Hue and Cry (22 page)

‘Would you know him again?’

‘No, I don’t know, I was turning my back. I might know the cloak, though.’

If the cloak existed still, it would be steeped in dye. Hew sighed. ‘I do not think he will have kept the cloak. Would you know the voice?’

‘He was a stranger. Not from here.’

‘An Englishman? A Frenchman? Dutch?’

‘Of course not,’ she said scornfully, ‘he spoke perfect Scots.’

‘How old was he?’

She shrugged, ‘A man.’

‘Alright.’ Another thought occurred to him. ‘Did Katrin see him too?’

‘She might have done.’

Hew gave a sigh. ‘Well, we’ve sat out here awhile. It must be safe to go indoors now, don’t you think? Will you not show me the way?’

The child shook her head. She had pulled her plaid tight round her arms. Hew awkwardly patted her shoulder, impossibly thin, and said gently, ‘Let me give you something. If not the money, then another box of candies. You could come up to the house sometime to see my cousin’s pictures.’

‘No, I’ll not. It’s not because of you,’ she added seriously, ‘but because your sister helped us. I’ll take nothing from you.’

He nodded. ‘Jennie, I will find him for you.’

Jennie whispered, ‘Aye.’

She scraped at the ground with a stick, as though intent on finding some small answer in the dust. He saw her set her lip against the tears.

Hew knocked lightly on the doorframe and called out. Inside all was quiet. Meg stood by the fireside warming towels. She looked relieved to see him.

‘Hush, they’re asleep. I don’t know how she’ll do, for she’s lost a lot of blood. There are one or two herbs I could give to her – mistletoe, yarrow – but I haven’t my things. When the boy comes, I’ll send him to town. Where have you been, Hew? I looked for you.’

‘Outside, talking to Jennie. She told me she saw a man in a green cloak, a stranger, use the piss pot on the day her father died.’

‘You think it signifies?’

‘Perhaps. Katrin saw him too, and now she’s gone. Forgive me, Meg.’ He had forgotten her exertions. ‘Sit here a while.’ He took the linens from her. ‘Is the danger past?’

Meg shook her head. ‘The babe seems so small, it cannot be full of its time. Thank God it came safe, for I had no idea how I could help her.’

‘Did you not, though? I thought . . .’

She smiled a little ruefully, and pushed a strand of hair out from her eyes.

‘On the farm, Hew, with the horses and the lambs, is not the same.’

‘I did not realise.’ He stared at her. ‘Yet you still came.’

‘It was for Jennie, in that kirk, despised and crying so. I thought the midwife would be here, and I should wash the sheets and fuss the children, boiling water on the fire. I little thought I’d have to help deliver her. She’s lost so much blood, Hew! I’ve used all their linen. Do you think Giles would come? Whisht!’ The baby was crying. Meg drew back the curtain and Hew saw its angry red face, no more than a mouth in a blanket, tiny red fists pulling free. The red face mewled a little and resumed the angry yowl. The mother stirred on the pillow. Meg helped her shift the infant to her breast, where it restlessly foraged, spluttered and gasped. ‘If she gives suck, then the milk may come through. I fear she is too weak.’

The dyer’s wife opened her eyes and smiled at them.

‘This is my brother come to fetch me,’ Meg explained, ‘he will not stay.’

But the woman merely nodded, too exhausted for surprise. She tried to clamp the bundle closer to her breast.

Meg was pouring water. ‘If you drink, you’ll help the flow. There, look, he’s quieter now.’

‘It’s a boy,’ remarked Hew, ‘then what will you call him?’

‘Call . . .’ her voice was very faint, ‘call him George, think you, after my husband?’

‘George?’ Hew was taken aback. ‘Forgive me, but haven’t you a son called George already? Geordie?’

‘I suppose I have.’ She giggled unexpectedly. ‘You must ask my husband, he calls all the names. Oh, but he’s dead. Did you know?’

‘It is the loss of blood,’ Meg whispered, ‘that has left her light-headed. Don’t encourage her to talk. I’ll take the child.’

But the mother murmured restlessly, ‘Aye, what name . . . what is your name? I’ll call the wean that name.’

‘
My
name?’ said Hew startled, but her eyes had closed before she heard his answer, head falling back on the bed. Meg slipped a finger in the baby’s mouth to break its suck, and it drew fiercely on the bone then slackened off and sighed, the little mouth relaxing into sleep. Meg swaddled it tight and tucked it to the bottom of the bed.

‘Well, little Hew,’ she teased, ‘what think you to your namesake?’

‘It can scarce be as little as I think to mine, ugly red ball of a thing,’ replied her brother wryly, ‘pray God that she forgets.’ But nonetheless, he stood for a long while and looked at the baby, hands on the bed. At last he spoke. ‘You brought him forth, Meg, and he wasn’t here before.’

She whispered, ‘Aye, I know.’

Presently the children came back from the burn with the sopping wet sheets to admire their new brother, though Jennie was nowhere to be seen. At last, as Meg and Hew were making their goodbyes, Will Dyer came home. He had searched for the midwife at farm after farm, and had found her at last at a baby’s updrinking, soused to the bowels of her, dead to the world. He had scolded and bribed, bullied and comforted, all without purpose; the woman was drunk. He came home then fearing the worst, to find his mother stirring from her sleep to fasten on her bairn.

‘George,’ she offered, smiling up at Will.

‘I’m not my father, Ma,’ he muttered gently. Then he understood. ‘That isn’t George. He’s Henry. You remember what we said.’

‘A likely name for one so livid,’ Hew whispered to Meg.

‘She’s thinking about the lost bairns,’ explained Will. ‘There were three died in crying, and all were named George, born
between James and Geordie. It was the same when Bess was born. But this,’ he gestured to the child, ‘his name is Henry, for my father chose it. God knows why. I suppose he had drunk to the dregs of the names. You’ll have a drink with me, won’t you, to welcome him into the world?’

‘I’ll not stay, Hew,’ Meg whispered, ‘I’m tired.’ And indeed she seemed uneasy on her feet.

Hew hesitated. ‘You are kind,’ he demurred, ‘we shall drink a brief health, but my cousin awaits us; we must hurry home. Good day to you, mistress. God bless your child.’ The mother had rallied a little, and rose from the pillows to thank them.

‘Tis good of you, lass, to come out to help us. Look, and there’s blood on your fine Sunday clothes.’ She picked at the sleeve of Meg’s dress, and as she did so her eyes momentarily darkened.

Meg was alarmed. ‘Has the bleeding begun again? Are you unwell?’

Janet sounded far away. She closed her eyes and whispered, ‘Aye, quite well, I had forgotten, and remembered. Ah, tis nothing now, perhaps a dream.’

‘It’s you who look to be unwell, if we do not take you home,’ protested Hew. He took Meg by the arm, and felt her rest upon him. ‘You shall come again tomorrow, if you will.’

Henry Dyer lived for three days. And on the fourth, his brother Will compeared before the kirk and bargained long and hard to find a place for him below the cold earth of the kirkyard, nameless though the child remained in sight of God. And his mother Janet, closed within her bed, fell back without a tear upon the fresh-laid whiteness of the sheets.

On the day Henry Dyer was born, Nicholas Colp regained consciousness. It was unwilling at first, dredging from dream into dream, but eventually he began to make sense of his feelings. He sensed he had been there a while, though he did not remember the place. The shape of the cot appeared welcome and comfortable, hugging him tight to its sides. The scents of the place, as sharp as turned milk, were familiar. He felt loose in the belly and heavy in limb, neither too hot nor too cold. In his throat he felt a thousand fissures filled with sand, cracked to the core, as if even the last drops of blood had drained to the surface and dried. There was no voice to cry out for water; no tongue to make the sound. He found it massed and spongelike in his mouth, but could not make it shape the words. Surely this was Hell.

But then Nicholas felt a hand upon his face. He felt it far away, as if his face was swathed in fleece. Someone tilted back his head to trickle a warm bitter fluid in drops down his throat. And the drops he felt evaporate like spittle on a griddle pan. They sizzled for a second and were gone. He wanted to sit up and seize the cruel wrist and its cup, to pour in a flood of cold water, and saturate and slake all the cracks of his throat and his thirst and its chasms and channels cut deep to the churn of his belly, but he knew he could not do those things. He could not lift his head from the grip; he could not hold his hands still, hold open his lips to pour in the drink, nor close his throat to swallow it. He did all that he could, and that was an effort; crusted and gritty, he opened his eyes.

‘I know you want more.’ The devil had set down the cup. ‘And trust me, you shall have it, but I cannot give it now. You see, until you are stronger, and able to swallow, we must take it drop by
drop. If you can keep awake, you may gradually absorb a little more, and little by little, you will find yourself restored. Let me look at you.’

He moved a lantern closer to the head of the cot, and tucked a small piece of wadding round his thumb. Then he dipped the thumb into the bitter dark liquid and forced open the mouth once again, carefully wiping the root of the tongue. It brought a little relief to Nicholas, who was in any case still powerless to object. The doctor cupped his hands around his face.

‘I see you have no pain, which is promising,’ he said. ‘That is, of course, in part the power of the medicine, which has not worn off, and in part a result of the swelling, which deadens the feeling there to a degree. But nonetheless, if the jaw had been broken, I would expect you to notice considerable pain, which in your eyes and body set is not apparent. Therefore, I think we can safely conclude that the jaw was dislocated, and will return to normal sometime soon. Which, you see,’ he added cheerfully, ‘is the happiest of news for you, since a broken jawbone requires setting by the surgeon, a man of great enthusiasm unparalleled by skill, and frequently leads to decay of the part, and then death. We must take a look at the rest of you now, and feel for any lasting stiffness in the limbs. If we do not find it, we may indeed say that you are on your way, God willing, to the first stage of recovery. In short,’ he whispered, confident that no one else could hear, ‘you may be
cured
.’

On that rare note of triumph, Doctor Giles Locke stripped back the bedclothes from the cot and subjected his patient to the most chill and thorough scrutiny of those bodily parts to which, as Nicholas discovered, the feelings were more readily restored.

Nicholas tried hard to sleep, to regain the lost world of oblivion. Each time he closed his eyes, his tormentor appeared at his elbow to prod him awake, promising water, incessantly chattering, delivering dry little dribbles, snatching back the cup. Nicholas wondered what it was that he had done. It must be something bad, he thought, to merit his own private demon, score upon score of
subtle indignities, torture so delicately cruel. But gradually, reluctantly, he found he did become more comfortable. And he began, if not to listen, to ease into the voice that droned around him. There was talk of a friend. What friend could he have? There was a girl would come tomorrow, which was grand, because the speaker lacked the time to play the nurse and to nourish and bathe him. Nicholas flinched. Could there be women in Hell? But for him, aye. He learned that he had been taken ill outside a dyer’s house –
what did he there
? – and he had a fever from a suppurating abscess in the thigh. The fever had raged for days, turning into lockjaw. Many times, he’d all but died. In the clutch of convulsions, he had damaged his face.

For days he had been there. What did he remember?

He remembered nothing. There was the sense of something dead, numb as the mass on his face, like probing his tongue in the raw mouth of memory, finding it toothless and vacant. Still it returned there, still there was nothing, but depth after depth of vacancy, loss.

‘Tomorrow you’ll be stronger, and each day you grow stronger will give us less time. You must tell him everything you know. I warn you, trust him as your friend. Hold nothing back. It is your only hope.’

And then at last he understood that Hell was yet to come. The forgotten place, freshly drawn, splintered and sheared into pain, and with it he found his voice.

Giles Locke was torn between fascination and frustration. For days, he had studied the patient, keeping all the while his own account, meticulously noted, in his careful hand. He charted the return to life and the restoration of the vital signs for three days in abeyance: first the quickening of the pulse and then the breath upon the glass and last the slight expansion in the lamplight of the fixed and glassy stare. One by one, and almost imperceptibly, the life signs had returned and Giles Locke had recorded them. He saw the flicker of the eyes below the lids return to dream.
Return from where? Giles ached to question him. But Nicholas, of course, could not reply. He lay there helpless as a child. Come from the womb of death, he could not speak of that unknowing place. As medic, as philosopher, as man of God and sceptic, simply as a
man
, Giles yearned with all his soul to have a moment’s converse on the secrets of the grave. He knew it was hopeless. When Nicholas began to speak, he would already have forgotten it. There was everything, and nothing, to be learned.

Giles was an honest scholar, and he made the case notes full, though he knew they would never be read:

Colona conium maculatum in hortulo domestico coluit et radice equum convulsum pavit. Equus superavit.

A farm girl grew poison hemlock in the garden of her father’s house and fed the root to a horse suffering from convulsions. The horse survived.

Colona
, a country lass. It was the wrong word, he knew, but he had not known how else to phrase it. He could not use her name.
Pagana
?
Sanatrix
?
Magus
perhaps? None of them seemed to describe her. She was something apart.