Burning the Water

by Robert Low

  He stopped and raised his head like a dog nosing air. Somewhere, now out of sight, was the bastel of Windylaws and a nun and mayhap even bairns, waiting in the dark. If it was Sister Faith that well-named quine would be clinging still to her belief that he would come.

  I am not bliddy Saint Michael with flaming sword, he thought bitterly. Yet, demanding and patient, he felt her waiting for his enlightenment.

  * * *

  The first thing Sister Faith registered was the heat. Wearily, she cracked her eyes open, lifting her head from where it had been lulling against her chest. Light flickered an open brazier on her left, dancing lurid shadows on the walls of a tent.

  She was fastened to a chair and she was naked, which fact made her panic until she realised that it was simply a means to an end, to make her less of God’s bride and more the whore who could be so treated.

  There was a table, littered with maps and plans, old food and ugly weapons; the tent smelled of leather and grease, oil and wickedness.

  Her breasts hung loose, a strange feeling and even here she thought to herself – not so withered for an old woman and then was ashamed of it. Her hair had grown out from under the removed kerchief and was sticking to her temples with sweat, even as she felt the cold ruck her to gooseflesh.

  She worked at the fastenings, pulling as hard as she could until the skin of her wrists was raw-red and aching.

  ‘They won’t come loose,’ said a voice and a shadow made a shape out of shadows. ‘I had Cornelius incant them with fastening spells.’

  Sabin was black in the black, his shirt dark, his fat breeks midnight and his pale face stamped with pits for eyes. The silvered streaks of his wings of hair seemed painted on and stirred in the heat of the brazier as he passed it.

  In behind him was the hesitant lurk of Cornelius, betrayed by the arcane symbols of his stained, torn robes; his face was stretched with fear and Sister Faith’s bowels twisted at the sight.

  ‘Stout rope will do,’ Sister Faith managed, realising that she had to step carefully here. ‘But if the Lord wishes me free, I will be free.’

  ‘I am lord here,’ Sabin said, turning a chair backwards and mounting it as you would a horse. He leaned on the back and raised a hand, summoning Cornelius forward. The robed man did so, stumbling a little; his face was pinched with terror.

  ‘There is a King in Heaven who would tell you differently,’ she said.

  ‘He is not here. Nor is Maramaldo, who was soft on your Spanish doxie. Maramaldo, I am thinking, is already swinging in the wind – he was the old way. I am the new.’

  ‘New?’

  She shifted, feeling the chair on her buttocks, feeling the heat down one side of her skin and the cold down the other. Watching Cornelius and the iron thrust into the brazier.

  ‘There is nothing new here,’ she said. ‘Guns and larger engines. Fear. Hate. Pain. Why can’t you people stick to hunting and cards?’

  ‘Fine pursuits for fops in fancy doublets,’ Sabin said. ‘Maramaldo loved such things.’

  ‘Love is not a word I would use in the same breath as Maramaldo,’ she answered. ‘He thinks of power and little else. You think of vengeance and little else. Even this, here, now, is no more than vengeance. Who did it to you, Sabin, that you hate so much?’

  His eyes flickered a little. ‘God, if I thought such existed.’

  She eased her wrists from chafing, watched Cornelius, standing hunched round his own trembling fear. He had come back, she realised, because he had nowhere else to go.

  ‘If you do not believe He exists, Master Sabin, why do you spend so much time fighting him? Do you think on your immortal soul? I believe Captain General Maramaldo did, seeing as how he was close to facing his Maker.’

  ‘You should pray to your god,’ Sabin said, standing up. ‘And I am Captain General now.’

  ‘God and I have an arrangement,’ she answered. ‘I put my trust in Him and he never fails me.’

  The truth was that and sometimes less. She was not sure, sometimes, that God really cared and suffered agonies of remorse for thinking it. But He left folk to get on with it, to make a mess as they chose. Folk were good at that, so widows and bairns went hungry, ending their short, squalid lives in want and fear and pain.

  ‘Your chest,’ Sabin said, ‘is very fine.’

  For a moment, she wondered and felt herself blush at having done so. He meant the one with the accoutrements of Mass, of course and he smiled at her mistake, a twist that never went further north than his lip.

  ‘It is richly made and Cornelius has been through it, in it, over it and broken it to pieces. There is no treasure,’ he said.

  ‘If you follow the Lord our God and Jesus, our Saviour,’ Sister Faith said, trying to keep the tremble from her voice, ‘then there are riches within.’

  ‘Some baubles for canting priests out of Glastonbury. Not what was promised.’

  ‘There is no other treasure,’ she said wearily, knowing what would come. ‘I am as naked as I can get. Where would I hide it?’

  He laughed, soft and vicious. ‘You think that is naked? I have guddled in cunny before this, woman and found coin and jewels. I have slit bellies and found wee fortunes. You are not nearly naked. Even flayed is not naked enough.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘What are they saying, Jew?’ he demanded and Cornelius jerked at being addressed, as if he had been speared.

  ‘The men say we should leave this place,’ Cornelius answered waveringly.

  ‘And what else?’

  Cornelius fought for a moment until Sabin turned his head and then it seemed to Sister Faith that he was seared by the look, flinching away; she held her breath.

  ‘They look for more coin, lord,’ he said, near to weeping. ‘All that was promised by Maramaldo from the condotta.’

  Sabin nodded and turned back to Sister Faith.

  ‘You see? Coin. You will tell me where it is. I am not foolish enough to believe that pain and suffering will be anything but martyrdom to you, woman. You are innocent but strong. There is another, even more innocent and not strong at all.’

  He nodded to Cornelius, who whimpered a little and put a length of cold iron in the embered coals of the brazier, working it deep; the flames flared.

  ‘While it turns white,’ Sabin said, ‘I will go and bring yon babe. Then you will tell me everything. If not, you can watch Cornelius at work. He is not a man for children, this marano.’

  Sister Faith had confirmed what she already knew and tried not to rave as two men came in, took the chair and carted her out into the chill night, back to the dark char of the bastel house.

  ‘There is no treasure. There is no treasure. Hail Mary, full of Grace…’

  * * *

  Good hempen cord, soaked in limewater and saltpetre for the nitre, washed in a lye of water and wood ash. The raw hemp burned with a lot of ash, so it had to be bucked – boiled. Bucked rope was boiled in ash to rid it of ash. You did not want ash when a slow match burned, for it could drop in the priming pan when you were aiming.

  Always blow off your ash before opening the pan was good advice, Batty remembered. That and how even a bucked rope yields some ash. Tranquilo had taught him that, among other things.

  A good slow match was laid flat all of a piece, for if you hung it up soaked the nitre collected at either end and got sucked out of the centre, so that all you got from that piece was a few seconds of dangerous flare and spit before it fizzled out.

  No match with a slow match, that was Batty Coalhouse. Everyone said so, so it must be the truth – but, Christ’s Wounds, it makes for a hard life, he thought. I am never done blowing matters up. On behalf of wummin. Wi’ wee bairns involved. The sudden realisation of it, of the resemblance to Mintie and the wee Royal babe and the powder mill at Hollows made him pause.

  Christ and all His Saints, he thought. I just wish I was the Archangel Michael, for a flaming sword would be of use now if only to light the slow matches when the time comes. />
  He worked by feel and the fleeting light of the moon when the wind on it blew clear and shining. Each time it did, old Tranquilo looked accusingly back at him, killed by Brother Curved and left with a smile beneath his lips. Batty had a Brotherhood of knives about him – there was Edge and Point, the three Throw brothers and Brother Curved, who was hungry for throats. And the cousin in his boot, Old Bollock.

  Tranquilo had been named Zuann by his ma back in the Italies, but that had been a long time ago. He had been with Maramaldo and the others since the beginning. When Batty was young with both arms, it had been old Tranquilo who had taught him the ways of camp life and the slow match.

  Age takes everyone differently, like knives. It sharpens some, blunts others, hardens them, to a point. But, in the end, it weakens and ruins and rots them with the fear, the knowledge that is always fear, of how they are birds forever flying south, or fish that are never done swimming upstream. An old money-soldier such as Tranquilo gains the knowledge that he will never be done with it, that there are no peaceful still pools or warm wind beneath his wings, or roosting tree at the end of a hard day.

  Tranquilo had been put to the task of sleeping in the powder store because it was always dark and always cold and always lonely – who would risk light, or fire or even his person in such a place? You needed someone who would not be missed and that itself was a measure of how low you had sunk – and added to the fear.

  Batty had known there would be one, but not that it would be Old Tranquilo. He had died swift and easy, like a blown-out wick. Mayhap it was for the best, Batty thought, before he was finally stripped of all he had been by the fear.

  He worked, swift and assured until the thought struck him. He looked at Tranquilo’s dead eyes.

  If I was still with this company, he thought, I would be the new Tranquilo. He was frozen by it, fastened to the world as if nailed – then someone called for a new tune and the vielle ground out anew, snapping him back.

  ‘I am not done yet,’ he said fiercely, then snapped his lips shut on having said it aloud. It is those wummin, he added to himself, working faster now. War, wummin and witchcraft…

  * * *

  She knew Daniel looked at her, even though he tried to make out that he wasn’t. In the dim of the bastel house, with the stale of the beasts and the old char wafting up from the undercroft, it wasn’t hard to pretend, but he wasn’t good at it.

  The others didn’t look, genuinely uncaring. The tall, lanky Spaniard they called Marillo had shot a few glances at Sister Charity, still in stained homespun and unfettered because they used her to fetch and carry. He might, once, have raped the nun who had been called La Tormenta before her cloistering, but everyone knew she was poxed.

  The blond Portuguese albino they called Nevar and the Fleming known as Witt played endless cards and never shot Sister Charity a second glance. She was, she realised, not attractive yet. More drink would do it, but the real reason they hadn’t already was Juup, their leader.

  He sat fixing a leather strap by the wavering light of a poor crusie. Now and then he looked up as Daniel made an excuse to move, to get closer to her. The simple act of moving his head was enough; Sabin had decreed they kept away.

  Daniel is lost to us, she thought. No, no – I must not believe that. God will find a way, despite him wearing the old finery of a dead man, a pearl drop in one new-blooded ear, a knife at his belt. Despite the way he growled and spat and laughed at the filthy jests the others trotted out – half the time it was to get Daniel to join in, for they knew the boy had never indulged in anything like they described.

  Now and then Juup would root about in his beard or hair and come up with something which he cracked between the frayed nails of thumb and forefinger. Then he would grin.

  ‘Louse,’ he would say in his thick accent. ‘Even Eden had problem of snake.’

  And Daniel would dutifully laugh.

  The other children huddled like mice round Sister Charity, clinging to her homespun and watching, big-eyed and afraid. They had been afraid for a long time – too long, Sister Charity thought.

  She felt for them and started to weep, though she made no sign other than wet on her cheeks.

  But Daniel saw it. And laughed.

  * * *

  Sister Faith wondered, dully, how long it took for an iron to grow white hot. She saw it in her head, a ball glowing balefully.

  * * *

  Batty watched the moon. He had the Nuremberg but even putting it right up to his nose he could only make out that the hour hand might have been at four or five. Anyway, he thought moodily, the bliddy thing is another wee alchemikal worn more for the look of it than the practical; they were expensive, too. King Johnnie the Wanne had given it as a gift, which should have been an expensive statement save that he took it from a box crammed with them.

  Batty did not need it – no match with a slow match, that was the boast and the most of that was in timing, making and cutting it to burn to the last second. He glanced at Tranquilo, still accusing though his face was stiff and moon-blued, death-darkened. No one had even come to find out how the old lad was, stuffed into the powder store with the musty smell of it drying out.

  It had been grained, but the wet had caked it again, for all they had spread it out. If it wasn’t combed carefully it would sputter and fizz and not much more – but that was in the pan. In this confined space…

  He waited, watching the moon get dressed and undressed by clouds. An owl shrieked and the vielle finally faltered, the trompette and mouche and chanterelle of it winding down, dying in the dark.

  At some point Batty moved and could not tell why he was shoved into it. He slid silently out of the low powder store, following the thin white fade of his match back to where they met like mating snakes.

  Crouching, he took a breath, for this was the Devil in the detail; his wheel-lock dagg felt right, all wound and primed and empty of ball. When he squeezed it to life, the great cartwheels of sparks made him almost shriek aloud with the blasting hole they made in the dark. A blind man could see it, he whimpered to himself. A bliddy blind man…

  The match stayed stubbornly unlit, so he had to do it again, the rasp now as loud to him as the light. At the end of it, when his scarred eyes stopped blurring everything, he saw the match glow faintly on one side and, with more gasp than puff, he blew life into it. It winked conspiratorially back at him with its red eye and began to creep away.

  I am never done with this, he said, remembering last year and the powder mill at Hollows – but, bigod, this will be the last time I creep about in the dark blowing petards.

  He left the match to run and slithered away, out towards the silhouette of the old tower, the broken tooth of it stark against a lightening sky. Up there was Trumpet, probably still hanging off the top by his rope – he had deserved better. And inside was the old nun with the eyes as blue as a Virgin’s robe. Ah kin coup ma lundies.

  Somewhere, a baby wailed. On his other side, Batty heard the grunt-squeal of a couple in the final throes; when the light comes, he thought sadly, all these wee lives will be put to the hazard.

  Including my own.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Her moved up to the big panoply, because he knew that was Maramaldo’s – or Sabin’s now. It was where the other Captains had lounged, playing cards or dice, listening to the plans for the next day.

  There were other bits of canvas and hurdle dotted around, some pallid with wormy lights, scattering music and small voices, but Batty saw the dull red glow he knew to be the Big Tent’s brazier and the shadow that seemed to flit back and forth.

  He was sure he had seen Sabin scuttling off, hunched and almost running towards the bastel, but he could not be sure. So he ducked under the flap, Old Bollock in his one good hand; he wanted Sabin at the end of some sharp steel.

  He had expected Captains, though he did not know who they might be after Sabin’s purge. He expected the fusty smell of wet leather and food gone off and he wasn’t’
disappointed there. What he hadn’t expected was a naked woman tied to a chair.

  He hadn’t expected it to be Sister Faith.

  ‘Don’t gawp,’ she snapped. ‘Cut me loose – and ’ware Cornelius.’

  Batty swung round, dagger up but saw only a shadow, like a rat scrabbling in a grain store. He moved to Sister Faith and cut her free.

  ‘Sabin has gone to the house to fetch Baby Stephen,’ she said. ‘He was about to let that little imp of Satan, may God forgive me, loose on him with a hot iron unless I told where the treasure was.’

  She tried to stand, failed and sank back with a gasp. Batty, glowering with it all, moved to the table, put Old Bollock back in his boot and seized a corner of the damask table covering. He had seen a mountebank do this at a Truce Day meet, but then the cloth flew free and everything else stayed where it was.

  When he did it, everything went in the air – plates, platters, plots and plans, whirling in a frantic dance. A blizzard of paper drifted in a snowstorm that made Cornelius look up and focus from his blind hunt for his book. He saw Batty and whimpered.

  Sister Faith took the stained damask and wrapped her nakedness in it. ‘Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places and talents in surprising people,’ she muttered hoarsely. ‘Give me, O Lord, the grace to tell them so.’

  ‘Aye, aye,’ Batty echoed, feeling the itch on his palms, where he had rolled his fuses. ‘Thank me later – but move quick for now. Hell is coming.’

  He shoved her to the entrance, just as Cornelius found some courage – and remembrance of what was stuck in the brazier fire. He grabbed the black handle and gave a hoarse cry of triumph which brought Batty whirling round to face him.

  What he saw was the mountebank magister screaming and dancing like he was moonstruck, sticking his scorched hand under his armpit; the white-hot iron sizzled on the plank floor, the deceptive black of the handle smouldering the wood.