Fate and Fortune (10 page)

Hew sighed conspicuously. But he had met officious types before, and knew that to refuse to answer would prolong a painful process.

‘My name is Hew Cullan, lately of the parish of St Leonard’s in St Andrews. I was born here, in the town. My father was an advocate, and I count myself a gentleman,’ he stated bluntly.

The short bailie snorted. ‘Ah, do you indeed! Then have you not looked in the glass?’

‘I met with an accident,’ Hew explained lamely. He began to see himself as Thomas and his tall friend saw him. The boatman’s clothes were worn and old, and though he had a shirt and breeks, the very least that decency required, he had no nether hose or proper coat. He had abandoned the boatman’s boots at Leith water, when the hobnails had worked through the soles. His legs were bare and bruised below the boatman’s britches, and his hair had not been combed since its dipping in the Forth. Worst of all, he had no hat; his plum-coloured cap, with its ostrich feather trim, lay sodden at the bottom of the estuary. In a last stubborn showing of pride, he had refused to accept the blue bonnet. And so he had come into the capital, bare-headed as the daftest loun, expecting to be greeted as a lord.

The milder of his twin inquisitors tugged at his colleague’s sleeve. ‘Tis possible,’ he whispered, sotto voce, ‘from his manner and his speech, that he may be a gentleman, but fallen on hard times. But think you, could he not be fugitive from justice? He has the look of one who has been freshly whipped.’

Thomas subjected Hew to closer scrutiny. ‘Aye,’ he said judiciously, ‘or else the look of one who should be freshly whipped.’

Hew answered wearily, ‘I was capsized at the ferry, where I have lost my clothes and papers. That is my misfortune, not my crime.’

‘There has been no report,’ the kinder bailie murmured, ‘of the ferry boat capsizing.’

‘It was not the ferry,’ Hew began to answer. Then he saw the
hopelessness
, and fell silent.

‘I am come on business, with a commission to the printer, Christian Hall,’ he explained at last.

‘On whose behalf?’

‘My own.’ Hew tugged at his scrip. ‘I have a manuscript here for the printer.’

‘And that survived the shipwreck?’ Thomas winked to his friend.

‘Miraculously, it did,’ Hew answered shortly. ‘The press belongs to my father.’

‘Is that so?’ The tall man rubbed his beard. ‘You know Christian Hall. Did you ken a man called Cullan owned the press?’ he asked his fellow doubtfully.

‘I never heard of such. Then Christian Hall will vouch for you?’ the squat man questioned Hew.

‘He will vouch for the book. Though I confess that he does not expect me.’

Whatever he had said, he said it all, for the bailies exchanged subtle glances, which Hew could not read, and each laid a hand on his arm.

‘We will see this settled at the tolbooth,’ Thomas said emphatically.

They did not turn, as Hew expected, to the southern corner of St Giles, but marched him to the tower of the worn and ancient tolbooth, rising gloomily to choke the narrow street. Thomas hammered loudly on the turnkey’s door.

‘Wait,’ Hew cried desperately, ‘there is one here who can vouch for me. The advocate, Richard Cunningham.’

‘Oh, aye?’ Thomas smirked. ‘Right enough. He kens Richard Cunningham,’ he confided to his friend.

‘Then he is the devil, and a rogue beyond a doubt. There’s many men that cry upon that name before they swing,’ the tall man winked at Hew. ‘I’m afraid you can’t afford him. Master Cunningham does not consort with beggars. Though he has met enough thieves, in his time.’ He rapped sharply once more on the door, and the gudeman appeared, gently grumbling, swinging a great bunch of keys. Hew looked around for a means of escape. A small crowd had gathered, all of them strangers: their interest ranged from scornful curiosity to fierce and frank contempt. They left no open passage to the kirk.

‘Aye, what is it now?’ The gudeman groaned. ‘Will I have no peace today?’

‘Here’s a beggar for you, Robert,’ Thomas answered cheerfully. ‘Put him in the ironhouse.’

The gudeman gazed at Hew, sad-eyed, and shook his head. ‘That is not the place, as ye well ken. Besides, the tinklar and her bairns are in the ironhouse. Since she is a woman, it would not be fit.’

‘What, man! The Egyptian! Were ye no telt to put her in the thieves’ hole?’ Thomas expostulated. ‘She’s a vagrant and a thief, and like as not a whore.’

‘Aye, but for the bairns,’ the gudeman answered lamely. ‘For they are but bairns, and the hole is awfy dark.’

‘In truth, I have no patience with your saftness, Robert! The hole is awfy dark! Tis dark enough where they are going, and the bairns had best get used to it. The lord Sinclair his man has set his claim on them.’

Hew interrupted, with a sudden rush of dread, ‘Where are they to go to, that must be so dark?’

Thomas ignored him. ‘Then put him in the thieves’ hole, since the whore is in the iron house,’ he iterated heavily, ‘it cannot be hard to work out.’

Hew reached out to grasp the gudeman’s sleeve. ‘You cannot let them do this,’ he pleaded. ‘For pity sir, I beg you.’ The gudeman shook him off, as mildly as he might blow off a fly. ‘Now do not fash. And do not fight it, sir. For if you cross these gentlemen tis likely you will hang, and that I should truly be sorry to see.’

‘Aye, so he would,’ the tall man endorsed this. ‘The gudeman is unco kind-hearted. He hates to see anyone hang.’

The gudeman of the tolbooth deftly turned Hew’s wrists behind his back with a strength and force that belied this gentleness, and held them firm in the grasp of one hand as he felt for his keys. ‘Now son, if you will not settle quietly I will have to chain you hand and feet, and you would not care for that, I doubt, your hands and feet so sore,’ he advised.

Hew tried to twist back to face him, but the gaoler’s bulk behind him at his back pushed him forward to the door. ‘Look, now! There are steps.’ He felt the outside world disintegrate; the bustle of the market and the crying of the cramers receding with the sunlight as he stumbled on the stair. If Thomas and his friend remained above, they had become irrelevant, displaced by the rattling of the gudeman and his keys. His calm and placid lordship of this place entirely his allowed no trace of hope. He would be sorry, aye, beyond a doubt, to see Hew hang. He pitied and kept watch with a cool and sad complacency more chilling than the bailies’ thirst for blood. At the foot of the steps, a second door was opening, and Hew knew that once behind it the last vestige of light from the street would be gone. He clung to the gudeman.

‘For pity, do not leave me here.’

The gudeman loosened his fingers and propelled him through the door. ‘I maun see to they bairns, and then I will come back to you,’ he intoned kindly. ‘You have no money, I suppose? For drink or aught?’

Hew shook his head. Though the gudeman could hardly have seen it in the darkness, he interpreted the silence, for he answered, ‘You may have oatbread, and water to drink, God willing, and grace of the baxter, for the bailies are right slow to pay their dues.’ The gaoler heaved a solemn sigh. ‘I’ll see what I can do. They are fixed on one of their purges, of Egyptians and strong beggars and the like, and not a care to who will pay the gudeman for their keep. When the tinklar wifie hangs, there may be bread to spare.’

‘Is she to hang, then?’ Hew pressed him. Though he did not want the answer, he was keen to keep the gudeman talking, to prolong the moment till the last door closed.

‘Aye,’ the gaoler regarded him curiously, ‘she is a villain, that tells fortunes, and plies magic fast and loose. She has been here once before.’

‘Then what will become of her children?’

‘Aye, the bairns, tis well remembered. I will see to that. I’ll leave you now,’ the gudeman finished pleasantly, ‘until this time the morn. And when I come this way, I’ll pass a cup of water through the grate.’

‘Send word to Richard Cunningham. I swear he will repay you, on my life,’ Hew implored.

‘But you know, my dear sir,’ the gudeman countered mildly, ‘your life is not worth very much. And though you cry for Master Cunningham, I doubt your kinship to him. We cannot have him troubled, by every loun and limmar that would plead for his defence. Well, though, you speak bravely, and you have an honest face, and a certain youth and
softness
that acquits you well, and so for that reason I will grant you that when Master Cunningham comes next to court, I will speak to him your name and make your predicament known. He is not here at present. He is gone about the circuit court.’

Hew cried, despairing, ‘Then what happens next?’

‘Next Tuesday you will come before the magistrate. If no one comes to speak for you, you likely will be scourged and branded in the lug. Take my advice, learn from it, and look for proper work. You may find it in the coal pits or the salt pans. Do not resort to begging, else you will be hanged.’ With that word of comfort, the gudeman slammed shut the door, leaving Hew alone to contemplate his fate.

In that first, desperate moment, he clung to the door, as though some residue of hope might filter through its cracks. Then forcing down his fear, he turned to face the cell. Though the stench was
overwhelming
, he knew that he would soon grow used to it, and that appalled him more. For when his stomach had ceased to lurch and rebel, and he no longer noticed the stink of decay, he would himself be part of it, absorbed into its core. Breathing shallow as he could, he felt his way about the space in front of him. The cell was no more than five feet by seven, small enough for him to touch the walls from its centre, high enough, at least, for him to stand. As he became
accustomed
to the darkness, he saw a trace of light; a tiny grating opened upwards, admitting a pinprick of daylight, or perhaps, on cloudless nights, the glimmer of the moon, and through this grate the trickle of the rain had washed the squalor of the street. The walls were streaked with filth, and the straw below the grate, that once had been a bed, was clogged and moist.

Hew curled up by the door, in the driest corner he could find. The dampness of the air that seeped through to the bone did nothing to obliterate the stench. He took off his leather knapsack, which became his pillow, and drew a curious comfort from its scent. He closed his eyes and tried to picture in its place the warm flank of Dun Scottis, the earthy April showers, the sweetness of the sunshine and the rain. And exhausted, cold and hungry, in this dark and hollow place, he fell asleep.

It was the cold that woke him, creeping insidiously into his bones. He woke long before the light. Gradually, though, the sun rose in the sky and a pinkish, milky daylight filtered through the grate. Outside, he heard murmuring, as though a crowd had formed. He heard a far off hammering, and somewhere up above, a deep, metallic clang. He understood these sounds, and tried to shut them out. Then as the sun climbed higher still he heard the sounds of commerce from the
luckenbooths
, along the northern aspect of St Giles. He allowed his mind to shape them into flesh: a fishwife fresh from Leith, with panniers full of haddocks; limp-eyed ponies, laden, trotting over stones; the ringing of the kirk bells, calling in the day, the harrying of children late for school. He imagined the booksellers, setting up their stalls, a prayer book for the kirkman who hurried to St Giles, a thrilling piece of tattle for his wife. He heard the market criers, sweet and mournful like the gulls:
caller herring, who will buy; neaps like succar; leeks and kale
. He tried to bring to life the textures and the scents, pungent oils and vinegars, dripping from a sponge, and slabs of yellow butter wrapped in muslin cloth. Yet he could not overcome the prison vault, the dark and putrid dankness of the gaol, where he left no mark upon the passing world.

His eyes had already become focused to darkness when the gudeman came to let him out. Someone called, ‘God’s truth! Can it be you?’ And he was standing in the light, in the gaze of Richard Cunningham, who met him with an air of such amused benevolence he could have wept.

He said simply, ‘Master Cunningham, I am truly glad to see you, sir,’ and haplessly, hopelessly, held out his hand.

Richard broke into a smile, and clasped Hew in his arms in a quick and warm embrace, recoiling, somewhat briskly, from the smell.

‘I should think you are,’ he answered humorously. ‘You are a little altered since we met.’

‘This is Master Cullan, and my friend,’ he confirmed to the gudeman. ‘There has been a mistake here, which I shall redress. Meanwhile I will take him in my charge.’

He removed from a pocket a purse of gold coin, which he tossed to the gaoler intact. The gudeman retreated, well pleased with his spoils.

Richard rubbed his beard. ‘The question is,’ he said to Hew, ‘what we should do with you now. I have some pressing business in the court room, where I dare not take you, in your present state. I think it may be preferable to send you to my house. My clerk here,’ he gestured to a man behind, ‘will show you the way.’

‘In truth, I am in no fit state to grace your home,’ Hew admitted awkwardly.

‘Andrew will explain it to my wife.’

Richard drew the man aside, for a hurried consultation. Then he smiled at Hew. ‘Now I must take my leave, and put this matter right.’ He moved on swiftly to the entrance of the council house, at the south west quarter of St Giles.

The clerk spoke impassively to Hew, in a tone that suggested he had seen it all before, and would not stoop so low as to remark upon it. ‘Will you follow, sir?’ He led Hew back into the lawnmarket, where the voices he had heard were given form and faces in the dizzy, urgent pressing of the crowd. Hew drank in deep draughts of air, with all its mingled pungency of sweetness and decay, grateful to be part of the returning world.

They had come to a stop at a tall land on a tenement that looked upon the street, with a forestair leading upwards to a wooden gallery. Only then did the servant pause to look at Hew, with a hint of
scepticism
. ‘Perhaps it would be best,’ he allowed at last, ‘if you wait here.’

Hew stood a little further from the door, afraid that it would appear that he was loitering. The high street had a rough, ramshackle air, quite different from the leafy thoroughfare of South Street in St Andrews, where the merchants built their houses on neat and ordered rigs. The lands upon the tenements appeared to crane their necks towards the sun. Like plants starved of light they pushed their
straggled
shoots up vainly to the smallest prick of sky. Everything was pushed upwards, striving for the mountains where the air was clean, leaner and lankier, stretched towards the sun. Timber frames and forestairs sprouted ever up and outwards, until the whole town twisted like a turnpike, rising to the castle, straining round the galleries that spilled into the street. Hew kept a watchful eye out for the bailies. A fruitman stood close to the house, selling baskets of apples and wardens, long-wintered, weathered and worn, and trays of dried medlars and plums.

Presently, the clerk returned, and honoured Hew with a
contemptuous
smile, that flickered round the edges of his lips.

‘Done,’ he said laconically. ‘Go up to the kitchen there.’ He led Hew to the side door in the close, and pointed to a turnpike stairway. ‘Second opening on the left, on the second floor.’

Hew found himself inside a warm and well-lit room, as large as Jonet’s cottage, that contained a roasting spit before a blazing fire. A dressing board was set with bread and butter, and a plate of mutton, thickly sliced. A low door opened to his right, and a little maid emerged, with a jug of frothing beer. She placed this on the board beside the bread and indicated through a string of squeals and gestures that he was to eat. Her duty done, she fled, as though she saw the devil supping at her hearth. Hunger overcame Hew’s inhibitions, and he made short work of the meal. He was wiping his mouth with the last piece of bread, when the kitchen door opened, and a child of six or seven peeped inside. She giggled as he smiled at her, clasping her fingertips close to her mouth, and let the door slam, darting away. Hew groaned. Once again, he was a fool for maids and bairns to gawp at.

The little girl was followed in a moment by her mother, who stood calm and curious, with her daughter peeking shyly from her skirts. Hew rose abruptly, startled into awkwardness, conscious of his squalid state of dress.

‘Master Cullan – Hew – you are welcome here.’ The mistress of the house regarded him with clear and candid gaze. She held out her hand, with a grace that he dared not return. ‘I am Eleanor Preston,’ she said softly. ‘The servant will send for a surgeon, to attend to your hurts.’

‘No surgeon, I implore you,’ Hew protested. ‘I am only scratched and bruised. I would not be bloodied as well.’

Eleanor raised an eyebrow, and answered with a mother’s patience for a dear but vexing child. ‘Well then, if you prefer, you shall have the apothecary. Come up to the loft; there is a room prepared.’

Hew followed her up the turnpike stair. Richard’s house appeared to be arranged on several floors, and he had lost his bearings from the street. At its very top they came into a space that overlooked the close, furnished with a writing desk and bed.

‘I hope you may be comfortable,’ Eleanor said. ‘I will bring up what you need. Soap and water, I should think,’ she inferred discreetly. She left him on his own, to wait for the apothecary. This man was polite though perfunctory in his attentions, and Hew began to suspect that the stench of the tolbooth, to which he had in some part grown
accustomed
, lingered more stubbornly than he had supposed. He wished for Richard to come home, to offer him a proper conversation, and restore his sense of self. Under the apothecary’s quizzical eye, he felt like one of Giles Locke’s specimens, floating in a jar and of dubious provenance.

As the apothecary took his leave, the mistress of the house returned, with a suit of clothes. ‘Aye, you were right,’ Eleanor smiled. ‘Only bruised. The man will make up a salve.’

It felt strange to Hew to be mothered in this way, for the second time in as many weeks, and he hoped she would not ask him to undress. She held out the clothes for inspection. ‘These will do, I think. Richard’s last prentis left them behind. They are a little worn for wearing in the court, but will serve until you have new. You can throw your old ones on the fire.’

‘I thank you. But I think perhaps you have misunderstood,’ Hew answered politely. ‘I am not Richard’s prentis.’

‘Oh?’ she looked surprised. ‘But you are Matthew Cullan’s son?’

‘For certain, aye.’

‘Then there is nothing more to say.’ She smiled at him again. ‘In any case, you will be glad to change your things. Have you all that you require?’

‘But for soap and water,’ Hew reminded her.

Eleanor hesitated. ‘I talked with the apothecar. I fear he is opposed to washing, as the witches recommend, in times of hurt and sickness. He believes warm water opens up the skin and makes it ripe for
pestilence
and putrefaction, such as is rife in … in the place where you most recently were …
incommoded
,’ she concluded tactfully.

Hew sighed. He wanted nothing more fervently than to rid himself of that stain, the taint of the gaol, its creeping stench and shudder on his skin.

‘I have heard that argument,’ he pleaded, ‘and my brother-in-law, who is a most renowned physician, until quite recently subscribed to it, but my sister, who is wiser yet than anyone I know – though she is not a witch, of course,’ he capitulated hurriedly, ‘– has succeeded in persuading him otherwise, and now he is convinced not only does washing not cause putrefaction but a little soap and water judiciously applied may oftentimes discourage it.’ He spoke like Giles, he realised sadly, in this curious circumvention.

‘
That
is not an argument we often hear in town. But nonetheless,’ Eleanor gave a thoughtful nod towards the counterpane, which did not look likely to wash well, ‘you may have soap and water. Richard has a bath vat in his closet,’ she admitted, as an afterthought, ‘though it takes some time to fill.’

This, Hew sensed, was a step too far. ‘Soap and water, and some towels,’ he assured her, ‘will suffice. I thank you for the clothes. But I should like to keep the others if I may.’

Eleanor stared. ‘You can have no further use for them.’

Hew grew hot beneath her gaze, so benignly sceptical. ‘I mean to return them to the gude wife who lent them,’ he explained.

‘They are noxious, Hew,’ she told him gently, as she might warn a child, who had simple understanding, and as little sense.

‘They belonged to her son, who was drowned.’

‘Then leave them by the door, to be washed and aired. You shall not take them back to her, tainted with the tolbooth,’ Eleanor said gently.

It was pity at his tale, perhaps, that she forgot her inhibitions in the naming of the place.

‘Mistress, I thank you, I cannot repay your kindness. I am truly sorry, to have brought the filth of the gaol to your house,’ answered Hew.

‘As to that, think nothing of it. It serves as a timely reminder that that dreadful place is not so far away. Now, I will leave you to dress. Richard will be home soon. You will find us in the hall, taking supper. I knew you and your sister both when you were children,’ she said kindly as she left.

The timid maid returned with basin, jug and towels, and Hew scrubbed clean the remnants of the gaol. Washed and dressed, he closed his eyes for a moment on the bed, and in a moment more, he fell asleep. He woke with a start to the sound of voices below, splashed his face again quickly and combed through his hair. Now sleepily presentable, he made his way downstairs.

He found the family all together in the hall. The room opened out through high, half-shuttered windows to a timber gallery. When the windows were left open to allow the air the house looked down upon the marketplace, a light and airy loft above the noise and dust, lifted from the clamour of the street. With the shutters closed, the hall was dark and intricate, lapped in quiet lamplight and the subtle, secret
stirrings
of the fire. In the cool April evening, Eleanor allowed for both; she left the windows open to the last pale trace of sunlight as she lit the fire. The long meat board was set before the window, with a
white-work
cloth, and beside it stood the linen stand, with water bowls and washing cloths. The table had been set with pewter bowls and cups, though Richard had a drinking cup of silver, and a set of silver spoons. There were fruit dishes, bread bowls and butter plates, and saucers of pickles and salt. Besides, there was a linen press, and a French oak dresser, together with a walnut stand bed, plump with cushions, in the corner by the hearth. Eleanor had woven fabrics bright with flowers, in russet, gold and primrose, picking out the colours of the flames. The walls were coloured white and hung with painted cloths. The whole seemed light and intimate, a public and a private space, both close and distant to the town.

Richard was sitting on the settle by the fire, with his little daughter in his lap. A young boy sat reading, curled on the floor at his feet. As Hew entered, Richard smiled. ‘You look a little better now.’

‘He stinked before,’ the little girl said candidly.

‘
That is
rude,’ rebuked Richard.

‘True, though.’ Hew winked at her.

‘Why?’ The boy by the fireside closed his book and gazed at Hew with curious grey eyes. Eleanor replied, ‘It is ill-mannered to remark upon the smell.’

‘I meant, why did you stink?’ The boy gazed closely at Hew, his interest implacable.

‘I was in a bad place,’ Hew said apologetically, ‘and I am grateful to your parents to be out of it.’

‘He was in the
gaol
,’ the girl said unexpectedly. Then she saw her parents’ warning looks, and capitulated hurriedly, ‘That was what my nursemaid said.’

Eleanor sighed, ‘Servants talk.’

‘I have thought for some time,’ Richard frowned, ‘that Grace is too old for a nurse.’

The little girl pouted. ‘I like her.’

‘We will speak of it later,’ Eleanor suggested. ‘Master Cullan, these are our children. Roger is twelve, and at the grammar school, and Grizelda, whom we all call Grace, has recently turned six. James, our elder son, is studying at St Leonard’s.’

‘So I understand. Grizelda is a pretty name.’ Solemnly, he extended a hand to the child.

‘I had a sister Mary, but she died last spring,’ the little girl confided.