by Robert Low
‘Batty Coalhouse,’ Harry Rae said when he hirpled in. ‘You look fine enough for a man who has shaken loose the Border, been whipped like a Turk slave and swam the Eden with a wee man on yer back, if stories have it true.’
‘Harry Ree,’ Batty answered, sinking gratefully on to a bench seat. ‘You look as usual – sleek and full o’ secrets. Is your hoose in Berwick still intact and free?’
‘I will find out soon enough – that’s where I am bound, save I stopped off.’
‘What brings you here?’ Dickon asked, while Fergus and others leaned forward like eager hounds, their faces blood-dyed by flames. Henry Rae, Berwick Pursuivant, did not like the look of them at all, but he was here for Will Elliot and reminded himself of the fact.
‘I have been in Carlisle,’ he said, ‘and am now headed across to Berwick. The pestilential weather drove me here – and it was Lady Day, so I thought to avail myself of some legendary Netherby hospitality.’
‘Granted,’ Dickon declared expansively and nodded to a figure, who started pouring wine into horn cups.
‘By God, Harry Ree,’ Batty said wearily, ‘you use that mooth of your like one of the hoors around Carlisle. If ye had wanted Lady Day and the dry and the warm, you’d have stayed in Carlisle, I am thinking.’
The Berwick Pursuivant bristled like a routed boar pig – but only for a moment. Then he forced a short laugh.
‘I should have remembered you, Batty – you could start a fire in a closed white room.’
Then he turned to Dickon. ‘I left the Whartons in Carlisle alternately raging and weeping over Batty here. They watched young Tom being buried not long since and they lay the blame for it at Batty’s door – and the Grahams who helped him.’
‘That’s nae secret,’ Fergus broke in. ‘We have been keeping one eye cocked for anything they might do – but they got tangled up in the war and Maxwell’s recent treachery gave Henry Wharton a sore neb.’
‘He got out of it,’ Henry Rae pointed out. ‘Now they are doubly angered at Batty and his caterans having lifted yon Egyptiani dwarf out of the Carlisle prison.’
He paused, then looked daggers at Batty. ‘I am told that Nebless Clem has been given Will Elliot back in exchange for ten hostages, who will be freed only if Clem brings Wharton someone he needs.’
‘Rynion Elliot,’ Batty put in, remembering what he had learned.
Henry Rae snorted derision. ‘He can be a thorn up the arse of anyone he chooses, but Rynion of the Hill is not worth sheep droppings. If he fails to show up and be judged at a Truce Meet, someone will be found to fetch him.’
Batty waved a dismissive hand. No’ me, he thought wearily. No’ unless I play him at Primero for it.
‘Naw, it is little to do with Rynion,’ Henry Rae said flat and hard. ‘It is for yerself. Wharton will hemp up Clem’s men unless Clem brings you alive to Carlisle. You should have kept your auld heid low, Batty.’
That snapped Batty awake. Will Elliot would be of no use to Nebless Clem now that the Ape was gone and could not reveal the secrets of the Egyptiani winter lair. He said as much and Dickon nodded thoughtfully.
‘He will dangle Will from The Scar tower and wait for you, Batty,’ he said, waiting for an answer. When none came he frowned.
‘There is a limit to what we can do,’ he said and Batty nodded.
‘As I said afore – it is not your fight, Dickon.’
‘Aye but it may be,’ Henry Rae put in, ‘since Clem and ithers have been heard to say that, afore they go after Batty Coalhouse, they are coming to free the Lady of Blackscargil, back to the loving arms of her husband.’
‘Did they say that?’ Dickon replied mildly. ‘Jesu, the lie in it – husband is he? Well, I have already put the question to Eliza Graham but I have no reason to doubt her word that no man of the cloth has set foot in Blackscargil since the Flood.’
He rubbed his face, blew out his cheeks. ‘Besides – I ken Clem Selby. From a long time since when I had dealings with his da. They were coal-hewers, did ye ken that?’
He shook his head. ‘A wee pick an’ shovel boy from a shit-smear vill. He fled soon as he was able and took up the outlaw life – until he had enough men and gall to cozen Dand out of his tower.’
He shook his head again, his face showing amazement. ‘Imagine it – a black-slathered wee thief raising himself to Laird. On what is rightfully Graham land. The presumption of it.’
As if Dickon was any better, Batty thought, but stayed quiet on it. Clem will come all the same, once Lady Day was done with, for he has his own obligations to that feast day. He muttered as much, feeling dark at his own lack of strength after climbing the winding stair of Netherby’s tower.
‘And we will be ready,’ Dickon said tersely, then beamed. ‘Until then, there is ale and beef and a great tart of rice and eggs. Go forth and enjoy it.’
‘Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine,’ Henry Rae answered, steepling his fingers.
* * *
There was beef and beer and bread – and the huge tart of rice and eggs, with fruit in it to make it even more tasty. There was cheese and wrinkled winter apples and as good fare as anything Fat Henry had enjoyed at his own feasts, or so everyone agreed.
The minister sat quiet in a corner, having done his duty in the procession of candles for the Purification of Mary – except that now it had to be Jesus in these reformed times – and keeping his eyes lowered on what the girls with their uncovered hair were getting up to in the shadows. There was music from drum and whistle and a singer who let loose with a thumping song which had gudewives tutting disapproval even as they wriggled in their seats at the words.
‘When he had played unto her
One merry note or two,
Then was she so rejoiced
She knew not what to do;
“Oh, God a mercy, carman,
Thou art a lively lad;
Thou hast as rare a whistle
As ever carman had!”’
The minister tapped his toe to it until he realised and then shrank a little, since it was altogether too lusty. By the end of the evening he was flush-faced and thumping the table while, out in the muddy garth, a brace of Grahams set at each other with fists and feet, howled on by a crowd.
Batty slid off, his ears tortured and his head bursting with it. He was table-messed with the Lovat Frasers and did not think they noticed his place was empty, but he was wrong.
He went to the stable and Fiskie. He had a perfectly good bed, surrounded by the Frasers in the crowded confines of Netherby, but he preferred the quiet and Fiskie appreciated it – until Batty saddled him.
He was sitting with a horn lantern, working filched wax seals round the wadding and slow match of his granado when he became aware of a soft shuffling and a new set of dancing shadows. When he turned, all the Frasers were there.
‘Unless you hate that beast,’ Ewan said lightly, ‘and want it to suffer all night with a saddle, I am thinking you are leaving.’
Batty worked the wax for a bit, then laid the black-leather flask to one side.
‘Prudence,’ he growled. ‘Come the hour afore first light, I am thinking Dickon Graham will have word that the Selbys are on the move. He will move to ambush them if he can, keep them away from doing damage to Netherby.’
He picked up another of the flasks. ‘If not this morning, then the next – but no later.’
‘And you did not think fit to tell us?’ John Dubh persisted. Batty sighed.
‘You have done your duty as Wemyss saw it and paid for it. This is not your fight – you can go hame to yer wee bit glen and burn and take my warm thanks with you.’
‘We canna do that,’ Red Colin answered softly, bitterly and Ewan agreed.
‘We ran, Batty. We are considered deid only because considering anything else is too much shame and hurt for those who have lost brothers and sons, husbands and lovers. Three hundred at least died – if I walked through the door of my auld home noo, it would break my ma’s heart.’
/>
Ewan fell silent, looking at the floor. Big Tam laid a meaty hand consolingly on his shoulder.
‘So ye see,’ John Dubh went on, ‘we are tied to you like a wee dug to a blood pudding – besides, our contract was to see Will Elliot and yerself safe back to yon scorched wee fortalice. That’s not yet done.’
‘There might be death in it,’ Batty said and Red Colin grunted a short, mirthless laugh.
‘Nae might about it – but we are already deid, Batty. And I have heard how one of our ain hangs from yon tower, black and rotting. I am telt how Malcolm was still alive when it happened, but he was left to die in the rain and cauld.’
That would be spur enough, Batty thought, if they were not already slathered with the shame of their own running. Truth was he was glad they’d be with him and listened to them moving softly with creaking leather and the clink of bit and bridle, saddling up their own mounts.
They followed his example and left the girth loose, then sat and said little, listening to the wild music and shouts. None of them wished they were there, all the same, for if Batty was right the arriving morning would be no time for a bad head and bokking.
So they listened to him sing, so softly it wavered in and out of the carousing, until they dozed, waiting.
‘She bathed him in the Lady-Well,
His wounds so deep and sair,
And she plaited a garland for his breast,
And a garland for his hair.’
* * *
Dickon had them routed out and back to the hall and Batty, stiff and shivering, felt the cold rain-wind as he sloshed across the wet garth to where Dickon, Fergus and the others were all gathered, festooned with arms, helmets in one hand. Batty felt fey, misted.
He had no idea what time it was, but it was likely to be this dark well into what would be morning. Dickon looked up and round them all.
‘Watchers say the Selbys are on the move,’ he began, ‘hoping we have been heavy on the drink and feasting and can be taken unawares. The trail he is taking will take him ower the Newhope Water, which isna deep, but has steep sides and is too wide to hop a hobbler. The crossing everyone here knows well and we shall ride hard to be there first and catch them wet.’
‘How many?’ someone asked from the dim.
‘A few score,’ Dickon replied, ‘all lanced and well mounted.’
Later, as more heidmen crowded in to hear how the Ride was to go down, the Frasers huddled round Batty and he could feel the nervous intensity of them like a heat, even above the fireplace where the ashes of the spitroast flames still trembled the air.
‘I have nivver done anything like this,’ Ewan breathed, in awe of what was happening, in awe of all the bear-men in their grim intensity and wargear. Batty hoped he would not ask about how it was, for the truth – as Batty was painfully aware – was that he had never been on a wild Border Ride either. In all the time he had been in these lands he had hunted solo, dragging men back for judgement on something they had done on such a Ride as this.
Dickon, his boots already muddy from the garth and no doubt wishing he hadn’t worn his fur-trimmed cloak in the hall, laid it all out for them as he sweated.
This was not for stolen kine, nor loot. This was to stop the Selbys committing outrage on Netherby, revenge for the murder of Eliza’s man and Clem Selby’s treatment of a Graham woman. This was to seize and hold Blackscargil.
‘When we put a cinch in the Selbys as they cross the water,’ he went on, ‘they will turn and flee. It will be oor job to run them away from Blackscargil. Fergus – it will be your job then to take your two-score and make for the tower with Batty and let him do what he does – blow in the doors and gain entry. There will be few men left to defend it and, once the entrance is breached, none will stand. We will have our rightful tower – and Will Elliot besides, for Clem will not bring him out on his Ride.’
Round-shouldered, bearded like a rampant badger, Fergus nodded his balding head. He was scarred on the left side of his face and had two fingers missing from the hand that clasped a horn cup of wine, tossing it down his neck in toast. ‘Never forget,’ they bawled and, out in the garth, the impatient men and fretting horses echoed it back.
Never forget. The cry of the Grahams – it even started Big Tam into growling until Ewan nudged sense into him.
‘Aye, he is something is he not?’
They turned into the sweating beams of Jamie Graham, one of Fergus’s men. ‘Dinna be fooled by his gentle wit and jest,’ he went on. ‘He killed a Ker once just for spitting near him.’
The minister had been prevailed to bless the company and their endeavours and had stumbled through it twice, once in Latin and was aware that not only his mortal soul was endangered but the rest of his person in a devoutly Reformed England.
They rode out into the teeth of a wet wind, into a land blocked out by deep shadows each time the moon, like some naked virgin flitting from cover to cover, was shrouded.
Batty did not know where they were or where they were going after a while, but Fiskie followed the horse in front and everyone behind followed Batty, snaking in between slender trees which might have been real or the shadows of others, picking a way across the drenched tussocks; now Batty admired the skill of the reivers and how they found a way simply by knowing.
In the end, after too long a time, the horse in front of Batty stopped and backed up alongside him. Fergus leaned forward, thrusting his beard, the colour of burned fields, into Batty’s eyeline.
‘Here we hold and when we hear the stushie from our ambuscade, we head off to Scar Tower. I hope you have brought yer big baubles, Batty, or we may have trouble getting in the door.’
‘I am never without my big baubles,’ Batty replied and one of the Frasers laughed. Fergus simply nodded and moved his horse quietly to the man next to him and spoke, low and urgent.
‘Whit noo?’ Ewan demanded and Batty told him.
‘Wait until told different.’
‘We don’t fight?’ Red Colin asked, truculent and disappointed.
‘We wait. Quietly. But dinna fash – there will be war enough even for you.’
* * *
They came down a narrow, steep gorge with a trickle of feeder stream that led to the Newhope Water. It was a darker slash on a grey-dim land and Clem stopped at the bottom of it, where the two streams merged.
He sat like some monarch at a review while the riders filtered down, lances unhitched, some with latchbows out and the breath of men and beasts smoking in short, hard gasps from effort and tension. It was cold and even under the mask, it bit into the rawness where Clem’s nose had been.
About sixty men, Clem reckoned, with Bells and Charltons, Forsters and Robsons. Not as many as he would have liked, nor as many as he had requested, but enough for what was needed – revenge on the Netherby Grahams.
He remembered them from years ago at Auldshaws, when he was a boy and Dickon Graham just a youth, trying to exert himself in the eyes of his da. He had arrived with only eight men but needed no more – Auldshaws was a huddle of cruck houses, no more than a score. There were no fighting men here, but determined ones and with picks and shovels from where they dug out coal from the Pit.
War had washed over Auldshaws and, as the heidman tried to explain, it did not matter whether they were Scotch or English, they had looted, pillaged, raped, burned and robbed the place. Including the black rents.
Dickon had leaned on the front of his saddle, scowling. ‘Including the rents?’
‘Exactly so,’ the heidman agreed mournfully.
‘You should have hidden them better,’ Dickon said and shot him. The boy watched from the shadows as his da flew backwards and the people moaned and drew back.
‘Sort yourselves,’ Dickon went on, ‘elect a new heidman and when I return for the next rent, have it ready. You are nae use to me ither than for your blackmeal and a peck of poor coal.’
Clem stared into the darkness and saw his da being lifted up, lolling dead and dripping b
lood. It was then he had vowed to make the Grahams pay, but his life had been one of a thief and robber, a Broken Man relying on others he gathered up and dependent on none but themselves.
They’d had a long, hard life of it in the Debatable, but found a way to increase and some riches. Finding their way to auld Dand at Blackscargil had been a God-gift. The man had been a power in his day but it was long gone and his younger wife – a Graham from Netherby, no less – was clearly looking for a way out. While Dand snored, Clem took her on the table and was afraid at the end of the business, her intense silence and lack of any fear for him unnerving.
It was an unease redoubled when she brought up the thought on what to do with her husband and the idea that Clem, married on to her once she was free, would be master of Blackscargil.
By the time the old man was pitched off the roof, Clem had come to realise that he already had Blackscargil and did not need Eliza Graham. Still, he had not given her leave to go and wanted her back, as he wanted every one of his other possessions. She was a Graham and he had a savage longing to humiliate that Name.
The wind wheeped under the mask and into the hole in his face. He hated the mask because it did not let him wear a helmet properly, but he needed it because otherwise the cold caused him a shrieking ache and made him dribble, which revolted him.
Once done with this, he thought savagely, I will deal with the Egyptiani. Once done with this, I will have Eliza back where I want her and she will go on her knees and take the butt of my whip wherever I choose to place it. That reminded him of Batty Coalhouse, the one-armed man who seemed to have had even less fear in him than Eliza. Another Graham, he had since learned and wished he had known that at the time he’d strung him up. He’d have flayed the back off him and left him for crows.
He heard someone laugh as they passed him and snapped back to watching the trail of men crossing; the lead elements had heaved out the far side and fanned out, standing hipshot, talking in low tones. The others crowded down into the narrow ford, confident, without doubt; balked they waited patiently to move forward like a forest of lances.
