by Robert Low
‘Is that the case?’ she answered eventually, near panting with the effort of holding her temper, which was the best course. ‘I am sure Mintie and her ma will be suitably tempered by your concern.’
Hob cared even less for her tone, less still for the way no one invited him or his men to unsaddle, or offered common hospitality let alone the due to the headman of the Hendersons of Liddesdale.
He was made fuming by the appearance of Will Elliot, for he had heard of the man and was confirmed in what he suspected – that the Land Sergeant of Hermitage was out to put his boots under the Powrieburn table. Which was mainly what he had come to prevent.
He saved his lowered brow and cat-spit of wrath for Mintie, all the same, when she finally drifted down into the yard and stood there, her face shrouded in the hood of a long riding cloak and her manner draped with rudeness. Her voice, he was forced to admit, had grit in it when she replied to Hob’s demand to see the Mistress.
‘I am the Mistress of Powreiburn now. My mother is taken to her bed and sleeps. What you have to say, you say to me, Master Hob.’
He had heard she was all whey and head-bowed, so this iron from her came as a surprise, enough to lift his brows. Still, he did not like to be reminded of how low the stock of the Henderson grayne had fallen, especially when it was delivered to him out the mouth of a young lass fallen from grace.
He did not say that, all the same. Instead, he introduced the two others and was disappointed to see no more than a turn of the hooded head as they bowed and grinned.
‘I am leaving them here, for I have a mind to see Powrieburn with some men about it now that your da has gone, may God keep him.’
The boys piously added ‘amen’s’ to that, but Mintie said nothing, and eventually Hob stirred in his saddle and looked from Mintie to Bet’s Annie, then to Will Elliot, who kept to the back of all this, knowing what Hob was up to.
‘Well?’ snapped Hob at length. ‘Have you no thanks for the kindness?’
‘If kindness there was, then thanks there would be,’ Mintie answered flat as a hand on a face. ‘But there is not kindness. There is a search for advantage. Which one of these am I to regard as my future husband? The comely son? Or his gummed kin?’
‘Ho, ho,’ Eck declared, bridling, but was silenced by a wave of Hob’s hand.
‘The comely son,’ he answered and managed a crooked smile. ‘I would have thought that pleasing at least.’
The hood fell back and Hob felt the weapon of her face strike him; Christ and His Saints, he thought, she looks like Death warmed over. Mintie saw his look and then stared at Hew.
‘Like your bride, then?’ she demanded, and he flushed like the boy he was, grew angry with it and would have spat back something cruel save that his da held up a hand and stopped the words in his mouth.
‘It makes sense to consider it,’ he said in a wheedling tone, then glanced quickly at Will, scowling. ‘Powrieburn needs a man’s hand at it, not that of a too-young woman. Unless you have set your cap elsewhere, Mistress Araminta.’
‘Will Elliot is a friend,’ she answered, and Will, on the point of boiling up himself at all this, was struck dumb by that. A friend; he did not know whether to be joyous or weep, wanting that at least and having hoped for a lot more.
‘My cap is firmly on my head,’ Mintie went on, her voice level and firm as an old Roman road, ‘and there it will remain. Powrieburn needs no man’s hand over it – nor do I.’
‘Aye, well,’ Hob declared, ‘Powrieburn is Henderson land.’
‘It is my land,’ Mintie answered.
‘It is mine as your chief,’ Hob retorted, closing one eye in a squinting scowl.
‘It is Hepburn’s, since you hold all your lands from him,’ Mintie answered, almost wearily. ‘So argue the bit with the noble who has fallen from courtly grace.’
‘Christ,’ Hob roared. ‘You are an ungrateful wee squit, who needs to mind her manners and her place in life—’
‘Steady, Hob.’
The voice was quiet but the steel in it rang, and Hob jerked to the sound of it, glowering now at Will, who had stopped leaning against the lintel and now stood, solid as a barmkin, with one hand on his hilt.
‘So,’ Hob sneered. ‘Your bloody light o’ love reveals himself—’
‘I will not be married on to anyone,’ Mintie said sharply. ‘Mattie of Whithaugh tried this and his boys paid the price for it – you must have heard that, even in Hobsgill. Though you did nothing.’
Hob stroked his beard.
‘I heard – and here I am. Are you threatening me with the same? Me? Head of your grayne? By God, Mintie, you sail close to being broken.’
‘I tell you only what is true,’ Mintie answered and turned from him as if he was not there at all. ‘There will be no one married to me and Powrieburn will stay Henderson. The women manage well enough here, as another good friend told a peck of brigands who came here in the night. That was another time you did not come to the aid of your Powrieburn kin.’
She walked back into the undercroft, her voice trailing behind like a waft of blue peat smoke.
‘Leave your lads if you must, but tell them they must do as I bid, or I will pack them back to you.’
‘Pack them…’ Hob began and then lost his words in the torrent of frustrated spray that came from his lips. By the time he recovered himself, Mintie had vanished, so he rounded on Bet’s Annie.
‘Tell yon wee lass she will have a task to pack off these lads if I tell them otherwise.’
Bet’s Annie shrugged and glanced at Will.
‘So thought Will, Clem and Sorley Armstrong. Hen Graham and Dand Ker too. Batty Coalhouse changed their minds.’
‘By God – is Batty her white knight then?’
Will laughed, so hard and hearty that Hob was left blinking and confused. Eventually he growled at the boys to dismount and take their gear into Powrieburn.
‘Da…’ said Hew, uncertain and not happy with the way matters had turned out, less happy still at the sight of his prospective bride. Bet’s Annie smiled up at him, pretty and predatory with promise, so that he swallowed and lost his way with the argument against remaining.
‘Batty Coalhouse,’ Hob said, once his boys had been eaten by the dim of the undercroft. Will nodded, bitter with the words Mintie had spoken so vehemently.
Hob shifted his weight in the high-backed saddle and looked at Will with one eye closed and the other quizzical.
‘Mintie will marry a Henderson,’ he declared. ‘As distant kin as will keep the kirk happy, but a Henderson for all that. No Elliots nor any else will be putting their boots under a Powrieburn table.’
‘So you claim,’ Will answered, as bland as could be managed by a fuming man. ‘Mintie might have a thing to say on it.’
‘Mintie has not a thing to say on it,’ Hob answered sternly, ‘being a young lass and me her feudal. Unless you or Batty Coalhouse wish to say it for her.’
Will, who did not want to add a quarrel with the Hobsgill Hendersons to his fearsomely growing tally of enemies, merely shrugged, and Hob took that for compliance. He shook his head in wonder and mock sorrow.
‘Batty Coalhouse. He has a deal to answer for, that man,’ Hob said finally, then touched his split-brim cap to Will with as polite a scowl as he could manage, reined round and left.
Batty will answer to the De’il, Will thought, but not to Ower-The-Moss Hob Henderson. Unlike myself…
He was still burning at his meekness hours later, when Batty arrived in the yard of Powrieburn, mouse quiet and leading Fiskie in. Will had gone to the undercroft to get out of the tension above, where no one spoke much and the dull pewter cloud that was Mintie hung over everyone. Her mother’s plaintive mewlings, rapidly turning to a grating whine, did not help.
Batty by flitting moonlight looked done up and reeked of moss and moor, firesmoke, blood and unwashed staleness.
‘You look like a sick dog’s arse-end,’ Will said, as Batty took Fiskie in the opened b
astel house door, walking as if his legs did not bend. Batty had no answer, since it was no doubt the truth if he looked anything like he felt; his legs were stiff as wooden balks, his whole body under the clothes felt clammy, and all of him ached in various and painful ways.
It was no life was winter out on the moss, and he said so.
‘Then come in from it,’ Will fired back sharply.
‘Just so,’ Batty said, waving a weary hand and finding a smile for Bet’s Annie and Jinet, tumbling down the ladder with delighted squeals, as if their favoured grandsire had arrived with nosegays and sweetmeats.
Fiskie was taken and unsaddled, Bet’s Annie – with a sly look over one shoulder – produced a flask, which Batty cowped down his throat until his apple threatened to bob up and out his eyes. When he stopped, it was with a great sigh.
‘By God, Annie, yon is as fine an eau de vie as ever graced a bishop’s cellar,’ he said, wiping his matted beard with the back of a grimed hand. He handed it on to Will, who took one look at where it had been and waved it away with a grimace that raised Batty’s eyebrows.
He said nothing, merely moved to the Saul’s stall, where the pair of them whickered to each other, meaningless sounds of affection.
‘Were you seen?’
Batty looked at Will.
‘I was, certes – but I will be away before they gather, so Powrieburn is safe.’
‘So you say,’ Will said bitterly, ‘though it is not. Nowhere is, for you have set Liddesdale and the Debatable aflame.’
Batty said nothing, but stroked the Saul’s whiskered muzzle.
‘I have seen what that can do,’ Will persisted hoarsely. ‘Red murder is the least of it, for folk are left in the wake of a Ride and the misery and ruin goes on long after the event.’
He leaned forward, his face savage.
‘Have you seen it, Batty? The ruin you cause? Bairns and pigs sharing the same filth because their roof is gone? Broken limbs and wounds that fester. Bairns starving because the mother is too wasted to feed milk. The pestilence that always follows, so that wee lassies the age of Mintie end up shivering and melting wi’ agues, or so poxed with blisters that they can open neither mouth nor eyes.’
He broke off and paced three steps the length of the undercroft, then three steps back into the steady, stroking silence of Batty’s hand on the Saul.
‘That’s what yours and Mintie’s vengeance will unleash on the houses of my neighbours, Batty. Ordinary folk who are no part of any of this…’
He broke off and squinted, quizzical and venomous.
‘I have seen that look on you,’ he said, and saw Batty’s head come up, thought triumphantly that he had scored a hit.
‘That look,’ he went on, ‘that shows how killing comes easy to you.’
‘It comes,’ Batty said wearily. ‘Nor is it easy. D’ye ken, Will, that sixty miles distant from either side of the Divide, life is all peace and lush? You should go there.’
‘Or is it redemption?’ Will persisted like a goad.
Batty turned and looked steadily at him, and Will took that as agreement, jumped on the idea and brandished it like a torch.
‘Redemption,’ he repeated, sly and soft, thinking as he spoke. ‘Aye – Batty Coalhouse, the white knight, finding a way to rescue his soul for all the viciousness he did in the Saxonies. By coming to the aid of a damsel in distress – aye, and maybe getting his boots under her bed as a wee addition—’
The hand on his throat choked the sound from him and he found, to his horror, that Batty’s face was close enough to his own for him to smell the sourness of his breath, the woodsmoke rank in his beard and hair. The eyes were cold and hard, with a spark in the middle like a fire inside ice.
‘Don’t carp to me about ordinary folk, Will Elliot. I have seen ordinary folk baying for blood and fire at pyres and breaking wheels for the entertainment in it. And don’t wave poor, innocent neighbours and families at me, for I have never had much of either and so that means nothing to me.’
His voice was low, a cilice that rasped the silence. He let Will go and the release sagged the man to his knees, holding his throat and coughing to clear it, feeling the raw burn.
‘I have never felt your God, Will,’ Batty went on, half to himself. ‘I have never met the man and would not know him if I did.’
He patted the Saul, turned to where Jinet was coming down the ladder, careful and steady with a bowl and spoon and a hunk of bread.
‘God is fine enough in wee universities,’ he added, moving to the siren smell of hot food, ‘but he is a vicious bastard for misery in his everyday work.’
There was more he could have said, but had no way to convey it and so fell on the stew while his thoughts turned it to ashes in his mouth, and Will massaged his throat and stayed sullen-silent. Bet’s Annie, who had crossed herself in shock at Batty’s cursing of God, stood in the chill and waited, looking from one man to the other.
Redemption? Aye, well, mayhap, Batty thought. His soul was in the gust of guns, in the desperate reek of slaughtered men and horses, whole acres of both with their innards out and smoking with plagues of flies.
It was on the walls of shattered stone, in sieges seen from both sides, where men had been torn into travesties of God’s creation by his expertise with powder and shot, in the frightening creep through mines and countermines. It was in the dazed little skeins of Will’s ordinary folk, fleeing with their bundles while fire made a mockery of the blue sky.
Where was God in that? There was only cold dread and the black, inhuman face of war. Yet there was hope in Mintie, faint and fluttering as a bird’s heart. He knew it and if he could keep it beating there was redemption in that, he thought.
Silly auld fool…
She came down the undercroft ladder into mid-spoon, saw the drip of it off the ragged moustache before he wiped it away. For a moment, a glorious little moment, he thought he saw the disapproving moue of her lips, half expected her to sniff, or even say: ‘Men will wallow if left to themselves.’
There was nothing and he nodded to her.
‘Mistress Mintie.’
‘Master Coalhouse.’
Silence, save for the shift of beasts.
‘You wish to ask me something?’ Mintie demanded eventually, just as the moment stretched to an unheard whine along everyone’s nerves.
‘Just so,’ Batty answered, handing the bowl to Bet’s Annie. ‘It is simple and it is this – are you still of the same mind? It seems there is a dissenting view.’
‘I think you must do as you will,’ Mintie declared flatly. ‘Everyone has an opinion and all of them agree – Batty Coalhouse must be stopped.’
‘Yours is the only opinion,’ Batty countered, and saw her look him over, taking in the stained weariness.
Bet’s Annie brought a bag of provisions and Jinet saddled up Dubs, for Fiskie would need some time of feed and warm. So too did Batty, and everyone saw it, even Mintie.
An old, one-armed, big-bellied man, she thought, skulking on the winter moss. Hardened in skill and resolve, she remembered from Tod Graham of Askerton’s letter – such an age ago now, it seemed. Was he hard and resolved still?
‘There is the justice,’ Mintie said softly. ‘He stole from me…’
Batty nodded.
‘There is that. But none of the justice in it will bring back what he took – or what has since been lost.’
There was a long silence then, until Mintie turned away abruptly and went back up the steps. Batty let out his breath and took the reins of Dubs. Will tore off his hat and scrubbed his head with frustration.
‘What was decided? Are you done with the affair?’
‘Is she hurt still?’ Batty asked Bet’s Annie and had back a nod. Will fell silent, suddenly seeing the half-crouch of Mintie in a different light and alarmed.
‘How bad is it?’ he demanded and Bet’s Annie shrugged.
‘She will heal, given time,’ she said. Then she squinted at Batty.
&nbs
p; ‘Is there no word on the wee queen?’
It was a whisper, for few folk knew the Queen of Scots was missing and had been for over-long now. It was not something the Regent wanted bandied abroad, for he was now sure Fat Henry Tudor did not have her either, and it suited him that Fat Henry thought the bairn tucked up in her French mother’s arms, safe at Falklands.
Sooner or later, though, it would all come out – unless the babe was found.
Outside, the two Henderson boys bobbed polite nods, admiring and awestruck at being close to the legend that was now Batty Coalhouse.
‘We saw men,’ blurted Eck.
‘A mile away, but circling to the north,’ Hew added.
‘Good lads – well done.’
They beamed and preened under Batty’s thanks, while Hew could not drag his eyes from the fearsome axe-handled dagg stuck in his belt.
Batty fastened his fodder bags and clambered into the saddle, grunting with the effort. Then he turned to Will.
‘Watch out for Mintie,’ he said, and his tuneless voice trailed off into the dark – ‘syne that he has kissed her rosy lips, all underneath the Eildon Tree…’
He will bring them down on him if he does not leave off with the Queen of Elfland, Will thought as he watched him vanish – then realised that was what Batty wanted, to drag the lurkers away across the moss, away from Powrieburn.
It left Will none the wiser as to what had been decided and he breathed hard for a while, the smoke of it curling back and making diamonds in his beard. Then, shaking his head and shivering with a tremble that had little to do with the snell wind curling round the yard of Powrieburn, he went into the undercroft.
Bet’s Annie waited for him, patient as old stone and with his own horse saddled and ready, which was pointed. Will did not argue, simply took the reins from her.
‘Will you be fine here?’ he asked, and Bet’s Annie, smiling like a boiled haddie at the bright-eyed beautiful Hew, spoke into his innocence with a throaty chuckle.
‘As the sun on shiny water,’ she declared, beaming, and Will did not know whether to smile for Bet’s Annie or frown for worry about the boy.
He took the horse into the yard and climbed up, looking down as Bet’s Annie came out briefly, wrapping herself with wool.