A Chorus of Innocents

by P. F. Chisholm

  The boys could not agree about the strangers. They were dark-haired, they were light-haired, they were wide, they were short, they were tall, they had the look of Grahams or Armstrongs or Maxwells or Johnstones or Fenwicks…No, they weren’t wearing jacks, just ordinary homespun, dyed brown and blue like anybody’s father might wear. No, they didn’t have spears or dags or nothing, only both had swords, of course. No, not one boy could tell what the swords had been like. One was older, one was younger, that was all they could say. They spoke Scots, like anyone else. No, neither of them had a finger missing or anything useful like that. They were just men. They’d said they were printers from Edinburgh.

  “Did they have inky hands?”

  “Eh?”

  “Were their hands stained? I never knew a printer that didn’t have his hands black with ink.”

  The boys thought, argued a bit and agreed. No, the strangers’ hands had been normal, no ink.

  Had the minister known them? Cuddy and Andy wrinkled their brows at that. Piers thought carefully. “I think he did,” he said, “or he knew of them. He bowed a little to them and invited them into the house. We were going fishing so we went off with oor fishing rods and a basket and he didn’t say, good luck boys, but we didn’t notice, we just went. Down to the stream, missus, where it hooks round and ye can get salmon sometimes.”

  “Yeah,” said Cuddy, “but we couldna fish there that day, for Mrs Burn was there with Sissy and Mary and me mam to do the linen and the sheets and so we had to go off to the ither place that isn’t sae good and none of us catched anything.”

  “Oh. And did you tell Mrs Burn anything?”

  “Ay missus, we told her there were two printers from Edinburgh come to see her husband and she told me mam to take over for a little and finish wringing them out and dry them on the bushes ready for the next day and she went off to see them.”

  “Oh really. How did she look? Was she frightened?”

  Both Cuddy and Andy were scowling. “Not frightened, but she looked excited. Ye ken? As if something good was happening? She hurried up away from the stream to the manse and she was straightening her cap while she went.”

  “Hm. So do you think she knew who the men were?”

  “Nay, ladyship, but I think she knew about them, if ye follow. It wasnae the surprise to her, two strangers in the village.”

  Elizabeth nodded and wished again that Poppy Burn had stayed in the village and sent for her instead, so that she could ask her about this.

  “All right. So what happened after that?”

  “After, missus?”

  It had been a day like any other. They had gone home with long faces and no fish for the table, and Cuddy’s mam had left the linen on the bushes overnight for she didn’t think there’d be too bad a dew and the weather looked set fair and come home and done their usual nighttime porridge with some bits of carrot in it, Cuddy hated that, and Cuddy had milked the goats though there wasn’t a lot there and then his mam had told him a story and he’d gone to sleep. His dad? Oh his dad was out guarding the Hume flocks and their own animals. “It’s the raiding season, missus, ye ken?” She did, though not being born to it as these children were, it wasn’t part of her normal assumptions. But all over the Border, most of the men were out in the pasture guarding the animals that were too far away to bring in or that they didn’t have enough fodder for.

  At some time in the afternoon, Poppy Burn had saddled and bridled her husband’s hobby and ridden off on him on the Great North Road, heading south, and had been rained on.

  “What about the next day?”

  “Ay, well, me mam was in a bad mood for it rained in the night when she said it wouldn’t, and so she couldna bring in the linen and she went to speak to Mrs Burn about it early and that’s when my Lady Hume tellt her the minister was dead and his wife had run away.”

  That flatly contradicted what Lady Hume had said about the boys discovering the body.

  She couldn’t get any kind of story from the youngest, a thin lad of about seven, called Jimmy Tait. He simply cried steadily until the snot was dribbling down his face and Elizabeth gave him her handkerchief because she couldn’t stand it. He balled it up and continued to cry and so she left it for the moment.

  She sent them all off home to clean their faces and in two cases to put some shoes or clogs on and told them to be back when the bell started tolling. She had asked a minister to come from Berwick but he had refused on the grounds that it was the Scotch kirk and they were all heathens anyway. And all the pastors she knew in Scotland were in Edinburgh, which was too far away.

  The smells of spit-roasting meat were crossing the village green which was thickly camped upon. Elizabeth went out through the main door and crossed the little yard there to look out across the green. Her precious wagonloads of beer were still secure in the stableyard and she nodded at the large cousin Daniel Widdrington who was guarding the gate. He touched his cap to her respectfully and she knew that the story of her beating of Sim and Ekie had already started growing. She was annoyed with herself for losing her temper, but there again, what else was she supposed to do? Allow the beer to be pillaged? She didn’t think so.

  Lady Hume’s two large funeral cakes were being borne back from the baker’s, half the lads from the school were following the two big lads carrying each cake. Lady Hume herself was standing there with an apron over her velvet kirtle and she was rubbing her hands in glee. “Och,” she said, “we willna bake the marchpane but still it’ll be fine, Lady Widdrington. Look, not a bit of it burnt.”

  Elizabeth investigated the cakes with her knife, they were far too big to turn over and knock on the bottom as she would do with a loaf. They seemed well-cooked—a bread dough with some butter and spices in it and then all the raisins and currants and candied fruit from Poppy’s store cupboard to make it sweet.

  She went into the kitchen and found that Lady Hume and Kat had been very busy about the marchpane and had even managed to find some red and yellow sanders for colouring. They’d also opened two pots of Poppy’s raspberry and blackberry jam and they had formed the coloured marchpane into two astonishing flat designs in the old-fashioned way, all curls and curves that looked like dragons. Kat set about painting some of the heated jam onto the tops of the cakes.

  With a palette knife and a bit of wood, Lady Hume gathered up the first of the marchpane lids and popped it on the top, then she did it again, her old fingers light and delicate on the fragile creations, so that the two cakes looked like the illustrations from an old book.

  “Why, that looks wonderful, my lady,” said Elizabeth.

  “Ay, I can allus do marchpane.”

  She used some of the jam to fill up some openings into the swirls and the cakes needed to rest then. They were a very creditable effort despite the lack of time to bake the paste because that took some careful management of the fire and most of the day.

  Elizabeth went back into the minister’s study. She was looking for something but not at all sure what it was. He always locked the door though he knew the lock could be picked by the boys, and therefore presumably anyone. What was the point of that? She had checked through the other papers on his desk and found only notes for the next Sunday’s sermon. Everything was neat and tidy, nothing out of place. On the shelves was a neat pile of sermons that he had given, beautifully written out in his best italic. That was a little surprising, for he had given those. But they were good sermons: well-founded in Scripture, well-thought through and each with a pithy moral at the end. On that shelf there were a number of books on teaching, some in Latin, including Ascham’s original, The Schoolmaster, well worn and in English. He was the one who had recommended not beating the boys too much since they seemed to learn better for it. She weighed the book in her hand absentmindedly and then put it in her petticoat pocket to read later. James wouldn’t mind if she borrowed it now. Then she went and sat in Jamie�
��s chair, looked about her.

  It was annoying because the whole thing refused to hang together. If she was honest with herself, she had pictured herself as like Robin, using her brain to pick through all the tiny fragments of truth in front of her and gradually build up the shape of the whole truth. And that would give her the murderers, she was sure of it. But here she was and she had nothing but odd fragments that might or might not have been truth and no shape whatever.

  Her husband would have laughed at her and possibly pinched her somewhere for being presumptuous. As far as he was concerned, she was a woman and women naturally have less sense than men and she should leave such things to the men and get back to her business of running his estate and saving him the cost of a steward. The pinches he gave annoyed her more than his slaps and punches because they were so mean and underhand. And often unexpected still.

  She sighed. There was Robin Carey in her imagination, wearing the astonishing clothes he had proudly worn at Court, not the one with the lilies, but the tawny doublet and the black trunk hose with the embroidered and pearl-encrusted black cape off one shoulder, the one that had been pawned the longest because it was worth a blinding amount of money. He had worn the clothes for the portrait he had painted to celebrate his knighthood. Elizabeth didn’t think it was a good likeness. He was wearing the massive rope of pearls the Queen had given him across his body—though in fact the pearl rope was half the length it had been because he had sold a lot of them and pawned the rest. It was shrewd of the Queen to give them to him and not money, seeing how helpless he was with the stuff.

  He was bowing and smiling at her, as he had in fact. He was the very picture of a confident courtier and a very different creature from the battered man she had said good-bye to at the Scottish Court in summer. She had given him back his ring and their eyes had met and…

  Their eyes had met. Their bodies had known their business and kept a distance, but their eyes…

  She suddenly put her face in her hands and tried not to sob. There were tears coming from her eyes and trying to push them back did no good at all, it was stupid to cry like this and besides she wasn’t one of those delicate Court maidens who could weep a couple of crystal tears and not become a sniffling stuffed-up lump. She was Lady Widdrington and had to make sure the minister’s funeral, such as it was, went in a reasonably respectful fashion and…

  I want him, she almost wailed, I want him to come to me and put his arms around me and tell me it’s all right and he’ll take care of it and that he loves me. The constant pain in her heart, deeply buried and numbed though it usually was, sharpened and strengthened. I want him now and I want to ride off with him and stay with him and have his babes and nurse him when he’s ill or wounded and laugh with him and eat with him and be with him and…

  And I can’t have that, said the sensible part of her. I can’t have it until Sir Henry is dead and buried and maybe not then, if Robin has any sense and marries money like he should. So I should get used to it and not fret after nonsense.

  There was a little paw patting her shoulder. She looked and it was the skinny little boy, Jimmy Tait.

  “Och,” he said, “I’m sad, too, missus, it’s awful sad about the minister. Dinna greet though.”

  How does he know…? Ah yes, he thinks I’m crying for Jamie Burn. Well, in a way I am, for Poppy’s lost a good husband and there aren’t enough good men around. She coughed and tried to smile at the boy though it was watery.

  “Now Jimmy,” she said, “what is it?”

  “I come to tell ye I canna sing for the minister’s funeral.” His face was shut down like a little old man’s, no more tears, only a sort of despair.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Me dad don’t like it?”

  “Really?”

  “Ay, he says I shouldnae have been going to the school in the first place and I’m tae stop home and help wi’ the goats and turn over the muckheap.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Jimmy. Can I come and speak with him about it?”

  “Why? Me mam tried to change his mind and he’s knocked her down, he disnae like the minister.”

  “I’ll come anyway. I think Sir Henry Widdrington would have something to say about it if he knocked me down.” And he would. Sir Henry Widdrington was the headman of the Widdrington surname and his wife was his property. The only person who could hit her was himself, which she supposed was something.

  She had her hobnail boots on which was just as well because the Taits lived in a tiny little wattle-and-daub cottage, half dug into the damp Earth and only three rooms—one for the animals, one for living in, and up a ladder under the roof for sleeping. Compared to some of the turf bothies the people put up after their homes had been burned down again, it was luxurious but only compared with them.

  The woman was stirring porridge at the fire in the middle of the living room and had a red wheal down the side of her face. She curtseyed anxiously to Lady Widdrington at the door and showed her to the only chair in the place.

  “I wonder if I might speak with Goodman Tait?” Elizabeth asked politely.

  “Lily, go fetch yer dad,” said her mother. “He’s fixing the infield fencing.”

  A girl in a homespun kirtle and dirty short shirt ran off barefoot without a word. Elizabeth thought about sitting on the rickety chair but decided against it in case she broke it. Also it was no doubt the goodman’s chair and she didn’t want to offend him.

  Tait arrived with a brow of thunder and an older boy trotting behind him. He had a dense black beard and black hair and a truculent expression.

  “Ay missus,” he said suspiciously.

  “It’s Lady Widdrington.”

  “Ay. What of it?”

  She looked at him carefully for a moment and abandoned what she had planned to say. She looked down at the boy, Jimmy, who was staring at the ground fixedly.

  “I understand you didn’t like the minister. May I ask why?”

  “He was a two-faced bastard.”

  “Really?”

  “Ay. All the time psalms and prayer wi’ the boys, and under it he were a bastard, a reiver like any one of us, though he was always preaching against feuding.”

  “He was?”

  “Ay. Ah’m no’ a man that goes runnin’ to God every time I have troubles, but I draw the line somewhere. I remember the mermaid queen and her connivin’ ways and I remember the fighting to stop them and the French, and I’ll no’ have a son o’ mine warbling psalms and what have ye at his funeral. I’m glad he’s deid and I hope he rots in hell like all the other Papists.”

  “Goodman Tait, this is a very serious matter. Did you think the minister was a Papist?”

  Jock Tait’s face became cunning. “I caught him at it, didn’t I? Him wi’ his book and his Latin writing. He didnae hide it, only smiled but it wisnae English, for I learned a little off…off of a friend I had once that went tae the Reverend Gilpin. I know the difference.” Odd the way he had gulped when he mentioned the friend who could read.

  “Was there anything else?”

  “Ay, and that slimy tooth-drawer. Everyone thinks he’s so great, but he’s a London man and what would a London man want wi’ us? We canna pay him what London folks can pay. I think he’s a Papist, for sure.”

  “Tooth-drawer?”

  “Mr Anricks drew my tooth for me when it was rotten,” said the woman. “He gave me a cloth to sniff and when I went to sleep he did it so quickly it almost didna hurt.”

  Tait snorted. “Ye see? I paid him and I saw him going off to the manse after, in the dusk, like a Jesuit. Maybe he’s a Jesuit? In he went and he stayed an hour or two and then he wis out again and on the road south. I saw it wi’ my ain eyes.”

  “I see.”

  “So I say good riddance tae him and his letters, I’ll not have my sons’ brains rotted wi’ Jesuit teaching.”

/>   “Did you kill the minister, Goodman?”

  Tait drew himself up and his fists bunched. “I didna,” he said, “though I’m glad he’s dead. I wis off wi’ my brothers and Jock Burn to see to the horses over by Berwick and I’ll get every one o’ them to swear for me. So now.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “Is there anyone else in the village who thinks like you—that has the same opinion of the minister?”

  “Ay and he wis a reiver once, a good one, when he was young. I knew him then too. And ay, there are some that know him for what he was.”

  “Who?”

  “Why d’ye want tae know?”

  Elizabeth thought fast. “If he was a Papist spy then I should tell my husband Sir Henry Widdrington about it, for he’s the Deputy Warden of the East March of England. It could be important.”

  The jaw and fists unclenched slightly. “Oh ay? Ye dinna disbelieve me?”

  “Goodman, I don’t know. I don’t want to tell my husband a pack of lies and yet if there are Papists hanging around here and Jesuits, he needs to know.”

  That was true as far as it went, although Sir Henry was as likely to take bribes off the Jesuits as arrest them. But she wanted to know. She didn’t think Jamie Burn had really been a Catholic; he seemed far too sincere for that, but if others thought he was a Papist that could account for his murder.

  There were two others in the village who apparently weren’t fooled by Jamie Burn and Elizabeth got their names. Then she tried another tack.

  “Goodman, do you think it’s wise for young Jimmy to miss the funeral?”

  “Eh?”

  “Well, you don’t want any of the Papists to realise you’ve spotted them, do you?”

  “What’re ye saying, missus…ladyship?”

  “Just that it’ll make Jimmy stand out a bit, won’t it? If he misses the minister’s funeral and him being needed to sing?”

  There was a slight softening now. “Ay,” said his father, “he sings well, does Jimmy.”

  “It’s not as if any Jesuits or Papists could get at him at the funeral. I’ll be there and Lady Hume and the young Lord Hume and Jock Burn and all the Burns. But someone might notice he’s not there and ask why.”