Dacre's War

by Rosemary Goring

  Crozier drank, to hide his disappointment. ‘Any idea where?’

  ‘How would I know?’ The landlord wiped the counter, and turned to another customer. When he had served him, he came back. ‘I suppose you could ask that man over there.’

  He indicated a tall, lank soldier, who had just entered and was hanging his tan leather cloak on a peg by the door, To this he added his wide-brimmed hat, so it looked as if there had been an execution, the body suspended as a warning to all. When the man reached the counter his drink was already waiting, and Crozier recognised one who was used to command. This was no foot soldier, but no doubt the captain of Dacre’s patrol.

  The borderer edged closer, ordered another beer, and from beneath his hat looked the soldier over. The face was ungiving, plain features distinguished only by a purpling nose and red-veined cheeks. He drank as if his throat were a sluice. When the first pangs of thirst appeared to have been assuaged, Crozier struck up conversation, if the man’s one-word answers qualified as that. As his mug was refilled, so fast it might have sprung a leak, Crozier mentioned Barton’s name. The man paused, his drink halfway to his lips. ‘Barton, ye say? What’s yer interest in him?’

  ‘He’s my wife’s cousin,’ Crozier replied. ‘I was hoping he could help me find work.’

  ‘God knows what Dacre’s thinking, employing scum like him. But he’s left, praise the saints. Disappeared last week, along with one of the scullery maids. Poor girl.’

  Crozier appeared disheartened, and lapsed into silence.

  ‘What sort of work?’ the soldier asked, when another tankard had been dealt with. ‘You another one hiding from the law?’

  Crozier looked affronted. ‘Cattle’s my line. So many herds have been stolen and killed in my part of the world, I was looking to start again, somewhere better.’

  The soldier nodded, gravely. ‘Well, good luck to ye. I don’t know of anything going round here, but—’

  ‘Forget it,’ said Crozier, draining his mug. ‘It was a bad idea.’ He nodded a farewell and left, squeezing his way through the crowded room. At the door he lifted the soldier’s cloak and hat from its peg, and was gone before anyone noticed.

  ‘Ye’re back soon, captain,’ said the sentry at the castle gates. Crozier swayed in the saddle, as if he had been long enough at the bar, and raised an impatient hand. Face hidden by the soldier’s hat, wrapped in his buff-coloured cloak, he rode into the yard. The place was quiet, the walls high and smooth, the gates that had just been closed behind him as heavy as a portcullis.

  The stables were on his left, and as he dismounted he threw the cloak behind the horses’ dung-heap before finding a stable boy and, without a word, giving him the mare’s reins.

  He strode towards the castle, making for the rear. At this hour of the evening the servants were busy making fires and preparing dinner. Watching the back door, Crozier waited until a kitchen maid was stooped over the courtyard well before slipping into the passageway, past servants carrying trays laden with platters. He made his way to the heart of the castle by the servants’ stairs. No shout stopped him; nobody even gave him a glance. Sir Christopher and Sir Philip were in residence and serving their dinner made the kitchen servants blind to anyone but the cooks. Had they been questioned later that night, they would have confessed complete innocence. They had indeed seen a dark figure pass between them, but they did not notice it.

  The bustle of the kitchens faded, and when he stepped into the castle’s hallway the only sound came from the fireside, where a pair of greyhounds lay, tails thumping at the sight of company. He bent, tickling their ears, and they whined with pleasure. ‘Come on then,’ he said, clicking his fingers, and the dogs unfolded their legs and followed him, tails held high.

  Another flight of stairs brought him to the castle’s private quarters. Before he could think where to find the baron’s daughter, a young woman in a linen apron stepped into the hallway, carrying a ewer. She looked up, and would have dropped the pewter jug in fright, had he not caught it. Water splashed over the flagstones, but he laughed, and she joined him. The dogs lapped at the soapy spill, and the girl was distracted, and confused, answering Crozier without thinking when he asked, ‘Is there anyone in that room?’ At her reply, he put his hand over her mouth, and dragged her into the chamber she had just left. This time the ewer fell, its crash dulled by a rug. Above Crozier’s hand her eyes rolled in terror.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he whispered, ‘I won’t hurt you if you help me. When I take my hand away, you must not shout, or else I will be obliged to use my knife. You understand?’

  She nodded, trembling like a rabbit in a sack.

  ‘So then,’ said Crozier softly, pushing her onto the bed, and sitting close, his hand around her arm. The greyhounds prowled the walls, as if sniffing out its secrets for him. ‘Is this the young mistress’s room?’

  She shook her head. ‘Sir Philip’s,’ she said, so quietly he could barely catch the words.

  ‘Where is she then?’

  The girl gave a moan. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She’s left.’

  ‘Along with the scullery maid?’ Crozier sensed something worse than he had expected. But again the girl shook her head. She began to cry.

  ‘It is Oliver Barton I am looking for,’ said Crozier. ‘I’m interested in no one but him. Do you or your mistress know where he’s gone?’

  The girl’s eyes were wide with fear, and he realised it was not him she was scared of. ‘I promised not to tell,’ she stammered. ‘The mistress and Barton said they would have me whipped and dismissed if I breathed a word.’

  ‘Where have they gone? If you do not tell me . . .’ Crozier pulled out his knife.

  The maid whimpered, making the dogs’ ears prick up. She spoke in a gabble. ‘Mistress Joan told everyone she was going to stay with her sister near Bolton, and had made arrangements with the Bishop of Carlisle to travel that far with his entourage, on his way to London. She got her father’s guards to chaperon her to the bishop’s palace, and made the scullery maid tell the cook that she was running off with Barton, to give them time to get away together.’

  ‘So where have they gone, Mistress Joan and Barton?’

  ‘They were going to make for the Scottish border, to get married there.’

  ‘Married? To a man like that?’ The disbelief in Crozier’s voice made the maid blush.

  ‘Mistress Joan loves him. She says he looks rough, and acts rough, but he is just like her father, firm, and brave, and kind. He makes her feel safe. And yet she left in tears. Terrible, it was. Barton had to throw her onto their horse, and they rode off together. She kept looking back . . .’ The girl wiped her eyes on her apron. ‘Will I get into trouble?’ she whispered.

  ‘Only if you don’t tell me exactly where they were going.’ Crozier eyed the door, but the passageway was quiet. He fingered the tip of his knife, as if testing its sharpness.

  ‘She said there is a family place near the border where they could stay once they were married, until her father got over his rage.’

  ‘Its name?’

  ‘I don’t know. A tower house, near Liddesdale, where there’s always feuding.’

  ‘Your mistress is a fool,’ said Crozier, pulling the girl off the bed. ‘That man will never marry her, or stay with her if he does.’

  ‘So I told her. But she slapped me and told me to shut up.’ She began to sob.

  ‘Be quiet!’ he hissed. ‘I need you to get me out of the castle, and then you will be safe. If you call out or set the guards on me, I will kill your mistress as well as Barton. But if you help, then I will see she gets safely home.’

  ‘H . . . h . . . how do I get you out of here?’ she asked, her eyes liquid with tears. ‘I am not allowed out after dark, without permission.’

  ‘I give you mine,’ said Crozier grimly, and looked round the room for paper and pen.

  A little later, the maid rode up to the castle gates, on Crozier’s mare. She was dressed for the road, in
riding cape and boots, the greyhounds trotting behind her. ‘Let me pass,’ she called up to the sentry, waving the paper on which Blackbird’s permission was indecipherably written, as was his style. ‘I am on my mistress’s business,’ she said, ‘with her dogs for protection.’

  ‘Late night out for you, pet,’ the guard replied, releasing the bars and drawing back the gates, without a glance at the paper. ‘You sure you’re not off to meet yer swain?’ He chortled. ‘Lucky man, he is. If I didn’t have a goodwife of my own . . .’

  The maid responded indignantly, with a flirtatious lift of her chin, hoping to keep the man’s eyes on her alone. As the gates swung open, Crozier sidled along the dimly lit wall, and under the arch. He was beyond the gate when the guard caught sight of him and gave a cry, but by then the maid had ridden beyond the walls. Grabbing the saddle, Crozier leapt up behind her and took the reins. Before the guard could summon help, the horse had bolted, and the pair were almost out of sight, the greyhounds racing far ahead, elated at their freedom.

  ‘Let me down!’ the maid cried, struggling against him as Crozier rode headlong, the castle now far behind, but not until they reached the village did he pull up the reins, and let her slide off.

  ‘Your mistress will be safe home one day soon,’ he said, as she stood staring around her in dismay at being such a distance from the castle. ‘Don’t look so alarmed. The dogs will keep you company, and you’ll find help in the tavern.’ He laughed. ‘You can tell the captain he’ll find his cloak in the midden.’ Touching the brim of his hat, he turned the mare towards the fields, and was quickly swallowed by the night.

  The baron was growing weary. He had criss-crossed the eastern boundary of his lands, and found much to perturb him. Unlike the western reaches, the dales and hamlets in these parts were in poor repair, ragged from constant raids, the people almost as unkempt as their ravaged hovels, the hilltops blackened by recent fire, and the valley pasturelands all but empty of cattle and sheep.

  He had just left the last settlement he would see that day, and was frowning. The villagers had crowded around his horse with tales of the Liddesdale reivers and their scathing of the land. The baron had listened, and assured them of his help, but this barely mollified them, and it was with some difficulty that he rode beyond their clutches, and found himself once more alone on the moorland track. unsettled at so much destruction, he rode briskly, contemplating the rising tide of vengeance across the marches in his absence, and wondering what role he had played in fomenting such trouble.

  The afternoon was advancing, and he was many miles from Naworth. The sun hung heavy in the west, disappearing behind misty banks of cloud. Woodsmoke filled the air, and despite what he had seen that day he felt content. He was home now, and could begin to take care of his territory and his people, as he had always intended. Wrongs would be righted, he would make sure of that.

  On he rode, the hazy light softening the horizon. His thoughts had turned to the dinner that awaited him when he saw a figure flitting across a distant hill. Raising a hand against the sun’s dying glimmer, he made out a rider cantering along the ridge. A single horseman was nothing to alarm him, yet something stirred in his gut. He rode on, eyes fixed on the rider, who having spotted him had cut off the hill and appeared to be heading his way.

  The letter had lain in Dacre’s room, upon his bed, for several days. Joan had written it the night before she left for Bolton, telling Blackbird it was to be passed to her father as soon as he returned from Berwick. The butler had given it no thought, until he heard of the maid’s ordeal the night before. The girl had been brought back to the castle by the captain of the guard, sobbing like a child. Little sense could be got out of her or the captain, who was soused as a barrel of brine. All that Blackbird and the housekeeper could make out was that the maid had been set upon by a Scottish thug, and forced at knifepoint to tell him where her mistress was. ‘I told him she was with her sister in Bolton,’ she wailed, hiding her face in her hands. ‘I had no choice. What could he want with her?’ A groan escaped her, and she began to rock herself back and forth, the night’s excitement too much for her nerves. The housekeeper looked at Blackbird, who shook his head. Given a warm infusion of camomile, the girl was sent to bed.

  By morning, she was calmer. Once more questioned about her attacker, she chattered on about his knife and his sword one minute, and the next avoided Blackbird’s eye and stumbled over her words, as if she were hiding something. Nothing more was learned from her.

  When Dacre’s guards returned a few hours later, to say the baron was on his way home, but would not be back till nightfall, Blackbird ran upstairs to his master’s room, and found Joan’s letter. The ink was smudged, he now saw, as if droplets had spilled on the paper. Snatching it up, he called for a messenger, gave him the letter, and told him to find his master out on the eastern dales. The note, at first so innocuous, now reeked of trouble. He should have opened it the day she left and braved Dacre’s wrath for his impudence.

  The messenger’s horse stamped and snorted as it reached Dacre’s side. The baron reined in, recognising the soldier, who reached into his saddlebag. The baron’s heart began to hammer. He held out his hand, took the letter, and opened it, squinting to make out its message.

  Dearest Father, it began, the writing starting out neat, but turning into a scrawl by the end of the page.

  By the time you are returned from Berwick I will be married. I have left with Oliver Barton, and we are to be wed, and I love him, so you cannot be angry, but happy, indeed I trust you will be for you have long wanted me settled and I shall be, and most joyfully, though not if you are angry. You must not be. Your most loving and respectful daughter, Joan.

  The messenger watched the baron. The only sound was his horse’s laboured breath. ‘Is there a reply?’ he asked, when it seemed Dacre had forgotten he was there.

  ‘Mmm?’ Dacre looked up, and shook his head. ‘Nothing urgent. Tell Blackbird I will be home in time for a late dinner. You go ahead, boy, you will ride faster than me, but I won’t be far behind.’

  With a salute, the messenger left, he and his horse dwindling to a speck on the hillside before disappearing. Dacre watched, unblinking, as if he had been struck by lightning, and could neither move nor think. He crumpled the letter in his fist, a taste on his tongue so bitter it might have been gall. The murderer and thief he had sent to spy on Crozier had betrayed his paymaster instead. He had been a fool of the most witless kind to think he could bring a man of that sort into his house and not suffer in some way. Barton, meant to be the agent of his revenge, had brought ruin to his house.

  Seeing in the baron’s daughter an opportunity of untold wealth, the sailor had grabbed it, as men like him will always do. Such a brute could have no idea of her real value. Dacre could admit now that he loved her more than he had ever loved before. She was a treasure, compared to which silver was worthless. And now her future was blighted. No lord or gentleman would marry her after this. She was fit only for the nunnery.

  Tears rolled unchecked down his face. Staring at the dusk-lit hills, he felt the power ebbing from his limbs and a pain begin to drill behind his eyes. He shook his head, to sharpen his thoughts. This would not do. Kicking his horse onwards, he wrapped the reins around his numbed hand. Ruin be damned. He would bring Joan back, and get rid of Barton, and all might still be well. He need only reach her before the news got out. No one need ever know about this, marriage or no, and with Blackbird’s help he would avert disaster. A few days hence, with Joan safe at home once more, he and the butler would be laughing to think of this moment of despair. He tried to smile at the prospect, but his mouth refused to oblige.

  The horse’s canter soon slowed to a walk. Dacre’s hand was slack on the reins, his legs leaden and almost lifeless. He did not have the strength to urge the stallion on, and after ambling for a mile or two it dropped its head to crop the grass. A short time later a roar of rage and misery rose from the valley, sending crows circling above the tre
es. It was the baron’s last sound, his cry of defeat. Staring in horror at the narrowing sky, Joan’s letter clasped in his glove, he recognised that the darkness beginning to wrap itself around him was not the approaching night, but the end of all things.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  After a few hours’ sleep on a frosted hillside beyond reach of Naworth’s guards, Crozier made good speed as he headed north. The maid had not known the name of Dacre’s peel tower, but he had a fair idea where it would be. The baron had several outposts, kept in the hands of loyal retainers, and even on the Scottish side there were some in thrall to him, or his purse.

  Across the borders countless peel towers rose, as if growing out of the bedrock. Stumps of featureless stone where clansmen could fight off attack and locals seek safety, they had no windows on the lower floors, and those on the upper levels were wide enough only for an archer to take aim. Stone-slated and smooth as ice, they were almost impregnable. Nothing but hunger or pestilence could overcome their inmates and bring them to the door.

  Dacre’s alliance with the Armstrongs was well known, and Crozier headed for one of the narrow passes into Liddesdale, where the clan made their home. The baron would not be brazen enough to have a property on Armstrong land, but it was very possible he had a redoubt in the wastelands that lay between the devil’s own dale and Cumberland. It would be a tedious business finding it, but Crozier had faith in his persuasive tongue, and even more in his sword.

  Neither let him down. On the edge of the woods by a hamlet north of Bewcastle he came upon a mother penning a flock of sheep which were more biddable than the three children who skirled around her heels. The woman’s face was warm with annoyance. ‘I’ll skelp youse good and hard if ye dinnae behave!’ she cried to the boys, who were tugging her apron, and goading the sheep. She looked up at the sound of Crozier’s horse, and the sight of the armed rider brought the boys to order. Fingers in their mouths, they huddled behind their mother, and a whimper was heard coming from the smallest.