Shake Loose the Border

by Robert Low

  She crouched, not wanting to sit but needing out of the hissing wind, which even the little copse of trees failed to break. It mourned between slender trunks, low and bitter. Batty envied her knees which let her perch like that.

  ‘You think Dickon Graham will welcome you back?’ he growled, knocking iced snow off a stump and sitting. He felt the cold seep up his hurdies and thought about what that would do to his nethers.

  Eliza had thought of little else. She would wake tomorrow to the bustle of tasks, among kin who knew her, who would bring her a civil meal. But it will be down to Dickon Graham of Netherby whether the rest of them scratch her with worried looks, wonder at what she has done to bring her back.

  ‘Yes,’ she said and he didn’t argue. There was a pause, then she asked: ‘D’ye ken what Clem wanted with your Will Elliot that’s worth dragging a poor cripple down to Carlisle?’

  ‘Exchange for a stunted mannikin of an Egyptiani,’ Batty replied, then stopped because he was not sure if the Ape was an Egyptiani at all, though he moved with them and was valued. He felt her looking, waiting expectantly and when nothing came, turned into her gaze.

  ‘Clem wants to know where the Egyptiani winter, a secret place only they know.’

  Her face turned stricken in the brief flicker of unclouded moonlight and there was something more there, Batty thought, than horror about what Clem planned to do with the knowledge – though that would be enough to strike you rigid. Mayhap she thought of the seven women hanged in a glade.

  There was a sound, a tiny ching, soft as a Faerie bell and Batty’s head came up at it. She huddled, afraid. Batty slowly drew out his monstrous axe-handled dagg and worked his stiff bones off the stump. She marvelled at him, softly singing.

  ‘At the mirk and midnight hour

  She heard the bridles sing,

  She was as glad at that

  As any earthly thing.’

  ‘Ho there.’

  The voice was rough, hoarse with fear and Batty was sure the man squinted into the dark, searching for the singer. Faerie, he thinks and then laughed; nae Faerie would have a voice like a badly cracked bell. He saw a bobbing red spark of match fuse in the darkness and knew where the man was.

  ‘Turn and leave,’ he said, then hirpled sideways, knowing what would come. The blast of light, the great roar blew out sight and sound, but the gout of flame spat a ball three feet to the left of Batty and let him see, for that lightning instant, the man who had shot the matchlock caliver.

  He pointed the dagg, squeezed and heard the wheel spin sparks. Then it exploded and there was a shriek; he flipped it, feeling the hot muzzle even through the gauntlet.

  From his right came a cracking, a crashing, a flurry of snow rolling like mist; the figure in the middle of it lunged at Batty with a big, ugly, notched broadsword, his mouth wild and wet and open.

  Batty struck with the axe, missed but caught the blade on the rest of the pistol grip, sweeping it sideways and away from him – then the man stumbled forward and hit like a runaway stirk. They both went over in an explosion of powdered snow.

  Batty rolled, gasping in a welter of blinding freeze but with his back flaming into agony. He scrabbled for sense, clawed for purchase to stand and realised he had dropped the dagg; then the man rose like a nemesis, broadsword still in one hand and his face snarling triumph.

  Batty saw it all then, the way time and age wears you to a nub, the way you can go too often to the well and how life, however long it has been, appears only as a single, short explosion stretched out in slow motion, an explosion in which question has become answer, possibility alchemicaled to reality, time transmuted to eternity.

  Then the man jerked and screamed, a blade tore through the rest of his throat and he fell away trailing rubies, leaving the dark angel called Eliza with a bloody knife, her kerchief torn free and her hair like Medusa.

  ‘Help me up,’ Batty said roughly, to tear her from staring at what she had done – but when she did, her eyes were dark and clear, with no shock; she had no strain in her at all and that made Batty more feared than if she had been a shrieking harpie.

  The man she had stabbed in the throat was dead, eyes staring at nothing and already done with melting the snow, though the last heat of him made it look as if he wept for the bad cess of his life.

  Batty found the one he had shot and it wasn’t difficult in the dark, since he moaned and whimpered. The shot had hit his hand and, like all the cruel weight that flew from the hexagonal barrel of a big dagg, it had not been content with a finger or two, but had blown off the whole affair. There was a deal of blood, but Batty expertly looped a snare he fetched from inside his jack and wrenched it tight until the trickle went to a seep, then stopped entirely; he felt the woman’s unseen eyes, the question she would not ask and answered it anyway.

  ‘You’ll not die here. Fetch your horse and ride back to the tower,’ he said and the man moaned, flopped in the puddle his blood had already made. ‘Keep that snare tight, mind.’

  ‘I wulnae make it.’

  ‘Ye will if ye ride firm and dinna fall,’ Batty answered firmly. ‘It will be the only way of saving yourself, to find someone there who can treat this. Are ye a Ker by any chance?’

  ‘John Forster,’ the man gasped and Batty patted him soothingly.

  ‘Well, ye can forget your right hand from this moment, for it is no longer a part of your world. Learn to be Ker-fisted. I am right sorry for it, but that’s the price the likes of us pay for the life we lead.’

  ‘Help me…’

  Batty helped him up, boosted him to the saddle and held him there while he found a balance. Then he looked at the man, hard as cold iron.

  ‘When you get to the tower,’ he said, ‘tell them this and no more. Tell them Batty Coalhouse is coming.’

  He nudged the horse hard enough to make it move and watched it amble a few steps, pick up a pace, then went back to the dead man to find his axe-handled dagg. Blood had made a dark hole under the man’s head and his tow hair looked moonlit bright against it. Batty blew snow off his precious pistol and, when he turned, the woman had both their horses held ready.

  Eliza followed in his wake, no longer concerned whether he knew the way to Netherby, though she was rasped by his singing.

  ‘Nae living man I’ll love again,

  Since that my lovely knight was slain.

  Wi’ a lock o’ his yellow hair,

  I’ll chain my hert for everymair.’

  * * *

  Wharton sat behind a table littered with papers and the litter of a meal. The ornate butt of a wheelock dagg peeping shyly from under a sheaf of bundled reports and a dagger with a jewelled hilt was carelessly thrust deep into the scarred wood.

  Across from him, lounging against the shutters, his son Henry had a pinked and slashed leather jerkin and a black sword belt and hanger over a red doublet and red hose with a prominent codpiece. It was altogether too German for his father, who preferred a plain shirt, though his overrobe was deep blue and trimmed with wolf fur; it was needed, for despite the fire the wind fingered through the shutters and fluttered the candles. Carlisle was a snell place, even in summer.

  Near the fire, which was clearly too mean for his liking, stood an individual with his back to them all, heating his hands and growling softly. He was short and slight and paunched a little, his head drooped like a withering willow and the entire appearance was of a pox doctor’s clerk. He wore a fine lawn shirt and heavy leather riding breeches and boots that came above the knee and looked as if stolen from his too-large da.

  But when he put on the fancy embroidered cote that was slung, glittering the firelight, over a chair, he was a different beast altogether.

  Henry knew why Harry Rae, Berwick Pursuivant, had come in the middle of winter, scowling at having had to do it. It made Henry sullen and unwilling to participate in matters with the other guest.

  The other guest stood impatiently, hard-faced – well, what you could see of it under the tawdry lea
ther mask that gave him a nose. He wore breeches and muddied boots, a jack of plates and a split-brim cap, all of them reeking of the moss and the moor. Wharton looked at him coldly.

  Nebless Clem glowered back, measuring Thomas Wharton, the Warden of the West March of England and Governor of Carlisle. He was a lean man, age gnawing it to stringy muscle and wire tendons, his greying hair carefully cut to curl on the great, rough wolf-fur collar of the robe, his silvered beard trimmed all perjink. When he spoke he steepled his fingers together and closed one eye; the rumour was that his open eye was a sure sign he was lying and the one that let him speak the truth he kept always shut.

  ‘It is a great shame,’ Thomas Wharton said insincerely, ‘that the Egyptiani mannikin escaped – but there you are. What can you do?’

  ‘A great shame to Carlisle,’ Henry Wharton put in pointedly and his father pretended to ignore him.

  Clem thought that the younger Wharton dressed like a hoor, but you had to take into account his resolve in fighting out of the treachery of the Master of Maxwell not long since. Wharton had reached an agreement with the Master of Maxwell that he would join them with at least two thousand men, giving ten hostages as a pledge. Together they would attack the Earl of Angus, in support of Hertford’s assaults in the east.

  Henry was sent ahead, to burn Drumlanrig and Durisdeer, but the Master of Maxwell’s men suddenly turned coat and joined Angus, chasing Henry Wharton into the mountains. Then the Scots force advanced on Dumfries and Wharton had to fight his way back to Carlisle with just his cavalry.

  ‘Seems so,’ Clem answered. ‘Seems all too easy to walk in and out of Carlisle’s fortress and free its prisoners. Well, I will find another use for Will Elliot and be on my way.’

  ‘Not that easy,’ the elder Wharton said softly. ‘Help was given from inside as well as out – a gaoler is now in shackles and I would have the outside man join him. I believe you know him – Batty Coalhouse.’

  Clem’s face gave nothing away – one of the benefits of the leather mask – but his eyes flickered enough for Wharton to smile thinly and nod. Henry noted that the back of the Berwick Pursuivant straightened at the name.

  ‘Aye, the man you striped,’ the elder Wharton went on. ‘I have heard he came to you trying to ransom Will Elliot and you gave him an answer. Pity you did not hemp him.’

  Clem shot him a look. ‘The law does not permit that.’

  Henry Wharton laughed scornfully. ‘Such legal niceties never prevented you from rapine, insight, arson and all the other crimes your band of rogues have stained the land with.’

  ‘I will keep Will Elliot,’ the elder Wharton went on, ‘and ten of your men besides, as surety for the task you will oblige me with – namely, the apprehension of Batty Coalhouse. You may hurt him but bring him to me alive.’

  The Berwick Pursuivant turned and made a slight coughing sound which made the elder Wharton scowl. He knew Harry Rae was pointing out how hangings were permitted only by writ of the Lord Protector, but he did not need to be told that. The Lord Protector was not here, in the Borders.

  Clem bridled. He wanted to snarl at them but did not dare. He had no use now for Will Elliot, but he wanted to drag him out because Will was Clem’s possession and he did not like to be robbed. He wanted, at the very least, to ride away and ignore the Whartons, but he was aware that four of the ten hostages the treacherous Maxwell had handed over had already been hanged; Clem was sure the ten men he’d be forced to leave would not be spared if he refused.

  Yet an idea came to him through the red fog and blew the rage away in shreds.

  ‘Will Elliot was once held by the Armstrong Laird of Hollows,’ he said, ‘or so I had heard. I also heard how Batty Coalhouse exerted all his legendary powers to free him, at great risk to himself.’

  Wharton’s head came up at that and he glanced sideways at his son. Clem almost grinned; so it was true enough, then. He pressed his point.

  ‘Give me Will Elliot and let that be known to everyone. When Batty comes to free him from yet another tower…’

  He left the rest hanging. Henry Wharton stroked his bushed chin and looked at his wolfen father. ‘Better that then thrashing about the moors searching for him.’

  ‘He’ll be with the Grahams of Netherby,’ the elder Wharton replied harshly, but he knew the likes of Clem could not take the Grahams on with the men he had, though he was lunatic enough to try. He looked blackly at Clem.

  ‘You will have Will Elliot. If you lose him or play me false, you will find Hell an easier sanctuary than this Earth with me hunting you down.’

  Clem wanted to say that Will Elliot was his prisoner, to do with as he saw fit, but he knew the truth of possession well enough and did the only thing he could; he thanked the Whartons kindly, bowed at the neck and left, clacking his big muddy boots out of the hall, feeling the heat of Wharton scorn searing his back. Like Batty Coalhouse, he thought.

  The Whartons said nothing afterwards, for it was all too raw. They had come recently from London and the funeral of young Tom, son and brother and even if it had been a merciful release from the pox and the mad fancies it was still a sore wound for them both.

  A handful of years before this the Warden’s son had been sent on what had seemed a simple enough task – fetch the wee Queen Mary from the hands of the Armstrong reivers who had stolen her. The wee Queen would be brought south to King Henry and married on to his young son, thus shackling the Scots to a different future.

  Instead, young Tom had somehow fumbled it, had ended up in the hands of Batty Coalhouse and, though returned intact in body, had never been the same since.

  ‘Coalhouse killed my boy,’ Wharton growled. ‘Retribution is overdue.’

  Harry Rae offered condolences but he was only dragging the attention to himself. When he felt it, he fished out a sealed packet from inside his shirt and laid it in front of the Whartons.

  ‘To save you going blind,’ he said, ‘here is roughly what it says – young Henry here’s gallant gesture to fight a duel with Grey of Wilton is refused by the Lord Protector, who urges you both to reconcile your disagreements with the Warden of the East March.’

  Thomas Wharton had been expecting it, but slapped an irritated hand on the table, stirring the packet. Harry Rae was unperturbed.

  ‘The Marches will need unity among those charged with presevering the peace along it. The war with the Scots is all but done with and England needs no Border brigandage. You are both charged with using your influence to prevent that.’

  Thomas Wharton looked as if he would choke. For six years his endeavours, blessed by the old king, had been bent on fomenting the family Names in the Border to fight one another for the furtherance of King Henry’s aims. Now it was all to be reversed.

  ‘This Will Elliot business,’ Harry Rae said mildly, ‘is a case in point. The Border does not need Graham against that cut-nosed horror from Blackscargil. Neither, the Lord Protector agrees, does it need more hempings. He is unhappy about what you did to the Maxwell hostages.’

  ‘Batty killed my son,’ Wharton answered. He wanted to say more, about how the Lord Protector Seymour should look to his own position these days, but did not. Besides, if the Seymours fell, Wharton would go as well.

  Henry Wharton knew that his fecklessly weak young brother had died of the pox, but it was true that whatever had happened between him and Batty Coalhouse had coloured him for the rest of his life, in night terrors and waking dreams.

  He never said anything, simply nodded curtly to Harry Rae and followed Clem out of the hall, to make sure the ten hostages were secured and Will Elliot delivered. He did not like it and agreed with Harry Rae – the Maxwell hostages had been hemped and now Gib the gaoler was dancing on air for his part in the freeing of the Egyptiani midget. There was altogether too much rope and tree for Henry.

  We need to be making useful friends, not snarling at everyone, he thought. The war here is done with and we have lost it – if we are not cunning then we will have the Fre
nch coming ower the border from Scotland as well as crossing the Channel into England.

  Spending time and blood on an auld one-armed man was a waste; Henry was afraid, more than he would admit to anyone, that his father’s grip was slipping, that all the cunning and plot he had used to shake loose the Border on behalf of his king was come to nothing. He had failed, after all, Henry thought and that might crush a man’s mind and resolve.

  Chapter Nine

  Netherby on the Esk

  His back was on fire and someone said ‘keep him verra still noo.’ The room was burning as it had been before, but this time someone was stabbing his flaming back, slowly and with relish, spearing it until white-hot pain ran straight down him into the red, molten core of his being.

  He felt himself curling, heard the strange sounds he made. ‘Move the light a bitty, ah canna see. By God, the fester in this…’

  The stabs began again and the pain grew until it filled the whole world, until it seeped into his heart and flooded into his head. He couldn’t breathe.

  ‘Batty Coalhouse – stop fighting. Just for a wee minutey. Ye have a great hert for fighting, I ken, but just bide still.’

  ‘If he had a foot in Paradise he would take it out to fight back on earth,’ a man said. Someone else had said that to him once – Mintie was it? He could no longer recall. There was the smell of herbs, some of which he recognised through the red throbbing – feverfew, marsh woundwort. His ma had known them and more and if she had been one of the seven in Nebless Clem’s woods he would have hanged her as a witch, too. Someone snuffed candles out on the skin of his back.

  He felt himself being bound, swaddled like a babe, then they left him and took the light so the darkness fell like a balm. Yet soon enough the roof burned and fell on him again, buried him under a scorch of dream timbers and burning scarlet flames.

  * * *

  He came out of an ocean of grey gently, not like all the times before when he breached back into the world like a whale. At first he saw only dim light and pale blobs, like the outlines Michaelangelo did before he painted, then they slowly, slowly coalesced into faces he knew.