Toby Clements - Kingmaker - Winter Pilgrims

Thomas thinks.

‘Where would I find him?’ he asks.

‘Canterbury.’

Thomas has heard of Canterbury, but he has no idea of where it is.

And besides, why should he run? If God is with him?

‘But what then of God’s purpose?’ he asks.

The Dean loses patience. He strides across the stable, picks up the bread and the nearly empty soup bowl.

‘God’s blood, Brother Thomas,’ he says, ‘you are a stubborn young fool, and you eating this is a waste, for you’ll be dead before you’ve garnered its goodness.’

Thomas scrabbles to his feet.

‘Do not despair of me, Brother. Please.’

The Dean looks at Thomas. He pauses and thinks for a moment and then comes to some decision.

‘All right,’ he says, handing the dish back. ‘You’re right. Finish it. You’ll need your strength.’

Thomas takes it.

‘Thank you, Brother.’

‘I must go now. Riven’s men are camped in the fields beyond and are demanding what little food we have and the Prioress has sent word that one of the sisters has absconded.’

Thomas is gripped by the fear that he is saying goodbye to the Dean, that this will be the last he sees of him.

‘You have been kind, Brother,’ he says, ‘and may God go with you.’

‘You too, Brother. I fear you will have need of Him more the soonest.’

He leaves the door unlocked, but Thomas does not move. He has made his mind up. He will face whatever he must, and with God’s grace, he will come through it.

Sometime later, when the chapter meeting is ended, the door is opened again and Brother John and Brother Barnaby stand there, pained to see Thomas has not fled.

‘You are to come with us,’ John says. ‘The Prior has sent for you.’

The bell begins a slow clap, a rhythm like that of the passing bell, and for a moment Thomas considers refusing. Already he feels nostalgia for the time he has spent in the stable. But then he follows them out across the cobbled yard into the north arm of the cloister proper. The rain has melted away the snow, leaving the world lichen-grey.

The rest of the canons are gathered in the eastern arm, a knot of black cassocks and white scapulars against the grey stone walls. Giles Riven stands bare-headed in the middle of the square as if he owns it. He is exercising, flashing his black-bladed sword this way and that, stretching his powerful shoulders, working the heat into his right arm, the sword’s tip a thrum in the confines of the garth.

Thomas is pleased to see his cheek is livid and his eye sealed with the swelling from yesterday’s fight.

Next to Riven, a little way off, is the giant, that dreadful axe in one hand like a child’s stick, and in the other two newly stripped quarterstaffs. He is a head and a half taller than any man there, and twice as broad. His grey-streaked hair falls in long hanks down the shoulders of his greasy leather coat and he is still bare-footed, like the meanest sort of peasant. When he sees Thomas he begins to laugh, a deep chesty boom that makes Riven stop and turn.

‘Brother Monk,’ he calls, his crooked smile apparently genuine. ‘Good news.’

‘What is that?’ Thomas asks. He will not call Riven ‘sir’.

‘The good news is that my boy will live,’ Riven replies. ‘The bad news is that you will not.’

The giant laughs louder, and two others sitting on the wall join in. One of them is wearing a white jacket as Riven’s son had been wearing, with a black bird that looks like a crow as a badge. The hem is made up of black and white checks, and the same device is repeated on a square banner that the other man has propped against the cloister wall. This other is in a thick padded coat, dyed blue, with long boots and a dark cap. Both have swords at their hips. Both are drinking from leather tankards, and Brother Jonathan stands by with a pitcher of something that steams.

The Prior and the Dean are together on the far side of the garth with Brother Athelstan. Athelstan is telling them something to which they continue to listen even while their eyes follow Thomas. The Dean looks angry — that Thomas hasn’t fled the priory perhaps — while the Prior looks haunted, as if he has not slept, and his owlishness, which Thomas had once taken as a sign of learning, now looks like weakness. The old man turns back to Athelstan, who is waiting for an answer to some question he has asked.

The Dean leaves them and crosses the garth to intercept Thomas, taking responsibility where the Prior is too ashamed to do so.

‘Your accuser has chosen the weapon with which you are to fight,’ he says.

Riven interrupts.

‘The quarterstaff,’ he says, motioning to the giant to pass one of the staffs to Thomas. ‘You’re broadly familiar with it, I believe, Brother Monk? An uncomplicated sort of weapon. Two ends. A middle.’

The giant tosses Thomas one of the quarterstaffs. Thomas catches it and places its end on the ground and waits. He is familiar with the quarterstaff from long hours fighting with his brother when they were children, then adolescents. He knows the tricks, he thinks, and, looking at Riven’s swollen eye, he permits himself to wonder. Without thinking he removes his cowl and hitches the skirts of his cassock as the men working in the fields do.

‘Begin then, shall we?’ Riven says, passing his sword to the giant and taking the other staff in return.

‘A prayer first, sir, surely?’ the Prior pleads, finally finding the strength to divert if not resist Riven’s will.

Riven sighs.

‘Very well, Prior. But make it quick.’

All kneel in the mud as the Prior begins the prayers with a paternoster. When it is over Riven stands, just as the Prior is drawing in breath to continue with an Ave.

‘Thank you, Prior,’ he says, ‘that will be all. Now, let’s get to it, shall we? In the absence of any formal arrangements, I suggest we clear this area and assume no quarter. Before I kill you, though, I shall permit the Prior here to administer the viaticum, so you’re provided for on your final journey. Agreed? Anything to add, Brother Monk?’

‘Only that this is not justice,’ Thomas tells him.

Riven pretends to be shocked.

‘Not justice, Brother Monk? Not justice? Yet here we are, quite equal before the Lord.’

‘You are a trained knight.’

This is what the Dean had called him. Riven is sidling towards him across the grass, weighing and measuring the staff, testing its properties.

‘Perhaps the good Lord knew I’d be called on to face this sort of thing, hey? Perhaps He instructed my father to instil in me a skill at arms? Perhaps that’s it. Perhaps He knew you’d turn out to be a miserable sinner and so made your father a cowardly little runt who would rather teach his son to fuck a pig than fight a man?’

‘My father died in France, facing the French, at Formigny.’

Riven straightens.

‘Did he? Well, I am sorry to hear it, but you are not alone in losing a father in battle. My own died at St Albans.’

As Riven mentions St Albans he flicks his wrist and the tip of his quarterstaff flashes past Thomas’s nose. Thomas remains motionless.

‘I am a canon of the Order of Gilbert of Sempringham,’ he says. ‘If I am to be tried for a crime that I did not commit then it should be done in Court Ecclesiastical, not this mockery.’

Riven lowers his quarterstaff and looks comically disappointed. The giant laughs again.

‘I cannot fight you, Brother Monk,’ Riven says. ‘Unless you strike me first. Now what will it take to get you to fight? I have impugned you and your father already, so now what about your mother? What can I say about her? A whore whelping in a ditch? No, no. I sense I am on the wrong track here.’

Thomas shakes his head, not in denial but in pity, and the gesture instantly brings the tip of Riven’s staff within a finger’s breadth of his right eye. Thomas blinks. Riven lowers the staff.