A Dish of Spurs Read online

  ‘It opens the lungs, washes the cheeks, brightens the eye and softens the temper, so weep away,’ Will declared, so gently that Mintie was astonished. He offered her the contents of a black leather bottle, sloshing it meaningfully and uncorking it so that the pungent smell bit her nose.

  ‘Drinking water neither makes a man sick, nor in debt, nor his wife a widow,’ she flung back at him, and he shrugged, unperturbed by her poor gratitude.

  ‘I am unmarried, never sick up good drink and spend not a half-groat on it – all confiscations.’

  He winked knowingly, took a pull and stoppered it, making that strange grimace which seemed at odds, Mintie always thought, with the pleasure men took in strong drink.

  ‘If you are unhappy with the Keeper of Liddesdale, try the Warden of the March at Roxburgh,’ he went on, then split his bearded cliff of a face with a smile. ‘Though I suspect Lord Maxwell is too busy with all the elbowing for favours at court. Or go to Carlisle,’ he added with a larger grin. ‘Hutchie Elliott is English, mind. It might be that the English Deputy Warden has men to spare, since he won at Solway Moss.’

  The last was another attempt at jest, but Mintie thought about it on the ride back home, a long, cold, wet journey down past the Bygate Priory, all spoiled with burning and pocked with shots from the raids following Solway Moss. The reivers who had done it might well have been Scots paid by the English and hot for Fat Henry Tudor’s Reforms, but it was more likely they were locals who knew the best shine was to be had in a Catholic priory.

  They had also burned out the Armstrong wool mill at Mangerton, for all that the Armstrongs were in English pay, like a wheen of others Mintie could name – including the Keeper, she was sure, though she had that to thank for Powrieburn being untouched.

  But war and greed knew no loyalties when blood got in the eye and fire the hand; cruck houses all the way down the valley were charred husks and she came down the frown of it, heeled by the black dog of despair, tempered by the thought of how her own home had escaped; the Faerie paid their debts, she thought. Her mother and the Powrieburn women did little to lift the mood and Tinnis Hill itself seemed to loom over them, drowning them in shadow.

  Still, it was the Twelve Days and everyone tried to be merry for Christ’s sake. Bet’s Annie, youngest of the trio of serving women in Powrieburn, enlisted her brother’s cousin, Wattie, as an ostler and because he was ‘a man aboot the place’. She had to sniff at the questions Mintie put to her regarding his talents when he arrived a few days later, but in the end Wattie was accepted. He was fair with the beasts, though the job of man seemed beyond him, for he was a sliver with protruding teeth and scarce older than Mintie.

  The point was made all the same – Mintie, for all her years, was the true Mistress of Powrieburn, even if she had to work through her distraught ma yet. Everyone knew it, accepted it, and life went on as normal as any household could which was perched on a lawless corner of Liddesdale, with the outlaws of the Debatable Land on one side and the ravaging thieves of England just across the Kershope Water. Not to mention the Scots reivers up the Liddesdale itself.

  * * *

  The day after Christ’s Mass, Mintie rode off, despite protests and hand-wringing, to take her lament to Carlisle.

  ‘You will be seized and robbed, so you will,’ Bet’s Annie declared across her folded arms as Mintie saddled up Jaunty. ‘There is war abroad and neither side is welcomed by the other. Your ma is fair laid up with worry.’

  ‘Then unlay her,’ Mintie replied tartly, ‘by making sure Wattie does his work as he should. I will be back in a day or two. Besides – the Hendersons of Powrieburn pay out blackmeal to every Name for Scotch miles in every direction. Who would want to kill that milch cow, war or not?’

  In fact, she was back in two days, and never got further than Askerton, on the English side. The snow came down and hissed across the Bewcastle Waste until she could not see farther than Jaunty’s head and stumbled into Askerton Castle with her feet and hands frozen and her face so numb she could hardly speak.

  Tod Graham was the Land Sergeant there, and once his clucking wife had rubbed sense and feeling back into Mintie’s limbs and plied her with possets, he sat down opposite and listened to her tale.

  At the end of it, he shook his head.

  ‘The crime was done across the Border, so it is no matter for Carlisle,’ he declared firmly. ‘The Scots Middle March Warden or the Liddesdale Keeper would have to apply to the English Warden here to have it resolved. That is the way matters work – though I doubt they work at all in these days. I would not waste your time going all the way to Carlisle.’

  ‘I would offer a fair reward,’ Mintie attempted. ‘I can manage five pounds, English.’

  It was sum enough to arch Tod’s eyebrows – as much as a skilled servant earned in a year in England – but still he frowned and shook his head. The English Deputy Warden, Wharton, had won a great battle against the Scots at Solway Moss. Hardly anyone had died in it, for the Scots had so clearly not wanted to fight that they had fled or given in, and it was said King James had died of the shame.

  The result, Tod explained gently, was that the two countries were at each other’s throats, and Wharton had forbidden contacts across the Border, knowing full well that Name blood was stronger by far than national pride. God forbid anyone is married on to someone on the other side of the Border now, he added, for Wharton has declared the death penalty for that. There would be no Truce Days, where Wardens on either side could sort out claims of criminality in a sensible manner – now March law pertained. Which is to say, no law at all.

  ‘You should not be here,’ he ended, ‘and it is only out of Christian charity that I welcome you in.’

  That and I am a Henderson and so no kin of yours that this Wharton can accuse you of consorting with, Mintie thought bitterly. Henderson was a Name feared by no one, a Name who paid blackmeal to all, just for the right to live quiet.

  In her barely unfrozen heart, Mintie had known all this from the start and accepted a night’s lodging in the warm of Askerton before setting off back home the next morning.

  Tod Graham watched her go into the great white of the day and wondered if she would be fine; it was not a long ride back to Powrieburn, but the weather was false and there were all sorts out and about and up to no good in it.

  ‘Is there nothing can be done for the wee soul?’ his wife demanded, and Tod didn’t know why it happened, but the words were barely in his ears before a face swam up into his mind. It was not a good face, even for kin, and he almost thrust it away.

  Yet the more he thought on it, the more the idea formed. He was, if he admitted it to himself, ashamed that his Deputy Warden, Sir Thomas Wharton, was paying Armstrongs and Croziers and others, on both sides of the divide, to ride into Scotland for burning and slaughter. Tod was a Graham, of course, who had a long-running feud with the Armstrongs and any of the Names who stood with them, but even so, what Wharton was doing was black-hearted.

  Besides, the kin Tod Graham had in mind for Mistress Araminta Henderson’s task would benefit – and not just from the money. The man had, Tod thought, been languishing long enough in bitterness and the stews of Berwick and would be washed into the deepest stank of them entirely if left much longer.

  He frowned about it a bit more, then got ink, quill and paper and painstakingly, tongue between his teeth, sharpened the implement and then scratched out a letter. There was not much in it – the man he wrote to would need to get someone else to read it to him – but the sweat had popped out on his brow like apple pips by the time he had finished.

  Then he summoned Leckie Bell, who was young and stupid enough to consider the task an honour in this weather.

  ‘Ride to Berwick,’ he told the boy. ‘Seek out the Old Brig Tavern and the thumper employed there. Give him this and tell him that his kin, the Land Sergeant at Askerton, would be pleased if he would consider it.’

  He glanced at the boy, newest recruit to the trained band
of Askerton, and hoped he would be safe, not only on the journey, but afterward.

  ‘The man you want is called Batty Coalhouse. You will not miss him.’

  Chapter Two

  Powrieburn, Liddesdale

  A fortnight later

  The dog stirred Mintie from overseeing the table, and she was concerned for she had heard no rooks, whose disturbance from roosting was usually the first warning of anyone approaching. She heard Wattie whining his annoyance at the hound, but even he was clever enough to realise why a good herd and guard dog had his voice raised.

  Everyone else stopped as if turned to stone, with platters and spoons and horn cups clutched tight, looking at one another fearfully in the butter tallow glow. Then they all started clucking at once and her mother sank onto a bench, where Megs flapped her kertch in her face to keep her from a faint. Mintie dispatched Jinet to soothe her before turning to the trapdoor in the floor.

  It opened to show the tousled head of Wattie, bright-eyed and blinking in the light, wafting in the strong, acrid stink of the beasts below; disturbed, they were shifting and grunting.

  ‘A rider is at the yett,’ Wattie declared solemnly. ‘He is asking for Mistress Mintie Henderson of Powrieburn.’

  A man. Come at night. Mounted. Where there was one, there could be two or more… Asking for her and not her mother, mind you, Mintie thought. Which means he knows how matters are at a Powrieburn so recently bereaved.

  She scrambled down the ladder into the warm, vaulted undercroft of the bastel house; there was a brace of milch kine in it but only eight horses, all brought in from the fields. It was late for Riding – it was usually done in autumn, because folk had to bring their beasts in from their scatter of grazing and pen them, which made for easy lifting. Still, it was possible some of the more desperate would Ride, and Mintie did not want any livestock reived.

  Any more livestock reived, she corrected. Particularly horses, which seemed suddenly few in number around the Border, so that the handful Powrieburn had were pure gold.

  She had a lantern held high and almost dropped it as the straw rustled and a head popped up, half defiant, half apologetic. Bet’s Annie smoothed her rumpled clothes and bobbed an arrogance of curtsey, but could not look Mintie in the eye.

  Mintie knew the ways of it and marvelled – Wattie Crozier the ostler boy might be a skinny runt, and Bet’s Annie might be a sonsie sometime aunt to him, but he was the nearest thing to a rooster this henhouse had. She had wondered where Bet’s Annie had got to when work was involved, but was already too wise to be diverted from what was outside in order to scathe what was in. She ignored the pair of them and moved to the yett, shivering as the cold hit her and wishing she had brought a cloak.

  The thick outer doors, a pace or two beyond the metal grille, were dark, silent and barred – but the voice from beyond made them all jump.

  ‘Are you there, Mintie Henderson? I have a letter here from Askerton and I am informed you can read it fine.’

  ‘It’s a ruse,’ Wattie declared firmly. ‘As soon as we open the way, they will be in with fire and sword—’

  ‘Shut up, Wattie,’ Mintie said and heard his teeth click, though she took no delight in slapping him down; he was Borders-bred and what he said was marrowed into the bone by long and bitter experience.

  For all that, she moved to the yett, lantern held high, then unbarred the metal grille with a squealing clank of bolt. She strode through with more bravado in her walk than sense, calling for Wattie to close and lock it behind her; there were only two steps to the outer doors, but her skin was puckered when she reached them, her breath coming in short gasps and none of it was because of the cold.

  Now she wished she had taken the time to look out one of the small shuttered windows set high in the wall before she had come down, just to see what was in the yard. She tried the looking slat set in one of the wooden doors, but saw only a vague shadow.

  She laid the lantern to one side, took the great wooden batten in both hands and lifted it off the trunnions, thinking, as she always did, that a solid sliding bolt, set into the thick wall of the bastel, was much safer and altogether more modern.

  Well greased, the thick double doors slid open with a soft groan even before she had set the bar to one side and picked up the light.

  Beyond was a figure on a horse, limned silver by moonlight. Moonlight, Mintie thought wildly – perfect Riding weather…

  But the man was alone, it seemed, sitting on his hipshot Galloway nag and leaning forward with his right elbow resting easily on the pommel, the hand outstretched and holding a fold of paper. The other hand, Mintie saw, was hidden –possibly with a blade in it – and the moonlight danced along the peak and comb of a burgonet fastened casually to the man’s belt.

  That helmet was all too familiar, the workaday headgear of every Riding grayne on the Border, and even in the lantern light it shone golden brown from years of weatherproofing with lanolin-rich sheep grease.

  She tore her eyes from it and raised the lantern a little, annoyed at a loose panel betraying her tremble.

  ‘I am Mintie Henderson. What want you here?’

  ‘Christian charity would be good,’ the man growled back, his breath silver smoke in the moonlight. For a moment Mintie almost giggled wildly at the thought of replying with her da’s old story – no Christians here. Hendersons only; try up the dale…

  Then the rider thrust his face and the hand with the letter into better light.

  It was not a comfort, that face. It was a long, lean affair with a tow-coloured raggle of hair and beard topped by a soft cap; under a glowering lintel of straw brows two eyes lurked in a surround like a parched desert, cracked and scored.

  ‘A horn cup of something warming would be good,’ the man added. His jaw waggled as he spoke, the curve of beard on it coming up to meet the swoop of a hawk nose, thin as a blade.

  Undershot, Mintie thought, trying to herd her mad thoughts together. If he was a retrieving dog I’d have put him down for a jaw like that, for it will grip and never let go until you kill it…

  She took the letter and then did not know what to do with it. He waited a moment, then nodded at her.

  ‘Sooner you read that,’ he pointed out, ‘sooner you can offer that Christian charity. The wind is cold up here.’

  She looked back up at him, while the moonlight blued his face with ugly shadows. Then, in a swift gesture, she thrust the lantern at him to hold and cracked the wax seal on the folded paper.

  It was brief and painfully scrawled, she saw, by a man who had taken care to get it right and had probably sweated over every careful loop and dot. From Tod Graham at Askerton.

  ‘Are you Batram Coalhouse?’ she asked, raising her face from it, though she knew the answer. The man nodded, widening his beard in what Mintie saw was a smile.

  ‘Batty Coalhouse. If Askerton Tod Graham says true, then I am bound for the recovery of your stolen horses and Hutchie Elliott, for the price of five pounds. English. No Fat Henry testoons in it neither. Good honest shillings. Even a bag of bawbees will suit.’

  He had a strange accent, even for an English, and Coalhouse was not a name Mintie had heard, so she supposed he came from further south. She looked at the fierce face of the man. ‘Do not be fogged by his appearance. He has been in the wars and is thus hardened in skill and resolve’ said the letter, and Mintie had no doubt of it. So she nodded and watched as Batty Coalhouse levered himself out of the saddle and onto the cobbles with a heavy thump.

  It was then that she saw he was not concealing anything in his left hand at all and never would.

  He had no hand, nor most of the arm it should have been attached to.

  She tried not to think on that as she led Batty Coalhouse and his horse into the undercroft, ignoring the frowning white faces of Bet’s Annie and Wattie.

  ‘The boy here will care for your horse,’ she said firmly, battening the door and the yett. ‘You will eat with us upstairs.’

  He only nod
ded and followed Mintie, who was aware of the dagger stares of Wattie at being referred to as ‘the boy’; she heard him and Bet’s Annie hiss at each other like snakes and was sure there was nothing good said about her in the whispers.

  Upstairs, Megs and Jinet had recovered enough to bob curtseys, while her mother was upright in a chair at least, though she coughed politely behind her hand now and then, a dry racking affair. Batty gave them a polite smile and a decent enough bow for a man with a belly on him, then sat where he was indicated, unloading himself of an ironworks of weaponry which made the women blanch.

  ‘Do you need some assistance?’ Mintie demanded as he struggled out of his bandoliers and unhooked the front of his lattice-sewn padded jack.

  There was a moment of puffing and grunt, then he emerged from the fustian cocoon of it with a waft of staleness and a triumphant, red-faced grin.

  ‘I do not, thank you. I have been dressing myself since I was a youngster.’

  When Mintie tried to lift it, her arm buckled under the weight of the steel plates sewn inside it. Flustered, she fought to recover her poise and waved insouciantly at his missing arm.

  ‘I thought only that that might have been a hindrance.’

  ‘It was so until a barber trimmed it, all proper and perjink as a new preen – but that was when I was twenty and something and I am used to it missing.’

  There was nothing much left to say, so they sat and the women busied themselves with platters and bowls and spoons. Wattie came up, with Bet’s Annie trailing behind like a grey smoke.

  ‘Your nag has been fed and brushed,’ he announced tersely, just as a bowl of fragrant stew was plunked under Batty’s beard, with a cup of small beer and a hunk of oat bread to go with it. He sniffed and then tasted it with a surprisingly delicate gesture.

  ‘Well, well,’ he beamed, ‘there is mutton in this. It seems myself and the Saul have fallen into paradise.’