Antoine glances at me. “We have to have peace,” he says. “D’you know George Hume?”
“Kinsman to Alexander?” I ask.
“Exactly,” he says. “An outlaw’s kinsman, continuing his work. I shall arrest him. Will your husband ride with me against lawbreakers?”
I am silenced. I know Ard will never ride against his cousins, the Humes.
De la Bastie laughs. “I thought not,” he says. “How can he be the king’s protector when he does not protect the king’s peace?”
He bows to me and goes to the door, as the captain shouts orders that the guard shall be mustered to ride out.
“How long will you be?” I ask, suddenly nervous.
He looks at the messenger for the answer. “It’s a good half-day’s ride,” the man says.
“Should be back by tomorrow,” he says casually. He bows to me with his hand on his heart, a gleam of his smile, and he is gone.
We expect him for dinner, but they serve and we eat without him. Archibald remarks that perhaps the famous French chevalier could not catch George Hume as easily as he expected. He says that jousting is one thing, a tournament is another, but riding hard across wild country commanding men little better than reivers takes courage that the chevalier would never have needed before.
“They are breaking the peace,” I say shortly. “Of course he has to arrest them.”
“They are defying the regency that sent you into exile and made you a stranger to your son,” he says. “The regency that I had to beg a pardon from before they would let me back to my own.”
“We have to have peace,” I repeat.
“Not on any terms,” my husband says. “I wish I were with them.”
“De la Bastie thought you might ride with him!” I exclaim.
Ard laughs. “No, he didn’t, he just said that to trouble you. He knows, and I know, that there will be no peace for this country until it is ruled by you, the dowager queen, for your son the king. He knows I would fight for no regency commanded by him or the other Frenchman. I am for the queen and England.”
“What’s that?” I say, starting up as I hear the portcullis chains clanking and the roller creaking as the gate is lifted. “Is he back at last?”
Together we go down to the castle door, expecting to see de la Bastie and his guard riding in. Instead there are half a dozen men with his standard. They are carrying it lowered, as if in mourning, as if there has been a death.
“What is it?” I demand, and Ard goes down to the captain of the guard and speaks quickly to him. When he turns back to me his face in the flickering torchlight is bright.
“De la Bastie was defeated. George Hume has escaped,” he says shortly.
“Come and report to me at once,” I say to the captain of the guard. “And bring all your men. They’re not to speak to anyone. They must tell me first.” I turn into the castle and wait beside the great stone fireplace in de la Bastie’s presence chamber as the guards straggle in and stand together.
The captain speaks for them all. “It was an ambush,” he says slowly. “There was no siege of the tower. That was a lie, a feint to draw us out.”
Behind him I can see Ard intently listening. There is no shock on his face, no unease. He might be hearing of the unfolding of a successful plan, perhaps even his own plan.
“Why?” I ask. But I know.
“We met with George Hume and his force just north of Kelso and the chevalier commanded him to come into the town and explain himself. We rode together, side by side, but just outside Langton it turned nasty. Hume drew his sword, all his men drew theirs. The chevalier shouted to us to follow him and gallop back to Duns. They were after us all the way. It wasn’t a battle, it was a trap, an ambush. I thought my lord would get away. He was headed for his castle. But there is a thick part of the wood, you can’t see more than three feet behind you, with a cliff to one side and a steep slope down to the river on your left.” He turns to Archibald. “You know.”
Ard nods. He knows.
“They caught us there, forcing us off the track, driving us down the hill. There’s a marsh at the bend in the river. We fought back but they had the advantage of the ground, and of surprise. More of them poured out of Duns on foot, twisting round the trees, jumping over fallen branches. Our horses struggled, many fell, we got pushed down the hill, and his lordship’s horse went over the bank into the river, the Whiteadder. It’s deep. Most of the other horses went in too. It was a mess: floundering and screaming and men drowning.”
I put my hand to the warm stone of the chimney breast, clinging to it as if the ground is unsafe beneath me as well. “And then?” I hear my voice say thinly. “And then?”
“His lordship came off his horse. His armor weighed him down, but he had one arm around his horse’s neck and they were swimming together, struggling together. I thought he might get to dry land. One of the Humes—John—called out to him, he had one arm around a leaning tree, his feet on the roots, dry-shod in the marsh. He reached out to his lordship and he took his hand.”
“He saved him?” I ask incredulously.
“He drew him towards him like he was pulling him from the marsh, saving him from drowning, and then he stabbed him in the armpit, where he could get the blade in under the armor. His lordship went down and Patrick Hume drew his sword and hacked off his head.”
The other men nod, too stunned to speak.
“You saw this?” Archibald asks. “Where were you?”
“I had fallen over a tree stump,” one man says.
“I was on my horse on the road.”
“I was fighting out of the marsh.”
“I fell from my horse. God forgive me, I lay still.”
“And what then?” I ask unsteadily.
They bow their heads, they shuffle their feet. They ran away, but they don’t want to admit it.
“Did many come home?” Ard asks. “Did the Humes not pursue you? It’s not like them not to finish the task.”
They shake their heads. “We’re the only ones that got away, I think,” the captain says. “But it was getting dark, and you could see nothing among the trees, it wasn’t like a battle at all, more like a brawl. There might be others, run off home. There might be others stuck like fish in a barrel, drowned like kittens in the river.”
“Not like a joust,” Archibald says with a swift smile to me. “And he was always so beautiful in the joust.”
NEWARK CASTLE, SCOTLAND, SEPTEMBER 1517
We go to Newark Castle as we planned, leaving Craigmillar with the chevalier’s standard at half-mast in deepest mourning. It is a miserable journey in cold driving rain. I am glad that my boy, James, does not come with us and Margaret stays behind in the nursery. But it is odd to ride into my own castle that I hardly know. I find I am looking around for any signs that another woman has lived here, but my rooms are bare and clean and the bed linen fresh and newly changed and the strewing rushes green on the floor. There is no evidence at all that anyone has used this house. I think that the chevalier must have forgotten his code of honor when he spoke against Archibald to me. And Ard is right—all great people are the subject of slander.
My son James cannot come with us because the lords of the council command that he goes back to the greater safety of Edinburgh Castle. Now, since the death of Antoine de la Bastie, they fear their own shadows. They don’t trust me not to steal him away to England, and now that the deputy regent has been murdered they fear that this is the start of an uprising against the regency.
“They suspect that your uncle Gavin Douglas will kidnap my son for me,” I say to Archibald. “They have no faith in anyone.”