by Robert Low
Batty’s voice was not raised, but the slash of it brought silence for a long time. Then a suspicious, uneasy Will asked the obvious.
‘The man who cut them off in Berwick town, Will Armstrong,’ Batty answered back lightly. ‘The night you thought a one-armed man was easy meat for a showing up with a blade. You were in drink then too, as I recall – I thought you might have learned.’
‘Batty Coalhouse – is that you there?’
‘It was me when I woke this morning, sure enough, so I believe it still is.’
‘Why are you here? Have you an interest in my bride, Batty?’
Will Armstrong’s voice was light but there was still a strain in it that Mintie delighted in; he is scared enough to wet himself at the idea of Batty Coalhouse, she thought. For the first time, she began to consider that the fat, old, one-armed man was something more than he looked.
‘I have no interest in Mistress Araminta Henderson save in a business matter. And that she has asked my help in refusing your suit. You should go quiet back to Whithaugh.’
There was silence at that for a time. Then Clem spoke up and it was clear they had all remembered what Batty did for a living.
‘Have you a made Bill on any of us?’
Batty’s chuckle was low and feral.
‘There speaks a man with guilt for something,’ he replied. ‘I will find one if I look, I wager – but I have no Bill on any, save the bill I will send to Will’s father for the trouble his son persists in putting to me.’
‘You speak mighty for a one-armed man behind a stout door,’ shouted Will Armstrong, clearly stung.
‘Get you gone before I open it, or rue the day.’
‘Come ahead, you single-winged auld cunny. You can have but one pistol in your one hand with one shot – and we have three good matchlock guns here.’
‘True,’ admitted Batty and deliberately clattered the bolt on the yett to let them know he was coming. ‘But what you want to worry at is who gets the one shot. At the range we are, it will tear some luckless soul a second dunghole.’
Mintie watched, amazed and afraid in equal measure, as Batty strode through the yett to the outer door and put his foot to hold the opening swing. He stuffed his pistol into the bandolier belt round his chest and carefully, slow and quiet, raised the bar and set it down; it was heavy that bar, and Mintie knew the strength it took to remove it silently. He might only have the one arm, she thought, but it is a strong one.
The doors, hooked by his foot alone, stayed shut, and Batty filled his lone hand with pistol, took a deep breath as if about to plunge underwater and shook himself like a dog in the rain.
‘I can hear you breathing hard there,’ he said loudly, and the nearness of his voice must have made them afraid, for Mintie heard a horse squeal as the reins were jerked hard by a startled man.
‘I will count, Will. To three, so as you can all follow it even with your poor tallying skills. At the end of it, I am coming through this door with my single fist full, and if any are there to see it, then you can count shots instead. You can all manage to count to one, can you not? Them left alive, that is.’
‘Will…’ said Clem uncertainly.
‘Weesht you – come ahead, Batty, you lack-witted by-blow of a Graham hoor. I owe you for my fingers and will take the five you have left in the world.’
There was a pause, then Batty shook his head. Mintie was surprised to see that the sorrow seemed genuine.
‘One,’ said Batty and took his foot from the door, so that it swung open. There were two loud bangs, the flashes bright as lightning, and Mintie jumped with the noise. For a moment, she thought Batty was down, but he had flattened against the wall and simply let the door open on panicked, eager men; the shots splintered wood. Wattie was hunkered on the ground with his arms over his head and Mintie heard Jinet start to wail.
‘Two,’ Batty said and stepped into the doorway, where Will and Clem sat their mounts, smoking matchlock pistols as empty as a Monday morning church. Sorley was frantically fumbling with his own weapon, which had misfired.
‘Three,’ said Batty. There was a whirl of sparks, like embers off a blown fire. Then a huge bang buzzed Mintie’s ears, and for an instant Batty was lit up, all bloody red, his bearded jaw jutting and his hand full of wheel-lock dagg, smoke fountaining from it like egret plumes.
The sudden plunge back into darkness came with a mad, ghostly wraith of acrid stink which made Mintie choke. Half blinded, she heard a clatter and only later realised it was Batty dropping the emptied pistol and hauling out a second.
Another great flare of light blasted away the night, then a blackness more choked and darker than ever. There were squeals from horses and women, but the thunder of Batty’s pistols had all but blown away Mintie’s hearing as she staggered to the doorway, expecting to see Batty bleeding on the cobbles.
Instead, she saw him drop the second pistol and haul out a third, while Sorley raved and cursed, flung from his maddened horse and with his caliver spilled uselessly away. Batty pointed the pistol at him and it whirred and sparked – and nothing happened.
He gave a roar of frustration and hurled it to one side, hauling out his last dagg just as Sorley rolled over, grabbed the caliver and swung it like a club, catching the end of the long-barrelled pistol and hooking it from Batty’s grasp.
‘Ha!’ Sorley yelled in triumph and swung it again, this time at Batty’s head – but Batty was quick on his feet for an old, bellied man, moving inside the swing to drive his forehead into Sorley’s face.
Sorley fell backwards, roaring with pain, the caliver spinning away to clatter on the rimed cobbles. He rolled over and got up swiftly, only to find Batty closing with him. Slipping and straining, the pair of them locked for a moment, and Mintie saw Sorley grin through the red mask of his face and thought – he has Batty now. Two arms against one is hardly fair.
Sorley was sure of it, exerted all his young strength and shoved Batty away, so that he could step back and start punching.
‘One arm,’ he roared triumphantly and cocked both his fists meaningfully.
‘Two legs,’ Batty answered and booted him in the cods. Then he clamped his one hand on the back of the whimpering, pain-lashed Sorley’s neck like a mastiff’s grip on a hare.
Sorley struggled and roared through sprung tears of pain, but Batty walked him to the dungheap and plunged his head in it, holding it there while the man thrashed. Then he drew it out until Sorley could splutter and gasp.
‘Are you done?’
‘You stinking bastard-bred—’
The powerful arm thrust and back he went, face first into the dung. Mintie took the hand from her stunned mouth and moved as if in an underwater dream, gliding to where Batty’s last loaded dagg lay.
Sorley was thrashing less, so that when Batty pulled him out, it was all the man could do to breathe; he had no curses left. Batty let him drop to the cobbles and started to wipe his hand down his tunic, when the great blast of the dagg blew fire and smoke everywhere and brought him whirling round.
Clem, already bleeding from the leg, had his arms over his head and a great scar on the cobbles marked where the shot had hit and screamed off into the dark. An inch from where his hand had been reaching for Sorley’s caliver.
Batty looked at Mintie, now sitting on the cobbles, feeling the damp and cold seep through her nightdress and the ache in her wrists, all done by the recoil of the weapon. He grinned, stamped the slow match on the caliver to blackness with one foot and booted the groaning Clem senseless with a single swift kick in the face.
‘Well done, Mistress Araminta,’ he said.
Mintie could only hear a strange low mutter, though she saw his lips moving and realised he was speaking. Panicked, she started to shake her head, thinking she had been driven deaf. Then, slowly, hearing ebbed back until the buzzed mutterings became audible.
‘You dare meddle with me, eh?’ Batty was saying mildly, and Mintie, blinking and rubbing the tears from her eyes, move
d through the drifting smoke to where Sorley coughed and spluttered, climbing painfully to his hands and knees and retching. Eventually he looked up at Batty and found he had to do it down the length of a long blade.
‘Get up and fetch Clem onto his horse,’ Batty ordered and Sorley scrambled to obey. Clem, whey-faced and laid out, had blood all down one leg, and Mintie, seeing the great scab her own shot had made on the stone cobbles, swallowed hard, for she knew he would never walk again without a limp – if he walked at all. It was a mercy for him that he was senseless, for the pain from Batty’s pistol ball would be bad.
Batty turned and saw her look.
‘Get inside, Mintie. This is no sight for you.’
Mintie took a deep breath or two.
‘I carted my dead father back, all bloody from what Hutchie Elliott did to him,’ she replied stiffly. ‘I just fired off yon dagg of yours and near killed a man myself.’
He nodded admittance of her iron and turned back to the groaning figure on the ground, just as Mintie started to realise what she had done and what had happened here; the shivering took her savagely.
Will Armstrong was struggling weakly to rise and not realising he would never do so. Mintie remembered the great ugly exit hole in her father’s body and saw the bloody seep on Will’s belly.
‘Ah, Christ, you have belly-shot me, Batty. Help me up, in the name of mercy…’
Batty levered himself down to kneel beside Will and looked at him with a flat, blank stare and laid his sword down. He picked up a stalk of straw, wiped it as clean as it would go on his jack, then balanced it on his knee and made the sign of the cross three times on it.
Will saw it and his eyes went wild and round while he tried to sit up. Mintie knew Batty was following the custom in urgent cases, asking God of His grace to consecrate this stalk, a fragment of His creation so that it could serve as Host and himself as priest. It was so swiftly done, worn by long usage, that Mintie became aware of how often Batty would have had to perform this in a life of war and siege.
He offered it and Will spat at him, about all that was left to him besides curse. Batty shook his head.
‘I can do nothing for you, Will Armstrong, save leave Sorley unharmed to cart the pair of you home. Clem may live, but you will not. I have blown your backbone through and you will not survive.’
Will closed his eyes to hide the panicked fear in them, but he was a Borders man and rode the bad cess and fear of it like a plunging stallion, rode it hard and all the way until his eyes flashed open to reveal the last venom he could muster. Blood lined his teeth and spilled from him with every word he spat.
‘My kin will hunt you, Batty. My da will pay you full measure for this…’
‘Blood feuds are meat and drink to me,’ Batty answered. ‘I might just have shot your horse out from under you, save that you had called my mother a hoor.’
‘So she was,’ Will raved. ‘A dirty-quimmed drab of a Graham, and I hope the German bastard who sired you on her rots in Hell, where you will be soon enough…’
Mintie stood, stunned and unable to move, while Will’s poison voice spewed on, then tailed slowly off into harsh breathing and, finally, nothing at all. Batty crushed the consecrated stalk and let it blow away into the yard.
Sorley, having loaded Clem on his horse, stood miserable and hunched as Batty ordered him to load Will across his own mount. Then Mintie saw Clem start to weep and was a turmoil of emotions, reliving the great bang and leap of the pistol in her hands, what it had done to the stone, what it might have done to Clem – and what had been done to Will Armstrong. The dam in her broke suddenly, so that she finally whirled and screamed at the grating wails from Jinet floating through the upstairs window.
She felt a hand on her shoulder and leaped before she realised it was Batty, his great ugly face full of concern. He did not speak, but the touch and presence of him made Mintie suck in a few deep breaths and recover herself. Batty nodded as if he knew, then turned back to the weeping Sorley.
‘Take them back to Mattie of Whitahugh and make sure you let him know Batty Coalhouse took nothing from them, for all the trouble the three of you put me to. If he wishes, he can feud with me – but remind him that he is not the first to try. Then tell him Powrieburn has no need of any husbands he may send. The women here can take care of themselves, and what they cannot manage, the Keeper of Liddesdale surely can.’
Batty waited until the horses were all moving out and into the dark before he fetched his thrown-down pistols and, when he straightened, he found Mintie staring at the blood left in the yard. Behind came the ostler boy, his mouth a black O in the white of his face.
‘You shot two men,’ Mintie declared, feeling slightly sick and stunned – and admiring, all at the same time.
‘I did too,’ Batty declared. ‘And killed one, which was careless of me, for there is no reward for the dead, as I have said.’
He frowned and gently wiped dirt from the barrel of one of the pistols he had thrown down.
‘But he angered me. And now I will have to spend a deal of the night cleaning and reloading all of these, which is a business.’
‘I will help,’ Mintie declared suddenly and then flushed as he looked astonished at her.
‘I can load a pistol as well as shoot it. My da taught me, and I would have his save that Hutchie Elliott stole it.’
‘Indeed,’ Batty said with a quiet grin. ‘Then we must make sure we get it back.’
He moved into the dark of the undercroft, then stopped, the trembling lantern held by Wattie making shadows leap and dance on his face.
‘Unless you think I am too decrepit for the business?’
‘I do not,’ Mintie replied vehemently, though she trembled and shook still. ‘We can leave as soon as you care.’
He had taken two steps before the import of the words hit him and he jerked up as if roped, then spun on her.
‘We? There is no “we” in this. I am unlikely to take a lass into the Debatable – why, I may as well tether a lamb in a wolf den.’
He broke off and shook his head until Mintie thought it might fall off.
‘No, no, and again no. You will bide here and look after your mother.’
‘I will not. I am determined to make sure justice is done and for five pound, English, I will be going with you.’
Mintie flung one hand at the dark beyond the light-pooled door.
‘Besides – take a long run and a jump from here and there you are in the Debatable. The boundary stone of it is only a good walk away and I have lived here all my life.’
‘Little good it has done you,’ Batty replied grimly. ‘Besides – what if Mattie of Whithaugh decides to come back? None of these here have any bottom to them save you – well, apart from yon Bet’s Annie.’
‘I agree that is a worry,’ Mintie answered bitterly, ‘though you might have more carefully considered that before you shot his boy.’
He muttered, unable to answer it, and then Mintie closed the argument like the jaws of a wolf trap.
‘You said yourself that Hutchie stole the Fyrebrande knowing full well what he did. Now I know what he will do with it.’
‘Do you now? And what is that?’
‘He will find someone in the Debatable with the money and contacts to buy it cheap from him and sell it on at premium,’ Mintie replied triumphantly. ‘Do you know all the horse dealers for miles around, in or out of the Debatable Land?’
Batty’s beard twitched as he chewed out his frustration on one lip.
‘I do,’ Mintie said and went up to pack her things.
Chapter Three
Powrieburn
The next day
She was up before any of the others, dressed in the chill and never felt it, exulting in the feel of boy’s hose and breeches. She went as silently as she could down the ladder to the undercroft, hoping Wattie had paid heed to her instructions.
‘Two hours before first light, feed Jaunty a handful of oats and a little hay. Ma
ke certain she has enough water. At one hour from first light, saddle her up, but leave the bridle off. Nod to show you understand.’
‘I am aulder than yourself and not witless,’ Wattie had replied scornfully.
‘Half right is all good,’ Mintie had said and went off up to bed.
Now she crept past Wattie and Bet’s Annie, tangled and snoring together – just for the shared warmth, they would argue, for sure – but Jaunty was saddled, and she put her travelling gear on, shoving the long-barrelled caliver and its coil of saltpetred slow match through the loops, so that it stuck out on either side of Jaunty’s haunches.
There was no sign of Batty, nor of the Saul, and for a terrible moment Mintie thought Batty had gone off without her – then she heard voices from the yard and realised the yett and outer doors were open.
When she went to the entrance, she saw Batty, fully dressed in battered buff jack and tattered boots, standing by the head of the Saul. Next to him was a resplendent figure in black Spanish formality, slashed and puff-lined with red, though the marks on Will Elliot’s finest doublet revealed where a back and breast had frequently been worn. Mintie had no doubt the metal armour was in the large bag hung on the saddle of Will’s horse, beside the metal helmet.
Will turned as Mintie came out and nodded politely, smiling an uneasy smile at the scowl he was getting from her.
‘That’s a face to turn milk,’ he joked and had no half ashamed apology in return.
‘What want you here?’
Will shifted on his game foot a little, taken aback by her vehemence. I should have remembered her from last time, he chided himself silently, but determined to be polite a while yet.
‘I am in conversation with Master Coalhouse here,’ he said lightly. And then added, as pointedly as he could manage and stay smiling, ‘A privy conversation it was too.’
‘Concerning?’
‘Concerning no matter you need involve yourself with,’ Will said, barely holding his temper in check and thrusting his chin out so that his beard bristled like a badger’s behind. ‘Away, lassie – butter needs churning somewhere.’
