Fire & Faith

by Steven Veerapen

  ‘My father,’ said Rowan, shifting in her seat. ‘My dear old da’.’ She gestured to a table in shadow further into the tavern, where a skeletal old man sat hunched, his cap pulled low over his face.

  ‘Pray bring him over,’ said Martin. ‘It’s no joy drinking alone.’

  ‘He’s proud. Doesn’t like to be seen such a shadow of himself. But he was a fine, strong scholar in his day. Old men’s wisdom,’ she smiled. ‘But returning to the case: I think your friend is best left alone. It’s sad to see a well-favoured young man pine after a woman who belongs to another. And I reckon it’ll tear at your heart.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Martin, gritting his teeth. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Very well. But if you should take a woman’s advice, I’d say find someone new.’

  It was Martin’s turn to fidget. He gave her an awkward smile. Though she was pretty, there was something disconcerting about her forthright manner, the glinting black eyes and the thick dark hair just about tamed by her bonnet. ‘Mistress Allen, you are a …’ he paused. ‘Fair’ didn’t fit. ‘You’re a remarkably beautiful woman.’ He slicked a stray strand of her behind his ear. ‘And I think you should make an excellent match for –’

  ‘Oh, ho – becalm yourself there, my young friend. I’m not looking to turn the heads of schoolboys.’

  ‘I am no schoolboy,’ said Martin, raising his chin. ‘And if you’d let me finish, I was going to say that you should make an excellent match for someone else.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Aye, with your old man’s wisdom and that. But never mind.’ He sighed, replaced his hands on the table and resuming his tapping. He had wasted time enough. He had promised Danforth that he would get some work done in the town. ‘Mistress Allen, you live in the town, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. It was difficult to sustain her gaze. There was something intent and mocking in it. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Do you know anything of James Hamilton of Finnart? He was executed by the king some years back. Keeper of the palace up yonder.’

  ‘Aye, I know who he was,’ she said, her voice soft. ‘A much-hated man in the town, much-loved up there. He was discovered making some plot to try and shoot the king through a window in the palace. The Douglases were his fellow plotters in it. I don’t know – that was the talk of the town when he lost his head, anyway.’

  ‘Why was he hated? Who hated him?’

  ‘Who? Anyone who opposed the Hamilton clan. Anyone who he and … well, who he persecuted for heresy. The bastard of Hamilton they called him. Still do, I suppose.’ Martin sensed the good humour fleeing. A little barrier had appeared between them. It had been Cardinal Beaton who had been Finnart’s ally in condemning heretics, albeit the cardinal had had the good sense to abandon his old friend when it became clear the king wished to be rid of him.

  ‘I understand that. Men of politics make lots of enemies.’

  ‘Aye, this is the truth. Well, nothing to do with me. One piece of advice my da’ gave me: stick to learning and selling. Let the great men of the realm fight amongst themselves. And try and avoid the lightning strikes that sometimes fall upon the rest of us.’

  Martin smiled. It was good advice. ‘Do you know anything of Finnart’s ghost appearing before the king?’

  ‘Ha!’ she exclaimed. ‘Aye, the old tales of the king haunted by the bastard.’

  ‘What do you make of them?’

  She shrugged. ‘Nothing. Tales are tales. Like Greek stories.’

  ‘Old men’s wisdom,’ smiled Martin. She returned it.

  ‘If you want ghosts you’ve got enough of them up at the palace,’ she said. ‘Without needing the bastard of Hamilton to haunt your dreams.’

  ‘Aye right – what ghosts?’ asked Martin, his smile fading.

  ‘Heaps of them, stacks. My da’ used to tell me of the ghost of St Andrew, who appeared in St Michael’s to warn James IV against going to Flodden. That’s a favourite one in the town. The palace too.’

  ‘Go on.’ Martin recalled Queen Marie mentioning the tale. He wanted to hear it for himself.

  She leant forward, a smile playing over her lips. ‘Let me see. It was a foul night, the winds whipping and the rain lashing. England and France were at war, and James IV was won to France’s aid by the pleas of the fair Queen of France. “Help us,” said she, “help us, our ancient ally.” And King James, being a chivalric sort of soul, raised an army, to make haste to France’s aid by invading the old enemy.’ She paused, as though for effect. Martin nodded her to go on. She had a lilting way of storytelling. ‘King James prayed for his army, for his kingdom, for France, in that great church up by the palace. As he made to leave, out stepped a vision, right into his path. A strange apparition, all clad in blue, its face hidden. “I am St Andrew”, it said.’ Her voiced deepened. “I am St Andrew, and I come with a warning. Make not for England. Proceed no further. If you do, you will be unfortunate, and will not prosper, nor any of your followers.” And then he pulled back his hood.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And revealed the face of a withered old man, hundreds of years old.’

  Martin shivered. The palace, designed for pleasure, was fast becoming a place of secrets and hauntings. He thought of the hammock he’d slumbered in. What might be up and walking the halls and corridors whilst he slept?

  As he picked at a stain on the table, a fat man barged past it, jogging it and sending Rowan lurching forward. ‘Ho!’ she cried. ‘Watch yourself!’ The man turned, peering down and scowling at her from a pink-flecked face.

  ‘You watch who you’re talking to, ya black bitch.’

  Martin was on his feet instantly. ‘How dare you speak to her like that, you fat-guts? You think you can –’

  ‘Who the hell are you, you daft loon, I’ll knock you –’

  ‘Enough,’ said Rowan, her voice measured but her eyes flashing. ‘Thank you, Mr Martin. I can speak for myself.’

  ‘Saved by a lass. The moor-lass,’ chuckled the fat man, staggering away from them and out of the tavern.

  ‘I should have struck that fat beast across the head,’ said Martin, teeth bared. ‘I won’t have a woman spoken to like that.’

  ‘Very noble, my friend,’ drawled Rowan. Then her voiced turned friendlier. ‘Thank you. I’m used to it. We’re all black bitches in Linlithgow. It’s another old tale, of a condemned man left to starve on an island in the loch. His wife trained their dog to carry food out to him, and since then it’s become the burgh’s great symbol: the black bitch.’ An edge returned to her voice as she looked down at her sallow hands. ‘When they speak of me, though … there is some venom added to it.’ She looked up at him again and smiled. ‘As I said. Used to it. Moor. Gypsy. Changeling.’

  ‘But … that’s cruel,’ he said lamely.

  ‘Ha. I suppose. I used to walk out in the fields to escape it as a child. It’s how I came to understand flowers so well. They can’t speak or curse. So I’d wander amongst the rowans and my da’ would teach me what nature can do.'

  ‘Your name,’ said Martin. ‘Rowan. It’s pretty. But … why?’

  She rocked back on her stool and laughed, light and tinkling. ‘Rowan. Aye. My da’ over there, he and my ma’ found me as a child under a rowan tree.’

  ‘You were a foundling?’

  ‘Aye,’ she shrugged, ‘no shame in it. It might have been worse. I might have been called “Park” or “Abbey” if I’d been dropped near Holyrood.’

  ‘So, your parents …’

  ‘My da’ is over there.’ Martin looked again, but the old man was still hunched. He had not noticed the little affray. ‘The folk who bore me … well …’ Again, she looked down at her hands, stark against the blue of her cuffs. ‘You know the old king, the fourth King James, he kept Moorish women back in the day. Musicians, mainly. Black Ellen, Black Margaret. Made much of. Perhaps I was descended from one of them, a granddaughter or something, from the wrong side of the sheets. Moorish blood and Scottish blood mixed, un
til I’m … me, I suppose. The Scots do love foreigners. Unless they are mixed breeds.’

  ‘Or English,’ smiled Martin.

  ‘Aye, or that,’ she said, returning it.

  There was something pathetic in her revelation, something sad. Martin wondered at the life she must have had. Mocked, he supposed, slandered. Different. A sudden urge came over him to pat her head, to tell her that she might escape a town in which she was an especial ‘black bitch’. However, he sensed she wasn’t the type to endure sympathy. ‘That was good, then, of the old man and his wife to take you,’ he said.

  ‘Good people,’ she said, drawing her cheeks in. ‘And as they brought me up in the world, so I look after him now my ma’s with the angels. The lot of an unmarried woman, eh?’

  ‘You never married?’

  ‘Me? No. Whom should I wish to marry? All the lads in this town are blind fools. Wouldn’t know a book from bonfire.’ Martin grinned again. He noticed she didn’t say ‘whom should wish to marry me’. He liked that. Danforth might not, though. ‘And I think my da’ has probably done with his ale.’ Martin chanced a look over at the old man, who seemed to be sleeping. A serving girl obscured his view, and he gave her a smile. ‘He doesn’t keep well,’ Rowan was saying, ‘and if he goes, I shall leave this burgh, I hope.’

  ‘Not well? You don’t trust him to apothecaries and physicians, do you?’

  ‘Not if I can help it. Too expensive, sure. I treat him myself. I’m skilled enough in it. Old man’s wisdom.’ She smiled, tapped her nose, and stood. ‘You take care, Mr Martin.’

  ‘Please, call me Arnaud.’

  ‘You take care then. No more stalking women. Put one foot in front of the other and never look back.’

  10

  ‘Signor Bassano,’ said Danforth raising both hands. ‘Signor Bassano, please.’ The Italian minstrels were gathered in the library, huddled and speaking over him in their own language. ‘Mistress Beauterne can you now make yourself useful and make them understand?’

  The Italians had come en masse. Their presence almost seemed to bother the quiet little room, their agitated movements making the specks of dust in the air dance and whirl wildly in the late-morning light.

  ‘Per favore silenzio,’ said Diane, her voice airy. Danforth noticed with distaste that one of the younger musicians appraised her with a leer, which she seemed not to notice. ‘Ahh ... questo uomo divertente vuole parlarti.’ She turned to him and winked. ‘Et voila,’ she said whispered.

  ‘Good. Good morrow, gentlemen,’ said Danforth. He stood behind the desk, hoping it lent him an air of authority. He paused to see if Diane would translate. When she didn’t, he went on. ‘I have brought you here because you are strangers in this land and in this place.’ He nodded at Diane, who shot him a sour look before speaking softly in Italian. A few of the men frowned at him; some turned to one another, mouthing silent words. ‘As you might know, there has been death in this palace. Unnatural death,’ he qualified.

  He waited whilst Diane translated. ‘I fear I must ask if you have any knowledge of it.’ At this, an angry gabble of conversation broke out and he thumped a fist on the death. ‘Silenzio,’ he tried. They quietened, but he sensed a shift in the atmosphere. Already he had turned them against him. Well, he thought, no matter. He had a job to do. ‘I must now ask if you have carried into this realm any knowledge of poisons.’

  A few of the men began muttering, ‘lui dice’; ‘veleno? Veleno!’ Diane looked at him, her mouth gaping. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Tell them to go into one of their ill-mannered clannish clusters and give us an answer.’

  Something crossed Diane’s face – a look between disappointment and disgust. Danforth felt a stab of regret, and instantly damped it down. ‘I cannot say this,’ she said. ‘I … will be more …’ She left it there, turning against to the assembled musicians. ‘Non si offenda. Lui è Inglese.’ A few of the men chortled and Danforth allowed Diane to speak rapidly back-and-forth. Then one of the younger ones spoke up.

  ‘I … Stephano,’ he said. ‘Son to Bassano. We need know – do you arrest us? My father in service long time. Never complaints before.’ There was a hard edge of challenge in his accented voice and his eyes locked on Danforth. His show of confidence brought another welter of excited conversation to his fellows, Diane again waving her hands as though trying to put out a fire. Eventually, she reduced them to black looks and whispered curses.

  ‘They want to know can they go?’ she said. ‘And are you to hurt them?’ She hesitated a moment before adding, ‘they … have heard that King Henry killed his late wife’s music man. And one of his other wife’s music men. They think you are come from England seeking the blood of musicians. To hurt them.’

  ‘Hurt?’ said Danforth. His throat had dried, and he licked his lips. ‘No, I … what did they say?’

  ‘Uh … they say they hurt no man. They are good servants of the dowager and have her protection. They … are not happy to be spoken to so, because of their birth.’

  Danforth felt very small.

  ‘Let them go. Apologise to them.’

  He sat down whilst Diane held the door for the men, who left on a wave of Italian curses. When they had gone, he said, ‘I need no Italian to understand what all of that meant.’ He rubbed his cheeks before letting his forehead rest on his hand.

  ‘You were very hard, sir, I think. It was not a good thing to do, to accuse so.’

  ‘Mistress, I am not in the habit of handling foreigners.’

  ‘Eh?’ She stood before the desk, one hand on her hip. ‘Are you not? Yet you are an Englishman living in Scotland.’

  Danforth looked up sharply. ‘That is different.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I am … they are …’

  ‘You English,’ she said, ‘think every man a foreigner except yourselves. As though you are the only race in the world.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Danforth, feeling his hackles rise. Trust a Frenchwoman to think ill of a man bred in England. What more could be expected from that pampered race but thrice-stewed bile over Agincourt? ‘I need no lessons from a French girl, thank you.’

  ‘Ohhh,’ she said, her hands grasping at the folds of her skirt. ‘You see. It is as I say. You might have better answers from those gentlemen with a little subtilité. Ugh, c’est inutile de discuter.’

  ‘Subtlety,’ said Danforth, grasping at the word. ‘Italians only know of subtlety in the skill of poisoning.’

  ‘Oh, is it so? And so you accuse the Holy Father of poisoning, oui?’

  ‘What? I did no such … the Pope is … Oh, you are a tiring woman.’ Danforth wanted her gone. She had become a female Martin, questioning and mocking, but doubly exhausting by dint of her femininity. It made it impossible for him to mock her back without looking boorish.

  ‘What is this of poisoning? Why do you ask them this?’

  ‘That, I think, is my business.’ He gave her a tight smile, which quickly faded. ‘Yet … for safety’s sake … you might tell the dowager to beware of what she eats in this place.’

  ‘There is some danger them, of poison?’

  ‘I did not say that. I said for safety’s sake.’

  ‘But I,’ began Diane, her forehead wrinkling. ‘Her Grace greatly fears poisons. It will trouble her.’

  ‘But her food is already tasted.’

  ‘Oui, mais … even so. You have heard of Queen Margaret, Margaret of Denmark?’

  ‘Wife to King James III,’ said Danforth. He knew his adopted country’s history as well as any French girl. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well then you know that she was poisoned by her husband.’

  ‘I know nothing of the sort.’ Danforth instinctively looked past her, and then around the room. He was greeted only with the bare shelves and curved ceiling. Still he had a very English suspicion of speaking ill of kings, even dead ones. ‘Her death was by God’s hand alone.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ shrugged Diane. ‘Yet the rumours have lasted.’<
br />
  ‘Rumours have louder voices than truths.’

  Again, she shrugged. ‘Still, her Grace has always feared poison since coming into this realm. If one queen might have been done to death,’ she mimed eating, ‘then so might any other.’

  Danforth considered this, and something unpleasant took shape in his mind. Fraser’s death was not by the blade – that was for effect – but by poisoning. If Margaret of Denmark had been murdered by poison and by another Stewart king … then it was almost as if the victims of the Jameses were reaching out from their graves, bent on revenge.

  ‘So I do not see how I might speak to her Grace without causing her some alarm,’ said Diane, breaking up his thoughts.

  ‘Perhaps you might think of some subtle way. Thank you,’ he said, pressing as much sarcasm as he could into the words, ‘for your aid, mistress. You may go.’ Roughly, he slid the hoary books he had located for her across the desk. She took them, not bothering to look down. Then, matching his sarcasm, she curtsied deeply, a whirl of orchid.

  She turned to go, paused, made to move again, and then turned. ‘Monsieur – Mr Danforth?’ she said.

  He looked up at her, waiting.

  ‘I don’t expect much from people in this world,’ she went on. ‘No. Not at all. Yet I do expect people to behave with courtesy – bonnes manières. There is never need for hate. Leave hate to those few like the man who hurt your friend. Let us, the rest of us, all be kind. It makes my heart to grieve – it makes me sorrowful – whenever I see a man behave as you did to those poor folks. It reminds me that there is bad feeling in the world, when there should be only love amongst all men. And women. In all our hearts.’

  With that, she gave a little embarrassed nod and drifted from the room.

  ***

  The sun was high when Danforth took the turnpike stairs down to the courtyard. Water was burbling from the fountain, the colours of the monument reflecting in a shower of sparkles. Martin was already there, kicking an inflated bladder around with Mathieu, the page boy. The yellow and red of his outsize tabard flailed. ‘It is no more time for games,’ said Danforth. ‘And you, young man, have you not better things to do?’ Service, he thought, wasn’t what it used to be.