Dacre's War

by Rosemary Goring

  For a moment, caught in the fire’s embrace, Black Ned could not move. Then, as the flames crawled over him, he staggered, shouting, out of their clutch, and found Crozier’s sword at his neck. The borderer pressed him back into the blaze, step by step, and held him there as if on a spit. Fire clawed at the outlaw like a bear, and his flesh quivered as if he were made of wax. His face was misshapen with terror, his mouth slack, and his eyes clung to Crozier’s. Then he began to scream. As his body started to twist and curl, engulfed in an orange tide, the borderer sank his blade home, and the screams were no more.

  Crozier and the men returned to the keep that evening, grey-faced with ash. Several were brought home slumped over the backs of their horses, to be laid out under sheets in an outhouse, and buried early the next day. When Benoit, Tom and Adam dismounted they were giddy with fatigue. Once the last of the raiders had been dealt with, they had joined the rescue. Many cottages were nothing but a slump of burnt wood, the bodies that lay under them destroyed beyond recognition, and the smell of roasted flesh the only sign anyone had once lived there. The blacksmith’s cremation was well under way when Tom and the others kicked the door in, found the family, and dragged them out, coughing as if they would never breathe easy again.

  The priest’s house, one of the first to be fired, was engulfed in flames. The clansmen stood back, smoke-blackened sweat pouring down their faces. If Father Walsh had been at home when the raiders arrived, he was now in the arms of Saint Peter. They crossed their breasts at the sight, and turned their backs to the inferno, to help those who were still alive. It was a week before they learned that the priest had been far away when the raid took place, visiting a monastery in the next dale. His reappearance amid the ruins was first taken as an angelic apparition, and then as proof that God had not utterly forsaken the village. In the keep, there was as much joy at the news as if he were their own kin.

  By the time Crozier’s men left, the village was a charred wasteland. That night, and for many to come, people would be sleeping in stables and barns. The dead were dragged to the square, arms folded over their chests. Dozens lay there, old and very young, as twilight mingled with the drifting smoke and a haze fell over the village, softening the sight of its desolation in a brief act of mercy.

  At the keep, Crozier strode across the courtyard, Tom and Benoit at his heels. A deep cut on Benoit’s face was oozing black blood, or so it looked in the fading light. ‘Why the village?’ he asked, wiping his cheek with a rag. ‘They’ve done nobody any harm.’

  ‘It was me they wanted revenge on,’ said Crozier. ‘Looked like they were Dacre’s outlaw army – some of the bastards I caught had brands on their necks. Word must have got back to the baron that I helped bring about his disgrace, but without him at their side his men would never dare attack me here, in the keep.’

  ‘Will they be back?’ Benoit asked, fear undisguised.

  Crozier shrugged. ‘Their leader is dead, and the village ruined. What’s left for them now?’

  Tom coughed, smoke still burning his lungs. ‘That sort’s loyal to no one and nothing but money,’ he wheezed. ‘If Dacre’s been dismissed, as they say, he won’t be able to afford them much longer.’ He glanced at his brother with a glimmer of awe. ‘And it looks as if he’s not coming back – or not as the man he was, thanks to you.’ He slapped Crozier’s shoulder and, arms round each other’s necks, the three made their way into the keep.

  Louise was sitting by the fire in the hall, hunched like an old woman. With Ella she had begun to tend the wounded, but the pains had grown so severe she could now do nothing but rock herself back and forth, arms wrapped around her stomach.

  Crozier was at her side, and before she could speak, he had lifted her and carried her to their room. He reeked of smoke, his clothes were spattered with blood, but she clung to him as if she would never let go.

  Laying her on their bed, he loosened her bodice, tugged off her boots and pulled a coverlet over her legs. Louise did not move, doing her best not to cry. What she had heard and glimpsed in the village that afternoon made her fears seem very small. When Crozier placed a concerned hand on her forehead a few tears fell, but they both pretended not to notice.

  Ella fussed around as if Louise were her youngest child. She brought hot water, and rags, and pressed a bitter infusion of wintergreen into her hands. Crozier lit the fire, and its pine crackle kept them company through the unsleeping night, when waves of pain convulsed her, and she could barely breathe, able only to clutch her husband’s hand.

  ‘What if we lose this baby?’ she whispered. ‘I could not bear it. Nor could you.’

  Crozier stroked the damp hair off her face. ‘Hush yourself. We’ll bear whatever we have to. We’re strong, and we have each other.’

  ‘I am a bad wife,’ she sobbed. ‘I have given you no child. If this little one should . . .’

  Crozier’s voice was unsteady. ‘I did not marry you for children, but for yourself. And thank God I still have you.’ He looked at her, frowning. ‘I am not one for words, you know that. I expect you to read my thoughts. But you must also know I would never betray you. The way I behaved with Lady Foulberry was cruel, but not in the way you perhaps imagined. I have not dared to tell you everything, in case you would think of me with shame, or worse.’

  Louise stared, frightened of what she was about to learn. Crozier turned away, unable to meet her eyes. ‘I led her to believe I might be interested in her.’ He stopped, as if that was explanation enough, but after a long pause he continued. ‘With a treacherous pair like them I thought it necessary. I knew they would think nothing of betraying me if and when it suited them. Hinting at what could happen, I thought, was a way of inveigling myself and entrapping her. And maybe I was right. In fact, I’m sure of it. But what mortifies me is that I began to enjoy it. A woman like that, who thinks she can have whoever she likes at a flick of her fingers – she was not only easy but a pleasure to trick.’ He looked at his wife, his face clouded with regret. ‘Lou, she would have destroyed our happiness – anyone’s – without a thought. I hoped I might inflict some damage on her marriage. Instead, I almost ruined ours.’

  He gave a low, unhappy laugh. ‘You wanted to meet her, but the very thought made me sick. You should not be in the same room as someone that conniving. And so I told her, at the end.’ He shook his head, remembering the shrieks and hysterics, the pounding of fists on his chest in the French inn, where it had taken three servants and a tub of dishwater to dampen Isabella Foulberry’s fury.

  ‘I did not like the kind of man I had become – calculating and callous as the very people I despised. That was the worst of all. I felt unworthy of you.’

  ‘So you and she – you were never tempted . . . You never, not even once . . .’

  He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘God forgive me, Lou, that you could even think such a thing. The lady Foulberry might make fools of most of the men she meets, but she could not make one of me. She is not an evil woman, perhaps, but she is vain, and wilful, and dangerous. Her manner is designed to capture hearts. Whereas you are lovely beyond anything she could dream of, and you do not even realise it.’

  Louise covered her face to hide her tears. ‘I thought you had grown to love me less,’ she said, when eventually she could speak. ‘I was so miserable.’

  Crozier bent closer, speaking low and stern. ‘I love you with all the love there is. You must never again doubt it.’

  Putting a hand up to his face, Louise would have spoken, but the pains began once more, and this time they were followed by blood.

  Dawn was breaking when at last the convulsions eased, the bleeding stopped, and Louise fell asleep. Crozier’s arm was around her, his hand resting lightly on her skirt’s swell, willing the restless life within to stay. Light seeped through the shutters, and the first birds began to stir. Holding his wife as if she were as fragile as the baby she carried, the borderer closed his eyes, but his mind filled with the image and sound of Black Ned dissolving into th
e flames and he quickly opened them again.

  The taste of ash on his tongue suited his wretched thoughts. For the crimes he had committed over the years, the lies he had told, the men he had killed, he deserved to wear sackcloth for the rest of his life. Yet he did not believe he had been allowed any choice. A groan escaped him, as if he were wrangling with his conscience. There was an afterlife, he knew, but the comfort of knowing a better place awaited them did nothing to diminish the distress people had to suffer before reaching it. The Church preached patience and pity, but those words had no place in the borderlands, where safety lay in power alone.

  His hand circled, as if to soothe his child, and he looked up at the beams above the bed. If it lived, please God this infant was a girl. A boy would not only fall heir to the misery of these lands, but would add to it, as had he. A life of suspicion, fear and violence was not what he would have chosen, nor the inheritance any father should pass on to a son. But what other way of existing was there if one wanted to survive, save for running away? And if this barely alive scrap of humanity was tenacious enough to be born, who was he to give up or fall into despair? Boy or girl, it would carry the family name, and bear some or all of its burden. Crozier could not promise a peaceful future, for he believed no such thing existed in this world. But he could raise his child to strive for better as, from now, would he.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  August 1525

  London was dry as a withered leaf, and the dust his horse kicked up as he entered the city made Blackbird’s throat tighten. He plodded through the filthy streets, head held high as if by raising his nose it might not be offended by the stench that rose from the gutters, the river, the dark-eyed urchins who clutched at his boots, whimpering for a coin.

  London was dry as a withered leaf, and the dust his horse kicked up as he entered the city made Blackbird’s throat tighten. He plodded through the filthy streets, head held high as if by raising his nose it might not be offended by the stench that rose from the gutters, the river, the dark-eyed urchins who clutched at his boots, whimpering for a coin.

  Westminster broiled, its pallid stone and new-laid roofs reflecting the light as if to turn summer’s glare back upon the sun. The yards and alleys around the abbey teemed, though with only the lower sort, the court and its hangers-on having decamped some weeks earlier to the countryside. Blackbird’s horse clipped over the cobbles, weaving between packmen and beggars, merchants and whores, their clothes clinging to them in the heat, their cries half-hearted and dry. Despite the warmth, a shiver crawled up the butler’s spine. This place unsettled him.

  The Star Chamber did no business at the height of the summer. At this season, the cardinal would often be found in his Yorkshire diocese, keeping cool under northern skies, but pressing affairs of state had called him back to the capital, and Blackbird had learned he was to be found at Westminster Palace, its long corridors and tapestried rooms entirely at his disposal while his king was out of town.

  Wolsey received the butler with ill grace. His face was hot with summer and the disagreeable diplomatic crisis he was obliged to avert on Henry’s behalf. The king’s reckless liaisons and desires were proving more troublesome than a monarch’s usual dalliances, which harmed no one but the queen, and often not even her.

  ‘Well?’ he snapped, greeting Blackbird in the palace’s entrance, and expecting him to talk as they walked through the grand hallway and down a narrow passage to the small, picture-lined room he had commandeered as his own. Blackbird made no comment until they were closeted alone. ‘Well?’ the cardinal asked again, before noticing the grime on Blackbird’s jacket and grudgingly pouring him a mug of warm ale. The butler drank greedily, and slapped the tankard down.

  ‘As I informed you in my message,’ he said, his voice deepened by dust, ‘the baron and I have come by information we think relevant to his captivity, and the undue length of time you’ve been holding him.’

  ‘So you indicated,’ said Wolsey testily. He closed his eyes for a moment, appearing to will himself into a state of patience. Casting a thin smile on the butler, he refilled the northerner’s tankard before settling himself on a small stool that was completely lost under his skirts, so that it appeared it had been ingested, and he was merely squatting. ‘I am agog to know what it is you have to say to me.’

  ‘Ah, now, your eminence,’ said Blackbird, after the second pint pot was emptied, ‘it is not as simple as that.’ He flashed the cardinal a glimpse of stained, flagstone teeth, but there was nothing friendly about his smile. ‘It has come to the baron’s notice that certain affairs of state have been conducted beneath the king’s nose, which he feels his majesty should learn about. I could not divulge these affairs to you without first being sure that you will present them to his highness or, at the very least, use them to order the baron’s immediate release and reinstatement.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Wolsey seemed in no way put out by this disclosure. ‘I will not ask what this sensitive information consists of. Not yet, anyway.’

  Blackbird pulled out a cloth and mopped his forehead and neck. ‘Devil of a journey, these past few days,’ he said conversationally. ‘Sun almost stewed me in my own juices.’

  Wolsey glanced at the butler’s stained hose and limp shirt sleeves, but said nothing. Untroubled, Blackbird continued. ‘I have just this minute come from the Fleet, which, I might tell you, stinks worse than the Thames itself. I speak with his lordship’s authority when I tell you that he wants you to attend upon him this very day, to settle the matter. Should you fail to do so, he will have no alternative but to instruct me to take this information and lay it before Henry himself.’

  ‘But, my dear man, until I find out what this is all about, I am working in the dark. My jumping at the baron’s command might prove a waste of all our time. Perhaps he is entirely right to want whatever news he possesses placed before Henry, rather than me. I might myself advise that, if I were clear what this relates to. Otherwise, as it stands, at the moment . . .’ He spread his hands and shrugged, indicating helplessness.

  Blackbird’s genial air faded. He walked to the window and looked out upon the river, its lazy waters dimmed by the thick bottle glass, yet bright enough still to set spangles dancing on the chamber’s walls. He spoke as if to the ferrymen. ‘Believe me, your eminence, that is not a course you want to take. It would be most injurious to your health. It is of little concern to Dacre which of you he informs. His life is already ruined, and he does not believe he has long to live. But in only one scenario do you continue to retain King Henry’s regard. I think you must by now have an inkling of what I am referring to.’

  The cardinal put his hands on his knees and examined his rings. He sounded weary. ‘Very well, though the cloak of mystery you and your master relish throwing over everything is tiresome. But since I owe Dacre a visit in any case, I will pass by the prison this evening.’

  ‘You will be heartily glad you have done so,’ replied Blackbird, facing him once more. ‘Your neglect of him has been shameful, and you a man of God. If this is the justice meted out to peers of the realm, heaven help the little man. No wonder so many of them take the law into their own hands.’

  ‘Do not push me too far,’ said the cardinal, rising from his stool to plant himself before the butler. His voice shook with fury. ‘You are nothing more than a peasant with puffed-up airs, but you fool nobody. Like your master, you have low manners and even lower morals. I will not be given orders by the likes of you. Whatever it is you think you can threaten me with, it is as nothing – trust me – to what I could level against you in retaliation, were I of a vindictive disposition. Happily for you, I am neither cruel nor unjust. It would be beneath my dignity to stamp on a worm like you, simple – and amusing – though it would be.’

  Blackbird laughed as he turned to leave. ‘Worms, your eminence, are all part of God’s good creation. They have their rightful place. My master knows only too well that it is as necessary to deal with low-life as with the high-b
orn. He tells me that at the end, it is impossible to tell them apart. They all beg for mercy. They all bleed. They all disappear from the face of the earth like—’ He slapped dust from his gloves, and left the room, the motes of traveller’s grime dancing on the sunlit air, as if his words had taken shape.

  For a second time, Dacre was led up to the small chamber in the prison where Wolsey was waiting. The baron shuffled into the room, his chained wrists were freed, and the guard took up his poker stance by the wall. ‘Be gone, man,’ said the cardinal, waving the guard off. ‘Close the door and wait outside.’

  He indicated that Dacre should take a seat and, lowering himself, unsteadily, the baron did so. Wolsey examined him from beneath hooded lids, shocked at the change in him. The broad, commanding figure was now slack and bent. The pulp of a paunch still rolled under his belt but the baron’s shanks were bony, his face sunken, his hair, beneath its black woollen cap, now a wintry white.

  ‘So you found time to see me, eh?’ said Dacre softly.

  ‘You bade me present myself,’ replied Wolsey. ‘And, as befits a good friend, here I am.’

  ‘Friend?’ The word fell between them and lay, broken, on the earthen floor. Dacre shook his head, and looked out of the window, for a second seeming to forget why he was here. The sky was darkening, but he lingered on the sight, the view of ivied wall his first glimpse of the outdoors in a month. He began to rise for a closer look, then remembered the fatigue that any exertion brought on and sat back down. He swivelled his head towards the cardinal. ‘Blackbird did his work well, to get you here so fast. Scared the life out of ye, I expect.’