After Flodden (34 page)

‘Forgive me,’ he said, with a deprecating sweep of his hand, ‘I look like a ragamuffin, and no doubt smell like one too. I hope I do not put you off your dinner?’

‘No, no, my lord,’ said Paniter with a laugh, ‘we were finished.’ With a glance he dismissed Goodwife Black, who disappeared downstairs, still hungry, and found
consolation in a bottle of beer.

‘Come, sit,’ said Paniter. The courtier took a seat opposite him on the settle, by the fire, and the pair sat knee to knee in its warmth. Gabriel hesitated, unsure how to proceed.
Paniter watched him with curiosity and affection. His absence had been sorely felt. ‘You have been away on business, or so your letter said. Urgent private matters, I assume, to take you from
me at such a time as this.’ His voice was gentle, but he needed an answer.

‘Indeed, sir,’ said Gabriel, ‘they were urgent in the extreme, but in no way private. They concern you, and all of us, very directly.’

Paniter motioned him to continue.

‘Sir, to speak plainly, I believe I have learnt of a spy who may have helped bring about our defeat at Surrey’s hands.’

Paniter said nothing, his face rigid.

‘I have been on the trail of a most cunning young man, who appears to have been in the English commander’s pay, and passing information directly to him. For how long, I cannot say,
but at the very least since the army left for the muster.’

‘Who?’ From the harshness of the word, no-one could have guessed Patrick Paniter’s heart was beginning to beat as it had not done since he had left the battlefield. As the
courtier described his hunt for Benoit, the secretary ate every crumb of the story as if he were a starving man. If there had been a spy, passing on their decisions, and indecision, then the rout
of the army, the failure of the guns, the sheer bloody horror of that day might not be wholly his fault. The guilt that had been suffocating him might not be all his. He took a deep breath, and as
his lungs filled his back straightened.

‘We must find this cur,’ he said, with a voice like sharpened steel, ‘and bring him to justice. The country must be told about him, and his crime. And, my dear lad, everyone
will be told the part you have played in bringing him to the gibbet, as I have every confidence you will.’

Gabriel bowed his head. ‘My role is of no importance,’ he said. ‘All that matters is finding him.’

He explained how he had convinced Madame Brenier that if Paniter could speak to her son before anyone else, he would have a better chance of winning a morsel of mercy, which no court would
offer. ‘I told her that he might be able to claim madness, a spell of lunacy, following his sister’s death. At the very least, it might render his form of execution less
terrible.’

Paniter nodded, but charity was the last thing on his mind. ‘Do you need men to accompany you? He will be dangerous, you know.’

Gabriel shook his head. ‘I will travel more swiftly and secretly alone. And I can more than handle myself with a man like that, never you fear. He may be good with a carpenter’s
tools, but he is a stranger to swords.’

Paniter smiled. ‘Bring him to me, then,’ he said, rising, and kissing the courtier on each cheek. ‘When you deliver him, we will deal with him immediately, and as he
deserves.’

There was more colour in Paniter’s face as he bid the courtier goodbye than if he had downed a quart of claret. When Goodwife Black returned to clear the dishes, he caught her by the waist
and whirled her round the room, singing snatches of half-remembered tavern songs as he went. She shrieked, then giggled, then relaxed into his hold. Cheek to cheek they shuffled in quickening,
tightening circles until, panting, they toppled onto the bed where they set about a more satisfying dance whose music they knew note by note.

When the secretary woke, as always in the very heart of the night, he was not lathered in sweat. His pulse was steady, his heartbeat slow. The dreaded faces that hovered under the canopy seemed
tonight to be in retreat, dissolving in a fog that muffled their words. He almost laughed at the sight of old Bishop Elphinstone, who had warned against war with England, as he struggled against
the mist, his lips moving, his meaning lost. ‘Maybe you were no more right than I,’ whispered Paniter. ‘Old as you are, your wisdom was that of a coward, the fear of daring all on
the spin of a coin. I am not young, nor am I wise, but perhaps our fate lay outwith our hands.’ A roar of insults from the rest of the council who had thought Elphinstone a dotard and a fool
chased the old man out of the room. Paniter was warmed by the feeling, rare these days, of not being alone.

One by one, as was their nightly habit, his tormentors paraded above him. But where before they had been more vivid than in life, each now was faint, and it took only a puff of breath to send
them spinning into oblivion. The king alone refused to be dismissed. He looked down on his secretary, his jewels bright in the hour before dawn, his eyes glinting as keenly. ‘My mother was
right,’ he said, ‘nothing achieved by violence can endure.’

Paniter had heard this too often. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said silently, ‘we have been over this and over this. Calling Henry to order was a sensible move. He needed his wings
clipped, his ambitions curtailed.’

The argument the pair had had, long into their first night camped on Flodden hill, was now repeated, word perfect in Paniter’s memory, rehearsed as it had been each weary night since he
arrived back in the city. At the time, though, bent over the card table in the king’s wind-blown tent, Paniter had scarcely listened to the king, whose tender conscience would always prick
him in times of stress. For a man of warm and strong opinions, he could be vexatiously indecisive, procrastinating and deliberating when it was clear there was only one path to take. Paniter saw
God and the long dead queen behind these episodes, pulling the king’s strings like those puppet masters he had seen at James’s wedding feast, making a wooden toy dance as if alive, its
mouth opening and closing with the flick of invisible fingers behind the tiny stage.

Irritated at his dithering, Paniter was perhaps rougher than he would have been. When James repeated, for the hundredth time, his mother’s dying words, and his promise to abide by them,
the secretary waved them away as if swatting a bluebottle. He did not hide his exasperation. ‘Your mother, God rest her soul, did not mean you could never go to war. What king could make that
promise?

‘No, sir, it was your father she was talking about. She was cautioning you not to live as harshly, or heedlessly, as he had done, for fear of coming to an ugly end as he did, losing not
just his life, but his family. I cannot believe she would ever have asked you to turn the other cheek in the face of a threat such as Henry, who breathes down the neck of our country.’
Paniter stretched his legs out, and yawned. ‘Nor,’ he added, ‘would she have expected you not to press your claim to his throne for fear that some blood might be shed in the
process. She was not a faint-hearted woman, as you well know.’

James sighed, drank his wine, and poured a fresh goblet. He sat back in his rickety chair and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was tired. They had had a long, hard, and successful few weeks
since leaving Edinburgh. The army was much reduced in size and vigour, but their carts were full of booty from the fortresses and towns they had taken. First Norham, then Etal and Ford castles had
fallen into their hands as easily as ripened pears. Long-standing scores had been settled, and now James was sated. He was not in the mood for war. He was beginning to believe that by stepping onto
English soil, by rattling his pikes and swords and marching his men this way and that, he had fulfilled his obligations to King Louis, without irrevocably provoking Henry’s wrath. His
objective, he told himself, had been to alarm Henry sufficiently into sending an army north, thereby diminishing the troops available to him, and distracting him, momentarily at least, from his
French assault.

It seemed to an incredulous Paniter that despite taking up position on Flodden hill, despite his years of elaborate planning and fighting talk, the king was hoping soon to ride home without a
cannon being fired, or a sword unsheathed against the upstart English king’s army. The man was wavering, of that there was no doubt, and he could not bear the thought. His fatigue fled, and
he leant forward, speaking urgently, for this might be his last chance.

‘Your Majesty, we are in danger of forgetting how big is the board on which we stand, and what an important part your pieces play. You, my liege, are one of the finest kings in Europe, if
not indeed in Christendom, and to retreat now, to allow yourself to be checkmated, would be to admit to the world that Scotland is a provincial outpost, a mere pawn in the grand game, which can be
pushed this way and that at the whim of your allies.

‘I believe, no, I know for certain, you are far greater than that. Henry has deluded dreams of winning the French crown. Well, let him dream. He is a braggart and a fool. But you, Your
Highness, might one day take his throne and add it to yours. Everyone knows this. So tomorrow, if you give the order to tiptoe back to Scotland, you diminish your own hopes of a glorious future,
and snatch wealth and renown from your people.’

‘But, Paddy, I will have spared our country a battle we need not have.’ James’s brown eyes held his, reproachful at his lack of understanding. ‘That, surely, stands for
something. I will have walked the tightrope between the French lion and the English bull, and got off it without falling, alive and fit to continue the fight.’

‘None of us would ever go to war without sound reason, Your Majesty, and as you know I am a man of books and letters, not of war. But you must consider whether having negotiated so
delicately and cleverly with both sides up to now, you do yourself and your country justice by creeping away?’

‘Tiptoeing, creeping – you use language fitted to a coward, sir, and that is one thing you know I am not.’ James’s eyes flashed. ‘There is wisdom in retreating when
more is to be gained by quitting the field, and I am surprised you do not acknowledge that.’

‘Certainly, Your Majesty. But I am convinced that in this instance you stand to win far more by taking on the enemy, than in postponing your confrontation to another day. Consider the
facts.’

Paniter counted them off on his fingers. ‘One: Henry is out of the country. Two: Lord Surrey is old and weak. Three: His army is hurrying north in this foul weather. Four: Our army is
likely stronger than his, and even if that proves not the case, our weapons more modern by far. Five . . . ’

James waved a hand to hush him. ‘I know all this, Paddy. We have rehearsed it a thousand times.’ He fell silent, staring into his wine. ‘I am not sure what is for the best. You
are my closest advisor, yet even now I am not convinced you do not talk from vanity and ambition rather than commonsense.’

Paniter began to speak, but the king motioned him to be silent.

‘Enough for tonight, sir. I must think, and I must pray. My mind is uneasy. Leave me, please, and send in my priest. You and I, we will speak again tomorrow, in full council.’

James’s face shimmered above Paniter, growing fainter as the scene began to fade. His king’s sweet face, his warm, tender eyes held his, as so often since the battle. It was one of
the last conversations they had had alone, one of the last undisturbed hours in a friendship that stretched back twenty years, in which angry words had been far rarer than in a happy marriage,
their faith in each other as strong, Paniter believed, as that between any man and his wife. And yet as the end approached, his king had not trusted him. The fact was like gall, scorching his lips.
Because of course the king had been right.

‘Forgive me,’ he whispered. ‘Forgive me.’ He fingered his rosary. ‘Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, beatae Mariae Semper Virgini . . . ’ The bedchamber lay in
darkness, but when at last the first birds woke and the dunghill cockerel crowed, Paniter was still mouthing penitence, staring wide-eyed and unseeing at the breaking day. ‘Mea culpa, mea
maxima culpa . . . ’ The beads clicked between his fingers like a scolding tongue.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

16 October 1513

Hands were fussing about him, clipping away his jerkin, baring his skin to the cold keep air. He tried to push them away. The keep was in danger, the commander’s men were
circling, closing in on him, and he had no sword, no knife, and now no shirt. He sat up, swung his legs off the bed and reached for his scabbard, but the buzzing in his ears surged, and the
darkness pressed in on him, hot and thick as burning pitch. He fell back, unconscious, running with sweat.

The hands again, gentle but persistent. A cold, damp cloth was pressed to his ribs. He clenched his teeth, and a low voice shushed him as his chest was swaddled in bandages. He smelled heathland
and forest floor, but could not know that moss and cobwebs were bound around his cut, as if he were a witch’s pie, ready for the oven.

He was warm now, the oven door invitingly wide. He heard the crackle of its flames, and he turned his head this way and that, roaring with fear for those inside the burning tower, hearing the
snap and snarl of fire around their bones . . .