After Flodden (43 page)

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Paniter found himself far from the valley, splashing water from the burn on his face. Here it ran clear and innocent. Somewhere over the hill the battle continued. At this
distance, the noise of it bellied on the wind, surges of sound filling the air, before a sheet of quiet dropped over it all. Stooping like an old man, Paniter drank from his cupped hand, and
stumbled upstream, his back to Flodden. The clash of the conflict receded.

A moment after the king was killed, when Paniter stood rooted, staring at the body of his dearest friend, a hand had grabbed his arm. He flinched, expecting a blow, but it was young Alexander,
though few would have recognised him. Mud-spattered, blood-stained, he was staggering, one arm hanging at his side. He shoved Paniter towards the fight that had broken out around the king’s
last assailants, where the remnant of the royal retinue was bellowing with murderous grief, their swords speaking for their loss. The secretary looked at Alexander, and saw the end that awaited not
just his pupil but himself. With a shake of his head he hurled down his pike, brushed past him, and broke into a downhill run, away from the field, and an otherwise certain fate.

As he fled, Paniter’s mind was empty. He had acted on instinct. He had had no choice but to escape, hide, survive. But the sound of his king’s dying scream would be with him forever,
as if punishment for the part he played in bringing the country to battle. And Alexander’s look, as he turned and ran from him, would in time burn even deeper into his soul.

Thus, as on the mercat cross gallows Gabriel was cut down, empty faced, and tied to a board, where his limbs were severed as if he were a surgeon’s toy, the secretary was blind to him.
Instead, he put his hands to his nose and smelled war. They looked clean, but in his mind they were black with the death of thousands.

When he ran from the battle, his fingernails were rimed with blood, his hose soaked in it, yet there was not a scratch upon himself. The image of the king’s dying moments was all he could
see, as he stumbled for the cover of woods, and the bleak road back to Scotland. James’s dead eyes rose before him that day and for weeks to come, turning every scene scarlet, rendering
everything foul.

From his seat by the gibbet, shoulder to shoulder with the queen’s courtiers, he shrank from them and himself. He could no longer deny it. He had abandoned the field and left his men to
die. He had fled. He who had urged war, had proved himself a coward, unable even to avenge his king. And now he understood Borthwick, and his sleekit glances. He had guessed what the secretary was
made of. When he handed him the pike, it was a challenge, and Paniter had lost, and everything with it.

As Gabriel uttered a last, shuddering cry, his lifeless body found peace at last. Paniter kept his eyes screwed shut. He could not bear the sight of any more blood. The agitated crowd milled
closer to glimpse the mutilated corpse. When the hangman held the golden head up on a pike, the cheering and stamping made the mercat cross shake. The privy council applauded, whistling and
hollering in delight as the spy’s dismembered limbs were carted off to decorate the city gates.

The spectacle over, the crowd quickly dispersed, but Paniter remained in his seat. The privy councillors brushed past him, eager for their dinner. Only when the square had emptied and it was
quiet did the secretary look up. The cobbles by the gibbet were wet with blood, yet a stab of envy pierced him. Gabriel’s torment was over, but he would never be at peace, not in this life,
or any other.

Slowly, Paniter picked his way across the square. In his black cloak and black-feathered hat, he was the only one that day who had been dressed for mourning. Whether this was for the spy or
himself, or for his sad, sorry country, nobody, not even he, would ever know.