by Alex Dylan
Mark kicked out suddenly and caught Adam between the legs. As was the Borders custom, Adam had put his money purse in his codpiece. The kick dislodged it and sent coins tumbling onto the cobbles. Adam crumpled between the guards.
“God, I hate the north,” complained Mark, straightening his tunic and wiping the toe of his boot on Adam’s prostrate figure. “It’s so bloody uncivilised.”
“You need to learn some manners,” he snarled at Adam and raised his eyes to look at the fractious crowd, “all of you.”
Adam struggled to rise again. Mark put his boot on Adam’s shoulder and pressed down, forcing Adam into the mire and offal of the street.
“Civilised people know to kneel in front of their betters,” he said. “You need to kneel. And then you need to beg for mercy. And if you do it quickly, I might be inclined to listen to you.” Mark kicked Adam hard in the stomach and he fell over on his side, retching.
“Does anyone else wants to protest?” Mark said. He was met with stony-faced silence.
On his signal, the pike men nearest the Cathedral lowered their weapons to make an opening. Other soldiers ran up around them and stood in a grim avenue. People were funnelled towards them as cattle driven to the Beeftub. The Captains began the long process of asking everyone their name and sifting through the crowd. The soldiers examined the shapes and colours of the patches on men’s jacks, though once they saw what was happening, most were swift enough to rip them away and throw them on the ground. No reiver wanted to be accused of betraying his allies and soon coloured rags were blowing everywhere in the wind, lifted onto the skeletal fingers of the trees around the Cathedral, causing them to bloom with sudden garishness.
One by one people, were turned this way or that. Some of the heidsmen owned to their names, though none so recklessly as Adam Routledge. They were taken to a waiting cart and bound hand and foot. Others were pushed roughly to one side. The soldiers jogged into a tight phalanx surrounding the cart and the other stumbling captives and marched decisively up Castle Street. There were muttered rumblings from the crowd, who followed at a suitable distance, lagging behind the procession. When they reached the moat, the cart rolled on alone over the drawbridge. The unhappy passengers craned their necks, stretching for a last glimpse of freedom and family.
The main force turned and barred passage for others, spreading themselves out in a line along the orchard boundary. The crowd hesitated, confused. Walking, shuffling and semi-conscious prisoners were prodded along the line to the Sorceries, each with their own personal guard who marched sternly behind them. Ned Storey was rattled but not subdued. He kept turning around to glare at his captor and received another thump every time for his troubles. Nick Storey ran along the outside palisade of pike men, shouting for his brother, who stared through him with unrecognising, dilated eyes.
Melisande was in Lady Mary’s Tower when the commotion below reached up to her window. One swift look had her running for the stairs. She didn’t pause until she reached the top and then peered cautiously over the edge. Looking down onto the ramparts below, she could see archers levelling from every slit and opening. Beyond the walls of the Inner Ward, commanding a view over both Battail Holme and the Sorceries, she could make out Ross and Mark A’Court. She kept crouched down, not wanting to alert them to her high vantage point.
Even from a distance, she could recognise a few familiar faces. She saw Jeffrie Nortbie, noticeable for his highly coloured headgear, trying to calm a distraught young man. She thought she saw a few of Heughan’s men in the crush but she couldn’t be sure. Desperately, she scanned the crowd for sight of Heughan, willing him not to be there. As they reached the curve of the walls, the soldiers fanned out along the banks of the river beyond the moat, each taking a man with him. Although this part of the river was a lazy ox bow, today it was in full spate; the influence of the high tide and the Solway bore. It heaved with swollen malevolence as an evil water serpent.
The captive men were cuffed and kicked to the ground, forced to kneel on the banks at the water’s edge. The Captain turned to look up at the battlements. Mark A’Court swept the entire scene with one hard look and nodded.
One after another, rippling along the line in a killing crescendo, the soldiers kicked the men into the water and stood on their backs, holding them under. Flailing arms turned the water into a frothing white maelstrom. Helpless friends and family screamed with despair, sobbing women shrieked above the shouting. It was all over in minutes. One by one, the soldiers stepped back, leaving a tide line of death along the sand.
The crowd still had some fight left in them and gathered themselves against the guards along the moat. Furious townsfolk turned and attacked with reiver ferocity. Desperately, they clawed, kicked, punched and butted. Those who had swords and daggers pulled them out and launched themselves into a birling assault.
Without warning, a whistling rain of death hailed down on them as flights of arrows soared high overhead and plunged to earth. People stampeded in all directions. Women screamed as they were trampled underfoot. Men fell where they stood, pierced through and pinned to the ground.
Nick Storey sat in the slump of defeat, rocking his body backwards and forwards, weeping as he looked along the river, vainly searching for a sign of his brother. His clever hands were cut to shribbons where he had tried to fend off the swords of friend and foe alike. Rough hands hauled him up and dragged him away.
Melisande watched with tears coursing down her face as the soldiers dragged survivors across the soft ground of Battail Home and flung them into open-sided hay carts, binding their hands to the timber rails. Only when the carts began to roll could she stir herself to action, stumbling over her skirts and knocking her head against the wall in her haste to get down the stairs.
The portcullis was down. Melisande was as much a prisoner as the hapless reivers. She paced for a while in the shadow of the Lady’s Walk, trying to clear her head and think straight. She caught herself asking what Heughan would do in the same circumstances. Bluff a way through? Probably. Fight his way out? Maybe, if he had to. What option was left to her? The one choice that always helped her to see clearly. She drew the cards quickly.
Two of Cups. The partnership card. Man, woman and the serpent. There was coercion at the heart of a contracted arrangement.
Nine of Swords. Imprisonment. Suspicion, fear and doubt. The card of bad dreams. Next to the cups, meaning relationship problems.
Death. Unequivocal.
She remounted the stairs to her rooms and watched the carts disappearing beyond Hangman’s Close. Her heart was leaden with the knowledge that the journey was one-way.
* * *
Lonely miles from anywhere, Heughan, Willie and the trusted few sat under the shelter of dark trees and waited. Heughan’s thoughts were elsewhere, and Willie watched him sideways as he whittled curlicues off a green stick. Heughan caught him out and, half-smiling, shook his head.
“We’re hanged men if we get this wrong, Willie lad,” he said.
Willie’s face cracked into a broad grin, “Och, is that all that’s troubling you? Nothing new,” he joked.
“Aye but I’ve never stolen a king before,” replied Heughan, “And your king at that.”
“He’s no more my king that he’s yourn,” said Willie hotly.
Heughan shook his head. “But you are Scots born and bred.”
“Och insults, is it now?” said Willie. “Well, I say that it’s not where you’re birthed that matters, for you have no say in that. Nor even is it where you live, for you may have no choice o’er that either, that makes you a man o’ the land. No, I reckon it’s where your heart truly lies. And mine is right here,” he said, driving the sharpened stick forcibly into the ground to make his point.
Heughan said nothing.
Willie looked again at him. “And I reckon your heart lies just above your sword hand at the moment.”
Heughan frowned as he looked down at his hand and back at Willie quizzically. Willie roared with laughter and
slapped his thigh. “On your sleeve, you eejit!”
“Ah fuck off!” Heughan said and turned his back to him.
There was silence again in the greenwood, broken only by the strange popping noises of trees filling out with leaf and rising sap, the rustle of small animals burrowing and the more disturbing sounds of a twig cracking out of place or a bird screeching in alarmed flight.
The men sat lightly with their ears straining for the smallest indication that their quarry was close at hand. As the long minutes turned to hours and the day wore on, the doubt began to set in. Heughan got up to stretch his legs and scuffed at the new show of grass around the margins of the trees where the horses nibbled quietly.
“We should have brought Hamish,” he said in accusing tones to Willie.
Willie shrugged. It could have been a shrug of agreement or disagreement. Heughan couldn’t tell. He carried on talking, “Hamish could have ridden scout and tracked ahead.”
Willie shrugged again and fiddled with his hat. It was beginning to annoy Heughan. “Did no one hear back from Hamish before you set off?” he asked the group.
One by one the men looked at each other and shook their heads. “Did you see Roddy when you fetched my horse?” Heughan asked.
Willie shook his head. “Naw, we wus awa’ affy early this morn. Eleanor would nae disturb him, but she gave us bread and cheese. We had no time for more,” he said in disappointed tones.
His stomach growled at the memory of a meal eaten long ago. They were all hungry and irritable at this stage. Heughan didn’t mind for himself.
He looked up through the leafy canopy, seeking the sun on the meridian. It was behind the uppermost branches of the trees, and he just glimpsed a bright corona across the straight arm bough. He thought about the cards Melisande had showed him. She’d shown him The Fool. Was he being naïve? She’d warned the hare would trip him up. The hare was a creature of magic, like her. Two of Swords. What had she said? Difficult choices. His choice always boiled down to fight or surrender. He would never surrender while there was any fight at all left in him; never. Why should he believe a witch who disguised herself as a whore in plain apparel, telling him his future was linked to the turn of a card? He snorted with exasperation.
Rodrigues had mused about a cull. Four hundred men sent to Carlisle to cull. In a flash of inspiration, he realised that it wasn’t just the Borderers James Stewart was concerned with; it was the border. If James were king of a united kingdom, there would be no border. But to get rid of the border, James would first have to rid himself of the Borderers. Fear twisted low in Heughan’s gut. Ten of Swords. Stabbed in the back. He had walked out of the city today as the rest of the reiving community walked in. They would be trapped within the walls just like the Maxwells had been in Lockerbie. He felt the sickness, knew he was right, knew he was already too late. They had been betrayed by a traitor in their midst.
“Take the lads, Willie,” Heughan said quietly. “Go back but watch out for yourselves. There’s treachery here.”
Willie muttered about ‘sleekit witches’ under his breath.
“Aye, maybe,” Heughan said noncommittally. “Lay low and wait for me, mind. Don’t do anything mad.”
“Noo jist haud on!” said Willie indignantly. “If you ken I’ll leave you here by yoursen, I’ll gie ye a skelpit lug!”
Heughan smiled at the thought of Willie trying to box his ears but shook his head. “Willie, I should go on to York. With or without a hostage, we had a deal to do.” Willie looked sceptical.
“Least said the better,” said Heughan cryptically. “I’ll tell you about it later. Right now I need you to get back to Carlisle and find Roddy. I’ll be back in a day or two.” He put his foot in Aluino’s stirrup and swung himself up.
“Aye, well, gie it laldy and haste ye back,” said Willie grumpily and slapped Aluino on the rump.
He watched Heughan ride away through the trees until he was just a speck in the distance before he mounted and turned back to the city with the rest of the men.
* * *
Secluded in his counting house, Rodrigues had been perusing the contents of his latest interception and a matter which commanded his full attention. He had been so immersed in his scrutiny that he noticed too late the lack of sound. He emerged onto a Grape Lane strangely deserted. Cautiously, he went by the back lanes to Sally’s. Here too was a pocket of survivors who had been saved by their sinning. Melisande would say that God had a warped sense of humour, he thought.
He walked briskly across the Market Square, certain that he had sufficient influential protection to armour him should he need it. He carried both sword and dagger but no one challenged him. Perhaps they already knew to leave him alone.
Once inside the Guildhall, as a respected member of the Merchants, he made his opinions heard; he himself offered to lead a delegation to the Castle. He held little hope of an audience but wanted to try. He knew that Heughan ought to be well away from the trouble, hopefully out of sight and, therefore, out of mind. He wasn’t sure he could count on the same security for Melisande. Trouble swarmed around her like flies round a honey trap.
While the diplomatic envoy from the city sought an audience with Mark A’Court, the last act of the day was being played out elsewhere. Jeffrie Nortbie had followed the carts to Harraby Hill along with a few other dignitaries who felt secure enough in their civic rank to risk further confrontation. They offered reparation. They offered forfeiture. They offered to stand surety.
The Captain shook his head and repeated in a monotone, “Orders is orders.” There were few spectators to the day’s end.
One by one, the captives were strung up and turned off the cart. As the sun began to set in eerie silence, those still able to walk turned back to the city and trudged home, burdened with heavy hearts and sombre thoughts.
The Harraby high jig was an ugly dance. Most had died an agonising death of slow strangulation. Geordie Nixon had helped hasten a lucky few by pulling on their legs. Nick Storey hadn’t been one of them.
A rough wind picked up from the north, causing the hempen ropes to creak and twist, turning his lifeless eyes to the Cathedral he had helped to build. His blackened tongue thrust from his mouth, a heinous parody of the gargoyles he had carved on the buttresses.
The party of guards remaining at Harraby watched the dead twirl in dizzy spirals.
The sun was low behind the tower, collapsing crimson into the west, when Rodrigues finally gained admittance to the Castle. Ross was furious at being out-manoeuvred. He expressed regret but was otherwise unapologetic. Rodrigues came away from the encounter frustrated. The only concession granted to him was permission to gather up the dead for burial. Having conferred briefly amongst themselves, the members of the guilds dispersed for the night, unable to do more until the next day.
Rodrigues sought a private audience with Melisande.
She admitted him and sent Sorcha away. As soon as they were alone, she rushed at him like a frightened child and hugged him tightly.
“Is Heughan safe?” she blurted out.
Rodrigues took her at arm’s length and looked at her in surprise.
“Mele, what is this?” he asked. “When did Heughan become your concern?”
She coloured slightly, her beseeching eyes the colour of heavy rainclouds threatening to spill.
He kissed her cheek and felt the track of a solitary tear rush down to meet his face. “Poor little peacock,” he said pityingly, shaking his head. “A fish and a bird may fall in love, but where would they build a home?”
She pushed him away from her and brushed at her eyes and nose, sniffing loudly. “I saw it all, Roddy,” she said softly, shaking her head, “so many dead.”
He came up behind her and pinioned her arms. “Yes, but he is not one of them.”
He felt her stiffen and then soften beneath his hands. She shrugged him off, and he let her walk away.
After a few moments, he said, “There are too many dead, Mele. I will need
your help.”
She turned around and looked quizzically at him. Her eyes widened with realisation, “Women too?” she asked.
Rodrigues pursed his mouth and nodded, “Worse.” She looked at him in disbelief.
He gritted his teeth and nodded. “Big enough to sit a horse……”
“They hanged children?” she covered her mouth as soon as she said it, wanting to take back the awful words. She crumpled into the outstretched arms of a large oaken chair.
Rodrigues didn’t answer immediately. “The guilds will organise the collection of the bodies,” he said. “The prior will help, but we will need somewhere to lay them out until they can be identified. And we will need help to make some of them presentable,” he added as a request. “Out of mercy, it is the least we can do.”
Melisande remained quiet, rocking back and forth.
Rodrigues was suddenly sharp with her. “Yes, I know it is my belief, not yours. But you will help me to bury the dead even if you won’t pray for them.”
Melisande looked at him with slate-hard eyes. “The dead hear no prayers,” she said.
“Stop it!” Rodrigues shouted at her. “I don’t want to spat with you. We have been over this so many times, and it always ends the same way. Sometimes we all have to make painful choices. Just stop playing the wronged woman, can’t you, and say you’ll help me this once?”
Melisande nodded imperceptibly but it was answer enough for Rodrigues.
After he had left, she pushed herself further into the chair’s embrace. How could she have misinterpreted Heughan’s cards so completely? She had assumed that he would have been asking about his own personal destiny whereas, she realised now, he had been asking about wider ambitions.
The Fool. She was the fool. It had never been about Heughan. It was the story of James Stewart, a man entangled with magic and learning.
Two of Wands. The man who has outgrown his world: James Stewart seeking to expand his borders and boundaries.
Nine of Pentacles. Success for past endeavours: the years of careful negotiation with Cecil finally paying off.