Read Online After Flodden by Rosemary Goring - Free Book Online Page B

with a desire to turn upon us, does it not? Would a true Christian raise his sword against his brother-in-law?
It’s hard to picture a man of such pure heart making a pact with our oldest enemy, planning to creep up behind us and cut our throats in the night.’
    ‘To be sure,’ said Surrey, ‘but – ’
    ‘I agree,’ said Henry, silencing him with a sigh. ‘But. James is all buts. I cannot fathom him. Nor do I trust him. He is weak enough to be swayed by any option that is to his
best advantage, whoever offers it. When his own needs are at stake, he is as ruthless as . . . ’ Henry snorted. ‘By Jove, when I think of it he’s as steely a bastard as you are,
Thomas, and that’s saying something!’
    Surrey did not laugh, but not because he resented his portrait, unfair though it was. Wisdom had it the best soldiers were made more of flint than flesh, and he had always wished he’d been
of their kind. The images he had gathered over the years from battle fields, from pillaged towns, from his own sentence in the Tower, might not then still visit him as regularly as unwanted
relatives. Peace from reminders of his past would be worth a calloused soul; or so he imagined.
    But he was perturbed by Henry’s picture of the Scottish king. This was a very different image from the one his agent painted. Was it possible they were doing James a grave injustice? Was
his accumulation of weapons and ships no more than the act of a cautious ruler? Were his invisible enemies not his neighbour but his own people? There had, he knew, been trouble enough from the
lords of the isles to make any king nervous.
    ‘What we need to find out,’ Henry continued, ‘is whether James is truly the religious sap we take him for, or whether he’s playing a fiendish deep game. A man capable of
leading a rebellion against his father and colluding in his murder cannot, surely, change colour overnight.’
    ‘He was but a boy back then, Your Majesty, a pawn in the hands of his father’s rebels. He never wanted his father dead.’
    ‘Maybe so,’ said Henry, ‘but he well knew what he was involved in. And where’s the difference between wishing your father removed from power, and him being slain? No,
James is no fool. I doubt these isles have seen a wilier prince.’
    Surrey was silent, and Henry too looked grim.
    ‘He may look like a willow, but he is made of steel. He might well be stricken with guilt, as rightly he should, and his sleep may be dogged by bad dreams, but it is almost inconceivable
that he would be more at home in a monastery than at the head of his troops.’ Henry gave a sour little laugh – ‘and I don’t refer to his taste for quim.’
    Surrey raised an eyebrow.
    ‘You must have heard,’ said Henry.
    Surrey shook his head.
    ‘Little James, whose beard was so fine he had to cut it off before he married my sister in case it came out in her hand, and now has not the vigour to regrow it, will tumble any woman
whose muff he catches whiff of.’
    The glimmer of a smile eased Surrey’s expression. ‘So not all saint,’ he said. He relaxed, profoundly relieved that the king had come round to his own view without a word of
coercion. The Scot might have the Bible engraved on his tongue, but he was, thank God, as fallible as any man. And while that made him more of a threat, it also made him familiar. After decades of
military campaigning, and too many hours spent at court, Surrey was of the opinion that knowing the enemy was only a step away from having him under his boot.
    The king shifted on his settle, stifling a belch. He had the look of a knight of old: broad and tall, solid with muscle, and eyes hard as a hawk’s. He stretched his legs, and laid a hand
on a stomach still firm for all his eating. He and the bishop exchanged a glance, whose meaning was hidden.
    Surrey was as yet unsure of the monarch. He was said to have a temper of a cast never before seen at the palace. Rumour had it he had once kicked a