A Dish of Spurs

by Robert Low

  This world is Hell and there is no other.

  He ducked into the darkness of the hidey-hole, into the smell of old stone and must. Something had staled here a time ago – badgers or rats, he thought, but inside the eggshell of hidden dark, he fetched out the dried kindling stuffed inside his doublet and placed it at his feet, then grunted his way down to a knee. He whirred sparks from his tinderbox and blew life into a flame, then a fire, and by the light of it inspected the hole.

  It was much as he remembered it – even the little stack of cut wood, bone dry and cobwebbed in a corner, and that gave him pleasure, for he could have a dry wood fire enough to cook and not smoke overly much. Filtered out through the brush of the entrance, it might not even show at all.

  There was dressed stone here too, which made his skin crawl. Good stone galleted – big pieces, infilled with smaller bits and mortared with clay, now crumbling – and fine as any bastel. Yet old; Batty could feel the age of the place and held a brand from the fire higher, squinting at the part of his hole which was bared rock.

  There were marks there, sometimes looking as if a hen had walked up the stones, sometimes no more than the scarts a man in jail will make, to keep track of his days. Yet Batty thought there was something regular about them; he thought they might be a message from the Faerie.

  A warning, he thought, which was his usual experience of marks on gates or walls; and though he could neither read nor write, he knew these marks were as different from the ones men made as an egg is to a plum.

  He tossed the brand back into the fire and turned his back on them, ignored them. It was what he had always done with such marks, whether on a Faerie wall or painted on a sign over the gate of a tower house. If folk wanted him gone, let them say so to his face.

  So he tended the horse, fed the fire and made bannocks with one hand and his knee. He had oats and water enough for him and horse both for a long while, cheese and even some bran bread, which he chewed, spitting the quern grit to one side while the bannocks scorched up.

  As he did so, he smelled the staleness more keenly and followed his nose, holding up a brand from the fire until he came to a ball of rough little twigs and straw. He touched it warily with a toe, felt it move and sat back on his heels, holding the torch high.

  Adders, by God. No guests to be sharing a house with, even though they had prior claim with their wee hibernating nest.

  They would be sluggish, but Batty knew they did not sleep constantly through the winter and he did not care for the idea of them, so fetched his emptied flour sack and struggled on his thick gauntlet with its maille backing. Then he scooped the lot up and tied the neck using his teeth and hand, watching the bag roil and bulge and hiss.

  The bannocks were well fired by the time he got back to them and the cheese had to be gnawed, but Batty was well content, full bellied, warm and in the dry.

  He sat and knitted until he started to nod, then pulled his cloak round him and lay down, watching the shadows dance and listening to the hoolets screech.

  Then he slept and dreamed of Florence and the siege and Maramaldo.

  Chapter Twelve

  Mosspaul Tavern, between Langholm and Hawick

  At the same time

  It had been a long traipse in the cold and wet, but worth it. Hutchie was well content, for he had discovered that the tooth he had lost had been inside his jaw and not at the front – his smile was intact, though the jagged nag of what was lost kept rasping his tongue and his memory.

  One day, he promised, that bitch who calls herself Lady of Hollows will find the price for such a blow…

  The whore winced at his savagery, converted it to a whine of seeming pleasure and waited while Hutchie thundered to the end, with a strange little-boy whimper and a shudder, like a dog taking a shit.

  At once she lost her charms for Hutchie, became a besmeared, sagged woman with missing teeth, wiping the sweaty grime and his own mess from her with a much-used cloth. He pulled his hose and fat slashed breeks together, threw coin at her and left, clattering down the stairs into the fugged reek of the tavern proper.

  The others were bleared with drink, creishie with food and women and the knowledge that they would not be shifting from Mosspaul this night. Most thought it a good thing to have come out with Hutchie after all, though those not entirely lost in drink knew they would not be spending a lot more time here. Soon, matters would get cold and wet and possibly dangerous – but, for now, there was drink, food and women, and someone else was paying.

  Only one man was unhappy with his lot, did not raise a cheer at the sight of Hutchie stumbling downstairs, lacing his cods. But of them all, Hutchie was pleased to see this man the most and said so.

  ‘Wattie Bourne,’ he added genially, flinging himself into a bench seat and calling for drink. He waited until the dripping man had taken the leather mug in both hands and raised it to his lips, watched the apple of his throat bob and bob until, finally, Wattie let the mug down reluctantly, paused, then belched a gust of warm beery breath.

  ‘By God, I needed that.’

  ‘Now tell me where Batty Coalhouse is,’ Hutchie demanded.

  ‘Up Tinnis Hill,’ Wattie answered, his answer muffled by the burying of his nose in the leather mug again.

  Hutchie preened a little, aware that everyone was hanging on Wattie’s words, aware that his clever ruse had worked. He had been sure Batty had been watching them, would move to watch them – and had set Wattie apart, instructing him to pick up Batty’s trail and see where he went.

  Tinnis Hill – well, Batty could hardly go back to Powrieburn, where he was too easily found, or any other roofed place along the edge of the Debatable. Hutchie had thought of Kirkandrew or some other Graham stronghold, which would have made matters awkward, but not impossible; sooner or later, Batty would have had to poke his neb out of doors and they’d have him then.

  But Tinnis was clever. More awkward still, but not impossible.

  ‘Where on Tinnis, then, Scarted Wat?’ he demanded, and Wattie, dribbling ale from the strake along one jaw that had cut him to exposed teeth and tongue, blinked slowly and dabbed the ale off his beard, delicate as a cat.

  ‘How would I know that?’

  Hutchie went a little still and cold then; men saw it and went quiet, moved careful.

  ‘Because you followed him, Wattie. To his lair.’

  Wattie’s headshake scattered ale droplets like a dog out of a stream.

  ‘Up the Faerie hill? By God, I did no such thing…’

  The blow scattered him and the ale cup, sent him tumbling backwards and struggling like an upended beetle. When he finally spluttered upright, red with anger and indignation, he found himself staring down the length of Hutchie’s knife.

  ‘Faerie, is it? I will give you Faerie, you white-livered wee drooler. Follow him, I said, and you should have done so if he had walked through the gates of Hell. Now we are only a little wiser as to where he is…’

  He eased a bit and the knife was suddenly removed from Wattie’s face; everyone’s breath went out, then back to normal, as Hutchie sat brooding.

  Of course Scarted Wat would not go up Faerie alone. Few would and Hutchie could hardly blame them – but Batty had, and where he went, Hutchie could go. And where I go, he thought savagely, these bastard-bred hounds will follow.

  So he made his face pleasant, even if the smile on it was shaky.

  ‘Well,’ he said eventually, ‘we will do it the harder way. We will plooter our way up it and down the far side and scare him out in the open.’

  No one spoke. Even in the cold light of day, Tinnis was no place to be hunting, especially when it was a man like Batty Coalhouse.

  ‘And you can lead the bloody way,’ Hutchie finished, smiling nastily at Wattie, who found his mouth surprisingly dry for all the ale he had just swallowed.

  Tinnis Hill

  Dawn the next day

  He was big and dark. He had a beak of a nose pitted with clogged pores and the scars o
f old boils. With his speckled beard and his cropped black hair, matted with blood and dust, he looked like a Moor, or a mad prophet who had fallen off his pole.

  There was a smear of blood across his forehead and a new scar down one cheek. His eyes were dark and desperate, his teeth were yellow and bared, and he had spatulate fingers with hairs like black spider-legs on them.

  The called him Simoni when he appeared, covered in dust and shit like the rest of them, though he was one of Florence’s best citizens. Once he had appeared in a silver back and breast, with a gilded helmet adorned with plumes; Batty and the rest of his Company of gunners laughed themselves sick until, eventually, he joined in. He had never dressed like that again down at the walls.

  He came with plans for the fortifications of Florence and had been put in charge of rebuilding them, while the army of Emperor Charles and Pope Clement raged on the outside. In between, he sketched on the back of his plans, using rough charcoal and all his skill, so that people saw themselves come alive.

  Now he struggled, him and Batty both, lumbering about like drunks fallen out of a tavern, lurching and tugging, clutching and gripping, while the grumbling noise sounded distant and faded, though it was a thundering din to folk who could hear properly. Someone had blown out the convent floor. Someone had dug into the sewers and blown it out… it was no comfort to Batty that he had predicted as much.

  He and Simoni fought their way over the rubble, panting dogs in the smoke whirling round the convent of St Theresa, halfway up the street that led down to the Gate of the Cross and Gallows; Batty saw men stumble past them, shadows in the mirk; then the sound roared back in like water out of a broken dam.

  Batty hauled Simoni over the broken beams and the cracked rubble, while men piled down the street and enveloped them like lovers. There were shouts and bellows and the crack of matchlocks.

  Someone reeled past screaming, and Batty lost his concentration, stumbled, fell and dragged Simoni down with him, rolling over broken stones and broken bodies, wallowing in the last expelled filth and tarns of blood turning to gory slush.

  Simoni climbed wearily to his feet and hauled Batty up, shook his head as if to clear it and put his mouth close to Batty’s ear; his breath stank of onions.

  ‘They blew in the convent. Someone showed them those sewers, as we suspected… a secret way.’

  It would do them no good, Batty thought, for he and Master Simoni had thought of this – and now the defenders were forcing them back. He had a moment, a sudden spasm that brought him upright, banished weariness, that it might be Maramaldo in the convent; he would have had the cunning to work out about the sewers next to the wall. He spoke the name and Simoni dragged him away up the street from the fighting, shaking his heavy head.

  ‘Even a Medici Pope would not allow the likes of Maramaldo in his army. Hurry – your match…’

  The world roared like a muffled bear, tilted, turned to whirling dust and ruin, and everything blasted away, even sound. There was a long time of lying, half aware of nothing much. Then, as if from far away, he heard his name and felt a brush of sensation on his cheek.

  It was repeated and the cheek stung a little, so that he tried to lift a hand. Then the voice came, louder this time, though as if from underwater.

  ‘Kohlhase? Kohlhase.’

  This time it was a slap on the cheek that sprang his eyes open and made him try and ward off another blow. Simoni’s face swam in his vision, his grey tongue pressed into the gap where his front two teeth should be as he concentrated. The great face creased in a dust-caked grin.

  ‘Good,’ he said in his Tuscan grate. ‘Back with us. Up. We cannot hold this and are falling back – your match burned down perfectly to our countermine.’

  So Batty let himself be dragged off behind the comforting metal backs of Michelangelo’s guards, back through the smoke and the screams, over the rubble of the crushed Gate of the Cross and Gallows, and back across the shattered dead to safety.

  Batty woke from it, felt the sweat on him and lay blinking, confused and trying to hang onto the shredding tendrils of the dream. By God, he had not thought of that in years – the day the enemy almost took Florence. The day he and Michelangelo had thwarted them.

  Michelangelo, the one they called simply Simoni, had been no more than one more annoyance in the life of Batty and his company, another Florentine gentleman given command with no knowledge and less skill.

  Except that he had been both skilled and learned, shared his bread and onions and wine with them, was right in every point he made regarding enfilades and defilades, and could draw their faces on the backs of his plans so that the men laughed to see themselves.

  He tried to show Batty the trick of it, but only because he was fascinated and repelled by Batty’s missing arm. In the end, Batty had tossed the charcoal back at him and told him that he had never had the skill of it, even with both arms.

  The fortifications expert Simoni nodded and gave a little shiver, touching the stump as if it might infect him with loss. He blessed God with fervent wonder and the hope it would never happen to him, since it would be the end of the world and he might as well die as not be able to sculpt.

  ‘For painting, Master Kohlhase, is an inferior art. There is no terribilità in painting,’ he added and passed the wineskin round again.

  When the creator of the Pietà of St Peter’s, David and, more recently, The Last Judgement on the wall of the Sistine pronounces on art, you listen. You listen too when such a man, with his ear to the Council, tells you to quit Florence before its hired commander betrays it.

  He had left the city himself shortly afterwards, and Batty had taken the hint. A week after Batty and his men had slipped away into the autumn mists and trees, Malatesta Baglioni, the city’s commander, abandoned Florence to Emperor Charles, the Pope and his Medici cousins.

  And Fabrizio Maramaldo, whom even the Pope could not keep away from the plunder and the victory. Batty only learned that much later and cursed Michelangelo for it, for making him lose even that slim chance of revenge on the mercenary captain.

  That was then and this is now, Batty thought. He lay in the hidey-hole on Tinnis for a while, listening to the birdsong outside, smelling the ash from the fire. Then he moved, careful not to wrench the stiffness into something worse. He raked the embers, blew life back and warmed himself at the flames; like the adders, sluggish in the bag, he thought, I need heat to move.

  He remembered the sketch Michelangelo had given him, of himself done on the back of a detailed plan of the fortifications of the Porta al Prato in Florence. He had given it away for drink, but he could not remember when or where. He wished he had kept it, if only for the memory of how he had once looked, when he was young and had the same soul in him that Mintie has. That Mintie had, he corrected, and felt the bleakness of that loss as keenly as his own.

  It also had an invite on it, that sketch, to be the guest of Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni in Florence when it was at peace and free – for remembrance of when they were brothers in arms. The man he had sold it to had read it to him, before he asked Batty if he really wanted to part with it.

  He had been surprised at that, at how a piece of fine paper with some scribblings by the likes of Michelangelo was worth anything at all – and how anyone could weigh it in the pan against a good bottle of eau de vie and find the balance tip in favour of the scribble. He had realised, somewhere in the sot of him, that Michelangelo had done well for himself if even his discarded scrawls were revered by some.

  Later – sober – he had known what he had lost, but shrugged and consigned it to a matter of God, a matter of the Devil. How changed would his life have been if he had taken up the offer? Christ in Heaven, what would the likes of Batty Kohlhase do in Florence, in the company of Michelangelo and his like? It is not as if I could paint as much as a door even when I had a brace of arms, he thought and chuckled to himself and the bag of adders.

  The artist had seemed old even then and is probabl
y dead now, he thought, while his city is as free as it will ever be, for the Medici are now dukes in it but the Emperor Charles is pulling his troops out. With a sigh of relief, no doubt – a dozen years it had taken to calm the Florentine feathers and secure it for the Medici.

  Maramaldo’s trail had not been hard to pick up, a snail-slime of terror and blood, first for this ruler, then his rival. Batty had followed him to the Germanies and lost him, lost his Company to the obsession of it – who wants to be led by a mumbling madman, passing up good paid service to chase rumours? Finally, he had stumbled to his kin in Saxony, penniless, alone and sick to his soul.

  After that… well, after that came the whole bad business, all of it broken from me by Hans and the wheel, yet here I am, brooding on Florence and Maramaldo and Michelangelo Buonarotti Simoni. What might have been instead of what is. Sitting in a cold Faerie cave in the Hell that is the world, and in the deepest pit of it, which they call Liddesdale. He laughed and shook it all from himself like rain from his eyes. By God, he thought wryly, I have done well for myself; Michelangelo would be proud…

  He hirpled out and tended to Fiskie, who was hipshot and chewing browned, frosted grass, draped in a warm blanket and happy enough with his lot. He was as Borders as the rest of us, Batty thought, patting him on the neck – enduring a lick of cold, a deal of wet and the wrath of God and the Devil on a peck of oats and a sip of water.

  The mist had come down on Tinnis during the dark of the morning, descending like a dank wet cloak and coming so far that it had dropped below where Batty stood, which was now bare of it, like a bald old man’s crown surrounded by a fringe of white.

  He shouldered his saddlebags and moved on down into the chill embrace of haar, for he had work to do before those lads came back from Mosspaul. He smiled to himself, for he knew that whoever commanded them had thought himself smart as new paint on a Michelangelo portrait, sending a tracker out, all sleekit and creishie.