A Dish of Spurs

by Robert Low

  Batty stayed the night, sleeping with the Saul after he had eaten upstairs, as he had done before. This time there was no Primero, for Mintie’s ma had taken to her bed following the events and horror, and the other women were not much better. The unease of Mintie seeped into them all save Bet’s Annie, who led Batty back to the undercroft with a horn-panel lantern and set it down slowly in the old place where Batty had bedded before, bruised from falling off Tinnis Hill.

  ‘You are moving better,’ she observed as he struggled out of his padded jack.

  ‘I am that – possets had a deal to do with it,’ he answered smiling, and she remembered them, then looked at the grilled yett and the battered double doors beyond, draught wheeping in through the holes. She shivered at the memories.

  ‘Is she sure?’

  The question turned her to face him, and for a moment she thought he spoke of her being with child – then realised he did not, and knew at once what he meant.

  ‘She is set on it. I said it was too early to tell and that if she had missed a bleed it was as much because of how she had been mishandled as having his plant in her.’

  Batty shook his head and the unspoken words ‘bad business’ seemed to coil out of him anyway. He squinted at her.

  ‘Is she good, this woman from the Solway?’

  Bet’s Annie thought on it. Auld Nan had as good a reputation as any, better than most, and would send away all the young ones who came to her begging love potions, or spells to ruin rivals in their affections for some man. Those she scourged away with growls and strangeness – but folk like Mintie, with good reason and deep fears, were differently treated.

  ‘Auld Nan,’ she said, nodding. ‘I went there once with my mother and a cousin in trouble. She took a long time, did Auld Nan, and most of it was to make sure the cousin knew what she was set on.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘She was relieved of her condition,’ Bet’s Annie said, and saw Batty shift. Then suddenly she realised why, and the shock of it almost brought her hand to her throat. He had been the unwanted bairn, got on Bella Raham of Netherby by a German. But for the merest chance, he might well have never been born at all, scourged to oblivion by the likes of Auld Nan.

  ‘What does she use – pennyroyal? The tail hairs of black deer?’

  She looked grimly back at him.

  ‘You know a bit,’ she answered, and he waved his one hand and then used it to balance himself against the stable stall while he heeled off his boots.

  ‘My ma did some for the camp women.’

  Bet’s Annie did not doubt Batty had seen the results – another reason for him not liking the business much.

  ‘Pennyroyal keeps fleas off a dog,’ she answered flatly. ‘That is because it is poison. Deer hair will make you sick, for sure, but you can’t sick up what is inside Mintie.’

  She handed him blankets against the cold, busied and fussed in getting him comfortable, as if he was a wee boy. Then she straightened.

  ‘She used black hellebore and savin, which is the juniper, on my cousin. Boiled it all up in milk and ale. Then she potioned her with dittany, hyssop and hot water, which is balming to the aftermath.’

  ‘Safe?’

  She set the lantern carefully on a hook, so it would not fall and burn the place down.

  ‘Nothing is safe. My cousin was as sick and near death as any woman I have seen. But she recovered. Went on to have a brace of healthy boys for the man she eventually got married on to.’

  All night Bet’s Annie felt him, awake and staring at memories, even through the corbelled stone floor of the undercroft.

  Solway Coast

  Three days later

  Fiskie, he called the horse, and Mintie suspected Batty did so to provoke a response from her. Normally she would have been stung by this renaming of her da’s old mount, especially since it was the term given to a horse prone to kicking, which was a great lie for her da’s gelding.

  But Mintie had no arguments in her, only a dull dread that kept her from saying anything other than the answers to direct questions about when to start, when to stop and which way to take.

  They had avoided Andrew’s forge and any encounter with Agnes, skirted Netherby and any contact with the Grahams, avoided Graitna and slept in the cold and the damp until Batty’s bones creaked. All rather than meet folk she might have to speak with.

  They came down on the River Sark in a dawn of milk and gold, with the wind hissing off the firth, fat with cold and running snell fingers through the hawthorn and gorse and willow. Red-legged little waders waddled and wheeled back and forth, and Batty looked up at a skein of geese making a black fork in the silver sky.

  ‘Mayhap we will find their tree,’ he laughed softly to Mintie, who nodded and almost managed a smile; it was well known that such geese were grown on a branch, hanging by their beaks until they matured and fell into the water. Though no one had yet found such a tree.

  The shape of a man rose up, dark against the sky, and Mintie reined in while Batty rode up to him. It was moot who was more afraid, Mintie or the man out with his bow, poaching from some mean hovel in Graitna and as anxious to avoid being seen or spoken to as Mintie herself.

  But he stammered out what Batty needed to know and then scuttled off. Batty kneed his horse back alongside Mintie and jerked his jut of beard at a rise of coast.

  ‘That headland splits and between is a sandy cove. Auld Nan’s cottage is there.’

  And so it was, a wattle and daub affair built almost into the earth and invisible, swaddled by willow and yew. It faced onto the opening in the headland, along a wind drift of sand in as sheltered a cove harbour as you would find anywhere. Smugglers, Batty thought, with a professional eye. For sure.

  There were seabirds on the boundary wall, hung out and dried to black crosses. A whole fox was nailed to a post, gone to a rickle of bones with ribs like a set mantrap. And as they rode up, the bitter firth rolled through the gap of the headland in long sighs, already withdrawing to leave the great stretch of sucking mud that was low tide. The wind mourned and danced spirals up from the sands.

  A woman opened the door as they dismounted, so that they paused in what they were doing and looked at her. She was neither old nor young, her hair unbound and a colour that might have been, in the dawn light, silver or gold.

  She said nothing, merely waited for them to duck under her lintel and enter, Batty with his nerves raw and his one hand on the hilt of his sword. The room was dim and grey with smoke, flowered with dancing flames from an open fire; mad shadows reeled on the walls.

  A chittering, like rats, made him crouch and half draw, but then he recoiled a little and blinked his eyes to get used to the poor light until he saw the figure. It hirpled out, rolling like a sailor, naked save for a scrap of cloth across its hips, and Batty felt the hackles rise on him because he did not know what it was, let alone male or female.

  The face was beautiful as a girl’s, the head hairless, the haddock eyes wet and bright, seeming blind as a slow-worm, and the jaw slack. The hands were held in front, like a prayer, and looked like flippers; the feet, Batty saw, had all the toes fused.

  ‘Christ in Heaven,’ he said and would have crossed himself save that he did not want to take his hand off the hilt; Mintie stood and stared. The creature made a chittering sound and a grimace which Batty realised was meant to be a smile.

  ‘My son,’ said the woman coming up behind them. Close up she was older, the eyes set deep as caves in a face once beautiful and now ravaged by time… and worse, Batty thought.

  ‘He bids you welcome and says you should eat.’

  Batty looked at the son, seeing now that the eyes saw well enough, just kept rolling up into his head. His hands flapping, he hirpled past them out of the hut, and the woman smiled.

  ‘He goes to swim,’ she said and looked at Mintie. ‘He swims well. But you would have guessed that.’

  ‘Is he… selkie?’ she asked wonderingly, and the woman laughed, bitter as th
e wind.

  ‘His da was, so I think,’ she answered. ‘At least he vanished swift as one when he found I was with child.’

  Mintie stared at her, at the surrounds and the fire which poured silver smoke up to the sucking roof hole, like a fall of water reversed.

  ‘But you could have…’ she began, bewildered, and the woman tilted her head, then looked at Batty.

  ‘Eat the broth,’ she said to him, ladling it into a bowl and fetching him a horn spoon. ‘Then leave. This is no place for a man, be it father, husband or lover. Come back in two days.’

  ‘I am none of these,’ Batty answered levelly, though his heart thundered. The woman nodded and Mintie said nothing.

  ‘And more than all, I think,’ the woman answered. ‘I know you, one-arm. You are Corbie. Slow match. I know your work, for I have had the spill from it here – wee husbands presented with evidence of cuckoldry from you and now convinced what lies in their unfaithful wife’s belly is not any get of their own.’

  She looked at him expectantly; Batty looked her right back.

  ‘Fathers,’ she added, ‘told of their daughter’s sins and determined to end the dishonour of it.’

  ‘They could take it to term,’ Batty answered in a growl, ‘but would only have it left on the moss, so there is little choice for them, which is what happens when you sin. Besides – you could have refused them, woman. Them and their menfolk both.’

  ‘And leave them in fear and with the loathing of those they have to live with after,’ she replied tartly.

  ‘Losing the fee betimes,’ Batty countered, because he thought he had the measure of the woman now.

  He nodded grimly to Mintie, but kept his eyes on the woman.

  ‘She wants to know why you did not use your skills on your own self. Will you tell her?’

  Auld Nan said nothing, merely worked the fire so that it flared and a small log rolled out into the ash on one side.

  ‘You had none, of course,’ Batty answered for her. ‘That artifice all came later, as if in answer to your misbegotten, who might be selkie-born and might not.’

  He leaned into the flames a little, blood-dyed by them.

  ‘Every wee silly lass you root out,’ he added, ‘is yourself. But that horse has long bolted, Mistress – does your son know you never wanted him?’

  ‘Firebrand,’ she said bitterly, and whether she spoke of the log in the ash or of Batty’s other byname, the one that set flame to everything it touched, was never certain. Then she turned to Mintie.

  ‘We will speak on it more,’ she said, ‘but I say this for the Corbie’s sake. I know why you are here. What you have in you was put there by a man and is now rooted. If it be your wish, then we will uproot it – but the part that is him will come also with the part that is you, and that will tear your soul.’

  ‘Do not forget the rip of the body in it,’ Batty added harshly, and Mintie finally stirred.

  ‘Leave,’ she said, and there was a deal of plead in her voice. Batty thought about it, while a cat with one eye wound itself round his legs. The broth was rich and good and welcome, so he ate it, wiped his beard and then nodded to the women and left. Mintie never looked at him.

  Outside, he found himself breathing hard, as if to take clean air into him. It was the smoky hut, he told himself… But he looked for the selkie son, half expecting to see him rolling in the Solway’s cold slide on his back, eating raw fish.

  But there was nothing. He crossed himself, took the horses and rode away to Graitna.

  Solway Coast

  Two days later

  He rode back, his tongue furred and his head thick and heavy from too much brooding drink at the Forge Tavern. The place was the same, with its black crosses of hung birds and rickle of fox bones, and the full light of day did little for it; even the cries of the gulls sounded like lost children.

  Auld Nan was waiting for him, though there was no sign of the selkie son, and he asked after him, out of politeness.

  ‘I send him away at times like this,’ she said, ‘for fathers, husbands and lovers sometimes do not take kindly to the work’s aftermath.’

  The work’s aftermath lay in the smoking dim on a draggle of old furs covered with grey blankets she would never have let touch her in normal times. Her breathing, as far as Batty could tell, was slow and even, so she was asleep and not dead.

  He turned into the woman’s stare, and she nodded at him.

  ‘Alive,’ she agreed, then frowned and handed him a slip of paper. It was clear neither of them could read it, and Batty simply turned it over in the calloused fingers of his hand until she told him what was in it – as he knew she would.

  ‘The lass says it is a writ, with a call on her for five pounds, English, and the name of the man she will not soil her mouth with. Justice, she says.’

  Batty closed his eyes against the beating storm of it, hearing Mintie’s voice even as the woman spoke. He felt the bleak, welling sadness rise in him.

  ‘Ach, Mintie,’ he said, slow and heavy and sad, then realised that Auld Nan was holding something, presenting it to him.

  ‘Last time,’ she said, ‘you supped from my pot. This time the lass bid me serve a harsher meal, and then you must leave. She will make her own way home.’

  Batty looked and saw the battered pewter dish and the spurs lying on it. Rusted, leather-rotted and useless for the purpose they had been made for, they were bright and sharp for the one they were being used for now. She must have brought them with her, Batty thought, all secret with purpose even then…

  It was the pointed way a Border woman said it was time a man did his duty and went on the raid, to ensure the survival of the household.

  A dish of spurs.

  Chapter Eleven

  Hollows Tower

  Feast of St Peter in cathedra (22 February)

  He came out of night and the moon, that lover’s lantern, chart of womb tides, accomplice of murderers. The dawn was a dance of loveliness by comparison, even though it dripped; the trees were grim and doves mourned.

  Batty eased himself in the saddle a little, watching lapwings skim the yellow fields, squinting down at the black Esk and the lumped hunch of the powder mill, its wheel turning. The snow was patched now, he noted – but this was the north, so it was no indication that there would not be more.

  Dark and cold it looked, Batty thought. Milling was done when there was enough daylight to spill in the windows and there would be no flame for heat or work. He saw folk moving there, shuffling in their rag-bound feet, breeches and hose loose without belts. No metal on them at all to cause a spark.

  Beyond on the crag, the finger of Hollows stood half built in stone and caged by scaffolding mottled with damp. No one worked on it now, for mortar would crack in the cold and all the undone walls of it were stuffed with straw to keep the freeze from the ashlar and the fresh-cut stones.

  Yet the barmkin was high enough, with a walkway on it where folk moved, sluggish as old snails. The outbuildings, hidden behind it, were up and about; Batty heard the whinny of horses and saw the thread of smoke from the kitchen fires.

  He waited, knowing he had been seen, and did not have to suffer it long until four riders came out, the leader’s bounce in his saddle showing he was no horseman.

  Batty knew Leckie Armstrong, the sometime steward of Hollows because he could tally and read. Learning, Batty confirmed to himself, leaves little time for the important matters such as riding and fighting, which was survival in the Debatable. Yet Leckie was valued, used his mind like a sword and had to be considered because of it.

  Flanked by surly scowlers who knew Batty, Leckie jounced up and reined the horse in gratefully, raising himself painfully in the stirrups. The long and fruitless ride to Carlisle in pursuit of the German had rasped him raw; there had been no child with the man and his wife, and he had babbled about handing the babe back to the physicker who had examined it. Of such a physicker, there was no sign.

  They had killed the German and h
is Dutch wife anyway, though Leckie had not liked that. Hutchie did it, grinning and getting the others to make it look like a robbery while he did things to the woman, then killed her. They had rolled the bodies under a gorse bush out on the empty moss and then ridden back to Hollows with the bad news that sent the Laird into a spleen folk walked soft round.

  The arrival of Batty would not help it, Leckie thought.

  ‘You might not have a brace of arms,’ he said by way of greeting, ‘but your neck is of purest brass, Master Coalhouse.’

  ‘Unlikely to be stretched, then, Master Leckie. Will your Laird speak with me?’

  Leckie eyed Batty sideways for a moment or two, then shook his head with an awe that was only partly mock.

  ‘By God, man, you have attacked his guests and left twenty of them cold and stripped in the road, a sprig of the English gentry among them. It took us a whole day to gather them in for decent burial.’

  No doubt, Batty thought, though you never soiled your own palms with the business; mind you, you have been riding until your arse bleeds. I wonder where?

  But he said nothing, simply waited, and Leckie did not disappoint.

  ‘You have turned out Grahams against the Laird and, we hear, are spreading scurrilous telltale about him and the Keeper being involved in this awful business with the wee Queen.’

  He shook his head and tutted at the outrage, all mock sorrow and innocence.

  Batty shrugged and offered his undershot grin of admiration.

  ‘Ach, Leckie, you are as fine as a mummer’s show when you get started. “Scurrilous telltale” is it? Christ be praised it never comes to question and trial, where the wet nurse and the wee woodworker who made the cradle in Hollows are called to witness. And let us not speak of a wheen of Armstrongs and their friends thieving and burning all over Scott’s land.’