Burning the Water

by Robert Low

  ‘I sent word an hour since that I needed no guide from Norham,’ the voice said, ‘so you have be thinking of how to answer that – you have as long as it takes for you to detach from the wheen of weapons I can see and those I cannot.’

  There was something about the voice. There was something about the glitter of the cote hung carefully on the back of the only fine chair in the Howff and Batty came to it almost at the same moment as he saw the fancy heraldry and the motto.

  ‘Diligent and secret,’ he said and turned into the fleshed, wary face he had last seen muddied and bloodied and pale with fear, huddled on Ancrum Moor. ‘By Christ’s Bones,’ he said, feeling like a falling man waking up.

  ‘Harry Ree, the wee herald from Berwick.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘Harry Ree.’

  ‘So you keep saying. It is a good name and needs no whetting to a nub with your tongue.’

  Henry Rae, Berwick Pursuivant of Arms in Ordinary did not look like someone who should be scowling at a man freshly unloaded of fearsome ironmongery which still lay too close.

  He was short and slight and paunched a little, his head drooped like a Spring daffodil and the entire appearance was of a pox doctor’s clerk. He wore a fine lawn shirt and heavy leather riding breeches as if he had stolen them from his too-large da.

  Yet here was a man who carried secrets between courts. Two years earlier, he had left Edinburgh with the Somerset Herald, Thomas Trahern and the Dingwall Pursuivant, Davey Lindsay. Two miles from Dunbar, two dafties still clinging to the Pilgrimage of Grace shot down Trahern; the other two had a wild ride to escape.

  So there was iron in the man, though it had to be said, Batty thought as he caught sight of himself in a water-waver of mirror-glass, that he was not himself entirely the image of a fierce Borderer.

  The food had arrived and now his beard was crumbed and drooped with wet from the jack of ale. He was damp and Stucley Taylor’s doublet had never been clean to start with, nor fitted well; it fitted less now.

  ‘What want you here?’ demanded Rae. ‘I remembrance that you were the boasted architect of English ruin at Ancrum, so you are on the wrong side of the divide. You had one arm before, so the one you have is a fakery – I can see straw at the cuff – and I am thinking there is espiery here, probably directed at Norham and its new defences. Get you gone back across the Tweed man; I will stay silent, since I owe you some small debt for Ancrum.’

  ‘Some small debt, is it?’ Batty said, wiping his greased fingers down the doublet and frowning at the added ruin. ‘Man – you were up to your hurdies in mud and tremble and they lads around you were fired for more of the horrors they had already visited.’

  It was a lie, of course; anyone of the College of Arms was safe enough if recognised as such. Save for dafties and the sort of stray shot God reserved for vicious humour, Batty added to himself.

  But he swallowed the last of the drink and looked ruefully into the leather mug. ‘I need your help,’ he said, when it became clear that Henry Rae was not about to unveil a decent bottle and offer some up.

  ‘In what? If you need across the Tweed, I suggest you ride hard at first light.’

  Batty shook his head. ‘I need to see Bull Dacre.’

  There was a moment when Rae opened and closed his mouth; Batty had seen the look before, on a salmon he had guddled out of a pool one time.

  ‘I… you,’ Rae began, then stopped spluttering and gathered a breath. ‘You want into Norham is the truth – I am as likely to escort you as I am to wed you.’

  ‘I ask for a hand, not the hand. There are matters the Baron needs to know,’ Batty went on, ‘which touch upon his rights to the Warden of the Marches.’

  Rae looked and frowned. His face had a suspicious brow on it now and Batty knew what he would ask next. He took a breath.

  ‘There is a man called Horner, a greedy man,’ he began and then laid the whole tale of it, talking low and fast and stopping only when Rae demanded answer to a question; they were good, sharp questions, too and Batty was surprised and admiring of the man’s acumen and then wondered why he should be – here was someone who negotiated the reefs of Courts which made a Border ride on a moonlit night resemble a wee pavane. Who was an agent in the pay of Ralph Sadler, ambassador to Scotland and spymaster to Fat Henry.

  ‘You have proof of this nun’s Glastonbury pie?’ he demanded at the end of it and Batty grinned a savage and bitter grin. Aye, aye, there’s the way of it. I can show Bull Dacre that his wayward bastard brother is putting the Name at risk, that Musgrave and Maramaldo and the Wallis Riders are all spoiling the country and looking for a fight with someone and that wee innocents are at risk of death. I can even wave the Musgrave name at him, one that he hates above all.

  But it comes to the shine in the end. He said as much and Rae shrugged.

  ‘The Bull Dacre is a Border man.’

  It was all he needed to say and Batty acknowledged that with a flap of a hand; Dacre knew the ways of blackmeal and righteous confiscations. He showed the contents of the leather case.

  Rae flicked through them, lips pursed then thought about it for a long minute, pacing a little. At one point he put the muzzle of his pistol to his head and scratched before he became aware of what he was doing and hastily set the engine down on a table.

  ‘I will help you,’ he said slowly. ‘If only to stop Mad Jack and the Wallis having at yin anither – that greed of Lanercost for Wallis lands is at the root of this. Also, I owe you a debt for my freedom. Lastly because I am a loyal servant of His Majesty who will only see rebellion in it and call out the whole of the north. It will spoil many plans already in train.’

  France being the biggest one, Batty thought. Yet, there was also Maramaldo, who had given him a constraint of time, otherwise Sister Faith and the rest would suffer his wrath.

  Rae nodded when Batty spilled this out and then wagged a stern finger.

  ‘Dinna fash Dacre with that,’ he warned. ‘Saving a parcel of wee Catholics getting hung or flayed or burned is a danger to him with the views he holds. These are less Reformed lands up here, but the Baron Gilsland is known to favour a Latin Mass.’

  ‘I gave my word,’ Batty said and Rae sighed.

  ‘Aye, I heard you are soft on wee wummin – was it not one who got you in that morass at Hollows? Away wi’ you. I take it you have a place downstairs, so go to it. I dinna want you snoring near me at any time, but we will look thief-thick if we do it here. Word may get out that I am conspiring with a known Scotch agent.’

  ‘Agent is it?’ Batty said, nonplussed by being flung out. ‘There’s fancy for you.’

  He tramped down the stairs and found a place as near to the fire as he could get without irritating packmen. He sat on the bench he would sleep on once he had rolled a packman off it and thought on matters and how God seemed, this time at least, to be smiling.

  Thought, too, on Merrilee Meg and her magickals which had brought him here – if they were magickals. He shivered a little and made a warding sign older than the Cross.

  No one noticed; they were all snoring or drooling, or whimpering like pups so that the thunderous hammering on the door sprang them all awake.

  The innkeeper had put a quine across the barred door to prevent folk leaving without paying; she was a plump woman, either daughter, doxy or wife, who slept on a pallet bolstered against draughts and now rolled away, scrambling to her hands and knees and keening with shock.

  The packmen woke in panic; there were more thunderous hammers, enough to rattle the bar in the locks and the innkeeper appeared, tousled and annoyed, with a big blackthorn cudgel in one hand.

  ‘We are shut – wha’s that there?’

  ‘A giant, a dwarf, a warrior and a witch,’ said a voice and Batty’s head came up because he knew it.

  ‘Awa’ wi’ ye,’ the innkeeper growled. ‘Japes is it? I will set the dugs oan ye.’

  ‘It’s a foul night,’ Batty said into the whimpers and panting. ‘You have
not the custom to be turning payers away. Nor the dugs, I might add.’

  ‘Is Batty Coalhouse there?’ demanded the muffled, sweet voice. ‘He kens us.’

  An apparition appeared on the stairs and Batty almost laughed aloud; Henry Rae had had no time for breeks, but had pulled on his cote, which was as good as armour. He stood, truculent as a routed boar with his pale shanks sticking out below his shirt and the richly embroidered cote; one hand held a long basket-hilted backsword, forty inches of bright steel.

  ‘Whit’s a’ this?’

  There was another thundering hammer and Henry Rae waved at the innkeep.

  ‘Let them in, man, else we will get little sleep this night.’

  The innkeep looked at Henry Rae and his sword, then at Batty, who had taken his axe-handled dagg and laid the fearsome-looking weapon on the bench top. Then he nodded to the luckless woman who had to creep back to the door and lift the bar. As soon as she did, she dropped it to clatter on the floor and scurried away screaming.

  Everyone waited, breath bated. The door swung inwards and in strode… a giant, a dwarf, a warrior and a witch.

  ‘How now, Batty?’ said the witch and shook free her red hair; the rain from her hood sparkled like diamonds in it. Behind her, Abie stood dripping and the Ape, mercifully clothed against the weather, made sure Abie was between him and harm.

  ‘Whit the Devil…?’ demanded the innkeeper and Henry Rae balked on the stairwell, the sword up. Merillee Meg looked him up and down, cocked a brow and laughed; Rae blushed to the roots of his sparse hair and tried to pull his shirt down further on his thighs.

  ‘I see a giant, a dwarf and a witch,’ Batty said with a wry chuckle. ‘I see nae warrior, all the same.’

  Meg grunted and came forward; the packmen all shrank back. ‘That was maybe a Faerie’s tale,’ she growled. ‘Warrior is a stretch for him now – but he’s the reason we are come.’

  She stood back and Abie moved to one side. The man hidden behind him swayed a little, then stumbled two steps forward, shrouded in a wet, hooded cloak. One hand, ragged lace at the cuff, reached up and brought his face out. Batty stared.

  ‘Indeed,’ Maramaldo declared. ‘It is I.’

  Then he bowed, though it nearly tipped him forward to the floor.

  ‘Captain General Maramaldo, at your service – is that drink I see?’

  ‘Captain General of bugger all,’ Meg added with a trill of laughter. ‘They have thrown him out on his ear. The King told Abie and the Ape to bring him to you if only before he swallows every last drop of decent drink. We met on the road – Michael and Baptiste keep watch.’

  Batty’s head roared with the bad cess of it. Maramaldo staggered to the bench and sat, then reached a hand for Batty’s little bowl, still with drink in it.

  ‘I widnae,’ Batty managed and Maramado frowned.

  ‘How else am I to drink it, man?’

  Batty fought for sense and found just enough to lean forward and take Maramaldo by the front of his stained torn shirt. The act of pulling brought the stale of the man out in a puff that stung Batty’s eyes. Maramaldo blinked from his wobbling head and then gave a lopsided grin.

  ‘Batty,’ he said, then frowned. ‘Ye have grown a miracle of arm – does this mean I am forgave for it by God? Yon wee nun said it might happen…’

  ‘The nuns,’ Batty growled, shaking him like a terrier with a rat. ‘What of the wee nuns?’

  * * *

  Sister Charity wore hodden grey and had changed into it by bartering the finery Maramaldo had given to her with a slattern from the camp. It was verminous and stained – she had an idea what some of them were but did not care; it was closer to the nun than she had been for some time. Now that Maramaldo had gone, she dared it and did not think the new commander would care.

  She feared him all the same and knew she could not hide forever, sitting side by side with Sister Faith in the dark dim of the charred bastel house, her eyes lifting from the dark shadows now and then to concentrate on the square of light from the doorway.

  ‘I pray he is all right,’ Sister Faith said in a low voice, for others were in the undercroft dim, snoring or muttering quietly to each other. Probably as afeared as us, she thought, at the turn of events.

  ‘I ken how much you believed in him,’ Sister Charity said softly. ‘I am not hourly expecting his return – he is a man for the practical is Master Coalhouse.’

  There was no victory in her voice, but Sister Faith reached out and took her hand, which made Sister Charity start to tremble; her skin was cold, even allowing for the poor pit fire and the weather.

  They sat for a moment in silence; outside were shouts and strange noises that might have been chains or shackles or the accoutrements of carts.

  ‘I wonder what it is like to die the way our Sisters did,’ Sister Charity said staring off into the embers of the pit fire. ‘Why would Our Lord allow them to die like that?’

  Sister Faith squeezed her hand a little tighter, knowing Sister Charity was birling with confusion, as much at events as at having been plucked from her nun’s habit by Maramaldo. Now the man was gone, probably dead.

  ‘The only difference between saints and ourselves,’ she said, half to herself, ‘is that saints have relived the suffering and passion of Christ. Used it as a guide on how to die in agony, even that they might live.’

  She felt Sister Charity nod.

  ‘The Lord will help us,’ she went on, ‘if not through Master Coalhouse who is yet with us, I believe, then in letting us accept the pain and welcoming us into glory when the time comes.’

  She felt Sister Charity move closer and reached out; they hugged and pulled apart; Sister Faith saw tears in her friend’s eyes.

  ‘I still believe in Batty Coalhouse,’ she said. ‘He was sent to save the children and us and save them he will.’

  Sister Charity glanced to the sleeping forms and dashed a tear away. ‘He will have some trouble with Daniel,’ she said and Sister Faith was forced to agree; Daniel had a pearl drop in one fresh-blooded ear and was swaggering with a gifted dagger in his belt, the new darling of the roughs who had helped string up Sabin’s conspirators – and then flayed the Captains who ordered it.

  She sat and listened to the moaning of Horner, prised free of Maramaldo’s chair, his hands swaddled in fat wrappings that still leaked watery blood. She tried hard to find Christian sympathy and felt herself so lacking in it for the man that she concentrated on spooning pap into the baby and tried to pray for forgiveness. But it was all about Batty.

  ‘Was I wrong about him, Lord? Was he not from You?’

  There was a burst of wild shouting and cackled laughter from outside and the thought came to her that perhaps she had been so wrong, so seduced, that he was the Antichrist come to weaken their faith in this, their hour of need and testing.

  The possibility of that was numbing and stoppered the prayer in her mouth with thoughts of how, all her life, she had fought her own nature, the headstrong, headlong gallop of her will and tried to humble herself before God.

  Had she failed the Lord at this, the end? Had the Prince of Darkness preyed on her frailities and vanities and love for the children to drive a dagger wedge between her and God?

  Would Satan come at the last to offer salvation at a price – and would she take it?

  The light from the door vanished.

  * * *

  The light in the room was poor, served up by a guttering crusie that reeked. It was the best room in the castle, which had never been much more than a grim fortress at its best. Its best had been ruined out of it by the Scots thirty-and-some years ago and, though recovered after Flodden, the place had stayed grim and cold as a whore’s heart.

  The room had no wood-panelled comfort and was warmed by a mean affair of sticks – but there was some excuse for that, it being an hour before dawn. Still, it did not make improvements to the mood of Sir William Dacre, Baron Gilsland and, even if the castle was not his and he was a guest, he had cause
for complaints.

  The witch, the giant and the dwarf had taken their leave after an hour’s warmth – neither the Howff nor the environs of Norham suited them. They also, as Maramaldo said often, had taken his fine horse and left him a spavined nag.

  ‘You drank the weight of that beast,’ Meg replied sourly. ‘You get nothing for free with the King.’

  ‘I asked for nothing at all,’ Maramaldo replied owlishly and Meg had laughed.

  ‘Away, man – you were wandering in circles, drookit and afraid. You would have died.’

  Batty knew they were fortunate to be in Norham at all and only thanks to Henry Rae. He and Maramaldo were now considered under a black gaze and it was a wonder Dacre had stayed silent for long enough for them to spill the sorry tale out.

  ‘I know you both by reputation and description,’ Dacre said eventually. ‘As bad a brace of lawless ne-erdowells as any I have hemped as Warden.’

  ‘That was a time since,’ Maramaldo said mildly, ‘for you have not been Warden or anything like for a period. Is that drink there?’

  ‘You will not wash away Sabin with it,’ Batty growled and Maramaldo spread his hands, scowling.

  ‘That bastard moudiewart,’ he said and then seemed to grow fascinated by his knobbly fingers. ‘Once I could bring down a bird at twenty paces with a bow. Now I can scarce see twenty paces on a fine day.’

  He stopped and looked wet-eyed misery at them all. ‘I have had many betrayals and picked myself up from them all – but that is the worst one, the betrayal by your own trusted men.’

  ‘Aye,’ Batty agreed morosely, ‘if ye live long enow, you see everything fall to ruin.’

  ‘Like a stone tower and powder mill in the Debatable,’ Dacre growled. He was wrapped in a great affair of fur collar and wool, a man whose forty-plus years had sailed after one another and made a landfall on his face, where they colonised chins. He had a florid nightcap under which the remains of his hair clung desperately to a scalp.