Fair Helen

by Andrew Greig

  I began to fear I had missed something, and would soon find Adam gone. So on the third morning I sought him out. I found him in the old tack room, lying stretched out on an ancient Italianate couch, feet dangling over the end, reading The Faerie Queene.

  “Still looking for the naughty bits?”

  “In vain.” He laid the volume on the floor. “I thought it time to better understand the English Court and mind.”

  “So you intend London?”

  “Perhaps.”

  A small grin on his lips as he waited for me to continue my questioning. There was no point in hiding my mission.

  “So,” I said cheerily, “any news of the tryst?”

  “Kind of you to take such an interest, mon cher.”

  “You asked me—implored me—to come down to this scrawny, violent neck of the March.”

  “Why should I tell you when we tryst?”

  I was flummoxed and not a little peeved. I waved my arms around.

  “You need protection! Jed is in the gaol, so I should shadow you.”

  He sat up and looked at me, all flippancy gone.

  “Harry, I do not want you to be there.”

  “Why for no?”

  He ticked the points off on his fingers, an aggravating habit.

  “First head: Bell has secured his engagement, so he thinks. We are all happy families now, united in fealty to our Warden Earl of Angus—and long may he live. Second head: It appears my stepfather is not trying to do me away. And yon turd John Rusby is in the ground.” He shrugged. “No protection required.”

  I disagreed, though could not say why. “Third head?”

  “I don’t want you in harm’s way.”

  “You said there will be no harm!”

  “Then you don’t need to be there.”

  “Smart clerk!” I sat on the other end of the settee, held out my hands in appeal. “I just want to help,” I said.

  We looked at each other. The kitchen girl singing in the yard just made the room more silent.

  “Harry,” he said softly, “your head at the window altered the light within.” Then he chuckled. “It was not unstimulating. But out of respect for Helen, I think not again.”

  I was on my feet. Could not look at him. Felt I could never look him straight again.

  “I would die rather than follow you again!” I cried, and fled the room.

  The pain of that moment has lasted longer than that from my broken nose or this ruined hand, though how are we to know this world, if not by clear witnessing? But he knew I had seen them at it, and that humiliated me beyond measure.

  Still, I had meant what I had exclaimed on fleeing, and he knew it. Perhaps that was why he told me just enough when the time came.

  The next morn I lay up among the hay in the stable loft. It was warm up there, and the horse-reek brought comfort. I could think there, and there was much to think about. The position also afforded a clear outlook over the stockade fence, and the side of the house, the courtyard and the peel tower.

  I was feeling again my faither’s muckle paw on my shoulder as he took me on his business through the warehouses of Leith. How these things linger, the imprint of his strong fingers when his voice is lost to me save in dreams.

  The usual grey doos flew out of the peel, made their short circuit, then hastened in again. And then a white one appeared against blue sky, higher up. I had not seen it leave the tower. It flew past the battlement, then banked, circled back swift and agile, then swooped inside.

  I crouched in the dimness under the roof and watched. Soon Snood emerged from the peel, and plodded across the courtyard into the house. Moments later Adam hurried from the house, made straight for the tower, went within. Snood did not reappear.

  It was my moment. I scrambled down the ladder and ran across the yard. I found him at the window slit in the doo-cot storey, holding a scrap of paper to the light. He looked round, alarmed. Then he laughed.

  “So you worked it out,” he said.

  “And you have your tryst.”

  “Aye!” He was lit up with it.

  “Today?” He made no answer, but I had studied him when he was young and unformed. “So it is the morn’s morn.” His eyes shifted. “The morn’s afternoon,” I amended.

  He couldn’t help grinning. Tomorrow afternoon it was.

  “Best shake out the horse blankets,” I said.

  “If you—”

  I held up my hand. “No,” I said. “Promise. You’ll be on your own.”

  He held my eyes. He had likewise known me when I was young and unformed. So he laughed, folded the scrap of paper away in his britches.

  “Wish me luck,” he said.

  “With all my heart,” I said. “Should you win her, let me know afore ye go, that I might say goodbye.”

  “If there is time. If not, come and visit us in Carlisle or Constantinople!”

  He was already heading out the door. “Things to do, plans to lay, night is night and day is day,” he chanted.

  I stood at the slit and watched him hurry across the yard into the house. No doubt he had a letter or two to pen, money and gear to bundle and lay by. Carlisle, then the Continent. I whispered a plea to a Power—to whom I suspected all the doings of our time were less than the mild throb from my right palm, something noticed and then forgot—and went up the winding stair.

  In the doo-cot all was cooing gossip and warm, sharp bird-stink. That we made gunpowder from the excreta of these! In the near corner, in a crate apart from the other birds, the white pigeon was still stuffing itself with grain, its job done.

  I like a puzzle solved. I watched the bird for a while, then made my way down the stairs and out towards my little room. I too had a short note to write, and all the while as I scratched it out with my left, I did not for a moment register the itch of healing beneath the bandage on my right hand.

  I rode to Kirtlebridge where Crosier took my sealed note and dropped it in his leather apron pouch. He looked at me; I looked at him. I gave him small coin; he nodded and I left. I walked out into the spitting grey, my work here done. It was out of my hands. Helen, Adam, Buccleuch, Bell could work out their fates without me.

  I rode on to the Fortune Rigg. I yearned now for Embra, to be again in warm chambers, sleeping without watchfires waiting on the roof, spending my days among languages, translating the thoughts and desires of others into clear and lasting words, to be paid but not enmeshed. No more sweating horses and saddle sores, no concealed weapon under my jerkin.

  And yet, even as I handed the reins to the cheeky stable lad, I knew I would miss this, the one great adventure of my life. In even its darkest moments, I had felt myself extended, fully alert in body and spirit. There had been terrors and terrible things done—that flurry in the pend, the feeling of my dagger entering another’s heart, a boy lifted clean off his horse by a lance through his chest, Philby twitching on the fire.

  But I was young, and there had been joys too. I had ridden hot-trod across the Border in fierce company, had that intimate walk and talk in code with Helen in the walled garden, known her silent midnight visitation. I had taken fighting lessons from Jed, then washed the dust away and gone in to eat with great appetite. I had killed a man. Yon drunken, despairing, hilarious night Adam and I had spent reciting King Jamie’s Daemonologie. And that evening among the players, musicians and servants, with my own people who lived by music, playing roles, wit and laughter, knowing it all a make-believe, a feverish dream. Pleasures too with my witty innkeeper, whom I hoped now to see one more time, to say farewell and see if she required anything of me.

  But the Fortune Rigg was stowed out. It was market day, the fire was piled high, the windows rattled with shouting. In one corner several of the Keeper Buccleuch’s troopers were filling their faces, and at the other side of the room three men who on their shoulders bore the red flashes of the Warden Angus’s riders. Some nodded, the younger ones glared at me, but nothing more.

  I made myself known at th
e bar, then found a stool by the pillar and waited. I thought of Jed, and prayed my patron still held the line against Bell and Earl Angus. Buccleuch had seemed set on keeping Jed alive, though the incarceration left Adam unattended. As Rusby’s death had exposed Robert Bell . . .

  Cui bono? I was sitting hunched over, thinking hard, when Elenora tapped me on the shoulder, then thrust a cup at me.

  “On the house,” she said. “All the way frae Langue d’Oc.”

  She was smiling, but her coif was askew and she seemed uneasy. She spoke quickly and her eyes were shifting round the room. Perhaps the rival troopers bothered her.

  She asked after Jed. I reported our visit, said I thought him well guarded. If Justice still existed in the Borderlands, the Assizes would find for defence of his heidsman. His wound was being well attended.

  A bray of laughter from the Warden’s men. She flinched and turned back to me. She seemed little reassured.

  “You’ll be awa soon—wi’ the engagement announced?”

  I hesitated. “It seems yon way.”

  For a moment she gave me her full scrutiny. I swear that woman could read me better than any.

  “I would fit you in afore you go,” she said, “but as you see I’m right busy.”

  I said I could see that. Still she seemed uneasy.

  “I thought that with Rusby dead . . .”

  Her breath was shallow, her eyes scarce meeting mine. “Best finish yon wine and go,” she said. “Some here have no cause to like you.”

  I nodded, said I would try to call in before going back to the city. She said maybe next time she was in Leith on business . . . We both knew it would not happen. She squeezed my arm, put her head down close to mine.

  “Tak tent,” she said quietly. “Awa hame wi’ ye.” Into my hand she slipped a sealed note, folded small. “Sew this away in your jerkin. One day you may have need of it.”

  She left me there in the poor light by the pillar, hurried back toward the servery, glancing at the tables, even up the stair, before disappearing into the kitchens. I checked at the note. It was addressed to Captain Jan Wandhaver of the Sonsie Quine, Port of Leith.

  I drank down my wine, though it did not taste as good as before. As I made casually for the door, head down, one of the Buccleuch troopers stood in my way. I don’t know what they put in these men’s oats that makes them so tall.

  He stared down at me. I recognized him from Dumfries, the Captain’s second.

  “Stay well out of this, laddie,” he said.

  “I intend to,” I replied, “if you’ll let me by.”

  He stepped aside. I went to get Handsome Jenny, wondering what this was that I should stay out of.

  I rode home the short way, unmolested. Whatever happened now was no affair of mine.

  Clockwork

  The dark timepiece in Nether Albie hallway struck noon. Of late many favoured the pendulum and gears because they took the guesswork out of life, the look at the sky for the obscured sun. I mused that for Lucretius the energy that drives all is quite impersonal, yet not mechanical. For on account of the swerve, nothing is predictable, and any History great or tiny may take a new, unguessable turn. That is the difference atween Life and clockwork.

  I loitered in the hall as the chimes struck and faded. New-made in Leith, bought a week earlier in clear imitation of the Irvines, this piece was Dand’s joy. He had already shown me three times how it presented the phases of the moon. He loved to wind it, humming to himself as he turned the handle. I thought it like a man enjoying winding up his own gallows.

  “That’s me awa, then!”

  Adam had been closeted with his mother, then in his own room, all morning. Now he was sprush, shaven and trimmed. Britches in heavy dark cloth, doublet with leather trim—not fancy clothes, but good gear for hard travelling.

  “Interesting salve,” I said. “Essence of dead cat? With a hint of ox-bollocks?”

  I ducked his cuff.

  “Musk,” he said. “Never fails to turn a lady’s head.”

  “Aye, but which way?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” he said.

  He was fair fizzing. I have seen alchemist’s fires that spat and flared so. Mind you, they never yet made gold. I glanced around. We seemed to be alone.

  “Good luck wi’ her.”

  He reached out, clasped his palm round the back of my neck and looked into my eyes.

  “Thank you,” he said softly. “Promise you won’t . . . ?”

  “Na,” I said. “You’ll be alone.”

  “I have told my mother and Dand I’m to Langholm all day on business. We have parted on good terms. Mind you ken nothing about this, so it will not fall ill on you.”

  He was brisk now, ready to find out which would prevail, the prompting of the heart, or family loyalty and advantage.

  “See you this evening, next century, or in a better life,” he said. And with that line (which he must have been saving a while till it gained interest) he was gone.

  For this last hour I have done nothing but sit at the table by the window, dumfountert. The pulse in my neck, the numbness in my arse-bane, the pigeon that kinks its wings and is gone, these are all I know.

  The rain comes down in ropes of murky horse-piss.

  I am scarcely breathing now. It is as if I have snuck up on something so omnipresent we do not see it. There is no mention of it in Lucretius. I am of Nature, yes, yes. And yet I sit here aware of it, and that is of another order.

  “You have astounded yourself at your own existence,” a voice whispers. “You are making ready to die.”

  Then again, who is not? I sit, watching ink dull as it dries.

  The Shot

  Right up to the end I told myself that were I canny enough, it would yet be possible to square my own interests, those of my dearest friends, and the demands of the heid yins of the world. I let myself believe it would not come down to a choice atween them.

  But it did, as in the end it must.

  I came out onto the peel-tower roof and watched Adam dwindle on the upper road. Usually he went on foot to meet her, down through the woods to the burn, then following it to the old brig, crossing it and taking the wide track by the great beech and oak that led to the graveyard, the kirk, the Lea. That was the way we had gone the first time, on the day of my arrival.

  But today he rode, his horse side-packed, panniers bulging. Perhaps they had changed the tryst? The day drove smirrs of rain through the dale and I shivered on the battlement. No, he would take the road beyond Kirkconnel, tether the cob in the woods and come down to the kirk where they would meet indoors, as planned. The horse was to keep his options open. I suspected he carried coin, clothing, a few lares et penates—a book, a portrait, a keepsake, whatever scraps and mementoes mark this is where we live now.

  He truly believed Helen might on impulse of the heart go with him, to take the byways across the Border before dusk, sleep in some remote inn before Carlisle. A quick marriage, a boat South, then whatever employment or shelter his letters had sought. They must have talked about it before. And perhaps she would go. What did I ken of any heart other than mine own, when even that baffled me?

  I stared the way he had gone till my eyes watered.

  The rider from the West rode fast and alone. Neither was common in our valley. Even less common was the yellow coif she wore. I ran down the staircase, across the yard to catch Elenora outside the gates, where we would not be overlooked.

  She slide down from her horse, her face pale as a revenant in a ghost-ballad.

  “Thank the Christ you’re still here,” she said. “Dowie Fairfax!”

  “Where?”

  “He was at the inn yestreen and . . . stayed the night.” She shivered. I understood now her nervy way when I had come by. I was not entirely surprised. I understood now that where Buccleuch was scheming, Fairfax would be not far off.

  “And?”

  When she raised her head I saw a soul torn.

  “He wa
s in high humour this morn.” I let that pass without comment. She looked at me. “Harry, he will kill me if I clype on him. But if I do not . . .”

  “What has happened?”

  She looked away, around, at the hills draped in rain as though help were hidden there. She breathed deep and decided her fate, and mine.

  “This morn Rob Bell came by, alone.”

  “Bell?”

  It made no sense. Fairfax was surely Buccleuch’s man. What would Bell want with him? Jamie Saxt himself would have been more likely.

  “They have ridden thegither for Kirkconnel. A short while after, the Keeper’s troopers went also, in two groups. Whaur is Fleming?”

  “Gone trysting to Kirkconnel.”

  The small rain glistered her face in a fine web, and o’er-late the blind began to see.

  There must have been a decision made, the kind I wrote of earlier, between conflicting interests, yet I have no mind of making it. One last wild look atween us, and then she rode back to the inn. I ran indoors, armed myself, and plunged down into the woods towards the brig.

  Cui bono? Wet branches whipped face and arms, scourging my stupidity. I could not see all, but glimpsed enough. Jed in prison, Rusby dead, Buccleuch’s insistence I should not attend the tryst—the lovers’ flight and marriage were not his aim, never had been. What he had sought among a hundred other schemes was just this, that Rob Bell and Adam Fleming should meet, unprotected, in high temper.

  I slid headlong down a muddy bank, hit a tree straight on. Blood tickled about my eye. I shook my head and ran. O cunning, cunning man! For it did not matter which died in that meeting, only that one killed the other. Fairfax there to mak siccar, and be witness. And the troopers . . .

  I slowed, then stopped amid the woods. I could hear the Kirtle burn now, and went on canny, canny towards the brig.

  There were three riders, motionless in the rain, on the far bank. The others would be stationed beyond Kirkconnel, at Palmersgill brig, and most like a couple more at the top end of the Lea. All were there to make siccar that one man would die, the other be arrested, charged, the family unmade, their lands made over . . . How else had Buccleuch risen from the petit laird of Branxholme?