by Andrew Greig
Warden Angus had laid on both priest and minister, to be on the safe side, just as at the Armstrong wedding that seemed an age ago. The priest was still lean and anxious, the minister was comfortably round. In St. Andrews the last priest to officiate at a wedding had sizzled in his own fat.
At least we were to have music: a tall bald piper and a fair young fiddler lurked in the shadows. Rosining his bow with slow, sensuous hand stroked up and down the horsehair, he winked at me, the tart.
We sat down to dine. William Douglas, Earl of Angus, as host and Warden took one end of the high table, with Will and Dand on either side, their wives beside them, smiling falsely at each other. At the far end of the table, Robert Bell ruled. Jed murmured that Angus’s young wife had died some years back, as spouses do, and he had never got round to replacing her. Broken-hearted, some said. Too busy scheming and changing religions, others said.
Sitting at the low table, I asked Jed to fill me in on the others. The black-haired, slightly frantic man with gap teeth two places up from Robert Bell was his younger brother. They cried him Ding-Dong or Clapper. He was an unconvincing copy of his brother, his shoulders less strong, his swagger somewhat hollow. He was plying his charms with a round-faced sonsie lass with nice eyes and a puggy nose.
“Yon’s Maggie Douglas,” Jen whispered. “Youngest daughter.”
“Married?”
“Na.”
“But Douglas has sons?”
“He lost baith.”
“Ah.”
I felt for the man. Such were the times, but that did not make it easier to thole. Though aristocratic in French finery, William Douglas today looked grey and hollowed-out as a wasps’ nest when winter comes.
I toyed with my mutton broth, keeking over my spoon to watch Clapper Bell close in on his future. With big brother Robert commanding at the far end of the table, his eyes fixed hungrily on fair Helen, for the first time I glimpsed why Walter Scott of Branxholme and Buccleuch might take an interest in the goings-on in these parts. Add Irvine to Bell, have Clapper Bell become heidsman by marriage to the Douglas family, why then there would be some power indeed.
What I could not jalouse was the end Buccleuch worked towards. I ate little, drank less, staying alert, watching and thinking. I noted the venison stew was unusually tender, the claret full, rewarding, then dry at the finish. I sipped and inwardly toasted Elenora Jarvis and her wine. A big day for her, supplying this lot. She too had her protector.
Then when fruit, tarts and cheeses came, and the company was mellow, Earl Angus scraped back his chair and stood up. His gloved hand tightened on the table as he spoke of old feud laid aside, and the joy this gave him not only as King’s Warden but also as a Borders man. (Many would dispute that under their breath.)
“We aa’ maun ride thegither,” he cried, his tongue broadening with feeling. “Then nane daur stand agin us!”
I wouldn’t be too sure of that, I thought. The English Queen is a corpse in finery and slap, Jamie Saxt is waiting cannily as he has for thirty years, men like Dowie Fairfax scurry to and fro between the Courts. Each week brought news of more banditry, both sides of the border, as though all were grabbing what they could while it lasted. Pigs at the trough, heedless of the butcher waiting in the wings.
Meanwhile, our Warden spoke of honour and courage, family and fealty, the ancient virtues that made us Borderers. He brought Will Irvine and Dand Fleming to their feet, witnessed the shaking of hands, the pledge of mutual accord, then that of fealty to his office and thus the King. The thin, weary priest blessed the day on behalf of the True Church, the wee fat minister spoke fervently of the Blood of the Lamb.
We all stood. As the toast to loyalty and amity was given by Robert Bell, Helen glanced my way. Behind her smile, she looked forsaken yet resolved. We raised our glasses, cried Aye! and drank. The music struck up, the kind that raises the spirits for the first few minutes, then becomes noise to talk above.
And I thought that would be the entertainment for the day.
Will Irvine clapped his hands, but most folk just talked louder. Then beside him Robert Bell’s palms struck like pistol shots, twice. The pipes gurgled and died wheezily.
Will stood by the ingle, swaying slightly. His face was pale and moist. Queer that a man can go through many a bloody battle—and Will Irvine was known to be handy indeed—yet be overcome at the prospect of making a speech. Beside him Helen looked anxious, with embarrassment I fancied, as he glanced at a slip of paper then thrust it into his pocket.
“Dearest friends,” he began. Then shied away from that line like a horse refusing a hedge. “My dear Lord—sorry, Earl,” he began again, looking to Angus, “My strongest gratitude—I wish to thank you . . . for—” he looked around helplessly at the flushed faces, the table a wreckage of plates and food and fruit—“this. It is . . . just grand.” Cheers, glasses raised to our Warden, who was paying for the whole clamjamfry. “It is a happy . . . thing . . . when ancient feuds are finally buried, never to be . . . disinterred?” Helen bit her lip, looked down at the flagstones. Aunt Ann stood just behind her husband, fair bursting with pride.
Will raised his glass to Dand. “Friend, we have ridden together and fought together. Now may our families always ride together in peace too. I honour you—oh, and Janet as well!”
Dand and Janet raised their glasses in response and we all drank deep. More of this sweet, inept speechifying and we’d be horizontal with goodwill.
But Will had not finished. “And while we are all gathered here, it behooves . . .” He paused, distracted perhaps by the word’s equine implications. “What I want to say is it gives me, and my fair lady wife, great pleasure to . . .” He took a breath, saw the finishing line up ahead and bolted for it. “To announce the engagement of our daughter Helen to heidsman Robert Bell.”
Bell grabbed Helen’s hand, raised his other high in some kind of salute. At his side she lifted her gaze from the floor to stare blankly over the company, the cheering and the silent.
I slipped away from the loud press and followed Helen and her attendant down the passageway, up a stair, along a corridor. They hurried through a door on the right, closed it behind.
She had pleaded a headache, I think. Or fatigue. The girl-child I had known never tired and there was nothing wrong with her head. Her eyes had caught mine, just the merest flicker and turn of the head before she left the Great Hall. I knew the signal of old.
I chapped on the door. Chapped again.
“It is Harry Langton!”
Muttered voices within, some argument, then the bar slid back. Door opened a keek.
“Go awa. She disna want to see anyone.”
Alysoun’s hair was pulled back and parted harder than a landlord’s heart. Two hectic spots high on her cheeks and a fine scowl that might discourage a gardener’s boy, but I was not that boy.
“I am no anyone, lass.”
Helen’s voice called from within.
“Why should I not talk with my cousin in my own house?”
“Because my lady has forbidden private audience. She pays my way.”
“Look,” I said gently. “It is hard to serve more than one.” (Who knew that better than I?) “Hard too to put much aside for a trousseau.”
I let her hear my purse clink. Her eyes wavered, but still she barred the way. I imagined my aunt was not to be crossed lightly. No one cared to be thrown out to the road.
“No private audience,” she repeated.
“If you remain with us, it will not be private.”
She hesitated, then stood aside.
It was a small workroom looking onto the wash-house and yard. When we greeted each other, Helen rested her head on my shoulder a moment and I smelled lily on her. Then her back stiffened and she moved to the window. Her eyes darted to me like the kingfisher heading downstream and away.
“Congratulations,” I said. “So you preferred the tarter berry.”
She near-smiled, then looked away. Against the ligh
t outside, her head trembled minutely. I had never seen my cousin ashamed. No, too strong a word. Apologetic. And proud.
“They last longer,” she murmured. “Reason must allow.” Her hand gripped the window rail. “You are a great man for reason, Harry.”
“At the service of worthy emotion, yes.”
She glared at me. Alysoun stood but feet away. We could not carry on speaking in obliquities.
Helen pointed at the spinning wheel in the far corner.
“Alysoun, finish off yon spindle. Please,” she added.
Her attendant-gaoler looked at us both. After all, what harm could we do? No one could mistake me for a suitor. She sat down on the stool, turned her back and began to pedal. The wheel spun, whirred, creaked.
Helen and I moved closer by the window.
“Emotion!” she hissed low. “What would you know of it? Our family will advance greatly. That cannot be gainsaid. And then Adam—”
“Yes,” I said. “And Adam, what?”
“Will be safe.” She looked down and abruptly clasped my hand. Her fingers were chill as death. “I understand there are those who would kill him if he went wi’ me.”
“There are. But who told you that? Adam? Bell?”
“No.” She looked startled. “Warden Angus. He has promised to keep my . . . dear laddie . . . safe. We have talked in confidence.”
“Ah.”
The spinning wheel clacked and birled, my thoughts likewise. Helen squeezed my hand hard till I had to look at her, so close to, one might have mistaken us for lovers.
“Will you explain to him, Harry?”
“Is this what you want?”
“My faither—”
“But he is not that.”
She looked right at me then. “So I owe him all the more.”
“What do you want for yourself?”
She looked as if I had asked her to walk with me to Byzantium or some other improbable fabled place.
“I want what must be,” she said at last. She let go my hand, stepped back. Still she spoke low. “Rob is a strong heidsman. He is bold and resolute. He adores me.”
“And you love him?”
“Love?” She seemed doubtful.
“Aye, love. When another means more than yersel. Meeting of two souls, time abolished, that divine sympathy poets write of. You have known it, surely.” I pulled her round to look at me again, close to. This time the pale flecks in her eyes held steady.
“We have been there, Harry,” she said sae saft. “But nane can bide there lang.”
As I blinked at that, she pulled away.
“Explain to Adam as best you can.”
“You must do that,” I said. “You owe him as much.”
To live without family would be like living without God is for some: unthinkable. Add that to Earl Angus’s offer of protection for Adam . . . Though she would break my friend’s heart, it was not lightly nor selfishly done.
“I will let him know when we may tryst,” she said at last. The room was quiet. Only then did I realize the wheel had stopped. “In the usual way. On you go, coz.”
As I took my leave, exchanged kisses, she gripped my arm, looked me full on. Something blazed in her, or in me, God knows.
“You alone want nothing of me,” she said soft. “You alone kenned me true.”
Blinking and half blinded, I closed the door ahint me. Then remembered. Chapped on the door again.
“One Fate spins, but it is another bears the scissors, Alysoun,” I said, handed her coin. “Keep this to yourself,” and hurried awa.
The Scabby Duck
Helen, fair Helen, the ballad bears her name, yet what did anyone know of her other than that she was fair? What did I? Perhaps Adam truly knew her, though I jalouse he was too dazzled to see more than her outline.
Even in memory she remains shut away, visible but untouchable as a glassed-in reliquary one kneels by at a shrine.
The truth is I knew her as a child, and saw but little of her grown-up, when our time together was constrained. I can say Helen Irvine was by-ordinar bonnie, yet plain enough when her eyes and nose streamed at May blossom time. She was calm and fervent, frank and evasive, cunning and honest. I believe that without knowing it, she was true to something beyond saying.
She had a power, most surely. That dawn we raised the hot-trod, when she appeared on the steps of Bonshaw, an entire courtyard full of fired-up fighting men fell silent at the sight of her. Her effect was far more than carnal. Even Robert Bell was tamed, uplifted.
I think on the time we walked round and round the garden together, talking in riddles, our eyes meeting as we bent over the last roses—the light that shone that day from her walk, her gestures, voice and eyes, was not truly hers.
I have heard the unprepossessing, half-cut makar Montgomerie speak his verse and strike a smoky, worldly room dumb. And in Firenze an ordinary venal youth summoned the entire angelic order as he sang his solo, then ten minutes later I saw him pick his nose, bored, spotty and plain, as he sat again among the choir.
So it was with fair Helen and her beauty. She did not own it any more than the singer owns the song, or the makar owns the poem. She was but its vessel. I believe she was scunnered by it, at the effect it had on others, who failed to see her, being dazzled by the light that poured through her.
Yet she said I knew her, and I took her word.
Many were still clustered round Warden Angus and Robert Bell, as wasps round jam, and as like to come to a sticky end, if my patron had his way. He would not be best pleased at this development.
Janet Elliot grasped my arm among the crowded hall.
“It was a bonnie notion, Harry, but never likely.”
“Adam will be broken-hearted.”
She shrugged. “Never fear but he’ll soon find another.” She smiled and went on her way towards the press around Bell and Angus, Will and Dand.
I found Adam in shadow behind a pillar, deep in talk with Jed.
“Leave you to it,” Jed said, put his hand on Adam’s shoulder and moved off.
I had thought to find my friend crushed, but even in poor light his eyes blazed.
“That’s that, then,” I said. “I am right sorry.”
He gave a queer grin.
“They’re no married yet.”
I shook my head at this foolishness. “You think to run off wi’ her?”
“Will she see me?”
“She says she will tryst one more time.”
“Good!” He slapped the pillar. His lean frame was quivering. “Did she say where and when?”
“She said she would send a message, in the usual way. Whatever that is.” I paused, but he said nothing. “She said she needed to explain herself to you.”
Adam seized my damaged hand so hard I yelped.
“Why would she want to marry Rob Bell? Man, he’s thick as the walls of Berwick!”
“He is a powerful heidsman whom many follow. The family have some wealth and lands. He is close to the Douglases. The match is unco good for the Irvines to resist.”
“She told me many a time she loves me, and given many proofs!”
“I do not doubt it,” I said. I saw them again, at it on the horse blankets. You could ignite a sodden forest from that fire.
“It is not what she wants,” he insisted.
“But it is what she has decided.” I hesitated. Was it my well-wishing for them, or my fear of Buccleuch that loosed my tongue then? “It is also for your sake, that you might live longer.”
His eyes were an auger screwing into my soul.
“Ah,” he breathed. “I understand ye.” His smile was not canny. “Of course, should Rob Bell ding his last, there will be no wedding.” He slapped the pillar once more. “I’ll bide for you outside,” he said.
His hectic cheer was far more worrying than his gloom.
It was decided the company, many already bleezin’ fou, should continue the celebrations and join their followers in Ecclefechan at the Scab
by Duck. I watched and pondered as the heid yins swept by me into bright day.
“Congratulations, Aunt Annie,” I said.
“It’s Ann, as you well know.” Still, she smiled. “A fine day, is it not? The Bell heidsman! Your mother would never have thought it. I expect you’ll be back to Embra soon?”
With that she swirled away triumphantly. I could see her point, it seemed my time in the Borders was near done. But she had not said your mother with any kindness, and that was hard to forgive. Once Helen’s wedding was by with, I would be free, a man of no allegiance.
We rode to Ecclefechan on the old road. In the low winter sun its ruts and puddles set hard and glittering as chain mail. Adam was silent up ahead, Philby loped by the mare’s rear heels, Jed and I were tight in behind.
“So now life can go back to normal,” I said.
Jed looked at me. “Normal? In these parts?”
But the company around us were in high good humour, with drink taken and the prospect of more to come. Free drink, foreby, for Rob Bell had called that he would pay for all.
At the last moment, Earl Angus had stayed behind with the women, saying he had other business to attend. It was clear enough to all that he was a sick man, and I understood better his grey peevishness, his wasted hands without gloves. Will Irvine and Dand Fleming said they would follow on soon and waved us off before closing on their superior.
If Clapper pressed on with his suit and married the Earl Angus’s daughter before the father died, it would not be long before the Bells were a leading force in the Western March. Perhaps the leading force, if they could make alliance with the Johnstones. Lord Maxwell was still but a boy, could be disposed of . . .
They had infected me. Time to go home.
The sun was low in our eyes as we dismounted below the clumsily painted sign of the White Swan. Even in kindly, red-going light, the Scabby Duck (as all cried it) was a low and malodorous hostelry. The men who jostled in the courtyard were not otherwise. Many I did not recognize from earlier, and I noticed some wore daggers at their hips. Here and there a sword glinted in its hanger. The word of free drink spreads faster than balefires.
