After Flodden (23 page)

‘Surprised to see you here at this time. Then again, maybe not, given the rumours flying around since yesterday. Are you needing a room for the night?’ he asked.

‘Aye.’

‘Tap thrice and thrice and thrice again at the back door, and Bella will know it’s you. You can sleep in the hayloft above the stable. Keep your voice down, and make no trouble,
d’you hear? They’ll put our heads on spikes if they find you.’

He dropped the coin in a hessian pouch around his belt, to which he continued to address himself. ‘And thank the lord you are alone. Your little brother is too much even for me to
handle.’

‘God bless you, Oliver. I will repay you when things are better, and we’re free to be family again.’

‘And when will that be? Terrible times, these are. And worse coming, they say. You’re risking your life out here, ye ken. Especially if you had aught to do with the warden’s
recent trouble.’

‘Needs must,’ said the Borderer, leading the mare on down the street, beyond the packmen and stalls, and the shouts of pie cooks and whelkers. As the chestnuts cooled, he fed them to
his mare, holding tight to her halter to steady her as the town sloped sharply away towards the river mouth.

The hot-griddler and his wife lived in a stone cottage by the shore, where tide met freshwater. By day, oystercatchers picked their way over the mudflats, piping as they went, but in the dark
only the cry of a solitary tern broke over the shush of deepening water, creeping in from the north sea.

Their house stood apart, lonely as its location. Its neighbours were little more than shacks and, set back as they were on the high shore road, seemed to shrink from this sturdy intruder who had
no fear of tides and spray. Those needing a louse-free bed and hearty dinner, however, welcomed its wind-tight walls and wide fireplaces, its oak settles and fresh sawdust.

The mare was familiar with the path and tossed her head, knowing the stable was near. As they approached the inn, lights warmed the night. The mare whinnied, and Crozier heard a fiddler scraping
a reel as he led her to the stable yard and the inn’s back door.

The smugglers’ nine-beat knock was an all-but silent summons, but Bella was sharp of ear – of face and voice too. Wrapped in a shawl against the night, she slipped out of the door,
and latched it quietly behind her. She hurried Crozier across the yard to the stable, and pointed him up the ladders to the loft. They were a good distance from the cottage, but she did not speak
above a whisper.

‘Rub your horse down and let her feed, and by then I’ll be back with something for you to eat.’ She handed him a blackened lamp, its light so weak it seemed bashful. She noted
his look. ‘An old watchman’s crusie,’ she said, ‘the kind used to signal boats making a drop from the clifftops.’

She looked up into his yellow-lit face, her own a charcoal etching, so angled and lined it might have been a lesson in geometry. She was his mother’s sister, but there was nothing in their
looks that suggested they were kin. Martha was tall and handsome with generous features whose message was misleading. With her thin mouth and shrewish eyes, Bella was the kind one. Even as a child
Crozier had recognised that.

He took her hard-worked hand in his. She looked anxious. ‘We didn’t think to see you this while, things being as they are. Sickening, the sights we’ve seen from Flodden field,
wounded, wailing soldiers carted through the streets to the gaol, a pit dug for the dead they throw out each morning, and that not big enough. I’ve never known times so bad.’ Her eyes
narrowed as she attempted to read her nephew’s expression. ‘And it’s trouble that’s brought you, no doubt.’

Crozier nodded.

‘Whole place is set about the ears,’ said Bella, pulling her shawl closer, ‘after the warden’s man was flummoxed out on the moors. The soldiers are all feart
there’s a brigade of painted men from the north, just biding their time to slit their throats in the night. The townsfolk think their houses will be set alight while they sleep.
Everyone’s on watch.’

‘Bella, it was me and my men who ambushed Dacre’s messenger.’

She drew in her breath as if she’d been scalded.

‘Dacre’s threatened to raze the entire border,’ he went on, ‘but I know what kind of a man he is. We’ve humiliated him, and he’ll want to make a special
example of us. I need to find out what he’s planning for us, and when.’

Bella stared. After a long silence she nodded. ‘Mibbe I can help. You know the sort we get here. There’s always one with a foot in the warden’s door. I cannae abide them, but
they’re how we make our living. I’ll see what I can do.’

Shaking her head she left, returning shortly with fish soup and a basket of barley cakes.

‘Mind and stay quiet,’ she said. ‘We’re right busy the night, and there’s soldiers in there who’d love nothing better than to take you back to the gaol with a
knife in your ribs. Your mother would never forgive me if I let that happen.’

‘I’m here for only a couple of nights,’ said Crozier. ‘You’re a fine, brave woman, helping like this. I won’t forget it. Mother always said you were as stout
as your brothers.’

‘She’s a blether,’ she said, patting Crozier’s cheek as if he was still a boy, and she on a visit to her sister in her god-forsaken castle. ‘The spit of your
handsome father, you are,’ she added, ‘but a bit quieter and more sensible, thank God. I pray you last longer in this world.’ With a sigh she was gone, back to her thirsty
customers.

Crozier ate in the stall where his mare was tied, at the farthest end of the stable. The horses stamped and snorted as they settled. A long night lay ahead, but he was glad of the rest, the time
to think. Climbing into the loft, he removed his spurs and sword, and stretched out on the straw. His dagger remained in his belt. Since his father’s murder, he had never slept unarmed.

He had fallen into a doze when footsteps crossing the yard woke him. Voices approached the stable, and he raised his head. They had a ring of arrogance that denoted military training or a lordly
background. When he caught the buttery vowels of the Borderlands, he knew they were soldiers.

‘Naked, he were, and tied to his horse. They say he had frozen to his saddle, it were that cold a night, and they had to peel him off. Lost a lot of skin on his nether parts, as you might
imagine.’ The voice was a whine, gossipy and obsequious.

‘He always was a fool, old Warrender,’ said his companion, speaking like one accustomed to giving orders in the barrack room. ‘He’d had a jar too many, is what I was
told, and had been careering around the countryside, looking for an ale-house rather than doing his duty. It didn’t need much cunning to find him.’

‘But the men that did it, they must be fiendish sharp all the same,’ replied the other. ‘I hear it was the work of the Hermitage and its diabolical lords . . . ’

‘You hear altogether too much, if you ask me. You cling to the innkeeper’s bar when you should be at your post. The Hermitage and its men are on the king’s side, and never
forget it. Elliot is one of King James’s retinue, insomuch as any from that benighted part of the country can be said to be on anyone’s side but their own, or the devil’s. He is
too wily to have anything to do with an act of lunacy such as that.’

‘So who then?’ asked the whine, as if hoping for a bedtime story, the sort to make shivers run down his spine.

‘There’s many that hates Dacre’s guts, that’s for sure. Whoever it was, Warrender knows full well because he carried a message direct from them. We will find out soon
enough, when Dacre takes his revenge.’

‘Oh yes,’ said the whiner. ‘Oh my goodness, yes. If there’s anyone does revenge, it’s his lordship. We all remember what he did with the Redpaths, when he imagined
they’d crossed him, don’t we?’ Crozier could not tell if he heard or only imagined the man licking his lips.

The pair stopped at the stable door. ‘We part company here,’ said the superior. ‘Make haste back to the garrison. The night air might sober you. I am headed in the other
direction.’ There was a rustling of hooves as the men entered and moved down the stalls. They untied their mounts, and led them into the yard. With a grunt and a belch the whiner,
full-bellied with beer, heaved himself into the saddle. Wordless, the other rode off. Crozier marked the slow retreat of the barley-head by a series of diminishing hiccups.

*    *    *

It was not yet daybreak when he left the stable and made his way on foot into town. The inn’s chimneys had not begun to smoke, and his aunt and her husband were still
abed, their windows ajar, for the first sound of approaching trouble.

Wakening gulls cried high above him on their way out to sea as he took the beach road into town. The tide was coming in, and as the waves washed up to the path, his face grew clammy with brine.
He pulled his hood lower, and was glad of it when he heard the rattle of a cart heading his way. He kept his head bowed, but in the gathering light he could make out a wide, swaying tumbril, pulled
by an ox. In the box sat a hunched figure, so still he might have fallen asleep over the reins.

As the cart drew closer, so did an unearthly stench. It was a nightsoil man, carrying human slops away from the town to a cesspit far from the public nose. As the cart passed, Crozier saw the
mounds of filth piled high, and was thankful, not for the first time, that he lived in the hills. The keep had its midden, but it was fragrant by comparison.

A short distance farther and another cart passed, with the same stinking load, and another after that. Behind them the castle loomed ghostly in the fading night, and he guessed that was where
they had come from. One more cart appeared on the road, and made its wavering way to the shore, the ox straining at its task. A figure not much bigger than a child held the reins. As it drew close,
Crozier stepped in its path. ‘Stop there, I beg you,’ he said, raising his hand. The driver stared, stupid, the reins still slack in his hand, and the cart rolled on. Crozier reached
for the ox’s bridle, and pulled it to a halt. The beast snorted, glad for respite.

Crozier felt in his pocket and produced a couple of coins. At the sound of them, the driver put away the stick he had picked up, and grew alert. He glared at the stranger. ‘What’s
you wanting?’

‘Information,’ said Crozier. ‘Are you come from the castle?’

‘Why should ah tell yous that, man?’

‘I am not your enemy, lad,’ said Crozier, trying to hide his urgency. ‘I mean you no harm.’

The driver chewed, as if at the cud.

‘So do you deal with the gaol?’ Crozier asked.

The driver shifted his wad to his other cheek, and paused before replying. Time in his world was infinite. ‘Ah dae, reet enough. Putrid, it is.’

Crozier moved closer, and regretted it. The young man smelled as bad as he looked.

‘I’m looking for a prisoner who might be lying there.’

‘Haud on there, man. It’s nae ma joab tae gang looking fir folks, ah’ve eneuch on ma haunds as it is, wi’ the mucking oot.’

‘Of course, I know that. And I’m not asking you to do anything, but get me into the castle.’ He chinked the coins, and the young man’s eyes fixed on his face.

‘How much?’

‘Five groats.’

The nightsoil man stretched out a hand, so black and grimed it was like a badge for his trade. Crozier dropped a couple of coins into it. ‘The rest,’ he said, ‘when
you’ve got me in there.’

‘Ah’ve nae mair trips the morn. That’s me finished.’

‘What time do you start out again tonight?’

‘When the bells ring three.’

A deal was struck, and to mark it, the driver shot a triumphant squirt of grass juice over his ox’s head. It was not an assignation Crozier looked forward to. He hoped the day ahead would
give him the facts he needed without recourse to the gaol’s drain mucker.

Skulking around the town, like the shiftless farmer he pretended to be, he was drawn wherever there was a group, hoping to hear what was known of Dacre’s plans. There was plenty of talk,
but the Croziers’ name was never raised. People were keener on adding colour to the story of the messenger’s humiliation than on finding out who did it. From what he heard, Crozier
realised that to these sheltered people, the Borderers were all as bad as each other, and it mattered not a whit who had done the deed. They could all be exterminated, and the Berwick folk would
not lift a finger in protest.

More worryingly, it also seemed that Dacre was keeping his counsel, certainly from any who would bleat to commoners. Yet there could be no doubt that trouble was brewing. The streets were
crowded with soldiers, and the castle gates and walls thrummed with life, carts wheeling in and out of the portcullis, and columns of soldiers marching back and forth at the gates, as if an air of
frantic activity alone could ward off danger.

Crozier dared not get close to the castle for fear of raising suspicions, and had he even attempted to ask questions about the prisoners, the guard would have been summoned. Already his
loitering, presumptuous ways had earned him suspicious looks, which only a slurring display of bonhomie to all mankind, and serving maids in particular, deflected. Aware of the growing risks he ran
with each hour he lingered, he felt his pulse quicken. He took great pleasure in walking beneath the nose of the enemy. The thought that he might outwit them was almost worth the danger. His eyes
gleamed. He was more like his father than his mother knew.

As he hung over the rails of the market, watching cattle and sheep whipped and sold under the eyes of red-cheeked farmers; as he supped in a tavern, and made a quart of ale last a lifetime; as
he wandered the streets and tried to look purposeful, it seemed the day would never end. Finally, in what felt like a new month, the curfew tolled, and he slunk back to the stable. There he found
his aunt, with a plate of mutton and herbs. As he slurped it down, she spoke, keeping her eye on the door.

‘Oliver knows a man who works for Dacre. He’s a bit of a sniveller, but he’s got good reason for loathing him. Added to which he’d do anything for a week’s free
drink. Ollie had a quiet word with him this morning.’ She wrung her hands. ‘It’s not good, Adam, they’re coming for you.’