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Authors: Rosemary Goring

After Flodden

BOOK: After Flodden
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AFTER FLODDEN

This ebook edition published in 2013 by
Birlinn Limited
West Newington House
Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
www.birlinn.co.uk
www.polygonbooks.co.uk

Copyright © Rosemary Goring, 2013

The moral right of Rosemary Goring to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-84967-272-0
eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-575-8

Version 1.0

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

For Alan

Characters

T
HE
S
COTTISH COURT
,
FAMILY AND FOLLOWERS

James IV

Margaret Tudor, his wife, and sister of Henry VIII

James, Duke of Rothesay, James’s toddler son and only surviving legitimate child, later James V

Alexander Stewart, Archbishop of St Andrews, James’s eldest illegitimate child (he had eight, by four mistresses)

Patrick Paniter, James’s secretary and right-hand man

Goodwife Black, Paniter’s housekeeper and more

Gabriel, Viscount Torrance of Blaneford and Mountjoy, a young courtier and advisor to Paniter

Robert Borthwick, master meltar

N
OBLES WITH
J
AMES
IV
AT
F
LODDEN

Alexander Hume, Lord Home, led disastrous plundering foray into England in August 1513, called the ill-raid. Was in charge of vanguard at Flodden, with Huntly

George Gordon, Earl of Huntly, in charge of vanguard at Flodden, with Home

Lieutenant General Archibald Campbell, Earl of Argyll

Patrick Lindsay, Lord Lindsay

Andrew Herries, Lord Herries of Terregles

Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox

William Hay, Earl of Erroll

John Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

William Graham, Earl of Montrose

John Douglas, Earl of Morton

T
HE
L
EITH HOUSEHOLD

Davy Turnbull, head of the house, a sea merchant and brigand, father of Louise Brenier

Madame Brenier, his dissatisfied French wife

Benoit Brenier, her eldest child, by her first husband

Marguerite Brenier, her elder daughter, by her first husband

Louise Brenier, her third child, by Davy Turnbull

Vincent, tenant, shipwright and family friend

John and Andrew Barton, Davy Turnbull’s cousins, sea-traders and adventurers

The vixen, the family mongrel

T
HE
C
ROZIERS

Adam Crozier, head of the clan, whose stronghold is in the Scottish Borders, near Selkirk

Tom Crozier, his younger brother

Nat Crozier, their reckless father, now dead

Old Crozier, Adam and Tom’s grandfather

Martha Crozier, Adam and Tom’s mother

Bella, her sister, who lives in Berwick-upon-Tweed

Oliver, her husband

Wat the Wanderer, Adam’s cousin and henchman

Murdo Montgomery, Adam’s cousin and henchman

Bertie Main, cousin, in charge of the clan’s scouts

O
THER

Hob, an East Lothian boy, orphaned at Flodden

Ella Aylewood, a silversmith’s daughter

T
HE
E
NGLISH COURT AND ITS FOLLOWERS

Henry VIII

Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, Henry’s lieutenant-general in the north of England

Thomas, Baron Dacre, Lord-Warden of the English Marches

Thomas Ruthall, Bishop of Durham, Henry’s secretary and a privy councillor

Beecham, Henry’s clerk of records

T
HE
A
MBASSADORS

Monsieur De La Mothe, French ambassador from the court of Louis XII

Dr Nicholas West, English ambassador

O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!

The lights burn blue; it is now dead midnight.

Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.

What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by . . .

 

Richard III
, Act 5, Scene 3, 180–184

S
HAKESPEARE

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER ONE

18 September 1513

There was a knock at the door, and then another. It was early morning and the sound of a small fist on oak would have been lost in the rumble of carts if Patrick Paniter had
not been at his window. He had been standing there since daybreak, peering into the street from behind a half-closed shutter, dreading the return of his visitor the way some men fear the day of
judgement.

In the years he had lived here these doors had been battered with cudgels and struck by swords, but he had not felt this kind of shiver at any previous summons. It was as if the hand was
hammering straight onto his bones.

The hand was small, little larger than a child’s, but it brought with it memories Paniter could not bear to revisit. The young woman at his door looked nothing like her sister, whose
warm-eyed lustre carried the scent of vineyards to this cold coast. No, this woman had a boy’s figure, and a boy’s rude insistence. He knew what she wanted: money, more than already had
been thrown at her.

He did not entirely blame her. Had Marguerite lived, had the king, there would have been a steady flow of riches into her family’s coffers. But the sister was dead. It was an unfortunate
and untimely end, Paniter would not deny that, but for her mother to lay the blame for Marguerite’s death at the king’s feet was the madness of grief. The pretty little thing had done
as she wanted, and with the mother’s blessing. The consequences were regrettable, but not unusual.

Now the king was gone. Most of the country’s soldiers too. After what he had witnessed of his sovereign’s final throes, he would call Marguerite’s deathbed gentle. Enviable,
even. Tormented by what he had seen, it was as if Paniter’s mind had been flayed. Even a whisper from happier days, a reminder of all he had lost, was like brine dripped into a wound. He
could not deal with the Brenier girl, and her ill-timed greed. She came from a past that was now as lifeless and bruising as stone. The present was every bit as unforgiving. Worse, perhaps, because
it promised nothing but pain.

There was a scratch at his door. Paniter kept his eyes on the street, where his unwelcome visitor’s horse was tethered. The housekeeper came in, her face flushed. ‘It’s her
again, sir, the Brenier lass, and she says she won’t leave until you speak to her.’ She hesitated, then ignored Paniter’s hand, which was waving as if to drive off his thoughts as
well as the young woman below stairs. ‘She means it, master. She’s taken a seat in the hall, and her dog growls like he’s seen a rat whenever I try to make her go.’

A sound escaped Paniter that in a weaker man would be described as a moan. His hand covered his eyes, and he sagged against the wall, as if he had no strength to reach a chair. Goodwife Black
was at his side before he could fall, and with an arm around his waist helped him to a seat. He began to sob. This man who, when he stood up to speak in council rose above his peers like a mainsail
mast, whose voice on a calm day could reach across the Forth into Fife, began to splutter and girn as if he were a child, clutching the housekeeper’s sleeve so wildly his nails grazed her
arm. His tears fell, dampening his lap, until she drew his head down onto her neck and began to rock him, to quieten his grief.

Goodwife Black closed her eyes, or else she too would have cried. Paniter had not slept since he had come home, a week past, and neither had she. The night he walked back into the house his face
was so grim she had clapped a hand to her mouth. He looked like a stranger, and when he told her a little of what had befallen, and when she heard what others in the city were saying, she doubted
the man she had once known so well would ever pass this way again.

Worn out by seven days of misery, of refusing all food and company, Patrick Paniter finally found comfort in his mistress’s arms. He had lain there often enough before, his hands roving
over her abundant form. Today, though, no whisper of lust disturbed the relief he found in her touch. For a few minutes the ceaseless roar in his head retreated. The ache behind his eyes did not
fade, but its sharpness was dulled. Images he thought had been chiselled into his eye lost a little of their vividness, as did the sounds that came with them. The smells? Well, they would be with
him for the rest of his life. Never again would he eat succulent roast beef or relish a plate of sheep’s lungs. The butchery he had witnessed had cured him of his taste for meat.

Downstairs Mistress Brenier scuffed her feet in the hallway. Her hound sat at her side. This house was dim as a forest, no tallow wasted for the ease of guests. Its windows were shuttered, and
the grate in the entrance was unlit. The girl shivered. It was not the chill of the hall, or of the housekeeper’s reception that made her tremble, but the grim business that brought her
here.

Eighty miles south of Paniter’s house lay the worst devastation of living memory, a blight more fearsome than plague or famine. The name ‘Flodden’ was already spreading like
pestilence through city and country, a word so tainted with misery and anger it tasted bitter in the mouth. Some spat when they uttered it. A month before, only a handful of Borderers knew the
place existed. Now, even before the last body had been stripped of coins and spurs, and flung into the village pit, it was a stain on the country’s spirit as dark as the quarts of hot blood
that flowed onto the hillside and seeped into the bog. Spring would bring fresh weeds and flowers, a new spurt of growth in the sturdy Borders trees, but who would be able to watch their nodding
leaves and buds without thinking of the iron water they fed upon?

BOOK: After Flodden
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