Burning the Water

by Robert Low

  She moved to the chest and opened it; despite himself, Batty peered in and, even prepared for a lack of glittering gold, jewels and coin, he was disappointed.

  He was, in fact, bewildered by what he saw. A flat slate stone, a beaded bracelet – a rosary, he guessed – and a rosary ring like the one Sister Faith wore. There was a pewter cup and a dented plate, a book which was not like any Bible Batty had seen before, then a deal of cloth in various sizes, some of which seemed to be robes.

  After that came a leather tube like a fat, long quiver and, finally, a small package of wrapped silk.

  No coin. No gold ornaments. No jewelled copes or mitres.

  Sister Charity laid things out and, at the end of it, Sister Faith laid a hand on her arm.

  ‘I love you Sister and am as sorry as you are that you are here. Thank you for your strength, which is strongest to me next to God’s Own.’

  They embraced and Batty felt like an unwanted onlooker as he turned away and moved back up to the tower. Behind he heard them start to pray and then realised that what had been drawn from the chest was everything a priest would need.

  The pewter cup and plate were chalice and paten, the innocuous book a missal. There was, he now realised, stole and maniple, altar cloth and vestments. The treasure of Glastonbury, he thought and gave a wry laugh; bigod neither Jack the Lad Horner nor Maramaldo would be pleased to find the truth.

  Nor was he pleased himself, for it made a complete mockery of what he had done, what he had risked. He was now aware that he had failed the nuns, the bairns and even, in a strange way he could not reconcile, the Abbey of Glastonbury and the burning nun in Florence. Probably even God. Galloping in like some barrel-bellied, single-armed ancient knight, he thought, to sweep away nuns, five bairns and a chest of secret geegaws for a Catholic priest.

  Silly auld fool.

  He hunched into himself and thought on how poor his cards were. Then again, he thought, it is only God taking his long overdue justice for all that had been done by Batty Coalhouse, a justice that should have been taken after the wedding feast of Von Zachwitz and his Klett bride. After he had left the nun to burn in Florence. Or any number of other terrors he had tried to board up inside his head.

  Mayhap helping Mintie Henderson of Powrieburn would add a tip towards balance. Helping save the baby Queen of Scots should add a feather. In the end, he thought it unlikely to weigh much in his favour; there had been too much grim death dealt out for the approval of angels.

  He wondered at this moment, all the same, for he had expected some sign or gesture that this was the end for Batty Coalhouse. All men do, he recognised, as if the world does not just go on without them and so must tremble and crack at the imminence of their passing.

  Yet there was nothing, not in the wind, no fire in the sky nor blood in the water. Not so much as ripple on his neck to warn that Batty was leaving for the welcome darkness of the lost worlds, the unlit pastures, the undiscovered glades.

  ‘You are almost done.’

  He jerked and then scowled at her.

  ‘Bigod, Sister Faith, you have an unhealthy and unnatural way of coming in on my very thoughts.’

  She smiled benignly.

  ‘You are not hard to fathom, Master Coalhouse,’ she answered. ‘You are almost done, as I say, for all the sins you have thought secured from thought are bursting free. Will you be baptised in the name of God?’

  ‘Will it get me dealt an ace?’ he responded with some of the old fire and she smiled softly and shook her head.

  ‘Then I will play these cards,’ he answered, ‘in life as in Primero.’

  ‘Will you help us bring up the body of Sister Hope?’

  He levered himself up, grunting and fought the swaddled corpse up the steps until lay on the tower floor. He had thought the Sisters wanted her body rolled out of the entrance like the rest and was squinting into the dark, wary of Klett still lurking there.

  ‘You are a brave man,’ Sister Faith said and that snapped his head round, as did the soft touch on his grimed, calloused hand. Her own was lizard-skin warm, the fingers curled gently into his and he was struck dumb and breathless by the touch, so strange to him these days. She saw it and smiled sadly.

  ‘Have you so little contact left with anyone, Master Coalhouse? Have you never loved, neither God nor girl?’

  Batty had no answer to it, though he was full of them, choked with old feelings of comfort and love, so fleeting and long ago in his life that it seemed it had scarcely brushed him at all. Yet the bond never slips, he thought, it stretches and flexes like a stream of honey.

  In that maddening, familiar way she seemed to read it right out of his face.

  ‘I can understand now why God esteems you, even if you and He have a deal to work out between you before you are ready to meet Him, face to face.’

  She placed the leather container at his feet and then handed him the silk-wrapped package, as big as his one good hand; it felt hard and round in his fingers.

  ‘These are the treasures of Glastonbury, Master Coalhouse’ she said. ‘and I am sure still that God sent you to save them. As sure as I am that His Hand is over us when we go out.’

  Batty heard the last and had suspected as much for some time. Still the reality of it made him suck in a harsh breath.

  ‘Bigod, Sister,’ he growled hoarsely, ‘you saw what they did to the others. To women… nuns…’

  She smiled up at him.

  ‘Sometimes it is far easier to die, Master Coalhouse, than it is to live. You know this already, of course.’

  He had no answer to it, simply stood and held the mysterious package, the leather cylinder at his feet, while the eldest boy came up from below with a torch and the two nuns hefted up the body of Sister Faith.

  Then, preceded by the bobbing light and chanting prayers, they all stumbled out of the tower and into the shouts and stir.

  He stood for a long time alone in the dark, feeling the wobble in his legs and the sick, sad loss of everything.

  * * *

  The bastel house of Akeld was fetid with reek and sickness – Sister Charity knew it at once and glanced across at Sister Faith, but her head was bowed and she murmured prayers, turning her rosary ring, while the children huddled close round her and stared at the hard-eyed men.

  The hardest turned his granite on the Sisters, then the children, then Klett and, finally, Horner.

  ‘This Balthie is still inside, you say?’

  Horner nodded. ‘As are the Glastonbury riches.’

  The man scrubbed his draggled chin and squinted at Klett.

  ‘Get him out,’ he ordered and Klett kept the scowl from his face; Jacob Juup was Maramaldo’s favoured right-hand next to Sabin and would carry out the last orders given to him by his commander. Thick as dogshit in the neck of a flask, Klett sneered to himself – but he simply nodded and went off.

  Jacob Juup considered the nuns and the bairns; get them out, Maramaldo had said and seize the treasure. He had not said what to do with them, though Juup could guess – but guessing Maramaldo’s thoughts was not safe so Juup fell back on orders.

  ‘Stick these in the corner,’ he began, but then Maramaldo woke up and felt his pain, began a bellow for Cornelius that ended in a weak whimper.

  ‘Your Master is ill?’

  It was the veiled nun; Juup looked at her down his considerable nose.

  ‘If you have prayers…’

  ‘Who is that there?’

  Maramaldo was a whisper of his old self, but even that was vicious, so Juup told him and then ushered them forward. He saw them look at each other and was surprised to hear a soft laugh from the veiled nun.

  ‘Pray for me,’ Maramaldo growled. ‘Light candles and pray, for I am cursed with ill humours…’

  ‘You have an ague,’ the veiled nun said coldly. ‘A light fever that comes and goes. You have pains in the fundament, too harsh to permit riding. On your palms you have scab, slight enough to be mistook for cold-chaps or bad call
ous, so that you wear gloves, for it hurts to grip without them. On the shaft of your pintle you have a callous which was a sore long since. Mayhap two. They do not hurt, but when the fever is on you they putrify.’

  There was silence.

  ‘Have you lain with any poor soul when the pustule was putrid?’ she demanded. ‘I hope not for her sake – you are poxed.’

  The air went still for a moment, then started to coil; Juup held his breath as Maramaldo cleared his throat.

  ‘Half and more of the Company are afflicted. It is the way of matters.’

  ‘How long since you passed water?’

  There was a pause, then a voice answered from the dark.

  ‘Five days.’

  Cornelius shoved into the light and the other nun signed the cross at the sight of him; he grinned back. The veiled nun simply removed her veil and Cornelius recoiled – now it was the nun’s turn to smile.

  ‘He will die if left much longer with piss choking him,’ she said simply and nodded to the cup Cornelius clutched. ‘Your foul muck will seal the pain but will not cure him of that. I can cure him. I can make him piss.’

  ‘Listen to me, Jesuit,’ Cornelius huffed. ‘I have a potion distilled from herbs taught to me by Agrippa himself, a Magister Magi whom you will not even have heard of. Mixed with quicksilver and given incantations from the fourth book, it is a sovereign remedy for the blood, for quicksilver is the First Matter and the herbs come from the high passes of the Alps, where the mountaineers enjoy clear skin and a lack of sanguine humours because of these plants…’

  ‘Pish,’ Sister Charity said mildly. ‘Harum-scarum, hocus pocus. There is no cure for the pox and he will die of it, by and by. As will I. I can make him pass water, all the same – can you do that?’

  Maramaldo struggled and folk lifted him upright, the pain of that scouring his face with harsh lines; his glare silenced the spluttering Cornelius.

  ‘How?’ he demanded and she told him. His face went from yellow to cream and every other man around him shifted subtly with the revelation of it.

  ‘Will it work?’ Maramaldo hoarsed out and the nun cocked an eyebrow.

  ‘Look at me,’ she commanded. ‘Who better to know the way of it?’

  Maramaldo looked for a long time, then turned to Juup.

  ‘If she kills me,’ he ordered, ‘slay her, her companion and all the children.’

  Then he looked at Sister Charity, who was searching the straw in the stalls.

  ‘If you succeed, I will spare your lives,’ he said and he heard the other nun’s dry laugh.

  ‘I am Sister Faith,’ she said, ‘and God, not you, will spare us.’

  Sister Charity laid a hand on Sister Faith’s shoulder and patted it. Then she looked at Juup.

  ‘I will need two strong men to hold him upright. Off the ground, with only his toes touching. They must not let him go. Take an empty knife scabbard and let him bite on it.’

  Juup licked dry lips and nodded, picked two men.

  ‘You must be still,’ Sister Charity said to Maramaldo as they hoisted him up. ‘No matter what, you must not wriggle. Master Juup – a rope on each ankle and strong men to keep them slightly apart. Do not let him kick or jerk.’

  Two more men obeyed Juup, looking uneasy at it, especially when Sister Charity demanded Maramaldo be stripped of breeches and underclothes. He grunted when they unlaced his points and whimpered when they started to draw off his trunk hose – crimson and paned so that the yellow silk lining gushed out like pus from a wound.

  He hung there, belly hanging down and distended further than usual, sheened with a slick unhealthiness. Sister Charity took the cleanest straw she could find and tested it for rigidity; those men who saw it brought the crotch of their own legs together slightly.

  ‘You have left it go too long,’ she chided and Maramaldo licked his pustuled lips, his voice hoarse as crows.

  ‘Do it, woman. Just do it, in the name of God.’

  Sister Charity looked at the men each in turn and they nodded their readiness; She held the leather scabbard out and Maramaldo took it like a dog a bone and, quick as an adder, Sister Charity reached out and took Maramaldo’s prick, shrunk to the size of a pea. She stretched it with one hand, then skinned the head free; Maramaldo’s brows went up and his eyes widened.

  Juup felt his legs close involuntarily when the straw went in; Maramaldo gave a muffled grunt deep in his throat.

  Sister Charity was slow and steady, but Maramaldo’s cheeks blew in and out as he clenched on the leather, accompanied by the boar-like grunts; everyone save him watched with fascination as the slender straw rod vanished.

  Like a twig up a chicken neck, Horner marvelled and then the straw rod reached the end – everyone saw it by the jerk and sudden stillness that froze Maramaldo. There was a satisfied little grunt from Sister Charity, then she started the straw on the way out. Maramaldo began to whimper expectantly and started to arch, so that the men on his ankles gripped harder.

  There was a moment, just before the straw came out, when everyone saw the seepage, followed by a spatter of darkness that might have been blood. Then the straw came out and with it an evil-smelling flow of what looked uncomfortably like the lees in every ale cup men had looked in. The men holding his ankles almost leaped away from it, but they were not needed now, for Maramaldo held himself splay-legged and emptied like a burst dam.

  There was a fresh spurt, almost as dark as the first. Then another and finally a steady gush, growing ever paler and reeking like vinegar; Maramaldo, who had been panting out little pig squeals, started into grunting relief like a bear on a scratching post. Sister Charity sniffed the straw and frowned, then turned to Cornelius.

  ‘You have seen?’

  The astrologer nodded, wide-eyed.

  ‘Good. You may have to do this in the future. Find a rod in that alchemikal litter you hoard – gold or silver and thin as this straw. Wear gloves.’

  And she tossed the straw to one side and grinned at the utter horror on the little magician’s face.

  Maramaldo, sloe-eyed with relief, stirred a little and finally looked straight at Juup.

  ‘Kohlhase?’

  * * *

  They were inside the tower. Klett was wary and hackled as a wet cat fresh from the bag, but there was no one beyond the carts, nor down in the undercroft. Men lugged up the chest while others watched and Klett eyed the ladder that led upwards.

  ‘Zerdig,’ he ordered and jerked his chin at it. Zerdig scowled, then moved reluctantly to it, his backsword raised as if to poke the darkness above.

  Up in the tower, Batty listened to them struggle with the chest and grinned. Little good may that do you, he thought, unless you like priestly vestments, or the chest itself. Which was a fine affair, he had realised, lined with silk and covered with ponyhair to keep weather out.

  He heard the ladder creak, saw the dark shape and pointed the dagg. The whirring wheel and sparks were warning enough and the man cursed and hurled himself away before the thing went off with a blinding flash and a gout of smoke.

  ‘I have another,’ Batty called out, though he did not add that it was as empty as the first, for he had no shot left at all and only a handful of Sister Charity’s rosary beads, which he would now load.

  There was a pause, muttering voices raised in argument, then a voice which Batty recognised as Klett’s.

  ‘Come down. Your nuns and kinder have gone and we have the treasure. In the morning we will shoot you from there with the sakers.’

  ‘How many shots?’ Batty demanded.

  ‘What?’

  ‘How many shots, d’you think? To get me blown out of this perch. Two? Three? More?’

  ‘As many as it takes,’ Klett replied, his voice annoyed now.

  ‘I wager you cannae do it in less than six,’ Batty replied. ‘You are the nearest offering to a gun-layer they have, I warrant, and you are unable to hit a bull’s arse with a swung shovel. How is your shoulder, Master Klett?’
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br />   Batty almost felt the answering scowl through the darkness. Aching, for sure, he thought.

  ‘We will see,’ Klett replied. ‘Zerdig, stand sentry at the door. Make sure Meinheer Kohlhase remains in his little nest until we blow him away.’

  Batty heard them go, risked a squint into the dark over the side of the tower and thought he saw them; he heard them, for sure, cursing and stumbling under the weight of the chest and he laughed.

  He sat with his back to the stones, looked at the shadowy shape of the leather cylinder and thought he had an idea on the contents – lots of tight-wrapped scroll deeds to manors all over Somerset. I am a rich man, he thought wryly, for whoever possesses these possesses the legal right to ownership – well, providing he has enough style to pass as a gentleman.

  The silk package was another affair entirely and it took him a time of peering at the contents in the dim to work out what they were. Even then he was not sure – a round wooden bowl and, nested inside it, two small phials carefully mounted in filigreed gold cases and stoppered with wax and seals. He had no idea what they were – though the bowl was of some use, for it had started to rain and he put it out to catch some.

  Then he drank, gratefully, while he considered his position. The watchtower was simply a fretwork of lashed poles on the uneven rotted tooth remains of the stone tower. There was a rough-planked floor with the trapdoor in it, hinged to swing up and battened with a fat wooden latch; there was a similar one on the underside.

  The only other item of note was a winch made from wood and clearly used once to haul the timbers up the outside of the tower. This was where he and Sister Hope had lashed the rope for safety while they hauled Trumpet up; it stretched out into the dark and creaked softly when the lisping rain-wind shifted his lashed corpse.

  When Batty risked a quick lean and peer, he saw the guard below and to the right, as close under the lee of the tower without actually being in the entrance, for he feared putting himself in the dark and whoever might come down into it with a loaded firearm.