Gemini (89 page)

‘And Sandy?’ said Wodman. ‘Back to England, and wait for another chance?’

‘Under a possibly dying king, and after an expensive fiasco? No. This is Sandy’s sole opportunity,’ Nicholas said. ‘And ours. And Gloucester’s. That brings us to the third possibility. If there is no rising, and no battle, and no captured king, then Sandy must become the prime mediator. Let him arrange Gloucester’s peaceful withdrawal, and let James reinstate him in Scotland.’

Wodman stared at him. He said, ‘Would you trust Albany to think of that?’

‘I’d trust Gloucester,’ Nicholas said.

‘I see,’ Wodman said.

Before any war, all the possibilities were discussed. Then, like this, they were abruptly reduced, and you knew where you were. And now only one thing mattered: to get the information over the river, and north.

The Archer started to calculate: how to get horses from Hume; what route to follow to Edinburgh. Once they crossed the river, it could be done in five hours. He supposed if Adorne had ever managed to come, he would have cleared off from Upsettlington by now. Everyone must think they were dead. He said, ‘We can’t get out tonight. They had a man captured yesterday over the river, and they’ve doubled the watch.’

‘All right,’ said Nicholas. ‘So, how?’

It was like a desperate comedy in the end. The Tweed was only a few miles away, and once they crossed it, they were in Scotland. But Castle Heaton was bristling with soldiers, occupying the low rises as lookouts, patrolling the distant steep banks of the Till as it darted headlong below, plummeting between mill-wheels and weirs on its crooked way to the smooth-running Tweed. And on the banks of the broad Tweed itself, the men from each nation were spaced out along either bank. Some were invisible; others were deliberately in view. Periodically one group or another would shout insults.

The bridge the artillery would use was between the Tweed and the castle, and just a mile from the mouth of the Till. Nicholas reported for duty next day with his friend Fletcher as a willing assistant, and helped drive the ox-wains there, with the mattocks and the sand and the limestone. The smell of dung steamed in the air: it had become breathlessly hot, with no wind. The river, dazzling below, looked like Paradise. ‘After,’ promised Hector the mason, a hard-working man with a kind heart. ‘After, if you’re good lads, you can strip off and give the lasses a treat.’ It led to a lot of badinage, and kept them cheerful for a while.

It was hard work. The bridge was recent, a replacement for an old timber one, and put together in haste until a better could be built. Andro, heaving up buckets of water, could hear the master’s diatribes, and Cuddie the Hod intervening and commenting. Nicholas did know a hell of a lot. Gossipy phrases floated down, to do with site-clearance, and quarrying contracts for ashlar. By the time the whistle went for a hunk of bread and a fill from the ale-cask, they were on to types of paving, and the length of the ideal abutment, and how to cut the cost of the iron and lead for the gates. He knew more about mortar, for sure, than Hector did.

It was just bad luck, Wodman thought, with a flash of yearning, that Nicholas wasn’t alone, and able to put his expertise to real use. He had a wistful vision of the cannon lumbering over from Norham, and reaching the bridge, and falling clean through it. Then the whistle blew, and it was terrible, beginning again.

They were all bare to the waist, and slick with sweat, and his shoulders were stinging. Once, when the banging stopped, he heard a rumble
far off to the south, and prayed it meant rain. He wondered, fuming, what the hell Nicholas was doing; then stopped himself. There was no way they could leave, just at the moment; and it was still only morning. Then there was another crack from the south that was loud enough, this time, to cut through the noise; and if you looked, the horizon was flickering.

After a while, Nicholas left the top of the bridge and came to work with his trowel near to where Wodman was mixing mortar. He made a joke, and then said, ‘I’ll suggest a splash in the shallow water at the next rest. We’ll lose the chance if it rains.’

True. He hadn’t thought of it. It was one of their simpler schemes. Few men could swim at all, never mind underwater the way Nicholas could, taught by an African. And he wasn’t so bad himself.

Dinnertime came, and they were indeed permitted to rollick about in the water, which was knee-high. Cuddie manufactured a ball, and made up the rules, and they had shrieked themselves hoarse by the time Hector good-naturedly summoned them back. There had been no chance whatever to escape, and there wasn’t to be one from that source. When the air cooled and the rain-clouds moved hazily in, Hector looked up at the sky and decreed a return with the wains to the village. If they were to go on, they’d need to build shelters.

Cuddie the Hod was struck by a helpful idea. ‘If you’ll give us the timbers, Fletcher and me’ll put up a shelter, master,’ he said.

I
T WAS THE
noise of the water-sport, with its echoing voices, that drew the attention of Simon de St Pol as he lay with his son and two soldiers in the ruins of a hamlet on the English side of the Tweed.

They had floated across in the night, spinning and drifting on a raft strewn with weed, delicately steered by a paddle. Above them, the sky had been deep blue and full of inimical stars, and they had lain side by side, soaked in danger; silent as if about to hook a solitary fish, or kill a listening stag. When, safely arrived, Simon sank down to recline in this haven, he wanted to fling his head back and yelp aloud with relief and delight. Then he turned to his son, and met the twin of his glee in Henry’s face. Moved by euphoria, Simon swung a punch and Henry answered it, their two arms aloft, jarring in comradeship, blue eyes ablaze into blue. Then they dropped, and Simon said, smiling, ‘I suppose we should get some sleep.’

Just before dawn, they moved quietly to quarter the territory; locate the watchers; and explore the river-bank and the way to the castle. They were in hiding again by the time they heard the rumble of laden wains, and men’s voices, and the work began on the bridge. They were strengthening it. Henry said, ‘They’re going to bring reinforcements from Norham. Artillery, even. We ought to let Borthwick know.’

‘We shall,’ Simon said. ‘As soon as we’ve dealt with our traitor.’

It was a word he used often, as if Henry might be in danger of forgetting. De Fleury was a spy and a traitor. He had secretly visited the King’s rebel brother, and was helping to plan an invasion. And Fate had chosen them to stop him.

Very soon after that, there came the noise, as if children were playing, and Simon sent Henry to look.

Splashing about in the gorge, and laughing like children, was a group of half-naked men playing ball. The man with the ball, clowning, was Nicholas de Fleury. And Andro Wodman was with him.

Henry lay for quite a long time, until the play finished and he saw that the two men belonged to the party of workmen. It was obvious that the builders didn’t know who they were. He heard someone use the name Cuddie. It was a northern English version of Cuthbert. De Fleury was wearing a hat, and had let his beard grow, and seemed to have dyed his hair yellow. He was clever.

His father, when he got back, was both eager and captious. ‘You should have fetched me! The builders don’t know who they are?’

‘I’d swear the labourers don’t. I don’t know about the master mason. And I don’t understand. If they’re on the English side, why the disguise?’

‘To conceal their treachery,’ said his father. ‘De Fleury isn’t supposed to be a double spy. You watch, he and Wodman are not going back to the castle. Unless we stop them, the mason’ll try to slip them over the river. Then they’d reappear at the Scots Court as if they had returned by themselves, and no one in Scotland would suspect that they were still collaborating with Albany.’

‘Except the person who warned you,’ Henry said. ‘Whoever it is, why didn’t he come forward and help us?’

‘Do you want a guess?’ his father said. ‘Because it’s a man who wants de Fleury out of the way, but, knowing the King, doesn’t want to be seen bringing him down. Someone close to the King. On the Council, even.’

‘Or the other Burgundian?’ Henry said. ‘You thought Adorne was joining de Fleury. Perhaps he’s doing the opposite. Perhaps, all this time, he’s been laying plans to get rid of him, without taking the blame.’

‘Does it matter?’ said Simon. ‘We don’t need any help now. We can capture or kill them, and no one will blame us. On this side of the river. On the English side.’

Henry didn’t reply. Of course his father, like the unknown writer, would risk the King’s personal displeasure, but he could hardly be punished for it. Grandfather Jordan ought to be pleased. This time, the St Pols weren’t pursuing a private vendetta: they were legitimately protecting the realm.

It came to Henry, suddenly, that he knew who had sent that mysterious message; had set them the task that had brought them both here. It was his grandfather. His grandfather was testing them both.

A cloud lifted, and for the first time he felt calm, and confident, and glad to be here. He settled down by his father, and prepared to show his grandfather what he could do.

It wasn’t simple. De Fleury and his companion were never alone. There was no way of taking them, and no safe way of killing them either,
without being at once hunted down. Then as time wore on, the sky clouded, and the work on the bridge came to a halt.

‘They’re going back to the hamlet! Mary Mother, we’ll lose them!’

‘No,’ said Henry, whose blue eyes were sharp. ‘De Fleury and Wodman are staying. It’s happened. We’ve got them, as soon as they’re alone.’

Once, he had stood over Nicholas de Fleury; and had been invited to kill him. Except for an interruption, he would have done so. Some men knew when their time had come. Some men, without fathers or grandfathers, knew when their lives were no longer worth living. Henry, on the other hand, was a St Pol; and true to his line.

S
AWING WOOD IN
the rain, Wodman was arguing in a murmur. The builders had gone. He and Nicholas were alone on the bank. Unfortunately, they were not entirely alone. At either end of the bridge paced its usual two duty sentries, returned now that the structure was vacant. To protect the pair of craftsmen still present, two more archers had come, perched on top of the carpenter’s wagon of mallets and mattocks and timber and felt, and presently helping to unload it. When the wagon left they remained, sitting on a bit of tarred cloth, continuing a shouted conversation with the men on the bridge and the builders. One of them had a flask. They were there simply as a normal precaution, and it meant that there were only four Englishmen to dispose of instead of a squad. It was ungrateful, really ungrateful to complain. After thought, they had let the wagon go back. If it didn’t, someone would come enquiring. They got on, cantankerously, with building the shelter.

Wodman, busily working and talking at once, was running through a number of excellent schemes. The common theme was that they should invisibly murder the pair on the ground, and purloin their bows to shoot the men on the bridge. Nicholas objected to this, on the premise that the bridge could be seen from upriver. Wodman pointed out that at the rate the river was rising, everyone would be running back to the castle and hamlet.

This was possible. A few minutes before, a silent wave had appeared round a corner and, coursing down, had swept past with a rumbling clatter, careering north to debouch into the Tweed. Another had followed. Here, the rain was at present haphazard. Somewhere far up the Till, the purple thunder-clouds had already exploded. It was unlikely that Hector would send his men back today. Bantering aloud, and arguing under their breath, Nicholas and Wodman agreed at least one thing. The shelter was so aligned that anyone inside its primitive poles and tarred felt would be unseen from the bridge or the opposite bank.

Desperate though it all was, the daft side, as ever, threatened to destabilise Nicholas. Shouting, murmuring, singing, thinking, calculating,
hammering, passing the flask, he was working at full pitch, exuberantly, the way he and Kathi used sometimes to vie with one another in Scotland, in Iceland. Andro, wearing his oyster-seller grin, could just about match him. All they had to do, really, was get the shelter half up, and get the two bowmen into it. They had knives. The wetter it got, the easier it would be.

It was like that, edging up to success, when someone screamed. When one of the men on the bridge screamed, flung up his arms, and fell headlong down into the rising water, which began to bear him away.

Nicholas stopped. Beside him, Andro jerked and then also stopped, held ferociously by Nicholas’s free hand. Beyond them both, the English archers sprang to their feet and started to run, appalled, to the river. The remaining sentry stood as if petrified. Then he turned, and began to run for his life to the opposite end of the bridge.

He might have escaped had the gate not been shut. They saw him reach it, and fling his arms over it, and then slide like a cloth to the ground. An arrow, fine as a toothpick, stuck out of his back.

Wodman said, ‘Holy Mother.’ It sounded entirely reverent, and his expression was awed. He said,
‘Adorne?’

Upriver, a bugle rang out above the thud of the water in a long, warning flourish that was repeated, closer at hand. It was too timely to be a coincidence. Nicholas had been right in his guess. The bridge had been under surveillance from the opposite side.

‘Maybe Adorne,’ Nicholas said. ‘Anyway, someone who’s going to be in trouble unless we do something, fast. Let’s pick up those bows.’ He began to run, Andro following, pelting down the side of the stream after the archers.

One was already dead when they came upon him, tumbled down the steep bank and half in the grip of the waters, his bow snapped and jerking. The next moment, a great bough swirled past, and took him into its tangle. On either side, the river was scouring high through the bushes, its lively roar melisma and counterpoint to the pedestrian thud of the thunder. The rain, hitherto desultory, began to drum down. The remaining archer turned and saw them, and whispered, ‘Go back! You’ll get killed. There are still some of them about.’ He was crouching, his bow strung, below the lip of the bank and his face, glistening with water, had lost all the flush of his drink.