Toby Clements - Kingmaker - Winter Pilgrims

Before Joan can hit her again, Katherine turns and catches her fist.

‘Enough!’ she says and she twists the arm with a strength that surprises her. Joan flushes red and pulls free.

‘Anger is a deadly sin, my child,’ the Prioress murmurs. ‘And for your penance you can now wash our sister for burial. I will send some of the lay sisters with a coffin. The sooner she is buried the better.’

When they leave, Katherine stands over Alice, and, now that she is alone, her tears pour down her cheeks and fall on the rough material of Alice’s winding sheet. At length she takes a cloth from the infirmarian’s table and, kneeling by the head of Alice’s bed, she dips it into the bucket and begins gently to wipe her forehead clean.

As she does so, she begins to envy Alice. Her time in this world is done. She has journeyed ahead to a place where there will be neither tears nor suffering. Death is a release.

The bruises and welts on Alice’s face only become more livid as Katherine wipes away the dried blood and spit and tears. She smooths the cloth across her unblemished eye and it is then that the doubt begins. She puts the flannel aside and presses the tips of her fingers against those bruised lips.

Is it her imagination?

She puts her ear to Alice’s chest and thinks she hears something but cannot be sure. She hurries to the table where the infirmarian keeps her medicaments in neat rows, the largest jars at the back. She does not know what she wants or needs and the jars and bags are labelled with words she cannot read. She unstoppers one, then another, removing the pig’s bladder seals and sniffing each until in one — a large green glass bottle — a sharp smell brings tears to her eyes, sets her coughing and clears her head. She hurries back to Alice and pours some of the black viscous contents on to the cloth. She reseals the bottle and drops it on the mattress next to Alice’s, then holds the cloth below her nose.

There is an instant reaction. Alice’s eyeballs flutter.

Alice is alive.

A moment later she opens her eyes and stares at Katherine. The clarity of her white eyeballs against the bruising all around is astonishing. Then her hand moves. The fingers creep out to touch Katherine’s.

‘Stay here,’ Katherine says. ‘I’ll get Sister Infirmarian.’

Alice moves her head an inch and coughs.

‘Be still,’ Katherine says. ‘Don’t move.’

She crashes down the stairs and out into the cloister. Beyond, the Prioress stands by the well in conversation with Sister Joan. Both turn.

‘She’s alive,’ Katherine says. ‘Alice is still alive. Where is the infirmarian?’

The Prioress is startled.

‘She is in the almonry,’ she says. ‘Quick, girl, summon her.’

Katherine stumbles across the garth and out across the yard to the almonry. But here the door is locked. She hammers and pulls at the handles. There is no give. She shouts. There is no one there.

She retraces her steps. The cloister is empty and the Prioress and Joan have gone. Another sister sits in her carrel poring over a page. Katherine makes her start.

‘Sister, have you seen the infirmarian?’

‘She goes to the library after Mass,’ the sister tells her.

The library is on the other side of the cloister, up a small flight of steps above a storeroom. Another room Katherine has never visited. The infirmarian is there, standing at the lectern over a large book.

‘Sister Meredith,’ Katherine breathes. ‘Come. Sister Alice is alive.’

The infirmarian looks puzzled.

‘I am glad to hear it, Sister,’ she says.

‘Then come. She needs you.’

Sister Meredith leaves the book and follows Katherine out of the library and down the stairs. Katherine holds the door for her at the bottom and guides her across the garth.

‘Where are we going?’ she asks.

‘The infirmary, of course.’

‘What is Alice doing there?’

‘She has been attacked. I thought you would have known?’

Something is wrong. The old woman mutters as they make their way up the steps to the infirmary. The Prioress and Sister Joan are there already, beside Alice. When the door opens they both step away.

Something inside Katherine goes cold.

Sister Meredith hurries past them and kneels by Alice. Her hands play over the girl’s face and neck. Alice’s eyes are closed again and her hair is messed up on the sheet behind her head. Sister Meredith fetches a small copper bowl from her table, places it on Alice’s chest and pours in water from an earthenware jug. Then she stops to watch. After a moment she turns to Katherine.

‘But she is dead?’ she says.

The Prioress and Sister Joan are both staring at her.

The infirmarian leans forward and opens one of Alice’s eyelids.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘You see? These marks? A sure sign that she died unable to breathe.’

But Katherine is not looking at Alice. She is staring at the long scratch on the side of Sister Joan’s neck.

‘Your neck,’ she says.

Joan touches the scratch and then looks at the bloodied tips of her fingers. She smiles nervously, sharp teeth on her thin lips, a furtive expression.

Katherine cannot endure it. She lunges and before Joan can raise her hands she is on her. She knocks her back over on to the mattress and her hands seek out the neck, her thumbs in the doughy throat. But Joan bucks. She arches her back and screams and after a moment the Prioress grabs Katherine’s shoulders and hauls her off and throws her across the room. Katherine lands badly, but Joan still screams. She is thrashing and scrabbling as if trying to get something off her back. And then there is blood frothing from her mouth and nose. It is staining her teeth, pouring down her chin.

The Prioress is frozen where she stands, hands clapped to her cheeks. Joan is choking on something. She rolls face down on the mattress and all three women see the shards of green glass driven into her back just as the stench of the medicine rises up and washes over them. It catches in their throats and burns their eyes and sends them coughing back up the infirmary.

This time there is no one to stop her. Katherine is through the door, down the stairs and across the yard, staggering past the very spot where she’d seen the canon, and out of the beggars’ gate. She has no plan in mind, only flight, and she no longer cares what happens to her next.

Snow remains in patches across the fens, but there is more grass and mud, and there are black fire circles on the fields, and the sweet smell of cold wood smoke and human shit hangs in the air. She limps out across the furlong, making for the hamlet at the river ford. Two lay brothers are there at the river’s edge with shovels. She turns from them to the ferryman’s lighter, on the riverbank below the mill. If she can right it and somehow get it into the water, then she might follow the river’s current wherever it will take her.

She crosses the furlong and tries to lift the boat, but it is too heavy. Vestiges of ice cement it in place. She finds the ferryman’s pole, a long staff of ash. She is about to try to use it to lever the boat upright when she sees a movement by the canons’ beggars’ gate. Someone running. A man. At first she thinks he is coming for her. She panics and looks for a place to hide in the shelter of the watermill, behind a pile of millstones. It is a canon, she sees, running desperately. Then she sees another man emerge.

‘Dear God!’ she says aloud.

It is the giant from the day before. He is still barefooted, still with that axe. She looks again at the canon. It is him. He runs towards her. He is also making for the boat. He tries to roll it over but gives up just as easily as she had. He goes looking for something and then starts with panic as the giant approaches.