by Robert Low
‘A brave tale, I am sure,’ Batty answered. ‘Has he scraped the horse shite from his hair and beard yet? I half drowned him in dung, for all his youth and both arms. Which taught him not to come in the night, expecting to abduct a wee lassie from a rickle o’ women and an ostler boy.’
He stared levelly at the Laird.
‘They found me instead and thought a one-armed man was an annoyance only.’
The Laird nodded thoughtfully, then rested his full gaze on Mintie, so that she almost cried out as if it stung.
‘This will be the ostler boy,’ he said and Will nodded.
‘Brought to help with the horse when we recover it from Hutchie,’ he declared loudly. ‘If you have news of either, I am sure your grace as the Laird’s Jock will allow it to be shared.’
The head turned slowly, like some horn-heavy ox, and his gaze was searing, so that Will had to brace himself, as if in a blast.
‘I am Laird’s Jock no longer. I am Laird of Hollows and my grace is none of your affair,’ he declared thickly. ‘I have horse and Hutchie both. The beast I will bring to you now, for the memory of a good man at Powrieburn. Hutchie I will bring to the next Truce Day. Will that suffice?’
‘There were two horses stolen. And a dagg.’
Mintie had blurted it out before she realised and shrank under the eyes that turned on her.
‘Sir,’ she added, her voice trailing off even as she tried to deepen it a little. ‘So I was told to say by the Mistress.’
The Laird looked at her a long time, then nodded.
‘The Fyrebrande and the horse Hutchie rode in on, then. Plus his dagg. Take it and be gone. Land Sergeant, if you poke your neb in Hollows again, it will be bloodied.’
Will Elliot, for all he did not like the feeling, had relief wash him and knew he had let it show by the Laird’s twist of sneering smile. Then the gaze was swung back to Batty.
‘Master Coalhouse, you are free to leave, but not free of obligation. Will and Clem are kin and Whithaugh will not forget. Neither will I. It would be best if you left the Borders entire for healthier climes. I hope you are as legendary stubborn as I have heard, and do not, for I have a mind to see you dead.’
Then he smiled, an arrangement of face muscles his eyes knew nothing of.
‘While you live, all the same, it satisfies me enough that you are a shame to the Grahams.’
Mintie held her breath. It was well known that the Armstrongs and Grahams feuded with each other, as harsh with hate as the Maxwells and Johnstones, and that viciousness had lasted decades already. She waited for an explosion, but Batty said nothing and his face showed only a mild, thoughtful surprise, which Mintie thought very fine after having seen Will Elliot almost fall off his horse with relief.
They sat in silence after the riders had gone, while the wind danced flakes of snow around them. Finally, Batty straightened and stretched, taking his hand away from the holstered pistol for the first time.
‘That went well enough, eh?’ he declared and had back a sour look from Will.
‘You may say so, having got your five pounds English.’
Mintie thought that he was more annoyed by how much he had revealed of his fears and how well Batty had not, to the extent that Mintie was not even sure if Batty had felt any at all. For herself the moment had gone, and only later did she realise that it was the arrogance of youth, that certainty of immortality, that had chased away how she had felt when the Laird set his eyes on her.
At the time, though, she dwelt more on the boots Hutchie had stolen and that she had failed to mention. They would now never get them back – yet there was enough grown woman in her to then feel a wash of shame for considering it after what they had just escaped.
Batty was right – they had achieved a great deal in a day, and though the justice for Hutchie Elliott was a promise only, she had it in mind that the Laird of Hollows would honour it. He thinks himself as graced as a king, that one, Mintie said to herself, and his pride and honour no less. His father had been the same and look where that had got him.
The horses arrived, brought by a brace of sullen men anxious to be done with the matter and back in the warm. Mintie took the cloth-wrapped bundle and unwrapped it; the sight of her father’s dagg and the inlaid vine-leaves that had delighted her as a child made her bow her head and choke a sob.
She felt that now familiar hand on her neck – the same hand which had gripped Clem Armstrong and buried him face-deep in dung, she remembered – and shivered. His rough voice was a soothe on the moment, all the same.
‘A fine pistol,’ he declared, peering. ‘German. Ivory inlay. Good ebenist work on that, for sure.’
But the Fyrebrande was nearly all of the moment and she spent a long time looking him over, ears to fetlocks, while Batty sat patiently and Will fretted to be away ‘afore the Laird alters his mind’.
In the end, Mintie had to admit that the stallion was glossed and gleaming, while her father’s original mount was no less cared for. She climbed on Jaunty and took up the lead ropes as Will reined his horse round savagely and started back the way they had come.
‘If we lift the pace,’ he growled over his shoulder, ‘we can be back in Powrieburn as dark falls. I trust I can beg the grace of a night’s food and lodging.’
‘You can,’ Mintie retorted, ‘even if your own grace in asking is sour as old gruel. What is bending you out of shape, Land Sergeant from Hermitage?’
Will did not reply, but had produced a leather flask from his saddlebags and unstoppered it with his teeth, before fumbling the cork into one hand and taking a deep swallow. Then he coughed, cleared his vision and realised Batty’s hand was outstretched meaningfully; reluctantly, he passed it over.
Batty drank, his apple bobbing in his throat for so long that Will’s mood was not improved by how much of his eau de vie was vanishing.
‘Is there to be a glut of drink tomorrow?’ he demanded, snatching the flask back. ‘Is it that makes you swallow it as if so easily got?’
‘A wee stirrup cup to success,’ Batty expounded and reined in at the brig to allow four big carts to trundle past them, stuffed with covered horse fodder; the fresh smell of it brought the undercroft of Powrieburn back to Mintie with an intensity that was almost painful.
‘Success, is it?’ Will demanded with a growl, and Batty stopped looking thoughtfully at the carts and laughed.
‘Not for you, mark you, who have to go back and tell the Keeper how you were foiled from getting the Fyrebrande.’
Mintie’s head came up at that, and Will blinked, stopped in the act of raising the flask to his mouth.
‘I don’t know what you are saying, Coalhouse,’ he blustered.
‘The Keeper sent you to fetch the horse. The thief if you could manage it, but horse for sure. For himself, mayhap? As fitting a tithe as ever was claimed, eh, Land Sergeant?’
Batty Coalhouse was both right and wrong at the same time, but he might well have stood outside the door as the Keeper told it to Will, so that Will was flustered by it and had no ready answer. Mintie, bridling, was starting in to curse him when the cackle of geese arrested her.
Batty knuckled his hat brim to Andra’s wife, Bella, herding the shod geese up the flinted track towards Hollows, with a stick and one of her boys to help. She bobbed a polite curtsy to the men, then looked at Mintie, taking the sting out of her with her smile.
‘You got your beasts back – there is nice,’ Bella declared, beaming. ‘The laird is a good, fair man, like his poor faither afore him.’
‘Keeps a fine table,’ Batty added and the woman nodded agreement.
‘These will not last long, if the last delivered are anything to judge by.’
She turned back to Mintie.
‘Agnes was right pleased to see you, Mintie. She would have invited you and your mother to the handfasting and wedding, save that matters grew crowded at the smith.’
‘Busy are you?’ Batty asked mildly and the woman threw up her hands.
<
br /> ‘Blessed be, aye, we are. Horses coming from all airts and pairts and not just Galloway nags – proper beasts, slipshod and needing my man’s skills.’
‘Honest-earned money is no toil,’ Batty intoned. ‘Fair journey to you, Goodwife.’
Bella, still beaming, added that Agnes would bring her bairn to Powrieburn for inspection, on the way to it being welcomed to Christ at Bygate, if the priory still stood. God be praised it were a boy.
Mintie watched Andra’s wife hurry off after her waddling charges, and soured to silence now, hunched into her cloak and glared daggers at Will, who had the sense to stay quiet and suffer the sear of her look on his back.
But Mintie, when she eventually surfaced from her anger and sullen embers enough to look, saw that Batty was strange and still and thoughtful and wondered what was going through his mind.
Chapter Four
Powrieburn
Later that day
Towards dark on the way home, a mist came up and the day was over, though it was scarcely late afternoon. As the mist cleared, the moon unveiled and had some wind on it, so that scudding cloud left just enough light to glint the burn they followed; the cold came out, sharp as fox teeth.
At Powrieburn, the women clucked and clapped at their success and return. Bet’s Annie declared she had thought never to see them again, and Wattie, who had never seen the Fyrebrande, was awed by the beast, as like the horses he had cared for so far as a dragon is to a lizard.
In the warm of the hall, fed and watered and listening to the quiet movement of her mother and the other women clinking pots and cutlery, Mintie hugged her knees while the fire danced shadows.
It had been a great adventure, if just for a day, and it hardly seemed only the previous night that Batty Coalhouse had killed a man and disabled two others. Or that her neighbour had thought to marry her by force and steal Powrieburn; it brought a strange feeling to Mintie, both of her power and lack of it.
Batty and Will sat, passing the flask back and forth in silence, and Mintie found herself embering up again at the thought of the Land Sergeant – and the Keeper – trying to cozen her out of the Fyrebrande. But she fumed inwardly, while Will had Jinet pull off his big boots and socks. Then he fell to massaging his three-toed foot, which clearly bothered him.
Mintie watched, fascinated and repelled at the sight of the puckered stumps. Batty grinned, drank and smacked his lips as he passed the leather flask back.
‘Between us, we can nearly make a whole man,’ he said and Will smiled wanly.
‘How did you come to lose them?’ Mintie demanded. ‘Stealing someone else’s sword maybe?’
‘Ach, now, Mintie,’ Batty admonished, but Will waved his attempt at mediation away into the flicker of shadows.
‘No, no, she has a right to know, about the Fyrebrande if not the toes,’ he answered and managed a grin. ‘Though I will reveal both.’
‘The toes I lost on a hot trod after one Dog Pyntle Eck Bourne,’ he began and then saw Mintie’s mother listening and made a hasty nod of apology. ‘Begging your pardon, Goodwife, but that is his name.’
‘I have heard worse,’ Mintie’s mother said and vanished to fetch sewing and a better light.
‘He and some Nixons, with a peck of Croziers, raided across the Waste, slipping up the east bank of Hermitage no less. This was a few years back, when we were less vigilant.’
‘In the time o’ the Flood then,’ Batty growled, ‘for a band of tootling mummers could drive reived kine past Hermitage in the broad light of a fine day all the time I have known the place.’
‘A foul calumny,’ Will replied, his amiability at such a slur surprising Mintie. ‘Unless it has been agreed aforehand.’
‘A fine distinction,’ Batty answered. ‘Which garners blackmeal for the Keeper and no good for the folk he is charged to protect.’
‘One of whom is myself,’ Mintie interrupted, ‘who would like to hear the rest of the tale.’
It was familiar enough even to Mintie, who had heard similar in her few years of life. A raid had been organised from the north side of the Kershope, the water dividing Scotland from its neighbour. Hermitage had known of it, but had let it happen because catching raiders going out is empty of profit, while catching them laden on the way back in gathers decent results in claimed tithes when the beasts are returned to barely grateful owners.
Dog Pyntle and his collection of grim, veteran men had been reluctant to give up their spoil, and a sharp fight resulted in broken heads and fleeing reivers. In the hot trod – the official pursuit – which followed, plain Will Elliot of the Hermitage garrison had caught up with Dog Pyntle, whose horse foundered in a bog.
The fight had been vicious and learning for the Hermitage man – Dog Pyntle’s Jeddart staff had sliced Will out of the saddle, his horse had been lifted, and Dog Pyntle had galloped off on it into the Debatable, where he had been laughing ever since. Will had all but bled to death before he had found help.
‘A toe were gone entire,’ he ended. ‘One turned black and stank later, so a barber was fetched and he snicked it off like you would a wee pup’s tail.’
Mintie made a face and Jinet, overhearing the last, made sucking noises, as you would to a child, then offered to soothe his wounded foot. Will seemed wary, but smiled nonetheless, so that Mintie thought the undercroft would be busy that night; she thought of Agnes and her swollen belly and hugged her knees tighter still.
‘Now tell her about the Fyrebrande,’ Batty grunted and Will sighed.
‘It is much as you revealed,’ he answered, with a quick, bitter glare at Batty for doing so. ‘The Keeper was less interested in getting Hutchie as the horse—’
‘Thief,’ Mintie interrupted, sour with indignant accusation. Will waved an irritated hand, making the candles flap.
‘Away – you may not believe it, Mintie Henderson, but I was to bring it back to you, all brushed and pin-neat, together with the news that Hutchie would be up for judgement at the next Truce Day Meet.’
Mintie’s disbelief was clear in Will’s exasperated sigh.
‘I swear on any Bible you like that this is the truth of it. I would not be party to such a theft, even from the Keeper of Liddesdale.’
‘Just so,’ answered Batty mildly. ‘I am sure of it. As sure of it as I am that when you tell him I and an ostler boy were there, he will hush you on the matter and wink and offer you a glass of wine and a clap on the shoulder for a job well done. Though he will not care to find my name in it. Best if you do not mention Mintie at all.’
‘What are you saying?’ demanded Will truculently.
Batty leaned forward so that his face was devilled by firelight and shadow.
‘Think on this, Will,’ he said. ‘You were sent on your own to the heart of darkness itself, Hollows Tower, to recover a prize horse from a grasping man like the Laird. Does the Keeper hate you? Have you swived his wife or daughters or both? Stolen his purse?’
Will frowned. The Keeper, he had always thought, ranked him well enough, and the fact of that mission had puzzled and irritated him all the way there and back.
Batty swallowed from the flask, made a sad face and handed it back to Will, who found it empty and scowled.
‘That should tell you enough,’ Batty said, ‘but in case you are struggling with it still, let me point up the ease with which the Laird handed back said horse – and more, beside – and promised redress on the thief.’
‘As if he knew,’ Mintie declared suddenly, seeing it clear. Batty nodded and indicated her with a triumphant flap of his hand, as if to say to Will, ‘There, you see? A bliddy wee lassie can work it out in less time than yourself.’
Now that it was said, the fact of it stared Will back in his face. The Laird had known someone would be coming for the horse, possibly even that it would be himself, since Hermitage was man-short and he was the most likely to be chosen for the task. Which meant that the Keeper of Liddesdale and the outlaw of Hollows had arranged it between them. Which mea
nt…
This last arrowed Will’s brow, though he struggled manfully with it – and failed.
‘What does it all mean?’ he asked and Mintie wondered it as well. Batty closed one thoughtful eye and stroked his raggle of beard.
‘Well – the Fyrebrande is no ordinary beast and neither is Mintie Henderson of Powrieburn,’ he declared, so that Mintie felt herself flush with delight at his grin.
‘She comes seeking justice for murder and spoiling, and when none is forthcoming, rides to Askerton – possibly on to Carlisle, for the Keeper has no way of knowing – to get it from the English.’
He paused and shook his head with mock outrage.
‘A wee chit o’ a lassie, stirring matters up, causing upset and ripples which the Lord Hepburn, Keeper of Liddesdale, would prefer to stop spreading, lest other folk start sticking their nebs into what is happening around Hollows.’
‘The mill?’ declared Will and shook his head uncertainly. ‘It is new to us, sure, but not something you can keep hidden for much longer. An event, as you say – there is no other like it, and if the Keeper and the Master of Hollows have contrived mutual profit from such a venture, then it will surely come out sooner or later.’
Most likely later, he thought, since we have no firm hand in the land, only a bairn still drooling milk and a regent too occupied with greater matters to care, even about such a strange thing as a powder mill in Scotland. And in the Debatable, where no permanent structures are supposed to be raised and no writ of Law runs, save that of the Laird of Hollows.
‘It is not all about the mill,’ Batty declared. ‘You will have noted how the Laird of Hollows was not facered in the least you reporting it to the Keeper, as you would do. He is, I suspect, put out by me and a wee ostler boy having set eyes on it, all the same. But the mill is part of it, mark me.’
‘Part of what?’
Batty sucked his lip and then suddenly grinned.
‘Ride to Hermitage the morn, Will,’ he said. ‘Tell the Keeper the Fyrebrande is returned and Hutchie promised for the next Truce Day meet, and see what he says and how pale he turns when he finds you were not alone, as planned. He will ask you if there is any Bill on me and whether one should be made, with a wink and a nod and a look that makes my future uncertain. He may even ask you to serve it.’
