Fire & Faith

by Steven Veerapen

  They did not look into the back room of the inn, but left through the front door. It was bitingly cold outside, veiny fronds of frost snaking through the mud, turning it hard. Together they turned around the side of the building and looked in on the horses. ‘Ho, Woebegone. You shall see some action again, you lazy brute.’ At his voice Archie appeared, cleaner than he had looked since Danforth had met him.

  ‘Ye aff, sirs?’

  ‘Yes, Archie.’

  ‘And ye’ll be settlin’ yer bill then, aye?’ Martin laughed.

  ‘Have no fear, Archie. Our bill shall be settled. But you’re not the master of this inn – the Abbot owns this land yet.’

  ‘And he might yet install a new master for you,’ said Danforth. ‘One who might turn this inn to a profit for himself and the Abbot.’ Archie nodded, dejected, and saw to the horses. He reached up to give them affectionate pats, and to Danforth’s surprise the fussy Woebegone nuzzled the thin hand in return. He then passed the reins to their masters.

  ‘Be of better cheer, wee man,’ said Martin, winking. ‘Think on what I said to you.’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ said Archie, his mournful look turning hopeful. ‘Aye, sir, thank you.’

  As they walked their mounts towards the market cross, Danforth turned to Martin. ‘What did you say to that little idiot?’

  ‘It’s of no consequence. He’s no idiot, sir, but a lad who’s had no life of his own.’

  The cross was bustling with more than usual activity, though it was not market day. Word had got out. As they drew closer they could see that the shopfronts stood largely empty of customers, and the balladeer of the previous week – who evidently stood ever ready to appear before a crowd – was whetting his pipes with a mug of ale, unwilling to sing without the prospect of coins in return. Jardine stood outside his shop, looking towards the Tolbooth, his thumbs hooked into his ample belt. When he spotted them, he gave a friendly nod. Outside the Tolbooth a crowd had gathered, demanding news of the Brody affair. A frustrated Logan was hollering for them to disperse, or be arrested for fomenting disorder. He waved his short dirk in the air, as though it was a musket and not a chipped and weathered old blade. The withered old knock-keeper, the gnome who had greeted Danforth on his entry into the burgh, had joined him his entreaties. Mobs were ever the bane of burgh officials. Pushing their way through rabble, Danforth and Martin tied their horses to a hitching post and went inside.

  Baillies Semple and Pattison were both present. Danforth noted with spiteful glee that they looked to have had an unsettled night themselves: both were unkempt and sagging. The air in the room was even staler than usual. ‘Good morning,’ said Martin, full of cheer. ‘I trust you fellows have slept well, knowing the burgh’s affairs to be in order.’ Both glared at him.

  ‘We’ve brought a report on all that has passed,’ said Martin, pulling it from under his cloak. ‘It’s signed. All is in order. The Brody girl has fled by herself, out of your jurisdiction. Mistress Caldwell was responsible for the deaths of Thomas Kennedy, Agnes Blackwood and Angus Brody.’ He passed them the document with a flourish, and Semple snatched it with a meaty hand. ‘Is she in there?’ Danforth nodded towards the closed door of the cell that had once housed Brody.

  ‘Aye, and still not speaking,’ said Pattison, grizzled face twisting into a frown. ‘Mad bitch. Logan will watch her close, see if her fat lips won’t open and reveal her crimes. Well, she shall have no trial if she does not speak up for it. We’re minded to hang her on market day. That should provide an entertainment, and warn off any thieves or mischief-makers what happens to their ilk.’

  ‘Then it’s pleased,’ said Martin, ‘that we shall not be here to bear witness to such a sorry spectacle.’

  ‘Oh, no nice demands for this one? No Sheriff’s Court, nor demands for a feather bed, or that we should give her a holiday until Christmas?’

  ‘No,’ said Martin without expression. ‘Hang her high. Do you require anything further of us?’

  ‘Nothing. Save that you leave off this matter now. I, by God’s own truth, shall be glad to see the back of you.’

  ‘That we shall do with pleasure.’

  ‘And you shall breath nothing of this abroad?’ asked Semple, in a small voice at odds with his frame. ‘I would not have the burgh under suspicion for the actions of a woman who is already dead in eyes of the law.’

  ‘Keep the peace here and you shall have nothing to fear. Only ... mind your backs around that woman. She is not as she seems, as we can attest.’

  With the briefest of nods their only concession to gratitude, Semple and Pattison walked them out of the Tolbooth, and joined Logan in screeching at the people to go their own ways. As Danforth and Martin took hold of their horses, one voice, reedy and full of malevolent glee, rose above the baillies. It was Grissell Clacher. ‘Those men!’ she screamed. ‘Those strangers, that Englishman, they know – they are art and part of what’s been troubling this town!’ The heads of multitude turned to them, and their own gabble died down.

  ‘Logan, bailies,’ shouted Martin, ‘you might think about bringing out your stocks, for here is an old wench who cannot govern her vicious tongue.’ Laughter erupted in the crowd and followed the pair as they led their horses away, over the Cart and through the Bridge Port. The sky had ceased its fretful tears, the river ceased its roar. The narrow, winding Cart had calmed to a steady, meandering tumble.

  When they reached the Abbey they found the gates closed and barred to them. Martin rattled them irritably, whilst a cold anger began to rise in Danforth. ‘You, porter,’ cried Martin, ‘open these gates and give us entry.’ The porter appeared from the turreted gatehouse and looked at them through the bars, a snarl on his narrow face.

  ‘You are the Cardinal’s men,’ he said.

  ‘As well you know. We have come before.’

  ‘The Prior will have no Cardinal’s men in his jurisdiction. He is not required to submit to any authority save his Holiness and the Abbot.’

  ‘Open this gate, you churl,’ said Danforth, his cadence deadly.

  ‘I shall open the gate gladly, gentlemen, if you sign yourselves in as guests, and no more.’

  ‘That we shall,’ offered Martin, ‘and never have we claimed to be anything other.’

  The porter duly unlocked and swung open the shrieking gates, and they entered. ‘Now you must sign the book.’ Danforth glowered at him.

  ‘Stable these horses.’

  ‘Sign the book. And surrender any weapons.’

  ‘You’re a weapon! Stable these horses at once, or you’ll eat the book.’ said Martin. The porter backed away, his eyes wide.

  ‘The Prior will hear of it. You shall answer to the Prior.’ But he led the horses off, only turning back to glare angrily at the Abbey’s guests when he was a safe distance away.

  ‘What was that all about?’ asked Martin.

  ‘That accursed Prior, damn the man, for all he is in holy orders. That, my friend, was a display of power, such as is felt necessary by all weak creatures. The Prior would have us see that we are here only by his permission, and warned that we not meddle. Well, I might show him yet. I might yet tell the Cardinal all about the fool’s softness for a young novice, about his readiness to let that monk become an apostate by making free with a townsman’s daughter, and then to bury evidence of the act. Yes, I might cause that man a scandal yet, such as may make his hoary head spin.’ He began stomping angrily along the path to the Abbot’s House.

  ‘Hold, Simon,’ called Martin. Moodily, Danforth turned. ‘Calm yourself. I understand your thirst for vengeance against the Prior. He’s a jealous, petty man. He’s just a town Provost in a cowl: governance will come before faith and trust. It’s the same the world over, and there’s no remedy for it save the poison poured by the Reformists, who want to replace what is with something worse, and to their own profit.

  ‘And there’s corruption here, sir, not really. Oh, some slackness, to be sure, and a Prior jealous of his Abbot’s jurisdictio
n and frightened of a scandal, but we don’t see monks fornicating in the cloister. We don’t see young boys and jades brought in to indulge the order’s lusts. No false relics are worshipped, no mechanical statues weep ducks’ blood or spring water from concealed pipes. What is here, Simon? One youthful monk with high principles in a fit of worry about his friend, and who wishes for harder measures. I doubt even Thomas Cromwell could find good reason to condemn such a place.

  ‘You have warned yourself of divisions within the Church, especially at a time when we are threatened from without. A scandal might weaken the faith, for all it might satisfy your dislike – your understandable dislike – of the man.’ He looked up at the Abbey church, towering above them to their left. Standing in stark relief against the grey sky, there was something austere, something magisterial about it. ‘Would you have a place that might have stood forever, despite its agonies, attacked for the man who governs it?’

  Danforth followed Martin’s gaze, then returned to him. For a while he said nothing, letting the words linger in the air. ‘When,’ he asked, ‘did you get so much wisdom?’ Martin smiled at him and shook his head. ‘But pray do not use my own words against me again. It makes me feel the fool that I almost made of myself. Still I would speak to the Prior on other matters.’

  ‘As would I.’

  They continued to the Abbot’s House, just as the deafening Abbey bells began tolling the monks’ dinner hour. His secretarial monk was not at his post, and so they took the stairs to his chambers without permission. Seated at his usual desk, his eyes closed in contemplation, the Prior did not start when he heard them enter. Nor did he register surprise at their entrance. The door to his bedchamber was again opened, the great bed a confusion of red sheets and curtains, but the room felt a little airier.

  ‘Gentlemen. I have expected you since the news broke this morning. I have had scribbled letters from the town’s baillies informing me of the hideous actions of your hostess, and her subsequent arrest.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Danforth, swallowing his dislike, ‘she is a wretched creature. It were lucky for us that she thought us the best sort before whom to perform her mummery, else she might have got clean away with murdering three people and putting a stranger in her husband’s grave.’

  A flicker of distaste crossed Walker’s face. ‘I have little interest in the matter save that it is closed, and nothing to do with this house. Indeed, I can scarcely see what it is you gentlemen have achieved. You lodged under the roof of a murderess, and yet she killed twice more – one of the Abbey’s servants, no less. Now another body lies unburied, and one, I believe, to be pulled from its mean and un-Christian habitation. I do not say you brought ill omens to Paisley, gentlemen, but your presence has saved no lives.’ He sat back, smiling at Danforth and Martin’s rising colour. ‘I trust that your standing here is as guests, and that it has been sufficiently impressed upon you? You have no power here to investigate anything that has passed.’

  ‘Yes, Father. We bore witness to your own mummery at the gate.’ Danforth’s voice had turned sad. Still the man was suspicious and fearful, lest men of his own faith conspire against him. ‘Yet I hope you see, Father, that had you been open and frank with us from the beginning, this affair might not have progressed as it did?’ Walker only stared impassively back in response. ‘Yet,’ Danforth went on, ‘as we are here as guests, we are minded to be treated as such. We might now be lodged in the guesthouse, for tomorrow we return to Glasgow.’

  Walker leaned back, his hands clasped, deliberating. ‘The sooner the better, I think. Yes, it might be so.’

  ‘And we shall hear Mass in the Pilgrim’s Chapel.’

  ‘All of our order are ordained priests. You might make your pilgrimage and be confessed there. Yet you signed at the gate?’ His eyes turned shrewd again. ‘You have declared yourselves guests, and admitted no judicial authority here?’

  ‘We signed nothing,’ said Martin. ‘Father, you will have to have faith.’ Walker’s bottom lip jutted. ‘There is one thing further, that might prove good faith on either side, if you will excuse the pun.’ His eyebrows rose in question. ‘The Abbot has lost the freeholder of part of his land in the Oakshawside, Tam Kennedy. You must now find him a new tenant to work the inn there and turn it to profit. There is a boy, a young man, Archie, as was a servant to the man now known to be dead. Might he have the inn, to run as his own business?’ Danforth turned to look at Martin, his eyes wide. A new respect bloomed. In the past week he had seen the very worst of man and his workings. Now, in some way, he felt he was seeing the best.

  ‘I do not know,’ said the Prior, the lines of his prominent brow deepening, ‘I shall have to ask the Abbot. If this boy was a bondsman of some kind ...’

  ‘He is an orphan, and a good ostler, familiar with the property. I am sure that the Abbot need not be troubled with such a trifling matter. You have the powers of Claustral Prior, Father, to discharge in the Abbot’s name.’

  ‘Has he the price of tenancy?’

  Sighing, Martin produced the money from his purse. He nudged Danforth, who did likewise, careful not to give the Prior too much. Together they passed across the cost of their lodgings at the inn, and more besides. ‘Also,’ said Martin, ‘there is a horse attached to the property, that might be sold as you – or the Abbot – think right.’

  ‘The beast is ours by right of herezeld. Yet this ...’ said Walker absently. He was gazing at the money, his lips moving silently as he totted it up.

  ‘We are men of credit and esteem,’ said Martin. ‘If more’s required, it may be raised against us. And it would be smoother, Father, that the inn continue as it is, though without its wicked mistress. There shall then be less scandal and no new tenant to ask questions. We,’ he said, his voice laden with suggestion, ‘should also be very grateful that the matter be closed, and our lips with it.’

  Walker drew a deep breath. ‘Very well, gentlemen. I can see little alternative. You have played your game well. Have you anything else?’

  ‘Have there been any letters for us?’ Walker smiled.

  ‘Yes. I see that temporal business does indeed carry weight with you.’ He picked a letter bearing the Cardinal’s seal from his desk and passed it to Danforth. It was unbroken. ‘It arrived this morning, with great secrecy and urgency, though I cannot say when it was dispatched. Things are in turmoil, with even the best riders struggling on some of the poorer roads. Though the frost may make your passage easier. You may go now. I have much to think upon.’

  ‘And yet you will send word to the baillies that young Archie is the new master of the inn in the High Street’s Oakshawside.’

  ‘Yes.’ The Prior’s voice was tight. ‘Though you have not provided enough for him to make a burgess.’

  ‘If the boy wishes to become a burgess, in time, he shall make his own money for the privilege. He has the means to do so and must prove he has the wit.’

  ‘Very well. That may be a matter for the Town Council. You shall find the guest-master in charge of the guesthouse. Brother James.’ Danforth and Martin resisted the urge to trade glances, lest they make trouble for the young man. ‘If he has finished his dinner. Good morrow to you, gentlemen.’

  They left the Abbot’s House, and Danforth looked past it, his heart and his mood soaring. The Pilgrim’s Chapel lay further down the path: a neat, pretty building where he might make a good confession. Martin caught his gaze and the smile that followed it. ‘You looking forward to making good this pilgrimage, sir?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘One day, I think, you might tell me what it is that weighs so heavily on your soul.’

  Danforth gave him a long stare, not unfriendly, and then sighed. ‘Mr Martin, it is a thing that I have carried with me for many years. It might be of little import to some men.’ Martin said nothing. ‘You know, Arnaud, that I was married and had a child in England. That I lost them?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I think I was not an easy man to love, alas.’ M
artin gave him a lingering, sideways glance. ‘But married we were. My wife, Alice, and my daughter Margaret. They were taken by the plague in September ’33. I blamed the troubles in England for it. The king had married his strumpet, cast aside Queen Katherine, and shown the world the path down which he wished to lead the realm. All was suspicion; all was hatred; everywhere there were spies. It was the last time the great plague swept the nation. It seemed that God had turned his rage on the kingdom.

  ‘Yet these past years, though I have hated Henry for his heresies, it has sat upon me that it was not the king’s sins that bore the guilt of Alice and Margaret dying, but my own. You see, we met in ’31, and were married the following year. Yet we could not wait. Well, you are a young man yet, you know the weakness and the temptation. We were ... intemperate. No ... no ... I was intemperate. We married in haste, because Alice was already growing heavy with our child. The poor thing was begotten in sin, and it was me that led Alice to it. Good woman,’ he said, wiping away an unbidden tear, ‘she would have waited, but I could not, and persuaded her by gentle means to give up her virtue, telling her that it was of no value, that we would marry anyway, that I had money and prospects enough to keep her. And so you see I was no better than King Henry, bedding the Boleyn before their wedding. She lost her head for her sins, and Alice and Margaret lost their lives. I have tried by all means to shrive myself of it, but until now I have felt it impossible. This pilgrimage, this visit to the last of my chosen kingdom’s holy places, I feel, will help me let those spirits lie. And now, for the first time, I feel that it may be so.’ He looked again towards the Pilgrim’s Chapel.

  Martin reached out and clasped Danforth’s shoulder. ‘Simon, you are a good man. Might I confess something?’ Danforth nodded, a little unsteadily. ‘To be honest, I only came on this trip to delight in causing you mischief, and to make sport of your piety.’