Toby Clements - Kingmaker - Winter Pilgrims

‘Let me,’ Katherine says.

‘But I want to help.’

Again Katherine wonders why Alice is there. Not standing by the river and holding a bucket of the Prioress’s slops, but in the priory at all. She is too young and too pretty to have come here to wait to die like the other sisters. She is too thin, that is true, but so is everybody these days, except perhaps the Prioress and Sister Joan. Nevertheless, even standing there holding that bucket of shit, even with that dew drop on the tip of her pink nose, Alice seems other-worldly, more than merely one of the sisters. Her clothes have no patches or stains and her rosary beads are finely wrought from ivory — a gift from a loving relative perhaps — and there is a lightness about her, as if she barely touches the ground at all.

‘Why are you here, Sister Alice?’ Katherine asks.

‘I told you,’ Alice says. ‘I want to help.’

‘No, no,’ Katherine goes on. ‘I mean here. Here at the priory.’

Alice smiles.

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I am a bride of Christ.’

She even holds up her hand to show the gold ring on her finger.

‘What about you? Are you not a bride of Christ too?’

Katherine cannot tell if Alice is making a joke, but she thinks of herself: left at the almonry as an infant, with only a purse and some letters, and now the one to empty the Prioress’s slop bucket every morning.

‘Me?’ she says at length. ‘I am like this.’

And she pours the slops into the barrel, careful to keep back the solids for the dung heap. After she has done it, she empties the heavy bucket on to the heap, three or four very brown turds on the snow. The two nuns step back and Alice shivers.

Then they turn and begin their walk back across the fields towards the priory.

‘Why is it always you who empties the Prioress’s night bucket?’ Alice asks.

‘It just is,’ Katherine says.

Alice opens her mouth to ask something more but then closes it. Perhaps she has too many questions and cannot choose the right one. They walk on in silence, listening to their footsteps, and the click of Alice’s rosary, and their ragged breathing; Katherine is lost in thought, and so it is that she doesn’t hear the horses on the road above them until it is too late.

When she does, she stops mid-stride. Her heart lurches.

Men on horseback. More than one. More than two.

‘Quick,’ she whispers.

She gestures to Alice, and they lift their skirts and run. She hears a man shout. Dear God. They’ve been seen. She keeps running. The men are urging their horses off the road, cutting down across the frozen river, aiming to meet them before they reach the beggars’ gate.

There are only a hundred steps to cover, but Katherine and Alice are floundering in their clogs and skirts, and the bucket is heavy and she dare not drop it for fear of what the Prioress will say. Then Alice falls with a cry. Katherine drags her to her feet. The men are in the field now, hollering as if at sport, ploughing their horses through the snow, one pulling ahead of the others.

Katherine turns and starts running again, but in a moment the first horse is on them. She cowers even as she runs, ducking the expected blow, but the rider overtakes them, thundering past. Then he stands tall in his stirrups and hauls back on the reins. He sets the horse on its hind legs and blocks their way.

The horse is huge, brown, with flailing hooves, a beard of filthy icicles and eyeballs as big as fists. The rider is young, but strong, and his face is bright with delight at what he’s caught. He is laughing. Without thinking Katherine takes a step to one side and then, using every muscle in her body, each one honed by punishing years of labour, she swings the heavy bucket. Lets it fly.

It hits the horseman with the crack of a falling trap door.

He flies back over the croup of the horse, hands clapped to his face. Alice screams. The horse launches itself forward again. They throw themselves aside as it barrels past them.

The man is screaming. He rolls on his back, knees drawn up, hands pressed to his face, blood pouring between his leather-gloved fingers. It is everywhere, staining the snow and his white tabard.

But now the other horse is on them, a grey, ridden by a man in a long red coat. He has a sword.

Katherine steps in front of Alice and faces him. She is beyond fear now.

The rider comes at her, arm raised. She stands to face him. But then something happens. Something comes through the air, a dark blur. It catches the horseman, hits his head with a slap. He falters, drops the sword, then collapses, as if filleted. He rolls from the saddle and crashes to the snow. The horse turns, canters away.

And suddenly there is someone else there with them. A man on foot, in a black cloak, clogs on his feet. It is one of the canons, running from the direction of the river. He is waving his arms and shouting, and his skirts are riding high around his bare knees.

The third rider turns to face the new threat, and the fourth rider, a giant of a man on a carthorse, dithers too.

Katherine snatches Alice’s hand and they turn and bolt for the gate. The canon hesitates in mid-stride, swerves, nearly slips, and then follows them. The third rider pulls a long-handled hammer from his pack and jams his heels into his horse’s flanks. The fourth rider — the giant — jumps from his horse and comes running at them on foot. He has no shoes, but is as fast as a wolf, and he has a monstrous axe, and he is roaring as he comes.

Katherine finds the beggars’ gate and pulls Alice through. Then the canon comes hurtling through. She heaves the oak door shut in the giant’s face and drops the locking bar. The planks rock and the bar bulges under the impact of the man’s shoulder, but the door holds, just.

Katherine stands back. She can hardly breathe. She can feel her pulse in her teeth. She makes the sign of the cross, but she cannot help steal a glance at the canon. He is bent with his hands on his knees, gasping with the effort, a long funnel of breath rolling from his gaping mouth. At that moment he stands and he looks at her and for an instant they stare at one another. He has blue eyes, reddish hair.

Then Alice speaks. She is on straw-flecked ice of the yard, pointing at the canon’s clogs, shrinking back, shielding her eyes so that she cannot see the rest of him.

‘He must go!’ she says.

It is true. If he is seen, Katherine can scarcely imagine the penance the three of them will face. But then a voice drifts over the wall.

‘Brother Monk?’

It is a refined voice, nasal and strong. The voice of a man used to ordering others about.

‘Brother Monk? Sister Nun? I know you can hear me. You’ve grievously mishandled my boy, Sister Nun, and you have knocked me from my horse, Brother Monk. By my honour, I cannot let that pass. Come out now and we shall do our business and then I shall ride on my way as if none of this ever happened. Do you hear me, Sister Nun? Brother Monk?’

His voice is close, just the other side of the door, a mere hand’s span away. There is a pause of two or three beats of the heart and then the voice comes again.

‘Well, Sister Nun and Brother Monk, since you’re not going to come out then I shall have to come in. And when I do, I promise you this: I shall find you. I shall find you first, Brother Monk, and when I do, I’ll let my man Morrant here do you to death. Then I’ll come for you, Sister Nun, you and your snivelling girl. After Morrant’s done with you, I’ll nail your bodies to this very door here, see, the one you’re hiding behind, and then I’ll set a fire under you. I’ll see you beg the Almighty to take you. Do you hear me?’

Then there is a quick turn of hooves on the other side of the gate and the horsemen are gone. Katherine stares at her wet wooden clogs under the snow-thickened hem of her cassock. Alice is whimpering.