Dacre's War (37 page)

When he had eaten, he waved Blackbird away and lay down, turning to the wall. Though the room remained dim, it was no longer dark. Safely through the hours he dreaded, now he could perhaps sleep.

In this manner, Dacre survived the Fleet, turning day into night. When his lamp died, in the hours before dawn, he schooled himself not to panic. Closing his eyes, he would travel around his lands. Roaming the western march was his delight, the horse beneath him, the trees overhead, the smell of the rain-sodden dale. But he thought often, too, of his dead wife, and their early years together. When he first found her on his mind, he shied away, fearing the distress it would bring. But Bess's presence was kind and the memory did not hurt. She smiled, her elegant hauteur softened by a wide, warm mouth, and a tongue that was quick to mock. She'd made him laugh, that she had, and none of the ladies he had since thought to marry could ever boast of that.

He would lie these nights hearing the dark stirring around him, like air down a well. Rather than open his eyes, he turned them inward, to his earlier life. There were foul images as well as comfort, and he would shift uneasily at the things he had done or condoned, though he still believed them necessary. Faces of the murdered and slain kept him company on the blackest nights. They did not frighten him, but a sadness descended that would not lift. It was not right, it could not be right, that life had to be this cruel.

Valiant though he was in his fight against sleep, there were times when he succumbed. Within minutes of drifting off, his tormentors would appear, crowding the cell, their red eyes alight, poking their fingers in his chest, swivelling their hips like a sodomite's dream. For Dacre these apparitions were beyond nightmare. They were not figments of his imagination, he knew, but as real as he. He knew also that they would one day devour him. Waking, clutching his sodden shirt, he would bang on his door and scream for a light. But the request was never granted, and he would curl up on the floor behind the door, guessing the hour by the sounds from the street, and thanking God when the first birds awoke, and then the clocks, and he was no longer alone.

Since Dacre's trial, Blackbird had lodged in a tavern overhanging the river. His room was no larger than his master's, and being so close to the Fleet there were days when it smelled almost as bad, but he barely noticed, so concerned was he about the baron.

Twice a day he visited, after dawn, and last thing at night, when Dacre's vigil against the dark was just beginning. He was not allowed to stay long, but the short conversations he had were troubling. Sometimes Dacre barely noticed him, at others he would clutch his sleeve as he left, his eyes brimming with tears. These were not of regret or remorse, but something closer to terror. Blackbird was not an imaginative man, but he began to think the baron was in fear for his soul, and thought the devils who visited him at night had come to claim him as theirs.

After a month of this, when Dacre would often neither eat nor speak, the butler left the gaol and hurried along the banks of the Fleet until he reached a church. He returned with a priest and the guard wearily waved the churchman through. If the prisoner made his confession and quietened down, they would all feel better.

The priest was with Dacre all that day and the next. Blackbird left the baron's food with the guard, not liking to interrupt the voice he heard droning behind the door. When next he saw his master, he could not believe the change. The baron raised his head when he entered, and looked him in the face. His voice was stronger, and his colour had returned. ‘I have slept, Blackbird,' he said, like one who has witnessed a miracle, ‘all through the past two nights. That man of God has cleared the room, and my spirit, of those devils.'

Blackbird blinked. ‘An exorcism?'

‘He did not use that word. It was more an act of protection, to shield me from the malevolent forces that have tried to destroy my mind. He said the powers of darkness were so strongly pressing upon me, he could almost see them himself.' The baron shuddered, as if the mere mention of the devils might conjure them again. Reaching for a vial that lay by his pallet, he pulled the stopper and dabbed a drop of liquid onto his finger, and rubbed it on his forehead. ‘Holy water, Blackbird.' He shook his head. ‘Ye saints, to think I've come to this, as pious as a nun. I'm even saying my confession, though I take care what I say, lest I give the man a seizure. It would be comical, if I felt like laughing. But better all this, wouldn't ye say, than how I was before?'

Dacre never disclosed what else the priest and he had discussed, but though the weeks in prison dragged into months, and it seemed he had been forgotten, he kept his spirits up. The devils, it seemed, had been banished. Once a week, the priest returned to conduct mass, take confession, or sit in prayer. The lip service Dacre had paid to God these many years now was heartfelt, and by permission of the cardinal he was allowed a bible. Blackbird was thankful to see his master passing his time reading the gospels, his grammar school Latin brought out for a polish and shine, like an ancient suit of armour. The butler, however, felt no need to join him in his devotions. Assignations with the landlady from the Judge's Landing offered all the sustenance he required.

The months passed, and Dacre began to reminisce, dipping into the past like a waterwheel, forever taking another plunge. Blackbird would listen, full of sorrow. His master had never been one for this. Perhaps he sensed there was little ahead, or maybe captivity turned everyone's mind back to where it had come from.

‘Remember all this, do ye?' Dacre asked one evening. ‘I begin to think I've never been away, and the time we've had and the things we've done over the last thirty years is nothing more than a dream.' He tugged his beard, and sighed. ‘I could've been locked in here a century, it feels so cursed long. D'ye recall, though, how Henry would tiptoe down the stairs and perch on a stool, his mouth tight as a shrivelled prune as he tried not to breathe?'

Blackbird nodded. ‘He liked to make sure you were suffering.'

Dacre shook his head. ‘No, it wasn't that, I don't think. He was just plain angry. He could not keep away. He was like my own father, telling me again and again how much I had disappointed him. And now, at this age, I can see what he meant.' He cackled, his face brightening. ‘I damn well nearly brought the country to war, or so he said. It was the arrogance of youth. There I was, my army at my back, trumpets blaring, ready to deal with Moresby. His army was larger than mine, but my men were tougher, that I knew. But of all Moresby's men, I have to take on the scoundrel Parkes, slice off his ear, and cause an unholy row.

‘How was I to know he was a friend of the Scottish king? For all his airs and armour, he looked like a peasant, a trumped-up nobody. And for that lapse of judgement Henry would never forgive me. Not for years did he soften. He'd ignore me at council, as if I was the black sheep of the room, and even when I was safely back home, out of his reach, I felt his eyes on me, following whatever I did.'

His laugh filled the room. ‘As Bess's guardian, he made my life hell. He wrangled over each pound of her inheritance, every mile of land I wanted to claim as my own. All to punish me for riding off with her under his nose. As if any red-blooded man could have resisted!' He paused, and gave a sigh. ‘Yet I could not dislike him. Not at all. He was a man of the old stamp, a hawk whose eye was on everything. Tough on wayward boys like me – and right to be – but trusting us, too, in an odd sort of way. He knew we were loyal and would turn out fine. We just had to burn off our youth, that was all, without causing too much damage.'

He fell quiet, and for a minute both men inspected the floor. The distance that lay between now and those far-off days was too painful to contemplate. Since the trial Dacre's hair had turned silver, and he shuffled around the cell, his limp grown worse with confinement. Blackbird's legs were slower too, and like an old man he now woke before dawn, and could not get back to sleep. Nor did all his visits to the landlady end in bed. Sometimes, he just liked to talk.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

March 1525

News of Dacre's downfall reached the north, and word spread fast through the dales. There was celebration in some quarters, in villages still in ruins after an Armstrong raid, or in the castles of lords who had felt the baron's greedy hand or baleful eye upon them. Sir William Eure, Vice Warden, no longer slept with a sword by his side. Lord and Lady Foulberry threw a banquet, and danced through the night. The Bishop of Carlisle spent an hour on his knees in thanks before the altar, then called his priests to help him enjoy a crate of fine Spanish wine that had been lying for months in his cellars.

When the information finally reached Crozier's Keep, sent up from the village by Father Walsh, Crozier felt only fatigue. He went about his business that day as if nothing had changed, but by nighttime, when the clan was gathered in the great hall, the talk was of nothing else. Unable to join in the revelry, he left long before the merriment had ended. While the hall rang to the sound of singing and pipes, Crozier and Louise sat side by side before the fire in their chamber. They said little, but listened to the snapping of pine cones in the flames and breathed their soothing scent. That night Crozier slept so deeply he hardly seemed to be breathing. When he did not wake at dawn, Louise crept out of the room. Crozier did not appear until noon, but where Tom and Benoit seemed to have grown younger overnight, their faces cleared of strain, his mouth was still set hard. These were volatile times, with Dacre gone, the marches unwatched, and the baron's allies vengeful and afraid.

‘So we can stand down the double watch?' asked Tom, gulping down ale to clear his wine-thickened head.

‘We do no such thing,' his brother replied, and gathered his men in the courtyard. Until order was established, and a Warden General in place, they were not out of danger, he told them. ‘Could be things will be worse than ever. The double guard stays on duty, and the watch in the valley, and none of us goes beyond these walls without my say-so.'

Standing near the back, out of Crozier's view, Barton chewed his black wad of beef, and spat. He eyed the Frenchman, listening doeeyed to the borderer as if he were an innocent, and not a henchman of Beelzebub himself. The sailor crossed his breast, and fingered the crude crucifix he now wore round his neck.

Mayhem was unloosed, as Crozier had predicted. Sluggishly at first, riots broke out in the west, where Dacre had held firm sway. Sir Christopher stamped on these, and for a time they appeared to have died, but as soon as his troops returned to their barracks, the uprising licked farther along the border. Sir Philip, in residence at Harbottle, was nervous. There was bad blood in the air, everyone sensed it. Joan should not be out here, where forces from all corners might meet. Yet with the border riders out in strength, did he dare send her south for safety?

She settled the matter for him, refusing to move until her father came home. Since Dacre's imprisonment, Joan had been moody and restless, given to tears and outbursts, and spending long hours alone in her father's chamber, which she now used as her own. Philip had neither time nor patience for such matters. Only his brother's affection for the girl prevented him from losing his temper. Agreeing testily that she could stay, he dismissed her from his mind. Already Tynedale was beginning to buck beneath their feet, as if an earthquake were on its way.

And an earthquake it almost was. In the following weeks, the border clans seemed to put aside their grievances and join as one to show the English king that with the Warden General gone, the land, and the power, was theirs. There had never been such turmoil in Dacre's yard. Cumberland seethed, Naworth on high alert, and the barracks at Carlisle were never at rest, soldiers despatched in relays, day and night. But it was in the east that the worst unrest was bubbling.

A courier sent to the king from the Bishop of Durham informed him that the city was almost under siege, and assistance urgently needed. Newcastle, meanwhile, was in the Tynedale highlanders' sights. Village by village, the outlaw Armstrongs and their gang advanced upon it. There was no doubting their intention. There was panic within the city, and the raiders had reached alarmingly close to its walls with barely a check before the king's men brought them to a halt. At that point, the conflict did not end, but grew more murderous.

Those who had no thought of taking town or city took instead to the roads. The riders' secret ways over the Northumberland hills into Scotland were flattened as raiders rode as if into battle, scavenging and scathing until the north of their own country was all but barren, and the Scots fearful their lands would soon be picked clean as well.

The ferment raged all spring. While Dacre languished in his cell, his border sizzled and roared under fire. Days after flames had been doused, black ash still drifted on the wind, a diabolical snow. Footsteps crackled, and the smell of cinders and burnt wood clung to everything, an invisible shroud that sent cattle mad and made peasants shiver, as if this acrid scent were a harbinger of the end.