by Alex Dylan
Rodrigues lifted the carved panel on either side of the pillion, to reveal a secret compartment underneath, with the flourish of the showman that he was. He took out heavy, chinking bags and passed them to the gypsy men. Heughan smiled and rolled his eyes, thinking it was so typical of the Spaniard to make a drama out of a simple payment. He hoisted himself up and waited for Rodrigues to lift Melisande behind him. “We’re going to sort it out, La’l Un, just like we always do,” said Heughan.
“Aye but…” Willie began.
“Not now, La’l Un,” said Heughan. “You never know who’s eavesdropping.”
Willie narrowed his eyes and fixed Melisande with an accusatory grimace. She smiled sweetly back at him, which for some reason both pleased and infuriated him. He shook himself. “Sleekit kelpie with mockit powers,” he reminded himself, thinking that Jenny would be none too pleased if she heard he’d been flirting with strange women. He jammed his hat down further on his head and spurred his pony out of the kicking range of Heughan’s long legs before he started a song to guide them home.
* * *
The lonely marsh at Burgh-by-Sands shivered as the wind blew unchecked across the vast, flat plain. It made an eerie noise that seemed as though the scrub grass was keening. Purple bulrushes striped the orange hues of heaven as the last of the sun’s disc sunk into the Solway. Heughan tried to imagine the great king Edward, Hammer of the Scots, lying in this very spot, watching the sun sink in the same way as his own life ebbed. Give me a clean death with a sharp knife, Heughan prayed, not lying in a puddle of my own piss, too weak to move. Fuck; that was no end for anyone, let alone a warrior king. He tugged the ends of his cloak around him more tightly.
“Shift the kine up the far end, La’l Un,” he shouted out against a wind which flung his words back at him.
Willie had heard though, driving the shaggy cattle away from the marsh flats up onto the bumpy higher ground with his nimble Galloway. These were Routledge’s beasts and they wouldn’t be lifting them; just keeping a helpful eye on them and seeing they didn’t scare too far. Elaine and the bairns had fled into Scotland weeks ago.
Heughan turned back to Jack and Desmond.
“Right lads,” he said rubbing his hands together, “let’s re-take Kinsale.”
A tall cairn marked the spot where Edward Longshanks, first of the English kings to dream of uniting the crowns of England and Scotland, had died in this spiteful place; in sight of both countries, symbolically split by the heaving serpentine Solway. Long centuries later, the small local church of St Michael’s was still boastfully proud to have entombed a king; even though it had involved rendering his body in a cauldron until only the skeleton remained. Edward had wanted his remains wrapped in cattle hide and carried with the army every time they went into battle with the Scots. Good man, thought Heughan to himself. There was a reiver through and through; unwilling to lie in his grave when his bones could rampage through the Debatable Lands for all eternity, striking terror into the Armstrongs. Too bad he hadn’t got his wish and had been kidnapped away to Westminster instead.
Jack was nursing the slow match. Desmond took it from him, touched it to the wick of the small pottery jar he was holding and blew gently. The spark ignited with a dangerous hiss. Desmond leaned back and lobbed the pot over his head in a sweeping arc. There was a loud bang and the cairn blew apart in puff of small stones. Heughan instinctively covered his head, even though they were standing some distance away on the edge of the dyke ditch.
“Desmond, you’re a mad bugger!” Heughan said admiringly.
“Good, isn’t it?” replied Desmond happily. “It’s the braided cord, it burns at steady rate, you see…” he began in earnest explanation but Heughan cut him off.
“Des, I don’t understand a word you’re saying, but I’ll happily put up with your chuntering if you tell me simply, just the once, how the hell you got it to go up like that; there’s nothing left of that bloody pile of rocks.”
“Oh, it wasnae just me,” said Desmond modestly. “Your Lady Melisande made the fuses and they burn just fine,” he said beaming. “She said she dipped the wicks in something she boiled up from horse piss,” Desmond frowned, “but I think she might have been messing with us.” He shook his head, “Anyhow, it looks like she knows what she was about, whatever she did.”
“What I’d like to know,” said Jack laconically, “is how the likes o’ her knows anything about men’s work. Bloody women; they won’t leave a man alone even to fight in peace.”
Heughan grinned, “Aye, there’ll be no living wi’ her when she finds out about this. Go on Des, gi’ us another.”
Desmond’s face cracked into a wide smile and he tossed another one of the grenadoes in the general direction of the Solway. They all held their breath until it erupted with a loud bang, blowing clumps of turf into the air. Then they cheered.
“Pipe doon, yer mad Irish hoors,” said Willie. “Yer gonna haf ter fetch all them stones back an’ build anither cairn, afore someone sees what’s happened.”
“Nae bother, not at all,” said Jack cheerfully as he and Desmond loped off over the dyke to rebuild the monument.
“So we’re all set?” asked Willie.
Heughan nodded thoughtfully. Willie cleared his throat and started humming experimentally. “Now what are you doing?” Heughan frowned in puzzlement.
“I am composing,” Willie said airily, “the famous ballad of Heughan the Hawk, the Border reiver, his doomed love for the wild witch of the Solway and his epic battle with twin tyrants.”
“Sounds inspiring,” said Heughan noncommittally. “You can tell me how it all turns out on the way back, if I don’t strangle you first for crimes against poetry.”
“Hah! Yer can mock me now yer skunner,” huffed Willie with dignity, “but mark ma words; one day everyone will know the name of La’l Willie Burns, poet of the Solway.”
* * *
“Melisande, you’ll have until the end of the first day of the Whitsun fair to leave the city,” Rodrigues stated baldly.
He was sitting with Heughan in the parlour of his house. The shutters were closed against the cunning wind, which contrived to slip underneath them anyway and tickle the lit candles intended to lift the gloom of the late evening. Outside the streets were quiet except for the urgent duet of two cats fighting for their territory. Somewhere else in the house, a loose shutter banged intermittently. Rodrigues bellowed out to Eleanor to fasten it shut and bring them some food to help them think.
Heughan and Melisande started to reply with their objections at the same time. They looked at one another, each waiting for the other to speak. There was an uncomfortably polite silence. Heughan didn’t wait a second time for her.
“There’s no need to panic, Roddy,” he objected. “If it all goes to plan, we can get everyone away in different directions and cause enough confusion that they won’t know which way to look for us. By the time they figure it out, we’ll be long gone. Then it’s just a case of sitting it out and waiting for them to lose interest.”
“Don’t be naïve,” Rodrigues replied acerbically. “This isn’t just Ross you’re challenging; it’s Mark A’Court too and by association, the whole Crown. It’s treason whatever way you cut it. If they catch you, they’ll hang you, but only after they’ve had their fun with you.”
“I’m not trying to die a martyr’s death, Roddy,” Heughan countered wearily. “I’ll exile myself in Ireland with Mac and spend a few months in Carlingford. It’s not like there’s anything going on during the summer anyway. Anyone who has land needs to get the hay in before the next riding season. You and I usually take ourselves off across the Narrow Seas to trade. Why change now?”
“Ireland holds no safety for you. Have you forgotten that it’s back under Mountjoy’s rule? You’d be arrested, MacShane or no. Your connections there count for nothing, right now. In fact, they’re more of a liability than anything else.”
Heughan swiped his forehead in exasperation, “Oh
for fuck’s sake, Roddy. Do stop being such a worry-wart. Have you finally lost your nerve, you soft bugger? It’s nothing I haven’t faced before and nothing I can’t handle.”
“Aye, lad,” Rodrigues replied softly, “but this time it’s different. You needs must consider the consequences of your rash actions for others, not just yourself.”
He looked sideways and indicated Melisande with a twitch of his head. She snapped her eyes round to him angrily.
“I can take care of myself,” she said huffily. “Don’t think I can’t. I don’t need a man to rescue me.”
“As you remind me on so many occasions,” acknowledged Rodrigues in a tired voice. “But you also are being naïve. One breakout of a notorious reiver prisoner could be considered unfortunate. Two would beggar belief. Of course, there would be a rigorous investigation and inevitably, there would be comparisons drawn between the two. It wasn’t that long ago. Everyone knows the story. Damn it all, I’ve heard La’l Un singing ‘The Ballad of Kinmount Willie’ down at the ‘King’s Head’ myself.”
“If you can call that noise he makes singing,” snorted Heughan.
“Even Ross is not such a dolt that he wouldn’t eventually work out that there was a common theme to the stories. He’ll pin it on the first person he could get his hands on, and we all know who that would be. You do remember the penalty for petit treason, Melisande? Geordie Nixon’s hands round your throat, throttling the life out of you before they burn you at the Sorceries.”
Melisande’s hands moved to her neck involuntarily even as she flashed her eyes angrily at Rodrigues. “I didn’t kill Walter,” she said in a flat voice. “As you weren’t even there, how would you know? You want to know the truth? Walter was the traitor. He’d done a deal with Sim the Laird. They concocted the whole thing between them. How else would Kinmount Willie Armstrong ever be taken so easily?” she laughed bitterly. “Walter thought that Ross would be recalled to court, and he would be appointed deputy in his place. The irony is that Ross’s only ambition was to secure the entail. Walter would have had the position anyway. Walter betrayed Ross but whoever betrayed Walter, it wasn’t me.”
“The truth in all of this is irrelevant,” Rodrigues answered quietly. “It isn’t me you’d have to answer to, is it? It’s Ross and Mark A’Court. And they’re ready to believe much worse of you; much, much worse.” He placed a blue pottery jar on the table between them, followed by the moon scroll from Sally’s and the wooden roundel with its unusual carving.
“What is all of this about, Mele?”
Melisande glanced at the evidence in front of her before folding her arms to stare defiantly into the middle distance, avoiding eye contact with either of the men. “You are such hypocrites. You ask for my help before stealing what belongs to me. And then threaten to double-cross and blackmail me with it? Bloody reivers!”
“If this belongs to you, all of this paraphernalia, it’s enough to condemn you.”
“Some herbs, an almanack and a press mould? You’d have to hang the whole Guild of apothecaries!”
“Don’t jest lightly, Mele. You have enemies who would make much of this. Poisons, astrological charts, patterns…they’ll call you assassin, witch and coiner. They’ll kill you.”
“There’s no proof I have done any wrong. I use my skills to help others, you know that.”
“No one cares about proof. You have both a reputation and a certain notoriety. Mark A’Court needs a public spectacle. Ross just wants revenge. What do you suppose their reaction will be if even a few prisoners escape? They’ll know that the instigator had to have had knowledge of where the prisoners were really being kept. You forget that everyone else assumes they are in the Keep. Ross will denounce you to Mark A’Court himself, whether or not you are guilty. Before you make yourself a target, you must leave now on some pretext and put yourself beyond suspicion.”
“Did you not just hear me? Or are you so like Ross that you too have no stomach for the truth and prefer the easy lie? I really don’t care what you or anyone else believes; I’m not running away.”
“Yes, you are,” said Rodrigues, “both of you. For the simple reason that it is a gossip’s story that everyone will be happy to believe.”
“This is your brilliant planning, is it?” asked Heughan scornfully. “That I’ve run off to sea with a witch?”
Melisande’s hackles rose as she heard the invective he managed to put into the sentence. “Who says it isn’t rather than I’ve run off to sea with you?”
Rodrigues chuckled from somewhere deep in his boots. "Run away together, with each other. It doesn’t matter who takes whom. The point is that you both go. What do you care what reasons others find for your departure? Say you left to join Ralegh’s expedition to a city of gold at the edge of the earth. Say that you ran away to be together for forbidden love. No one truly cares. People will make up their own stories, their own reasons as it suits them. The lovelier the lie, the easier it is to believe, sometimes.
“If it is as you say, Heughan, then you will be forgotten by the turn of the year. You’ll have a clean slate and a fresh start. If you choose to come back to this city, that’s your choice. At least you will have your lives and the freedom to choose your future.”
“And you?” Heughan asked in return. “Will you come with us?”
Rodrigues laughed artificially. “I can’t tell what the future holds for me. If I did, I might have an answer for you. I have an investment here that is finally coming to fruition but I need to see it through. No, I’ll stay. I have reasons enough to detain me.”
Heughan and Melisande exchanged glances. She shook her head with a minute movement, discouraging him. They slipped into silence again. Under the eaves, an owl hooted tentatively, searching for an answering call which never came. Eleanor reappeared with wine, a casserole of spicy sausages and a dish of stewed rhubarb. No one said anything else while they ate and drank; a mute compliment to Eleanor’s cooking.
When he’d finished a second helping, Rodrigues leaned back in his chair to pursue the conversation. “I’ve taken the liberty of arranging a ship already,” he announced. He looked to the heavens, his scalp tingling with tension as he held his breath waiting for Heughan or Melisande, singly or together to make vociferous objections. When he heard nothing, he looked sidelong from one to the other.
He caught Heughan looking back at him shrewdly and knew he had figured out the answer for himself.
“Mac?” Heughan asked simply.
Rodrigues nodded. “It seemed sensible. Mac knows our most pressing need is for discretion. He of all people I would trust to keep a secret.”
“But you just said I couldn’t go to Ireland,” Heughan remembered. “Mac won’t be keen to take me beyond the Narrow Seas in his cog. He won’t go back to the Lowlands, especially not the way things are there now, so where am I supposed to go?”
Rodrigues grinned, knowing he had hooked Heughan’s interest and wanderlust. All he had to do now was pull him in. “Must I do all the planning, lad?” He rubbed his knuckles into his eyes.
“Aye, aye, aye! I must be getting too old for all of this,” he sighed heavily. “Mac can take you as far as the Man and use his connections to arrange onwards passage. This time of year there are plenty of traders coming and going. So long as you don’t linger and you stay out of sight, and out of trouble, you can pick your own path. Go have an adventure, lad! What you do next is up to you.”
Heughan looked at Melisande with many questions in his eyes but only one on his lips. “Will you come?” he said.
She shrugged enigmatically with a half-smile. “Doesn’t look like I have a choice.”
Chapter 18: A Towering Failure
Carlisle, Whitsuntide, Early June 1603
Whitsun dawned bright with a face-slapping breeze. The pennants flapped briskly against the edgy north wind, which was whipping back and forth across the flat of the Sands, some distance below Carlisle Castle. The rhythmic, wooden clack of tent pegs being hammered
into place by a heavy mallet carried up to the windows of Melisande’s chambers.
She had dressed at first light, rousing a sleepy Sorcha to fetch her hot water and a rose-petal soap ball for her ablutions. While Melisande washed, Sorcha went back to the kitchens to fetch fresh oatcakes and small ale for their breakfast. She had also thoughtfully brought some cold sliced pheasant left from the previous evening’s meal, but once Melisande had shucked on her plain red woollen kirtle, she found that she had no appetite for meat. Anxiety had hardened her stomach to a flat board, tensing every muscle in a rigid climb upwards to her throat, and the gaminess of the pheasant caused her to swallow uncomfortably. She barely managed to sip the ale and nibble the corner of a still-warm oatcake.
“Eat something, please, my lady,” pleaded Sorcha. “If you have to purge like last time, it’s best to have something down you first.” Melisande looked pale to her eyes, and she was sure it wasn’t just the wanness of being roused too early from sleep.
Melisande put the palm of her hand over her own mouth and inhaled deeply, breathing in the lingering fragrance of rose petals to steady her nerves.