by Robert Low
It was all Mintie said and all she needed to say, so that Bet’s Annie closed the undercroft doors, then the grilled yett, and went upstairs to the thin slit of window, where she watched the small, slim figure and the two horses vanish softly into the fading mist of the winter’s day.
Later, she brought a posset down to the waking Batty and told him what had happened to Wattie and what Mintie had done.
‘By God, I am sad to hear of the boy,’ Batty said, then shook his head and flung off the blankets.
‘Gone to Hollows with her fine horse,’ he added in a voice as dull as poor pewter. He shook his head again and added a pungent curse even Bet’s Annie had not heard, then apologised for it.
‘No offence taken,’ she answered, ‘for I am thinking the same.’
‘She will do no good,’ Batty answered, and started to drink the milk posset in order to free up his hand to help him rise. He made a face at the taste.
‘Is there nothing to add life to this?’ he demanded, and Bet’s Annie brought out a small leather bottle from under her apron, though her smile was strained.
‘Put some life in it with this,’ she said and winked. ‘Don’t tell the others – especially wee Mistress Mintie.’
Batty saluted her as she tipped a considerable amount of it in the posset, then he drank and sighed.
‘Saints bless ye,’ he said, making a nest in the straw to sit his cup in so that he could stroke his beard, which felt strange. He realised it was because it had been combed of raggles and nits.
Then he stuck out his hand, and after a pause, Bet’s Annie took him by the wrist and leaned back, hauling him up. He grunted and Bet’s Annie was sure that there was more pain in him than he let on, particularly from that wrenched stump.
For a moment he swayed, testing the limits of his battered leg, while Bet’s Annie tried not to look at the fat naked thighs and sinewy legs sticking from under his bulging shirt.
‘Fetch me breeks and hose,’ he ordered in the end. ‘And hand me that cup up, for the place is swimming round me.’
‘Eau de vie does that,’ she answered, obeying him, and he laughed.
‘Not now. My head is widdershins and this fine posset will spin it back the right way – did Mintie take her da’s pistol?’
She had not taken any weapon at all, and Batty, struggling into his clothes, sent Bet’s Annie to fetch the pistol and load the caliver. He knew the Keeper would release Dand and Dog Pyntle as soon as he arrived back in Hermitage, finding good excuse to do so into the outrage of his Land Sergeant.
‘Men will come,’ he said when she returned with the pistol. ‘Two, possibly three.’
Bet’s Annie nodded, then recalled what she had heard Will reveal earlier and told Batty about Dog Pyntle and Dand the Lamb Ker. Batty nodded.
‘I heard a third name,’ he added. ‘Francie. I don’t know him, but he was the one who shot and I have it that he was considered to have killed me because he seldom misses.’
Bet’s Annie frowned over it a while.
‘Francie Bourne it will be,’ he said firmly. ‘He wins the Truce Day shooting more often than not – when he is sober. Never been known as a man for following Hollows, mind – but he’s a cousin to Dog Pyntle.’
‘A man will follow money, drink or quim if offered in sufficient quantity,’ Batty declared, smacking his lips and raising the pewter cup to Bet’s Annie. ‘But he will exert himself for the Name for free. A fine posset. I taste honey and… is it gingifered a bit?’
‘It is,’ replied Bet’s Annie, beaming. ‘Four eggs, boiled milk—’
‘By God, Powrieburn keeps a rich spice chest,’ Batty said admiringly and smiled. ‘Load the caliver with peppershot, so you don’t miss.’
Bet’s Annie was swallowing hard but nodded firm enough and stood for a moment watching Batty, sitting with his back against the stall, loading and keying up the wheel-lock with his knees and one hand. When he picked up his basket-hilted sword and tested the edge with his tongue, she went up the ladder and fetched the caliver off the wall.
The other women watched her load it and tried not to whimper.
Andrascroft
Later that day
Mintie came up on the hunch of buildings through the bad cess of a wintering day, Jaunty plodding through the swirling sleet, head down and moving like a dog. Mintie rode astraddle, her dress howked up and tucked in, leaving her with breeches and her best blue wool stockings exposed; her legs were chill. Behind, dragged like an unwilling bairn to church, the Fyrebrande fretted and followed.
The forge fire was a welcome ember, the sound of the hammer and anvil like a tocsin – but the place was filled with men, which Mintie had not expected. They had buff doublets and puffed breeches, slashed to show the reds and greens, wore ribbons round one thigh and an upper arm – a livery which showed they were professional soldiery, a trained band. She had not seen the like since her one visit down to Carlisle, the year before last – but these men were not Carlisle men.
They were harder men, with flint eyes and iron stares, hands on hips or stroking thoughtful beards as she rode into the yard. Mintie did not know whether it was her or the Fyrebrande they fancied more.
Andra and Geordie’s Eck hammered iron and sizzled shoes in their forge lean-to, surrounded by horseflesh and the buzz of talk, strange and foreign to Mintie; with a thrill she realised that these were men from the south, further than Carlisle or even York. Brazen and unafraid in a land they were at war with, which told Mintie a lot.
Andrew Crozier looked up briefly, sparks smouldering in his beard and his face a runestone of blank misery. When Mintie caught sight of the pinched face of Geordie’s Eck, red-eyed from weeping or lack of sleep, she knew something had happened.
Bella confirmed it, bustling up through the men and dragging Jaunty by the bridle away from the lean-to forge and the stamp of horses and men; Mintie felt their eyes raking her, griming over the fine lines of the Fyrebrande.
‘Mintie, Mintie, you should go home, lassie.’
Bella wrung her hands in her apron and her face was clearly marked with hours of tears, so that Mintie felt a cold stone settling in her.
‘What has happened?’
There were still tears left, but the tale spilled out, hot and sorrowed, as they fell.
Agnes had birthed a stillborn, a wee soul of a boy now swaddled up and buried. It would be a Christian mercy on him and Agnes if Mintie would ask the priory to say a prayer and light a wee candle for him. They could not do it in the nearest church, which was across in the Reformed England.
‘What of Agnes?’ Mintie demanded, cutting harshly into Bella’s weeping. The Goodwife wiped her eyes, hiccupped once or twice and ignored the clamouring for ‘ma’ from unseen bairns behind them.
‘That, at least, is good news,’ she managed. ‘Agnes has gone to Hollows. As a wet nurse. Which is a gift from God that will save her from grief and milk fever.’
She saw men swaggering over, the better to look at the Fyrebrande – or Mintie – and slapped Jaunty’s rump.
‘Away, lass – this is no place for fine born, neither horse nor lass.’
Mintie went, dragging the Fyrebrande and only dimly aware of a few cozening calls for her to stay. Her mind reeled, not only with news of poor Agnes’ loss but of a new babe at Hollows.
Mintie did not know any woman at Hollows other than the wife of the Laird and she was too old to be birthing new weans. There would be other women there, of course, to fetch and carry – and no doubt other matters with such men around – but none of them warranted the expense of a wet nurse for any birthing they may have had.
The snow fell like drifting oat flakes, melting on her lashes. By the time Hollows loomed, her toes and fingers were pinched and cold and she rode over the sluggish crow-black slide of the Esk by the bridge, looking at the nestle of the powder mill. It seemed as dark and cold as the water, with no one moving near it.
There were watchers who saw her come up, appearing from nowhere it seemed. They
held her by the bridle, grinning up at her, but any mischief they planned was halted by the slash of a voice. It chilled Mintie, but not because of what it promised the men if they did not leave off, nor because of the way they slunk sideways like whipped dogs.
It settled ice on her spine and brought her hand to her throat because she recognised it only too well. One step more brought the owner of it out of the swirling veil of snow to stand and grin his fine teeth at her out of his handsome face with its wave of thick hair.
‘Aye, aye – well met, Mistress Mintie,’ said Hutchie Elliott. ‘I know that excellent horse as if it were my own. Did you also bring me back that fine dagg?’
She found her throat constricted and fought for control of it, was suddenly aware of her indecently exposed ankles.
‘The things you see,’ she managed weakly, ‘when you have no weapon.’
He laughed easily.
‘With that tongue, Mintie, you are never unarmed.’
His riposte stung her, both by the insult and the fact that it had bettered her own, so that she found her voice at last.
‘I am bound for the Laird,’ she snapped. ‘Either stand aside or take me.’
His eyes narrowed like button slits.
‘Mintie,’ he said, and added a sudden twist of nasty grin to her name. ‘I will take you, Mintie. Never fear.’
Powrieburn
That same night
Will Elliot came with the dusk, a clatter in the yard which brought everyone alert and snapped Batty out of sleep in mid-snore, cursing as he fumbled for the dagg. By the time he had it, Bet’s Annie was leading in Will’s horse, blowing on the slow match of the caliver to keep it glowing in the sleet.
‘Aye, aye,’ Will grunted, beating wet off him with his hat and looking like a slab of metal in his gleaming back and breast. ‘You are up and about then – how fares it with you?’
Batty, more relieved than he cared to admit, eased the hurt in his leg a little and stuffed the dagg back into his waistband.
‘Well enough,’ he grinned. ‘I have a touch of gravel in the back, lime in the right foot, and hourly expect my rotted liver to fail. Apart from that, one arm and a gammy leg, I am fine as the sun at morning.’
‘I have news that might bring on a new malady,’ Will said grimly, unburdening himself of a brace of latchbows and a basket-hilted sword. ‘Spleen, for sure. The Keeper is back and has freed the men I jailed. He was not best pleased to find them locked up and less pleased with me for doing so. I am suspect now.’
This last was added bitterly, and Batty had some sympathy with the man, who had put his living – and even his life – at such risk. He thought he knew why, all the same, and dreaded having to answer the inevitable next question Will Elliot would ask, his bluff face miming unconcern and hiding eagerness.
‘Where is Mintie?’
Batty told him and saw the grim cliff of the Land Sergeant crumble like old bread. He sank down on his hunkers, heedless of the cold iron back and breast biting his hips, and stayed there a long time, shaking his head and unable to speak.
In the end, it was Bet’s Annie, bringing food and drink to him, who chivvied him from despair.
‘Get this down you,’ she declared, ‘and never fear. Between us, we will see Mintie safe and justice done.’
Will looked up at the pair of them, dog-eyed with hope. Batty grinned his jut-jawed grin.
‘The posset is good. Better with a wee finger of eau de vie in it, mind.’
Bet’s Annie went back upstairs with the caliver while Will finished his posset in a gulp and tended to his horse. Batty went to the Saul for a while, murmuring and soothing, then levered himself down to the straw and shared bread with the dog when it came to lay a head on his wounded knee. Will came and joined them after a bit, watching Batty click-click his needles on the endless swathe, but the waiting and what lay at the end of it was a rasp. After a time, the grate of the silence on Will’s nerves grew too much for him and he nodded at the knitting admiringly.
‘You are skilled with just the one wing,’ he said. ‘How came you to lose it?’
Such a simple six words, yet it washed Batty with sudden, sharp memories – so sharp that he had to glance down to make sure the stump was there, for the blinding agony of the moment of his arm’s loss almost sprang tears to his eyes.
It had been after Pavia, where the Black Band died under the Imperial cannon fire he and his da helped with. All those proud, beautiful Landsknechte with their gaudy finery and plumes and ribbons, shredded to blood and splintered bone.
He remembered the sweating hell of it, his mouth dry and salted from the powder, gagging at the sulphurous reek like the Earl of Hell’s own arse. Swabbing until his shoulders ached, ramming, pricking, laying, with his da grinning at him out of a stained black face like some mad, white-haired imp.
At the end of it, Maramaldo had ridden up, all smiles and rewards as befitted the Grand Captain of a mercenary band which had six good rabinets served by such fine gunners as the Kohlhases. He had tossed them a purse and ridden off to hang all the looters who had not turned in their plunder to him; he was a byword for cruelty even then, was Maramaldo.
After that, the French had been on the run and Maramaldo, bright with triumph and seeing himself as a condottiere of the first rank, had been made Captain General of the siege of Asti.
It wasn’t much, a little walled place on the plain of the Tanaro River, but Maramaldo set up the guns and invited its surrender. It refused. He pounded it for a day or two and asked again. It refused. He hung captives. The city still refused and paraded its patron saint, Secondus, along the battered walls, chanting prayers for the martyrs. Maramaldo lobbed dead people over the walls like the Romans did in ancient times. It still refused.
And all this time Batty and his da sweated at the guns, while his ma brought them water and food as if they ploughed fields on some peaceful farm.
Then Batty saw Maramaldo speaking head-to-head with his da and his da frowning and unhappy. A little later, he came to Batty and explained what they had to do, his bluff, black-powdered face sheened with sweat.
‘He wishes us to set charges under the walls at the Torre Rosso.’
Asti’s claim to fame was that it was a ‘city of one hundred towers’, and two of them formed the main gate. One of these was the Red Tower, the Torre Rosso, and a more defended part of the walled city you could not hope to find. It was here that the defenders had perched the image of their saint, for protection and defiance.
That night, Batty and his father crept out, with five men carrying charges close behind them, picking a slow, nervous way through the singing night and the old dead, slithering through stinking fluids and farting rot that had once been men.
At the walls they had stacked the charges, and in the dark Batty’s da had prepared the slow-match fuses. The problem, as they had always foreseen, was that someone would have to remain to make sure the fuse was lit. And that would be at dawn, when light betrayed him to the watchers fifty feet above as he sprinted away from the explosion. If he cut the match for safety, the defenders would have time to put it out; and if he cut it shorter he would risk blowing himself up.
His father sent Batty back, of course, and he was unmoved by protests. Batty was moved to obey by entreaties about his ma and had spent the rest of the night with his mother, watching and waiting by the guns, ramrod in hand and worry in his gut.
At dawn Maramaldo assembled his army, then gave the signal for the breaching charges to be lit. But it was clear that the defenders had spotted Batty’s da; sally ports opened, men spilled out, and Batty’s da got ready to run for it.
Maramaldo, who had expected this, simply pointed his sword at Batty and his ma, a gesture Batty’s father could not miss, even across the swathe of scarred, corpse-littered ground. If you run too early and fail, that sword said, then everything you love dies.
Batty reared up then, roaring with anger, and made a grab for Maramaldo’s wrist, missed and sliced his
palm along the sword blade before men dragged him off.
Batty’s da waved to them. Then he blew the charges on a short fuse. Blew himself and the wall to flying flesh and stones to save his son and his woman, and had known he would have to do it, for the charges he had laid were four times more than needed, with more than half angled to blow out from the wall.
Stones and earth scoured across the littered ground, the blast tearing up bodies, helmets, discarded weapons and shields, slamming them into the waiting ranks like cannon fire.
The statue of Saint Secondus launched itself like an avenging angel, arcing into the sky, bouncing a gouge out of the earth, whirling across the ground, ripping through the scattering men until it whipped all four legs out from under Maramaldo’s horse.
Batty was a screaming angel of vengeance himself, so that Maramaldo found himself, dazed and sprawled, looking up at Batty Kohlhase’s unbloodied good left hand, full of ramrod and righteous anger.
Batty almost beat Maramaldo to death with it. Almost. He had to be dragged off while the milling, half confused and leaderless army launched itself at the breach. But their heart was not in it and they fled, while the defenders shouted about the ‘miracle of Saint Secondus’.
Next day, with face bruised and his head bloody-bandaged, Maramaldo had paraded the remnants of his army before lifting the siege and marching away.
There, in front of the mercenaries, a limping, wincing Maramaldo had taken a farrier’s axe to Batty’s left arm, strapped at the wrist with leather thongs and pulled across a rabinet trace by leering men who had never liked him, for his wit and his wage as a skilled man.
‘You dare to strike me?’ Maramaldo had shrieked, his mouth wet and working, spittle flying. ‘Me?’
He had been too injured by the ramrod and botched it, leaving the barber to cut the last few shreds, cauterise the stump with hot pitch, and tell Batty how lucky he was that Maramaldo had left him an arm at all – and that he would be worse off now if he had beaten the chief with his right hand.