A Chorus of Innocents

by P. F. Chisholm

  She read the Gospel of Matthew about the Nativity and a couple of Psalms and then decided that beautiful though the language was, what Poppy needed was dullness. She chose the dullest sermon in a very dull book and started reading about how one should never wear velvet or any colour other than black, brown, grey, or white because of worldliness and the sins of the flesh.

  Poppy shut her eyes and seemed to doze off at last and Elizabeth left Mary to sit in the same chair and read the same book if necessary.

  She went downstairs, ready to make a start on the pig and found Young Henry and four other Widdringtons tramping their boots into the hall.

  “What’s happened?” asked Young Henry, looming over her as he always did now. When first she had known him, he was a boy and much shorter than her. She hardly noticed his spots anymore but there was a particularly fine one on the end of his nose—a beacon of red and white. She found it mesmerising.

  She told him to come with her into the wet larder where she took her sleeves off and put on her wet larder apron to make a start on the pig—opening it up and taking out the innards. She called the boys in from the stables and set them to fetching buckets of water from the well and then to the really unpleasant job of cleaning the intestines, to ready them to make sausages, while she dealt with the pluck and got it ready to make a haggis. It was a nice pig, quite fat and had come from the post inn where they got a lot of leftovers. She believed the pig had been called Bucket, like its predecessors, for obvious reasons.

  Young Henry stood in her wet larder in his third best suit and his buff jerkin, which he was wearing because it was a bit proof against water and didn’t get as heavy as a jack when it was wet. His boots were in a terrible state because inspecting drainage ditches often meant you had to get muddy. The four Widdrington cousins were no better and had wisely decided to come in no further than the kitchen where they were getting some ale from the cook.

  “Just like that?” asked Henry. “They just rode in, found out his name and killed him?”

  “And raped his wife.”

  Young Henry shook his head. “Have you told Father?”

  “I’ve told you,” she said. “You can decide whether to tell him or not when you go through Berwick, though I don’t think he’ll care because it’s Scotch East March business, not his.”

  Young Henry nodded at that and Elizabeth finished putting bits of pig in various bowls and cleaned her knives carefully before giving them to the smallest boy for further cleaning and sharpening. The first stage was over and the carcass clean inside, with a bit of washing by the middle-sized boy, and the next stage of cutting up and salting could wait several days, unlike the innards. The liver was nice and big; she thought she might make a liversausage out of it. The other two were gasping and complaining in the kitchenyard at the disgusting job she had put them to.

  What she really wanted to do was go north to Wendron and take a look at the house where it had happened and see the corpse if it was still there. Had anyone found it yet, done anything about it? What had happened afterwards, after Poppy left? She particularly wanted to know if Tully’s two found horses had anything to do with it.

  The problem was Sir Henry. He thought women should stay at home and do as they were told, not ride about the countryside. Ever since she had been to Carlisle and back in the summer and with what had happened there and in Dumfries, he was even worse than before.

  On the other hand, he was in Berwick at the moment, concerned with governing the East March with Robert Carey’s pompous elder brother, John. He’d find out about it, of course, but if she could find a good enough excuse…

  She shrugged as she washed her hands in the bucket of cold water and took off her wet canvas larder apron, hung it up on its hook, and put on another clean linen one. He would probably beat her again, and if she didn’t go to Wendron, he would find another reason to beat her. There was no point trying to please him because he could not be pleased with her.

  Young Henry was still there, looking shrewdly at her. “It’s only about forty miles across country,” he said, “but I don’t think you should go.”

  She said nothing to this. He was right, of course, but she had a terrible itch to see for herself.

  She went upstairs to check on Poppy and found her awake again but not crying. The rest of the milk with laudanum in it was cold now and Poppy wouldn’t take it.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “I shouldn’t have come here, should I?”

  “No,” agreed Elizabeth, “with the babe and all, it would have been better if you’d sent for me. Not ridden for a day and a night on Prince.”

  “I couldn’t think,” Poppy said. “All I could think of was getting to you and telling you.”

  Poppy had her fists clenched but was at least making sense now. She had no family nearer than Carlisle and her mother and father were dead; there was only an uninterested uncle who had something to do with mines in the lakes and not of a riding surname. Nobody could actually say Poppy’s maiden name either, it was so foreign, though she herself had been born in Keswick.

  James Burn came of the Burns, all right, but had shocked the family by going to university as a servitor and gaining a degree in Divinity and then coming back to the East March to be a minister of the kirk. Elizabeth had made the match at Christmas two years ago and had been there when they had married the following March. She had also prodded a powerful friend of hers into preferring Jamie to St Cuthberts with some sweeteners to the Elders to ensure his election.

  “Well,” said Poppy, “I’ve come here and I’ll not leave for a while.”

  “I don’t think you should ride anywhere until after you’re churched, at the earliest,” Elizabeth agreed with her. “In fact, you should be sleeping now.” She picked up the milk and prepared to spoon it into Poppy.

  Poppy shook her head. “Ye have to go to Wendron for me,” she said. “Ye have to. Please? Who’s the living going to go to now that Jamie’s dead? There’s things I need like my other kirtle, there’s his will, and who else can I trust? And make sure he’s buried right. Make sure…” She stopped, clenched her fists and took a deep breath. “Otherwise he’ll walk for sure.”

  Elizabeth wanted to get away from that kind of thinking. “Ah,” she said. “What did the men talk about with the minister before they killed him?”

  “I don’t know. They were talking quietly, Jamie sent me out to get the wine and the wafers and when I came back he was…he was…”

  “Can you remember anything, anything at all about what they said?”

  “It was just talk. Oh, the older one said something about scripture. He was quoting some scripture.”

  “Which verse?” Poppy just shrugged. “No threats, nothing?”

  Poppy looked proud. “My man wis a man of peace, he was a man that turned away from war and reiving and toward the Gospels. But he knew how to fight, so if they’d given him any warning at all, or a threat, it wouldn’t have been so easy for them. And he knew them. He recognised the younger one as I went out. He shook their hands and he was asking them about the Low Countries and were they back for good now?”

  “All right, Poppy, I’ll go to Wendron for you. It’ll take a few days and I want you to stay right here and not go anywhere. You can borrow my English gown if you want to walk about, but I wouldn’t even go out the door. Give the babby a chance to rest. He’s had a couple of shocks.”

  “You don’t mind all that riding?”

  “Not in the least.”

  Elizabeth starting feeding Poppy the milk and halfway through she suddenly bent over and cried again.

  “Och Jamie,” she sobbed. “You’ll never have curds and whey to your breakfast again.”

  Friday Afternoon 13th October 1592

  Two hours later Elizabeth was in her green riding habit with her best black velvet gown trimmed with coney in honour of the funeral, a cloak
over her shoulders and her low-crowned hat on her head, in a style that had been fashionable in London four years before. She was cantering north along the Great North Road that passed through Widdrington and had done for hundreds of years, the second-to-last post inn before Berwick. Young Henry rode beside her and the Widdrington cousins were two in front and two behind, very happy to have escaped from the eternal autumn job of clearing ditches and checking waterways. Young Henry was happy as well because he liked his stepmother and it always made him feel better about his father when he saw her like this, cheeks flushed, eyes sparkling, swinging along with the rhythm of the horse. She was riding a half-hobby called Rat, because he looked like one with his pointed nose, and had her jennet, Mouse, behind her for a remount.

  They would break their journey at Bamburgh on the coast, and from there it was only fifteen miles to Berwick. They would take fresh horses from the stables in Berwick that Young Henry’s father maintained, go into Scotland there in daylight, and into the Merse, and so to the quiet village full of raspberry canes that Jamie Burn had been living in.

  They wouldn’t be visiting the Burns in East Teviotdale, which was his family and a dangerous riding surname, with a Jock Burn in every generation. Jamie was the second son of Ralph o’ the Coate.

  The management of Sir Henry had taken half an hour to think about. In the end, Elizabeth had prayed about it to God and left it to Him. If God wanted her to go to Wendron, Sir Henry would agree and if He didn’t want her to go to Wendron, she’d catch the Berwick market because she needed more salt, since the salt in the wet larder was poor stuff, and go home again.

  As usual she was thinking about Sir Robert Carey while she rode because Sir Robert was always where her thoughts went when they weren’t occupied by something else. His behaviour in Scotland in the summer had been disgraceful and then he had been ordered south by his father at the end of August. Since then she hadn’t heard a word about him; she wouldn’t hear from him because Sir Henry had forced her to write that letter to him, ending their friendship. She didn’t know for certain if her verbal message had got through but she thought it had.

  Sir Henry had overreached himself at Court in his attempt to kill Carey. The Scottish king liked Carey and had said some things privately to Sir Henry that he hadn’t seen fit to tell his wife but which seemed to give him pause sometimes. There had only been one really bad beating since then. He always kept away from her face because he didn’t want the rumours to start going round as they had with his first wife, but now he didn’t use his belt so much. It was something.

  Carey would love to have an excuse to kill him but wouldn’t get it. Sir Henry was not a young man to be inveigled into a duel; if Sir Robert challenged him, he’d use a champion. And probably cheat. Nobody stayed headman of an English riding surname like the Widdringtons without being canny and clever and hard to kill. However Sir Henry had gout which didn’t usually kill you but was very painful when he had an attack. She tried to think of him charitably as a creature in pain who wanted to lash out, rather than a man who enjoyed hurting her and humiliating her, but it was hard.

  They clattered through the gate at Bamburgh just before it shut at dusk and up to the keep where Sir John Forster’s unfortunate son, also called John, held sway. He was drunk as he usually was and explained the rotten state of the rushes and the filth of the solar as the consequence of there being no woman there. Elizabeth had seen worse, though not much worse, and accepted Johnny Forster’s offer of the main bedroom which at least had a four-poster, though no clean sheets. Or blankets. In the end she rolled out the truckle bed and slept fully clothed on that because it seemed to have fewer fleas and much less dog hair. Johnny Forster was no threat to her virtue, not as drunk as he was, and with Young Henry endearingly sleeping on a pallet across the doorway with his knife in his hand.

  She was up before dawn and saw no reason to awaken the marshal of the castle who had passed out in the hall while explaining how heavy his responsibilities were to his two lovely hunting dogs, both of whom listened carefully and were as sympathetic as they could be. From the state of the blankets in the four-poster they normally slept there with him when he went to bed. Not one of the servants in the place had changed the bedclothes since last Christmas at the latest.

  She shook her head at it. Men were very strange creatures. Surely even if you were drunk it was uncomfortable to sleep in a dirty bed full of dog hair and an old bit of mince pie turned to rock?

  Saturday 14th October 1592

  They were out of a postern gate, opened by a heavy-eyed Forster cousin, and back on the Great North Road before the gate usually opened. The fifteen miles to Berwick were gone in a flash because the road was very good here, where the town council of Berwick maintained it, with hardly any potholes.

  At the Widdrington house in Berwick they found that Sir Henry wasn’t there. The steward explained to Elizabeth that Sir Henry had gone north of the Border two days before and was suppposed to be meeting the opposite Warden and somebody from the Scottish Court, in a secret matter. Yes, John Carey was in town and they could see him tomorrow but not today because he was busy, which she suspected meant he was hungover. That suited her perfectly and meant she got out of hearing John’s perennial complaints about the town council and mayor of Berwick, as well as not having to deal with her husband. She, Young Henry, and the four Widdringtons stayed only long enough for breakfast, with Sir Henry’s steward tutting because she expected bread and ale for six.

  They were out the northward gate against the flow of people, crossing the Tweed on the narrow rickety Scotch bridge into the Merse, with Elizabeth now on Mouse with Rat behind. Everyone else had got hobbies from the stables. The hobbies needed a lot of persuasion to set foot on the bridge which was in a bad condition. This was one of the major connections between Scotland and England; couriers passed both ways across it every week—it was like Bamburgh. What was the point of not keeping it in good condition?

  She shook her head again as her horse stepped off the end of the bridge and both of them breathed easier. No doubt the King of Scotland thought it was better to have a bridge that would not stand an army crossing it.

  Wendron wasn’t very far from the road to Edinburgh, the continuation of the Great North Road which was well-used by travellers and merchants, not to mention the ceaseless hurry of post messengers riding to and from London and Edinburgh. There was at least one bag of dispatches a week and sometimes one a day if Scottish politics suddenly got interesting. The raid on Falkland in the summer had produced staggering quantities of paperwork.

  As they rode into the village they found two boys sitting in a tree by the side of the road and one ran off purposefully as they passed. Young Henry nodded approvingly. The church alehouse was full and the manse had a man standing by the door with a reasonably good jack on his back and a billhook in his fist. Young Henry dismounted and went forward to speak to the man who pointed at the alehouse.

  Eyes watched as they left their horses tethered near the alehouse, leaving two of the lads outside to keep an eye on them, and went into the smoky commonroom. The laird of the area had died of a flux a year before, and his wife had died in childbirth ten years before, so the land was in wardship to the Crown and theoretically being administered by Lord Spynie on behalf of the ten-year-old boy who was the only heir and now his ward.

  His grandmother sat in the best chair in the house, the Dowager Lady Hume of Norland, a tall hat on her head and a ruff at her neck, her fine dark grey wool kirtle under a magnificent gown lined with sable from Muscovy.

  Elizabeth hadn’t met her before. She thought she had been a great beauty fifty years before and her face still had the bones of it, but the flesh was gone the way flesh goes and she had two grim lines on either side of her mouth.

  Young Henry did a tolerable bow and Elizabeth swept a curtsey to her. She felt dowdy in her small hat and old green riding habit, but on the other hand, perhaps
that was all to the good. At least she had her furred velvet gown.

  Grey eyes narrowed as the lady took in the whole of them.

  “Whit’s the interest of the Widdringtons in this outrage?” she demanded. “Our minister’s been foully murthered and his wife is aye missing. Well?”

  “My lady,” said Elizabeth, “Mrs Burn is at Widdrington and as far as we can tell both she and the baby are well.”

  The creased face relaxed a tiny bit. “How did she get sae far south?”

  “She rode, ma’am. She was in a terrible state and all she could think of was to get to me. I have no idea why. She rode Mr Burn’s hobby south all night and came to us yesterday afternoon.”

  “Is she hurt?”

  How could you answer that? “She is getting better and I’ve had the midwife to her and she says the babe is well.”

  The eyes narrowed again. “Why did ye come all this way?”

  “I wanted to fetch clothes for Mrs Burn as I feel she’ll be better to stay at Widdrington until she’s churched and I wanted to find out the truth of what happened to Mr Burn if I could. And of course, Mrs Burn asked me to see to it that her husband is properly buried.”

  It was an honest answer and there came a single proud nod. She didn’t mean to, but her eyes locked on Lady Hume’s. Lady Hume could choose to send her away once she had the clothes, but she hoped…She really hoped she wouldn’t. She had liked Jamie Burn; he was a good man, perhaps a little hot-tempered, perhaps a little intolerant, but he had started a school for the children of the village and his sermons were only an hour long. She had come to Wendron to stay several times when Young Henry was in Berwick, and it had touched her heart to see how he smiled and let his wife speak and would find excuses to touch her hand or her shoulder and how Poppy would find excuses to do the same.

  Touched her heart with envy, true, but it was good to see that a marriage could be…kindly.