Burning the Water

by Robert Low

  Batty hunkered down and endured the rain, might even have dozed until a snap of sound brought his head up. Another followed, with shouts and a mournful lowing.

  Cracked whips and wet miserable oxen, the cries of equally dripping and exhausted men; Batty knew those sounds as he knew his own breathing – the guns were coming up, hauled out of their Cheviot hidey-hole under the lash of Maramaldo’s will.

  I was wrong, Batty thought, squinting at the still-dark sky, the rain pebbling his face. If I stay here longer, I will be elevated higher than this tower, but only as long as it takes for me to crash to the ground again, in bloody bits.

  * * *

  She watched Horner watching the chest and gnawing his nails while the fire and sconces bloodied his face. Apt, Sister Faith thought, for a man more fitted for Hell would be hard to find, even in this place.

  The stone house of Akeld was worse up the undercroft ladder than down, for this was where the original occupants had been scumfished out. Sister Faith had not known the term, but Juup told her it was the name they had in these parts for what Germans called ‘rauchwerfen’. That was a joke, he explained patiently, since the German word for kicking someone out was ‘rauswerfen’ and the word for ‘smoke’ was ‘rauch’…

  Yes, Sister Faith understood, but Juup seemed sullen about her lack of laughing and went back to sitting, scowling down his hawk nose at the sleeping Maramaldo as if her lack of humour was all his fault.

  Smoking them out, whatever you called it, had blackened and reeked the entire top floor of Akeld with a damp char and the children had found portions of it and contrived to get it on them, as children will do.

  Men came and went with seeming purpose; one or two muttered to Juup and every time it happened, the man they called Cornelius raised his head from the book he pored over endlessly, muttering to himself. Once or twice he caught the eye of Sister Faith and looked away.

  Sister Charity sat with the children, hands in her neat lap, veiled and silent as an icon; Horner had tried to speak to her and failed, falling silent under the intensity of her gaze.

  Sister Faith watched him and knew he could not resist it longer – there, she was right…

  Horner got up and moved to the chest, had a hand on it when Juup opened one seemingly sleeping eye.

  ‘Step away or lose it at the wrist.’

  Horner jerked as if pricked and stumbled back a pace, then rounded on the bush-bearded German.

  ‘At least open it,’ he burst out. ‘See if the treasure lies within. They may have left it in the tower…’

  ‘In which case it will be there still,’ Juup replied blandly, ‘for the Captain General to order recovered when he wakes and looks in the chest.’

  Horner twitched and fumed, then rounded on Sister Faith.

  ‘Is it in the tower? Is it? What have you done with it, you bitch-tick…’

  ‘That is no way to talk to Christ’s brides,’ Juup said, which amazed the Sisters as much as Horner; Juup saw it and raised a lazy eyebrow.

  ‘What? You think all Hollanders are Lutheran?’

  ‘In my experience, such religious feeling does not sit well in such a band as this,’ Sister Charity replied and Juup laughed.

  ‘Ach, ja, you would know, little Sister, for you did not get poxed at Matins or Compline, I think. But you would be wrong. We have cut, gouged, burned and stabbed believers all over the Italies, the Germanies, France – everywhere. Catholics, Lutherans, Jews, people who follow God, those who follow the Devil or the infidel god of the Saracens, which is the same thing. Or even worse – those who do not believe in any god at all.’

  He shifted slightly and stretched.

  ‘We have stabled horses in monasteries, pissed in fonts, burned mosques and sacked churches. All with religious feeling, Sister.’

  ‘Do you believe in nothing?’ Sister Faith asked quietly.

  ‘Coin,’ Cornelius interrupted before Juup could speak and the Captain acknowledged it, with an added frown at having been interrupted.

  ‘Florins, guilders, thaler, batzen, kreutzer, shillings,’ Cornelius went on. ‘A Mass of coin, as it were.’

  Juup and he both laughed.

  ‘And you?’ Sister Faith asked, turning to Cornelius. ‘Do you believe in Lord Jesus Christ – or is it Simon Magus?’

  Cornelius blinked, but did not seem shamed or outfaced. He shrugged.

  ‘Do not discount the magi, Sister. They had power before Christ came to the earth. Besides – pick an army. Any one you care to. You will find they all fight with God on their side, which at least makes sure He wins.’

  Juup grinned as the Sisters crossed themselves.

  ‘You may not know God in full,’ Sister Faith answered him, ‘but He knows you, magus.’

  ‘None of which answers the question which my Lord Chancellor will insist on knowing – where is the treasure from Glastonbury?’

  Horner loomed over Sister Faith who looked briefly up at him, then bowed her head and prayed, turning her ring round and round her finger. Horner hovered on the edge of striking her, but was aware of Juup’s mocking look and eventually subsided. He glowered at the Captain.

  ‘Remember why I am here,’ he said and Juup’s smile broadened.

  ‘Remind the Captain General when he wakes,’ he replied. ‘I am sure he will listen carefully to your complaints, Meinheer Horner.’

  Horner’s eyes slitted.

  ‘I will be sure to ask him before he learns that you have failed to extract this fat, one-armed old man from the tower, Captain Juup. Again.’

  He went back to gnawing his nails, wondering if he had scored a palpable hit on the Hollander, for that badger-bearded stolid face gave nothing away. Yet everyone knew that the lack of a Balthie in suitable chains would put them all at risk when Maramaldo woke up.

  Like the treasure, he consoled himself moodily, Batty Coalhouse is not leaving in any hurry.

  * * *

  Batty had determined on leaving in a hurry. While it was still dark and before folk found out that the chest was as empty as balls after a night in a brothel.

  He had worked out the way of it and moved swiftly once he had, wrapping bowl and phials up and stuffing them inside his jack, looping the cylinder round his back like a quiver.

  Then he leaned over, quiet and careful and took the rope in his one good hand; Trumpet trembled. You can only play the hand you are dealt, Batty thought, in life as in Primero. At least I have one good hand left.

  He clenched it round the rope and hauled it up a little way, then heaved it sideways, then back; slowly, like a fat pendulum, Trumpet started to swing.

  Below, Zerdig huddled in the lee of the tower, afraid to go into the dark of it for fear of the one-armed man coming down the ladder, unseen and unheard, to fire off that axe-handled dagg.

  So he hunched up and got wet and cursed Klett for it, knowing the Lance-Captain did not like him and sure that he was not about to be sent any relief and would be here all night. At least here he would be safe – it was unlikely that a fat, one-armed man would come down the outside of the tower, after all. Not even down that rope with a dead man at the end of it.

  The rain spattered him with heavier drops and a wind hissed. From the corner of his eye, he saw something black against the night, moving like a swift shadow. An owl, he thought, though it was large and he peered anxiously; this land was full of gespenster and the people in it were hardly better than trolls.

  He had hunched himself back into his shoulders and misery when something made him turn his head… in time to see the grave-wrapped dead come howling down on him out of the night. He never had time even to cry out.

  Batty let the last of the rope go on the inward swing, heard the crack and thump of it and made for the ladder like a rat out of a drain. He half fell down, had his bollock knife out even before he scrambled over the last splinter of the carts and out the door.

  The corpse swung and turned, bumping the old stones of the tower, but Trumpet’s last blast had s
truck the guard hard and he lay moaning, his face bloody and his breath bubbling in and out of his nose; Batty knelt to him and peered into the unfocused glass of his eyes.

  ‘Never play Primero,’ he said sorrowfully, ‘for you have no luck at all.’ He slit the man’s throat. Then he looked at the swaddled, tumbled corpse.

  ‘God keep you, Trumpet. Blaw a blast at the Lord if you see Him, as a reminder that I am supposedly on His good work here.’

  Then he went into the dark, limping on his bad leg and rolling like a sailor, out past the finger of tower, with the lights of fires all around.

  There was noise in the night – singing, loud talk, the zing of a beggar’s lyre – and Batty turned slowly in a circle, letting his eyes search the dark. He wanted a horse; he wanted Fiskie and all his gear, but thought that too much of a risk while the vague, gnawing thought came at him again, the one he’d had ever since Sister Faith had started in about him being chosen.

  If he died here, on this muddy, rainwashed ground, it would be as if nothing had happened with his life at all. No one would remark on it bar those he owed money and if the nuns and weans recalled him at all, he fancied it would be brief, for they would be rubbed out of the picture soon enough. God is like Michaelangelo, he thought, with spit and a thumb on the chalk of our lives.

  He shook it from him. The nuns had stood here. He had stood here and was standing yet and he heard her speak as if she was next to him, twisting her rosary ring.

  ‘God came to this valley, Master Coalhouse. He came and He touched us all, sent you to us. Mayhap… just mayhap… you are not who you believe yourself to be.’

  ‘She’s as banging daft as a yett on a windy day,’ Batty muttered. ‘I am me myself and not one thing more. I am not chosen.’

  Then he gathered himself a little, felt a sudden lightness; he was out in the night and the wet, with as good a chance of escape as any. He looked at the flickering lights, picked the least dense and took a deep breath.

  Set a stout heart to a steep brae, he said to himself and moved off.

  They were eating and talking, flickering shadows back and forth against the flames and he realised the fires were fewer here because they were larger with more men gathered round them; the blood started to pound in his temples as he saw he had walked into a pack of them. Right in, like a raw orb fallen from nest to viper pit.

  Someone belched and others laughed; they were close enough to poke with a stick and Batty hunched himself, trying to make his shape nothing much and certainly not one arm less.

  Then he ploughed forward, walking slow and trying not to limp too much, his flat bonnet pulled low. Heads looked up and someone spoke a challenge; Batty waved his one good hand.

  ‘Unter der Fuchtel stehen.’

  There were good-natured jeers and catcalls trailing him as he stumbled on and Batty kept going, relentless as a millwheel in a race until, eventually, he grew light-headed and realised he had stopped breathing.

  He sucked in air then and glanced back at the shadowy shapes, who were paying him no more concern than the dark.

  Unter der Fuchtel stehen. ‘Standing under the stick,’ was the term used for punishment detail – you had annoyed some commander who was entitled to beat you with a stick, or give you some shit to shovel. Sending someone off on some pointless errand beyond the warm assurance of fire and guard was typical and excited only ribaldry from folk glad it wasn’t them.

  Batty blew out his cheeks and shook rain off, remembering all the times he had shared such a fire with the same sort of men.

  Then he turned his back on them and plootered on into the night.

  Chapter Ten

  Later, out on the Cheviot hills…

  He stumbled and hirpled until his hips and knees struck something hard and he fell over it, with time only to think ‘dyke’ before he tumbled to the far side and lay there, looking at the lightening sky and the face of a curious sheep.

  There were many curious sheep, penned in the hip-height barmkin wall with a spreading tree at the centre of it for shade and shelter; Batty crawled through the droppings to it, put his grateful back to the gnarl and lay, blinking at the dawn and wondering if he had done enough.

  He was sure he had not, that he would have to be up and away as best he could through the rain and moor, once it was light enough to work out the way down to Wooler. If he could reach that place…

  The sheep cropped and stared at the fat one-armed man nodding towards oblivion.

  * * *

  He woke from a dream of Bella Yelland, with a yelp that sent the sheep licking his face away with a plaintive mewling. The rain had stopped, but the tree dripped and it was now full light, eldritch with clouds so thick the only way you could tell where the sun lay was by the milk-glare being brighter in one spot than elsewhere. There was a silence so immense you could hear a snail breathe.

  He was facered by the dream and lay, aching and cold, thinking on Bella and the summer they had gone from scampering bairns to coupling like frantic stoats. Ned and Batty’s da had been friends, gunners in the service of Maramaldo and, even then, Ned had been more interested in drink than war.

  Batty and Bella had scarce gained fluff hair on chin and quim, but discovered the whole business of copulation and were so rigorous in the learning that they frequently could not stand up without trembling.

  Then Ned had spoken out against Maramaldo, though drink had more to do with the courage in it that any lion heart. He and Bella had then left in a hurry and, the night before she did, Bella and Batty had sworn blood oaths to be united, to never forget, to be as one once again.

  The next year a big flaxen-haired Dutch girl ran away from her parents and her farm to join the Company of the Sable Rose and Batty’s memories of Bella grew misted as breath on a mirror when faced with her pink and white breasts.

  The next time he had seen Bella had been at Bologna a decade and more ago when the Emperor Charles was being crowned; Captain General Ferrante Gonzaga, seeking to impress his lifelong master, was hiring every man he could find to make his contribution to the coronation procession magnificent.

  Batty had come down with what was left of his own small Company, for easy money and no fighting. He had been 30, one-armed and gaunt with hatred, and didn’t even realise Bella was in the same camp, staring at this one-armed man and roaring orders and curses at Ned Yelland’s gun crews. Bellow Yelland, they all called her but never to her frown of face.

  When she had spotted Batty, she lost her scowl in an alchemy that transformed it into the sunniest of smiles, cracking her chap cheeks and showing as much gap as teeth.

  Batty had been shocked at the sight of her, for her face seemed to have swollen in places and sunk in others, was as homely as a suet bun and nothing like the fey beauty he had swived years before. He knew why, of course, because Calvin’s wife had told him of it – she’s been poxed caring for the Goodwife, who had been poxed by Calvin himself.

  At the time Batty had stared at Bella until her quiet smile and bird-tilt look had made him realise how much he had also changed; he shifted sideways, as if to hide the missing arm and she laughed.

  ‘Have you been sent to recover the tub of Orkney butter we stole when we left Maramaldo for the second time?’ she demanded. Orkney butter was a mix of oil of olive, wax and sheep tallow, an expensive and highly-prized way of proofing gun barrels against rust; Maramaldo would flay such a thief for the loss of a single pat of it, never mind a tub. But Batty was more facered by the knowledge that Ned and Bella had rejoined the Company of the Sable Rose.

  She admitted it with a light shrug.

  ‘After he took your arm,’ she said and had looked at Ned, lurching about and getting in everyone’s way; it was clear to Batty who ran the gunners now, clearer still that his own da’s death would have left a vacancy the Yellands had not been slow to fill.

  She saw it all in his face and her gaze was defiant.

  ‘Well?’ she said. ‘Are you here to claim Maramaldo’s due?�
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  ‘When I catch Maramaldo up,’ he retorted, ‘I will ask him if he misses it still.’

  She shook her head then and gave a soft, gentle laugh.

  ‘I had heard you were chasing some Saxon noble over horses,’ she replied. ‘Now I find you are chasing Maramaldo for the loss of your arm.’

  She smiled sadly.

  ‘Next time we meet, I trust you will be less busy.’

  ‘Next time we meet,’ he had said sullenly, ‘I trust you will not be back with Maramaldo. Again.’

  Her face had grown even sadder then and Batty felt ashamed of his sourness, so that he managed to chase enough of it away for a grin. Then she kissed him, no more than a flick of the end of her nose on his cheek if he was honest, and stepped back a little.

  ‘It was my idea to join Maramaldo,’ she said, ‘for Ned is too sodden to run matters these days. It was for a season only and I had my reasons.’

  She paused, then leaned forward a little.

  ‘Never be minding about Maramaldo, all the same. Old sins will end old sins.’

  He started suddenly, realised he had drifted off again and was now more afeared than ever of his dreams – Bella Yelland, sprung up like a villain in a mummer’s play, haunting his dreams with strangeness. He had not thought of her in years and was troubled by the idea that Sister Faith had the right of it – he was all but done and the great lake of black sin he had dammed up deep inside him was leaking at the seams.

  Then a hand clamped his shoulder like a horse bite, hauling him up to his feet and the lancing agony of his leg. Bewildered, he stared at the bearded faces, the tilted bonnets and jacks and gauntlets of a crowd of men, one of whom had him gripped tight.

  ‘It is him right enough,’ boomed one. ‘The one-armed bastard moudiewart from the Berwick Tolbooth. The one who slew Tam on the stairs.’

  ‘Are you certain, Anthone? He was seen in the tower at Akeld wi’ yon nuns. I would not care to hemp wrangwise here.’

  The one called Anthone shook Batty like a terrier with a rat.