Friend & Foe (12 page)

With the strain upon his shoulder and the welts upon his back, it was plain the archer’s life was not a happy one.

‘It would be the worst thing in the world. It would do dishonour to my father, for he sent me here, to learn to be a man. My father is a servant to Lord Robert, earl of Orkney, who is half an uncle to the present king, and the earl himself it was that put me to the bishop here. It would shame him too, if they sent me back. And I might die for shame.’

‘What kind of man is your father?’ wondered Meg. She thought about her husband, and his hopes for Matthew, and of her own father, and his hopes for Hew. Hew had gone his own way, believing to the last that his father was displeased with him. She did not doubt that Matthew Locke would go his way too. Would Giles be disappointed, then? Or would he learn to moderate his fierce pride in his son?

John Richan shrugged. ‘I cannot tell you that. For the best part o’ his life, he has been in thrall to that dark and errant lord, and I do not ken his mind; but that he does what Robert says. Sin he serves sic a master, no one likes him much. And here, they do not like me much, because they think I am his spy.’

‘And are you?’

John was silent for a moment, toying with the buttons on his liver-coloured coat. ‘Perhaps,’ he said at last. ‘But servants do not always tell their masters what they know. Indeed, I think they often do not do so. And if I telt him everything I saw, I do not think his lordship would believe me.’

‘Can he be a master worthy of your trust?’

A smile played upon John’s lips. ‘He is worth no man’s trust. He is a black-hearted loun. It was a dark day for Orkney, when Lord Robert came to rule. We are all of us there in his thrall. For thou maun understand, he lives between the tides.’

Meg frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘That place on the shore that lies betwixt the high and low water marks. It is the devil’s land, for no living man can bide there. But Robert earl of Orkney would take it off his hands. At council, no man kens what side the earl is on, whether he is of the party of the earl of Gowrie, or of Lennox and the king. The truth is, Robert earl of Orkney is on no side but his own. Do you understand? He shifts upon the tides. He sends out spies like fishermen, to dabble in the burn; the small fry they hook up he sets by for the bait, in hopes of catching somewhat bigger fish. I cannot go back with no fish on my hook. It were better, after all, that I lay dead and withered by the fairy dart.’

Meg felt for the young archer, lost and out of place as a selkie on the land, who had come up for the sun and had been strippit of its skin, forced to live its days in a borrowed human shape. ‘Then you must come again, until you are cured. I have no doubt that you will make a full recovery, with exercise, and rest.’

‘I have no want of exercise, and little hope of rest. The sergeant here will work me to the bone.’

‘Is there no work,’ she asked, ‘that does not hurt your shoulder?’

A raw smile crossed the soldier’s face. ‘Aye. There is keeping the watch.’

Chapter 12

The Draucht-Raker

In the beginning was the word. The New College of the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was built upon the site of the ancient pedagogy, where two staunch scholars of the faith, Dod Auchinleck and Colin Snell, kept watch one moonlit night, crouching in the shadows of the chapel of St John. Their faces, pressed in hollows that had once held panes of glass, peered out pale as ghosts. The sky was overcast, the grey moon skulking shiftily, leaving Dod and Colin quaking in the gloom.

In principio erat verbum
. Dod had not wanted to come. It was Hew Cullan’s fault, for he had put the night watch into Melville’s mind, and Andrew Melville looked for someone he could trust, and why would he look further than his own disciples, students of the college, stalwarts of the kirk? Dod had waited back, and let the others stand up first. He hoped the devil might be captured early on. But that had not worked out.

‘Eh? Whit was that?’

‘I said we shouldae brought a lantern wi’ us.’ Dod had not meant to speak his fears aloud. He placed his hand, accidently, in a patch of thistles growing in a crevice half way up the wall, and sucked at it, resentfully.

‘Ach, Doad, dinnae be daft. The light would frighten aff the limmars at the gate, and put them a’ tae flight,’ asserted Colin Snell. Colin was bolder and braver than Dod, stauncher and more resolute in Christ. He did not suffer fools, or fear, as much as Dod did, and he had kept the watch for Melville twice before. Both times, he had
come back to the college empty-handed, disappointment swilling over his fair face.

‘Limmars?’ echoed Dod. A weakness and a trembling rippled through his knees. ‘How many of them are there, d’ye think?’

‘Ah dinna ken. But we will be prepared for them. We have a horn an’ a stick.’

It was not what Dod had hoped for, and it was not enough. But Melville had been adamant. Scholars of the college did not carry swords.

‘What will we do, an’ supposing we catch them?’

‘Well . . .’ Colin set aside a moment to consider this, thoughtful fingers closing tightly round the stick. While Dod had hoped that he might hold the hunting horn at least, it seemed that Colin Snell had taken charge of both. ‘We will tak all diligence to mak them see the light, repenting of their sins, and bowing down in Christ.’

‘And what if they will not repent it? What if they are rotten, to the very core?’

‘We all of us are rotten, Doad,’ Colin said, complacently. ‘Steeped in filth and sin. We are all contemptible, you the same as them.’

‘Aye,’ persisted Dod, ‘but what if they are reprobate, and there is no hope for them?’ He swallowed back the worry that was rising in his gorge: how could he be certain there was hope for him?

‘I think it very likely, they are truly reprobate,’ Colin Snell confessed. ‘Yet they cannot be denied the right, the comfort and the solace of God’s word. If they are reprobates, their hearts will be closed to it. Their eyes will not open, and allow the light. But if they are but belly-blind, their muffles may be lifted, and they may repent of it, and we may be the instrument that leads them to the light. Wherefore we owe it unto them, as to ourselves, and God, to bring that message home to them, and thwack them with this stick, to cow them to contrition while a higher justice comes.’

Dod was unconvinced. ‘But what if they are devils, or else elfin folk?’

The faerie folk came at the full of the moon, to briar and hawthorn, and haunted old ruins; but faeries were shy, and would fly from the light. He had kent it all along. They should have brought the lamp.

Colin reassured him, for the umpteenth time: ‘If the faerie folk come, we will blow on the horn. Scare them awa’ wi’ three solid blasts.’

‘But suppose they creep up on us, an’ tak us by stealth?’

‘Pah!’ Colin snorted. ‘I would like to see them try.’

He would an’ all, thought Dod. And if the devil were himself to come, Colin would not baulk at it, but he would stand and fight. He would grapple wi’ the fiend, and grasp him by the horns, and send the devil whimpering, his boot print black emblazoned on the devil’s arse. Dod wished he had the courage of his dauntless friend; a grand and fearsome preacher Colin Snell would make. Dod had not the stomach to resist the devil’s charms. The devil would make mince of him. Suppose the devil came, and brought the faerie queen with him, to tempt them to their doom? For faeries were attracted to a young man on a quest. And what were they on now, in the dead of night and grey light of the moon, if it were not a quest? They were knights of Christ that ventured for their lives. He kenned the queen was after him; she came to him in dreams, insinuated, snakelike, round his helpless hips, and left her trail behind her, fouling his clean bed.

‘Let me haud the horn a while.’

‘Whist wi’ your whining. There is someone in the garden,’ Colin hissed.

Dod kept his flattened face still against the stone. He did not dare to move. His whimpering was stoppered by his beating heart, that drummed a heavy rhythm in his heaving chest, till he could barely breathe.

A small crack of light had opened in the wall, the unveiling of a door, with a lantern set behind it. Through its sly glancing, a figure appeared. Colin Snell sighed. ‘Ach, tis the nightman.’

‘What is the night man?’ Dod felt his faint heart might burst.

‘Lord, ye are green, Doad!’ Colin said, scornfully. ‘The gong-scourer, draucht-raker, what ye may call him. He that wis wanted to cleng out the sink.’

Dod answered, ‘Oh,’ filled with confusion, wonder and doubt. He watched the slight figure cross over the grass, moving towards the latrines. In the light of the pale sickle moon he could make out the shapes of a shovel and pail that swung from the gong-scourer’s back. The scourer’s nose and mouth were covered with a cloth. Dod considered for a moment what it what it might be like to be scouring stinking cesspits rather than men’s souls. Fired by curiosity, he made bold to speak. ‘He’s slender for a raker, though. Perhaps it is a lass.’

Now Colin Snell would read his mind, he realised with a blush, and ken what matter lurked in it. The thought of a lass was a torment to Doad. What he might say to one, what he might do to one, what one might say or do back to him. ‘A lad, I meant to say. Perhaps it is a lad,’ he corrected quickly. ‘The draucht-raker’s boy.’

‘Tis very like, his boy.’

‘Then where is his cart?’ Dod now dared to hope that he had got away with it. That Colin had not caught the whiff, the stench, of his sick soul.

‘In the vennel, as I doubt,’ Colin answered with a yawn. ‘We may as well call aff the watch. For no one will come forward wi’ the rakers here. We will leave it, for the night.’

Dod paid little heed, for he was watching as the figure, slender as a girl, opened up the channel under the latrines, and disappeared inside. The channel was an underbelly unexplored by Dod, deep as hell itself, belonging to a world in which he had no part. Dod held his breath until the raker’s boy emerged, dragging up his bucket, and pulling loose his scarf, to take in a draught of the cool night air. How many buckets were required, for one slight lad to finish with his Herculean task? The raker’s boy dragged up his load, staggered at the weight of it, and made his way cautiously across the college square.

‘Wha the devil is he going wi’ it?’

Colin shifted restlessly, suffering from cramp. ‘Let the limmar be now, Doad. Ye are fair fu’ fixed on it. Tis nothing but a laddie, wi’ a bucketful of shit.’

‘But where is he awa’ with it?’

The draucht-raker had crossed the square, coming past the hawthorn tree, to rest by Melville’s house. He set the bucket on the ground, and stepped back, looking up. The master was asleep, the doors and shutters closed.

‘What is the devil up to, there?’

The answer to their question was played out before their eyes, for the raker scooped his bare hands in the bucketful of muck and began to smear it on the master’s house, cawking doors and windows with a layer of filth.

Colin whistled softly. ‘Wid ye look at that? Filthsum little shite.’

‘Now, then,’ Dod suggested, ‘will I blaw the horn?’ For he was eager, still, to have it in his hand.

‘And scare the beggar off? Not on your life. Let you and I upend the beast, and rub his filthy nose in it.’ Before Dod could respond to this, his friend had broken cover from the chapel ruin, and hurled himself, full force, in the direction of the draucht-raker. The boy dropped his bucket and turned tail in flight, but Colin was upon him like a falcon on a sparrow, and swept him from his feet. Dod, arriving breathlessly, caught sight of the raker’s scared and startled face, torn out from its scarf, before that face was splattered by the force of Colin’s fist. The raker had no time to howl, for Colin tipped the bucket out and over his bare head, now thick with filth and blood. Dod became enflamed with a tremulous disgust, and swelling in his veins he felt the zeal of Christ, a righteous indignation, fierce and staunch and strong. His rising spirit fed upon the stench of iron and earth, the yielding of the boy’s soft flesh to Colin’s boots and fist. Horror turned to rage, and terror to excitement. ‘Why not swak the filthsum devil back into the sink?’

Colin dropped the raker’s boy, and turned to stare at him, and for a second, Dod supposed the remedy too brutal, even for his friend, with his stout heart, to stomach, and he felt a spurt of pride. Then Colin smiled, admiringly. ‘Wha would have thought it, Doad! You’re not the sop I took you for. That is a fine idea.’ He pulled the raker up, and grasped him at the mouth, already caked and choked. The boy let out a howl, spitting like a cat. Dod saw his white eyeballs, frantic in the moonlight, darting back and forth. One eyelid thick and bloodied had begun to close.

‘What say you, sir? Since you are so fond of filth, what say you go to swim in it? Tak his legs,’ said Colin Snell. Dod felt the thin limbs kicking, thrashing in his hands, the raker’s boy no match for him. A dizzy rush of blood came flooding to his head. ‘See how you like it, you shite!’

The two men held the raker, writhing like a fish, and Colin tied the dung clout tight around his mouth. ‘Now son, haud yer whist till we are at the sink, then ye may howl yer heart out. Not a soul will hear you.’

‘What in the name of Jesus Christ are you men doing there?’ A voice broke through the gloom, to strike Dod still with terror, deep down to his soul. It was followed by a light, and a fearful apparition, far more dreadful than a ghost or the devil in the night, that would turn Doad’s wam to water, and his blood to stone. He dropped the raker’s boy, and fell down to his knees. He dared not lift his eyes to Andrew Melville’s face. From the corner where he grovelled, like a serpent in the mud, he glimpsed the master standing, in his pantons and his nightshirt with a lantern in his hand. It was Colin Snell who spoke.

‘We found this
trucour
smearing ordure on your house. And Doad here thocht it fitting we should dook him in the jakes.’

Dod turned his head and vomited, thick, into the earth. The raker’s boy had fallen, senseless to the ground. Melville bent over him, loosening the cloth that had covered his face. ‘Are you quite mad? You would murder the man, with the fumes from the jakes?’

‘Not murther him, sir. But to show him the light.’ Reason, sense and shame came flooding back to Dod. His cheeks ran wet with tears.

‘God help us all, but this is a child.’ Melville cleaned the debris from the raker’s face with the hem of his own shirt. The raker moaned and stirred.

‘I recognise him now,’ Colin Snell declared. ‘For I ken his older brother, as an honest decent man, who comes oftentimes to lectures here, to you and Master James. They are students at St Leonard’s. This is Roger Cunningham. I did not see him clearly, under a’ the muck.’

‘Students of St Leonard’s?’ Melville echoed wearily. ‘Can you make this worse?’ He cradled the boy’s face. ‘Is this true, my child? No one here will hurt you, if you speak the truth.’

Roger answered weakly, dazed by Colin’s blows. ‘What they say is true, sir. And I am right sorry that I put muck on your house.’

Andrew Melville groaned. He wiped the boy’s face tenderly. ‘Then God love you, child. But why would you do that? Did someone put you up to it? Or have I done some hurt to you, that you bear such a grudge?’

The boy’s eyes fluttered closed. ‘I pray you will not mind it. It was a defiance, sir. It was not meant for you.’

At Kenly Green, the baxter brought a letter with the morning loaf. The servant propped it up against a jug of cream. Hew opened it and read it as he drank his morning ale. He broke the loaf, and buttered it, and read the note again; he set his empty cup on it, and scattered it with crumbs. The letter bore St Mary’s seal, was written on white paper, in a crisp dark ink, and made no sense to Hew. Andrew Melville wrote, ‘Your purpose is discovered, and your trap is sprung, the coney that was caught in it delivered to St Leonard’s. You may have him there.’

Since Nicholas was still asleep, he tried it on the cook. ‘A curt enough note for a man of the kirk. It is not like Andrew Melville to have masked himself in mysteries.’

‘If there is a rabbit, I will make a pie,’ the cook suggested doubtfully.

‘I will let you know,’ Hew promised with a smile, ‘when to make the coffin, for we may not want one yet.’

Hew saddled up Dun Scottis, fuelled by the intrigue, and set off for the town. He stopped off at the mill, by the Kenly burn, to allow the horse to drink. The miller’s youngest son lay face down on the bank trailing through the water with a net, for sticklebacks.

‘Good morrow to you, John,’ said Hew.

The small boy leapt up guiltily. ‘I wasna trouting, sir, nor tickling up the hecklebacks.’

‘Are there hecklebacks?’ Hew wondered, peering at the stream.

The child considered this. ‘They come up fae the sea,’ he allowed at last. ‘Look sharp, and you will see them. They have spinkes upon their backs instead of scales.’

‘Tis they that look sharp then,’ Hew pointed out. He followed where John gazed into the white-flecked water, and saw the dart and flicker of a silver fish. The boy’s bare legs were streaked with weed, as though he had recently slipped from the bank, a clinging, sinewed thread of muddy green. His face was wan and wary, and his small fists tightly closed.