After Flodden (4 page)

It took more timber than that. Wood from Norway, Sweden, France and Spain had been arriving for the past few years, dried, spliced, nailed and carved into place to create a vessel so magnificent
it was not just the sun that made James’s eyes water.

Though her sails were yet to be raised, and her wood varnished, she was glorious. She soared above them, her prow facing east, as if desperate for her first sip of water. The length of thirty
Highlanders lying toe to head, nearly as tall as the Bass Rock, she blotted out the sun as the king walked round her.

The
Michael
had been his dream since he was a young king – earlier, if the idle drawings he made as a boy counted for anything. As he and Paniter walked its burnished decks, he
grew thoughtful, enthusiasm replaced by a more sombre mood.

‘I have done many things since I took the crown,’ he said, peering through a gun loop below deck, ‘and some of them will no doubt be considered far more significant than this.
But none of them has made such a statement. None of them has touched my soul quite like this.’ He thumped a hand on his breast. ‘None, that is, apart from my children. That goes without
saying.’

He smiled, leading the way out of the galley. ‘I am a bleeding-heart, Paddy. Forgive me.’

On the subject of fatherhood Paniter could never understand. True, he had a brood of bastards, two by a spirited woman who lived a mere step away from his house, who had been found a sensible
husband, and given a good settlement. There may also have been children he knew nothing of, but the thought neither troubled nor excited him. His offspring were pleasing enough, but he felt no
pride as their father. They were the result of accident not of design, and he intended to make as little fuss of these matters as possible. When he took holy orders – and that day was
imminent – there would be more awkward difficulties to sidestep than his ill-begotten family.

The king knew of his secretary’s children, of course, but he was a liberal man where liaisons were concerned, his own illicit affairs being almost beyond count. Not all at court were so
tolerant, however, and plans were already afoot to legitimise Paniter’s heirs, and avoid future scandal.

‘You have a deep affection for my boys, I know,’ said the king, with the complacency of a besotted parent. But in this instance his confidence was well placed. As his former tutor,
Paniter’s friendship with Alexander, James’s illegitimate first-born, was particularly close. It was to be one of Paniter’s cruellest misfortunes, in a life that would grow
increasingly afflicted, that he did not recognise in time that what he felt for the boy was love: as tender as the affection of an uncle for a nephew, perhaps even a father for a son.

By now Alexander was almost grown. It was two years since he had returned from the university in Padua where, Paniter suspected, he had neglected his studies as wilfully as he had in his
homeland. He certainly forgot to write to his old tutor, for which the secretary scolded him. At that age, though, he too had lived abroad, glad to be beyond critical eyes. At the University of
Paris Paniter proved himself a dutiful son – he wrote every month – and a devoted scholar but, when money allowed, he was also an avid student of the warmer arts. Those lessons still
brightened his daydreams.

Now Alexander’s studies were over, he had taken on his duties as Archbishop of St Andrews and Lord Chancellor of the realm. Even so, neither his tutor nor his father believed a young man
should embrace the life of a monk. Already, from all accounts, the boy had drunk deep of certain pleasures. Before Alexander had left for Italy, James’s greatest fear, he told Paniter, was
that his son could fall prey to the pox. He had been sent off with a sachet of powders and an earful of advice about the kind of company he was to keep. And, since a man who was to give his life to
God’s work might still one day march to war, shortly before he left the boy had spent a month with Ernst Bastian, one of the finest soldiers in Europe, a survivor of Bosworth, whose eyes
gleamed at memories of the field. By the time Alexander arrived in the narrow alleys and dark meadows of Padua he was able to give a deadly account of himself with sword and dagger. On his
father’s command, he went nowhere without both weapons in his belt. It was advice he continued to heed, even now he was home.

On the road back to Edinburgh, Paniter and the king scarcely spoke. The sight of the
Michael
, and discussion of her successors, already designed and ready to build, brought the future
thrillingly and disturbingly close. These warships were not for show.

‘Louis must be told that our fleet is under way,’ said James, as they neared the city. He paused, nudging his horse forward. ‘I have of course made sure Henry is aware of the
fact, though by more devious means.’

Paniter nodded. Showing the world they had the means and appetite for battle was the surest way of never needing to go to war. Month by month, though, James was arming his country. He had lost
his peaceable neighbour Henry VII, and now his son Henry VIII was on the throne, rapacious and ruthless as a vulture. As Europe’s kings wrestled for supremacy under the eye of a calculating
pope, Scotland looked very fragile and forlorn, alone on the farthest northern edge of the globe.

That night the king and Paniter dined in James’s private rooms. As the flagons emptied, and all but the king’s valet had been dismissed, papers gathered on the table, scribbled with
calculations and daubed with spilt claret.

‘We need more money,’ said James.

It was too obvious, too common a statement to need a response. Paniter merely nodded.

‘More than ever,’ he continued, seeing his secretary fail to take his point. ‘Argyll brought news last night that battle between Henry and Louis draws closer. Whatever happens
in that quarter, as I hardly need tell you, will determine our future course. I fear that events will move swiftly, once they are set rolling, and we are still far, very far from ready to meet
another army.’

James refilled their goblets.

‘Our new consignment of meltars and foundrymen arrive tomorrow. French, most of them, barring a couple from Ghent. Borthwick has been crying out for help. They should cheer him.’

‘Not the cheapest labour, though,’ said the secretary, and drew a fresh sheet of paper towards him.

Beneath their room, in the depths of the castle, the fires in the foundry were being stoked afresh. Vats of iron steamed and smoked as they melted, obedient as snow, over the flames. The roiling
iron was reflected on the stone ceiling in medallions of red and silver, but no-one had time to look up. Men, stripped to the waist, wearing leather aprons and arm-length gloves stirred their metal
broths with poles twice their height, but even so, the heat they gave off made the skin prickle like pork crackling. There was a throat-catching smell and a hiccup of belches and slurps as the
earth’s metals were recast with a violence befitting their new purpose.

In a chamber where the heat was merely hellish, iron magma was tipped into moulds. Before it had begun to cool it had taken the shape of swords, spears, arrows; of lancets, pikes, knives, axes,
halberds, shot and balls. In a smaller room, cannons were fashioned, narrow guns as slender as virgins, with a reach to outrun any arrow.

In the heart of the foundry was the man who oversaw this industry. Robert Borthwick, master meltar, ran between smelters and smiths, shouting orders that they must guess at under the tolling of
hammers and irons. He almost danced with excitement.

Above ground, Edinburgh slept. Its people had no inkling of the foundry’s business. Their most blissful dreams were of peace and prosperity; their worst, the outbreak of war. For
Borthwick, the nightmare was that his new-cast weapons would languish cold and clean, never to sit in a soldier’s hand, or harrow the guts of the enemy. These were times when steel was almost
as necessary to man as bread. Borthwick would not allow his country to be unready. Under his direction the castle thrummed, a sweltering crucible for war.

*    *    *

Benoit was planing a spar for a ship’s hull. The rhythm lulled his senses, and while he continued to work with care, the squalling of the shipyard gulls and the clatter of
workmen slowly faded into the distance. Wood shavings fell at his feet, curls perfumed with resin. Transported by the scent, Benoit found himself in a forest, trees whispering like petticoats above
his head. Underfoot was moss and loam, a bed crying out for company.

His plane brushed the spar over and over. The jawbone arc of the plank grew smooth beneath his hand as every roughness was tamed. Benoit loved handling wood and under his touch it responded
almost like a live thing. But he knew a limb far sweeter even than this. Suddenly, he was no longer alone in his forest.

The king and his men rode into the yard, quiet as commoners. Scarcely a week went past without James inspecting the boats and the shipwrights’ sheds. Some seasons he was upon them every
day. Paniter, that Scots pine of a man, was with him again this morning. Also the chiel with yellow hair, known in the yard as the Angel. Gabriel Torrance was his name. He wore a look of perpetual
good humour, as though the world pleased him, whatever face it showed.

The party handed their horses to the stable boy and went in search of Barton. Benoit put his head down and carried on with his work. He was out of their sight in the shed, not required to doff
his cap or bend his knee. Barton’s son Andrew was in the yard today, and he’d scrape low enough for all of them.

The shipyard was on the Firth of Forth, within a couple of miles of Edinburgh Castle. On quiet days Benoit could hear the chatter of rigging in Leith docks, half a mile to the south. Close
behind the yard lay the broad streets and slow river of this Dutch-gabled town, and the quayside where Davy Turnbull’s high-roofed house stood, so close to the water that a badly piloted boat
would send spray over its door.

Benoit had liked his stepfather, a man who never was silent if he could find a reason for laughing, whose left hand would dig coins out of his pocket for urchins and beggars while his right
found a way of distracting his companions from the actions of his soft heart. His stepson still mourned him, but it was a sad truth that Marguerite’s death had dislodged this lesser grief
from its proper place.

At the sound of the king’s laughter, Benoit lifted his head. His fists closed on the spar. For one long, never-ending year that laugh had rung throughout their house, morning, afternoon or
night, whenever the king chose to visit. Closeted alone with Marguerite in her chamber, his bark would be echoed by her merry voice. And then by a silence so full of meaning that Benoit could not
stay in the house, but would slam his way out of the door, off to the docks, or the dunes.

Around this time he and his mother began to argue, Benoit accusing her of prostituting her child, and she deflecting him with bemusement. ‘Are we so hard up ye need sell her body?’
he roared. ‘Ye are aware, aren’t ye, that she is only one a many? That when he has tired of her, she will be kent as his cast-off?’

‘You don’t understand, mon cher, they are in love,’ his mother cried, as if the louder the words, the truer they would be. ‘In love! James told me that, lui-même.
And Marguerite – ’ she smiled up at her son as if begging him to share her joy: ‘I have never seen her so happy, so jolie. How can you begrudge her that?’

‘Begrudge her?’ Benoit sank onto the settle, his head in his hands. ‘Maman, maman.’ He drew breath, to steady himself. ‘D’ye ken how dangerous a game
you’re playing? The sorts of things folk are saying about Marguerite?’

But the mother who all his life had indulged him, cosseted him, and protected him from even the hint of a cross word from others, seemed suddenly deaf to his meaning. She was determined, it
seemed to him, to set Marguerite on the road to high-class ruin.

Benoit softened his tone. ‘Imagine the day when he has finished wi’ her – when the Church or maybe the queen herself begs him no to stray from hame – what kind of
reputation do you think she’ll have left? Whit man will marry her then? She will be like one of the king’s poor nags, driven so hard its only fate is the knackers’
yard.’

‘The king, he is a generous man,’ said Mme Brenier, her bosom swelling at the prospect of wealth. ‘So say everyone. If ever he and Marguerite part – and many kings keep
their amours for as long as their wives, you know – then he’ll likely thank her well. Look what he did for Janet Kennedy! They say she has a castle of her own. A new robe every season.
He has been gracious to other lady loves too, I’m told. None of them is cast off. None of their enfants, their love children is abandoned.’

She glared at Benoit, roused to fury by his look of horror at the idea of a king’s bastard born in their home. ‘You are far too severe, mon fils. Don’t you see what a good turn
this is for our family? When Davy died, I was in despair, absolument désolée. I thought we’d lose this house; be paupered. Now my prayers have been answered.’ She crossed
herself, and bobbed towards an imaginary altar.

Benoit’s face blackened. ‘Ye think it God’s will that Marguerite earns a living by servicing the king? That velvet skirts and earrings can repay her for the loss of her virtue?
She is far, far too decent for him, as we both ken; but she’s no jist sweet and gentle. She’s completely innocent. Nothing more than a wean. And you shouldae protected her.’ He
ran a hand over his face. ‘Mairlikes I shouldae protected her.’ His voice dropped. ‘It’s as much my fault as yours, maman. And now she’s no much better than the
half-naked lasses you sneer at on the street. We ken she loves James; and we ken she’s no in it for money. But we also ken that everyone else will be calling her a hoor.’

‘You are crude, Benoit,’ said a quiet voice. It was Marguerite, drawn downstairs by his shouting. ‘And wrong. James is a great man, but he’s also a good one. He has a
conscience. He has a heart. He has given it to me, and I have promised to keep it safe. It is my precious nightingale, and it flutters here’ – she put a hand to her bodice –
‘every hour of the day.’