‘Eh? Whit was that?’
‘I said we shouldae brought a lantern wi’ us.’ Dod had not meant to speak his fears aloud. He placed his hand, accidently, in a patch of thistles growing in a crevice half way up the wall, and sucked at it, resentfully.
‘Ach, Doad, dinnae be daft. The light would frighten aff the limmars at the gate, and put them a’ tae flight,’ asserted Colin Snell. Colin was bolder and braver than Dod, stauncher and more resolute in Christ. He did not suffer fools, or fear, as much as Dod did, and he had kept the watch for Melville twice before. Both times, he had come back to the college empty-handed, disappointment swilling over his fair face.
‘Limmars?’ echoed Dod. A weakness and a trembling rippled through his knees. ‘How many of them are there, d’ye think?’
‘Ah dinna ken. But we will be prepared for them. We have a horn an’ a stick.’
It was not what Dod had hoped for, and it was not enough. But Melville had been adamant. Scholars of the college did not carry swords.
‘What will we do, an’ supposing we catch them?’
‘Well . . .’ Colin set aside a moment to consider this, thoughtful fingers closing tightly round the stick. While Dod had hoped that he might hold the hunting horn at least, it seemed that Colin Snell had taken charge of both. ‘We will tak all diligence to mak them see the light, repenting of their sins, and bowing down in Christ.’
‘And what if they will not repent it? What if they are rotten, to the very core?’
‘We all of us are rotten, Doad,’ Colin said, complacently. ‘Steeped in filth and sin. We are all contemptible, you the same as them.’
‘Aye,’ persisted Dod, ‘but what if they are reprobate, and there is no hope for them?’ He swallowed back the worry that was rising in his gorge: how could he be certain there was hope for him?
‘I think it very likely, they are truly reprobate,’ Colin Snell confessed. ‘Yet they cannot be denied the right, the comfort and the solace of God’s word. If they are reprobates, their hearts will be closed to it. Their eyes will not open, and allow the light. But if they are but belly-blind, their muffles may be lifted, and they may repent of it, and we may be the instrument that leads them to the light. Wherefore we owe it unto them, as to ourselves, and God, to bring that message home to them, and thwack them with this stick, to cow them to contrition while a higher justice comes.’
Dod was unconvinced. ‘But what if they are devils, or else elfin folk?’
The faerie folk came at the full of the moon, to briar and hawthorn, and haunted old ruins; but faeries were shy, and would fly from the light. He had kent it all along. They should have brought the lamp.
Colin reassured him, for the umpteenth time: ‘If the faerie folk come, we will blow on the horn. Scare them awa’ wi’ three solid blasts.’
‘But suppose they creep up on us, an’ tak us by stealth?’
‘Pah!’ Colin snorted. ‘I would like to see them try.’
He would an’ all, thought Dod. And if the devil were himself to come, Colin would not baulk at it, but he would stand and fight. He would grapple wi’ the fiend, and grasp him by the horns, and send the devil whimpering, his boot print black emblazoned on the devil’s arse. Dod wished he had the courage of his dauntless friend; a grand and fearsome preacher Colin Snell would make. Dod had not the stomach to resist the devil’s charms. The devil would make mince of him. Suppose the devil came, and brought the faerie queen with him, to tempt them to their doom? For faeries were attracted to a young man on a quest. And what were they on now, in the dead of night and grey light of the moon, if it were not a quest? They were knights of Christ that ventured for their lives. He kenned the queen was after him; she came to him in dreams, insinuated, snakelike, round his helpless hips, and left her trail behind her, fouling his clean bed.
‘Let me haud the horn a while.’
‘Whist wi’ your whining. There is someone in the garden,’ Colin hissed.
Dod kept his flattened face still against the stone. He did not dare to move. His whimpering was stoppered by his beating heart, that drummed a heavy rhythm in his heaving chest, till he could barely breathe.
A small crack of light had opened in the wall, the unveiling of a door, with a lantern set behind it. Through its sly glancing, a figure appeared. Colin Snell sighed. ‘Ach, tis the nightman.’
‘What is the night man?’ Dod felt his faint heart might burst.
‘Lord, ye are green, Doad!’ Colin said, scornfully. ‘The gong-scourer, draucht-raker, what ye may call him. He that wis wanted to cleng out the sink.’
Dod answered, ‘Oh,’ filled with confusion, wonder and doubt. He watched the slight figure cross over the grass, moving towards the latrines. In the light of the pale sickle moon he could make out the shapes of a shovel and pail that swung from the gong-scourer’s back. The scourer’s nose and mouth were covered with a cloth. Dod considered for a moment what it what it might be like to be scouring stinking cesspits rather than men’s souls. Fired by curiosity, he made bold to speak. ‘He’s slender for a raker, though. Perhaps it is a lass.’
Now Colin Snell would read his mind, he realised with a blush, and ken what matter lurked in it. The thought of a lass was a torment to Doad. What he might say to one, what he might do to one, what one might say or do back to him. ‘A lad, I meant to say. Perhaps it is a lad,’ he corrected quickly. ‘The draucht-raker’s boy.’
‘Tis very like, his boy.’
‘Then where is his cart?’ Dod now dared to hope that he had got away with it. That Colin had not caught the whiff, the stench, of his sick soul.
‘In the vennel, as I doubt,’ Colin answered with a yawn. ‘We may as well call aff the watch. For no one will come forward wi’ the rakers here. We will leave it, for the night.’
Dod paid little heed, for he was watching as the figure, slender as a girl, opened up the channel under the latrines, and disappeared inside. The channel was an underbelly unexplored by Dod, deep as hell itself, belonging to a world in which he had no part. Dod held his breath until the raker’s boy emerged, dragging up his bucket, and pulling loose his scarf, to take in a draught of the cool night air. How many buckets were required, for one slight lad to finish with his Herculean task? The raker’s boy dragged up his load, staggered at the weight of it, and made his way cautiously across the college square.
‘Wha the devil is he going wi’ it?’
Colin shifted restlessly, suffering from cramp. ‘Let the limmar be now, Doad. Ye are fair fu’ fixed on it. Tis nothing but a laddie, wi’ a bucketful of shit.’
‘But where is he awa’ with it?’
The draucht-raker had crossed the square, coming past the hawthorn tree, to rest by Melville’s house. He set the bucket on the ground, and stepped back, looking up. The master was asleep, the doors and shutters closed.
‘What is the devil up to, there?’
The answer to their question was played out before their eyes, for the raker scooped his bare hands in the bucketful of muck and began to smear it on the master’s house, cawking doors and windows with a layer of filth.
Colin whistled softly. ‘Wid ye look at that? Filthsum little shite.’
‘Now, then,’ Dod suggested, ‘will I blaw the horn?’ For he was eager, still, to have it in his hand.
‘And scare the beggar off? Not on your life. Let you and I upend the beast, and rub his filthy nose in it.’ Before Dod could respond to this, his friend had broken cover from the chapel ruin, and hurled himself, full force, in the direction of the draucht-raker. The boy dropped his bucket and turned tail in flight, but Colin was upon him like a falcon on a sparrow, and swept him from his feet. Dod, arriving breathlessly, caught sight of the raker’s scared and startled face, torn out from its scarf, before that face was splattered by the force of Colin’s fist. The raker had no time to howl, for Colin tipped the bucket out and over his bare head, now thick with filth and blood. Dod became enflamed with a tremulous disgust, and swelling in his veins he felt
the zeal of Christ, a righteous indignation, fierce and staunch and strong. His rising spirit fed upon the stench of iron and earth, the yielding of the boy’s soft flesh to Colin’s boots and fist. Horror turned to rage, and terror to excitement. ‘Why not swak the filthsum devil back into the sink?’
Colin dropped the raker’s boy, and turned to stare at him, and for a second, Dod supposed the remedy too brutal, even for his friend, with his stout heart, to stomach, and he felt a spurt of pride. Then Colin smiled, admiringly. ‘Wha would have thought it, Doad! You’re not the sop I took you for. That is a fine idea.’ He pulled the raker up, and grasped him at the mouth, already caked and choked. The boy let out a howl, spitting like a cat. Dod saw his white eyeballs, frantic in the moonlight, darting back and forth. One eyelid thick and bloodied had begun to close.
‘What say you, sir? Since you are so fond of filth, what say you go to swim in it? Tak his legs,’ said Colin Snell. Dod felt the thin limbs kicking, thrashing in his hands, the raker’s boy no match for him. A dizzy rush of blood came flooding to his head. ‘See how you like it, you shite!’
The two men held the raker, writhing like a fish, and Colin tied the dung clout tight around his mouth. ‘Now son, haud yer whist till we are at the sink, then ye may howl yer heart out. Not a soul will hear you.’
‘What in the name of Jesus Christ are you men doing there?’ A voice broke through the gloom, to strike Dod still with terror, deep down to his soul. It was followed by a light, and a fearful apparition, far more dreadful than a ghost or the devil in the night, that would turn Doad’s wam to water, and his blood to stone. He dropped the raker’s boy, and fell down to his knees. He dared not lift his eyes to Andrew Melville’s face. From the corner where he grovelled, like a serpent in the mud, he glimpsed the master standing, in his pantons and his nightshirt with a lantern in his hand. It was Colin Snell who spoke.
‘We found this trucour smearing ordure on your house. And Doad here thocht it fitting we should dook him in the jakes.’
Dod turned his head and vomited, thick, into the earth. The raker’s boy had fallen, senseless to the ground. Melville bent over him, loosening the cloth that had covered his face. ‘Are you quite mad? You would murder the man, with the fumes from the jakes?’
‘Not murther him, sir. But to show him the light.’ Reason, sense and shame came flooding back to Dod. His cheeks ran wet with tears.
‘God help us all, but this is a child.’ Melville cleaned the debris from the raker’s face with the hem of his own shirt. The raker moaned and stirred.
‘I recognise him now,’ Colin Snell declared. ‘For I ken his older brother, as an honest decent man, who comes oftentimes to lectures here, to you and Master James. They are students at St Leonard’s. This is Roger Cunningham. I did not see him clearly, under a’ the muck.’
‘Students of St Leonard’s?’ Melville echoed wearily. ‘Can you make this worse?’ He cradled the boy’s face. ‘Is this true, my child? No one here will hurt you, if you speak the truth.’
Roger answered weakly, dazed by Colin’s blows. ‘What they say is true, sir. And I am right sorry that I put muck on your house.’
Andrew Melville groaned. He wiped the boy’s face tenderly. ‘Then God love you, child. But why would you do that? Did someone put you up to it? Or have I done some hurt to you, that you bear such a grudge?’
The boy’s eyes fluttered closed. ‘I pray you will not mind it. It was a defiance, sir. It was not meant for you.’
At Kenly Green, the baxter brought a letter with the morning loaf. The servant propped it up against a jug of cream. Hew opened it and read it as he drank his morning ale. He broke the loaf, and buttered it, and read the note again; he set his empty cup on it, and scattered it with crumbs. The letter bore St Mary’s seal, was written on white paper, in a crisp dark ink, and made no sense to Hew. Andrew Melville wrote, ‘Your purpose is discovered, and your trap is sprung, the coney that was caught in it delivered to St Leonard’s. You may have him there.’
Since Nicholas was still asleep, he tried it on the cook. ‘A curt enough note for a man of the kirk. It is not like Andrew Melville to have masked himself in mysteries.’
‘If there is a rabbit, I will make a pie,’ the cook suggested doubtfully.
‘I will let you know,’ Hew promised with a smile, ‘when to make the coffin, for we may not want one yet.’
Hew saddled up Dun Scottis, fuelled by the intrigue, and set off for the town. He stopped off at the mill, by the Kenly burn, to allow the horse to drink. The miller’s youngest son lay face down on the bank trailing through the water with a net, for sticklebacks.
‘Good morrow to you, John,’ said Hew.
The small boy leapt up guiltily. ‘I wasna trouting, sir, nor tickling up the hecklebacks.’
‘Are there hecklebacks?’ Hew wondered, peering at the stream.
The child considered this. ‘They come up fae the sea,’ he allowed at last. ‘Look sharp, and you will see them. They have spinkes upon their backs instead of scales.’
‘Tis they that look sharp then,’ Hew pointed out. He followed where John gazed into the white-flecked water, and saw the dart and flicker of a silver fish. The boy’s bare legs were streaked with weed, as though he had recently slipped from the bank, a clinging, sinewed thread of muddy green. His face was wan and wary, and his small fists tightly closed.
Hew assured him, ‘I do not mind it if you want to fish for trout, but you must take good care to throw the small fry back, else stocks will be depleted for next year.’ He had given up the mill as a gift to Matthew Locke, but kept a careful interest in it, on the child’s behalf; this stretch of water too, and all the trout that lived in it, now belonged to him.
‘I mind you, and I ken that, but I wasna fishing trout,’ the boy insisted. His breeks were sopping wet, and told a different tale. His mother, Hew supposed, would put him right on that.
‘What were you doing, then?’
John Kintor opened up his palm, ‘Finding stones for shot.’
‘Ah, is that a fact?’ Hew’s interest was aroused.
‘The best are in the burn; the water makes them smooth.’ The boy showed up the stones. And they were not unlike the pebbles Hew had found beneath the hawthorn tree. ‘What will you shoot with them?’ he asked.
‘Craws that peck the seed, and rooks upon the wing,’ the boy admitted, warily. ‘I dinna kill the dows.’
‘Then you must be a clever shot, to catch a rook in flight.’
‘My brother is a better one. But I am not so bad. Last night, I killed a rat that crept into the mill. My brother put its carcase out upon a stick, as warning to the other rats. Would you like to see it?’
‘Another time,’ said Hew. ‘But may I see your sling?’
‘Tis nothing but a common one. I made it for myself. But I can show you how to work it, if you will.’ The boy pulled up his shirt, and unhooked a plait of hemp, which to all appearances was holding up his breeks, with a toggle knot and loop to secure it at the ends.
‘Ye can mak it out o’ wool, which is softer on your hands, but it will not last so long, but ye maunna use a rope, for that will stretch. In the middle is a pocket, where you put the stone. Then you fold the cord like this, an’ your finger in the loop, and then you let it go.’ John brought up his arm, spinning up the sling, and in one sudden rapid movement he released the stone, which followed through the air in a graceful arc, landing in a tree. ‘Now you have a try.’
Hew took up the sling, and attempted several shots, but for all his play at tennis and his practice at the butts he could not get the hang of it. He succeeded, at the last, in launching up the stone, but mastered no control of where it came to ground.
John Kintor pulled a face. ‘The trick is in the aim. That wis no’ so bad, for a full grown man, for it is better suited as a weapon for a boy, and if ye did not learn it then, ye may never learn to have the simple knack of it. No man that was strong and powerful ever had a shepherd’s sling, nor any c
ause to use one. Keep it, if you like. For I can mak another,’ he conceded generously. ‘They are not hard to craft.’
‘That is very kind of you. You may have been a help to me, on business of the Crown,’ Hew said with a wink.
The boy’s eyes opened wide. ‘Am I then your man?’
‘You are indeed,’ said Hew. ‘And you shall have a penny, for your service to the king.’
John Kintor shook his head. ‘You may have it freely, sir, for that you were kind to me, in giving me a pig. That pig has had some babbies, sir. And I have no idea how that could come about.’
‘I think, before she came to you, she lay down with the boar.’ Hew smiled.
‘Aye, so my brother says. But I have seen the bullocks swyfing in the fields. And whitever they were doing there, it was not lying down.’
The boy ran off, bare-legged, pulling up his breeks, while Hew rolled up the sling and tucked it in a pocket. He looked forward to more practice with it at St Mary’s college.
Chapter 13
Old Haunts
Andrew Melville was angry. It was not the white hot fury which was fired up quickly, and as quickly quenched, but a wrathful smouldering, deeper and more damaging, that threatened to ignite at any time. Prayer did not cool it. He was angry first with Hew, who had brought about the watch, and who, if he intended to expose the college weaknesses, had done so in the cruellest manner possible. He was angry also with his two disciples, Auchinleck and Snell, whose pell-mell ministrations on his own behalf had shaken and appalled him. Dod repented bitterly, and he had abased himself, unmanly and unmannerly, that offered little hope and provoked as little pity for him, calling for contempt. No word that Andrew spoke could lessen Dod’s guilt, nor press on him more forcefully the full stent of his shame, and so he had said none, but left Dod to his torment, grovelling before God. Colin Snell, more practically, he sent off with a bristle brush, to scrub out the latrines. Still, and for the most part, Andrew Melville’s anger was directed at himself. He knew, without God’s hinting at it, that the fault was his.
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