Burning the Water

by Robert Low

  Then he levered himself up with a grunt. The bastard horse was gone, he thought. Fiskie would have bided like the good beast he was, but the borrowed one had simply sauntered off.

  There was fighting all round, for he could hear it like a muffled brawl through the rain hiss. This is no place for Mistress Kohlhase’s wee lad, he thought and started to move to where he thought the guns lay, shuffling through the grey sheet of water; sooner this was done, sooner he could be away from the middle of Maramaldo’s army. The thought of that brought more shiver than the cold rain.

  He fell over a bucket and cursed, but when he began to lever himself back up his one good hand closed on a shaft and he found himself looking at a mallet, a great wooden affair with dented caps of iron. Used to hammer free the locks that kept the wheels fixed – fourteen hundred pounds of recoiling cannon is not something you want rolling about – it was now just litter.

  The gunners had fled, leaving buckets, wad-screws, spongers, rammers and a botefoux, the fuse match in it soaked to ruin. Batty moved to the gun as through a waterfall, laid the mallet at his feet and fished in the drench of his apostles until he produced the spike, four inches of iron nail. He worried the sharp end of the spike into the touch hole, fetched up the mallet and banged it hard; he had to hit it six or seven times and the last one was a poor stroke, bending the final third of nail sideways.

  Good enough, Batty thought exultantly. Pick that out, ye moudiewart bastards…

  He reached the second gun, colliding with the front of the long barrel and just as he thought of dropping the mallet and fumbling for another spike, something lunged out of the grey mist and made him rear back; the length of backsword meant for his face rasped over the ornate muzzle, followed by the hand and the desperate snarl of face behind it.

  Batty gave the face the mallet with all the force his arm could muster; there was a spurt of blood and teeth and the man vanished, shrieking. Beyond him, though, Batty heard cursing and clashing; the fight was closing in on the guns as Maramaldo’s men recovered themselves.

  A horse cantered out, squealed and veered away trailing reins Batty tried in vain to grab, dropping the mallet to do so. Cursing, he fumbled out the spike, slithered up the rainwashed length of the gun and found the touch hole. He worried the spike in and then had to go back for the mallet.

  When he found it, men were careering madly around, wraiths in the grey mist of rain; Batty ducked under the muzzle, to put the gun between him and this new fighting. He moved up the length of it again, listening to the rasping breathing, the curses and wild, wet chopping sounds.

  He stumbled over a foot and thumped heavily on his bad leg, which made him curse and shoulder his length into the wheel – a good, dished wheel, he noted. Not perpendicular, which warped out of true with the weight and the forces expressed on it, but this was a Scots gun taken as plunder and stolen by Maramaldo. The Scots bought in good guns, well carriaged – though, unless they had a Batty Coalhouse, they served them badly…

  All of it went racing through Batty’s head in the time it took his eyes to travel up the fine leather of the long boot he had tripped over, up to the spreading, soaked breeks with their extravagant panes to the gilded half-armour, all fluted and roped up to the lace collar. The face above it, yellow as clotted cream, smiled a twist of grin at him.

  ‘Ill met, Balthie. It seems you have taken pains to hunt me out – well here I am. Though you will find me no easy mark.’

  Which had more truth than lie in it, as Batty saw; Maramaldo had a length of steel in one fist, but he seemed dazed and unable to rise. Batty raised the mallet.

  Here was his hated enemy, the focus of all his bad cess for as long as he could remember. The stump of his arm seemed suddenly to be on fire.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Later, at Akeld…

  Who did?

  It was what Sister Faith asked when Batty came to say his farewells and was such an echo of that moment when he had stood in front of Maramaldo, hammer in hand that he had to shake his head at the way she could read his mind.

  He had stood for what seemed a long time with the rain pouring off him, staring into the drenched face of his hated enemy – then he had raised the hammer and whacked it down. Once. Twice. Three. Four. Five.

  Each one had made Maramaldo twitch and driven the spike deep into the fuse hole. Then there had been shouts – here he is. Rescue…

  Batty had let the hammer drop from his sodden fingers and Maramaldo’s surprise betrayed itself only by the merest twitch of a wet brow.

  ‘If you did not arrange for me to be here,’ Batty said to the slumped Captain General as shapes loomed out of the grey, snarling and vengeful. They lumbered up, paused and piled on him.

  ‘Who did?’

  The bellow had the last of its air driven out by kicks and punches; Batty’s last coherent moment before the white sear of agony blossomed round him, was Maramaldo’s voice.

  ‘Alive. You cunny-licking bitch-ticks – alive.’

  Who do you think did?

  Maramaldo had asked that when Batty arrived back in a world of pain struggling up from where he lay. He grunted with the hurt that caused him and looked at Maramaldo, sitting opposite in dry and splendid clothes.

  ‘Someone treacherous,’ he muttered and touched a swollen lip. ‘This is bursted. You might have said “alive and unharmed”.’

  ‘Consider yourself Dame Fortune’s favourite,’ Maramaldo said coldly, ‘that there was at least “alive” in what I said.’

  ‘I might have bashed in what little brains you possess,’ Batty reminded him, feeling a twinge in his sole elbow that spoke of a kick. He still wore his soaked clothes, too, and looked sourly at the dried and preening Maramaldo.

  ‘You have hunted me long and hard,’ Maramaldo replied, ‘so it was a mystery to me why you did not – save that you would have my length of blade in your paunch.’

  ‘Aye, aye,’ Batty answered wearily, ‘we would have ruined each other’s day, sure enough – but the true reason is discovered at the last. Neither of us sought the other here. Someone else brought that about, for their own ends.’

  Despite himself, the cold made Batty shiver and Maramaldo shifted slightly to pluck up a cloak, which he flung casually; Batty wrapped it round him, dextrous with one hand so that Maramaldo smiled wryly.

  ‘You are clever with that one wing,’ he declared. ‘I did you a favour, it seems.’

  ‘Pray it is never returned,’ Batty answered sourly, then glanced at the cloak, which was a virulent green with red trim. ‘Unlike this cloak, which will keep me warm but is too loud to sleep in.’

  ‘You never had taste or style,’ Maramaldo answered, rising and spreading his arms. ‘What d’ye think, then – every inch Mars, is it not?’

  Black boots to the knee, with golden spurs fitted with small bells that tinkled when he walked. Fat breeks the colour of dried blood, paned to spill a white silk lining in gouts like gushes of water. A doublet to match, ribboned at the shoulders and over it a breastplate of fluted steel, gilded and ornamented with cherubs and fruit. A broad-brimmed hat with a soaring panache of frothing white plumage.

  ‘You look like a whoremaster with his head stuck up an egret’s arse.’

  Maramaldo beamed. ‘The very look the Sable Rose demands… come. There is someone you need to meet.’

  They had walked out together, as unlikely a pairing as wolf and dog and so ill-dressed they would have been stoned in any Edinburgh wynd. Here, no one noted it and only acknowledged them at all because one was the Captain General.

  In the yard, the sun steamed a mist from the drench of Biblical weather which was now a distant memory. Insects whined and buzzed, smoking round Maramaldo’s carrying chair which was occupied by a slumped figure; closer to, Batty saw it was Horner and marvelled at the man’s temerity. Then he saw it was not Horner’s choice and that he would have quit the throne if his hands had not been nailed to the armrests by Batty’s remaining spikes.

 
Maramaldo stopped and looked at the slumped figure, then reached out one gauntleted hand to take Horner by the hair and raise his head up. The face, Batty thought, looked like a bag of blood left a day too long; the bloodstains on the armrests were still new and bright.

  ‘He did not resist very long,’ Maramaldo declared. ‘Told all he knew before the first spike had gone all the way through. I did the other, just to show illness does not temper me mild.’

  Batty was chilled by the cold viciousness of it, but then thought he had been too long apart from the man and had forgotten much. Maramaldo saw it and turned a mirthless smile on Batty.

  ‘Of course, I could not leave him half-fastened, so we spiked his other hand. I beat his face for the pleasure in it; I do not care for Master Horner of Mells.’

  He paused and stared hard at Batty.

  ‘We are the same, you and I,’ he declared and Batty wished he could muster a counter to it.

  ‘Yet we are opposites,’ Maramaldo went on. ‘Fire and water. Earth and air…’

  ‘Sane and mad,’ Batty almost muttered aloud, but did not. Maramaldo gave up searching for another example.

  ‘We are both… lacking. You an arm, me a heart, some would say.’

  ‘A soul.’

  This Batty could not keep behind his lips and Maramaldo frowned, then shrugged.

  ‘So your wee nun says. The one hot for Christ, not the poxed one.’

  It was the first intimation Batty had that the Sisters were alive and he felt strangely raised by it.

  ‘No matter the missing part, it separates us both from good company.’ Maramaldo declared. ‘So we share that, at least.’

  He shook Horner’s bloody head to make the man moan – and wake him, Batty saw.

  ‘I took a condotta from this Musgrave fellow,’ Maramaldo went on. ‘We were to bait the local trolls, this Wallis tribe, let them to gather and be the anvil to a hammer of King’s Men.’

  Batty had worked this much out and saw, from the easy way men moved around him, that the fighting was long done. Poor John Wallis, he thought, trapped by Musgrave and Dacre cunning; it doesn’t pay to bait the Red Bull.

  ‘The details were arranged by Rafael,’ Maramaldo went on and then jerked hard on Horner’s hair, making the man whine and spit through his broken lips. ‘And this one. Rafael remained, as is proper, to ensure the details.’

  Rafael remained as hostage, Batty corrected silently. A normal arrangement.

  ‘Horner brought my copy of the condotta, all Latined. Cornelius read it and it was as agreed – in return for service for a certain period la-la-la-la the Company of the Sable Rose would be paid la-la-la-la-la and guaranteed of the good grace of His Majesty King Henry, to be included in his army bound for France.’

  ‘Aye,’ Batty agreed. ‘There is better shine to be had in France.’

  ‘Best of all in Saxony,’ Maramaldo answered, ‘which is the new cockpit of war after the Italies. But France will do for now.’

  He jerked again and Horner groaned.

  ‘No mention of Batty Coalhouse in it,’ Maramaldo went on, cold and vicious as a north wind. ‘Not in the copy I had. But Musgrave had another, it seems, which Master Horner knew of. One with a name in it – yours, Balthie.’

  This time the jerk was savage, the gauntleted fingers twisted hard into the hair, so that Horner whimpered.

  ‘A private arrangement,’ Maramaldo went on. ‘Who did it? Eh, Horner. Who did it?’

  Batty knew the answer before Horner whimpered it out in a puff of bloody froth.

  ‘Sabin.’

  Maramaldo let the head drop, wiped the gauntlet on one of Horner’s shoulders.

  ‘There you have it,’ he answered bitterly. ‘Treachery from one’s own chancellor.’

  ‘Hardly that,’ Batty replied wryly. ‘Rafael Sabin would scarcely think you so set against such an addendum.’

  Maramaldo’s face was a white chill that Batty was hard put to stare into.

  ‘My decision to make. Not his. Not ever his.’

  Aye, he was right in that, Batty thought. When your wee right hand begins to handsel deals on his own, it means he considers his master lacking. In a company of mercenaries, that is not to be tolerated.

  ‘Rafael must hate you in handfuls to have risked this,’ Maramaldo said softly, which thought had only just occurred to Batty, too; the cold sweat slithered the length of him.

  ‘He follows his master’s lead like a fawning wee dog,’ Batty said, hearing the croak of it from his dry throat. Maramaldo shifted from one foot the other and suddenly seemed weary.

  ‘I do not hate you, Balthie,’ he answered, ‘though continually hearing of your desire to track me down is a scrape. You might consider why you never did, Meinheer – I was not in hiding.’

  Batty did not like to dwell on why he had always seemed to miss Maramaldo, no matter how he tried. Like the burning nun, he thought, I can always be diverted by seeming good sense.

  Maramaldo shifted his weight a little – his bladder is bothering him again, Batty thought.

  ‘You were nothing to me, though the business of your limb was… messy,’ he said, as if was discussing coppicing a tree. ‘Done in anger and not a little pain – you beat me with a ramrod if you recall.’

  ‘Almost to death,’ Batty admitted. ‘I am sorry for the “almost” in it.’

  Maramaldo’s smile was twisted and humourless.

  ‘You see? The same, you and I.’

  He hitched the weight of the fancy half-armour and sighed.

  ‘The condotta forces me to remain until this new tower – what is it called? Two Crows? Yes, that. It is to be reduced. Since my guns will have to be drilled out of your spikes, this will take some time and I am not pleased. I wish to be gone from this pestilential country.’

  ‘The feeling is mutual, I am sure – but Musgrave will hold you to your condotta.’

  Maramaldo nodded.

  ‘Then you must find a way to end it,’ he declared. ‘I will not risk the good grace of King Henry or the promised fees at this late stage, so someone must call this business off. You know these people, this country.’

  I was wondering why I was still in the world, Batty thought. They sat at a scarred table torn out of Akeld and littered with a spread of papers and maps, old cups and cracked glasses, the harrigles of a meal and spilled red wine. The usual remains of a conference of captains, which had turned as ever to Primero and wagering; the sight brought a sharp pang of remembrance. What had become of the old crew? LeBois, Desaix, Blymmedes the Greek… only Sabin and Maramaldo seemed to be left of the ones Batty recalled sitting at just such a table, cheating furiously at cards.

  Gone to the gusty breath of guns or the violation of blade or the silent, secret disease. Now new and younger men ordered Maramaldo’s company – and that was part of his problem, Batty realised.

  It was clear that whatever war had been waged was now done with, though the bulk of the Sable Rose was not here but moved to Twa Corbies, all save the guns. They sat morosely silent while men moved round them and hammers clanged, picking away at Batty’s spikes.

  They sat opposite one another, Batty and the man who had taken his arm and Sister Faith asked, later, why Maramaldo had not killed him out of hand. Was he not the fell cruel mercenary commander, anathemised by the Holy Father?

  That, Batty told her, was exactly why Maramaldo let me live. He had worried the same matter himself like a dog with a dug-up bone and only came firmly to the meat of it when Maramaldo looked at him over that littered, scarred table and said:

  ‘The condotta Rafael made is rotted. Rafael has betrayed me.’

  There it was, though the truth in it was that Maramaldo was rotted, poxed, without cure. He would live for years yet, each one marked by the decline of his acumen, crumbling bit by bit to the ruin of the Company.

  Maramaldo knew it, feared it, feared the young, hard men he led watching and waiting. These were not Desaix, Blymmedes and the like, who had come with the young Ma
ramaldo and knew him as well as any. These new captains only knew Maramaldo by reputation and when that started to tarnish…

  Maramaldo now saw the beginnings of it with Rafael, his trusted lieutenant who was starting to add secret codicils to agreements. It was a step from there to ousting the Captain General.

  Such things were normal enough, Batty recalled. The Company could vote one commander out and another in if they thought the new one could make a better fist of matters. The Companies themselves changed and split and reformed – Maramaldo’s had had many guises, the Sable Rose being only the newest; that black rose flag had once been a golden purse, potent symbol of the Company of Fortune and when Batty had been working guns for Maramaldo, he had done so in the Compagnie di Vendetta – the Company of Revenge.

  All led by Maramaldo, who could feel his iron grip slipping and whose mind was poxed enough to smoke up more fears than there were.

  There would be others involved, of course, captains Rafael had subverted to vote Maramaldo out, so Maramaldo needed success. He needed Musgrave’s coin to sugar men back to his side. He needed a new condotta with King Henry, transporting the Company and the guns it had stolen, no questions asked, back to the other side of the Channel – that contract would not, Batty was sure, be arranged by Rafael Sabin.

  But the biggest reason for Batty’s survival was that he was home, in the Border lands. He had kin here and even if Maramaldo was not exactly sure of how welcome Batty was in any of their houses, the kin-ties of the Borders was something he already knew well enough – a brace thousand and more Wallis men had turned out to fight him over a handful of stones and a waste of moorland. That had shocked him and Batty belonged to the Grahams, a more powerful Name than Wallis.

  Killing Batty would cause a feud Maramaldo did not care for; bad enough he had fired the country with a simple burning at Broomhouse without adding to the flames of it.

  After all, this was Maramaldo, trailing a funereal cloak of outrage behind him – rapine, arson, violent conduct, adultery, incest, parricide, uxoricide, sacrilege and heresy. In his home town of Naples they waited to hang him on the gloriously-worded charge of: ‘trattando ignominiosamente le vergeni e le matron a guise di meretrici e di schiave vilmente vendute’.