Lammas

by Shirley McKay

  Henry glanced back at the sister by the butter tron. The eyes she returned to him were shadowed and unfriendly. Mary’s sister served her as both mother and a friend. She had taught her all that Mary knew of men. Which was quite a lot. Henry was obliged to her. Yet he found no warmth of welcome in her face. He could easily have bought the whole stock of her eggs, freeing her to see the puppets with her son. The thought occurred at once, and he almost acted on it. Good sense held him back. For it would have seemed that he was buying Mary, and he would not for the world have it look like that. The eggs he had no want of would be left to lie, snatched up by the gulls or splattered at the stocks. For Mary and her hens, they were of some worth, and Henry did not care to cheapen her, or them. And so he took the bairn on with a gracious nod, to trail them in their pleasures like a spectre at the feast.

  There were no puppet players at the fair that day. But Jockie saw a monkey in a velvet coat, and two Egyptian tumblers burling over hoops. He saw a juglar slice off his own nose and restore it whole again. Henry had once seen a pickpocket cropped of his nose at the cross, with a less happy result, and did not find the magic quite so entertaining. He yawned when the juglar brought out yards of silk, in every rainbow colour, streaming from his mouth, and when he fished a groat out of Jockie’s ear. Jockie gulped and gawped, but did not speak a word.

  ‘Can the bairn not talk?’ Henry asked.

  ‘He is five years old. Of course he can,’ Mary said.

  Jock was like no bairn that Henry was acquainted with, of the gentle sort. His flat, sullen face, like the face of the monkey he had prodded with a stick, had the fixed expression of a hardened labourer. Nothing could effect in him a movement of excitement. He was gloomy as a butcher at the start of Lent. Henry bought a whistle for him, and some sooking candy twisted in a poke. Jockie sucked on both, adamantly grim.

  The fair was sweaty, foul and raucous. Henry smelt around him the ripeness of the crowd, rancid flesh and fish blackened over coals, sickly fruits and sweetmeats curdled in the sun. The shows were surrounded by stalls, spilling from the market square to the wynds and lanes and further to the South Street. A ballad singer sang a song against the Pope, pleasing to the kirk in whose yard he stood. The fiddle and the drums and the pipes were played. Chapmen cried their wares: ribbons, tinsels, lace. Mary paused to look.

  ‘Let me buy you something. Ribands, or a handkerchief. A hat,’ Henry said, uncertain what might please her, in amongst the trash.

  Mary shook her head.

  ‘Well then, a book.’

  Mary hesitated. She liked to hear him read to her, for she had not had the chance to learn to read herself. His voice was fine, and grand, she said. It was part of the pattern of the nights they spent together. She asked him to speak Latin once, but Henry had refused. He had enough of that at the university. She had wanted to attend his last examinations, to cheer him in the schools. ‘If they are public, why can’t I?’

  ‘Because you are a lass,’ Henry had explained. He found a stall with books and pamphlets. ‘Here is one for you. A Thousand Things of Note.’ To last a thousand nights, he thought, a thousand conversations, written in the sheets.

  ‘A thousand,’ Mary said, ‘sounds an awfy lot.’

  ‘Not near enough, for you.’ He bought the book and gave it to her, as the piper in the square broke off, announcing that the games on the sands would soon begin. ‘Now I will try my bow, and win you a prize.’

  Coming to the links in a fresh sea breeze Henry felt relaxed and once more in his element. He had shot and hunted since he was a child, on horseback and on foot, and had long refined and tuned his natural skill. He was sure and strong, both in hand and foot. The targets where he practised each week during term were bairns’ play to him. He could spear a bird or a sprinting hind, delicate in flight. The farmhands and cowherds, surpassing him in strength, wanted his finesse, the sureness of his eye, his cool and steady hand, his confidence and nerve. It did not exercise him to secure the prize. He had it closed in sight, when a voice behind him said, ‘A braw bow, is that. ‘

  Henry straightened up, and turned to face his foe. He saw a fair young man, older by some years and taller than himself, glaring at his back. He answered pleasantly. ‘Aye, indeed it is.’

  ‘Awbody might win, wi a bow like that,’ the challenger complained.

  ‘Would you like to try?’ Henry smiled at him. He offered up the bow in his gracious hand. ‘Three shots at the papingo. Whoever hits the eye, he shall take the prize.’

  The other man backed off. ‘The contest isnae fair, for you are used to it.’

  ‘Then you shall have your pick, and I will take my chance with any bow you like.’ Henry looked around. The course was well equipped with racks of common bows, for anyone to use who had not brought his own. Henry was accustomed to the college armoury, and could well adapt. His own bow, on the other hand, had been made for him, and worked to best advantage solely in his hands. When he picked it up, he blessed his father’s gift, and was overcome with filial love and sympathy. There could be no way to make this contest fair, as his opponent knew. For Henry had the privilege of birth.

  His opponent’s pride was spared by the lass beside him, clutching at his sleeve. ‘Michael, will you come? We are going to miss the races on the shore. You promised you would run for me.’

  ‘Aye, my love, I will. You shall have a ribbon for to pin upon your sleeve. Will you come race, then?’ Michael asked Henry.

  Henry said grandly, ‘With my horse, gladly; by no means on foot.’ He collected his prize, of a silver pin, and gave it to his lass. But he was disappointed when she passed it to the bairn.

  ‘Who was that?’ she asked.

  ‘Some presumptuous loun, who thought to snatch your prize. I have seen the lassie at the harbour inn. I do not ken her name.’

  Mary pulled a face. ‘At the harbour inn? Why do you go there? It is a filthsum place. No better than a bordal-house, so my sister says.’

  Henry said, ‘I don’t. I went once last year, to play a game of dice. The company was low. I did not go again. But I’m sure I saw her there. She has the sort of face a man does not forget.’

  Mary snorted, ‘Face. For sure it was her face.’

  ‘Do not be that like. You know that I have eyes for no one else but you. I only caught a glimpse of her.’

  ‘You were lucky then, if that was all you caught.’

  He liked that she was jealous. He had felt her cooling to him, on this summer’s day. He yearned to be alone with her, in some secret spot. ‘This bairn must want his mother now,’ he said. ‘And you and I shall find a place quiet from the crowd.’

  Mary nodded. ‘Aye, we should.’ Her answer gave him hope. They took her nephew back to his mother at the tron. All the eggs were sold. Mary spoke a word, and listened, to her sister. Henry heard her promise her, ‘I will not be long.’ The sister glanced at Henry, heavy with mistrust. Jockie’s hands were sticky, and she wiped them on her skirt.

  ‘Succar candie,’ Henry said. ‘If his teeth are rotten, I have several cures.’ She did not meet his smile.

  ‘Where will we go?’ Mary asked. ‘Not to the inn, at this hour?’

  ‘Walk with me,’ said Henry. ‘I know of a place.’

  He took her by the hand, landward through the South Street to St Leonard’s fields.

  ‘Suppose someone sees us,’ she said.

  ‘It belongs to the college. But the college is closed up, and the principal away. There is no one but the farmer and the tenants of the land. And all of them are absent at the Lammas fair. Come, lie down with me. No one can see us in amongst the rigs.’

  They were in a barley field, a shiver of green stalks that shimmered in the sun. Henry spread his coat between the rows of corn. ‘Lie with me,’ he said.

  ‘I cannot,’ Mary said. ‘I have not come prepared.’

  There were herbs she used, and pessaries of wax. Henry did not know how it was she came by them, and had never asked. It fell to a woman not
to get with child. Some women chose to snare a man, and caught him in a trap. But Henry knew that Mary was not of that sort.

  He lay down on his back and looked up at the sky. Mary sat beside him.

  ‘Lie with me awhile,’ he said. ‘For there are other ways. I can show restraint.’

  She laughed at that. ‘You? You never can.’

  It was true enough. He rolled on to his front to disguise it from her. ‘I will read to you. From the notable things. One fact for a kiss. Four facts for a—’

  ‘You are bad,’ Mary said. It was a compliment that she had paid before. But now her voice was sad. And Henry at that moment was quite certain what he felt for her. It was more than lust, though he ached with that. It was more than the delusion of a tender boy, scribbled in the margins of his copy book. At Martinmas, I met a lass, At Candlemas I kissed her, At Whitsuntide, I lay with her, At Lammas tide, I loved her. It was deep and true.

  To still the rush of blood, in heart as well as groin, he opened up the book. ‘Here is one. Stop both your ears with your fingers, and the hiccup will go away within a while after.’

  ‘How long is a while?’ Mary asked.

  ‘He does not say. But he swears tis proved. Now you owe me a kiss.’

  Henry broke a wisp of barley from its stalk and fell to tickling her. She wriggled from his grasp. ‘I do love you,’ she said.

  He sensed, unthinking then, the cloud behind the words. He knew there was a but. He fell back in the grass, and looked up at the blue of a cloudless summer sky. He felt at once, instinctively, what she had to say. He closed his eyes and tried to block it out, to feel the sun, the breath of barley graze him on the cheek, to hear the mellow doves, the murmur of the bees.

  ‘Henry, don’t. Look at me,’ she said. ‘I have to talk to you.’

  He opened up his eyes, and found her looking down. She spoke the words he did not want to hear. ‘I cannot see you again.’

  She told him that there was a man, who had asked for her to be his wife.

  ‘It will no be for a while. He is prentice to a blacksmith, and he cannot marry till his time is up. My sister says I should. He is a guid man, she says.’

  ‘How long must you wait, then?’ he asked her.

  ‘Four years, near enough.’

  Four years was a lifetime, Henry thought. He could not conceive what it was to wait. In a year’s time, he would leave the university. He would be at court, in service to the king. Or fighting overseas, in a foreign war. Life was short and swift. It could not be put off.

  ‘Mary, stay with me. I will have left here long before then.’

  ‘I cannot,’ she said, ‘or he will not have me.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I believe that you do. But ye ken full well that you will not marry me.’

  ‘I never telt you that.’ It was true, of course.

  ‘You did not have to say it, for I always knew. Look at you down there, with your books and bow, and your brave new coat. How could you marry me? I do not blame you for it. But my sister says I have to take this chance, or no one else will want me, once my lord has gone.’

  ‘I bought the book for you,’ he said, bewildered at her words.

  She kissed him on the cheek. ‘I owe you for the fact. And I will not forget. When I have the hiccups, I will think of you. But you must keep the book. I have no use for it.’

  (5)

  Hew and Frances reached the town a little after twelve. They watched the races at the links, and met with Robert Lachlan there. The men that Robert had engaged showed themselves as fleet and strong, and Hew approved his choice.

  ‘Ye canna tell the mettle of a man till he is tested,’ Robert said. ‘And strength is not itself a mark of courage. Still, it is a start.’

  ‘When do they begin?’ asked Hew. ‘The barley is not ripe for reaping yet.’

  ‘Then we shall have a week or twa to break them in. I have telt them they should show at eleven on the morn, and every morning after that at dawn. They will be drunk tonight.’

  ‘Do they know what they come for?’ Frances asked. Robert glanced at Hew, who answered in his place.

  ‘Their labour on the land is all we ask, for now. They will be here till Michaelmas. And after that – God knows. Robert, is there news?’

  ‘Rumour is all. The country hauds its breath. There are beacons set, all around the coast, but none of them yet lit. The harbour is the place for news. Folk will gather at the inn there when the fair is done. I will move among them.’

  ‘If you hear aught, come find me. We may be at my sister’s house,’ Hew said.

  Robert left them then, to begin his reconnaissance in the taverns of the town.

  ‘Bella does not like him going to that inn,’ Frances pointed out.

  ‘He will be at work. He goes to spy for us.’

  ‘That will not stop him drinking.’

  ‘It should not stop him drinking. He must fit the part.’

  ‘He fits it far too well.’ Frances sighed. ‘Was he not married, once, to the woman there?’

  ‘For another purpose, in another world.’

  Hew steered his wife gently from the subject back into the town and through the market place. There they met Giles Locke, giddy with his bairns, buying gingerbreads. ‘Meg is expecting you,’ Giles said to Frances. ‘She sent us with a list, which we have fulfilled. Fair winds for the morrow. Everything is set.’

  ‘What is tomorrow?’ asked Hew.

  ‘The harvest, I suppose.’ Frances said. ‘We should have a goose for the men at Michaelmas. What do you think?’

  Meg was with a patient. But she came out at once when they arrived. ‘Your coming is fortunate, Hew. I have someone here who has been asking for you. He is not a man given to impose or to press himself in any way. He is modest and restrained. And yet I have the sense his need is urgent. He would like to speak with you. His name is Walter Bone.’

  ‘Walter.’ The name was not unknown to Hew, and yet he could not place it.

  ‘He owns the harbour inn,’ Meg said. ‘He says you handled the conveyance, when he took it on from Maude.’

  Hew said slowly, ‘Aye, I did.’ The mention of it caused in him a prickle of foreboding, which he did not understand. Perhaps it was coincidence, for Robert had but lately spoken of the harbour as a place for news. That news they looked for, endlessly, in dread. Robert and Maude Benet at the harbour inn. A life, a world away. No good could come from there.

  ‘I will see him,’ he said.

  ‘I hoped you would. He is in my still house, where he came for medicines. Canny Bett is with him. Send her out to us. Frances, I have something for you in the kitchen. And Giles has promised . . .’

  Hew left them to their talk. Meg dispensed medicines from the small house in her garden, stilled from the flowers and herbs she grew. Here, there was no wind, the garden seemed to hang in the heavy heat, yet the air inside remained fresh and cool. As Hew came to the door, he felt a shadow fall. There is nothing here to fear, he told himself.

  It was Canny Bett, full of smiles and bluster, on her way back out. ‘Did you not want to go to the fair?’ he asked her.

  ‘Fairs are for lovers and bairns, and I am fair trauchled wi both,’ Canny said. ‘The doctor has gone wi the weans, to gie us a moment of peace. We maun mak shift for the morn.’

  ‘What happens then?’

  ‘If you dinna ken, then I surely don’t.’

  Walter Bone was sitting in Meg’s chair. He stood up when Hew came in, though he did not do so rapidly, or easily. He was not a man of an open disposition. But there was no mistaking the emotion in his face. It was made up quite plainly of relief. But the relief was a mask upon a deeper kind of feeling. That feeling was not physical pain, though the physical pain might be read as an expression of it. The pain was acute. But it could not reflect the depth of feeling that lay underneath. It distracted from it. It was not its expression, but another kind of mask.

  Walter said, ‘It is fortune that brings you
here. I hoped to see you in the town today. But I did not expect it. I ken that the college where you work is closed.’

  At the same time, Hew thought, whatever fate has brought me here, whatever fortune is, it cannot be good. This is an ill wind. He said simply, politely, ‘It happened that we came to watch the races at the links.’

  Walter shifted, as through pain. ‘I was there myself. Not long. But long enough.’

  ‘How can I help you?’ asked Hew.

  ‘I want to make a will,’ Walter said.

  So simple a request was not what Hew expected, and he almost laughed at it, or rather at himself, for fearing so much worse. He answered readily, ‘There is a man in the mercat place will draw that up for you. He is very sound. I use him myself. If you like, I will make the recommendation.’

  But Walter shook his head. ‘It is you I want. The will is not straightforward. It will be hard to prove. There is a guid chance that it will be contested. I need a man who can ensure that the terms will still stand, however untoward or difficult the circumstance. We do not have long. I may die very soon. Tomorrow perhaps, or the next day.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that,’ said Hew. ‘Are you so very unwell?’

  ‘I am not well. But that is not the point. There is a possibility that later on today I may kill a man. And, if I do, I expect to hang for it.’ His words were careful, clear. They were not the product of a seething of emotion, but carefully thought out.

  This is my fortune, thought Hew. It was never simple, from the start. It was not meant to be. He was sent to me, and I cannot refuse him. He took a breath, and seemed to launch himself headlong from a precipice, airless, dizzy, blind. And yet when he spoke he was completely in control. He said simply, ‘As your man of law, that is not a course of action that I should advise.’

  ‘I do not propose it lightly,’ Walter said. ‘And yet I am persuaded that it cannot be escaped.’

  ‘If I were you,’ said Hew, ‘I would put my mind to making my escape from it. For if you proceed with it, the testament you make will be null and void. You will be indicted for murder, of forethocht felony, which is a plea of the Crown. When you are convicted for it, your goods will be forfeit.’