Toby Clements - Kingmaker - Winter Pilgrims

‘Let us find him somewhere more comfortable to lie,’ she says.

One of the friars looks up from the other side of the chapel.

‘A space here,’ he calls, and he stoops to close the eyes of a dead boy. Mayhew summons the other friars to take the body away, and they carry Sir John across the blood-smutted straw. In the light of a rush they stare while Mayhew runs his fingers over the body. What is wrong with him? She cannot say. There is no obvious wound, yet his breath is quick and shallow, and when they remove his arming jacket they find his chest is sunk.

‘I have seen something like this once before,’ Mayhew says, though he does not look happy with the thought. He rinses water through Sir John’s white hair, washing the blood away, and then runs his fingers over the skull.

‘Here,’ he says. ‘Feel.’

He stands beside her and guides her fingers. She can feel nothing at first; then there is a slight depression. She wonders if she can feel the slightest sensation of grating bone when she applies pressure.

‘A blow,’ Mayhew says. ‘He came in without his helmet, but he must have been wearing it when he was hit.’

‘It saved his life,’ she says.

Mayhew looks doubtful.

‘Perhaps,’ he says.

‘So what can we do?’

‘There will be a sanguineous swelling within the orb of the skull, I have no doubt,’ he says. ‘It is usually — always — fatal. It is something to do with the brain. It cannot work with the swelling.’

She cannot bear it.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Not Sir John.’ Then she thinks, and asks: ‘How do you treat sanguineous swellings elsewhere on the body?’

‘A leech, sometimes,’ Mayhew says. ‘Or we cut it open and dispose of the blood.’

‘Why?’ she asks.

‘Why? Because. Because we do.’

‘If we cut open the swelling now?’

‘It is — behind the skull,’ Mayhew says. ‘We cannot get to it to cut it.’

‘The bones are broken, I am sure of it.’

Mayhew frowns. He looks down at Sir John.

‘You would have to cut open the scalp,’ he says, ‘which is easy enough, of course, but then you would have to crack the skull if it is not cracked already.’

‘I think it is.’

‘But the swelling might not be where the break is. It might be on the other side of the brain and — no. You do not want to touch a man’s brains.’

‘It is worth a try, surely?’

Sir John looks closer to death than life.

‘It cannot hurt,’ Mayhew says. ‘But let us call a priest first.’

While Mayhew fetches more wine Katherine finds Richard. He is sitting on a step talking to a wounded captain and tearing linen into strips. She touches his shoulder.

‘Richard,’ she says. ‘Your father is here. He will die unless we cut him. But it is not easy and of course the cutting may kill him.’

Richard stands up.

‘Take me to him,’ he says.

Katherine does so and leaves the two together while another man is brought in with a wound in his chest that makes a noise and within a few minutes he is dead. She glances over at Richard and Sir John when she is holding the dying man’s hand and Richard is gently feeling his father’s face, cupping his bearded chin, letting his fingertips play over the nose and eyes and forehead.

‘Will you do it, my lady?’ he asks when the priest is called and she is standing next to him. He is offering her a courtesy, since she knows Sir John.

‘Thank you,’ she says. Mayhew nods and takes a step back.

Richard holds Sir John’s hand and the old man mews in his sleep. She has a blade, taken from the barber surgeon’s bag, which is sharper than anything she has ever seen. She holds it up to the candle that the murmuring friar is holding.

‘Should I shave his head?’ she asks. ‘It will help with the stitching afterwards.’

Mayhew raises his eyebrows.

‘Good idea,’ he says. She turns the knife and slices through the white locks. Underneath there is a silver furze, nicked here and there by tiny scars. She had imagined that people have round heads, but of course they don’t. Sir John’s is long and fluted with angles, slightly asymmetric, with a ridge here and a point there. She clears away the sodden hair and wipes the bristle with some linen soaked in wine. Now that the hair has gone it is easy to see the indentation and there is even a greenish tinge to the skin. Again she presses her fingers to the skin and she can feel the grating of the bones.

‘There is nothing for it,’ Mayhew says.

She nods and cuts, holding her nerve even while blood pours from the wound.

‘Scalps always bleed mightily,’ Mayhew says.

The skin wrinkles around the cut, pulling back. There is a thin veil of pale pink flesh that she needs to slice through. Then there is the bone, the colour of old teeth.

‘Linen,’ she says, and she retracts the blade. Mayhew wipes the wound with wine and for a moment they see thin cracks in the depression, such as on an egg. He nods. With the tip of the knife she touches one of the pieces of bone. Sir John gurgles and moves his tongue.

‘Hold him,’ Mayhew calls and he grabs Sir John’s head to keep it still. Katherine touches the bone again, this time letting the tip of the knife slip to the edge of the fragment. She probes further. Her hands are steady though her heart is fluttering. Then she attempts to lift the fragment away, to prise it from the skull. It comes, but with it comes a splurge of blood, thick and dark, that wells from the wound and pours down into Sir John’s ears.

‘Good,’ Mayhew says. ‘That might be the sanguineous swelling.’

Sir John makes another noise, deep in his throat, more like a dog than a man, and she fears the worst, but Mayhew has placed the clay pot of wine on the old man’s chest, and concentric rings appear in its surface to let them know he lives and breathes. After that there seems nothing else to do but stitch Sir John’s scalp back together. She uses her own hair and makes the smallest stitches she can, taking her time while Mayhew sees to the rest of the wounded as they come limping in. When she has finished she wipes Sir John’s wound with more wine and egg whites and then his face with the last of the rose water.

His eyes flutter and he opens them and for a moment he is terrified.

‘All is well, Sir John,’ she says. ‘All is well, only don’t move.’

She takes his hand and they are like that for a moment, still and silent, and then his eyes focus on her and he smiles.

‘Kit,’ he whispers through dry lips. ‘Kit. Praised be, you are here.’

She feels a jolt, and the blood runs to her face. She cannot help herself glancing at Richard, who is sitting there, his face expressionless. Has he heard? She supposes not.

She bends over the old man.

‘I am Margaret, Sir John,’ she whispers. ‘Margaret Cornford. Do you not remember?’

Sir John opens his mouth in close little gasps.

‘I know what I know,’ he whispers. ‘By my truth, I know what I know. And where is Thomas? Where is he? You should be with him.’

‘Hush now, Sir John, hush now and all will be well.’

He shuts his eyes and drifts away again.

She stands abruptly and walks away.

Her plan! Dear God, in all this she has forgotten her resolve, and now there is no time for it, but Sir John’s words have stirred her again, thickened the brew, decided her. She looks down at her bloody dress and knows she cannot be Margaret Cornford. She cannot be like this. All at once it has become a stupid pretence, as crude as it is dishonest.

But has she left it too late?

And what of Thomas?

She has seen so many dead men this day, how can she believe there are any still living? Yet, somehow, she is certain that he is.