Disgrace And Favour

by Jeremy Potter

  Disgrace and favour

  Jeremy Potter

  Contents

  The Border

  The Succession

  The Prince

  The Favourite

  The End Of An Age

  The Border

  I

  Blood had stained the Border since its first habitation. Down the generations, lawlessness had become the established way of life. The Romans, who fought to pacify the known world, built their wall to the south. A thousand years later Edward Longshanks of England subdued the Scots, but not the frontier between the two kingdoms. Throughout the centuries the Borderers had remained the Ostrogoths of Britain. They lived like brutes, ignorant and vicious, remote from the paths of civilization. Their accomplishments were murder, robbery and rape.

  The most famous Borderer of his time, the Scottish outlaw Geordie Bourne, boasted of such accomplishments, and Sir Robert Carey, the English deputy warden of the East March, had sworn to hang him. He took the oath one afternoon and swore to hang him before sunset the following day. He swore by the blood of his royal forebears, and was not the man to take such an oath lightly.

  The ambush was prepared, and from the look-out above his castle at Norham he scowled towards Berwick, fretful lest the garrison should fail to answer his summons before nightfall.

  His eyes, as he brooded, rested on a solitary horseman fording the stream which bordered the castle grounds and divided England from Scotland. It was an unexpected sight and the unexpected alerted him. No honest or welcome news would be carried by a ragged Scottish wretch on an ill-kempt mount. A trick more likely.

  Behind his scowl and his suspicion, the deputy warden felt pity. Not for Bourne and his fellow brigands, but for this man and others like him in the wildness of the marches. The poor savages were the victims too: the murdered, robbed and raped. In all history, one man alone had brought them the blessings of law and order: Richard of Gloucester, last of the Plantagenet kings.

  Like him, Carey was a young veteran of wars. He had fought in France by the side of the King of Navarre and been knighted on the field by the Queen’s commander, the great Earl of Essex. At sea he had joined the pursuit of the Armada of Spain from Portsmouth to Calais. Here at Norham he strove to be worthy of the man who had crowned his reign with a hero’s death, but authority and opportunity were denied him. He could scarcely capture Berwick: Richard had secured it for England once and for all. The Governor now was Carey’s father, the Marshal his brother John. Nor could he march on Edinburgh when the two countries lay at peace and the Scottish king stood heir to England.

  Carey’s father was the Right Honourable Lord Hunsdon, not only Governor of Berwick upon Tweed and warden of the East March, but also Captain of Her Majesty’s Band of Gentlemen Pensioners, Knight of the most honourable Order of the Garter, Privy Councillor and cousin german to the Queen. The Lady Mary, his mother, had been sister to Queen Anne Boleyn. At the sailing of the Armada, the safety of the Queen’s own person had been entrusted to his care. Twenty-six years ago he had put down a rebellion in the north, but now the court and old age kept him in the south. Indeed one could not be a Privy Councillor and the Queen’s nearest blood relation and expect to perform one’s daily duties in Berwick and the East March in person. Nor, at the full human span of three score years and ten, could one hunt Bournes and Armstrongs for oneself. It had been his wife’s task to provide him with deputies, and this she had done in plenty. Famed as a prodigious scatterer of his seed, his lordship had fathered seven sons in the marriage bed alone.

  In order of birth Sir Robert came seventh, and it was fortunate for him that his mother had borne daughters too. One married Thomas Lord Scrope, Governor of Carlisle and warden of the West March, who gave his wife’s youngest brother his first employment as a deputy on the Border, allowing him free lodging at the castle and a half share in the warden’s fee of a thousand marks. After his own marriage, Carey had had no choice but to leave court and earn his keep thus, banished far from the dying rays of England’s royal sun, where others were free to bask and plot their rise in the world.

  He had cut his teeth in the west and was gnashing them now in the east. Nearly forty, he stood broad and squat; well connected but not well favoured in beauty; wise in the ways of Border lore, implacable to outlaws, and exiled without hope. Once the Queen had called him Robin and allowed him to kiss her hand, although she acknowledged her mother’s kin sparingly. After the French wars she had given him a thousand pounds to pay his debts, although, as all the world knew, the Queen did not part with money readily. At one time there had seemed no heights he might not scale, in the steps of those other Roberts - Dudley and Devereux. But now in his banishment, his ambition ran no higher than a wardenship in his own right; the same respect which these wild men had paid to Richard of Gloucester; and, before the sun sank behind the Cheviot hills a second time, the hanging of Geordie Bourne.

  ‘Will the garrison come?’

  The voice was his wife’s, soft but urgent. He turned to greet her. She possessed beauty enough for both of them. It was small wonder that he had committed the crime of marrying her. Their betrothal had become an occasion for royal pique unequalled since Ralegh revealed the secret of his marriage to a rival Elizabeth - Mistress Throgmorton. After four years the weight of the Queen’s displeasure lay heavy on them still, the remembrance of her tantrums an unhealed wound. How had he too dared provoke her by preferring another and younger Elizabeth - Mistress Trevannion? No Frenchman, Spaniard or Borderer could frighten him, but at the fury of his sovereign his knees had trembled and trembled still. The spinster Queen was old and jealous and expressed herself mightily offended with the youngest of her Robins. He had to wrench at his mind to put aside the remembrance of her spite.

  ‘They will come soon, Elizabeth. You will see.’

  He spoke with more assurance than he felt, then took her by the lobe of the ears and kissed her on the mouth. She had brought him a jointure of five hundred pounds a year and another five hundred in her purse. Not a penny more, nor a blade of grass. The ready money had been insufficient to meet what he owed, and as a seventh son he should have married land. So his father declared, who could raise for him no more than a hundred pounds a year from the Exchequer. His brothers despised his weakness in setting love above ambition. His friends shook their heads at his folly. He had offended the Queen without securing an heiress.

  ‘Promise me one favour,’ she begged when her mouth was free.

  ‘You have only to ask,’ he told her.

  She spoke quickly, fearing his response. ‘If you capture him tonight, do not hang Geordie Bourne.’

  His scowl returned. ‘I will grant whatever you ask,’ he replied, ‘except that.’

  ‘I ask for your own sake, Robin.’

  ‘My sake is not my duty. There will be no peace in the East or Middle Marches until a rope is round that ruffian’s neck and his legs are off the ground.’

  ‘For you there will be no peace when it is done. He has friends, you know that.’

  ‘One friend.’

  The rider had reached the gate and was addressing the guard. The wind carried their voices away. Carey bent and kissed his wife again, tickling her chin with his beard. She pulled herself free.

  ‘You are as wilful as your cousin the Queen,’ she said.

  ‘If I married you despite the Queen, how should I not hang Geordie Bourne despite Sir Robert Kerr? What is his wrath to hers?’

  The wardenship of the Scottish Middle March was held by another Sir Robert, a man of a different breed, a Borderer himself. The post belonged to his family - the sinister clan of Kerr - as a hereditary right. The Kerrs held it as the Maxwells held the West March and the Humes the East. It provided them wi
th the best of opportunities for lawbreaking themselves.

  This Kerr of Cessford was tall and fair and shifty-eyed, with scruples as freckled as his skin. Bribery shut his eyes when raids were planned. Every Border thief knew how to keep him in his bed. The brighter the moon, the sounder he slept, if the price was right. Freebooters who paid grudgingly did not escape punishment: those who paid with an open hand went, as the English said, Scot free. The Bournes, who lived in the Middle March, paid Sir Robert Kerr with the most open of all hands – better, it was said, than King James himself. Englishmen whose cattle were stolen by Geordie’s band could be sure that the fattest would find their way to the soft grazing at Cessford.

  ‘Hear me, Robin.’ Carey’s wife became earnest. ‘Your father is growing old, and the Queen too. Your deputyship will lapse with his death and when the Queen dies King James will be master of both realms. You have made your mark with James. If all goes well, you will be able to return to court and gain everything you sacrificed for me. But Kerr has the King’s ear. He is treacherous. If you kill his creature, he will malign you to the King. Then your fortune will be lost indeed.’

  ‘So long as he hopes to succeed to the English throne, the King must have peace on the Border. He knows it. He has told me so himself. There cannot be peace while villains go unpunished, and he will thank me for catching them while his own wardens lie abed.’

  ‘Catch the rogue then, but do not hang him.’

  They were interrupted. The rider and guard had climbed the turret stairs and stood on the ramparts behind them. The guard advanced with a crumpled letter.

  ‘Sir Robert Kerr sends you this.’

  Carey read the message twice: once at a gallop, once at a canter. The Scottish warden wrote that he had an English guest who was returning home. He sought permission to ride with him to Norham and spend that night in the castle. His guest had to be escorted safely and without delay. Moreover, there were pressing matters for the two Sir Roberts to discuss. That at least was true.

  ‘Give the man food,’ Carey ordered. ‘I will speak with him when he has eaten.’ He passed the paper to his wife.

  ‘I will have the guest chamber made ready,’ she promised.

  They were alone again and he shook his head. ‘This is another of Kerr’s tricks,’ he told her. ‘Have you forgotten his ambush of me?’

  The Kerrs of Cessford and Fernyhurst ran wild over every part of the Border - on Hume and Maxwell and English territory as well as their own. The two Sir Roberts had first clashed in the West March, where Carey’s zeal had lightened Kerr’s purse. One day two fugitives from Scottish justice were reported to have crossed the Border north of Carlisle. Carey found them hiding in a watch-tower. His men were on the roof when news reached him of a rescue party on the march from Gretna. Two hundred men in arms, a frightened farmer told him: some on horseback. Carey’s force numbered six, but he would not abandon them. He lent the farmer his own horse and sent him with a message to Carlisle, where his lieutenant mustered the citizens and arrived in a sweat of fear and the nick of time. The Scotsmen retreated and the fugitives proved to be no fugitives after all. They confessed to complicity in a plot by the Scottish warden and pleaded for their lives. Carey waited a week for Kerr to admit his guilt by interceding for them. When no word came, he hanged them where their bodies could be seen from Gretna. That was the last time he had trusted Kerr.

  ‘He seeks to keep me round the hearth tonight while his Geordie raids our cattle. If I tell him not to come, he will suspect the reason and the raiders be forewarned.’

  ‘What will you answer then?’

  Below, in the solar, he wrote his reply, returning in kind the compliments of the laird of Cessford. That night was not convenient. He expected his brother John from Berwick. Nothing, however, would give him greater pleasure than to welcome his brother warden on the night following.

  ‘There! And that is the truth.’

  ‘Not that he will be welcome.’

  ‘Even that.’ He smiled at her, a special smile which she had learned to recognize and fear.

  ‘You will not kill him?’

  ‘And make an outlaw of myself?’ He laughed, sealed and sent the message, and took her by the waist. Her flush of alarm had roused his lust.

  With one arm he lifted her off the floor and carried her to the couch. Love tuned his body for fighting. Between her legs he counted the world well lost. In his impatience he ripped the seam of her gown from neck to ankle. Squeezed of breath, she protested until her cries were smothered. When it was over he pillowed his head on her breast and thought, not of her, but of James of Scotland and the world regained.

  With eyes closed he could picture the young King tugging at his beard, drooling at the mouth, fiddling with his codpiece: his manners uncouth and unkingly, his clothes unclean and shapeless, padded against the assassin’s dagger. A man craving to be loved. A man – so he judged – to reward a favour with generosity.

  A decade ago, the Queen of England had sent her faithful cousin Robin north on a mission of some delicacy. He was to deliver a message written in the Queen’s own hand protesting before God her innocence of the execution of the King’s mother, the deposed Queen of Scots. Carey’s instructions were strict, rehearsed with him first by Walsingham and then by Mr Principal Secretary Cecil himself. In private audience in the palace of Holyrood he had played the part, sternly warning the King of the consequences if he did not accept the protestation: the Queen never spoke of the succession and there were other heirs to England; any aspirant guilty of a treasonable act or utterance would be summarily debarred for ever.

  The King had come to heel, excusing himself cravenly for making no public pronouncement, sending back no reproaches. Was he to shed tears for the mother he could not remember except as his father’s murderer? Her death brought him one step nearer the English throne, a paradise of power and riches to the impoverished monarch of a rebellious people in a barbarous land.

  Barbarous indeed! Although head of an important embassy from the English court, Carey recalled, he had had to delay a whole week in Berwick before the King could lay his hands on the money to raise and despatch an escort of sufficient size to ensure his safe conduct to the capital. Such was the sorry state of Scotland.

  He slept, and when he woke prepared himself to lead his full retinue of ten horsemen. The awaited message from his brother had arrived, appointing a place and hour for meeting. They left the castle in good time, silently by the postern gate for fear of spies.

  Darkness fell before they reached the approaches to the appointed village, but his men could have directed their horses blindfold. They rode eagerly, their appetites whetted by the prospect of taking the most infamous of the Bournes. They were local men, chosen for their honesty and courage. Not like the idle garrison from Berwick, whom they found shivering in a field, sullen at having to leave their wives for a single night.

  The brothers greeted each other mistrustfully. Robert had obtained the reversion of Norham castle from the Queen in the teeth of his brother’s protestations, and only after paying him in satisfaction of his claim. The cost had been high - a hundred pounds a year and the assignment of a lease worth another six hundred. Youngest sons could expect no favours from their elders.

  ‘Well, I have brought the men, Robin. Is your intelligence sure?’ Sir John spoke brusquely.

  ‘I have no doubt of it. We took a night raider yesterday and promised him his life if what he told us was true.’

  ‘Then Bourne will have learned of it and changed his plans.’

  ‘I believe not. The man fell into our hands by chance. His capture was unknown to his companions. They will have suspected him of driving away his prize in secret so as not to share it.’

  Sir John grunted. ‘If they are coming they should be upon us now. Look at those clouds. In another hour the moonlight will be gone and it will not be worth their trouble - or ours. I tell you, I shall not keep my men out of their beds after midnight.’

&n
bsp; ‘One or other of their bands has crossed the Border every week since autumn and the long nights came and they knew the cattle to be in winter quarters. This is the first time we have had a warning of the when and where. If our people are to enjoy the protection of the Queen, you and all your men must surely stay. How many have you brought?’

  ‘Four score.’

  ‘We shall need every one. You will see.’

  The village lay asleep two hedgerows beyond them; yet even as they spoke it stirred suddenly to life with the clip of hooves, a volley of oaths and cries of alarm from the villagers. Sir Robert signalled the alert to his lieutenant.

  ‘Stay your hand,’ his brother ordered. ‘The command is mine.’

  ‘If we delay, the villagers will be butchered.’

  ‘If we do not delay, what evidence will there be? To convict thieves, there must be stolen goods. To convict murderers, there must be corpses. This is not a battle. I will have none of your French campaigning here. England is not at war with Scotland, brother.’

  ‘It is at war with Scottish night riders - and their friend, the Scottish warden. My duty is to guard the lives and property of English folk on English soil.’

  ‘Your duty is to obey me and treat the Scottish warden as an ally. Have you not even yet learned the cost of rashness and disobedience?’

  ‘Who appointed you my captain? This is my territory, not yours.’

  ‘Then you should not have summoned my aid. By your own act you have placed yourself under my command. Already you have stolen Norham from me. Would you now usurp my Marshalship? By God, I promise you our father shall hear of this. And the Queen herself.’

  ‘Stolen! I have beggared myself to meet your false claims.’

  ‘They were true, not false. Norham belongs to Berwick and Berwick has been entrusted to me.’

  ‘Norham is mine. I have the Queen’s word for it. The East March is mine. I have our father’s word for it.’

  ‘Then look after them yourself and God be with you, you and your ten men.’ Sir John wheeled his horse abruptly.