by Alex Dylan
Heughan had gone with Rodrigues and the rest of his party when the call had come. For hours he’d lain in wait on brittle winter bracken, feeling the even rise and fall of his horse’s warm belly, patiently waiting for death to come to meet him. There had been no panic. Lying beyond the trees lining the shallows, he remembered feeling only an empty acceptance. He’d fought against the numbing chill by moving his fingers and toes one by one to keep his blood flowing and remind himself he was still alive. Even though the cold had hurt him slowly, he had found it strangely comforting.
Heughan counted that he had lost sensation in six of his smallest toes before they heard the jingle of harness across the clear air. They were mounted in an instant, all personal discomfort forgotten. Screaming their savage battle cry, the Johnstones swarmed over the banks, across the field from two sides, trapping the enemy between them. The ambush was their only chance for survival and the Devils had fought like men possessed as they tore into the flanks of the enemy. They understood all too well that to lose the fight was to lose their name, not just for a generation but forever. Their ferocity turned Maxwell’s overwhelming force into a panicked scrum of jostled confusion.
Trapped in narrow places, unable to turn and manoeuvre, the Maxwells were hacked down mercilessly. Horses shied, ponies bucked, men were thrown and trampled underfoot. Pitched battle swiftly turned to rout with the Devils pursuing the Maxwells all the way to Lockerbie town. Heughan had closed his ears to the screams of horses as they were skewered on thrusting pikes, men shrieking as their limbs were hacked off. The Johnstones had charged again and again, striking out with back-handed cuts to the faces and heads of their fleeing opponents, slaughtering with murderous desperation. Bodies butchered beyond recognition left the runnels of Lockerbie red with the blood of the dead and dying. There had been no mercy even for those who had sought sanctuary in the church.
Heughan knew from personal experience the damage that a weak king and four hundred godless reivers could do. Was Melisande reminding them of that?
As if reading his thoughts, Rodrigues chose that moment to say, “Where did Melisande go, Heughan?”
Heughan scowled. “She slipped away when we were disturbed.”
“But you saw no one?” insisted Rodrigues.
He shook his head. “We heard voices and footsteps but there was no one. I had a look. When I came back, there was only a serving woman and Melisande had vanished.”
“What? Where could she have gone?” Rodrigues was incredulous. He lifted the patch he wore to cover his scarred and empty socket. “If I had looked with this good eye, I would have seen more than you,” he said with measured sarcasm. Heughan frowned as Rodrigues tapped him insistently on the forehead with one finger and spoke in the even tones he used for bewildered children and especially stupid idiots, “Only a serving woman?”
Comprehension dawned. “You’re saying that was Melisande?”
“Christ Jesus, Heughan, you’re a hard bastard. You just fucked her and you can’t even recognise her face mere moments later?”
Rodrigues shook his head in disbelief, rubbing one knuckled hand into the palm of his hand as he thought carefully, “Once more, Heughan. What did she say?”
“’Small messenger to a big man, tell Roddy, look about you, it’s all about numbers. Carpe diem, mañana,” repeated Heughan, his head suddenly clear.
He cavilled at the idea that Melisande had doubled back and then brazenly walked past him. Why play games with him? He called her a bitch, and a few other choice names for good measure. It didn’t make him feel any better. He was angry with himself for falling for yet another one of her ruses.
“Seize the day. Tomorrow,” translated Rodrigues. He clicked his tongue and quoted to himself, “Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero,” musing. “That’s the original Horace and it better translates as ‘Plunder the day, trusting as little as possible in the next.’ And ‘tomorrow’? What does Melisande mean precisely?”
“Does that mean Melisande knows what we have planned?” asked Heughan. Was she encouraging them or warning them off? The thought irked him. How would she know? Not from him, that’s damn certain. He had warned Rodrigues before to keep Melisande out of his way.
Rodrigues, meanwhile, was lost in his own whispered musings. “Who uses numbers, big numbers? Someone big using numbers? Diablos! That’s it! No, no, no.” He shook his head in disbelief. “‘Small messenger’ is Cecil. Cecil the hunchback, the stunted man, it has to be. A code with numbers, he’s the small messenger, the small number, number 10. The biggest number must be King James himself. Big man. Who is bigger than the king? What’s going on?”
“Are you sure?” queried Heughan. “Perhaps she means Big Man Maxwell. Is this something to do with Johnstones’ feud or perhaps that idiot Kerr is just stirring up more trouble?”
Rodrigues gazed at the lintel, deep in further thoughts of ancient languages and old grudges.
He muttered to himself, declining under his breath, “Carpe, Carpo. You pick, pluck off, crop, gather, cull…” he tailed off. “Not a riding day. Not a raiding day. Truce Day. The day tomorrow when we should have peace. Every one gathered together in one place. Is Ross rounding us up for a cull? Four hundred men, here in Carlisle with King James and an unannounced emissary? Who are they, Heughan?”
Heughan shook his head. He knew to a man which reivers were in the Castle that night and had seen neither unfamiliar patch nor face, barring the contingent of personal guards who had accompanied Mark A’Court. The patches the men wore showed their allegiances. Intermarrying and the complex arrangements of border feuds meant that men might be connected to more than one family but a reiver’s first loyalty was always to the ties of blood and clan.
“No one here yet, I think,” he replied. “Balefires would have been lit to warn us. Someone would have seen them, sent word along the line somehow. A troop that size could never pass unnoticed overland.”
Fire was always the quickest way to send an urgent message. There was a great iron basket at every milepost along the length of old Hadrian’s Wall. Any trouble from east to west would light up the border within minutes. The coasts had flambeaux and light towers, built on high ground and natural outcrops. In the Debatable Lands, the reivers had constructed their own watchtowers. Their system was crude in its simplicity. One bale for a small force. Two if it were bigger. A conflagration to light the sky ensured total panic. If there was no watchtower, it was always acceptable to burn a cottage or two. If there was time, the inhabitants were often allowed to leave first. Every pursuit had to be preceded by the lit turf on a lance, the so-called ‘hot trod’. Fire legitimized your fight.
Rodrigues was thoughtfully pondering the implications. “They might not need to come overland, at least not all the way.”
An expeditionary force coming from the north could cross the Solway by land or boats, depending on the tide. Likely they would make landfall at Burgh-by-Sands, from where it was not a day’s march to Carlisle. Mark A’Court was the guest of honour at Ross’s table. If he had brought troops with him, his intent could be by securing the Borders to stake a claim to the greater prize: the throne of England itself. Perhaps James was unwilling to wait for Westminster and was executing a plan to unite the crowns and join the lands of both England and Scotland under one monarch. This was Cecil’s ambition, begun in secret communication.
Heughan frowned to himself. Tomorrow was a Truce Day and families from both sides of the border would be gathered in Carlisle. Ross was supposed to have Big Man Maxwell locked up in the Keep dungeons. He didn’t know where they stood with the Johnstones after the fiasco at the Beeftub but he would never trust the Devils again. He had half a suspicion that Ross was in league with them. The Devils would know how to cross the Solway too, as Rodrigues had suggested.
For his part, Rodrigues was thinking that Ross Middlemore, as Lord Warden of the Border Marches and keeper of troubled peace in troubled times, had his own ambitions to control the Borders. He would c
ertainly oppose an intervention when he meant to secure his entail for generations to come. Dominance, independence or freedom? Rodrigues worried for Heughan’s sake, uncertain of his planning.
With his unusual knack for directness, Heughan thrust straight at the heart of the problem. “Even if King James is waiting to rendezvous with an army, he doesn’t have one now. This is the closest we’ve ever come, the best chance we have. Maybe Melisande’s message isn’t so secretive. We just have to seize the day and the would-be king with it.”
Rodrigues looked doubtful. “Melisande is usually more discrete. More likely, she disguised her message in case you were overheard. Four hundred men could put an awful big dent in our plans. It’s a warning to be wary of a trap, Heughan.”
Heughan shook his head. “I don’t see how. Remember the last time the Truce Day was broken? It nearly cost Ross his head for crossing the Scottish Border with his English troops. James has no jurisdiction here in Carlisle until he’s crowned king of England. Besides which, he himself has no gold to pay an army and neither does Cecil.”
The mention of gold caused Rodrigues to look again at his gingerbread counterfeits on the table. “So who is driving this? How do we know who to trust?” said Rodrigues.
“Why disguise a message in Latin?”
“A safeguard. Who in Carlisle uses Latin?”
“Priests and lawyers.”
“Los diablos,” Rodrigues inhaled sharply. “That might have been part of the message. Priests and lawyers with deep pockets, and gold enough to buy a king a crown. Or maybe two. You say Howard’s not involved, but he is noticeable by his absence tonight. Perhaps King James doesn’t intend to be as tolerant of Catholics as they have been promised, unless they can pay for that privilege.”
“Melisande has been cosied up to the king’s envoy all night, and she’s part of Ross’s household. I’m not convinced that she isn’t just part of the problem,” said Heughan. “I intend to find out exactly what she knows and what she means.”
“There is no time for this distraction,” said Rodrigues abruptly. “We have a plan and you are expected at York.”
“Fortunes change, my friend,” smiled Heughan, taking the gingerbread from him and biting into it. “Perhaps I should heed Melisande’s words and seize the day, intercept the king before he gets to Westminster.”
Rodrigues still had his eyes on the gingerbread. “I don’t think that was what she meant at all.”
Heughan shrugged carelessly. “You are right in one detail; I have no time for distraction. I’ve had enough of her game playing. If she’s any sort of threat, I need to keep her out of the way or eliminate her entirely.”
“There’s no need for that,” Rodrigues said in consternation. “Melisande just needs the right sort of persuasion.”
Heughan looked at Rodrigues, outstaring him with an inflexible challenge. “Then tell me what I need to know. Tell me everything there is to know and yield her to me.”
* * *
Willie was lounging against the walls, trying to look inconspicuous. Mostly he was succeeding. He saw Melisande descend by the outside staircase carrying her basket. His face cracked into a broad smile as he surmised correctly that she was sneaking out for her own purposes. Her disguise was good but there was something about her gait which had alerted the sharp-eyed Willie. He frowned as he tried to figure out what it was. She was too eager for a serving maid; that was it. She fairly bustled, where everyone else toiled with weary resignation.
Willie was minded to have some fun with her, perhaps offer to carry the basket, but he thought better of it. She might recognise him. He settled for following her at a discrete distance. He trailed her from the safety of the shadows as she crossed the Outer Ward, skirting past the Captain’s Tower and through a small gate into a corner of the Inner Ward. A finely tuned sense of self-preservation cautioned him to hang back. He watched her re-emerge from a small lean-to and retrace her steps to De Ireby’s Tower. There was a moment where Willie thought she had seen him as she paused briefly and glanced in his direction. He concentrated on small thoughts and willed himself invisible. It seemed to work; she shook her head and moved on past him, putting them both beyond a dangerous confrontation.
Deciding there was safety in numbers, Willie finally found Hamish and together they went back to the hut. Willie had Hamish check for traps. He didn’t trust strange women and would heed his own warnings, even if Heughan would not. “Sleekit kelpie,” he muttered to himself. Against his better judgement, he had made a sly wager with Desmond and Jack as to how long it was going to take Heughan to bed Melisande. The Irishmen were incredulous; they had heard the rumours about Melisande’s predilections.
“She’s a tom,” sniggered Jack. “She don’t like men, that one, not at all. Got rid of her husband, sharp like, so she did. Took a knife to Heughan last time he tried it on wid’ ‘er. She’ll be having none of it but I’m happy to take your money, La’l Un’.”
I know my laird, thought Willie stubbornly, an’ there’s something between them for sure.
Leaving Hamish on watch, Willie eased open the door of Melisande’s stillroom and slipped inside. A sleek black cat curled on the bench next to a charcoal brazier opened one large green eye and looked at him balefully. Willie didn’t like to move while it was watching him. It was a witch’s familiar for sure. He stared at it until it pushed itself up onto its paws, its question-mark of a tail punctuating a lazy yawn full of fangs that asked why comfortable sleep was being disturbed. When Willie didn’t supply an answer, the cat hopped nimbly off the bench with the brief patter sound of raindrops and disappeared quickly on the other side of the door like the echo of a fading knock. Willie’s eyes flicked back to the bench and widened at the collection of pots and vessels simmering over the red glow of the charcoal brazier. One in particular caught his eye; it was a wide-bottomed copper bowl with a long snout like a badger. It was poking itself into another tall-necked vase held on a retort. Hubble, bubble, all sorts of bloody trouble brewing, thought Willie.
Willie picked up a small crucible, turning it this way and that to watch the light reflect off its interior. He picked at metallic flakes with a fingernail and frowned. There were the wooden roundels of gingerbread moulds. He turned one over in his hands and sniffed at it. He was surprised to recognise the carving of the fish-tailed faerie. The last time he had seen it, it was unfinished in Nick Storey’s fine hands.
He turned his attention to the shelves lining the walls, twisting small pottery jars around and lifting off the lids to peer inside. They seemed to contain nothing more than crushed herbs and powders, like his Jenny’s cooking stuff. At the back of a shelf, tucked out of sight, he found some irresistibly pretty blue-glazed pots, each bearing the sign of a double-tailed mermaid. “More sleekit kelpies,” he muttered under his breath as he pocketed one, half expecting the cat to return and make complaint.
His quick eyes scuttled into every nook and cranny. The smoulder of the brazier caught a glint of something on the floor, something the cat had disturbed in its leaving. He bent to have a closer look and picked it up. He turned it this way and that, catching the light. It was gold, old and worn and marked with the familiar faerie figure but feeling like a gold coin should, although the edges were roughly shaped as though it had been clipped.
Gingerly he bit it, testing just to be certain, in case it was that kind of faerie gold that vanished unexpectedly. He held the coin up to the light again and locked greedy eyes on it in case his teeth had left a slight mark; the coin was genuine. It was like the old rhyme said, “They should take, who have the power, and they should keep who can.”
He pocketed the coin gleefully and eased out of the hut into the shadows, slipping though the dark. Once he reached the edges of the Outer Ward, he felt bold enough to brazen a swaggering walk and challenge Hamish to a game of dice.
Mischief wove himself in and out of legs and shadows, enticing the attention of yet another woman, waiting to have his head scratched appr
eciatively by the hand of the fickle seductress. Together they watched till Willie and Hamish vanished.
The shrewdly astute Mark A’Court noted that Heughan had come back alone after a brief interlude and frowned to himself. Although not a betting man, he would have risked a small wager that the Lady Melisande had been intent on providing a May Eve’s entertainment for her young conquest. It wasn’t often that he misread a situation, and he pondered what subtlety he had overlooked.
For some time he watched the animated discussion between the two men on the distant table and stacked gingerbread coins on the table. He couldn’t hear what they were saying above the general hubbub but the story their body language and demeanour told was one of an older man counselling the younger against rash action. He sighed to himself. Perhaps the younger man had misjudged the situation and his wooing had fallen on stony ground. Perhaps the Lady Melisande was ambiguous in her preferences, as James had hinted. Satisfied there was nothing left to see, Mark A’Court turned back to Ross.
He cleared his throat to attract Ross’s attention.
“My Lord Middlemore,” he began evenly, “you have had a lot of unrest here since the death of the queen.”
It was more of a question than a statement. Ross was wily and made no reply, so he continued, “The king is concerned for the scale of lawlessness visited upon the Borders.”
“Not on the English side,” Ross reproached. “I hold the whip hand here.”
“Are you suggesting that I tell His Highness he needs to get his own house in order first?” Mark A’Court asked smoothly. “Do I need to remind you that in a very short space of time, His Highness will be king of both England and Scotland? Everything that goes on hereabouts is of utmost interest to him, including those loyal supporters,” he emphasised the words, “who have given him sound service.”