‘We are, after all, at war with them and not with the Kerrs,’ the Marshal said mildly.
To the Frenchmen risking their lives to drive the English from Scotland, such a feud seemed no doubt an ill-timed indulgence. To Buccleuch, any comment from a foreigner was a piece of damnable impertinence, no less. He said, ‘And what pains the Marshal in that? Because we sit here in bows and silk sarks, it doesna mean we couldna jummle the English and the French off our own turf if need be, and mind our own affairs too. Ye didna fare so sweetly yourselves the other week in yon bicker at Haddington, after raxing yourselves in Edinburgh killing poor folk as they walked their ain causeway.…’
But halfway through this, Lord Culter had kicked the fiddler on the ankle and the fiddler, a man of sense, struck up a dance tune, while every Scott present rose hastily to his or her feet. Among them Sir William Scott, his arm in his bride’s, leant over his father. ‘You’ve a few quarts in you, Faither?’ he said.
‘No more nor him!’ retorted the head of his house, surprised and irritated, with a wave at the Marshal.
‘Aye, well. He isna going-daft in the heid. Take a dance with Janet, Faither,’ said Will Scott kindly, and whirled off with his new lady wife.
Looking round for sympathy, Sir Wat found himself indeed standing eye to eye with his wife. ‘Fegs,’ said the Lady of Buccleuch, fixing him with a calculating eye. ‘If you’re going to fight the English single-handed, you’ll be needing your strength. I’ll dance with Marshal Strozzi, if he’ll have me.’
And as the Marshal, his face marvellously tutored, rose and made her a bow, Janet Beaton of Buccleuch took his hand and led him over to Will Scott and her sister Grizel whose wedding day, if memorable, was not what every girl would expect.
Later, the Florentine made a point of finding Lord Culter and congratulating him on the success of the day.
Richard Crawford, who was by no means a stupid man, smiled slightly and said, ‘I am sure you realize the scheme was not of my devising. The peculiar imagination of the Crawfords is the inheritance of my brother Francis.’
‘I am sorry not to see him tonight,’ said the Marshal politely. Lymond, with the Midculter men, had ridden back to Talla to join his mother and sister-in-law and escort them safely home, leaving Richard to represent the family at the belated festivities. ‘You are both of formidable calibre, my lord; you do not need me to inform you of that. I merely wondered whether, as the younger and therefore freer of you both, he had considered a captaincy abroad? The King of France, I know, would be happy to employ him, and I am sure my brother would press the claims of his crusading Order, were they to meet. Has he ambitions in Scotland, your brother Lymond? Or is he well-disposed towards France, or to the Religion? Or—’ he smiled a little—‘has he commitments quite incompatible with a life sworn to chastity …?’
In the last few months, Richard Crawford of Culter had become very used to such questions. For sheer decency’s sake, he seldom answered them. He rarely felt qualified to answer them, anyway. But here, from one of the great soldiers of Europe, was an inquiry without inquisitive intent.
He said carefully, ‘Francis has led a company of his own, you may know, in this country and abroad. But as to the future … I have no idea of his plans, or his ambitions. He may have none. He has no ties here that I know of, other than what you might expect. As for religion.…’ Lord Culter strove for tact. ‘In Scotland, perhaps, we tend to extremes. There is a devotee of the Old Religion among us—you may have met him. Peter Cranston is his name—’
‘—Who is so fanatically religious that he makes all men atheists. I have met him. I have met some of your Lutherans too, mostly in prison. But it seems to me that your Government tolerates both, except where the Reformers threaten alliance with England. And your brother, after all, risked a good deal recently to keep your Queen out of English hands. I should judge him to be perhaps a man of humanist principles …?’
He was offering more leeway than Richard, on his brother’s behalf, was prepared to accept. The Order of St John, which had crept so obliquely into the conversation, was the supreme fighting arm in the known world of the Holy Catholic Religion. ‘I should hesitate to attribute anything to him at the moment, even principles,’ said Lord Culter, smiling. ‘But you are free to try.’
Marshal Strozzi studied his well-groomed hands. ‘There are three men I should like your brother to meet. One is my brother Leone, now in charge of the Mediterranean fleet in action against the Turks. One is the Chevalier de Villegagnon, a soldier and sea captain to equal any in the Order of St John. And the last is also in the Order: a Grand Cross of Grace named Sir Graham Reid Malett, known to a great many people as Gabriel.’
As he spoke the last name he looked up, in time for nothing but Lord Culter’s habitually unexcited grey gaze. ‘I’ve heard the Prior here talk about Gabriel,’ said Richard serenely. ‘He seemed at times to be confusing him with the Pope.’
‘When you meet him, you will realize why,’ said the Marshal simply. ‘He is one of the Order’s great names. You should be proud of him. His forebears were from Scotland, although he has no family now save a sister, a child of thirteen called Joleta, who lives in a convent on Malta. And in her also you would find something rare.’
A swift vision of his brother Francis posing as a man of humanist principles crossed Richard’s mind. His voice wary, ‘A beauty?’ he asked.
The Marshal looked at him. Then, unexpectedly, he laughed. ‘You are applying mundane standards,’ he said. ‘You cannot do that either to Graham Malett or his sister. Your brother will understand when he meets them.’
Richard was silent. He doubted it. If Joleta Reid Malett was as plain and as pure as she sounded, she was out of Brother Francis’s territory, thank God. For Brother Francis’s standards were mundane, all right. And high.
*
Not long after that, Sir William Scott took his bride by the hands, and drawing her from the throng said, ‘Well, as you see, I came back. Were ye worried?’
‘Worried? What about?’ said Grizel, and as his mouth opened, added prosaically, ‘Janet said that as a widow woman with no protector, I’d need to wed an Englishman or a Kerr.’
Her husband’s features resumed command of themselves. ‘And which would you choose?’ he inquired.
‘Well now. The English make bonny speeches, but they run to an awful wee man. And the Kerrs … there’s something unchancy about a left-handed race.’
‘I’m right-handed,’ offered Will Scott.
‘Aye.’
‘And six foot three in my hose.’
‘Uh-huh. I didna say I wanted to run up a beanpole. Nor have I heard hide nor hair of a speech, bonny or otherwise.’
‘I’m saving it,’ he said austerely, ‘till I’ve the theme for it.’
‘Oh!’ said Grizel Beaton (Younger) of Buccleuch, with a squeal of delight. ‘Will Scott! Are we having our first married set-to?’
They had come to the quiet wing of the house, and the suite where their chamber lay. ‘Aye we are,’ said her husband, a large hand closing round her arm, as he felt for the latch with the other.
‘I enjoyed it. And what next?’ she asked, doucely.
‘We get reconciled,’ said her husband, steering her through the bedroom door smartly and allowing it to close fast behind them. The tapers fluttered and straightened, bright in Grizel Beaton’s wide, critical eyes. ‘Are ye reconciled?’ he inquired.
‘I’ve been reconciled for eighteen hours, Will Scott,’ said his aunt. ‘And if ye don’t win me ower soon, I’ll be past it.’
II
Hough Isa
(Crailing, May 1549)
IN the spring of next year, when the Culter family were beginning to find their younger son’s presence a little wearing, the Chevalier de Villegagnon, Knight of the Order of St John, came back to Scotland for four months, and not unexpectedly found his way to Mid-culter castle.
The war with England was then dwindling. Two Scottish stronghold
s had been recovered by their owners, and the occupying garrisons thrown out. In the remaining fortresses, the English and their mercenary troops passed a formidable winter, deserting where possible. Besides the bad food and the pneumonia and the boredom, they had begun to suffer pinching from London, where the Protector Somerset, with a political crisis on his hands, issued curt orders to his captains in Scotland to lie as if dead.
Boredom was the great enemy among the French troops as well. Depleted by the departure of Piero Strozzi and the rest recalled to France, they were kept alive and fighting through the first part of the winter by the Queen Mother’s surgeons and the sale of her jewellery. Then reinforcements and money arrived at last; and the problem changed into one of directing the quarrelsome instincts of fifteen hundred belligerent French towards the enemy and not to the Scots. The country, ruled by Governor Arran in good Scots, and by the Queen Dowager, the French Ambassador and General d’Essé in their native French, became not bilingual but speechless, and to hire a boat from Leith upriver at night, an interpreter was essential.
In all this time, Crawford of Lymond devoted himself to refining his professional skills to undue limits, to the affairs of his family, and to keeping out of Sir William Scott’s way, judging rightly that the marriage so informally begun would best succeed if left to itself, since a Scott, having got his bride pregnant, was apt to file her as completed business for eight months at a time.
Then in the spring, when the Chevalier de Villegagnon arrived, whose expert seamanship had taken the small Queen to France the previous year, Thomas Erskine took him to see Francis Crawford at his brother’s home of Midculter.
Instead, they saw the Dowager his mother. Sybilla, small, white-haired and timelessly chic, trailed thoughtfully into the great hall at Midculter where the two men were waiting and said, ‘Dear Tom. How kind of you, M. de Villegagnon, to come and see Francis and how disappointed he will be, for you see both my sons are away. Richard is at Falkland with the Queen Mother and Francis.…’
Here the Dowager Lady Culter broke off and, rubbing her neck absently with a slender palm, said, ‘But you must be seated instantly. Such an advantage of height must be very useful, M. de Villegagnon. And how is Margaret, Tom? And her mother in France? I’m afraid Francis is with Will Scott, dear, and likely to be gone all day,’ finished Sybilla, her blue eyes owlishly on Master Tom.
Thomas Erskine at that time was a short, unremarkable man, whose chubby features concealed, as his neighbour well knew, one of the shrewdest negotiating brains in the hierarchy. Common sense was Tom Erskine’s forte, and in his many diplomatic trips for the Scottish Crown he had made a number of friends, of whom Nicholas Durand, Chevalier de Villegagnon, was one. And at thirty-eight a brilliant exponent of arms and a knight of the great fighting and religious Order of St John, the Chevalier de Villegagnon had absolutely no use for common sense himself, but respected it in the laity.
Of such a militant lord of the Church, Sybilla was in no awe, but even Tom, least clairvoyant of men, noted that today she was having a little trouble covering her tracks. After two disingenuous guesses about Lymond’s present whereabouts the Dowager finally gave way to subdued laughter and said, ‘I’m sorry, Tom. But I think he and Will are at Hough Isa’s.’
‘Auhaizace?’ said the Chevalier phonetically, in some confusion.
‘It’s a woman’s daft name,’ said Tom Erskine. ‘She has a wee croft just out of Roxburgh.’
The Chevalier, topping Sybilla’s largest chair, grinned unexpectedly. ‘We may be under vows, my lady, but we are not unworldly. Isa: I know of her. Not all the ladies residing round Roxburgh and Lauder and even Ferniehurst have been reluctant prizes in the England forays. When the Roxburgh garrison emerges for a raid, there are a few houses in the district where they are made Very welcome; is that not so? And this Isa’s cottage is one?’
‘That’s right,’ said Tom Erskine, removing his gaze reluctantly from Sybilla’s face. ‘They used to allow the country folk into the castle with eggs and meat and suchlike, until Hume Castle was taken by a trick of that sort, and now they let the men in only as far as the forecourt, and ban the women altogether. But not before they and the English garrison had become … acquainted. What’s Francis doing there?’ asked the Master of Erskine bluntly. M. de Villegagnon’s eyebrows shot up.
‘Well,’ said Sybilla, taking her time. ‘I’m very much afraid he’s chastising the English. You see, if any Englishman serving in Roxburgh actually felt homesick to the point of desertion, a friendly face and a roof nearby would be the first thing he’d want. So—’
‘So Isa and her friends are helping English soldiers to desert?’
‘They don’t help them,’ said Sybilla with dainty precision. ‘They merely encourage the disaffection of their clients, and provide good advice and shelter to those who desert. Surprising numbers have gone, you know. Astonishing numbers, in fact.’
‘With Francis behind the friendly ladies, I’m not surprised,’ said Tom Erskine.
‘And with Will Scott there as well, you can imagine,’ said Sybilla calmly, ‘that not all the English visiting Hough Isa survive the experience. They are not, to do them justice, all desperate to desert.’
‘But when they do not come back, their fellow soldiers think they have. A most ingenious game,’ said the Chevalier de Villegagnon. ‘But not one which may continue for ever?’
‘That’s why Francis has gone,’ the Dowager admitted. ‘He thinks the English have begun to realize what is happening. Would you like him to call on you, Chevalier? He will return no doubt before long. He will find you at Leith?’
‘Ah, but no,’ said Nicholas Durand, Chevalier de Villegagnon, rising to his abnormal height and lifting his bonnet and cloak. ‘I must meet him before then—I think at Hough Isa’s.’
*
But it was Sir William Scott they met first, with a score of Kincurd men at Bonjedward, trotting cheerfully through green Teviotdale rehashing his last quarrel with Grizel. ‘Use that word to the bairn’s face and I’ll clout ye!’ Grizel Beaton had shouted.
There was no child—yet. He had said as much. ‘Is there not!’ had cried his bride. ‘Is there not, Will Scott! And if it comes this night, what will I tell it, and its faither getting its kin in a bawdy-house?’
‘Christ, I told ye why I had to go to Hough Isa’s!’ yelled Will Scott, his neck as red as his hair.
‘Yes, you did,’ agreed his lady. ‘A matter of duty, ye said. And her cooking’s rare.’
‘Well it is! Better than the auld, done collops ye get at this table!’
‘Then bring her home wi’ ye, ye red-heided gomerel!’ said Grizel Beaton, Lady (Younger) of Buccleuch. ‘Would ye let us all starve? Doesna the Church tell us all, the act o’ love is a sin, wanting a purpose?’ There was a long, harassed pause. ‘Or does she not like ye enough?’ Grizel had added and lumbered off, squealing with laughter as her husband chased her through to the solar. The odd ways of women were new to Will Scott, but some of them he was getting to like fine.
He was still thinking about it when he met Tom Erskine and his Chevalier friend, and they went on to Crailing together. At roughly the same moment, the English captain at Roxburgh fortress, six miles to the east of Hough Isa’s, decided to pay the lady a visit.
It was a decision not entirely supported by the exiled English soldiery under his command. Those who still had voices with which to speak muttered. The rest wound and rewound the scarves round their jerkin collars and croaked. With each fresh command from the old man, their prospects for both tender friendships and a safe passage homewards to mother were dwindling. The captain had found out about Hough Isa and her friends. That is, the captain knew about Hough Isa already, but not about her specialized role vis-à-vis his vanishing garrison. And today the captain intended to act.
With a company of picked men therefore, about whose qualifications strange rumours were rife, Sir Ralph Bullmer with his cousin Sir Oliver Wyllstrop left the castle of Roxburgh an
d ventured into the enemy country around to visit the too-welcoming homes of single ladies of ample means.
The queen of these, Hough Isa, lived in a stone-built thatched house just outside the village of Crailing. Its windows, part board, were clean and neatly painted, her herb garden was trim, and her chimney place, with its blackened whinstone and its festive hooks and chains, smelt of good soup and mutton stew, witness to the fact that the local shepherds had hearty appetites and the means to satisfy them. There were fresh rushes on the floor of the kitchen, and in the next room a piece of painted carpet even, beside a double bed like a table, with the joiner’s initials and Hough Isa’s, though her English visitors did not know that, entwined on the headboard.
Nothing was entwined on the bed. The house was empty.
Sir Ralph Bullmer, seated aloof on his horse, ordered the residence to be burnt.
It was a bright, clear day in late spring, and the straw burned quickly, the smoke shadows trotting over the grass to their horses’ hooves as they watched; the flames mere distortions of the blue air. A wave of anecdote went over the English troop as, scratching their necks and pushing back their helmets, they watched. They wondered, in an undertone, if The Bullock knew of the other two ladies who obliged, down Oxnam Water and the widow at Cessford village itself.
Sir Ralph Bullmer knew none of them, in the most congenial sense, but his military intelligence was so far adequate, at least. His pale, long-sighted gaze lifted to the road south beyond the cottage, and raising an arm, he waved his men past the crackling shell of Hough Isa’s home and almost missed, so intent was his purpose, the fluttering movement of woe on the hilltop beyond. Then a woman’s scream, blunted mercifully by distance, repeated itself like a seagull and there, on the rising ground behind the friendly Isobel’s house, was Hough Isa herself, haloed in sunshine, her scarlet pattens sunk in the turf and her striped skirts tied up to her calves, shaking an arm like a rolling pin over the English soldiers below.
The Disorderly Knights Page 3