Dacre's War (6 page)

Flints were struck, lights glimmered, and Dacre's lieutenants were at his side. ‘We will send a party down there,' Christopher began, panting from the chase, but Dacre turned away, his back to the cliff.

‘No,' he said, so tired he could barely speak. ‘There is nothing we can do.' An ache gripped his chest, and he lowered his head, waiting for it to pass. He put out a hand, and Christopher's arm was there. ‘No,' he repeated, ‘let us return to camp. This has been an evil night. Going down there will only make it worse.'

Behind them their men paced, too disturbed to leave, trying to ignore the sickening noises from below. As they gathered, they cursed and swore and cried, undone by this heartless act. Soldiers who had killed without qualm now felt unsure about what lay out there in the dark. Who would do such a thing, and why?

When daylight broke, the night's work took shape. A thousand and more of the army's steeds lay at the foot of the precipice. The first beasts to fall had pitched headlong into the valley, embedding themselves in a lather of earth. Seeing the danger, those close behind them had tried to veer away, but crowded by the horses upon their tails they were forced onwards until all had spilled over the edge, a waterfall of flesh.

Now they lay on broken backs, stiff as tables upturned in a brawl. Some were spread-eagled, as loose under the skin as if their bones were liquid. Most were dead, but some still kicked, life ebbing cruelly slow. Already men were moving between them, cutting throats for mercy.

Waking armies are as noisy as a gallows fair, but that morning the hillside was subdued. A cook clattered a pan, and felt the rebuke in the men's averted eyes. Few were hungry, yet all tried to eat, for who knew what the day would bring. But many meals were lost when they looked over the cliff top.

CHAPTER FOUR

As the baron recalled the sight, his throat tightened. He spoke slowly, Burgundy words lying thick on his tongue. ‘We may have taken the town, but the story doesn't end there.'

‘Don't be forgetting your prisoner,' said Philip.

Dacre thought of the disdainful laird captured on his way home as they rampaged over his lands and set his castle alight. His wife had been distraught to see him carried off. Touching it was, to witness her concern. But his men had left her with troubles of her own to deal with, and he doubted she'd have much time to worry about her husband over the next few days.

‘Aye, it's good we've got him in our cells. He'll be useful.' Dacre paused, trying to grasp the disappearing thread of his thoughts. ‘But this business is not finished,' he said, pulling a jug of wine towards him. ‘Not by a long way.'

‘What business?' asked Surrey, his voice clipped as an abstainer's, his goblet half full and his eyes clear.

‘The horses.' Dacre's mouth twisted as if the word had scalded him.

Blackbird leaned forward. Reports of the carnage had arrived ahead of the baron. He'd heard nothing like it before. It held a menace new even for these plagued lands.

William Eure shook his head. ‘Truly vile. I've never seen anything so vicious.'

‘A petty revenge,' said Surrey, ‘and we should have been prepared for it. The fault lies with us. Our night watch was woefully lax. How it happened that they could be run through and die without putting up a fight astounds me.'

‘This was no mere revenge,' said Dacre, staring at the table as if talking to himself. ‘Why kill the horses, when they could have kept them for themselves? That I would not have minded so much. But this, this . . .' He raised a hand as if in disbelief, his golden rings burning in the firelight.

Christopher slapped a hand on the table. ‘Tam is right,' he said. ‘It was not a reprisal, but a threat. Not the tail end of the Jedburgh affair, but the start of something different.'

A murmur ran round the table.

‘Who would dare . . .' Blackbird began.

Eure looked grave. ‘Only those very sure of their ground. The brazenness of it. The risks they ran . . .'

‘It was clever,' conceded Surrey. He narrowed his eyes, as if trying to retrieve the mood of that night. ‘And I've a suspicion you may well be right.'

Dacre nodded. ‘We aye knew there'd be revenge some day for razing the abbeys. Yet it seems trouble is here sooner than we'd expected, sooner than we'd any need to fear. This was too well planned, too cold-blooded to be the work of Jedburgh town.'

‘You think our raid had nothing to do with it?' asked Philip.

‘Either that, or the raid merely stoked a fire that was already burning.'

‘A few names have been suggested,' said Eure, hesitant as always. All eyes turned to him. ‘It could just be gossip; we were so busy rounding up new horses for the men I didn't pay much attention. But the archers had their s-s-suspicions.'

‘Tattling town criers,' said Surrey. ‘Nervous as nuns.'

‘Maybe,' said Eure. ‘But the names they gave were plausible enough. One was the Ridleys, who have been needling us for months. Then there was the Croziers, a pestilent family from S-S-Selkirk way. The clan chief has been getting above himself in recent years, growing more pernicious. Could be that they were behind the attack.'

‘Who else?' barked Surrey.

‘The Fenwicks, from around Coldstream. They are thick with the Percys, who do not care for you, my lord, a fact you already know. It seems they might also still be smarting after we torched their castle and carried off their stock last month.'

Blackbird looked thoughtful. ‘So many possibilities . . .'

Eure nodded again. ‘And nigh impossible to prove. That's why I didn't pay attention.'

There was a movement from Dacre's chair. The company watched as the baron sat up in his seat, straighter and broader. It was as if he was inflating before them, strength and vigour returning him to full size and power.

‘I'd see all of them swing, without a scrap of proof,' he said, running a purpled tongue over his lips. ‘The Ridleys are dangerous, but unguarded and rash. It will be a simple matter to find out if they were involved. Even if not, I have a mind to see their leader shackled, for the good of the marches. The Fenwicks are more problematic. I cannot be seen to persecute the Percy clan without solid evidence. Get me that, though, and I will see them choke on the rope. And then there are the Croziers. I doubt that pox-ridden clan would have the mettle to trick us like that; for all the airs of their chief they are little more than savages. Nonetheless, whether we find them guilty of this crime or not, one day Crozier and his men will end on the gallows where they belong.'

He stroked his beard. ‘But I will know who was behind this. And soon.' He turned to Philip, whose gaze sharpened, knowing his orders were coming. ‘We need spies, brother, for each of their camps, people they'll never suspect.'

Philip murmured agreement. ‘I will think on who could do this,' he began, but his brother raised a finger.

‘Already I have thoughts on where they might be found. We shall talk tomorrow. But for now, let us drink to our enemy, that he stays deaf and blind to our approach, until the noose is slipped over his neck.'

Blackbird left the hall, returning with a fresh flagon of wine. ‘To revenge!' cried Dacre, when their goblets were filled. The table drank as one, and Christopher watched his brother's brightening face. This was the old Tam he knew so well. Nothing cheered him better than settling a score.

Long after midnight, Dacre sat alone in the hall. His lieutenants were asleep upstairs, and even Blackbird had been dismissed. The baron wanted to be on his own. He sat beside the fire, its cooling embers his only light. The castle gathered around him like an old and favourite shawl, and as he stared into the rosy ashes he smiled. An enemy he was able to fight held no terrors for him. Devils he could not handle; border curs he could.

There was a shuffle from the edge of the hall, a glimmer of white in the shadows. Dacre tensed, but the figure moved swiftly towards him, sheltering a rushlight in its hands, and he relaxed.

His daughter, pale and light-footed as a moth in her night-wrap, placed her lamp in the hearth and joined him on the bench. She leaned her head on his shoulder. The smell of wine rose from him as if from an open bottle, and she clicked her tongue. ‘You have been emptying the flagon, father. You should drink less.'

‘So ye tell me,' he said, ‘yet it's done me no harm thus far. You, however, should be in bed.'

‘I've missed you,' she said. ‘With Anne gone, and Mary too ill with the ague to play a hand of cards, let alone see to my clothes and tidy my room, it's been dull, dull, dull. All I've done is sew and draw, and do my lessons for Father Whitmore, who smells like a gutter. Blackbird would not even let me ride out on my own. He says it's not safe. So I had to have a guard wherever I went. Can you imagine?'

She kicked her slippered feet, more like a petulant child than a woman almost of an age to marry. ‘I cannot wait to return to Naworth. How can you bear it out here? Don't you miss home?'

Her tone was that of her mother, her complaint an echo of Bess's nettling refrain. The baron banished the thought of his tormenting, much-missed spouse, and patted his daughter's knee. ‘I know, Joanie, it's tedious for a girl out here. But Blackbird was right. This is a dangerous place. That's why I'm here. It has to be kept in order, and there's no one but me to do it, though God knows I'd rather not.'

‘You've written to the king, as you said you would?'

‘Aye, and much good it did me.'

They contemplated the grate in silence. When a slither of ash sent up a wisp of smoke, Joan lifted her head.

‘When can we go home, Father?'

‘Any time you wish. I'll send my best guards back with you tomorrow, if you like. I cannot keep ye here. But it may be months before I can return.'

‘But Naworth is almost as miserable without you as Harbottle,' she whined. ‘Everywhere goes quiet when you leave.'

‘I could do with a little peace myself, that's for sure.'

His daughter looked at him. She had never seen her father so tired, and she put her arm through his, as if to infuse him with some of her high spirits. Together they stared into the fire. Her face was a youthful mirror, its Roman nose and wide-spaced eyes a more delicate reflection of the baron's good looks. But where he was broad and strapping, she, though sturdy, was small.

Dacre had an affection for this girl that sometimes caught him by surprise. The youngest surviving child of his marriage, Joan had been a sickly infant. Her twin sister was buried within days of their birth, and he had wondered then, and since, if Bess's burrowing canker had poisoned those in her womb. At mass and private prayer, he never forgot to thank God and all the saints that Joan had outgrown her puling years and was now as healthy a sixteen-year-old as one could ask for. He tried not to think of the two little boys who had followed her twin into the grave in the years after. Better remind himself instead of his robust adult children, whose boisterous offspring assured the family's future.

One day, no doubt, Joan too would give him grandchildren. He wondered what sort of man he should find for her to marry. Unlike her mother and her sisters Mabel and Anne, she would never be a beauty. Happier out hawking than dancing a gavotte, she might complain about Harbottle, but she was at home in the wilds like no other gentlewoman he'd ever met. He suspected, of course, that she followed her father's entourage precisely so she need not behave like a lady. Loose-girdled and unpainted, she went her own way. At her age, her sisters had spent their days knotting flowers in their hair, tightening their bodices, and colouring whenever his officers spoke to them. Joan laughed at his soldiers' crude jokes, but she had not yet blushed.

Dacre was aware he had indulged her. Had Bess been alive, she would have schooled Joan strictly. The time was coming, he knew, when he would have to place her in the care of her sisters, to be prepared for court, and marriage. Already Mabel was urging him to send her to Bolton, where she would turn her into a wise and comely wife-to-be. One day, he promised, one day.

For the moment, he liked her company too much to pack her off. Since Bess's death, her chatter had been a comfort. He sighed. It was a sign of getting old that a daughter meant so much. Though not a fanciful man, he imagined that returning home to find her absent would be like entering a wintry hall where the fire had died. Best perhaps if he married again first.

Joan hugged her wrap close. ‘I'll stay a few weeks longer,' she said. Slipping off the bench to retrieve her rushlight, she looked down at the baron, whose face was the colour of curds. ‘The birds will soon be waking, Father. We should get some sleep.' Dacre nodded. Shuffling in her wake as if his bones had softened, he followed her out of the hall and allowed her to lead him upstairs. At his door he briefly placed a hand on her head, and in the gloom he sensed rather than saw her smile.

The next morning Dacre's head buzzed like a hive. He rose at his usual early hour, but those who knew him well had found tasks that kept them beyond his call. Joan was nowhere to be seen; nor were his brothers, who, Blackbird told him, had ridden out shortly after daybreak.

‘Bring me paper, man,' barked the baron, cutting short his butler's ruminations on where Christopher and Philip might have gone, when they could be expected to return, and what he could provide for their dinner when they did.

Only when seated at the table in his room did Dacre's mind begin to clear. He dipped his pen in ink, stared for inspiration at a butterfly fluttering up to the rafters, mistaking them for the boughs of a tree, and began to write.