by Robert Low
* * *
‘One-armed and alone, though I have reports of him being with a handful of others.’
‘Where is this handful, Mickle Anthone?’
It was said softly, but Mickle Anthone grew wary at once, for he knew Nebless Clem’s ways well enough. He watched the long-fingered hand toying with the coiled whip and licked nervous lips.
‘Nearby, sheltering – I suspect a few places and have sent men to look. He has come alone to make himself seem less of a threat. He has empty saddle holsters and no seeming weapons ither than a backsword, for the same reason.’
‘D’ye know him?’
Mickle Anthone squinted and frowned in the dim of the top room. He knew Batty Coalhouse well enough – most of the Trotters did, for he had scoured out Sore Will and Red John for having fouled Bills a few years since. Red John had been hanged for it. Mickle Anthone did not say this, all the same and muttered only that he knew the man by reputation, all the while looking from under lowered lashes at Nebless Clem’s face.
It was singular, that face, like a fierce dog fox, long and sharp snouted – though the snout was leather these days. The image was accentuated by the whiskers which stuck in coarse, thick red from just below his ears, joining the mass of russet hair round his head like a ruff save where it had gone bald. He covered his vanity with a rakish blue wool bunnet, which also hid the laces of the mask, a moulded confection that covered both cheeks and gave him a nose of leather.
‘Only what you ken yerself, sir – he is known as Corbie for the way his victims can run and jink and hide only to look up at the last and see him there, like a fat crow on a branch, waiting to peck their e’en oot.’
Clem knew Mickle Anthone wasn’t telling all, but it was probably nothing he did not know himself – the best part of it was that this one-armed man called Corbie was favoured of Netherby, which was where Megs came from.
‘Well, he didnae come this far to stand and watch,’ he said. ‘Bring him in.’
Mickle John headed for the stairs and Clem stopped him at the door with a last word. ‘The other business – who has pledged?’
‘The Trotters of Till promise fifty, full-armed and horsed. The Grays of The Snab similar, Bangtail Heron of Eastbraes can bring a score. The Forsters at Owlrig are undecided.’
Mickle John waited until it was clear nothing more was forthcoming, then left. Clem fingered the ivory-inlaid butt of the whip and thought about the Forsters of Owlrig. Even without them he had enough riders for what was needed – but it was the fact of them prevaricating he did not like; he would have to slap them when all the rest was done.
* * *
Batty came up through the gazes, some of them hard enough to let him know that they knew him; he felt like a chick wandering into a nest of weasels, but handed his horse to a lad who gave him back an idiot, black-rotted grin.
‘See to him,’ said another man, stepping from the tower. He was short, squat and dark, his hair straggling into a bad beard which he scratched. What showed of his skin was flaky and pustuled.
‘Anthone,’ he announced.
‘Batty Coalhouse. I have come to see Nebless Clem about a ransom.’
Anthone had started to nod, but his eyebrows shot up at that and he kept nodding until, finally, he led the way to the tower door.
The barmkin was parapeted and men walked it, stamping against the cold. Inside the tower’s ground floor were the beasts which Batty had expected – horses all of them, for any cattle were byred elsewhere. There was a haulage sling for lifting heavy goods up to the next floor, the kitchen – Batty could see the glow of the fire and smell the baking bread.
A wind of stair went round and round, past other doors, all closed. At the top, he was ushered in with a brief pause and a whispered urgency.
‘Never call him Nebless Clem,’ Anthone warned. ‘Not never.’
The room was unpartitioned, floored in planks which had had a sheen to it when new; years of nailed boots had scuffed it to ruin and the other marks showed Batty that it had once had tables and trestles and chairs. Feasting, he thought, though it would have been a poor meal for guests since the kitchen was so far away the food would have been cold by the time it reached here.
The walls had some ratty tapestries, almost certainly lifted on a raid of someone else’s house and there was some furniture. Most of the room was dominated by a solid plank table littered with papers and a trencher with the remains of a meal. There was a good fire and Batty saw that it was fed with coal; well, wood would be scarce here, he thought – but where the De’il did Nebless Clem get coal?
The man himself sat behind the desk in a plush chair with ornate arms and back, though the gilding was scraped off here and there. Plunder, Batty thought. Nothing in this place has been fairly bought.
‘You are Batty Coalhouse,’ Clem said finally and he toyed with a coil of black whip, which Batty saw was fine with ivory work in the handle and the curled thong of it studded with black metal barbs.
‘I am,’ Batty answered and eased his stance, seeing he was not about to be invited to sit.
‘What want you here?’
‘Will Elliot if you have him. I am give to understand you paid Malatesta in Berwick for the man and I am here to ransom him.’
‘Ransom?’ Clem said and his eyebrows lifted at that. ‘Is he kin?’
‘I am here for the Lord of Newark in Fife,’ Batty answered. ‘Will Elliot is his Steward and he wants him back. He is prepared to pay forty pound in English coin for him, provided he is in good condition. I would needs see him afore we handseil the deal.’
Clem laughed. ‘Would ye now?’ he said, then yelled out ‘Mickle Anthone’ and did not have to wait long for the sore-faced man to appear.
‘Fetch up the cripple,’ Clem ordered and Anthone hastened to obey. Clem sat back in the chair and poured wine from a silver salver into a gilded cup; Batty was not offered any and took note of that. Clem began to speak then fell silent as someone entered the room; Batty felt the presence and turned, expecting Will Elliot.
Instead he found himself staring at a woman, who stared back at him. She was as tall as Batty, dressed in a simple wool skirt falling in conical folds and cut low to show the white chemise beneath. Her hair was long and brown, falling free to her shoulders and her eyes were grey, the colour of a storm at sea, Batty thought. She was shapely and lovely, though there was a razor’s edge to her.
‘Mistress,’ he said and she acknowledged it, then drifted past him to stand next to Clem, who grinned up at her.
‘Kerchief your heid,’ he said shortly. ‘You’re indecent for a married woman.’
‘My husband is dead,’ she answered and Clem frowned. He took the butt end of the whip and laid it on her skirted leg, then dipped it until he found the hem of the dress and insinuated it upwards; she did not flinch.
Anthone came back, with a hirpling figure at his side. Batty and Will stared at one another while Will’s mouth dropped open. He was unbound and unfettered – he would hardly be able to run in his state, Batty thought.
‘Batty,’ Will said hoarsely. ‘Is that you there?’
‘It was when I rose,’ Batty answered, ‘and hope it will still be so when the sun falls.’
‘I had not thought to see you ever again,’ Will answered and Batty thought he heard a tinge of bitter in that. Not a surprise, considering – everything Will had once been had been stripped away by the events around Hollows. Seven years since, Batty remembered suddenly.
‘I am glad to hear you found some decent work at Newark,’ Batty replied, awkward now. Will nodded and shifted his weight; Batty moved to the spare chair he had not been invited to sit in and scraped it over the floor to let Will sink gratefully into it.
‘Aye – wee James Sandilands was good to me,’ Will said. ‘D’ ye ever think on it, Batty, that sixty miles either side of the Divide is peace? I was brought up in the Border lands and all my life believed that was the way of the world everywhere – murder, rapine,
plunder, neighbour against neighbour. Yet ower in Fife there is none of that.’
‘Allowing for a lack of English,’ Batty reminded him. ‘For here you are, taken in plunder, with Newark burned. But Sandilands has sent me with forty pounds English to bring ye home.’
‘He is already promised.’
The voice brought Batty’s head round to where Clem sat. The skirt was rucked up pretty far, far enough for Batty to see the hand and coil of the whip and judge where the handle was; he saw her wince slightly, then adjust her stance. Clem took his hand out from under and looked at the glistening butt; he grinned across it to Batty.
‘Promised?’ Batty echoed blankly. Clem nodded.
‘So – since the sky threatens a deal of weather on the moors, you had best be on your way afore it occurs.’
‘Promised to whom?’ Batty demanded; he liked Clem a lot less than when he’d first laid eyes on him and had not been overly impressed then. Clem frowned.
‘None of your concern.’
Batty saw it had all been set up to show Nebless Clem’s power, from his welcome to the act with the whip butt. He looked at Will, who shrugged.
‘I am no wiser than you.’
Batty turned back to Clem. He saw it was useless to promise more money and he thought, briefly, of dragging out his backsword and running it through the moulded facemask. Then he took a deep, dragging breath, nodded amiably to Clem as he sat, toying with the whip, the butt still glistening. And let his mouth run him down a blocked wynd.
‘I would wager you wish you could smell that,’ he said.
Chapter Four
Later still – somewhere else…
The building was burning and the roof had collapsed for the third time. He lay under the flaming beams of it, feeling the sear all over his back and struggling like a beetle to move, to wriggle free – to turn over, at least, away from the agony.
His breath laboured in short gasps and every one of them cauterised his throat. He saw the dark shadow, heard the familiar voice.
‘Kohlhaas – you need to get out from under here. They are throwing shot at the Vecchio – David is in danger.’
David was in danger. Batty had seen Simoni’s masterwork when he had first come to Florence, had marvelled at the breathtaking size of it, the menace of it, the smooth polished nakedness seeming to take a breath before striding out to confront Goliath. As long as it stood, Florence’s enemies would fail at the walls, it was believed.
Michaelangelo reached down a hand and Batty felt himself being plucked and dragged, which only added to the pain.
‘Hold him steady,’ Michaelangelo said, but Batty could not see how he or anyone could hold the massive statue steady. Then he realised Michaelangelo was staring off into the flames and wondered if rescue was at hand – or at least someone shifting the burning balks off him. The ceiling fell in yet again, a great blast of flame which washed over him and then was gone in a flurry of sparks.
It wasn’t Florence, Batty realised suddenly. Not the siege, with Michaelangelo fretting over his masterwork. It was later, at Kőszeg when that tiny fortress was being battered to ruin by Ibrahim Pasha and all the Turks of Suleiman I. It wasn’t a church he lay burning in, but a counter-mine and it wasn’t Michaelangelo come to save him but Baron Nikolas, his upturned sweep of moustaches smouldering as he gripped Batty’s shoulders.
‘It will do no good,’ the Baron said in his thick Croatian English, ‘if you harm, him worse – Netherby won’t care for it and they are already watching and waiting for you to fetch a priest and marry me.’
That wasn’t right, Batty thought. She said that while I was on the wet ground, with Nebless Clem standing over me and a crowd baying like slewdugs on a scent. Should have resisted throwing a flyte at him, he thought – but the snow blew his face stiff while his back flamed.
‘Keep him on the horse, Big Tam,’ said Ewan Fraser. ‘We have a wheen of miles to go before we find shelter. If we do at all.’
‘He’s burning up,’ Big Tam said. ‘He will die…’
‘Death is here,’ Giovanni Loppe said and he should know, Batty thought. I watched him die in the breach at Kőszeg, one of the many heaps of rubble which had been solid wall a few days before. The trick to keeping the Turks from coming through the holes, Batty had told his men, is to creep out in the dark and lay pots of poisonous powder, the fuses all chained to one ignition. Poisonous powder was gunpowder and a mix of tiny iron pellets and broken pottery coated with piss, shit, salis armoniaci and the juice of scallions. When it went off, no-one escaped and where it did not kill it burned.
The true trick was, his men countered, to creep out there and lay them without getting shot down by arrows and hackbutts from the Turkish sentries. Loppe got careless and got a fusillade of both so that he fell on his pot with a lit slow match – the light was shrieking, the explosion loud. Mayhap Loppe saw it as the last trump and the Gates opening for him, Batty thought. Mayhap that’s what happened to me; a pot exploded too early and got me in the back. Now I am lying in the rubble of the breach while the Turks come to wipe away this little pimple of a fort and continue on to Vienna, the Golden Apple…
* * *
He was called Thomas, a tall lean man like some ancient pole-sitter fallen off his perch. He had a neat-trimmed beard and hair cropped to his ears, all the same, so he was no nit-swarmed mountebank, which is what Ewan and the others always thought when they heard the word ‘physician’.
Actual physicians were rare as teats on a bull – usually the ones calling themselves by the title of ‘Doctor’ were tooth-pullers or the sort who sold bone relics such as another big toe of St Anthony or the skull of Jesus when he was a babe.
This one had a wool overrobe with short sleeves which let him roll up the long sleeves of his undershirt so that he could delicately slather Batty’s back with some ointment.
Ewan was, though he would not admit it, ruffled as a wet cat over the place they were in, which was all hefty cold stones and poor light – save for the one next to Thomas the Physician. The folk in it were no better, slippering around like monks though they were not and Ewan had set the others to finding out how many while they took care of the hobbies and their gear.
‘A big stone,’ John Dubh had whispered to him only a moment before. ‘Give or take a peck.’
It was their way of tallying cattle – aon, dhà, trì right up to fichead, which was a score, at which point you put down a big stone. This one was a rock Ewan did not trust much – the dark and the sprawl of the place, ancient and crumbling though it was, could hide more.
On the bed, a half-naked Batty moaned and tried to move; Thomas patiently prevented him, then turned to Ewan.
‘Could you help hold him fast? Best he does not roll over onto that back.’
Ewan obeyed before he even realised he had done so, but it was the mark of this Thomas that you did what he said.
He and the others, towing Batty on his own horse and trying to keep him from falling off it, had come up to this place in a flurry of driven snow, half-blinded and heading for Edinburgh. None of them, in truth, had thought to make it, but felt they had to try – discovering this blocky huddle of low, solid buildings had been a gift from God. Once, Ewan was sure, they had belonged to God; the place had old stones fallen from ruined walls that spoke of monastery in hushed tones.
Thomas finished his task and wiped his hands on a cloth. Batty, though still gone from his head, seemed easier in his breathing and made less sounds than before.
‘Beaten,’ Thomas said matter-of-factly. ‘With something that had nails or studs.’
‘Whipped,’ Ewan corrected. He had watched it from the top of the ridge, lying on the snow-patched grass, peering through the frozen fronds of a tussock while they dragged Batty from the tower.
They had stripped him of jack and shirt, lashed him to the wheel of a cart, having to make a loop round the stump of his missing arm. Then the one in the facemask had stepped up and uncoiled the black whip, shout
ing words which made the watchers howl appreciation for this was good entertainment on a bleak day and in a place where hangings were no longer novelty.
The masked man stepped back a few paces, judged the distance and made the whip crack so that the gathering crowd went ‘ooh’ and ‘aaah’. Then he swung it round his head and bent his body to give it full force before bringing it down; the smack made the watchers grunt and a couple of women shrieked.
Once, twice – six times. Then a woman stepped up to him, lithe and fine Ewan saw and not afraid of a man in the heat of bloodlust. She said something and the man stopped; he coiled the whip, breathing heavily. Then he shouted orders that brought men forward, one of them leading Batty’s horse.
They started loading him on to it and the masked man spoke in short, panting rushes to about twenty surrounding men, all helmeted and armed. Ewan had an idea what they were going to do – ride Batty out and bring him round enough to tell where the rest of his party was. Where the coin was. He slithered backwards, then scurried in a half-crouch.
‘Who did this?’ Thomas demanded and Ewan blinked back to the Now, to the pool of strong light that only made the shadows of this place darker still; a snow wind got a finger in and made the light dance madly and the flames of the fire throw up embers.
‘The Laird of Blackscargil,’ Ewan said dully and Thomas frowned.
‘We know of him here and he is no lord, just a dark heart with a stolen tower and someone else’s gudewife, or so I hear. What did your friend do to warrant this?’
‘Nothing but try to ransom an old friend,’ Ewan replied. ‘I think yon dark heart fancied to take the ransom and keep the friend. Nebless Clem, I am thinking he was, since he wore a mask affair with a leather nose.’