Free After Flodden by Rosemary Goring Page B

they couldn’t knock a single stone out of the Wall of London. But France is less easy to dismiss, and I grow mistrustful of brother James. I need him
brought to heel before he smuggles our enemy over the border like a Trojan horse.’
    Beecham drew a sheet of paper towards him, and picked up a knife. His tongue darted out with anticipation as he began to sharpen a pen. ‘Then I shall prepare a draft,’ he said.
‘It will be with you by and by.’
    Henry nodded and left, the bishop hurrying in his wake. Surrey and Beecham bowed again to each other, at which the rabbitskin hat slipped further down the clerk’s nose. Peering from under
its brim, he started to scratch words on the page. Surrey left him, clouded in frozen breath as if generating a steam of diplomatic heat.
    *    *    *
    Overnight, Surrey’s horse had been watered, fed and rested. He was eager to be off, stamping at the frosted earth as his master approached. The earl climbed into the
saddle, and gathered the reins from the groom. Henry stood looking up into his soldier’s face, his crimson cape a roar of colour against the bleached blues of morning.
    ‘I will have Dr West spend the night with you on his way to Linlithgow Palace,’ he said. ‘He will explain the detail of the proposed agreement we’ll be putting before
James. You can tell him whatever news you have for me. Thereafter, I expect to receive regular bulletins from your Edinburgh man. I do not expect you to disappoint me.’
    Surrey raised his hat. ‘Trust me, Your Highness. We will get under James’s skin as if we were ringworm.’
    The king laughed, a bark that set rooks flying from the battlements, and slapped the horse’s rump. With a kick of earth Surrey and his servant cantered off.
    England was still in the clutches of winter, but in the king’s heartland, spring was not far away. The undulating fields and woods of Essex and Herefordshire passed effortlessly under
Surrey’s hooves, buds already quickening on the trees, aconites threshing in the wind as if they wanted to snap off their own heads.
    As a younger man the earl would have felt a pang leaving these shires behind. They were his home, and he knew their smell and taste so intimately they still crowded his dreams. But since those
years in the Tower, when he had feared he would never set foot outside again, the south had lost its hold on him. When Henry made him Lieutenant General of the North, he had not doubted for a
second that this was the post for him. The north was a challenge for any soldier, and it promised more hardship than comfort, but a seasoned campaigner like Surrey did not want ease. Comfort meant
old age, age brought feebleness, and feebleness signalled the end.
    On the ride back to Pontefract, the earl let his horse find its own pace. He spent ten nights on the road, and indulged himself, and his man, with beef and wine, to put heart into their chilled
blood. Out of the dripping mists of February the north crept up on them slowly, trees thinning, oystercatchers piping. At the first scent of peat-smoke, Surrey smiled. Yorkshire was close.
    The king and his kind might call it north, but Surrey knew where true north began. The Borderlands were the limit of civilisation on these islands. Their fierce terrain and cold-blooded people
were a race apart, so heartless and unpredictable that Surrey at times found himself bereft of speech at the treachery he and his march wardens encountered there. Sons would turn in their fathers,
mothers kill their babes, sisters betray their brothers. If they had a code of honour, it was unfathomable to those unversed in its edicts.
    A man who found solace in a God who had interfered little with his life beyond setting down the rule-book, Surrey often wondered if He had given up on the Borders. There was something abandoned
about this place, as if a sickness of spirit bubbled up from its springs. Abundant troubles would be found here, for king, earl and commoner.