Dacre's War (14 page)

‘I’m a carpenter,’ said Benoit, avoiding his eyes.

Ilderton looked at the calloused hands and strong wrists and seemed satisfied with the answer. ‘And what brings a carpenter here, so far from home?’

‘None of your business,’ replied Benoit. ‘I did not know I needed your permission to drink here.’

‘Oh, but you do. It is a tedious duty, but I find I must keep an eye on everyone who passes through the village. In times like these, enemies are all around.’ His tongue flickered over his silver beard, catching a lick of wine. ‘You look like an enemy to me, my friend. Smell like one too.’ A hand caught Benoit’s wrist before he could move. ‘Careful, now, how you answer,’ he said, so low that his voice disappeared up the chimney. His grip tightened. ‘Are you one of Dacre’s men?’

Benoit started, unable to hide his surprise. Ilderton smiled. He squeezed until Benoit could feel the thrum of his pulse before releasing him and tipping back the remains of the jug, his beard purpling like a plum.

‘Come to spy on me, I suppose,’ he said, raising a finger and bringing the girl behind the counter running with a fresh flagon. His tone startled Benoit even more than his words. ‘I’m a liability, in his eyes, am I not? He thinks I’m a danger to his well-laid plans. And here you are, his little messenger, sent to report what I’m up to, what state I’m in, what needs to be done about me, eh? Is that it?’

His eyes glazed with drink, his voice harsh as a saw, he was sodden with wine yet his head was clear. It was the drinker’s most dangerous hour, the cusp between mellow and murderous, when tempers are tipped, and daggers drawn. Benoit swallowed. He had a knife in his boot, and a smallsword in his belt, but in this confined space, among strangers, he would not have time to pull them before he was cut down. His heart hammered, but his voice was ominous in its calm.

‘So I look to you like one of Dacre’s lackeys?’

‘Every pore on your body sweats his name, boy. My guess is you’re one of his outlaw band, the roughnecks from the dark side of the border, who do his dirty work.’

Benoit fastened his eyes on Ilderton. ‘You do not speak of him with respect. If I were his spy, that would be the first thing I would tell him. If I was who you think I am, I would caution you to be more careful.’

Ilderton snorted. ‘Respect? We’re all of us rotten, one way or the other. Dacre’s no different. He’s bad, same as me. Very, very bad. And that I respect.’ He cocked his head. ‘You can’t trick me. I may be a sot, but I still have my wits. You won’t catch me speaking against him.’

He returned to his flagon, and when it was drained another was set down before him. His words began to slow, and he tapped the table with his garnet ring at the end of every sentence. ‘You can go back to the baron, lickspittle lad, and tell him he has nothing to fear from me. My affairs are in order. My horsemen are ready at four hours’ notice. I have fifty and more, all for Dacre to command. The business with my wife was unfortunate, but I can be trusted. She is now safely in care, and who I choose to bed with is my affair. He is not, I hear, so fussy himself.’

The slump of his shoulders showed time was running out. Benoit leaned forward. ‘Your loyalty is impressive. Were Dacre to hear of it, he would be proud, I’m sure.’

Ilderton’s eyes narrowed. ‘So what game is it you’re playing, boy? Is it his enemies you’re seeking?’ Benoit shook his head, measuring the distance from fireside to door. Three paces, four, and he could make his escape. But for the moment, Ilderton was merely curious.

‘You don’t have far to look for them, do you?’ he said, with a damp chuckle. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Benoit frowned, as if bemused, and Ilderton pulled his stool closer. ‘There is one who has grievance enough against him, if that’s what interests you. His bastard son, John. Noble mother, but cast off by the world, as was she. Both disgraced, and she died of shame. John’s never forgiven him. Dacre has bought him an office in the church, but the boy wants the life of a lord, not a monk. When he is on his knees beneath the holy cross, he prays not for the poor but that his father be brought as low as he, humiliated and disgraced.’

‘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.