Dacre's War (13 page)

At dusk the borderer set off, in better spirits, Tom at his side. They returned the next morning, grim-faced. Ellarcar’s mastiffs had been set upon them before they reached his walls. The next week it was Sir Thomas Grayson who bolted his doors against them, a few days later Malcolm Ridley and old Andrew Wark who refused them entry. Yet some time later messengers arrived from Grayson, and from Ridley. Like Ogle, they told him they would be party to this venture once Crozier found a ringleader.

So began an autumn of furtive excursions, riding deep into enemy country. Protected by nothing but the dark, Crozier was buoyed only by the hope that one night he would find a man brave or fool enough to be the first to put his name to this rebellion.

CHAPTER TEN

October 1523

As darkness fell and the air thickened with woodsmoke, Benoit Brenier led his horse from its stall. Hob looked up from his corner by the brazier, where he sat hunched over a rough-hewn chessboard. His opponent, Wat the Wanderer’s youngest boy, was deep in thought, transfixed by the pieces, but Hob raised an eyebrow as the carpenter led his chestnut mare into the yard. ‘Be seein ye,’ said Benoit. ‘When Ella asks, tell her I’ll be back in a few days. Business to attend.’ Hob nodded, before returning to a game that would keep him and Hewie up until the brazier had burned itself out.

Leading the mare out of the yard, Benoit felt like a child bent on mischief, heart skipping, nerves alive. A day after the name Rauf Ilderton had been raised, Crozier had forbidden anyone to approach him. ‘If it must be done, it will be I and I alone who puts their head into that noose,’ he had told them. ‘But should that day come, times will be desperate indeed.’ Benoit planned to save Crozier the trouble and prove that, fat and slow though he might be, he too could play his part in the family feud.

He rode cautiously, with no need for speed. When he was well on the way, he would sleep by the road, and the next day should reach Ilderton’s demesne, where he would set to work.

The trees met over his head, darkness smothering him like a heavy blanket. He whistled a song for company, but the sound was weak and wavering, and soon he fell quiet. As the hour advanced, the woods grew louder. Leaves rustled, twigs snapped, and the night was broken by startled cries as owls and foxes went on the hunt.

It was not yet late, but a frost was already beginning to bite. Benoit’s hands grew stiff in their gloves, and his breath left a cold mist on his face. The prospect of sleeping on a bed of hard earth grew less and less inviting. He plodded on, down the valley and out onto the hilltop track that led towards the border. Here the air was keen. He tasted winter on the sharp, thin wind, and buried his nose in his kerchief. Kicking the mare into a trot, he was suddenly eager to cover the miles and reach a hollow, off the hills, where he could shelter till dawn.

The next morning, long before light, Benoit staggered to his feet, putting a hand to his horse’s neck to help him find his balance. Lying since midnight under a spreading beech, he had shivered, not slept. He took a swig of ale and crammed a bannock into his mouth before giving the mare a nosebag of oats. The pre-dawn darkness held a new note, the stirring of day in a robin’s brash reveille, in a blackbird’s answering call. The strangled cries of the night had died, and with it the sinister thoughts they fed. Benoit belted his cloak, saddled his horse, and set off once more, whistling as if to join the first chorus of birds. Now, as his limbs returned to life, and the ache in his deeply scored belly began to ease, he felt better for his night in the wild.

He had lived too soft for too long. Crozier’s Keep had offered a home he and Ella could never have hoped to find for themselves. He had been an invalid the first year of their marriage, recovering from a fighting wound that had left him close to death, and when he was back on his feet he was fit only for his old job. True, people around here had needed a carpenter more than another man with a sword, and business was brisk from the start, yet even as he built the frames for new houses, and mended hammer beams, stables and wells, still he felt the weakling, the odd one out, the man they did not require. He did not want Crozier’s charity; he longed to be one of the clan, as fit for the fray as any. Yet if he offered to ride out with them on their raids, the borderer dismissed the idea as if Benoit were as frail as Old Crozier. Sometimes he caught Louise staring as his children climbed over his knees and under his feet, and he imagined she was wishing he was less a family man and more like her husband, a fighter one had to respect. If he met her eye she would colour and turn away, as if embarrassed at having her thoughts read.

The ride into Ilderton’s shire on this brittle, frosted morning did much to raise his spirits. The countryside was stitched with trees, fields lying soft and loamy as risen loaves, a bristle of winter wheat casting shadows of green across the furrows. Benoit breathed deep. If he carried off this venture, Crozier for once would be in his debt. If he did not – but he broke off that thought, refusing to think beyond the next few days.

Herdsmen were already elbowing in at the tavern counter when Benoit reached Ilderton’s village. These fieldworkers preferred beer to food, and drank their midday meal as if they had been labouring under a scorching sun and not in a snell wind that fingered their smocks and blew back their snoods, intent on reaching their bones.

Benoit squeezed himself in, ignoring the workers’ stares. A mug of beer was slapped before him, awash in its own spill. He gulped the first half, then set the tankard down with a grateful sigh. The tavern keeper, wiping the counter at the end of the bar, watched him from under his fringe. The others had half turned from the stranger and lowered their voices, but Benoit appeared not to care. Staring into his drink, he was heedless of company. His lips moved as if in conversation with an invisible friend, but when the bartender approached he lapsed into silence, swallowing his words along with his beer. The Wheatsheaf was dingy, the beer bland, the earthen floor puddled in slops, but Benoit seemed quite content. ‘Another,’ he mumbled to the host, and tipped his head back to drink it in one.

A knowing look passed between the herdsmen. ‘Soaking yer sorrows, then?’ asked a ploughman, his black eyes holding a hint of sympathy.

‘Nah,’ replied Benoit, slapping down his empty tankard, and a coin with it. ‘Jist getting started for the day.’ His voice was neither friendly nor cold.

‘Passing through?’ The ploughman moved closer, and Benoit shrugged.

‘Too early to say.’

A silence followed, and Benoit was on the point of leaving when he looked the ox-driver in the eye. ‘All depends,’ he said, as if the words were being wrung out of him. The peasant waited. ‘All depends on his lordship, doesn’t it? If he’ll honour his pledge.’

The ploughman’s eyes widened. ‘Whit pledge would that be?’ But Benoit shook his head, as if already he had said too much. He was at the door when the driver reached his elbow. ‘If ye’re looking to find him,’ he said quietly, ‘he’s never at home. This time of day, he’s most likely asleep with his hoor. Come back at dusk, and he’ll be in here, or yin of the other howffs down the street.’

Benoit put on his hat, and without looking back raised a hand in thanks.

Ilderton clung to the bar counter. His back was to the door, but in this, the meanest tavern in town, he would have been able to smell immediately whoever walked in, had his nose not been buried in his drink.

Benoit took a seat by a window so small it offered no more than a keyhole onto the darkened street. That morning’s hostelry was sumptuous by comparison, and he wondered what had brought his lordship’s tastes so low. The bench creaked beneath his weight, and the empty barrel that was his table wobbled on the uneven floor. Nodding to the man behind the counter, he ordered a flagon of ale and a pair of dice.

The dice were grimed, but in the firelight he could make out their faces, chipped and black as they were. For the next three hours they were his only entertainment, that and his private wager that the mouse slinking around the walls would make it through the evening without catching the eye of the tomcat by the fire.

Two other drinkers were at the bar, but they paid neither him, nor Ilderton, any heed. Their conversation was slurred, but they appeared to be in the Vice Warden’s employ. From time to time Eure’s name fell onto the counter as if they had spat.

Ilderton moved from his place only to relieve himself in the pail by the door. While he fumbled with his small clothes, arching his spine backwards like a greenwood bow, Benoit shot him a glance. The man’s haunts might be common, but there was an air of ancient breeding in his imposing stature, the high-cut nose and silver hair that flowed over his collar.

On the counter were ranged five flagons. As one was drunk, Ilderton pulled the next towards him. When the barman’s boy made to remove an empty jug, Ilderton caught him by the wrist. ‘Leave them,’ he growled. By the time Eure’s men had left, he was on to his third. In the draught from the door, Benoit caught the vinegar tang of young wine. When Ilderton turned at last and spoke to him, the smell grew stronger.

‘You’re a quiet one,’ he said.

Benoit acknowledged this with a curt nod, and rattled the dice in his hand. A minute passed, and another, Ilderton staring unabashed at the newcomer. Benoit kept his head lowered, his eyes only on his throw.

‘Nothing you want to say?’ mocked his lordship.

Benoit looked at him coldly, and returned to his game.

‘Stranger and stranger,’ mused Ilderton. ‘A wild-looking man rides into the village, smelling of the north, but too good to talk to the likes of us. I mistrust those whose tongues are tied,’ he said more sharply. ‘Smacks of deceit, or trouble.’

Benoit put down the dice, picked up his hat, and got to his feet. ‘I’m here only for a bevvy and a bit of quiet,’ he said. ‘It’s my experience that those who talk of secrets have the most to hide.’

He left, followed by Ilderton’s braying laugh and the cry of the cat as it pounced, too late, on a shadow.

After that night, Benoit’s visits to Ilderton’s shire were irregular. A week after their first encounter, he set out again from the keep, shortly after Crozier and Tom had ridden off into the dusk on one of their petitioning calls. Thereafter his trips over the border matched theirs. It made for a restless existence, and some friction with his wife, but Benoit’s eyes grew brighter with every journey.

‘Where in God’s name have ye been?’ Ella had demanded the first time. The smell of hops clung to his cloak and beard, and there was a hint of mischief in his round, coppered face.

‘That I cannae tell ye, lass,’ he’d replied, planting a kiss on her scolding lips. ‘But the nichts were cauld without ye.’ He put his hands on her hips and drew her close. ‘I dinnae want tae deceive ye, hen, but it’s best ye dinnae ken where I’m headed, no for now, at least.’

Ella looked at him gravely. ‘Does Louise ken?’

He shook his head. ‘Christ, she’d no like it. Not one bit.’

Three of his youngest had by now attached themselves to him, one to each leg and another dangling from his arm. The conversation ended, but in the weeks that followed, as soon as Crozier and Tom had gone, Ella packed her husband’s satchel with food and ale, and walked with him to the forest track. She did not care if Louise might not approve when Benoit’s secret business was finally revealed. Seeing the change in his mood, the lightness in his step, she welcomed it.

When asked what took him from home, Ella said he was on a commission for a farmer in the next dale. She spoke with an air of resentment, as if she thought he was finding an excuse to be off on his own. Louise frowned, not with suspicion, but with worry at her brother’s behaviour. She put a hand on Ella’s arm. ‘Crozier often needs to get away,’ she said. ‘The keep can sometimes feel like a cage.’ Ella cast her eyes down, ashamed of her lie.

On his second trip Benoit did not find Ilderton. Killing dreary hours in the village howffs, his steps unsteadier with each hostelry, was a waste of money, but not time. Word of his reappearance would soon spread, and that was enough.

Days after that visit, Benoit was back. He was huddled by the fire in a high-beamed tavern when Ilderton walked in. The Crown was clean but cold, all four winds finding their way under the doors and through the rafters, making the log flames dip and dance, the rush lamps plume with smoke. Rubbing his hands, his lordship showed no surprise at seeing him. He entered as if the place was empty and all his own, not packed with villagers fortifying themselves against the lengthening nights with draughts of golden cheer.

Benoit turned his back and stared into the fire, but despite the press of bodies he could sense his lordship’s stare. A stool scraped at his side and Ilderton joined him, tumbler and jug in hand. ‘So then,’ he said, as if picking up a conversation broken off only that morning, ‘you think I’m full of secrets?’ He poured until the tumbler brimmed. With a tremulous hand he brought it to his lips, ignoring a splash of wine which dripped onto his boots, dark as blood.

When it was drunk, and the tumbler refilled, he continued. ‘I’ve been thinking about you, young man. Your sudden appearance, your mysterious ways. I find it curious. No one here knows you, or your business, yet here you are, always at the tap, as if you’re one of us. But we know not a thing about you. People don’t like that, you know. It makes them uneasy, like an albino robin, or a two-headed lamb. Perhaps you’d care to enlighten me?’