by Robert Low
Chapter Thirteen
The bastel house at Micklegate
Maurie sat by the fire and chewed his lip. He did not want to send word back to the heidman at Whithaugh to send up more men, that he had Batty Coalhouse and mayhap three others trapped in Micklegate. Even as he said it to himself it sounded whining and afraid and he thought to sit for a while and see if the ones inside the house got worn away with fear and saw sense.
The others were grouped round the smoking fire, leaching heat as the sun came up, spearing rays that made their shadows eldritch. The horses, tethered to a rope line tied rock to rock, whickered with the new heat – and Maurie heard the sound of the outer door banging open.
He turned, expecting to see a man with one arm in the air and others following him with both hands held high. Instead, his mouth dropped open with shock.
Batty, flattened out along Fiskie’s rough mane to avoid bashing his brains out on the lintel, came out at full gallop, axe-handled dagg held by the muzzle. The others followed, all bawling at the top of their voices.
By the time Maurie had managed to click his teeth closed, Batty was on him and he fell back, one hand raised in a futile gesture. His spurs caught and he went backwards over the remains of a moss-covered wall, landing like an upturned beetle.
Batty ignored him, ploughed on and let Fiskie crow-hop a low wall, then cut down on the rope tether. The axe wasn’t sharp enough and the rope too loose; nothing happened save a little fraying.
Will scattered bodies left and right of him, rode straight into the rope tether which made the fastened horses jerk and squeal. Will came to a halt, barely hanging on – but the rope was now tighter and two blows from Batty cut it. The horses, freed, slipped away and galloped, pursued by a yelling Ewan.
John Dubh rode up and into an Armstrong who had sprung up, knocking him sideways to spin and roll. He lashed out with his backsword and Batty caught his breath, for he had insisted that no-one die today – but the blade simply cut the string of a waving latchbow.
Batty reined round and walked Fiskie back to where Maurie tried dazedly to get to his feet. When he had managed it, he found himself staring down the hexagonal tunnel of the dagg.
‘By the time ye sort all this oot and send someone back to Whithaugh to fetch your cuddies back, we will be long gone,’ Batty said. ‘Let the heidman know how we took pains not to kill anyone.’
Not that it would tip any scales in my favour; it is no accident that those legal devices are known as an ‘ambush’ – as in ‘lying in weight’ – and start off against me, Batty thought as they rode away, fast and hard initially so that they were out of range of any bolts or arrows. Yet he felt Fiskie’s mane lash his face and the wind in his beard and he almost laughed.
I have rode in a Ride and now I have led a cavalry charge. No wee feat for a man in his fiftieth year.
When he said as much, everyone laughed aloud and reined in a little to ease their blowing horses.
‘Ye tell us ye have drunk from the Grail,’ John Dubh answered with a dash of sting, ‘so it is mayhap that making you so milkie about killing.’
‘A danger in a man with a profession such as yours,’ Ewan added. Will smiled.
‘Batty feels shame, which has been a long time coming for him. Not about killing, mind. There is no shame in feeling bad about having to kill. The shame comes when you realise you no longer care.’
Batty said nothing and thought much. He wasn’t ashamed – Will always placed his pronouncements as if he had plumbed the depths of a person, but always it was about himself and so invariably he got it wrong.
It’s no small thing, ending someone else’s life, Batty wanted to tell them. There should be some sort of uncomfortable weight to it and I feel it every time, though it has nothing to do with what I just did and everything to do with what I have just lost.
This morning I managed not to kill a man. Later today I might have to kill two. There were some he’d love to resurrect just so he could kill them all over again. And there were those not yet dead who deserved killing. There was balance.
Yet the weights were heavy and grinding, made more so by the increase of age. People, if they admire me at all Batty thought, do so because they believe I curl my moustaches at death. Everyone believes death is not to be courted at all – if they only knew that old age is worse…
* * *
Hermitage was a frown in grey, streaked black by rain, perched on a mound and glowering at the world. It was surrounded by a mottled fungus of domed tents and half-roofed stalls. People had come from Newcastleton and further with what produce they had, looking to sell or barter for the produce they didn’t have.
There were hurdles with new lambs and a desperate clutch of bedraggled waiting by their only cow, tethered and bound for sale because they had nothing else.
‘War,’ Will said meaningfully as they rode up, but Batty’s attention was all taken by the men at the tower gates and peering out the windows. Round metal hats and bills, spotted with rust, old leather jacks reinforced by latten chains. They were hard-eyed and leaned casually on the pole of their bills, watching.
They had always looked like this and Batty had never cared for the place, making a point of trying to avoid it wherever possible. To Will, this was his old home, a place so ingrained in him that he felt a pain in his chest and thought, for one terrible moment, that he would weep.
That was thrown from him by a voice which called his name. Then again and with some delight. The man who did it came over at a brisk walk, a grin on his bluff, bearded face. He wore the workaday of the Hermitage garrison – mud-coloured linen, dung-coloured jack, blue breeches and scuffed leather boots to the knee.
He beamed from under a split-brim cap and Batty saw the iron-grey hair straggled to the ears, but he did not know the man.
‘Will Elliot,’ the man said again. ‘Would you credit it?’
‘Do I know you?’ Will asked cautiously and the man nodded so hard Batty thought his bunnet might fly off.
‘Aye, mebbes. I was part of the garrison in your last year – Patey’s Will Carruder. You wid have known me as Horse-Boy, since that’s what I did then.’
Will thought he recognised the face, though it was young and cherubic back then, an ostler boy who had clearly risen far. With a lurch, Will heard him say he was the Land Sergeant; he felt Batty’s consoling eyes on him and that made it all worse.
‘Well done to you…’
‘What brings you here?’
‘Sustenance and shelter,’ Batty answered before Will could speak, then told Carruder of the events at Mickledale, his suspicions regarding Nebless Clem and the arrival of the Armstrongs.
‘I have felt the itch of them on my nethers all the ride here,’ he added.
Carruder nodded sagely, then summoned a man with a sharp command and sent him for ‘the Captain’.
‘Keeper absent?’ Will asked innocently and Carruder spread his hands in a Border shrug. ‘He is abroad, I hear.’
Aye, well he might, Batty thought. He had backed the wrong horse, had Patrick Hepburn and now had a long road back to acceptance at a Scottish court – but he still had his lands. For now. Now you have a Captain, Batty thought, sitting patiently in the rain. Used to be that a Land Sergeant was enough, but it seems the lesson of Will Elliot’s independent thinking has been learned – this Captain will be a sprout of the Hepburn brood and so more likely to do as he is told.
The Captain was taller than anyone else, even John Dubh. He was clean shaved, his fair hair curled neatly at the ears but allowed to grow into a thick wad on top of his head, as padding for the burgonet helmet. That let Batty know this sprig had learned a few matters, while his cheekbones and pale blue eyes let him know he was a Hepburn – they were all called ‘The Fairbairn’ because of their looks.
He was John Hepburn of Fortune, he announced, a splendid title for a splendid man, all willowy and languidly elegant though his hand rested on the worn hilt of a workmanlike sword. Batty dislik
ed him at once.
Batty and Carruder filled him in and, at last, were let in out of the rain. There were new ostler-boys to look after their horses and the guards watched Ewan unlatch his big two-hander from his back. Carruder laughed.
‘That’s the weapon of them furrin pay-sojers,’ he explained. ‘We have had enough of them stravaigin’ everywhere, causing havoc.’
They were taken up to the warm of the best room in Hermitage, which had the benefit of better light and a proper fire blazing a welcome in the hearth. There were servants to bring them bread and cheese and a decent pot of ale – good-looking quines, as John Dubh announced when the last of them had swayed her skirts and partlet out of the room. One of them lugged a dirty bucket of black stones and fed one or two to the fire under the approving smile of the Captain.
‘Anything come down the waggonway?’
The woman shook her head, left the bucket of stones – coal, Batty realised – and went away, dusting her hands.
Batty went to an unshuttered window and squinted out; the rain had stopped, the trading had started again but even from this height he could see the mean produce – cabbage and dock, a little barley, almost no wheat, some oats. Growing wheat was hard in this country, so oats was a better, hardier affair – but not when folk arrived to strip you of all your hard work.
The Captain looked at them all and grinned.
‘I should be obliged if you keep your seats and your temper – what happens next should be interesting, but I don’t want it spilling over.’
He had a good brogue, but his speech was dandified by Edinburgh’s collegiate and mayhap, Batty thought, some foreign schooling. He wondered if John Hepburn was the Keeper’s byblow.
‘Riders have arrived and are standing a good bowshot away,’ the Captain went on. ‘On the other side, so you won’t see them from the window. I count two score of them, all Armstrongs.’
Batty and the others looked at one another; the Captain smiled.
‘Their leader had demanded a meeting. So I have asked him to be brought here.’
Demanded? That was a word that made the Captain’s voice like a badly trained horse – stiff and reined in. Batty felt a cold slide in his belly at who would dare use that to anyone in control of Hermitage. He had a good idea, all the same and was proved sickeningly right when the man himself stepped into the room.
He was tall, but was as broad so it made him look like a new-woken bear. He had a grey-streaked beard, was of ages with Batty and was dressed in half-armour finery, complete with the lobster tails down his thighs, meeting the big riding boots coming up. He had a sword and dagger on him, for the Captain of Hermitage was not about to show any fear of the armed Laird of Mangerton by asking that he leave them at the door.
Archy Armstrong took three steps into the room and stopped, staring at Batty sitting in cushioned comfort with cheese crumbs in his beard.
‘So – it is true then. You have the slaughterer of Mickledale. Hand him ower and we’ll be gone.’
‘I have no such person,’ the Captain replied levelly. ‘I have Batty Coalhouse, a guest. And the man he is escorting back to the Lothians, Will Elliot.’
‘We are just folk of no account at all,’ John Dubh offered and the Captain had the grace to look abashed; Ewan sat in grim silence, grasping the two-hander by the ricasso.
‘I see you all,’ Archy Armstrong replied coldly. ‘And I will have you hemped by day’s close. I will not wait long to find a suitable tree…’
The slap of palm on wood was loud enough to make Batty spill the ale on its way to his mouth. It seemed to astound the Laird of Mangerton.
‘Listen to me Archy Armstrong. I have been gracious with you and ignored your demands of the Hepburns of Hermitage to give you audience here. I know you have issues with Batty Coalhouse and mayhap even Will Elliot – though I cannot see why him, since he was ill-used by the Armstrong Laird of Hollows some years back. But they are guests and you have brought a score and more Armstrongs within sight of Hermitage and so fast you probably have not buried the poor folk at Mickledale, the place you claim to be avenging.’
‘They are deid and Coalhouse here was fair caught inside…’
‘Nebless Clem did this,’ the Captain replied sternly, while Batty and the others sat, open-mouthed. ‘I had word of him racing back to his lair in the Mutton Pot and you would do better to go there, if you have the courage.’
He took a breath and the Laird of Mangerton spluttered out the word ‘courage’ as if it had sprung into his mouth like vomit.
‘Aye. Pursue the true villains and not your fetid revenge. And mark me, Archy – if you bring numbers of men back within sight of Hermitage again I will track you down, grab you by the lug and haul you back to be dropped into the Pit here.’
He waved a hand in a dismissive flap. ‘Get you gone, Laird of Mangerton.’
As if summoned, two big men arrived at the Laird’s back to escort him out. For a moment the Laird bristled like an annoyed badger and laid one hand on his swordhilt; the Captain drew himself up and cocked an eyebrow.
‘Would ye? Go ahead – and you will meet the Pit early.’
The heat of the men at his back finally let the rancid out of Archy Armstrong, Laid of Mangerton, heidman of all the Armstrongs in the world. He took his hand from his hilt and turned to go – at the doorway, he turned back.
‘You will rue the day,’ he said. ‘Be minded we have a pit at Mangerton too and one day, you long streak of piss, you will be in it so long it will be named efter ye.’
It was only when Batty heard him clatter down the wind of steps, each boot seemingly more angry than the last, that he realised he was holding his breath and let it out noisily. The others did the same, save for John Dubh, who looked admiringly at the Captain.
‘What’s the Mutton Pot?’
‘The worst roost on the moss,’ Will answered before anyone could speak and the Captain laughed bitterly and filled the rest of it in. A slash of gully and cut, smothered with gorse and stunted woods, with a grass dip at the centre of it perfect for hiding stolen livestock. You could not use the way in unless you knew it.
‘I would love to root Clem and his Broken Men out of there,’ the Captain mused, ‘but not without double the men I have now.’
Then he managed a smile. ‘Not your problem all the same. You have the hospitality of Hermitage for tonight, and tomorrow will be escorted by two of my riders until the Armstrongs give up – they won’t attack with witnesses present. You will be back home in a few days, Master Elliot.’
‘He will keep coming,’ Batty said, half to himself and everyone knew he was not speaking of the Laird of Mangerton.
‘Does Clem hate you that much?’ the Captain asked. No-one answered and the silence was profound. Everyone – even the Captain – knew how Nebless Clem had been kicked out of his tower and humiliated and the part Batty had in it. He would not stop coming.
Only Will knew Batty well enough to realise that the whipping, bone deep though it had been, had not inflicted a pain as sharp and terrible as the fire Batty had for vengeance. He would not stop coming either.
Chapter Fourteen
The Mutton Pot
Will had watched him leave in the grey light before dawn, a Batty from another time. He had four pistols, all wheel-locks and two of them monstrances that were barely contained by the horse holsters. He had a sword, the basketwork gilding almost all worn off and somewhere in between the apostles on his bandolier lay a brotherhood of knives.
Batty hadn’t wanted to do it, but he went to wake Will when he was about to leave only to find him in a dark little hole barely lit by a reeking fish-oil crusie.
‘This was mine once,’ he said as Batty stepped inside.
‘And you carp about losing it,’ Batty answered flatly and then let the bag of coin drop to the floor. ‘There’s the bounty I was given to make your freedom. It is light by my fee and some necessary expense, but since it would all have been lost if Nebless Clem had
seen sense I am thinking the Laird of Newark will not be unpleased.’
‘You are going after Clem,’ Will answered. ‘You and I and the others could be sixty miles from here by the end of the sevenday. Leaving all the folk who want to do you harm, leaving starvation and misery and disease – you ken those at Red Cross died of the Sweats?’
Batty had guessed as much, though he wondered how Will had known and said so. Will shifted in his seat on a truckle bed.
‘I have seen it before. It took my ma in a night. Day before she was complaining of nothing more than a summer chill or a wee ague. Next day she was dead.’
Batty knew how the Sweats worked though he was glad the disease had not worked on him, even after he had plootered through victims of it out in Piedmont. It began with a strange premonition of oncoming horror, followed by a crippling, violent headache, fever tremors and aching limbs.
He’d always though it was a feature of battlefields and war and when he had seen it along the Borders, he had felt a new fear. He wondered if any of them now carried it and if so when it would show.
‘One foot in Paradise, Batty,’ Will said sadly.
‘Aye well,’ Batty said. ‘Enjoy the harp music.’
‘Why go at all? Because you were whipped?’
Batty took a breath and let it out. ‘That,’ he answered, ‘and the wee girl at Mickledale. He’s a fell cruel man and yon Captain here is right – he will not stop. I will not let him stripe another, be it man, woman or even a wee bairn.’
‘The Captain is a good man,’ Will said softly. ‘If you ask, he might help.’
‘He might. Or he might prevent me, for the peace of the March. I have shaken loose the Border, it appears and no-one cares for it.’
‘It’s whit you do, Batty.’
Batty had been aware of Will’s eyes on him, for he had gone with him to the gate in order to persuade the guard to let him out. They made his back itch. Will was aware of Batty’s bristle of weapons and steady, grim resolve and the ‘good fortune’ he offered was genuine and sad; he looked sideways at the guard as they watched the grey figure slide into the last of the grey night. The guard rolled his eyes and shook his head – but he would stay silent on it for a while longer; then go and tell his Captain.
