‘Who?’ Louise repeated.
He looked at her, wide-eyed. ‘The border guards, from Selkirk. They chased me out of the town. The town’s people had cornered me and two were setting on me with clubs when the guard arrived . . .’ He paused for breath, and wiped a cold sweat from his lip. ‘They broke my leg, but with the good Lord’s help I got onto my horse . . .’
‘Where are the rest of the regent’s men?’ asked Hob, keeping the smouldering feathers near the soldier’s chin.
His head sank back on the blanket. ‘I have deserted,’ he said. ‘Albany will have me hanged if they find me.’ At the sight of his listeners’ shock, he gripped Louise’s sleeve. ‘It is a very long story. Please, madame, please hurry! They will almost be at the doors. You must hide me, or I am dead.’
The man was a deserter, and maybe worse, yet Louise had no hesitation. She turned to Hob. ‘Take his horse out by the postern gate and down to the back field, so he’s not in the stable when they get here.’ He left, at a run. She looked at Wat and the guards, who stood by the fire. ‘We shall hide him behind the walls. You know where I mean?’ Wat nodded, and was bending to lift him when shouts came from the gates.
A guard ran out into the courtyard, and was back in a moment. ‘They’re here,’ he yelled from the door.
‘Keep them out,’ cried Louise. ‘They cannot be allowed to force their way in.’ She turned to Wat, her voice rising with fear. ‘It’s too late to hide him. Go back to the walls. They have no right to gain entry without Crozier’s authority.’
Swords in hand, the guards left. Louise looked at the soldier, who had closed his eyes in despair, knowing the end was near. ‘What is your name?’ she said.
‘Antoine. Antoine d’Echelles.’
‘From now on, say not a word in English. You are my French cousin, comprenez-vous?’
He gave a feeble nod.
There was the sound of feet from the stairwell, and Ella appeared in the hall, three of her children scampering around her skirts. The fourth was in her arms, sucking a rag, his eyes sleepy from crying. Louise put a hand to her head, to calm herself, but even before Ella had taken in the scene, she had begun issuing orders.
It was only a matter of minutes before the courtyard filled with voices and the tread of boots. The Selkirk guards had barged their way into the keep.
Throwing the door back on its hinges, they entered the hall. Five men, in black leather and steel helmets, brandishing swords, stood at the top of the steps. At sight of the hall below, they were brought up short.
Around the table, a family dinner was being eaten. An old man, two women, and a young gentleman sat dandling spoons over pots of steaming fish. Ale mugs were half empty, the meal well under way. A scattering of wooden platters and crumbled bread told of children who had eaten their fill. Heedless of the adults, two boys and their sister raced around the room, human bees whose buzz would have driven the Selkirk men crazy in a smaller space. A large dog sat on his haunches between the old man and the young. His blue eyes followed the guards, but he did not move. A moment earlier, Louise had placed the wolf at the soldier’s side, with the command to stand guard over him, and there he would stay until ordered otherwise. The children were also under instruction, urged to be as boisterous and rude as they liked. They could not believe their luck. Even the infant, in his mother’s lap, found himself a role. Ella had given him an old horn, which he was banging against a tin plate as if to raise the dead.
Louise, seated at the head of the table, rose in outrage at their arrival. ‘Guards! Guards!’ she cried. ‘See off these barbarians!’
Wat and his men appeared at the stairhead. ‘Mistress,’ said Wat, breathlessly, ‘they would not be kept out.’
Crossing the hall, as the border guards descended the stairs, Louise stared up at them. ‘By what right do you enter these premises?’ she asked, her voice shaking. ‘Who are you? What is your business?’
The leader of the posse would not allow himself to be thwarted by any woman, however outraged. ‘We have reason to believe you are harbouring a fugitive from justice,’ he said, removing his helmet in the hope that might dampen her fury.
She said not a word, merely raising her eyebrows in disbelief.
A man at the leader’s back pushed forward. ‘There is a heretic on the loose, and his trail has led us here. Unless he somehow turned himself into a bird and has flown off, he is in the keep, whether you know it or not. He was badly lamed. He cannot have gone any further.’
Emboldened by the deputy’s confident tone, the officers moved towards Louise. ‘We have the right to search the keep and its buildings,’ said the leader, holding her stare. ‘By statute of the warden of the middle march, we can demand entrance to any property we suspect of sheltering someone who threatens the country. If you were the regent himself, we would be within the law in crossing your threshold.’
‘You do not have that right,’ she replied with contempt, ‘and well you know it. You cannot intimidate me with talk of laws. I may be a woman but I am not a fool. With my husband absent, and without my permission, you have no authority to be here. This is trespass. You are breaking the law.’
‘Goodwife . . .’ began the guard, but she cut him off.
‘And why would we, of all people, be suspected of harbouring a heretic?’ she asked, on a rising note of indignation.
‘We don’t . . .’
‘We are all good Christians in this house. And like all good believers, here you find us, at our Sunday devotions. That you burst through our gates on the Lord’s Day makes me question how devout you and your men can be.’ She made the sign of the cross, warding off the presence of such ill-doers the way healers sniff herbs to protect them from the plague.
The children were running in whooping circles around the group, pretending they were corralling sheep, and Louise was obliged to raise her voice. ‘You have disturbed a sacred family meal, officer, all the more precious as we approach the days of our Lord’s Passion. Should you not also be at home examining your souls?’ She fingered the rosary at her waist, examining the well-worn beads while she waited for an answer.
The guard coughed. ‘Madam, we are obliged to work all days of the week. If a man commits an act of heresy on the Lord’s day of rest, we cannot let it pass. For breaking this holy day his crime is thereby doubled, and his punishment with it.’
Louise smiled, the way a dog bares its teeth. ‘Well, as you can see, we have nothing to hide.’
There was silence, each side weighing the other. If Louise had hoped the men would back down, she was to be disappointed. Planted before her, uncertain but still suspicious, they stood their ground. ‘If you do not let us conduct our search,’ said the leader, when it seemed Louise had no more to say, ‘such obstruction would be viewed very seriously by the march warden, law or no law. In recent years he has had reason to doubt the loyalty of people in these ungoverned parts. You’d be wise to give him no further grounds for suspicion.’
Louise gave an irritated sigh. ‘Very well,’ she said, as if the last thing she wished was to displease the warden. ‘My husband will no doubt chastise me severely when he hears about this, but you have my permission to examine the keep and its outbuildings. But be quick about it. He will be home soon.’ She looked the officer in the eye, a nasty glint in hers. ‘He is a reasonable man, but he does not like intruders. The last such, a miserable pack of thieves’ – she turned to Old Crozier, who nodded at the imaginary memory – ‘never left the keep. Their remains lie in the pit, behind the midden.’
With a harried air, the Selkirk guards set out through the keep, Wat and his men so close on their tails they might have been shackled. Only Hob remained in the hall, standing motionless in the gloom at the foot of the stairs. The French soldier’s horse was grazing safely, his harness and saddle stowed at the back of the stables.
While two officers searched outdoors and two the keep itself, one remained posted in the great hall. Louise gripped her hands together, to
hide their trembling. Seeing her expression, Ella’s daughter Emily stopped playing and ran up to her. Before the child could speak, Louise crouched, smiling. ‘On you go, poppet,’ she said, and clapped her hands, sending the child back to her whirling games, though her cheeks were ruby and her legs growing tired.
Ella poured ale into a mug and held it out to Louise, who sipped it slowly in the hope of steadying her heartbeat. As she handed it back, the women shared a look.
The guard caught the silent exchange. He shifted, eyes narrowing and, after a second’s hesitation, strolled towards the table, to get a better look at the languorous young man whose back was to the room, his face half hidden by the brim of his black felt hat.
Louise put a hand on the young soldier’s shoulder. ‘Antoine, mon ami, est-ce que tu veux un morceau de fromage?’ she asked him gaily. Turning to the guard, she explained. ‘Our goat’s cheese can rival even that from Antoine’s homeland.’ She repeated her words in French, and Antoine dutifully gave a gasp that might have passed for a laugh. Shaking his head, he replied at length. Louise translated. ‘My cousin disagrees. He says he cannot bear cheese from Scotland, it is more sour than raw rhubarb. But our ale, he admits, is good.’ She topped up his mug, and he drank it down in great gulping draughts that proved the truth of his remarks. Taking a cloth to his face, as if to wipe his lips, the young man contrived also to dry the sweat that was trickling down his neck.
Beneath the table, Antoine’s leg was propped on a stool. On his lap lay a rug, to shield his canted limb from any casual eye. As the guard drew closer, Antoine looked over his shoulder. Removing his hat, he turned a curious gaze on the man, as if amused at his interest, and offered him a clear view of his face. At Antoine’s side, the wolf’s gaze was every bit as intent. A low growl tickled his throat. If the guard came a step closer he would leap.
‘Where are ye from?’ the guard asked the soldier, halting at the sight of the wolf.
Antoine’s smile remained in place, though the pallor of his face was ghastly. The guard repeated the question, and Louise took a seat beside her new guest. ‘He speaks no Scots,’ she answered for him. ‘He is one of our kin, but newly arrived. He is a soldier to trade, but has agreed to help my ailing cousin Benoit in his carpenter’s shed for a time. I hope to have him fluent before the year is out.’ She took his hand, and pumped it playfully on the table. Seeing the man’s stare fixed still on Antoine, she continued: ‘Antoine is my late mother’s godson, the child of her dearest niece.’
‘Ask him to stand up,’ said the guard, as if she had not spoken.
The hall fell silent. The children had stopped their chase, the infant had tired of the horn and was sucking his thumb, and nobody at the table was able to breathe. Into this abyss charged Emily. With a squeal, she flung herself at the table, nearly toppling Old Crozier from the bench, and throwing her arms around the soldier, who came close to fainting once more as his leg fell off the stool. His face hidden in the child’s embrace, he fought back the encroaching darkness, shook the ringing out of his ears and, with a look as grim as if carved from granite, made to get up. The girl loosened her grip, but before he could rise she held up a small leather-bound book. ‘Look what I found!’ Antoine’s face went from white to grey, and Louise’s eyes widened with horror. The book must have fallen from Antoine’s cloak while he lay on the settle.
She leapt up, placing herself between child and guard, who advanced with outstretched hand. ‘Give me that,’ he commanded.
Escaping from behind her aunt, Emily danced off across the room, ‘Catch me then, fat-face!’ she crowed, leaping onto the settle, then across the fireplace, as if this was the best game she had ever played. Her skirts flapped as if she were an insect in flight, and her delighted laughter sent a rill of iced sweat down Louise’s back.
At that moment, the chief officer returned from his hunt of the cellars, and his companion emerged empty-handed from the upper floors. Wat’s curses on the warden’s men flew around their heads as he and the keep’s guards stationed themselves beside them. Moments later, the last Selkirk guard finished prodding the stable hayricks and the brewhouse vat, and joined them, plodding down the stairs with a disappointed tread.
The officers assembled, as if to confer, but sensing the altered mood in the hall they looked around with fresh interest. Louise was almost as ashen as Antoine. She no longer looked like the affronted mistress of a fortress, but a girl scared out of her wits. Ella was darting between table and hearth, trying to catch her daughter with one arm, a startled infant tucked under the other, and there was a sheen of excitement on the guard’s face that told them he had found something.
‘What’s going on?’ barked the leader, raising his hand to calm the hubbub. Emily, a stickler for doing as she was told, continued to jig and holler. Seeing the officers bearing down on the child with swords drawn, Louise screamed at her to be quiet. ‘Bring me the book!’ she cried. Frightened to hear her aunt so angry, Emily burst into a bawl and approached, sobbing. Louise took the book, and dropped a kiss on her head. ‘You’re a very good girl,’ she whispered. ‘Now, go sit by old Tom.’ Old Crozier held out his hand and, hiccuping with tears, the girl climbed onto the bench beside him, pulling his arm around her.
Without a word, Louise held out the book. A sense of nightmarish unreality numbed her fear, and she no longer trembled, though she believed that whatever it contained would condemn her, and the soldier, to gaol, and probably far worse.
The leader of the Selkirk guards sheathed his sword and took the book. As he flipped through its pages the hall was hushed. In the shadows, Hob fingered his dagger. The wolf’s growl thickened, haunches tensing as he readied himself to leap at the first sign of attack.
The officer frowned. Crabbit black print spread across the page. He saw scribblings in the margins, in a paler ink. ‘Bible, is it?’ He thought of the huge illuminated tome his priest read from in chapel. ‘Seems small for a bible.’ Turning it over he saw the embossed gold cross on the back cover, and the letters INRI. Even one who could not read understood what that meant.
The guard ran a finger over the leather binding, marvelling. No one he knew owned the holy book. Not even all priests had their own bible, sharing one between parishes, and copying out the parts they most often used. Many priests, he had heard, could not even read. They learned passages by heart, and spouted them at every chance, lest they forget them.
He handed it back to Louise. ‘Read me some of it, then,’ he said. Louise opened it. It was not in Latin, but in a language she did not recognise, though each letter was clear enough. Her eyes flew to Antoine, who was staring at the table with the air of a man on the scaffold.
She looked up at the guard with contempt. ‘I cannot read. Does your wife?’
Sensing he was closing in on the mystery, the guard looked around. ‘Someone here must be able to read it,’ he said. ‘A house such as this, there’ll have been a bit of schooling. Otherwise what’s it doing here?’
Louise went cold. Unsure what the book contained, she could not claim it was her husband’s. Yet to say it belonged to her guest was to draw attention to him. That he had not already spoken up told its own story. She could not answer, and the longer she was quiet, the deeper the guard’s suspicions would grow. Not knowing what words she would utter, she was about to speak when someone else did so first.
‘I will read it,’ said a hoarse voice, and a figure at the top of the stairs pushed back his hood and picked his way down to the hall. ‘It is after all my book.’
‘Father Walsh!’ cried Louise.
‘Apologies for my tardiness, madam,’ said the priest, taking her hand, and bowing over it, ‘but the confession hour overran. I am here now, though, for the family’s weekly instruction.’ He cast a look over Selkirk’s officers. ‘Lent is a serious business, my friends. No true Christian can reach the kingdom without first shriving his soul. But before we begin,’ he continued, unclasping his cloak, and draping it over the settle, ‘I see my lit
tle book has been amusing you.’
‘Who is this?’ the guard asked Louise, as the priest patted down his cassock and ran a finger under his collar.
‘Father Michael Walsh,’ she replied, ‘the valley’s priest and a friend of the family since my husband was a boy. And this man,’ she went on, turning to the priest and biting back tears, ‘is from the border guard, who accuse us of harbouring a heretic. They have searched the premises and found nothing, but still they persecute us.’
‘Give me back my book,’ said Father Walsh in his mild manner, ‘I was vexed at leaving it here.’ He turned the pages. ‘Such handsome print,’ he murmured, rubbing the page, ‘and what an elegant typeface. A far richer paper too, compared to the copy in the church. Quality rags, that’s the difference.’
‘It does not look big enough to be a proper bible,’ said the guard doggedly, standing at his shoulder.
‘Indeed no, it is not,’ said Father Walsh. ‘It is my travelling bible. This is merely the New Testament.’ He smiled at the guard. ‘So then, let me read you the first page, from the gospel of Matthew.’ He put his finger under the line, and then looked up. ‘No, I will spare you the endless genealogy.’ He flipped further into the book, humming under his breath, until he found a passage some pages in. ‘Now this,’ he said, looking up with an innocent smile, ‘this is a good text for the long days of Lent.’
He cleared his throat. ‘Matthew chapter six, verse one.’ He began to intone in Latin, his voice weak with advancing age, but growing stronger as the familiar, much loved words flowed. When he finished, he looked up. ‘That was telling us to beware of doing good deeds simply so that we will be praised. As the gospel says, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men.’ He turned to the Selkirk guard. ‘You should know, sir, that the Croziers are a fine example of those who hide their light under a bushel. A more faithful, charitable, reverent family I could not wish to serve though they keep their good works quiet as the grave. Shall I read on?’
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