Fire & Faith

by Steven Veerapen

  ‘And so we close the book? We let Fraser’s killer go free, hoping that his job of work has been cancelled? I don’t like that. He was still one of us.’

  ‘No. No, of course not. But we must put aside the politics and find Fraser’s killer as we have found others. We are being drawn into a maze otherwise. Only he can reveal the truth of this tangled web. We shall not find it from chasing the mysteries of politics. No more than from chasing ghosts.

  ‘And if this is the true case,’ Danforth went on, ‘then our killer has shot his mark, missed, and the quarry is now something he must preserve. We can, then, expect no attempt on the child’s life. We can only be grateful that the first step of his plan was all that he carried forth. He sought to draw protection away from the queen, failed, and now has no reason to get at her anyway. The cause, the motive – it has been removed.’

  ‘And so it’s over?’ asked Martin. ‘Before it truly began?’

  ‘Let us pray so.’ He let his own image of God smile into his mind, a figure not unlike his father, bearded, and benevolent. Let there be no more death, he asked. ‘Although I should be far happier knowing who killed Fraser and hearing that this was the way of it from his own lips.’ Danforth looked up into the clouds, a haphazard mixture of greys and white. ‘We can tell the dowager of our thinking. It might yet be worth imposing some manner of – of confinement – on the palace and servants. Whilst her Grace is here, I mean. Everyone to keep to their rooms now, save the guards patrolling. That manner of thing.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s flown now,’ said Martin. ‘And you can turn your eyes elsewhere. You might be getting on in years, but I reckon the lusts bloom again when you near thirty. If I were – uuaagghhh.’

  Danforth’s head jerked back from the sky and his mouth fell open. He leapt towards Martin. His friend was pinned to the oak tree, an arrow jutting from his body.

  ***

  ‘Martin! Arnaud!’ Danforth reached out for Martin’s shoulders. On instinct, he grasped at the arrow, making to yank it out. He paused, not sure what to do. His hands shook wildly as he saw that Martin’s eyes had closed. A physician – an apothecary – that is what he needed. But who had done it? Why?

  He pivoted, his robes flying. ‘You!’ he called, anger, fear, and shock colouring his tone. Cam Hardie was standing in the churchyard. ‘You bastard! You’ve shot him!’

  Hardie looked between Martin and Danforth, the usual smugness wiped from his face. He shook his head, his mouth working silently. ‘It wasn’t me,’ he said eventually ‘No, no.’. He turned. ‘Simms? Simms? Where are you?’

  Danforth watched as Hardie began skipping away, back towards the church. ‘Get back here! You can’t run!’

  Hardie disappeared around to the right of the church, leaving Danforth unsure whether to give chase or stay with his friend. Before he could decide, he heard Hardie’s screams. With an anguished look at Martin, he began running towards the sound.

  As he turned the corner, his hands grasping the stone for speed, he drew up short. Only a few steps ahead of him, Hardie was hunched over Simms, who was lying on his back. ‘Help him,’ shouted Hardie, turning. Danforth peered down, his heart thundering. Simms was alive, but he had been slashed at. He was grasping up at Hardie’s coat with bloody hands.

  ‘A fine show,’ said Danforth.

  ‘What?’ barked Hardie.

  ‘You will both of you hang. You have shot my friend and think to hide it by some wounds done by your own hands?’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about, you bloody madman? He’s been stabbed.’

  Danforth stood his ground, but a little more doubtfully. He chanced a look towards the churchyard, but all was silent. ‘Can you speak, Simms?’

  The man on the ground grunted. ‘Who did this to you?’ persisted Danforth.

  ‘The devil,’ croaked Simms. ‘A devil. In a blue cloak. He … bastard stabbed me … tried to stop him running.’

  His words hung in the air as Danforth roughly dragged Hardie to his feet. ‘You can plead for your lives later,’ he said. ‘The pair of you. And you can explain then what you meant by following cardinal’s men on the dowager’s business. Get you gone now. Find help.’ Hardie gave him an angry look, not moving. ‘Go and find help,’ hissed Danforth. ‘Go into the palace. Go now!’ He shoved at Hardie, which seemed to bring back some of his bravado.

  ‘Don’t you push me.’

  ‘Go!’ Danforth shouted. And then, ‘I shall keep an eye on your friend.’

  Hardie ran, and Danforth turned back towards Martin, abandoning the groaning Simms.

  He was half slumped against the tree, neither standing nor sitting. The arrow, he saw, had gone in under his left shoulder. It didn’t look like it had pierced the heart. No blood spurted. With luck, it would be a slight wound. Painful, but not life-threatening. The pages of a book he had seen in London opened in his mind: a book on anatomy, with the image of a man who had undergone all the wounds one might receive in battle. It was a hideous thing, the figure having a spear clean through his thigh and a sword in through the ribcage and out through the back. He tried to banish it.

  ‘You’ll live, my friend,’ he whispered. ‘As God stands above us, you will live.’

  Danforth produced a handkerchief from inside the folds of his robe and wiped gingerly at Martin’s forehead. It was a pointless gesture, but it felt like something. A light wind started up, making the bare branches above them sway.

  He shivered. It was not over before it had begun.

  14

  The hubbub in the small guardhouse only died down with the arrival of Depute Forrest, his hands on his hips. ‘You will all,’ he said, his voice low but carrying, ‘be silent in the presence of the depute.’ Danforth, Hardie, and the quailing porter ceased. ‘Now what the hell is all this? Don’t you dare all speak at once.’

  The assembled men looked at one another, and the porter spoke first. ‘It’s all been wild, Alexan–‘

  ‘Forrest,’ snapped the Depute.

  ‘Sorry.’ The porter shrank. ‘It’s a’ been wild. These lads were oot in the churchyard wi’ their friends. Fightin’ last night, there were, in here. I threw them oot, o’course. Noo they’ve been duellin’ on hallowed ground. Shameless knaves, the lot.’

  Hardie started to protest, but Forrest silenced him, his arm cutting the air. ‘Was that the way of it?’

  ‘No, indeed,’ said Danforth. ‘My colleague, Mr Martin, was pierced with an arrow. This man,’ he gestured at Hardie, ‘and his friend were following us. He claims his colleague, Mr Simms, was stabbed.’

  ‘Claim nothing,’ snapped Hardie. ‘He was stabbed to be sure, sir. You might go and take a look at him yourself. He has been carried down to our lodgings in the burgh, bleeding like a butchered hog.’

  Forrest looked at them both through lowered brows. ‘A strange tale. A tale I don’t like.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said Danforth. ‘That seems to be the way of it. You might look upon Mr Martin too. He is lodged in our room in the palace.’

  Hardie had returned with a stream of palace and household servants, all eager to see what the commotion was. Between them, the wounded men had been removed to their beds. Both, judged the dowager’s physician, were likely to live. If infection did not rot the broken flesh.

  ‘And who, pray, did these foul deeds?’ asked Forrest, crossing his arms and leaning back. ‘Who have you fellows upset? Who have you feuded with?’

  ‘I feud with no man,’ said Danforth, lowering his head. ‘And Mr Martin and Simms have nothing to bind them.’

  ‘Simms saw him,’ said Hardie. ‘Aye, he saw the bastard.’ Forrest only raised an eyebrow. ‘A devil, he said, in a blue cloak.’

  ‘Blue cloak?’ The depute looked sceptical. ‘What foolish fancy is this, a devil in a blue cloak? Danforth, are you of this mind?’ Danforth shrugged. ‘If you expect me to believe the ghost of St Andrew is haunting the churchyard, shooting men in their boots …’

  ‘Ghost?’ asked Danfor
th, a weight forming in his gut. ‘Mr Forrest, what do you mean, the ghost of St Andrew?’

  Forrest waved a hand in the air. ‘Pfft. Daft old legend for bairns.’

  ‘Please,’ Danforth insisted.

  ‘The old church is said to be haunted by the ghost of St Andrew. He appeared before King James IV, warning him not to go to Flodden.’

  ‘He should have listened,’ put in Hardie. Forrest turned a scowl on him.

  ‘It’s a bootless tale. One of the palace’s scare stories. Likely it was some man in disguise, working for the old king’s wife.’

  ‘And this fellow, then?’ asked Danforth. ‘The man who shot Martin and stabbed Hardie. A man in disguise?’

  ‘If there was such a man. If you pair aren’t trying to hide your friends’ fight. Me, I think you’re a pair of goddamn liars. I think this whole tale a steaming puddle of pish.’

  ‘Uh, sir?’ said the porter, clearing his throat. ‘I think ye’re right.’ Craven little rat, thought Danforth. ‘But … well, one of them stole a crossbow from here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A crossbow is missing. One of them must have took it. A gun too. You ken, one of the old wheellocks.’ He cowered.

  ‘What? Those things are damned expensive. And where the hell were you?’ The porter pressed himself against a wall. ‘I … I was oot, sir, by the auld gatehouse.’ His voice turned querulous and Forrest’s bearded face darkened. ‘Well you were the one who said no more pissin’ in the hallway there, so I had–’

  ‘Enough!’ The depute began kneading his forehead with a knuckle. ‘Hell damn and blast it.’

  ‘We must have a search,’ said Danforth, slamming a fist into his palm. ‘This whole palace must be searched, from its lowest stone to its highest.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ snapped Forrest. ‘Do you know how many rooms there are in this place? How few men to search?’

  ‘We might work in earnest, every man paired–’

  ‘A bootless endeavour. Too many places to it. There was a maid here once, some years back.’ Forrest paused to rub his eyes. ‘Stole some jewellery, little trinkets. Hung her parcel from a hook dug in under her chamber window, on the outside. One of the gardeners only found it in summer, trimming the hedges. When it caught the sun.’

  ‘Still, we must do something. This fellow has a gun. He must mean to use it.’

  ‘Goddammit, get out of my sight, all of you,’ roared Forrest. ‘Now.’

  The three filed out. The porter drew his eyes off of Danforth and Hardie theatrically before marching away, scratching at his backside as though fighting to dislodge trapped breeches.

  ‘Well,’ said Danforth. ‘Do you care to explain why you were following us?’

  ‘I don’t have to explain anything to you.’

  ‘Our friends have each been hurt here. What have you to hide? Unless, that is, what I thought out there was true. You shot Martin and stabbed at Hardie to draw away guilt. I feel certain I could argue that case very well before any court the dowager wished to call.’

  Hardie bared his teeth. ‘You bastard, if we hadn’t been following you you’d both be dead. It was us coming upon you that frightened that blue devil. And for our pains you dare make threats?’ Then he stepped back, brushed at his front, and straightened his hat. ‘You have a care, sir. We are great men. Working with and for men of great power and fame. You don’t frighten me, nor your whoremongering master either.’

  Danforth let the insult pass. ‘I have no wish to scare you. I only wish the truth.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Hardie seemed to be thinking. He threw his head back and put a hand nonchalantly on his hip. ‘Aye, we were following you. Archibald Douglas, the esteemed Earl of Angus, has every right to know what you know, as long as you meddle in the affairs of the great. The lord protector will pay well for any news,’ he added, tapping at his purse. ‘But now … well, sir, now this thing has become a matter of personal honour to the House of Douglas. One of our own has been nearly slain. An injury to one of us is an injury to all.’

  ‘The fellow who did this,’ said Danforth. ‘He is likely the one who slew our colleague, Mr Fraser. We had hoped his diabolical scheme was at an end. Oh, but then, why am I telling you this? You heard us in the churchyard as you heard us at Dalkeith, your noses pressed against the door like schoolboys.’

  It was Hardie’s turn to ignore provocation. He shrugged, bobbing his head to let the feather in his hat flounce. ‘As you have been too stupid to catch this bastard, perhaps it is up to me.’

  ‘You cannot be serious. You think you can discover the fellow where I have …’ he hesitated to say ‘failed’. ‘Where I have not yet done so?’

  Again, Hardie shrugged. ‘I have no doubt of it.’

  ‘I have no need or wish for a new colleague,’ said Danforth, his nose rising in the air. ‘And certainly not one of your–’

  ‘Ha! I have no intention of helping you, you fool.’ Hardie drew a loose strand of blonde behind his ear. ‘Only … perhaps we might agree like gentleman to stay out of one another’s way. For now.’ With that, he turned and strolled out of the courtyard, leaving Danforth gaping in his wake.

  ***

  Martin sat up in his cot. The hammock had been wrenched down, and a grumbling Guthrie had ordered a proper bed, with a wafer-thin mattress, brought in its place. ‘Much better than I’ve ever had,’ he had muttered, ‘and me a gentleman-born’.

  ‘Ahh,’ said Martin. ‘This is more the kind of thing for which I was meant. He prodded the pillow – a rare luxury – with his elbow. The one on the good side. Still, the movement sent a jolt of pain running through him, and he felt pearls of sweat pop out on his forehead and run down his face.

  ‘Cease moving,’ said Rowan.

  Although Danforth had insisted that the queen’s physician was an honourable and trustworthy man, Martin had insisted on the services of Rowan Allen as soon as he had come to. The physician had stamped off, ignoring Danforth’s apologies, cursing ‘Scotch ruffians, thieves and ingrates’, and swearing in French. Martin had returned the curses in kind. Rowan Allen had, he recalled, said that she was skilled enough to care for her father in his dotage, and Martin trusted to the instincts of a girl who worked with flowers, herbs, and possets more than a man who looked to cutting and bleeding.

  ‘You know,’ said Rowan, ‘the apothecary in the burgh says that everything can be cured by the right diet. If you have a stomach ache, eat this. If you cut off your thumb butchering meat, eat that.’ Martin laughed. ‘What did I say about moving?’

  ‘Understood.’ He chewed on his lip.

  ‘What on earth happened to your face?’

  ‘My … is it bad?’ Martin’s right hand brushed his cheek. ‘Is it really bad?’

  ‘Pretty bad.’

  ‘I was in a fight.’

  ‘Fight, ha!’ Danforth’s voice barked from across the room. ‘He was struck in the chops by the fellow who was stabbed. Yesterday.’

  Rowan laughed. ‘Well, that at least will fade. Your wound there, that will close up soon enough. I’ll fashion a bandage for your arm. It’ll keep it raised. Stop you from using it and tearing the hole. You have rare luck, Arnaud – it passed through you.’

  ‘He has rare luck that the man was a weak shot,’ sniped Danforth.

  ‘A hunting accident, I thought you said.’ Rowan turned sharp eyes on him. ‘It was poor luck, surely, that the man was a weak shot.’

  ‘So it was. I misspoke.’

  ‘And the man carried out, swearing and cursing, as I came in. Was he in the same accident?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Martin looked away, whilst Danforth clasped his hands behind his back and looked down. ‘What were you hunting this time, the Calydonian Boar?’

  ‘Eh?’ Still Martin was looking at his chest, suddenly interested in the bloodstains on his shirt.

  ‘A great boar which ravaged Calydon,’ offered Danforth. ‘As I recall, it was shot by a woman in the end. That did not please th
e men.’ Martin looked up, to find Danforth looking at Rowan. His stare was somewhere between suspicion and, perhaps, attraction.

  ‘Atalanta,’ she said. ‘Who killed also two ravening centaurs. But she did not kill the boar, sir, only took the first shot and claimed its hide.’

  ‘Look, will this bandage stop the pain?’ asked Martin, ignoring the strange atmosphere between the pair.

  ‘It’ll stop it getting worse,’ said Rowan, drawing her gaze from Danforth.

  ‘Can’t you do something for it now?’ He lowered his voice for the last, conscious of Danforth’s presence whilst Rowan ran hands over his chest.

  ‘With a basket of heather? I think not. The arrow entered just under your armpit, a tender spot. It will sting and trouble you for some days yet.’

  ‘Then some other natural remedy, then? You must have your garden, where you … grow things?’

  ‘I’m not,’ Rowan sighed, ‘a cunning woman. My father’s garden grows some hardy flowers and herbs. For cooking. I know what can dull pain yes – I’ve had the knowledge from books. I visit the apothecary for what’s needed like everyone else.’

  Martin slid down again, disappointed. ‘Fine,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Fine. Go to the damned apothecary. But please, only ask of him what you trust.’

  ‘Very well. You are a truly ungrateful patient, you know.’ She smiled first at him, and then Danforth. ‘Would you care, sir, to accompany me into the burgh? We can talk Hippocrates on the road, if you like.’ She held up an arm, for Danforth to help her rise from the low stool by the cot.

  ‘I cannot, mistress. I cannot leave the lad alone in case … in case he … falls from the bed.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I won’t fall, Simon,’ smiled Martin. ‘I can look after myself. I’ll be safe enough in here.’

  Danforth took her hand. Martin grinned.

  15

  Danforth stood in the bustling market cross, Rowan at his arm. Being outside of the palace brought a sense of relief. It was as though he were suddenly engaged in some great, gladiatorial battle, and leaving the place was stepping out of the arena to catch breath. She raised a finger towards a well-kept wooden building, its door painted. ‘That’s our Master Apothecary,’ she said. ‘He knows me, so I should speak.’ Danforth nodded, a little put out. It ill became a woman to take charge. It was a trait peculiar to Scotswomen, he thought. Some men, perhaps, found it attractive enough. They must, or there would be no more Scots.