Patten came into the hall almost unnoticed among the throng gathered round the high table where the Laird sat. In front of him stood a square man, blocky and pale, his hands bound in front of him, but his beard jutting with a defiance – though Patten thought it smacked of desperation. He remembered him, with a sudden spasm, as one of the men who had ambushed the column taking the royal bairn south.
Since then, he had made it his business to learn a deal about the men involved, and this one had been an official from Hermitage. Probably still was, Patten thought, and counted more than that these days. Bringing him here, bound and threatened, was a reckless move for the Laird of Hollows, and if he kept tweaking the beards of his betters they would eventually come at him together.
The Laird of Hollows wore an embroidered leather doublet over a clean linen shirt with a high, small-ruffed collar and a grey, fur-trimmed gown over that. Above his glower of brows was a black velvet hat with a panache of plume in it and Patten almost laughed aloud. Wee papingo, he thought, all dressed in his best feathers to make himself out noble, though the truth was that he was no more elevated than any shoemaker.
Yet he did have the money and rents from Hollows and elsewhere, not to mention the loyalty of every Armstrong on both sides of the Border for miles in every direction. Above all, Patten added to himself, he was a robber baron in the Debatable Land, where his was the only real law.
It was this very fact Johnnie Armstrong was pointing out to the Land Sergeant of Hermitage, who had tried to bluster his hands free, at the very least, with the statement of who he was and what he represented.
‘The law, is it?’ the Laird replied, lolling back in his seat. He waved one expansive, ringed hand.
‘D’you see any here who care for your law, Will Elliot?’
They all laughed, dutiful and savage. Like a wolf pack, Patten thought with a shiver, scenting blood; he did not like the tone of this matter, but the faint throb of his hand kept him from stepping forward to say so. Across the crowded flagstones, he caught the eye of the Lady, almost lost in the throng and consigned to the fringes as if of no account; her eye was glaucous as a fish.
‘The Scott of Buccleuch will care,’ Will replied, and there was a mocking burr of sound at that. The Laird flushed a little.
‘Wicked Wat? Aye, I hear he is to take over as Keeper. If he had cared, Will, he would have come at me before, when Armstrongs burned him and took his gear and kine. Are you worth more?’
‘His dignity is,’ Will responded, hoping that it was so. ‘He is Warden of the West as it is. Now he is Keeper of Liddesdale as well, and I am his Land Sergeant – an affront to me is a direct one to him. You step on that cloak at your peril, Johnnie Armstrong.’
Leckie started to growl about giving the Laird of Hollows his ‘my lord’ due, but a wave of the Laird’s hand clicked his teeth shut on it. The Laird scowled at Will.
Will did not like that look. Holy Mother, he is eident to do me harm, he thought, and the sweat ran down his back in salt worms.
‘I hear you will not be Land Sergeant at Hermitage for long – and though I dislike the thought of giving aid to Wat Scott, I do not think he would exert himself much on your behalf. Your death, in fact, would be to his advantage.’
It was too close to the truth for Will to argue against, so he contented himself with a glower and hoped his heart’s thunder could only be heard in his own ears.
‘If you are so much the law,’ the Laird went on slowly, ‘then you should be out on a hot trod for Batty Coalhouse. I have a pile of left arms and some of their owners waiting to be buried thanks to him.’
‘Make a Bill,’ Will answered shortly, knowing the Laird would never ride out to Hermitage, nor ask a Scott for as much as the time of day. Besides, any investigation or Truce Day trial of Batty would find too much at the Laird’s own door.
‘I have a better idea,’ the Laird said, and the hall buzzed with a murmur of savagery; Will felt his bowels shift.
‘He will come for you,’ the Laird declared. ‘You are fast friends, which is why you have not done your duty and gone after him in the first instance.’
‘He is no friend to me,’ Will declared, which was not exactly denying Christ three times, but was close enough for him to feel the taint of the lie.
‘We will see,’ the Laird said. ‘I have a wee room prepared for you and will send a message to Powrieburn, one Master Coalhouse is sure to get.’
He turned to Leckie and smiled.
‘What d’you think, Leckie – a left arm, like my poor lads?’
Will’s mouth was so dry at the thought he could not speak at all, and it took him all his time to stand up – even then he sagged a little and had to step sideways to recover his balance. The Laird saw it and his head came up like a dog on the trail.
‘Some toes, mayhap. Balance him up as it were.’
Now the hall was a buzz of vicious bees and Patten was more alarmed than ever, for it was one thing to hold such a man as the Land Sergeant of Hermitage, another thing entirely to mutilate or even kill him. He announced it, overloud because he was afraid.
His words hung in the air like a blast of chill air and everyone fell silent under the haar of it. The Laird looked round, his face flushed and threaded with veins.
‘Master Patten,’ he declared, rolling the name round his mouth like imminent spit. Then he smiled, which took everyone by surprise, not least Patten.
‘Is correct,’ the Laird added, and Will staggered with the lurching force of the relief.
‘I am the Laird of Hollows and I do not attack unarmed men,’ he went on. ‘Not even the friend of such an infame as Batty Coalhouse.’
He made a gesture and Leckie stepped forward with a knife and cut the rope binding Will’s hands; he fell to massaging life back into them, almost weeping with the prickle of returning blood.
Leckie took a linen-wrapped bundle from someone and then handed it to Will, whose sausage fingers fumbled to unwrap it; his basket-hilt sword and parry dagger fell to the flags with ringing clangs, and for a bewildering moment Will stood there, blinking.
When he looked up, the Laird was away from the table, one hand on hip, the other resting on the long hilt of the massive two-handed sword which had snicked the head off the Fyrebrande. The point made a sinister grate as he turned it slowly, smiling. He had shrugged out of the grey robe and stood in his shirt and hose.
‘Now you have a better chance,’ the Laird said, ‘of keeping your wee bits on your person.’
Will became aware that folk had drawn back, all the way to the far walls and corners, and that only two people were left in the square they formed – himself and the Laird of Hollows.
The Laird hauled off his soft hat and flung it away. Then he spun the two-handed weapon lightly upright, bowed and fell into a stance.
‘Porta di ferro piana terrone,’ he said. ‘Flos Duellatorum of Maestro dei Liberi of Cremona.’
He saw Will’s narrow-eyed incomprehension and, as much for the equally bewildered crowd, translated.
‘Guard of the Iron Door.’
Of course it is, Will thought bitterly. Along with all the other fancy wee poses he no doubt has, culled from the manuals of arms. He shook life back into his fingers and hands, wrapped them round the hilts and set himself.
‘Come ahead, then,’ he said as firmly as he could manage.
The month had come in growling and swishing a tail of snow-wind, and if the old saw held true, would bleat its way out at the end, all lamb-soft and sunny. There was precious little sign of it that Bet’s Annie could see, and the day, when she surfaced into it, was bitch-cold.
Normally she would never have slept in the feed store, which for all its fragrant contents, warm enough when you burrowed in, was a solid affair whose stones leached cold like a larder.
But it was private and she had crawled in with Hew, who was as eager as a leg-humping pup. Bet’s Annie had forgotten how young boys were when presented with the mysteries of a woman and her head was muzzy with lack of sleep. Still, she looked at him fondly enough, for he had come back at her again and again, with seemingly boundless energy and enthusiasm, if no skill at all.
Now he woke and shifted to her, so that she felt the bar of iron on her leg and marvelled at it – Christ’s bones, did he sleep with it up?
But she shoved him away, too weary to even think straight.
‘Away, you muckhound,’ she declared, scrambling up and blowing white breath onto her hands. ‘If you have such fire in you, use it to clean out the stalls.’
‘Ach, but Annie,’ he wheedled. ‘You are a braw as the sun on shiny water. Come here, for I love you.’
Preening despite herself, Bet’s Annie was too wise to be cozened – and too dressed to be easily invaded. She buckled for a moment when he surfaced, naked and displayed – only the young and daft took every stitch off in weather like this, even for loving, so it was a fine sight for her, rarely seen. He shivered, slender and handsome, the bits which had been exposed to sun and weather brown against the rest of him like a cut loaf. Irresistible…
She was reaching for him when a voice cracked the moment.
‘Hew, Hew – are you there?’
Hew cursed Eck to the ninth circle of Hell as Bet’s Annie spun away with a laugh, leaving him to cover himself up.
Eck was shuffling and turning his hat in his hands, his breath smoking in the chill. He bobbed politely to Bet’s Annie and blinked once or twice.
‘He is in there,’ she said, and began to sway away, knowing the effect she had. Eck cleared his throat.
‘It was you I sought,’ he said, and she turned, half expecting some stammering declaration of love – a lie that translated as ‘I would like some of what Hew is enjoying’.
‘Mistress Mintie is gone.’
The surprise of it made her mouth work like a fish. Gone? Gone where? With what? Or whom?
Eck looked anguished and told her. Gone early that morning. Saddled up Jaunty herself and left alone. No one heard, for everyone was asleep – the door and yett had been left wide open, he added, bright with the thrilling horror of that.
Bet’s Annie fought the rise of panic. Gone. There was no good in it at all. She whirled as Hew sauntered out, swaggering for Eck’s benefit and smirking knowingly at Bet’s Annie.
‘Can you track?’ she demanded, which reeled him out of his bravado and he stammered a bit, then recovered.
‘I can follow a leaping hare on a flagged floor blindfolded,’ he answered and there was no boast in it – Bet’s Annie marvelled at how a night’s quim turned uncertain boy to confident youth. Like some alchemical, she thought. Or a witch brew. One more night’s visit to my cunny and I will end up ducked or burned for having transmuted him into a man.
The thought almost made her laugh, while the boys scurried off, shouting, to saddle horses and fetch their arms. They were delighted to be on a quest, to be out and free of mucking out stables.
‘Saddle one for me,’ Bet’s Annie called after them and was less shining on the moment, for she hated riding and that pleasant ache in her nethers from the night before would become a fiery shriek before the day was out.
But she could hardly trust two laddies to have sense – and she was sure Mintie was riding into trouble.
Miles away, Mintie rode in grey fog, veiled from the duck-egg sky and whirling cry of peewits, lost and looking for the Jerusalem of her soul. She wanted milk and honey, the sweetness of bairns still cauled from the womb, and knew only that it was not for her.
Not in this world.
She rode past black cattle, avoided the forge by the curling dog-tail of smoke. Thought of Agnes and felt sadder still.
The dew was sweet. The wind shifted to the west and felt warm; she realised spring was coming with a sunlight of bright cloth, and once it would have lifted her up like the sound of a treble choir.
She rode Jaunty down the long falls of elder and briar, yarrow, harebell and thorn bush, all the way down the blackmealed lands of the Armstrong, out past the huddled thumbnail defiances of the Grahams.
Out to the silvered Solway, sitting on Jaunty like a lop-lugged sack and lost as a shower of sparks from a log.
When rain and night came, she stopped and slithered off Jaunty’s back, stumping on wooden legs to the shelter of a copse. No fire. No food. Jaunty whickered plaintively, and Mintie fondled the velvet muzzle for a moment, but offered nothing, not even the relief of unsaddling.
In the morning she climbed back up, and Jaunty, moody but loyal, carried her on. She made good time and only had to hunker down in the damp a second night. She remembered it had taken one more when she had come this way with Batty – but he would have been riding light, giving her time to think. It had made no difference then, nor would now, so she almost rushed to the end of it, down to the place she had chosen. Or which had chosen her, she could not be sure.
The boy knew her, peering from his huddled hidey-hole, his hands held in front of him as if in prayer, his herring eyes rolling. He remembered her, would have gone and welcomed her, save for the other one, the one he did not care for. The woman did not know she was followed by the one he did not care for.
Mintie did not know of the selkie boy, had left Jaunty as if she had never been anything to her, and Jaunty, not knowing the way of it, fell to cropping the windblown grass while her mistress gathered stones.
Fat, rounded and clean-washed, they snuggled in the apron, cradled close to her as any bairn would be – to anyone looking, she might have been a mother with a wean caught up to her breast in the safe snug of an apron loop, crabbing along the shingle.
As she wandered, picking her way down the long tumble of stones to the sighing sea, she sang softly of all the regrets and the things she was leaving, so that they began to fade, become like trees in a thick mist. No more than black bars, the memories of themselves.
The wind blowing the grass. The fish that jumped and left ripples. The cow licking her calf clean of newborn slime. The cautious sharp-shouldered stalk of a cat. The bee at the heather – first this year. The sun like a coin and the salt Solway breeze that spiced the air.
The boy ran for his ma, who came out too late, in time to see her up to her knees, the wet dress clinging so that she stumbled. Too late and too far away – yet someone was close and closing still, hurling off a stumbling horse.
She was numbed by the cold and breathless with it, but the world had faded, stalk by stalk, flower by scented flower, shrunk to a pale line between the sea and the duck-egg sky. She started to fall, tumbling into the heavy embrace of the stone bairn – and found herself snagged.
It bewildered her, half in and half out as she was. She could not fall, could not slide beneath the cold balm of the Solway coverlet and let the stone bairn carry her down and down with her hair like wrack.
There was splashing and a grunt, and suddenly the world cascaded back on her, so that the chill bit and she whooped in air. Then the realisation that she was held, by a single strong arm round her waist, firm-fastened and dragging her back to the land and the world and all the pain.
‘Let me go…’
‘No.’
She knew the voice. Batty. She tried to beat at him, to struggle, but he was a moving rock, a relentless progress towards the land, and she was carried out of the sea and up the shingle.
She became aware of the selkie boy and then his ma.
‘Soft, soft,’ the woman said and gathered her in, so that she was the bairn and the stone one tumbled out, back to all the other rocks of the beach.
‘Let me go,’ she managed before the grey swallowed her.
‘Never,’ she heard him say.
He cut and slashed, dashed in, scurried back, spun on his good foot, did every thing he could remember and some he had never tried, so that he started to pant and drool and sob with fear, frustration and fatigue.
To every attack, the Laird parried, smiling and easy and light as grace.
‘Porta di ferro mezzana,’ he would say. ‘Guard of the Iron Door, in the middle.’
‘Porta di Denti di Cinghiale – Guard of the Wild Boar’s Teeth.’
And once, when Will thought he had at last forced an error and could strike at his exposed back:
‘Porta di Donna Sovrana,’ he had called, and the blade appeared across his back, the clang of Will’s sword on it like a knell.
‘Guard of the Queen,’ he translated, turning light and easy so that Will saw the entire event had been deliberate.
It was all managed like a mummer’s play, for the amusement and instruction of the gawpers. Patten saw this after a few minutes, when he realised that the Laird was parrying everything, creating no counterstrokes.
Patten knew the Italian sword manuals were considered far too vicious, concentrating on attack and almost always ending in one or both combatants dead or injured. That was for the single-handed blade. The two-handed sword manuals from the Italies were the opposite, too oriented to defence, unlike the Swiss and Germans – that was typical of the little robber baron of Hollows, Patten sneered to himself, to choose the worst of every fighting style.
Still, it did not matter much if you had mastered it, he conceded, seeing how the Laird danced with the huge, unwieldy weapon. Mattered less still if you fought an idiot and could afford the instruction in it; in the end, all Johnnie Armstrong of Hollows was doing was setting his seal on the moment, showing the admiring crowd that he was still the Laird, Master and Champion of the Armstrongs.
Will did not see it until later, stamping and birling in the maelstrom of it and thinking he was fighting for his life. It was only after the man had exposed his back and shown that it had been deliberately designed to make a fool of him that Will realised what was happening and stepped back a little. His scowl stopped the Laird’s smile.
He nodded, seeing Will understood. Then the next second Will saw the great sword whirl round, held by the ricasso, the blunted section of the blade, the hilt and quillons lashing into his face like a mace.
‘Mordstreich,’ the Laird called, and Will, his face shrieking and his eyes full of his own blood, did not need to know that it meant Death Stroke and was not Italian at all, but the altogether more vicious Swiss.
The next should have been the finish of it, a two-handed waist slash that might well have cut him through. Instead, as he staggered away and tried to dash the blood out of his eyes, he felt the heat and the sheer size of the Laird right up close, so that his wine breath fluttered Will’s nostril hairs.
He had a brief bewildering moment when the sword whirled like a circle of light; then the Laird, his face impassive, drove the point through Will’s instep.
Will shrieked, his face a red mist of his own blood, his mind a white light. When he came to his senses slightly, he realised he was slumped, clinging onto the ricasso, with both hands as if he kneeled at a crucifix; he was astounded that he had dropped his own weapons.
For a moment he let go of the two-hander, looked into the Laird’s face and tried to pull away; the Laird smiled, soft and vicious, ground the sword in a small circle and drilled pain deeper into Will with every grate of small bones.
The removal of it, that sickening suck that lifted his foot like a marionette, brought Will off his knees, struggling as if in a net to keep the blackness from swallowing him. He could get to his weapons…
The second blow drove it through his other foot, a last vicious twist splintering the bones. The pain hit him, his eyes turned white as they rolled up into his head, and he gargled while the world roared like a great voice in his ears; as he fell to the flagstones, he realised it was the crowd of onlookers, cheering their Laird.
She awoke but did not move or want to be awake. She wanted to be dead and lay in the smoked dark hoping to be no more than a cloud on a star, feeling so small between them, trying to wish herself into oblivion.
There was a tendril of wind, draughting into the hut she knew she lay in, whispering night secrets to her with the scent of fox and earth and salt. She did not want that; it was life.
Life would not let her be. It clattered the lid on a kettle, sparked the fire with pops, muttered in the strange, incomprehensible way of the selkie boy, so that she knew where she was and no matter how she fought not to know, it was there, bright as day.
She tried, then, to be alone with the sound, as if there would be no sound except for her and that way she could banish it. But it would not be cellared and the scents betrayed her, with their harsh smoke, the fish, the savour from the kettle and the tang of something else – eau de vie.
Finally, there was the most traitorous of all, the tuneless grate of singing sound that dragged her back to the now and the pain and the anguish of failure.
‘For speak ye word in Elfin-land, ye’ll ne’er win back to yer ain countrie.’
She opened her eyes and saw him by the fireside, blood-dyed by the flames and squinting his face up into that strange grimace of displeasure that lied about his enjoyment of strong drink. He caught her looking and corked the flask with his teeth, grinning so that his curve of beard waggled.
‘Back with us then.’
He wore a wrap of dirty blanket and his clothes were scattered and steaming all round the fireplace. So were her own, Mintie saw.
‘If you hate it so much, why put it in your mouth?’
It was a voice like the whisper of moth-wings, but Batty heard it and grinned broader still at the memory in it of the old Mintie.
‘By God, lass, if it tasted good we would never be done swallowing. It is only the fact that it tastes like the worst physick that keeps me this side of sober.’
There was a pause while Mintie blinked away the last shreds of the little sleep she wanted to be more, sucking in the echoes of strange music, the hiss of growing spring and the cold eyes of stars.
‘You should have let me go.’
‘The Solway is a cold embrace for a woman with a cuddle of stones mumming as a child,’ he replied shortly. ‘It is no life for a young lass, that.’
‘It is an affront to life,’ said a new voice, heavy and thick with grief and censure; Mintie turned to the face of Auld Nan, fierced by firelight into a vengeful angel.
‘God hates me,’ she replied wearily, and Auld Nan hissed her displeasure and rattled the kettle with a stirring spoon to show it.
The music, strange and thin, moved over her like the dancing rill of a burn giving birth in spate; despite herself, she turned her head – so heavy, like a huge gunball – to see the selkie boy with the pipe in his mouth, head waggling from side to side.
‘Just so,’ said Batty thoughtfully. ‘There he is, poor wee twisted soul, witless and webbed, rolling-eyed and gabbling. Yet he is doing what neither the pair of us can do, Mintie – I can’t play the wee pipes at all and you can’t get up from where God has thrown you.’
He leaned forward a little.
‘Look at him, Mintie. His fingers are fused, yet he plays and the music is in him.’
He stopped and they listened; at first it sounded like screeching cats to Mintie, but gradually she heard a melody of sorts, distinguished something like a merry jig. Sweet as snake venom.
‘Mayhap that’s the music they play in Elfland,’ Batty mused and reached out to touch his doublet, sighing when he felt the damp.
Mintie was trembled by the music, wanted to get up and run, flee like a deer. Instead she cried, soft and silent, but Batty saw the betraying glint of her tears, heard the faintest whisper of her.
‘He stole from me.’
Batty did not know whether Mintie meant just the horse and the money, or her father, or everything that had come after, but he knew Hutchie Elliot was in it even without the name. He sighed.
‘I have said before – punishing Hutchie will not bring back the loss.’
‘If God loved me, He would do it.’
The logic was unassailable.
‘Am I to be an archangel, then?’ he replied, trying to keep his voice light and feeling the crushing weight of it dragging his soul down, like Mintie’s stone baby, into a darker sea than the Solway’s firth.
‘Michelangelo,’ he said almost to himself, ‘with fire and sword.’
Auld Nan heard it and crossed herself. Batty watched Mintie slide into the little death, breathing easy while the fire popped and the kettle lid clattered with savoury promise. There was the yeasty smell of good beer as Auld Nan fetched horn beakers of it.
There is yeast in me too, Batty thought, no more willed by me than beer has a choice – and it will out in the murder of a bride and groom with slow match entertainment, or vengeance for a young girl.
Batty had seen Auld Nan’s fervent cross-signing for what it was – a warding against the bad sins of what must be done. Folk knew all about sin, or so they thought, but Batty knew everyone was born and situated in station differently from one another, and sin was particular to all of them. Dependent on self and circumstance.
For all that, a body felt guilt. Even if not master of self nor circumstance, the fool felt guilt and shame for it. It was senseless as the self-loathing of an idiot for being born that way – he looked at the selkie boy, listened to his music. No such loathing there, he thought. He is in himself, complete and needing no more. But priests would claim the sin in him made him monstrous, wrought it hard in texts and tracts and fierce mouthings about reward and punishment.
For all that he knew this, for all that he could deny God, Batty still felt accountable beyond the facts, wanted to atone, to flagellate and humble himself, to promise to be better.
So he would commit even more sins to expiate the ones already gone, for the new ones were in a Good Cause.
Who lay, breathing soft in the little death.
The riders came in the night, two wide-eyed boys and Bet’s Annie, walking like a sailor and so weary she thought herself about to shatter to shards.
She was sagging with relief when she found Mintie alive and snugged up in a strange hut, with an eldritch boy the other lads eyed with cautious revulsion, Auld Nan the Solway Witch – and Batty, big-bellied, solidly cheerful and grinning still, even if it never quite made it to his eyes.
Bet’s Annie wiped even that mockery from him, saw the cold stone that replaced it when she told him what had happened just as they had started on their ride to find Mintie.
Two men had ridden up to the outer door of Powrieburn and Bet’s Annie and the boys, just far enough away to see and yet not be seen, had heard Megs and Jinet shriek as the door was hammered. One of the men, Bet’s Annie noted, was Leckie, the steward of Hollows.
But the men did not want in, only to leave a message.
‘Boots,’ Bet’s Annie declared, slathered with the thrilling-sick horror of it. ‘Bloody and rent at the feet and nailed to the door. He was awfy proud of those boots and would never have given them up willingly.’
She had not needed to say the name, for she could see Batty had worked it out, but she said it anyway.
‘Will Elliot.’