Dacre's War (25 page)

‘I am obliged to you,’ said Wolsey, rising with difficulty from his stool. He was unsteady, but Surrey knew better than to offer a hand, busying himself instead with collecting the papers strewn at his feet. With all in his clutch, he fed them one by one into the flames, which leapt at their dinner like ravenous waifs.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

May 1524

Antoine hobbled into the great hall, crutches under his arms, bad leg trailing. In the time he had been at Crozier’s Keep his soldier’s frame had been replaced with a stooped, creaking figure whose halting gait was as painful to watch as Old Crozier’s.

From his fireside seat the old man greeted his new companion. Antoine raised a crutch in reply. He and the white-haired clansman had become friends these past few weeks, Old Crozier regaling him with the history of the family, the valley, and the border. He was also schooling him in the complexity of local affairs, which, thought Antoine, made the wrangling between France, England, Scotland and Spain look half-hearted.

Already the soldier’s English was accented with a border burr, and he understood, if did not use, some of the outlandish words peculiar to these parts. Between them Ella and Old Crozier had taught him the ballads. He could be heard singing to himself as he stumped his way around the courtyard, or disappeared into the woods, where he would sit all afternoon on a fallen tree, lost in silent thought, or carolling to the birds. One day he asked for paper, to set the ballads down. Old Crozier was startled to see that it was not only the words he was recording but the tunes themselves, marching across the page like rooks on a bare tree. Antoine was amused at his astonishment. ‘It is simple, really,’ he said. ‘Bring me a recorder, and I will show you.’

Open-mouthed, Ella’s brood sat at his feet as he picked out the melody on the instrument, each inky rook turning into a note that flew up to the rafters. Andra, Ella’s eldest, could barely contain his excitement, flapping across the rush-strewn floor as the ballad filled the hall and singing louder than a church bell.

It was Andra who found Antoine, later that day, sitting in the woods. The boy approached him slowly, cradling something in his arms. ‘What is it you bring me?’ said Antoine, noting the child’s bowed head.

‘I found him, down by the burn,’ Andra replied, his face streaked with tears.

‘Put him down, boy. Careful now.’

Andra placed the creature at the soldier’s feet. It was a hare, ears lying flat, eyes closed, body quivering with fear. It lay awkwardly, its hind leg useless, as Antoine’s had been. ‘It’s hurt,’ said the child. ‘The crows were pecking it.’

Antoine ran a gentle finger over the hare’s spine. The fur was matted with sweat.

‘Boy,’ he said, putting a hand on Andra’s arm, ‘the kindest thing would be to kill it.’

The child pulled away. ‘No! You cannae do that. If your leg can be mended, so can its.’

Antoine sighed. ‘It’s not so easy with animals. They will not stay still, as I had to. Some die just being brought indoors. They are wild creatures, after all. And a dead hare will be a good dinner for a fox or the crows, who need to eat also.’

Andra shook his head, staring at the grass at Antoine’s feet, holding back his tears. ‘No,’ he said again, kicking the fallen tree. ‘We cannae just do it in.’

‘Very well.’ Antoine fumbled for his crutches and got to his feet. ‘Carry it back to my room, and we will do what we can for it.’

Andra scooped up the hare, which lay limp in his arms, and followed the soldier back to the keep. There, under Antoine’s instruction, he found a stick and, while the soldier nursed the hare in his lap, sanded it smooth of bark and knots. Antoine stroked the animal until its breathing calmed, then felt the damaged limb, fingering it so softly the creature did not move. It was a simple fracture. No bone was splintered, no skin broken. ‘You may have a chance, little one,’ he whispered, binding the hare’s leg to the splint with strips of lint.

A nest of straw was made in a small wooden chest in Antoine’s room, far away from the hounds. The wolf, who had followed them down the passage, put his nose into the box, sniffed the animal, and went back to his place by the great hall fire. From that moment, he added the hare to his duties, guarding him from intruders as he had done Antoine.

While the hare rested, Antoine despatched Andra with a list of plants he must find. ‘I would come, but I will slow you down,’ he said, ‘and the most important is only found on north-facing slopes, so I could not climb there with this leg. Not yet.’

Memorising the list – poppies, shepherd’s purse, sage and honeysuckle – Andra scurried off. When he returned with a pouchful of leaves and stems, Antoine picked through them. ‘Well done, boy. You have found everything I asked for. If anything can save your hare, it will be these. Now, watch carefully.’

Pouring a flagon of water newly boiled over the kitchen fire into a bowl, he added the poppy heads and a handful of crushed leaves and left them to cool. Once the water was tepid, he removed the poppies, placed the bowl inside the hare’s nest, and tucked a sprig of shepherd’s purse under its ribs. ‘And now we will leave him,’ said the soldier, pulling the lid of the chest over the box until only a chink of light reached the hare. As the pair made for the great hall, the hare lay still as a dead thing. Later, when all was quiet, its nose twitched, and it lapped the bowl of water. Then it slept, for days.

Three weeks later, a party from the keep made its way deep into the woods. Antoine and Andra walked together, followed by Louise and Benoit, who was carrying the hare’s box. When they reached the burn, they stopped. Benoit put the box down, removed the lid, and tilted it. The creature hopped out. For a second it crouched, nose quivering, ears at half-mast, before, with a leap, it was gone, darting left and right into the grasses, and out of sight.

Andra looked on, biting his lip, but at the sight of the smile on Antoine’s face, his eyes lit up. ‘We did the right thing,’ he said to Benoit, who nodded, and placed a hand on his son’s tousled head.

Oliver Barton was restless. He was being kept at work in the outer pastures, farthest from the keep, and felling trees on the fringes of Crozier’s land. It was hard labour, for a man of his age, and in springtime the hours were long. Some days his companions slept over in a stone hut, to save the walk. He resisted this until it became clear his days as lookout on the walls were over. Those long watches had offered the chance to slip away with little trouble. The men he reported to seemed not to care if he was gone a day or two. But out here, as part of the small gang of woodcutters and herders, his absence would be noticed at once.

He was itching to report to Dacre. At the arrival of Albany’s red-haired soldier, he had known something strange was afoot. The Frenchman’s presence disturbed him. Who was this young soldier, and what was his business, first an invalid, and now sitting in an outhouse grinding herbs and blending salves for villagers who brought him their lame mules and worm-eaten cows? Even before he had an answer, the Warden General must be informed.

As the weeks passed, and he found no opportunity to slip off to Harbottle, his impatience simmered, and with it his ill temper. Growing fractious, he was gaining a reputation as someone to be avoided, not only because he was a stranger they could not trust. Quickly angered, he was an alarming sight when carrying an axe. Nobody liked to work alongside him, but sometimes they had no choice. When the foreman broke up a fight between Barton and Wat the Wanderer’s son, in which Barton had bitten Hewie’s hand so hard his finger was nearly severed, the sailor was consigned to a solitary spell in the stone hut. Brooding as he sat on the narrow wooden shelf and watched the day crawl past between the moss-packed stone, he nevertheless laughed. It was the gang who were suffering, not him. They would have to walk the five miles home that night, and back again at dawn, while he could laze the hours away, staring at the stars through the ragged thatch.

Freed the next morning, he promised to reform. But a few days later he started another brawl and laid a woodcutter out cold. This time he was condemned to five days’ confinement.

‘Any more of this,’ the foreman warned him, ‘and it’ll be Crozier himsel who sees to ye. Believe me, ye dinnae want that.’

Head low, Barton slunk off to serve his time in the stone cell. Only when the door had been locked on him did a slow grin spread into his beard. Shut in with a pitcher of water and a muslin-wrapped cheese to see him through, he was happy for the first time in weeks. The woodcutters’ voices were still clear on the evening air when he took out the chisel concealed in his boot, and began to work at the loose stone walls.

The horse he stole from Hob’s top field did its best to throw him, but a man who had sailed the German Sea and the Cornish coast in winter, pitched about deck like butter in a churn, would not be defeated by a border mare. Digging his fingers into her mane, and his boots into her belly, he clung on until she quietened, though he cursed her bony flanks. A few hours later, before sunrise, they trotted through a hamlet. Seeing a rope lying in the street, Barton tied the mare to a tree and slipped into the yard of the biggest house on the street. In a lean-to shack he found an old horse dozing. ‘Easy, lad,’ he said, as it shuffled, ‘it’s no you I’m after.’ Lifting a saddle and bridle off the wall, he backed out.

Barton reached Harbottle the next evening. Weary and hungry after a night on the road, he did not argue when he was shown to the soldiers’ quarters, and given a plate of lamb chops. Blackbird found him there some time later, lying on his pallet, chewing a wad of salt beef like a cow its cud.

‘The Warden General is away,’ the butler said, without ceremony.

Barton narrowed his eyes and looked at Blackbird as if he were blocking his view. ‘When’ll he be back?’ He spat the beef onto the floor, and saw the butler’s mouth tighten.

‘Tomorrow, perhaps. No later than the day after.’ Blackbird’s reluctance to divulge his master’s whereabouts was plain for both to hear. ‘But you can leave a message with me.’

Barton lay back, and put his hands behind his head. ‘I’ll wait a day. There’s no great hurry.’

‘As you will,’ said Blackbird, and left the bunkhouse, uneasy with Barton’s eyes following him. In the sergeant’s office, he took the troops’ captain aside. ‘Keep your eye on that man. He’s the baron’s informant, but a felon of the lowest rank. The sooner Dacre’s done with him, the better.’

Warm and fed, Barton slept well. He rose, washed himself in a bucket of water from the well, and ran his fingers through his hair and beard. Thus freshened, he took his mess, slurping down porridge and bread as if he had no care in the world.

When the captain asked what he would do that day, Barton gave him a sweet smile. ‘Take a ride to the coast, since I’m near. I’m a seafaring man, never right unless I can hear the waves. I will be back by nightfall to see the baron,
Deo volente.’

Saddling up, he rode out of the castle and turned east. Harbottle was far below him, nestled in its springtime bowl of green, when he pulled the mare to a halt. Sheltered from the morning breeze by a lonely stand of elms, he watched the castle gates, so distant his eyes watered as he stared. The mare fidgeted, but he held her still, and after a few minutes she dropped her head to crop the grass. An hour later, he saw what he was waiting for. A figure in a long cloak rode out of the gates, followed by a helmeted guard, whose horse tailed hers at a few yards’ distance.

It was just as he had hoped. An old guardsman had been grumbling over dinner the night before at this tedious duty. ‘Waste of my time, and the baron’s money,’ he’d said, gnawing his chop. ‘The girl won’t come to any harm. She never goes far. More likely to meet trouble from the locals with me pointing my sword in their faces.’ A murmur of agreement had run round the table.

‘Still,’ one of the group had said, pushing his plate aside, ‘it’s an easy posting, being nursemaid to a child. Better than chasing thieves and risking your life, like some of us do every day.’ He’d leaned across the table towards the guardsman. ‘Do you sit doing needlework with her of an evening, old man? Sing her lullabies at night, eh – or send her to sleep some other way? She’s not the comeliest I’ve seen, but out here there’s not much choice. Take whatever comes your way, says I. And at your age, be grateful for any port that’ll have ye.’

The man had given a cackle as the guard threw his chop bone at him, and the group had broken up, in laughter and jeers.

When he saw the path they had taken, Barton set off across the hilltop. Some time later, he watched them pass below, and urged the mare down the hill in their wake.

Hearing approaching hooves, the guardsman turned his horse to face the rider.

‘A good morning to you both,’ said Barton, pleasantly, bringing the mare to a walk. He touched his helmet, and bowed to the girl, who was watching him with interest.

‘It is your father’s informant,’ said the guardsman to his charge. ‘We will let him pass.’

‘I am merely ambling to kill the time,’ said Barton, coming to a halt. ‘I would not mind company. I was headed for the white sands at Alnmouth, to give my horse a run. Are ye going that way?

‘Not so far,’ said the guardsman before Joan could answer. ‘Her ladyship is merely taking the air for an hour or two.’

‘But I would like to see the white sands,’ she said. ‘Is it a great distance?’

‘Nothing a good rider would notice,’ said Barton.