After Flodden (16 page)

Hob appeared at her side, and struck a light. He stared at Gabriel, who smiled up at him. ‘Good evening, young squire.’ The boy did not reply.

‘Who’s your silent companion?’ Gabriel asked, as Louise slipped his cloak off his shoulder, and untied his shirt sleeve.

‘This is Hob,’ she said. ‘His father was at Flodden. He was mortally wounded.’ She looked up. ‘Hob, this is Gabriel Torrance. One of the king’s men, and a
good friend to my family. We can trust him.’

‘Right ye are,’ said Hob. He held the light steady as Louise rolled back the sleeve and uncovered the bite. Thanks to the cloak, it was little more than a scratch, but the force of
the vixen’s attack had opened the wound on Gabriel’s arm, and blood was beginning to seep into that morning’s fresh bandage.

‘An old wound,’ said Gabriel, seeing Louise’s shock. ‘Taken at Flodden field. Your hound is not to blame. She’s a fine guard dog, and you’re lucky to have
her. I was a damnable fool not to declare myself earlier. I must have scared the wits out of all of you, creeping up like a cut-throat.’

‘I wisnae feart,’ said Hob.

‘Good man,’ said Gabriel. ‘But still I owe you an apology.’

Louise frowned. ‘Do you have another dressing, or bandage? This one will be soaked through in no time. Or should we bind you up tight till we can wash and dress this properly?’

‘There are linen strips in my saddlebag, but if you can help me put another wad of lint under the bandage, that will staunch it. That’s all it needs.’ Louise looked at him
anxiously, and he smiled down at her. ‘Believe me, this is nothing. What’s more pressing is that we find a place for the night.’

‘There’s a farm close by, where we were heading.’

‘I know. I called in there a while ago, and when they had seen nothing of you, I came back.’

‘How did you know we were on this road?’ Louise pressed clean lint onto the wound, and pocketed the bloodied wad.

‘I didn’t. Not with any certainty, anyhow. At first I thought you’d have gone due south, straight to Berwick gaol. But then I reckoned you might start the search at Flodden. I
did not think you could have gone far this way. Hence why I came back.’

‘Well,’ said Louise, tying the bandage back in place, ‘we are glad you found us.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper as she fastened his shirt and jerkin, but she did not
meet his eyes. ‘I’ve never been so glad as when you called out my name.’

Gabriel put a hand on her shoulder, and its heat burned through to her skin. He was about to say something when Hob bent closer with the light. The farmyard smell of tallow caught their throats,
and they rose to their feet. Gabriel seemed to sway for a moment.

‘Come, both of you,’ he said, mounting his horse with obvious pain. ‘We don’t have far to go.’ The vixen ran close to Louise’s heels, with the courtier in her
sights at every step.

CHAPTER TEN

3 October 1513

The evening after he had taken the bad news about her son to Mme Brenier and her daughter in Leith, Patrick Paniter retreated to his bed. Goodwife Black could do nothing to
stir him. He turned his back to her, his nightshirt yellowing with sweat. That he would occasionally drink a bowl of broth gave her hope that he would recover, but in the meantime he was sunk in a
sea of guilt, toiling to get out of its clutches but driven back onto his pillows by wave upon wave of regret.

As he lay sleepless, staring at the canopy above the bed, the past paraded before his eyes. He found himself reliving decisions he had taken on his own as secretary, letters he had composed, in
James’s name. Often the king barely read them before scrawling his signature, trusting his servant to conduct affairs with delicacy, and acumen. And until the day of battle, Paniter believed
he had done just that.

But as autumn began to chase leaves down the streets of Edinburgh, and shutters were closed against the rising winds, he was haunted by each order he had delivered as the king’s
counsellor, every document sanded and sent out. As he saw it now, he and James had been steering Scotland straight onto the rocks. In the dead of night, the only hand he saw on the tiller was his
own.

One man loomed larger than most in these waking nightmares. Doctor West was Henry VIII’s ambassador, and a frequent visitor to the Scottish king’s palaces. He was a welcome guest,
much liked by the court, to which he always brought a crate of Alicante wine, and a stream of irreverent anecdotes that set the dinner table alight with laughter. Of scrawny build, when dressed in
the puffed and padded style the English preferred he looked like a child’s drawing, his legs thin as a pipe and his head as small as a button above his bulbous jerkin. He would arrive with
gifts for the queen and her infants, treating them as fondly as if he were an English uncle, and it seemed he genuinely grieved at the toll of nursery deaths that dogged this marriage. For that
reason, perhaps, on his most recent visit he had been particularly affectionate with Jamie, the queen’s only living child, a beefy infant whose crawling antics at his mother’s feet he
would watch for hours at a time.

Mind you, thought Paniter, we gave him many hours to fill. On his last mission, as the secretary now acknowledged, the ambassador had been badly dealt with. Though the business he came to
conduct was often irksome to James and Paniter, in previous years he had been given their full attention. This past spring, however, he had been treated no better than a troublesome commoner, kept
waiting for meetings, and cold-shouldered in council. Paniter winced at the memory of their last encounter. With hindsight, he believed their complacency heralded the start of the disaster that was
soon to unfold.

It had been a brisk spring morning, trees coming into bud on the road from Linlithgow Palace to Edinburgh, where James had summoned the ambassador with the promise, or so the Englishman thought,
of finally giving him the signed papers he had so long requested.

‘At last, he appears to have come to his senses,’ said West to Paniter, as they waited in the antechamber to James’s rooms at Holyrood Palace. The ambassador rubbed his hands
before the fire.

‘Mmm?’ said Paniter, laying aside his book. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that after keeping me kicking my heels here since Candlemas near enough, and doing everything possible to avoid my company, it would seem that the king has finally had the wit to
realise he must sign his old accord with Henry. He knows he cannot ally himself with the French king, and take war to England on his behalf. And that if he did, Henry would consider the Treaty of
Perpetual Peace to have been broken.

‘Should that happen, all hell would be unleashed on Scotland’s head. For believe me, Henry is a man with some knowledge of hell. He has it at his command, or so many of his servants
and mistresses have told me.’ He stroked his beard. ‘I wouldn’t fancy risking it, myself.’

Paniter flicked dust from his britches. ‘Is that so?’ West’s frown should have warned him to be cautious.

‘Sir,’ the ambassador replied, with unusual asperity, ‘for your sake, and all of ours, I truly hope it is so. No monarch can be trusted who will break a deal signed with his
neighbour, purely on a whim. I know there have been faults on both sides, and resentments, but there are no serious barriers to a full alliance between our kingdoms. Yet James has been as skittish
as a maid. Louis appears to promise him everything his heart desires, but will he produce it? Has there been any sign yet of the largesse, the soldiers, the ships for his crusade that Louis assures
him are his, yet for some reason never quite delivers?’

The doctor turned his back to the fire, but kept within its reach as he looked down on the secretary where he sat, unperturbed.

‘So far as I can see, Master Paniter, all the gifts flow from the Scottish court into Louis’s hands. Forgive me for being blunt, but your king is more like a swain suffering
unrequited love than a ruler who knows his own worth. Even his wife thinks he is mad not to affirm the Peace with England for all to see.’

Paniter began a sharp reply, but West held up his hand. ‘It’s true, I assure you. She told me so herself, just yesterday, when James’s invitation arrived to summon me here
today. She was hopeful it meant he had rethought his position, she said, because in the public eye, and in her own, Henry is in the right, and her husband wholly in the wrong. It grieves her that
he should be so sly.’

Unwilling to acknowledge the awkwardness of this revelation, Paniter would not meet his eye. Instead, he stared at the portrait of James that hung over the fireplace. He disliked this painting.
The Dutch artist had imbued the king with a melancholy that infected even the hound at his feet. He did not recognise the mischievous, spirited man he knew in this sour-lipped, sanctimonious
figure. After James’s death, however, when just such a mournful monarch paid him nightly visits, he began to wonder how a mere artisan, in the space of a few sittings, had seen deeper into
the king than his closest companion. Thereafter, he would avoid this chamber and the sorrowful James.

The doctor had clicked his tongue in irritation at Paniter’s silence. ‘His excuses and prevarications make him look slippery, sir, a man no-one can do business with for fear of being
cheated. I warn you, in some quarters Scotland is being spoken of as an outlaw country, a nation of bandits, whose worst criminals are to be found at the court – the royal court, that is, not
the courts of justice.’

Paniter did not like his tone, and it took an effort to remain calm. He reminded himself that as he and his king had discussed the night before, the cards were all in their hands. James need not
put his name in writing to any affirmation of amity with England. By giving a verbal agreement only, he could maintain good relations with both Henry and Louis, for as long as was useful. That way,
his plans for a great crusade would be aided by the pious Louis, while the threat of Scottish action from the north on Louis’s behalf would keep Henry unsure.

Unacknowledged by either party, though it was the bone over which each side snarled, was the possibility that one day James might claim the English throne for himself, and with French support.
That fact hung tantalisingly in the air, like smoke after gunfire or, in this case, before it.

But had the secretary known then what he discovered after West had finally taken the road for England, he would have summoned the guard to throw him into the cells. As he later learned, to his
fury, in the Englishman’s pigskin purse, hanging from his belt before his eyes, was a copy of a letter from the pope. All the time West was decrying James’s manoeuvring, he was being
even more duplicitous.

The letter spelled out very clearly how wide the gulf between Henry and James was growing, and what forces were allying themselves on each side. The pope’s missive, couched in platitudes
and scripture, welcomed Henry VIII into the Holy League – whose greatest enemy was France – and promised to excommunicate James should he break his pact with England.

Had James or Paniter even suspected he was in possession of such a treacherous document, West would have been pitched into prison, and the chill between England and Scotland hardened to ice.

If only, the secretary now thought, that had been the next page of this story. Instead, West had maintained his air of injured propriety. A few days later he was handed a sheaf of letters from
James which were virtually meaningless in their vagueness, their masterly wording a feat of supreme ingenuity by Paniter’s pen.

As the ambassador made his disgruntled departure, Paniter and James congratulated themselves on a diplomatic coup. But now, lying wide-eyed in the dark, Paniter wondered if they had not that day
lit the fuse on a powderbox that would in a few short months ignite beneath them.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

4 October 1513

The farmhouse hid itself well. In the dark, Hans plodded along the road, his nose to the tail of Gabriel’s horse. An hour into their journey, and they were all, riders
and ridden, dizzy with fatigue. As they entered a wood, and were enveloped in the nutty scent of beech-masts, Louise found herself yearning for the warmth of a kitchen fire and a place to lay her
head. ‘It can’t be far now,’ Gabriel called over his shoulder, as if his thoughts were hers. ‘Whit does he ken?’ muttered Hob, but his words were lost in the rustling
leaves.