The Fool's Mirror

by Alex Dylan

  Ravensdale wrapped an embracing arm around Carey’s shoulder and waved away the guards with the cheerful dismissal of a gold angel apiece as they made a move to stop him from leaving the Palace. “Let us pass! Sir Robert’s accepted my challenge and I mean to get the better of him today,” the guards grinned amiably. Sir Robert was given to extravagant wagers and Lord Ravensdale’s thirst for gambling had its own notoriety. Seeing little threat from either, they chose to uncross their halberds and let them pass without a search, in spite of their strict orders to the contrary.

  Having smuggled him away, Ravensdale saw Carey saddled up and rode with him as far as Charing Cross, urging him to take a circumspect route north via Doncaster and avoid interception or assassination. Their brief conversation was guarded. They were both men who knew the value of words. Too few or too many either way would be sufficient cause for their heads to be spiked on London Bridge, left to rot as the crows picked out their eyes. Robert Carey was sufficiently alert to heed the advice and sped away in a frantic gallop. Lord Ravensdale hung back, making sure no one was following before turning his own horse in a different direction.

  Two days later, Ravensdale rode north across a western frontier whipped wild by March winds. Few would have recognised the suave courtier who had left London. He was a man nearing the limit of both his strength and endurance, urging a spent horse to carry him the extra miles to Carlisle. His clothes were plastered with mud and his head ached. Dried blood, from a head wound sustained when he had fallen and his horse had kicked him, caked his scalp and ran anew down his face in fresh rivulets, resurrected by the slanting Borders rain. He swiped a tired hand across his forehead to clear the bloody drips from his eyes. He thought briefly of Carey and hoped he was faring better; they were two sleuth-hounds following the same trail. Carey had to be the first to reach Edinburgh if he was to change the course of history and preserve a future for himself and his own dear family. It was the ghosts from his own past that were urging Ravensdale to Carlisle.

  The beacons had reached Carlisle a long time before, but he was confident that no messenger was ahead of him. He intended to keep it that way. While the men of Westminster vacillated, he wearily rode the last few miles along the London Road and entered Botchergate on his way to the Castle.

  Lady’s Day had also been a Quarter Day. The shambles were still slippery with the business of slaughter as the butchers took advantage of the lull in weather and the lapse of Lenten strictures. Steam bloomed in fetid bursts as hot blood overspilled the fleshing tables and onto the road, running away with the rain to congeal in dark puddles. The pounding of heavy cleavers hitting through bone and gristle splintered into the wooden backboards. The rhythms of dismemberment. The killing was necessary if people were to come through the winter in fighting form. Everyone would be better with a warm bowl of good stew inside them.

  The morning’s first rain had eased. Melisande and Sorcha were treading their way past the many puddles in the Outer Ward, laughing and splashing water at each other with their pattens as they crossed to De Ireby’s Tower. Sorcha was holding Melisande’s hand and felt her grip stiffen as she saw the lone horseman arrive and ride straight for the Barrack Stables. Habitually, she stepped in front of Melisande, ready to address the servant when he came looking, on behalf of her lady. Melisande moved her to the side gently, “Easy, Sorcha. This messenger needs to find me with some haste.” Sorcha knew better than to ask how Melisande could be certain. She had been with her long enough to have learned to trust her lady’s instincts.

  Melisande put an arm around Sorcha’s waist, “Come away now,” she said quietly. “Let’s just walk over here.”

  She steered Sorcha towards the tower but with a wisp of sight, she continued to watch the solitary rider. She saw a stable lad run out to catch the bridle of the steaming mount. The rider practically fell off the horse and stumbled across the yard, shouting at the lad to fetch him a new horse and keep it moving. He covered his head with rough sacking cloth against the drizzle and obediently walked the panting horse around the circuit of the Ward.

  Melisande left Sorcha watching the drawbridge and returned to the Ward. The rider was making a slow rotation of the Castle, pivoting to get his bearings. He frowned as though confused by the displaced familiarity, looking for something or someone amongst the muddle of building works. She looked at his clothing and chewed her lip thoughtfully. He was wearing a thick and warm cloak, or one which would have been if it hadn’t been sodden with the local grey rain. Under the caking of mud, he had a good quality silk doublet. Merchant or messenger? Had he dressed in haste or travelled far? He seemed unprepared. He eased a hand over his forehead to brush his hair away in a familiar gesture. She saw his injury and recognised his aquiline profile. “Lord Ravensdale,” she called out as she hurried over to him but stopped when he turned suspicious eyes to her, grabbing automatically at his rapier.

  She stopped in her tracks and pushed back her capuchin hood, so he could see her face. He frowned in recognition and relaxed his careworn features. He was a handsome man, with a disreputable reputation. He wore his age lightly; it dusted his hair like hoar frost settled on the high peaks. “My lady,” he said, bowing with a courtier’s flourish, which belied his parlous appearance. His hand was still on the elaborate pommel of his expensive-looking sword, and he saw Melisande’s eyes slide to it. “The Borders never leave you peaceful,” he growled apologetically, before smiling with that easy charm which had been the ruination of many a court lady.

  Melisande replaced her hood and hurried to him. “This way,” she said, taking him through into the Inner Ward. She was permitted to stay just long enough to usher him into Ross’s chambers in the Captain’s Tower and no longer. Ravensdale eschewed all offer of her help to dress his injuries, politely but disdainfully. Ross poured wine for them both by himself and called for food before pointedly shutting the studded oaken door in her face and ordering guards posted outside. Melisande was left with no alternative but to return to Sorcha.

  Together they sat on a thin cushion either side of a narrow window that had once seen service as an arrow slit in William Rufus’s day. Now it was trying to masquerade as ornamental rather than a fortification, like much of the new building in Carlisle Castle. However, it still lacked glass or horn and the rain, which had picked up again, blew delightedly into the room whenever Melisande twitched the small leather covering to one side. She looked out at a slant, trying to avoid getting any wetter as she watched the horse and boy tramp the Ward in squelching circles.

  A man wearing the familiar reiver jack sauntered across from the Ward Stables with a fresh horse. Melisande spotted Heughan’s blue kerchief tied on his arm. One of Ross’s soldiers approached them from the direction of the Captain’s Tower. He barked at the pair of them and held out a scroll. The reiver took it. He exchanged brief words with the boy and the guard before giving the scroll to the lad and sending him scampering off towards the city. Melisande watched him run past her and under the portcullis. She crossed to the other side of the gallery and peered out across the drawbridge. Through the brightening gloom she could see him running through the Castle orchards towards the city.

  She turned her attention back to the reiver. He too had pulled a split sack over his head as a hood, meaning that she couldn’t see his face but she was sure she recognised the brute. He made the hairs on the back of her neck rise. Not a man she would trust. As she continued to watch, she saw Lord Ravensdale return briskly and snatch the reins of the fresh horse. He accepted a boost into the saddle and vanished into the rain, leaving Melisande and the unknown reiver staring as he galloped towards Scotch Gate, his horse’s hooves kicking up a slurry of red Eden mud.

  Throughout the short afternoon, Melisande watched tight groups ride purposefully from the Castle. Dusk settled quickly and the remaining guards on the northern walls stoked the beacons with renewed vigour. She wondered what message Ravensdale had carried and what new mischief the night would bring.

 
By the time James turned out of his bed in Edinburgh to accept his late cousin’s sapphire ring and the crown of England from Carey, balefires lit up the night sky throughout the Borders and the reiver companies were riding in full muster. Hard-faced men with pointed lances converged towards Carlisle with a single purpose. The general held belief in the Borders was that when a monarch died, the law of the land no longer applied until the new monarch was crowned. During the interregnum, it was all for one and each to their own. Reivers could commit crimes with impunity. Who would dare stop them?

  The Cathedral bells shouted a warning and every man with a horse was out of bed and mounted within a heartbeat. The bishop of Carlisle barely had time to grab the sacramental vessels, the golden ciborium, chalices and patens, and run to the safety of the Castle with a haste unbefitting to a man of such episcopal dignity. His Lordship fairly sprinted down Paternoster Row to Castle Street with his cassocks held up that high, he nearly tripped himself with his own crozier.

  Death came in many forms. The lawless Borders had seen them all many times before. Sim and the Scots Armstrongs came swiftly into Rockcliffe, lining the height of Etterby Scaur with grim silhouette. His local ally, Hutcheon Graham, overran the villagers of Cargo, who only managed to escape with their lives and wives intact by promising to provision his men for free. With the Castle securely closed against them, the reivers ripped through the outlying communities, dividing the Carlisle countryside like the executioner’s knife quartering a traitor’s entrails. Thanks to a combination of protection and local family allegiances, most of the city escaped largely unscathed. Looking from the safety of the Castle ramparts, the bishop could only wring his hands in mingled despair and supplication as he watched the reivers ride beyond the bend of the Eden, packhorses trailing out behind them, laden with the spoils from the rape of the neighbouring Cathedral properties. They waved merrily at him, shouting insults and making obscene gestures.

  The bishop crossed himself and prayed for deliverance from the godforsaken city he was forced to minister to. He tackled Ross while they dined together.

  “You are Lord Warden,” he pleaded to Ross. “For the love of Christ, do something! Those thieves have taken everything.”

  Ross paused from spearing another chunk of meat into his mouth. “I thought the Church was tolerant of thieves?” he said smugly.

  “Only if they repent,” replied the bishop tartly, “and in all my time here, I have never yet found one truly repentant member of the reiving community.” He pursed his lips primly, “Even in death, they stick together and demand to be buried in this side or the other of the cemetery. As if they have any hope of influence in the hereafter. They’re all destined for hell.” The bishop crossed himself as punctuation. And, as an afterthought, protection.

  Ross was solicitously quiet before he resumed eating. Through a mouthful of food, he replied apologetically, “My hands are tied, my lord. These are undoubtedly Scots malefactors and they have robbed from Church property. The Border Laws don’t extend to religious houses and therefore, regrettably, I can’t intervene. The best I can do is to contact the Scottish Wardens and demand they pursue the villains on their own side of the border.”

  “Who is the Scots Lord Warden?” asked the bishop.

  Ross’s smile expanded slowly before he replied, “The Laird Johnstone.”

  The bishop exhaled noisily. “The Devils? What justice will we get from that bunch of ruffian outlaws?”

  “Justice? No, perhaps not. Recompense? Now that’s a different matter,” Ross said, swilling wine with his food and chewing thoughtfully. “The Laird owes me the return of a favour for services rendered. Let’s just say I gave him some helpful information that led to the recovery of stolen cattle. And I’m holding a prisoner who could be of interest to him. I might be able to broker an exchange. In return for a small consideration, my lord,” he added deferentially.

  Privately, the bishop nurtured the suspicion that Ross had already done a deal with the Johnstones in return for a cut and was now playing both ends against the middle. He decided to take himself off to the safety of his residence at Rose Castle at the earliest opportunity and entrench himself there while he petitioned for a change of tenure. Carlisle had become far too dangerous for a simple man of God who longed only for an easy life of comfortable servitude doing the Lord’s work.

  I curse them going and I curse them riding, I curse them standing and I curse them sitting, I curse them eating, I curse them drinking, I curse them walking, I curse them sleeping…the bishop stopped himself from carrying on with his mental recitation of Archbishop Dunbar’s great cursing of the reivers even though it was a great solace to him. Reciting it end to end had sustained him many a cold night since he had first come to the northern offal pit which called itself a city but was, as far as any civilised person was concerned, a squabbling dung heap full of fighting cocks. I condemn them perpetually to the eternal pit of hell, he allowed himself indulgently before taking his leave of Ambrose Middlemore.

  North across the border, the many plumes of grey smoke spiralling heavenwards told a sorry tale of plundering in the Debatable Lands. For the thick three miles’ width across the Scots dyke, families who had them retreated into the protection of their fortified towers and watched helplessly as the reiver companies took away anything that could walk or be carried and burnt the rest.

  Those forced to defend themselves died where they stood, casually murdered by rough men seeking to relieve them of their goods and chattels. Limping back across the blighted countryside after the fiasco at the Beeftub, Heughan and Rodrigues found a trail of battered, sullen women and weeping bairns clutching at the tattered remains of their existence.

  Ross Middlemore kept his promise and appealed to his fellow Wardens for their assistance. The other English Wardens had taken the threat to border security seriously enough and had sent extra troops from both Newcastle and York. The Scottish Wardens remained strangely silent.

  The additional troops promised to Ross arrived in smaller numbers than he had hoped for. Deep down, Ross knew it was an exercise in futility; most of the capable fighting men in his own garrison were related to the reivers somehow through ties of blood or marriage. Up and down the Borders it was the same story; men were reluctant to take up arms against family and would rather fight a common enemy than each other. Ross fully understood that the arbiter of law was one enemy all reivers would oppose. He was content to flounce around the Borders without engaging anyone in an actual skirmish. That way he could write reports in all good conscience, without making any new trouble.

  He left the city of Carlisle to its own devices and led the plump watch, his own men and the extra muster of troops, on endless, exhausting patrols into the Debatable Lands in pursuit of criminal elements. It was a policy of setting a thief to catch a thief, and the bishop mentioned as much in his many verbose letters of complaint to Cecil. He wasn’t alone in suspecting that Ross’s real purpose was to make sure he grabbed as much of the action for himself as he could, taking cattle, horses and anything portable, as he went the rounds.

  Carlisle, Busy Week 1603

  They were all on edge. The Cathedral bells rang a canon that went round and round, recalling the events of the busiest of ill weeks the city had ever known.

  Once the Scots Armstrongs had withdrawn to their own side of the border, the general consensus was that it was reason enough to celebrate. In the Borders’ traditions of blood feud, everyone knew perfectly well who they were or weren’t at war with presently. Heughan was as relieved as the next person. His men were injured and needed time to heal before they could think of tackling Sim again.

  The city was hardly still from dawn to dusk. During the day, the roaring boys held races up and down the length of Blackfriars Street. The losers were lifted bodily from the saddles and hefted over the walls into the town dyke. The taverns and bawdy houses were doing good trade, pleasing both Rodrigues and Sally.

  It was late on the third afternoon, when
Sally had had to turn away Old Man Kerr, who was already deep in his cups and slurring his speech. She had watched with concern as he staggered unsteadily towards Bessie Musgrove’s alehouse. Bessie took him in hesitantly, as she was struggling to make enough ale to meet demand. After he’d downed several pints, she flapped her fat little hands helplessly as he threw yet more coins onto the counter. “I’ve nothing left, I tell you,” she said flatly, shrieking when Kerr grabbed her by the throat with one spade-like fist.

  “Ish my money not good enough anymore, Bessie?” he stumbled. “I’ve got plenty, so dish it all up,” he snarled, reaching into his purse to shake the remainder of the contents rolling over the wooden serving board.

  “I’m dry!” she shrieked in panic. “It doesn’t matter how much you have; there’s not a drop left, I tell you!”

  Willie looked up from the corner table, where he was sharing a furtive drink with Jack, Desmond and a few of the lads. He was hiding from his Jenny and didn’t want to get dragged into any more trouble.

  “Is that right, Bessie?” he called out casually. “Will we have to move on after this ’un?”

  “Willie, I swear,” she coughed, slapping Kerr’s hand away and pulling on her bodice to straighten her stays. She wriggled and rearranged her soft, dumpling breasts, “There’s not a drop more to be had today. Not even if you had gold to offer me.”

  “Gold?” rumbled Kerr slowly. “I kin get yer gold to pay for a drink, wumman. I know a wee frightened faerie who’ll find it for me…” he broke off with a staccato laugh.

  Jack and Desmond exchanged looks and made the sign against the evil eye.

  Kerr saw them and laughed some more. “Yer bloody neth superstitious women,” he sneered.

  “They’ll tek yer eyes, Kerr,” Willie cautioned. “Yer know they will.”

  Kerr laughed harder. “What fer? Just cause that bastard Heughan says so? You should worry more about him, La’l Un. He’s got prettier eyes.”