A Dish of Spurs

by Robert Low

  He knew her, that was clear, and that put Ganny in a blind panic – Christ, mayhap the baby was stolen from him, he thought. Yet the next thought was that a man like this, with winter in his eyes, did not have any child he cared for.

  Yet he knew the babe and knew it was stolen.

  ‘Fine looking wee lass,’ he had said, smiling and easy when he had come to Ganny after all the hullabaloo had died down. Seated well below the salt, hoping for anonymity now that his role was done, Ganny had known he’d been sought out deliberately and his bowels, then as now, had turned to stone.

  ‘Baby Jesus,’ he had muttered back, trying to look winsome, though his top lip had stuck to his teeth when he smiled. ‘Feast of Fools jest.’

  ‘Aye, aye, good one,’ the man had agreed, squeezing onto the bench close up to Ganny, so that the stink of the robes wrinkled his nose. The man apologised cheerfully, while another in the same robes stopped, looming over them both, and asked if they had seen his dog.

  ‘No, Penny,’ the man had replied, then took the other by the wrist. ‘Get ready to move, Black Penny, dog or no dog. I have a money-making scheme that is surer yet than anything the Lady of Hollows has promised you.’

  The man called Black Penny shook off the grip, scowling.

  ‘Aye – what is it, then, Hutchie? Robbing wee bairns of their sweet sucklings?’

  ‘In a manner,’ the man called Hutchie had replied and winked at Ganny.

  ‘This wee lad here has a bairn. It is not his bairn, is it, lad?’

  ‘My father…’ Ganny had lied, making Hutchie laugh; he had seen the sometime doctor come and go with the boy in tow. He knew the man was a priest fleeing from somewhere.

  ‘Ridley? I fancy not, wee man. I fancy that priest is too old to be fathering the likes of you – or wee pretty red-headed babes like this.’

  He was looking at Black Penny when he spoke, and Ganny saw something light in that man’s eyes; his fear grew, so that it was all he could do not to flee there and then.

  ‘No,’ Black Penny had said, then peered closer. ‘By God, it might be. You know it for sure?’

  ‘As I know my hand’s back,’ Hutchie had agreed, and now Ganny was moving, so that Hutchie reached out and gripped his wrist.

  ‘Not so fast—’

  There was a fierce commotion, a great snarling and growling that scattered folk in a ring. The man called Black Penny had looked up and cursed.

  ‘Beauchien—’

  He leaped forward, collided with the man next to him and was flung away angrily with a drunken curse for his clumsiness. He fell into another, who rounded on the thrower – in a second, fists and boots were flying, faces red and greased were exultant and snarling.

  Hutchie lost his grip as someone tried to hit him; Ganny snatched up the crib and fled, haring in between bodies as if through a forest, straight out the door, down the steps and into the courtyard and away.

  He had been running ever since, the first mad rush of it slowed to a trot, then a walk, and finally to a panting, heaving stagger which let him see the glowing gold of himself out on the bare moss. Like a torch in darkness, he thought.

  He looked back over his shoulder; he knew they would be coming and he thought of just leaving the baby. But when he looked down at her, face squashed up in a wail because she was fretting, tired, needed changing, needed fed, he could not do it.

  All his life Ganny had had nothing save his siblings. They had cowered in fear from their own parents and hugged their slim lives and each other. When Ridley had left, taking Ganny with him, he had nothing at all – baby Jane was all of his brothers and sisters in one, and he could not leave her on the wet moss for men like Hutchie and Black Penny.

  He wondered who baby Jane really was. Valuable, or the likes of these men would not be bothered. He cursed Ridley for his stupidity in getting involved with it – but looked east, squinting into the blood of the sun and hoping to see the place called Powrieburn, where Ridley had gone.

  Then he struggled on.

  * * *

  Not far behind, Hutchie and Black Penny and the dog followed after, grim as rolling rocks and on foot. Rob’s Tam and Rob’s Davey were still back in Hollows, for there had been no time to find them.

  Black Penny fretted on that, for Clym’s Bairns had been a family when all was said and done, and leaving them behind was abandonment, pure and simple. They would be punished for our escape, he had told Hutchie, who had sympathised with soothing words about going back for them when this business was done – while thinking that it was nothing to him if the two idiot brothers were hanged for it and good riddance.

  ‘He is headed for Powrieburn,’ Hutchie said at length and shook his head, laughing grimly at the joke of it. ‘I am never done with that place, it seems.’

  ‘We can’t go there,’ Penny declared. ‘We have not even as much as an eating knife between us.’

  ‘We have the dog,’ Hutchie answered and they stared down at it, as it stared back, bleeding from a new rent on what was left of an ear and bright with tongue-lolling ecstasy at being out on the moss. Its teeth were a reef of all the daggers they would need.

  ‘True enough,’ Penny declared and patted the straked muzzle.

  There was a sudden rumbling roar from behind them, making them turn and stare; a great pall of smoke rose up and a wind, feral hot as the breath of a great dragon, washed over them, rippling the stunted trees and moss grass.

  ‘What in Hell was that?’ demanded Penny fearfully, and Hutchie, who did not know and did not want to know, merely grunted and stepped out over the moss to where a golden cope lay like a trove on the wet earth.

  He held it up; they forgot about what lay behind and struck out towards Powrieburn.

  Hollows Tower

  At the same time

  Batty came up on the Hell of Hollows, shattered and surrounded by burning and shrieking. The horse did not care for it and balked, so he climbed off, wincing at the pain in his back where his own explosion had punched him.

  Folk ran like chooks, making the same noises and with the same mindless panic; almost all of them ignored Batty as he stalked forward, leaning as if into a wind, the axe-handled dagg in his one hand.

  A woman saw him, must have recognised the one arm and her shrieks went up so high only wolves could have heard her; she spun away, stumbling. A man saw her do it and peered, swaying; the eyes in his blackened, blood-streaked face grew wide with knowledge and he gave a grunt, fumbled for a weapon.

  Batty, striding steadily towards him, did not want to be bothered, for he had seen the battered cylinder of cage and realised what had happened. When the man finally got a knife out, Batty’s axe was splitting his neck from his shoulder and the man reeled away with a blood-clotted scream and fell to his knees.

  Uncaring, Batty lumbered on to the cage, to the still figure inside it. He cursed; had he managed to kill Will Elliot with his rescue plan?

  He struck the lock once, twice and burst it open, then levered the battered half of the cage up; Will groaned and Batty almost cried out with delight.

  ‘You bastard-born one-armed son o’ a hoor.’

  The voice whirled him round into the twisted bloat of the Laird’s stare. Blackened and bloody that face, and the first rays of the new day did nothing for it – but it threw golden shafts off the length of steel he held in his hand.

  That bloody two-hander of his, Batty thought bitterly.

  The Laird was humming with the horror of it, strummed with fire at what had been done to him and his. He had woken from a half-drunk snooze to the crashing roars of stones falling all round him, folk screaming and fleeing, falling crushed and bleeding.

  It took him a long time – an age, it seemed – to suck in the fact that the roof was fallen in and the ceiling above him too, the whole lot crashing into the hall. When he realised it, he could only think he was under attack, that somehow great guns had been used on his precious tower; he lurched for the mantle and the sword, shoved and elbowed his
way through the panicked throng, heading for the door to defend what was his.

  Scotts, he had thought. Or Grahams. Even Fat Henry himself, his ears poisoned by that wee sleekit popinjay rat Patten…

  Stumbling out, he had tripped over the body of Sorley Armstrong, crushed to bloody ruin by the crashing fall of the metal cage – and when he looked up, there was a one-armed man bashing open the lock of it.

  The Laird of Hollows knew that Batty was somehow responsible for this. Then he saw, in a bemused blink, the flaming timbers and the remains of a millwheel, and knew what had been done.

  The sheer destruction of it, the impudence of it – by God, the challenge of it – made him roar.

  His first sweeping cut made Batty jerk backwards and almost stumble over the cage. Batty felt the last wicked point of the two-hander pink his jack of a few threads and he waved the axe-handled dagg threateningly enough to stop the Laird.

  ‘By God,’ Batty declared admiringly, trying to stretch time – somewhere, Wat Scott was coming, he hoped, fast now that he had seen and heard the explosion. ‘I have lost a deal of belly pursuing this business and it is just as well, otherwise you’d had slice the pluck of me open, for sure.’

  The Laird blinked. He had paused only because he’d seen a dagg, but he was now sure that it was unloaded and so was no better than a hand axe. Fixed with hate, he started in to swinging, calling out the cuts as he did.

  ‘Fendenti da sinistra,’ he shouted after the cut from the left.

  ‘Fendenti da destra,’ he roared as it came in from the other side.

  Christ, thought Batty, he is decided on opening me like a side of beef – and he backed away, wishing he had loaded the dagg.

  ‘Sottani da destra,’ the Laird bawled, though Batty heard the whistling breathless of him. This, a cut from the bottom right upwards, Batty locked with the head of the axe, ran up the blade of it in a short step and was face to blood-bag face with the Laird for a brief moment.

  ‘Kopfstreich,’ he declared and rammed his helmet into the Laird’s face. It isn’t Talhoffer, or any other wee Fechtbuch of the art, he thought, but I can’t read anyway.

  The blow was not entirely full on, but it made the Laird curse and reel away, a new mark across his forehead, already seeping blood. Good, Batty thought, let it run in your eyes and blind you.

  He was feeling more confident now – as much as you could against a man with several feet of ugly steel – for the Laird was half drunk, panting like a mated bull and bleeding badly. But hate kept the man fired and his skill, Batty knew, was considerable.

  Then, in the middle of the whirling confusion of staggering, fleeing people, a man lurched out of the ruin of Hollows, weeping and roaring and heading towards Batty with a length of backsword raised high for a vicious cut.

  It was not in any manual of arms, Batty thought in the fleeting second it took to recognise Mattie of Whithaugh, but it will cleave me all the same. Then he flung the dagg.

  A dagg with an axe handle was no weapon balanced for throwing, so it showed how poorly Mattie stood with God and the Devil both – how poorly that whole family stood, Batty thought with astonishment – when the axe blade smacked Mattie in the forehead like it was slicing kindling.

  The force of it stopped Mattie, though his legs kept going and ran out and up, so that he crashed like a thrown grain bag. The Laird stared in astonished horror – which gave Batty the chance to haul out his own sword.

  Another Armstrong gone was what the Laird was thinking in that eyeblink when Mattie spreadeagled on the flame-lit earth and started making a lake beneath him, one that seeped to the fringes of the crushed Sorley nearby. By God – the entire of Whithaugh has been slaughtered by this man…

  The slither of steel from scabbard snapped him back to Batty and he snarled and rushed in, frenzied with fresh hate.

  Batty dodged and parried as best he could, while the Laird howled ‘mezzani’ as he hacked swings from one side and then the other; Batty parried one and almost lost his sword with the sheer power of the blow.

  After that he jigged about, making the odd riposte cut while the Laird swung and whirled and slashed, yelling all the while in Italian about ‘Iron Door Guard’ and ‘Royal Guard of the True Window’.

  When he started in to wheezing and the cuts slackened, Batty grinned a little.

  ‘Oberhow,’ he called out and banged down an overhead cut.

  ‘Sturtzhow.’

  And he slashed the plunging cut.

  ‘Das Lang Zorn ortt.’

  He thrust the Long Guard of Wrath at the Laird’s face.

  They were all parried, though the Laird was not quoting any manual now – the drink and the exertion were taking their toll – but Batty wanted the Laird worse still.

  ‘The man that would the two-hand learn both close and clear,’ he recited impudently, ‘must have a good eye both far and near.’

  He feinted, cut left and the blades rang.

  ‘An in stop,’ he said and thrust.

  ‘An out stop,’ he added, and parried the return – a weak blow that scarcely jarred him now.

  ‘And a hawk quarter,’ he said and ripped his edge through the stained blue doublet, a new slash that revealed more red than white.

  The Laird backed off, his face paler and his eyes scrunched up with trepidation; Batty might have only one arm, but it was frightening in its strength.

  ‘A cantle, a doublet and half for his fear,’ Batty recited and gave all those half-arm strokes in a whirling display of strength and dexterity that the Laird was barely able to fend off.

  ‘Two rounds and a half, with good cheer,’ he finished, and suddenly the Laird found himself locked hilt to hilt, blinking through the drink-sweat into the curved quiver of Batty’s beard. He thought another headbutt was imminent and started to reel back, but Batty grinned his undershot grin.

  ‘Gamba destra, calci nei coglione,’ he declared, and while the Laird was blinking the sense of that into him, Batty’s right foot kicked him in the cods, as he had said.

  The Laird fell back with a vomiting shout, the two-hander spilled from his grasp and everything forgotten save the white-hot screaming agony where his balls cowered.

  Batty leaned on the sword like a cane for a moment, heaving in panted breaths, then straightened wearily.

  ‘I cannot read,’ he said, ‘but I can listen and learn to those training with a manual of arms.’

  He limped to where the Laird lay, took the point of his sword and laid it against the man’s neck; the Laird was vaguely aware of it, lost in the agony of pain which seemed to flood sickeningly from his fork to the crown of his head and everywhere between.

  ‘I would think on that,’ said a voice, and Batty half turned to see Wat Scott, leaning casually on the high front of his saddle, his other hand outstretched as a perch for a hooded hawk. Behind him, mounted men spilled up to Hollows, lances and swords in their fists, with scarcely much to do except loot the place.

  ‘I came hunting, as I said,’ Wat went on, nodding admiringly to his fine hawk, which was nervous and fluttering with the noise and scent, turning its blind, hooded head this way and that.

  ‘It would not do, Batty, to remove the Headman o’ the Hollows Armstrongs entire,’ Wat Scott declared, stroking the breast of the hawk to soothe it. ‘His uncle will take the high seat if you do and he is a man of better judgement entirely. Better the Devil you know, as it were.’

  Batty took the point away from the Laird’s neck; he did not care one way or the other, and the cold of that when he said it made Wat’s armflesh creep.

  ‘Besides,’ Wat added, trying to pierce Batty’s armoured indifference, ‘his wife lies a score of feet away – what’s left of her, poor lady – and we will spoil his beasts, take all the monies we can, then burn the rest. His powder mill is gone entire and his tower is collapsed, so he is well paid.’

  ‘Will Elliot?’ Batty demanded and Wat nodded to where men were levering the Land Sergeant out of the cage.
/>   ‘He is alive, but sore hurt, so he may yet die. We will care for him – and yourself, if you need it.’

  Batty ached like a huge bruise, but if he did not go on it would not be finished, he knew.

  ‘Hutchie Elliott.’

  Wat nodded.

  ‘I thought you would ask – no sign of him, but here is one who might tell us.’

  He beckoned and two riders pushed a figure forward at lance-point – Rob’s Davey, bloody and sullen, his sooted face streaked with tracks of weeping.

  He was numb and raw, felt as if he had been split from crown to groin and one half of him stripped away; he had seen his brother running like a pillar of fire, like a torch, to hurl himself off the edge of the Hole, trying to plunge down into the Esk beyond and below, to put himself out. So he was dead, either broken by the fall, burned to charcoal or drowned. Probably all three.

  Rob’s Davey was done for and knew it – a Broken Man, a man with no Name, was the butt of everyone’s hate and they would hang him simply for being here. Yet he did not care, for the world was a strange, shivered place without the other half of him in it.

  He gave his last curse to Batty Coalhouse – pungent enough to strip enamel off Wat Scott’s fancy neck collar – but provided the information they needed in return for the promise that they would fetch out his brother and bury them side by side, all perjink and Christian.

  After he had been promised and huckled away to tree and rope, Batty took a breath and walked over to Mattie of the Whithaugh; the axe-handled dagg came out of the splintered mess of his head with scarcely a tug.

  ‘East,’ he said and squinted into the new day’s sun. Powrieburn lay that way – could it be that Hutchie Elliott, desperate wee rat that he was, was heading for more mischief with Mintie?

  The thought chilled him and he wiped the axe head clean on Mattie, then stuffed the dagg into his belt.

  Wat saw it and stared, saw Batty take a last look round at the burning ruins as if seeing them for the first time. Admiring and appalled, Wat shook his head and there was no mock in it at all as his voice escorted Batty back to his horse.