Fire & Faith

by Steven Veerapen

  ‘That depends on what you have to tell us.’

  ‘Bring forth your purse, friend, that I might know you better.’

  ‘And have it taken? No, Sir Andrew.’

  ‘Then you’re a fool. For I know all, Mr Englishman, all. And for your greed you will know nothing by me. I’m off.’

  He turned to leave, and Danforth moved quickly, stepping across the room and grasping at the back of the stained and faded coat. In a lightning movement, Boyle turned, his arm poised to strike; but Martin had moved too, leaping around boxes, and he brought down a fist on stocky man’s head.

  ‘Bastard!’ shouted Boyle, ‘You damned whoremongering dog!’ His thick, hairy fist had disappeared into the folds of his coat, the fingers grasping for a blade. ‘You’ll die for that!’

  ‘Enough!’ roared Sharp, making them all pause. ‘Not in my tavern, he won’t. Out, all of you – go from my place, else I’ll have the law on you myself, should I not make the law myself.’ Sharp ducked below his bar and reappeared with a long wooden curling broom, of the type Stirling men played on the town burn and on the Forth when they froze. ‘Out!’

  Boyle seized the moment of surprise, half-falling out the tavern in his flight. Martin jumped after him, Danforth following. He stopped outside the door to catch his breath. He was too old for bar brawling. He doubted he had ever been young enough for it. ‘He has flown,’ said Martin, turning his head left and right.

  ‘He knows this part of the burgh,’ said Danforth when his breathing had resumed its normal pace. ‘We shall not have him easily.’ He turned left and looked over the stable door. Woebegone was still there, unharmed.

  ‘Yet he said he “knows all”,’ said Martin, wiping his forehead in annoyance.

  ‘He also said his name was Sir Andrew Boyle, and that he held lands in Argyll. The man is a liar and a coney-catcher, out only to catch fools and relieve them of their money. We might know more than he does.’

  ‘Still, I should have liked to have wrung something out of him.’

  ‘With luck and the rule of law, the hangman might one day wring the life out of him.’

  Martin fell silent for a moment. ‘That were a hard punishment.’

  ‘It is the law for such as he. And this realm needs laws, for it has as many brutal men as England, though less people dwell here in total.’

  ‘You are strange, Simon.’

  ‘How is that?’

  ‘For a man who detests lawyers, as I recall you once claiming to, you are a stout man in defence of the law.’

  ‘There is a difference,’ said Danforth, ‘between loving the rule of law and disliking the pettifoggers and caterpillars who practice it.’ In London the Inns of Court had churned out innumerable lawyers and encouraged many more young students to waste their time in idle jesting and whoring in the nearby stews; many of them did not even pass the bar. Yet the English breeding of lawyers had led to the fellows encouraging disputes amongst neighbours, until it was customary for every man to be legally at odds with another more than once in his lifetime. By the time Danforth had left the city, it had seemed like no Londoner could blow his nose without another suing him for the cold he had caught. ‘The law, when properly handled, keeps the society of men in order. Too much of it and there is great tumult and disorder; too little of it and there is the same.’

  Danforth’s speech was interrupted by a shrill voice. ‘This yours, jock?’ He turned to the stable, where the filthy young ostler had appeared, and was looking sidelong at Woebegone. There would be no feeding or brushing of the lodgers here, thought Danforth. The horses would be lucky not to have their shoes stolen.

  ‘It is my horse, yes. You, young sir, were nowhere to be seen.’

  ‘I don’t live in the stable, man.’

  ‘Indeed – it is too good for you,’ sniffed Danforth. ‘Tell me, do you know a fellow that calls himself Andrew Boyle?’

  ‘What’s it worth, sir?’

  ‘It is worth your ear remaining attached to your head,’ said Martin.

  ‘Then no.’

  ‘And what shall this bring?’ asked Danforth, producing a penny. The boy eyed it greedily, then shrugged.

  ‘Hard to say from here, sir.’ Danforth passed it to him. He bit it, though it was plain he did not know why, and then dropped it into his filthy, unlaced shirt. ‘Might’ve seen him, sir. Sure I have, in fact.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘Don’t know. Can’t say.’

  ‘Then we have no further business. Be gone.’ The boy turned away and walked barefoot through the ordure, to a little door that led out the back of the stable, into some enclosed vennel behind the tavern.

  ‘You should not have given him anything,’ said Martin.

  ‘You surprise me, Arnaud. You say you recall my dislike of lawyers. That is fair. I recall your Christian charity towards the unfortunate.’ Danforth was a little disappointed. Formerly – in fact, during the bulk of his life in Scotland – he had turned his face from people, even from suffering, because he had believed his own struggles to be of greater consequence than other men’s. Martin had aided him in turning back towards the world, in part through his good nature and charity. ‘Have you turned miser?’

  ‘Tres drôle, sir. No, but I can see a deserving case from an undeserving one. That young fellow will not spend money wisely, nor accept charity with gratitude.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Danforth, unsure what else to say. Still he was a little disappointed. People were contradictory creatures, never constant in opinion or attitude towards anything. As if answering his thoughts about the stews of London, the door at the top of the stairs beside them opened. Danforth tensed, expecting Sir Andrew Boyle to poke out his head.

  Instead, a young girl emerged, a bucket clasped in pale hands. She was dressed in a cheap gown, low-cut to reveal an underdeveloped bosom. Her hair was pale, the washed-out colour of dry straw. She took the stairs carefully, trying to keep an eye on the contents of bucket with each step. She looked at them when she reached the bottom, and Martin swept off his cap. Despite the air of poverty and desperation that hung about her, she might have been pretty. She was, thought Danforth, glumly, exactly the type of sorry little waif that Martin would try to adopt.

  When she reached the bottom, she went to the middle of the street, held the bucket out from her and upended it. Immediately she stepped back lest she get splashed. With horror, Danforth realised that it had held thin vomit. The stink rose in a noxious wave. There was no sewer channel; the foul contents sat bubbling on top of the cold mud. The girl looked down again at the bucket, thinking, and then cast it aside by the stairs. She moved to go back up them, looking over her shoulder at Martin and Danforth.

  ‘Good morrow to you, gentleman.’ Her voice was high and piping. She could not have been older than sixteen.

  ‘Good morrow,’ said Martin, replacing his cap. ‘I do not much like your business.’ She looked at him, confusion plain on her face, and then again at the bucket, lying dejected on its side.

  ‘Oh, you mean getting rid of the puke.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  She shrugged. ‘It needs must be done. Can’t have it stinking out the place. It’s stronger even than the scent the mistress pours about.’

  ‘You are employed above? You tend to the place, keep it clean?’

  ‘Don’t be daft. I’m a whore.’ Danforth was horrified, by her revelation and the calm way in which she delivered it. ‘No shame in it,’ she said, spotting the look on his face. Her neat little features twisted into a scowl. ‘Better than dying on the street.’

  ‘I think not,’ Danforth muttered, turning his back on her. He had seen prostitutes before. They haunted the streets of Edinburgh, trying to tempt men into sin. In London, there were entire districts dedicated to the maintenance of their trade, where it was said even members of parliament and the high-ranking gentlemen of the clergy spent their wealth. As with everything sinful and dangerous, London had found a way to make a thriving trade of
it. He knew that some women drawn or dragged into the way of life were corrupted young, for some men were themselves twisted enough in the mind to wish for fresh flesh. He preferred to ignore the practice, to pretend it did not exist. It was an uncomfortable reminder of just how fallible man was. And here was this girl voicing not shame and repentance, but a kind of misguided, truculent pride.

  ‘Is it true? You are … you are used by the men of the burgh?’ Martin’s voice was strangulated.

  ‘It’s so. I’m safe up there.’

  ‘Yet you cannot … you cannot enjoy such work? There are places you might go, where you might find aid, charity.’

  The girl sighed wearily. ‘If you think to save me, sir, think on. I know all about such places, and some of them no better than where I’m at now. If you wish to use me, then you’ve to go above.’

  The conversation was too much for Danforth, and he began moving back to the stable to loose Woebegone from his moorings. Still Martin was talking. ‘Stay, girl, what’s your name?’

  ‘Louisa, sir.’ A look came into the girl’s face not unlike a horse trader sensing an easy mark.

  ‘Louisa. It is a pretty name.’

  ‘Thank you. It was my mother’s.’

  ‘She is … above?’

  ‘God’s feet, no, sir. Well, she is somewhere above, I hope. She died having me, or so I was told. Then my father followed her, and I fetched up here. Where I’m safe. Where I’m alive.’

  ‘Tell me, Louisa, do you know a Mr McKenzie?’

  ‘Doctor McKenzie?’

  ‘If you like.’ Behind him, Martin heard Danforth whistle an irritated hiss through his teeth. ‘Ignore my friend; he is of a delicate nature. In what manner did you come by your knowledge of this gentleman?’ The girl, Louisa, cast a surreptitious glance upwards.

  ‘I don’t know that I’m meant to say, sir.’

  ‘Please. For me.’ Martin smiled, a flash of white against dark stubble. ‘You shall get in no trouble from your …’ He trailed off. He had come perilously close to saying ‘owners’. Warming to him – or pretending to – Louisa, answered, keeping her voice low.

  ‘The man is abed upstairs.’

  ‘Is that so? Louisa … would you take me upstairs, into your rooms?’ Excitement lit his face, whilst disgust coloured Danforth’s. The stew was forbidden; a devil’s playground; a great, heathenish house of sin set within sinister, secretive walls like a coy, enchanting woman hidden behind a mask. Martin wanted very much to see what lay within it. McKenzie was almost an afterthought.

  ‘If you like, sir,’ she sighed. Evidently she had heard such speech before: the pretence of hoping to help; the feigning of Christian charity; the ultimate request to share a bed. The friendly smile she had favoured him with disappeared, the blank, destitute mask which she habitually wore falling once more over her features. ‘Come upstairs. You pay first.’

  Danforth had re-emerged from the stables, Woebegone’s rein in his hand. ‘What is this, what is happening?’ he shrieked. Martin was skipping up the stone steps to the stew, the young whore ahead of him, swinging her hips.

  He spluttered and reddened to no avail. The door of the stew closed on Martin’s back, his friend swallowed up by the brothel.

  10

  Within the stew, Martin found a short hallway stretching to the back of the building. The whole place stank of sickly scent, like boiled roses, oversweet and choking. The place was lit by wall sconces, which cast cheerful light on walls painted in garish scenes. Grotesque, naked fawns pranced through sylvan woodlands, whilst naked women protected their modesty with their arms. Here and there scraps of paper were pinned to the walls, each illustrating further crass images of humans entwined in each other’s arms.

  The first doorway lay on the left, opening into a hall. This was not, however, a cheerful family reception room, but the payment area. Before Martin could reach it, the doorway suddenly filled with an enormous woman in a red dress faded to pink, her large bosom heaving. Her hair was thinning, the flickering lights illuminating patches of scalp; yet it was laced through with ribbons, elaborate curls sticking out in all directions. With one large hand, she gripped the doorframe.

  ‘What kept you,’ she barked, seeing Louisa first. Then, catching sight of Martin, ‘oh, but you caught a rabbit. Welcome, sir, welcome. A young gentleman, too.’ Lascivious eyes appraised him. ‘The girl is yours, lad. But in this house you pay first.’

  ‘Very well, um …’

  ‘Mistress Sneddon. Hereafter you might call me Marjorie. After you have paid.’ The woman swivelled her bulk on the spot, releasing a cloud of sweetness mingled with stale body odour. He followed her into the room. The reception room was like a crude pastiche of the Furay hall, or the great hall at Martin’s mothers. Instead of sedate wood panelling and whitewash, the walls were painted again in various bright colours, the idea presumably being to excite the passions. Candles were everywhere – in candelabra, in single sticks, in a cheap, imitation chandelier.

  On a small three-legged stool sat a scrawny older man, a wooden board across his knees forming an improvised table. Beside him sat a strongbox. ‘What’s this, Marge? Custom?’

  ‘Yes indeed.’

  ‘Welcome, son,’ leered the man. ‘I’m McGuire, owner of The Old Nag.’

  ‘The Old Nag?’ asked Martin, his eyes flitting to Marjorie Sneddon.’

  ‘This house.’ McGuire caught the line of his sight and smiled, revealing thin, yellowed teeth, gaps between each of them. ‘Though I don’t blame you for asking.’ He laughed, wheezing and racking. ‘Which are you after? In this house, you pay first.’

  ‘So I told him, James,’ said Sneddon. ‘I know our affairs as well as you.’

  ‘Hold your clack, woman. This is my house. You’ve grown large, but not too large for my rule.’ Marjorie Sneddon closed her mouth, her thick lips whitening and her jowls quivering. ‘You pay me, boy, and then you might do as you want. Which girl has taken your fancy?’

  ‘Louisa,’ said Martin, fumbling for coins and passing them over. McGuire held out an open palm, the pads calloused and rough. He closed it on the coins.

  ‘A fine choice, that. The little wench has not yet lost her blush, not like some.’ Again, he cast a sideways glance at Sneddon. Martin wondered at the nature of their relationship. Perhaps they were lovers or had been. Perhaps they were married. It was a strange thing to have turned to such a business, and for it to have been allowed to pass unmolested by the burgh officials. What a conversation they must have had in the founding of it. ‘This shall buy you,’ McGuire went on, ‘only an afternoon’s entertainment. You may not lodge the night on it.’

  ‘I have no wish to lodge the night.’

  ‘Just so we’re clear, son. Have at it.’

  Dismissed, Martin turned and left the hall. Neither Sneddon nor McGuire made any effort to follow, and so he pulled the door closed behind him. In the passage Louisa had waited, her expression blank, albeit coloured by a little weariness.

  ‘You’ve paid?’ she asked him.

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Well, come forth, then, and do as you wish.’

  He followed her further down the hall, past two closed doors, until she stopped at a third. Although the house was narrow, it must have been deep, extending further back even than the tavern next door. ‘Well, this is the chamber I use.’ She pushed open the door and stood back, letting him go first.

  ‘Jesu, what a low place.’ The tiny room was empty save a wide cot with a stuffed sackcloth and a board set on thin blocks of wood serving as a rickety table. On that was a water basin. The walls had been whitewashed, and at some point in their history plastered over; now they were chipped and stained. A tiny window, wooden-shuttered, lay beyond the bed, a single candle burning on the sill. The place had succeeded in being both mean and gloomy.

  ‘It is better than nothing, especially in the winter.’

  ‘Better a cold body than a cold soul,’ whispered Martin.

  ‘What w
as that, sir?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Each girl has a room according to her station. I am but young.’

  ‘Very pretty.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘The order of the place.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yet you also. Pray listen, Louisa. I have no wish to use you immoderately.’

  ‘But you have paid, sir. You may do as you desire.’

  ‘My desire is to know a little more of you.’

  ‘And so you may,’ she sighed, crossing to the bed.

  ‘No; I mean of your mind. Tell me, would you not like to leave this place?’

  ‘Leave? Why the hell should I leave? Where should I go? All the world’s the same.’

  ‘The world can be a hard place, cruel and uncaring, I’ll give you that. Yet it is wide, wider than that great ox Sneddon who sits back there.’ She gave him a wan smile. It was not quite big or as warm as he had hoped for. Generally, he found that making cutting and astute comments about people drew laughter from others, and that was a pleasant thing to get, even if doing it was questionable. ‘Is there nothing in this world you should like to see?’

  ‘See, sir?’ Her little brow wrinkled in concentration. Martin could see that the afternoon was not going how she expected it. Probably men who visited her never asked her anything much about herself, nor would she have ever been inclined to engage them in private conversation. ‘I think,’ she said at length, ‘that perhaps I should like to see the sea. The great ocean.’

  ‘Would you, Louisa?’

  ‘Yes. I would that. Not to be adrift on it on some boat, but to see and to smell it. It’s said to be a good sight, like the Forth, but with no other side to it, no end beyond. It just goes on.’

  ‘The sea is a great thing indeed.’

  ‘You’ve seen it?’ Interest flickered in her eyes.

  ‘Indeed; I am in the employ of Cardinal Beaton. I was with his Grace in France the summer last.’ Odd that he wanted to impress her. ‘Is that your hope, Louisa, to go abroad?’

  She shook her head, the straw hair shaking. ‘No, I wouldn’t like to be all adrift, as I said, sir. But I should like to live out of a burgh, out of the stink and the toil, and to live alone by the great sea, where no one talks to me or asks anything of me.’