After Flodden (12 page)

Packed for her journey, Louise untied her bodice. She took a shawl filched from her mother’s press and wrapped it, with one of her own, around her shoulders and midriff, securing them with
Benoit’s belt. She patted her new girth, and gave a grim smile. She could scarcely fit her bodice over her bulk, and she left the ribbons dangling, too short to meet over her matronly bosom
and waist. Next she wetted her hands in the butt, knelt by the fire, and clawed together a pile of cool ashes. She rubbed a handful into her hair, stifling a sneeze as soot flew around her head.
The vixen cocked her head and sniffed, but made no noise.

It was a grey-haired, fat little woman who crept out of the back door, a docile hound at her heels. Only when she reached the outbuildings, well beyond sight of her mother’s window, did
Louise dare stop to light a wick. Sheltering the flame from the wind, she hurried over the courtyard. In his stable, Hans whinnied and shuffled at her approach. It took an age to quieten him. He
had once been a fearless creature, a good-natured adventurous bay, whose temper matched his master’s. When her father died, Louise took him as her own, despite Madame’s complaints at
the cost of feeding him. Benoit reminded their mother that in these times, a family horse was essential. His own little mare was a working beast, used every day in the yard, or on his travels, and
rarely available for anyone but himself.

Reluctantly, Madame agreed, persuaded that between them her daughters would put the animal to good use. Marguerite, however, would not go near Hans, complaining that he was too edgy. She
preferred Benoit’s docile grey, and somehow managed to wheedle him into lending the mare out whenever she wished. Marguerite liked the picture she made with her skirts spread over the
mare’s flanks, and her riding hat perched aslant over her eyes, as she rode to rendezvous with her king. Hans would not have tolerated those slow afternoons, where Marguerite wandered through
woodland with her lover, never giving him a chance to burn off his nerves. He would have killed romance with his prancing and pawing. Once placid, Hans these days had grown fretful, as if still
waiting for his owner’s firm hand and voice. Louise understood. She felt much the same herself.

While the old horse lipped at her sooty fingers, nosing out the apple she had tucked up her sleeve, she stroked his neck, not daring to think about the time she was wasting, or imagine her
mother coming downstairs, sleepless, and finding the ill-written and ink-spattered letter on the kitchen table. Vincent would read it to her, because while Madame claimed her eyesight was poor,
everyone knew she could not read; she had never needed to. That her daughter could not only read but write was entirely to Benoit’s credit, who believed a woman should be able to run a
business like any man.

Louise murmured to Hans, to keep him calm and quiet. But as the horse crunched up the apple, exhaling a grassy scent with every mouthful, Louise’s own fears began to ebb. This was a
strangely soothing sound, familiar since childhood, and its domestic sweetness steadied her. ‘Good boy,’ she whispered, kissing his nose. When she began to saddle him up he stood, calm
as in daylight, and her own heartbeat was almost regular as she snuffed her light and led him out of the stable.

When his hooves struck the cobbles she hesitated, certain a window would be thrown open and her mother’s bonnet appear behind a candle. But nothing stirred except the wind, and she urged
him on, round the side of the house and out onto the quayside. There she got into the saddle – an ungainly manoeuvre with her added weight – and set off at the quiet, plodding pace of a
wake. On one side the vixen trotted at her heels; on the other the Water of Leith slurped at its banks, an oily wash and slap that had been the sound of home since the hour she was born.

When they reached the street, Louise nudged Hans into a brisk walk. She wanted to be clear of the city walls and well on her way before her mother found her gone. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to
the dark. There were no lights to be seen, but behind their shutters a window or two gleamed like a narrowed eye as a fire within was stoked for that morning’s work.

The road to the south wound along the coast, a crooked seam stitched in mud. Louise knew it well. Benoit had often ridden out with her to the fishing villages beyond Leith – Fisherrow,
Prestonpans, Port Seton. They had eaten hot mackerel on the sands at Aberlady, squinting into the sun as the oil ran down their chins and they eyed the milky blue trees that fringed the Lothian
coast, knowing that it would be long after dark before they were home, with their mother’s fierce tongue to face for their day’s escape.

Louise could, if she wished, follow the coast road all the way to the prison at Berwick, but that was not her plan. Paniter’s words rang in her head, dolorous as a church bell: ‘If
you had seen what we have seen. If you had seen what we have seen . . . ’ She could not banish them, because as soon as he had spoken, she knew she must go to Flodden. It was dread at that
prospect, not the news of Benoit’s likely death – which she did not fully believe – that had made her faint. Flodden had swiftly become the most fearful name in the Scots
language, and to visit the scene of such slaughter would take a degree of steeliness and resolve she did not believe she possessed.

Yet, if Benoit had died there, she must see the hillside where he had fallen. She might never find his body, but she would have the painful comfort of knowing in what sort of place he had spent
his final hours. If she found no proof of his death, however, then she would ride on to Berwick, and its fortress of a prison. Paniter said few survived capture, but few had survived smallpox
either, which was surely more lethal. As her father had taught her, jiggling the dicing cup in his hand, the braver the gamble, the better the odds of winning. He brought home so much money from
the alehouse tables, he must have been right. She would try to live by that rule.

She rode on. Hans’s breath, and the clink of his bridle were a comfort in the dark. Yet even as dawn crept over the sea, coaxing the night to dissolve, the shadowy land she crossed felt
alien, no more familiar or safe in gathering light than it had by night. Keeping her eyes on the path, she pressed on.

The sea had been her close companion for hours when at last she dropped the reins and allowed Hans to rest. The vixen panted at his side, and sat, as if to take in the view. While the horse
grazed, Louise looked out across the red earthen fields that ran between the road and the clifftop trees. Some distance behind her, Dunbar castle crouched on its outcrop, guarding the harbour like
a miser stooped over his hoard. Under a pall of cloud, fishing boats moved slowly homewards across the horizon, their day’s catch already on deck. Ahead of her lay grey sea, woodland, and a
rutted road running between the two, so narrow it looked too puny to fight its way through the trees.

Louise had never ridden this far from home. Benoit had once told her about the herring-wives’ track that ran south-west from Dunbar, the route he used on his trips to the Border foresters.
That was her road. She remembered him saying that when he reached a village called Cockburnspath, a huddle of houses clinging like barnacles above the sea’s edge, he would turn south-west,
climbing into the Lammermuir hills, where the ancient path wound its way over some of the loneliest moorland in the country.

So this was where the Borders began. The name rang like a bell, a frightening toll as if it described the home of giants and not ordinary, workaday folk like herself. Benoit had spoken of these
people often, and rarely with warmth. The Borderers, he had told her, were a tribe apart. They could be kind, but they were more often treacherous. They were suspicious of outsiders, and were
fractious among themselves. So far as Benoit could tell, the list of those of whom they were wary covered all kinds, from march wardens and merchants, to the king himself. Even for their monarch
they would not lift a finger unless it was to their advantage. It was said that only a handful had joined the king’s side at Flodden. The rest had melted into the trees, to watch and
wait.

And yet this past year or two, Benoit had seemed almost eager to leave the bustle and cheer of Leith for these unwelcoming parts. Louise tried to take heart from that. She surely had no need to
be afraid. Crumbling a bannock, she gave a corner to the vixen, ate the rest, and took a long draught of ale from her flask. It was already noon, the sun as bright as it would get this day, yet
even now shadows were fingering their way across her path. It had been a relief to ride out of Dunbar a little earlier, leaving behind a main street turned to stew with mud and slops. A posse of
weans dressed in sail-cloth rags had splashed alongside her, catching at her boots and begging for a coin. Their whining turned to curses as she spurred Hans on out of their reach, but as she faced
the empty road ahead, she was sorry to have left even such bad company behind.

Hans trotted at an easy pace. The vixen jogged a yard ahead, turning now and then to check the horse stayed close. With the hovels of Cockburnspath at her back, Louise began to look for the turn
in the road. Waves rolled onto a rumbling beach far below the path, and the wind began to strengthen, blowing her ashen hair into her eyes. A speck of rain prickled on her cheek, followed by
another. Soon she was squinting into a downpour, fighting to keep her hood in place while also holding Hans steady. The horse picked his way between the ruts and stones as the road plunged
downwards, out of the wind, and away from the sea. The growl of milled pebbles receded, replaced by the melancholy drumming of rain, and the slush of hooves on a sticky path that was designed for
nothing wider than a waif and her horse.

Louise sniffed, wiping rain from her nose. The sky was purple, and the path so confined by rock face on either side, she could not see much beyond Hans’s ears. Relief at being out of the
worst of the squall soon turned to worry. After what felt like hours, their passage grew even narrower, and Louise’s skirts were turning green from the moss brushing her on either side.
Unsettled, Hans snorted and tossed his mane. The vixen had slowed to a walk, and Louise was beginning to fear she had taken the wrong road. She was wondering how they would turn back in such a
confined space when without warning the rocks dropped away and they emerged into the open, spat out from their funnel onto a hillocky plain where the rain and wind could come at them in full
venom.

There was nothing to do but keep going. Putting her head down, she kicked Hans into a canter. There was still some time before dusk, and before then they must find shelter. She tried not to
imagine what a night outdoors in this weather would be like.

They had been riding doggedly for some miles, the ground underfoot growing steadily rougher, when Hans stumbled, and Louise was thrown onto his neck as his knees buckled. He quickly regained his
balance, but Louise reined him in at once. ‘Easy, there, boy,’ she said, dismounting, her boots sinking into the sodden trail. No wonder the horse had lost his footing. They were
ploughing through a marsh.

Cursing her heedlessness, Louise ran a hand over his fetlocks. Hans nuzzled her shoulder as she crouched, looking for a sprain or tear. She found nothing swollen, nothing that made him flinch.
In relief, she laid her head on his neck. Whatever the weather, they would have to ride with caution. A cold, wet night stretched ahead.

Some considerable time later, when she looked up to see where the vixen had gone, she blinked. Absorbed in her hurry, she had not noticed the country changing character under her feet. It was as
if someone had wiped it clean. Woodland and fields had melted behind them, as if they had never existed. This was a new land, like nothing Louise had ever met before. Without realising it, she must
have moved inland faster than she expected. This was the moor that Benoit had warned her about, a desert of wild, inhospitable terrain that would, eventually, bring her to Duns, and the road for
Flodden.

In the thin afternoon light, heath and bog stretched on every side. Wind-whipped oaks crouched by the roadside, bent as beggars. They were sinister not for their human shape but for whatever
might lurk behind them.

Hans sniffed and pawed, catching a scent he did not like, and the vixen gave a yap, darting around the horse’s feet, her ears pricked. Louise patted Hans’s neck, more to reassure
herself than him. She walked him on slowly. The rain had turned to drizzle, thickening into a haar that cloaked the moor in a drenched gauze. ‘Watch your step,’ Louise warned, holding
the horse in check, in case he trip again. Now she began to understand what their old servant had felt like, as she descended by degrees into blindness. She remembered Sally haunting the window
seat, holding her stitching up to the light and squinting at it like a jeweller with a gem; when the milky cloud finally claimed both eyes, she would stroke Louise’s cheek as she spoke to
her, as if to remind herself that though the girl was invisible, she was just as she’d always been.

Now, like Sally, Louise could not see a horse’s length ahead. Peering into the mist until her eyes ached, she could make out nothing until it was upon her. An alder loomed over them,
shaped in a pounce, and she shrieked as its arms reached for her out of the pall.

Though it was still day, they might as well have been in the dark. The moor and its sodden silence closed in around them, a cold cloying prison as secret as the bottom of the sea. Out here they
were alone. If anything happened, they would be lost forever. Benoit had told her of the body he once found by the wayside out here, a herring carter who had lost her footing, and broken her leg.
By the time he came upon her, she was pickings for the crows. Louise put the other details of the story out of her mind. Overhead, hidden, an oystercatcher flew by with a piercing cry, and she bit
her lip. She tried to believe there was nothing out here to be afraid of, that there were worse things to cope with than a bit of bad weather. And then she saw something moving towards her.