Shake Loose the Border

by Robert Low

‘Aye – it would have been enough for him to hand a whipping out if your friend had called him that. It was also wise that you all ran,’ Thomas said, making Ewan glance up, hackling, but he saw it was no kind of insult, just a statement of fact. ‘How did you spirit your friend away from them?’

  ‘We fought,’ Ewan answered, which was no lie, but not all of the truth. They’d known the men would track back to the cruck house, had seen them earlier when the light was better and the snow a lot less. So when they came up, all lances and squinting and cursing Batty for always wanting to fall off the horse, they got a Lovat greeting.

  Two went down from latchbows, solid smacks of bolt that blew them off their horses and even if they were not stuck through, they were winded and gasping. Then we tore into them, Ewan remembered. He knew he screamed out ‘A mhor-fhaiche’ and launched himself off a crumbling dyke like the wrath of God. A wee skip and a hop into the air, sword gripped in both fists and underhand.

  The horseman, with his fine lance and his decent back and breast, his neat helmet and, Ewan saw at the last, his fine-combed beard simply stared. His mouth was open and his eyes held a look that let Ewan know he had seen that it was death coming down on him and was resigned to it.

  The big blade skewered him like mutton on a dish, then Ewan slammed into him, making the horse stagger. Ewan landed heavily but upright, but the horse with the man on it gugging for breath from a torn throat, took a few steps sideways, tangled its feet and fell over, screaming.

  The nearest after that was the luckless man who’d had the thankless task of keeping Batty in the saddle, but he gave that up to fight his own mount’s shrieking fear. Ewan struck, felt the tug and heard the man yell out, then fall; his strike had been neat and deadly and the man had most of an arm missing, which Ewan found eldritch, almost Faerie, for someone who had been holding a one-armed man upright on his horse only moments before.

  John Dubh went past him, wild breath smoking from his mouth as he roared. He had no targe but a decent broadsword that he hacked madly with as he went rolling into the rest of the prancing, yelling pack, screaming spittle and Gaelic.

  ‘Well, you seemed to have come out with your man and no more than a scratch or two,’ Thomas said, as if he had heard all Ewan was thinking. ‘All’s well that’s well done.’

  Ewan said nothing, but stared at the light and the fire. There had been a score of men at least, well armed and one of them had a matchlock pistol which he shot wildly as he careened away. They saw Malcolm go down holding his belly and yelling. Big Tam saw it, but no-one could stop to find out more, for they knew the men would recover and come back at them.

  So they had left him and run. Same as we always do, Ewan thought miserably to himself, since the Battle of the Bogs. It had been a long, harsh misery of a ride to here and no-one knew where here was. He looked at the tall, lean shadow of the physician and asked.

  ‘Soutra Aisle,’ Thomas replied easily. ‘Once a monastery and a hospital but now Reformed out of monks and left only as a refuge and infirmary for weary or sick travellers on the old road to Edinburgh. We are part of the College of Trinity in Edinburgh now.’

  He glanced down at Batty and then nodded to Ewan. ‘There is food – not much, but hot and filling. Likewise a room with a fire to keep out the chill. Tomorrow I will treat your friend’s back again.’

  ‘Will he be fit to ride?’

  ‘Not for days.’

  Ewan fell silent; he was sure they’d be followed and if he had stumbled on this place, it was likely pursuers would as well.

  * * *

  They sat in the ruins listening to the crash of guns, feeling the shudders on the wall, hearing the noise of overshots like a gale in the trees.

  ‘We will all die here,’ Bocanegra said bitterly, his face a sheen of dirt-smeared sweat in the guttering light. Batty had no answer, but his back burned – so he had been caught by one of his own petards after all. So much for ‘no match with a slow match’…

  ‘This is because of Maramaldo,’ Spinola added savagely. ‘We shouldn’t even have been here save that you thought he was here and followed him like a dog sniffing a blood sausage.’

  They all agreed with angry mutters – Doxaras, Alvaro, even his second, Theodore Luchisi. All of the Company of Gold; Batty could hear the poor gilt of it strip away. Even if we get out of this, he thought, we are finished…

  ‘Time to wake,’ said a voice from the dark and Batty tried to turn his head, but it seemed to be fastened to the floor; he had not even realised he was lying on the floor.

  ‘They are leaving,’ shouted the Baron, his beard bristled and matte but his splendid moustaches still curled. ‘They are leaving.’

  They were. Batty could see them even though he did not know how he got to the last standing ramparts of Kőszeg, an unimportant little fortress a day’s march from Vienna. Under a thick layer of dust, men, shields, flags, drums, horses and wagons, groaning laden camels and men all tramped away, back down the road they had come up. For more than twenty-five days, without any artillery, Captain Nikola Jurišić and a garrison of 700 local Hungarian peasants and a few mercenaries held out against nineteen full-scale assaults and an incessant bombardment by the full Army of the Ottomans.

  Then the Pasha heard of an army forming up at Vienna to march on him and decided not to face it.

  Batty heard the cheers of those who had considered themselves dead the day before. He watched the Turks trundle away, the sound of the whips loud as they urged their beasts south. Not ones with black-metal barbs – those were too cruel for valuable beasts. Only slaves felt the lick of them.

  * * *

  ‘Whips,’ he said and a bright light scoured his eyes until a shape blocked it.

  A voice said: ‘There you are. Welcome back.’

  It was a long, sheep-like face under a soft cap and it told Batty to hold himself awake, then scurried off. When the man returned he had another with him, a confident, neat-bearded man who said he was called Thomas and stilled Batty’s attempt to get up.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘The best you will do is roll over on to your back and that will be painful beyond words. Here – I am about to lotion you.’

  He smeared his hands with some paste and saw Batty’s wary, glaucous stare.

  ‘A mixture of eggs, oil of roses and resin from the terebinth tree,’ he said. ‘Soothes and heals.’

  Batty had no complaints; his back was fired but not blazing and he found his mouth worked after a fashion. He asked the questions he needed answers to. When he was done, his throat hurt.

  The sheep-faced man gave him small beer in sips and Thomas wiped his hands clean, nodding with satisfaction.

  ‘You would have roared a deal,’ he explained to Batty, ‘given what was done to you. Six strokes, I jalouse. If it had been more, you would be deid of it.’

  She stopped him, Batty said, remembering the voice, soft and low and hissed at Nebless Clem. The biggest wonder in it was how Clem had heeded her and coiled his whip – Turk, Batty thought dully. I recognise the work for I picked up two or three in the litter left by them when they had gone. And janissary hats, made to look like huge sleeves and with a spoon-holder sewn in; Batty had such a spoon to this day and was no wiser about why they had one in their headgear, nor why they venerated cooking pots or why none of them was even Turkish.

  Ewan and the others came when they heard he was awake and broken from fever, huddling around and twisting caps in their hands while Ewan told what he knew.

  ‘I am sorry for your dead,’ Batty managed when all was said and Ewan shifted in frustration and bitterness. Magairlean he said aloud before he had even realised.

  ‘Aye, you have it right – bollocks it is. Hands will wag above Lovat graves right enough,’ Big Tam added mournfully and Batty knew he spoke of the restless, discontented dead.

  Batty’s croak brought them back to the moment and some sense; who else was in Soutra Aisle other than the ones who were supposed to be. Was there any sign of pur
suit? Was there any word on Will Elliot?

  His throat was raw when he had finished, but Ewan had answers – only a packman and a carter carrying coals to The Scar were in residence, both caught in the bad weather.

  ‘The carter’s stot is lamed,’ John Dubh added with a grin, ‘so he will not be going anywhere for a whiley.’

  Batty did not ask how the beast came to be lame, but his eyes fixed on Ewan, who shifted from foot to foot.

  ‘I heard,’ he said slowly, ‘one of those moudiewarts before we sprang on them, saying as how they needed this business done with for they’d be off to Carlisle with the cripple the day after next.’

  Carlisle? Batty could not fathom it. Why would Carlisle pay ransom for Will Elliot – and more than Batty himself had offered? Was he wanted on some fouled Bill?

  Ewan finally stopped shifting and plucked a bag from behind his back which he placed on the bed. The ransom, intact and safe.

  Batty eyed them one by one, then nodded.

  ‘Soon as yer honour is able,’ John Dubh said, ‘we should quit this place. I am sick of eating dock pudding.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Batty said, which made them laugh.

  Chapter Five

  Last day of Advent 1548 – near Carlisle

  They ate dock pudding before they left – with no bacon in because it was Advent. Still, the mix of Passion docks and nettles, oats, onions and egg let them ride far on that first day, westwards on a rolling waste leprous with patched snow.

  When the light went under clouds and the horses started stumbling, Batty called a halt at the Beef Tub near Hawick; he did not want to frequent a place where other travellers came and went, but everyone needed rest. Nane mair than me, Batty thought, feeling the fiery tug of the stripes on his back and the way the world shifted and rolled like a sea.

  He had not been fit for this ride, but lied about it, more fretted at staying longer in Soutra Aisle; riders would come looking for them and he wanted away before that. He groaned with everyone else at the Advent lack of meat in such a named place, but the Beef Tub offered a gruel of winter vegetables which they ate at a board set back in the dim, Batty watching the other faces and praying he recognised none.

  That night he slept in the stall with Fiskie, the pair taking comfort from each other and the warmth of the other beasts welcome even if their staling fouled his breathing.

  It reminded him of Powrieburn in the days after he had been shot off Fiskie and dropped a hundred feet down a gully. Mintie and Will Elliot had come out, found him and dragged him back; what happened after that did no-one any good.

  The next day took them to an even worse place and Batty cursed himself for it; he had not planned on it, but there was snow tumbling from a leaden sky in flurries, with a wind that picked it up and drove it in whirling circles like starlings at dusk.

  It forced them into Mosspaul Tavern, the horn-panel lanterns a lure that stumbled them into the courtyard, where ostler boys dragged their mounts to shelter.

  ‘I will see the beasts are decently treated,’ John Dubh said, shaking snow off his cap. ‘You need the warmth and some decent food, Batty, afore you fall in the dung here. By God’s Grace it will not be dock pudding or bliddy gruel as fare.’

  ‘Take note of how many other beasts are stalled,’ Batty said, urgent and low and John Dubh nodded. ‘Look for reiver hobbies.’

  It wasn’t dock pudding. It was goose, considered a fish for fast days and Advent, the roasting smell of it a firm beam for the ale and farts and sweat of the place to rest on. There was a whistler and a hurdy-gurdy player laying out firm, foot-stamp tunes – no soft love songs here, Batty saw. He also recognised the tune as a branle, a French dance and the hurdy-gurdy had the buzzing bridge of a French-made instrument.

  He mentioned it, casual as asking for goose for four and the woman wiped her hands and smiled. She had started the day neat in wool skirt and partlet and even a kerchief for her hair. The latter was long gone, leaving the tresses to draggle free, while the partlet was mostly unfastened and heaved a considerable bosom out of a stained underserk. She smelled of sweat and the musk of recent sex.

  ‘The Frenchies are everywhere noo,’ she answered. ‘Annan has fell to them and they are up and doon the road to Graitna, looking for advantage and hoping to get intae Carlisle, which is still held by the English. These players are not Frenchies though, if you are looking for same.’

  She squinted at Batty a little, slantwise and considering. ‘If you are Scotch I wouldnae try to get in Carlisle these days – they have closed the gates.’

  A man yelled at her – the innkeeper, Batty imagined and kept his bonnet pulled low, for he was sure the man would know him. For the same reason he had his cloak draped round his left side, to hide what was missing.

  The woman scowled back at the innkeeper. ‘Nae work until Plough Monday,’ she said bitterly, quoting the law on Advent.

  ‘Save for the tending of beasts,’ Ewan threw back, ‘so I suppose that applies here.’ He grinned and that made her smile back at him; she still had decent teeth to make it winsome, Batty saw.

  They ate well and drank decent ale, with their backs to the farthest wall and stitting at a board set in the shadows because the place itched Batty. The other three saw it and looked from one to the other, then pointedly at Ewan. So eventually he asked.

  ‘This place is where folk from the Debateable come,’ Batty answered in a low, terse voice, having to go close to their heads to be heard above the music, ‘which is the most lawless place in a lawless land. The ones that are reivers are mostly known to me – or me to them, since I probably dragged a deal of their kin back to face the Bill they’d fouled. A few of them were hemped as a result.’

  ‘By God, Batty,’ Big Tam marvelled in a mocking rumble. ‘If a man is known by enemies, you are a byword for certain. Èisd ri gaoth nam beann gus an traogh na h-uisgeachan.’

  Batty didn’t understand that much and said so in the same breath that he hissed at Big Tam to be done with the Gaelic so close to the English. John Dubh leaned in, smelling of small beer and goose. ‘Listen to the wind upon the hill till the waters abate,’ he translated.

  It was good advice, but keeping a low profile was no longer an option, Batty thought. He kept his lip fastened tight on the main reason for his itch – that Moss Paul was close to the Armstrongs at Hollows, who actively hated him. They had cause, of course – he had blasted their powder mill and ruined their tower, killed more than a few of the Name including the Laird’s wife and humiliated the Laird himself.

  It was where Will Elliot had been held, hung up in a cage on the crow gables like a bauble for the Christ’s Mass – Batty suddenly realised it was around this time of year it had happened. He wondered at it. Years since and now it was risen like some dark beast that would not be killed or ignored.

  In the end, the warm and the food and the ale eased the clench in him and he laughed once or twice when the Frasers made a weak jest, careful to keep away from the Gaelic.

  Ewan had wriggled out of his long mail coat in the stable and was fretting that it would still be there when he got back to it. Batty was sympathetic; he had saved his weapons, but his jack of plates was gone, stripped off him before he was whipped and now lost. Apart from the protection and the front-fastening that let him get it on and off one-handed, it had held his knitting and needles inside. He had one sock and now would never have the other – I should have concentrated on mittens, where one would be a use, he thought.

  Big Tam asked about his back and Batty lied, saying the bedesman at Soutra had done clever work and it did not hurt at all, while all the time trying not to lean against the wall and drive fire into him.

  It was all pleasant; there was an upstairs with two or three rooms but they were not for sleeping and the rent was included in the cost of the whore. Ewan eventually gave in to the lure of it and went upstairs with the woman who smiled. She handed out bread and ale and cheese to the hurdy-gurdy man before leading Ewan away.

/>   The hurdy-gurdy and the whistle broke into ‘Ding-dong merrily on high’ in honour of the season and everyone joined in, stamping and smacking tables. They rocked the roof and fluttered the lights – and hid the sound of horses arriving in the courtyard, then men coming through the door in a blast of cold air and snow.

  The music dribbled to a halt as people stared at these newcomers, weighing them up; Batty saw the innkeeper’s hands drop below the slice of fronted oak that formed a serving top for drinks and food. Ca’ canny, Batty thought. Make a move with a cudgel and they will show you why they favour those flanged maces dangling at their belts.

  There were six of them, dressed in loud colours, puffed sleeves showing from under mail coats cut for riding, hats of all kinds, never without a plume. They bristled with weapons and beards.

  Dressed like the Turks they fought for preference, Batty thought. Stradioti, mercenary prickers from the Balkans, almost good enough to take on the Scots reiver horse – but these weren’t taking on anyone. They reeked of marinaded grease and woodsmoke and blood, but their faces were patched as old mutton with cold and hard travel.

  There were mercenaries of all sorts – called ‘furriners’ by the locals – because Fat Henry relied on them since his main army of English faced the French in the south; one fourth of the Royal army was mercenary these days, Swiss, Landsknechts, Balkan throat-slitters and crowds of light horse to try and take on the reivers swamped the Border – but the ones who had arrived were not any of them.

  Still, they tried for swagger and failed by such a long way that the hurdy-gurdy man struck up again, the whistler joined in and people went back to bawling out the words and thumping the tables.

  ‘Barthie.’

  His heart flipped and his stomach joined in, like a pair of mountebank tumblers. He saw the man who had called out and knew him at once, cursed him wordlessly. If he’d had any second sight to see with, Manolis Voicha would have shrieked in horror at the way he was casually consigned to the Ninth circle of Hell.