The Green Man

Eight

The town of Berwick fell quickly. The English were masters of the shattered streets and eyeless houses in a matter of days after our arrival, but the citadel continued to hold out, the wild skirling of the Scottish pipes hurling defiance from the battlements. Many of the citizens had taken refuge inside its walls, adding no doubt to the fortress’s congestion and its shortage of food and water. Albany, returning to his pavilion from a council of war in the Duke of Gloucester’s tent, railed bitterly against his countrymen’s obstinacy.

‘The fools know they can’t win, so why don’t they just give in sooner rather than later?’

It was not a question to which he expected an answer — indeed, there was a note of pride underlying his irritation — but, scrambling up off my straw mattress, bored and restless with inactivity, I suggested, somewhat impertinently, that the defenders could be waiting for the arrival of King James and his army. ‘Except that Your Highness’s brother seems to be taking his time in getting here.’

For a moment, Albany looked as if he might be about to remind me of my status as slightly lower than a worm — one of which was squirming across the ground towards me as I spoke — but then he thought better of it and laughed.

‘James is incapable of bestirring himself for anyone or anything. No doubt dalliance with his favourites is consuming a great deal of his time and energy.’

‘Would he have brought them with him?’

‘Brought them with him?’ the duke snorted. ‘Of course he’s brought them with him. He never stirs without ’em! One of ’em’s doubtless in charge of the army — probably that louse, Tam Cochrane — while good men like our uncles, Atholl and Buchan, are thrust aside and humiliated.’

I said nothing. There was nothing I could say. The names were unfamiliar to me, as were my surroundings. With each succeeding day, I felt myself to be in an alien world where strangeness was beginning to be the norm; where home and family and the soft green contours of my native west country were fading into a kind of dream glimpsed now and then in the long, dark watches of the night, but gone by morning. There were even times when I wondered if I had perhaps indeed strayed into that world of faerie beneath Glastonbury Tor, or into the elfland that Donald Seton had mentioned as existing under the Eildon Hills.

The call of a trumpet jagged the afternoon silence, and was answered by the keening wail of the pipes. Immediately all was bustle and confusion as men suddenly sprang into action. Murdo and Donald appeared as if by magic, ready to arm their master.

‘A sortie from the citadel,’ the former said in answer to Albany’s barked question, while the latter pushed me unceremoniously aside with a well-aimed kick.

‘Out of the way, Roger, my lad! This is soldier’s work. Not for hangers-on like you.’

I didn’t rise to the bait, but took myself off to a vantage point a little way outside the town where I could view the action in safety. It was a place I had discovered some days earlier; a small knoll where the delicate blue of the harebell and the deep, sweet pink of the clustering ling tinted the summer grasses; a little haven that had somehow escaped the general surrounding devastation.

Ten minutes later, I was watching the Duke of Gloucester, with Albany and Lord Stanley at his heels, closely followed by Earl Rivers and half a dozen other of his captains, engage in hand-to-hand fighting with a hundred or so of the enemy who had suddenly erupted from the citadel’s main gate. Hordes of screaming citizens lined the walls above them, indiscriminately hurling missiles at friend and foe alike. I couldn’t help laughing when an earthenware chamber-pot, with all its contents, landed upside down on a man-at-arms’ head; but it was laughter quickly silenced when the man, blinded, was ripped open from waist to neck by an enemy dirk.

A voice screamed above the general din, ‘The hay-cart! They’re firing the hay-cart!’

The cart stood close to the ballista, its contents waiting to be woven into fire-balls to be hurled over the citadel’s walls. In the panic of the moment, it had been left unguarded, and suddenly its contents were aflame. Even I, hanger-on that I was, could now see that the sally had been a mere diversion to keep the English occupied around the main gate, while another party of Scots crept out by a postern door and set fire to the hay-cart, which they were in the process of pushing towards the huddle of dwellings nearest the centre of the town. A rainbow of sparks whirled and tumbled in the afternoon light. Smoke billowed and wreathed in choking clouds.

I could just make out my lord Gloucester, Albany and the rest, spluttering and coughing, smoke-blackened and sweating, laying about them with their swords as they struggled to overpower their opponents before the citadel gates were slammed shut in their faces. But it was no good. The heat of the burning buildings distracted and confused them, and the width of the barbican drawbridge made it impossible for more than two men to go abreast. The great wooden leaves creaked defiantly together, the last Scotsman disappeared, like a wraith, through the final crack and the whirr and clatter of the iron bar could be heard, even above the general din, as it was laboriously levered into place.

A chance to end the siege of Berwick by capturing the citadel had been lost thanks to the stupid error of leaving the hay-cart unguarded. I decided I wouldn’t care to be in the shoes of whoever was responsible for that.

No one was in a happy mood that evening; but then, as far as the common soldiery was concerned, that was nothing new. Albany was dining in the Duke of Gloucester’s pavilion along with the other commanders, while they no doubt apportioned blame for the afternoon’s fiasco, and I was left to line up beside the cooks’ great cauldrons of what passed for stew with the rest of the unwashed masses. For some reason best known to themselves, the cooks had elected to build their fires and set out their trestles within shouting distance of the hospital tents, so while we chewed on bits of gristle and choked on pieces of turnip that were so raw they cracked our teeth, we were entertained by the cries, groans and screams of the wounded and dying.

A little man, a Londoner by birth I reckoned, seated on the ground beside me, spat out several choice morsels of the caterer’s art and, lumping all army cooks and commanders together, blasted them to hell.

‘A bloody good chance to end this siege once and for all,’ he grumbled, ‘and what ’appens? Our lords and masters allows ’emselves to be diddled by a party o’ kilted savages. Disgraceful I calls it.’

A second man gave a throaty chuckle. ‘You ain’t surprised, surely, Dickon? Don’ you know by now that if anythink can be cocked up, it will be? Tha’s the first rule o’ warfare.’

There was a general murmur of agreement in the fire-studded dark and a general shifting of bodies. After a while, people began getting up and wandering away from the heat of the flames and the sound of their fellow men in agony. With full bellies, they sloped off to find their own or somebody else’s woman amongst the camp followers at the rear of the baggage waggons, and I found myself isolated in a little pool of shadow thrown by one of the cannon used earlier in the siege, but at present abandoned in favour of more old-fashioned weapons. It reminded me of Albany’s story of how his father, King James II, had been blown up and killed by a piece of his own beloved artillery …

‘Chapman!’

The apparently disembodied voice came out of the darkness, making me jump. I scrambled to my feet, staring wildly about me.

‘Chapman!’ The hoarse whisper came again, like the scraping of a fiddle bow across catgut. ‘Chapman, I say!’

‘Who are you? What do you want?’

I had, by this time, located the source of the sound as coming from the opposite side of the cannon, and moved purposefully to round it.

‘Stop!’ ordered the voice with such urgency that, against all my natural inclinations, I obeyed. ‘Don’t come any closer. Stay where you are on the other side of the gun. You’ll regret it if you don’t. I have a knife and I shan’t hesitate to use it.’

The man, whoever he was, sounded desperate enough to carry out this threat, so I retreated. The nearest fire was nothing now but a carpet of red-hot ashes. It was a clear night, the sky above swimming with stars, but moonless, the distance curtained by the shadowy outline of the town. The cannon stood in a pool of blackness.

I repeated my earlier questions. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

A head was raised cautiously into view, but not an ordinary head. It was over-large and, as my sight adjusted to the darkness, I could see that it trembled with what seemed to be leaves. From the mouth drooped branches of foliage and where the eyes should have been were two glittering slits. In other words, the fellow was wearing a mask; the mask of the Green Man.

The realization gave me courage.

‘For heaven’s sake, take that stupid thing off and let me see your face,’ I begged. ‘If you have something to tell me, say it openly like a man.’

‘Hold your tongue,’ rasped the voice, ‘and listen to me. It’s for your own good and I haven’t much time. Watch your back, Chapman. You’re in danger.’

‘Danger? In what way?’

‘I don’t know exactly. If I did, I’d tell you. But I repeat, watch your back!’

I could feel little worms of fear beginning to crawl over my skin, but I answered jauntily enough, ‘Are you certain you have this right? Surely it’s my master, the Duke of Albany, who is threatened, not me. I have been hired to protect him.’

‘Albany?’ was the grim retort. ‘Maybe he is in danger. There are plenty of people who’d no doubt like to see him dead, his brother, King James, amongst them. But I do know you’re in jeopardy, as well. It’s no good asking me how I know this because I’m not allowed to tell. Just do as I say and be on your guard and maybe nothing will come of it.’

‘That’s not much use,’ I grumbled, adding violently, ‘I wish you’d take that damned Green Man mask off and we could discuss this face to face, man to man. Incidentally, was that you at Fotheringay who threw me against the wall and sent me sprawling to the ground?’

‘Yes. There was someone, I couldn’t see who, standing on the stairs above you. Whether or not he meant you harm, I’d no idea, but he could have done.’ Suddenly the Green Man flung out an arm. ‘Look behind you, Chapman!’

I whirled round, my right hand flying to the knife stuck in my belt, all my senses straining to meet whatever danger was threatening, and to meet it head on …

But there was nothing and nobody there, just a slight breeze stirring the darkness. The noises of the camp had grown muted; even the cries of the wounded had diminished and I realized it must be later than I thought. Albany would doubtless have returned to his pavilion and be looking for me. I turned back to address my companion …

He had vanished. I walked round the cannon several times, but there was no trace of him. He had deliberately misdirected my attention, and I had fallen into the trap like any green schoolboy. ‘Over there!’ we used to shout to unpopular school fellows. And while they were looking ‘over there’, the rest of us used to run away and hide.

Angered by my own stupidity, I made my way back to Albany’s tent and only just in time. A minute or so later, he walked in.

I lay tossing and turning on my straw mattress, listening to Albany’s snores which were loud enough to waken the dead. It was obvious that he had drunk too much of the Duke of Gloucester’s best wine, and it had taken the combined efforts of Davey and myself to strip him and get him to bed. If, I reflected sourly, the other commanders were all in the same state of inebriety, a surprise night attack by King James and his army could not only retake the town of Berwick, but drive us back as far as the River Tyne, if not farther. I wondered how distant the Scots’ army was.

But this was the least of my worries. My first concern was to work out the identity of the Green Man and the second to try to fathom his intentions. There had surely been something familiar in his voice, some intonation I had heard before, but although I went over and over his words in my mind, I could not pin it down. One moment I thought I had it, the next it had eluded me and, like a will-o’-the-wisp, was gone. And what was the purpose of his warning? Was he right? Was I really in danger, or was he, for some unknown reason, attempting to unsettle me and so make me less on my guard where Albany was concerned? And should I tell the duke what had happened, or did this unknown danger emanate from him? Yet why should he wish me ill? To listen to his protestations, I was his only friend, the one person he could trust. On the other hand, could I trust him?

It struck me suddenly that perhaps this was what the Green Man wanted; to sow seeds of discord between Albany and myself. My discontent with my present lot was probably no secret in general, and was most certainly known to each one of the five Scots. If I could be frightened into actually carrying out my threat to desert and make my way back home, relying on the Duke of Gloucester’s eventual clemency towards one who had rendered him several important services, then Albany would be deprived of a vital protection and left vulnerable to whatever mischief was being hatched against him.

As I tried desperately to calm my tumultuous thoughts, I recalled that only recently I had doubted if the duke was in any actual danger and had suspected him of some ulterior motive in keeping me by his side. Had I been right? Now, I didn’t think so. The more I went over my conversation — if you could call it that — with the Green Man, the more I was persuaded that someone was trying to scare me off, which seemed to imply that Albany really was in peril of his life. Whoever it was, would discover that I was not so easily intimidated.

The morning found me in the same frame of mind. Indeed, the first moment I was alone with Albany, I confided in him the details of my previous night’s encounter with the Green Man. We had made our way to the grassy knoll from where I had observed yesterday’s debacle and the spectacular failure of the English to take the citadel when offered a heaven-sent opportunity to do so. Below us lay the war-torn town; above, the bowl of the summer sky hung newly scoured and shining. The distant hills were burnished by the morning sun, and on their lower slopes I could just make out cattle and a few thin goats quietly cropping the grass. A little stream, possibly a tributary of the Tweed, washed the glittering mosses and gurgled over sun-bleached stones, fringed by crumpled, gently waving fronds of bracken. A lovely day; too lovely for the sights and sounds of war and the discussion of death and destruction.

Albany listened to me in silence before letting rip with a string of oaths that could only command my respect and admiration.

‘Who is this bastard creeping about in a damned Green Man mask?’ he finished on a quieter note, but his handsome face still suffused with colour. He was shaking, too, and not altogether from anger. He was frightened. ‘Someone’s trying to scare you away from me, Roger.’

‘That had occurred to me, my lord,’ I admitted. ‘Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have told you.’

‘Why not?’ he sounded alarmed. ‘You can’t possibly imagine that I mean you harm? What reason do I have? Well? Tell me! I asked to have you with me. This fellow, whoever he is, is trying to make you jumpy. It’s as plain as the nose on your face. While you’re worrying about yourself, your attention is not on me.’ His voice had become shrill. He heard it and took himself in hand. ‘If the scoundrel bothers you again, I shall complain to Duke Richard,’ he added on a calmer note. ‘He’ll soon root the fellow out and have him whipped at the cart’s tail.’ He glanced at me curiously. ‘You have no idea, yourself, who it might be?’

‘None at all, my lord.’ True enough; with the coming of the light I could no longer recapture that faint inflection of the voice that had brought momentary recognition.

Albany hesitated. ‘I meant … You have the sight, have you not?’

I was reminded of the discussion with the squires and Davey and wondered at this constant harping on my ability to ‘see’.

‘No, my lord, I do not,’ I answered firmly, determined to put this mistaken notion to rest once and for all. ‘It was my mother who had the “sight”, not me. All I have ever experienced are certain dreams that come to me occasionally and help me interpret things that I already know, but have failed to connect to one another in the proper and necessary way. Sometimes they may even jog my memory about things I have forgotten. But this is not “sight” as you mean it.’

‘Nevertheless, your mother had it. You have inherited your powers through the female line.’

‘I repeat, my lord, I have no powers. I cannot see into the future. If you imagine that I can foretell your destiny, you are mistaken and I am of no use to you.’

It had suddenly occurred to me that perhaps this was the reason Albany had insisted on my company and kept me by him, expecting some revelation concerning his ultimate fate — a revelation that would never come.

He read my thoughts and laughed. ‘I keep you with me for my protection, Roger. Because you are big and strong and, at the risk of repeating myself yet again, I trust you. I genuinely believe myself to be in mortal danger, either from one or more of Mars’s servants, who travelled to France after his death specifically to seek me out, or from someone within the English camp who thinks that King Edward’s attempt to put me on the Scottish throne is a mistake.’

‘Do you think it a mistake?’ I asked bluntly, risking his displeasure, or perhaps his scorn.

But he made no immediate answer. Overhead, a lark soared away eastwards towards the distant shimmer of a line of hills. Albany followed the bird’s progress until it flew out of sight.

‘I know my countrymen,’ he answered at last. ‘They won’t readily accept a king foisted on them by the Sassenachs, who have tried that game more than once in the past, and been thwarted. It will take more than my brother’s unpopularity and King Edward’s will to place the Scottish crown upon my head and keep it there.’

I was surprised by this sudden pessimism from one whom I had previously considered too confident for his own good, and said so.

Once again, Albany laughed.

‘Oh, I intend to take my own precautions for securing the crown, Roger.’ He slapped me on the back, unexpectedly jovial. ‘Don’t ask me what they are — ’ the question had indeed been on the tip of my tongue — ‘because I shan’t tell you.’ He raised his arms above his head and stretched until his bones cracked. ‘This damn siege!’ He was petulant again. ‘We stay here like so many sitting ducks while James and his army get closer and closer, when the sensible thing to do is to abandon this God-benighted town — when I’m king I shall hand it back to the English, anyway — and march to meet him.’

We descended the knoll and walked back towards Berwick, across the scorched and blackened earth, to the encampment outside its walls. Here, Murdo met us with the intelligence that the Duke of Gloucester was holding yet another council of war in his tent and desired his dear cousin of Scotland’s immediate attendance.

Albany swore.

‘More damn talking. Why don’t we get on and do something?’ he roared and strode off in the direction of the royal pavilion, the squire at his heels.

I knew what Albany meant and had a sneaking sympathy with his impatience. The continuing siege of the citadel was under the direction of Lord Stanley and Earl Rivers who, with a handful of gunners, kept up a desultory bombardment of its battlements without producing any result other than occasional abuse and defiance hurled from its walls. Occasionally, women would appear and start emptying their chamber-pots on the besiegers’ heads; or they would throw rotting meat and cabbage stalks at their tormentors along with some pretty foul language that men, in their innocence, always like to believe the female sex could not possibly know. (My experience is that women are less easily shocked, and have more fortitude of mind, than husbands, fathers and brothers give them credit for.) But these latter occasions were growing less frequent as food supplies dwindled inside the citadel and starvation began to take its toll.

But although, as I say, I shared Albany’s impatience, my faith in the Duke of Gloucester’s military ability remained unshaken. Here was a man who, at eleven years old, had been Admiral of England, Ireland and Aquitaine, while I, born on the same day, had still been trying to kick an inflated pig’s bladder between two upright sticks stuck in the ground (unsuccessfully, I regret to say). And eight years later, at nineteen, he had helped his brother, Edward, to regain his throne at the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury, where he had fought with the skill and precision of a man twice his age. My trust was in Prince Richard.

This did not mean, however, that I was not suffering from all the prickles of boredom that afflict those with too little to do and too much time in which to do it. The result was not only bad temper but a fatigue that had more to do with the mind than the body. I would lie down at night on my pallet feeling worn to the bone, only to find sleep elusive. I would doze and wake, doze and wake throughout the night, but at the same time, I had trained myself to lie as still as possible so as not to disturb the duke, who, on his camp bed with its swansdown mattress, passed his nights in comparative comfort and who resented being aroused by my tossing and turning.

But that afternoon, after his return from the council of war, Albany re-entered the pavilion in a particularly restless mood, and, when night fell, spurned his bed in order to sit up and read in an attempt to tire himself out. He had pulled his camp stool and table close to the brazier which gave the tent both light and warmth. Lozenges of incense gave off a sickly sweet smell that at first irritated my nose, but then had a soporific effect, lulling me into slumber.

A slight commotion as the tent flap was opened and Davey announced, ‘My lord of Gloucester!’ brought me, however, wide awake. I lay perfectly still, unnoticed in my pool of shadow.

‘Cousin!’ Albany rose to his feet, although with a lack of urgency that plainly indicated this was merely a social gesture from one prince to another.

‘Cousin.’ Gloucester’s deep voice acknowledged the courtesy. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you. I’ve interrupted your reading.’ I sensed rather than saw that he was turning over the folios spread out on the table, and his next words confirmed it. ‘Let me see. Richard Rolle. “Meditations on the Passions.” Saint Thomas Aquinas. Thomas à Kempis. “Imitation of Christ.” You favour the mystics, cousin?’

‘As you do, yourself, I believe.’

‘True.’

Davey reappeared with a second camp stool, then discreetly made himself scarce again. I lay doggo, hardly daring to breathe in case I attracted attention to my own presence. That nosiness, so frequently deplored by my nearest and dearest, had me agog with anticipation as to what I might overhear.

‘What can I do for Your Grace?’ Albany enquired, evidently sensing that this visit had a purpose and was not simply the desire on Gloucester’s part for a friendly chat.

There was a momentary hesitation before the duke said abruptly, ‘You have three nephews.’

Albany waited for a second or two, obviously expecting his companion to continue. But when nothing more was said, Albany replied, ‘Yes. The eldest, the Duke of Rothesay is nine, his two brothers six and three.’

‘What … What do you plan to … to do with them when you become king?’

‘Why … nothing.’ Albany sounded startled, as well he might. It was not the question either of us had been expecting.

‘Nothing? Won’t they prove a menace to you?’

‘A menace?’ Suddenly Albany seemed to grasp the meaning behind the query. ‘Ah! You mean as my brother’s rightful heirs? No, no! Scotland, like other Celtic countries, has always adhered to the law of tanistry, not to the rule of primogeniture, as you do in England.’

(At that moment, I had no idea what the law of tanistry was, but I discovered its meaning later. The heir (the tanist) of a Celtic prince or chieftain is not necessarily his eldest son, but can be elected from a whole circle of his male kinfolk, thus ensuring that the strongest or the wisest or the most talented member of the royal family is chosen as leader of the nation. Of course, it doesn’t always work that way; people make foolish mistakes or they grow lazy and accept the next in line as a matter of course, as had happened with the present Scottish king. I imagine that one danger tanistry is intended to obviate is the child ruler with all the attendant jockeying for power amongst the nobles. ‘Woe to thee, O Land, when thy king is a child.’)

The Duke of Gloucester made no immediate answer, but sat drumming his fingers on the table top, lost in thought. Then he rose abruptly.

‘Thank you, Cousin. You’ve … er … you’ve relieved my mind of a worry about … ah … about the position of your … your nephews.’

He spoke almost at random as though he were thinking of something else altogether and I guessed Albany must be as puzzled by this little episode as I was. Indeed, I heard him clear his throat preparatory to making some remark or other, but before he could say anything, the tent-flap was once again flung back, but this time with some force, and Timothy Plummer made an unceremonious entrance.

‘Your Grace! My lord Albany! Forgive me butting in like this, but you must both come at once. A messenger — a scout — has just ridden in to camp with the most momentous news!’