by Alex Dylan
The Johnstones were also called ‘The Devils’. They had double-crossed Heughan at the Beeftub, colluded with Ross to steal his cattle. She peered at the card again, searching deeper for the meaning. The Devil held a firebrand. That could be Ross; ever since Walter’s death, he had persecuted her, looking for an excuse to throw her on the bonfire for witchcraft. He would only be appeased with gold. Old Man Kerr had hinted there was a secret hoard but it had cost him his eyes and his voice. Was that Heughan’s doing or did his fortune come from other men’s cattle? Enough gold for her to bargain a way out of trouble, did he have that?
She looked again at the depiction of the lovers, bound with a ring and chains to a book by the devil’s feet. Her father had also been called ‘The Devil’. He had gone to the flames rather than reveal the secrets of his book. Did the card represent him, her past? Even so, she would still be the woman enslaved by him, imprisoned by her quest for knowledge. However, Heughan was not a part of that same past, which would mean that her demonic lover, bound to her, bound to her book, was quite another man.
The realisation pierced her heart with a pain that felt physical. She rubbed the heel of her hand against the curve of her ribs until it eased. She wished she could disperse the confusion in her brain as easily.
So, in summary, all she knew was that a man who desired her once, or to be more precise, an aspect of her, was concealing their true identity until the demons from their past brought them together.
How marvellous! As if she didn’t have enough problems already.
* * *
Next day the sun rose with quick enthusiasm but faltered once the wind began rocking the clouds in an opaque sky, striking them together to produce the occasional spark. Sorcha was having as much trouble firing the tinder for the hearth. Melisande looked out morosely as black clouds draped themselves over the slate roofs of the merchants’ houses in Fisher Street.
Carlisle looked grim. Yet Melisande was pulled towards the city, fretting about Sally and the girls in Grape Lane, how to handle Heughan…and Rodrigues. She distracted herself deciding whether to wear her functional leather capuchin or the serviceable fleece. The leather would keep her dry but in the capricious wind it would be a flapping nuisance. The fleece was warmer but she could end up sodden; sweaty on the inside from having to keep it wrapped close to her in the wind and wet through from the outside if the threatened rain became a promise. Sorcha sighed at Melisande’s indecision.
“This weather’s like my Lord Middlemore; all noisy protests but ne’er any action. Take the fleece m’lady, you’ll be dry enough.”
Melisande disagreed and said so. “‘Sun before seven, rain before eleven’ is what they say hereabouts, Sorcha. It’s usually accurate.”
Sorcha pulled a disdainful face to express what she thought about Borders’ wit, wisdom and weather predictions. “A lightweight fleece will be fine, even so.”
She scowled at the unpredictable border skies. They answered with a thundery rumble. Melisande picked up the anonymous hooded leather with a sigh.
In choosing the longer walk through Abbey Street and the pavement, the rain had increased to a steady, wetting downpour by the time she threaded her way through to the Greenmarket. Huddled into her cloak, Melisande felt unusually uncertain of herself. Stepping through the quagmire of the Lanes, she was pushed roughly by the townsfolk elbowing past and almost bumped into Heughan. She turned her face away quickly once she recognised him but not before he saw the moisture glistening on the ends of her lashes.
“Melisande?” Heughan questioned, reaching out to take her hand. She squeezed his in reply and let the silence drip between them. Heughan towed her gently into the shelter of the overhanging eaves. “Did I dream it all? I can’t tell what’s real anymore. I doubt myself. I don’t know if I should trust you. Is this what it feels like to be bewitched?”
She turned to him with an expression that was at once vulnerable and defiant. She saw his eyes narrow but couldn’t read with what emotion. He pushed back her hood, put one sensitive hand behind her head and drew her to him. Secretly, he was relieved that the marks he saw on her were faded. Heughan didn’t want to discuss details of that night any more than she did. They should have been content to connive a civilised ignorance without recriminations. Instead, Heughan found that he couldn’t stay silent.
“I can’t apologise,” he said. “Hamish…”
Her muffled voice interrupted him quietly, “It was not my knife that made the first cut.”
She had buried her head in his chest and wouldn’t look at him. The rain poured down in a steady curtain. He stroked her hair thoughtfully. “I thought they hanged him,” he said and felt her shake her head briefly.
Ten of Swords. Betrayal. He remembered her prophesy all too well. Of course, if you’d planned it before you executed it, it was a self-fulfilling prophesy.
A wolfish thought stalked him; what if the cards that Melisande turned didn’t merely foretell the future but created it? Supposing that she caused events to come into existence by the manner in which she revealed a sequence of cards?
He wasn’t ready to pursue the notion. "Who brought up the bodies?’ he asked Melisande.
“It was Rodrigues who organised everything,” she told him, “but he had the help of many in the guilds. Ask him; I cannot.” She shook her head as Heughan looked questioningly at her. “No, I can’t apologise,” she said, turning his words back at him.
“Come inside,” he said, tugging her towards Rodrigues’s house. She looked intently at him, her own eyes besieged with concern as she tried to persuade herself to trust him.
“I have to ask, did you take my book?”
“Me? Why would you think that?”
She didn’t reply and shook her head with shy movement.
Heughan frowned. “Perhaps you misplaced it in… in that place. Have you tried looking?”
Melisande looked at him with thin contempt, “When Ross has moved all the prisoners there and barred the entrance?”
“What?”
She nodded, “Now there’s only his way in and out.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not,” said Heughan thoughtfully. “There are things I would share with you. Please, let’s get out of this dreadful day. We both have business inside, I think,” he gestured again to Rodrigues’s house.
“My path takes me elsewhere. You’ll know where to look if you need to find me,” she said and turned away to Sally’s.
As they huddled around the big table in Rodrigues’s parlour, throwing ideas around, Heughan looked at the rough men who were happy to plot sedition with him. They were the salt of the earth, his lads, Solway born and bred. What was it Melisande had once said to him? Salt and the Solway and sedition? Aye, just another bastard reiver to you, maybe, my lady, he thought, but one who’s prepared to stand by his friends and not desert them.
He dragged his reminiscing back to the conversation in front of him before the stirrings of that first dangerous encounter with Melisande became obviously embarrassing.
“Horses?” asked Willie. “Aye, we’ll need horses to get awa’ reet enough but wha’ are we supposed to get hobbies when yon bastard whatever he is…”
“Constable of the Realm,” Rodrigues supplied automatically.
Willie hawked and spat before continuing, “When yon bastard hae a ban on aye o’er thirty Scots pund in value? That leaves us the dobbins an’ those daft farm brutes are nae use ta’ us. Tae big, tae slow. Come tae think of it, just like the rest of ye,” he aimed at Heughan’s lads.
“We’ll need the drays to move the gunpowder anyway, won’t we?” Heughan asked, ignoring Willie’s jibe while the others made rude gestures at him. "What about the rest of our horses, Roddy?
Rodrigues smiled roguishly and twirled the ends of his moustaches, happy in the intrigue. “They’re all safe enough,” he said airily, “but we can’t very well bring them into the city. Dand the Man is minding the drays in our stables, including Aluino, who makes a poor apol
ogy for a roan in spite of all the walnut juice and shit we smeared on him. It’s an old pedlars’ trick to disguise a stolen horse.”
“The Whitsun Fair,” Heughan said, snapping his fingers. “They’ll be pedlars here for the Horse Fair. It’s the tradition. They’ll be horses a-plenty for sale. All we need is the means to buy them and a way of doing it so we won’t arouse suspicion.”
Rodrigues shook his head. “Willie has the right of it. Mark A’Court will not permit the fair.”
“I don’t see how he can stop it,” said Heughan. “Whitsun’s a quarter day in Scotland and the fair has its own charter. It’s not held within the city limits, so Ross can’t ban it. Besides the travellers who come, an Lucht Siúil and the Roms, have their own ways.”
“One gypsy’s the same as anither, whataye they call themselves. Bunch of bloody unreliable horse thieves,” said Willie hotly, “and mostly heathens besides.”
“So more or less exactly the sort of people we’re used to dealing with?” queried Heughan. He caught the Spaniard’s wry grin.
“’Tis nae nivver mind anyhoo,” announced Willie. “Nae gypsy will sell yer so much as a spavined nag for less than thirty pund, nae matter how hard yer haggle.”
“That’s a moot point,” said Rodrigues thoughtfully.
“Go on, Roddy, you’ve got an idea, haven’t you?” Heughan coaxed.
Rodrigues shook his head, “Only the mad notion that if you could fix the prices beforehand with the tinkers and provided than no man offered more than thirty Scots pounds, you could buy any number of horses that you wanted without falling foul of the law.”
“Phwaf!” said Willie in disgust. “They’d nivver sell ye horseflesh for thirty pund unless it was colloped first. And if yer offer them less than the value, they’ll tek it as a witting insult, and ye’ll wind up cursed and horseless, for all yer plotting.” He spat on his fingers and made the sign against the evil eye, looking wildly round in case any gypsies happened to be within hearing, or cursing, distance.
Heughan smiled his lazy smile, thoughtfully cupping his chin with one hand while he massaged it with thumb and forefinger extended. “It could work, Roddy, with a few minor alterations. Willie’s right, we would have to let the gypsies in on the plan. We would pay them fair and square, just not in plain sight. The problem is that we can’t muster with the families if the heidsmen are locked up, so we’d have to do this on our own.”
Desmond’s unexpected voice musing from a corner made them all jump. He spoke quietly in one of his rare moments of lucidity, “I’d say your biggest problem would be to persuade the drabarni to trust you.”
“Who’s that then?” Willie asked. “The heidsman o’ the gypsies?”
Jack shook his head and looked sidelong at Desmond. “There’s always a heidsman, aye, but the real power lies with the wise woman, the drabarni. She’s the one who will advise whether to accept your offer.”
“A witch?” muttered Willie in disbelief. “Whit? Anither one? Aw for fuck’s sake! As if we dinnae allus ha’ enough trouble wi’ yon mockit Castle kelpie.”
Jack looked between Desmond and Heughan and licked dry lips nervously before clearing his throat to speak. “The drabarni might agree to speak with you, if you came to a meeting matched with your own woman of power.”
Rodrigues and Heughan exchanged looks. Rodrigues inclined his head thoughtfully, “Well, Heughan, do you think you could persuade your inamorata to work with us?” he asked silkily.
Heughan considered Rodrigues. The other men held their breath and considered any number of interesting architectural details in the plasterwork on the cornices. Willie was about to make a smart comment to the effect that his laird could make a mort do anything he wanted when he saw the dangerous way that Heughan had narrowed his eyes. Willie clamped his mouth shut and kept a still tongue in his head. He had an inkling that Heughan was in no mood for his witty observations, however perspicacious.
“I would say that the Lady Melisande could be accommodating if you had something to offer that might be of interest. So, aye, she might let herself be persuaded; for the right reason,” Heughan said softly but his eyes were glittering dangerously, and Willie recognised the way he was holding himself tense, like a horse about to jump the gorse furze.
“And can you offer enough to interest her, lad?”
“Do you have anything left to offer her, old man?”
Rodrigues laughed with brittle frivolity, like a slapped face after a risqué remark.
“I dare say that if we can put our heads together, we’ll find something that will both appeal to her and encourage her to be compliant in this matter.”
Willie shifted uncomfortably. He was about to mention Melisande’s coin that he’d palmed when he noticed the way that Heughan and Rodrigues were looking at each other. A private grievance, he decided, wisely staying dumb.
“What hold does she have over you, Roddy? Or are you worried that you’re losing your influence to a better man?”
“Heughan Corwin perhaps? A scavenger like the bird he’s named for, surviving on scraps and leftovers?” Rodrigues said scornfully.
“I’m more interested in how one of our own ended up as carrion and who fed him to her.”
“You suspect me, now?” Rodrigues complained. “Haven’t we spent every waking moment together this last week? I think it’s rather I should be asking you about secret ways into the Castle and my lady’s intimate confidences.”
“You mind your own business, Roddy, and I’ll mind mine.”
“It’s one and the same to me, lad.” He changed the topic abruptly. “Jack, Des, have you been able to make any sense of this?” He jabbed at John Johnson’s sketches.
Jack spoke for them both, pointing animatedly at various parts of the parchment. “This is the design for the grenadoes, aye, and the mix, easy enough. But see here, these symbols and markings. I don’t know what this means. It’s not complete.”
Rodrigues and Heughan pored over it, looking more closely. “Do you understand it?” Heughan asked.
Rodrigues tugged at his beard, “I can’t be sure. But I believe there’s a certain lady who might.” Willie caught the look that passed between them and shook his head glumly. “It’s a grim day that it should come to this. I feel for ye m’laird. That a man should have to seek the counsel of such a wumman. Aw fuck. Whatever next?”
* * *
Willie was adamant. He crossed his arms stubbornly and refused to negotiate with Heughan. “Our secrets, our ways. If she’s to come wi’ us then it’s wearing this,” he said holding out a strip of cloth. He didn’t like the way that Melisande was smiling half-amused at him, but she took the blindfold from him and tied it around her own eyes.
The four of them made an incongruous party. Willie kept up an incessant commentary, but under his breath after the first time that Heughan had snarled at him. Heughan could still hear him perfectly well, caught the odd imprecation against ‘sleekit witches’ and ‘love-blind fools’ but chose to ignore it. Jack trudged along, carrying a melancholy dark lantern, nervously watching between Willie’s mutterings and a blindfolded Melisande, whom Heughan was leading along the smuggler’s passage, from a cavern in the Town Dyke, below the sally port and the West Walls and under the streets of Carlisle itself.
Once they reached the widening point, he took the blindfold from her. She blinked uncertainly, trying to find her bearings. They were in a stone chamber. Far above her head there were street noises; the clack of wheels turning, an indistinct twitter that could have been geese or townsfolk gossiping, the knocking echo of foot strike. She looked around, marvelling at the precision of the smooth walls. Water dripped quietly onto the ground, where it ran away under their feet in well-disciplined grooves. “Where are we?” she whispered. It seemed appropriate not to disturb the stones.
“Under Long Lane.”
Her eyes crinkled with amusement. “Long Lane with its ghosts? Small wonder people think they can hear the spirits. It’s been you
all the time?”
Heughan bowed to her with a courtier’s flourish that reminded her of someone.
Melisande put out a hand to touch the stones. They were warm and thrumming. They weren’t so much buried as growing.
“What is this place?” she asked, intrigued.
“It’s a secret, that’s wha’ it is,” said Willie forcibly. “Sim’s secret.”
“Sim the Laird Armstrong?”
“Aye, one and the same.”
Heughan led them on a twisting route, where the tunnel decayed into hollowed earth and dipped sharply downwards for a time. The coarse sand floor was wet underfoot. This deep below the moat, the runnels would remain perpetually damp, even on the sunniest of summer days.
A steep ascent stopped abruptly as the trail ended in crumbling masonry. Built recklessly in violent times, when it had seemed more prudent to have the safety of a high tower than worry about the security of the footings, here was the reason for the West Tower’s list. It was falling on itself as the eyes of the gibbetted dead collapse into their own cavities.
“Have you been using this tunnel to get in and out of the Castle?” Melisande asked.
Heughan shook his head. “No. Not me. As far as I know, it’s not been used for seven summers.”
Her eyes widened. “This was how the Armstrongs got in to rescue Kinmount Willie?”
“Hamish told us about it. He was part of that rescue with Sim. But they had the help of someone on the inside. Roddy thought you might know something about that…” he trailed off, realising how all of them connected together with a shared history.
“Roddy doesn’t think. He schemes. And he’s wrong.”
They squeezed through a gap in the block work only to find themselves unable to go further. Heughan peered at the solid walls in the gloom and frowned. “This is a dead end for us all.”
“Where now?” Jack asked quietly, turning to have a look around. His light found a passageway but it too was blocked by a rock-fall. “There’s no way I can get through, though La’l Un might.”