If he had asked her then to marry him, she thought, she would have accepted, not to have the inn, but for the sake of Sliddershanks, for him. He had not asked again. Maggie Mauchlin’s vice had squeezed out all his marrying, and none of it was left.
That, she thought, was then. Things were different now. She was twenty-one. Far too old, said Sliddershanks, for any man to want her. ‘You are a guid lass. But ugly as sin.’ But Sliddershanks was wrong. And he had told a lie to her that she could not forgive.
Michael was a labourer, who had come at seedtime. When the seeds were planted, he had gone away. And Elspet had believed her hope of him was gone. Sometimes she believed that he had not been real. That she had thought him up. But she did not forget. How could she forget, when he was in the ale?
Elspet hugged herself. Sliddershanks would say that she had lost her mind. But Sliddershanks told lies. She must not think of him.
At seedtime, he had waited for her outside at the pier, where she poured the slops. She had heard her name, and took it for the gulls, mewling in the froth. But then she had seen that it was a man, with fair tousled hair like tufts of ripe corn and a face coloured dark from the sun.
Elspet had asked him, ‘How do you ken me?’
‘You are the girl from the inn. Will you fetch me a drink?’ Michael had said. Though she had not kent he was Michael then.
She had shaken her head. ‘I canna. We are closed.’
‘Oh, but I am thirsty, Elspet Bell.’
She had fallen for him then, right at those words, as though the saying of her name had cast a kind of spell. But she had not liked to show it. ‘You should have come before.’
Michael had telt her, ‘I did. I was turned away. The landlord said I’d rue it if I ever came again.’
‘That does not sound like him. Why would he do that?’
‘Because I asked your name. Because I never saw another lass as lovely. And when he would not tell me, I asked your friend Marie.’
Elspet had answered with ‘Oh’. She did not like it that Marie had a part to play. If she had made it up – and sometimes she believed that she had made it up – that part would be left out.
‘Your master must be fond of you, to keep you to himself.’ He had winked at her.
Elspet had felt a flood of confusion. ‘Mebbe,’ she had said, ‘I could fetch a drink for you. Just one.’
When she had returned to the inn, Sliddershanks had gone already to his bed. Elspet had been thankful not to face him then. She had poured the ale and taken it outside. She had half expected Michael to have gone. She thought she had imagined him. But he was waiting still. He had drunk the ale in a single draught. He had been as thirsty as he said. When the drink was done, he had bent and kissed her, covering her mouth with a spray of foam that was bitter-sweet and frothy in its breath.
Marie had been waiting when she took the cup back. She sensed that Marie knew, and could not look at her. She could hardly speak. She was trembling with such violence that she feared to waken Sliddershanks, shaken from his sleep. Her teeth were chattering too. Yet when Marie asked her why she had the cup she answered her quite easily. ‘One of the fishermen left it outside. I was bringin it in.’ The lie had astonished her, but no more than the truth. Michael had been planted, sprung up like a seed.
Marie was not fooled. ‘Oh, aye?’ she had said. ‘You had better mind that he does not find out.’
Michael made a promise that he would return for her when the harvest came. She had not believed it then. She did not tell Marie. But Michael kept his word. He came on Lammas eve, to find her by the pier and claim her for his own. She would be his sweetheart at the Lammas fair. Lammas was today. And Elspet kept her secret close and safe from Sliddershanks, knowing that her friend would not be welcome here. Michael had been kind to him. ‘You cannot blame a man that wants ye for himself.’ Yet that could not be right. For Sliddershanks, she knew, had never wanted her.
II
The colleges were closed on Lammas day. For Hew Cullan of St Salvator’s, the start of the vacation came as a relief. The last days of the term had been stormy ones. Giles Locke had spent the dog days of July – canicular, he called them – bearding the apocalypse. According to the compass of the ancient almanacs, the world was set to end in 1588. Giles had proved them wrong, with endless sheets of sums and logic so abstruse that it had baffled Hew. The storms were summer squalls, with fairer winds on course for 1589.
Hew was pleased to hear it. ‘I have planted trees, and would be annoyed if the world should end before the grove is grown.’
‘The world is good,’ said Giles, ‘for a few years yet.’
The lightness of their words concealed a present threat, which Hew took very seriously indeed. There were wild reports that the Spanish army had landed on the coast, and the town was placed on perpetual alert. Giles had drawn a chart of the British Isles, on which he marked the progress of the Spanish fleet. The Spanish made no secret of their ships; rather, they had leaked their lists and inventories, the powder kegs and armoury of thirty thousand men, the ripple of their forces gripping at the sea. The lists had been enhanced with varying accounts of the types of torture that were taught on board, with their end effects. The students were distraught. Their spare hours were wrung out in practice at the butts, where their summer contests ceased to be a sport, and they sparred and squabbled over the results. Some were eager to be out and fighting for their faith, frustrated at the college that had penned them in. Others were afraid, and spent their days in prayer, fearful that a way of life to which they were attuned might soon become unstrung, their brittle futures plucked from them before they were begun. Most were ill and fretful by the end of term.
Giles had marked on his map the place in Flanders where the fleet had mustered, following its course into the English Channel. Hew remarked his interest with a deep unease. The Spanish had, officially, no quarrel with the Scots. But if England were occupied, and her queen overthrown, how likely was it then the Scottish king would treat with them, to gain the English throne? Or, if he did not, would join her fight with them, and sacrifice his people to the English cause? Nor was the Spanish army like to rest content while there were reformers on adjacent shores. The king in betwixt them, to serve his own ends, could scarcely stay neutral for long. There were open spies, willing to assist the Spanish in their aim, and though the king had taken measures to deter them, some had found his efforts feeble and lukewarm.
Hew, who had witnessed at first hand the devastation caused by Spanish troops abroad, did not underestimate the truth of the reports. He consulted with the spy and soldier Robert Lachlan how they should prepare themselves for the event of war. They had served together in the Netherlands. The substance of their talks he kept secret from his wife, for he had no wish to add to her alarm. For his sister and her husband he reserved a cool discretion, hiding from them both the matter in his mind. For sometimes, when he came into the tower where Giles was at his work, he saw his old friend start, and cover up his charts. Nowhere in his heart did Hew believe his friend – a Catholic through and through – colluded with the fleet, or opened up the passage for the Spanish force. Indeed, he was aware that such suspicions pandered to the enemy, opened up a door by driving through divisions in his native land. Still, he used a trick that he had learned from Walsingham, placing all his trust upon a single man, so that if a man betrayed him, he knew who it was. That one man, for now, would not be Giles Locke.
With so much to distract him, he was glad enough when the term was done. On Lammas eve, he sat with Robert, making lists of arms and working out a course of action late into the night. They resolved to go together to the fair, not for any pleasure of their own, but to hire a sturdy band of men, ostensibly for working on the land, but secretly to form a fighting force. Such was Hew’s intention when he went to bed. He found he could not rest, but lay alert and fretting through the early hours. At last, he fell asleep, and when he next awoke the day was well advanced, heavy with a squal
id, listless kind of heat. When he called for water, Frances came.
‘Were you up with Giles last night? You were very late.’
‘Robert,’ Hew replied.
‘Bella did not say.’ Frances was surprised. ‘She said that you and Robert would be going to the fair, to look for hiring men. But since you slept so late, he has gone ahead. He will meet you there, and I will come with you.’
‘You?’ Hew’s wits were not awoken yet. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘How strange you are today. Wherefore would I not? I want to call on Meg. There are certain matters I want to discuss with her, and some things I need to buy.’
‘Lammas is no place for you. Tis filthy, loud and lewd. You will not like it there,’ Hew said.
She fixed him with a look. ‘Do you suppose I have not been to fairs at Leadenhall?’
‘That is what I mean,’ he countered desperately. ‘It is not like London. It will disappoint you. There are no good stalls.’
Frances was intent, and would not let it lie. ‘How will it be different from the other fairs? I have been to those.’
‘Because the town is different now. The colleges are closed. Lammas is the harvest fair, for those who work the land.’ It was, he recognised, the worst thing he could say. For Frances was involved as closely in the land as he was in the law and the university. She kept a close surveillance over his estates.
The paradox had not escaped her. ‘And when were you so bound up in the land you oversaw yourself the hiring of your hands? Robert Lachlan might. But you? What are you about? Bella says it is a coupling fair.’
‘You cannot think—’ said Hew.
‘What am I to think, when you will not say? I do not like it when you are so shifting, Hew. Do not look so stricken, for I know full well what it is you do. There is one reason only why you look to Robert Lachlan, and it is not for the wenches or the drinking games. Robert is a fighting man, and we are at war.’
‘You have seen my mind. But we are not at war. I seek but to defend against that possibility. I did not want to frighten you,’ he said.
‘You cannot frighten me by telling me the truth. My country is at war, in peril as we stand. I feel it all the time.’
‘Forgive me, then. I did not think.’
‘No,’ Frances said. ‘You did think. You have been thinking of us, while I was thinking of them. Tis like you.’
‘Does Bella ken too?’
‘Bella does not ken. She does not know Robert quite as well as I know you.’
‘Perhaps she does,’ said Hew.
Frances kissed him fondly. ‘Ah, perhaps she does. Now you must wash and dress, and come with me to Meg’s; I cannot go alone, and I must speak with her.’
‘Why today?’ asked Hew.
‘You should know that women have their secrets too.’
As soon as he was dressed, they set out to walk together to the town. His spirits lifted then, to see the carts and crowds in all their coloured finery, the fields of ripening corn that lined the country way. Hew felt like a boy again, with his English bride, among the lads and lasses in their play day clothes. They left the infant Flora home with Bella Frew, who had told them that she felt her coupling days were done. ‘And if ye see that man of mine, up to his old tricks, tell him that his coupling will be over too.’ Hew, for all her fears, doubted Rob would stray. For though he was red-blooded with a belly fu’, he was milk-and-wattir when it came to Bella.
III
There were four strangers staying at the inn, come for the fair. One was a chapman, with a great pack full of trinkets and toys. Two of them were tumblers, young Egyptian brothers, who could walk on ropes and stilts that made them giants, tottering and tall. The last was a juglar, expert in legerdemain. Marie liked the juglar best. He had cut an apple open with a knife, and placed the cut side down upon the board, where it had spun round without any touch; the drinkers marvelled at it.
For Marie, he had turned the apple on its back, showing the black beetle that was trapped inside. He had shown no one else. At first she had thought that he had found it in his bed, and was making a complaint. The beds were none too clean, though Marie shook them out. The tumbling brothers shared, and as she imagined, woke up from their dreams tangled in the sheets, while the juglar had been quartered with the chapman and his wares. But the juglar had not come to complain. He showed her a box where he kept the beetle and a little frog, and clinging to the lid, no bigger than a mouse, a creeping blind-eyed bat. He showed her a goose egg blown and sucked out, and put the bat inside, curled up in its wings. Then he covered up the place where the shell was cracked with paper and paste, smoothing it out until the crack was gone, and no one would guess that there had been a hole. He had given her the mended egg to hold. And she had felt it solid in her hand. Its weight was anchored still, as though the yellow yolk was still inside its bowl, and Marie had wondered if the bat was dead. The juglar had told her that it was asleep. When it was dusk, the bat would wake up, and the egg would fly up in the air. Probably. It was a trick that did not always work.
There were other marvels that he would not show her, saying she must come and see them for herself. He had taught her a trick, and he asked her to show her secrets in return, giving her a shiny English shilling on account.
She let him have a kiss, promising her secrets if the egg should fly. She did not think it would. When he first arrived, he had had a boy with him, enchanted with a charm. The boy had gone bow wow, running on all fours, like a little dog, and everyone had laughed. He had done a dance, and when the juglar telt him to take off his clothes he had stripped them off, right down to his hose. But when he was telt to take them off too, he took it in great snuff, bursting into tears. He said that if his pintle must be bared for all to see, he would want to have another half a crown. The crowd had roared at that. The juglar then was sad, though she did not see why. When the morning came, the juglar’s boy was gone. ‘He was my confederate,’ he confided in her. Marie liked the word. ‘But he was nae good.’
She had served the men breakfast early that morning, of bannock and butter and ale. All four of them were going to the fair. And Marie wanted badly to be going too. The shilling she had won was squirrelled in her purse. But Walter had determined it was not to be. He had made Joan and Marie draw a straw to see which one of them should go, and it was Joan who won. Elspet had leave to go out as well. She did not even have to pick one of the straws.
Marie said, ‘It’s no fair. You always favour her.’
‘Ach,’ Walter said, ‘Elspet is no use to us on a day like this. Her face is so sour it turns men awa’. The drinkers want a bonny one, like yours.’
He always spoke like that, no word of truth in it, and Marie was put out.
‘You are a fool for her,’ she said. ‘Ye widnae be so fond if ye kent.’
She had the devil in her then. For Elspet’s sake, she ought to haud her tongue. But she felt in her throat a kernel of spite, a tight angry knot she could not swallow down. Venting it afforded her a vicious kind of pride. ‘Oh, you think her chastely. I tell you, she is not. She is flesh, like us. And the first lusty laddie comes laiking with her, she is up and efter in the twinkling of an ee.’
‘Aye? What lad is that?’ He humoured her. Marie saw he did. He thought that Elspet, precious as she was, kept no secret from him. He took her for his own. Marie thought the spark between them an uncanny thing; they were like brother and sister, twin scrapping bairns, or a husband and wife, who long ago had lost all front before the other, mellowed to a comfort that was closed to her. Marie would not dare to flyte with him like that. She was jealous of the favour Elspet had from him, swaddled as it was in a loose contempt; their casual warmth of humour made her feel shut out, excluded from the jest.
‘He came at the seedtime, and now he has come back. His lustrous blue een and bright yellow hair have spun sic a charm upon your ain pet lass that it will be seedtime, for sure. Elspet is ripe. He is reaping her now, at the fair.’
‘You have a foulsum tongue,’ was all he said, and mild, as though he did not mind. Perhaps, after all, he kenned it all along; it was a part of the game that they played.
She told herself that, consoling her conscience, a sharp little thing that was pointed and sore. She liked Elspet too, did she not?
Walter worked on for an hour, drawing up the barrels from the cellar down below, preparing for the influx later on that day. At the close of the fair, the business would transfer to the inns and taverns, and, if the night stayed dry, spill out on the sands and the harbour shore. The merchants from the market would be ready for their drink. The house was quiet in the meantime; one or two stray creel men, who had sold their crabs, came to slake their thirst; most fishermen were absent, with the herring fleet. Noon trade would be slow, for people took their dinner at the fair. By twelve o’clock, the place was bare, but for one old man, too old and deaf to traffic with the crowd, who drank his solitary pint on a stool outside, sipping in the quiet of an August sun.
Walter Bone took off his apron. ‘I maun go out for a while.’
‘Where will ye go?’ Marie asked, alarmed.
‘I have rin out o physic I take for my back. It is hurting me sair.’
It was true enough that he did not look well. He had shifted half a dozen kegs that day, and the crates of wine. It was easy to forget that Walter was not strong. He rarely made complaint of it. ‘I can go,’ she said.
1588 A Calendar of Crime Page 12