After Flodden (14 page)

‘You’re the clever one, Crozier,’ said the hooded complainer, known as Wat the Wanderer for his nocturnal habits. ‘Just tell me what to do. I can handle an axe, but I
never was much of a thinker.’

A laugh ran round the hall, but the old man hushed them with a raised hand. ‘Let Adam speak. We don’t have much time.’

‘Gather round,’ said Crozier, and they scraped their stools up to the table. ‘The rumours are bad,’ he said, ‘and getting worse. Dacre is busy, acting as go-between
between Henry’s man Surrey and the Scots court. We know Henry’s planning something. Whatever it is, you can be sure it won’t be pleasant. After what happened at Flodden, no-one on
the border is safe.’

A youth whose face was livid with an unhealed scar thumped the table. ‘Bastard sons of whores!’ he shouted. ‘Armstrongs, Elliots, all the scum of the Borders.’ Seeing the
eyes around the table on him, he continued, quieter now he had their attention. ‘Stole from the camps at Flodden, while they were on the field. Didn’t care if it was Scots or English
they were robbing. Drove off their horses and oxen. And cut the throats of any who got in their way. Children and wives among them. Not a groat of mercy.’

The old man, Crozier’s grandfather, nodded in sorrow. ‘I heard tell they robbed the dying on the battlefield, and ran them through, in case they lived to bleat. Sliced off hands and
fingers to get their rings. Pulled off boots and jackets, didn’t care if the bodies were quick or dead.’

There was a moment’s silence as the men contemplated the scene. Several shook their heads, as if even in these lawless parts, some vestigial code of honour had been broken, and shame been
brought on them all.

‘We’re all under suspicion,’ said Crozier. ‘As far as Surrey or the widow queen knows, it could have been any of us did that. What we can be sure of is that they
won’t let this go unpunished. They won’t care if the innocent are hurt along with the guilty, they only want revenge.’

‘Revenge,’ said Murdo Montgomery, from the far end of the table, ‘and an excuse to corner and kill us like rats. They won’t be happy till the border is vermin free. Far
as they’re concerned, we’re all fair game.’ He stroked his beard. The look in his eye suggested the feeling was reciprocated.

‘So what do we do?’ asked the boy with the scar.

‘You do what our father would have done, Tom,’ said Crozier. ‘You make the first move.’

Tom’s eyes brightened. ‘Aye? How, like?’

Crozier lowered his voice, as if he feared eavesdroppers in the rafters: ‘We ambush Dacre.’

‘Pah!’ said Wat the Wanderer, who as Crozier’s cousin had no fear of offending him. ‘That’s child’s talk. How are we going to get close to him, do you
suggest? Just stroll past the guards and into his castle?’

‘No, you fool,’ said Crozier. ‘We get him when he’s out on the road. There’s as many of us as he will have bodyguards. More, perhaps. And we’ll choose our
position well. They won’t stand a chance.’

Wat was unconvinced. ‘And what if he won’t talk?’

Crozier looked at him, and the hall’s chill deepened. ‘Oh, he’ll talk.’

A smile spread across Wat’s face. This was the kind of action he liked. There was a shift in mood in the hall, a rising of spirits. The men nodded with approval, and shuffled their stools
closer to the table.

‘Tonight, then,’ said Crozier. Lowering his voice, he began to explain his plan.

*    *    *

There was no name the Crozier clan hated more than that of Lord Thomas Dacre, warden general of the English marches. From the day of the old soldier’s posting in the
north, Adam Crozier’s father had toyed with him as a cat plays with a sparrow. There was no malice in this; Nathaniel Crozier had been flouting the law and riling its officers since he was
old enough to spoon broth. Many wardens before Dacre had found his image swimming before their eyes as they tried to sleep. Nathaniel Crozier and his ilk – the Procters, the Fords, the
Thomsons, the Scotts – were a daily irritation to those charged with keeping order on the marches, a human itch that kept the wardens’ skin perpetually aflame. They were gleeful in
their thieving, unrepentant in their venality. Wardens on both sides of the border read their names so often in court and on writs they were more familiar to them than those of their own
families.

But wild as they were, few Borderers were reckless enough to taunt the wardens. Most saved their energy for their true enemies. Nathaniel Crozier, however, seemed oblivious of the danger his
actions held for himself, and his kin. It was almost, his son later thought, as if he needed to prove that he was king of the middle march. And for a few sweet years, it seemed as if he were.

When Nat Crozier was dragged before the assizes for fighting with his English neighbours and stealing their sheep, he used the occasion as a stage. Standing in the dock, hand on his hip, he
ignored the warden’s questions and replied instead with a salvo of contempt against the Saxon king and his lickspittle servants. A year later, he languished six months in Carlisle Castle for
rustling English piebalds, one of which he rode off upon when he had served his sentence. A year after that, he broke free from Corbridge gaol, with the help of his men, leaving behind a letter
expressing his thanks for such lavish board and lodging, to which was attached a silver coin to cover his keep, and a salutation to Dacre’s fragrant spouse.

This last insult to Dacre’s pride turned contempt for one more Scots ruffian into such personal enmity the warden would idle away his waking hours dreaming of retaliation. That his wife
had chanced to speak to the lout as he lay in captivity and found him amusing only added gall to his mood. Before his time in this barbarian fastness was done, he swore that Nat Crozier would be
dealt with.

His wish was answered. One midsummer night, when Crozier’s Keep and its men lay stupefied in liquored sleep, their fate crept up on them in the shape of two hooded intruders. Nat was warm
in his bed, his wife tucked into his arm, when a tap on the forehead made him open his eyes. In the dark he smelled the sword before he saw it, three feet of bitter steel, pressed between his eyes.
But while he lay transfixed by the blade, it was a keelie’s gutting knife that did the deed. It came at him out of the night and sliced his throat so fast and deep he had time to do nothing
but gurgle before his head lolled back on the straw, windpipe gaping. His wife was drenched in his blood as she cowered, hands over her ears. Her screams scared the crows from their trees and they
whirled around the ramparts, a cawing wake for the departed spirit below. By the time Martha Crozier was silent and the birds had settled, the intruders were long gone, and so was her husband.

Fifteen at the time, Adam Crozier remembered only the smells and sounds of that night. He wanted never to think of them again, but as he rubbed linseed into his saddle, ahead of the
evening’s ambush, they refused to be banished. It was the stench that clung to him still: the slaughterhouse stink of blood, and his mother, daubed in it, holding out her hands to her boys
who had rushed into the room. Tom’s wails, as he stared at his father’s body and the bloodied stranger who was his mother, were at the heart of that picture. Even now the memory made
Crozier’s eyes smart. The child had retreated to Crozier’s side, reaching for a hand, and his brother had swung him up, hiding his head in his shoulder. Crozier had no recollection of
what happened next. His mother had told him he pulled her out of the bed, as if rescuing her from a blaze, and the three stood, shivering in each other’s arms while Nat’s brothers and
retainers stumbled into the room in their nightshirts, and saw what was left of their kingdom.

It was over ten years since Nat Crozier was murdered. No-one had yet been put on trial, though there was no doubt that the men who’d done it were Elliots from over the river, a clan as
inspired in their thievery as Nat ever was, and – it now was clear – considerably more vicious. The week after he was buried beneath the beeches at Crozier’s Keep, the
enemy’s messenger arrived at the door. He brought an offer from Ethan Elliot for the keep and its lands. The message boy’s blackened eye was answer enough when he rode back over the
river.

News of the killing reached Dacre before the body was stiff. That evening, he and his wife and brood ate well, a belated solstice thanksgiving that carried on till midnight. As the fire sank to
ash, and his children fell asleep alongside the dogs, Dacre bundled his wife upstairs for further celebration. Later he fell into a sleep sounder than he had enjoyed since Nat Crozier slipped out
of his clutches.

Within days, all the border knew who the murderer was. Ethan Elliot, they said, was holed up in his farmhouse in Liddesdale, emptying his cellar keg by keg and plotting further revenge. He was
not denying what he had done, but defied anyone to take action. The Keeper of Liddesdale and the Scottish warden of the middle marches were both informed, but they valued their own skins too dearly
to challenge the wolves of the march, and left well alone. When the news reached Lord Dacre, he not only did nothing but from that day remembered the Elliots fondly in his evening prayers. A
petition from Martha Crozier lay on the English warden’s window ledge, fading in the damp. A year passed, and no charge was brought. And in that year, Adam Crozier was to learn just how rough
was the justice in these lands.

Man of the house at fifteen, Crozier turned to his uncles for help. Like their brother, they were fighters, but unlike Nat, they were not bright. Where Nat went to work with his wits as well as
a sword, they blundered straight for their target, without guile or strategy. Their enemies not only saw them coming, but could hear them, a mile off. Within months of Nat’s death, the
Crozier lands had been pillaged, burned, and much of their livestock stolen. New cattle disappeared overnight, as if swallowed up by the fields. Higher hedges, better gates did nothing to protect
their animals, and in time the Crozier inheritance shrank to a swathe of thistly wasteland, a few good fields on the valley floor, and a meadow for livestock within a brisk drive of the
keep’s barnyard. A watch was posted on the meadow, night and day, and slowly order was restored.

Pride was less easy to recover. To look at the Crozier clan as it stood today was to know that the Elliots and their allies had won. A once thriving, powerful family had been brought close to
poverty. As she picked at her thinning dresses, or bound her boots together with twine, Martha railed at Crozier for his feebleness. ‘Yer father would have torched the curs who stole our
sheep,’ she’d say, on the occasions now when neighbours rampaged over their land. ‘You, you can do nothing but mend gates and traipse all o’er the place trying to find your
blessed lambs. And when you track them down, all you do is bring them home. What sort of message does that send? And you call yourself a Crozier. Your father would be sick at you.’

Crozier did not remind her that it was his father who had squandered their best land at cards, lost his health in gaol, and made the enemies who took his life. Unlike Nat, Adam did not seek
trouble, though he’d meet it head-on when it came. He was defter with the sword than Nat had ever been, and a keener horseman. His blade had scarred men the length of the border, but it was
never done with relish. The few he had killed would visit him at night, their youngsters at their heels, and he longed for a time when the border was quiet, and he could ride out to his fields
unarmed.

The long years of aggravation, of skirmishes, theft and squabbles had left Crozier’s Keep a near ruin, pitted from battering rams, arrows and grappling irons. Martha appeared to have
forgotten the end her husband had provoked. Along with the horror of that deathbed, she had chosen to erase from her memory what kind of man he was. Over the years, she and Adam spoke little of the
past; nor was there much about the present that either wished to discuss.

The land and its livestock kept Crozier away from the keep from early light until dark. ‘He’s jist a farmer,’ Martha would tell Tom, when he came home, muddied and wet.
‘The Croziers used to be a proud people, and folk respected us. Now, we’re nothing more than peasants.’

It was Tom who carried his father’s mantle. By twelve, he was getting in rough fights with boys from the village; a year later, he had spent a night in custody. He had never seen his
brother so angry. For a week after paying for his release, Adam Crozier could not look at him. Tom was chastened, but that feeling soon fled. As he grew into a young man, it took only a thoughtless
comment, or a sideways glance to fire his wrath. Without a word, he would be off on his pony, sword at his side, and not back until he had avenged the insult or righted the wrong he felt his family
had suffered.

Crozier despaired. No punishment or hard talking made any difference. Sweetly, Tom went his own way, bit by bit unpicking the work of a decade in settling old feuds, and restoring peace.
Tonight, though, his temper would be put to good use. The Borderer gave a grim smile.

After saddling his nag, who gleamed from his brush, he led her out into the yard. His grandfather would not join them tonight, but the others – cousins Wat and Murdo, and the best riders
among the retainers still loyal to the family – would make up the party. Revenge was not on Crozier’s mind, but if Dacre did fall into his hands, he wondered what the outcome would be.
In the moment of capture, it would be easy to persuade himself that the warden was to blame for the family’s misfortunes. Given the nervous state of the border after Flodden, and given
Crozier’s mood, he hoped for Dacre’s wife’s sake that he was not out on the road tonight.

CHAPTER NINE

3 October 1513