After Flodden Read Online Free PDF

him.’
    ‘Not the cheapest labour, though,’ said the secretary, and drew a fresh sheet of paper towards him.
    Beneath their room, in the depths of the castle, the fires in the foundry were being stoked afresh. Vats of iron steamed and smoked as they melted, obedient as snow, over the flames. The roiling
iron was reflected on the stone ceiling in medallions of red and silver, but no-one had time to look up. Men, stripped to the waist, wearing leather aprons and arm-length gloves stirred their metal
broths with poles twice their height, but even so, the heat they gave off made the skin prickle like pork crackling. There was a throat-catching smell and a hiccup of belches and slurps as the
earth’s metals were recast with a violence befitting their new purpose.
    In a chamber where the heat was merely hellish, iron magma was tipped into moulds. Before it had begun to cool it had taken the shape of swords, spears, arrows; of lancets, pikes, knives, axes,
halberds, shot and balls. In a smaller room, cannons were fashioned, narrow guns as slender as virgins, with a reach to outrun any arrow.
    In the heart of the foundry was the man who oversaw this industry. Robert Borthwick, master meltar, ran between smelters and smiths, shouting orders that they must guess at under the tolling of
hammers and irons. He almost danced with excitement.
    Above ground, Edinburgh slept. Its people had no inkling of the foundry’s business. Their most blissful dreams were of peace and prosperity; their worst, the outbreak of war. For
Borthwick, the nightmare was that his new-cast weapons would languish cold and clean, never to sit in a soldier’s hand, or harrow the guts of the enemy. These were times when steel was almost
as necessary to man as bread. Borthwick would not allow his country to be unready. Under his direction the castle thrummed, a sweltering crucible for war.
    *    *    *
    Benoit was planing a spar for a ship’s hull. The rhythm lulled his senses, and while he continued to work with care, the squalling of the shipyard gulls and the clatter of
workmen slowly faded into the distance. Wood shavings fell at his feet, curls perfumed with resin. Transported by the scent, Benoit found himself in a forest, trees whispering like petticoats above
his head. Underfoot was moss and loam, a bed crying out for company.
    His plane brushed the spar over and over. The jawbone arc of the plank grew smooth beneath his hand as every roughness was tamed. Benoit loved handling wood and under his touch it responded
almost like a live thing. But he knew a limb far sweeter even than this. Suddenly, he was no longer alone in his forest.
    The king and his men rode into the yard, quiet as commoners. Scarcely a week went past without James inspecting the boats and the shipwrights’ sheds. Some seasons he was upon them every
day. Paniter, that Scots pine of a man, was with him again this morning. Also the chiel with yellow hair, known in the yard as the Angel. Gabriel Torrance was his name. He wore a look of perpetual
good humour, as though the world pleased him, whatever face it showed.
    The party handed their horses to the stable boy and went in search of Barton. Benoit put his head down and carried on with his work. He was out of their sight in the shed, not required to doff
his cap or bend his knee. Barton’s son Andrew was in the yard today, and he’d scrape low enough for all of them.
    The shipyard was on the Firth of Forth, within a couple of miles of Edinburgh Castle. On quiet days Benoit could hear the chatter of rigging in Leith docks, half a mile to the south. Close
behind the yard lay the broad streets and slow river of this Dutch-gabled town, and the quayside where Davy Turnbull’s high-roofed house stood, so close to the water that a badly piloted boat
would send spray over its door.
    Benoit had liked his stepfather, a man who never was silent if he could find a reason for laughing, whose left hand would dig coins out of