Burning the Water

by Robert Low

  ‘How do I ken this? Witchery, think you?’ she demanded. ‘Mother Shipton’s eldest bairn mayhap?’

  She laughed again at Batty’s look.

  ‘Silly bugger – the cloth binding you was wimple linen and we have been spierin’ you and yon parcel o’ Christ-brides for a three-day at least.

  ‘Well, cow piss cleans better and the De’il has his saving eye on you,’ she added.

  Christ’s Blood, Batty thought, it was bad enough when a nun told me I was chosen by God. Now this hedge-witch tells me I am Auld Nick’s favourite imp. It was better, he thought bitterly, when I was plain Batty Coalhouse, of no fixed abode in Heaven, Earth or Hell.

  Still, the thought reminded him of Sister Faith’s last charges and he looked round for his gear; Trottie produced it in flourishes, right down to the wrapped silk bowl and the phials – but this last she handed back with a frown.

  ‘That’s no poison or love potion you have in them wee jugs,’ she declared and made the horn-sign again. ‘Yet there is power in it.’

  Batty took the leather container beside him and nodded cautiously to her, feeling weariness descend on him.

  ‘Thanks for you care. I have nothin’ to give but advice and it is this – nivver leave these hills, beldame. They will bind you in iron chains and burn you at the stake.’

  Her cracked-bell laugh followed him as he ducked under the lintel of sleep and fell through the door to oblivion.

  * * *

  He walked in a street and thought it might be Berlin save that it was free of horse-apples and ruts. He wasn’t certain where he was in the end, for it had houses he thought he recognised from Strasbourg and even Rome; at one point he passed what he was certain was Giovanni Acuto’s tomb and that was in the Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence.

  He could not stop to find out, no matter how hard he tried, and realised he was flanked on both sides by tall men in the livery of Maurice of Saxony, all sweeping moustaches and halberds; his arms were bound with smooth rope and each liveried man-at-arms had a grip like an iron band on one shoulder.

  They walked in silence for what seemed a long time, down this endless street where people walked, looking amazingly fresh, the women with immaculate dresses and the men with pressed doublets and shoes that looked new.

  Then he heard a slow, repeated creaking, like a door opening endlessly and, gradually, a speck on the street’s eldritch stretch grew and grew into the breaking wheel. A burning nun stood by it, her eyes embered; the creaking was her turning it with flaming hands.

  Now he heard noise behind him and craned to see a crowd, fifty or sixty and growing, led by a dark, saturnine man he knew well. Ahead, a masked man in a stained butcher’s apron bounced a hammer meaningfully in one palm and, next to him, a bride with a chaplet of flowers and a bloody grin stretched out her hand to take his.

  He fought, but was propelled inexorably towards the turning wheel and the hand of the Klett bride, leading him to where his limbs would be broken and braided into the spokes.

  ‘Prepare to meet thy God. His approach; so dreadful is the sight that what can man do, man who is but rottenness and a worm, when even the Cherubim themselves must veil their faces in very terror?’

  He turned to the speaker and knew it would be Cauvin, had listened to that grate all the way from Strasbourg to Geneva, had seen the tics and twists of that bearded mouth daily for weeks.

  ‘Jehan,’ he called out. ‘How is the Madame Cauvin?’

  Jehan Cauvin smiled, that self-assured, self-involved smile.

  ‘Gone, Balthie,’ he declared. ‘Gone to her destiny, as decreed by a loving God. Though I never experienced the slightest hindrance. She was never troublesome to me throughout the entire course of her illness.’

  ‘I am sure she died without fashing,’ he answered wryly. ‘Same as she lived. Ach, Jehan, you may know God well, but you are a misery to women.’

  Cauvin nodded, smiling, to where the Klett bride waited, a strange wind blowing her hair like the flames of the nun turning the breaking wheel.

  ‘You would know the misery of women, Balthie.’

  He heard the nun laugh, a harsh gargle of sound. Ach, he thought, astounded. I did not know nuns could laugh…

  * * *

  He woke, eyes wide open and coughing up smoke in his throat. From the nun… then he realised it was the fire, swirling a cat-tail flick from the damp wind blowing through the open shutters.

  It was morning on the moor, with a spanking wind from the west and the peesies blown ragged with the clouds as they played will-o’-the-wisp with sunlight. He could see it all through the open shuttered winter and could feel the warm, a leprous heat thanks to the rain. There should still be white on the grass to shiver early lambs and snow caps on the high tops; even the season is whirlimagig, Batty thought and then lay back, trying to blink the images away.

  By God, he thought to himself shakily, one o’ these nights yon nun will get me. Yet the Klett bride was new; he had never dreamed her before and as for Cauvin…

  He remembered the man, young and intense, dark-bearded and full of himself. The Saint-Madeleine church had packed him off from Strasbourg to Geneva, with a couple of carts and his wife, Idelette and he had not wanted to go. Batty had been hired as much to make sure of it as to protect him on the way and had been offered the task because, it turned out, Madame Cauvin knew Bella Yelland.

  Poor Idelette Cauvin, Batty thought, struggling with pregnancy and the knowledge that her bairn would almost certainly die as soon as it was born. Bleak with the knowledge that the man who spent his time rehearsing sermons – twice on Sabbaths, three times during the week – had certainly poxed her. In between muttering about the Genevans, whom he hated, the Jesuits whom he hated and someone called Servetus, whom he hated, Jean Cauvin spent a deal of time in hot, darkened auberge rooms starving and sweating himself as a precursor to drinking concoctions of lignum vitae mixed in sack.

  Once he even had a physicker giver him an enema of the stuff, which Batty knew the Spanish called guayaco. If the dagos were any measure of efficacy, Batty thought, then any philtre made from yon fancy tree from the Americas was of little use.

  In the end, Cauvin was pale and wasted and still poxed. All he got out of the experience was a new hatred, of physickers above everyone else. Should hate become a measure of piety, Batty thought, feeling the sweat on him, then Jehan Cauvin, whom folk now lauded as God’s anointed John Calvin, will be a wee saint. If Protestants are allowed such.

  Batty found out then that it was Bella who had persuaded Ned to return to the good grace of Maramaldo and still fought to understand that.

  ‘Here.’

  He came out of his dream-shreds into the wrinkled malfeasance of Trottie’s face as she thrust a horn beaker of something hot at him; he looked at it suspiciously.

  ‘Anis, wolfsbane – the one that isn’t venomous – centaury, fox clote, vervain,’ she intoned. ‘All good for wounds and bruises. White willow to kill the pain – and some chervil against the bad dreams. Sweetened with a wee taste of honey – the brew, that is. Nothin’ will sweeten dreams as hagged as yours, Batty Coalhouse.’

  Bigod, you have the right of that, Batty thought, sipping cautiously; it was not entirely bad, so he drank it down, then crawled unsteadily up and buckled himself back to his old life.

  Trottie watched, tucking a grey straggle under her grey lace cap.

  ‘You are all but done,’ she said and it was so much an echo of Sister Faith that Batty jerked; Trottie grinned gum at him.

  ‘With the beaker,’ she added and held out a grimy hand for it, grinning when Wallis called from outside for Batty to fetch himself. Batty thought the grin sly, but was reassured to see she made no more witchy moves, which were unsettling.

  Eventually, he nodded pleasantly to her and thanked her for her hospitality, then hirpled through the door – and stopped short. He had expected a pen, sheep – Mickle Jock with a scowl between his horns even – and a few armed riders. What he g
ot stunned him.

  There were men right enough, but no wee handful; you could not see the sheep pen for them, long hundreds of mounted and ranked riders, all lanced and armoured for war. John Wallis grinned down at Batty as a scowling Chilman, nursing his gnawed hand, brought forward a horse.

  ‘A thousand here. Some hundred more at Twa Corbies,’ John Wallis declared and waved one expansive hand. ‘Behold the power of the Wallis, the Robson and Charlton and Dodds and all else who owe us the hand of friendship.’

  He leaned on the pommel of his saddle.

  ‘Yet there are King’s men gathering in numbers and meeting with Musgrave. Around Wooler, or so I hear and the place is busy as a Truce Day meeting.

  ‘But I don’t fear them, nor your wee band of ribboned mummers, guns or not, for I have these at my back. Now mount – I would hear of nuns from Glastonbury and why the King has sent an army into the Cheviots.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Eglingham Hall, a day’s march south of Wooler

  At the same time…

  ‘D’ye know how to fish, young Lord?’

  The young Lord Ogle eyed Musgrave warily, wondering if he was being patronised; since he had come into the lordship recently it seemed to him that everyone was anxious to give him advice and that most of it was patronising when it wasn’t self-serving. Sometimes both.

  ‘What has this to do with our expedition?’ he asked sourly and Jack Musgrave kept his smile, even as he thought what a sow’s arse the boy was.

  But the boy had a slew of relations clustering jealously round him, all called Oswin or Cuthbert it seemed, and his late da, the bold Baron Ogle, had managed to get himself slain at Ancrum and leave the estates to a callow eighteen-year-old. The Ogles were stout supporters of King Henry on the eastern Border and Musgrave needed their good grace.

  ‘It has everything, your lordship,’ he managed, staring round the faces; they were all the same, that Ogle stamp of sharp chin, wire-thin lips and the sort of eyes which were considered large and handsome when young and turned every middle-aged face to frog.

  ‘I have thrown a line in a decent trout pool,’ Cuthbert Ogle offered and Musgrave gave him a brief look, then ignored him; Cuthbert was a mere clerk, for all the family name and had contrived to get himself captured at Ancrum. He had brought the old Baron’s body back for burial at Bothal and considered himself to be the new Lord Ogle’s most trusted advisor.

  ‘No doubt, Master Ogle,’ he said. ‘Following the ways of your betters is laudable in one of lesser birth.’

  Cuthbert fumed and seemed on the point of spitting bile in reply – but this was Mad Jack Musgrave, the Bastard’s Buzzard of Bewcastle and he did not have the belly for it. Musgrave seemed almost disappointed when he did not, but the young Lord Ogle noted Cuthbert’s disorder with some satisfaction, for he was tired of the man’s endless, obsequious advice.

  ‘The true mark of lordship,’ Musgrave continued airily, ‘is the ability to adapt the ways of those who have no finer breeding – yet avoid compromising station or honour.’

  He paused and nodded to the man next to him.

  ‘Master Sabin is without breeding,’ he went on and smiled. ‘He will, I know, forgive me for mentioning it, but let is also be said that such a lack of bloodline does not detract from his many skills.’

  Master Sabin’s face was as blank as a new wall, even under the weight of all the stare now turned on it; he did not as much as blink his olive-pip eyes, nor take them from Musgrave’s face. Framed by the iced wings of his hair, his own face seemed something badly carved from old oak.

  ‘Master Sabin,’ Musgrave continued, ‘knows how to extract a bothersome pike from a decent trout pool. It does not involve tedious hours of hook, line and coaxing and some would say it does the art of fishing little favour.’

  They were all watching Sabin, but were disappointed to see nothing at all. Not a flicker on that bog-water brown face with the grooved lines at the corner of his mouth, which the neat-trimmed iron beard did not quite hide. Not so much as a slight toss of a head cossetted in a fine, brimmed cap of cramoisie which, on the hanging knives of his long white hair, looked like a drop of blood on snow.

  There was silence for a long moment, though the gap in conversation was mercifully covered by the neigh and clamour of the camp which surrounded the half-built house at Eglingham.

  There were skeins of red-liveried men in it, all brought by the Ogle master of Eglingham – better known as Captain Luke Ogle from the Earl of Hertford’s army and commanding a Company of Hertford’s own liveried Band. They had been lent to Musgrave for this one important purpose.

  Which seemed to be fishing as far as the young Lord Ogle could make out. He sighed, eventually, when he saw nothing more would be forthcoming without a new question. So he asked it, gritting his teeth at the benevolent uncle smile from Musgrave, a man he was starting to detest worse than Cuthbert.

  ‘You rid yourself of a troublesome pike at night, young Lord,’ Musgrave declared. ‘Taking a torch and a boat if need be. You pass the former over the top of the pool, which then makes everything clear, right to the bottom where fish sleep. Yes, they do, gentlemen. Pike included. If you wake them, they swim to the light. If they do not, they remain still. Mazed, you see? Either way, they can be easily netted and removed.’

  He looked round triumphantly.

  ‘That is what we are doing here. Master Sabin is Chancellor of the Company of the Sable Rose of Captain General Fabrizio Maramaldo and has agreed a contract which makes that well-known company the torch.’

  ‘We know their burning qualities – saw it at Akeld, to the Wallis. That was part of the contract?’

  That was Captain Luke Ogle, wearing Hertford’s red coat livery to match his face, it seemed. Choleric, Musgrave thought, over the outrages perpetrated at Akeld. Or that he has been taken from the Scotch wars and sent here to be commanded by me. Or perhaps because we are encamped round his half-built new house at Eglingham, ruining what gardens he has been trying to create.

  ‘The necessary flame in the torch,’ Musgrave answered eventually, with a slight dismissive wave. ‘When the Wallis rise up from the bottom of their pool to investigate, Captain General Maramaldo will occupy their attention until we, like a net, scoop them all up.’

  He paused and beamed.

  ‘Thus ending another Catholic rebellion in the north, to the happiness of my Lord Hertford and the king.’

  ‘Catholic rebellion?’ Luke Ogle said flatly. ‘A brace of nuns and the Wallis? And you sent by the Dacre from the West March to see it ended? Still, I can see why Dacre would mislike the Wallis – did they not burn the Bastard of Lanercost’s land claims on the Wallis in Berwick?’

  ‘Lord Dacre of Lanercost,’ Musgrave replied pointedly and everyone heard the iron creep into his voice. ‘is not involved in this. No Dacre is. The proof of Catholic involvement came from the office of the Lord Chancellor himself, by way of one of his trusted commissioners, Thomas Horner. Nuns from Glastonbury, no less, travelled to the north to spread sedition. D’you think my Lord Hertford would have sent you under my command with his own men if he did not think this had the possibility of becoming a second Pilgrimage of Grace, Captain?’

  Mention of that event, less than eight years ago, clicked teeth shut; the popular uprising in the north against Fat Henry’s dissolution of Catholic monasteries had been quelled viciously and black heads and haunches still decorated gatehouse spikes from Carlisle to York.

  Luke Ogle was enough of a Captain to know when to push an attack and when to retire; he merely blinked like a soporific owl, then turned to his kin and master, the young Lord Ogle.

  ‘My Lord, I will see to the troops. When do we march?’

  ‘When I say,’ interrupted Musgrave and no one missed the steel clash of his tone. ‘We are a day from Akeld and, when Captain General Maramaldo sends word that he is firmly engaged, then we shall move in on the mazed Wallis men, smash them to ruin and spoil their famed tower of Twa Corbi
es.’

  The captain straightened while Lord Ogle tried to find words to express his outrage, but politely. Finally, the captain bowed to his fish-mouthed lord and nodded sourly to Musgrave and Sabin.

  ‘Remember Broomhouse,’ he said in a low voice, turned on his heel and left Musgrave fuming in his wake.

  ‘By God,’ he managed eventually and everyone heard the shake in his voice, though no one was fooled that it was anything other than anger under tight rein. ‘Yon officer needs a lesson in protocol.’

  ‘There has been a sufficiency of lessons,’ the young Lord Ogle declared suddenly, rising from his seat and gathering up a fine short-cloak. ‘Fishing being the least of them.’

  He nodded curtly to Musgrave and went out, trailed by the swarm of relations. Last to leave was Cuthbert, who smirked at Musgrave.

  ‘I think you have annoyed the Baron Ogle, my lord,’ he declared.

  ‘How is that working out for you?’ Musgrave replied, bland as secret venom. ‘The thinking.’

  Cuthbert frowned, scowled and scuttled; Sabin laughed.

  ‘Broomhouse,’ he said flatly. ‘Why do folk constantly carp about that place?’

  Musgrave noted the twist of grin, the dismissive attitude and remembered that it was Maramaldo who had done the deed, though Lord Eure had taken the blame, since it was his overall command. Eure had paid the price for it, of course – hung on a tree by the vengeful Scots after Ancrum. He mentioned it, almost idly, to Sabin.

  ‘So I understand,’ Sabin replied in his clipped, tainted English. ‘It was not Maramaldo himself, you understand, it was me. Which is why I am curious – we burned many other places as well as this Broomhouse.’

  Musgrave poured wine to cover his momentary lapse of concentration; he had not realised Sabin had had a personal hand in the matter, but it did not surprise him. The man presented himself as the perjink Chancellor of a mercenary company – the person trusted by his Captain General to negotiate the details of contracts and to be a conduit to the men of the Company – but he was an old mercenary, Musgrave thought, marinaded in sin and blood.