by Robert Low
‘We have butter enough,’ Mintie snapped back, ‘and you are keeping Master Coalhouse and myself from important matters of our own. Feel free to enjoy bread and the butter you are so concerned with before you leave. You may tell my ma I said so.’
Will’s face flushed and he quivered, looking from Mintie to the mild, amused eyes of Batty.
‘By God, child, you are in sore need of a scold bridle.’
‘Try such a thing and I will prick the bladder of you with something sharp.’
‘You are not so auld that I cannot put you on my knee and slap manners into you, lassie—’
‘You may dream of it.’
Will, unaccountably to Mintie, flushed even deeper and could not speak at all. Batty, his voice rich with laughing, laid his hand on Mintie’s shoulder, so that she became aware of her own tremble.
‘Enough, the pair of you, good entertainment though it is on a chilled morning.’
He hitched the wooden apostles round his padded jack and spoke seriously to Mintie.
‘The Land Sergeant from Hermitage came to tell you a Bill has been duly made for Hutchie Elliott and he himself ordered to track the man and bring him to justice, returning your goods betimes. We were discussing the matter of it when you arrived.’
Mintie looked from one to the other, frowning. Will Elliot’s face was suffused but triumphant, and he recovered himself enough to speak.
‘My coming was timely,’ he grated and nodded to the darkened cobbles, which a night’s rime had failed to cover. ‘Blood spilled and men slain is no light business.’
The memory of the night flooded over Mintie, so that she hugged herself tight and could not speak.
‘Ach, now,’ Batty soothed, ‘it was properly done, as all here will subscribe – they came to do mischief and fired first. You can see the marks in the door there.’
Will glanced at the fresh scars and wondered at Batty Coalhouse having taken on three weaponed men with only the one arm. Killed one too, and there would be conniptions over that. He suspected foul play but there was no way of proving it, and he knew the man only by reputation, struggling to recall more which might be of help.
Batty Coalhouse had arrived at Berwick two years since and there was some scandal attached to his mother, who had been a Graham. His father had been some German mercenary who came with Perkin Warbeck when he was pretending to be Richard IV of England and persuading King James to launch a huge army from Scotland against the English. It had all been smoke and Scotch mist, soon uncovered. Warbeck was packed off to Cork in shame and eventually got himself hanged at Tyburn.
Some of the Germans had hung on in Scotland, washing round the Borders like slurry all through the last year of the old century. One had eventually washed over a Graham lass and had Batty on her. The pair of them, Will surmised, must have fled, for the Grahams would not have suffered either to live long.
That had been years back, but memories were long and grudges longer still. Since he had come back to his mother’s homeland, Batty Coalhouse had been as shunned by Grahams as if no time had passed. Will knew most of this because Batty had been taking on the worst of fouled Bills for the Wardens of the Marches on both sides, hunting down hard men for the money in it and spending the rest of his time as a thumper, keeping peace in a tavern in Berwick.
He had his name from the German and Coalhouse was the nearest most folk could make of it. A morose, ugly name, Will thought, fit to match a man it was better not to cross, for all he had a bit of belly and only one arm. Will was polite, though determined to mark a little of his authority, which did no harm.
‘Aye, it is surely as you say,’ he said slowly, stroking his neat-bearded chin, ‘but the Keeper will want it writ up, witnesses attested and all that.’
‘It will be,’ Batty said cheerfully. ‘All done as if there was law on the Border right enough – but once we have brought Hutchie back out of the Debatable.’
‘So you agree to my proposal then?’ Will said, brightening.
‘Which proposal is this?’ Mintie demanded and had another scowl from Will, who sucked his teeth with frustration as Batty explained.
‘Young Will here has been sent by the Keeper, as he says. He proposes we join forces to bring Hutchie to task and that he will claim only the two pound Scots for recovery, leaving your fee entirely to myself. Since he is well set up with a brace of decent latchbows and a good sword, I think that is a fine arrangement.’
Mintie, frowning, thought about it and was puzzled as to why the Land Sergeant at Hermitage, who could not be bothered before now, was suddenly so hot to go after Hutchie that he would not even argue for a share of five pound English. She said as much and saw the flicker in Will’s eyes that showed the next thing he said was a lie.
‘I am the Land Sergeant out of Hermitage,’ he declared stiffly, ‘and Lord Hepburn – your feudal, I might add, and Keeper of Liddesdale betimes – has so ordered. I am the law.’
Mintie felt the heavy hand of Batty on her shoulder, almost at the back of her neck, as you would do to gentle horse or dog; she turned up into his mild, benign, ugly smile.
‘By God, he is a man of parts right enough. The law, he says. Well, we are better served with him than without.’
‘We?’
Will’s face was wide with incredulity.
‘We?’ he repeated, then looked a sneer at Batty.
‘You are not taking this girl with you? I wondered why she was dressed as a laddie, but thought that was just her way. There is no way under God’s Heaven that I am riding into the Debatable with a girl in train – lad’s breeks or not.’
‘Then we wish you a good day and a safe journey,’ Batty said before Mintie boiled over. ‘Though the Debatable is less likely to regard a poor one-armed man and a wee ostler boy than yourself. I doubt a Land Sergeant from Hermitage will pass unchallenged.’
The fact had not escaped Will Elliot when Hepburn had put the scheme to him, and he had asked for a dozen riders besides himself. The lord had waved it away.
‘I don’t have a dozen. Nor half that,’ he had told Will. ‘The Hamilton Earl of Arran has turned Catholic overnight since he became Regent to the new wee Queen. He is thumbing his neb at English plans to marry their wee Prince to his charge, but might birl himself into a new condition in another eyeblink. The Stuart Earl of Lennox, who has a fair claim to the throne himself, is looking to be wed to the wee Queen’s mother and Mary of Guise is giving him a poor welcome, so he scowls and plots in France – but he is hourly expected. Fat Harry of England, bad leg or not, will not be backwards in coming forwards and we are at war, for all nothing seems to be happening. Yet. But every man will be needed for what follows, mark me.’
Which was no comfort, as Will explained.
Hepburn, his slab face bright, had clapped him on the shoulder. ‘One man, sly and secret, can get in and find Hutchie where a hot trod of riders would only attract unwarranted attention. Go to it.’
Will Elliot would have loved to have broken his knuckles on the Keeper’s smug smile, but he had paid fifteen pounds Scots for the position of Land Sergeant and had recouped half of the outlay in a year of tithes on returning stolen beasts; he was not about to slay that milch cow.
He thought about it now, blinking into Batty’s bland stare. He would have refused save that the task he’d been handed was important, as the Keeper had been at pains to point out, the threats concerning failure only slightly veiled. There had also been a strange note, as if the Keeper already knew the outcome.
‘You have been cozened by a slip of a girl,’ he said bitterly to Batty and climbed on his horse. Batty, grinning from one cheek to the other, levered himself up on the Saul and looked at Mintie.
‘Well, don’t stand there like a millstone. Fetch your gear and horse.’
They rode a little way, long enough for snow to start in large, wet flakes. Will gathered his fashionable, short black cloak round him, and Batty drew out a long, hooded riding cloak, green on one side and mad
der on the other, though both colours had faded with time and stain.
They had stopped at the great slab of Faerie rock that was the boundary stone marking the north-east extent of the Debatable Land, as if Batty was giving Mintie a last chance to change her mind as he expertly looped the cloak around himself with the one hand.
‘Have you a cloak, young Mintie?’ he asked, and she admitted she had, a good Border shepherd one of cream wool and blue check, but it was wrapped up in her tied bundle and strapped to the back of the saddle. They waited while she climbed off to get it, and Mintie was annoyed at herself for having packed so badly.
‘By God,’ said Batty admiringly as she pulled the caliver free, ‘that is a fearsome lump of iron – there must be a three-quarter-ounce of ball shot in that. Can you fire it?’
Mintie knew how but never had, though she tilted a defiant chin and lied. Will was unimpressed.
‘Ha. It would tumble you backwards on your hurdies, girl. That is too much gun for the likes of you.’
‘A man who cannot afford one should not give advice on what he has not,’ she spat back, and Batty laughed out loud into the flush of Will Elliot’s face.
‘She has you there – is it cost that puts you off a decent pistol or two?’
‘It is not,’ Will said indignantly. ‘I prefer a good latchbow – I can get half a dozen bolts off in between your reloads. Nor will the rain douse it, as it will that slow-match caliver. A longbow shoots faster still, but badly from the back of a nag. So a latchbow is best.’
‘Fair points,’ Batty said and nodded to Mintie. ‘Coil the match length of that up under your hat to keep it dry. And tie a wee bit cloth ower the barrel-end to keep damp from the charge – I take it you have loaded it, but not primed?’
Mintie had done neither, and Will shook his head at the revelation.
‘See? This is not some gallivant, girl. What would happen if folk came on us sudden-like, all drawn weapons and bad intent?’
She was searching for a stinger to fire back at him when he suddenly whipped out his broadsword and whacked Jaunty on the rump with the flat. Outraged, Jaunty squealed, bucked and ran, scattering Mintie’s pack as she did so.
‘Something akin to that, lassie,’ Will roared triumphantly. ‘Now, by the time you have gathered in your mount, we will be long gone beyond the horizon and you would be best advised to go home. Where you should have bided in the first place.’
Mintie was stunned for a moment, then the anger surged up in her. She put two fingers to her lips and blew a piercing whistle which brought Jaunty to a quivering halt. Another started the beast, almost shamefaced, back towards her.
Will was open-mouthed, then scowling, and Batty slapped his knee and roared with laughter. Will was too busy trying to get all the bitter flow out of his mouth at once that he never noticed Mintie at his knee until the knife flashed.
He yelped, thinking she was stabbing him in the cods – but then felt the grip on his big knee boot and realised, as he fell sideways at her tug, that she had sliced through the stirrup and hauled him off his horse.
He landed heavily and scrambled up, aware of the mud slathering his elbows and knees. Batty was hanging onto his pommel, helpless with laughter, and Will whirled to face the crouching Mintie, her knife held low and point up.
‘Come near me and I will draw blood,’ she hissed, and though her own blood sang in her ears and her chest was tight so that she could hardly breathe, she felt a great surge of exultation at what she had done. That will show you, Land Sergeant of Hermitage.
Will Elliot frowned. That stirrup leather had been old and tough and two fingers wide, yet the knife had sheared it easily enough, so he had respect for the edge. But no slip of a girl was about to outface the Land Sergeant of Hermitage – it was bad enough that she had tumbled him off his horse.
‘Now, now, Mintie…’ Batty managed to get out between haw-hawing.
Will darted, feinted, got in under her strike and twisted. Mintie did not know how she had missed, but felt the hand on her wrist, the sudden sharp pain that made her squeal, and knew she had lost the knife.
Then suddenly she was headlocked under one arm, and he had plonked himself on a fat tussock and dragged her over his knee. She did not believe it – could not believe it – but he slapped her, hard.
‘This is what I promised you, missie,’ he said, breathing hard. ‘And so what you will get. Your hurdies will keep you warm all the way back – but you will have to walk for I am determined to make it too hard for you to ride.’
He hit her again, and she roared with indignation and outrage, struggling futilely in his iron grip.
‘Aye, aye,’ Batty said, wiping the tears from his eyes. ‘Enough is enough, Will Elliot. Let the lass go now.’
There was a pause and Mintie felt the tension coiling.
‘I will finish what I started,’ Will Elliot declared, and another whack descended, though it seemed less hearted than before.
‘Best if you stopped now. We have a long ride and we will be slowed enough by your lack of stirrup without having to wait for a walking Mintie.’
‘I can ride fast enough without stirrups,’ Will answered, and she felt the shift of him raising his hand, ‘and she will not be walking our way when she leaves here.’
‘She will be riding which way she chooses. And I said to let her loose.’
She heard the change in his voice, the laughter gone from it and the tone shifted to something low and soft, like the slither of a snake’s belly on wet grass. Will heard it too, but Mintie felt only anger tremble in him.
‘And who are you to order me, you Graham half-blood? I will finish what I started.’
They both heard the low, dreadful scrape of metal on leather as the dagg came out of the saddle holster.
‘That will be your last mistake, you lack-toed fud of a fatherless whelp.’
The air creaked with the coiled tension of the moment, and Mintie felt his grip slacken, tore free and rolled over to face them.
Batty sat his horse casually, leaning his elbow on the pommel, the hand filled with long-barrelled pistol; from where she sat, the damp seeping up through her breeks and hose, Mintie could see the big black hexagon cave of it and realised it must seem like the mouth of Hell to Will, who quivered on the point of launching himself, like wine in an overfull cup.
And all the time he was thinking: he knows of me as I know of him – lack-toes he calls me, so he knows that much. Fatherless, he calls me, which is true enough, though not as much sting to me as calling his ma a hoor is to him.
Which, even as he said it to himself, he knew as mostly lie. He let himself subside and breathed out slowly.
Batty nodded and carefully stowed the weapon.
‘Mintie – collect your gear and repack it. We will wait. Master Elliot – can you ride without stirrups for a while? There is a sometime farrier a mile from here at Andrascroft who might be able to find a spare stirrup leather, or something like it. Beyond that, you may do as you please.’
Will said nothing, simply got up, fetched his hat and beat it pointlessly on his knee boots until he was assured it was clean enough to stick back on his head. Then he vaulted, lithe and easy, into the saddle. Batty nodded admiringly at that, as if he recalled a time when he could have done the same.
A thought struck Mintie and she aired it.
‘I know the farrier Andra. Perhaps he has a pistol the same as yours. I will willingly trade this caliver for such a dagg, Master Coalhouse, which is one I can handle and load and which can still kill the likes of Hutchie Elliott.’
Batty shook his head like a weary dog.
‘Mintie,’ he said. ‘Shut your bliddy bread hole, fasten your pack and climb up on yon clever horse.’
* * *
They rode on and heard the tink-tink-tink of hammer on metal before they came on Andrascroft, a straggle of cruck houses huddled like sheep; though they were all wattle, daub and thatch, they’d been there long enough to get moss and as
long as Mintie could remember. She knew Andrew Crozier and his family well enough, but Will Elliot regarded it all with a scathing eye.
‘No fixed raisings,’ he muttered and Batty laughed. The law, agreed between both countries, was that the land none of them wanted was not to be settled by either side. No permanent structures were to be built – but since neither country upheld their laws in the Debatable, it was an instruction the residents thumbed their noses at, to the extent that an entire village – Canobie – existed within it.
‘A substantial slab of Scotch mist,’ Batty agreed wryly, ‘as is the one being built in stone and belonging to the man who lets Andrew smith here.’
Mintie knew, as did Will, that he spoke of Johnnie Armstrong, once known as the Laird’s Jock to distinguish himself from his father of the same name. The Armstrongs were the power in the land no government wanted and the Laird’s Jock was now the power at Hollows, a great tower which had been the arrogant stamp of his father. He was also close kin to the chief of the Armstrongs, whose castle was at Mangerton.
A thought struck Mintie, though it was clear when she spoke it that it had fallen on both Batty and Will long before.
‘Will the Laird of Hollows know you killed an Armstrong of the Whithaugh?’
‘If I were Mattie of the Whithaugh,’ Batty said flatly, ‘I would have sent riders to tell him before first light. He may not know yet. Or he may.’
‘Then it would be wise to put distance atween us,’ Will muttered, hunching into his cloak and eyeing the wood-spattered hills as if a band of vengeful Armstrongs would ride over it at any moment.
Which they might do, Mintie thought, since Hollows is a spit beyond the horizon. It was also one of the places she thought likely for Hutchie to go with the Fyrebrande and said so. Will Elliot groaned. Batty paused in dismounting, then levered himself off the Saul with a grunt.
‘Let us speak with this Andra first. He may have news more welcome than sticking our hands in a Hollows viper nest.’
‘Aye, very good,’ Will said morosely.
