Fair Helen

by Andrew Greig

  To my account of the conference before we set off from Bonshaw, and the mustering at Tinnis Hill, he offered neither comment nor question. But the one on our return—when the heidsmen went off apart into a chamber off the Great Hall at the Hermitage—that made him very still. Exactly who was there? In what order did they come out? Who stayed behind for further converse?

  I sensed this was the nub, and spoke with care. I wanted to give him whatever he wanted, and be in his favour. And then be far from here.

  “And young Fleming? He was among the heidsmen then? Sober, in his right mind?”

  He seemed to look into my very soul, had I one.

  “Yes,” I said.

  He stared at me. I dropped my gaze. His hand lifted my chin to make me look him in the eyes.

  “He would not talk much about what they discussed,” I confessed.

  “Not for the likes of you?”

  “No.” His hand was gentle on my chin, close to the windpipe. “But I understood . . .”

  “What did you understand, my canny lad?”

  “That they intend a further raid, with more time and thought and men. While the Kerrs and English Elliots are still weak.”

  “Where and when?”

  “I do not know,” I stammered. “I think it yet to be decided.”

  He released my chin, gave my cheek a gentle pat, sat back.

  “You will send message when it is.”

  It was a statement of fact and a contract, witnessed and sealed. He stood up, stretched his legs. “Wine!” he said cheerfully. “Wait here.”

  He left me in the oriel window, looking out at the flooded fields, the grey rain and the beasts at peace in their dull acceptance.

  My heart still beat too fast, yet I was wabbit as after battle. I thought: So long as he has use for me, I will live, unless another get me first.

  My patron came back with two goblets, presented me one as though we were equals.

  “Drink!” he commanded.

  I hesitated, then did so. After all, he still had use for me.

  “That is very fine,” I said. The warmth went down, turned about and rose up through my chest. I drank more, looked out at the rain, surprised not to see the sun full out on Tuscan hillsides. “Molto bene,” I said, almost to myself. “E superbe.”

  He clapped me on the shoulder.

  “Well done,” he said. “Montalcino.” He sipped, rolled his eyes, swallowed. Smiled. “A small but fertile branch of our family have vineyards there. If all goes ill here, perhaps I shall retire to warmer climes.”

  “My lord is surely too young to retire,” I obliged.

  “Flattery is pleasant but never clouds my judgement. Remember that, boy.”

  He turned away from the window and sat on the stool. Apparently our interview was not yet done. I wearily slid down the wall and waited.

  “So,” he said. “Young Bell had a good raid. As did Johnstone. And the feud is concluded between Irvine and Fleming?”

  I nodded. Will Irvine had looked ten years younger when he had emerged from the conference. Dand was expansive, arms waving enthusiastically. Even Adam admitted some good had come of our hot-trod.

  “But the boy Lord Maxwell still commands the Flemings’ loyalty, despite not being present at your grand adventure?”

  “I believe Adam Fleming is not especially inclined to Lord Maxwell,” I said with care.

  “And why would that be?”

  “Because his stepfather is.”

  He almost smiled. “Perhaps. And his mother? She is an Elliot to the core. Little Jock Elliot . . .”

  “My friend’s relationship with her is . . . strained,” I said. “And I have cautioned him against relying overmuch on Maxwell, or our Warden, and to look to ally himself . . . elsewhere.”

  This was not strictly true, but could become so. I began to glimpse possibilities. A smile like wintry sleet from my patron.

  “Very good of you, I’m sure.” He looked down at the back of his hand. Nose, lips, cheeks, chin were all in balance. A harmonious visage, a trim physique. Men trusted him. He looked up. “He is still inclined towards the bonnie chick, though Bell considers himself good as betrothed?”

  I nodded casually.

  “Some say a man who uses a pistol is a coward,” he observed. “Nonsense! To every situation its apt weapon. Bell is a fine leader and fighter because he is too stupid to know fear. His brain is the size of his cock, which is very small.”

  “It is?”

  He shrugged. “How would I know? But spread the word and it will go about the world and men will snigger. How fares young Fleming’s body-man?”

  “Jed Horsburgh? Well, I think.”

  “A bonnie fechter, I am told.”

  The former Keeper of the Western March sat in silence, hands at rest as he gazed out through the window. His face was impassive, yet I could almost hear the sleuth-hounds of his thought scouting the world beyond the glass. When he spoke at last his voice was low, as if to himself.

  “How does one ever bring lasting peace to the Borderlands?”

  “Abolish the Border,” I said promptly.

  “You are not as daft as you look. Nor as clever-breeks as you think.” He rubbed his right palm lightly down his sleeve, reshaping the nap. “Encourage young Fleming in his wooing. Suggest to him it is not o’er-late, if he be bold.”

  I nodded, but wondered as I had from the start why he should take keen interest in the affairs of a minor family like the Flemings. The Irvines were a step up, and the Bells two steps more. I could not see where that stair led.

  He smacked his palms on his knees and stood up. A small cracking sound and he winced, more in exasperation than pain.

  “Aye,” he said. “Time to let others go reiving for me. Perhaps I shall retire and live among vines and sunshine.”

  “The country would be poorer for it,” I said loyally.

  “No doubt,” he said. “But when I need my arse licked, many can do it better than you.”

  I looked down, but failed to hide my smile. He drew back the curtain and led the way out of the oriel. I thought our interview concluded.

  “You too have seen the marvels of Italy and the Low Countries,” my patron said over his shoulder. “Hard to come back here, eh? We do not do graces well.”

  “Indeed, my lord. Yet it is my country.”

  We crossed the chamber, went past impassive guards at the door.

  “Quite so,” he said. “I aim to make it a better one.”

  I followed Buccleuch down the spiral, thinking the betterment he aimed for was his own. And that of his family, I now add, for even the most brutish of those I knew then, the Border men and women, lived and died by their wider family. It was not King, nor Saviour, nor country defined them. Family honour, duties and family standing, those were the lights they guided their short lives by.

  On account of my mother’s coolness with her sister, my attachment to the Irvines was sentimental, not visceral. My father, being a city man, was loyal first to his wife and son, and then to his guild. I have no guild, nor wider family other than those who live in the books on my shelf and in my mind. I am not connected to any cause greater than myself, and in this I know myself lesser than those I write of.

  “Nice place, eh?” Buccleuch was once again in lightsome spirits.

  “The arcade at least is very fine,” I said cautiously.

  We turned from that elegant walk, through a decorated arch and into the great courtyard. I had long been curious about the wonder that was there.

  The face of the south-east court was studded with diamond-shaped carved stone. I had seen the like under dazzling sun in Firenze, but had never imagined it in sleet-grey rain.

  “Bothwell was illiterate,” my patron murmured. “He went to Florence and saw something he wanted. What do you think of his lozenge wall?”

  The Renaissance graces of this wall, and the arches, fountain and garden, sat oddly with the ancient tower that was the castle’s stony heart
.

  “Astonishing, if somewhat overstrenuous,” I said at last.

  He seized my elbow, painfully, on the joint.

  “There you have the man!” he said. “There you have him. He overplayed his hand and lost all but his head. Still, in France he will remain, and he kindly left us this fine, if somewhat conflicted, castle.” He turned away from the wall. “I do not think we will hear more of the Bothwells.”

  Having consigned the Hepburn family to history, we walked in the shelter of the arcade. He hummed some tune I could not place.

  “Let that be a lesson to us both,” he said. “Rise by all means, but keep in mind the ceiling.” He chuckled, shook his head. “His uncle killed the Queen’s husband—understandable, really—harried, then married her, then fled the field at Carberry, to be confined in a donjon. Ten years chained to a pillar in utter dark. Died insane, as one would.”

  I chilled at the thought.10 “Earl Bothwell’s death has long been rumoured,” I said.

  “Why, he earned his end!” Scott exclaimed. “When our impetuous Earl fled for Norway, he was apprehended by Erik Rosencrantz—cousin of the first wife Bothwell had fleeced and abandoned! He was given to the King of Denmark, and at the request of—well, never mind who—incarcerated in Dragsholm for the rest of his days.” He shook his head. “They say he wore a deep circle in the floor around his pillar.”

  “That is . . . terrifying,” I said.

  “There you go, laddie. Ambition! Ceiling!”

  In this at least my patron did not dissemble. I see now he aimed very high, but long ago had identified his ceiling, and that was the King. Unlike Bothwell, he was content to fatten and grow like a wasps’ nest under some high corner. And unlike the Bothwells or Maxwell or the other warlords of the Borderlands, he saw clearly how that ceiling could be—must be—raised yet higher, and himself with it.

  And so it came to pass. That man is gone (peacefully, in his bed, so much for cosmic Justice) but his family prosper and prosper, growing ever greater under that Union ceiling.

  We sat in the shelter of the arcade as the rain drew a curtain across the afternoon. As he murmured the last of his instructions, there came a clatter of footsteps, an opening door. The guard and a man in a wide-brimmed hat stood for a moment in the stone-clenched dimness, then, seeing us, swerved abruptly into another corridor.

  Though his face was calm when I dared look at him, I sensed Buccleuch was vexed. My glimpse of that visitor was the only moment of our meeting my patron had not controlled. I raised my eyebrows as if in mild puzzlement, and took the purse handed me with a steady hand.

  That hat, that long pale face, the manner of turning away—it had been no other than Dowie Fairfax, whom I had thought Earl Angus’s man.

  Buccleuch stood, so I did too, fumbling for my hat. He put his hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes. I tried to neither avoid his gaze nor meet it, to give him no glimpse of the turmoil within. It was, I think, my moment of greatest peril.

  “O’er-late to ride, laddie,” he said at last. “Bide the night in the fine stables Bothwell left for us. I think you’ll find good company there. Enjoy them according to your tastes, but don’t keep them up too late, for I have use of them tomorrow!”

  With that he gestured to an attendant to lead me out, and himself set off briskly in the direction the new arrival had taken.

  The stables and servants’ quarters of Crichton Castle were indeed magnificent, a grand house in themselves. A fire burned in the main room. I glimpsed small rooms off, with pallet beds and wash stands. The floor was of fine wood, not earth. It did not smell of piss. The long table was set.

  All this was good, but better was the company gathered round the fire. They were players—a rare sight this far North, being long proscribed by our high-minded Reform. They said Scott had hired them to play tomorrow at a feast in the Castle—tragedy in the forenoon, comedy in the evening.

  One passed me a cup of spiced wine and I drank, letting all else go. A boy strummed his lute, his face all bright mischief. Another wittered like a laverock on the recorder. A couple of youths scuffled in the corner. The senior men pulled up their stools by the fire, and paced their drinking and their wit.

  The balding one with wide, round brown eyes asked my trade and business here. Encouraged by wine, I gave them a fine and fanciful version—a nervous scholar come to help his erratic friend, and finds himself riding hot-trod with reivers, beaten at trysts, witnessing the amours of others and constantly disappointed in his own. I threw in some blood and a villainous stepfather, hoping to impress, but my audience were more inclined to comedy so I turned my tale to that.

  I sat among them at table, all cares forgot. Neither bound peasants, nor fighters, nor gentry, not churchmen nor anxious merchants, we knew better than our masters that this world was a charade, imagined into existence and as quickly gone. And when we had employment, food, drink and attractive company, we made the most while they endured.

  In plain terms, we had a party and got pissed. The music and catches grew obscene, then nostalgic, then melancholic. At some point the younger servants from the castle joined us, lasses among them. A fine youth stood in the ingleneuk to sing “The Wyfe of Usher’s Well,” and the hall was silent as the firelight flames ate our faces.

  The senior player stood pinned against the wall, cavernous eyes unblinking.

  More drink, more songs. The night began to disintegrate, the senior men said they were for bed on account of rewrites in the morn. We younger ones carried on till we too were ready for our beds, where some took pleasure in the usual way, with added wit and laughter, not without affection.

  I did not so much fall as soar into sleep that night, thoughtless, free, among my own.

  Gales

  I woke with aching head, drained in my netherparts. Crawling from a tangle of limbs, I collected boots and hat and stumbled forth to find my Handsome Jenny.

  By dint of hard riding, I got back to Nether Albie in a gale at dusk the following day. None questioned my story that I had been summonsed to Galashiels by the Judge to fill in for the absence of his clerk. Adam had already retired to the peel tower. Saddle-sore and with much to think about, I warmed some wine, picked up a stack of biscuits, said my goodnights and went down the dark passageway I now knew by heart.

  I lay awake in my wee chamber and the wind loud in the trees sounded as if we were at sea, too close to a dangerous shore. The stockade fence howled and groaned. How went it with Adam in his guardroom den? He would be lying under furs on his pallet, long limbs bunched, clutching dreams of Helen, nursing fantasies of his stepfather plotting to kill him (which I still doubted) or taking pleasure with his new wife in the marital bed (which I did believe, Janet Elliot being almost alarmingly alive in that respect, her fingers lingering on Dand’s hirsute arm as they sat at table).

  Above the stramash outside in the woods, I heard, or thought I heard, a door close, a slop of slippered feet in the passageway. The wind doubled; my door shook. By the light of my creusie I saw the latch lift and jiggle. I cried out in fear, or hope. God knows.

  The gale dropped to a sullen roar, door and latch were still. Did I hear or imagine footsteps going softly away, a draught as the door at the end of the passageway was opened then closed?

  “Push, you wee bugger!”

  At first light I put my manly shoulder to the skewed gatepost. Jed and I got it near-upright while old Snood jammed a timber into the gap, then kicked earth in about it. The gale hit again, the stockade fence slewed as the post gave way completely.

  “Haud to it, boys!”

  Dand Fleming tacked bare-headed across the yard, red and grey hair flying. He grinned his gap-teeth. He must have had a good night.

  Strong, too. With his weight and push we got the posts and the gate upright. But none of us could step away. The gate doors shook against our straining shoulders. Even a second timber shivved into the post-hole wouldn’t keep it up. The four of us looked at each other, stuck.

&nb
sp; Adam went by in a whirl, shirt hoist high in the gale. I noted his pale belly, his ribs, the rope across his shoulders. He too seemed in high humour. He shouted words snatched away, unbolted the gate, staggered, then went through.

  Janet Elliot and the cook, Mrs. Smeaton—a strong woman with a low centre of gravity—bundled out of the storeroom with stakes. The pot-boy, Alec of the skelly eye, followed on with a great hammer that seemed the only thing keeping him to the ground as the wind roared.

  The solution was simple, though it took some doing. Ropes looped round the post near the top (pot-boy on Adam’s shoulders, thrilled at his elevation, fearful of the fall as my friend staggered). Pale-stakes hammered in obliquely, ropes tied, then tightened by staves pushed through the rope-loop, then twisted into tension.

  The strain came off our shoulders. The palisade bulged but held. More hammer blows and grunts from over the fence, then the work party came back in. Together we shouldered the gate closed and double-bolted.

  We stood gasping and grinning in the lee of the fence, rather chuffed with ourselves. Adam’s arm on wee Alec’s shoulder, Mrs. Smeaton beaming, hair awry. Jed and Dand laughing quietly, Snood coiling spare rope, smiling at the ground. So this is family, I thought. Warm eyes everywhere. Us agin the storm. One of those moments of harmony and affection, as though an underlying good order of things had been revealed.

  “Jed, you should be with people that can afford better walls,” Janet said.

  “Whit would be the fun in that?”

  Amid our laughter, Dand put his great paw round his wife’s waist. Her hips inclined to his. Then she turned to look to Adam, her hand went up to tenderly brush mud from his cheek.

  He leaned into her touch, then quivered away. I felt the attraction and the repulsion as if it were my own.

  “I must inspect the woods,” he muttered. “See what we have lost.”

  He hurried back towards the peel tower. I glanced to Jed, who shrugged as if it were all beyond him. We straggled inside to eat, the shining moment faded.