After Flodden (17 page)

Gabriel’s hand was pressed to his arm, holding back blood and pain, when the night erupted around him. His horse reared, the reins slipped through his fingers, and he was thrown onto the
path as figures rushed in upon him. His cheek was pressed hard against the earth by a boot stamped on the back of his neck, and his arms were bound behind his back by hands that did not care how
roughly or tightly they worked. Louise’s scream was stifled before it escaped, a greasy glove smothering her face while its partner pulled her from her horse. Hob was already being carried
off the road, legs kicking like a frog heading for the pot. He bit the hand that gripped him, and there was a strangled oath, followed by a child’s squeal, as the vice-like arm tightened
unkindly around the boy. Louise’s breath stopped with shock, but at the sound of the vixen being kicked into the air, she began to struggle.

‘Don’t,’ said a voice in her ear. ‘If you make another move, I’ll have to knock you out. And sometimes I dinnae ken my own strength, know what I’m
saying?’

She felt sick, grateful almost for the hand pressed against her lips and holding back the bile. In the darkness, the wood was alive with men, formless and fearsome as ghouls. ‘So, what we
got?’ whispered one. ‘A fat wee wifie and her boy,’ replied the man whose hand was over Louise’s mouth.

‘A lang streak o’ misery over here,’ hissed another.

‘A scrawny dug, but he’s no trouble now,’ said a third.

A low voice spoke, close to the tree where Louise and Hob huddled. ‘Now listen, my friends. Make one sound, and you’re as good as dead. Your hands are tied, but we can silence you if
you start to shout. It’s your choice.’

After a moment’s silence, when none of the three captives moved, the hands were lifted. Louise licked her lips and tasted blood.

To her horror, Gabriel’s voice rang out: ‘You are a pack of cowards.’ He had barely spoken when there was a dull crack of wood on bone, and the sound of a body slumping onto
leaves.

What followed was worse. After the fierceness of their assault and capture, nothing happened. It was as if time had stopped. The ambushers stood mute around their captives, still as the trees
themselves. Even their horses were quiet. Louise felt as if they had been plucked off the face of the land and submerged in a netherworld of brooding shadows, waiting for who knew what.

Then it came, and she began to understand. Down the road from the south she heard a reedy note breaching the night, faint as a curlew out at sea. Gradually it grew into a song, and in time she
could make out the tune. Richer and louder it approached, swelling until it was so close, Louise could follow the words. The singer was bellowing, defying the dark:

‘Merry was the hour she came, Bright as Mayday’s morn. I took one look, and I was hers, Lost in love newborn.’

A jingling bridle kept the rhythm, and there was a squeak, as of a flask being stoppered. The singer paused, drawing breath for a new verse, but as the song started up again, the men surged out
of the wood. The messenger was thrown from his horse in an uproar of shouting, a bristling of drawn swords. The powerful voice from the wood cut through them all. ‘Keep still, sir,’
said Crozier to the felled singer, ‘or I’ll run you through.’ There was a whimper from the roadside.

‘Get his satchel,’ Crozier ordered. With a yell the men crowded in upon the messenger, and cut his bag from his side.

‘I’ve nowt of value,’ the man cried. ‘No money. Nothing. I have ne’er a groat for you, believe me.’

‘Well, then, I’ll just take yer bevvy,’ came Wat’s thick voice, as he rummaged in the man’s cloak.

A voice like the north wind halted the thief as he lifted the flask. ‘Take anything from this man without my permission and you will never ride with me again. We are not
criminals.’

The group hushed, as if they had all been chastened and not Wat alone. ‘Now then, sir,’ said Crozier, ‘we mean you no harm.’ He opened the satchel. There was the scrape,
scrape, scrape of flint against steel, a spark in the blackness, and finally a glimmer of orange light as a lantern was lit and held low over the paper. From under her tree, Louise saw the
crouching shapes of the men caught in the circle of light. At their heart were the singer’s upturned boots, motionless as if they belonged to a dead man. A sword was pressed to his
breastbone, holding him in place as if he was on a spit.

Crozier broke the seal on a small square of letter, and all sound ceased while he read. ‘Damn this flame,’ he muttered at one point, squinting to read the words half lost in the
dark. Then he went quiet once more. A tide of wind passing through the tree-tops filled the silence, the comforting scent of loam it raised mocking the terror of the night. When finally Crozier
spoke, Louise recognised anger as pure as she had ever encountered. His was a voice to be feared, and everyone present knew it.

‘I wonder that you dare ride through the marches carrying this,’ he said softly, folding the paper and pocketing it. ‘If you knew what was in this letter, you’d not be
singing your head off like a soused old fool. If you had any brains, you’d have caught a boat out of the country.’ He lifted the lantern over the messenger’s head, so that they
could see each other’s eyes: ‘This letter is a death sentence, for you as much as me.’

There was a sob from where the messenger lay.

‘Be grateful we have saved you a long ride,’ said Crozier, handing the lantern to one of his men. He dragged the songsmith to his feet, where he swayed, nerveless with shock.
‘Get back to Berwick, and take this message with you.’ His voice hardened. ‘Tell your Master Dacre that the Croziers have business with him. That if he does not begin to deal out
justice, justice will be done to him. And remind him that our idea of justice is not his. We do not consort with murderers, and nor do we protect them. Unlike him – and thanks to him –
we have nothing more to lose. We don’t want vengeance. We simply want our father’s killer put behind bars. But if the price of that request turns out to be Dacre’s own head, then
that will be his choice, not ours.’

He whipped a cord around the messenger’s wrists, and hoisted him back into the saddle. Tying the trembling hands to the reins, Crozier turned the horse to face the way it had come.
‘You got all that?’

‘Mmmmm,’ came the mumbled reply. ‘Then be gone with you!’ cried Crozier, slapping the animal’s rump. With a bound, it sprang off, the messenger bent over his
horse’s neck like a monk at prayer.

Crozier’s men were subdued as the hooves faded. They gathered around their leader, who spoke too low for their hostages to hear. When they stepped back under the trees, Louise tried to
still her pounding heart.

There was a groan from the tree where Gabriel had been flung. ‘What’ll we do wi’ him?’ asked Murdo Montgomery, kicking the near-senseless courtier’s feet as if he
was as worthless and expendable as the other dog he’d just dealt with. ‘Ask me, we should dispatch him now. He looks like evil trouble.’

Crozier’s lantern passed over Gabriel’s face, taking in the silver-clasped cloak and filigreed scabbard. ‘Who’s this?’ he asked. ‘One of the king’s
men,’ said Louise through clenched teeth. ‘Kill him, and you’ll all swing.’ Crozier approached and crouched beside her. She smelled the leather of his jerkin, and bitter
sweat on his brow. ‘Jesus and Mary. What a night’s work.’ He rubbed a hand over his face. ‘And are you and the boy also from the court?’ The light moved over her ashen
hair, and the matronly chest under its homespun cloak. ‘You don’t have the look. Servant, are you?’

Louise did not reply. He untied her wrists and ankles, and as Louise rubbed her hands and the blood rushed back, her fingers tingled and buzzed. ‘If you had got in our way,’ said
Crozier, in what she later realised was a Borderer’s apology, ‘that would have been ugly.’

‘And this is not?’ Louise’s voice choked at the thought of Gabriel half-dead and the vixen in Lord knows what condition. Only Hob seemed unharmed, close at her side, and
watchful through all the proceedings.

As she spoke, there was a slither of leaves, and a warm snout found her hands. She gave a cry of delight, but as her fingers sank into the vixen’s pelt, there was a yelp. Holding the dog
steady, Louise ran her hands over her. A feeble tail swished the undergrowth at her side. ‘Petite mignonne,’ she murmured, ‘pauvre petite.’ The vixen whimpered.

Pressing the dog to her side, Louise turned to Crozier, whose expression was harsh in the dim wick’s flame. ‘Look what you have done,’ she hissed. ‘Her rib is broken. She
is in agony.’

‘She will survive,’ he said, and the curtness of his tone was more chilling than the gale gathering overhead.

He stood. ‘And now we must leave. There’s a long ride ahead.’

Louise’s panic began to rise once more. ‘We?’

‘You have no choice, ma’am. We cannot abandon you and your child out here. Nor the king’s man, not in his condition.’

He was already untying the horses. ‘Trust me. You are safer with us than wandering out here this night.’

‘And if I do not trust you?’ Louise asked, a tremor in her voice.

‘You will have to,’ said Crozier, and strode off. A moment later, the lantern was snuffed, and the trees swarmed around them blacker than ever.

It was an ill-tempered party that set out from the wood. Gabriel was thrown, unconscious, across his horse’s back, and led off by cousin Wat, who had designated himself nurse and keeper as
if hoping to atone for his bad behaviour earlier. Hob leapt onto Hans, and Louise lifted the vixen into his lap, before climbing up behind him.

‘We will ride fast,’ came Crozier’s voice from the front of his men. ‘Whatever happens, you must keep up.’ With a cry, he wheeled off into the smothering dark.

*    *    *

The first thin light of morning was creeping over the hills when the party reached Crozier’s valley. So tired she could scarcely keep in the saddle, Louise was aware at
first only of a slackening pace as the horses slowed to file along a track by the river. Even in the dank mist of an autumn dawn, there was a beauty about this valley, its larch and pines a haven
after the barren, bitten hills they had crossed that night.

The horses slowed, whickering as they drew close to home, and Louise touched Hob’s shoulder. ‘We’re nearly there.’ There was no answer. The child was asleep, as
untroubled by the fierceness of their flight as if he was on a blanket by the hearth. At the sound of her voice, however, the vixen’s tail thumped. Even in sleep, Hob had held her fast. Until
now, she had curled unmoving in his lap, making a sound only when the horse had stumbled or leapt. In the course of the night’s ride, Louise had not dared to think what condition she might be
in after a journey that had ground her own bones nearly to dust. In the lantern’s dim light she had seen the matting of bloodied hair, but there was no way to know how badly the dog had been
injured. The wagging tail raised her hopes as nothing else this past week.

Picking their way up the valley side, the party reached Crozier’s Keep. The ambushers dismounted beneath a sheer wall, cloaked with ivy, and led their horses, and the corpse-like figure of
Gabriel, through the gate. A young man clanking with sword and knives lifted the vixen from Hob. ‘Thank you,’ said Louise, slipping to the ground, and taking the dog into her arms. She
felt bruised from the ride, so stiff she wondered her legs had not buckled. Spritely as a silverfish, Hob gathered Hans’s reins, and followed the young man into the keep.

With a whine, the vixen struggled to be free. Louise’s eyes filled with tears of relief as, once on the ground, the bloodied animal limped around her mistress’s legs. She bent to pat
her, and the vixen licked her face.

She stared up at the grey battlements, rising out of the smirr. The night’s gale had dropped to a gentle breeze, but the morning’s birds were not yet in song, and there was a
quietness about this place that she found ominous. Up here, at the head of this narrow, wild valley, it was as if the world she knew had been muffled, or gagged, all security and comfort now far
out of her reach.

Catching her skirts up out of the mud, Louise followed the vixen through the gate. In the dark, narrow courtyard there was no sign of the horses or of Gabriel. Louise touched the arm of one of
the ambushers as he crossed the yard. ‘Where is he? What have you done with him?’

‘The king’s man, you mean?’

She nodded. Wat used his thumb to point out a low studded door that led into the heart of the keep. ‘I reckon he’s already abed. In poor shape, but still breathin.’

‘It’s been a bad night’s work,’ said Louise, her voice shaking. ‘Have you no idea what the king’s men will do when they learn how you’ve dealt with a
courtier?’

‘Aye, dreadful things I hear,’ said the Borderer, screwing his eyes up as if even the glimmer from a dawn sky was too bright for a man of the night. ‘Yer man woke up long
eneuch tae tell me hissel.’

‘He woke?’

‘Till I shushed him. A bletherin sort, ain’t he? It wid wear you doon, right enough.’ Wat shouldered his pack, and made for the keep. ‘No the kind of chiel we much like
round these parts. All bluster and nae spleen, is what we say.’

‘He’s a man of noble birth . . . ’ Louise began, but Wat was gone. She hurried after him, through the studded door and down a narrow set of stone steps that led into the
keep’s main hall. Here she came to a halt, adjusting to the dimness.

By the light of tallow flares the vaulted cavern appeared to be peopled by shadows, shapes flickering around the walls and running over the blackened stone arches high above, as if it were the
haunt of wraiths and not men. It was the scene of a fairytale, a goblin hall or the lair of some reclusive magician.

Light seeped in through windows thin as pikestaffs, but the unwelcoming gloom was tempered by a sullen pinewood fire, which perfumed the smoky air. Beside a hearth large enough to roast a bull,
the head of the gang stood, alone. The English messenger’s letter was open in his hand, and he was staring into the flames. For all the expression Louise could detect on his face, he could as
easily have been contemplating what to eat for dinner as the troubling information that missive held.