Elizabeth moved back and sat next to Lady Hume, erect and still as the twilight came down.
“It’s aye hard,” said the old lady, “I allus doze off and I wake and the music’s still ringing in my heid, Chevy Chase, and my feet are tapping and a foul spell’s come upon me for I’m an old woman again.”
Elizabeth could think of nothing to say to that. She started to hum Chevy Chase, though, the repetitive song so you could hear the verses. Lady Hume smiled and nodded at her.
“Ay, ye’re right, it’s like that. And who’re ye, girl?”
“Lady Widdrington?”
“Och, ye’ve got an ill man to wed there, if it’s the Henry I knew. He liked breaking the wings of birds when I saw him when he wis a child, but he’s terrible afeared of heights.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“He allus kept it secret. And the puir minister. He shouldnae have gone back to the reiving, should he?”
“Did he?”
A sharp elbow went into Elizabeth’s ribs. “Och, ye know he did, he was out last month in the Middle March. Couldnae keep hisself from it, could he? Once a reiver, allus a reiver, I say.”
Elizabeth nodded. “You’re right. But he must have reived the wrong cattle.”
Lady Hume giggled at that. “In a manner o’ speakin’, aye, that’s why they killt him so gentle. Not hanging so he danced for half an hour like my Archie, but off wi’ his brainpan.”
“Do you know who did it, Lady Hume?”
She just frowned. And then she stopped and sighed and turned her head as the stars came out in a couple of gaps in the clouds. “Ay, d’ye hear the music? Ay?” She sat rapt, her eyes shut, her head nodding slightly to the beat of the silent music. After a while she drew in a deep breath and sighed it out again.
She dropped off to sleep then, curled over and down like a small animal, laid her head in Elizabeth’s lap and went to sleep with a smile on her face.
Elizabeth sat and thought. Killed him so gentle: compared with many a Border killing or indeed a judicial death with no drop and a long choking death on the end of a rope, it was a gentle death. Paradoxically because it was hard to think of anything much more brutal than a knife under the ribs followed by a long sharpened metal bar coming around and cutting half your head off, but yes, it had been a quick death and a clean one. Almost a kind one, as such things were reckoned on the Borders.
That was interesting. It was also interesting that Lady Hume had been the first to know, seeing she was a Burn and some kind of aunt to Jamie Burn. Somebody must have told her, or she was a witch or the faery folk had told her.
You could but ask. Elizabeth stroked the old head in her lap, pushed the white hair back and straightened the cap and took off the hat which was getting slightly crushed. It was a respectable hat.
“Lady Hume,” she asked softly. “Lady Hume, who was it told you Jamie was dead?”
She asked a few more times and was about to give up when Lady Hume moved her head and answered with her eyes tight shut.
“They did, ma’am, the two men that killed him. They rode over and told me all about it and I was sick and sorry for it, that I was, but I knew Jamie had been out the month before and I knew what he was at and…that’s why they tellt me. It was a way too high for him and me, I know it now. And they rade away intae the night and I went to horse meself the next morning for it wouldna be right for the minister to be unburied, no matter what.”
“What was it? What had he done?”
“Ay, it was terrible, how he was, part of his head had rolled a way but I brought it back tae his body.”
Her eyes were still shut, was she awake? “He’s dancing with me now, ye know, he’s dancing and laughing and his head’s back together again, dancing along of all the ither people, like my Archie Tait and the people in the wood and the archers and the English archer and a’ the puir folk we couldna feed for the English had burned their fields and their goods and they had nothing and they starved and died. They’re all dancing with me here now.”
“Who were the men? Can you tell me that at least?”
“Och, I don’t know, I couldna tell ye any more, it’s hard to tell all o’ them now. Not Geordie, that’s sure.”
“But…”
“And they’re bringing in the boar’s head now and we’re singing for it,” said Lady Hume, eyes tight shut, the night making it hard even to see her face, and she started humming a version of the Boar’s Head Carol.
Elizabeth sat with her until her arm was cramped and her bum had gone numb from sitting on the rock. Kat Ridley came with a blanket and behind her the broad silent man who nodded and said “ma’am” to Elizabeth, and then took the old lady in his large strong arms. Kat held her while he mounted his horse and then handed her up to him with her hat and he rode off northwards to the castle.
Elizabeth looked impatiently at Kat Ridley. “Do you know who came to her to tell her Jamie Burn was dead? Do you know their names?”
“Nay, ma’am, I told ye, I took the washing down to the washerwoman and I didna…”
“They came at night.”
That gave Kat Ridley pause. She put her head on one side. “No,” she said, though Elizabeth thought she was lying, “I must have been asleep.”
“Were you?”
“Ay.”
“And do you know what the minister was at a month ago?”
An almost invisible shake of the head. “Nay, ma’am, he wouldna tell me, ainly herself.”
Elizabeth sighed and said good-bye to the woman who was only doing what she was told, trudged on through the night to the manse where she found Young Henry and all four of the cousins anxiously waiting for her and found herself being scolded by him for wandering around the village on her own.
“Don’t be daft, Young Henry,” she laughed. “I’ll come to no harm…”
“Ma’am, a man punched ye in the heid and knocked you out a day or two ago, how do ye know they’re not still here?”
“Well he…”
“They might still be after whatever it was they was looking for and…they might see ye and think it’s a great time to find out where it is, or kidnap you and make us give it them, whatever it is.”
“Oh.” Now she thought of it, she had been careless. “I’m sorry, Henry, you’re right. I started in daylight and went down to see the Taits and then came back and met Lady Hume at the old burnt peel tower and got overtaken by dusk. I never thought of that.”
Now she had thought of it, it gave her a bad feeling in her stomach, an anxious unhappy feeling. Henry made a few more pompous speeches about being more careful and she waited him out because he was right. She wasn’t at Widdrington now, where the only real danger to her was Sir Henry.
“You’re quite right,” she said. “I’ll start for home tomorrow.”
Well that was no good, either, apparently. Was she quite sure she was all right, had she felt dizzy…? She had, but she certainly didn’t want to tell him. “I’ll decide in the morning,” she said after she had listened patiently to about enough of it. “I’m for my bed.”
She went upstairs to the big bed with its tester and curtains and found herself the only occupant, not even a girl sleeping on the truckle. Henry and the cousins were sleeping downstairs and where, she wondered, was Anricks?
Before she got undressed, she took a look in his room with the old bed in it and saw his pack still there, half open and with his instrument case taken out so presumably he was treating someone.
She thought about it, and went downstairs again. A little later she had young Cuddy Trotter’s mam coming pink-faced and flustered up the stairs to sleep in her bedroom with her and keep the proprieties. Henry had the grace to be embarrassed about that, he’d forgotten about the barber surgeon.
When Anricks came back, with blood still under his nails, Henry asked him bellig
erently if he still wanted to sleep upstairs.
“It’s perfectly all right, Mr Widdrington,” said Elizabeth to her stepson. “I have Mrs Trotter to sleep with me.”
Henry scowled at Anricks as if it was his fault everyone thought he might be a Jesuit.
Anricks took his instrument case into the scullery and used a bucket of water there to wash his instruments, which were fine ones of steel and looked fragile for the heavy work of pulling teeth.
“Mr Widdrington, would you like to inspect my mirror and my tools?” asked Anricks with a perfectly straight face. “I assure you I’m not any kind of Jesuit or Papist.”
“So you say, sir,” said Henry who was clearly still upset about something, although Elizabeth had no idea what.
Anricks brought the pack over and the instruments and plopped them down in front of him. “There you are, sir,” he said. “Will you be wanting to search me personally?”
“Er…no.”
Henry made a half-hearted search of the pack which contained shirts, hose, breeks, bandages, a packet of mouldy lamb pasties that had to go out into the yard and onto the dung heap, several small books including Ascham’s The Schoolmaster, and a great deal of writing paper thickly scrawled.
“What’s this?” asked Henry, holding up a page between thumb and forefinger.
“My book, sir,” said Anricks, still equably. “My accounts of the North and my thoughts on the tooth-drawing trade and also my speculations on the nature of toothworms.”
“Yours?”
“Ay sir, perhaps I may get it published next time I am in London. If I can come up with a way to prevent holes and rotten teeth, I will be famous and rich.”
“What way is that?”
“I think the avoidance of sugar is one thing, for toothworms seem to be attracted to it. In a family where one child loved sugar plums and the other child preferred cheese, it was the sugar plum-eater who had the worms and the holes, although…” Henry grunted and squinted at the writing.
“Why can’t I read it?”
“I don’t know, it’s in English.”
Henry flushed and turned it the right way up and started to puzzle out some of the words. “For toothworms, if they exist, must live in the stomach and come into the mouth by way of the throat…”
Elizabeth smiled. Anricks had a strange kind of patience, a watchful intelligent kind that does not allow emotions such as doubt or anger to interfere. Suddenly she found herself wondering about him again. Jesuits were supposed not to lie about being priests, though according to the pamphlets, they could equivocate.
Perhaps she could find out more about Jamie Burn from him.
“Gentlemen,” she said, “none of us have had supper and I’m hungry. Shall we eat whatever’s left in the larder and be friends?”
There was the end of a hambone, there was more pottage, there were quite a lot of bits of calf, though no one had thought of the perfectly simple operation of putting the bones and some potherbs to a large pot of water and making soup, and there was the remains of the sheep as well.
They served it up in the Burns’ dining parlour as one remove with some bread that needed to be toasted to make it edible. They brought in the remains of the beer and the ale, which was just on the turn and would be spoiled by the morrow. Elizabeth invited Mrs Trotter to join them and the Widdrington cousins as well, although they were on watch, strictly speaking, since Henry wasn’t about to allow another incident like the last. But they agreed to take it in turns, and she reserved plates for the two on watch first who were Humphrey and Daniel. Hector and Sim were understandably nervous of eating at her table but she reckoned honour was satisfied and served them some of everything and some of the ale they had nearly allowed to be reived as well.
She sat at the other end with Young Henry and Cuddy’s mam, Mrs Trotter, and Mr Anricks as well and as the eldest man there Young Henry gave place to him. Mr Anricks said grace. It was slightly unusual. “Blessed be you, Lord God of the World, of your goodness we have this meat and drink to our dinner, which Earth has given and human hands have made.” But it wasn’t Catholic, not being in Latin.
“Amen,” she answered to it firmly and took some of the veal which was excellent even cold; she’d boil it up into a soup tomorrow just on general principles.
They talked of neutral things until Elizabeth thought that you can but ask again and said to Hector, “By the way, were you working for anybody the other night or was it just a bit of foolishness?”
“Foolishness,” said Hector who had come at her with a knife.
“Jock Tait,” said Sim with a lowering look at Hector. “It were Jock that tellt us he had some buyers for the beer and what would we say to a shilling?”
Young Henry put down his knife and glared at Sim and Hector. Elizabeth managed a repressive glance and smiled at the two lads, neither of them over nineteen, she thought.
“Och,” said Hector.
“Did he say who the buyers were?”
Both of them shook their heads. Sim too had a splendid crop of spots though he wasn’t as big and broad as Young Henry.
“Did you get your shilling?” Two heads shook sadly. “I thought not. Have you ever ridden with Jock Tait?”
“Ay, o’ course,” said Hector and Young Henry was now staring busily at his food and stirring the pottage.
“Ay, well, ma’am,” said Young Henry. “It’s when we’re hitting the Routledges and the Carletons that we…eh…well we ride wi’ the Taits and the Burns.”
“And the Elliots?”
“Wee Colin? No, he’s an unchancy bastard though him and Geordie Burn are thick as porridge together.”
“So Jock Tait’s a good man, is he?”
“Ay,” said Sim, “he’s no’ extra special wi’ anything like Young Henry can shoot wi’ a gun, but he’s a good solid all round man, good wi’ a lance and a sword if he had one, and he’s good at scouting too.”
“I heard tell it was the Elliots who wanted the beer?”
“Nay, ma’am,” said Henry, “they like the Burns.”
“So who wanted the beer?”
“Perhaps it was Jock Tait himself,” said Simon Anricks thoughtfully. “To spoil the funeral, since you say he doesn’t like…didn’t like the minister.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “and I heard that Jamie Burn was out last month, reiving. Surely that’s not true?”
How very interesting the faces were. Young Henry was surprised, and then thoughtful as if it wasn’t such a surprise after all. Hector and Sim were not surprised. Simon Anricks, just for a second had an extraordinary look on his face, of understanding and regret and worry, which closed up at once into conventional shock.
“Ah dinna ken, missus,” said Hector with a warning look at Sim that should have molten his helmet which was sitting beside him on the table.
“Well, never mind, I expect it was just gossip,” agreed Elizabeth brightly. “You two can go and relieve Humphrey and Daniel now.”
They clattered off while Elizabeth served some more of the mutton to Young Henry and Simon Anricks, then helped herself to half of what was left.
“Jock Tait’s the hero of another tale I heard, too,” she said while Humphrey and Daniel shovelled food into their mouths. They weren’t brothers like Ekie and Sim, sons of one of Sir Henry’s younger half-brothers, but cousins. Sir Henry had many sisters and brothers and half-brothers and they all lived round about Widdrington. As a surname it was numerous and had a name for being fierce for the Middle March, where the village actually was. She told how she had found out the horses were looked after by young Jimmy Tait and the scrap of dialogue the boys had given her, how someone called Spiny could wait.
Young Henry put down his eating knife and looked appalled.
“The Earl of Spynie?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered r
egretfully. “It could just be a reiver with very wiry hair.”
“Good God, if it’s him…”
“It doesn’t actually help us find the murderers,” she told him, “but Jock Tait could. If we could persuade him to give us the men’s names and be a witness.”
“I suppose going to him with the cousins, grabbing him and hitting him until he told us wouldn’t be a plan you’d like?” said Young Henry, good humouredly.
“No, Henry,” she said, “it’s like all short-cuts—gets very long in the end. If we did that do you think he would stick around to be a witness at the trial? If there is one? He might not tell you anyway, he looks a tough nut to crack. And besides,” she added, “you have no jurisdiction of any kind here, this is Scotland.”
“I have the right to follow the trod,” said Young Henry, “same as anyone else.”
“You aren’t here on a trod, you’re here for a funeral.”
He didn’t answer and looked mulish. Simon Anricks was looking very thoughtful and she thought she’d do some more stirring, again on general principles. It sometimes made her very tired the way menfolk tried to keep their reiving and other dubious behaviour secret, as if women could be fooled so easily.
“Mr Anricks,” she said, “you were friends with the minister. You don’t think he really was out last month?”
Anricks answered slowly. “I knew he wanted some money quickly because he asked me about it, but I said I couldn’t help him. And he said something then that worried me but I put it out of my mind. I shouldn’t have done, I regret it greatly.”
“What was it he said?”
“When I said I couldn’t help him, he said, no matter, he already knew another way to get the money and he’d look into that.”
“Did he say what the other way was?”
“He said he’d talk to the Kerrs, that’s all.”
A Chorus of Innocents Page 17