A Dish of Spurs
Page 22
‘March law,’ Will scorned. ‘I have heard that thrown about all my life, and by harder men than you. That is why we have Wardens on either side of the divide and a Keeper, special and singular for Liddesdale. So there can be true law, not whatever the red murderers make up as they go.’
‘You would do better to exert yourself for the protection of Powrieburn,’ Batty countered, ‘for you’ll have better success with it. Since you have taken over from Hepburn as Keeper, however much for the moment, you take over his duties to that house as well. They are as much in danger there as me.’
‘You are their bloody danger,’ Will spat back, his face angry and his arms waving veils of rain up. ‘You, you red-handed cantrip. Enough is enough—’
‘Until Hutchie is handed ower, there is not enough,’ Batty said, and his voice was bleak as the Bewcastle Waste, a sound to make Will stop his angry reply.
‘Is the babe found yet?’ Batty asked as the rain lisped into their silence, and Will shook himself from his sodden scowl.
‘No, nor is there word that the English have her.’
Batty sighed and cocked a squint at the sky.
‘Pity the poor mite, then, if she is out on a day like this.’
There was a pause and then he wiped rain from his face with his one grimy hand.
‘The lass of Powrieburn wants justice, Will,’ he said, almost sadly. ‘If not me bound to it, then you will be. And go willing, as willing as you came here in the wet and cold.’
Shakily, Will wiped his mouth and then forced a laugh.
‘You make Mintie sound like a witch with a bad spell and a lock of your hair…’
‘Worse than that,’ Batty answered slowly, turning away to find his hidden horse. ‘Worse than wee apples driven with summoning thorns. Worse than mandrake dipped in man-milk and blood.’
Will was silenced by the tone as much as the man’s knowledge of a cunning woman’s arts. Batty’s voice was wistful as lost youth when he turned his back on Will and started to vanish into the trees.
‘We will do it for the spell of love, Will.’
It trailed after him, faint as his tuneless singing.
‘For a’ the blood that’s shed on the earth, runs through the springs o’ that country.’
For a time after, up in the shadow of Tinnis, Batty had watched Will sitting there, dripping in the rain. He had not meant to be so hard on him with talk of love and wondered if Will understood that what he felt for Mintie was not the same thing at all. Will’s was a hotter, saltier affair. Not that it mattered, since Mintie would not be comforted or loved in any way by any man now.
Still he came to her in Powrieburn as promised, singing as he rode into the courtyard, loud enough to let them know who he was and trying to keep to the tune under the glaucous dead eye of the Fyrebrande.
‘I doubt neither speak to prince nor peer, nor ask of grace from fair lady. “Now haud yer weesht, Thomas,” she said. “For as I say, so must it be.”’
The rooks wheeled and screeched, making crosses in a sky blue enough to make every Virgin a robe, though the sun in it was a red-gold coin with no heat at all.
He rode up with a wind at his back, dragging itself through the claws of the trees and whipping the bundled cloak; he did it so everyone would see, and at first Bet’s Annie, peering through the upstairs window, thought it was some peddler, come early and horsed for the trade.
Then she felt her stomach lurch and her heart rise in her throat.
‘Batty,’ she said.
He stopped in the yard and looked round as if it was strange to him, which it seemed. He remembered the first time he had come here – though it was not so long ago, it felt like another age; he missed the bark of the dog.
There was little difference to it, save for the horse head stuck on a pikeshaft in the dungheap. The beast’s muzzle was bloody, withered back to show the yellow grin, one eye frosted, another pecked out, and the neck a vicious hem of torn flesh, for the rooks had been at it and would be again when folk stopped chasing them from dinner.
Bet’s Annie unbarred the door and stepped out, wiping her hands on her apron and nodding politely.
‘Have you eaten all you were given? There is more and as much as you need, Mistress Mintie says. Step down and sup – there is fish.’
‘And a good day to you, Bet’s Annie,’ Batty said. ‘How keeps this house?’
He made no move to get down, and Bet’s Annie finished with her hands and folded them across her bosom.
‘The mistress’s mother is bedridden. All that has happened has taken the legs from under her.’
And the wee bit sense she had left, she would have added, and Batty saw that, suspected why she was silent and merely nodded.
‘Megs? Jinet?’
‘Fine well,’ she answered to each.
‘Mintie?’
‘I am well enough.’
She came quietly out of the dim undercroft, as Batty had known she would, and he was facered by it, for he had not expected the whey cheeks and sunken eyes. As rough as a week-dead corpse, Will had said, and he had not been wrong. Mintie was either sore-sick or hag-ridden. Probably both, he decided.
‘They have brought you an answer to black rent, I see,’ he said, and she took a deep breath and nodded. Bet’s Annie snorted.
‘I wanted to bury it with the dirt flies in the dungheap they stuck it in, but Mistress Mintie insisted we leave it until you saw it. Have you seen it, Batty Coalhouse?’
‘I have, Bet’s Annie, so you can fetch a mattock and dispose of it. If there is a wee prayer for horses, say it.’
‘Christ forbid,’ Bet’s Annie declared, crossing herself piously. ‘A horse has no soul.’
‘Tell that to mine, stabled behind you and with more soul than the likes of Clem Armstrong, who I hear has died – do you still want me to pursue your justice with the Laird of Hollows?’
The last was fired at Mintie and designed to catch her unaware. If it did and revealed the truth, or if she had been ready for it all along, Batty could not tell, for the answer was swift and firm either way.
‘Aye. Pursue my justice.’
Batty knuckled his brow to her, turned Fiskie and rode off singing.
‘“Now haud yer weesht, Thomas,” she said. “For as I say, so must it be.”’
Bet’s Annie, bustling with the mattock, all disapproval and scowls, commenced to muttering and digging, but Mintie stood and watched Batty go, feeling nothing but a faint wistful loss, as if her kertch had been blown away in the wind.
Chapter Fourteen
Netherby, Cumbria
Later that day
‘Give them to me,’ Batty said harshly. ‘All but Hen. Do what you will with him, since he is kin, though I would not expect ransom for him if I were you – the Regent is not interested in pursuing the Keeper of Liddesdale now.’
Dickon Graham glanced at Batty, seeing the dance of shadows and flame from the torches all along the curved beard and the hook nose of him, so that, for a moment, he resembled Auld Nick himself; he shivered, despite himself.
‘What will you do with a puckle o’ Armstrongs?’ demanded Dickon suspiciously.
‘Nothing that need involve the Grahams in any feud with Hollows, since Batty Coalhouse will be doing it.’
‘You are known as kin to the Grahams now,’ Dickon pointed out and Batty shook his head.
‘I am Batty Coalhouse until the day I die and you know it. You used me and the kin in me to put a crimp in the Armstrong slow match, no more.’
Dickon did not care for the plain speaking, nor for the way Davey-boy was listening, head swivelling one to the other; he did not like to appear less to his son and so he made a show of careful consideration, then closed one eye.
‘I planned to keep them a few days longer, then let them go. I have asked no ransom, nor do I want them hemped.’
‘Hanging and black rent is not in this at all,’ Batty replied. ‘They will be released to the care of the Laird.’
‘Take them. They are eating me out of all larder.’
* * *
Dog Pyntle knew matters had changed for him again when he heard the gruff, off-tune singing and the rattle of keys in locks.
‘And see ye not yon broad, broad road, that lies across the lily leven? That is the Path of Wickedness, though some call it the Road to Heaven.’
‘Batty. Batty Coalhouse – is that you there?’
The answer was cheerful, with a hint of smile in it – like a sun in the dark of Dog’s life now.
‘It was when I woke this morning.’
Other voices joined in, gruff and suspicious, but Dog Pyntle turned this way and that, with only dark wherever he pointed his face.
‘You are coming with me,’ Dog heard Batty say. ‘How many are here – eight is it?’
‘Aye, eight. The other four were let go days since. Ransom paid by kin, no doubt.’
That voice was slathered with bitterness; Sandie Armstrong it would be, who came from Canobie with his brother, Sim. Their ma was a wee widow, too poor to ransom her boys, who had been left to the grace of their master, the Laird of Hollows. Who had paid ransom at last… Dog Pyntle almost sobbed with the relief of being included in it, even though he was only a Bourne, a Name long recognised as supporters of the Armstrongs, but even so…
‘Has ransom been paid, then?’ demanded Sandie.
‘Step lively, lads,’ Batty said, which was a jest as Dog found out, for his ankles were roped like a hobbled pony and none of them could do more than shuffle. Dog felt his hands being slapped angrily by whoever owned the tunic hem he was trying to hang onto, so as not to be left behind. He cried out in anguish at it.
‘Soft, soft, Dog,’ said Batty, his voice all soothe and reasonable. ‘You come up behind me on this fine horse and we’ll let the others shuffle, shall we?’
Dog could almost feel the hot hating stares on his back as he was lifted up on a hobby and sat sidewise, because his legs stayed roped; the cold bit him, but it had been as chill in the Graham undercroft and worse still.
He bounced on the back of the horse, realising that it was a wee pack pony and that Batty rode alongside it; the others, Dog suspected, were lashed behind and stumbling after, a sorry wake of misery.
They moved for a long time and Dog recognised only one part of it for sure – passing through Canobie, where the sharp stink of mould and damp and privies let him know it.
He remembered the village with a sudden sharp pang, how it had looked all the times he had gone through it, the street so narrow two horsemen could not ride side by side, the road no more than two deep ruts of brown water, the soil yellowed with years of dumped manure from ox and horse. The houses would still be wizened cruck affairs of wattle and weathered daub huddled round a square with a mercat cross.
Dog heard some chaffer from village folk to those Armstrongs they knew, but none hailed him, nor came within a loud shout of Batty. In the end, Dog did what he always did when the hunger bit and the cold gnawed; he fell half asleep, running towards oblivion, where it was warm and dry and he was fed and could see sunlight on meadows.
The halt and the voices woke him, so that it took a while before he sluggishly rolled back into the ache of the world, into the endless dark and the cold; his eyes blazed with pain and he could feel the leak of something on his cheek, from under the bandage that had been put round his head the day his eyes had gone.
Shot from his head by someone in Powrieburn. No one had cared and Dog thought the leak might be tears, though he knew the peppershot had blasted away eyes, tears and light, all in an instant. And no one had cared then, nor now… no, that was a lie. Someone cared now, for he heard her voice.
‘Poor wee man – yon cloth on his head is a pure disgrace. Here – light him down to me and let me look at it.’
‘You were ever for caring, Bella,’ Dog heard Batty say, and then he was dragged from the horse and ushered stumbling over unfamiliar ground to where a hand on his head forced him to duck. He realised from the change in sound and the smoky reek that made him gasp that he was indoors; the heat of the fire drew him like a mad moth.
There was an exchange of greetings, Batty to someone else, and then he realised as the woman tutted and fiddled that it was Andrew the smith, and his wife was the one slowly unpeeling the cloth from round his eyes. It had crusted to him and something tore and made him whimper.
‘Christ in Heaven, what a mess,’ a new voice said, and Dog heard the goodwife shush him. Agnes’s man, Dog thought, and did not want to know what was a mess. Not ever.
He felt the wonderful balm of warm water, the gentle sponge of cloth and would have wept save that he had no way of doing it. Instead, he made mewling noises that tore Bella’s heart.
There was a soft murmuring exchange, conversation like a swirl of bees; he heard Batty cough and growl and give thanks to Andrew for what was clearly water and bread.
Then Dog felt horned fingers on his matted chin, tilting his face up.
‘By God,’ Batty said, ‘she did a work on you, did Bet’s Annie.’
‘Bet’s Annie?’
‘Aye. Shot you from the window of Powrieburn. In bad light and hasty with anger, so this shows how poorly you stand with God, for that shot should never even have hit the cobbles, let alone your face.’
The fingers were removed and, stunned, Dog let his chin fall, feeling the utter bleak, black misery of his life settle on him like a moan. Shot by a woman. Shot against the sort of odds that could never be worked out with quill and pen and clever wee men in university gowns. He felt a hand on his heaving shoulder and then the goodwife’s disapproving voice.
‘Christ save us, Master Coalhouse – have you no mercy in you? Bad enough the man is blinded, without that you taunt him with it.’
‘Then he should have stayed clear of me and Powrieburn,’ replied Batty, indifference ripe in his voice. ‘And not have me shot off Tinnis Hill.’
Dog felt something thrust into his palm, hard and curved; a handle.
‘Here,’ Batty said, ‘carry this.’
It was a pot of cold pine pitch, almost solid to the touch and distinctive, acrid to the nose. Dog did not ask why they carried it, or what Batty wanted to caulk with it, but he had heard of the feud with Hollows and thought Batty had a secret lair that would need some proofing against the weather.
The hawthorn faggots strapped up behind him gave off another scent he knew – good wood, burns hot and slow, and more importantly, gives off almost no smoke; Dog was sure Batty was headed for his lair once he dropped them off.
Near Hollows, he thought. Batty will not risk going close to the place, but will fasten us up until he finds a way to negotiate with the Laird.
So when he heard Sandie, Sim and the others start in to mutter among themselves, then finally burst out with asking why they were headed towards Tinnis, Dog was not worried.
‘Free us if the ransom is paid,’ Sandie demanded truculently, and Dog could hear the struggle of him, testing the bonds on his wrists.
‘It is not,’ Batty answered. ‘Not yet.’
‘Then it is yourself has ransomed us?’
Dog heard Sim snort. ‘He thinks to buy his way back into the favour of the Laird with us.’
Batty chuckled.
‘If that is true,’ Dog heard him say, ‘you had better hope Johnnie Armstrong of Hollows favours you. Else you are no use to me at all.’
That closed mouths, and they went on with the wind hissing through them and the hunger gnawing. Dog’s eyes felt raw, felt as if they were still there but full of grit, and he marvelled at that, almost wondered if they were growing back.
They stopped. Batty hauled Dog off the horse and he heard the others muttering about where they were. One – a youngster called Cock Davey –
pointed out that they were at the dule trees and that gave everyone pause. The dule were fine oak, a grove of eight or ten of them and much used by the Laird of Hollows – dule were hanging trees.
‘Are you hemping us?’ Dog asked, trembling, and Batty’s laugh was reassuring.
‘No, Dog, your neck is safe and everyone’s besides. Hemping is not in it at all.’
He instructed Dog with brief, harsh phrases – knot this, hold that – and Dog realised that he was lashing the wrists of the men so that they each embraced a tree, their arms stretched round the fat trunks, cheeks pressed close to the rasping bark.
It was as fair a way of fastening them as any, Dog thought. He will send me to Hollows to fetch the ransom and tell me where to deliver it; even without eyes I can follow the road to Hollows with a tapping stick. And after, he will seek me out when he is sure I am not followed.
So he sat, douce and in the dark, listening to Batty make a fire, which he thought was for mercy’s sake, to keep the cold from them while they waited. Yet the cauldron went on it which was a puzzle, and the sharp, acrid tang of the resin coming to the boil was a surety that it was the pitch cauldron and not another with soup.
That and the tuneless singing of Batty was rasp enough on everyone’s nerves – ‘O see not yon narrow road, so thick beset wi’ thorn and briars? That is the Path of Righteousness, though after it but few inquires’ – but the harp to his carp was the slow, steady rhythm of him whetting his blade against a stone held between his knees.
‘Batty – what are ye about?’
Sandie’s voice was grim and had more anger than fear in it, for he thought matters were still bound for freedom; Dog was now not so sure, especially when Batty grunted and levered himself up.
‘Here,’ he said and closed Dog’s fist round a stick. ‘Hold it carefully, for it is dripping hot and I would not have you burned.’
A slather of boiling pitch on a rag-ended stick; Dog held it though his hand shook, and he heard Sandie give a growl.