by Robert Low
‘Thwarted them again, Batty,’ said a voice and turned to where Will was weaving on his feet, sword in hand.
‘If you have burst open yon wound to leaking, I will beat you with a bridle.’
‘I am pert as a rutting buck,’ Will said and then his legs failed him so that he sat down, a bewildered expression on his face.
‘Up,’ Batty said, shoving the pistol into his belt and extending his hand. ‘Nebless Clem might be close enough to hear that so we should not wait around for it.’
‘I thought you came to kill him,’ Will said, his voice a whisper. Batty scowled.
‘I will. I would just prefer not to have to break a wall of his men to do it.’
Will managed to climb into the saddle with some help from Batty and for a time he looked upright and alert, but Batty saw him droop and slump. He did not want to stop, all the same, so he led Will’s beast and took the easiest way he could find, always heading west, towards Langholm. Though there was no certainty of decent help for Will there, no proper barber-surgeon, only beldames with skill and potions that would get them burned if a decent witch-finder took it into his head to go hunting.
The only such medical I met inspired no-one, Batty remembered but then I was out of it for most of the affair and only my ma told me how his hands were clean and his nails trimmed, which was a good sign for her.
The wee barber-surgeon, whose name Batty did not know and wished he did in order to offer daily prayers, had cut and tied the stump of his arm and even offered help swaddling the body of Batty’s da. His ma, ruined by grief, barely functioned and Batty came out of his fogged condition only once, enough to hear the chirugeon offering his ma some ‘small beauties’.
That had been maggots, which his ma had used to root out the rot when Batty’s stump started in to healing. That unknown wee tooth-pulling hair cutter with his Paracelsus skills saved my life, Batty thought. Though there are some as would think that a waste…
What do they think has happened to make old fools like this?
Batty jerked round at the sound of Will’s voice, which seemed strong and yet came from a lolling husk. He’d though to find intelligence in the face, but it was wobbling like a bladder on a stick and the mouth moved wetly and when silent, hung open and drooled.
Is it more grown-up when you keep pissing yourself, and can’t remember who called on you this morning?
Aye, well done Will Elliot, Batty thought. Who is younger than me by a score of years and yet has beat me to the tape. If he lives, I will tell him of this moment…
The thought made him guilty and ashamed because he had come to believe Will when he said everything bad that had happened to him came from Batty. Mercifully, Will had given up on sense and though he spoke, said nothing Batty could understand.
If either of us could choose, he thought, we would pact with the very De’il to alter things back to when we could dance all night, or lace our own shoes.
Better having faith in that than knowing God will make no change and they will always now behave as if crippled or foolish, sitting through days that seemed too thin and where dreaming had more substance.
Age whittles away at beauty, saws away at strength, blunts sharpness of skill and wit. Few are born with a treasury of those traits. Fewer still manage to beat off the relentless attacks of Time. I have done so for too long and thought I held my own, Batty thought, then chuckled. Maybe I should have drunk more often from the Holy Grail when I had it in my hand. If you believe it…
The biggest mystery of all is – why am I not screaming?
* * *
They came up through a soft day and the haar rolling up from the Solway, cold enough to make lawyers keep their hands in their own pouches. The milk-mist had no rain but it soaked everything, leaving clear diamonds trembling on stalks and petals and clothing and beards.
It made the cross that loomed up a sudden, frightening beast that caused Batty to jerk and set Fiskie snorting; he looked guiltily back at Will, but his horse was plodding weary and had noticed nothing.
It was a tall cross with a nimbus, slouching on a three-step base. Defiantly Catholic these days, Batty thought, but a defiant Scotland embraced it – but he knew where he was now and felt better for it. In another few steps the dark shadow of the old chapel slid out of the mist.
It was a squat, unhandsome affair with a slate roof still intact and, though wee kirks only a few miles away on the English side of the Border had been Reformed years before, the ones on the Scots side went relentlessly on.
This one, however, had seen the ravages of raid and counter-raid so that the wee men of God had fled for the safety of Glasgow, because the kirk was dedicated to Saint Teneu, mother of Saint Kentigern, apostle to Strathclyde and founder of the city of Glasgow. Whenever fire and steel threatens, Batty thought, you run for that sacred place that can never be violated – your ain home and bed. There God will show you your folly of belief.
Good old Saint Thenew, Batty thought. He had ridden this way before, but had never stopped; the value of the place then lay in the narrowest, easiest crossing of the Esk with a step of stones that took you dryshod from one side to the other in less than a minute. It came up to the hubs of two-wheeled carts, which could also be taken across it and you might risk a four-wheeler if the river was not flooding.
Now the building was all of it. Batty was sure it had been maligned with hauntings and worse, which is why its stones and slates were still intact; the double doors were open wide and had been badly battered before this, but the locking beam was inside, propped up against one wall in case folk arrived here desperate and pursued. The inside was a scatter of timbers from broken pews, the shattered glass of magnificent, decadent coloured windows and the litter of smashed idolatry – but it had been mostly left alone.
Batty brought the horses in and unloaded Will, who tried to help but had no strength. Batty put him under a part of the roof with more slates than holes, wrapping him warm while he attended to the beasts. There was little left for them to eat, so once he had unsaddled them, he led them out one by one, then pegged and hobbled them so they could chew grass.
After that, he fetched the wood of the splintered pews and started a fire. He reckoned there would be little light and less smoke from the dry wood inside the church and fairly certain that Clem and his trackers would not come this way – at least at first.
He made pottage with the last of their stocks – cabbage soup with some oats and a sniff of bacon. It was liberally dosed with ransom, wild garlic, a deliberate ploy by Batty. Will made murmurs of appreciation and managed to get some down him before he gave up and sank back, exhausted.
Not that it will do him much good with a belly wound like he has, Batty thought as he watched him and supped. In a while Batty would expose the wound and sniff around it; he fully expected to smell the wild garlic and confirm that Will’s liver and lights were pierced. From there it was a step or two from the end.
But the taste and warm will keep him this side of Heaven for a while and maybe if we reach Langholm…
He slept, couldn’t say for how long, but when he woke it was the dying of the day and he started up thinking he had heard something moving. He scrambled up, found the axe-handled dagg and went out to where he had hobbled the horses; they looked up at his approach, calm and rested.
The night was cool and clear, the haar shredded away by a wind that staggered clouds over the bloody sunset; somewhere a hunting owl screeched. Batty went back to where Will lay, fetched out a brand from the fire and stuck it where it gave extra light for what he wanted to do.
He took the old wrappings off to expose the wound, a coin-sized hole blotched with blue flesh, turning black, speckled with puffy sick white around the edges. He cleaned the wound with a clean rag and then started to rebind it, having to shift Will to do it. When he had finished, he turned into the stare of Will, a dark affair from a face the colour of spoiled cream.
‘Bad,’ Will said. ‘Want you to know I am so
rry for griping at you. You keep saving me but I am thinking this time you cannot.’
‘Away,’ Batty said dismissively and then felt the touch of Will’s hand. He knew it was meant as a warm gesture, but the skin was dry and felt like a lizard claw.
‘When I am gone,’ he said and Batty snorted.
‘Ye have a dance invite then?’
‘When I am gone,’ Will repeated, ‘leave me here. Wrap me up, tie me tight and prop me at the altar – I like the idea of scaring the Jesus out of anyone who creeps in looking for slates.’
‘Just because you have lost God,’ Batty answered roughly. Will’s chuckle was feather light.
‘I have. Is it not the worst irony? Here am I without God and there is you, who could never be persuaded to him, now wanting to believe.’
‘I drank from the Grail,’ Batty answered and wondered if it was true. The Lord was still a vicious bastard in his everyday life was what he thought – and yet he would pray to him to spare Will.
‘I want ye to know I’m as proud as a new rooster to have ridden with ye,’ Will added, his voice fading. He lay back and closed his eyes, so that the shadows made by the lancing sunbeams softened his hollowing cheeks. Sleep made him look like he did when he was a wee boy.
‘Ye are a wee rooster, right enough,’ Batty said softly, then fell to the painstaking annoyance of reloading the axe-handled dagg.
It is a dread matter, watching the approach of death. To know that hope is gone, and recovery impossible and to sit and count the grey hours until life leaves. In a while there would be the secrets of the heart, buried and hidden for years, poured out by a being no longer able to keep the doors closed. The strength and sleekit of a whole life will fail when fever and delirium tear free.
Batty had heard them many times before, strange tales told in the wanderings of dying men, full of guilt and crime that those who stood by the sick person’s last bed have shifted away in horror and affright, no matter that they were hard men, fell cruel in the ways of war. But they had the same secrets and were afraid to see that, at the last, they would spill them forth like vomit.
They left that poor wretch to die alone, raving of foul deeds that had mattered to him.
* * *
He started awake into the dying echoes of a dog fox screaming and the rattle of wings fleeing the trees. He knew what it was at once and cursed his luck; he had thought to give Will and the horses more rest – and himself, if he was forced to admit it – but the dawn was spearing light over the horizon and all was undone.
He heard them prowling, talking in low voices and then someone pressed the doors and felt the barrier of the beam.
‘Some yin is inside,’ a rough voice declared and the answer to it was a growl of spit and scathe.
‘Aye, wake them up why don’t ye?’
‘Might be haunts,’ another voice offered, rich with fear, but the scathe had plenty left for him, too.
‘No’ much of a haunt if it needs to bar the door, is it?’
Batty fumbled for his pistols. He had started to reload them but the poor light, his poor eyes and the treachery of pain in his knuckles had allowed him only two before he gave it up, vowing to himself to load the last ‘in a minutey’, once he had rested his eyes.
He found the axe-handled dagg and brought it up, found his baldric and backsword and dragged it close, then levered himself up, listening to his knees crack and complain with sharp stabs of pain. Will never moved, which was a blessing at least.
Then a voice he knew said: ‘Lever up the beam and get in. It’s him, I know it.’
Batty watched the blade slide through the splintered door seams and under the bar, then it went up, there was a tremble and a grunt as the man wielding it raised the bar off the trunnions and let it fall. It clattered loudly to the remains of the flagged floor. The doors swung inwards.
‘Coalhouse. Step out. You have annoyed us long enough and caused folk out here to be resentful of their lost kin. If I turn them loose, there will be no parlay.’
It was Nebless Clem, that familiar drawl Batty had recognised.
‘Come ahead, you skull-faced child beater.’
Clem growled and muttered, exhorting men through the door and no-one was willing because they knew what would happen; Batty suspected Clem promised silver he didn’t have and one was gullible enough to become the Forlorn Hope and crash through the castle breach.
He lived long enough to realise where greed had got him; the ornate Saxon dagg spat deafening noise and a blinding flare of flame which ate his face and sent him backwards into his crowding mates, who recoiled in horror.
Batty dropped the dagg and took up his backsword, in time to face the fear-masked howl of a second man, his own sword up and coming down like the wrath of the Devil. Batty had time to throw up a block but the shock nearly drove the sword from his grasp and his opponent felt it, grinned manically and started to bore in for the kill.
Save that Batty kicked him in the shin, hard enough to crack bone; the man fell away sideways yelping, but there was no time even for a brief moment of triumph – yet another took his place and stamped forward swinging right and left.
Then he came on, all fire and flashing steel, forcing Batty to back, away from the poor firelight and until his back slammed a pew. The man who followed, relentless as avalanche, was grinning and twirling.
Once, Batty had thought to learn the proper way of the sword and he knew the ways of it, saw it in this man’s supple wrist and easy moves. He fought desperately, knowing he was outmatched from the start, hearing the wee Bologna maistre’s pawky voice, a grate on all those sweaty hours in the salle, with its stink of liniment and fear; the glide to the outside high line should be executed in one movement from one’s own engagement in sixte, Monsieur. It should end in the adversary’s outside high line.
The blades spanged and shot sparks – the answer to it is a parry – la! – with third and riposte to the low line, which is detached, or outside high line, which is contact.
This was no salle elegance, no Lippo Dardi expertise; Batty dropped low, feeling his knees screech. He scythed, caught his opponent by surprise and booted him in the cods as he rose up again – save that he missed and hit the upper thigh. It was enough for the man to yelp and fall backwards, clattering into the man behind – Christ’s blood, they are lining up to hack lumps aff me – but he was up and away like a cat before Batty’s savage backsword cut chipped up stone where he had been. The man took advantage of Batty’s off-balance to lunge, pinked him in a rake up the wrist.
Cursing, Batty spun away, shaking his hand in agony, spraying blood in fat drops, but determinedly hanging on to the sword; he turned to face the man, who saluted with an insouciant swish-swish – and came on again.
Or he can parry counter of fourth and riposte to the inside high line – detached or contact – or a flanconade in fourth.
They locked hilts and faces – and Batty spat on him, which made the man reel back with a cry of outrage. He recovered well enough to glissade Batty’s mad whirl of cuts and thrusts until the strength bled out of them. Batty backed away until the altar racked his back; now the men fanning out on either side of his opponent could not circle round and backstab him.
Instead of parrying and riposting, he can also counterattack with the time thrust or passata sotto…
The backsword wasn’t the weapon for it, but Batty was sobbing for breath now and backed hard up against the altar; from somewhere came more shouts and the squeal of too-excited horses.
He lunged, felt the almost contemptuous glissading parry, took the brunt of the enemy’s hilt on the side of his head and went sprawling; he lost his grip, heard the backsword clatter. Someone screamed and a pistol went off with a roar and blast of flame that silhouetted all the heads facing Batty. Too many, he thought, struggling for sense.
‘Not so much after all, Batty Coalhouse,’ his opponent sneered, though he was breathing hard and limping from the kick. He saw Batty start to move toward
the distant sword and gave two small steps and kicked it further away.
‘I had heard you were a wolf with fangs of steel. I had heard you defeated the Armstrong lord of Hollows, for all he had a two-hander. I am Tam of the Shaws and I have you Batty Coalhouse,’ he gloated.
So ye have, Batty thought, feeling sick and drained and dizzy. Too auld, too slow, too everything that was bad…
Tam of the Shaws had put the point of the sword to his neck and the steel was cold as an icicle, though it broke out more sweat on him and kept him from speaking. Yet his mind ticked – why was there shouting and fighting? Why had a gun gone off when Nebless Clem’s men had none?
‘Away, ye moudiewart wee pox sore,’ said a new growl of voice and Batty watched, bemused as Tam o’ the Shaws reared up like a goosed mare and let the sword fall from his hand. He was looking round until he thought to look down a little.
The Ape grinned up at him, a dagger driven into the cloth of his cods, hard enough for him to feel the point. The Ape turned the grin on Batty.
‘The King sends his regards.’
Batty got to his feet, swaying; there were men crowding everywhere and a deal of them with grey faces in the sudden torchlight, knowing their fate but unable to fight to the end, in case God or the Devil stepped in and saved them. Tam of the Shaws had a luminous face and a mouth twisted with fear; the Ape pushed his point harder and Tam whimpered.
Will was lying where he had been before, though the blanket was off him where folk had kicked and trampled over him. Batty felt a lurch then and confirmed it when he knelt, almost falling as he felt his neck.
Will was dead.
The truth of it drove a gasp from Batty so that he could not stand and had all his efforts straining to keep from falling over prone.
They had almost made it. They had almost thwarted them all. Batty cursed God until he started to choke on his own incoherent spit; someone’s arms went round him and raised him on to wavering legs – he threw them off.
‘This man,’ he managed eventually, ‘was raised in a time of blood and dying, of war and burning water. He never turned his back on folks in trouble and when he rode with me I had no complaints.’
