Burning the Water Read online

  He paused and Rae waited.

  ‘Maramaldo,’ Batty said. Rae’s eyebrows went up, for it was not what he had expected.

  ‘What of him?’

  ‘You ken of him?’

  ‘Who does not. Him it was who did the deed at this Broom House…’

  He tailed off, realising the spectre he had summoned up by the heads that turned to him, eyes feral.

  ‘Aye,’ Batty declared, soft and vicious. ‘Captain General Fabrizio Maramaldo and his paid men. A byword for cruel, even in a land as abandoned by God as this. You ken where he is?’

  Rae considered the question and saw the unconscious movement of Batty Coalhouse’s sole hand towards the stump of his missing arm. A half-gesture, no more, but it told Rae all he needed about why Batty hunted the man and he narrowed his eyes thoughtfully.

  Maramaldo had not been welcome in England, Rae remembered – the Pope had banned him from Christian armies years before, but King Henry thought that as good as a sealed letter of recommendation. Not against the French, mind you, for Maramaldo was too uncivil for them. But the Scots… well, the Scots deserved the likes of a Maramaldo and so he came north to join all the other Spanish, German and Italian mercenaries the king depended upon in the north.

  Yet even here Maramaldo’s cruelty had so sickened Sir Ralph Sadler that he’d sent him off on a false errand, escorting captured Scottish guns back to London. That was weeks before, Rae told Batty, spilling it like bile and as fast as he could get the words out. He will be in Newcastle now, or even York.

  When the blade flashed, he yelped – but it was only Batty’s big sword in his sole fist, slicing Rae’s hands free.

  ‘Run,’ Batty advised, then he smiled and, looked at the slow-turning corpse of Sir Ralph Eure. There was a note pinned to his chest, but Batty did not need to read to know what it said; everyone had growled it to the captives they were gralloching.

  Found guilty of Burning the Water.

  As a message to Fat Henry it was as subtle as dropping your breeches and waggling your bare arse. Eure had been a disliked man since 1541, when he had started expelling Scots settled on the Northumberland side of the divide, handing their land and living to English folk – but, for all that, no one liked the blued face of him, nor could look for long at the blackened, blistered, burned feet and lower legs.

  ‘Two gone,’ Douglas growled, wiping his lips dry with the back of one stained hand as he watched Batty stare, ‘and only Bowes to go. We almost had wee Georgie here – he is sleekit, that yin – but we will get him in the end.’

  Some folk cheered, but it was half-hearted at best, from men too sickened by slaughter to be welcoming more of the same. There was fear in it, too, for this was the Douglas who had exercised his right of pit and gallows, the Law of hanging or drowning the guilty. It had been the Earl’s boot on the neck of Layton that had driven that man’s face into the muddy puddle serving as Pit and few were made cheered who looked on His Grace the Douglas now.

  So it was an astonishment to everyone in that blood-soaked place of foul deeds, keening wind and dead, when Batty began to croon, tuneless as a sick crow as he urged Fiskie away.

  ‘My love he built me a bonny bower, and clad it a’ wi’ a lilye flower. A brawer bower ye ne’er did see, than my true love he built for me.’

  Chapter One

  Berwick on the Tweed

  Spring, 1545

  He dreamed one of The Dreams. Not the one in Florence with Michelangelo. The one where Maramaldo cut off his arm. It was an old familiar, this dream, but this time Batty knew it for what it was.

  There was the town, besieged by Maramaldo as he tried to be a condotterie of the first rank. There was the Red Tower which marked the gate of the place – Asti, a nothing walled town on the Tanaro, important only because Maramaldo wanted it.

  Out there, under the gate, Batty’s da lit the slow match on the petard he had been forced to arrange while Maramaldo pointedly paraded Batty and his ma as a warning not to fail. Faced with the inevitable, Batty’s da had blown the charges, himself and half the tower out across the plain. There had been forethought revenge in it, all the same, cold and bitter as only the Kohlhases of Saxony could deliver it – triple the powder and the blast trained outwards, so that the debris whirled Maramaldo off his horse and his army off its kilter.

  Batty had almost beaten Maramaldo to death with a ramrod in the aftermath, but folk had wrestled him down and, next day, a limping, bruised Maramaldo, pissing blood and smouldering with anger, had botched the work of chopping the offending arm from Batty.

  This dream, however, had the wrong arm lashed and stretched for the farrier’s axe and Batty could not understand why his right seemed fastened when it was his left that had been stretched for easier aim.

  He woke, blinking from his own dream-shrieks into the smell of cooked leeks and foul straw. He took a moment to find out he was curled by a cold damp wall and that something furred and foul had nested the night in his mouth; his head thundered.

  The smell of the leeks made his rank mouth water all the same and he scrambled round to see a man sitting at a rickety table eating with a spoon. It was a porray of leeks and the drips ran off his moustache when he grinned over at Batty.

  ‘Aye. Aye – awake then? Yer head must be loupin’. Thirsty?’

  All of which was true and Batty rolled over to take the proferred horn beaker of water, only to find his right arm shackled to the wall, which accounted for the strangeness of the dream. He looked at the man, who looked back at him and, grinning evilly, gave a shrug and drank from the cup himself.

  ‘Now there’s a shame,’ he said insincerely and Batty knew he was not about to get up and bring him water, porray or anything else. He studied the man, from his broad, bearded face with its flat nose and sneer, down the shirt and jerkin to the breeches and boots. Not the best, but good clothes; the boots were for riding and Batty suspected that this was no cobbler or baker.

  The fact that they were both in the same jail added weight to his assessment.

  He lay back and thought about how he had ended here. He was fairly sure it was in Berwick and almost certain it was the Tolbooth prison, for he had come down to the town, an old haunt. He had fallen in with some old friends at the Brig Tavern and tried to lose the stink of powder and death for a little while.

  It was, he admitted, unwise to have done so, for Berwick was English and, even though it was still open to Scots, Berwick was nervous. Ancrum Moor would be on all lips and those who fought in it on the winning side would be suspect and unwelcome.

  Batty recalled playing Primero and losing, which fact he had not liked. He remembered, vaguely, announcing that he would take wagers on whether the notoriously crumbling walls of Berwick would fall down if he pissed on them. The gunners he had fallen in with agreed with cheers, for they lived in fear of the swaying towers they occupied crashing down if they ever fired off the ordnance mounted on them. The masons, having recently rebuilt the very part of the wall Batty was pissing on, saw it differently. The inevitable fight was bloody, tangled and noisy.

  After that Batty could recall only a strange, translucent fog of eau de vie in quantity and, somewhere in it, a woman. He was sure there had been a woman…

  ‘You are awake then.’

  Batty craned round and saw the bland, chap-cheeked face of a Doorward peering through the grille on the iron-studded door. He knew the man, fought through the reek of his head for a name and came up with Cuthie. He said it and the man beamed and nodded as if he had been recognised by the king himself.

  ‘The Sergeant said you might be,’ he said. ‘If not, I was to wake you – the Sheriff himself is hearing your case.’

  Batty sucked that in and managed to extract the lees of something from it. That he was in the Tolbooth and not the garrison prison, the one known as the Hole In The Wall and reserved for those likely to hang. And of the Tolbooth cells, he was in the Fourpenny Ward – tuppence if shared. There was a Gentlemen’s Commons a
cross the way – a half-shilling a day – and the Deep for those with no money to pay their way. The Deep was mainly seepage from the drains.

  So – Tolbooth comfort then. And Sergeant was a man he thought he knew well enough.

  ‘Sergeant?’ he queried. ‘Would that be Red Rowan Charlton?’

  Cuthie smiled and nodded.

  ‘The same. Who says to bring you up and in presentable state.’

  The door racked open and the Doorward stepped in, unshackled Batty from the wall and stepped back cautiously.

  ‘The Sergeant also said it would be a pleasantry to himself if you cause no row, for it will only make matters worser.’

  Batty levered himself up, brushed as much of the straw off him as he could reach with his one hand and looked at the man sitting at the table, now dipping bread into his porray.

  ‘Bigod, you eat well in this lock-up,’ Batty declared and Cuthie glanced almost apologetically from Batty to the man and back.

  ‘If you have coin, you do,’ he answered and the man grinned broadly, then waved expansively at the long-handled skillet of porray sitting in front of him.

  ‘Eat. Help yersel’ noo you have a hand for it… if you have the tuppence worth to pay, that is.’

  Batty nodded thoughtfully, picked up the skillet, hawked deeply and spat in it, then emptied the contents on the man’s head. There was a pause, a long moment of horror, where Cuthie’s mouth started to form an O and the man sat, hunched up and dripping leeks and amazement.

  Then, just as he bellowed, Batty backhanded the pot into his face with a dull clang; the man flew off his bench and into the wall, slid down and lolled; his breathing snored in and out of his broken nose, bubbling blood. Cuthie looked at Batty with utter horror.

  Batty studied the copper skillet for a dent and smiled at the Doorward.

  ‘No row,’ he said, and tossed the skillet to one side. ‘For the pleasantry of the Sergeant.’

  ‘Christ in Heaven,’ Cuthie said, looking back at the slumped figure as he followed Batty out of the cell, locking it firmly behind him. ‘You have made a bad enemy there.’

  ‘There are no good ones. Who is it?’

  ‘Tam Wallis. One of the Wallis’ of Twa Corbies. He did not get to be called Evil-Willit Tam because of his lamblike nature. In here for his ramstampit behaviour in the White Hoose tavern.’

  Batty knew both man and kin by reputation only – it was a wise man who knew all those he was likely to have to end up hunting down – and merely shrugged, following Cuthie up the wind of steps and out into the Tolbooth entrance. Red Rowan waited, busy checking a fistful of papers and frowning as he laboriously formed the words.

  ‘Was there trouble?’ he asked, glancing up as the pair came in and Cuthie looked sourly at Batty, then shook his head.

  ‘Tam Wallis spilled his breakfast,’ he replied and Red Rowan, too busy to notice the exchange, merely nodded and smiled as if seeing Batty for the first time.

  ‘Your case is up in a minute. The Sheriff is in a fair mood, so speak when you are spoken to and take your punishment.’

  ‘For whit am I charged?’ Batty demanded.

  ‘Vagrancy, which is serious. Drunken and lewd behaviour which is the same.’

  ‘You might have stayed your hand a little,’ Batty replied, feeling his head thunder and Red Rowan grinned. His was not a pleasant face, having too much snub nose and a sanded look to it thanks to pale hair and lashes; he looked like a too-lean piglet.

  ‘I did not strike you at all. I sent you eau de vie in quantity and Sweetlip Maggie Trotter and let nature exhaust an auld man and take its course. I plucked you, blissed as a babe, from herself’s naked embrace all the way to the wee prison.’

  That was nice of him and Batty said so, wondering what he owed.

  ‘I had a whole angel in my pouch,’ he said hopefully and Red Rowan laughed.

  ‘The most of that went on a bad run at Primero,’ he answered. ‘The rest went on repairing your good graces with the Old Brig and some masons for damage done.’

  Batty scowled. Eight whole shillings, gone like smoke.

  ‘What paid for the drink and the woman, then? Am I in debt?’

  Red Rowan shook his head, while folk moved round them like wraiths; the Tolbooth was busy of a Monday and Batty’s was not the only sore head in it.

  ‘Contingency fund,’ he answered, laying one finger along his nose. ‘Better than having you wreck more of the Old Brig and men’s faces if I had tried to drag you.’

  He leaned forward, serious as plague and whispering.

  ‘And better yet than leave you to rant on about killing at Ancrum and your soul. Folk know you as Batty Coalhouse, thief-taker and master gunner, lately with the army of the Scotch. Even those who believe you are vending yourself for King Henry’s assurance are learning that menfolk they knew well are not coming home. The only reason you are not in chains, Batty, is because Sir Cuthbert is not inclined to follow the example of Carlisle. They have banned all Scotch from the market there.’

  Batty acknowledged that with a half-ashamed admittance of wave. Sir Cuthbert Ratcliff was Captain of Berwick Castle and the only real power in the town now that the Marshall of Berwick, Gower, had been packed off to the Fleet in London following a dispute with the Warden of the English East March. Who was, Batty recalled sickeningly, none other than Sir William Eure, wrathful, plum-faced old da of the Ralph Eure Batty had seen swinging his scorched feet from a tree on Ancrum Moor.

  Batty swallowed. He could easily have been in the Hole In The Wall, waiting a hemping and vowing to give up the drink. Again.

  He did not explain that the soul mentioned had not been his, but a horse called The Saul, which had carried him for a wheen of years until shot out from under him by a moudiewart bastard called Geordie Bourne, on instructions from the Armstrong Laird in the Debatable Land. Not that the Armstrong Laird hated The Saul – it was Batty who had been the target.

  The Saul had never recovered fully and had spent the last of his days at Powrieburn, where Batty had got Fiskie, his present mount. It was after Ancrum, already adding to the stains on his sleeping, that Batty had heard The Saul had died, kicking his feet up and rolling in the ecstasy of spring.

  Mintie Henderson, mistress of Powrieburn, had been sorrowed and pleased to see him both at the same time, said he could bide longer – but Batty knew that Powrieburn wanted the powder-stained bloody memory of him gone and so he had politely accepted a night and then left, a little empty where The Saul had once been.

  He had come down to Berwick, war or no war and tried to see if old faces and places would leach the sourness from him. That and drink a combination which, Batty reflected moodily, had merely added to his toll of troubles.

  ‘Besides,’ Red Rowan said, oblivious to all this turmoil in Batty’s head, ‘there are King’s Men riding up and down the road atween here and Newcastle. Lobsters, no less and looking for ne’erdowells like yourself.’

  ‘Lobsters?’ Batty asked and Red Rowan nodded, frowning. Batty thought about it. Lobsters – those who wore Hertford’s red livery – were hen’s teeth north of Newcastle now and must be seeking someone in particular.

  He said as much, but Red Rowan shook his head.

  ‘If they are, they keep it close-mouthed,’ he answered, then rubbed his beard with confusion. ‘It seems to me they do not know what they seek, but will grab up every likely ragged-arse they come across and cart them south to be put to the Question by folk who do know.’

  He stopped and looked Batty grimly in the eye.

  ‘They want someone or something, Batty,’ he declared. ‘Just be sure it isnae you.’

  Batty subsided thoughtfully and they waited, while wee legals muttered in knots and the Guild called-out men leaned on their halberds and failed to look like a Trained Band company, for all their fustian jacks and gilt latten sleeve chains. Some sign was given and Red Rowan stirred.

  ‘That’s us – follow on.’

  He led, the Doorward bro
ught up the rear and they moved up the Tolbooth steps to the next floor, all waxed wood and heraldic badges. The Sheriff was Sir Nicholas Strellie, according to the pompous announcement made by a staff-carrying official, sweating in the unseasonal heat.

  There was an exchange of documents, a muttering between Sergeant and Sheriff, then Red Rowan stepped back and stood, silent and respectful, while the Sheriff studied, turned documents, turned them back.

  Then he raised his hatchet of a face and peered at Batty over the bridge of his thick-rimmed eyeglasses.

  ‘You are Bartram Coalhouse, of no fixed abode?’

  ‘None in Berwick.’

  ‘Guilty of the charge of vagrancy, then.’

  Batty bristled at that and Red Rowan laid a quieting hand on his forearm, a gesture the sheriff noted with a scowl.

  ‘I am not the vagrant,’ Batty declared indignantly. ‘I have coin.’

  Then he thought about it and blinked at the lie.

  ‘I can get coin. Besides, the Old Brig kens me well enough and I have bided there before this.’

  Sir Nicholas studied, frowned, then peered at Batty over his precariously perched eyeglasses.

  ‘The Old Brig,’ he repeated flatly. ‘This would be the place you ruined.’

  ‘He has friends in high places ower the Border,’ Red Rowan offered and the sheriff gave him back a glaucous eye.

  ‘And low, I have no doubt. But his friends are all on the wrong side of the Border.’

  The moment hung on a rusty nail of silence. The penalty for vagrancy was to have a hole put in one ear with a hot iron but the shaming mark of it was as much a pain as the branding.

  ‘I can stand surety for him,’ Red Rowan said and Batty breathed a little, blessed the man and then wondered what he would have to pay to rid himself of the debt.

  The Sheriff considered it for a moment, then shrugged and pronounced.

  ‘Jail.’

  Batty heard Red Rowan sigh.

  ‘Public lewdness,’ the Sheriff went on, and the peering returned. ‘With an unknown woman. In the street outside the Old Brig Tavern.’