A Dish of Spurs

by Robert Low

  ‘By God, Batty. Loudly you said and loudly you did it. The echoes of it will be a long time dying in the Debatable.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Powrieburn

  Not long after

  Her ma fought hard all through that morning, and the man called Ridley showed that he was a better priest than a physicker when he murmured her through Penance, Anointing and Viaticum.

  Then her ma asked for Mintie, and she went in a turmoil of feelings, of rememberings of this woman’s strength being all there was between the world and wee Mintie, of her sureness and her teaching of things a woman needed to know. She was aware too of how she had been, asleep in a veil of smog it seemed, with the only light in it a firebrand…

  ‘I am done,’ her mother said and patted Mintie’s fluttering, impotent hand. ‘There is the truth of it and so I am called before God.’

  Her voice was a wind through a web, no more, but the urgency in it was tangible.

  ‘Make your peace, Araminta,’ she whispered. ‘With God and with yourself. Ask forgiveness of the one and forgive with the other. Else you are lost. This is the last good advice I can give.’

  It was the use of ‘Araminta’ that broke her to silent, shoulder-shaking tears. Too fine a name for a wee sprout of lass in a corner of the Borders, her da had said, but ma had defended it fiercely.

  ‘In this place, a Name is everything,’ she had said. ‘The Henderson one does not count for much, so I will give my daughter another name to be proud of.’

  Eventually Mintie felt hands on her shoulders and was raised up into the soft concern of Bet’s Annie, while the other women moved gently and quietly to the task of washing and swaddling the old Mistress of Powrieburn, who had passed out of the world with no more ripple than a gnat’s wing on a pool.

  Ridley, his eyes gritty from lack of sleep, was pleased that all had gone well – a gentle death and he had remembered the rites even though he had not had to use them for a long time. Now all he wanted was to accept his payment graciously and scamper back to Hollows and Ganny; when the daughter came to him, he was expectant and easily ambushed.

  ‘Hear my confession,’ she said, and Ridley, his heart sinking, could do nothing more than agree; they trooped down the steps to the undercroft, then out across the yard to the feed store. Bet’s Annie stood with folded arms at the door to keep folk out, while the women washed and dressed and roped Mintie’s swaddled ma by the legs for lowering through the trapdoor and out of Powrieburn.

  First time the old woman has been out of the house in an age, Bet’s Annie thought, trying not to listen at what was being said behind her back. I know most of it anyway, she said to herself; there is nothing there to shock me.

  There was for Ridley, for he had been a cloistered cleric most of his life, taking confessions from other monks; Mintie’s book of revelations was a stun on his sense.

  ‘I am told only the Pope can forgive such a sin,’ she said at the end of telling him about ridding herself of the child.

  ‘Only God can forgive you,’ Ridley blurted out before he had time to think. Then he took a breath or two. If this Batty Coalhouse was loose round Hollows, planning badness, then Ganny was perhaps in danger…

  He dismissed it as preposterous. One man against the Armstrongs of Hollows?

  Mintie sat on a hay bale, hands on lap, while Ridley sat next to her, shrouding his face with one arm and hand like the barrier of a confessional booth. She needs absolving and punishment, he thought – yet she is right. Only the Pope can lift this level of sin.

  Then he sighed. What did it matter here, in this wild, northern place, with all of the south throwing out the Pope in favour of Fat Henry? The world was turning and God spun with it. Perhaps, then, it was the spirit of God Himself, so long absent from Father Ridley, that slid the justice and mercy into him.

  ‘Te absolvo,’ he declared. ‘Your penance is to forgive. This Hutchie Elliott and yourself both, as your mother demanded – a deathbed request, which cannot be ignored. God is watching.’

  Mintie took a deep breath then. She was not sure she could do it and said so, but Ridley sat like a stone saint, and finally she bowed her head in acquiescence and he signed the cross over her. Outside, they loaded her ma onto the pushcart, to take her for burial.

  In the yard, the women stood by the cart, waiting patiently for Mintie and the priest, who now realised he was expected to preside over the actual burial too. Wearily wordless, he fell in with the procession, eventually noticing that they were all looking in the one direction, at a great black cloud on the horizon.

  ‘Looks like rain,’ Ridley said pointedly, in the hope of spurring them on to be done with the business.

  ‘This is the Borders in springtime,’ Jinet smarted back at him. ‘Does a hirshel heft to a hill? Of course it will rain.’

  Ridley had been around long enough to know that a hirshel was a herd of sheep and that Borderers believed such flocks clung to a particular hillside, never to be driven off save by force. It was, he understood, some kind of country proverb, but her attitude irritated him, for he was a priest deserving of better. He did not have long to feel aggrieved.

  ‘No raincloud that,’ Davey-boy declared, looking up from pointing out more splendid features on his gun to Hew. ‘Smoke. Over Hollows.’

  For a moment Ridley felt the chill in his bowels, then they dropped away entirely when two figures came round the side of the feed store. One was Eck, who had the second by one arm and was huckling it along.

  A wee girl, folk thought at first, with a babe in a basket, a babe that wailed; Mintie’s hand went to her throat.

  The figure tore free from Eck and set the basket down with surprising gentleness, just as a sharp, piercing cry of recognition came from Ridley. The figure heard it and raised a tortured, frightened scowl of face.

  ‘You bloody left me. They bloody chased me.’

  The voice was no girl’s and Ridley, even as he felt the shock at seeing Ganny and baby Jane here, felt a sharper pang at the sound of the boy’s voice breaking.

  Then Ganny was at him, nut fists beating at his chest until a big woman hauled him away, and Ridley, shocked, could only stare, knowing with the cracking bell of the boy’s voice and the glare of the fierce, big-armed woman that the sweetness of Ganny was gone from him. Just like that, in an eyeblink, in a dung-covered yard in the middle of nowhere; he almost wept.

  From the depths of the woman’s apron where his face was buried, they heard Ganny weep and moan about being chased. Mintie, as if in a dream, moved wooden-legged to the crib and peered in it as if it was a nest of snakes.

  The squashed face shrieked itself red with fury at being hungry and ignored, yet even through all that, Mintie knew the child well enough and fell on her knees in the mud, overwhelmed by what work God made to bring Mary, Queen of Scots to this place at this time.

  * * *

  The rooks were wheeling and rasping when the cavalcade came back from the Faerie stones, draped in sadness and their own thoughts.

  Ridley could not believe that Ganny was gone from him, but each time he looked over at the boy, folded in one protecting arm of the big woman, he had such a glare that it melted his resolve to keep staring. And the voice had splintered the charms besides…

  Bet’s Annie knew what the boy had been, knew what the filthy wee sodomite priest had done and was determined that all of that was ended for the boy. Ganny, she discovered his name was, though it was Ridley’s name for him – Ganymede.

  ‘I had a name but I lost it,’ he hiccupped, and Bet’s Annie melted. Hew and Eck, having worked out the way of it, stared daggers at the priest and dared him to challenge Bet’s Annie – while looking at the boy as if he was some Faerie apparition.

  Mintie had worked all of it out, standing with her leaf-whirl of memories of her ma while the priest intoned the service and consigned her to the embrace of worms and Faerie. And all the time she wondered where the priest had come by the boy and where the boy had come by t
he babe, and if either of them knew what they had.

  In the end she thought not, and was easier, then, when she handed coin to the priest and thanked him for his service.

  ‘You may leave,’ she said, ‘whenever you care. The boy stays and the babe stays.’

  Ridley did not argue, for he was sick of the babe and sicker still at the loss of Ganny. He made the coins vanish and trooped after the cavalcade, back to the bastel of Powrieburn where he would reclaim his horse and leave.

  By the time they had reached the yard, the strange cloud had wisped away, the sun had come out and the rooks whirled and cried; Mintie was uneasy about that, but when the dog barked, everyone stopped.

  ‘Davey Graham,’ Mintie called, for they had left him behind to guard the door and the now sleeping baby.

  There was silence, then a soft whistle came from nearby and a figure stepped from the feed store, with a slinking, ugly brute of a hound at his heels. Hew and Eck cursed and grabbed their hilts, but the figure chuckled and blew on a slow match.

  ‘That’s our caliver,’ Megs declared indignantly and the man laughed.

  ‘Put it from your mind, quine,’ he said, ‘for it is yours no more.’

  Hew and Eck had their weapons half out when the fat barrel of the caliver turned on them like a Cyclops eye.

  ‘Don’t,’ the man said softly.

  ‘You have but a single shot,’ Hew answered.

  ‘Who will be the one to take it, then?’

  Hew trembled on the brink of it, but Mintie was no fool and put a hand on his arm, stilling him as you would a skittish horse.

  It scarcely even came as a shock to her when the second figure stepped from the undercroft, another caliver in his fists and the crib looped over the crook of one elbow. It was almost a satisfaction to see that it was Hutchie Elliott, for Mintie was sure the Queen of Elfland was hanging over Powrieburn. She had brought them all here for a purpose.

  Bet’s Annie saw the gun Hutchie held and gave a cry, both her hands rising to her mouth as if to keep the other shouts penned. Ganny, freed from her embrace, sank at her feet; and Ridley saw it, saw the men and knew them at once.

  ‘Hutchie,’ he said. ‘Penny… don’t hurt me.’

  Hutchie sneered and now Mintie saw the reason for Bet’s Annie’s distress; the gun he held was inlaid and silvered and splendid – Davey-boy’s own caliver, which the lad would not have given up lightly.

  ‘Did you hurt the boy who owned that gun?’ Mintie asked softly and Hutchie eyed her sourly. All that had happened to him had happened because of her – bloody wee lassie of no account; yet there were other feelings coursing in him, confusing and strong.

  ‘He is not worried much about its loss,’ Hutchie answered and Bet’s Annie groaned. Mintie nodded, as if she had known all along, though it was only partly true and she felt a deep bone-ache of sorrow for the fierce boy who would never now grow up.

  ‘He was called Davey Graham,’ she said. ‘Of Netherby. You will wish for a clean hanging when his father catches you.’

  ‘Dickon Graham’s lad?’

  The question came from the one called Penny and the fear was in his face when he looked across at Hutchie.

  ‘The same.’

  ‘Dear God in Heaven,’ said Penny, and the barrel of the caliver drooped.

  ‘Keep your guard,’ Hutchie snapped, though his own mouth was dry. Christ, of all the wee lads in the world, I had to cut the throat of the son of the fiercest Graham in the Borders. God’s wounds – what was that wee lad doing here? All his life had been luck like this.

  He glanced bitterly at Mintie. Her doing again. The babe stirred and murmured and he felt a savage surge of joy at the sound.

  He had the prize and the getting away…

  ‘I will take the priest’s horse,’ he said and moved to it, for it was saddled and ready. ‘Black Penny – lead out the mare called Jaunty. Mintie will point her out.’

  It was a calculated swipe of viciousness to steal her favourite horse and he saw she knew it. His grin was wolfen as Mintie moved past him, close enough to smell the staleness of his body. She indicated the horse and Penny led it out.

  ‘It’s not saddled,’ he protested.

  ‘Take the time if you choose,’ Hutchie declared, mounting carefully and always keeping the caliver trained. ‘But you will be here on your own in another minute. Hand me up the crib with the bairn.’

  Muttering, Black Penny did as he was bid and then swung up on the back of Jaunty, who stirred and snorted at having such a weight and no saddle. Then Penny squinted into the distance and pointed.

  ‘Someone is coming.’

  Hutchie knew before it was more than a shadow who the someone was. He felt the bones of his face grow cold, as if he stared too long into a howling blizzard and then, blinking, realised that Mintie was watching him.

  ‘Aye,’ she said softly, almost sadly it seemed to Hutchie. ‘You are right to be feared of him and I am sorry for lighting him all over the Border at you.’

  ‘It’s Batty Coalhouse.’

  Black Penny spat that out and started working the lead rope, which was no proper bridle and reins, and needed, he thought, more viciousness to get the beast he rode to move.

  ‘I forgive you, Hutchie Elliott.’

  The words clattered out into the silvered air of Powrieburn’s morning and everyone heard it, especially Hutchie, who felt that some spell had been laid on him and shivered; there was altogether a deal too much Faerie around this place.

  But he managed the old, white, lopsided grin at her as he reined round to follow the urgent Black Penny out of the yard and away.

  ‘Aye, wee Mintie – I will miss you, so I will.’

  The words, viciously familiar, seemed only to be echoes of what they once had been and no more trouble to Mintie than a scattering of feathers. She smiled back at him and he felt a sudden rush of fear that sent him heeling the horse in a panic.

  Mintie took a breath or two while folk cursed and ran here and there. Bet’s Annie scurried to the undercroft, hoping not to find what she did, lying in a tarn of his own blood.

  Then Mintie whistled once, twice. Jaunty stopped dead, spun on her hind fetlocks and came thundering back. Black Penny gave a shout, fell off and rolled, while the bewildered dog capered and yelped.

  ‘By God,’ said a familiar voice, the grating admiration of it bringing a rush of strange peace to Mintie, so that when she turned, her face was beatific.

  ‘That’s a fine trick you have with that beast,’ Batty Coalhouse said as he passed her at a fast trot, heading out to the sprawled Black Penny and the dancing bark of dog.

  For a moment Black Penny thought he might resist, but then he saw Batty’s fist full of dagg – Clym’s own axe-handled dagg, no less – and all the resolve blew out of him like old smoke.

  In a moment the two Henderson boys had come lolloping up like pups, but their fists were full of steel and they eyed the monstrous dog warily.

  ‘Leave off,’ Black Penny said wearily to the dog and then stood up, swaying and favouring one leg. Batty looked down at him, leaning on the saddle front.

  ‘Why did you come all this way?’ he asked. ‘And where is Hutchie headed?’

  ‘To Hell,’ Black Penny answered bitterly. ‘Will you find someone to care for the dog after I am hemped?’

  ‘You will see him, by and by,’ Batty answered mildly, ‘for the law will hang dog and man both for their crimes.’

  Then he frowned down at the pistol.

  ‘I wish I had stopped to load this now.’

  Black Penny’s look was sour, but Mintie was suddenly alongside Batty, mounted bareback on Jaunty and with her skirts caught up to let her ride astraddle. Batty looked at her with his eyebrows up.

  ‘Hutchie has the wee Queen,’ she said. Batty did not even begin to ask all the questions that crowded into his mouth, merely nodded and kicked his mount into her mud-spattering wake.

  Tinnis Hill

  Not long after
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  The bracken was changing, the green of it sharp enough to cut the eye after so long a time staring at a world of amber and gold, black and white. Now there was purple and a blush of Faerie gloves, not a flower Batty cared to see up on the moss and bracken hump of Tinnis, where the wind hissed.

  ‘Faerie glove,’ Mintie said, seeing him stare. ‘They gave the flowers to the fox to put on his paws and make him silent while hunting. Pretty.’

  She raised herself in the saddle a little and sniffed the air, for all the world like the fox she spoke of.

  ‘Spring,’ she said.

  ‘Poison,’ Batty grunted and jerked his beard at the pink Faerie gloves. ‘Keeps evil at bay in a garden, but is bad cess if you bring it indoors.’

  ‘True,’ Mintie agreed, and her smile was the old smile, the sly, challenging smile, and he almost laughed aloud at that.

  ‘It is a most insincere bloom,’ she declared, and now Batty did laugh, but the sound was strange on Tinnis and he cut it off, remembering why they were there.

  All about was the trickling lisp of water, motes dancing in the new sunlight, curlews churring and insects wheeping and whinging; the horses flicked and trembled at the bites. Yet somewhere death lurked.

  Strange that a desperate Hutchie should have headed up Tinnis, Batty thought, and shivered, despite himself. As if the Queen of Elfland called him.

  They moved on, shuffling up through the clinging bracken, across the scraped waste and past the crooked trees and the strange upright stones that lurched drunkenly, for all that they had been Faerie raised.

  It was there that Mintie saw the horse, reins dragging on the ground and standing hipshot, one front leg raised. She knew at once that Hutchie had lamed it, flogging it hard up Tinnis, over bad ground.

  ‘Careful, lass,’ Batty said and levered himself off the horse. Mintie did likewise and they stood for a moment, looking at the huddle of man-sized stones. Then Mintie moved towards the horse, unable to stand and watch it suffer any longer.