A Clash of Spheres

by P. F. Chisholm

  Obediently he joined another row of dancers and jogged past the astronomical spheres on their stands and the leaden globe of the Earth on its scaffolding above the chair where the King would soon sit. There was something odd about that chair, it had a few little spots of black on it as if someone had shaken a dish of coals over it, but he didn’t have time to wonder about that, he was holding hands with a Danish girl and spinning her round as they thundered past.

  ***

  Hughie could hardly believe his luck. He had only gone into the alehouse for a quart on the off chance and there was Henry Dodd himself, sitting by himself, stonily eating the ordinary which was haggis, of course, with bashed neeps and fried sippets of bread to soak up the fat, and drinking the ale while the alehouse racketed around him. He didn’t look as if he was enjoying himself but then he never did and had got even gloomier after Dick of Dryhope’s tower.

  Hughie gave out that his name was Tyndale but it wasn’t. He had had to be very careful coming back to Edinburgh and in fact until now he had not been into the town at all but had stayed in Holyrood House out of sight because it was less than a year since he had been banished from Edinburgh for a year and a day for the accidental killing of his uncle. Certainly the murder had looked like an accident, which Hughie had planned carefully to achieve. Since then his life had been transformed what with doing a few killings for the man who called himself Hepburn and a few for himself too.

  There was only a month or two to go but he still didn’t want the nuisance of being arrested again and certainly not of possibly being hanged. He had been all the way down to London to find and attach himself to Carey and had finally got himself a very cushy job with the man himself, if you didn’t mind a fair bit of sewing, which he didn’t. He was good at it, after all. In due course, Hughie would kill Carey and earn his thirty pounds sterling. Not yet. Hepburn had told him very clearly that Carey was off-limits until the day after New Year’s Day, and then he could kill the Courtier any way he liked.

  But in the meantime, here was Henry Dodd, sitting in a booth in an alehouse, grimly eating haggis and that was an opportunity not to be passed up because Hughie’s right name was Elliot and he was a younger half-brother of Wee Colin himself.

  So he elbowed his way through the crowd to the bar, using his size and height, got himself a quart, and came and sat down opposite Dodd. The face noted him and got longer and grimmer.

  “What d’ye want?” said Dodd. “Did Carey send ye?”

  “Nay,” said Hughie genially. “Only I wis wondering why are ye here paying for food when ye can get it free at the King’s Court?”

  Dodd grunted. He was in his jack; his helmet—a nice new morion—on the table next to him where he could get at it easily. He hadn’t taken his swordbelt off though. Hughie knew how to use a sword though he was better with a pike because of his size. However he had no plans whatsoever to fight Dodd with a sword, that wasn’t his way at all.

  No more words from Dodd. Hughie asked, “Where are ye going, Sergeant? Are ye taking a message.”

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Dodd. “Wee Colin Elliot challenged me to a duel and I’m carrying my own message to say I accept.”

  “First blood or to the death?”

  Dodd gave him a contemptuous look. “Death, o’ course.”

  “Ay.”

  “Wee Colin’s.”

  “Ay.”

  Dodd finished his ale.

  “I hear ye took money to kill the Courtier,” said Hughie carefully. “Is that true?

  “Ay.”

  “So is he dead then?”

  “What do ye care?”

  I’m due a lot of money for killing him meself, Hughie nearly said but didn’t. “He owes me wages,” he said, because it was true.

  “Well, last I saw of him, he wasnae dead,” allowed Dodd.

  Hughie smiled happily. “Och that’s good news, is that. Nor wounded?”

  “Nay.”

  “So where are ye going?”

  “Ah told ye, Ah’m gaunae find Wee Colin Elliot, we’ll fight and I’ll kill him,” said Dodd coldly. “And then I’ll probably die meself.”

  “Och,” said Hughie, “So ye’d rather kill Wee Colin than the Courtier?”

  “Ay,” said Dodd, “o’ course.”

  Hughie sat back to think. Was it worth it? Yes, definitely. Could he do it? He thought so. Would Dodd believe him? Only one way to find out.

  “I know why ye wantae kill Wee Colin,” he said carefully. “And I’m really a Fenwick so I’d not be sorry to see him dead.”

  Dodd nodded once and waited. In the complex entanglements of the Border, the Fenwicks too had a long-running bloodfeud with the Elliots. It was quiet at the moment and there had been a couple of marriages to try and heal the breach, but nobody forgot a bloodfeud. How could you? A bloodfeud meant men dead.

  “So,” said Hughie authoritatively, “Ah ken where Wee Colin Elliot is the day. He’s spending New Year wi’ his sister and doing a spot of raiding in the East March. And I know his sister because her man’s a Fenwick cousin of mine.”

  Dodd had sat back, his eyes slitted. “Ay?”

  “Ay. I could take ye there in mebbe two days and then ye could do it and naebody to interfere. I cannae help ye get out again after ye do it and ye’ll have to talk to the bastard Elliots, but I can take ye to where Colin Elliot is.”

  “Hmm. I just want the mither done with.”

  “Well, I won’t help ye, I’m just a tailor, me, I’ll leave the killing to ye.”

  “I don’t need yer help.”

  “Good.”

  “What do ye want oot of it?”

  “Your horse, the one ye call Whitesock,” said Hughie, who had cast many covetous looks at the big sturdy beast. “I think ye willna be needing him again.”

  Dodd nodded. It was a fair price for the work as well. He looked into the distance as if he was talking to someone else and Hughie felt the hairs go up on his neck.

  “Ay,” said Dodd, with a short sigh. “Ay. It’s a good idea. We’ll need supplies and some horsefeed since the grass is under the snow, but ay. Is the tower near Jedburgh?”

  “Nay,” said Hughie. “Stobs.” That was in fact where his poor sister lived, though he hadn’t seen her for years. Never mind. They wouldn’t get that far.

  ***

  At last the Masque had started although nearly everybody was too drunk to walk. His Highness was sitting under the leaden Earth, lolling sideways and laughing while the girls wafted about waving their arms and singing verses about Venus and Mercury and then formed an outer ring of angels, some of them semi-conscious and distinctly fallen. The men pranced and kicked and jumped. Huntly was particularly good at this despite his size and large feet. Apollo the Sun had never been known to leap so high or disposedly when King James had been wearing the costume.

  Napier and Anricks were deep in conversation like a couple of lovers and Carey looked around for the man organising the props in the Masque. He was nowhere to be seen and nor were his men. Carey poked his head out of the door and asked one of the guards where the four artificers had gone.

  “Mr Hepburn went down to get some air, sir,” said the man. “And his men with him.”

  Carey looked back at the Masque. Apollo was on one knee, speechifying in verse to the King and explaining that Apollo was the King’s servant and sought only to do him good with his bow and arrows. He hurried over to Anricks, extricated him from his conversation with Napier and said,

  “Something is wrong, Mr Anricks. Mr Hepburn, the masque artificer has gone and his men with him.”

  “An explosion?”

  “Maybe. Will you search all the rooms nearby while I look in the cellars?”

  He ran out of the door, down the stairs to the winecellars, searched through each of the arched vaults more by smell than sight sinc
e he only had a candle, found nothing apart from barrels of wine and more importantly, no lit fuse. He went to the stables, found Hutchin currycombing the horses, and learned from him where he had seen the tanks. They went to look and found the tanks open and empty, nothing else there and four of the better horses gone from the stables.

  He sprinted back up to the hall, where the Maxwell and Huntly were advancing on the giggling King who kept slapping his arms as if he was being bitten by insects. Anricks was arguing with the musicians who were sawing away with a will as everybody circled around the King again. Apollo, the Sun, Mercury, Venus, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, all partnered with blond Danish girls with their costumes askew and their nipples popping out.

  He used his fist on the open door and produced a loud thumping which made the nearer dancers slow and get bumped into by the next dancers. The whole stately sight tumbled into chaos.

  “My lords, ladies, gentlemen, please leave the chamber at once!” He used his battle roar which produced a moment of silence.

  King James stood up. “What are ye at?” demanded the monarch angrily. “You leave at once.”

  Carey looked up at the globe above the King, and suddenly got it. The round shape, the deadly liquid that Widow Ridley had dipped her finger in, everything.

  He pointed at it. “Step away from the chair, Your Majesty…”

  King James goggled at him. “Wha’?”

  Carey saw it then, a crack from pole to pole in the leaden globe above the King splitting slowly, something oily leaking. “Ware the globe!” he shouted and started sprinting across the floor as the world went slow. Anricks saw it too and was nearer. He sprinted for the King before hunching his shoulders and making an excellent football tackle on the King which carried both of them sliding several yards away from the chair and the scaffolding, with the King underneath him.

  The painted globe was opening like an egg broken by an expert cook, from the bottom to the top and from it came a quantity of oily liquid which poured onto the chair and the velvet robe the King had left there.

  For a moment nothing happened and then smoke began to rise. Before their eyes the velvet robe and the upholstery and the very wood of the chair started to char and blacken as if it was burning in an invisible fire, and a horrible sour smell was growing while the invisible fire caught the rushes and floorboards and blackened them too.

  Carey had never seen anything so terrifying as the slow ghostly fire, but he pulled down a tapestry to try to put it out.

  “No,” shouted Anricks, “this is oil of vitriol, stay back and find some lye quickly, or we’ll have a fire.”

  The smoke was getting thicker. The King picked himself up off the floor, gasping and shaking. Suddenly he ran from the room, crying like a child. Anricks chased after him.

  The Queen had already gathered up her ladies and swept them from the room, mostly frightened and not drunk anymore, although some were still giggling in bewilderment. Carey thundered down the stairs again, followed by a couple of bodyguards, across the courtyard, through the stables and into the yard behind where the laundry was and three lyedroppers standing in a row. They emptied them out carefully for the lye was caustic and put the lye into buckets which they carried upstairs into the hall full of smoke and tipped them onto the spreading fire. The first bucket produced a hissing and foaming which made one of the guards run, but the next produced less and the one after that, less again until there was a charred mess in the centre of the hall, bad-smelling smoke dissipating, and an expensive velvet robe and a chair turned to a charred mess.

  ***

  Anricks chased after the fleeing King of Scotland, up many flights of stairs and into the small rooms under the roof where the palace servants lived if they were important enough. At the end of the corridor the King ran into a room with just a bed in it, stood wailing for a minute and then crawled under the bed. After hesitating because of his new suit, Anricks crammed in under the bed as well.

  “Your Highness, I must check your clothes for oil of vitriol…”

  The King had his eyes tight shut and his thumb in his mouth and was making little whimpering noises.

  “Please, Your Highness…” No response so Anricks found his tinderbox in his sleeve pocket and with shaking hands made fire and lit his candle stub. There were a few black-edged holes in the purple brocade but thank the Almighty, the oil of vitriol hadn’t gone through the padding. There was a watch light on the windowsill and Anricks lit it and brought it under the bed where the King was rolled up tight, eyes still shut but tears pouring down his face.

  “Maman,” he was whispering. “Ou est maman? Je veux maman, je vous en prie m’sieur, maman…”

  For a second Anricks didn’t understand, but then he did. The King was begging for his mother who had been taken from him when he was eighteen months old.

  What do I do, he wondered desperately and then he thought of his own children and what he would do for them. He crawled back under the bed and held the King tightly from behind, difficult with a fullgrown man.

  “Je m’excuse,” Simon said, his voice shaking. “Je suis désolé, votre majesté, mais votre mére n’est pas ici.”

  The King nodded, sucking his thumb. “Je sais,” he said, “mais ou est-elle?” Where is she?

  “I don’t know either,” Simon said, still in French, “But you must be brave…”

  James opened his eyes, turned over and blinked at Simon. “Brave?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty, you must be brave. It’s very important because you are the King.”

  “The King?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  The whisper was almost too soft to hear and hard to understand with its lisping childish French. “But I am not brave,” said the King, “I am a coward. I am always afraid.”

  “Well,” said Simon, “so am I. I am not brave but I pretend to be brave, I do what a brave person would. I act, Your Majesty.”

  There was silence from the King. “Ça marche?” That works?

  “Oui.”

  “Oh.”

  “Ça suffit,” said Simon, suddenly hating the cold ambitious men who had taken the King from his mother all those years before. “Vous étes brave, tres vaillant. Et soyez calme.”

  “Oui,” said the King, “je suis calme.” And the King smiled suddenly at Anricks and then shut his eyes and went instantly to sleep, lying there on the cold dusty floor, with Anricks holding him.

  He lay for what seemed a long time and then heard light footsteps tiptoeing into the room.

  Very carefully Anricks wriggled out and climbed stiffly to his feet and saw the Queen, still wearing her artful draperies but stone-cold sober.

  “How eez he?”

  Anricks crept to the door carrying the watch candle and beckoned her outside.

  “He is sleeping, Your Highness.”

  “Sleeping? He never sleeps after somessing like zis, he cries and wails and says sings I not understand in French…”

  Anricks gestured that the Queen should look for herself and held the candle so she could see.

  “Good God,” she said, “he is sleeping. How did you do it, sir?”

  “I…ah…” Anricks hesitated, wondering if he should be tactful or honest. “I…spoke to him in French, which is a language I speak, and it seemed to calm him and so he slept.”

  The Queen suddenly smiled. “And you held him, no?” she said. “I see it from the marks in the dust. This is vot I should do. Yet he always say he speaks no French and vos late talking.”

  “I think perhaps when he is upset he remembers…”

  “Vat?”

  “His mother?”

  “The mermaid Queen? Surely not. He vas alvays taught to hate her.”

  Anricks bowed because one does not contradict a Queen. She contradicted herself. “But yes, I have heard him say “maman” when he i
z like zis. That is French for ‘mutter’, is not it?”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  “Poor poor one.” The Queen smiled at Anricks. “I vill hold him now and you may go downstairs and help Sir Robert find the vicked men who tried to kill him viz magic vater.”

  “Oil of vitriol,”

  “Vatever it vos. I vill look after him. He vill vake up soon. I vill be here.”

  Anricks watched as the Queen slid herself under the bed. He bowed, left the watchcandle on the windowsill, went looking in the other bedrooms and finally found a shawl folded up on one of the beds. He brought it in and passed it under the bed to the Queen.

  “Sank you,” she said, “zo I not feel ze cold usually.”

  “Still,” said Anricks. “When shall I tell your women where you are?”

  “Vait at least two hours. In fact tell zem only I am viss the King.”

  Anricks went slowly down the stairs, feeling exhausted and longing for Rebecca, his own shelter and safe harbour, longing to put his head between her breasts and tell her what had happened.

  ***

  When they had put out the invisible flames with the lye, they gathered everything together using spears and pokers from the fire, and put it all into the Yule Log fire which smelled truly terrible but crackled and burned with ugly yellow flames. Carey was checking behind all the old dusty tapestries, in cupboards, nooks, window seats, because he couldn’t believe there was no gunpowder. James’ worthless father, Lord Darnley, had been blown up with gunpowder and because he had somehow escaped, then been strangled in his garden. Whenever Carey looked at the King of Scots now, mentally he heard the boom of a large explosion, which annoyed him almost as much as his repeated dreams of his own execution.

  Huntly and Erroll had ridden into town, ostensibly to stop the Allemaynes getting away, which Carey didn’t believe would do any good at all, seeing how they were both Catholics and Huntly was still his prime suspect for the originator of the plot. And so he went to the audience chamber where all the great and good of Scotland were discussing the doings at the tops of their voices, found Maitland of Thirlstane, got him to swear out a general warrant, and at midnight had the satisfaction of battering a door in and finding the Maxwell in bed with two of the Danish girls.