Dacre's War (27 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

June 1524

That summer the English marches began to simmer, rebels and reivers picking fights with the king’s men and Dacre’s guards, and even with themselves, as if to pass the time.

Across the border in Teviotdale, Crozier’s lands were at peace. The calm made him uneasy, and with Benoit and Tom and his most trusted lieutenants he prowled the dale in search of the reason. It should not be this quiet.

Was it worry that made her husband so grim-faced when he was at home? Louise told herself it must be, but she was unconvinced. Since Crozier had returned from Foulberry’s castle, he had lapsed into silence, his face hard as basalt, his words falling like stones. At night too, when they lay in bed, he barely spoke though he clasped her tightly, even in sleep. By day she would sometimes catch him gazing at her, a forlorn look in his eye, as if he were measuring the distance between them.

Antoine was now walking with a stick, ignoring the limp that pitched him to the side with every other step. Every morning he headed out to the woods with basket and bowl, collecting flowers and herbs and tapping trees for sap. Word had spread of his knowledge of bones, and the plants and seeds that mended them, and the parade of ailing animals brought to him for treatment was soon joined by villagers seeking help for themselves.

The Frenchman refused to charge for his services, saying it was mere guesswork and cost him nothing, but some dropped him a coin regardless. Such donations he gave to Louise, who put them in a jar. He would need money for his journey home, which was fast approaching.

‘You will soon have to leave us,’ she said one day, as Antoine pounded willowherb to a paste at the kitchen table, making her head thump like a barn door. ‘Now your leg is almost healed you must think about what you are going to do next.’

Antoine stirred distilled water into the mush, and set pestle and mortar aside. ‘I know,’ he said, and the sadness in his voice startled her. She looked up from the fire, but he had gone, leaving behind the willowherb salve and its sharp scent of summer.

A few days later, Crozier took him aside. ‘What are your plans, lad?’ he asked, not unkindly. Antoine told him he had not yet made any. ‘Then you must rejoin your army.’

‘But they will throw me in gaol, as a deserter,’ said Antoine, colour warming his cheeks. ‘Maybe worse,’ he added, seeing Crozier unmoved.

‘No reason they need know you were running away,’ the borderer replied. ‘We can come up with a tale to explain why you were so far from camp when you broke your leg. Never fear, I will take the blame.’ Crozier put a hand on the soldier’s shoulder. ‘A line from me, and Albany will be lenient. But you cannot hide out here much longer.’

Antoine shivered. ‘I would rather join my brethren in the east of the country than go back to the army,’ he said.

‘I thought you’d given up that nonsense,’ Crozier said, sharply. ‘You promised my wife.’

‘And I meant it. But if it is a choice between soldiering and doing what I first set out to do, I would rather stay here and take my chances as a preacher. I am likely to die in either case, am I not?’

Crozier frowned. ‘Your life is entirely yours once you leave us. But so long as you are in my care, you are an injured soldier, planning to return to barracks as soon as you can walk without a stick. You understand? Breathe one word of your heresy while you live here, and I will have you whipped.’

Antoine bowed his head. ‘I understand,’ he said quietly.

‘What will happen to him if he goes back to Albany’s army?’ asked Louise that night as she and Crozier sat beside the fire in their bedchamber. Her husband shrugged. ‘If they believe us, then nothing, perhaps. But more likely he will be flogged.’

‘But that might kill him!’ Louise put a hand to her mouth.

‘He will survive,’ said Crozier roughly, bending to remove his boots. ‘He’s already been through far worse.’ His face was flushed when he sat up and set his boots aside, but Louise did not notice, staring instead at the smouldering logs as if they were a problem she could not solve. She was still quiet when they climbed into bed. Long after she had fallen asleep, Crozier lay thinking about Antoine and his reluctance to leave, while the fire burned slowly to ash.

In the morning, Crozier was gone before Louise awoke, and his side of the bed was cold. She dressed and went down to the kitchens, where the maid had stoked the fire. ‘Take Grandpa his bread,’ said Louise, giving her Old Crozier’s plate and cup, and laying out food for Ella and the children, who would be down shortly.

A minute later, the maid hurried back into the kitchen, the plate still in her hand. She opened her mouth, but could not speak, tears spilling instead of words. Louise picked up her skirts and ran across the great hall and down the passage to the men’s quarters, where Old Crozier had a small room to himself.

Lying on his pallet, turned towards the wall, Crozier’s grandfather was curled like a dried leaf, knees drawn up, head tucked down. Louise fell to her knees and put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Grandpa,’ she whispered, but he did not respond. His body was cold and stiff. She turned him towards her, and felt her heart kick at the sight of his face, eyes closed, mouth agape, the silvered cheeks hollow where his teeth had been knocked out many years before.

Putting her head on his chest, she held her breath. Eventually she felt his ribs rise and fall, though the lungs were weak as a fledgling’s, and the air he sucked barely enough to sustain life.

‘Fetch my husband,’ said Louise to the maid at her side. ‘Hurry, girl. Get him at once.’

Left alone, Louise put a hand on Old Crozier’s brow. He did not move. Settling herself beside him she took his hand, talking to him softly all the while, until Crozier found her there. From the doorway he looked down at his once powerful grandfather, now so shrivelled that his blanket lay all but flat. ‘Jesus and Mary,’ he said hoarsely. He crouched beside Louise and took the hand she had been holding, rubbing it as if his touch could bring his grandfather back. But Old Crozier did not stir.

‘What shall we do?’ said Louise, leaning against her husband. ‘He is scarcely breathing.’

Crozier shook his head. ‘Make up his fire and keep him warm. Keep watch, and hope he awakes.’

There was a scrabbling from the passageway, and the wolf appeared in the door. Sniffing Old Crozier’s hand, he licked his face. When there was no response, he sat on his haunches, whining.

Louise put a hand on Crozier’s back. ‘Antoine might be able to help,’ she said.

‘I’ll find him,’ he replied, and left the room, summoning the wolf to follow.

Antoine, when he came, was perplexed. After feeling for Old Crozier’s pulse, and examining his chest and back, arms and legs and tongue, he sat back on his heels. ‘I have never seen anything like this,’ he said. ‘He has no obvious signs of sickness. His skin is clear, and no limb is twisted or out of shape. Yet he is far, far away. It might be the prelude to . . .’ His eyes flickered towards Crozier, who was staring at his grandfather’s sleeping face. The word that hung heavy over the room remained unspoken. ‘Or,’ he continued, ‘it may be a temporary oblivion, of a sort that he will wake from, refreshed.’

‘For God’s sake,’ said Crozier, ‘he is an old man. At his age, nothing can refresh him.’

‘That I know, but . . .’

Crozier ignored him, and put a hand on Louise’s arm. ‘All we can do is take care of him, and see what happens.’ She looked at him, unable to speak.

‘I will nurse him,’ said Antoine. ‘With your permission, of course.’

With a glance at her husband, who nodded his assent, Louise agreed. ‘We will take it in turns, then, you and I.’

Calling the maid to fetch ale and a sponge, she dragged a stool beside Old Crozier’s bed. ‘I will watch over him till nightfall.’ She wetted the sponge and dabbed the old man’s lips, but even at the taste of the honeyed beer he did not move.

A long week followed. It was as if a pall had fallen over the keep, everyone hushed and subdued as they waited for news from Old Crozier’s room. The wolf took up post outside his door, leaving only for a few minutes at a time. Louise would call him to her as she sat by the bed, burying her hands in his fur, and laying her head on his. The wolf’s warmth, his shining blue eyes and panting tongue, were a picture of life, while the husk of a man at her side seemed to grow flimsier each day.

A candle was set burning beneath a bowl of bay leaves, and the room was sweetly scented. Old Crozier could not be roused to eat, and the only liquid he drank was what trickled down his throat from the sponge pressed to his lips. His skin grew papery, and his face was becoming more skull than flesh.

On the third night, when Antoine relieved Louise from her post, he brought with him a jar of green unguent. ‘What is this?’ she asked.

‘Foxgloves mixed with ground ivy and hemlock,’ he replied. ‘I can think of nothing else that might rouse his senses, or reduce his pain. If you allow it, I will rub it onto his chest.’ He led her away from the pallet and lowered his voice. ‘Your husband’s grandfather is close to death, as you must know. Rather than cure him, this salve might hasten that process. Are you willing to take that risk?’ He turned to look at the bed. Louise followed his gaze to where Old Crozier lay.

‘I must speak to Adam,’ she replied, a catch in her voice.

She found him in the great hall, seated by the fire, and took his hand as she repeated what Antoine had said. The line between Crozier’s eyes deepened. ‘I’m not sure it is our place to wager on Old Crozier’s life.’ Louise waited, knowing he had not finished. After a pause he raised his hands, as if for one of the few times in his life, he felt helpless. ‘Yet though he makes no sound, he must be suffering, wasting away without food or drink. Another week like this, and he will be dead anyway. If the salve proves fatal, perhaps we will have eased his passing.’ He gave a groan, and dropped his head. ‘Jesus, Louise, I don’t know. What do you say?’

‘I do not know either,’ she said, biting back tears. ‘I want to trust Antoine. We know he means well. But to hasten his death? I don’t know if I could carry that on my conscience. It would be a mortal sin.’

Crozier looked up, as if he were seeing through her to someone who stood at her back. He sighed, and took her hands in his. ‘Then let it be on mine, Louise. Tell Antoine to do it.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

There was only one good bed in Harbottle. Blackbird’s curtained recess by the fire in the castle’s main hall was the envy of all, out of the reach of draughts and warm as a new-baked loaf. Yet for some months it had lain empty, the butler no longer retiring there at the end of the evening but to a truckle bed outside his master’s door, where winds from all airts of the castle convened. Since autumn, the Warden General had been waking most nights, shouting, sometimes screaming, though not for Blackbird. Dressed in shift and buckskin slippers, the butler would tap on his door, giving him time to come to his senses before lifting the latch. The sight of a candle seemed to ease the baron’s fear, chasing off the spectres that fouled his dreams, and he would wave his man away with an oath or a growl, as if it were Blackbird who had disturbed his sleep, and not the terrors he carried within.

The butler had hoped that light summer nights would ease Dacre’s mind, but the nightmares came furious as ever. Blackbird should not have been surprised. Out here, on the lip of the civilised world, summer was but a name, and a short one at that. In June the wind was sharp as a winter squall, and the sun struggled to shine through clouds plump with rain, whose salt-laced columns scoured the hills and turned sweet meadows to mud.

Accompanying the night-time sweats was Dacre’s daytime frown, a glower that clung to him like thickening fog as he set to work each morning. At night, over dinner, he drank his kegs and flagons dry, growing so testy that none but his brothers dared sit with him till the wicks guttered and the servants snored, and there was nothing for it but to make for bed.

A letter from court would cure all this, Blackbird felt sure. The baron was fretting, waiting for an answer to his last message, a querulous reminder he had despatched to the king in a skitter of dusted ink as Easter bells rang out across the shire, and his sentence had yet to be lifted.

But no reply had arrived, and now the butler’s nerves were fraying at the sight of his master’s unease. They were like a matching pair of guns, he thought, held in unsteady hands, and likely to blast fire from their mouths at the first sign of an enemy. He did not like his own, or his lordship’s, volatile mood.

As Dacre’s temper roughened, his hands began to shake. Of a morning he could not hold his reins steady until he had swigged from his flask, the mere scent of spirits as the bottle was unstoppered calming the tremor before he had taken a sip.

This was not the time to grow feeble. Rebel fires were flaring across the eastern and middle marches on the English side, and the west and eastern Scottish marches were turning ugly. Reluctant to withdraw from the east, where trouble brewed whenever the Warden General looked away, Dacre despatched his brother to deal with the Scots. Sir Christopher preferred chess to the chase, but when he caught the smell of the enemy he was, Dacre believed, a better soldier even than he, and crueller, more pitiless, for sure.

As children, Dacre and his brothers had fought the peasant boys on their Cumberland lands, hazel staffs against sapling sticks, crowbars against stones, but only Christopher had carried his games to the very end. There were several boys who rued their encounter, one so badly beaten he never spoke again, spending his few remaining years mumbling and sucking his fingers. And there was one who did not make it home, spitted on Christopher’s first sword. Philip and Dacre had scrabbled at the earth and packed the body beneath it while their brother turned his face to the darkening sky, and told them to hurry.

In their neighbourhood, fear did the Dacres no harm. Yet now it was Tam who was afraid, something Blackbird would never have believed possible. As war with Scotland dragged on, Dacre grew more sullen. Summoned by Surrey, newly named Duke of Norfolk after his father’s recent death, to broker yet another short-lived truce with the Scots, he would return hot-cheeked, cursing the duke for his deaf ear, which would not hear of his retirement. That humiliation was compounded by the duke’s probing of his activities, the man’s obvious suspicion of him settling like a black cloud over his head.

There were skirmishes and set battles across the border, the Scots taunting their enemy, and Dacre swift to reply. That year had seen some of the fiercest engagements Blackbird could recall, the Harbottle bugler working all hours as he called the alarm, or trumpeted the troops on their way as they poured out of the castle like ink spilled from a pot, before spreading over the dale. Yet even a bugle blast could not charge the Warden General with fire.

Previously, war had brightened his eye. Now he hesitated before setting out at the head of his men. Night-time forays were a memory, the baron taking instead to standing on the castle walls, watching darkness gather as if it, and not the northern tribes, was his enemy. ‘I’ll no venture out in that,’ he would mutter. ‘They’ll never catch me that easy.’ More than once Blackbird caught him speaking aloud when he thought he was alone, but whom he was addressing the butler did not know.

These should have been exhilarating days. News from over the border suggested the boy king James would soon be taking his throne, the factions around him and his mother finally reaching accord, and peace between their countries within reach. The regent’s laughable last year had left the marches barely scathed, unlike Albany’s reputation. Departing with undignified haste, yet still too late to reach his ailing wife, he would do well never to return. The garrison he had left at Dunbar Castle, in the east, kicked its heels, scanning the horizon for ships and news, but hearing nothing but the kittiwakes mewling over their heads. A catalogue of Albany’s deeds was being compiled in Edinburgh Castle by the Lord High Treasurer, filling a book with the upstart’s misdemeanours. Should he return, he would not be housed in Holyrood, or the dowager queen’s bedchamber, but more likely the castle gaol.

Blackbird smirked. Two more dissimilar men could scarcely be imagined sharing Margaret’s favours. Her alliance with the regent had been tactical: that he did not doubt, or condemn. The affection in which Dacre held her, however, suggested theirs had been a bond deeper than lust, little good though it had done them.

Was Margaret Tudor the root of his master’s distress? He thought it unlikely. The death of Dacre’s much-wronged wife Bess had chastened him, but only for a time. No woman could disturb him this powerfully, surely, except perhaps his mettlesome daughter. These days, though, Joan was docile, tamed – one prayed – at last. Content to wander Harbottle’s grounds with her maid, or ride out with her pudding-faced guard, she was growing into a young lady. Not Blackbird’s type, even had she been on offer, but he could see her charm: the heart-shaped face, the supple waist, the pert, intelligent eyes.

For the moment, Blackbird could do nothing but pace the castle walls at his master’s heels. News was awaited from every quarter: the west, where Sir Christopher had been despatched to quell the debatable lands; the south, where Henry’s court had turned its back on them; and the north, where the answer to their ancient quarrel might be found in the shape of a twelve-year-old boy, whose crown, if donned, would slip over his head and lie round his neck like a collar.

In the moorland wastes of Liddesdale, the Armstrongs had just received their orders. The day was bright, the wind boisterous, and in his whistling peel tower Sly Armstrong received Dacre’s messenger, whose sodden shirt smelled sharp as vinegar. Sly listened, neither nodding nor shaking his head. When the list of commands had been delivered, Dacre trusting only to the spoken word in this cross-border alliance, Sly repeated them, like an altar boy reciting the catechism. The messenger interrupted, to amend a detail, and Sly tossed his head, not liking to be corrected, and began once more from the beginning. The orders were not complicated, but Sly was a man of action, not memory, and he was sluggish in this lesson as in nothing else. When finally he had it learned, he dismissed the messenger and summoned his men.

They were a large clan, not only in number, but built like men-of-war, with barrel chests and beefy arms, and legs so sturdy that when planted wide they could have anchored a bridge on the Tyne. As they filed into the room, weighed down with knives and clubs, cross-bows and quivers, the place shrank.

Sly stood among them, a silver-ringed hand stroking an unkempt black beard. Perhaps unwilling to expend energy he need not waste, he spoke with lips all but closed. His eyes too were slits, though the gleam that shone from under his lashes told his listeners that here was an expedition they would enjoy.

A few words were enough to send his outriders off to alert their Tynedale kin. The rest of them were informed they had three days to prepare and muster their men to Sir Christopher’s side, at the gate that crossed from Bewcastle Waste into Liddesdale.

‘We’ll meet Black Ned and our Tynedale cousins there,’ said Sly, into his beard. ‘Dacre’s our paymaster, as ye well ken, but he doesnae own us. This is a fight, nothing mair. Like all those afore, it is a paid deal. Our allegiance is tae none but oursels.’

His men frowned, and drew closer. ‘Whit I’m saying, lads, is this,’ said Sly, his eyes passing over each of their faces, the hangdog, the fat-jowled, the eager and cruel. ‘Have nae fear if, in the ruck, ye spit yin o Dacre’s boys. I’m no gonnae hand ye ower for justice. Accidents happen. Scots or English, it disnae matter whose throats we slice, so long as we’re true to the clan. Ye with me?’

A growling assent ran round the room, accompanied by a scraping of spurs as the band dispersed to polish their steel and gather provisions for a week-long conflict, or more.

Across the border, in the northern reaches of Tynedale, Sly Armstrong’s outriders picked their way with care. It was still light, though evening stars were pricking the lowering sky. Moorland stretched to infinity on one side, but on the other they saw a line of treetops over the next ridge of hills. On they rode, parched heather raising dust around their horses’ hooves, setting the riders coughing beneath their scarves. Pulling to a halt when they reached the trees, the three men swigged from their flasks, wiped their faces, and knotted their kerchiefs around their necks. From here, they would be moving slowly.

What lay before them was deep, dishevelled forest. They entered and were met by toppled trunks, uprooted bushes and mounds of leaves, as if an angry hand had stretched down between the trees and knocked everything askew. As they followed the track, which was strewn with branches, twigs and stones, the wind quietened and the light faded like a lamp that was burning low. The tops of the trees shifted and moaned, but down here they were in a vault, the air as still as if it had not stirred in years. Fallen trees blocked their path at several points, obliging them to dismount and clamber their way around the obstruction. Unlike the unwary who strayed into these woods, the riders were not surprised to see that the trees had not fallen but been felled, the stumps where axes had swung lying like giant coins, clean-severed by Tynedale’s foresters. Where the wiser of the unwary would have turned back, the posse drew their cloaks close, and continued. The track led them gently downwards, and after a couple of miles they heard water, at first a murmur, then a roar, and came to the edge of a gully, through which a river licked over a bed of sharp rocks.

The stone stumps of an old bridge stared up at them from the gloom, green with moss. Planks and rubble from the broken crossing had long since been overgrown or swept away. They could not pass here, yet they did not ride on. Instead their leader put his fingers to his mouth, and whistled. For a few minutes the messengers sat in silence, aware of the army of trees at their backs, and the slow-falling night that would soon trap them here. Upriver a fox barked; there was a slither from the riverbank as an otter slid unseen into the black waters and swam off down the stream; and there was a footfall, so quiet it might have been a bird, creeping up behind them. One of the horses tossed its head and whinnied, and they turned to see a figure in brown approaching, longbow in hand.

The Armstrongs got off their horses, and the leader approached the archer. ‘I bring a summons from Sly, for Black Ned,’ he said, grasping the archer’s forearm in greeting. The man in brown jerked his head for them to follow. He led them upriver, through a thicket of holly and ash so low they had to duck their way through it. This was the Tynedale reivers’ warren, a morass of woodland and marsh they had reshaped, and set with pitfalls, until only those versed in its maze could find their way unaided.

Where the river narrowed, the archer came to a halt and disappeared into a fall of rocks. He emerged carrying a fat rope over his shoulder, which he lashed to a tree on the bank and flung across the water, where a boy stood in the shadows to catch it. When it was tied, the archer sidled down the slippery mud embankment, walked into the water and, holding the rope tight, waded towards the other side. The current ran fast and deep, and he stepped in from thigh to chest in a few paces. Caught by the torrent, his body bent like a bow, as if he would have been swept away had he not been tethered by the rope.