knife hangs, though Grey is more a shouter than a stabber, but the outburst has woken Riven, who slowly turns his head. Katherine’s heart beats in her throat and she cannot take her gaze from him, though she knows she will give herself away, and now she sees his face and she cannot help but gasp. It is almost exactly as she imagined it would be: skeletal, drawn, his lips peeled back, teeth clenched through long-endured misery. He does not even look at her. Nor Thomas. He looks only at Grey through half-closed eyes.

‘Grey,’ he whispers. ‘Grey.’

Sir Ralph is taking a breath to continue shouting, so he hears the quiet voice, and he stops, looks down at the bed.

‘What?’ he asks.

‘Shut up,’ Riven says. Then he turns back to the wall, presenting his skull. There is a moment’s silence while Grey grows scarlet and comes to the boil.

‘You!’ he shouts. ‘You! You goddamned whoreson! You goddamned turncoat! You don’t tell me what to do. You don’t tell Sir Ralph Grey of Castle Heaton what to do. No one – no one tells a Grey of Castle Heaton what to do. Do you hear me, turncoat?’

Riven is still. The only sound is Grey’s breathing, the faint creak of Payne’s boot sole, a distant bell. After a moment, Grey looks up. He catches her eye and she sees the doubt in his. He does not know what to do. So he turns and marches out of the chamber, leaving them in silence, listening to his departing footsteps, a scuffle, some muttering, and then a slammed door. A drop of water drips behind another smaller door that leads to the garderobe. The servant coughs.

‘You may leave us now,’ Payne tells him and when he is gone, after raising his eyebrows once or twice at them, Payne says he supposes she would like to see what there is to be seen of the wound, and when she nods, still unable to speak, he bends and folds back the sheets that cover Riven. She can see the muscles of his back flex as he breathes. His skin looks too big for him, as if he has withered from within, but there is the wound, a whorl of thickened skin, as if someone has taken a stick and stirred a hole in his back, as big across as the mouth of a drinking cup.

‘There it is,’ he says, gesturing with an open hand. ‘Do what you will.’

And she stands there next to Thomas and they continue to stare. Do what you will. Do what you will! How many times has she wished she could do exactly that? When she thought about Walter, Dafydd, Owen, Geoffrey. When she thought about Goodwife Popham and her daughter Elizabeth. When she thought about poor blind Richard. When she thought about Riven attacking her that time, all those months ago, outside the priory in the snow. When she thought about Alice.

But still she stands, her hands trembling at her sides, and she closes her eyes and lets out a deep breath and she knows that it is already too late. She cannot do it. She opens her eyes and turns to Thomas. He is pale, aghast, his hand over his jaw, and it looks as if he might cry, and she knows that he too has discovered he cannot just kill a man lying in his bed.

They should have done it in a rush, she sees. They should have come straight in, closed the door behind them, and stabbed him then. Cut his throat. Put the blade between the ribs. There would have been a fight with Payne. They would have had to kill him, perhaps, and Christ, the others too: Horner, Grey and that guard. And then they could have covered Riven’s body with the blanket and left, telling anyone they met that he slept, and then – well, they would have been caught and hanged, but at least they would have done it, at least they would have done it! And the future be damned.

‘Well?’ Payne says. She takes a breath, swallows, steps towards Riven. Her nerves are stripped and raw. She can feel everything. She can see her hands shaking. She bends to touch him, touch his naked skin, something she never thought to do with anything other than a length of steel, but now here she is. He is cold under her fingertips, and she pulls back. He is part corpse already, she thinks, and she remembers how Richard changed shape after he had given up all that sword practice, how the muscle had withered and he had become padded with fat, cold to the touch just like Riven, until that had melted away for lack of vittles.

Payne says nothing. He is staring at her.

‘Is this the wound?’ she asks. Her voice rises and cracks. Payne merely stares at her. It is obviously the wound. And then Riven turns his face on the sheet again, and he looks at her through those half-closed lids as if he is interested in anyone so stupid as to ask such a question, and she cannot meet his gaze, and finds herself looking away, down at the floor, back at his wound, then quickly back in his eyes and then away again.

‘Who are you?’ he asks. His voice is softer, and weaker of course, than she remembers it that one time she heard it, but there is something about it, some grim power that makes her feel she must meet his gaze.

‘My name is Kit,’ she answers. ‘I have had experiences of wounds such as this. I have cut men, saved their lives. King Henry asked me—’

‘Kit what?’ Riven asks.

She falters, and says nothing, for she does not know. She has no surname. She looks around for inspiration. The room is bare save for a coffer on which sit various dishes, two or three stoppered pots, a knife for the bleeding and a spray of dried herbs she does not recognise. There is a bag on the floor – Payne’s instruments, she supposes – and a rolled-up mattress where perhaps Payne sleeps. Through another door she imagines the garderobe, with its hole down to the cesspit, and Riven’s and perhaps Payne’s all-too-immaculate clothes on their pegs.

‘Kit what?’ Riven repeats, and she turns to look down at him, and as she does so, she almost misses it. But no. There it is, too distinct a thing to overlook or ignore. She jerks her head back and is fixated by it, propped in the rounded corner of the room, a thing of singular purpose and value, if not beauty, and despite his gaze on her, she gasps when she sees it and she cannot help clap her hand to her mouth. My God, she thinks. My God.

It is Thomas’s pollaxe. She shivers to see it, the steel beak; the hammer, the spike on the poll. She remembers it so clearly, how it always seemed to have a life of its own, she thinks, some force within it, and she remembers the men Thomas killed on that boat, almost as if he did not want to, as if it had done it itself, and she remembers levelling it at the other physician, at Fournier.