Shake Loose the Border

by Robert Low

  Riders materialised into two firm shapes and Batty reined Fiskie away from that, sticking the dagg back in the horse-holster and hauling out another. He fired, just as the nearest rider, wet-mouthed with fatigue was suddenly aware of who he was riding at. Wishing he had unshipped his lance, astonished as if he had stepped through a portal into fairyland, the last thing that went through his mind was a half-ounce of soldered lead shot.

  He went backwards in a cloud of pink mist, as if hauled by the Devil’s scaly hand – Batty shoved that dagg in the empty holster and hauled out the new backsword, kicking Fiskie straight at the remaining man.

  This one managed a desperate parry and backed off, trying for room to slash and stab, but Batty pressed home. The man’s face was red and sheened, he had a look of utter terror and his eyes rolled up into his head when the backsword hissed round and down; blood flew up and he yelped, collapsed moaning and whimpering off the horse.

  There was a sudden, eerie stillness, broken only by the grunting of Maurie, who was pinned by his dead horse and struggling to escape; he went quiet when he saw Batty loom out of the clearing pistol smoke.

  ‘You will hang for this,’ he said and Batty looked down at him and smiled like a fox in a hen coop.

  ‘I will hang you myself…’

  ‘Och, Maurie, you will not,’ Batty answered mildly. ‘You will dine out on the tale of how you came quim-hair close to catching the terrible Batty Coalhouse – again – but was foiled by a poor mount and too many enemies. Again.’

  Batty winked at the fallen man. ‘There will be twenty at least who stood with him and you fought them all to no avail,’ he added, ‘and, with some luck, your limp will only add to the attraction all the weemin will have for you on the dancefloor.’

  Even pinned and in pain, Maurie found a twist of smile, hearing what he would have said if the circumstance had been reversed.

  ‘Get you gone, Batty. One day I will have the price of these dead from you, with interest.’

  Batty did not hesitate; more men would be coming up and he wondered, already, why he had no seen them. Clutching his new backsword and exultant with the fact that he had survived and won through, he could not care less. He felt better than he had since he’d originally left Edinburgh and wondered if Meg had spelled him.

  ‘Si Deus pro nobis quis contra nos,’ he said and knew it was too enigmatic for Maurie to comprehend. He rode off, leaving Maurie yelling for his men and trailing a discordant verse or two after him, laughing in between.

  ‘If God had let her work her utmost spite,

  Nae doot she’d have killed the man outright,

  But he is saved and for all her Malice,

  She looks to hang upon the Gallows.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Hermitage

  Hermitage boiled like a fish cauldron and Batty found himself almost ignored as he shambled Fiskie up to the gloom of the castle. In the end, Toddie Graham saw him and trotted through the shriek and litter of carts and people.

  ‘Batty,’ he said, bemused. ‘I thocht you were away out in that Fife. What brings you here?’

  ‘I was that way inclined,’ Batty answered, ‘and still am. I need only the rest of today and the night and then I will continue. What’s occurring here, then?’

  Toddie was a big-chinned youth who had contrived to hide what he considered defect under a beard, but that had backfired and simply made his lower face massive as well as hairy. Batty, who had known Toddie as a wee lad, was facered to see the streaks of grey in it.

  ‘Right slorach, is it no’?’ Toddie responded, then looked right and left to find who was in earshot. ‘Wicked Wat has only gone and declared his intent for a Truce Day at the Reidswire. We wait for the reply of Hume.’

  ‘Christ save us,’ Batty offered. ‘Bad enough all the work and hazard of a Truce Day without the new Wicked Wat in it, he who has seldom been seen stirring to any work.’

  Toddie chuckled. ‘Aye well, he still isnae – the Captain has been packed to the Reidswire with wood and canvas to erect the shelters and booths. We can only hope that Hume says naw.’

  Batty doubted it. Wicked Wat Scott, of Branxholme and Buccleuch, was newly appointed Warden of the Middle March in Scotland and determined to stamp his mark on it. Alexander Home was similarly smelling of new wood and paint for the English Middle March; they would both posture in their finery and make a clear declaration that the war between nations was done with, but the war against rapine, theft and slaughter had now to be fought.

  Batty was surprised to see Harry Rae in the solar, twice surprised by how he felt glad about it. Rae cocked an eyebrow at the sight of him.

  ‘Ye look better than last we met.’

  ‘In Netherby,’ Batty added, showing he remembered. ‘Hot work after that, but Blackscargil is returned to the Grahams and Nebless Clem sent whirling intae the moss.’

  ‘I hear Will Elliot died,’ Rae said blankly. ‘I am sorry for that – were you there for it?’

  Batty admitted it and then sat, divested of his jack and boots, squinting at his daggs in the fire glow and fretting that Philo had drenched them with too much oil.

  ‘What brings you here yerself?’ he asked and Harry shrugged.

  ‘I bring the news of all the world to Edinburgh.’

  ‘As filtered by Sadler,’ Batty added grimly and Henry laughed.

  ‘Losh, no. There is a fifth outbreak of Sweating in England, down Shrewsbury way if you wisely wish to avoid it. John Caius is writing the first full contemporary account of the symptoms of the disease.’

  He took a swallow from the cup of wine; Batty realised he was not about to be offered, so he crossed over and poured for himself.

  ‘There is a debate in Valladolid concerning whether the indigenous folk of the Americas have human rights or not.’

  ‘You say?’ Batty queried, tasting the wine – a decent hock, he realised. ‘Well, the Spaniards are a bit late coming to it.’

  ‘I do say,’ Henry went on. ‘No doubt it will be the main thought on the mind of new Pope Julius III, recently elevated to the triple crown.’

  ‘Which of all these marvellous events will concern the Upper Ten most in Edinburgh, d’ye think?’ Batty asked. Henry shook his head.

  ‘Dinna ken, dinna care. I bring the facts and await exodus or revelation.’

  Batty acknowledged the jest with a raise of his cup, then went back to studying his guns at the fire.

  ‘Out o’ the lady’s grave grew a bonny red rose and out o’ the knight’s a brier. And they twa met, and they twa plat and fain they wad be near; but in the end all angels rise and men are wise to fear.’

  ‘That’s a nice song,’ said Rae and it was only then Batty realised he’d been singing it. It took him a moment or two to recall that he’d heard it over and over out beyond the Balkans.

  ‘A wee tune for fighting men,’ he added and Harry smacked his lips round the wine.

  ‘With angels in it? I didnae ken such folk cared for angels much – and many of them will care less for such Catholics in the years to come, I surmise.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Batty declared. ‘You are right.’

  Rae was silent for a moment or two and then huffed. ‘As I have said, ye looked like a burned boot that had been kicked round a muddy garth as a fitba’ last time we met. Yet here ye are, fresh as new dawn and singing songs about angels.’

  ‘I drank from the Grail,’ Batty answered and found a patch of linen which he used to try and lighten the oiling on his daggs. ‘Besides, a wise man told me the secret of good health.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Never to argue with a man of opposing view.’

  ‘Away,’ Harry Rae declared, scathing and slack-mouthed. Batty grinned.

  ‘You are right,’ he answered.

  He remembered the song being sung after hard fighting and men crying over it, cheerful though it seemed. But that was because they were listening out for the voices not singing, the ones who would never sing again. Ha
rry Rae had never experienced it and probably never would unless he stood poorly in the eyes of God or Satan, for the business of war was not in his nature. Only causing it.

  Batty did not say anything and, after a long and pleasurable silence, Harry broke it, gruff as goats.

  ‘I hope you are gone afore the Captain gets back. That cloth ye hold is a Dutch lace doillie to stop creishie heids rubbing on the good fabric of his chair. Cost a wee fortune, but lets the great and good know he has taste.’

  Batty looked guilty for a moment, then went back to cleaning the pistol pan. Somewhere outside a hound howled.

  ‘I have a favour,’ Harry Rae declared and Batty’s heart foundered. He turned a heavy head and saw Rae holding something between the thumb and forefinger of one hand, a slim, silvered affair, domed at either end and no longer than half a ring-finger.

  ‘This is the stock of our trade,’ Rae continued. ‘There are secrets here.’

  He twisted the affair so that it unscrewed; inside was a tightly rolled piece of paper, which he withdrew.

  ‘Secrets,’ he said, ‘for the eyes of the great and mighty.’

  Batty had seen wee pieces of paper like this before, spilled from Needle Tam’s geegaw cases and said so. Harry Rae huffed dismissively.

  ‘Many are used,’ he answered dryly, ‘but only the most loyal and trusted get the silver. You know why it is this shape?’

  He did not wait. ‘If you are taken by surprise, you swallow it.’

  Batty was unsurprised, but equally unsure it was safe to do such a thing – he had seen long-time silversmiths turning blue with the exposure to silver and he did not trust the process of ingesting it.

  ‘If you ever rediscover Will Elliot,’ Rae added, reining round, ‘you might try his dead insides for one like this – perhaps a little longer. Not swallowed.’

  Inserted. Batty recoiled at the idea, but knew one sure thing about it.

  ‘Valuable to you, is it?’

  Rae chuckled. ‘Mair valuable to you, I am thinking. Make the effort and then quit the Borders forever. That will make it worthwhile to me.’

  Batty rode on, musing on what he had heard. He did not like spywork and vowed never to go near the dead Will in his church tomb. The endless nag of it, all the same, almost took away the delight of Falkland stables, where the royal horses were kept.

  There were 200 in stall and room for more, so Fiskie had a royal night in the dry, massaged by a brush in the hands of two servitors while Batty ate lavishly of stew and bread and greens. He brought Fiskie an apple later and, though he had a proper bed, stayed with his horse and slept warm and dry.

  In the morning, he rode on to Newark Castle.

  There was scaffolding everywhere and what seemed to be too many people, milling like maggots and unnerving Batty. He found the Lord, was invited to the solar, half new wood and the rest old char.

  He presented the scuffed worn bag of coin and told how this was less his fee and how Will had died. The old Lord’s seamed, pouched face seemed to droop even more at the news, but he shook Batty’s hand.

  ‘Ye did well, in the fight here and efter; I have heard tales of it. Good luck to ye Master Coalhouse. I would advise you take your fee and travel far from Scotland, all the same – folk have been here looking for you and Will.’

  The way he said it was meant kindly but had the word ‘monster’ unspoken in it. Batty ate frugally and lay in a cot for a long time, thinking on how hard he and Will had struggled to get here and how it now seemed like mist on glass.

  They were all right, the ones who breathed ‘monster’ to themselves. Batty had hundreds of monsters inside him wearing his face as a mask. Screaming and trying to tear him apart and all for sound reasons, while he fought furiously to hold them back in the mind-twisting chaos it made inside him.

  I am losing, he thought. I am being dragged into the abyss, crying and begging to get out from there again and to be myself.

  So Meg had told him, a soft voice and a sweet breath in the dark. If you have to fight longer, the real Batty is lost forever.

  Chapter Twenty

  Moss and moor

  He had no idea why he did it, other than the hagging of Harry Rae’s words. He did not like the idea of that church at the beginning and even less now with the swirling fetch of those killed in it.

  But he went because of Harry Rae’s words and the warning from Newark; it didn’t sit well with him that Will had carried secrets for one lord or another, or even one country to another. That he had been paid for it and by the English spymaster Sadler, through Harry Rae. Somehow, he had considered Will above that sort of war.

  Yet he plootered Fiskie through the dark and wet, hunched in a waterproofed leather cloak and a grim realisation that he had known nothing at all about Will.

  About anything.

  He left Fiskie in the dark and struggled almost blindly down to the Esk, followed it a little way and came up the worn steps to the church. He saw the light inside and felt his heart loop at the sight. For a long moment he hovered on the razor edge of quitting. Just leaving the place and all the revelations it might still hold. Will would have advised it, for sure – but he quelled that, almost savagely; Will had been no less of a liar than everyone else, about God, about right, about sense…

  He crept in and saw the horn lantern beside the body; the place reeked of mould and death, but the rug the Egyptiani had used to wrap Will was gorgeous, the gold and silver wire in it bouncing the light like the halos of angels.

  Batty breathed soft, unshipped Brother Throw from his family of knives and moved to the light; Will looked back at him from dark sockets and Batty, no stranger to the ways of death, had to take a breath in through his nose – he would gag if he tasted it, he knew – and moved the lantern closer to Will’s belly.

  It was slit open and Batty rolled saliva round his mouth and spat it out sideways; they had been here. They had taken what Will had hidden; Batty was almost grateful for it.

  ‘Is this what you seek?’

  It was proof, when he later thought of it, of how strong his heart was that Batty didn’t fall down and die on the spot. His head thundered, all the same and he turned as fast as his joints would allow, knife up – but the voice was strangely familiar and he wasn’t surprised to see a face he knew.

  Elfin, framed in red – even artificed, that hair was beautiful – and smiling, soft and sad. Meg held up one hand and in it, long as both her ring fingers, a slim wand bounced light of the silver.

  ‘Jesu, wummin,’ Batty managed. ‘You risk killing me with tricks like this.’

  ‘I hoped you would nivver come,’ she answered, ‘but I knew that moudiewart in the pretty cote would persuade you. Told you of its value, did he? Paying you for its return to him?’

  ‘Told me it was more valuable to me. Offered no payment, nor was I inclined to wanting it.’

  Meg’s smile broadened. ‘Then you are blessed. Did he say you should take it and run far away?’

  That was true and the length it took Batty to think about replying confirmed it for Megs, who leaned forward and untwisted the silver length.

  ‘Stuck up his arse,’ she said crudely. ‘Did you ever hear of such a thing? Did you ever consider the likes of Will Elliot, Land Sergeant as was, would even contemplate such a thing, never mind do it?’

  ‘I did not,’ Batty managed hoarsely.

  ‘God knows when he did it, but he will not have visited a privy in all the time it was in…’

  ‘Aye, aye,’ Batty interrupted. ‘You have acquainted me with the regard he held for the contents and all of how much I did not ken of the man.’

  She slid out the thin rolls and opened them. ‘I ken you dinna read, but I do.’

  Batty tried not to be surprised by this and failed; she chuckled.

  ‘My King insisted on it and so I sat moodily through all the lessons he provided from some wee priest running for his life from the forks and flames.’

  She held the unrolled paper up
, so that it stirred in the heat of the lantern. Batty saw it had ornate writing on it, the sort that was printed and looked Germanic, though it might be any tongue.

  ‘Nae secrets of plot or counterplot here,’ she said. ‘This is a writ from the Goldsmith’s Company in London which says “pay to the bearer the sum of one hundred silver shillings”. You know what that means?’

  ‘Who ever presents it there will get the coin,’ Batty answered and turned briefly into the black stare of Will.

  ‘There are eight of these wrapped up one inside the other. And you don’t have to go to Lunnon – any goldsmith moneylender will do. There are several at Appleby, for example.’

  ‘This is Will’s rewards for services,’ Batty intoned dully, seeing it now. She nodded.

  ‘Tha earliest date on one is six years since. Clearly Harry Ree knew it and thought it like a benefice in a will from a close friend or relative. I am sure he considered coming back here with enough men to keep banditry at bay, but he is weel kent and constantly watched. The great and good would want to know what he was doing.’

  Batty looked at her and grinned. ‘But you have it now, so no-one would question that you are not entitled.’

  ‘Just so,’ she said, almost triumphantly – then pushed the notes at him. ‘I would like to keep the wee silver container, all the same.’

  Batty did not want to know why – or where she planned to push it if things came to that. He had realised that anyone finding the notes would be rich, even if the testoons were devalued of more silver, as Fat Henry had done before he died.

  He took the notes, squinted at them and knew, for the first time, how important the skill of reading and writing was. And how absolutely anyone could claim the reward for these wee bits of scribbled paper.

  ‘We had best go,’ she said suddenly. ‘I have waited here, trembling, for someone to arrive, hoping it was you and praying you were first. I dare not rely on the Lord’s Grace much longer.’