by Alex Dylan
When the queen’s temper had cooled enough to listen to reason, Cecil had counselled her to recall both Scrope and Carey to Westminster and keep them under closer scrutiny. In a final twist of irony, she promoted Ross to the very position he had been trying to negotiate from James.
Ross’s success had soured for him and he was sworn to bitter revenge. He harboured an irrational suspicion that Melisande was implicated in the plot and had contrived to let the raiders into the Castle through the postern gate. He had no proof of her treason but had promised himself that if he ever found it, he would strangle her himself and then enjoy her lingering death as she burnt at the stake.
Disused for nearly a decade, the crumbling West Tower was now a slowly subsiding labyrinth of cold, damp dungeon cellars, the driest of which was useful only for storing wine. And as long as no one came looking for either of them, Melisande knew she would be undisturbed. For the final time that day, she rolled up her sleeves to drag the dead away.
* * *
Nothing stirred on the mountain until the first tinge of pale dawn brightness filtered through the rain-polished slats and woke Heughan. He winced as he stretched, testing the overnight stiffness of his back, and grunted uncomfortably as a few muscles objected to the exertion. Aluino did likewise. Rubbing a hand over the back of his head, Heughan yawned himself awake.
The day was more amenable to travel. Heughan found himself amidst verdant woodlands, pastures and fields. He judged that he was still a good day away from York. The country was growing richer as he rode south. Here and there he glimpsed fine brick houses with elaborate chimneys cresting mullioned windows and fish-scale roofs. He kept to the outskirts of farms and villages, not wanting to draw attention to himself.
Seated on a ridge overlooking the far-distant town of Topcliffe, he marvelled at the great white horse carved into the hillside. He patted Aluino’s neck and grinned to himself, taking it as a good omen. However, once into the fertile countryside of the Vale of York, Heughan found his progress slowed by James’s court entourage.
Despite the orders for officials to remain at their posts, courtiers continued to stream both north and south to petition the royal progress. People had quickly discovered that payment to one of James’s favourites was all that was required to secure a knighthood or other honours.
For a man who had once been so poor that he had been forced to borrow stockings from his servant in order to make himself presentable to a visiting diplomat, James was suddenly and delightedly flush with new found wealth. En route from Newcastle, he had paused from his pursuit of the hunt just long enough to write to the Privy Council, requesting them to send Elizabeth’s possessions into Scotland for his queen. He wanted to make sure that his wife Anne was regally equipped for her journey south in a manner befitting the consort of the divine king he had become.
In every small village, traffic clogged the routes in and out, growing ever heavier as Heughan drew nearer to York. The roads were thronged with anxious men burdened with heavy purses, keen to strike a bargain.
Sir John Fortesque, Keeper of the Great Wardrobe, cited this as the main reason in his reply refusing James’s request. Mark A’Court knew that secretly the Councillors still regarded Scotland as a foreign and potentially hostile country. Sir John was a wily old fox who would want to ensure that James would be offered the crown with conditions attached. George Home would be much more amenable and Mark approved James’s choice. The king, for all his faults, was a shrewd judge of a man’s character and motivation.
James was at Topcliffe when he received the news that the Council refused him. He was doubly angered when they announced they would meet him at York rather than at Burghley House, as he had originally suggested. He was in acid mood when he summoned Mark A’Court to him.
“Write this to the miserable misers of the dung hill,” he instructed.
“To our trusted and well-beloved Councillors, our Keeper of our Great Seal of England, our High Treasurer of England, our Admiral of England, and our Principal Secretary, for the time being,” he paused as his cleric chuckled darkly.
“Highness, do you not think that you are taking the gilt off the gingerbread,” Mark A’Court suggested.
“I would make it perfectly plain,” sneered James. “I want those miserable little men to squirm and writhe beneath me like the worms they are. Do they think themselves so secure in their tenure that they can refuse me? I’ll have their jobs, and then I’ll have their backsides. I’ll split the offices between the two nations and we’ll see who falls over themselves to gain preferment.” He laughed and rubbed his hands together gleefully. “I’ll make them jump. Come, Mark, let’s finish this letter and get on to York.”
York was indeed jumping. Lord Burghley had ordered the streets swept and the outsides of the houses painted. The scum had been swept up too, all the vagrants shipped out to Hull, drubbed into the militia bound for the Low Countries. By the time a tired and dusty Heughan eventually rode through Bootham Bar, he was amazed to see proud householders hanging their tapestries and painted cloths out of their windows. Looking down, he saw that Aluino was treading an interested path across herbs and rushes strewn across the cobbles. People shouted at him to ‘get the horse off the street’ and ‘clear up the dung’, so he was glad to make the shelter of the ‘Lamb and Lion’.
The small hostelry was wedged between the pallid roundness of the gatehouse and its larger and grander neighbours on High Petergate. With the great Minster looming over it, the inn sat shoulder to shoulder like a small fidgety child between two plump aunts, facing a disapproving parent. The tap room was warm with the fug of busy tongues and thirsty throats, and the underlying stink of something stale.
Heughan sniffed a couple of times, trying to place the smell. It reminded him vaguely of summer land clearances when the gorse was in full, bright incandescence. The smell here was similarly tinged with small deaths and recklessness. Tobacco it was, another of Ralegh’s lovely legacies. Few in Carlisle had ever heard of it, much less smoked it, but here in York people were well-mannered and easy, lacking the raw incivility that characterised the Debatable Lands. The king was disapproving; of tobacco, of Ralegh and of the Borders, and not necessarily in that order, thought Heughan. There was nothing for him to do now but wait.
He hadn’t meant to doze off but the room was warm and he was bone weary. He’d jerked himself awake once or twice before succumbing to the inevitable. A sharp kick to the soles of his feet woke him suddenly. I’m getting slow, he thought, staring blearily, trying to get his bearings in the unfamiliar room.
He focused on the kicker; a liveried soldier with a surly disposition. “Awa’ lad, what’s the problem?” The soldier appeared surprised, “You’re Scots?”
“Ach, no more than you are,” bantered Heughan, “but home’s away to the north, aye.”
“Oh, a Borderer,” said the soldier dismissively. “Here for the king?”
“Not today,” said Heughan ruefully.
“Are you staying or aren’t you?”
“What’s it to you, lad?” said Heughan. His manner was easy but he had started to tense.
“If you’re staying, you’ll need to hand over all your weapons. I’ve got my orders,” said the soldier pompously.
Heughan sized the fellow up and dismissed him of no consequence. He could drop him and be out of the door before anyone had even had the time to draw a blade against him. Bloody soft southerners, he thought, reaching lazily for the hilt of his sword as though he were going to hand it over. Someone put a restraining hand on his arm and a trencher in front of him.
“Nay, Master,” the tall stranger spoke with the flat vowels of a local man. “No need. See here, I have your food. Sup up and we’ll be on our way.”
He smiled warily at the soldier, “‘appen we can be out o’ t’ city afore dusk.”
The soldier looked between the two of them and walked away, with Heughan’s eyes boring into the back of him. His ally sat down with two cups of ale
. Heughan kept his eyes down, watching the soldier sideways to make sure he really was going to leave them alone. He pretended to be interested in the food but wasn’t going to eat an unsolicited meal.
“Thanks, friend,” he said under his breath. “Do you have a name?”
“John Johnson,” the man replied so glibly that Heughan knew it for a lie.
“Call yourself whatever you wish. You’ve got my thanks all the same.”
“He said you were sharp,” John said, all trace of accent vanished. “‘As a dish of spurs’, I think was the exact phrase.”
Heughan eased back in the chair and appraised him. John was a dapper man, with a neat goatee beard. He reminded Heughan of Davy the Lady. I bet you’re a wicked little fighter too just the same, he thought. Bright eyes caught his own briefly, then darted away again. Heughan recognised the nervousness of the fugitive. “York makes you uncomfortable?” he asked.
John shook his head. “I was born and bred here. Went to school over yonder,” he said, jerking a thumb towards the Minster.
Heughan wondered what he wasn’t telling him.
As if reading his thoughts, John added, “Let’s just say that the fewer people who see me today, the better. I’ve been out of England for the past fourteen year’ or so; I’ve got other places I’d rather be and a liking to get there quickly.” He jabbed a finger at the trencher, “Eat up. You never know if it’s going to be your last meal.” He picked a small onion out of the stew and popped it into his mouth, chewing with relish. Heughan picked up the spoon to eat the rest.
“I hear you have some Spanish wine to sell. I trust you are keeping it away from the king’s party?”
“It’s safe,” Heughan mumbled through a mouth crammed with stew. He hadn’t realised he was famished and the food was good.
“You didn’t bring it with you?”
Heughan shook his head. “No. The roads are thronged and twenty-two barrels is a lot to move by horse alone. Better to use the waterways.”
John nodded approvingly.
“There’s a problem though,”Heughan lowered his voice; “Ralegh is energetic in his pursuits off the southern coast. Anything coming round the Lizard and through the Narrow Seas would be stopped and you’d as like lose your cargo. We could take it by cart as far as Berwick and then down the East coast with the coal, that’s less conspicuous, but there’s no guarantee that you won’t be bothered by pirates from the Low Countries anyway.”
John smirked. “Pirates are no bother to me,” he said airily, “neither the Dutch nor the Spanish.” The soldier had left to check on other households and the tap room had emptied. Heughan felt it safe enough to risk a more open conversation.
“So you know our mutual friends from Kinsale?” he hazarded.
John nodded briefly and dropped his voice, “Don Juan del Aguila was too quick to give up the fight. I never even had the chance to use my skills.”
“Which would be?”
John sat appraising Heughan, deciding how much to tell him. His eyes looked trustworthy, he decided. “I make petards, grenadoes and the like, mainly for tunnelling or making openings. I’m an engineer.”
Heughan looked at him with new respect. “Dangerous work if you get it wrong,” he said cautiously.
“I don’t,” said John without a boast. “That’s why I’m not troubled by either the Spanish or the Dutch. I’ve got friends on both sides.”
“You’re for hire,” Heughan said snidely, “like all bloody zealots.”
John laughed, unoffended by the comment. “He that serves God for rewards will serve the Devil for better wages. As a younger man, I lived in the shadow of the Church. It takes payment to break free; gold is easiest but it’s not the only way. Take your good friend, for example; once a soldier of God, now as keen on commerce as the rest of us, with many a lucrative business.” He raised his cup in a toast before swilling the remains of his ale in one gulp.
Heughan finished eating and belched loudly in appreciation. “You’re right, that was good. So now what?”
John rubbed his palms over his thighs, thinking and deciding. “Nothing as yet. The roads are still chock-a-block. We sit tight until James gets to Westminster. Time enough after that. I know how to get a message to you.”
Heughan was dismayed, “If the king reaches Westminster, it’s too late for us all. I need my money,” he said. “There’s been a lot of outlay. I owe people.”
“Easy, easy,” said John soothingly. “There’s more than one plan here. Speak to the Spaniard. He holds gold for me. He’ll see the debt paid once you deliver the wine.”
Heughan frowned. “But he lent me the money in the first place. Why would he do that if you had already made the deposit to him?”
John shrugged, “Up to his old mischief, I expect, ever a tricky one. It’s true what they say about him; he can’t see what his right hand is doing from his left. I think he’d rob God to pay the devil.” He barked a hard laugh, “In fact, I believe he once did just that.”
Heughan had more questions but a kerfuffle outside the inn drew their attention. A cart with a heavy load too big to pass through the gate had become trapped between the narrow shambles. A crowd had gathered, offering advice and abuse in equal measure. The carter belaboured the horse to pull through but the wooden cart scraped against the lathe and plaster walls of the overhanging buildings, gashing a dirty furrow.
Heughan caught the man’s hand as he went to hit the horse, “Do and you’ll have to pay someone to piss for you, because you’ll never have the use of that hand again.”
The carter scowled and dropped the switch.
“Where are you headed?” asked Heughan, peering beyond the man to the load. It was an elaborate stone fountain carved with mermaids.
“St Mary’s Manor,” he said waving vaguely past the Minster. “Master Rawlings fettled this so thon king can get gradley kaylied. It’s t’av’ wine flow through it and the lasses’ll spill it o’ their bosoms like mother’s milk, see thee. What d’yee reckon?”
What would Nick Storey make of that? Heughan wondered, planning to tell him when he got back to Carlisle.
Heughan faced the carter sternly. “I’d say that’s a pair of tits I could suck and never want to be weaned.”
They were both silent and then the carter let rip a guffaw like a thunderclap. “By gum, lad, tha’s a rum’n. Tha’s allus sharp tha’d cut tha’self!”
He let Heughan grasp the big horse by the collar and noseband, speaking gently to it, persuading it to back up to manoeuvre the cart through the tight turn. The horse bowed its neck as it took the strain and Heughan watched his feet under the big horse’s hooves. With the cart creaking ominously, man and horse sweated together to pull the load around and face it away from the gate, back in the direction they’d come.
“Is there another way round?” Heughan shouted to the crowd.
People waved at another of the streets. The carter grumbled that it would take too long as he’d have to go right around the Minster until Heughan said, “Aye, well you’d best hurry up then and not keep the king waiting,” as he patted the big horse on the rump to send him on his way.
“Give the Spaniard my regards, and here’s my recipe for success,” said a voice at his elbow and someone pushed a folded paper into his hands. The crowd were melting away, taking John Johnson with them. By the time Heughan walked the few steps back to the ‘Lamb and Lion’, he had vanished.
* * *
“The mermaids were a delightful touch, Alderman Askwith,” said Mark A’Court archly. “I don’t believe I can remember the last time His Highness cupped a woman’s breast so enthusiastically.”
The Alderman heard the sneer in his voice but bowed low anyway.
“And don’t trouble yourself with His Highness’s little slight; it will be remedied,” Mark continued. The Alderman seethed. By rights he should have had the sword of state from the king to process through the city. Instead, the king had handed it to the Earl of Cumberland, sho
wing his blatant favouritism and preference for a pretty face.
“His Majesty did receive our gift in Newcastle?” questioned the Alderman.
“Gratefully indeed,” replied Mark. “Do not worry little man, your ennobling is bought and paid for.” Privately, he worried at the large number of knighthoods that James was bestowing. A month ago, it would have been an honour. Now it was simply a transaction. If this keeps on, we’ll have to invent a new title because every Tom, Dick and Harry Askwith with a bag of gold can buy a knighthood in this court lottery, thought Mark anxiously. He would have to speak to James.
James, however, was in truculent mood. He refused to speak to anyone in English unless Mark was there besides him. He had angered Cecil by pairing the two Gentlemen Ushers who had come up from London with two Scots, surrounding himself a number of young, handsome gallants like Robin Kerr and disdaining all protocols.
Cecil tried to tackle him about it. “Your Majesty must appreciate the increased workload this will cause,” he objected. He bowed low to the king but kept his eyes on Mark A’Court, who stared back unwaveringly and thoughtfully stroked at his beard.
The king made no immediate reply and the diminutive Cecil was forced to remain uncomfortably stooped. Mark A’Court coughed discretely and James turned round with a perplexed look on his face. He peered across the room and said, “Where is my Lord Cecil?”
Mark looked downwards slowly so that James would follow his gaze. “Oh there you are! Pray stand up, my lord,” commanded James imperiously.