Friend & Foe

by Shirley McKay

  At the castle, Ninian Scrymgeour felt in great fear for his life. He had used the bishop’s closet for the third time that evening, knotting and untangling the thin string of his belt. He found it oddly comforting to hold it in his hands. The closet felt to him the safest place, though of course the bishop had no kenning that he used it. When Tam had found him there, he had been so afeared that he had shat himself. He had not thought that Tam would foul that private place. But Tam had no respect for either man or Kirk.

  He spent so long at his stool that he was almost late, and he did not see Tam Fairlie coming from the hall, with butter saps and honey for his little lass. Tam glimpsed Ninian’s shadow as he scurried past, and set down his plate. ‘All quiet, here?’ he asked the guard. The soldiers in the guardhouse packed away their cards, and tried to sit up straight. ‘A’ quiet, aye. His lordship isna back.’

  ‘Did I not see, this moment, someone pass the gate?’

  ‘Maister Ninian Scrymgeour ganging to the priory, for ter bring a ticket that the bishop had forgot.’

  ‘Ah, is that is a fact? A muckle fearsome venture for a timid clerk.’ Tam Fairlie rubbed his beard, and buckled on his belt. ‘I doubt I will go after him, and see the fazart safe.’

  The half hour had already struck before the clerk appeared. He was carrying a staff, and a little lamp of horn that cast a sallow shadow on his frightened face. He put his fingers to his lips. ‘I fear that I am followed. Do not make a sound.’ Hew could hear the wind, and the slow swell of the sea, as it grumbled at the cliff, clamorous, insistent, for the tide was coming in. The water filled the darkness, drowned out other sound. Ninian Scrymgeour fled, his horn light darting faintly, from the precinct walls. Hew cried, ‘Ninian, wait!’ and followed the shy light out to the Kirk Heugh, towards the ruined chapel of St Mary’s on the rock. There were lights far below at the harbour, where beacons burned brightly to guide in the boats that came in by night on the incoming tide. And at the castle, too, a pinpoint prick of lamplight, steady as a heartbeat, flickered from the parapet, moving round the tower. Between them was a blackness, deep distilled and dense, and deep within this darkness Ninian’s horn lamp danced. Hew cried out again. He kept close to the track, and one hand on the wall. He saw the faint light stop, and picked out in the gloom the old kirk on the rock, to which he felt his way, carefully and stealthily. He stepped into the shadow of the old kirk’s weathered footprint, reaching out to Ninian. There the light went out.

  Ninian’s cries were dulled by the clamour of the sea, and Hew could not identify the place from where they came. They were perilously close to the sharp edge of the cliff, and in the muffled darkness, Hew could sense the drop, the transitory falling in the flood of sound. ‘Where are you, Ninian?’ he called. His own voice resounded, hollow and strange.

  ‘Help me! Murther! On my life!’ Ninian’s words came far and faint but Hew heard footsteps somewhere running.

  ‘I will go for help.’

  In answer came a scream that splintered the night air. Hew dropped to his knees, and feeling through the darkness, found the blown out horn lamp, next to Ninian’s stick. ‘Call to me,’ he cried. ‘Cry out; I will find you.’ Ninian gave a moan, tremulous and pitiful. Hew used the stick to probe, feeling for the ground. He could see a little light that was mirrored in the sea from the beacons at the harbour, and he attempted to look out among the shadows of the cliff, looking for the place where the little clerk had slipped, as he saw shapes and movement in the heavy darkness, and began to find his bearings in the thunder of the waves. He heard a whistling at his back, like the drawing of a breath, and something struck him hard in the middle of his neck. It struck him to the ground, or where the ground had been.

  The rushing of the sea, or the rushing of his blood; he could not tell at first which it was he heard. The chapping of the sea sent a light spray at his back, lapping at his heels. His left foot came to rest, on a shelf of rock, his right foot dangled loose, and could find no place. Both hands wrenched and gripped, in grass and leaf and mud, and clung and burrowed hard into a clod of earth. He felt against his skin the sharp face of the cliff and clung to what was hard, fearing what was not. He dared not turn his head, and knew he could not move. ‘Help me,’ he cried out.

  And, to his relief, the little clerk appeared, and he had lit the lamp again, and held it in his hand.

  ‘Dear me.’ The clerk set down the lamp, and knelt upon the ground, to reflect on Hew’s predicament. ‘I cannot rightly think what I ought to do. You see, I left my spectacles, and that was why I fell. I do not see too well.’

  ‘If you give me your hand, I can pull myself up. But I cannot hold on here for long.’ Hew heard the water, close at his back, the swell of the sea, as it broke on the rock.

  ‘That will not do. For I am, you see, such a very small man, and I have not the strength of a young man like you. But I have a better idea.’

  Hew did not see, from the slope of the cliff, as the little clerk pulled out his knife, but he felt the blade prick, and the warmth of his blood, as Ninian stabbed blindly at both of his hands. He reacted from instinct, as well as from pain. His left hand gripped hard at the red clod of earth, while he straightened and lunged with his right, and grasped at the little clerk’s belt. As he clung to it hard, it came loose in his hand, and the little clerk fell, soundless and down, a heavy cross wind that blew at Hew’s back. Hew closed his eyes as he felt his life slip, and his foot and his hands and his heart working loose, as strong fingers grasped and gripped at his wrists, and lifted him up, like a child. He found himself thrown on a soft patch of ground where he clung for his life to a pair of thick boots.

  ‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ Tam Fairlie said. ‘Wad ye have me over too?’

  He pulled Hew to his feet, where his legs gave way, and held him at the cliff edge by the collar of his coat. ‘Not the devil’s chance.’

  In the sullen lamplight they saw Ninian’s broken body dragged out by the ocean and returned upon the rocks, tossed upon the shadows of the restless sea. Tam picked up the hemp that had fallen through Hew’s hands. ‘This is Ninian’s belt.’

  But it was not a belt. It was a shepherd’s sling.

  Chapter 25

  Private Lives

  ‘Do you mean to say that you have killed my clerk?’

  ‘I did not kill him. He tried to kill me.’ Hew was shaken still. His legs had given way on the way back to the castle, and the sergeant of the guard had all but had to carry him. Tam had marched him straight to the bishop’s chamber, where the bishop in his nightcap scrutinised him now. Patrick was not pleased. His household was in jeopardy; the king would not look favourably upon a second death, and it was more than likely that the castle would be forfeit, if he could not keep it safely for the Crown. He had lost two futemen, and a privy clerk, and given up his physick wife, a source of some regret. The physick wife must die a grim and futless death, and he must look elsewhere to satisfy his needs. He was working on a sermon to extol the duke of Lennox. He doubted whether James would think it warm enough. How could a man be glowing, when a cold hand gripped him, grappled in his bowels?

  ‘Ninian, a murtherer? That timid, mild, sweet man?’

  Hew showed up the sling. ‘This was Ninian’s belt. It is the meek man’s instrument. Like David and Goliath.’

  Patrick answered irritably, ‘I have heard that story, sir. My clerk, ye may recall, could not see past his nose. Then how do you suppose he found the target for his stone?’

  ‘In truth, I do not know.’ Hew glanced back at Tam, who had saved his life, and left his help at that. It was hard to fathom what the sergeant thought, what he had observed, or was prepared to tell. He had heard Ninian’s cries, of help me! and murder!, and he had seen Ninian go over the cliff, like a stack of onions rolled up in a sack. The stab wounds on Hew’s hands were evidence of sorts; but the clerk might have inflicted them in simple self-defence. Hew could not predict which way Tam’s mind would turn.

  The bishop had come home f
rom an unrewarding supper, to be woken by his sergeant as he settled down in bed. The rummle of the fish plat rippled through his bowel, and resurfaced, salmon-like. Adamson excused himself, retiring to his closet. Within a moment, he emerged. ‘It seems my privy secretar has made free with my closet, discharging there a privilege that I did not bestow. He has left his spectacles.’ He held up Ninian’s glasses in their leather pouch. ‘I daresay in the darkness he had little use for them, for there the blind man is advantaged and surpasses other men.’

  ‘Not so little use,’ said Tam, ‘as he has for them now.’

  ‘May I see those?’ Hew took up the spectacles and pinched them to his nose, squinting through the candlelight, to see the world as Ninian had, thickly through a slab of glass, hoping to cast clearer light upon the clerk’s distorted mind. For what must it be like, to see the world so darkly? What he saw astonished him. ‘Were these his only pair?’

  The bishop confirmed it. ‘He was, you understand, a man of simple means. His eyes had grown quite weak. A villainous affliction, in a privy secretar, for it was a trial to him, to read and write a letter. I kept him out of charity.’

  Hew returned the spectacles. ‘Then look, sirs, if you will.’

  It was Tam who saw, and put the facts succinctly. ‘This is plain clear glass.’

  Patrick said, bewildered, ‘Why would a privy clerk put out he could not see?’

  ‘That, sir, is a question.’ Hew moved back a step, and began to look around.

  The chamber was divided by a light partition, lined with panelled oak, that sectioned off the closet in the corner to the east. Access to the privy was provided through the corridor, which linked it to the fore tower on its southern side, and to the little room where he had found the books. The partition-wall of oak was in line with Patrick’s bed, but Hew did not remember seeing it before.

  ‘Is that panel new? I do not think I saw it, when we came with Andrew Melville.’

  The chamber had been stripped since then. The walls and floor were bare, and the scent of rotting sweetness – of the hawthorn bough, thought Hew – had finally dispersed. He remembered, too, the crown of hawthorn blossom hidden in the rock, that Tam had taken from him, dropped into the pit. The castle stone gave up its secrets, randomly and one by one, like the coloured shards of glass that were thrown up on the beach. Ninian had killed Harry, with his shepherd’s sling. And why had he done that?

  Patrick answered, ‘Aye, there was a cover on it then. A tapestry of silk. It was sent out for repair. The castle was refurbished for the coming of the king.’ He surveyed his lodging gloomily, counting up the cost. ‘The lords that slept here said the hangings harboured dust. There was, ye may recall,’ he gave a little cough, ‘a staleness to the room, that wanted airing out. The servants took the arras out, to shake it at the parapet, and there it was discovered there were muckle holes it in.’

  ‘What made the holes?’ asked Hew.

  ‘Wha devil should I ken?’ the archbishop countered testily. ‘Some monster of a moth. The tapestries are old, no more than scraps of threads; the holes were at the top, and in the darkest parts, and over the dark panel never would be seen, though they were fat and muckle ones.’

  ‘Big enough,’ Hew pressed, ‘for a man to peep through?’

  Patrick stared at him. ‘What kind of a man would be peeping through a tapestry?’

  ‘A filthy one,’ smirked Tam.

  ‘And it please you,’ Hew suggested, ‘Let us look into your closet. We may find the answer there.’

  It grieved the bishop’s heart to take a prying company in to that secret place, which no man ought to share. ‘Ye maun take a candle there,’ he agreed, reluctantly. ‘It is dark inside.’

  The entrance to the closet was a heavy woven curtain, opposite a window looking out towards the town. The window could be opened, and the curtain flattened back, to allow the wind to draft in extra air. Tam Fairlie did so now, letting in the blackness of the summer night. He brought in a lamp to supplement the candle sconces on the far stone wall, and set it on the ground. Inside were Patrick’s privy stool – his dry stool covered with a cloth – his laver and his water pots, and two or three more resting places, where a man might sit and think, at peace and at his ease. A corner held a hassock, where he bared his soul, and the back wall marked the place, underneath a canopy, where he bared his body, in the wooden bathtub kept beneath the stairs.

  Hew took up a stool, of the ordinary sort, and explored the wood partition that faced back to the room, feeling at the top of it. It did not take him long to discover and dislodge the panel that was loose. From his vantage on the stool, he could see quite clearly to the bishop’s bed. ‘I think you had a keeker, hiding in your closet. A most perverse and inward sort of spy.’

  Patrick’s face turned several shades, from puce to grey to bilious green, before he squeaked indignantly, ‘Whit kind o’ man wad spy upon a malade in his bed? A sair and sickly languisher?’

  Tam Fairlie answered with a snort, ‘Whit kind o’ man, indeed? And you think that this keeker murdered Harry Petrie?’ he inquired of Hew. ‘Why wad he dae that?’

  ‘I think,’ reflected Hew, ‘that mebbe Harry caught him in the act, of something that he was not supposed to see. He appeared to think that Harry had something of his; he mentioned a blue sock.’

  ‘I ken naught of that,’ the archbishop answered quickly, ‘and I’ll warrant, nor does Tam.’ The two men swapped a glance, and the sergeant shook his head.

  ‘Then it remains a mystery. For no such sock was found. I think he had a secret cache, in the chamber next to this.’ Hew led them back in to the tower, and opened up the cubby hole. The piles of stones had gone. ‘Well, we have his sling, and that must be enough. This was his room, I suppose?’ He looked back at Tam. ‘He telt me it was yours.’

  ‘The lily-livered shite. This was Ninian’s place. It gave him ready ingress to the bishop,’ Tam retorted. ‘And a pleasant view. I caught him in the closet when the physick wife was here, but thought that he had come to have a shit.’

  Patrick cleared his throat. ‘Indeed, I see it all. And what kind of a man,’ he squawked, ‘would take his pleasures so, to watch a sick man in the throes of strained and desperate remedies? I am sore aggrieved, that we have been deceived in him. Speak nothing of this, sir,’ he beseeched of Hew, ‘for it is an old man’s shame, to be spied on in his bed. I will send a letter to the earl of Orkney, to warn him that the Richan boy may not have been the villain that we had supposed, and you may tell the crownar that the case is closed. Now, sir, it is late, and you have had a close escape. God speed you to your rest. Tam will take you down. But pull the curtain, pray!’ He sank down to the horror of it, in his feather bed, leaving Tam to close the drapes, and blow the candle out.

  It was several days before Hew fully understood what Ninian had been spying on, and why the bishop had insisted that the case was closed. Justice took its course. The physick wife was taken up and accused of witchcraft, brought back to the castle to await her trial. Her name was read in kirk. And he remembered then the cloudless summer’s day when he and Meg had met with her, coming homeward with the May, dizzied, drunken, black and bruised, and she had lifted up her skirts, and mourned her blue silk sock.

  Alison was not afraid at first. At first, she had supposed that it was one of Patrick’s games. And why would it not be, when they put her in that place, the hollow quiet cell, with the window to the sea, and the narrow bed of stone? She expected, fully, Patrick to appear to her, dressed as Little John, or a mummer from a masque, or in his bishop’s gown. He had not been at the kirk, and Alison was sad at that, and had to face alone those dour and dreadful men. There are three types of kirkmen, Patrick might have said, and of all those types, those elders at the session were among the worst. She wished that he had been there, to explain it all to them. But, for several days, she kept faith he would come. Patrick was like William, who came back still, in the night, and for many years, after he was dead.

>   After several days, she began to fear that she would not be fresh for him. She wondered, after several more, whether he lay sick, or otherwise distracted, that he did not come to her. In between her wondering, she sang, or wept, or prayed, depending on her mood. She lay down on the bed of stone, and when she fell asleep, dreamt strange and fitful dreams, befuddled and bewitched by lack of warmth and food. In the morning, when she woke, she found that he had left her things to eat and drink, in the angled cubby hole where she had put the hawthorn crown. The hawthorn crown had gone; she worried he was vexed at her, for throwing it away. But surely, all the world must ken, that no one but a libber brought the hawthorn in a house. Sometimes, there were other things, a flower, or stone, or shell. And once a piece of coloured glass, from the chapel window washed up on the beach, worn smooth by the sea. Alison held up the glass, and let the sunlight fall upon it, painted blue and green. It might have been the cassock of a long dead saint, or a piece of water, thrown up on the storm. It was not the emeralds and sapphires he had promised her. But she took it for a token she should not lose hope. Fine things would be hers, if she could be patient now. She put the stones and the shell and the piece of coloured glass into a little pile, and when a seagull feather floated to her windowsill, she put that in as well. She looked forward to the gifts another day might bring.

  Patrick, in the meantime, was otherwise engaged. It was a source of some regret to him that there must be a trial, for he could not be certain what the witch would say. Tam had scoured the castle, looked in every crevice and in every crack; he had not found the sock. He wondered if the Richan boy had squirreled it away. Patrick preached a sermon to appease the king, on a crowded Sunday at the Holy Trinity. It was not a great success. He telt them that the duke of Lennox had kept to his faith, and had died a Protestant. To illustrate his point, and give it further force, he brandished the duke’s testament, a rolled-up piece of parchment borrowed from his desk. A woman in the front row saw it and called out, ‘I have seen that paper, sir. I sent it ye myself.’ The wife was Tibbie Strachan, married to the dyer, and the paper was the bill for his May Day coat; he would never dare again to dress as Robin Hood. He had too much on his mind to spare a thought for Alison, or to stop to wonder how she spent her days.