Fair Helen

by Andrew Greig

  None of them could save my mother.

  She died so many years ago, in Embra when Jamie Saxt was yet a boy, at just this time of year when nights are long and mirk. She died in our tenement room within sound of the Lawnmarket, with stall boys pitching, carts crunching by outside, masons’ hammers thumping, all the quarrel and energy of the town, far from the sweet, bloody dales and darts of Annandale.

  I would guess I was in my sixth year, too small to seek work yet old enough to be useful about the house, to do the messages, wash out cloots, sing street songs and country ballads at her requesting as the swelling sickness took hold. Her sole surviving child—I never knew the ones that came before—I was old enough to have my hand gripped, to be present at her dying, as her company and witness.

  (What else have I ever been, but company and witness to the living as they hurry to their end, most in great reluctance, some baffled or enraged, a few eager to be done?)

  My father went to work still, as he had to. Aunt Ann came, reluctantly, I felt. I slept now in a neuk in the common stair, where men taken with drink would stumble on me and curse, and women touch me silently, soft hands passing over my hair.

  She died of causes evident and unknowable as the lump that had appeared beneath her breastbone. Once, when it hurt greatly, she bade me put my hand there to still pain while I sang “Thomas Rhymer.” I feel that growth yet, hard in my palm as a cannonball.

  Soundless for days she lay, but towards the end a ceaseless moan rose from the very core of her, as though her bones were humming the song of pain. The terrors planted by the Reformist sermons of her childhood sprouted in her mind, then ran wild. She feared Damnation for her sins—I caught something of a bairn unborn, another conceived too young, perhaps by another than my father. She came to believe her present agony would last through all Eternity.

  Then the merciful fainting and the apothecary’s draughts. In the end, no sound but her long terrified gasps, her frail chest rising, the obscene swelling where her ribs divided as though her body were trying to give birth again. I sat beside her, hating those men that had implanted such terrors. I have never forgiven them, nor see reason to.

  Each morn my father left for the cooperage, tools in the leather bag over his shoulder. By his quick glance at me, then toward the closed door of her room, his head down like a man ashamed as he left and closed the street door so douce-like, by his impotent shame, I kenned he loved her. Sensed too his relief that he must work each day, his gratitude and sorrow that I must stay and attend her.

  She died around Candlemas on a quiet afternoon, her sister Ann and I present. Her breaths spaced wider. Her chest rose and fell minutely. Her jaw dropped. I heard that last breath go. Then there was but a shell and an open mouth, and within it darkness without end.

  Trip-step

  My soul is an old horse-trough that lies forgot in a field, its rotting boards mottled with fungus and moss. What fluid remains lies stagnant under yellow leaves from the trees above, bugs squirm in its shallows. Once in a while a living creature comes to sip what it needs, then moves on hastily.

  Soon this trough will cease to hold water, then someone will burn it, or let it lie in long grass under the trees until it becomes indistinguishable.

  I do not find this a melancholy thought, not compared to my mother’s fearful dying or Helen’s end, or young Watt’s scream as the lance of death tore through him.

  Give me the old horse-trough any day.

  I woke whimpering among blankets. I was in my room at Nether Albie where I had fallen like a dead man on returning from the hot-trod. I lay looking at the ceiling. Nothing up there but mottled stains. I am definitely going to die.

  Unlike Jed, I could see no comfort in that. No mother, no father, no lover, no guide. Only me.

  I lay there till I got bored with being dismayed at myself. Then noticed I was hungry. So I took myself off to the kitchens where Mrs. Smeaton found me some cake, cold beef and cheese. No one else was around, so I was able to sit at the servants’ table, eat and give myself a talking-to. When I had become something approximating to a man again, I began to think about what needed done.

  The light was fading as I hirpled across the empty courtyard, hips and knees aching from the hard riding hours. The peel-tower door was barred, so I thumped and waited till it opened.

  “He’s up amang the doos,” Snood said.

  I went on up, hearing him bar the door behind me. The stair curled up past Adam’s makeshift quarters where the door lay open, up another flight, and then the acrid stink. This room was completely lined with pigeons, each slotted in its box, chubbling and crooning, a scandal o’ doos my mother would have said.

  Adam stood facing one wall, cradling a pure white pigeon, slim and sleek. He looked up, smiled distantly, slotted the bird into its cubby-hole.

  “How do I find you, Harry?”

  “Been worse, but not often.”

  He looked at me closely.

  “You should spend time in here. It’s peaceful.”

  “Peaceful?” The doo-cot room was so loud with pigeon, we could scarcely hear each other.

  “Well, a lot more sense than I hear out in the world.”

  He passed his hand over the head of the slim white bird, then led off down the stair.

  “Can’t beat pigeon pie,” I said on the way down. “This loft is a living meat safe.”

  He nodded. The Border keeps and farms relied on the doo-cot to get through winter.

  “Also for our gunpowder.” He turned into his room, waved me in and saw my puzzled face. “You didn’t know? It’s part of old Snood’s work to gather the shite for making saltpetre. He and Jed mix our powder in the wee shed out-by.”

  “You can’t buy it?”

  “Rationed by the Crown. And unmade folk like us get none. Angus and Buccleuch seem to get as much as they need, but the rest of us make our own.”

  “That’s the Borderlands for you,” I said. “Even the birds of peace were used for killing. Three hundred years of this has turned men to brutes.”

  He turned at that, glowered at me. “Jed? Wat O’ Harden? Will Irvine? Folk in these parts may be rough indeed, but would you say they were anything less than human?”

  He stared till I had to lower my eyes.

  “No indeed,” I muttered, and my shame stays with me still. “I am no better.”

  Adam slumped onto his pallet, leaned back against the wall. He looked pale and wabbit. “So tell me of this soi-disant engagement.”

  I told him. He turned his face to the wall, sat there picking at the stone with his fingernails, inward and dark as a donjon. Then he turned back to me, lamplight sparking uncanny in his eye, and his voice and smile as he recited made me more uneasy than any scowl.

  “Do me a favour,” he said. “Fetch wine and yon witch book from the house, and we’ll put it all by for a night.”

  We sat up late, getting drunk and cackling satanically at Jamie Saxt’s Daemonologie, hot off the press in the Cowgate, astounded, incredulous that in our modern age such haivers would spew from the pen of an educated man.

  Adam read aloud, stumbling round the chamber like our King himself, orating most solemnly. “The fearefull aboundinge at this time in this countrie, of these detestable slaves of the Devill, the Witches or enchanters—” he rolled his eyes, adjusted his imaginary codpiece, continued—“hath moved me (beloved reader) to dispatch in post, this following treatise of mine, not in any way (as I protest) to serve for a shew of my learning and ingine . . .” At this point, he could read no more, for he could not breathe for laughing, laughter like vomit from the pit. He passed it over to me, motioned I should continue.

  I took the damn book, made a kingly stance, fondled the head of an imaginary favourite or two, and read: “. . . but onely (mooved of conscience) to preasse thereby, so farre as I can, to resolve the doubting harts of many; both that such assaultes of Sathan are most certainly practized, and that the instrumentes thereof, merits most severely to be punish
ed.”

  “Yon’s what comes from spending too much time in Denmark!” Adam groaned. “We might as well take up augury.”

  Our laughter was tinged with horror, for there was indeed evil afoot again in North Berwick even as we spoke, and it emanated not from so-called witches but their tormentors.

  On taking my leave in the small hours, I said I had to go back to Embra for a day or two. I had some smooth lie at hand, about how I had been summoned back to my work—as indeed I had, but not by my Justice. He just grunted, embraced me heavily, his unshaven cheek rasping on mine.

  “Mind the trip-step,” he managed, kissed me full on the lips then slumped onto his pallet.

  Clutching Daemonologie, I stumbled down the turning staircase. Out in the courtyard, a freezing night, the stars bright, wind-polished. The Seven Maidens hung tangled in the trees outside the compound. No young Watt loitered in the stables to report on me. His last cry had gone out among the imagined constellations, never to be re-called.

  I threw the accursed book in a corner and fell a long, long way.

  Crichton Castle

  Have little, travel light, bear no weapon, trust none—that is one way to travel through this world. Another is to be girt with arms, travel with enough coin to pay for followers, and trust none.

  Neither is any guarantee of safe passage.

  I left Handsome Jenny at Crichton’s stable block—so sturdy and ornamented as to be more laird’s hall than quarters for horse and servants—then walked round the back of the castle under the shadow of the great wall. Since our return from the in-glorious hot-trod, the wintry rains had come, and the Tyne burn had burst its banks in the valley below. Fifteen miles from Embra, horses and fat kye, market-ready, stood sodden but unguarded in well-made fields.

  Here in Lothian the King’s writ ran, more or less. The castle Earl Bothwell had so enlarged was vast, untroubled and, it seemed, impregnable, were it not that modern artillery and antique treachery will breach the most stubborn walls.

  I scraped mud off my boots and chapped on the postern door.

  “Wha the fuck are you?”

  The guard was not a looker. One side of his face had red infection and both ears were cankered. When I gave my name, then that of my summoner, he recoiled as though I were contagious and scuttled off, his scabbard scraping the wall.

  I had not thought I looked so frightful. Four days after our bedraggled return from the hot-trod, I was sprushed up, dressed in clean doublet and best britches, and positively fragrant with a new skin salve from Janet Elliot, applied by her own hand. (I will not deny her touch set me a-quiver and uneasy. She handled her son so, and his reaction was much like mine, but went deeper.)

  I stood in the grim little guard room and wondered at this secret summons. The postern door was still open behind me. I could see myself run to the stables, turn my horse to ride far from this peaceful and so dangerous place.

  I stared longingly at the low hills to the West. At least those Border men could rely on their courage, horsemanship and strong right arm. Despite the horrors of yon place, life in Annandale and the Debatable Lands seemed direct and simple in comparison to what I was entering. My concealed stiletto was of no use here. The wrong word, a poor formulation, a deception discovered, would have me killed and dropped in a ditch without even knowing why.

  The guard came back with an ill-tempered friend. One slammed and barred the postern door, the other nodded me to follow. We passed into the arcade, a place of elegant arches, all decorous order as in a Florentine monastery where scholars might pass hours of solitary thought or earnest high-minded debate. At least that was the fantasy it had imported wholesale. It hadn’t been true even in Florence.

  We ducked into an unexpected narrow arch, then up some back stairs. A brief glimpse down into the courtyard with shrubs and benches and—Lord help us!—a fountain in the manner of Ammannati, as executed by a pupil with terminal ague and a blunt chisel. Then the gracious windows abruptly reverted to slits, and all was dim as we climbed.

  A door that led only to another door, a twist to the right, then more narrow steps felt for in the dimness. The guard ahead stopped so suddenly I tripped into him.

  The door opened on a small room with full windows, rugs on the wooden floor. I blinked in the sudden light. Frescos on three walls—hunting scenes, a battle, a Last Supper. The usual themes, and not badly done.

  The man in the doorway was all too familiar. I had last seen him in the grove of trees in yon place, glowering across at Jed, who had stared steadily back. I felt some odd affection for him, just because he had been there with me and survived.

  “Arms out, arsehole,” Davy Graham said.

  I held out my arms. One opened my jerkin and felt inside my shirt.

  “Careful,” I said. “I’m tickly.”

  In truth I near soiled myself. Graham plucked out my stiletto. He looked at it, looked at me. He touched his thumb gently to the point, watched as the deep red stuff bubbled up.

  “Bonnie,” he said.

  “It will be returned when you leave,” said a rich, well-modulated voice behind me. “Come this way.”

  I hung on to that “when you leave” and like a wee lamb followed Walter Scott of Branxholme and Buccleuch through a heavy brocade curtain, into the intimate splendour of the oriel window set high in the west wall.

  We stood by the window. I heard the door of the outer room thud, then the world was silent but for the whisper of drizzle on the panes.

  “You may put your hat on,” he said. “Chilly day.”

  I fumbled my best bonnet back onto my damp head. My patron was dressed unshowily in dark green and black. From under a broad-brimmed velveteen chapeau his steel-grey eyes pricked into my soul.

  His silence was more frightening than any threat I have known.

  “Good salve, by the way,” he said at last. “You must have been quite a bonnie laddie.”

  “The King once ruffled my hair in Holyrude Park,” I stammered. “When he passed with Esmé Stuart.”

  “He did that to everyone.” Pause. “Still does, come to that.”

  “Oh.” In truth, Esmé Stuart’s elegance and beauty had struck into my young soul, and a little barb of it sticks there still. That midnight-blue chapeau! Those wide, wandering dark eyes!

  Scott sat on the only stool and stared at me. After a pause, I hunkered down at the other side of the window. With my back against the stone wall, in that narrow private space there was nowhere to look except where I least wished: at him.

  “Shall I start with the raid?” I offered.

  “Ah yes,” he murmured. “The astute Earl of Angus and his bold pursuit.”

  “We rode hot-trod,” I protested. “To take back what was ours.”

  He smiled down into his hand. I realized then he was in high spirits, hugging a secret satisfaction.

  “Indeed you did. And got back—what?—a quarter? And caused quite a stushie. It is neither dignified nor well-advised, the King’s Warden charging off across the Border, and making such a guddle of it.”

  “We drank a toast at the Hermitage to celebrate our return, but his heart was not in it.”

  “Dear, dear,” Scott said. “The new heidsman in the Western Borders, so lately a convert to the Reform, has made himself look both rash and ridiculous. His Majesty is not best pleased. I fear William Douglas is not the best-flighted arrow in the King’s quiver. Did I mention I have just been appointed Keeper of Liddesdale?”

  “A pleasing honour,” I managed. For years the two offices of Warden and Keeper had been combined. Jamie Saxt wasn’t daft. The wind was blowing from a new airt.

  The pins and needles were starting, but I stayed crouched as I was, letting my patron enjoy himself. I saw our hot-trod in a new light, and wondered what message or advice Scott of Buccleuch had offered to Angus before we rode. I also wondered how long the latter would remain Privy Councillor and Warden.

  Walter Scott put aside his private pleasure. His eyes levell
ed at me.

  “Tell me everything,” he said.

  And I did, very nearly.

  I talked through the hot-trod, from my moment of waking at the watchfire’s false sunrise. I made no mention of my night visitor. Once in a while he would ask for more detail of who met, in what order, who talked, who rode together and who kept apart. When I spoke of how we were ambushed at the ford when our force was divided, he shook his head at such stupidity.

  “Kerrs,” he said. “My grandfaither ganged wi’ them deep into Northumberland some sixty year hyne. Three thousand men!” His eyes brightened at the prospect, his very voice changed. “Yon was a big raid. The old King was well pleased, though he had to let out he wasna.”

  Then the mask fell back in place, leaving only his eyes skewering me as I talked. It was his silence that made me talk, confess more than I ever would have under cross-examination. I would say my piece, look for his response, but he gave none, just kept looking. To fill in that silence I gave him more, and more.

  I told him of our flight into the trees. Of how Robert Bell rallied his men, led them back across the river. In a flush of something like hero-worship I recounted how he killed his two closest pursuers—the body-swerve, the pistol, then the sword.

  He listened, very keenly, without comment. I could not read his face.

  “And Andrew Fleming?”

  I told him how Dand seemed to have been cut down by the Kerrs as we galloped for cover. We learned afterwards that Dand’s jack had turned a sword-slash, and his horse went down, with its rider sprawled half-hidden under its head and neck. He escaped with bruises, nothing more.

  “A most fortunate man,” Buccleuch commented. “Let us hope he is enjoying marriage to his late brother’s redoubtable wife.” His smile was thin as the newest moon. “Continue.”