by Pat McIntosh
‘It’s down the other side o that,’ said Steenie. ‘Less than a mile, it is.’
‘I hope the track is going through those trees,’ said Euan. ‘They are growing thick together.’
‘I can be showing you the way through, maisters, bonnie lady,’ said a voice from the roadside. Alys’s horse shied sideways, tossing its head in surprise, and she checked it as another of the tinker laddies, or possibly the same one, rose up out of the ditch and stood grinning at them, his face and his long belted shirt grubby with earth, bracken fronds in his shaggy dark hair. No, it was certainly the same one, the one who had told her Isa’s advice was a true word. She put that firmly aside, and studied the youngster.
‘What do you want?’ demanded Henry.
‘Why, to offer you help,’ said the boy, opening his eyes wide in innocent surprise. ‘What else would I be doing, maisters, bonnie lady, but helping sic travellers as yoursels?’
‘I keep expecting you to turn into a fox,’ said Alys. The boy grinned at that, and touched his brow. In five years or so, she recognised, he would break hearts.
‘If you was the King’s daughter of Ireland, bonnie lady,’ he said, ‘then I surely would. And that’s my by-name you’ve given me, and I thank you for it.’
‘And how would you be helping us?’ Euan asked.
‘I can be showing you the road through the wood, the way I was telling you already.’
‘Och, we’ll find that for oursels,’ said Steenie.
‘And I can be showing you where the fine merchants will be looking at the cannon.’
‘That would be a help indeed,’ said Alys, smiling at him. ‘Do you ken where my man is and all?’
‘Oh, aye,’ said the boy. ‘You’ll be wanting to free him, I don’t doubt.’
Chapter Thirteen
‘It could be worse, I suppose,’ said Gil, looking round their prison.
Doig snorted in scepticism, but Sandy Boyd stretched and said, ‘Aye, we could be in the cellars wi the rats, or down the bottle-hole. This is almost civilised, compared wi that.’
‘We shouldny ha trusted those tinkers,’ said Doig, rubbing the graze on his jaw.
Gil rose stiffly and went to the window. The shutters stood wide, but the chamber was right under the roof and the air did not stir. This tower was higher than Belstane, and that rose four floors above its undercroft; a long way below him he could see Gregory Vary strolling in the pleasance which occupied the whole extent of the barmekin, in friendly conversation with the black-bearded man.
Beyond the walls, there was a huddle of the outbuildings which were more usually inside them, the stables, the bakehouse, stores and barns and byres. Vary must be confident in the peaceable nature of his neighbours, Gil thought, studying these. It would hardly take much of a raid to carry off an entire year’s stores, and the horses to bear it away as well. This was not Armstrong country, but it was not so far removed from it.
Further off, a burn ran eastward, down towards the wide valley of the Medwin, where the hay lay out drying in the long strips in the fields. In the other direction the land closed in, and a track rose towards a low pass clothed in thick woodland. Away from the track he could make out movement under the trees, low tents or shelters like those in the camp below Carnwath, one or two dogs roaming about.
‘I think they were as taken aback as we were,’ he said, replying to Doig. ‘Wooden Toe was ready to argue, till Blue Doo stopped him.’
‘Aye, and why did he stop him?’ Doig glowered at Gil. ‘You’re in gey weel wi the tinkers, I must say, for one that’s never met them afore.’
‘No so far in as you,’ Gil countered. He turned from the window, surveying again the dusty chamber where they were imprisoned. It contained remarkably little: a broken settle, two worm-eaten stools, a roll of mouldering tapestry. The walls were limewashed and draped in cobwebs, and there was no hearth, so no chimney; overhead the rafters, purlins, sarking, supported whatever covered the roof. Probably slate, he considered, looking at the angle of the boards. There was no sound of any other movement up here, only the squeal and thump of the jackdaws on the roof, distant birdsong and lowing of cattle, and someone singing at his work beyond the barmekin wall.
They had reached the bounds of Kersewell’s policies about midday, to be accosted by a pair of scowling men in leather jacks and helmets, one with a businesslike quarterstaff, one with a whinger, who had insisted grimly on escorting them to meet Maister Vary. Half the tinkers had melted into the landscape at the sight, but Blue Doo and Wooden Toe had accompanied them, protesting that all they wished was a word wi the black-haired Irish fellow, so it was, and no need to be disturbing himself.
Gregory Vary had received them in the hall of the tower, a wide chamber occupying the whole of the first floor, hung with damp and decaying tapestries, its ceiling painted on planks and beams with irritatingly uneven lozenges. Vary himself was remarkably like his brother, thin and narrowly made, but his face was lined and bitter, and there was an odd triumphant look in his eyes. He was seated behind a table which was draped in a handsome carpet and held a Gospel-book and a stack of papers, as if this was about to become a trial or a hearing at law. Gil did not glance at his cousin, but was aware of him tensing warily by his side. Behind them the two armed men stood alert and waiting, and the tinkers looked uneasily about them. The Irishman was not to be seen.
‘You call yoursel Maister Cunningham, I hear,’ Vary said. ‘And who are these?’
‘I am Gil Cunningham,’ Gil agreed, ‘the Archbishop’s quaestor.’
Boyd held his peace. Doig growled something unintelligible.
‘What, going about the country wi a band o tinkers?’ scoffed Vary, much as Gil had predicted. ‘You’ll forgive me if I canny believe you, man. So what are you after? What brings you on to my lands?’
‘There’s a few things I’d like to discuss wi you, and maybe wi a guest under your roof,’ Gil said politely. ‘We could start wi the abduction o your good-sister Mistress Madur, to the endangerment o her life and her bairn’s. Then there’s the arson at The Cleuch, wi the death o—’
‘That’s havers and lees!’ said Vary forcefully. ‘I had naught to do wi any o that, and you canny show that I did. Whereas here’s you and your retinue,’ his lip curled at the word, ‘traipsing across my lands spying out the saints ken what, in broad daylight, planning and plotting a’ sort o nefarious deeds!’
‘No, no, maister,’ said Blue Doo, and swallowed nervously. ‘Deed they wereny, for we brought them here quite openly and were about to put them afore you, so we were, just as we agreed on—’
Just as who agreed on? Gil wondered.
‘We’ll ha nothing from you vagand rannagants,’ said Vary contemptuously. Behind him the tapestries stirred, and a tall man with a black beard stepped into the hall. The tinkers cringed at sight of him, but he ignored them, studying Gil with an interested and slightly disturbing smile.
‘And who might these be, Gregory?’ he asked, his voice buttery with the accents of Ireland. ‘For I’m sure they’re not the company we looked for, seeing they have but the one follower between them.’
‘I’m the Archbishop’s quaestor, as I said,’ Gil repeated, studying the newcomer. He was a big man, taller and broader than Gil, clad in workmanlike leather doublet and upperstocks, his legs bare below the knee but for a thick pelt of black hair, his feet encased in soft brogans such as the men of the Isles wore. The black beard rippled down his chest, a strange style for a fighting man, Gil thought, and this was certainly a fighting man. ‘And what’s your interest?’ he challenged in return.
‘None o your mind,’ said Vary, at the same time as the Irishman smiled more broadly and said, ‘Ah, I’ve an interest in all kind of things, so I have. Where our wandering friends get to,’ he nodded at the tinkers, who were trying to become invisible without moving, ‘who it is that’s buying and selling the black powder, where royal dukes are to be found. All kind of things. So what is it interests you, Maister Cu
nningham?’
‘None of these,’ said Gil firmly, somehow chilled by the use of his name, though he reminded himself that the fellow must have heard Vary address him. ‘As I’ve already told Maister Gregory Vary, I’m pursuing the abduction of his good-sister Mistress Audrey Madur, and the arson at The Cleuch. If any of these things you mention are connected wi those, then I’d like to ken more, but otherwise they’re none of my concern.’
‘And you, the silent man at the side there,’ said the Irishman, scorn in his tone. ‘Have you naught to say for yourself? I’ve heard all about you, Maister Boyd, that I have, but to tell you truth, I’d not have expected to see you wi a train as short as this at your back.’
Doig growled, deep in his chest like Socrates. Boyd remained silent, though one eyebrow twitched, and after a few moments Blue Doo stirred uneasily. ‘The likes o the MacPhersons would be having nothing to do wi royal dukes at all, and that’s a true word, your honour, so it is. So it is,’ he repeated, his words slowing as if he was a toy whose string was running out.
So it was you shifted the black powder in truth, thought Gil. I wonder did it get here?
Another of those smiles stirred the black beard, and the Irishman said happily, ‘Indeed, and I would say royal dukes would be having little to do with the likes of you, except it’s strange what you find among the heather when the need presses. Maister Vary, what will we be doing with these gentry? For I hardly think the guests we look for will be wanting to keep company with them, do you?’
Vary nodded at this, and signalled to the man with the quarterstaff. The door opened behind Gil, and he glanced over his shoulder to see several more sturdy men enter the hall.
‘I’ll talk to you later, Cunningham, or whatever your name is,’ Vary pronounced sourly. ‘Take them away, lads. Put them above.’ He gestured towards the painted ceiling.
‘I’d rather talk now, if you would,’ Gil said, since Boyd remained silent. Little hope of persuading the man, he thought. Whatever I said or sang, it would be better received by a billy goat, or by a rotting tree trunk. ‘I’ve a deal o questions for you, like I said, and it’s a long walk back to Belstane, where I’ll be looked for the night.’
‘Oh, we’ll put you on the road later,’ the Irishman assured them casually. Dead or alive? Gil wondered, and could not predict the answer from the tone of voice.
‘Take them away, lads,’ Vary said again, and two of his men laid hands on Gil.
It was Doig who swung the first punch, level with his own big head, but Vary’s men took it as a signal to use force on all three of them and waded in joyously. Gil ducked to avoid a blow aimed at his throat, and his attacker tripped over Doig’s writhing victim; Gil parried another blow, managed to catch a joint-stool which was hurtling towards his cousin’s back, and heard one of the tinkers protesting.
‘There’s no need o this, maisters, sure there’s no, and if himself’s the Archbishop’s man like he says, this is bad luck, and I want none o’t. The red-haired fellow never—’
‘Begone, then!’ said Vary impatiently.
Gil found his feet hooked from under him and he went down, with a solid weight on top of him, the breath driven from his body. Before he could try to scramble up to recover, something struck his head and the whole melée whirled away into shadows; he was only distantly aware of being dragged up many flights of stairs and flung on to a bare floor in a cloud of choking dust, of hearing a key turn in a heavy lock.
Now he touched his head gingerly where the lump was, surveying his fellow-prisoners. Doig displayed a number of bruises, the graze on his jaw, and the beginning of a splendid black eye; Gil himself was aware of more scrapes and contusions on his back and arms than were visible. Boyd, on the other hand, appeared undamaged, which Gil felt was somehow typical.
‘So why are we here?’ he asked. ‘Locked in like this, I mean. And why at the top o the house, rather than the cellars?’
‘In cause they tinkers are a crowd o cheatin, jankin sniggerts,’ said Doig roundly. ‘And that Vary and a’.’
‘No the tinkers, Billy,’ said Sandy Boyd. ‘As Gil said, they were ready to argue when we were taken up. No, it’s Vary we need to look at, and his guest.’ Who has signed his own death-warrant, Gil thought, with that crack about the length of Sandy’s train. He can’t be allowed to live long with the knowledge that implies. ‘Though I wouldny trust the tinkers full reach,’ Boyd added musingly. ‘Wi my life, maybe, but no my purse.’
‘So what’s Vary at?’ Gil asked casually. His cousin glanced briefly at him, then at the folds of tapestry in the corner of the chamber. Overhead a scuffling and thumping on the slates suggested jackdaw politics was being enacted. ‘So far I reckon he prompted the abduction o his good-sister, probably suggested the trees on the Burgh Muir, brought in this Irishman that goes about torturing and killing and committing arson. He’d likely get away wi those, though I doubt if his brother will ever forgive him when he finds out the whole, so why’s he so coy about answering questions the day?’
‘I wouldny ken,’ growled Doig.
‘It does seem he’s expecting company,’ remarked Boyd, still eyeing the threads fraying from the tapestry. ‘The Abbot o Melrose coming for his dinner, or the like.’
‘The hall didny look set for a feast,’ Gil countered, and Boyd grinned and nodded. ‘Though I must say,’ Gil went on, turning back to the window, ‘if he’s expecting company, he’s got it now. Come and see this.’
Below them, on the track which led up from the Medwin, a cloud of dust had appeared, with what seemed like a large party of riders at its centre. They seemed to be peaceful, to judge by their leisurely approach, and to be expected, to judge by the way the barmekin gates had swung open and Vary was making his way to welcome them. As the dust settled, Gil made out a group of persuasively armed guards, who wore black cloaks with a white device on the left shoulder. In their midst rode a well-padded, well-gowned man, with another fighting man at his side, presumably the leader of the guard. The first of the guests dismounted, removed his broad hat and fanned himself with it, accepted Vary’s bowing welcome. Gil craned to see better. Even at this distance, he could recognise the dusty face and sweaty, balding pate which were revealed. Suddenly the device on the guards’ cloaks became clear: the fishtailed Cross of St John.
‘Sweet St Giles,’ he said. ‘William Knollys.’
‘Who?’ said Doig from behind him. ‘Are you certain? What’s he after?’
‘It’s him,’ agreed Sandy Boyd. Gil looked along his shoulder at his cousin, and found him staring intently at the scene by the gate. ‘It’s Will Knollys right enough. Whatever can Gregor Vary have to attract him? It takes a mighty big bit o cheese to tempt Will out o his hole these days.’
‘It’s the espinyards, surely,’ said Gil. ‘How many is the Crown wanting?’
Sandy turned his head to meet Gil’s gaze, the pale eyes sparkling with amusement.
‘The lot, a course,’ he said. ‘But at our price, no at Will Knollys’s price.’
‘I thought Knollys was out o favour wi the Crown,’ said Doig, who had not stirred from the settle. ‘Dismissed two-three year ago from the Treasury, wasn’t he no?’
Gil preserved his countenance. He had been instrumental in Knollys’s fall from favour, after he had recovered, quite unintentionally, a quantity of the late king’s coin and jewels which the Treasurer had rather hoped to keep for himself. James Fourth, the present king, had been appropriately grateful to Gil, but Knollys had left office all incontinent, and currently had to content himself with his income as Preceptor of the Knights Hospitaller at Torphichen. Gil suddenly recalled Mistress Somerville’s waiting-woman mentioning Commendator Noll. So Somerville was acquainted with Knollys, it seemed.
‘He was.’ Boyd was watching the display at the gate again. Servants had emerged from the house with refreshments, the horses were being led away, some of the armed escort had left with the horses. Some of it had not. ‘This is how he wants to get back in fav
our, I’d say. This king hasny the same interest in gunpowder his grandsire had, but he wouldny say no to a set o matched espinyards. So what we want is to get them at a price suits us, no a price that suits some middle man or other.’
‘I can see that,’ Gil agreed. ‘You should get my mother in to bargain wi Vary. Did you ever see her chaffering for horses?’
‘Even Vary doesny deserve that,’ said his kinsman. ‘Who d’you suppose that is wi Will Knollys? I canny tell from this angle.’
Below them, the guests were being escorted to the house with some ceremony, Vary offering an arm to the former Treasurer of Scotland, the Irishman conversing with Knollys’s companion behind them. Gil frowned down at the scene: the companion was lean and dark, his helmet removed to show neatly clipped hair and beard. Where had he seen him before?
‘Maybe we should get out o here, then,’ said Doig from the settle, ‘let you get a right look at him. Yon tapestry’s away too rotten to make us a rope, let alone there’s no enough o it. How stout would you say the door is?’
He slid down off the settle and marched across to the door, kicking it hard with no great effect, and began poking at the lock and hinges.
Gil looked about the chamber again, paying more attention this time. Below the window, the limewash on the wall clearly covered raw stone, but the other three walls seemed to be plastered. Drawing his dagger, he stepped to the nearest and knocked on it with the pommel, then struck it harder. The wall shook visibly under the blow, and a lump of plaster fell out, revealing a framework of woven hazel behind it.
The hazel grove, he thought, I must break out of the hazel grove.
‘You’re a handy fellow to have by in a crisis,’ Sandy Boyd commented, joining him. ‘I suppose the whole chamber is wattle and daub?’
‘The inside walls, at least,’ Gil said. ‘None o Vary’s folk stayed up here, did they?’
‘Naw.’ Doig kicked the door again. ‘I heard them all away down the stair. You think we could get through this?’ He drew a sturdy dagger, and began digging at the limewashed surface by the jamb of the door.