Toby Clements: Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims

During the 1450S England was in a sorry state: her hundred-year war in France had ended in humiliation, law and order had broken down in the towns and shires, and at sea, pirates were everywhere so that the wool trade — which had once kept her coffers brimming — had withered to nothing. Meanwhile her king, Henry VI, was prey to bouts of madness that robbed him of his wits, and with no strong leader, his court had become riven by two factions: one led by the Queen — a strong-willed Frenchwoman named Margaret from Anjou; the other by Richard, Duke of York, and his powerful allies the Earls of Warwick and of Salisbury.

Relations between the two factions first broke down in 1455 and each summoned its men to arms. In a short sharp action in the shadow of the Abbey of St Albans in Hertfordshire, the Queen’s favourite, Edmund, second Duke of Somerset, was killed, and the Duke of York and his allies won the day.

But York’s ascendancy was short-lived. By the end of the decade the King had regained his wits and the Queen her control of the court, and the sons of those killed at St Albans sought vengeance for their fathers’ sakes.

In 1459 the Queen summoned the Duke of York and his allies to court in Coventry, where she was strong, and, fearing for his life, the Duke once more raised his banner and summoned his allies. The Queen — in the King’s name — did likewise and on the eve of St Edward’s Day in October that year, the two sides once more took the field, at Ludford Bridge, near Ludlow, in the county of Shropshire.

But the Duke of York and the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury were betrayed, and so, finding their position hopeless, they fled the country: the Duke of York to Ireland, the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury across the Narrow Sea to Calais.

And so now while those of the Queen’s faction strip the land of all that is left, men in England are waiting, waiting for the spring to come, waiting for the exiles to return, waiting for the wars to start once more.

The Dean comes for him during the Second Repose, when the night is at its darkest. He brings with him a rush lamp and a quarterstaff and he wakes him with a heavy prod.

‘Up now, Brother Thomas,’ he says. ‘The Prior’s asking for you.’

It is not time for prime yet, Thomas knows, and he hopes if he is asleep, the Dean will let him alone and wake one of the other canons: Brother John perhaps, or Brother Robert, who is snoring. A moment later his blankets are thrown back and the cold grips him fast. He sits up and tries to gather them to him, but the Dean casts them aside.

‘Come on now,’ he says. ‘The Prior’s waiting.’

‘What does he want?’ Thomas asks. Already his teeth are chattering and there is steam rising from his body.

‘You’ll see,’ the Dean says. ‘And bring your cloak. Bring your blanket. Bring everything.’

In the lamp’s uncertain glow the Dean’s face is all heavy brows and a crooked nose, and the shadow of his head looms across the ice-rimed slates of the roof above. Thomas untangles his frost-stiffened cloak and finds his worsted cap and his clogs. He wraps the blanket about his shoulders.

‘Come on, come on,’ the Dean urges. His teeth are chattering too.

Thomas gets up and follows him across the dorter, stepping over the huddled forms of the other canons, and together they go down the stone steps to the Prior’s cell where a beeswax candle shivers in a sconce and the old man lies on a thick hay mattress with three blankets drawn up to his chin.

‘God be with you, Father,’ Thomas begins.

The Prior waves aside the greeting without taking his hands from under his covers.

‘Did you not hear it?’ he asks.

‘Hear what, Father?’

The Prior doesn’t answer but cocks his narrow head at the shuttered window. Thomas hears only the Dean’s breathing behind him and the gentle rattle of his own teeth. Then comes a distant rising shriek, pitched high, thin as a blade. It makes him shudder and he cannot help but cross himself.

The Prior laughs.

‘Only a fox,’ he says. ‘Whatever did you think it was? A lost soul, perhaps? One of the lesser devils?’

Thomas says nothing.

‘Probably caught in the copse beyond the river,’ the Dean suggests. ‘One of the lay brothers sets his snares there. John, it is.’

There is a silence. They ought to send for this John, Thomas thinks, the one who set the trap. He should be made to go and kill the fox. Put it out of its misery.

‘Quick as you can then, Brother Tom,’ the Dean says.

Thomas realises what they mean.

‘Me?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ the Prior says. ‘Or do you think you are too good for such a thing?’

Thomas says nothing, but that is exactly what he is thinking.

‘Do it like this,’ the Dean says, miming with the staff, jerking its tip down on the skull of an imaginary fox. ‘Just above the eyes.’

The Dean has been to the wars in France, and is well known to have killed a man. Perhaps even two. He passes the staff to Thomas. It is almost as tall as him, stained at one end as if it has been used to stir a large pot.

‘And be sure to bring the body back,’ the Prior adds as the Dean guides Thomas from the cell, ‘for I shall want the fur, and the infirmarian the flesh.’

The Dean’s light leads Thomas down more stone steps into the fragrant darkness of the frater house where he is drawn to the warmth of the fire’s embers glowing under their cover, but the Dean has already crossed the room and pulled aside the door’s drawbar.

‘God’s blood!’ he exclaims as he opens the door.

Outside it is the sort of cold that stops you dead, the sort that drops birds from the sky, splits millstones.

‘Go on, young Tom,’ the Dean says. ‘The sooner it is done, the sooner it were done. Then get back here. I’ll have some hot wine for you.’

Thomas opens his mouth to say something, but the Dean shoves him out into the cold and closes the door in his face.

Dear God. One moment he is asleep, almost warm, dreaming of the summer to come even, and now: this.

The cold sticks in his throat, makes his head ache. He gathers his cloak, hesitates a moment, then turns and sets out, picking his way across the yard to the beggars’ gate, his clogs ringing on the ice.

He unbars the gate and steps through. Beyond the priory walls the dawn is already a pale presence in the east and the snow lying over the fen gives off a light so cold it is blue. To the south, where the river curls around itself, the millwheel is frozen in mid-turn, as if opening its mouth to say something, and beyond it the bakery, the brewhouse and the lay brothers’ granges stand deserted, their walls frosted, their roofs bowing under the weight of snow. Nothing moves. Not a thing.

Then the fox screams again, high and sharp. Thomas shudders and turns back to the gateway, as if he might somehow be allowed back in to return to bed, but then he collects himself and turns again and forces himself to move. One step, two, carefully keeping close to the priory walls, following them around to where the dark line of the old road comes into view on its way through the fen towards Cornford and the sea beyond. There was a time when it might have been busy, he thinks, even on a morning such as this. Merchants might have been making their way to Boston with their wool for the fleet sailing for the Staple in Calais, or pilgrims might have been coming to the shrine of Little St Hugh in Lincoln. These days though, with the land so lawless, anyone abroad at this time of day is either a fool or a villain, or both.