Burning the Water

by Robert Low

  Which was only the least of it, Batty thought – Naples was not the only city where Maramaldo had ‘treated virgins and married women ignominiously, as if they were prostitutes and slaves to be basely sold’.

  Maramaldo did not want any new stain showing up the old and soiling his chances of joining Fat Henry’s army, so he would slaughter no nuns or weans for Musgrave and certainly no Batty Coalhouse for Rafael Sabin.

  It came to Batty, as he sat at the scarred table idly turning over discarded Primero hands, that there was as much admiration as hatred in his consideration of Maramaldo. He might dress like a brothel pimp, insist he had been knighted personally by the Pope and strut as the very font of chivalry – yet Dux pertissimus was a title Maramaldo also revelled in and that had been fairly earned – Most Experienced Commander. Dux cautissimus was another – Most Prudent Commander and he valued that even more, for employers liked their paid Captain Generals to be more Fabius The Delayer than Alexander The Great.

  Most of which was unsaid between them and all of it understood. Maramaldo turned and waved, bringing a gilded clank of soldiery up carrying a familiar cylinder of leather, scuffed and battered now.

  ‘I make a condotta with you, Balthie,’ he declared, grinning. ‘This rich payment and the freedom of your nun and children – just the one nun, Balthie, for the other I will keep. In return you will find a way to end the condotta with Musgrave which does not involve me breaking my bond.’

  Batty eyed the cylinder sourly. No gift to return that which was stolen, he thought. Especially since the likes of Maramaldo could make no claim on such holdings as those wee parchment Rolls represented – bad enough that some Scotch Lord might, let alone a foreign blackguard such as the Captain General.

  He said nothing, all the same though he knew Maramaldo read his face well enough.

  ‘I also return your weapons and personal possessions. Your horse, saddlery and accoutrements. You have one hour to arrange yourself and appraise the nun of matters and a ten-day to achieve all – she will, of course remain. Every good condotta requires assurance.’

  ‘And Rafael?’

  Maramaldo’s eyes went a colour that had no name and which Batty did not care for.

  ‘He remains with Musgrave, for the moment. Perhaps he suspects I know of his treachery – nessuno me lo ficca in culo!’

  He recovered, breathing hard.

  ‘Horner will live,’ he went on, ‘for the Spanish whore-nun is skilled enough with physicking and I do not want him dead. I shall free him back to his Lord Chancellor once we are safely gone from this place, for this Musgrave fellow wants no survivors inclined to link him to the nuns he betrayed here. One his own kin, I believe.’

  He glanced slyly at Batty.

  ‘Musgrave thinks they are all already dead – nuns, kinder and Master Horner. This will become truth if you fail. I will risk the wrath of another Broomhouse over it, you must believe me, Balthie.’

  ‘I might just take these Deeds and run,’ Batty pointed out and saw Maramaldo’s slow smile; he flushed. He knows I will not and voicing it aloud shows I have no plans for it. Aye, push down on my shoulders God, Batty thought bitterly. See if they are wide and strong enough to bear this.

  Bliddy Sister Faith…

  She was all perjink and proper in the upper floor of Akeld, hands folded in her lap and the bairns gathered round her skirts – all save the eldest boy, Daniel, Batty saw. He did not ask where he was, but told her what had happened and waited until she had finished a prayer for Horner. Jack The Lad Horner will need it, Batty thought, as well as Sister Charity’s skills.

  Who did it?

  It was the first of the many questions she asked, quiet and calm, twisting away at her rosary ring. He told her the name and why Rafael Sabin did it. He held out the silk-wrapped container with the phials, returned by Maramaldo who did not comment on them, even if he knew what they were. Batty was not surprised since he scarcely understood what they were himself, only that Sister Faith valued them highly.

  But she was a mad old biddy who looked quietly at what he offered and then shook her head.

  ‘God gave them into your hand to keep safe,’ she declared. ‘It is not safe yet to release them to me.’

  Batty wanted to throw them at her, shouting that he clearly recalled her shoving them at him in the dark and marching out to the dubious mercy of Maramaldo. So God had not given them at all…

  Yet here they all were, mercied by Maramaldo, a man whose murder of arch-enemy Ferruci in Italy fifteen years before was now spawning the term maramaldesco to describe someone so fell cruel he would keep stabbing a dead man.

  Perhaps there was God in it after all, Batty thought and then hoped He would remain in it, for Maramaldo’s personal Devil would drive him to carry out his threat against Sister Faith and the bairns if all else failed. There was a limit to Maramaldo’s good sense and temper and the pox ate it daily.

  ‘What will you do, Master Coalhouse?’

  It was asked with no more emphasis than if she wanted to know how many cards he wanted at Primero and Batty had no true answer to it.

  ‘Ride,’ he said and she heard him do it, leaving a faint sound of singing behind him like a waft of incense.

  ‘As I was walking all alane,

  I heard twa corbies makin a mane;

  The tane unto the ither say,

  Whar sall we gang and dine the-day?’

  A few miles away, at Twa Corbies…

  They watched the figure caper along the crenelated roof, scrambling up the slick steep-pitched slates now and then to get higher. They listened to the wild singing and Lord Ogle leaned on his ornate stick and cocked an eyebrow.

  ‘It is my fervent wish the old beldame tumbles down.’

  Musgrave agreed, for the old beldame was giving the men collywobbles with what some thought were hurled spells; Maramaldo’s hard-eyed paid-men were the worst, creeping around making crosses or clutching amulets with both hands. He was tempted to give the order to shoot her down, but that would not sit well with men determined on no hint of Broomhouse.

  ‘In ahint yon auld fail dyke,

  I wot there lies a new slain knight;

  And nane do ken that he lies there,

  But his hawk, his hound and his lady fair.’

  ‘What is she chanting?’ Sabin asked, frowning and Musgrave told him – some local verses concerning murder. No spell at all, he added, though it would be a benison on all of them if Sabin would dispose of her and the entire place.

  ‘My Captain General says no,’ Sabin replied, nodding in the direction of the stolid-faced captain called Juup. ‘He has sent his emissary to tell me this.’

  Something in Sabin’s voice made Musgrave look at him. They stood in a knot of men, mostly Ogles, who were listlessly pointing out the salient defences of Twa Corbies. Most were agreed it was a hard place to crack open, for all the long hundreds of men they had surrounding the place, for they had no idea how to shell the defenders out without causing more Broomhouse outrage, which was the one matter they were all fervently agreed upon not doing.

  ‘Even if they are Catholics,’ Luke Ogle kept saying sarcastically, shooting glances at Musgrave each time he did so. Musgrave took Sabin by one elbow and steered him out of earshot of the others.

  ‘Is there a problem regarding the Captain General?’

  There was, but Sabin was not about to admit it. There were five captains missing from the men clustered round Twa Corbies and all were well known to Sabin – were, in fact, the ones he had gathered to his Cause. Rafael did not believe in coincidence.

  He was making dismissive sounds and gestures when a rider appeared, jouncing like a badly-packed sack on a donkey, his legs bare, knobbed and unhealthily white, a robe hauled up to let him ride; Sabin knew the robed figure of Cornelius at once and felt a lurch that felled him to silence. Cornelius was another he had been working on.

  Cornelius slid off the horse, buckled at the knees for a moment, then gathered himself an
d scurried towards Sabin, who saw the whey face and its unhealthy sheen of sweat; the lurch dropped his bowels away.

  ‘Meinheer Cornelius,’ Musgrave began and then stopped, astonished, as Cornelius ignored him and stared goggle-eyed at Sabin.

  ‘Tannhauser,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Jacob. Ruggiero, Langlands and Louis Limousin. He has them all.’

  Musgrave saw Sabin’s face seem to stretch and set, so that the cheeks grew white over the bones beneath.

  ‘He was not sure of me – though he will be now.’

  Aha, thought Musgrave. Master Sabin has overreached himself and Maramaldo has clipped his wings. Interesting…

  Then it grew more interesting still.

  ‘Horner and the nuns are alive,’ Cornelius went on, striding back to the horse and dragging a book from a bag fastened to the saddle. ‘Coalhouse, too.’

  ‘The nuns and Horner, you say?’ Musgrave demanded and Cornelius spared him a brief glance, long enough to appraise and then ignore.

  ‘Coalhouse – is he there, with Maramaldo?’

  Sabin’s voice was an edge that cut through Musgrave’s outraged demands for his question to be answered.

  ‘No,’ Cornelius replied, clutching the book to him. ‘Maramaldo let him go. Some errand – failure will mean the death of the nuns, Horner and those execrable children.’

  ‘Errand?’ demanded Musgrave and, at last, had an answer from the cream-faced little man.

  ‘North. No idea what. He rode out an hour ago and he no sooner had than Maramaldo started rounding folk up. My God, Rafael, what he is doing to them… I knew I would be next, so I came here.’

  Sabin could imagine, though he did not want to. He felt a hand on him and looked down to see Cornelius plucking at his doublet, face wide-eyed and pleading.

  ‘Rafael – what do we do? We must flee – you must save me. You got me into this…’

  Rafael stepped back, letting Cornelius stumble. He looked at Musgrave.

  ‘Take your men,’ Musgrave said, seeing the possibilities at once. ‘Stop Coalhouse – do what you will with him. If you do, the others die and all is served.’

  ‘Give me some more men.’

  ‘For a one-armed man on his own?’

  Musgrave’s voice was a harsh scald and he waved a dismissive hand as he did so.

  ‘None other than your paid-men – there must be no involvement of the Musgrave nor Dacre in this or, God forbid, King Henry. You have a sufficiency of your own.’

  A dozen, Sabin thought bitterly. It would be enough, provided Balthie did not fall in with any of his kin on the way. Besides, it was the only way – if Batty returned to the shelter of Maramaldo there was no possibility of getting to him, or of Musgrave getting rid of his own problems.

  He nodded and turned away, leaving Cornelius floundering in his wake.

  Musgrave felt the eyes on him and turned to see all the Ogles looking at him. Ogling him, he suddenly thought with a dangerous urge to giggle. Instead, he nodded and smiled, bland as new milk and moved back to their company.

  ‘Problems, my lord?’ Luke Ogle asked with vicious hope. Musgrave smiled even more widely.

  ‘I was hoping to persuade Master Cornelius to perform some magicals of his own on yon woman,’ he declared and watched people cross themselves piously, shooting glances at the scuttling figure.

  ‘Burn her on the roof, no doubt,’ the young Lord Ogle answered thoughtfully and folk blanched at the idea of a burning woman on a Border roof until the lord realised what he had said and started to flush and bluster.

  ‘A simple gag would suffice,’ Musgrave offered and folk laughed uneasily as Trottie danced on the roof and jeered down at the men unable to get in, though there was only her, two men, a dog called Diamant and a boy called Will Wallis inside.

  ‘Ye’ll sit on his white hause-bane,

  And I’ll pike oot his bonny blue een;

  Wi ae lock o his gowden hair

  We’ll theek oor nest whan it grows bare.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Later, at Kirknewton near Akeld…

  In the time it took him to murmur the entire song, Batty could see the solid block of the kirk tower and the huddle of cruck houses gathered on it like chicks round a hen. There was a fringing of fret-leafed oak and some men working sheep whistled up their dogs and vanished, leaving the ewes to jostle in the bracken before returning to a meander of grazing.

  A mere Scots mile and a bit from Akeld, Batty thought, so they would have heard the noise of it – mayhap some of Maramaldo’s men rode out on a forage and they are wary of more.

  He looked around, not anxious to encounter any, but the haar was rolling in to drown the light; Fiskie stirred and muttered.

  Batty patted him, glad to be reunited with a beast he had not hoped to see again. Almost as glad to find his gear, though one dagg was missing and he was woefully lacking in powder and shot. He nudged Fiskie on down the track, seeing the ruts deepen, following it round to where it became fringed with wet-black drystane dyke; by the time he had reached this point, the haar had thickened and rolled in like a blanket of wet linen. He shivered.

  ‘Mony a one for him makes mane,’ Batty crooned softly, peering this way and that. ‘But nane sall ken whar he is gane…’

  ‘Oer his white banes, whan they are bare.

  The wind sall blaw for evermair.’

  The voice was deep and resonant, coming right out of the milk-mist and seeming so close that Batty cursed and jerked the rein so that Fiskie snorted. A figure loomed, formed from shadow into a tall man with a face like a benign slewdog and a long black garment which Batty recognised as vestments.

  The wee minister of St Paulinus’s kirk, Batty thought, hearing his heart banging.

  ‘A goodly song that,’ the vicar declared, ‘and apt since it is called Twa Corbies, at least hereabouts. Who are ye?’

  ‘Who asks?’

  ‘The vicar of St Paulinus’s kirk – and the man told by running sheep-men that raiders from the war around Akeld and Twa Corbies are coming down on us. Yet I see a horde greatly diminished to a drookit auld man with a single arm.’

  ‘Batty Coalhouse is the name under all this drip,’ Batty answered. ‘Your sheep-men echo the itch down my backbone, so I am supposing your raiding horde will be here presently – I would gather what flock you have into yon stout-walled kirk and bar the door.’

  The cleric squinted a little and the nodded.

  ‘I did not think you came to adore our adoring Magi,’ he replied, ‘fine carving though it is – the Magi have belted plaids, no less, did you know that? Will you light down from yon stot and take shelter? You look peaked to me.’

  Batty felt peaked, but there was no question of stepping down and taking shelter, though he thanked the vicar, who glanced at the sky.

  ‘And God said let the waters of Heaven be gathered unto one place,’ he intoned and then grinned wryly, a graveyard of teeth that echoed the tombstones around him. ‘As it says in my good Myles Coverdale book, though it omits to say that the Lord let said waters be gathered all in this place.’

  ‘There was hail,’ Batty remembered and felt silly for saying it; he felt light-headed and fey, so he shook himself like a dog and nudged Fiskie on.

  Peaked, he thought. Aye, I am peaked… and he sneezed. He almost brought Fiskie to a halt with the shock of it. A sneeze. Well, it might equally be a bad humour brought on by rain, a herald of snotters and sweating – or it might be the start of an all-too-short visit of the Death. He tried to feel for swellings in his armpits but could not be sure.

  Not that it mattered, he thought dully, since the sheep-men have confirmed what I feared – I am followed. It will be Sabin, for certes, out to prevent me…

  From what? The question hung and swung, leering at his poor pretensions of being Galahad. What in the name of Christ am I supposed to do to halt a war?

  And the word popped into his head as if placed – blackmeal.

  He felt the strap of the scuffed, b
attered leather cylinder like a brand and mulled it over. Dacre might be persuaded to leash Musgrave for some richer manors in England. Might be dazzled by it to offer more, even…

  Lanercost, then and Thomas the Bastard; the wool in his head fluffed up even as he turned Fiskie to what he thought was west, with a drift of south in it. There was a time when he left the world and came back to it, swaying in the saddle and confused about time and place, when Fiskie stopped.

  Batty had a few moments of dragging at his shredded thoughts before he realised the mist had lifted just in time to stop Fiskie at the bank of a slow-flowing stream. Too wide to jump and, if Fiskie was anything to go by, too deep to ford.

  ‘Aye, aye,’ he soothed, patting the beast’s mane. Everything dripped and he was soaked through – shivering, too, he noted. He had a long moment of squint and consider before he concluded he was headed north and east and that this might well be the Till, a branch of the Tweed. North of where he wanted to be and he cursed: left to his own, Fiskie was headed to the only home he had known, which was Powrieburn across the border.

  ‘Tweed said to Till

  ‘What gars ye rin sae still?’

  Says Till to Tweed,

  ‘Though ye rin wi’ speed

  And I rin slaw

  Whar ye droon yin man

  I droon twa…’

  He found himself giggling at the old rhyme and caught himself, though he took a long time about controlling the tremble. Ague, he thought, for sure. And sneezed. Then he turned south, hoping he could stay awake.

  The moor stretched, tawny and green and glistening in the watery new sunlight, as if there never had been hail or the sort of rain that presaged the Flood. A wind sighed, but it was colder than a witch’s tit and set Batty shivering again. His chest felt tight and pained. He coughed up a gob and spat it free of him.

  He moved in and out of the world, finally emerging into a bone-chill wind as Fiskie plodded stolidly up a hill, right across a spring-ploughed field. It was only after a moment of head-wobbling deliberation that Batty worked out it must be Branxton Hill. The cairn on it was confirmation, for it was not all made from stone – some of those smooth, round white shapes were the skulls of those who had died thirty-odd years ago.