After Flodden (5 page)

Benoit scarcely recognised the girl in front of him as the sister who used to throw crab apples at winching couples in the woods, scrambling off sniggering while they pulled their clothes
together and looked around to find their assailant.

Gone was the unruly smile of those days, replaced by something more like a simper. ‘Nobody forced me into this, Ben,’ said Marguerite, her refusal to be angered making his rage burn
more furiously. ‘I know it will not last forever. But it’s enough to have it, even for a little while. It’s more than I could ever have imagined, so fine a love it is beyond
words. I don’t need to be his wife. I believe our union will be looked upon kindly in heaven for the pure thing it is. And I hope one day you too find such joy. Such unmatchable joy.’
She laid a hand on her stomach, and glanced at Mme Brenier, who covered her mouth to stifle a cry of delight.

Benoit looked up. He caught the gesture, and after a frozen moment while its significance sank in, flung himself out of the room. He crossed the quayside at a run, shaking his head as if
clearing his sight. He did not come home that night, or the next.

In the weeks that followed, while Marguerite’s child was swelling in her belly, and she and her mother spent their days stitching laying-in chemises and small clothes, Benoit was often
absent from home. He had begun to travel far from Leith, searching for new suppliers of wood to feed the king’s insatiable hunger for ships. Riding borderwards for days on end, he would
return looking weary and sullen. His conversation dried to nothing, as if he had been tapped and drained of words.

‘Where ’ave you been?’ Mme Brenier would ask, as he took his place at the table for dinner, the mud of his journey still on his cloak and bonnet.

‘Down south,’ he would reply, avoiding her eyes.

‘You’re a changed boy,’ she complained. ‘Never a kind word any more. No cadeau for your mother from your travels. This might as well be lodgings as your own home, the way
you treat me and your sisters.’

‘I can leave, if ye like,’ he responded, gathering himself for a fight. But Mme Brenier was wise to that, and would shrug. ‘Makes no difference to me, mon fils. Your
bed’s your bed, for as much or little as you want it. So long as you pay your board, I’m happy.’

At which Benoit would lower his head to his food, and retreat into silence for the rest of the night.

Neither Marguerite nor Louise could lift the black mood that descended on him whenever he entered the house. From the foot of the table, Louise watched her brother with astonishment. He was the
best-natured man she had ever met, yet he seemed now as rough as the other men at the yard. When his eyes fell on his mother, they narrowed into an expression she could not read. If the
king’s name was mentioned – and in Marguerite’s company it often was – he would turn his face aside, as if about to spit. One day, taunted beyond patience, Marguerite begged
him to grow up. He stared back at her, emotionless, holding her gaze until, with a shriek of fury, she burst into tears and left the room.

Later that evening, the king paid her a visit. From their stools by the kitchen fire, Benoit and Louise heard his boots on the stair overhead. He did not stay long, and shortly after Mme Brenier
had seen him out, Marguerite’s tears could be heard again, louder than ever. The king, it appeared, found his loved one less interesting while she was in this condition. The nightingale was
flapping its wings. Instead of staying to talk and soothe her nerves, he had come only to deliver the name and address of a midwife in Queensferry, and of her sister, a wet nurse, who between them
had birthed and suckled other of his infants. Not his heirs, but those by his lovers. He could recommend them highly.

The kiss he dropped on Marguerite’s forehead before he left – he had not even stripped off his riding gloves – was as unmistakeable a farewell as a slap. So too the pouch he
let fall on her bed to pay for the sisters of mercy. Sisters who took the money and hid it under their skirts, even before the scarlet sheets from Marguerite’s delivery had been burned, and
her body wrapped in a shroud.

From his hut near the dry dock, Benoit could follow the progress of James and his men around the yard without taking his eyes off his work. They spent half an hour fondling the new fittings on
the
Margaret
, whose name he hoped turned a skewer in the monarch’s bowels. From there they were shown to the master mariner’s boathouse, to examine the models for the
Edward
and
Mary
, elegant warships both, though smaller than the
Margaret
. Benoit’s plane did not slacken. If wine and ale were offered as they pored over the
models, they might, with luck, feel no need to inspect the shipwrights’ sheds.

Luck was elsewhere that morning. Benoit heard boots approaching his shed, led by Andrew Barton, prattling every step of the way. Patrick Paniter and Gabriel Torrance entered ahead of the king.
Paniter saw Benoit, alone in the workshop, and made to turn back, but James anticipated the move and stepped around him. For the first time since Marguerite’s death, he faced her brother.
From the set of his mouth, it seemed he had sought out this encounter.

He approached the bench. Benoit lowered his eyes, his only concession to the royal presence. Andrew Barton was too excited by his own eloquence to notice Benoit’s insubordination. No-one
else missed it; the story of Marguerite and James was widely known. Gabriel’s face held a glimmer of sympathy, Paniter’s not a morsel. Barton had plainly forgotten the scandal, and the
significance of this meeting escaped him. He looked bemused when James raised his hand and Paniter ushered the party out of the shed, leaving the king and Benoit alone.

Benoit put down his plane. His heart was thumping. He could not have spoken even had he wanted to.

James too was quiet. He picked his way around the shed, skirting pyres of planks, prodding the earthen floor with his cane while he summoned the words he needed. Benoit did not turn his head. He
stared at the bench, so that when the king began to speak, he was addressing the young shipwright’s back.

‘I have asked God’s forgiveness,’ he said. ‘Now I ask yours.’ Benoit’s back was unmoving.

After a pause, he continued. ‘It was easier to face God.’ He gave a dry laugh. ‘He and I are old acquaintances. I have had much to beg forgiveness for over the
years.’

There was a clink of metal as James tugged the belt around his waist from beneath his cloak. ‘Look,’ he said.

Benoit turned, as if at sword point.

‘See this?’ said the king, an iron chain looped over his hand. ‘See? Two more links, each engraved with Marguerite’s name. She will forever be a weight on my
soul.’

‘Your soul be damned!’ cried Benoit, suddenly finding his voice. ‘God can forgive ye. So would I, if it would help. But nothing, nothing ye say or do can bring her back, and
that is all that matters.’

‘You must believe I cared for her,’ said the king. ‘She was – ’

Benoit raised his hand to silence him, his mouth twisted as if he were about to vomit. ‘Ye barely knew her. She was just another trophy. She suited ye fine till she was with child, and
then ye found ye cared less. A lot less.’

‘That night,’ said James, approaching the bench. ‘That night, when the message came, I tried to get away.’

‘And what? Afraid of confessing to your wife, were you? Or just afraid of the mess ye had made.’

‘Yes,’ said the king, ‘I was afraid. I admit it. I have seen too much death in my time. And I was ashamed. Mortally ashamed, God forgive me.’

‘I don’t give a wheen about your feelings,’ said Benoit. ‘There is nothing ye can say to make this better. Ye treated her cheap.’

Tears ran down his face and into his mouth. The salt taste brought back the smell of pumping blood that the midwife could not stem, as Marguerite’s life seeped away and all he could do was
hold her hand, and wash it with his weeping.

Benoit closed his eyes as he gripped the bench. ‘Yer Majesty, ye treated her life as wantonly as ye treated her. It’s as if ye dinnae realise how precious folks are, each of us.
Everything ye do is about buying and owning, winning and boasting. Ye wear a flash chain of penitence. How easily ye add another link. How easily ye ask to be shriven. It’s all a show. Ye are
as selfish and ignorant in your desires as any common man.’

He was sobbing now.

James was white. He laid his cane against the wall, as if about to set upon Benoit with his hands. ‘No man has ever spoken to me thus,’ he said. ‘You forget your station, young
man. I could have you sent to the gibbet for any one sentence you have just uttered.’

Benoit raised his head to look him in the face. His heartbeat was steady.

The king’s eyes were troubled. They flickered over Benoit, then sank to his ruby ring, whose stone seemed to mesmerise him as he turned it, round and round and round. He was silent for a
long minute. Finally, as if in answer to a question Benoit had not heard, he said, ‘No, I cannot. I cannot. I am not the beast you take me for. And there is enough truth in what you have said
to shame me from taking a petty revenge that would lie on my soul for eternity.’

An arrowhead of geese flew low over the yard, wings beating a low note. It was a melancholy sound, a reminder of the emptiness of sea the birds were about to cross, of the fleeting nature of
company. The king removed his cap, and for the first time, whether as prince or king, he abased himself before one of his subjects. He swept a wide bow, one knee to the ground, his long greased
hair falling over his shoulders. ‘Once more,’ he said, ‘I crave your forgiveness. Yours, your family’s, and all heaven’s.’

‘Get up,’ said Benoit hoarsely. ‘What d’ye care if I forgive you or not?’

The king stood, pale as if dizzied. ‘One day I hope you will judge me less harshly,’ he murmured, fitting his cap back on his head. Its feather was dusted with earth. He picked up
his cane.

Benoit looked at him. ‘As my king you will always have my loyalty,’ he said. He had regained composure enough not to risk adding that his respect was lost for ever.

CHAPTER THREE

16 September 1513

‘There is one man who can help us,’ said Mme Brenier, her eyes showing their first flicker of life since the news from Flodden. ‘A man who owes us, you could
say.’

‘Who?’ asked Louise, as her mother pulled her chair closer to explain. ‘The king is dead. He can’t help us.’

‘No, and very sad that is,’ said Mme Brenier, crossing herself, ‘especially for his poor young wife, who I believe is expecting another child. Pray God the shock does not bring
it on too early like the last one.’

‘No, of course,’ agreed Louise, bemused at such piety from a mouth that only a year before had been calling the king and all his court the devil’s accomplices. Her
mother’s religion was a peculiar substance, she was learning, more weapon than solace.

‘But do you not recall the man King James was with the first day he came to visit Marguerite?’ asked her mother. ‘When they all came into the house and I had not enough wine
for them all, and I sent Marguerite upstairs to put on her boudiche à la rose and powder her cheeks?’

Louise reddened. One man had indeed caught her eye, as the king’s party dismounted by their door in a swirl of capes and laughter. A lean-faced man, with hair the colour of butter, and
smiling green eyes. She later learned his name was Gabriel Torrance. He was a minor nobleman, but often at the king’s side.

‘You mean the fair man, on the black stallion?’ she asked, spirits lifting at the suggestion. ‘The one who asked for beer, not wine?’

‘No, no, he’s nothing. A scribe, at best. No, I mean the older fellow, the tall, lanky one, dressed in black. With the chapeau à plume, who ’ave those chains around his
neck.’

Louise remembered now. He had stared down his nose at her as if observing a dull-witted child.

‘Well, that man may ’ave looked like a schoolmaster who’s never got dirt under his nails, but I have been told that he was in charge of guns at Flodden, and came home in one
piece. Vincent says so.’

Louise understood now. She sprang to her feet. ‘He must have seen Benoit!’

‘Calme-toi, calme-toi!’ cried Mme Brenier. ‘You can do nothing about it tonight. I will ask Vincent where he can be found. We will have an answer by morning, be sure of
it.’

It was Vincent’s rent that stood between the family being poor and poverty-stricken. A master wright, with his own team of apprentices, he had worked at the Leith yard with Benoit before
Barton promoted him to his works at Newhaven. With added duties now, he left the house at sunrise, and returned after dark. His shift was ten hours, but every spare minute God allowed he spent with
his lips clinging to a tankard. When he sweated, diluted ale gave a sheen to his forehead. When he spoke, his breath was barley.

His walk home from Newhaven at night took twice as long as the outward trip, each step doubled in a lurching gait that from a distance bore some resemblance to a hornpipe. On those nights when
the alehouse proved more seductive than ever Mme Brenier would leave his dinner under wrap on the cooling gridle. The house was often in bed when he returned, but Madame preferred to wait up for
him and serve him herself. She rose early each morning to lay out his bannocks and cheese, and pour the day’s first draught of ale. ‘The man’s rent should buy him more than just a
room, n’estce pas?’ she would protest, when quizzed.