‘Where would I find him?’ Benoit asked quietly.
‘Greystoke,’ said Ilderton, more quietly still. ‘Dacre’s dead wife’s land, in the west. Find the boy, and you’ve found your answer.’
He raised his garnet hand, his face quickening with anger. ‘Now be gone,’ he said, his voice growing loud. ‘Be gone. And do not return. We’re none of us traitors here.’ The room quietened, the crowd turning, circling around them. In the sudden hush, Benoit drained his tankard, picked up his hat, and with unhurried step made his way to the door. The villagers looked to their lord, sticks and knives at the ready. Ilderton shook his head, his neck bowed as a goaded bull’s, and Benoit’s passage was cleared. Not until he was on his horse and out of the village did the crawling sweat on his back begin to dry.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
October 1523
The Warden General of the English marches was inspecting his lands. It was a blustery morning, and Dacre was many miles from Harbottle, having ridden out at first light. His intention was to reach the Berwickshire coast, the part of his kingdom where he felt least at ease, a stranger in a hostile land. If day had begun to fade before they could return, he would take shelter with the Percys. Rivals they might be, but manners required the earl to offer the warden a bed, no matter their disagreements. But Dacre hoped it would not be necessary. He liked nothing better than his own palliasse. These days he could find sleep nowhere else.
At his side, in fighting gear, were his brothers Sir Philip and Sir Christopher, and Blackbird too, a rare outing for the butler who, to mark the occasion, had packed a satchel with potted game, newly baked bread, and a flask of strong ale.
The ride was hard, the roads narrow and pocked, the woods misshapen by centuries of salted gales, from which they offered little shelter. Baron Dacre was a fine horseman, but there was a twist to his mouth, a line between his eyes, that told he was in pain. Whenever they came to a halt he rubbed his knees, unaware he was doing so, but needing that warmth to comfort his aching bones.
The hours stretched before them, cool and grey. As the sea grew closer, the sky brightened, the land a mere ribbon of faded green against an expanse of blue that mirrored the flittering waves below. Dacre rode doggedly, eyes fixed on the path. It was unusual for him not to keep watch for signs of danger, but this morning he felt his troubles lay in his own lap, and he kept his head down, the better to brood on them.
He had not yet had any reply to his request to be relieved of his post. Twice he had written, both missives ignored. He expected no answer from the king himself, though it was to Henry he had written, but not to have heard from Wolsey, or even Surrey, was unsettling. It could of course mean they were considering his suggestion, but would that take months? A day’s discussion would settle the matter. As he had informed Henry, he would prefer to be discharged entirely from the burden of wardenship, but to oblige the king he would consider continuing as warden of the west march, until such time as someone was appointed in his place. His keepership of Carlisle he would not relinquish.
The court’s silence was beginning to grate on his nerves as surely as his knees ground with every step in their swollen sockets. He wondered what was being said about him to Henry; how his reputation stood. Thinking of the sort of lies that were likely being spread, he laughed without joy, the noise carried off by the wind like the leaves that were whipped into a reel under his horse’s hooves.
Did he care? Not even a little. Devil take them all. They were prattlers, backstabbers, sycophants and saps who took fright when the king so much as coughed. Such men could say whatever they liked of him; he’d pay them no heed. All he wanted was to be allowed to settle quietly, to retreat to Naworth and live out his life as a country lord, among his fields and his horses, a situation to which he was more than entitled after years of service.
He was too old to be commanding the north, with all its tribes and factions. Had he ever asked for such a thankless task? Ever begged for a post as bloody as the executioner’s? A grunt escaped him and he shifted in the saddle, a spike of hot pain skewering his foot. At least the hangman and the hatcheter slept in their own beds each night. They did not fear an army of horsemen storming their hovels, or spiriting away their servants. it did not fall to them to ride out in all weathers and all hours to face down men with faces like gargoyles on a parish church and hearts as twisted. Their pay was regular, too, and more than sufficient for their needs. Whereas he was filling the king’s treasury, using his own money to pay for his private army, and rewarded with a pittance, an insultingly abject sum for the privilege of keeping the king’s order in barbarian lands. A country, by the by, that Henry had never yet set foot in.
By God, he’d like to see the king feed and equip four thousand horsemen on £433. 6s. 8d a year. That would soon put an end to his majesty’s popinjay robes and gold-buckled shoes, his tournaments and banquets which lasted for weeks, and left the court clutching its stomach and bathing its head.
He too could dress and eat like a king, if his purse weren’t so stretched. Did they think he liked wearing old leathers and patched up boots? Did he keep ponds packed with eels for the pleasure of watching them snake among the weeds, or huts of hens to feather his hats? They were cheap, God damn it. A household could be fed on them alone for a month; and in the depths of winter, sometimes it was.
The countryside passed unnoticed as Dacre nursed his complaints, the drum of hooves setting the beat for his endless list of woes. Only one thought cheered him. Thank the lord for the Armstrongs. Not many could say that, he knew, but murderers and thieves and damnable Scots though they were, they had proved his salvation. Holed up in Liddesdale, two days’ hard ride across the border from Naworth, the clan was like his secret army, one he need never pay. orders could be issued from Naworth at dawn, and Sly Armstrong would ride out to effect them before nightfall the next day. No task, the baron soon learned, was too savage for their taste, no venture so vicious it slaked their thirst for the kill.
When the law threatened to catch up with Sly or his men, the clan retreated to their stronghold, a wilderness of glens and woods where their grass-roofed houses, hidden in hollows, were reachable only by secret paths. These low dwellings might look isolated, but the next was never more than a whistle’s alarm away. The fast streams and rivers that fed the hills were uncrossable without bridges, whose splintered stumps greeted travellers brought to an unwelcome halt; roads were made impassable by cannily felled trees; and many strangers rode into the darkest forests, and were never seen again.
Money was the only language Sly Armstrong understood. Dacre offered him half the booty from every venture, but if the man occasionally took more than his share the baron did not fret. The bounty the Armstrongs had helped him reap in the past few years more than made up for some leakage. That it was money – cattle, corn, horses or houses – that the exchequer knew nothing of made these rewards sweeter still.
But the Armstrongs’ worth lay less in the wealth they gathered than in the terror they spread. All the north quailed at their name. When Dacre sensed there had been too long a spell without fear, when peace was threatening to take hold, he would send them out, east and west, north and south, to remind his own people, and those across the border, that they were powerless before the baron’s command.
There were mutterings, of course, and the stirrings of rebellion among the titled and moneyed ranks, but nothing he could not crush, alone, or with the Armstrongs at his call. The thought of his unassailable authority brought the hint of a smile to the Warden General’s face, though none of his companions noticed.
The morning had almost passed when there was a cry from Christopher, who rode at their head, and the party pulled up behind him. Dacre looked up, and his breath was almost snatched by the fierceness of the wind, but also the beauty of the scene. They stood on the crest of a hill, so buffeted by the gale that a firm hand was needed to hold their horses in line. Below stretched dunes and white beaches, disappearing in both directions
into a milky haze of sea. At the foot of their bluff, beyond reach of the advancing waves, a spearhead of blackfaced gulls faced into the wind. High above them, a crow was being tossed around by the elements. It fluttered like a scrap of burnt parchment, wingtips splayed but useless, and who knew where it would land.
‘Which direction, Tam?’ Christopher shouted against the wind.
Dacre pushed up the brim of his helmet and stared out to sea. Northwards, the coast disappeared beneath marching black cliffs, leading to Berwick, with its foul-mouthed keeper, and a few miles beyond that, the Scots. Southwards, by the sands, lay Alnwick, Alnmouth, and the pernicious Percy tribe. Dacre had no taste for either, but he had to choose.
With a kick he turned his horse south, and made for the shelter of the low coast trail. When at last it was possible to be heard, he gathered his men by a stand of spindly pines. ‘A night at Alnwick Castle is our lot. Prepare for the thinnest gruel this side of London Tower.’ Philip began to speak, but his brother raised his hand. ‘I know, I know. Percy’s hell-bent on becoming Warden General, and you’re worried he might slit my throat while I sleep.’ He spat, and wiped his mouth on his glove. ‘Then so be it. I have little love left for this life.’ He set off at a canter, leaving them to look at each other in consternation.
‘The man needs food,’ said Blackbird, spurring his horse on to catch his master and set this lack to rights.
Some time later, the sanded trail grew bright in the noontime sun. Dacre raised his face, this late warmth an unexpected boon. When they stopped to eat, at Blackbird’s insistence, the grumbling voice in his mind fell quiet, and he recalled instead a real feast, on the cliffs not far from here, when old Henry had been in the north.
‘A fine man, he was,’ he told his brothers, scooping grouse pâté from its jar with his finger. ‘His son would do better if he had his father’s cool head.’
‘You did not always think so well of him, as I recall,’ said Philip, catching a nosedrip with his cuff.
‘Aye, well, I could be a hothead. I was troublesome for him, in my youth.’
Blackbird knew the story well, but seeing his master’s mood lighten he encouraged him to repeat it. ‘Nothing much has changed, seems to me,’ he said, handing round more bread. ‘You were hot-blooded at twenty, and still are to this day. Where’s the difference?’
Dacre considered the question. ‘I know better how to hide my tracks, I reckon. How to keep my mouth shut, and my feuds out of the king’s sight. But I wasn’t that wise as a boy. Who the hell is, at that age? I was a puffed-up braggart, thanks to Bess. I’d ridden off with her under the king’s nose, so I had. A ward of the crown, and still I married her without his consent.’ He slapped his good leg at the memory. ‘Jesus Christ, when I think of it!’ He swigged his ale in belated celebration.
‘Best move you ever made,’ said Christopher, rubbing his fingers together as a river of imaginary coins slipped through them.
‘Aye,’ said the baron sharply, ‘but not for her money or lands. Or not those alone. She was a good wife to me, don’t ever say otherwise. I was not the best husband, but I loved her as well as a man ever could his spouse. And I still do, dust and memory though she is.’
Blackbird passed around greengage pies. ‘But what of the old king? If he did not put you in chains for snatching Lady Greystoke, the richest heiress in the north-west, then why would you fall foul of him for an act of common rioting?’
‘I will never know,’ said Dacre, his wife’s image fading for the meantime. ‘I thought it nothing more than a skirmish. Sir Christopher Moresby and I arranged the day, set the rules, and rode our armies out to test the other’s mettle. I like to think I came off better – Moresby’s northern ally, Baron Parkes, lost an eye, I merely broke a toe – but since I spent nine months in the Fleet, and Parkes barely a week before he was released and packed off home to Scotland, few saw it that way.’
Sir Philip coughed, and hawked onto the grass. ‘You threatened the realm, that’s what you did, you and your magnificent pride. You were like a nine-point stag, going head to head with whatever other big beast wandered onto your land. You never thought what it might mean to Henry’s negotiations with the Scots, never for a moment considered that you were putting years of diplomatic sweat at risk by near as dammit killing a Scottish noble.’ He laughed. ‘You ask me, you were fortunate getting off with a fine and a few months in the cells. Pretty lenient, considering you could have lost your head.’
The baron nodded. ‘I can see that now, so I can. But not at the time. It made no sense to me. I rode out of that prison, back to my wife, and spent the next ten years fulminating. Pity is, I never had a chance to tell Henry I came to realise he’d been right. He avoided me from then, and even when I was called to council and was obliged to attend, I never once crossed his path.’ He picked flakes of pastry from his cloak, licking them from his fingers. ‘Of late I’ve been wondering if he passed his aversion for me on to his son.’
Blackbird was on his feet, packing up. ‘We must be off. There’s a long ride afore dinner.’ Dacre rose from the grass with a groan, shaking his head, as if ridding himself of needless worries. ‘Aye,’ he sighed, ‘a long ride, and much toadying to endure at the end of it before we get a crumb. Look on it as cheap entertainment, the only sort we’ll get this night. At the puritan’s table there’s no chance of cards or dice.’
Blackbird raised a hopeful eyebrow, and the baron’s laugh rumbled in his chest like a deadly cough. ‘No, you old goat, nothing like that either. We’ll all just have to shiver in our beds.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
Late October 1523
Crozier was in the stableyard when Benoit returned. The mare’s flanks were soapy with sweat, and the carpenter’s face shone from the morning’s ride. Crozier held the bridle while Benoit dismounted, and saw the dusting of earth and leaves on his cloak.
‘Did you sleep rough?’
Benoit brushed his sleeves. ‘No, I rode a’ night, thanks to the moon herself. But I should’ve gone slower, for when she took a stumble, a mile or so back, I fell off.’ Hob approached, and Benoit patted the mare’s flank as she was led away. ‘Poor beast, she’s mair wabbit than me.’
‘What was your hurry?’ Crozier asked, growing curious. ‘Could your farmer friend not have put you up for the night?’
Glancing over his shoulder, Benoit lowered his voice, though the stable boys were interested only in mucking out the stalls in time for their midday meal. ‘We must speak,’ he said.
The borderer’s eyes narrowed. ‘Come up to my quarters.’
As they made for Crozier’s rooms, Benoit tried to marshal his thoughts. The chief would be angry, that he knew, but once he learned of Dacre’s resentful son, a bishop to outflank the other pawns on the board, he would surely forgive his disobedience.
He was wrong. When they took their seats in the low-beamed room off Crozier’s bedchamber, the borderer’s expression was benign. Over the years he had grown fond of his wife’s brother, recognising the kindness and loyalty hidden behind that dour, pitted face. But Benoit had done no more than begin his story – ‘I’ve made the acquaintance of yon bastard Rauf Ilderton’ – before Crozier was on his feet, stool kicked aside, affection forgotten in his fury that one of his men had defied his command.
The ferocity in his eyes brought Benoit to a stammering halt. Crozier turned ashen as he leaned over him, pounding the table with his fist as if nailing each word into place. ‘You fool!’ he roared. ‘You utter imbecile, you ignorant wretch. Do you have any idea what you have done?’
Benoit swallowed. ‘I have information . . .’ he began, but Crozier was not listening.
‘You might as well have laid a trail of gunpowder straight to our door. D’you think you have not been followed? Did you really believe you could outwit him? Ilderton is a knave and a killer, and he is ferociously intelligent. He’d have worked you out before you’d said a word.’
Benoit stared at his bitten nails. ‘He doe
snae ken who I am,’ he said sullenly.
‘No need,’ spat Crozier, crossing the room and putting some space between them. The first wave of rage had ebbed, and his hands were shaking. ‘He can find you, and us, easy as tracking a wounded stag.’
‘But he dropped a name,’ Benoit persisted. ‘Yin who might lead the charge against Dacre, maybe the very chiel ye’ve been seeking.’
Crozier ran a hand through his hair. Such an act of defiance demanded punishment, and had any other of the clan stepped out of line, they would have been dealt with harshly. Benoit, however, was different. Were it not for his falling into the hands of a murderous traitor ten years ago, on the night before Flodden, Crozier would never have met Louise. Her search for her missing brother had brought her to the borders, and to him. It was a debt Crozier would always owe this man, contumacious, vexatious, pig-headed as he was.
Taking a long breath, he leaned against the wall. ‘Tell me, then,’ he said, one hand clasping the other lest it fly free of its own accord and send this ass sprawling.
Benoit told his story quickly, without the colouring or wry asides he had rehearsed on his way home. This version, he felt, sounded somewhat reckless. A northern stranger rides into an Englishman’s domain, and corners him. He narrowly escapes with his life, but in possession of the name of a man who might help them solve their problems. Even to his own ears it began to sound like a fairy tale. After his account reached John the Bastard and his desire to be revenged on his father, he faltered and fell quiet.
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