The Green Man (13 page)

I rolled on to my back and stared sightlessly at the canopy above me. Something was bothering me and would not let me rest, but in the end, I fell into an uneasy slumber without resolving what it was that troubled me. And the next thing I knew, it was morning.

A careful study of the knife in daylight gave no clues as to its owner. Indeed, it was plainly a kitchen knife – one of those sharp, broad-bladed implements used primarily for cutting up meat – and could have been procured by anyone who had access to the friary's kitchens. And who was to say that it necessarily belonged to the friary? It could have been stolen at Fotheringay, Leicester, Nottingham or at any other of the stops we had made during the past week on our journey northwards. No, there was nothing to be learned from the intended murder weapon. Nor was there any certainty that the murderer himself was one of Albany's servants, for the Austin friars had offered hospitality to the retainers of many other lords who could not be accommodated under the same roofs as their masters; and upon enquiry I discovered that there had been very few spare corners anywhere in the buildings that night.

The duke himself seemed to have recovered the tone of his mind with surprising speed. He was almost inclined to make light of the incident except for his insistence that I was necessary to his safety and must never again consider leaving him until we reached Scotland and he was crowned king. My suggestion that last night's happening should be reported to the Duke of Gloucester, so that extra measures might be put in place for his protection, was brushed aside.

‘And lay myself – in whom the honour of Scotland is invested – open to the ridicule of Sassenachs?' Albany demanded indignantly. ‘Never!'

‘It was a determined, a genuine, attempt on your life, my lord,' I argued, amazed at his attitude. ‘Neither Prince Richard nor any other English noble will think you ridiculous for making a fuss over such a matter. Do you really believe that if such a thing had happened to any one of them the whole city would not now be in an uproar in an attempt to find the would-be assassin?'

But Albany remained adamant, even going so far as to swear both Davey and myself to silence on the subject.

‘We'll never catch this murdering bastard if we put him too much on his guard,' he said, as we once more rode northwards just after dawn, leaving the rose-tinted walls of York behind us.

I considered him to be over-sanguine if he thought the page would keep a still tongue in his head. I wondered if Albany were truly unaware of the close bond of comradeship that existed between the late Earl of Mar's former servants, or if he simply ignored it as an inconvenient fact. For my own part, I had no doubt whatsoever that both the squires, James Petrie and John Tullo would be in full possession of the story before many hours had passed. Indeed, it seemed to me, glancing at the faces of Donald Seton and Murdo MacGregor, as they rode alongside me, immediately behind their master, that they already knew. There was a sly expression in the former's green-flecked eyes, and a wry twist to the latter's usually stern-set mouth that convinced me Davey had wasted very little time in informing his fellows of the night's events.

As for what I thought myself, I was in a quandary, my head reeling from a lack of sleep and a growing sense of unreality. The suspicion kept obtruding that the previous night's attempt on Albany's life had been staged for my benefit, in order to keep me from defecting, as I had threatened to do. I could not choose but remember that the duke, although pleading sickness, had not actually thrown up into the night-stool. There had been a great deal of retching, but no actual vomiting. His claim to be ill, however, had removed him providentially from his side of the bed, and had, moreover, occupied my full attention. And that was another thing, the killer had, apparently, known in advance on which side of the bed Albany was sleeping. Had he been forced to part the bed curtains wide enough to ascertain this fact, he must have seen that Albany wasn't there; could not have helped seeing, in fact, his quarry's kneeling figure beside the night-stool and myself bending over him. Furthermore, Davey's absence had been so opportune …

And yet the whole notion was so absurd as to be laughable. It was foolish beyond permission. There was no possible reason why Albany should go to such lengths to keep an unwilling man in his service. It argued some sinister motive for which there was no justification. No; his desire for my presence must surely be what he had always claimed it was. I was somebody in whom he could trust; somebody who, for no better reason than that I liked him, had once broken the law to help him evade his pursuers by arranging his passage to Ireland. It was no use my complaining. As Timothy Plummer had pointed out to me, I had brought my present situation on myself.

So I might as well get on with things and see what transpired.

We reached Berwick at last, sometime in the early weeks of July, all twenty thousand of us, together with siege machines, baggage waggons and the hangers-on that, or so I was told, all armies gather to themselves as they progress. The town was already under siege, and had been since the preceding October. But now we had arrived to wrest this border town back from the Scots and establish it as a part of England once and for all. Such was the Duke of Gloucester's avowed intention.

As we approached, I could just make out through the gloom the scorched and flattened earth outside the town and the battered fortifications beyond. As preparations began for the pitching of tents and the lighting of camp fires, dark clouds began to gather. Dragons, mountains, castles stood carved in ebony against the rays of the dying sun. Thunder muttered across the hills, and a flock of crows swooped and cawed their way overhead as they flew to roost. The surrounding countryside stretched black and purple in the fading evening light. Heavy drops of rain began to fall.

There was a flurry of horse's hooves as my lord of Gloucester rode alongside. He clapped Albany on the back.

‘Not an auspicious beginning, cousin,' he said, laughing, and pulling his cloak tighter about him as protection against the elements. ‘But I'm sure you don't believe in such auguries. You're within spitting distance of your native soil. We'll be across the border in no time at all. You'll see! You're almost home now.'

‘There might be a case for arguing that I am home already,' Albany answered dryly. He noted Gloucester's swift, sidelong glance and added, ‘Oh, don't worry, coz. If you can retake Berwick, it's yours as far as I'm concerned. It's always been a troublesome place and not one worth fighting over. When I'm king, I shan't go back on my word.'

Prince Richard smiled, a little grimly I thought. ‘I'm glad to hear it.' He suddenly noticed me and the long, thin mouth relaxed somewhat. ‘Roger!' he acknowledged before turning once more to Albany. ‘My intelligence is that your brother is on the march. It seems there's a sizeable army moving south from Edinburgh.'

T
he town of Berwick fell quickly. The English were masters of the shattered streets and eyeless houses in a matter of days after our arrival, but the citadel continued to hold out, the wild skirling of the Scottish pipes hurling defiance from the battlements. Many of the citizens had taken refuge inside its walls, adding no doubt to the fortress's congestion and its shortage of food and water. Albany, returning to his pavilion from a council of war in the Duke of Gloucester's tent, railed bitterly against his countrymen's obstinacy.

‘The fools know they can't win, so why don't they just give in sooner rather than later?'

It was not a question to which he expected an answer – indeed, there was a note of pride underlying his irritation – but, scrambling up off my straw mattress, bored and restless with inactivity, I suggested, somewhat impertinently, that the defenders could be waiting for the arrival of King James and his army. ‘Except that Your Highness's brother seems to be taking his time in getting here.'

For a moment, Albany looked as if he might be about to remind me of my status as slightly lower than a worm – one of which was squirming across the ground towards me as I spoke – but then he thought better of it and laughed.

‘James is incapable of bestirring himself for anyone or anything. No doubt dalliance with his favourites is consuming a great deal of his time and energy.'

‘Would he have brought them with him?'

‘Brought them with him?' the duke snorted. ‘Of course he's brought them with him. He never stirs without 'em! One of 'em's doubtless in charge of the army – probably that louse, Tam Cochrane – while good men like our uncles, Atholl and Buchan, are thrust aside and humiliated.'

I said nothing. There was nothing I could say. The names were unfamiliar to me, as were my surroundings. With each succeeding day, I felt myself to be in an alien world where strangeness was beginning to be the norm; where home and family and the soft green contours of my native west country were fading into a kind of dream glimpsed now and then in the long, dark watches of the night, but gone by morning. There were even times when I wondered if I had perhaps indeed strayed into that world of faerie beneath Glastonbury Tor, or into the elfland that Donald Seton had mentioned as existing under the Eildon Hills.

The call of a trumpet jagged the afternoon silence, and was answered by the keening wail of the pipes. Immediately all was bustle and confusion as men suddenly sprang into action. Murdo and Donald appeared as if by magic, ready to arm their master.

‘A sortie from the citadel,' the former said in answer to Albany's barked question, while the latter pushed me unceremoniously aside with a well-aimed kick.

‘Out of the way, Roger, my lad! This is soldier's work. Not for hangers-on like you.'

I didn't rise to the bait, but took myself off to a vantage point a little way outside the town where I could view the action in safety. It was a place I had discovered some days earlier; a small knoll where the delicate blue of the harebell and the deep, sweet pink of the clustering ling tinted the summer grasses; a little haven that had somehow escaped the general surrounding devastation.

Ten minutes later, I was watching the Duke of Gloucester, with Albany and Lord Stanley at his heels, closely followed by Earl Rivers and half a dozen other of his captains, engage in hand-to-hand fighting with a hundred or so of the enemy who had suddenly erupted from the citadel's main gate. Hordes of screaming citizens lined the walls above them, indiscriminately hurling missiles at friend and foe alike. I couldn't help laughing when an earthenware chamber-pot, with all its contents, landed upside down on a man-at-arms' head; but it was laughter quickly silenced when the man, blinded, was ripped open from waist to neck by an enemy dirk.

A voice screamed above the general din, ‘The hay-cart! They're firing the hay-cart!'

The cart stood close to the ballista, its contents waiting to be woven into fire-balls to be hurled over the citadel's walls. In the panic of the moment, it had been left unguarded, and suddenly its contents were aflame. Even I, hanger-on that I was, could now see that the sally had been a mere diversion to keep the English occupied around the main gate, while another party of Scots crept out by a postern door and set fire to the hay-cart, which they were in the process of pushing towards the huddle of dwellings nearest the centre of the town. A rainbow of sparks whirled and tumbled in the afternoon light. Smoke billowed and wreathed in choking clouds.

I could just make out my lord Gloucester, Albany and the rest, spluttering and coughing, smoke-blackened and sweating, laying about them with their swords as they struggled to overpower their opponents before the citadel gates were slammed shut in their faces. But it was no good. The heat of the burning buildings distracted and confused them, and the width of the barbican drawbridge made it impossible for more than two men to go abreast. The great wooden leaves creaked defiantly together, the last Scotsman disappeared, like a wraith, through the final crack and the whirr and clatter of the iron bar could be heard, even above the general din, as it was laboriously levered into place.

A chance to end the siege of Berwick by capturing the citadel had been lost thanks to the stupid error of leaving the hay-cart unguarded. I decided I wouldn't care to be in the shoes of whoever was responsible for that.

No one was in a happy mood that evening; but then, as far as the common soldiery was concerned, that was nothing new. Albany was dining in the Duke of Gloucester's pavilion along with the other commanders, while they no doubt apportioned blame for the afternoon's fiasco, and I was left to line up beside the cooks' great cauldrons of what passed for stew with the rest of the unwashed masses. For some reason best known to themselves, the cooks had elected to build their fires and set out their trestles within shouting distance of the hospital tents, so while we chewed on bits of gristle and choked on pieces of turnip that were so raw they cracked our teeth, we were entertained by the cries, groans and screams of the wounded and dying.

A little man, a Londoner by birth I reckoned, seated on the ground beside me, spat out several choice morsels of the caterer's art and, lumping all army cooks and commanders together, blasted them to hell.

‘A bloody good chance to end this siege once and for all,' he grumbled, ‘and what 'appens? Our lords and masters allows 'emselves to be diddled by a party o' kilted savages. Disgraceful I calls it.'

A second man gave a throaty chuckle. ‘You ain't surprised, surely, Dickon? Don' you know by now that if anythink can be cocked up, it will be? Tha's the first rule o' warfare.'

There was a general murmur of agreement in the fire-studded dark and a general shifting of bodies. After a while, people began getting up and wandering away from the heat of the flames and the sound of their fellow men in agony. With full bellies, they sloped off to find their own or somebody else's woman amongst the camp followers at the rear of the baggage waggons, and I found myself isolated in a little pool of shadow thrown by one of the cannon used earlier in the siege, but at present abandoned in favour of more old-fashioned weapons. It reminded me of Albany's story of how his father, King James II, had been blown up and killed by a piece of his own beloved artillery …