Time and Tide (33 page)

‘Niet mijn . . . eigen ben.' ‘I am not my own.'

‘What is my only comfort, both in life and death?'

‘That I am not my own, but belong to Jesus Christ.'

For Jacob had been no one's man, yet he belonged to Christ, and whispered his last prayer to comfort him in death. That brought to Hew no comfort now, at all.

In the dawning light of the late October morning it was already cold; an early frost instilled a stillness that was absolute. The soldier tied the letters and the creed into a sack, which he hung around Hew's neck, so close that Hew could feel the hot breath on his cheek. This sack, as he supposed, was to be his San Benito, or penitential garb. The soldier grinned, and showed a mouth of broken teeth. A pity, Hew thought ruefully, if this turned out to be the last face that he saw.

The soldier stood behind and drew his sword. Hew felt the blade tickle the back of his neck. The soldier urged him, ‘Walk.'

Hew answered, ‘Where?' Calmly, and evenly. He would not let them see that he was afraid. ‘Where would you like me to walk?'

The soldier said, ‘
You
,
walk
,' pleased with his few words of English. He slapped Hew on the back, hard enough to push him forward, without him falling to the ground. It was the sort of slap that Hew had sometimes given to Dun Scottis, encouraging, exasperated, rather than unkind.

It was a long, cold walk. So long that in the course of it, Hew became detached, immune to bitter sunshine and the yawns of sleepy labourers, to windmills and canals and woods and far off fields, and to the dull, insistent pricking of his bared and bruising feet. He did not want the walk to end. But end, it did, in a quiet copse of trees where the birds were mute and desolate.

‘Kneel,' the soldier said. And Hew could not resist. His hands and feet were bound, and a strip of riband placed around his eyes. And there he knew at last, that there were no inquisitors,
that there was only death. He gave up his last prayer, in cursing Andrew Wood for sending him to die so far away from home, and in a pile of leaves. Like Jacob, he was lost.

Hew heard a twig crack behind him and the whistle of a sword. He knew that it was time. And while he had imagined he was ready for the moment, he now realised that it came too soon, too late for him to make his peace with God. The birds around were silent as the man approached. He felt the cool draught of the sword; as the bonds that tied his feet were cut, and he fell sideways from the sudden force. In retrospect, he realised that his own voice had cried out, a shrill, involuntary sound that he felt ashamed of, though it did not come from any conscious sense of fear. He lay face down in the leaves, and felt their soft damp muddiness, before strong hands took hold of him, and dragged him to his feet. He realised it began again; the game was not yet done, with a sense of terror, resignation and relief. His heart clung still to life. The men who held him now spoke Dutch, as he inferred from their few grunting murmurs of command. He knew that that meant little in itself, that there was no one in this place that he could trust. They did not speak to him, or give credence to his cries, his trying, inarticulate, to connect with them. They did not seem to notice him at all, but swept him from the surface of the forest, as though he were a sack of gathered leaves, or a corpus they had found, littering the land, that they must now clear up. He thought, perhaps, he was; and in this last strange trail of time had somehow failed to hear the scythe that stripped and cut him down, and had become a ghost. The stiffness in his knees and the rawness of his wrists where the rope began to chafe suggested he lay open still, to fresh and deeper pain. The men were Dutch, he told himself, and yet it brought small comfort; he was cut off from their pity by the strangeness of his tongue, and from common understanding by the bandage round his eyes. And the Dutch, as he had heard, had exquisite forms of torture, that were too explicit even for the Scots. And so he found no solace in the sudden change of hands, for fear that there might be no sweeter course than death.

He was taken to the edge of the wood, and lifted, still blindfold and bound, onto the back of a horse. He could feel its broad flanks, a great Flemish beast, several hands higher than his slow Dun Scottis, and broader in the beam. The swerve from the ground took him dizzyingly high, and Hew entwined his fingers in the horse's mane, for fear he would fall. He was comforted to feel his captor climb behind, to steady and to settle him before him like a child. Though he had not ridden double on a horse since he was six, yet he was thankful for the rider's skill and expertise, as he held him to his place, spurring the horse on. He felt a desperate fondness for this man, who held him through the darkness, the giddy bump and sway, and in whom he was obliged to place his trust.

Hew judged from the sounds there were four or five men on horses around them; the man at his back was heavy and tall, and had his hands and eyes been free, and even with his sword, he could not have overpowered him. They had ridden on perhaps for half-an-hour – Hew had long ago lost any sense of time – when the ribands round his eyes were cut, and he cried out in pain. He thought it was a trick to hurt him, before he realised that it was the noonday sun; they had travelled on for several hours. He saw that he was riding with a troop of Flemish soldiers, roughly dressed and fiercely armed, and that they brought him to the threshold of a Flemish town. Emboldened by the sight, he asked aloud, in Dutch, ‘Antwerpen?'

There was a moment's hesitation, before one of the soldiers confirmed, ‘Antwerpen.' Though nothing more was said, Hew took a scrap of comfort in the word, spoken without rancour or evidence of threat. At Antwerp, at the least, he felt no fear of Inquisition, with Jacob's catechism hanging round his neck. It was, as he assumed, a safe, Reformers' hold. There was a marked lift in spirit in the soldiers at the gate, where they stopped to joke and jostle with the Antwerp city guards. Hew hoped that he himself had not occasioned it, for he had still the sense that they were bringing home a prize. He was aware of curious eyes as he was taken down the street, handfast on the horse, with the soldier braced behind him, careless and unkind, as though
he were a runaway, taken to be whipped. And whipping, as he knew, was the least that they might do to him. The people watched him pass, with frank and curious gaze, and pity for the consequences he must have in store. Hew had heard it said that the Flemish were inclined to sympathy for others who had fallen foul of laws, in part because they were resistant to authority, in part as a revolt against the cruel and stringent penalties that often were attendant on the smallest crimes. They had the reputation of a fiercely stubborn race, who scorned to bear the yoke, and shared a common grudge, the wicked and the good, against the force of law. In that respect, he judged, they were quite different from the Scots, who were keen on retribution, and saw justice done with relish. Both approaches filled him with a sickening squeamishness, and a gnawing apprehension of what was soon to come.

They came into a courtyard under heavy guard, where after some exchange of words, Hew was lifted bodily and set beside his horse. He saw the locks and gratings of another prison gate. And as it closed behind him he felt his hopes give way. His long, blind ride on horseback and cold trek through the woods had robbed of him his wits, like a melancholy sleepwalker, falling in a dream. The dream became more vivid as he was brought in through an entrance port into a central hall, where a woman waited, fine and fair of face. She spoke to him in French, ‘Come, monsieur, he waits.'

In the centre of the room was a large oak standing bed, with thickly woven drapes of ochre, red and black. The curtains opened back had the look of a campaign tent, for a heap of scrolls and documents was strewn across the coverlet. Around it were four or five soldiers, who came to and fro with papers and packages, brought to the man in the bed. A young boy by his side stood with pen and ink. A little further down a chessboard was set out, where a second man sat thoughtfully considering a rook. The room was large and light, and bright with coloured tapestries, while the marble floor was chequered like the chess set it contained. The player on the bed loomed up to look at Hew, and spoke to him in French. ‘Come into the light, that we may see what hope our intervention bought.'

The voice was low and kind. As Hew approached the bed he saw light, reflective eyes, intelligent and searching, and a neatly sculptured beard, lightly flecked with grey. The beard was thin and straggled on one side, where the hair refused to grow. Above it was the horror of a sunk and, blasted cheek, a mass of thick confusion, taut across his face. The cheek was turned again, returning to the chess, considering his queen. The second player looked at Hew and grinned. ‘Will you not bow your head, to the prince of Orange-Nassau?' It was Robert Lachlan. And Hew dropped to his knees, as his head began to spin. He saw the chessboard mirrored in the marble of the floor, and strong hands came to catch him as he fell into a faint.

Hew was not surprised to wake up in a warm soft bed, to find Robert Lachlan sitting at his side. ‘I had the strangest dream,' he told him. ‘I dreamt that you were playing chess with Prince William of Orange. He had a hole in the side of his face.'

‘It was not a dream,' Robert Lachlan said, ‘You are in his house. And when he comes to speak with you, as he is like to, presently, I'll thank you if ye dinna make a show of me, by gawping at his face the way you did before. Though he is not a vain man . . . Pfah!' he finished with a gesture of disgust.

‘I did not think that it was real,' whispered Hew.

‘It's real enough,' said Robert grimly.

‘And then I thought you had betrayed me,' Hew admitted.

‘And why would I do that?'

‘I thought you were in league with Andrew Wood, and had sold me to the Spanish Inquisition.'

‘Who is Andrew Wood?'

‘The coroner of Fife,' Hew closed his eyes again.

‘And why would the coroner of Fife want to sell you to the Spanish Inquisition?'

‘I do not know.'

And Hew told Robert Lachlan, as he had not done before, of
Andrew, and of Robert Wood, and of the college and the baxters, and of Jacob and his windmill, and why he went to Ghent.

‘Strewth!' said Robert Lachlan. ‘The company you keep. I ken not how you come to think that I would take my orders from a man like that. Some of us,' he mentioned pointedly, ‘are more particular. You do know, I suppose, that band of renegades who held you in their grasp was not the Inquisition?'

‘So I had supposed. Who were they, then?' asked Hew.

‘Fly by nights, free lancers, looking for a chance; they hoped to turn a profit from your sins. They never meant you harm. For though,' he added cheerfully, ‘they would have slit your throat, and left you in a ditch, as soon as they grew tired of you, there would have been no malice in it.'

‘That,' said Hew, ‘is good to know. And yet I do not understand what happened at the inn.'

‘I warned you,' Robert said, ‘that something wisna right. Papists there, the lot of them. You'd think,' he snorted in disgust, ‘that with all their chaff and chanting they wad be a bit more cheerful, would ye no'? It was the wee bit lassie that betrayed you.'

‘I thought it was the Welshman,' whispered Hew. ‘Surely, not the girl.'

‘The lass,' insisted Robert, ‘who went looking through your things, and saw Jacob's question book, and kent it for a creed. And did the silly hussy not then take it in her head, that you were one of they preachers, who go about the countryside stirring up the crowd and are a nagging thorn in our Spanish masters' side. So she goes running to those men, who were camping in her barn, and they imagine there is profit to be had. And she it was, of course, who slipped the potion in your drink.'

‘But Robert,' Hew objected, ‘You were gone all night.'

‘And so I was, and more the fool, in telling you to bolt the door,' the soldier answered with a smile. ‘I went out for my piss, and look around the yard, and nothing did I see. Then coming back, I found I couldna wake you from your snores, and so I spent the whole
night sleeping in the stables with my horse. And no more did I know of it, until I saw you taken by the Spaniards through the yard.'

‘When you turned your back on me,' Hew reminded him.

‘You cannot doubt I turned my back. For there were six of them and one of me, and even with the Welshman, I did not like the odds. I gathered up our things, and slipped away, precipitate, for want of better help. The Welshman, for his part, I sent to follow after, to find out where you went. Few men are more useful, than one who knows both sides. He it was who brokered the exchange.'

‘Your pardon, Robert, for I have misjudged you,' whispered Hew. ‘I thought you were a man for hire.'

‘You do not see it, do you, sir,' the soldier sighed. ‘For that is what I am. There is a difference, plain and clear, between a man for hire, and a man who lies about the side that he is fighting for. I think you do not follow it. Suppose that in your court, you act for the defence; you do not hope to damn the man, and see that he is hanged. Yet in another case, where you will prosecute, you find yourself upon the hanging side, and no one says that you have turned your coat. You paid me, sir, to see you safe to Ghent, and that is what I mean to do. And if another man should offer me another sum, to stop your passage there, then I should turn it down, just as the lawman in your court will not accept a bribe, to prejudice his case. That does not mean that in another case, he will not fight upon another side. And so it is with soldiering. Each battle is a separate case that I will fight, according to the task, and if I do accept a task, then I will see it through. If I hold your colours, then I work for you. And so, when you were taken hostage at the inn, I rode here to Antwerp for audience with the prince, for he, I knew, would gladly hear your case.'