Time and Tide (32 page)

‘You are too suspicious,' Hew complained. ‘I see nothing wrong.'

‘It is not always to be seen,' said Robert enigmatically. ‘Tis more a whisper, hint or scent, that puts you on your guard.'

Hew did not take him seriously. A man who spent his life upon the other side must find it hard to trust. The welcome of the place was plain enough to see, and no other hope of shelter was on offer for some miles. The bruises he had suffered at Campvere still throbbed, and he felt tired and cold. He closed the wooden shutters upon the chill night air. The room, for all its cleanliness, still lacked a decent fire. There had been a bright warmth in the lower hall, and the smell of baking meat, that lured him like a lapdog to the hearth. ‘Tell the lass, the room is fine, and we are pleased to take it. Let us go and eat.'

The bar below began to fill, and the lass was serving supper in a corner by the hearth, shuttered from the drinkers who were gathered round the bar. The men were Flemish farmers, of broad and brawny stock, oddly grim and taciturn. One of them, perhaps, was the miller from the mill, the others hands and labourers, from the fields and farms. None glanced up as Hew and Robert settled by the fire. Robert shifted restlessly. ‘I do not like it, for it is too quiet here.'

‘Because there are no roaring boys? The clamour and the squalor you are used to in the town? Be grateful, we have found a sober, decent place,' argued Hew.

‘Mebbe,' Robert pondered. Suddenly, he grinned. ‘There is a saying in the Dutch, Voor herberg, achter bordeel, that means inn at the front, whorehouse behind.'

‘You think there is a brothel here?'

‘I very much fear that there is not,' the soldier confessed. ‘It means that things may not always be quite as they seem.'

Hew looked around, but saw little to alarm him. He wondered if the drinkers had returned here from a funeral, or else they were a much more sober breed of Dutchmen, that were not given over to rash merriment or mirth. Yet they caused him no offence, and accepted none from him, and it was far from clear what Robert's worry was. He suspected lack of sport, for Robert Lachlan's weakness was to be spoiling for a fight; he would not be content with a gentler pace of life.

‘I fear you must resign yourself to have a quiet night. What do they have to eat?'

Robert called the girl, whose smile made welcome contrast to the drinkers at the bar, and spoke with her at length.

‘The ordinair is eel,' he reported briefly, ‘stewed in a green sauce.'

‘So little,' teased Hew, ‘in so many words.' Robert did not rise to this. ‘Or else there is rabbit, with prunes. That costs a guilder more.'

‘The rabbit, then. And you?'

‘The rabbit, if you're paying.'

‘Two rabbits, then, and white Rhenish wine,' suggested Hew, who did not feel like red.

Robert relayed this message, to which the girl replied. He reported with a frown. ‘They have no wine but Spanish.'

‘The Spanish then. Yet does it signify?' asked Hew.

Robert answered thoughtfully. ‘Possibly, though likely not. It need not mark allegiance. For here, as a rule, an inn may not sell both, for fear they are tainted and mixed. Excepting that, they may serve Rhenish white and Spanish red, that cannot well be mixed, yet according to the girl, the red is Spanish too. And since they sell the Spanish, they do not sell French. Yet if you do not mind the Spanish then it does not signify.'

‘I do not mind it,' answered Hew. ‘Two rabbits, and a jug of
Spanish
white, will see us well enough.'

‘I will stick to ale, sir, if you will. I have no wish to drink tonight, for we may want our wits.'

‘For what might we want them?'

‘I never drink, sir, while I work. A sober wit will see you safe to Ghent, and that is my intention. Once we are in Ghent, I will drink the taverns dry.'

‘Fair enough,' sighed Hew. Robert's watchfulness was beginning to unsettle him, and he began to start at the creaking of the door. It was true that the ambience was oddly dull and dour, and that the drinkers at the bar seemed as mirthless as the grave. Hew sensed this was a place where no one would get drunk. In contrast, though, the serving lass came bustling to and fro, with a warm and bright good nature that brought the room some cheer, and the rabbit from the kitchen came steaming in its broth, with its hind legs split and roasted and a dish of buttered greens.

‘These people,' muttered Robert, ‘are curiously fond of eating buttered kale.' He pushed aside the cabbage in disgust. Nonetheless, the meal seemed to relax him, even as it failed to have the same effect on Hew. The wine was thin and reedy, and had a bitter taste, and as he ate and drank, he had the feeling he was watched by a figure at the bar. Robert, for his part, gave no sign he had noticed, until Hew chose to remark upon it.

‘Oh aye?' the soldier turned his head. The man at the bar returned his stare, steady and belligerent.

‘Well, now, so we are.' Robert wiped his mouth, stretching lazily. ‘I will go and have a word with him.'

For the first time that evening, he seemed properly at ease. Hew realised he was warming to a prospect of a fight. What turned out to be a blessing in the alley at Campvere no longer seemed so welcome on the journey down to Ghent. ‘If you are come to fight,' he warned, ‘then you will want for work.'

‘You do mistake me, sir,' Robert Lachlan said, ‘if you think I look for trouble. The truth is that I know that man. I fought with him at Ghent.'

‘With him, or against him?' Hew inquired astutely.

‘As it happens,' Robert answered, ‘both. He speaks our tongue, in a fashion, for the man is Welsh.'

‘Then let us go together,' Hew proposed, ‘and ask him why he stares at us.'

‘Best not to, sir, for that you are a gentleman. He will not talk to you. In truth, he is an ill-bred cur. His morals are elastic, like the Welshman's hose.'

‘What do you mean?' laughed Hew.

‘The Welshman's hose is stretched, to any size or shape.'

‘It seems you have a proverb and a prejudice,' said Hew, ‘for every foreign race. Go, then, and talk to him. Yet know, that if you threaten him, then you will lose your place.'

‘I understand,' said Robert, with a rare show of humility, that Hew did not believe.

He watched the soldier make his way towards the bar, and move towards the Welshman, drawing up a stool. The other man did not resist, and Hew observed him calling for a second stoup of ale, which he passed to Robert Lachlan. Presently the pair were thick enclosed in long and heavy talk. Hew left them to it for a while, feeling dull and dizzy from the close heat of the fire, before he decided to retire to bed. He made his way towards the bar.

‘I am going to the room. Will you ask the girl to send another cup?' he instructed Robert Lachlan. The Welshman turned upon him with a sneer. ‘So this is your new posting, Robert, nursemaid to the gentlefolk.'

In view of his instructions, Hew could hardly rise to this. Robert answered placidly. ‘Aye, and I will follow you. I will not be long.'

Hew went back to the room, to find the maid had lit a fire and  set fresh linen towels upon the folding beds. He sat down on the blanket, pulling off his boots. Robert came in after with a cup of wine. ‘The girl says she will bring you water, if you want to wash.'

Hew agreed, ‘I do.' The room was warm and pleasant in the
crackling of the fire. He stripped down to his shirt, lying on the bed.

‘What was the talk with your friend?'

Robert shrugged. ‘Talk.' It seemed his mood had changed again. He opened both the shutters, letting in the moon. ‘Do you have the sense that someone has been here?'

‘Of course they have been here,' Hew pointed out. ‘Someone lit the fire.'

‘And someone else,' said Robert, ‘has been going through your things.'

‘What things?' murmured Hew. ‘Close the shutters, light the lamps.'

‘In a moment,' Robert said. He lit a candle from the fire and placed it on the window ledge, looking out across the fields. ‘It is too quiet here.'

‘How can it be too quiet, when we wish to sleep?' objected Hew.

‘The other rooms look out upon the yard. Why are we in this one?' Robert mused.

‘Because,' Hew answered patiently, ‘it has the better view. What is it, Robert? You are like a cat, that prowls upon a roof. We go to Ghent tomorrow, let us now be still.'

Robert paced the room again, and buckled on his sword. ‘By your leave, sir, I will go outside, and look around the yard. I need to take a piss.'

‘Granted,' Hew said sleepily. The servant eyed him sharply. ‘How much have you had to drink?'

‘The Spanish wine is potent.' The world seemed well when his eyes were kept opened, but when they were closed the room seemed to spin.

‘Bolt the door behind me,' Robert said.

Hew was startled back to life by a light knock on the door. ‘Hot water, sir,' the girl called out, or something of the sort, in Dutch.

‘One moment!' It was surely but a moment since Robert Lachlan
left, and yet the candle on the window ledge had burned down to a stub and the fire lay out in ashes, smouldering in the hearth. Where was Robert, then? And how could it be possible that Hew had slept the night? Heaviness oppressed him. He felt confused and dazed. He pulled back the bolt. The girl who brought the water jug had somehow disappeared, and in her place were five or six black–bearded men. Hew saw a grinning flash of teeth and steel, and two men held him fast while the others turned to strip and search the room. Hew asked them in bewilderment, in Latin, Scots and French, what was it they were looking for. They answered with a sneer. And then they lit upon the catechism, tucked inside his bag. The book was seized, and brandished, thrust into Hew's face. ‘I do not understand,' he whispered. ‘What it is that you want?' They answered him in Spanish then, with dark and mocking grins. He understood the meaning though he did not know the words.

They took him by the arms and marched him from his room, and through the tavern drinking hall out into the yard. At this early hour, the house was already awake, and breakfasting. Two or three guests looked up at curiously, but none of them ventured to help. The innkeeper's daughter fetched water from the well, and passing, Hew called out to her, yet she would not look up. He saw Robert with the Welshman in a corner of the yard, crying out his name in clear and frank relief, turning to despair as Robert turned his back. In the bitter Flemish morning and the coldness of its light, he knew that Robert Lachlan was someone's else's man. Hew felt himself enclosed by rough and heavy hands, gagged and bound and blanke ted, and thrown upon a horse, before the last dregs of the wine again took their effect, and he slipped once more from consciousness. Which may have been a blessing, after all.

He awoke, he presumed, in a cell of sorts. He knew that he was there because of Robert Lachlan. Robert had betrayed him at the Molen inn; perhaps he had betrayed him from the very start, staging the attack in the alley at Campvere. Hew had little doubt he was a spy for Andrew Wood, and that Andrew Wood had wanted Hew to
disappear. Yet he could not think why. Surely, not to save a brother, for whom he had no love? Then family honour, Hew supposed, or some grave secret of the state. It seemed unlikely he would ever come to know. Whose man was Andrew Wood? The question turned relentlessly, and yet he could not answer it. He fretted most of all, for the fate of Meg and Giles. He had no way of guessing what had happened since he left.

His own fate, too, gave cause for some concern. His prison was the cellar of some great stone country house, where a heap of woollen blankets served him as a bed, and kept him from the comfort of an early grave. The penetrating cold reduced him once to tears, grateful for their warmth upon his frozen cheeks. He was fed and watered once or twice a day, and allowed a little light, from a candle at the wall. They sometimes came at night, to wake and question him, though their questions were haphazard, and showed very little art, and as torturers, they struck him as peculiarly inept. He had no misconception that they were the Inquisition, and yet they made it plain to him, that horror was to come, and he would come in time into more practised hands. The matter, as he understood, was Jacob's catechism, which they had brought with them from the inn. The charge against him, he assumed, was one of heresy. And though they tricked and toyed with him, and kept him there for sport, they had a deeper, darker purpose, which he began to dread.

To dilute the fear, which at times seemed overwhelming, he made use of the candlelight in learning to speak Dutch, by reading Jacob's creed. It helped to pass the time, and took his mind from what was yet to come. He found some words were closer to the Scots than to the English tongue, and that if he spoke them aloud, they gave up their sense to him. It reminded Hew of learning Latin when he was a boy, teasing out the meaning from his Seneca or Cicero. He had been quick and good at it; the puzzle pleased him well. It was a code, a secret to unlock, a hidden store of wisdom to while a winter's night.

‘Wat is uw enige troost, beinde in het leven en sterven?' ‘What
is your only . . .
troost
was trust perhaps, the thing of which you were assured . . . both in life and . . .
sterven
he assumed was death, aye, what else but death? What is your only trust – or solace, he supposed – both in life and in death?

‘Dak ik met lichaam en ziel, beinde in het leven en sterven, niet mijn, maar mijns getrouwen Zaligmakers Jezus Christus eigen ben.' ‘That I with . . . something and . . . body and . . . soul, both in life and in death, not mine . . . but belong to my . . .

‘That I with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but belong to my saviour the Lord Jesus Christ.'

And then he saw at once what Jacob meant, and understood the words that he had said to Maude: