The Fool's Mirror

by Alex Dylan

  Willie pushed his stool back with an angry scrape and turned to face Kerr with his sword half drawn. “Say it agin and I’ll have yer tongue from yer head and toss it to the faeries along with your eyes.”

  Kerr looked down on him and laughed hugely. “You’d take me on, by yerself? By God, you’ve some balls, La’l Un! But I need to piss. So don’t stick me when I turn my back on you, and then I’ll buy us both a drink when I get my gold.”

  “There isn’t any more drink,” Bessie insisted.

  “Shut it!” Kerr roared.

  “I dinnae want yer drink and I dinnae want yer cursed faerie gold neither,” Willie said evenly through gritted teeth, but Kerr was already lumbering away, swatting at Willie’s words as if they were so many flies.

  “Bloody superstitious wummin,” was the last thing they heard him mumble as he shambled off into the alleyways.

  Willie and the lads waited a while and then took themselves off in search of the afternoon’s rumbustious distractions. A battery of young men had descended to the flat fields within view of the Castle walls for a pugnacious game of football. Even the apprentices had been keen to join in the rowdiness, much to the disapproval of the city goodwives.

  Later that night, the city walls reverberated as Borders ballads were mangled by a never-ending caterwauling of drunken singing. In the narrow Lanes, the raucous clang of swordfights bounced crisply into the night air as gambling cheats settled with one another. A frowsty pall of piss and vomit hung over the city. Even the night soil men were evidently too busy or too afraid to clear the streets and the city wallowed in its own filth. Everyone was holding out for a peaceful end to an ill week, provided that the drink kept pace with the Lord Warden’s tolerance.

  At some point during the evening, Old Man Kerr’s horse found its own way back to the city, with the rider slumped drunkenly to one side, leaning heavily over the horse’s neck. The Watch let him through the Irish Gate and the horse plodded resolutely onwards, finally halting outside the ‘Brothers’ Arms’, where Kerr’s troubles had all began.

  Red-hand-Will, the dyer’s apprentice, had walked past him twice before realising that Old Man Kerr wasn’t moving. He worried at first that the man was dead; he didn’t want to be the one to call for the Watch in case no one believed his version of events, and he suddenly found himself with more enemies than he had managed to see off after the football game earlier in the day. Red-hand-Will rubbed a few tender spots in unhappy recollection and gingerly touched his eye, which had coloured as lividly as the bruised sky. He sorely needed a drink to soothe his aching face.

  Truthfully, he knew he lacked a nimmer’s skill, but if he was caught, he would claim he found the money. What was one act of petty thievery compared to the rest of the reiving? He squared it with his conscience and cautiously felt around Kerr’s belt for his purse.

  Out snaked one strong hand to grasp him by the wrist, making him yelp involuntarily. He wriggled to get away but Kerr held fast. Red-hand-Will was panicked, “Let me go,” he whimpered, “I dun nothing.”

  Kerr made a throaty, gargling sound and turned his head, searching in the dark for the cut-purse trying to rob him. He stared at Red-hand-Will with a bloodied face empty of eyes.

  Red-hand-Will screamed in terror and pushed Kerr away. He bolted into the tavern, jabbering wildly, pushing the rest of the patrons into the night as he fought towards the safety of the fireside, which he refused to leave once he had claimed sanctuary there. He got his much-needed drink, but his hands shook so badly he spilled more than he swallowed.

  A reluctant Heughan had been called out to take matters in hand. There would be no hot trod, he decided swiftly. On Rodrigues’s advice, he had seen Kerr settled with the infirmarer of the Poor Clares. As a silent religious order, forbidden to speak, the nuns would neither respond to his questions nor let him ask his own. Heughan had no answers for his lads when they pressed him.

  As far as he was concerned, there was a certain inevitability about the whole matter. He said as much to Hamish, earning him sharp looks from his younger lads, Ricky and Young Jackie, who privately decided they didn’t want to hear Heughan sing ‘Tam Lin’ or any other ballad that was going to turn out to be a prophesy.

  Heughan’s foot kicked off the table, where it had been precariously balancing the chair as he swung back and forth, jolting him to wakefulness. He righted himself and crashed the chair back squarely on the ground, before he realised that all eyes were upon him, waiting for an answer to a question he hadn’t quite heard. Rodrigues sighed with exasperation at his inattentiveness.

  Heughan rubbed his palm up and down his thigh, bouncing the ball of his foot energetically and setting the table knocking against the floor. “I can’t think like this,” he complained to Rodrigues, scraping the chair back and standing to pace instead. Rodrigues said nothing and watched him stride up and down the small room in tight confinement.

  Willie and the men stayed silent, picking at the remains of food and drink on the table in front of them. Ricky amused himself spinning a dented pewter plate around in wobbling circles until Jack put a hand out to still him. There would be a conclusion to Busy Week and they needed to be prepared.

  “We have an opportunity,” Heughan folded his arms across his chest. “We have to use it to make the king sit up and pay attention.”

  There it is, thought Rodrigues, scanning Heughan’s face. A spark of sedition and he’ll fan it into an inferno, if I don’t do something. Out loud he spoke with a calm he did not feel, “What did you have in mind?”

  Heughan slammed a fist onto the table with enough force to make both the plates and men jump. “Take control of the Castle and with it control of the Borders.”

  As he bent down to retrieve a fallen cup, Rodrigues barked a short laugh, “Mere weeks ago you were telling me that we weren’t going to be fighting, that you had a plan and you were going to Ireland. The queen dies, we’re all at each other’s throats and now, when there’s finally a truce of sorts in sight, now, you want to fight? You’re mad!”

  The other men shuffled their feet and coughed awkwardly. Heughan glared around the room but no one would meet his gaze. Even Willie kept his head down, intent on stabbing his knife rapidly between the spaces of his splayed hand. He pricked out the pattern of his handprint on the table, toying with injury and idle vandalism, as he kept one ear on the conversation.

  When Heughan didn’t reply, Rodrigues continued in a more even tone, “It makes no sense, lad. Have you forgotten that there are still extra troops at the Castle from both Newcastle and York, even if most of the garrison are exhausted with the night patrols? Why risk it when the enemy has the strength of numbers?”

  “Because we have the element of surprise,” Heughan replied. “Besides, the strangers in our midst could work in our favour; there’s much confusion at the Castle, unfamiliar faces coming and going all the time…”

  “Increased security and checks on the gate,” Rodrigues interrupted. “You can’t even make a simple delivery without a writ.”

  “But then again, as long as we have the correct passes, entry is guaranteed. Once inside, we are amongst more friends than enemies. You know as well as I do that Ross’s forces are drawn as much from the families as from the standing militia. And we know how to apply the right kind of pressure to remind a family man where his loyalties ought to lie.”

  “Fartleberries! The only pressure that gets results is the warm comfort of gold pressed into the hands to persuade the eyes to look the other way,” piped up Willie.

  “Gold is no guarantee either, Willie,” Rodrigues insisted, looking pointedly at Heughan. “It does strange things to men, makes them unreliable.”

  “Good thing yours is all reliably locked away in a chest, then, isn’t it,” managed Heughan with a troubled laugh, not liking the implied censure. “In any case, I don’t need your gold, not this time. This time I have twenty-two barrels of fine wine, which will prove very persuasive.”

  Rodrigues caugh
t the darting looks the Irishmen exchanged but Heughan seemed oblivious. Before Rodrigues could interrupt, he whirled around to face him.

  “So let’s talk about another unreliable man with a high price on his head. How much exactly is a king’s ransom these days?”

  “You can’t be serious?” hissed Rodrigues with a sharp intake of breath. “You’d try to kidnap the king? It’s treason.”

  “Why not, Roddy?” countered Heughan flippantly. Without waiting for a response, he resumed his pacing, talking animatedly. “Ransom is a fine Scots’ tradition and he’s not king of England until he’s crowned. Think about it. James Stewart must come south to England to claim the throne. He has to make a move soon. He has both a funeral and a coronation to organise, and he needs to be sharp about it. The longer he hesitates, the more likely it is that the country will split itself into factions and we’ll have civil war.”

  “There’s no reason for him to come to Carlisle even so,” Rodrigues was quick to point out when he could get a word in edgeways. “The surest way to Westminster would be via the Great North Road; Berwick, York and so on.”

  “I don’t think he’ll do that though,” smiled Heughan, trying to display a confidence he didn’t really feel.

  “Why not?” asked Rodrigues.

  Heughan could hardly tell Rodrigues it was just a feeling he had. No man would risk his life, his future or his fortune on a hunch. He paused to marshal his thoughts into arguments that Rodrigues would appreciate. “Well, for one thing, it’s obvious and expected. When have the Scots ever been predictable? For another, James Stewart is curious. He’s a man who likes to flirt with danger, even if he doesn’t want to put himself in the thick of it. I think the trouble stirred up with Busy Week will have been enough to have piqued his interest. Ross will encourage him to attend the Truce Day because he needs to have the ear of a London-bound king to make sure his position as Lord Warden of the Border Marches is secure.”

  “Go on,” said Rodrigues, unconvinced. “What else?”

  Heughan nailed him with a sharp look, “James Stewart’s other interests are well-known. We just need to find a compelling reason for him to come to Carlisle, something that he can’t resist.”

  Rodrigues was sceptical. He eased back into his chair with both hands clasped above his head. Heughan recognised it as the gesture Rodrigues made when he felt he had already won the argument. His heart hardly felt like it was beating as he waited for Rodrigues to skewer him with the next question. “And what are you going to tempt him with, Heughan? Faerie gold from under the hill?”

  Ricky suddenly pricked to attentiveness. Jack and Desmond sucked in breath sharply. Willie swallowed ale the wrong way and spat it back noisily with a spluttering choke. Rodrigues looked at them all incredulously before laughed derisively, “You superstitious women!”

  Young Jackie shook his head, suddenly serious, “Aye, that’s what Old Man Kerr said too. But Heughan had warned him long afore the faeries plucked his eyes out. He was cursed from the singing.” The other men nodded gravely.

  “Having to listen to Heughan’s singing is curse enough for anyone,” Rodrigues agreed genially. “But it’s just a damn song. It’s not real. More likely someone took his eyes because he saw something he wasn’t supposed to. When he comes round, he’ll tell you himself.”

  “He’ll tell no one,” said Heughan. He stuck his tongue out and mimed slicing through it. The action made him recall he’d also suggested the punishment to Melisande as a remedy for loose talk. Who had they been discussing?

  “The Beeftub, was it?” asked Rodrigues keenly. “He crossed us to the Devils and you took his tongue for it? No more than the greedy bastard deserved.”

  “What? No,” denied Heughan. “I would’ve done if I thought he’d betrayed us. What makes you think it was Kerr? I hot trod for him.”

  “Aye, but you didnae tek the cattle from Maxwell when he asked ye,” Willie reminded him. “Johnstones and Maxwells are old enemies. Mebbe Kerr could nae resist the chance to pick the scabs off the wounds and make them bleed afresh. Mebbe he got into a fight wi’ someone who was prepared to make a stand of it.”

  The rest of the men focused on Willie, remembering his threats in Bessie Musgrove’s alehouse. Willie evidently remembered them too. He swelled with indignation like a pot threatening to blow its lid, “I ne’er touched him. I just said…”

  “Shut up, Willie, no one’s blaming you,” said Heughan. He was sure it hadn’t been Old Man Kerr he discussed with Melisande.

  From the muttering that rippled round the table, clearly the rest of Heughan’s lads were not as convinced of Willie’s innocence as Heughan. Willie was determined to remind them they’d witnessed the exchange.

  “Ye all heard him,” he stammered. “He said he knew a wee frightened faerie who would give him gold.”

  There’d been gold too; Heughan remembered the sunlight glinting on it. It had been the first light of a cold day across the Solway, the day he drowned Seamus.

  “There, ye are then. It must have been the faeries did it ter him,” concluded Jackie hotly.

  “There are no such things. It’s just a silly tale for the simple-minded,” Rodrigues said with tired patience. Young lads or not, they needed to learn discipline their minds. He was irrationally angry that Heughan hadn’t made more of an effort to steer them away from nonsense. Could the boys even count or read? Probably they made do with the dialect of the fells, the counting rhymes the shepherds and reivers used. Every society had its own secrets.

  Heughan spoke softly. “Simple-minded? Aye, Adam Routledge had reason enough. He was running out of money to pay Old Man Kerr protection.”

  “Adam Routledge? He would never dare take on Old Man Kerr!” scoffed Rodrigues. The others added their agreement. “The Routledges have no backbone at all.”

  “Maybe not,” Heughan agreed, a bit more strongly than he should have, “but there’s a certain witch watches over them, and she has sharp hearing and a sharper knife.” Would she be willing to use that knife to such devastating effect, to carve a man to pieces? That was the question Heughan needed an answer for.

  “Be careful, boy,” warned Rodrigues, “don’t frighten folk with stories that just aren’t true.”

  “There are a lot of stories concerning witchcraft that are true though, aren’t there, Roddy?” answered Heughan with cold assurance.

  Something in his tone disconcerted Rodrigues. Heughan’s eyes bored into him, glassy and dead. Rodrigues could feel his heart pumping hard, the breath from his nostrils heavy and forceful. He laughed to cover his discomfort. “It was a long time ago. There are just stories now. Perhaps some that don’t merit the re-telling and are best forgotten,” he ventured more cautiously.

  Heughan shrugged easily, “You don’t believe in it anyway, not without your proofs. What if we could conjure up a witch with a magical book? Would you believe then?”

  Rodrigues opened his mouth to protest but found that his tongue was cleaving to the roof of his palate. He managed to croak out just a few dry words, “From superstition to heresy in one easy move? Have you no scruples, Heughan?”

  The room seemed to have grown smaller. Heughan was aware only of the dialogue between the two of them.

  “I’m just trying to do what needs to be done, Roddy. There are few things that James Stewart finds more irresistible than intrigue. That’s the bait that we need.”

  Heughan’s mind was already forming a tale of a witch who disguised herself as a beautiful woman so she could steal men’s souls. She had a cinder from hell in place of a beating heart. To look into her eyes, see her false heart revealed, was to catch a glimpse of an eternal horror so terrifying it would sear your eyeballs, shrivelling them so that she could pull your soul through the empty sockets. When you were blind and damned, she would kiss you, biting your tongue from your mouth with teeth like daggers so that you had no chance to scream. Only then would she turn your empty husk loose to be consumed by a world of demons.


  He shuddered. Even Old Man Kerr hadn’t deserved such as fate. It was a good story though, guaranteed to be spread by the gossips. If a succubus could entice James Stewart to Carlisle, Heughan could do the rest.

  Rodrigues waited until the two of them were alone before waggling an admonitory finger at Heughan, “Lad, you are playing with fire, and you will get badly burned. Save your stories for the ballads.”

  He helped himself to wine and poured one for Heughan.

  “Don’t call the witch-finders down on us. They’ll ne’er be satisfied until they have wormed out someone to burn. Whom do you hate so much that you’d have them killed as a witch? Face them like a man with a knife and the truth, not with lies and superstition. Or else you’ll as like end up at the stake yourself.”

  It always cost a woman’s life for him to cheat the flames, Heughan thought. Was he ruthless enough to sacrifice another’s life for the chance to kill the king? On the other hand, was he foolhardy to incite a witch?

  “Is this your own folly or are you following someone else’s orders?”

  Heughan bridled. “I’m my own man, Roddy.” He put the cup down too forcibly and spilled wine onto the table, fat blood-red drops. He scowled and wiped them away with his cuff.

  “If you stand alone, you’ll hang alone.”

  “Meaning?”

  Rodrigues hesitated, trying to judge the moment. He braced himself against the arms of his chair before choosing his words carefully, “Hugh, Earl of Tyrone, has capitulated in Ireland.”

  Heughan was white-faced and speechless. He didn’t want to believe it. “The O’Neill’s surrendered? No. Never! Says who?” he whispered angrily.

  Rodrigues shook his head. “A reliable source but the message was delayed. It happened this past week, while we were being distracted by the Armstrongs. Bastards.” He spat at the memory of the Beeftub.

  Heughan collapsed onto a chair and put his head in his hands. The questions came tumbling out of him. “What happened? Why did The O’Neill surrender? The queen’s dead, for fuck’s sake. He didn’t have to. He just needed to hold out and trust us to do the rest. I’d never let him down. Why did Hugh betray us?”