Burning the Water

by Robert Low

  I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ, His only son, our Lord…

  Later, in the long dark, she heard him grunt up the steps and started to breathe shallow, pretending sleep and wondering why he was here, fearful for the children though she did not really think he was as fell cruel as to murder them in their sleep.

  She smelled him close to her, a mix of leather and sweat, brandywine and Hungary Water. And heard him speak, soft and low and urgent, realising that he did not care whether she was asleep or awake and that the words were not for her. Himself perhaps – or even God.

  I think you may be a witch because after everything I have been it is my heart that is touched as I watch you and wonder if you are one who licks the backs of toads and sucks emeralds to preserve their beauty, even though you are hardly that, yet your soul is young Sister Faith and I have burned your likeness many times before now and I could reach out my hand now and snuff the life from you like the blowing of a candle but I won’t and want instead to set you free like the bird you are and your chicks with you for the salving of my own soul and yet we have only a one-armed angel at our command, an angel I made with blood and blade and anger…

  It rolled on and on, a soft muttering unholy prayer, a rill like a stream reaching spate. Then it stopped as suddenly as it began, there was a shifting and a thump and he was gone.

  Conceived by the Holy Spirit, she continued as if never interrupted, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried…

  And rose again to glory.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Next day, on the moor road to Norham…

  He sat on Fiskie and contemplated the parapet of the hill, brackened and turfed and studded with black boulders and wet sheep. Green Hill, they called it, which was a friendly name for something most remembered their old kin calling ‘Faerie’.

  It had stones on it older than God, Batty had heard, placed there by the Silent-Moving Folk and, behind it, a loop of the Tweed rolled sullen and slow. At the foot of it, directly in front of him, was a huddle of cruck and daub houses calling itself Horncliffe. Beyond that was Norham, its towers straining to be seen.

  Between the two sat a rider, no more than a wavered shape and Batty sighed. It had been too good a hope that he had evaded Sabin, but here was proof of the death of that – a man set to watch this way to Norham. There would be at least another close by, probably in a shelter by a fire, for they would not go in less than pairs, taking turns to watch. There would be others further out and when the signals went up, the whole pack, Sabin probably at their head, would come riding and that would be the end for Batty.

  He had ridden north from Alnwick, as close to Berwick as he dared before turning west, following the rain-dark ribbon of the old Wall, then branching off, closer to the Tweed. He’d hoped to come up on Norham all unnoticed, but had not relied on it.

  Stucley will be furious, Batty thought, when he finds his good doublet and gauntlets missing – my auld jack of plates will be poor compensation but he hoped to get it back in time; he missed the weight of it and the doublet had taken him a long time of awkward fastening to get into. He remembered the Elbe and getting out of that jack in less time that it took to curse the ambushers; he would never get out of this doublet in a day, even with help.

  It was a fine affair, green plush with gold wire, all padded and embroidered and went well with the cloak Batty had reluctantly taken from Maramaldo. Tucked under the cloak was his hat, with the panache of plume on it only slightly crushed; underneath that was his old, stained sark, still damp. His boots were old friends which leaked and creaked, all were still damp and he felt the insidious chill, the leach of sweat at odds with the shiver he felt. He coughed and spat a gob of something thick and noxious.

  He knew he looked like a lump of dung half-eaten by a papingo, but that was what he wanted – the look of a threadbare money-sojer of learning and skill, with an armoury of weapons that warned ne’er-do-wells that he was hard beneath the plumage.

  Better still, the doublet had an arm on the left, stuffed now with grass and covered with one of Stucley Taylor’s fine gauntlets at the end, the fingers of it stuck in Batty’s belt in a casual gesture.

  Now he was no longer one-armed, though he excited as much attention as he rode up to Horncliffe’s green, which was thronged with too many folk for such a wee place.

  The tootling and drums and raucous laughter gave it away in the end; there was a wedding feast, with a hog roasting on coals and barrels of ale. The noise grew subdued when Batty rode in, replaced by sullen and suspicious looks, which was no strange thing in a vill sitting just across the Tweed from folk they were at war with.

  A man stepped forward, hitching up his furred robe and trying to puff up for importance, his cinder and ash beard horse-brushed to make it lie against throat and chest.

  ‘Squire Paxton,’ he announced and Batty gave him a neck bow.

  ‘Balthazar Kohlhase,’ he answered, knowing the name was no lie and yet not all the truth, either. ‘On my way to Norham and my lord Richard Lee.’

  The Squire relaxed a little, thinking he had the measure of this stranger now. One of Lee’s masons or surveyors from the Germanies, an expert in building and fortifications – there was a deal of work going on at Norham, putting it back in order as a bulwark against the Scotch. Which was all to the good as far as Squire Paxton was concerned, so he beamed and bid Batty welcome.

  The bridegroom was a wheyfaced Weatherburn boy in uncomfortable finery, his lips like roses in a face made brosy because the impatient drunks who had been his friends had tried to get the garter off the bride, with much lewd comments besides.

  The bride was an Adair in a lace dress so old and passed down that the white of it had turned yellow as old bone, but she curtseyed neatly and was glad of the interruption which had saved her new husband from having to strike out. She had crumbs on her shoulders from having had a round cake crushed on her head for luck and clutched her half of a split coin; the groom had the other.

  Batty eyed the chaplet she wore and blinked away the hiss of slow match and Klett ghosts as he drank a stoup to her good health, for politeness sake and trying out the effect of his disguise a little. He would have to face the rider with it and it did no harm to let that man see him, as if known in this place.

  He asked, casually, who the man might be and the Adairs and Hobkirks, Weatherburns and Paxtons thronging the place all professed ignorance, though none liked the cut of the strange rider, who kept his distance even when approached. There was another, for sure, tending a fire close by.

  ‘Nae good,’ a red-cheeked Adair declared between belching. ‘Twa’ chiels, up to nae good.’

  The Squire was an old hand, who squinted milk-blue eyes, one at a time like the moon with wind on it; it was an old Border reiver’s trick for staring at the dangerous dark and Batty recognised it at once, knew it did not miss much.

  ‘Been here two days,’ the Squire said darkly. ‘A brace of them, watching and waiting and well-armed besides, with swords and pistols.’

  ‘Well that’s strange,’ Batty said jovially as the fiddlers struck up a tune. ‘I hear there is trouble to the south a little – perhaps they are from there. Or Scotch spies from across the river.’

  ‘Aye,’ the Squire replied, blinking one eye after another like an owl. ‘I heerd o’ that trouble also. He might well be Scotch – he is not a local man, for certes and we shall ride out to him by and by.’

  When more drink had been taken and boldness grew as a result, Batty thought.

  ‘I am heading that way – do you wish me to mention this visit? Or will I invite him to your wedding feast?’

  The Squire stroked his beard, the colour of old burned fields and then nodded. Batty offered the bride a wave and rode on, feeling the tension creep into his belly.

  ‘Easy, easy’ he murmured, though Fiskie was not the skittish one. ‘Ride up all perjink and polite,
invite them to feasting and ale as you pass, a two-armed man of note headed for Norham and not the one they seek…’

  He rode slowly, softly and kept his eyes fixed ahead, though he was aware, with an intensity sharp as an edge, of the smell of ransom, the wild garlic that grew on the fringes of the path and the slow slide of the stream, the moorhens high-stepping through the mast of beech and hazel and oak.

  A bowl of enchantment, that was the Border lands. Gentle hills and loamed sweeps no matter which side of the divide you lived on. Batty knew it well and would have loved it even if it hadn’t once cradled his mother in it.

  ‘Ho.’

  The voice stripped him of glaured memories and he turned, spreading smile that cracked his face like dried mud. The man was easy on his mount, one hand resting on the pommel, the other on the butt of a big horse pistol, a wheeled dagg already wound and ready.

  ‘Ho yourself.’

  ‘Who are you and where are you going?’

  The voice had a lilt to it; Ragusan, Batty thought. A mercenary or my name is not Balthazar Kohlhase and that can only mean he is a man of Maramaldo – or more likely Sabin.

  ‘Who asks?’

  ‘A man who is want to know. You will tell, pretty quvick.’

  Batty eyed the rider up and down, as he would if he were what he pretended to be and let his bluster sag and his crest droop a little.

  ‘I am headed for Norham and the Lord Dacre,’ he answered. ‘As if it is any business of your concern.’

  He saw the man look him over. Take it all in, he thought triumphantly, and come to the part where two arms are no use to you.

  There was a burst of music, faint on the wind and the rider flicked his eyes towards it. Batty widened his smile and shifted in the saddle a little, as if his arse pained him; it let him slide his good hand nearer to his own horse-pistol.

  ‘A wedding,’ he said and nodded. ‘They issue invite to anyone passing. Good ale and better food, not to mention the lassies who will be relieved to find a man with finery and less dung smearing him.’

  The man opened his mouth and Batty knew he was about to order him to ride on. Then a second voice cut the words from the air with a slash of wicked tongue.

  ‘Batty. Now there’s a miracle, for I know the face, but the face belongs to a man with only one working wing.’

  The owner stepped out from where he had been watching, from where the thin blue reek of a carefully tempered fire barely hazed a presence. He wore mud clothing with bits of iron filched from little raids all over Europe and a draggle of baldric and pistol holders and apostle bandoliers. His face was a wasteland of scars and age shrouded by a frosted beard long enough to work into two plaits; Batty recalled the man wove in the fingerbones of dead enemies – once he had removed their rings. He wore earrings and amulets and a gap-toothed black of grin.

  An askouret, Batty recalled with a sickening plunge of bowels to boots, a mercenary from Greece he had once shared bread and wine with. He fought for a name and came up with Epifadi Laskaris, but that wasn’t what most people knew him as. He found it, even as he cursed it.

  ‘Phaedra,’ Batty said. ‘Bright by name if not by wit.’

  The man’s grin was lopsided because of the scar that ran from the left corner of it all the way to the ear. I gave him that, Batty recalled miserably, when he came at me with a knife for winning at Primero. Sister Faith and Trottie were tenfold liars; neither God nor Satan seemed to be looking after Batty Coalhouse this day.

  ‘Clever enough to catch you,’ Phaedra answered, grinning. The other man scowled back and forth.

  ‘He has two arms,’ he insisted and Phaedra’s brows lowered.

  ‘It is Batty. I know him well enough.’

  ‘You said that about the last one – he was a wearing a cloak that covered one side of his body and you said…’

  ‘Gamato hristo soo! Waa fagri, koos…’

  There was Greek and possibly Mussulman in the stream of curses that spewed darkly from Phaedra. The other man jerked his horse’s head round and urged it up to Phaedra, as if to run him down; he was waving both hands and shouting something in his own tongue, which was just as ugly and dark.

  Knock or draw, Batty thought. And drew.

  The big wheeled dagg hissed out of its holster and Phaedra screamed when he saw it. Batty checked the dog with its pyrite was positioned and triggered the engine. The rider half-turned as the pan cover clicked open, the wheel spun and flicked, the sparks flew. There was a slight hiss and pause and then the world blew too bright for Phaedra.

  Batty did not see what an ounce of lead ball did to Phaedra at close range because the great plume of smoke, the crashing thunder of it and the dazzling gout of flame blew away sight and sense.

  Fiskie shied from it, collided with the other horse which was rearing; it gave a scream and staggered sideways, caught a leg and fell, spilling the rider to the ground.

  Batty did not wait. ‘Ride, my bonny,’ he yelled and dug in his heels, knowing even as he did so that he was galloping the wrong way, away from Norham. Knowing also, by that old itch that had never betrayed him, that he was followed, that the pack was closing.

  He went a long way in a daze, oblivious to peewits and the curl of breeze, the lowering clouds and even the rain that left him drookit. He came to the bit when the thump of himself in the saddle, riding like baggage instead of a Borderer slowed and stopped entirely. He looked back and thought he saw two riders, but couldn’t be sure. He kicked Fiskie on anyway and they went away at a stumbling run.

  He was barely aware of anything much until Fiskie came to a shambling halt, at which point Batty woke up and stared around. Fiskie was blowing and backing nervously while Batty sat like a half-empty sack of grain, the big gun hanging down, staring at a Barbary ape while the Cheviot day went down to a ripe of rain and curlews.

  The Ape came out and made Fiskie throw up his head and whicker back another half step of two; the act of it finally shook the dagg out of Batty’s hand and he heard it thump to the sod. That sharpened him and he shook himself like a dog out of a pool, became aware that he had lost his fantoosh hat – and that he was staring at an ape.

  ‘How now, Master Coalhouse,’ said the Ape from behind the trees. ‘At least, I says it is you, though I misremember the other arm.’

  Batty blinked again and cursed his luck, then cursed it again. He had had dealings with the Ape before and the Ape’s master; he wondered how he stood in the regard of the King of the Egyptiani after the business of the stolen babe.

  ‘How now, Ape,’ he answered carefully, then forced smile into his voice. ‘You are frightening the horse with that – it’s a gelding, but never could match you even when it was whole.’

  The Ape was a half-sized man completely naked save for a small cloak, long-armed, hunchbacked and wild with long, ginger-brown hair which shrouded part of his stunted body, though his hands and feet were normal. From underneath the curtain of hair round his face and head, eyes peered like small independent beasts and he growled, stroking the chubby curve of a considerable penis.

  ‘Well met, Batty. Or whatever you call yourself… it seems you always come to the king when you are foxed and pursued by hounds. He is expecting you.’

  ‘Batty will do,’ he answered, wondering about how he had been expected. The Ape’s hairy face parted in a grimace masquerading as a grin – his teeth had been filed sharp for effect, which spoiled the sweetness of the smile. He came forward while Batty stilled the nervous Fiskie, smiled and handed up the dropped pistol.

  ‘Follow on. It is not far.’

  He turned and lolloped off in the twisted gait he had, swinging his short legs and long arms from the shoulders and so much like the beast he was named for that it took little artifice to complete the picture for those willing to pay. Some clawed, haired gloves for his hands, similar little boots for his feet and he made the ladies ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at every Fair. Later, discerning clients – male and female – who paid considerably more wou
ld see Beauty reduce the Beast to her power; the Ape was stroked to cross-eyed panting by red-haired Merrilee Meg for the price of a beefsteak dinner.

  A bawbee or two for a larking cull? The Ape would have done it twice the three times a day and for nothing. He was just one of the King’s many enterprises.

  The King was called John the Wanne, though no one knew why but his da, Johnnie Faa, who had been Lord of the Egyptiani for years and given the title of ‘Earl’ by no less than then the ill-fated fourth James, who fell at Flodden.

  Johnnie Faa promptly elevated himself to king and had died only recently so that his son, John the Wanne, had his writ renewed by the fifth James – who died, they say of a broken heart, after the defeat at Solway Moss.

  There were those who cried that the Egyptiani had put a curse on the kings who granted them Royal writ of authority over all the Travelling Folk of the Scotch, up to and including hanging malefactors. Others just didn’t trust or like the mysterious folk who spread like a rash from Carlisle to Shetland, travelling where they pleased, staying where they willed and never for long in the one place.

  Johnnie Faa had been elevated to even greater heights, if rumour was right, when the Earl of Cassilis hung him from a dule tree in front of his castle for running off with his wife. The Countess, it was said, had to watch from an upstairs window.

  Johnnie’s son was cut from the same rough cloth, a robber, a horse-dealer – thief, if you listened to some – and maker of hornware, which crafts he did with equal skill and counted them all as honourable. When Batty had first met him, a fierce bare-knuckle fighter surrounded by a strange moving fair of the bizarre, he had been relying on the King of the Randies, the Earl of Cipre, Lord of all the Egyptiani to get him safely through Galloway at the time. That and provide some information on the Egyptiani who had stolen a babe.

  He was hunted then as now and in a freezing November frost which had all but laid him low with blinding snotters and a cough. It came to Batty that nothing much had changed, save for a lack of snow.