Dacre's War (4 page)

While they drank, the throng in the great hall dispersed, hounds and wenches following their men up the stairs, and into the sobering night. There was the clatter of horses and mules, and servants' boots, as the keep emptied, the crowd spilling out over the cobbles, their voices wakening the birds.

By the keep's gates Crozier stood, with Louise at his side. He pressed a pouch of giltsilver into the hand of each guard as he passed, a gesture of gratitude and respect that would last longer, and be of more use, than their aching heads.

CHAPTER THREE

27 September 1523

At the bugler's cry, Harbottle Castle came alive. Soldiers dropped their dice and raced to the gates, stable boys crammed the remains of their evening meal into their mouths before scurrying to their stalls, and sentries streamed from the barracks to crowd the walls. With the groan of a ship about to break up in a storm, the drawbridge was lowered.

Far above them, Francis Blackbird watched from the ramparts as his master returned. He knew at once that something was wrong. The baron was not at the head of his men but out on the wing, riding as if the army he was bringing home were invisible, and he alone was cantering through the early autumn evening off the hillside and into the greensward fringed by trees where Harbottle stood, a haven in the heart of rebel territory.

On the walls, the guards' helmets glinted as if they'd been struck with a flint. The flashing steel was echoed in their gimlet stare. By day, nobody could approach without being seen. Allies were anxious as they drew close, fearing they would be taken for foes; enemies were rarely able to reach the gates before they were chased off by arrows or shot.

The baron's men swept into the castle, steam rising from their horses as if it were the depths of winter and not a golden warm day. Wild-eyed and raucous, they were in good spirits after a week of fighting, but his lordship was wrapped in brooding silence, his mood visible even from Blackbird's lofty lookout as he flung his reins at a groom, and strode up the ramp and into the castle without a word.

His butler feared a difficult night lay ahead. While the army birled around the courtyard as if at a dance, unsaddling their horses and shouldering packs heavy as the dead, Blackbird hurried down the turnpike stair to the baron's private quarters. By the time his master reached the top floor, a fire was burning in the grate, a sprinkling of herbs sweetening the dank fortress air, and fresh hose and shirt lay on the bed, awaiting their weary owner.

Thomas, Baron Dacre was the most powerful man in the north of England. Warden General of the English marches, and Keeper of Carlisle, he was not as rich as his king, but he had so many debts he could call in, so many allies to answer his summons, that he could whistle up a fortune at a day's notice, far faster than Henry could dream of. Nor would his income be recorded by the treasury. No whisper of the gold and silver, the grain and cattle and plate that passed into Dacre's hands from the countrymen around him ever reached the Chancellor. The only evidence lay in Dacre's widening waist, and a smile so full of teeth, it made some think of a wolf.

The north was Dacre's bailiwick, but his heart lay in the west. The middle and eastern marches were too troublesome for comfort. Though he had been in charge of them for many years, he was considered an impostor, an enemy, and the post irked him like a hair shirt. As a young man he would have relished the challenge. Now, in late middle age, the baron was weary. More and more he longed to retreat to the west march, and Naworth, the castle he called home.

Dacre's spurs scraped on stone as he approached his chamber, his tread heavy with more than fatigue. Busying himself, Blackbird knelt before an oaken chest, tidying underclothes and shirts. He wiped his face blank. The baron hated any display of sympathy.

A man more comfortable in the saddle than in a chair, who patrolled the borders in all weathers as if there were assassins behind every tree, Dacre was an uneasy presence indoors. Blackbird had seen veteran soldiers flinch and reach for their daggers as the warden flung himself from dinner table to fireside, more like a man about to begin a charge than one in search of a drink. His vigour and enthusiasms were better suited to the outdoors than to the confinement of bedchamber and hall, and quite how he carried out his dalliances with elegant wives and widows bemused his servant. Surely he left in his wake a tell-tale trail of broken trinkets and paintings knocked askew? Whatever appeal he held, neither grace nor patience was part of it. Blackbird's own affairs, by contrast, reflected a lifetime's study in manners, his conquests planned and executed as cunningly as Dacre's military campaigns, though not always with equal success.

The Warden General stooped to enter the room, which in his presence shrank to half its size. He grunted at Blackbird and unstrapped his sword and belt, dropping them onto the settle by the fire. His man helped him out of his jerkin, and the smell of sweat filled the room. Blackbird raised an eyebrow, and the Warden General stripped off his wet shirt, and threw it after his sword. Boots followed shortly.

His face was smeared with filth, his thinning grey hair greased and unkempt. Blackbird poured water into a pitcher and stood by, a cloth over his arm, while Dacre plunged his head deep, then rose, shaking water from his eyes and hair as if he were a hound fresh out of the river.

Towelling himself, the baron sat half dressed on the bed. Flesh spilled over his belt, but beneath the buttery flab was a chest made of muscle. His shoulders would not have disgraced a blacksmith, nor his hamlike arms. He did not speak, but Blackbird sensed an easing of the atmosphere, and allowed himself to fill it.

‘I hear the venture was a great success,' he said in a reedy voice bred on the Cumberland moors. ‘They say there is a string of pack-horses still to arrive, laden with goods from the ransacked abbey.' He cast a glance at his master from beneath grizzled eyebrows, but the Warden General's expression did not change. His eyes were fixed on a middle distance where something was happening that neither he, nor his servant, liked the look of.

‘My lord,' continued Blackbird, with a self-deprecating cough, ‘is it true that Jedburgh burns, and the Scots have been brought back to heel?'

‘Aye,' replied the warden at last. He began to pull on his shirt. ‘It burns all right.' Blackbird heard a muttered rider, but not the words. ‘As do I. As do I.'

Heaving himself off the bed, Dacre looked around the chamber as if only now recognising where he was. ‘There'll be dinner tonight for my lieutenants. Surrey and Eure will also be joining us. My brothers too. They will sleep in these rooms, not in the barracks. Have the truckles made up.'

‘Goodwife Cooper has dinner in hand, my lord, and I shall help wait at table. The beds are already prepared.'

‘Good,' replied Dacre, as if his mind were elsewhere. ‘Is Joan still here? She hasn't skipped off to Morpeth with her sister?'

‘No, my lord, she was too keen to see you return. She will be waiting for you downstairs. I told her to let you disrobe first, but she's been asking when you'll be back since break of day.'

A glimmer of warmth crossed the baron's face. ‘Good,' he repeated.

At dinner, none but Blackbird would have guessed his master's state of mind. Harbottle's hall was cheerless, as spartan as if the warden's smallest and shabbiest castle were nothing more than a garrison. From its lack of decoration you might have thought Dacre rarely visited, but in recent years he had spent much time here, keeping an eye on the eastern march. Even Morpeth, his best-appointed castle, some miles south, drew him rarely. These days his married daughters and their young sister slept there more often than he, enjoying the rich Flemish hangings, the fine carved beds, and fires so well tempered they sent their smoke up the chimney. There was nothing to keep a woman in Harbottle, not even a kitchen. Finding a cook out here who could organise hot dinners that were not reduced to charcoal and still retained a blush of heat was almost as hard as keeping the gangs of these parts in check. Had any of his men known what Dacre paid Goodwife Cooper for her services, there would have been revolt.

There were days when Harbottle's oozing damp and vindictive draughts made Dacre sigh, yet he returned to it, each time, with a lifting of his heart. The bleak and threatening hills it faced, the moors that lapped its stone, were a reminder of his duty, and why he was here. The eastern march and its middle neighbour were a battlefield, and the conflict was constant. Placed as he was here, within a halfday's ride of the Scottish border, surrounded by Northumbrian highlanders as treacherous as the Scots, the enemy could appear in any guise: cattleman, child, serving wench or lord. Trouble was always near, as if the heart of this country beat only when stoked with rage or revenge. Chill and comfortless it might be, but Harbottle cautioned him against growing careless, or feeling safe. In his world, those were the gravest dangers a man could face.

As he joined his guests in the hall, at a table piled with meats and pies, a hearth of flames filling one wall and his hunting hawks perched overhead, beadily awaiting the scraps that would be thrown their way, Harbottle, he thought, was welcoming enough.

‘My lords,' he said, with as broad a smile as if he had not seen them for weeks, ‘please, take your places. We must eat.' Surrey, Eure and Dacre's brothers Christopher and Philip rose from their benches by the fire, goblets in hand. The baron filled a cup to the brim and raised it. ‘A toast, I think, after our labours.' There was a murmur of approval as they held their glasses aloft. ‘To Jedburgh,' said Dacre. ‘Long may it smoulder.'

‘And all Scotland with it!' roared Christopher, already flushed with wine. A laugh ran around the room as drinks were drained, and in the corner a hesitant lute was plucked, the castle's bugler pressed into service as a minstrel though he could play barely three tunes, and those only before he'd touched a drink.

The evening sank low and late in conversation. Blackbird cleared the platters, brought more ale and wine from the cellars, and made a space for himself on the bench beside them. No one questioned his right to a place at Dacre's table. The baron's oldest retainer, a miller's son taken into service in Naworth as a boy, he had become more family than servant. His official title was butler, but his duties and responsibilities were far wider than that. Butler, manservant, steward and confidant, he was the most influential of Dacre's men, and the most feared. His loyalty to Dacre was absolute, a devotion that none could explain or diminish. It was said Blackbird's love of his master was what kept him unmarried – how else to explain the single habits of a man whose lust for wenches meant no good-looking skivvy was safe unless her door was barred at night?

Over the years, Dacre had ignored Blackbird's nocturnal prowling. Occasional difficulties were easily resolved, although eventually there was a limit to the toll of bastards the baron was prepared to find homes for. Placing his own was taxing enough. After his butler had fathered one too many, a severe scolding brought a brief spell of chastity. When contrition wore off, Blackbird took greater care, and chose his wenches more for their meekness than for their looks. At the first hint that they might cause a scandal, he was confident he could quell them with a word, or a slap, or a visit to the healer and her scouring herbs.

This evening's conversation was the sort Blackbird most enjoyed. He never rode on campaigns with his master, seeing his function as keeper of the home fires, a role Dacre's long-dead wife had never performed, at least not to his standards. Now, he would learn what had happened in the time Dacre had been gone.

He knew better than to ask questions, nor was there any need. Dacre's companions were happy to revisit their exploits. So excitable was their chatter, it might only have been Blackbird who noticed how quiet the baron kept, and how much he drank.

‘Who'd have thought they would put up such a fight?' said Thomas Howard. A favourite of Henry VIII, he had been elevated to the earldom of Surrey when his elderly father was created Duke of Norfolk after trouncing the Scots at Flodden ten years earlier. It was a victory won with his son's help, and the memory of that appalling battlefield might explain why, despite his still black hair, the middle-aged Surrey was haggard as an old man. It was hard to picture him leading a charge and lopping off heads, but it was said his sword was lethal. He would never match his father's military brilliance or political brain, but he was a worthy foe, and a most useful ally. Dacre might be Warden General of the English marches, but whenever the king wanted his authority stamped on the Scots he sent Surrey north, as he had his father. Like a nurse to oversee a wayward child, thought Dacre, staring into the oily depths of his rich red wine.

‘They've been half starved this past summer,' continued the earl. ‘Armstrong and his men told us they had made sure of that. Yet they fought like lions.' Surrey's eyes narrowed, and he leaned across the table towards Dacre. ‘Can we trust Sly Armstrong, d'you think? Has he been playing a double game with us?'

Dacre's booming northern voice rose to the rafters like a reproof to Surrey's sleekit southern accent. ‘Armstrong wouldnae dare cross me. If he said he burned the corn, and all the barns in Teviotdale, he did it sure enough. Where these border rats get their strength from, I couldn't say. For all I know, they eat their own middens, or mibbe their own bairns. Nothing would surprise me. But they fair near did for us this time, and I'll never forget it.'