A Dish of Spurs

by Robert Low

  A Dish of Spurs

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  In The Year 1542…

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteeen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Author’s Note

  Glossary

  Copyright

  In The Year 1542…

  King James V of Scotland, capricious, prideful, paranoid and cruel, sent an army against Henry VIII. It won a victory at Haddon Rigg and then, a few weeks later at Solway Moss, fled before a much smaller English force ordered, paid for and commanded by Sir Thomas Wharton, Deputy Warden of the English Middle March. Wharton’s army was composed almost entirely of Border reivers, the Scots and English along the frontier who cared more for their family Name than any sense of national patriotism and were happy to take English money to fight a Scottish king.

  King James, hearing of this rout, suffered a nervous collapse and died, aged thirty. His only offspring was a six-day-old daughter, promptly hailed as Mary, Queen of Scots and served by the Earl of Arran as Regent. Arran refused to be cowed by English demands for the baby Queen to be married to King Henry’s son, Prince Edward. So Fat Henry, old, gouty and pained by a bad leg and a bad wife – Catherine Howard had just been executed – looked for a way to force the issue.

  He decided on a bold plan, using the skills of the Border reivers.

  The Border lands, particularly that portion claimed by neither country and called the Debatable Land as a result, were already lawless, ruled only by fire and sword. That was scarcely to change for another sixty years… but change it did, with the death of a queen and the rise of a king with two crowns.

  For some, all that came too late.

  Chapter One

  Hermitage, Liddesdale

  Baptism Day of Mary, Queen of Scots (14 December)

  Never a place of joy, even in the green, bird-sweetened summer, winter made Hermitage a bleak grey slab that shouted ‘bugger off’ in stone. Set in a bleak landscape, the death of King James had it draped in mourning black, so that Mintie Henderson fancied she could feel the tomb-chill of the place just by riding up on it. She thought, then, that the stories concerning the laird who built it being boiled in molten lead for his wickedness could well be true.

  It was also, she discovered, a great mistake to have arrived at this time. She had been sure the Keeper would have been here for Advent and more amenable because of it – but Lord Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell and Keeper of Liddesdale, was gone. As the sentry told her, the Keeper had ‘sklimmed up to Embra, for a king’s kisting and a bairn Queen’s ascent into the arms of God.’

  Mintie, though she sympathised with the reasons for it, could not help but be irritated and offended by the pomp and circumstance in Edinburgh which deprived her of a hearing. The wee Princess Mary, she pointed out, was hardly likely to sit up and give orders or favours after having been duly blessed and crowned. They could have waited until she was a full fortnight old at least. Or, better still, until she did not wet on the royal robes.

  The sentry pointed out that the child’s father, King James, had died, which news had sent the Keeper off on a fast horse, knowing what would follow and that the realm needed an arse on the throne, even one swaddled and damp – and anyway, what did a slip of a girl know about such matters?

  Mintie crossed herself, a defiant gesture in these Reformer days in an undecided Scotland, and the sentry was not slow to note it.

  ‘My own father is dead and our holding spoiled this past fortnight,’ she told him stiffly. ‘He was fell murdered by one Sweetmilk Hutchie Elliott – with two “T”s – who has also run off with two valuable horses, a deal of money and a brace of good weapons. I came to have a Bill and justice done.’

  The sentry was sorry to hear of it, though there was little that could be done, seeing as how the Keeper of Liddesdale was gone to Edinburgh.

  ‘Is there no man in charge of Liddesdale?’ Mintie demanded primly. ‘Or even of L’Armitage?’

  The sentry was a Graham, a Border family never given to suffering fools lightly, so the proper name of Hermitage never even made him raise an eyebrow. He probably does not know it means ‘guardhouse’, Mintie thought scornfully.

  Henry Graham knew well enough that Hermitage was the guardhouse of the bloodiest valley known to man or God, which was enough. He knew also that it was cold and that this young snip – Christ’s blood, she could be no more than fifteen – was keeping him from the warm, with her steely eye and perjink way of speaking. She had a neat way of dressing and holding herself, iron eyes in a face too wary to be pretty, with lips thinned into a bloodless line – but that might have been the strain of riding here after dealing with a dead father.

  Well, Hen thought, her da’s wee rickle of acres was held from the Henderson chief, who in turn was bound to the Hepburns like a dog to a sausage, so she had done right to come here, though it would be no help to her. It was not more than a week since a Scots army had been routed to ruin on the Solway Moss – no more than a strong spit from here – and there were so many armed men everywhere that sensible men kept to their strongholds.

  Still, he walked her over to Land Sergeant Will Elliot, since she had mentioned that name and he thought the sergeant might be kin to the reiver, a not uncommon occurrence. And because Will Elliot was the nearest thing to command that Hermitage currently owned. And because he was defiantly Catholic, when he was anything at all in these strange Reformer times, and Hen had seen this Henderson lass cross herself.

  And, finally, because Hen Graham did not care much for Will Elliot, since he seemed to win more at dice than was reasonable for an honest player, while having the very job Hen himself coveted; let him deal with a purse-lipped wee snippy.

  Will Elliot limped like a sailor on a rolling deck, courtesy of lost toes on his right foot, and was built in a series of squares, from the one that seemed to be his head, perched on the rectangle of his body, to the oblong dykes of his legs. He had a dark beard like stuffing spilled from a bad mattress and matching hair that straggled round his ears from under a bonnet that might have been blue once, but barely retained the memory of it.

  He was cubbyholed in a room seemingly carved out of Hermitage’s stones, a dark place on a dull day and lit only by an evil-smelling crusie; this at least allowed him to get to a bench and eat a poray with a spoon without missing the bowl more than once in four.

  When Mintie came in he had just hirpled to a seat and paused in raising his spoon for only his second sup, so that Mintie saw drips pearl along the length of his moustache; he wiped them away with the back of one hand as Hen Graham explained who Mintie was and what she wanted.

  It was clear to Mintie that the Land Sergeant did not care for it much, and he made that plain when he snarled Hen back to his post, then turned a jaundiced eye on Mintie and forced a smile.

  ‘Hutchie Elliott,’ he said.

  ‘Known as Sweetmilk,’ Mintie confirmed, ‘though he is neither sweet nor milk. He killed my father and stole two horses, weapons and money. I have come for justice.’

  ‘Hutchie Elliott,’ repeated the Land Sergeant and Mintie was irritated, wondered if the man was slack-
witted.

  ‘He is. I understand your name is also Elliot – is he kin?’

  The Land Sergeant’s blockhouse face creased into a scowl.

  ‘He is not,’ he growled and then offered her a shadowed smile. ‘Double “L” and single “T” are fine. Double “T” and single “L” are fine. As good Names as Graham or Armstrong.’

  And then he sing-songed out the last: ‘But double “L” and double “T” – no man knows who they folk be.’

  ‘Yet you know him,’ Mintie persisted and knew by the shift of him that she was right. He confirmed it with a nod.

  ‘Hutcheon Elliott is from the English side. A brawler and a ramstampit hoormonger – begging yer young ears. Permitted to ride and commit all sorts with the Eliotts of Minto for all the extra “L” in his Name. Then they threw him out for his burning of a Ker house at Bloodyhaggs with the pregnant wife inside – that was a foulness too far, even for the furtherance of an auld feud.’

  ‘You know him well,’ Mintie said, trying not to show her shock.

  ‘Until recently he was in Berwick, displaying a caged rat the size of a fair hunting hound,’ Will went on. ‘He claimed it came from the Paris sewers, whose rich foulness made it only typical of the breed there and no monster. It died and he was left with no living from it.’

  The jest thudded, flattened by Mintie’s cold regard.

  ‘I know nothing of that,’ she declared, but was not surprised at the revelation of Sweetmilk Hutchie Elliott’s previous employment.

  She had not liked Hutchie Elliott from the moment he had appeared, begging work on a quarter day last year. Hutcheon was not a name so much as a description, given to the black sheep or the albino crow, offspring that were odd and almost certainly unlooked for. If a father had handed out that name – and a mother agreed to it – then there was an understanding of an offspring unwanted and a contrite wife once less than loyal.

  Mintie had said as much, and her father had frowned and pointed out that every decent man had gone for the army, which was headed to fight the English. And besides, he had added in his big, quiet, gentle way, such an unloved whelp needed more of a leg-up in life than others.

  There was no arguing with that, and help was needed with the horses they bought and sold at Powrieburn, so Mintie had bridled her tongue on matters. But she continued not to care much for Hutchie Elliott.

  It wasn’t that he was ill-favoured – just the opposite, which was where, Mintie supposed, the hutcheon in him had lain for his father. It was plain to see in Hutchie’s reasonable features, wavy hair, and good white teeth, which he cared for with a frayed hazel twig.

  Finer by far, Mintie thought, than should have been bred onto poor flax labourers by themselves. And there is why the mother agreed to everything her man decided, out of shame and fear of abandonment for her clear adultery.

  Hutchie also thought himself fine as the sun on shiny water and it came as no surprise to Mintie when, not long after he had put his feet under the Powrieburn table, he came to her all heat and heavy breathing in the dark of the barrelled undercroft. He had a hand pinning her arms to her waist and another fumbling at her quim before she could yelp.

  ‘I am too young,’ she gasped desperately. ‘It is my menses—’

  He grinned his white grin, pressing his hardness against her hip.

  ‘Auld enough to bleed, auld enough to breed,’ he pointed out.

  She thought quickly, seemed to acquiesce, and when she had her arms free, hauled out the little knife she used to clean the Fyrebrande’s feet and poked him hard with it.

  ‘If it is blood you want…’

  He yelped and sprang back, rubbing the forearm.

  ‘By God, you have as well. You have drawn blood, you wee besom—’

  ‘I will draw your insides out of your belly if you try again,’ she declared, and he went off, muttering.

  Later, when the tremble of it tipped her into sitting, she found it running over and over in her mind. She was sure he would try again, and having thought about it all the way to her bed, had made up her mind to tell her father the very next day – only to find that he had gone off early to deliver a brace of stolid horses to a farmer several miles off in Blackdubs. Because there were all sorts milling about in the wake of the great failed affray at Solway Moss, he took Sweetmilk Hutchie with him, for the protection.

  All day Mintie knew there was wrong in it, but the bad cess only fell on them all with the sound of screaming and hooves the very next night.

  She rushed out into the yard in her nightshirt and with a spark-trailing torch threatening her unbound hair, but was too late to prevent Hutchie riding off on Effie, the nag her father had lent him – and leading the Fyrebrande out of the undercroft.

  Jinet, who had been dazzled by Hutchie, lay sprawled and weeping on the cobbles, having let him in quietly and suspecting nothing.

  Her mother, screaming the whiles, was rendered all the more useless by the other pair of equally wailing serving women of Powrieburn. That trio of witches were no help at all and sure that everyone was about to be foul murdered in their beds and no man here to help.

  Mintie, soothing and determined, ignored the wails and pleas and Jinet’s sobbing apologies, saddled Jaunty the mare as soon as it was light and rode out with only her paring knife, fearing the worst. She found it not far off, a ragged bundle lying close to her father’s own mount, which cropped grass all unconcerned.

  He had been shot in the back, which must have been with his own caliver, given to Sweetmilk, ironically, to guard his back; the hole in was small and the one out of her da’s belly was enough to make Mintie swallow once or twice, then turn away and be sick.

  His own pistol, a good wheel-lock dagg, was gone, as was his purse, his leather jack and boots; the last caused Mintie more distress than any of the rest, simply because it left her father looking so vulnerable, even in death.

  Blinded by tears and snot, she cut willow poles and fixed them as a sledge, then wrestled her father across it and dragged him home at the back of his own horse, despite the beast’s protests. What followed was a great lake of tears and head-shaking from the women, fainting and despair from Mintie’s ma. It was heartbreaking and brought Mintie to her own hot spill of tears more than once – but none of it was any help once he had been swaddled and put in the ground.

  Not in any priory, either – though Mintie would pay Bygate for a Mass for his soul – but among the old Faerie stones that ringed their land, for the Hendersons had a pact with powries and the price, it was believed, was that the Faerie welcomed the dead.

  The other Border Names, if they cared, simply made warding signs older than the cross, and the priests were all eye-lowered and huddled in these times, saying nothing at all and hoping they would not be noticed. Many of them remembered the burning of the Reformer preacher Patrick Hamilton by the Archbishop of Glasgow the year after Mintie was born – six hours it had taken because the faggots were wet, yet the Archbishop had sat stolidly through the whole of it, listening to Hamilton scream and praying, for the love of God.

  There was little of God left in the Borders and even the Archbishop had known that – even before smouldering Patrick Hamilton to ruin, Archbishop Gavin Dunbar of Glasgow had produced the Curse, an admonition so foul that every Borderer was breathless with admiration. The reiving men of the Borders were cursed awake and asleep, from the crown of their head to the soil on their feet, from behind and before, above and below – it went on and on, and not one of the reiving Names cared a black damn, even as they applauded the skill in it.

  After all, these were God-fearing folk who made sure the right fist, which would be called upon to commit the ungodliest of sins, was left unbaptised. Or, if you were a Ker, the left, for all that Name were contrary-handed.

  As Mintie stood by the stone-lined hole with the swaddled body of her father and the smell of the new-turned earth fierce in her nose, she remembered his big, gentle voice and the stories he told. Like the one about the
Christians.

  The Borders were lawless and proud, holding their Names higher than God Himself, and the story her father had told her was of a traveller arriving at a lonely bastel house on a dirty night up the Liddes and getting no charity from it, only suspicion and shut yetts. In the end, wet and freezing, he declared he was a good Christian and desperately called out to ask if there were any Christians within at all.

  No Christians, came the wary reply. Croziers and Nixons, but no Christians. Try up the dale.

  After the kisting-up, Mintie was dried of grief, replaced by an ember of anger which smouldered away on justice. She resolved that she must be the one to do it, since her mother was not capable; at the best of times her mother could tally using a notched stick, but neither read nor wrote more than ‘God’, and was not the one to ride off to the Keeper of Liddesdale and make a Bill against Hutchie Elliott.

  Mintie had been taught reading and writing by her father, who wanted a clerk he could trust, and that role had been filled by his daughter since the age of twelve, so that she wrote a fine book hand and a fast charter script.

  Will Elliot listened to all this, nodding and breaking bits off some bread, which he chewed. He barely read or wrote himself, so he was all admiration; and finally remembering his manners, he invited Mintie to sit and offered her some of the poray, but it looked particularly unattractive, so she refused. He offered her small beer, which she took and sipped.

  ‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘I can make a Bill for you, but nothing will be done until the Keeper returns. You should know also that we are men short since the English under Wharton are stravaiging everywhere in the wake of the defeat at Solway Moss. There are few even to guard Hermitage.’

  ‘Is there no one will go after Hutchie Elliott?’ Mintie demanded.

  He thought of lying, then sighed and shook his head.

  ‘No. He has gone into the Debatable for sure, where he either has friends or will be dead for the cost of his stolen purse and horses. I fancy the latter myself.’

  ‘That is no justice nor consolation to me,’ Mintie snapped back, and then, to her horror, felt the tears well and had to stop, biting her lips.