Fire & Faith

by Steven Veerapen

  ‘We should have questioned every man in the place when we first came here,’ said Martin, interrupting his thoughts. ‘We’ve played our hand wrong.’

  ‘Pfft. The two of us? Taking in a hundred different stories, each with arms and legs attached? Forgive me,’ he said, as Martin’s face whitened. ‘I did not mean that as a jest.’ He could feel Fraser’s ghost frowning. The man must now be sealed in his coffin, the flesh receding and puckering, mottling. Perhaps the journey to Edinburgh Gibb had mentioned had sped up the process, as the body was jounced about over rutted, half-frozen roads.

  ‘So we now know how it was done, but not why it was done. Nor who did it. And one thing confuses me.’

  ‘One thing?’

  ‘Aye. Why this?’ He raised his arm, wincing. ‘Why me?’

  ‘I cannot say. You and Mr Fraser, both victims.’

  ‘It is some attack then on the cardinal?’

  ‘Don’t be foolish. If the cardinal’s enemies wished him ill, they would have no better time to do so than in his prison.’

  Martin shrugged. ‘Another thing. Why show himself now? When we came he might have hidden. We would’ve thought he’d fled into the night. Some enemy of Fraser’s, that’s all. Why come out in the open by attacking me and Simms?’

  Danforth looked around again. There was no one to hear them, no one to shoot from the dark. Still, it felt that they were being watched. It was a constant feeling, the product of living in close quarters with a gaggle of unknowns. He thought before answering, shifting possibilities. There were few. ‘It might be two ways. Perhaps we are closer than we realise, and he had to chance silencing us.’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Or perhaps his mission, whatever it is, is not yet complete. And so he presses on, thinking us irrelevant.’

  ‘Bastard. So we are nowhere. No matter what scraps of knowledge we gather, the devil hides his face.’

  ‘No. But … have you ever seen a master painter at work, Arnaud?’ Martin gave him a blank look. ‘At first his work resembles nothing. Mere lines, splashes of colour. You have no notion what he is about. But the more lines, the more colours, are added, the more his subject becomes clear.

  ‘Thus far we have the clothing. We have the weapon. We just need to find the man who wore one and wielded the other.’

  18

  Danforth set off for the lazar house early in the morning, leaving Martin snoring. A resolve had burned its way into him, a desire to find out more, to assemble enough pots of paint that he might make a clear picture. He checked the crate he had pushed against the door before sleeping. It was undisturbed.

  He picked his way through the crowd of servants who rose early: maids to stoke up fires, grooms carrying bales of hay. He avoided contact with all of them, although they did bring a thought: of what rank might their murderer be? Could it be some unnamed domestic servant, one of those fresh-faced grooms, or a singing pot-boy? Ghosts were said to move about unseen when it suited them, but so too might lower servants, pressing themselves against walls when more important men and women chanced to appear in the same hall or room. If it were some servant, then the nebulous and taunting question of motive remained. So too did the disturbing idea that a chamber maid might at any time hide a dagger in his hammock, to pierce him as he slept, or a pot-boy might sprinkle ground glass on his trencher. Hitherto he would have cared nothing for danger, but when Martin had been shot at, something had come into his mind very clearly: he wanted to live – and to live with purpose. No, he decided. If it were a servant, he or she must have been guided. The lower orders, he assumed, were in language no less than barbarous and in wit no more than stupid. Had it been a servant, they would have left bloody footprints right to their bed. He clung to the thought like a blanket. There was some greater mind at work here. There had to be.

  The sky above was a rich pink. He had always heard that that brought ill luck, and he crossed himself to banish it. There was something bracing about the chill morning. It was, he reasoned, the perfect time to visit a sick house. The air was fresh enough to blast away any evil vapours. It was the afternoon, when the sun was at its highest, that infection bred in the winds.

  The burgh, when he reached it, was stirring too, the bakehouse already wafting sweet scents out and the other merchants setting up their displays. He caught the attention of a dull-eyed young woman carrying a basket and asked her where the lazar house was.

  ‘Why do you want to go there?’ She drew away from him as he spoke, as though he were diseased.

  ‘My brother works there,’ he invented. ‘I seek only to see him’

  ‘Oh, I see. You have to go by St Magdalene’s Cross. The place sits out there. God go with you.’

  ‘And with you, Mistress …’

  ‘Muir.’

  He followed the direction she had pointed in, wandering some way and asking for further directions from others. Eventually he found the place, a small collection of buildings with a cross denoting one as a chapel. He smiled at it, before taking the path to the largest one.

  Inside, a masked man was sweeping the floor, his broom casting up feathers of dust and wood shavings. He set it against a large crate as Danforth closed the door behind him.

  ‘Good day, sir,’ said the attendant, his mask puffing. It gave his voice a thick, reverberating sound. ‘What news?’

  ‘Good day. I seek information on one of your patients. The fellow lately fallen ill at the palace.’

  ‘Him again,’ tutted the man. ‘Auld Nick.’

  Danforth started at the nickname more often used for the devil. ‘Who?’

  ‘Nicholas Kerr.’

  ‘He was a Kerr?’

  ‘Aye, from some bastard branch of them. I’ve nothin’ tae tell I didnae tell the lad who came down here. Dunno who’d have wanted tae meet him up there, or why. Dunno what business he had taking letters from anyb’dy.’

  ‘The letter,’ said Danforth. ‘That is what brought me. Can you tell me who delivered this letter to him?’

  The man shrugged, grasping the broom again. ‘Naw,’ he said. ‘Save nob’dy brought it here first. It must’ve got tae him some other way.’

  ‘Did the fellow go out, then? Do your patients have liberty to leave?’

  ‘Naw. Absolutely not. Cannae have diseased creatures out spreadin’ their pestilence. Do you have some visor yoursel’?’

  Danforth, rolling his eyes, removed a handkerchief from his pocket and tied it around his face. ‘Are you saying,’ he asked, ‘that the fellow never left? How then did he get out? How did the letter get to him?’

  ‘Dunno. This is a hospital, sir. We’ve a passel of sick men and women here. And at the alms-house next door. We can’t keep them aw locked up aw the time.’

  ‘And so he slipped out? You were derelict in your duties?’

  The attendant’s face clouded. ‘Do you fancy this job, Mr? Working for the scraps we get from the diocese?’

  ‘No,’ frowned Danforth, unwilling to get into an argument about church revenue. ‘No. I only mean … well, might he have slipped out by some other means? And might the letter have reached him by any others. His family perhaps, the Kerrs?’

  ‘Ha! His family haven’t come near in the months he’s lain here. Would you want tae look at a face like that?’

  ‘Perhaps not. Might I see his chamber?’

  The man propped his broom against the crate again and moved towards a door. Over his shoulder he called, ‘aye, well, are you comin’ or no’?’ Danforth followed, into a short hallway with doors on either side. From behind them came the muted sounds of sobbing, and some incomprehensible muttering, rising and falling in pitch. He watched his host’s back, wondering what it might be like to work in such a place. It was good work, of course, but it must pluck at the soul, to be amongst the afflicted. Hearing the cries, he remembered the weeping mass of the diseased man – Kerr’s – face. God commanded that his children show charity to such creatures, but he had never been able to do so properly. The thoug
ht of reaching out to comfort them disgusted him, as a spider or a snake might disgust some men.

  Scrabbling at a key on a belt tied round his robes, the attendant unlocked the door to a long, thin cell, dominated by a coverless cot. A single cross hung on the wall, and a tall, wide window admitted morning light. ‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘Letter was lying on the bed. Didnae even know that old creature could read. Never spoke tae him save tae shove his food through the door. Cannae get too close tae them when they’re that far gone.’

  ‘I see,’ said Danforth. He was looking past the bed, towards the window, its wooden shutters gaping. ‘That window is fair.’

  ‘They’re all big here. Have tae be. Have tae let the good air in. Let the bad air out. Otherwise I’d be a patient mysel’. Don’t fancy that. Most o’ them go mad, locked up, the sickness eating away. Poor bastards.’

  ‘I think,’ said Danforth, ‘there is no great mystery as to how he found escape. I wonder more of them don’t.’

  ‘Aye, well, they wouldnae get far. If the disease didnae bring them down, they’d be hanged first town they reached.’

  ‘I see,’ said Danforth again. ‘Yet I think also the fellow had his letter by these means. Has anyone been seen around the …’ he hesitated to use the word garden to describe the scrubby land around the hospital. He settled on, ‘yards.’

  ‘Naw,’ said the attendant, scratching at his head. ‘Just you and that wee lad yesterday.’

  ‘And you said no one was interested in this Kerr?’

  ‘Mr, nob’dy’s interested in any of the poor souls here. Few ever get better. The only people who ever came were … well, the dowager used tae come down wi’ divers of her household in better days. A few months back, before the king died. Used tae bring alms tae them. Hasn’t been since the new queen was born.’

  ‘You did say that Kerr had been here for months, did you not? How long?’

  ‘I think,’ he said, his eyes rolling up, ‘Aye, I ken he came around the start of winter. He wasnae so eaten away then. The physicians don’t bother wi’ this place, so we rely on the apothecary fae the town. All he ever says is tae change whit they eat. So they rot. It was the smallpox or the French pox done for Kerr. A pox anyway. Who cares? God rest him.’

  ‘Who cares, indeed,’ said Danforth, thinking. A cry from one of the other rooms in the building tore him back – a hollow, weak yelp. ‘I think I have seen enough. Her Highness the dowager wishes to do something for the family. I assume you have the names of his kin, and where they hail from?’

  ‘Hmph. Aye. Doesnae seem right that they get looked after when they slung him on us. Should be this house that gets something, for the next poor bastard that gets his bed.’

  The man had a point. Still, that was what Marie wanted, and it was hardly his place to counsel her otherwise. ‘The names?’

  ‘I’ll write them out for you.’

  ‘No,’ said Danforth. ‘Have them sent up.’ A superstitious dread had come over him that taking anything from the place would breed infection in him. It was foolish, he knew, but now he had thought it, he could not un-ring the bell.

  ‘Aye. Awright. When I’ve got time.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He cast one last look at the window. Something thrummed dimly in his brain, but it was too weak to make it out. Instead, he left the lazar house, snatching off the handkerchief. Before he left the grounds, he threw it away.

  ***

  Martin slept late, waking with a rumbling stomach. He dressed himself awkwardly, flexing his arm to see how it fared. It was still raw, but the pain was less sharp. He stuck his head out the door and looked up and down the hall before leaving. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, exactly – someone with a gun trained, perhaps. He cast aside the paranoia. Living in fear was pointless. Instead he took himself up to the kitchens and scrounged some breakfast.

  As he skipped back down the stairs, humming a tune, he was joined by a small army of craftsmen, who informed him that the revels were in readiness. They were being escorted out, barred from the palace so that only the invited guests would be within its walls for the afternoon’s production. That, he guessed, should make him feel safer – it was a sign of good security. For some reason, though, the idea that he’d be trapped inside with people who had been present when Fraser had been murdered – never mind the panoply of other horrors – unsettled rather than comforted. He tried to shake off the gloom.

  In the courtyard, he found Diane Beauterne rinsing what looked like a white sheet in the palace fountain. ‘Haven’t you got laundresses for that?’ he asked her in French.

  ‘Takes too long,’ she said, grinning. ‘If I do things myself, I know they’re done right.’

  ‘Do you like it, being a queen’s lady?’

  ‘I like helping people,’ she said. What was it Danforth had called her? A Mistress Peaceweaver. It seemed apt. She smiled again, her cheeks like apples.

  ‘What’s your job this afternoon? A fair lady, to be won from a dragon? Or do you lead the dance?’ He attempted a step in front of her, hissing as he jogged the little patch of skin over his armpit.

  ‘You’re foolish,’ she laughed, drawing up the sheet and squeezing out the water. ‘There haven’t been any dragons in Scotland since … 1520!’

  ‘Aye,’ said Martin, impressed. ‘Fraser of Glenvackie, 1520. Slew the last dragon.’ He mimed thrusting a sword into her wet bundle. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Long nights. There is nothing to do but share stories. In Scotland you had dragons to scare the children, in France we had the wolves of Paris. They came in 1450 during the great dearth and ate everybody up.’ She made a claw of one hand and growled. Martin laughed again.

  ‘But really, what is this for?’

  ‘It is a dress. Opened up a little, I had to add a panel. I must dry it by the fire, and quickly.’

  ‘Add a panel?’ he asked. He considering making a pregnancy joke and thought better of it. This girl seemed anything but a bawd. ‘Is it for this masque?’

  ‘Yes. The ladies are to be dressed in white.’

  ‘Are you taking part?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘not really.’ Martin half-turned his head, narrowing his eyes good-humouredly at her evasiveness. ‘I have a friend,’ was all she gave him, moving away with the bundle held out in front of her. He watched her go, pausing as she reached the entrance to the southwest tower. ‘Someone,’ she called back, still in French, ‘is going to get the surprise of their life this afternoon!’.

  ‘You look like a wolf carrying a sheep!’ he called back. Something about her lightness had lifted his mood, albeit infinitesimally. Why, then, could he not shake the feeling of dread that seemed to be hanging over the place, mocking the men and women making ready to enjoy themselves beneath? As she disappeared, he wondered what on earth she was up to.

  ***

  Danforth passed through the burgh and joined the Kirkgate, tensing his legs for the slog uphill to the palace. Windows, letters, households, it was all a jumble. He needed time to sort things through. There would be little enough in the afternoon unless he could find some way of avoiding the play. Even then, he supposed, the palace would be so full of noise and bustle that he would be unable to find peace. As he stomped up the cobbled street, a door opened to his left. He moved aside to let someone leave the low-roofed building he knew to be the Song School – that little educational institution used for teaching boys the basics of choral singing and any other knowledge they might need. He did a double take as a pair of piercing eyes met his. The man nodded curtly, before hurrying off in the direction of the town. It was the fellow, about his own age, who had been meeting in secret with Forrest. It was John Knox.

  Danforth watched him go, his stride neat and determined. So too did the schoolmaster, standing in the doorway of the Song School. Danforth stepped towards him. ‘Good day,’ he hailed. ‘I see you had words with my friend Knox.’

  ‘Aye,’ said the schoolmaster, looking him up and down. ‘You’re not c
ome to harangue me too, are you, son?’

  ‘Harangue? No, I have no mind to that. He was then pressing on you too? Oh, that Father John. A fine man, but he does … harangue good folk. I’ve said it myself to him often enough.’ Danforth stopped, worried that he might go too far, say something that might be easily disproven. Or simply look like what he had suddenly become, his mind added with censure: a grubby, spying liar.

  ‘Aye,’ he laughed. ‘For a deacon he has a right questioning sort of mind. Full of, uh, miscontentation.’

  ‘I know it,’ smiled Danforth. ‘What were his lessons today? Not harping on’ he lowered his voice, ‘reform again, I hope?’

  ‘What? No, no-no-no. Nothing like that. Och, just wanting to know what we teach the lads here. Why we don’t teach them better things, their grammar and more Latin. I didn’t know he was a reformer.’ The old man’s eyes twinkled with malicious glee. Panic struck Danforth: he might have just got the damned Knox fellow in trouble over something he had just invented as a tool to pry. If the schoolmaster ran off to the authorities, as well he might – and damned well should, now – he would have a lot of explaining to do to the cardinal.

  ‘Well, he is a schoolmaster himself,’ Danforth chanced. ‘I fancy he wishes to share his own methods.’

  ‘We have our own ways. Don’t need some new man from out east who thinks he knows it all telling us how we ought to rear our bairns. Sorry, sir, if he’s your friend. Who are you?’

  ‘I am a gentleman of the lord cardinal,’ said Danforth, throwing his shoulders back to let his cloak open.

  ‘Oh, I see. How is his Grace?’

  ‘On his way to Blackness, as I understand it.’

  ‘Oh aye? It’s a bad business, that. Those Hamiltons and Douglases keeping the Pope’s own man kept close.’