Fire & Faith

by Steven Veerapen

  He strode up the street, ignoring the shuttered houses, which turned grander and smugger with each step. Then he paused. No more hiding his face – his true face, his dread sovereign face, as he called it – from them. Very soon he would take what he wanted.

  The king was dead, but that only meant that the kings of the underworld could make their presence known.

  1

  The sky was a murky, mottled grey, the colour of frosted glass. Simon Danforth picked his way carefully through the days-old snow, his boots making curiously satisfying crump, crump, crump sounds as he went. At his back lay the Abbey Church of Holyrood, the parish for the inhabitants of Edinburgh’s neighbouring burgh, the Canongate. It was now tenanted by the body of King James V, in a newly-built tomb bearing a carved lion atop a great crown. The late king, the keeper and protector of Scotland, was now only ‘the late king of good fame and memory.’ His death the month before had left the nation leaderless. A baby daughter had succeeded him, doubly unable to govern by her sex and infancy. In her name, James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, had been appointed regent, by dint of his trickle of Stewart blood.

  Danforth had heard Mass in the church, amidst a quiet congregation still awed and shocked by the king’s death and the lengths of rich black velvet that draped every surface of the gloomy interior. It was almost a relief to step back into the wintry light, leaving the new tomb to the silent contemplation of its new inhabitant. To Danforth’s left the majestic palace of Holyroodhouse reared, a wall of carefully-hewn stone and diamond-paned windows. He paused to look up at them, nodding at some acquaintances from the burgh as they passed. Snow was banked up in the corners and interior shutters were closed against the January air, masking the comings and goings of the men and women within.

  Inside the palace, Danforth knew, his master, Cardinal David Beaton would be involved in the administration of the nation. Only a few months before, he would likely have been called into Beaton’s presence to aid him. Then he had been a trusted and much-loved secretary: a man who did not balk at a difficult task and whose loyalty was beyond question. Now, however, he was heading home to his quiet, lonely house at the head of the Canongate. It had been over a month since the Cardinal had requested any labour from him, and that last request had been refused.

  In the days following the death of King James V, Cardinal Beaton had struck upon an idea. Still lodging in the splendour of Falkland Palace, where the king’s body natural had begun to putrefy, he had summoned Danforth and his colleague, Arnaud Martin, into the mean little room in which he had first informed them of the death. ‘I have need,’ Beaton had said, ‘of loyal and trusted men, and I know of none no better than you.’ Danforth had smiled at the compliment. Martin had shifted uncomfortably. ‘Now that his Grace has been summoned to his eternal reward, I find that the safety and security of Scotland must rest in my hands.’ Beaton’s hand, which had developed a tremor, stilled. ‘Simply put, my friends, I must express what I believe to be the will of the king.’

  ‘Yet his Grace left no will,’ Danforth had said, resisting the urge to scratch his head in confusion.

  ‘It must be that he did. I was of his heart, of his very mind at the end. It was his earnest desire that I, Argyll, Huntly, and Moray govern the realm whilst the little queen is in her minority. He did not wish my foolish cousin, young Arran, to seize the sole regency. My friends, his Grace let me know this by sign and speech. I had only to pray on the matter to be sure. I now lack only the document to prove the king’s will. You will write me such a document.’ He had flicked his hand at them. Matter settled: get on with it.

  Danforth could recall the horrified silence that followed. It was like the stunned awe that followed an execution, no one sure whether to cheer, laugh or cry. It was unthinkable. Even if the Cardinal believed he knew the king’s desire, to write a will and sign it would be a great injustice. It would be forgery. It would be a fraud perpetrated on the nation, on the Church, on the people, on God. He had struggled to comprehend what was being asked – and asked with such casual sangfroid. What the Cardinal had proposed was little better than following Mendacius, the Roman god of trickery and deceit, who had fashioned a statue of Veritas to trick people into worshipping the fake. Unfortunately, he had run out of clay and could not finish the feet. Forgeries could not stand. It was difficult to believe that the Cardinal, even in his disturbed state, was seriously asking such a thing of him.

  ‘I … your Grace, I cannot write any such document. I cannot invent a document from a wish, however much it might be desired or believed. I just … cannot think it right.’ Beaton, usually a genial, well-spoken man, had begun to tremble. He rarely became angry at servants, preferring sardonic good humour and theatrical sighs. His raised voice was for his opponents and those who thwarted him. But the king’s death and the preceding defeat of Scotland’s army at Solway Moss had worn heavily, aging him beyond his fifties.

  ‘Perhaps I was unclear,’ said Beaton, his lip curling. Anger lay beneath the calm. ‘This is not a request. This is a pressing matter, necessary for the right governance of this realm. You chose to live here. You chose to serve me. You will prepare the document.’ A clawed hand, held rigid, had moved to massage his grey-streaked temple.

  ‘I cannot, your Grace,’ said Danforth, falling to his knee. Martin remained standing. ‘I cannot make a shipwreck of my conscience, nor leave a stain on my posterity. It … I cannot. I am very sorry therefore, my Lord Cardinal. I am your obedient friend, but … no.’

  ‘You, Martin,’ the Cardinal had said, his voice a strained whisper. ‘You’ll turn your back on me too? Surely not.’ Martin’s reply had been smooth and even, with none of Danforth’s histrionics.

  ‘Your Grace, this matter is strange to me, to be honest. It … I must have time to think, to consider. I’m sorry.’

  The Cardinal had risen from his chair by the fireplace, and he thumped a fist on the small desk before him. ‘Give me no apologies. What am I to do with apologies? Apologies can’t govern!’ Beaton’s eyebrows had then met in a dismissive, disdainful look. Neither man had an answer for him. ‘If you can’t serve me, then I have no use for you. If you wish to continue in my service – for you are my servants, my vassals, and I’m the master here – you will do as you are told.’ The final words – demeaning, condescending – had been their dismissal. The Cardinal had turned his back to them.

  Afterwards, Danforth had gathered his things and set out from Falkland. Martin had tried to dissuade him, suggesting that there might be less dishonour in accommodating their master’s wishes than in letting the nation fall into the hands of Arran, a chubby, slow-witted fool who would bend to the will of anyone offering him enrichment and prestige. But Danforth had been deaf to all pleas. A deeply ingrained sense of loyalty and duty – a desire not to disappoint – took up arms against a pervasive sense of wrongness. He could not reconcile the two, his mind rebelling against itself, and so he had decided to run. Just as he’d run from England many years before. Besides, Beaton’s words had stung. ‘Do as you are told.’ They had shattered the pleasant fiction that he was a fellow soldier in the Cardinal’s defence of the Catholic Church against Lutheran heresies. They reminded him instead that he was a serving man. A tool. A puppet. Martin, exasperated, had eventually called him all manner of pious old fools, the friendship they had cultivated over the previous weeks and months dealt a severe blow by their master’s divisive demand. Images of Abraham and Isaac had loomed large in Danforth’s imagination as he took his leave of Beaton, Martin, and Falkland.

  Since he had returned to the Canongate, Danforth had received news only second- and third-hand, reduced to begging it of strangers when he took the air or looked in on the local merchants. The Cardinal had duly produced his debatable will – notarised by a servant at Falkland, in the end – but failed in his bid to share the governorship of the realm. Barely believing his luck, the dim, vaguely reformist young Arran had been installed as sole regent after calling Beaton a false churl, albeit
the Cardinal had been given the office of Lord Chancellor, formerly held by another nemesis of his, Gavin Dunbar, Archbishop of Glasgow. The whole of Scotland was abuzz at the news, wondering at what Beaton held over Dunbar that he might rob him of his office: especially given that Arran looked on Dunbar as a friend. Danforth smiled knowingly at this. Before King James had – quite extraordinarily – turned his face to the wall and died, Danforth and Martin had discovered proofs of the Archbishop’s misdeeds and placed them in the hands of the Cardinal. So much for gratitude.

  Although he had to watch events unfold from the side-lines, receiving not a scrap of notice from his master, Danforth was surprised to find that one of Beaton’s other servants, a garrulous and nosy man called Shug Fraser, turned up at his house regularly to deposit his wages. As Chancellor, Beaton didn’t forget his servants, even if they were not high in his favour. A more cynical man might have thought it a form of insurance. Throughout January Fraser had deposited money at Danforth’s house in the Canongate, assuring him that it was also his duty to see Arnaud Martin was given his wages. But he carried no personal message from the Cardinal, insisting only that his Grace was too busy being everything in Scotland, and keeping Regent Arran honest and true in the faith. Nevertheless, the Cardinal’s provision of money had given Danforth hope. He had not been cut adrift in disgrace but was merely resting on his heels until he was restored to useful office. In the wages Danforth dared to surmise also a hint of regret on his master’s part. Now that he had achieved a form of success, the Chancellorship, might not any man repent of words spoken in desperation?

  As he passed under the gatehouse and left the secretive and silent Holyroodhouse in his wake, Danforth reflected that his only regret in refusing the Cardinal’s demand was that it had cost him his friendship with Arnaud Martin. Martin had not accompanied him back from Falkland, but discreet enquiries assured him that the man had not tarried long there either and must have decided to follow Danforth’s moral path as well as his physical one. Neither had attempted to visit the other, pride wrestling against pride in the battle over whose argument had proven correct. Friendship was a curious thing, either as strong as refined gold or as unstable as mercury. When still being minted, it required tempering, not division. With the Cardinal in power, Danforth decided, he would be the bigger man, the wise elder, and visit Martin in Edinburgh with a stout apology. Though his decision had ultimately been right, he would assure the younger man, it was bootless to lose a friend over a disagreement. It was the behaviour of children, not gentlemen.

  The main road of the Canongate was clear, having been beaten into a slushy, muddy swamp by heavy boots, cart-wheels, and horseshoes. The only undisturbed snow lay on the lopsided roofs of townhouses that competed for size and elegance. Forming an uneven blanket, the clouds reflected a pretty variation of violet and blue hues. The strange thing about snowy weather was how much it drew people into themselves, thought Danforth, as he spied men and women going about their business in silence, their eyes on the shifting, sucking ground. Trepidation had hung over the country, twinkling maliciously in the air since the king’s death, few wishing to hazard a guess as to what fate might now befall Scotland. Each person braving the morning seemed to share the same desperate longing spring, and the subsequent lazy summer days on which no which no one would either need or be inclined to think seriously about anything.

  If there was one good thing about the cold, though, it was that it muted the smell of the street muck, a witch’s brew of human and animal waste. He skirted the market cross, its pillar rising high into the still, cold air from a richly painted stone gallery. The merchants of the Canongate were not fazed, however. It was a Saturday, and they were eager to be about their business. Outside a draper’s, a scrawny shopkeeper was screwing his eyes up and blinking into the sky, judging whether or not sleet might come and ruin his wares if he put them out on display. Next door a butcher was shouting ‘just do it, ya shitebag, ye. Look here!’ at an apprentice. On the broad table before them sat a chunk of cattle meat, the butcher trying to show the queasy-looking young boy how to tackle it. With a look of grim determination, he rose his cleaver into the air and brought it down, hard, severing flesh and bone. A flurry of abuse began again when the butcher realised his charge had looked away.

  Spotting a chapman and making the mistake of catching his eye, Danforth hurried on before he could be accosted. The chapman, who had begun a measured stagger through the churned mud, already reaching into his pack for his wares, let loose his own string of curses. ‘For Christ’s sake, sir, have a care how you look upon a fellow. Cannae make a living these days,’ caught Danforth as he turned into the alley that led to his own little courtyard, where the snow was still intact save a few boot-prints coming and going. Sticking his head into the tiny stable, he called out to his horse, Woebegone. The chestnut head rose at his voice, black eyes peering at him dolefully. He had had little reason to ride out lately. Woebegone must have felt abandoned. He did not even keep a stable boy, feeling that as he had, in the past, spent so much time away from home, it would be an unjustifiable expense. He would need to rethink that. He would need to rethink a great deal.

  Danforth spent some time visiting with Woebegone, patting him and letting the beast nuzzle at his hand, before leaving the stable. He paused for a moment, irresolute, wondering whether it might be a good time to visit Martin. Otherwise he was faced with the prospect of nothing to do, and there had been too many days like that. He was beginning to feel like an exile again. It was an unwelcome feeling. Scotland had been his home now for the better part of a decade, but when he was by himself, he felt again like an Englishman adrift on a lonely, choppy sea. The feeling was only exacerbated by a lack of service, the loss of a grateful master. Loneliness had threatened to embrace him, a vicious and uninvited old acquaintance. ‘Did you think,’ it seemed to say, ‘that I had forsaken you? No, my friend. I’ll always be ready to return. I am the only constant in your life.’

  He started at a sudden movement. One of the bare trees in his garden had quivered under the weight of snow on its branches, and the sudden motion had sent it cascading to the ground in a shower of powdery glitter. It was almost as though the tree had shivered. Beyond it, in the raggedy bushes, he noticed that a network of cobwebs had been turned into shimmering patterns, like snowflakes suspended in time. He laughed at his own foolishness, his breath bursting forth in a confusion of steam. Startled by a shivering bush; next he would be jumping at crying bird. His hand had even begun a journey to his neck, around which hung his lucky St Adelaide medal. Ever since God had created man with eyes sensibly to the front, he had been wary if not terrified of what might lie behind him.

  In the kitchen Danforth found his housekeeper, Mistress Pollock, fussing over some pots, dressed in her usual dull grey dress, white apron and coif, iron hair bound in a painfully tight bun. She had a good fire going and the room was welcoming. Her face was less so. Though she was a proficient worker, Mistress Pollock nevertheless presented a stony, humourless face to the world. It was only when she had happened to meet Martin, in the short days before the death of the king, that she had broken her usual demeanour and smiled. With him she approximated girlishness and good humour, uncaring that it sat so oddly upon her.

  ‘Good morrow, Mr Danforth.’

  ‘Good morrow to you, Mistress Pollock.’

  ‘Shall you be wanting some dinner?’ She knew better than to ask if he was expecting company.

  ‘Oh, I think so,’ said Danforth, deciding to test her. ‘Although I have it in my mind to go out.’

  ‘Is that so, sir? On his Grace’s business?’ she fished.

  ‘No. Well, not exactly. I have it in mind to visit young Mr Martin.’

  ‘Oh? Well that’s good, so it is. He’s a good sort.’ The ghost of a smile threatened her thin face, something between a dimple and a twitch troubling her right cheek.

  ‘I had suspected you might find the news agreeable. You like young Mr Martin?’


  ‘May I speak freely, sir?’ She said, after a pause.

  ‘Pray do.’

  ‘I think it does you no good to be without a friend here. No’ just here, I mean – in this land. You’re a solitary wee soul, quiet. Melancholy, I might say. A man should have friends.’

  ‘As should a woman.’

  ‘I have friends, Mr Danforth.’ Her chest rose. ‘When I’ve no’ got duties, when you’re from home, I visit, and I talk. My life’s no’ all toil, nor is it all fond foolishness. A balance, that’s what you need. For anyone, man or woman. That’s all, sir. Sorry if I was forward.’ Something like a blush came into her face, the prominent cheekbones darkening.

  ‘It is no matter, Mistress Pollock. I bid you speak freely and thank you for your concern. I shall call upon Mr Martin, and you might have the … pleasure … of his company again, as it appears you wish. But first I should like to eat.’

  When it came, Danforth’s meal was better than his usual fare, the pottage spiced and thick. Perhaps, he thought, Mistress Pollock was experimenting ahead of the prospect of cooking for someone she liked rather than someone she merely respected. He was surprised at the old woman. He had thought her a sullen termagant; he had taken her on initially because she was taciturn and never pried or made a fuss of him.

  After his morning dinner, Danforth pulled on his furred robe again. Now that he had decided to visit his old friend, he found that he wished to put it off. It was a daunting prospect to approach a man and give an apology. Martin was an easy-going person, but his tongue could be sharp. Danforth would have to work out his opening words in advance: he should give ground, but appear magnanimous in doing so, not overly grovelling. Besides, he must not forget that his decision had been the correct one, the moral one. He had not demanded Martin abandon the Cardinal too; that had been his own choice. It had worked out for the best, at any rate. If Cardinal Beaton was not Scotland’s governor, nor even its co-governor, then he was still its Chancellor and thus in a position to rein in the excesses of Arran.