Kingmaker: Broken Faith by Toby Clements

that name mean anything? No? They are a small family from the north of here?’
    Barnaby gestures and Thomas shakes his head, though the name does perhaps set off a distant peal of recognition.
    ‘No? Well,’ Barnaby goes on, ‘when Lord Cornford was killed, our Giles Riven seized the castle. I don’t know by what right he did so, though no doubt deception and violence played their part, but at the time, Richard Fakenham – who might perhaps have been expected to take it by right of being betrothed to Margaret – was the Duke of York’s indentured man, and just then that Duke and all his retinue were outside the King’s grace, do you see? But Giles Riven was firmly with King Henry, who was then in the ascendant, so whatever the divers rights and wrongs of the matter, Fakenham was unable to unseat Riven, and the bastard was left to sink his roots into the estate.’
    Barnaby wets his throat before going on.
    ‘Of course, that was before the great reversal,’ he continues, ‘before King Edward drove King Henry from the field at Towton, in the process of which, as I say, Giles Riven met his end, and so now, with him gone, Richard Fakenham is in the ascendant, is he not? The loyal Yorkist, there to receive his reward, through his betrothed wife, of an estate worth, when old Cornford had it and ran it properly, more than two hundred pounds a year.’
    Thomas says nothing.
    ‘Yes,’ Barnaby says, ‘an enormous sum, a great fortune. So this newly minted Richard Fakenham and his wife Lady Margaret arrive – two summers past, it was now – with a retinue of borrowed soldiers and they took the castle, and all the lands, though in parlous state by now, as if by right. And if it had ended there, then that would have been its end. Obviously.’
    ‘But?’
    ‘But at around All Souls this last year, the reeve of the castle, a man named Eelby, who is a drunk and a thief actually, and who in quieter times might have long since expected to find himself dangling at the end of a rope, had a wife heavy with child. Now, as from cloth comes the moth, so from womankind comes wickedness, as it is written, and as you know, and it has always been, since Eve first corrupted Adam, but still – but what follows, I confess, shocked me. For it transpired that Lady Margaret, the childing woman’s mistress don’t forget, was herself barren, being married and still without child, and so, filled with such hatred and envy as is unique to her sex, she cut open the reeve’s wife to reveal the child within.’
    The fire’s flames have matured, throwing out more heat than smoke, and the bell rings in its tower and Barnaby glances up, and Thomas knows instinctively what time it is and what the bell means, and part of him is pleased he does.
    ‘So there was an inquest,’ Barnaby continues, ‘as was right, just this last month, and ordinarily a man such as Fakenham would have packed the inquest’s jury with his own men, or he would have paid the coroner some sum, and fixed it that way, so that it was found that there was no felony, and that would have been that. But I have not told you the crucial thing about Richard Fakenham, have I?’
    Thomas shakes his head. He supposes not.
    ‘The crucial thing about Richard Fakenham is that he is blind,’ Barnaby says. ‘Blind, not from birth, nor from cataracts nor any other disease, you understand, but from having had both orbs put out, some time during the recent wars.’
    ‘Do you suppose he ever encountered your Giles Riven and his giant?’ Thomas asks.
    ‘I have wondered that,’ Barnaby admits, ‘but whatever its cause, his blindness undid him, for unable to see, he was forced to leave it to his wife, this Margaret, to fix things, and she – well. She either did not know what to do, or she was unable to do it. She being, of course, a woman.’
    ‘So she was found guilty?’
    Barnaby holds up a finger.
    ‘Not quite,’ he says. ‘It has not progressed that far, if it ever will, because,