Lammas

by Shirley McKay

‘And you believe you should have done?’ asked Giles.

  ‘Aye, I should have done. My actions then did shape what now becomes of her.’

  ‘We cannot see the future. It were pride and folly to suppose we can,’ Giles said. ‘Those sorcerers who seek to ken what it is to come are damned, and see their own destruction in their crystal balls.’

  ‘You say that, with your charts?’

  ‘The charts are dispositions, Hew, and are not set in stone. They cannot tell us all that is to come, they merely tell us where the wind will blow. I may ken that certain physic suits a man at certain times and serve it to him at those times, to increase his chance. The man may yet depart upon a different course, and he may harm himself, but God alone decides if he will survive. Walter, I believe, was disposed to die. You did not have the power to turn him from that end. But I do not believe that you were fortune’s instrument, nor that he was driven blindly to his fate. The proof is in his words when he came to you, ‘to make his will,’ he said. That will was his, not yours. You served him as his man of law. Elspet too. And there is nothing in that worthy of reproach. In this, for once, I count you not to blame.’

  Hew smiled at that. ‘Your kind words are welcome, though not yet deserved.’

  ‘Not kind, but honest, Hew. Trust me to remind you when you are at fault. But not upon this day. Today, if any day, you should set aside your quarrels with the world.’

  ‘Why, what is today?’

  ‘You do not ken?’ The doctor laughed. ‘I have it on authority I do not dare to doubt – your sister’s and your wife’s – that this day is your birthday. Please do not deny it, for you are found out.’

  ‘I suppose it is,’ said Hew, who kept no note of it. ‘But such days do not count, except for bairns and kings.’

  ‘Do not tell that to your wife, who prepares a banquet for you. Meg is with her now, and you and I expected. It is a surprise.’

  ‘It is,’ said Hew. ‘Or was.’

  ‘I thought I should forewarn you, in your present state. Or you would ruin the feast, with your baleful looks.’

  ‘My birthday is no cause for feasting,’ Hew replied.

  ‘Frances thinks it is. God will you do not show to her your cold ungrateful face. Calvin himself permits a man good cheer to thank the Lord for life. We are not like pharaohs, gorging to excess. The lapin that you like, in a mustard sauce, pippins in a pie, a jug of claret wine, will do well for us. The bairns have brought you honey from our bees. And I have here a gift for you that I prepared myself. It is your horoscope.’

  ‘My horoscope,’ Hew whispered. ‘Why would you do that?’

  He felt a clutch, a tremor in his heart, though he did not believe, never had believed, in horoscopes. But now he understood that Giles had worked on his, through the sultry days when he was close and secretive, he was half afraid, and fascinated too, as though his friend had cast a charm that he could not resist.

  ‘You looked to see my future there?’ he said.

  ‘Not your future, Hew. That I cannot do. And would not, if I could. Rather, I have here your native disposition, according to the motions and disposal of the planets at the moment you were born. Would you like to see it?’ Giles unfurled the scroll, and showed to him a paper filled with charts and scribblings he could scarcely read.

  ‘I know not what it means.’

  ‘Here, to make it plain to you, I have put the sum.’ The doctor smiled. ‘It says you are a scholar and a true philosopher, subtle and ingenious, tending to a fault to recklessness and stubbornness, but always and essentially a searcher after truth. There, we must allow for a small degree of error. Tis possible the stubbornness is more advanced and dominant, while scholarship recedes.’

  ‘Now I know,’ said Hew, ‘that this must be a fraud. You have made it up.’

  ‘I assure you, not. Tis written in the stars.’ Giles rolled up the paper. ‘Later, after supper, I will show the science. For now, I have a prophecy for you.’

  Hew said, ‘A prophecy! You promised you had not!’

  ‘It is very short, and not at all obscure. The prophecy is this: you will leave for home, and meet me on the path. We will walk together through the fields. And coming to your house, you will find your wife has made a birthday feast for you, which you will receive with wonder and delight.’

  ‘So much you suppose.’ Hew smiled. ‘How can you be sure that it will come about? Frances knows me well. My feigning may not fool her.’

  ‘Then you will have to practise on the way. It must turn out, precisely, as I now predict. Or I will never hear the last of it from Meg.’

  They walked together through the fields, just as Giles had said. And Hew looked out upon the shore, a wash of white and watered blues. He looked upon the fields of ripening corn, the slender stalks that shivered in a veil of green, and thought, How fragile all this is. The harvest in the last three years had failed. A sudden gust, a blast of wind, could blow the barley from its course. Even as it caught its colour from the sun, it could still be crushed, as Spanish ships could light upon an undefended coast. But when they reached the gate, and came to Kenly Green through a bank of trees, he let himself be led off by the laughing bairns, blindfold, to the house. And when the doors were closed, and they were safe inside, he did not see the corn rigs bristling in the breeze, or the rain that swept them, falling soft at first.

  Glossary

  Ain own

  Apothecar an apothecary

  Awbody anybody

  Awfy an intensifier: very

  Bailie a town magistrate

  Bairn a child

  Banes bones

  Bannock a flat bread or pancake of barley or oats

  Black stane black stone, on which students sat during public examinations at the ancient universities

  Bordal-house a brothel

  Braw fine, excellent (= brave)

  Breeks nether hose; trousers

  Buttock-mail a fine for fornication

  Cags kegs or casks

  Chapman an itinerant merchant, a pedlar

  Chastely chaste

  Converse carnal conversation, i.e. sexual intercourse

  Crownar Crown officer responsible for keeping the king’s peace

  Dinna/e don’t

  Ee, een eye, eyes

  Egyptian a gypsy

  Factor a land agent

  Flankert armour for the thigh

  Flit to move (house), move away

  Flyte to wrangle with aggressively

  Forethocht felony premeditated crime

  Foulsum loathsome

  Fu’ drunk, full (of drink)

  Futless/futling useless, footless

  Girn to grimace

  Gossip chair a sixteenth-century conversation chair, French caquetoire

  Greet to cry

  Guid good

  Handfast betrothed, informally wed

  Haud to hold

  Heugh a hill

  Hichty high-spirited, courageous

  Hing to hang; to cling or hold fast to

  Jougs a type of pillory

  Juglar a magician, a conjuror

  Ken to know

  Kirtle a woman’s frock or gown

  Kitchins basic provisions

  Laik to play (amorously) with

  Lammas rain heavy rain at Lammas time, tending to flood

  Latter Lammas never (proverbial)

  Limmar a villain

  Loun a male of low birth

  Lugs ears

  Lusty cheerful

  Mak shift make shift, cope, manage

  Maun must

  Maunna must not

  Melee chaussee ‘shat melle’ – sudden affray, an unpremeditated outbreak of violence

  Mercat a market

  Milk-and-wattir milk and water, i.e. meek and mild

  Mimmerkin a small person

  Morn the morn = tomorrow

  Mow a grimace, a pulled face

  Neb a nose

  Neep a turnip

  Papingo a
painted parrot used as a target in archery

  Physic medicine

  Piddling dallying, messing about

  Piker a petty thief

  Pin-hippit having narrow hips

  Pintle a penis

  Ploukie-facit having a face with blemishes; pimpled

  Powder court special court with jurisdiction on fair days

  Prentice an apprentice

  Quean a young woman of low status

  Richt right

  Rig a strip, ridge or row

  Rin to run

  Sair sore

  Sark a shirt

  Sic such

  Sin since

  Slidder slippery, not easy to control, unreliable

  Slutheroun a slut

  Snuff indignation, a huff; to take [something] in snuff = to take offence at

  Sonsie lucky

  Sooking sucking

  Spelair a rope dance or acrobat

  Stoup a tankard or pitcher

  Succar sugar

  Telt told

  Thrang throng

  Thrawn twisted

  Thwart from side to side

  Trauchled worn out, exhausted

  Tron the public weighing machine in a burgh market place

  Tumbler an acrobat

  Twattle a pygmy

  Wean a child

  What devil what the devil

  Widdershins in the wrong direction

  Wrang wrong

  ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE CALENDAR OF CRIME SERIES

  Candlemas

  On Candlemas eve an apprentice candle maker finds his master, John Blair dead in his workshop, and the evidence points to the surgeon Sam Sturrock. Enlisted by Sturrock's desperate apprentice, Hew Cullen, together with his friend and physician Giles Locke, finds himself drawn into the investigation to uncover the truth of the matter. At first it seems like Blair's death is the result of reckless surgical practice, but as Hew delves deeper into the life of the candle maker he discovers a web of extortion and deceit.

  John Blair was a man with many enemies…

  Whitsunday

  When a Lord Justice is found dead within the grounds of St Leonard's College an unfortunate group of students and teachers take it upon themselves to dispose of the body. However, when the supposed corpse vanishes from its hiding place it quickly becomes apparent that not all is as it seems at the College. Rumours of corruption, blackmail, murder and witchcraft begin to circulate as an invisible power struggle between rival colleges and a group of commissioners unfolds in St Andrews.

  Before long, Hew Cullan and Giles Locke are reluctantly dragged into the ensuing melee of investigation and accusation. Hew must not only protect an innocent man accused of murder, but also salvage the teetering reputation of a respected commissioner.

  ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE HUW CULLEN SERIES

  Hue & Cry

  ‘A gripping and welcome addition to the growing genre of historical crime fiction’ Waterstone’s Books Quarterly

  ‘An elaborate, closely plotted tale that combines extensive research with high drama’ The Herald

  1579, St. Andrews. A thirteen-year old boy meets his death on the streets of the university city of St. Andrews and suspicion falls upon one of the regents at the university, Nicholas Colp. Hew Cullan, a young lawyer recently returned home from Paris, uncovers a complex tale of passion and duplicity, of sexual desire and tension within the repressive atmosphere of the Protestant Kirk and the austerity of the academic cloister.

  Fate & Fortune

  1581: young St Andrews academic Hew Cullan is unhappy with his life and disillusioned with the law. After his father's death he is invited by the advocate Richard Cunningham to complete his legal education in Edinburgh as Richard's pupil at the bar. Among his father's things Hew finds a manuscript entitled 'In Defence of the Law', directed to the Edinburgh printer, Christian Hall. At first, he resists its influence, but when a young girl is found dead on the beach at St Andrews, he is left unsettled and confused. He resolves to take the book to press and agrees to Richard's offer. Embarking on his new life in the capital, he falls in love. His relationships are fraught with lies and secrets and lead to brutal murder on the borough muir. Hew suspects a link with the dead girl on the beach. As he begins his desperate search to find the killer, he finds that the truth lies closer to home.

  Time & Tide

  In the swell of a storm, a ship is wrecked in St Andrews harbour. A young Flemish sailor, the last man aboard, collapses and dies at the inn. The cargo of the ship appears a welcome windfall but soon brings devastation to the town as petty squabbling turns to rage and tragedy. Hew traces the ship to its source in Ghent, where he uncovers a strange secret. Unwilling to allow the law to take its course, he returns once more to the bitter role of advocate, to find his deepest principles are tested to the core.

  Friend & Foe

  St Andrews. 1583, and tensions are running high. Dissension rages between King and councillors, and between the separate factions of the Kirk. At St Mary’s college, the reformer Andrew Melville is unsettled by a series of unnatural events, while the ailing Archbishop Patrick Adamson plays out his darkest fantasies, in the safe seclusion of the castle vaults. Hew is called to investigate a mysterious incident and finds suspicion falling upon him as he is ensnared in a world of superstition, subterfuge and death. This new Hew Cullan story sees the academic lawyer once again in the company of his sister Meg and her husband, physician Giles Locke, in their most challenging case yet. Alliances are formed; there are old scores to be settled; old ghosts reappear and spies are abroad. The king’s escape from captivity throws all in confusion, and as Hew’s loves and loyalties are put to the test, his own life and future are no longer secure.

  Queen & Country

  1587. After three long years, exiled from home and family, and drawn into the depths of the London underworld under the tutelage of Elizabeth’s spymaster Francis Walsingham, Hew returns to Scotland with his new English wife Frances. The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots has unleashed a torrent of anti-English sentiment in the Scottish people and fear in King James VI, jeopardising Hew’s now unlawful marriage. However, the king invites Hew to investigate the perplexing meaning of a death’s head painting that has come into his possession. What does it symbolise, and is it a message from his dead mother? And are the local painters all that they appear? If Hew solves the mystery, his marriage to Frances will be blessed. The stakes have never been higher as he embarks on a quest for love and life.