A Chorus of Innocents

by P. F. Chisholm

  “Ye’re not…ye’re not armed,” growled Jock, horribly suspecting some of his grandsons and nephews were laughing at him inside, which indeed they were.

  “I am armed,” said the mad preacher. “I am armed with the sword of God’s Truth and the shield of God’s Word. Will ye not strike? Perhaps yer sword will not wither like a twig in the fire nor your whole surname go to dust and ashes with you left alone until your enemies catch ye. For those who live by the sword shall die by it.”

  Jock Burn backed off, paling. No more was ever said about the challenge and the gauntlet.

  That was the Reverend Gilpin. He helped broker the deal between the Dodds and the Elliots in the late 1570s, which calmed upper Tynedale no end, and saw to it that the worst offenders left the area. He kept coming every summer, at first with his quiet young manservant and then, after the man died of a fever, he came on his own, sadder, gentler now. He preached at several Warden Days, on the invitation of Sir John Forster, the English Middle March Warden. He carried no more than an eating knife and a Bible, he slept wherever he could find shelter, and he ate whatever the poor people he lodged with could give him. He preached from his Bible whenever anyone asked him to and always on Sundays.

  Nobody had ever seen or heard of such a strong minister, such a mad churchman, who had said publicly that he gave not a feather for vestments and as for the Papists—well, hadn’t he been a Papist himself once, before he read the Bible and understood God’s Word better? And surely most of them were good men misguided, with only a few actively serving the Evil One.

  What was more he never laid a hand on girl or boy, though he had no wife either. Many were the snares and traps set for him by cunning mothers with girls who would have liked to be mistress of his rumoured large and comfortable living in the south. When a gentlewoman twitted him on his wifeless state across her dinner table, with her daughters on either side of him, he smiled and toasted her and her daughters.

  “You see,” he told her, “I swore before the altar of God to keep chastity and although I was certainly a sinner when I was young and hot-blooded, now I am old and tired and no use whatever to a woman.” He smiled and bowed to both the girls who blushed. The mother found herself wondering about his deacon who had died of the fever but she said nothing and nor did he. All the girls who had hopes of his rumoured magnificent house at Houghton le Spring were sadly disappointed.

  He only came to the Borders in summer. For the rest of the year he kept a school at Houghton le Spring, boarded likely boys at his own expense, and paid for some of them to go to Oxford where he himself had studied Divinity and sung the Masses with the rest of the young men before Henry VIII’s divorce.

  Slowly, little by little, some of the men of the surnames came to like him, the women too, despite his obstinate refusal to wed any of them. The children had loved him from the start and the lads ran to meet him when they saw his solitary silhouette with his soft flat churchman’s cap and warm cloak over a ridge along the road from Berwick.

  Then in 1583 sad word came. He had been trampled by an escaped ox in Houghton market, lay wounded for a month and died of lungfever on the fourth of March. Both sides of the Border were stricken at the news and Jock o’ the Coates Burn and some of the headmen from south of the Border as well went to pay their respects in the south at Houghton le Spring, and with them they brought some of the boys Gilpin had taught, the bigger ones, to sing for him at his funeral. Jock died a few months later, leaving his grown son Ralph as headman and the grandsons grown as well—a lucky life Jock never admitted he attributed to not cutting Gilpin’s head off when they had met at the chapel in the early 1570s.

  And the seeds that Gilpin had sown, dangerous and revolutionary seeds that they were, lay in the soil of the people’s minds, and here and there they set down their roots.

  Thursday Afternoon 12th October 1592

  The men had been riding for two days, and were now into the broad fat lands of the East March of Scotland where the Humes held sway. They had instructions but those had been vague on the important point of position.

  “Och, we’ll never find him,” complained the younger one. “A’ the villages look the same.”

  The older one shook his head. “We ainly need his kirk,” he said.

  “Ay, one kirk in hundreds.”

  It was surprising and the older one thought a little shocking that there were so many kirks, and not all of them burnt or in ruins like in the Low Countries. Some old Catholic churches had been torn down and a new one put up, but more often they were just altered with the heads of the saints knocked off and the paintings whitewashed. Not every village had a kirk, by a long way, but a lot did.

  They came over the top of a shallow hill and saw another little scatter of cottages and the kirk on the next hill, with a nice tower on it to keep an eye out for raids. It was October, so only a few women were out in the gardens, mostly tidying up for winter or planting winter cabbages. The surviving cattle and sheep were scattered over the infield and most of the pigs had gone to make sausages now so there wasn’t a lot of noise. There was ploughing going on nearby, with the village plow and its oxen struggling through some new Earth that might grow some wheat next year, while the children followed it gathering up the stones. The harvest had been poor thanks to the bad weather in July, and no doubt the people were hoping to grow a bit more on the new field next year.

  The two of them didn’t need to talk much. They knew what they were about, had done it before, and so they decided to make for the church alehouse. That was a small thatched building next to the church in the old way and the church was one of those that had been altered, not demolished.

  It was cold and damp and the men were out of their own country. They rode into the village, tethered their horses by the duck pond and walked up to the alehouse. They weren’t very many miles north of Berwick itself and hoped to get to the city that night and find lodgings there. They didn’t expect to find any in this village, any more than they had in the last two or three.

  The village alehouse was no longer run by the church. A young man stood behind the bar and the usual people were there, despite it being afternoon. Two men sat in the corner playing dice, a third was hunched over his quart by the fire, a fourth was asleep. The fifth and sixth were standing by the bar, arguing over whether a billy goat could beat a ram in a fight, if you could get them to fight and how would you do that anyway. The seventh was a travelling barber surgeon, obvious from his pack, sitting in the corner, reading a book. As they came in, he stood up and stretched his back, put his book carefully in his large pack, and said in a London voice, “I’ll pay you now, shall I, Tim?”

  “Nae need, Mr Anricks, ye paid for more than your tab when ye drew my tooth for me.”

  “Are you sure? You paid me for it at the time.”

  “Ay, but I never lost a tooth before so nice and easy. I’ll be telling ma dad about ye, that’s sure, he’s got a bad tooth too.”

  “Well thank you, I appreciate it. I’m for Edinburgh now and after I think I’ll head west and see if there are any bad teeth in Dumfriesshire or even Carlisle.”

  “Bound to be, Mr Anricks. Me dad’ll be waiting for when ye come back.”

  “Now mind what I tell you, the invisible worms that eat your teeth, they love sugar and honey and so if you scrub your teeth with a cloth and salt, that’ll keep them away.”

  “Ay, and I’ll keep the charm ye sold me too, that’s even better.”

  “Hm. Good day to you.”

  “Clem!” bellowed Tim. “Bring Mr Anricks’ pony round for him.”

  A boy leapt out from under the counter and pelted out the door and the tooth-drawer followed him out, moving a little stiffly, as if his back hurt.

  “Ehm…” said the older traveller, “good day to you.” Everybody turned and looked. “That’ll be two quarts, please.”

  This was an event. Two strange
rs coming into the alehouse. A smaller boy was staring from where he’d been whittling under the counter. The older man hated the feeling of being conspicuous, but you couldn’t help it.

  The quarts were drawn from the only barrel and the younger man paid, twice as much as usual on account of them being foreigners of course. That was all right, they had plenty of money.

  After both had taken a drink, the older one said, “What’s the name of this village?”

  Several people answered and it seemed you could choose between Lesser Wendron or Minor or the old one of Wendron St Cuthberts.

  “Ah. St Cuthberts,” said the older man wisely, “would the minister here be a Mr Burn? A Mr James Burn?”

  “Why?” asked the man at the bar, with narrow suspicious eyes.

  “Well,” said the older one, not looking at the younger one, “we’re from a printer in Edinburgh to see about the printing of his sermons and selling them too.”

  This was what he had been told to say by his principal and he was happy to see it worked like a charm. The man might well have been suspicious, after all, and it would be so much easier if they could get him alone.

  “Yes,” said the barman, “that’d be the pastor.” He wasn’t at the alehouse which was a little odd for a pastor. What was more, he was at the manse and teaching the children.

  The younger man choked on his beer. “Teaching?” he asked. “Why?”

  This touched off a dispute. The dice players looked around and said it was all this new-fangled religion, the arguers agreed and sniggered about it, the barman said it was all very well learning your letters but then what could you do with it, the sleeper said nothing because he stayed asleep, and the man who was hunched over his quart straightened up and told them all that they were fools because the truth was in the Bible and the children would be able to read it for themselves, whereas they couldn’t. One of the dice players snorted and said that was all very well and the truth might be in the Bible at that, but what was the use of it?

  The older man cut through the talk and asked where the manse might be, and learned it was right behind the alehouse from the days when the alehouse was the church’s and ran church ales.

  Both men finished their ales, parried a couple of questions about where they came from. No need to send the boy with them, they could find the manse themselves from the sound of it.

  They went out the door and round the back of the place and there, sure enough, was the manse, a handsome building of stone like the church, though perhaps older. It looked like part of it had once been something else, maybe a little house for monks or something.

  The door flung open and twelve boys came pouring out, shouting and pummeling each other, two of them fell wrestling at the feet of the men. They stepped around the boys and spoke to the man standing at the door, smiling at them.

  He bowed slightly and led them inside. The boys all scattered to their homes except for three who had planned a fishing expedition at the stream. A woman arrived in a hurry, and went in smiling. There was a quiet sound of talking, a woman’s voice, a man’s voice.

  A pause. Then a sudden grunt, like a pig being stuck with a lance, a thump, then a sound like a cabbage being cut. Then the sound of a stifled scream, thumping and bumping and some muffled groans, going on for a while.

  The two men walked out of the house, grinning and rearranging their hose and round the duck pond to where their horses were tethered. Unhurriedly they untied them, mounted and trotted away to the little copse nearby where they had some remounts and a boy guarding them.

  Then they changed horses and went to a canter out of the copse and round by the little lanes that threaded across the countryside, although they could have crossed the ploughed fields in a straight line. As it happened they went north first on an errand and to throw anyone off the trail, and then they went south and west. The boy took the West March-branded horses straight south to a horse-trader.

  Friday Morning 13th October 1592

  Lady Widdrington looked at the farmer in front of her and waited for him to stop lying. The horses in question were nice beasts and she knew they were not local. The question was, where had they come from and had they been reived.

  “Mr Tully,” she said, “I’ve never seen the brands before. Where are they from?”

  “They’re Middle March horses, your ladyship,” he said promptly. “Bought from my brother-in-law in Jedburgh.”

  She sighed. “Those aren’t Jedburgh brands.”

  His face flinched a little and she read it easily. She was a woman; she wasn’t supposed to know about brands. It had taken Elizabeth two years to know all the main brands and variations hereabouts, but she knew them now. In fact she wasn’t completely sure she didn’t know these particular brands, only she couldn’t bring to mind which surname they belonged to, which was odd. They niggled her. Probably they came from the West March, Armstrong, Nixon, Graham? But they certainly weren’t from Jedburgh and they were good horses. Not as good as Robin Carey’s beautiful tournament charger Thunder, which he had sort of sold to the King of Scots that summer, but…

  She sighed and pressed her lips together. That familiar ache in her chest had started up again. It had been three and a half months since she saw him riding Thunder, tipping his hat to her seriously as he rode past. Less time since she saw him at the Scottish Court where…

  Mr Tully saw her face lengthen and become stern. It was a handsome face, rather than pretty, the long nose and chin would probably draw together eventually but hadn’t yet. He drew a couple of wrong conclusions and decided she must be a witch.

  “A’ right,” he said sadly, “they’re no’ from Jedburgh,”

  “I know that,” agreed Elizabeth.

  “Fact is, I dinna ken where they’re from. So now…”

  Elizabeth folded her gloved hands on the reins and leaned back slightly. Her horse tipped a hoof and gave a resigned snort.

  “They were running loose in the woods.”

  She looked around her at the plump farms and copses. There weren’t a lot of woods anywhere near.

  “Which woods?”

  “Aah…in Scotland.”

  She could have asked what he was doing north of the Border, but she didn’t. She nodded invitingly.

  “Ay, I’d been north of Berwick getting…ah…getting supplies and up to Edinburgh forebye for I couldna find what I was looking for and I got lost in the wood meself and so I found ’em.”

  She waited patiently for him to start telling the truth. “They had nae tack on them or nae ither signs and they were sad and sorry for themselves, so they were, and when I found them they were hungry too…”

  Likely since these weren’t tough little hobbies who could live on a couple of blades of grass a day, but taller bigger horses who would need more food.

  “And one of them had thrown a shoe and the other was lame too, and so I brung them south with me to help and comfort them and that one’s called Blackie…”

  “That’s the grey?”

  “Ay and that one’s called Pinky.”

  “The chestnut?”

  “Ay,” Tully looked at her cautiously. “It’s a joke, ye ken, missus. Ah niver name my animals for their right colours.”

  Elizabeth nodded. Why else would the man be riding a beast as black as pitch and known to all as Milky?

  One of the Widdrington cousins who was riding with her and waiting a little way off, chuckled softly.

  Elizabeth moved her own horse, a very dull dark chestnut called Mouse for good and sufficient reasons, to a nearby stone wall. She unhooked her knee from the sidesaddle and stepped down to the wall, then picked up her skirts and climbed down the other side to go into the paddock with the horses. There were other animals dotted around the pasture, which was looking bare and brown. Among them were two billy kids, nearly grown and making themselves useful by calming the h
orses while awaiting their inevitable fate.

  She went among the horses and patted them, felt their legs, lifted their feet—yes, they had been shod a while ago, though Tully hadn’t re-shod them yet because that was expensive. She checked their teeth as well. Blackie, the grey, snickered with his lips and pushed his nose into her chest, looking for carrots, no doubt. She patted his neck and found Pinky on her other side also wanting attention.

  “These are quite young and good horses,” she said.

  “Ay, ladyship,” said Tully, looking at her sadly. “But I didna reive ’em.”

  “No,” she agreed to his great surprise, “I don’t think you did but you’ll have to wait until I write to the Scotch Warden and ask about them.” Tully sighed. “I’ll try and get you a finder’s fee for them if I can,” she added since he had told her some of the truth eventually. and what he had been doing in Scotland was probably just smuggling and nothing worse.

  “Or,” she said thoughtfully, “I could take them off your hands now and give you something for them and then keep the fee if we find the owner.”

  Tully scratched the back of his head and looked at the sky scattered with clouds, though it was not raining yet. He was not a wealthy man and although there was horse feed available now, it would get short before spring because the harvest had been bad. The horses were geldings and she could put them to use, whereas he couldn’t. On the other hand, the Borderers all loved horses, which she did herself, of course, and were ridiculously sentimental about them, too, when they could be.

  Slowly Tully nodded. If the horses did turn out to have been reived in some way, the Widdrington surname would be better able to deal with that than Tully, who had come to the area from further south and only had two sons and a daughter.

  “Ay,” he said. “Ay, that’s fair, my lady. I dinna need them, only they was there, ye ken.”