by Robert Low
Batty agreed. He knew disease had a part in what had happened here, because the family had not tried to flee. It looked as if the man had come back – hunting, if the bow was any guide – seen the death of his wife and bairns and had simply sat down and waited for his own last breath.
‘Or the Sweats,’ Will put in darkly. ‘Or the Bloody Flux.’
‘Cheer us why don’t you?’ John Dubh flung back and ducked out into the drizzle.
‘This land is cursed,’ Ewan said, hunching in to the wet. ‘Witches…’
Batty had no answer that would be a soothe, especially with night coming on. He had seen a witch, once, out in the Italies when he still had two arms and marched with Maramaldo. They were on some rutted trail, in wet such as this, slogging under dull grey lowering skies, shackled to guns and carts.
On the third day he saw the witch. ‘Trailing her rags across the sky,’ he said excitedly to the others. ‘Her hair all wild and looking like snakes. Cursing, she were.’
The others all stared and then at Hordle Billy who led them. He looked at the priest, which no-one cared to see; Hordle Billy was in charge of five good men and shouldn’t be seeming to ask a priest what to do, but old habits died hard. Back in his home town, Priest sat at the right hand of God and this one had more about him than most; this one was called Wilibald and had once led pilgrims to the Compostella shrine.
Witches was the province of priests, all the same and even those who doubted me, Batty remembered, had heard tales of a devil dragged out of the river two days from where they’d once lived, caught in fishing nets. The fisherman had beat the black, frog-thing until it squealed, but it tore free and ran off before they could kill it.
So witches was possible, Batty thought. If nothing else, the weather was hagged, for as the dark slid in the rain slid out, leaving the stealth of cold and a fat, gibbous moon. Riding weather, Batty thought, if it was the season for it – but everything was thrown into the air now that the war with England and France and Scotland was done. The Border had been shaken loose and everything was flying…
‘That is what war is,’ Will muttered, the first coherent thing he had offered since Redmoss. In truth, Batty was concerned about Will, who rode like a half-empty bag of grain and muttered about his soul, the world’s soul, redemption and such.
‘What is?’ John Dubh asked and Will told him. That war always falls on the little people while those fighting it went about their business of glory and plunder.
Batty hunched up and shut his ears to it. He knew the truth of soldiers in war, which Will had never experienced for all his time as Land Sergeant at Hermitage. A few hot trods, the wild gallop across moss and whin in pursuit of people who only wanted to flee to the safety of the Debatable was not war. Will had fought once or twice and suffered injuries, which was not war.
Batty knew war. It was all he knew, he realised. He knew the fighters did not tally glory with their deaths; they died crying in their minds like bairns. They forgot why they were fighting, the causes they were dying for and died yearning for the face of a friend so they would not be alone doing it. They died whimpering for the voice of a mother, with their hearts sick for one more walk on the rutted track to the home where they were born, please God, just one more look. They died angry at the injustice of it being them and if they were truly blessed by God, they died faster than it took for them to say ‘fuck’ in that surprised way.
They knew what was important. They knew that life was everything and they died with screams and sobs at the one real and constant thought – I want to live I want to live I want to live.
They say if I had one foot in Paradise I would remove it to join war on earth, Batty thought. The truth is that Heaven will not drag the other foot out of the gore and let me in. War is all I know. If you tally up my life so far you will find a sorry list. Friends – few and usually tavern keeps or folk I owe money. Wife – none. Bairns – none he knew about. Prospects – none.
All he said aloud was: ‘We will push on to Mickledale. It lies on a hill and folk have been there since God was a boy.’
‘If they are watchful,’ Will replied, ‘then they will not let us in.’
Batty leaned in towards him a little. ‘If you have no cheer to offer, offer nothing. These men around you risked life and limb to free you and return you to safety and you have done little else but grumble over it.’
Will nodded soberly. ‘Yet you are in it, Batty, and every rescue you have ever done for me makes me worse than before.’
‘Away wi’ ye, ye ungrateful spalpeen,’ Ewan spat. ‘D’ye hear yerself? Every rescue Batty has ever done? What does that tell ye, Will Elliot?’
‘Let us keep quiet and keep riding,’ Batty said softly, so they did though the tension coiled like a hanging noose.
They made about twenty minutes before John Dubh called attention to the glow in the distance, though even Batty had seen it and his eyes, he was the first to admit, were not as they had once been. It was right where Mickledale should be.
‘There,’ Batty said and because it was almost too dark to see his point, he told them. ‘The trees to the right. Move in and keep your mounts quiet.’
‘Who would raid in this season?’ Will demanded, almost outraged. ‘There’s nothing to be had from it.’
Aye, Will, you have forgotten nothing of your time in Hermitage, the guardhouse of the Liddesdale. This is the season where cattle are too lean and horses too out of condition. There is nothing to be had from a mad raid at this time of year save savagery and spite.
The riders were silhouetted against the moon for an eyeblink each as they passed, with no word and no noise save for the creak of leather and the shuffle of hooves. When they were gone, Batty let out his breath; there had been a score of them and that was a score too many.
Will stared at the flickering glow and mourned bitterly.
‘Oh burn the house. You’ve murdered the husband, slaughtered the cattle, poisoned the well, raped the mother, killed the child – you must burn the house. It’s mustard to your sausage. You are the bold riders of the Border, you must do your duty. Burn the house. Burn the fields. Burn the water…’
‘Hist on that,’ Batty snapped. ‘There was enough burning of the water when Fat Henry was alive to demand it. The Border does not need you.’
‘It does not need you nor the likes of you,’ Will countered and it wasn’t anger, just wistful and bleak. Batty ignored him, irritated – but he was right enough. The steading was a solid wee bastel house with a slate roof, the garth no more than a waist-high drystone dyke and the other buildings roughly made, with thatched roofs that had been fired by the raiders.
A milk cow lay with its legs stuck out like discarded bagpipes, a child sprawled, a wee rag doll in the blood-muddied garth, naked next to a dog shot by a latchbow. The reivers had run the wee milk cow through with lances and had stripped the place bare of anything small and portable, taking no cattle nor useful goods as was normal.
The main door of the bastel lay open, as did the iron yett behind it and John Dubh went inside like the vengeance of the Archangel, though no enemies were to be found. Instead, he came back spitting the foul from his mouth as he told them of the man sprawled in the undercroft, his wife upstairs, two other servant women and a youth, maybe the son, scattered and ill-used on both floors.
‘The bairn heard the dog being badly treated and ran out to save it,’ Will said, reading the sad tale of it in the mud and blood. ‘She left the doors open and that was all that was needed.’
‘This was not done for gain as I have heard it,’ Ewan said. ‘This was for sport and badness. Who would run a milk cow through with lances?’
They prowled, looking for stragglers and finding nothing but death – and worse. When Batty slithered stiffly off the back of Fiskie and went to the bairn he knelt and then straightened and spat to one side. He looked at the others, who went closer.
It had been a pretty girl, no more than ten years in the world before she had been stripped of
her nightdress and the lash had ribboned her naked back open. The others were already too dead to be a sick joy for the man who had done it, but Batty knew him. They all did.
‘Clem Selby,’ John Dubh breathed and Batty’s back seemed to flare at the sound of the name, each stripe like a new fiery brand. Ewan shivered all the same; the Selby men had passed close enough to be touched…
They put their horses in the stalls, leaving one empty. They struggled the bodies down to the undercroft and laid them in the empty stall, brought the dog in as well and laid it next to the girl. Will covered the naked, torn body with a ragged horse-blanket and sat for a while next to it.
The others went upstairs, found the cloth-covered jug of milk, the last squeezed from the cow before it was used for lance practice. They found oats and barley – too little of both which showed how the family would have faced a hard time if a harder time had not come to them in the night. There was cabbage and a hard, pale cheese, so with all that and a fire in the hearth, Batty got himself a full belly and a measure of sleep.
The morning came up on the plateau, showing where the old fort had once been, now no more than the mark of an overgrown ditch and some stones. Ploughing had cut away the rest of it and the road up to the house had sliced part of the old circle of ditch, making it look like a horseshoe.
Batty saw all this from the roof, cloaked against the chill but watching the riders come up. Eight men, with lances and helmets.
‘Is it Nebless Clem?’ Ewan called up and Batty came slowly down the ladder to join him.
‘I suspect Armstrongs out of Whithaugh, since it is closest.’
Since they held Batty as an enemy, it was little comfort and Ewan said so. John Dubh merely laughed; he was in Purgatory and he knew it and Batty Coalhouse, with his beak nose and his bearded chin rising to meet it, fat-bellied, one-armed, and moving like a dung heap that had learned to walk, was one of the bigger imps in it.
‘There are people,’ Will said, ‘who are born to rub others up the wong way; Batty Coalhouse was born to rub the whole world up the wrong way.’
Batty merely grunted and moved to one of the slit windows and unshuttered it. When someone called out ‘Ho, the hoose,’ he responded almost at once.
‘Ho back at you. Who comes here?’
There was a pause. ‘Is that Johnnie Little?’
‘It is not,’ Batty said, flat and loud. ‘He is dead and his entire family with him, servants and all. Who are you who asks?’
There was a longer pause, with low muttering in it but Batty did not think any of the riders were surprised.
‘Maurie Armstrong of Whithaugh,’ the man shouted back, ‘sent by the heidman to find out what occurs here. Come out.’
‘We did not do this. Nebless Clem did this and left the youngest girl flayed by his whip. She is laid in the undercroft.’
Mutterings, which made it clear the riders were unconvinced.
‘Who are you then?’
Batty sighed. ‘Batty Coalhouse, escorting Will Elliot, former Land Sergeant of Hermitage, back to his home.’
It did no harm to lay out Will’s old standing; Hermitage was a hard, short gallop away, but not short enough to beat a pursuit from here. All the same, Batty knew what would tip the scales.
‘Batty Coalhouse,’ said Maurie Armstrong and it seemed that his voice was as weary and resigned as Batty’s own.
‘The same. Innocent of this and wanting no trouble over it.’
‘You may be innocent of this,’ shouted a new voice, ‘but of nothing else. We have riders coming…’
‘You do not. The wee dug died afore it could run to you with whatever message was knotted round its neck. It’s dying made the girl run out and leave the yett unlatched, sealing the fate of all within.’
Batty let that sink down on them. ‘You came with a handful of men only to spy the land and if you met with serious resistance you were to gallop back and fetch the Whithaugh Name.’
‘Thanks for reminding us,’ shouted the unknown voice and Maurie shushed him with added curses to sauce it.
He does not like the idea of calling out Whithaugh for Batty Coalhouse and Will Elliot, Batty thought and then Will did a monstrous thing.
He opened both doors of the bastel and stood under the lintel in full view.
‘Come and look at the bodies and see if we speak the truth,’ he said. ‘They were ill-used.’
‘Only one of you, mind,’ Batty roared out, stumbling for the ladder to the undercroft and cursing Will. Ewan followed and John Dubh stuck a caliver out of the window.
Batty arrived at the foot of the ladder, half-stumbling, the big dagg with the axe-head grip fearsome in one hand and a savage glower reserved for Will, who met it with a bland smile.
‘A fistful of dagg is always better than a mouthful of arguments.’
The man stumping up on stiff, booted legs laughed and stood, waiting. He was red-haired and bearded, with a cast in one eye and barely into his second decade on the earth. He had a decent back-and-breast, a worn blue shirt beneath it, good breeks and fine boots which he placed carelessly in the dung and mud, as if he did not care. It might have been true, Batty thought, but the man was aware of what he was and had a decent length of backsword hung from his waist, a dagger on the other side. Both showed glints of gold and silver.
‘You’ll be Maurie from Whithaugh then,’ Batty said, aware of the men with lances resting on hipshod horses beyond him.
‘You’ll be Batty Coalhouse of nowhere in particular.’
‘Step in,’ Will invited. ‘Look at them poor folk and see for yourself no-one here could do it.’
Maurie made a neck movement, as if to look over his shoulder at the men, but he never did; it was a gesture to me that they were there, Batty thought. He wanted to shut the doors, but that would look too much like they taking Maurie hostage, so he left it, with a warning glance at Ewan to watch.
Maurie and Will went to each body, Will pointing out this and that. When they came to the whipped girl, Will knelt and made the sign of the cross over her, while Maurie stared. He did the same, however, to another slight form. That one is kin, Batty thought.
It was the servant girl who had her hair unbound but had a cream-coloured cap which still dangled round her throat by the ties.
‘Libby Armstrong,’ Maurie said dully. ‘Sent here for the learning in it.’
And maybe also to flirt and sway at the son, younger than her but becoming aware of her body. A nice match. He said so and Maurie nodded.
‘I see them ill-used. I see the youngest was lashed, though I can see no whip – but then, why would ye leave that out for me to see clearly.’
‘We did none of this,’ Will answered softly. ‘Mercifully, we came on it too late, else we might have suffered the same. The man who did it does not care for us any more than you do.’
‘Nebless Clem Selby,’ Batty added and Maurie looked at him, then moved back to the door, ducking under Ewan’s gaze.
He paused. ‘Whether you did this or not,’ he said – at which Batty’s heart seemed to turn over and sink – ‘it would be best if you came back to Whithaugh while it is determined.’
‘And expect fair treatment from the Armstrongs of Whithaugh? I dinna think so.’
‘Then face the consequences.’
Batty stood slightly to the left of the doorway. ‘If you come at us,’ he said, ‘you will be answered. Ride away on a pleasant morning. This is a feud that has gone on long enough…’
‘That is not for you to decide,’ Maurie spat back. ‘Will you let me back to my hobby and my men?’
Batty nodded. ‘The doors here will be shut once you have gone. If we have to open them again while you are here, my fist will be filled with dagg.’
‘Let us baith ride away from here…’ Will began and Batty shushed him loudly, then nodded to Ewan; the wooden door closed, the bar went on and then the iron grille clanked shut with the finality of a tocsin.
‘Ye should never have
opened these,’ Batty said scathingly to Will. ‘If you do so again without my permit, I will fell you Will, for all I like you.’
‘I thought to avoid war,’ Will answered, not in the least trembling when faced with a jut-jawed frowning Batty, which Ewan thought very fine. ‘It is always war with you, Batty, and I told you so when you ran like a wolf at the bidding of Mintie Henderson and could have stopped all the blood if you had chosen.’
‘What do you know of war?’ Batty growled. ‘Land Sergeant at Hermitage. Twice a year if that, you turned out in a hot trod against reivers with cattle so the Keeper of Hermitage could take his tithes on recovery. You never whetted a blade as the Steward of Newark.’
‘I know war is famine and death to those who want no part of it,’ Will answered. ‘War is what they call it to give the illusion of honour and law. But it is madness and blood and the lust to win even if folk like these lying in a stable die for it. It has always been thus and shall always be so.’
‘God and the Devil rule the world by turns and you cannot tell me who is on the throne at any time, for they handle the world the same way.’
‘The pair of you should go to be wee Lutheran cants and debate this every day at some German college,’ Ewan interrupted. ‘Mayhap you can turn those fine minds to working out how we get out of here.’
‘We fight,’ Batty answered morosely. ‘Which is what they wanted from the moment they jaloused I was here.’
John Dubh stuck his head through the trapdoor. ‘They are beyond the garth, in the lee of some auld stones. I can see the blue reek from a fire.’
They will sit for while, wondering what to do, Batty thought. They’ll have seen me and two others in the undercroft and the muzzle of a caliver from above, but their imaginations will make more.
‘He will not want to send a rider back for more men,’ Will said as if reading Batty’s mind. ‘But he will in the end, because even with all he has with him, he will not storm a bastel like this.’
Batty heaved the saddle on Fiskie one-handed and started fumbling with the girth.
‘Which is why we will run at them,’ he said and they all looked from one to the other and finally worked out that it was the best way.
