Friend & Foe (2 page)

Now Harry stood there talking to the porter at the gate, smiling at the lass, who made her way unsteadily across the wooden bridge. For form’s sake, Tam called out, ‘Ho, there, stranger! Stand!’

The silly wench blinked back at him. ‘But surely you maun know me, Tam? I came as I was asked.’

‘Oh aye, I ken you now. It is the physick wife, that brings his lordship’s remedy,’ Tam informed the world. The porter gave a nod, and let the woman pass. Tam took her arm and hissed, ‘What mean you, wench, by coming late? We looked for you at dawn.’

The woman shook him off. ‘I went to gather dew. And I will not have you call me, as I were some whore, that walks about at night.’ She answered him, with spirit. ‘Will Patrick take his physick now, or no?’

She looked, in light of day, a decent sort of wife. She came from a good family, she had told Tam once; scholars, men of learning, who had taught her secrets they had found in books. Though he had not believed her, he approved her plan. She was a subtle lass. ‘What medicines have ye brought?’

‘A pill to purge his stomach. Water for his eyes.’

Though Patrick’s eyes were sharp enough, none sharper bar his tongue.

Tam had kept her talking as they passed the guardhouse, partly to distract her, partly for appearances, to satisfy the crowd. The castle’s inner courtyard was a town within a town, and at this time of morning filling up with traffic, soldiers cleaning weapons in the sunlight on the green, stable boys and scudlars gathered round the well. Tam Fairlie scowled and snarled. ‘Are none of ye at work today, that you must chat and clatter, littering the square? Here comes the physick wife.’

The woman clutched his sleeve. ‘Tam, I am afeart.’

‘What are ye afeart of, lass?’

‘For that he is sick. I cannot make him well.’

‘A lass like you? For sure you can!’ He brought her to the place that Patrick had prepared for her, the cold north-western tower that looked out to the sea.

She whimpered, shrinking back. ‘You never said in there. I will not wait in there. You cannot make me, Tam.’

She was, after all, a silly witless wench, and Tam could well have shown to her the error of her words. Instead, he murmured soft to her, and coaxed her like a bairn. ‘See, lass, tis a play, a wee bit dressing game.’ He opened up the door so she could see inside. A fine fair shift and cloak lay folded on a ledge, together with a girdle and a coronet of flowers.

‘Put on the dress, and Patrick will come for you. You are his queen of the May.’

Tam whistled as he put the final touches to his lordship’s room. He had brought a banquet, balanced on a tray, of sweetmeats, wine and fruits. He bent the boughs of hawthorn that the bairn had fetched and bound them to the bedposts, making up a bower. He lit candles in the passage next to Patrick’s closet, where his lordship wrote his letters, did his easement, took his bath, and knelt on winter nights to say his blackest prayers. A thick curtain on the south side closed it from the draughts. Behind this, came a scuffling sound, which Tam put down to rats. At once, he drew his sword and pulled the curtain back.

‘Mercy, but a poor blind clerk, helpless and unarmed!’ A timid voice cried out. A figure flew up flapping, from the stool of ease, floundering and fummilling, falling on its knees. ‘Murder! Mercy! Oh, my life!’

Tam put up his sword. ‘Master Ninian Scrymgeour,’ he acknowledged pleasantly. Patrick’s privy secretary, stripped of breeks and spectacles, grovelled on the floor. ‘Here ye are, a-scummering,’ Tam said with a smile.

Scrymgeour squinted, whimpering, ‘Mercy, who is there?’

‘It is I, Tam Fairlie, Sergeant of the guard.’ Tam found the missing spectacles, and gave them to the clerk. The clerk received them gratefully. With one damp hand he felt for them, and clasped them to his nose, and with the other pulled and pummelled at his clothes. ‘Dear me, I thought . . . I thought . . . I thought to fetch a letter, that my lord has had me write for him, to take it to the town.’ He gestured to the ink and papers on a little desk.

‘And thought to use his close stool?’ Tam supposed.

‘I have not been well,’ Scrymgeour said, defensively. The closet bore this out. ‘And you yourself are here because . . .?’

‘To mak the place secure for him. The physick wife is coming to advise his regimen. His lordship has instructed that they manna be disturbed.’

‘Quite so, quite so. I see . . . I go . . . I am . . .’ The small clerk turned bright pink, and clutched a sheaf of papers tightly to his chest. He asked no further questions in his haste to leave, but scuttled past the banquet and the flower-decked bed. Indeed, his sight was limited, a pitiful impediment, to plague a privy clerk. He saw the world but dimly, through thick slabs of glass.

‘Have you done your office, now?’ Tam pursued him playfully.

‘Ah, yes, aye, indeed.’

‘Then go about your business, sir. And take the scummer pan.’

Chapter 2

The Physick Wife

The physick wife stood naked in a pleasing coolness, shown to none but God. She felt that God approved of her, stripped and cleansed of sinfulness, His shrewd eye winking kindly on her bare white breasts. The cell had a monastic feel, with solid, whitewashed walls and one long shelf of stone. A man had made his bed on it, for you could see the hollow worn smooth by his head. There was a hole above it where they passed his food, like a little tunnel to the other side. Standing at the window she could see the sea, the blank face of the cliff, leading to the jetty, blackened by the tide. A seagull perched to keek at her, parked up on the sill cut deep into the rock. She darted at it, laughing, ‘Aye, then, keek your fill!’ The bird took fright and flew from her, leaving her bereft. Supposing God abandoned her? She said a prayer, in case. The words became a song, that echoed through the tower, and were soothing in the stillness, like a kind of spell.

It was too cold to stand still for long, whatever God might think. The sea tower facing northwards seldom felt the sun. The woman bundled up her clothes and put them in her basket, taking up the costume laid out on the shelf. The first thing was a shift of fine white linen lawn, with little whitework flowers. A dark green band of velvet clinched it at the waist, and shaped the full white softness of her breasts and hips. The best part was the long green cloak, which swept down to the ground, and she felt warm and safer gathered in its folds.

She had unpinned her hair, taking off her cap and shaking loose the curls, just as Patrick liked it, but she would not wear the crown. The tight-lipped buds and blossoms brought the stench of death,
carrion scent of darkness, dank and sweet decay. No one but a witch brought hawthorn in a house. The very sight and stink of it might make a person sick. She thrust it in the channel where the thick walls met, hidden out of sight, and settled on the ledge, hugging close her secret through the thin white shift.

It was Tam she thought of when she closed her eyes. Tam Fairlie smelled of leather, sweet earth, sweat and smoke. Tam was Patrick’s man. He had found her at the market, where she sold her flowers. Nettles, garlic, violets, sweet herbs, who will buy? And she had not supposed that he would stop to look at her, but she had caught his eye. ‘What is it that you want, sir?’

‘What have you to sell?’

Her basket wares were roots and posies, seaweeds, flowers and ferns. But for those that wanted, she had other charms. She learnt them long ago, when she was a lass. She had suffered as a bairn from a fearful kind of palsy; they had sent her for a cure to a man called William Simpson. William was a cousin, on her mother’s side. Some said he was carried off by gipsies as a bairn, some that he had gone to sea, and trained to be a doctor in the foreign schools, some that he had learnt his magic from the faerie queen. However he had learned them, he taught his charms to her. The first time it had happened, he had given her a potion, sending her to sleep. After it wore off, she found herself full stiff and raw, and sorely black and bruised. There were blood spots too.

‘The guid neighbours took you,’ William had explained, ‘off to elfin-land. If ye stayed too long there, you wad go to Hell. I risked my life for you, to take you back again.’ He had added, oddly, ‘Dinna tell your dad.’

The next time William came to her, he took her hard and cold. But while he had his way with her, and she closed her eyes, she could see quite plainly there the elfin folk and court; the faerie queen had shown her terrors and delights.

In all the years she had been coming to the town, the physick wife had met with many sorts of men, but none of them had proved so
hard to please as Patrick was, so fond of make-believe. He had something in him that reminded her of William. It made her sore afraid, for how the play might end.

She had not sat for long before the key was turned, and Patrick came to find her. He was wearing yellow hose, with a feather in his cap and a Kendal archer’s coat, a longbow in his hand and a quiver at his belt, too heavy and too broad for him, so that he buckled slightly underneath the weight. His limbs were weak and withered while his belly hung distended, like a sack upon a stalk. She should not have giggled, but she could not help herself. She disguised it, quickly, with a little gasp. ‘Are you come to save me, sir?’

He took her hand in his. ‘I am Robin Hood.’

He teased her with the arrow shaft. The flint began to burrow, deep inside her dress. The physick wife shrank back.

‘I liked the other play,’ she protested, weakly. ‘When you dressed up as the bishop and you blessed me, on my knees.’ They had gone up to the chapel. He had worn his bishop’s cloak, and he had knelt behind her, on the quiet stone. And since he was God’s servant, it could not be wrong. There were three sorts of bishop, he had told her once; one that was a lord, and one that served a lord, and one that served the Lord. Which of them was he? He had laughed at that. He was laughing at her now.

‘Did I say something daft?’

Patrick shook his head. ‘I liked that play too. But this is a May game. A Robin Hood play.’

They were lying on the bed in the bishop’s private chamber, and around them lay the remnants of their May Day feast. The walls were hung with tapestries, blue and green and grey, and she could not dismiss the thought that somehow they were peeking at her, through the flowers and leaves. ‘Tam Fairlie keeps the watch,’ Patrick reassured her. She closed her eyes, and thought of Tam, standing watchful, somewhere near. She thought she would not mind it if he took her for himself.

She felt sleepy now, gorged on Patrick’s wine, the jewel bright cups of claret he had made her drink. She had not wanted to. The wine was on a flowery carpet, like a faerie feast. There were sweetmeats too, quince and honeyed figs. It did no good to Patrick to consume such richness; she had tried to tell him: ‘You must take your physick for to make you well.’

Patrick had refused. ‘I have drank your physick, both the foul and fair. It does me no good. I am dying, no doubt.’

‘Do not say that.’ She did not know a cure. Sometimes, he made water, and it came out black. She told him, ‘That’s a good sign, the badness pissing out.’ But she shuddered at the thought of that black polluting her.

He fed her fruits and jellies, teasing on her tongue. She was empty, always, hungry for a herring or a bit of bread. She wished she had them now. She did not eat or drink enough. ‘You are skin and bone.’ His words made her afraid. For both things could be broken, could they not?

‘There is food enough here to last for a year,’ she tried to distract him. ‘Here in the castle, I mean.’

If the town was like a world, then the castle was a town, and Patrick’s bed of state was like a private stronghold high up in its walls. To climb it there were steps, yet Patrick struggled still to mount it, as he struggled to mount her. He caught her at the waist and held her close and hard, that she could feel his hot breath on her neck, his wheezing dry and labouring. He was laughing at her. ‘We would not last long.’

She did not see why not. The castle had a well, in the centre of the yard, though Patrick would not drink the ale brewed from the water there; he drank from vaulted cellars that were stocked with wine, and when the stocks ran dry, more were brought in boats.

‘The walls are not so strong as you suppose. And many times afore they have been built and blasted, and they will not stand a siege.’ The worst threat, Patrick told her, was the sea. And how could that be? A narrow metal ladder ran down from the cliff top, sheer
onto the rocks and the jetty down below. From there they brought provisions when the gates were closed. And no man could have scaled it with a blade between his teeth, before his hopes and bones were driven down and dashed; the coast was closely watched.

Patrick shook his head. The constant, slow artillery of water, he explained, the patient revolution of the waves, would wear the walls away. What was sand but stone? What was man but dust?

‘Not in a year, Patrick,’ she protested stubbornly. ‘The walls will not be worn out in a year.’

‘Aye, mebbe not.’ He had closed his eyes. ‘Long before that, I shall be dead.’

Long ago, he said, archbishops lived like kings, and they had many palaces, and kept many whores. They drank their wine from cups of gold. A cardinal was murdered here, taken at his prayers. And those who drew him out had all met dreadful deaths. One falling from his horse; the horse had kicked his face, and shat into his mouth, as it bubbled, bright with blood. ‘That was God’s revenge on him.’

She sensed that he was sporting with her. ‘The cardinal was bad, though, was he not?’ Patrick merely smiled at that, showing yellow teeth.

The bed was decked with hawthorn flowers. ‘I dinna like the May,’ the physick wife complained. ‘It smells like rotting flesh.’

Patrick snatched a clutch of petals from the bough and crushed them in his fingertips, breathing in the scent. ‘It smells,’ he concluded, ‘like a woman’s placket.’

He meant a women’s sex; her placket was her apron, a pocket in her dress. She wriggled from his grasp. ‘You will not hurt me, Patrick?’

‘Why would I do that?’ He took out another arrow from the quiver at his side, and began to stroke her with the feathered end. ‘You are my quiver-case.’

‘I am all a-quiver,’ she replied, obligingly. ‘Will you close the drapes?’

The curtains round about were heavy, thick and worn. They did not look as though they had been often drawn. She imagined they
were laced with moths, creased into the faded cloth, feasting on the flowers.

‘What is the matter? Are you cold?’

Tam would stand outside the door, a little upwind of her cry, frowning as the sun rose higher, polishing his sword. Perhaps it was Tam Fairlie’s bairn, the feylike, faerie child, whose eyes she felt still at her back. The child had brought the May, a harbinger of death. She swallowed thickly, fearful. Surely, it was God, who looked down on her nakedness, saw her bared and brazen, brought to Patrick’s bed.

‘Patrick—’

‘No more words.’

Once Patrick was asleep, the woman crept out from the sheets. She folded up the white lawn shift and left it by his side. Her clothes were in the basket – kirtle, cap and shoes. She sought, but could not find, the partner to her sock, a sky-blue scrap of silk. Patrick frowned on nether hose. He liked to nuzzle bold and bare her warm soft placket through her skirts, to find her muff and burrow there. The sock was not in her basket, nor beneath the bed; she dared not lift the quilt. The drowsy dullness of the wine was turning to a throb. Her foot would rub and blister on the long walk home. She felt a wave of sickness as she met the sunshine, dizzily descending, feeling for the steps.

Tam Fairlie stood on guard at the entrance to the stair. He would take her to the gate, and set her on the bridge. By the time she turned the corner, he would already have forgotten her.

‘Patrick is asleep. I left his medicines at his side. He did not want to take them,’ she confided.

Tam Fairlie did not care. He had taken out a purse and was counting out the coins. ‘I know where I can find you, if he asks for you again.’

‘I dinna ken . . .’ The physick wife whimpered.

He glanced at her then. ‘Why is that?’

‘Tis that . . . he hurts me sometimes. And I do not like it. I think he does not mean to, that he is not well.’

She knew it was not Tam who had listened at the lock. She saw how he considered her, neither cruel nor kind. ‘How am I to cure him, Tam?’

‘How should I know? Use your charms.’ He brought out an extra shilling. ‘Or, if you will not, I can find some other lass.’

‘I did not say that.’ She took the money quickly, hid it in her basket. It was business, after all. ‘I have lost a sock.’

Tam had turned his back.

‘A short footsock of sky-blue silk. Mebbe I dropped it back there in the tower?’ She knew that she had not. ‘Or mebbe in the square.’

Tam went on ignoring her.

‘Perhaps it has been picked up by your little lass.’

This produced an answer, for he turned on her and scowled. Dismayed, she trailed off lamely. ‘I should like to have it, if she has.’ They had come down to the gate, where the sentinels kept watch. She felt hot and shamed, discarded like a cloth. She clutched the sergeant’s sleeve. ‘That man is staring, Tam.’

‘Is that so?’ Tam took off a glove, and struck the soldier full force in the face, with his open hand. The young man staggered back. Within a moment, he stood full upright again, staring straight ahead. He made no start or cry, nor raised his fingers up to touch the place, already turning purple on his cheek. The woman felt a thrill, a sudden flush of pride, that she had the power to work the sergeant’s fist. Tam Fairlie pushed his red face close into the boy’s. The soldier did not flinch.

‘What was it you were thinking, son? Thinking you could go with her?’

‘I wasnae thinking that.’

‘What is your name, again, son?’

‘John Richan, sir.’

The sport was cheap enough, yet it did not grow stale. ‘Reekie, is it?’ Tam inquired.

‘Richan, sir. Fae Orkney.’

‘Oh aye, I forgot that. Mind me, what it means?’

The soldier answered, ‘It means bruck.’

‘An’ wit wad that mean now, in a proper tongue?’

‘Bruck is a word that means . . . trash.’

‘Do you mean shite, son?’

The soldier shook his head.

‘Trash? Then it reeks, does it no? Trash reeks? In guid plain Scots, ye are a piece of shite.’

Harry Petrie, hearing this, had come out from the guardroom on the western side; there were chambers built on both sides of the gate, and Harry kept the left one, closest to the bridge. He stood quiet, watching, resting on his sword, while the sergeant poked. ‘How is your sore arm?’

John Richan dropped his gaze. ‘The surgeon couldna help it, sir. He couldna find a lesion on the place where it was hurt.’

‘Imagine that! All cured!’ The sergeant marvelled cheerfully, and clapped him on the back. ‘Awa ye go and practise then. Shoot arrows at the butts.’

‘
Aw, sarge
.’ Harry Petrie murmured, quiet, at Tam’s back. For only Harry Petrie ever spoke up for the Richan boy, and dared, or cared enough, to come to his defence. Tam Fairlie let it pass. He jabbed the Richan boy, hard in his sore shoulder. ‘See you gang an’ practise, son. Else you will spend your rest hours sleeping in the pit.’