by Robert Low
She realised he spoke of his horse – Saul meant ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’, and it seemed a long way from the mild beast she had seen, all winter tangle and mud-clagged hairy fetlocks. Nor was the beast’s master much better; for all his initial grace he ate slovenly, Mintie noted, pausing now and then to run the drips off his beard with his hand, which he wiped clean on his stained shirt. Men will wallow, she thought sourly, if left to their own.
She was astounded at how pleased the women were by him all the same, all beams and quiet chaffer – and when he exclaimed with delight at their wobbling junket, flavoured with rosewater and honey, they laughed. Even her mother, Mintie saw with amazement.
‘Now,’ Batty said, pushing his plate away, with the last of the junket clinging to the ends of his moustaches, ‘if there was a lick of eau de vie to wet my beak, I would be a content man.’
‘Your body is a church to God – keep the Spirit in and the spirits on the outside,’ Mintie said swiftly. Bet’s Annie laughed bitterly.
‘There is no strong drink in this house, Master Coalhouse,’ she said and shot Mintie a hard stare – which she had back in measure enough to make her drop her gaze.
‘Aye, aye, so I see,’ Batty said thoughtfully, then shrugged. ‘Well, I’m often ashamed of the way I drink. Then I look in my cup and think of the wee monks slaving away with their hopes and dreams of pleasing the Lord with their work in producing a good aqua vitae, and I think to myself – Batty Coalhouse, how can you be so selfish as to deny these folk their way to God?’
The silence was stunning and, beaming, Batty added ‘Amen’ to it, so that everyone repeated it by rote.
Mintie let a moment pass, then cleared her throat.
‘You claim to be able to bring Hutchie Elliott to task and justice,’ she said flatly. ‘I know you can eat and I hear you can drink, but even allowing for the faith your kin in Askerton places in you, I see little evidence of your ability to do more. In fact, you seem poorly diminished for such a task as Hutchie Elliott.’
There was an embarrassing silence and Batty shook his head with wonder.
‘God be praised,’ he breathed at Mintie’s mother, ‘would you listen to the mouth on it? Goodwife Henderson, I can see why you leave the pursuit of justice for your man’s demise on this sprig of the house, but you need manners with such spirit. Your daughter needs a lick of reminding now and then, certes.’
‘She is a good girl,’ her mother bleated.
‘You are not in the first flush of youth,’ Mintie snapped, ‘with only one wing betimes. Hutchie Elliott, as I remember him, is young, strong and now well armed.’
‘Ach – two-armed besides,’ Batty said and Mintie flushed. She might have added ‘belly like a cask’ to Batty’s list of faults, but would have had to admit that he had moved surprising fast and light, enough for her to have noted it as he climbed the ladder to the hall.
‘Did you hear the rooks?’ he said, closing one sly eye; it was so suddenly announced that Mintie had to open and shut her mouth a few times, unable to answer. Batty nodded with a satisfied triumph of a smile.
‘You did not, for I saw that neat trap – ride close to it and roosting rooks will rise, as my da used to tell me. As good watchmen as any.’
‘I heard the dog,’ Mintie fired back, flustered, and Batty waved his one hand.
‘I did not come to spoil the house, so I let the hound hear me,’ he pointed out, and Mintie heard the murmurs of agreement behind her – and felt the flame of her face at the truth revealed. He was clever, right enough.
‘I have enjoyed your Christian hospitality,’ Batty went on and bowed like a courtier to the simpering women, ‘and have seen the mutton in your dish. You have no sheep, though. A pair of milch kine and a handful of horses besides mine in the undercroft, but no sheep.’
‘We do not keep sheep,’ Mintie answered, only realising afterwards how much he had noticed in his brief trip through the dark-shadowed undercroft. ‘Our fields are given to winter fodder for horses mainly – and grazing for same. Sheep crop the grass too tight for horses to follow. We get some ewes or lambs in barter now and then and slaughter them for the pot.’
He nodded, one eye shut and thinking.
‘That is what we do,’ Mintie added scathingly, wondering if he was lack-witted. ‘We deal in horses.’
‘You do,’ he agreed. ‘And keep no sheep. Yet you eat mutton, which means you are getting it in exchange for what you sell. No coin. And you have precious few nags – there are more empty stalls than full in your undercroft. The stall you have put the Saul in was made for a finer-bred beast than he – though I will not say so to his face.’
‘The Fyrebrande,’ Mintie answered blankly, the dull, leaden feeling of the stallion’s loss settling on her like sea haar, as it did each time she thought of him.
‘Just so. Stolen by Hutchie Elliott – a racing beast was he, this Fyrebrande? Winner of prize silver bells at Truce Day meets?’
‘He could do that,’ Mintie admitted, ‘but he was not. He was a fine tourney-bred horse, fit enough to carry a plate-slathered king to battle, and would not be out of place in the royal stables at Falkland Palace. We were crossing him with decent mares, to breed good horses for riding or fighting by gentlemen.’
‘A harsh loss then,’ Batty answered. ‘Which is why you will want him back.’
‘He is eaten, according to everyone I have spoken to, including your kin at Askerton,’ Mintie answered harshly, and her mother burst into tears, which almost made her turn with the guilt. But she kept her face like a dyke and set the stone of it on Batty’s own.
‘I do not think so and neither do you, Mintie Henderson,’ Batty replied, which surprised her. ‘Hutchie murdered your father – my pardon for intruding into your grief with this memory – and had a brace of horses, money, weapons and a good new pair of boots. Is that the way of it?’
Mintie nodded dumbly, remembering.
‘He left a horse,’ Batty pointed out. ‘The one your father rode. And came back to Powrieburn to take the Fyrebrande. He left your father’s mount because he could not control a pair and ride hard on a third. He left your father’s – fine beast though it might be – and came back for the Fyrebrande, which he wanted in particular.’
The truth of it took Mintie’s breath hard up into her chest so that it hurt. A lot of that had to do with her own stupidity in not having seen it as clearly until now.
Batty nodded, seeing the revelation scrawl across Mintie’s face.
‘Just so. He took the Fyrebrande and I do not think he wanted a decent meal out of the beast. Knowing Hutchie as I do, I also do not think he stole it to order, or with any regard as to what to do with it after. No fine-bred tourney horse is a use to Riding men in this country – Galloway nags is more their strength, beasts that can travel a brace of days through the wet on a handful of oats and the scum water from a tarn. So Hutchie must know someone he can sell it to, someone with the coin and the sense to know the value of such a beast. Find such a man and there will be your stallion. And a clue to where Hutchie has since fled.’
‘You know Hutchie Elliott?’ demanded Mintie suspiciously.
Batty waved a hand dismissively.
‘Everyone in Berwick knows Hutchie Elliott, brawling swaggerer that he is. Him and his giant rat – though the truth is that it was no rat at all, but some creature he had off a sailor who had brought it back from the far Spanish Americas. I am surprised the ugly creature lasted as long as it did.’
Mintie was silent and Batty cocked his head to look at her.
‘I am not surprised that the ugly creature that is Hutchie has lasted as long as he has,’ he added. ‘He is as dangerous as nightshade, with Bills filed on him in every March and no family name to shelter him – his own were no more than labourers at the flax, though his true father is nowhere to be found. I jalouse that such a da would keep well clear, for shame, from acknowledging the likes of Hutchie as any get of his.
‘He is as bad a ba
ckstabber as any I have hunted,’ he went on grimly. ‘I mention all of this – and your lack of sheep and horse and coin – only because, as you doubt my ability, I doubt you have five pounds English to make it worth my while bringing him to task and your fine beast back to his stall.’
‘I have it,’ Mintie declared, equally steely eyed, ‘though I will not be showing you any time soon, lest the shine ruin what sense you have. But if you bring Hutchie Elliott to task, there it will be, waiting for your hand.’
‘A poor bargain,’ he fired back, one eye closed in a villainous look. ‘I have to trust you, when you have no trust in me at all.’
‘That is the nature of master and hired,’ Mintie answered, then cocked her head to one side. ‘How many have you brought to task?’
Her mother cleared her throat pointedly then broke into a fit of coughing, which jerked Mintie back to the others, all ignored in this intense exchange. She felt herself flush under her mother’s cool censure.
Batty blinked and fumbled inside his shirt for a moment or two, then produced a strange tangle of wool and fat sticks. He tucked one stick under the obscene waggle of what was left of his missing arm and took another in his good hand, letting the rest dangle.
‘Alive?’ he asked, and Mintie, mesmerised and only now realising that Batty Coalhouse was knitting, was forced back to her question.
Batty grinned at her face.
‘That was a trick,’ he said, winking to Mintie’s mother, ‘for all the ones I bring back are alive. The Wardens only pay for live ones. Two pounds Scots, usually, in order to see them decently hanged and view for themselves that the fouled Bill has been duly served.’
He paused, clicking dextrously, then leered at Mintie.
‘The dead I leave where they fall, for they are no use to me.’
‘What age are you, Master Coalhouse, if I may make so bold?’
The question came from her mother and was innocent as a white kertch. Batty smiled at her politely.
‘I was born with the century, Goodwife Henderson.’
Then he was forty-two, Mintie thought, aware – with some pride – that she had calculated that more swiftly than any of the others, who were still frowning over it.
‘Do you play cards, sir?’ her mother asked brightly, and Mintie, aware somehow that the rug had been pulled from under her and that matters had been settled, sat back and gnawed a nail.
‘I do, Goodwife,’ Batty replied cheerfully. ‘Primero, Cleke, Loadum, New Cut, Putt, All Fours, Post, Pair, Ruff and Trumps. Noddy for preference.’
‘My,’ her mother replied admiringly, ‘you are a man of many parts. Then we shall play Primero, for the others are all much the same and Noddy is a game for hard gamblers, I understand. Mintie – fetch the cards, dear.’
Mintie did as she was bid and they played Primero, which Batty did with a reckless, stone-faced bravado and won as much as he lost. That was Primero all over, a game of bluff when all was said and done.
And all the while Mintie watched, with growing fascination, the way Batty’s fingers flicked and purled the wool round the needle, a skill which she had trouble enough with using two hands. And this as well as playing the cards, so that he tucked the needle into his collar while he picked them up, studied them, then did not need to look at them again to know what he had, tallying their worth in his head.
When the tallow started to gutter, Mintie led Batty, festooned with weapons and jack back down the ladder to the undercroft, where he would sleep well enough in a bed made up in a stall next to his horse, the Saul.
‘We have had worser billets than this, eh, old lad?’ he said, speaking soft and quiet to the horse, which whickered and rubbed him with its nose.
Mintie had noted the scored and scuffed saddle with its big worn buckets of horse holsters and the great wheel-lock daggs snugged in them. He had two more such daggs for his belt, as well as a basket-hilted cutter and a bollock dagger, all expensive items; the helmet, she saw, wore the last glimmer of gilding like a proud memory of greatness. No longbow, no parry dagger, nor small shield, the familiar accoutrements of any man on the Border – then Mintie realised how useless they would be to a man with no left hand to wield them.
There were stories in everything that surrounded the man, and Mintie wanted to ask about them all, but did not dare.
She bid him a good night and left the lantern so he could find his way to the night pot. All the way back up the ladder to her own bed and long after she was in it, she thought on the strangeness that was Batty Coalhouse.
The rooks woke her, hooking her from sleep; Mykkel followed soon after, with his low growls and then brief warning bark, as if he was hoiking up his dinner. It was dark outside and Mintie realised she had slept no more than an hour or two.
There was a flurry of flustered women, moving in the dancing shadows made from the single reeking crusie kept burning so folk could find their night pots. More light was sparked and the sconces flared, even as Mintie peered through the shutters of the small, high-set window.
The yard held shadows and shouts.
‘Goodwife Henderson – open up. It is Will Armstrong from Whithaugh come to visit.’
There were two others with him, and Mintie thought hard about it. Will was the lout son of Mattie Armstrong of Whithaugh Tower, a lick and spit away from Powrieburn. She paid Mattie blackmeal to let her alone and he had done so, for Powrieburn was held by the Hendersons from the Keeper of Liddesdale, a Hepburn who was not lightly crossed. But even he permitted Mattie to blackmeal Powrieburn just a little, because the Armstrong Name was powerful in Liddesdale. Just a little and no more, all the same.
Yet here was Fingerless Will Armstrong, past midnight and with two of his kin; she did not think they wanted to sit and play Primero.
‘What want you here at this time of night?’ she yelled back, and there was a pause.
‘Is that you, Mintie? Well, it concerns you, but your ma is the one we have to speak with, so open the doors and let us through like a good lass.’
Wattie stumbled up the ladder from below, white-faced and shaking. Mintie heard Bet’s Annie cursing – and then a low, harsh voice telling her to weesht. She almost laughed with delight, sure she had heard the click of Bet’s Annie’s teeth in her haste to obey Batty’s growl.
She went to the wall and took down the caliver, then shoved it almost scornfully at Wattie, who took the weapon as if it was hot poison.
‘Light the slow-match on that at least,’ Mintie declared as she started down the ladder. ‘If you can load it, do so. Check the priming powder – and try not to blow your own head off.’
Below, Bet’s Annie was hunkered in a corner, more in fear of Batty Coalhouse than any outside.
‘You know them, then?’
The soft voice heralded the face, then the bellied body shoving out of the shadows. Batty had his jack on and his baldric was crossed with a bandolier of apostles, the dozen dangling wooden powder charges softly clicking as he moved. Three pistols were stuffed in his belt and a fourth held in his only hand.
‘Will Armstrong of Whithaugh. I suspect the others will be Clem and Sorley, his kin – cousins, I think.’
‘Ach, yes,’ Batty said thoughtfully. ‘Fingerless Will of Whithaugh, son of the headman there, old Mattie. He and Clem and Sorley are a godless triumvirate of no good, for sure.’
‘You know them?’ Mintie asked and felt rather than saw the nod.
‘We have had dealings, Will and I. In Berwick, where he lost a brace of fingers from the end of his left hand.’
‘Open the door,’ demanded Will Armstrong, his voice raising. ‘It is chilled here.’
‘Why have you come?’ Mintie shouted back, and there was a great false sigh.
‘Ach, Mintie, you have spoiled the surprise of it. I have come to wed you.’
‘Aye, and bed you besides – so open the yett and your legs, lass…’
Clem Armstrong was roaring drunk and no amount of hissed commands to shut his lip ha
d any effect, save that all three went off into argument.
‘Well,’ said Batty mildly. ‘Have you a mind to wed him?’
‘I would rather be wed on to a wet-sick dog.’
‘Then tell him so.’
She did, while Batty hummed and sang, tuneless and soft, one wheel-lock dagg stuck under his lost arm’s pit while he primed it with rasping turns of the key.
‘Ach now, Mintie, is that a way to start a wooing? You’ll lose that edge when you are proper married, my lass… for married you will be.’
Will’s voice was light and laughing; Mintie’s was a scorch.
‘You moudiewarp. You want this only because your da has put you up to it. No man at Powrieburn, he thinks, and a way to get his greasy fingers on it. My mother is too greying for you, Will, but I am sure she was considered first.’
There was pause enough to let Mintie know she had hit the mark, enough for her to hear the low, soft lilt of Batty.
‘Her skirt was o’ the grass-green silk, her mantle o’ the velvet fine,’ he murmured. ‘And ilka tett o’ her horse’s mane, hung fifty siller bells and nine…’
A thunderous battering at the outer door made Mintie jump; Mykkel went off into furious barking; and Bet’s Annie squealed once with the shock of it, then grew hard-eyed at Fingerless Will’s bellowing, for she was Borders bred and had iron in her.
‘Open up, damn your eyes. Or I will scumfish you out. Open, I say – Sorley, spark up that torch, man.’
Mintie was unfazed by threats of scumfishing – smoking them out – for Powrieburn was stone with a slate roof and anyone who wanted to scumfish them would need to start by getting up on the icy roof in pitch darkness. She did not think that would be happening in any great hurry from folk as drunk as these sounded.
She started to reply, and felt a heavy hand gentling on the nape of her neck; she turned upwards into the face of Batty Coalhouse, all shadows and pits. He was not looking at her, but through the yett and the big wooden doors to those beyond.
‘You have had your answer, Will. The only way you will lay a finger on lass or lands is if you dig up the pair that were cut off and throw them at both.’
