After Flodden (33 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

16 October 1513

Woodsmoke was rising from the village inn when Gabriel rode off the hills and down the steep, mossy street. Daybreak was some hours off, but he could go no further without
rest, and his horse was stumbling with fatigue.

The innkeeper, clutching a candle, was dishevelled in grimy apron and cap, but at the sight of a customer his sour expression lifted. Calling the stable boy to take the stallion round the back,
he ushered Gabriel into a dank, beery cavern, where the new-laid fire was not yet lit. He struck a flint as he sat his guest, and by the time a pint of ale and a plate of cold mutton was placed in
front of him, the flames were merry, even if the room would never be.

‘Goin far?’ the innkeeper inquired, hands clasped behind his back as if anticipating a protracted reply during which he’d have no use for them.

‘Edinburgh,’ said Gabriel. He swallowed a greasy mouthful, and took a long draught of ale, as if to wash away the taste. ‘I’ll need another horse. I will pay your boy to
bring mine to the city in a day, once he’s rested. And I must have a room, for a few hours’ sleep. Make sure the bed is aired and the linen fresh.’ He slapped a coin onto the
table and lowered his head to eat, signalling an end to the conversation.

His host was undismayed. The finer the dress, the worse the manners, was his experience, and in this, the first settlement at the edge of the Lammermuir hills, or the last, depending on your
viewpoint, he got all kinds of visitors. Few of them were men he’d wish to know better.

‘Right away,’ he said, touching his cap, and heading for the back quarters where his wife would not appreciate being woken and asked to run the warming pan over their best bed and
pick cat hairs from its pillow.

Neither sheets nor room was clean, but Gabriel was so tired he barely noticed. Clambering fully clothed into bed he snuffed the candle and was asleep before its glowing eye had faded. No bad
dreams, no thoughts at all disturbed his repose, and when he woke to bright light beyond the shutters, he was smiling.

On the road again, his mood matched the sunlit day. He would be in Leith before nightfall and Madame Brenier would tell him where he could find her son, willingly or not. He reflected on the
satisfaction it would give him to come face to face once more with the young man who had caused him so much trouble.

The thought of Benoit swiftly brought him to his sister, and for a moment Gabriel’s spirits faltered. He was not so self-deluded as to think he could easily repair the damage he had done.
Whatever her girlish faults, Louise was no fool. She had seen more of his character last night than he had shown anyone he’d ever loved, and it was possible he had frightened her off for
good. Women scared easily, he had learned. It was an endearing trait so long as they could be won around, but tiresome when this took effort. Louise, however, was worth all the skills he could
muster, and once this business over Benoit had been settled, he intended to devote himself to regaining her trust. He had no doubt he could do it, and spent the rest of the morning savouring the
ways in which he would woo her back.

Gabriel had never considered Edinburgh his home, but the pleasure he felt when he caught his first glimpse of the smoky, grimy jumble of houses, set against the turquoise firth, surprised him.
He crouched over his horse’s neck and dug in his spurs, his cape billowing like a main sail as he galloped the last few miles to the widow’s house.

Vincent opened the door. Whipping off his cap and bowing low, he led the courtier to the kitchen, where Madame Brenier was dressing a chicken.

She clapped an oily hand to her mouth when she saw him. Vincent pulled up a stool, and she sank onto it, wiping her hands on a cloth. ‘Well, my lord,’ she said, ‘tell me. Je
suis preparée.’

‘Madame, there is some news that will cheer you,’ Gabriel said, dragging up another stool to sit beside her. He took her hand, and rubbed the blood back into it. ‘Your daughter
is well, that much is certain. You need have no fear on that score. I saw her only a few hours ago, and she will be returning shortly. For the moment, she is with friends, who will give her an
escort home.’

Madame crossed herself in thanks, but her eyes were wide and anxious. ‘And Benoit?’ she asked, dry-mouthed. ‘Do you have any word?’

Gabriel looked across at Vincent, whose attention was fixed on a shoe he was brushing. Madame Brenier caught the courtier’s meaning, and shook her head. ‘He is family. Anything you
have to say, he can hear. Better he does.’

Gabriel sighed. ‘Madame Brenier,’ he said, ‘I have reason to believe your son may still be alive.’

Madame shrieked, hands flying to her face. ‘Oh Lord!’ she cried, ‘Vincent, did you hear? He is alive! Lordy, Lordy, this is the happiest day of my life!’

‘Aye,’ said her tenant, but seeing the look on the courtier’s face his expression remained tense. Madame was out of her seat, but before she could say another word, Gabriel
silenced her. ‘Alive, yes, good lady, but perhaps not for much longer.’

‘Je ne comprends pas,’ she said. ‘First good news, now it is bad. Explain, please, if you will.’ She sat, and folded her hands in her lap. Her lips were white.

Gabriel described the scene in the English prison, where Benoit had been heard demanding an audience with Surrey; how, once he had spoken to him, he had been released, and paid.

Madame Brenier frowned. ‘But he is alive,’ she said, as if that were all that mattered. ‘He survived the battle and he will be coming home. Coming home, soon.’ She turned
to Vincent, her smile childlike and uncertain.

‘Aye, mistress, so it seems,’ he said, but he gripped the shoe as if he were throttling it, and his eyes stayed on their guest.

‘I know it is painful, a dreadful thing to contemplate, Madame,’ Gabriel said softly, ‘but it is possible your son is a spy.’

The word sizzled on the kitchen air, as if someone had spat on the fire.

‘Un espion? Benoit?’

‘He has been passing information to the English, it would seem. The very fact he has not come home, when he is plainly uninjured, tells its own story. Were he innocent, he would be with
you now.’

Madame Brenier rose. She opened the shutters and stared out onto the night, as if she could find comfort in its sheltering dark. There was silence, until eventually she spoke. ‘If that is
so, then it is all my fault. Mine alone.’

Gabriel drew in a sharp breath. ‘How can that be? Spying against one’s country is a capital offence. I cannot imagine you persuaded him into this wicked act. Please tell me you did
not, Madame, otherwise you are as liable to swing for it as he.’

‘Swing?’ The word jolted the widow back to her senses, and she faced the courtier, her head high. ‘My son is to be hanged? Well, if that is the case, I go to the scaffold with
him, and gladly. Because he will have acted only because of the things I said to him. Harsh things, but true. I, toute seulle, must have driven him to it.’

Gabriel looked to Vincent, who had dropped his shoe and was gaping.

‘Whit are ye sayin, woman?’

Madame looked at him, and her eyes filled with tears. It was Vincent she addressed. Gabriel was of no more importance at that moment than the firedogs.

‘Remember the night when he came back from the Borders, happy as a skylark? I’d never seen my boy smile so wide. Tu te souviens de celui, oui?’

Vincent nodded.

‘He sat at this table, and he said how much business he was getting, and how the woodsmen over the border could teach the Scots a thing or two, and they had the finest oaks and beeches
this side of France?’ She looked into the fire, twisting her hands.

‘I knew it was not the work that was making him so happy, though it was good for his purse. Marguerite looked at me, I looked at her, and we both knew. It was love. Il était fou
d’amour, a man besotted. And we’ – falling tears made a dark brooch on her bosom – ‘we were joyful, because there was not a better, kinder man in the country, and he
would make some woman a very good husband.’ She swallowed, and her voice tightened. ‘If she were good enough for him.’

She passed a hand over her eyes, and her voice grew softer. ‘The girl he had found was from over the border. English. He met her here, though, right here!’ She pointed to the street
outside. ‘Her father was a silversmith, and they’d come up, two or three times a year, with their packs, to sell from the quayside. Pretty stuff, I’m told. They made enough in a
week to last them months.

‘But it was when Benoit was on his trips through the Borderlands that he got to know her. He sought her out, he told me. Took him a while to find her too. She was living in a village near
Jeddart – Belscreek, Bellscleugh, something like that. She was sixteen, and, to my thinking, she saw a good thing in Benoit. Well,’ – she sighed, as if she could not blame the
girl – ‘what young woman wouldn’t?

‘Alors. He told us he had asked her to marry him, and she was willing. We were raising our drinks, d’you recall, Vincent? A fine bordeaux, brought up from the cellar to welcome him
home. Marguerite blooming, close to her time, Louise chirping away like a canary, and then he told us. Casually, as if it was nothing.’ She stopped.

‘Told you what?’ asked Gabriel.

‘That the girl was one of the Elliot clan,’ she said, without turning to him.

Vincent nodded. ‘Ah remember it fine, mistress. Ye dropped yer goblet, and it spilled a’ ower the place.’

‘Elliots,’ repeated the widow, sensing Gabriel’s confusion. ‘Worst enemies of my husband’s family. Wretched people, les enfants du diable.’

Dimly Gabriel remembered. Years back, the Elliots had ambushed one of the Bartons’ ships off the Holy Isle, murdered all on board and stolen its cargo. The Bartons had more than avenged
the original crime as they swept down on the Elliots’ fortress and lands, and the villages around. Ever since, a state of warfare existed between them, waged at sea, or on land, whenever
chance allowed.

Gabriel nodded slowly as the story became clear.

The widow looked at him. ‘Enfin, vous comprenez, Monsieur le Viscomte? If he had married her, he would have had to leave the country, and she hers. It was a marriage not possible. A sad
fact, but not a tragedy, so long as no-one at the shipyard ever knew they’d been friends. Otherwise he’d have lost his job, or worse.

‘I told him, mon fils, I said, there are plenty of young women out there for you. Hundreds who will snap you up. You say she is the only one for you, but be patient. You will
see.’

She shook her head. ‘You can imagine the scene, j’en suis sûre. Mine was not the only drink untouched that dinner. And from that night, he was a different boy.’

Vincent’s expression confirmed this, as he recalled those miserable months.

‘A few weeks later,’ the widow continued, ‘Marguerite was taken from us. So, we lost her and we lost our old Benoit too. He never whistled like before, and did he talk? Pah,
not a word. He had left his tongue in the Borders.

‘But now I begin to understand.’ Her voice thickened with fresh tears. ‘He was all the while thinking how to make his escape. He would need money. Money to make me and Louise
secure before he left us, and money to run off with this girl of his. How would he make that sort of sum, in his line of work? Impossible, bien sûr. But he was always a clever one, mon petit.
He must ’ave seen his chance, with the court always at the shipyard, and the talk loud and loose.’

She faced Gabriel, her eyes glittering. ‘Do you see now? It was your beloved king that made my boy loathe the very sight of the court. Moi, I was more pragmatic, but I too could not look
on the bonny king without a knife twisting in my heart. He could smile, and dress in velvet, while Marguerite was turning to dust in her grave.’

The widow stood before Gabriel, magnificent in her pride, as if willing him to break her spirit, to condemn her own son. She gave a bitter laugh at his stare.

‘Can we really blame the boy if he took against the crown, and all this grande folie, these family feuds that last for generations? What is war, but our own squabbles on a grand scale? And
who is to say what is the right side, and what party deserves to win? English, Scottish, French, they’re all as wicked and wrong as each other. They can all be damned. They can all burn in
hell. I have had enough, je vous dis. Assez! Assez!’

Sobbing, she hid her face in her apron. Vincent laid a tentative hand on her back. ‘Calm yerself, sweetie,’ he said, close to tears himself, ‘dinnae take on sae sair.’
But she cried as if the world had ended. And who was to say that in this household, this country, it had not.

*    *    *

Curfew was approaching when Gabriel left the widow’s house. The streets were empty, and the road to the castle was hushed, his horse’s hooves loud on the cobbles as
he rode up the high street and dismounted outside Patrick Paniter’s door. Goodwife Black took her time answering, and her smile was chill as she led him into Paniter’s room, where a
meal for two lay half-eaten on the table. The secretary welcomed the courtier with an embrace. He smelled of soap, and Gabriel was suddenly aware of his travel-stained clothes and unscented
hair.