After Flodden (21 page)

‘You speak in riddles, my man,’ said James. ‘Am I to understand you think I should not take the field? Set not even a boot upon it?’ He smiled, like a hunter who has
cornered his beast.

Lindsay, an unobservant man, as his wife would confirm, nodded eagerly: ‘I do, Your Highness. I – and most others here I hazard – think it best if you were to watch the battle
from another hill, where you will be safe. For if we lose you, we lose the whole realm of Scotland, and all its nobles and gentlemen. The . . . the commoner sort having fled in recent days from . .
. from hunger . . . ’ His words petered out as he saw, too late, his mistake.

The roar the king gave was heard across the valley. Soldiers paused in the act of strapping on their swords. Horses stamped, and birds rose from their trees.

‘I will flay you for such insolence,’ cried the king, drawing his sword. ‘Who are you to tell me what to do? Am I a milksop, to watch my valiant men head into battle, but raise
not even a finger? To sit a mile away, and know myself secure?’ He advanced on Lindsay, who began to back away. ‘As soon as we are home in Scotland, I will have you hanged above your
own gate for this act of treason.’ His lips glistened with rage.

‘Father,’ began Alexander, ‘for God’s sake calm yourself . . . ’, but he went unheeded.

James descended on the unfortunate lord, whose back was now pressed to the canvas. ‘You are unworthy of this army. I will have your lands confiscated and your title removed.’ Before
Lindsay could make his escape, the king had grasped him by the collar. Under his clutch, the lord’s face began to purple. ‘Fight from the rear, eh? What Stewart has ever done that?
Lindsays perhaps. Oh yes, maybe that is the Lindsay creed. That may explain why you and your lickspittle kin have done so well for yourselves over the years. But me?’

Sheathing his sword, to everyone’s relief, he took off his glove, and slapped it across the lord’s face. The council gasped. He slapped one cheek, then the other, again, and again,
and again. Lindsay looked close to fainting. It appeared as if only the king’s stranglehold was keeping him upright.

Paniter was appalled. Never had he seen the king so angry. Never had he been afraid to intervene, but to do so would be to risk his own neck. Yet Lindsay’s question was legitimate. It was
not one Paniter would have dared raise alone: he knew too well James’s love of the fight, his pride in his fearlessness, but never before had he, and his country, faced a challenge such as
this.

In the past few months, the contempt with which James had treated any of his advisors who had cautioned against war had acted as a warning to all who might otherwise have raised doubts. On the
subject of the English threat, and of his role among his troops, the ordinarily sweet-tempered king was terrifyingly sure and ferocious. Even so, Paniter had not once shirked challenging him, if
his arguments were well prepared. Now, far, far too late, he cursed himself, and the council, for not discussing this privately between themselves weeks before now, when they might have come to a
united front that even in this mood James would have been obliged to heed.

As it was, Lindsay was the scapegoat. The council looked on, embarrassed and afraid, until the king’s fury spent itself. With a deep sigh, he released the lord, who could be heard choking
as if he’d swallowed a bone, before falling to his knees. It was Paniter who helped him to his feet. ‘Come, you need some air,’ he said, ushering him out of the tent, and the
king’s sight. Once on the hillside Lindsay bent over, and was sick. Paniter left him to it.

Back in the pavilion, James was laughing, but there was no mirth in it. His colour was hectic, his eyes glittered, and for the first time since they had set out on this campaign, Paniter felt a
flicker of doubt. Was James in his right mind? Were they all mad? What could they hope to win by this battle? The months of fighting talk, and the king’s invincible sense of a destiny blessed
by good fortune were nothing more than hope and superstition. What if they failed?

James approached him, and the secretary knew he had seen the uncertainty in his eyes. ‘There is no place for the weak in this army,’ said the king, loud enough to reach Lindsay
beyond the tent, but the words cut Paniter to the quick. ‘After today I will make it my duty to root out any such from our ranks. But right now, we have a battle to face. And face it we will,
with the lions’ hearts that can only be found in Scotland.’ He summoned his vassal, standing sentry outside the pavilion, who entered with servants bearing trays of wine and
goblets.

The circle around James stood straight, as he surveyed them. ‘Lords, gentlemen, and trusted friends, we go out today in the name and under the cross of our Lord, whose will we are doing.
Whatever the outcome, God will preserve our souls, now and forever more.’

He gave a great smile, and raised his cup. ‘And now, a toast. To Courage. To Victory. To Scotland!’

The council echoed his cry. At the memory of the chinking silver, the peppery red wine and the brotherly back-slapping, Patrick Paniter staggered down the palace stairs and out into the
courtyard. Tears drenched his shift, but he did not feel them. Nor did he observe the perplexed faces pressed to the privy council chamber’s windows as he lurched his way out of the grounds,
a black-sailed galleon caught in a rip-tide no-one else could see.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

5 October 1513

A green light was playing on the walls when Louise woke. It was mid-morning, but the brightness of the day was filtered through the ivy that framed the window, entering the
room in spangles of colour that shimmered and danced as if inviting her to join them. She sat up, jolted back to her senses. She was in a stranger’s fortress, in a part of the country so
unknown and wild, it might have been a foreign land.

The name Teviotdale came with the ring of swords and war cries. This fertile, gentle shire, twinned with its bleak and fearsome neighbour Liddesdale, was well known as the crucible of the
Borders, a place where trouble bubbled and brewed as if on a bed of coals. After their initial assault, the clansmen had been, she admitted, unexpectedly civil and even kindly, but as Benoit had
often told her, subterfuge and deception were a Borderer’s prime arts. For all she knew, she and her companions were being held prisoner. No-one would ever know where they had gone. She
recalled the story of a madwoman found wandering the streets of Leith, claiming that day to have found her way back, after an abduction twenty years before, by an apothecary who had needed a living
creature on whom to experiment. People had scoffed, and the poor woman was despatched to the city hospice. Louise wished the memory had not swum back at this time.

Throwing off the wolfskin, she peered on tiptoe out of a window set in a wall so deep she could not reach the shutters. She saw a sea of early autumn leaves, and beyond it a sky the colour of
tin. The smell of baking bread reached her, a reminder of ordinary matters that did much to improve her spirits. She and the boy had not eaten for almost a day, and the need for food overcame
fear.

A warm, damp snout felt its way into her hand, and she crouched to pull the vixen close. The dog whimpered. Hair was matted to her ribs with blood, and she looked more bone than body, but her
eyes were bright, and her tail thrashed like a landed trout. Louise looked around. There was a pitcher of water beside the bed, with linens for her face and hands. Gently she began to swab the
blood off the mongrel. It was a slow task, as she avoided the cuts and bruises, but she suffered no more than a cautionary nip as she got close to the broken rib. By the time she had finished, the
vixen looked almost presentable once more. Louise dropped a kiss on her nose.

Her thoughts turned to Gabriel, and she lifted a hand to her hair, still gritty with ash from her mother’s fireside. In dismay, she felt the wadded shawls around her waist, forgotten in
the previous day’s events. With a tug she began to unwind the layers of fat from beneath her bodice, turning back the years, from middle-age to youth. With a fresh rag she washed her face,
and, dipping her head into the pitcher, as best she could soaked the ash from her hair.

When Louise opened her door, the night guard was whistling his way down the stairs, like any retainer caught going about his business. She paid him no attention, so did not catch sight of the
knife and sword attached to his belt, nor a nose reshaped by a hundred brawls. She had the impression only of a lumbering woodsman, burly under his wrap and leather bonnet. Heedless, she stepped
over the castings of mud and leaf his boots had shed outside her door, the spoor of a sleepless minder.

The vixen limped behind her down the narrow stairs, too hungry to nose out the tantalising smells at every twist. A low rounded door at the end of a passage led to the main hall, as bright at
this hour as it would ever be, and still little more than a smudge of shadow and lingering wood-smoke. Louise crossed the cavernous room beneath a pair of tapestries draped on the walls. They must
once have been magnificent, but now their loom work was so dulled by age and dirt it was impossible to guess what their pictures conveyed, let alone their original colours.

By the fireside hung a collection of hunting horns, their polished shine a rebuke to the stains and neglect of the rest of the hall. They were within easy reach, and were clearly often in
use.

She looked down into the kitchen. In the flame-lit dimness she saw a woman in a crimson wimple and guessed it was she who had seen her to bed the previous night. Her back was turned as she
stirred the fire, and Louise hurried past, up the stairs and into the courtyard.

By day, the keep looked more forlorn and forbidding than in the half light of dawn. Rain-sodden walls rose to a fearsome height, the dark stone pockmarked by shot and cruder missiles. The damage
in parts was so severe it seemed as if ivy alone were holding it together. To new eyes, the tower and its crow-gabled turrets looked like a beggar’s face, gap-toothed with decay. Rooks
patrolling the battlements did nothing to soften its expression.

The hill-top air was cool, and Louise walked fast towards the stables, at the rear of the keep. Hob saw her approaching, and darted out. He said nothing about her overnight change in appearance,
as if it was his experience that women’s looks were as changeable as their moods, but put a hand in hers and led her towards the stalls. Hans had been fed his morning mash and was dozing, one
foreleg bent. The smell of his newly-brushed coat was the scent of home, and Louise breathed deep, pressing her face to his mane. His nightlong ride was evident in the way he stood, and she hoped
sleep would be cure enough for that punishing race.

‘Did you sleep?’ she asked the boy, once they were outside.

‘Nae trouble,’ he replied. ‘Ye’re never snugger than in straw. They telt me you wis given a bed wi’ a mattress, but I didnae believe them. No in a place like this
– they’d have mair sense than that.’

‘And have you eaten?’

‘Aye,’ he said, but with a wistful air suggesting a lack of plenty.

Louise put a hand on his shoulder and led him back to the keep, in search of food. They were crossing the yard when Crozier appeared, saddle over his arm, and scabbard scraping his boots.

He halted, puzzled. Louise stared back, but as she realised the source of his confusion, she reddened. She put a hand to her hair, to explain. ‘My cap is drying. It was covered in soot.
And I have washed the ashes out of my hair too,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t bear it any longer.’

Crozier’s eyes travelled over her, head to boot, and as understanding dawned he nodded. The sight of this slender young woman, copper hair falling around her shoulders unbound even by a
ribbon, was hard to reconcile with the fierce matron who had barked at him the night before. Her appearance, in this grim setting, had taken him aback. With the exception of his mother and her
shoddy servants, the keep rarely saw women, and never one such as this.

Crozier was not a man for romance. He had been catapulted into manhood early, but while he had taken on his father’s obligations, and proved himself precocious as a leader, he was a mere
beginner, and a slow one at that, in the subtler arts required of a grown man. Too shy and severe to engage the heart of any woman of his family’s standing, he had for some time enjoyed a
liaison with a lissom young seamstress in the village, whom he imagined he might one day, should time and events allow, make his wife.

In the meantime, she asked nothing, and gave herself willingly, whenever he rapped at her door. She was so undemanding, indeed, that he had of late suspected he was not her only guest, a rare
flash of perception in a man unversed in such matters. That she lived alone, and unwed, was the least of the clues she dropped, but he was grateful for her company and the comfort she offered on
his increasingly rare visits. The coins he left by her bed were a gift, not a toll, or so he told himself.

Louise watched, as Crozier’s mind raced. She was unnerved by the blank look in his eyes. ‘I needed a d . . . d . . . disguise,’ she said, ‘riding out alone as I was. I
thought a fat old woman wouldn’t be of any interest to anyone . . . ’