Burning the Water

by Robert Low

  Batty was silent, drinking the water and wishing it was eau de vie while he thought about Sister Faith, who prayed vehemently over the deaths of those who wanted to kill her and could cut his leg up as if she gutted fish for the pot.

  The other one watched him, even when he returned her stare; he did not do it often, for her eyes were fierce affairs that she shook at him like a fist with every glance. He did not try to match it, but remembered where she should be.

  ‘Who is looking out from the tower?’ he demanded and watched the Sister blink annoyance.

  ‘No one. You can see nothing for dark and rain, so it would be a pointless exercise in getting wet. Besides, Trumpet needs my help now that you do not.’

  And she was gone, leaving Sister Faith smiling at Batty’s face.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She is boldinit for a nun is she not?’

  Batty was not growing any less disconcerted by the seeming ease this woman had in reading his face for thoughts, but admitted it with a wry smile.

  ‘She was not always a nun, of course,’ Sister Faith went on. ‘She came late to the embrace of God, unlike myself and Sister Hope, who came to it young.’

  She broke off and laughed softly.

  ‘While we could still coup our lundies,’ she added and Batty moaned.

  ‘No more o’ that – each time it is said I suffer pain and loss of sense.’

  There was silence for a time, broken only by the sound of rain and, eventually, by the chick-chick-chick of someone striking flint to tinder. There was no shower of sparks, so Batty assumed it came from below.

  ‘What was she, then?’

  Sister Faith looked at him for a moment, then followed the train of his thought.

  ‘A whore,’ she said flatly and watched Batty’s eyebrows shoot into his airline. ‘From the Spanish Netherlands. They called her La Tormenta.’

  Batty stared and Sister Charity came up in time to hear the end of it and, to Batty’s surprise, she winked.

  ‘I could suck a curl into the toes of your shoes,’ she said and Sister Faith touched her arm chidingly, though her smile robbed it of sting and Batty was left reeling, his mind like a whirl of blown leaves.

  Then the glare snapped him back to the flickering flames and the hunched form of Sister Hope, rattling skillet and pot.

  ‘In the name of Christ douse that!’ he bellowed and started to struggle up until the pain lanced him. ‘It will show you up like a shadow-puppet, to be shot.’

  ‘Do not blaspheme with the Lord’s name,’ Sister Faith declared severely. ‘Besides – we need a fire here, to cook food for the children. It makes the undercroft too reeky if we light it there.’

  Batty fought with the sense of it for a moment, until the full import smacked him like a hand back and forth on both cheeks.

  ‘Children?’ he asked weakly.

  There were five – three girls, an older boy and a chubby-limbed crawler with the solemn stare of a cat. All of them save him perched on a cloth-covered chest like mice on a ledge and looked warily at Batty when he came down into the candled undercroft.

  ‘Joan, Margaret and Alice,’ Sister Faith said and the girls stared until the nun clapped her hands at their rudeness; they rose and bobbed wobbling curtseys.

  ‘The babby is Stephen,’ Sister Faith went on, ‘and this is Daniel.’

  Daniel was older, on the cusp of double years and scowling suspicious through the grime of his face while Sister Faith stood behind him, hands on his bony shoulders. All of them were thin, Batty noted. And one of the girls coughed because of the damp.

  ‘Children,’ Sister Faith said, ‘this is Master Coalhouse, summoned like the Archangel Michael, by God and prayer, to take you to safety.’

  It was the Latin way she said it, that ‘michaelangelo’ that snapped Batty’s head back. That and the surety of what she said, which she laid on him like some dank smothering cloak.

  ‘I was not summoned by God,’ Batty answered weakly. ‘I just came.’

  But the solemn eyes watched him, itching his back all the way up into the tower proper.

  ‘Bairns,’ Batty said as he limped back up the worn steps behind Sister Faith, half-bent to scuttle to the fire. He leached its comfort and warmth even as he wished for an end to the cooking and the damned thing to be put out. The rain may do it anyway, he thought, listening to it sizzle and spit from the rogue drops that came through the ruined roof.

  There was a distant crack that brought Batty’s head up, though he could not see the flare. He heard the ball strike the top of the tower and whine off; one of the girls gave a whimpering cry.

  ‘We could not leave them behind, for they are orphans all. We are the last nuns of St Margaret’s almshouses,’ Sister Faith sighed. ‘Part of the See of Glastonbury and forgotten when that place suffered dissolution from Master Cromwell.’

  She signed the cross and shook her head. Another crack, this one ending in a loud slap against the stonework. Batty knew there was no one up there, but the shooting was nag all the same, which was the purpose.

  ‘God salve Cromwell’s sins,’ she added, ‘for what Thomas did to England and Glastonbury. Him and the king both.’

  That talk will get your head on a gatehouse spike, Batty thought grimly, then remembered where they were and almost laughed. Sister Hope gathered up a small kettle and went off down the steps with it.

  ‘It took five years,’ Sister Faith went on, ‘but then we were remembered. Thomas Horner remembered us.’

  The way she said the name made Batty look up to meet her cool stare and gimlet eyes. Oho, he thought, now comes the reason why the likes of Maramaldo’s men are hunting down some nuns and weans in the wild of the Cheviot.

  She read it in him in that disconcerting way she did, but already he was growing used to it and it did not rasp as it had at first.

  ‘Cromwell wanted Glastonbury,’ Sister Faith said slowly, composing her hands in her lap and twisting the wedding band. ‘He wanted it the same way he wanted all the other holdings of the Church, to swell the coffers of the king.’

  ‘And drop a wee bitty into his own purse,’ Batty added laconically. ‘I have heard of the man. If Christ walked among us again, Thomas Cromwell would have deceived him anew.’

  ‘God be praised,’ Sister Faith said, ‘and for all your blasphemy, you are right. Cromwell was a grasping man, who did poorly by the Abbot of Glastonbury.’

  ‘I have no doubt of it,’ Batty said. ‘When Cromwell wished for something, he would keep at it until folk gave into him.’

  ‘Abbot Richard did not,’ Sister Faith said firmly and then sighed and made a fresh crucifix in the air. ‘Though it was the end of him.’

  Batty was silent for a moment, wondering how the Abbot of such a powerful place such as Glastonbury could have been brought to his end. Finally, he had to ask.

  ‘A Christmas pie,’ Sister Faith answered which was so far from what Batty had considered that he was left lost and blinking into Sister Faith’s enigmatic little smile.

  ‘You know of Christmas pies?’ she asked and Batty frowned his way through what he thought he knew. Rich gifts atween prelates, he knew. Packed full of arrogance and nonsense as well as the richest meats and finest spices – saffron, which was worth its own weight in the gold used to gild the pastry, for example. Monstrous large affairs, too, with some even containing live birds cunningly placed at the last, so that they flew out when it was cut.

  Sister Faith nodded sadly.

  ‘Just so. Given upwards, from abbot to bishop, bishop to archbishop, archbishop to… king. Fawning gifts to show the riches of the monasteries and abbeys that sent them. Now the Christmas pie is seen as the very mark of idolatrous corruption.’

  She shifted slightly; below there was soft singing; Sister Hope, hardly less of a child in her mind than her charges, was perfect for the task of keeping them from fear. Batty remembered, with a sharp twist in his gut, how Sister Hope’s own fear had supposedly been driven out because of the arrival of t
he saviour, Batty Coalhouse.

  ‘Abbot Whiting knew of Cromwell’s attempts to loot Glastonbury and in 1538 he thought to subvert him by sending a Christmas pie direct to the king. It was a fine affair, a rich savoury – but the meat of it was not venison but twenty carefully wrapped scrolls of vellum, each one a deed for a manor belonging to Glastonbury. It was to be payment for exemption from the Act of 1536.’

  ‘Blackmeal,’ Batty declared and nodded, for he was a Borders man at bottom and none better than they knew the concept of paying those with power to keep them away from your door. Sister Faith sighed.

  ‘The time for such exemptions had passed,’ she said, ‘though few knew it. Swept away in a rising tide – Thomas Horner, the Abbot’s steward, knew it and was a strong swimmer. Few knew that, either.

  ‘The pie went in the care of Master Horner,’ Sister Faith went on, ‘that rank-faced treacherer, who delivered it to Lord Great Chamberlain Cromwell instead. His reward was a plum picked from that pie – Mells Manor, which he now dwells in. The others stayed with Cromwell, who saw the riches of Glastonbury not only in treasure and relics, but in valuable holdings.’

  Batty could work out the rest – the Abbot would be put to the question and had probably died of it. Sister Faith confirmed it.

  ‘Cromwell sent his commissioners to find fault,’ she said. ‘It was not hard for them. Layton, Pollard and Moyle – those names will be remembered for eternity, if not by those of Glastonbury, then by God. It took them two years after every other holy place had been ransacked, but Glastonbury fell and Abbot Whiting went to the Tower and died there – executed for treason, they said. But I know he died being put to the Question.’

  ‘Aye, well,’ Batty said, easing his leg a little. ‘Cromwell himself was brought low the next year and himself executed for treason, so all’s well that ends ill, as they say.’

  Sister Faith nodded.

  ‘God’s punishment,’ she said simply, ‘which two at least of those commissioners also suffered – Pollard died in 1542 and Richard Layton died last year in Ghent, having pawned plate belonging to the Chapter at York to fund his foul life. Moyles waits to face his God with his deeds, but has fallen from favour and no longer pursues the treasures of Glastonbury. Some they had, but the best were gone – including the rest of the manor rolls and deeds. All spirited away in secret.’

  The skin on Batty’s arms was creeping now as he listened to the soft lilt of the nun’s voice.

  ‘Cromwell’s death put an end to it – or so we at St Margaret’s thought. New fleas bred, as they will, fighting for royal favour. The Earl of Oxford was elevated to Cromwell’s seat – and his records. Lord Wriothesley became Lord Chancellor and anxious to make his mark, so Thomas Horner went to this one with Glastonbury’s tale. The Lord Chancellor saw the advantage in it and set Thom squinting and peering.’

  She broke off and stared bleakly at the dark.

  ‘No doubt the taste of that plum had a lingering sweetness that made Jack The Lad Horner want more of the same.’

  She lifted her head and looked squarely, almost defiantly, at Batty.

  ‘He ciphered it out in the end, where the Abbot had sent the treasure – but the last nuns of St Margaret’s almshouses, former leper hospice and sometime orphanage – the least of Glastonbury’s possessions – quit the place a fortnight before he got there.’

  She stopped, then crossed herself and kissed the rosary ring.

  ‘God forgive me for the sin of pride in thinking myself clever to have persuaded my Sisters to Horner’s imminence. Sister Benedict was sure we would be safe in the north, in her brother’s care. Not me, O Lord, but thine Hand…’

  Pointing them north to Bewcastle, Batty thought, the hair on his arms bristled as boar, led by a Sister whose brother in Bewcastle was Catholic enough in the unReformed north to appreciate the worth of relics from Glastonbury. Not to mention a wheen of manors in Somerset.

  Did Mad Jack know what his sister brought him? Was that the main interest? And why send them so far off course – was that to keep them at arm’s length and secreted from any tainting of Dacre or Bewcastle? Batty whirled it round and round but could make no firmness out of it and gave up when his head hurt.

  ‘We took the children,’ Sister Faith went on, ‘but Thomas Horner does not care for us or them. He looks to stick more fingers in this Christmas pie.’

  She stopped for a moment and, when she continued, her voice was all henbane and aloes.

  ‘There is a special pit in Hell for Master Jack the Lad Horner.’

  ‘You have the treasure of Glastonbury in your keeping,’ Batty said dully, remembering the chest on which the children had perched. ‘Here, in this place.’

  He felt the crushing weight of it all and his leg ached so much he had to sit and did not need an answer from her to know the truth.

  ‘Christ’s Bones, wummin,’ he said wearily.

  ‘Mind your tongue, Master Coalhouse,’ Sister Faith answered sharply.

  Batty had nothing left to say, simply gave her a look halfway between an ox waiting for the last hammer and admiration for her certainty that Batty Coalhouse was the way out of their doom.

  The dark split with another crack but this was aimed at the base of the tower and the smack and whine of it was louder. Batty wanted to tell her the truth of it all and how, at last, he had been dealt the worst of hands by God, but the nun who had been a whore came up from below, wiping her hands on a cloth and looking grim.

  ‘Old Trumpet has gone to God,’ Sister Charity said and she and Sister Faith fell to their knees and started praying.

  Batty listened, dulled almost to oblivion, while the soft words pattered out like the rain; beyond, the dark seemed blacker now that the fires had been put out and he wondered where Fiskie had gone.

  Not that it mattered. Three nuns and five bairns were not going to ride out clinging to Fiskie, never mind the chest they would want to take with them.

  Nor would these routiers be bluffed for long – Batty wondered when Maramaldo would come, for come he would. If there was serious plunder in it, Fabrizio Maramaldo would not leave the matter to underlings. He was on his way, sure as birds laid eggs.

  And here is me, laired up like a silly wee levret. Batty Coalhouse who has dogged him like a slewhound these last years – Maramaldo will take delight in that, for sure…

  He blinked and shook himself, hauled out the last two daggs and fell into the familiar, awkward routine of loading and priming them with one hand and his stump. In the dim, he did it mostly by feel.

  The ones outside would want to present their Captain General with the prize before he got here, so men would come before dawn, he thought, when life is lowest and dark is most; he knew well enough the way mercenaries went at the work. Since the nuns would not shoot straight, he thought, then Mrs Coalhouse’s unlucky bairn must, even if he stands so poorly in the sight of God.

  You can only play the cards you are dealt, he thought, in life as in Primero.

  Chapter Seven

  In the tower at Akeld

  The second day…

  They took some persuading, but in the end the Sisters agreed that Trumpet could neither lay dead in the undercroft with the children, nor take up space above.

  ‘We can hardly bury him,’ Sister Faith pointed out and Batty had to admit that.

  ‘We can put him out of the tower,’ he said, ‘but not just by rolling him out the door, where he will be as close as ever. The stink will waft in with every breeze. Do you have rope in that cunning wee chest below?’

  Sister Faith looked at him then, head cocked to one side as if to query his belief that they would last as long as it took for Trumpet to start smelling bad. Or perhaps she thought it was part of his cunning escape plan.

  Or that he simply wanted a look in that chest, he thought in the end. That would be it.

  There was rope, which materialised from nowhere Batty could see, so Trumpet was lashed and manhandled up the rickety ladder to the t
ower top, a sweating affair. Sister Faith and Charity pushed from below, Batty and Sister Hope pulled from above, and the rope was securely fastened to the lattice work on the tower top in case they should lose grip and allow it to plunge all the way down the ladder.

  Finally, panting with the effort, Batty heaved Trumpet up on to the rickety platform on the tower top, then to the ragged stone edge. At which point the leg fired pain through him and he sat down heavily with a curse. Sister Hope came to him, concern in her childlike gaze, while Sister Faith called up from below to ask if he was hurting.

  ‘I am sun and shiny watter,’ Batty lied, then turned to Sister Hope. ‘Shove him ower, Sister, there’s a good quine.’

  He sat back, feeling the rain-wind wash the sweat from his face. He was soaked inside and out and the padded jack weighed all the more for it. Drag you down like a big stone, a wet jack, he said to himself. Like the last of the Kohlhase at the Elbe at Wittenberg, on the day the band had been moving out, trying to avoid the troops of the Elector after having been camped too long nearby; Saxony was no longer safe for the Kohlhase name.

  They were delayed because Hans Kohlhase and his right-hand, Georg Nagelschmidt, had been trying to deal with Luther, who held a lot of power then and had a problem of his own, Batty recalled. The good Doctor had acquired a stoked hatred of Jews and Hans had put it about that he and the rest of the Kohlhase brigands had been warring against all the Jews in Saxony, who had been led by the foulest of them all, the ignoble Von Zaschwitz, secret gaberdined moneylender and horse thief.

  Well, Batty thought, after all we had done already a lie like that was hardly here nor there – even the band’s physicker, the Venetian Jew Loppe Bassano, had laughed out of his big, bearded face.

  But Luther had wanted to believe it and it was as good an excuse as any to meet Hans, Georg and Batty in his farm, where the big-breasted ex-nun he had married ran matters with iron efficiency. Batty had not been keen on it, all the same, since Luther did not just have a downer on Jews, but had ranted about rebels not that long since – nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel. For baptism does not make men free in body and property, but in soul; and the gospel does not make goods common.