After Flodden (6 page)

Her children were baffled by her affection for Vincent. Benoit knew him to be kind, tolerant and even generous, when drinksilver allowed. But on first acquaintance there was no denying that his
accent was impenetrable, his habits uncouth, and his bald head lumpy as a neep. When Benoit had brought him home as a prospective lodger, he expected to be met by Maman’s famous disdain. They
were not in a position to sneer at anyone’s money, but as he had learned over many years, Mme Brenier could bury commonsense and dance on its grave when her dislike or disgust was
kindled.

Mme Brenier never explained her fondness, nor did Vincent trade on it. He was a single man and happy with that state. When fire destroyed his lodgings in the centre of Leith some two years
previously, he was concerned only to find another berth for his head and his tools. Home comforts barely featured on his list of requirements. The room need only be pest free and close to the
shipyard. Gradually, though, the family warmth of the tall house on the quay percolated, and the domesticity he had avoided since he had left Prestonpans as a boy slowly posed less of a mortal
threat to his peace of mind. While to the Breniers’ sober eyes he was an incurable ale-fly, had a man of science taken note of his habits, he would have observed that month by month, Vincent
was spending longer in his lodgings with Madame and her offspring and less time supping from the brewer’s tap. Between them, had they known it, the Breniers had achieved something close to a
miracle. Family, for Vincent, was no longer another word for misery. That he continued to feel this even after Marguerite’s love affair and death, when Madame and her son and daughter could
barely talk to each other, was either proof of the harshness of his earlier life or of his affection for each of the Breniers.

As the wind roused itself to a fiercer assault on the house, Louise and her mother waited for Vincent’s return. ‘I wish he had a horse,’ said Mme Brenier. ‘It is a
miserable cold journey on foot at this time of night.’

‘He says he can’t bear seeing good barley go to waste in a nosebag,’ said Louise. ‘He would rather feed the nags mutton than rob the oasthouse.’

‘The man talks nonsense,’ said Madame Brenier, her needle flashing in the firelight, an implement modelled on her tongue. ‘He’s not the fool he would have us
believe.’

When he was heard at last on the doorstep, Mme Brenier launched herself down the passageway, with Louise close behind.

‘Whoa!’ cried Vincent, as they crowded in on him. ‘Gie’s a minute, and let me get ma jaikit aff! Whit’re ye like, yous pair! I’m drookit.’

As he hung up his jerkin and cowl, and tipped off his boots, water ran onto the flagstones. ‘Crabbit, crabbit weather,’ he muttered. ‘Aye, bad times all roon.’

Mme Brenier took his elbow and hurried him into the kitchen. The smell of soup and the sight of a warming loaf quickened his step.

‘Ye’re a good ol’ soul, Madame B. Come on, then, tell us whit’s up.’

While he ate, Mme Brenier explained.

‘Patrick Paniter, aye?’ said Vincent. ‘He’s some chiel. No blate, ye could say. The king’s right-hand man. He disnae – didnae – make a move withoot his
say-so.’

Years of alehouse talk made Vincent a vat of information, much of it gossip, and some of it true.

‘He was manning the guns, like I telt ye. He wis the brains, Borthwick the brawn. God alane kens how they scarpered oot o’ there alive.’

‘Do you know where he lives, Vincent?’ Mme Brenier asked. ‘We pray he might know something about Benoit.’

‘Aye,’ said Vincent, ‘ye’re mibbe right.’ He stared into his soup, avoiding the naked desperation in his landlady’s eyes.

‘He bides up the Cowgate, ken, nae far frae the castle. Gie’s a while tae speir and I’ll get ye a better idea. Yous pair git tae your beds now, and I’ll see ye the
morn.’

He drained his bowl, crammed bread into his pocket, and was back out the door into the storm before the women could stop him.

The fire was banked down for the night, and mother and daughter were hunched as close to it as their chairs allowed when he returned. They shivered as the main door let in a chill that had no
trouble finding its way to the kitchen.

‘Right, then,’ said Vincent, who was even more sodden than when he first came home. ‘Andra in the Nag’s Heid kens the secretary’s hoose fine. It’s aboon the
castle, he says, on the Grassmarket side. Ye cannae miss it, like. Twa muckle oaken doors it has. It’s an imposing beast, built frae black wid. And he’s at hame, all right. Folk say
he’s gone mad, like. Aye hovering at the windae, fingers in his mooth.’

He looked at Louise, and cocked his head. ‘So ye’re gaunae pay him a visit?’ Louise nodded. ‘Wid ye be needin company?’

‘Bonne idée,’ said Mme Brenier, warmly.

Louise shook her head. She had seen the way Paniter had looked at her. Vincent might have the soul of a gentleman, but he disguised himself as a vagabond. She might have little chance of
speaking to the secretary as it was, but with Vincent at her side she would be refused admittance before he had his cap off.

‘As ye like,’ said Vincent, with ill-hidden relief, and climbed the stairs to his room above the kitchen. His stockinged feet padded over the boards, and they settled under his
weight. A little later, from the box-bed by the hearth where Louise lay awake, his snores rattled like the windows. Lying at Louise’s feet, the vixen whuffled in her dreams, as if in
duet.

*    *    *

The secretary’s doors were dark with rain. At this hour of the morning the shutters were drawn, but at an upstairs window Louise saw a chink, where they had not been fully
closed. What she did not see was the figure that stood by the gap. He had watched her ride up the street and tether her horse, and he heard her knocking. When the housekeeper came to tell him there
was a girl asking to see him, he yelled so loud, Louise heard every word from the doorstep.

‘I won’t see anyone, I tell you. Send her away!’ And the doors were closed in her face.

She came back later. ‘Please,’ she begged. ‘It’s about my brother, I only need to ask him about my brother.’

‘What about him?’ said Goodwife Black, although she could guess.

‘He’s never come home from the battle,’ said Louise, holding her voice steady by pressing her hands together like a nun. ‘The secretary knew him. He might be able to help
me.’

‘The name?’

‘Benoit Brenier.’

‘Wait here.’

Goodwife Black climbed upstairs to her master’s room and once again Paniter roared.

The following morning, Louise returned. Like Paniter, she had not slept, and like Paniter she was angry. Goodwife Black opened the doors no more than a crack. When, as expected, she saw Louise,
she would have closed them at once, except that something shot past her legs into the hallway, and she shrieked, letting go the bolt. Seeing her chance, Louise pushed her way past the door. She
whistled and the vixen skittered to her side across bees-waxed boards.

‘Get that filthy dog out of here, and you with him!’ shrieked the housekeeper, outraged at this breach of her domain.

‘I’m not leaving until I have spoken to Patrick Paniter,’ said Louise, surprising herself at how firm she sounded. ‘If I have to stay all day and night, I
will.’

‘Is that right?’ said Goodwife Black, advancing on her. She’d dealt with tradesfolk dunning for bills, and knew how to twist their arm to make them glad to escape back into the
street. It would not take much to encourage this thin lass to leave sharpish, once she’d got her hands on her.

There was a growl, a streak of gold, and the vixen crouched before the housekeeper, hackles raised and teeth bared, ready to spring.

‘Jesus and Mary!’ gasped Goodwife Black, retreating to the far side of the hall. ‘This is outrageous. You force your way into this house, and now you set your dog on me.’
She began to back up the stairs, moving very slowly for fear of the vixen launching itself at her. ‘I promise you, you little slut,’ she said, reverting to her fisher-row roots,
‘if he dares so much as touch me, he’ll be strung up and hanged. He won’t be the first hound I’ve put a noose on and watched scrabble as the rope tightened.’

Louise caught the vixen by the scruff. The dog continued to growl, her eyes never leaving Goodwife Black. Louise dragged her back to a bench, where she sat, keeping a hand on her. ‘I
won’t let her bite you,’ she said, ‘but I refuse to leave until I can see your master. I’m in no rush.’

The housekeeper gave her a look that would turn fresh herring rancid, and ran up the stairs. Louise heard her disappear into the room overhead. The house went quiet. The vixen stopped growling,
and sank onto her belly, head on paws, eyes on the stairs. Beyond the oak doors, the day’s work was gathering pace, oxen drivers cracking their whips above the beasts’ heads as they
lugged drays of stone toward the infant Flodden wall. But in Paniter’s hall, nothing stirred. Nothing, but Louise’s skipping heart.

*    *    *

He plunged his face into the bowl, and held his breath. The water was cold as stone, but for the first time in a week he felt a flicker of life catch in his veins. In that deep
wooden dish he found something of his old self, as if he’d carelessly dropped it there before he rode off to battle and only now closed his fingers around it again.

Shuddering at the medicinal cold, he raised his head, sending a spray of droplets across the room. Water ran down his neck and arms. He gripped the cloth and scrubbed, rubbing at his skin until
the water’s chill was banished in a red glow. Arms, chest, belly, groin, legs and feet were lathered and rinsed. With each swipe of the cloth, the smell of the field grew fainter.

Goodwife Black held out fresh clothes, and Paniter dressed with care: shirt, hose, stockings, shoes and waistcoat. He slipped on his ring and chain, and smiled. ‘I will see her now, thank
you,’ he said, and took a seat by the window, whose shutters his housekeeper latched open, letting in the late morning light.

Louise bowed as she entered the room. The air was stale, very different from the polished hallway. Before she left Paniter’s room, Goodwife Black had placed an ashet of pot pourri on the
dresser, but its sweet rot could not disguise the smell of metallic dirt and sweat that her master had brought home with him.

The man himself was immaculate. Louise had been waiting all morning, unaware of the torment going on above her, certain only of her own growing impatience and unease. By the time she was shown
into Paniter’s room, Goodwife Black’s face as expressionless as a chapel carving, she was rigid with anxiety. If Paniter could not help, she did not know what she would do.

The distance between the door and the window where Paniter sat was a gangplank, and Louise’s steps were unsteady. As she approached he looked at the vixen and raised an eyebrow.

‘Your housekeeper threatened to kill her,’ said Louise. ‘I couldn’t leave her outside the room.’

‘She does not care for animals,’ he said mildly. But to Louise, he looked far from mild. Dressed in black, with a great silver cross on his chest, and a topaz ring that winked in his
lap, he was a man from a world so different from her own it was a wonder they spoke the same language.

Louise had heard how Paniter could hold the council spellbound. It was a rabble of opinionated men who were not easily silenced, yet Paniter was second only to the king in the awe he inspired.
Some, fearful of his power, wondered if he might be the son of a witch. Others said one need look no further than his agile brain to explain his rise from tutor to the king’s boys to
secretary to the state.

It was said that he had written all the king’s letters, as a secretary would, but most without the need for dictation, and many on his own whim. While his official position was as clerk,
not policymaker, the secretary was regarded as the most influential man at court. He had been the king’s right hand. What did that make him now his master was dead? Was every word he spoke
guided from beyond the grave? Louise shivered.

‘Come over here and take a seat,’ said Paniter. Louise joined him by the window. ‘I hear you are searching for your brother.’

Louise explained that Benoit had ridden out of town to join Lord Home’s men, and never been seen again. ‘I am told Home’s troops were first into battle and first out,’
she said, ‘and many survived, yet we have not heard a word from him.’

She clasped her hands to hold back her tears, but it was no good. One, then another, fell onto her hands. She dashed them away, but could not speak.

Paniter’s face offered no comfort. One man among such mayhem would have gone unnoticed, whether he fell or fled.

Louise was too blinded to see the secretary’s harsh look, and his words were gentler than his expression. ‘I know your brother. Marguerite’s brother. A dark, squat lad. He
looks like a solid worker. A steady man, no doubt.’

Louise nodded, though this description did no justice to him. Benoit’s serious demeanour and shyness among strangers hid the kindest heart Louise could ever hope to find. In a
moment’s distraction, she saw her brother’s face in front of her, his quiet half-smile as he took her hand and hauled her onto the back of his horse for a day’s tramping over the
hills.

She shook her head to be rid of the image, and found Paniter talking about Lord Home, Benoit’s commander.

‘ . . . and has returned safe, as you know. I could write to him, and see what he can remember of your brother, whether he has any information about his welfare, or . . . ’

Paniter coughed, brushed the air with his ringed hand to cover the obvious conclusion of the unfinished sentence. ‘His lands are in the East March, his castle near Coldstream, so one of my
men can take a message tomorrow. I will stress its urgency.’

What he did not tell her was that it took an effort to say the name ‘Home’. Even in his private thoughts, Paniter could scarcely bring himself to utter the word. It was a more
contemptible name indeed than that of Henry or Surrey. Home and his fellow commander Huntly had charged into battle with their cavalry and acquitted themselves with courage and honour, cutting down
the first wave of the English, stamping them beneath their hooves into the mud and sodden grass of that treacherous bogland.