Yells burst from the door above him. A barrage of missiles was hurled down at him, beating him back even as he put his hands up to protect himself. As the missiles tumbled around him, he looked up through crossed arms to identify his attackers. Robert and Henry stood at the top of the stair in the doorway, waving their wooden swords.
‘You’re Tippoo Sultan,’ screamed Robert, ‘and I’m Davie Baird, and you’re trying to attack our camp, but we’ve just caught you!’
‘I can’t help feeling that it would be fairer if I knew that I was attacking your camp before you caught me. Couldn’t you let me know what my plans are in advance?’ He looked about him and with relief saw that the missiles were mostly old cushions, some burst and leaking feathers.
‘Then you might come armed,’ objected Robert.
‘But I’m armed now,’ said Murray. ‘Look, you’ve armed me!’ He grabbed an armful of cushions, and started hurling them back up the stair at the boys. They shrieked, and backed through the doorway, but he sprang up and caught the door handle just before they had time to close it in his face. There was a moment’s frantic struggle, before Murray managed to manoeuvre himself entirely into the low tower room, laying about him with cushions as he went. In a few seconds it became a three-sided fight, as Robert started to beat off both brother and tutor with his sword, and Henry blamed him for the failure of the Tippoo assault.
‘And anyway, why can’t I be Davie Baird? You never let me be anything!’ he cried, slashing indiscriminately at Robert and at Murray’s leaking cushions. No one noticed the heavy footsteps on the stair until the jovial voice came from the doorway.
‘Oh, aye, lads, heave away there!’ called Major Keyes. Henry dropped his sword in surprise, and Murray quickly snatched it off the floor and out of his reach. Henry attacked Murray’s ribcage with his fists, and Robert, the method appealing to him, dropped his sword as well and laid in bare-handed. The noise was unbelievable, yelling and laughter, until Murray got Robert by the collar and dragged him off, and Keyes caught Henry’s flailing arms, pulling him backwards.
‘These lads need teaching in their fighting,’ said Keyes at last, as Murray helped the boys tidy the tower room. ‘We shall have to see about that pugilistic display you mentioned.’
‘Oh, yes!’ cried Robert, dropping the cushions he was holding.
‘Only if your father says so,’ Murray reminded him sternly. ‘Come along, it’s supper time.’ He blew out the candles the boys had lit, and chased them in front of him back down to the Long Gallery. Keyes let them pass and followed more slowly with Murray.
‘I’ll try and persuade Scoggie to let them go,’ he carried on, more quietly. ‘It would do them the world of good.’
‘Will you go anyway?’
‘I think I might. There is little enough entertainment for men around here, and I thought of having a lesson, too.’ He looked sideways at Murray. ‘If I can’t persuade Scoggie, would you like to come on your own?’
‘I’d be delighted,’ Murray admitted, slightly surprising himself. ‘If Lord Scoggie has no objection, of course.’
At some earlier stage in the Scoggie family history, someone – Murray suspected some strong-willed Lady Scoggie – had insisted that the Great Hall was not suitable for comfortable suppers, and had moved supper to the parlour next to the drawing room. It was an informal meal, and when Murray, Keyes and the boys arrived, Tibo, Cocky Leckie and the ladies of the family were already half-seated, chatting, around the table. Henry hurried over to greet his mother, while Robert dawdled after.
Murray and Keyes followed and paid their respects to everyone.
‘Was there some kind of riot going on upstairs?’ asked Deborah. ‘I thought I heard an invasion.’
‘No, not an invasion: Tippoo Sultan was rash enough to venture an attack on Sir David Baird’s camp,’ Murray explained.
‘I don’t remember that from the newspapers,’ Deborah remarked, and Beatrix smiled.
‘I hope Tippoo Sultan was not badly injured,’ she said.
‘The missiles were fortunately fairly soft,’ he grinned back. Keyes’ dog, hearing his name, pushed round his master’s legs and sniffed optimistically at Beatrix’ lap. She pushed him gently away.
‘Boys, you are so violent!’ Lady Scoggie sighed over her sons. ‘What am I to do with you?’
‘It’s just because we’re men,’ Robert explained to her kindly. ‘We have to be strong and hit people.’
Tibo pushed his chair back.
‘Not necessarily,’ he said. ‘Not all men hit people.’
Robert shot him a look in which disbelieve mingled with derision.
‘All real men do,’ he said clearly.
‘Well,’ said Tibo, looking round at all the grown-ups with a half-smile, half-sneer, ‘I seem to have been put in my place.’
‘Robert, you are very rude,’ said Lady Scoggie.
‘Well, I thought he was being silly,’ said Robert, not quite clear what he had done wrong.
‘There’s nothing else for it,’ said Keyes, standing behind Tibo with a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’ll have to come with Murray and me to see the Pugilistic Chanticleer. And the boys, if Lady Scoggie and my host will let them come with us.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Tibo, his sneer-smile growing broader as he looked across at Deborah. He ignored Keyes’ hand. ‘It seems to me a foolish way to spend an evening.’
‘And a dangerous one!’ said Beatrix. ‘Must you all go?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Tibo, still watching Deborah.
‘Oh, I think you should go,’ said Deborah, surprisingly.
‘You do?’ Tibo sat up. ‘It seems to me that there are better ways of taking exercise.’
‘But Major Keyes is right: it is a very manly way,’ said Deborah. ‘Think of it: you will never be able to hold your head up in front of the boys again if they are allowed to go and you decline such an opportunity.’
‘And we should support people who come all this way to entertain us, shouldn’t we?’ added Cocky Leckie, with half a knowing eye on Deborah. ‘Even if you do not choose to fight, you can at least come and see the exhibition.’
‘And if you’re going too, Father will have to let us go!’ added Robert.
‘Go to what?’ asked Lord Scoggie, coming into the parlour at that moment.
‘To the pugilistic exhibition in Elie,’ Tibo sighed.
‘You still want to go, eh?’ Lord Scoggie asked the boys. He stood like a goat in judgement, hands behind his back. They broke away from their mother and stood straight, recognising this as a solemn moment.
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Please,’ added Robert fervently.
‘Then if Mr. Murray is willing to escort you, you may go.’
‘Hooray!’ cried the boys, leaping up and down. ‘Thank you! Hooray!’ They dragged Cocky Leckie, who was nearest, off his seat, and danced around the room with him. ‘We’re going to see the pugilist! We’re going to see the pugilist!’
‘We shall be quite a party, then,’ said Keyes happily. Beatrix smiled anxiously, but Deborah looked not the least concerned.
‘Now you cannot refuse, Mr. Tibo,’ she said persuasively.
‘No, indeed!’ cried Cocky Leckie, escaping from the boys and scrambling back up on to his chair. ‘It will be the greatest entertainment this whole year! You cannot possibly miss it!’
Tibo smiled, but the smile was more like a wince of pain.
Chapter Nine
Dear Father,
I am now well settled at Lord Scoggie’s house, tutoring his two sons and acting as his Lordship’s secretary. Henry, the elder, is a bright intellectual lad, with a strong bent toward science and literature. His father encourages this in him, and we hope that he will soon go to St. Andrews. Robert is a boy more to your taste, active and energetic and good at all manner of sports, just like George at the same age. There is some talk that, like George, we will make an army officer of him.
My dear
father, it is now eighteen months since we last spoke at St. Andrews, and I have heard from neither you nor George since then.’
Murray stared at the last sentence for so long that the black letters seemed to lift off the page, hovering above it, casting little shadows beneath them. Then he leaned back in his chair, changing his gaze to the ceiling and its shallow coffers.
He stroked out the words, and wrote:
‘I have settled very happily here, and am on terms of mutual respect and liking with the whole household, I believe. I am allowed to ride and walk when I please, and have full liberty to use Lord Scoggie’s extensive library ...’
Libraries would not interest his father. He broke off again. The coffers tempted his absent scrutiny. In his mind, the ceiling above him was turned from the pale oak squares of Scoggie Castle’s upper floors to the bare black beams of his old student lodgings in St. Andrews, and he lived again, as he had so many times, through that last argument with his father.
It had all been his father’s fault, that much had always been clear. His father had been bullying, selfish and unimaginative, and cared nothing for what mattered most to his elder son. He hoped his father realised that, that he had lived to regret it, skulking on his own now in Letho, stamping around the big house with no one but the servants to reprimand and despise. It would serve him right. After all, here Murray was writing to the man, finding the words to communicate to him when he certainly went to no effort to write to his son. He no longer wished to have anything to do with Murray, and that was the end of it.
The trouble was, he thought, as the coffers came into focus again and the back of the chair dug into the nape of his neck, that when it was a matter of family there was never an end of it, not even, he suspected, with death. He missed his father, and even more he missed his brother George, following his career second or third hand, asking any officer he met in Elie or in Cupar if they had heard of his brother, heard tell of a George Murray in the First of Foot – was he well? was he happy? was he a success? There was enough he could reproach himself with, too, when it came to it: he should not have been selfish, either, should have thought more about what mattered to his father and to his family, not just about his own pleasure.
He was happy enough in his present life, but on so many levels he regretted what he had done. He wondered if his father did, too, or did he deal with his past sins by ignoring their crouching presence on his shoulder, or did he struggle to think of an atonement? He looked down again at his own attempt at atonement, the letter on his desk. Sighing, he folded it, and slid it into the drawer of his desk, incomplete. He would have to find a bigger drawer soon: that one was full of incomplete letters, not sent to his father.
‘Mr. Murray, sir! Are you coming? We’re all ready to go!’
Robert stood at the door, jiggling with impatience. Murray pushed himself out of his chair and snatched up his coat and hat from the bed where he had them ready. It was time to leave for Elie to see the famous Pugilistic Chanticleer.
Lord Scoggie had not the least interest in such displays, and had left his sons in the hands of his kinsman and his tutor for the day. Even so, they made quite a procession starting off from Scoggie Castle: Major Keyes had elected to take his carriage, which could also accommodate the boys and Cocky Leckie, who had no horse. Nathaniel Tibo sat gracefully on a grey gelding chosen, Murray suspected, because the grey was flatteringly the same as Tibo’s own hair. Murray was on his usual mount from the Scoggie stables, Daisy the mare, and not, thankfully, on the embarrassing gelding. They had started early, expecting the road to be busy, but it was almost empty, and the cottages they passed along the way had an abandoned look, instead of the usual weekday bustle.
‘Do you think the French have invaded, gentlemen?’ Cocky called from the carriage.
‘If they have, they’ve left the place unusually tidy for an invading army,’ Keyes remarked, casting an expert eye over the countryside.
‘Maybe they’ve just come to see the pugilism,’ Robert suggested, half-seriously, but Tibo was dismissive.
‘Pugilism is not to the sophisticated European taste,’ he said. ‘It’s only the British that find one man hurling another around a chalk ring a suitable way of spending an afternoon.’
‘And that’s why we’ll defeat the French in the end, my lads. The British fighting spirit,’ said Keyes, grinning broadly. Tibo looked disgusted.
The day was bright, with an unstable kind of brightness that lurched in a sharp wind from glowing to glittering, whipping dust off the road and into their dazzled eyes. Tibo and Murray came off worst, the shine taken off Tibo’s glossy boots before they had gone far. As they neared Elie, the wind also carried sounds – cries, groans and cheers, sweeping around them as if the wind itself had a voice.
‘It’s the public display,’ cried Robert excitedly. ‘It must still be going on!’ He struggled to turn and look out of the carriage window, eager for the first possible sight of his hero.
Parry the Pugilistic Chanticleer aimed to make the most out of his visit to Elie, whatever it was that had brought him to such a small town. His afternoon, taking advantage of the daylight, was to be given over to a public display in the town’s wide main street, outside the inn, where he would take on all comers for a small consideration, pausing during the bouts to comment on technique. The evening was to be spent in the inn’s upper room, in private coaching for wealthier folk. The Scoggie Castle party had booked themselves in for the first of these evening sessions, hoping to be home for the boys’ supper, but the quiet road had allowed them to arrive early.
Major Keyes’ skilled coachman drew the carriage up at the back of the crowd, and hurried to pull the hood down so that the Major, the boys and Cocky could stand and see the ring over the heads of the crowd. Tippoo the dog barked and nosed up on to the seat, tail furiously wagging. Murray and Tibo were not the only ones watching from the vantage point of horseback: every farmer in the countryside who had the use of a nag with more than two legs formed a tight ring around the crowd, like dragoons at a public hanging.
‘Watch out for pickpockets, boys,’ Murray called, but he was ignored. Already Robert and Henry were entranced. Murray turned back to watch.
A ring had been roughly roped off in the middle of the street, and boards had been laid across it. Murray could just see part of a square chalked in the middle, though most of it had been rubbed over by the bare feet of the fighters. There were two in the ring just now, and a few others, stripped and sweating, stood about at the ring’s edge, their bouts over for the day, rubbing their bare arms down with sacking. One had a broken nose, Murray could see clearly, and blood had flowed freely down round his mouth. Another favoured his right leg, leaning against the inn wall. In the ring, a stocky man with fair hair seemed to be trying to obey his opponent’s instructions in intervals between punches: he had his fists up defensively, but was looking down at his feet, fidgetting with their position as if he was learning to dance, red with concentration and embarrassment in front of such a crowd of watchers. His bare shoulders were red and wind-bitten, with a sandy scuffmark on his shoulder to show where he had already been thrown. His opponent, then, was Parry, short and tidy in his movements, pale-skinned to his waist and buff breeches. Parry was evidently pleased at last with his pupil’s feet, and the pair took on more seriously the pose of those about to fight. A man designated referee stood forward, and dropped a red handkerchief. The bout began.
Parry gave his pupil the first three hits. One grazed his arm, hardly touching him. One missed him altogether. The last caught him on the jaw, and the crowd cackled with laughter as he stepped back and shook his head as if to clear it. Then he launched himself at his pupil.
It was a more even fight than you would have expected, for the pupil was a good couple of stone heavier than the professional and was clearly used to a certain kind of brawling. But Parry had technique and endurance on his side, and though few of his blows were particularly heavy, they had a relentless regular
ity to them that was wearing even to look at, let alone to endure. They landed about the pupil’s ribcage and throat, restricting his breathing, making him gasp for air when he could instead of using his energy to finish Parry off. He tried to stop the blows by seizing Parry around his thin shoulders, trying to trap the flying fists in a crushing embrace, but Parry squirmed away, poking his pupil in the eye as he went. The pupil cried out, echoed by the crowd. One hand to his face, he lashed out at Parry half-sideways, hitting him near the kidneys but not quite the devastating blow he had hoped for. Parry was impressed, though, and skipped away, then used the pupil’s momentary loss of balance to thump him in the stomach. The crowd drew breath collectively, and as the man fell slowly to his knees, they let out a vast sigh. He doubled over, one hand still to his face, the other clutching his stomach, while the referee stood over him, counting. His friends, gathered at the side of the ring, began a chant of encouragement, gradually taken up by the rest of the crowd. For a moment, it looked as if it might be enough to lift him again – his head moved a little, and he started to sit up, but in a moment it was clear that it was only to shake his head in defeat. He was helped to his feet and out of the ring, his friends crowding round him, slapping him on the shoulders, wrapping him in coats. Parry watched him go with a kindly smile, then turned back to the crowd with a bow. They cheered loudly, but he waved down their enthusiam, and in a second they were silent. Here was the second part of the performance. Parry the Pugilistic Chanticleer smiled from ear to ear, and drew breath to sing.
Come lads and ladies, girls and all,
And gentlemen, come hear my call:
A tale of triumph you will hear
From the Pugilistic Chanticleer.
A great cheer went up at the name, and his grin increased as he sang on, conducting the crowd as they joined in the last line of each verse.
Knowledge of Sins Past (Murray of Letho Book 2) Page 14