Toby Clements - Kingmaker - Winter Pilgrims

‘Why?’ he shouts. ‘Why me?’

The giant ignores him.

The canon tries to punch him, but the giant catches his fist and twists his arm. He falls to the ground.

‘Why?’ the canon cries out once more. ‘What did I do to you?’

The giant plucks him up without effort. The canon kicks out but the giant has him by the throat. He is carrying him at arm’s length. The canon struggles, still kicking, tearing at his hands, but he is forced backwards and pinned against the upturned boat. Still he kicks but it is no use. The giant leans forward and switches hands, so that he is holding the canon down with his left hand while his right moves up to the canon’s face. The canon tries to pull away but the giant is too strong. He seems to stroke his cheek and look into his eyes and then he places his thumb over the canon’s eyeball. The canon screams.

Without thinking Katherine leaves the stones and rushes the last few paces to the boat and, with all her remaining strength, she brings the ferryman’s pole down on the back of the giant’s head. It makes a crack she feels in her knees.

The giant lets the canon go and stands, as if he has just thought of something he ought to do. He turns and looks down at her. He is confused.

She takes a step back, lifts the pole again. The giant takes a step towards her. He stretches his hands out. She is about to bring it down on him when his face seems to go blank, his eyes roll up into his head, he cants to one side, staggers, then slips, and finally falls to the ground.

After a moment he is still.

The canon is gasping, muttering some prayer, his hands clapped over his eyes. After a moment he stops, removes his hands and now he too looks at her. Then he lifts himself to peer down at the giant’s body.

‘Is he dead?’ she asks.

The canon gets up and looks at the giant more closely.

‘I don’t think so,’ he says.

She is only partly relieved. There is a pause. A breeze has picked up. The rainclouds have retreated, and the sky is a scrim of white clouds again. They look to the walls of the priory, then at each other.

‘Are you expelled?’ he asks.

Katherine nods.

‘I was seen talking to you,’ she says.

She looks back at the priory. Three figures have appeared in the canons’ beggars’ gateway, one limping, coming down towards them. All are carrying swords. The men from the day before.

‘Brother?’ she points.

‘They will kill us this time,’ he says. He stoops for the giant’s axe. It is a fearsome thing: four feet of chamfered oak pole with long steel points at both ends, its axe blade balanced by a vicious pick. It is crusted with dried blood, as if dipped in brown lace, and it looks oddly light in his hands.

‘You cannot fight them,’ she says. ‘Not three of them, not even with that thing.’

‘God is by my side,’ he says. ‘He will provide.’

‘Where was God when he was about to put out your eyes?’ she asks, pointing at the giant.

The canon flinches. He stares at her open-mouthed.

‘Besides,’ she says, hurrying him on past her blasphemy, ‘God has provided. Look. We must take this boat. Come. Help me.’

She slides the boat pole under the lighter’s edge and tries again to right it. Still it will not move.

Seeing her struggle, he joins her, pushing the axe under the boat’s side and helping her lever it over, revealing grey grass and a family of dead rats. He puts the axe aside and helps shove the lighter across the mud and down into the water where the river is running high, thronging with brown meltwater, the ice long gone.

The men from the priory are running now, down across the furlong. They are shouting.

He stands with his feet in the water and holds the boat steady while she throws in the pole and then clambers in after it.

‘Come!’ she says, holding out a hand. ‘Come!’

Still he hesitates. Is he mad?

‘You cannot fight three,’ she shouts. ‘They will kill you! Then me! They’ll kill us both. Come!’

This decides him. He collects the axe and slides it into the boat. Then he launches himself in after it, sending the boat out into the rolling current. The boat staggers, dips as if it will sink, then rises and spins in the water.

The men are near now. She can see their expressions. One has blood on his face. They are shouting. They run past the giant and the one in a white shirt comes down the bank and wades into the water up to his thighs. They are too late and they know it. The man in the water smacks its surface in frustration.

The canon plunges the boat pole into the water and heaves, sending the boat off into the current as the two men on the bank start following them. After a few moments the one in the water wades back on to dry land and shouts after the canon. She cannot make out his words and in a little while the boat crosses the ford and the man in the river is lost to sight.

Katherine stares back over her shoulder long after, though, watching as first the roofs and then, finally, the priory’s church tower slip away until at last, for the first time in her memory, she is beyond its sight, floating in a land unknown.

The sister sits ahead and keeps watch with the giant’s axe across her knees. She is rubbing her blistered feet and Thomas can think of nothing to say to her.

Finally she speaks.

‘Where shall we go?’

It is a good question.

‘We must make our way to Canterbury,’ he tells her with more certainty than he feels. ‘We must seek redress from the Prior of All. He will hear our case and see that justice is done.’

The sister turns to him and studies him as he talks. Her eyes are blue, her face paler than vellum.

‘Where is this Canterbury?’ she asks.

Thomas does not know.

‘It is where the Prior of All is,’ he says.

There is a pause.

‘So you do not know?’ she says.

‘No,’ he admits.

She nods and turns her back on him again. He feels only confusion. To think that the day before he had been looking forward to rubbing gold leaf over a letter T he’d built up from the page with gesso. She says nothing more and after a while the mist begins to clear and a flock of gulls wheels above them, wings black against the pale clouds.

‘More snow,’ he says, and thinks of the night to come.

Then there is a crash in the rushes, and a shout from the bank.

‘Oh Great God above.’

It is the giant. He comes pushing through a stand of reeds and is almost on them before Thomas heaves on the boat pole and sends the boat lurching across the river.

‘Leave us be!’ the sister cries. ‘For the love of the Trinity, leave us be!’

The giant comes down at them, but stops at the water’s edge. He looks about wildly and shouts something unintelligible. He seems stuck.

‘Merciful Mary,’ Thomas breathes. ‘He’s scared of the water.’

The giant stares at them, deciding what to do. Then scrambles along the river’s edge, ripping his way through the thickets. Ahead of him a bittern takes flight with a slow clap of wings.

If Thomas can just keep up this rhythm with the boat pole, and if he can stay on the right-hand side of the river, then he need think of nothing else, need think of nothing that has happened and of nothing that might yet happen. His feet throb with the cold and his head rings from Riven’s blow, but he goes on, letting the water run down his arm as he pushes and lifts, pushes and lifts, and all the while the giant crashes along the riverbank beside them.

Then, suddenly, the giant stops. He stands in the bulrushes and the sedge where the wind makes a tuneless song among the sodden seed spikes. But now Thomas can hear something else. The giant points ahead and shouts. There is something almost sorrowful in his expression. He shouts again and waves his arms.