Fate and Fortune (27 page)

‘I am relieved to hear it. But I hope there will be no cause for the spilling of blood. What is required here is caution, Paul, and
vigilance
, and above all quietness,’ Hew warned him. ‘Can you hold your tongue?’

‘I can sir, and I will, sir. I can be silent as the grave, and hot irons would not force your secrets from me. The doctor’s work is close, and confidential. He has taught me … oh!’ Paul caught the drift. ‘You wish me to be quiet, now, sir?’

‘That is the gist,’ Hew confirmed. ‘I wanted space to think.’

‘Then I can be quiet, as the smallest mouse.’ Paul said confidently.

They had come to the cottage, on the outskirts of the Flodden wall, and Hew unlocked the door.

‘What should I do, sir?’ Paul asked, in a loud stage whisper. ‘Do I stand and watch?’

‘Aye, a little further off.’ Hew looked around. Behind the cottage ran the ruin of the old town wall. ‘Crouch there,’ Hew instructed, ‘and keep watch.’

‘Aye, that I will,’ Paul accepted eagerly. Then he hesitated. ‘What is it I am watching for?’ he wondered.

‘To see if anyone comes in,’ Hew answered patiently.

‘And if they do, I should pounce on them, and prick them with my blade?’ suggested Paul.

‘No, you should do nothing,’ Hew assured him, ‘until I give a sign.’

‘Aye, very well. But what sort of sign?’

‘I know not – a whistle. I will whistle if I want you, Paul. Unless you hear the whistle, do not show yourself.’

‘Aye, well and good,’ the servant answered happily. ‘What tune will you whistle, sir?’

‘Oh, dear God!’ Hew swore, and checked himself. ‘No tune. Just a whistle, long and low, like this.’ He gave a long low whistle, and Paul nodded, satisfied. ‘We should practise it indoors, in case I do not hear.’

‘No, we should not,’ retorted Hew. He pushed Paul firmly in his place behind the wall. ‘If you do not heed the whistle, I shall scream.’

Hew entered the house and let the door close behind him, leaving the key in the lock. He left the shutters closed, and lit the lamp, looking through the rooms. The cottage had been empty over winter, yet the doors were solid and the walls and windows watertight, the place was clean and dry, beneath a layer of dust. The light oak furniture, half tester bed and press, were scaled to fit, and the fabrics of the bed were finest silk, out of keeping with a small and modest house. The entrance hall led back into a second chamber, with a kitchen and a closet below stairs. The cottage backed on to a long strip of land, sloping to the hills, and flanked with plum and apple trees, the new leaf already in bud. A chicken coop, and garden beds of vegetables and herbs, were visible beneath the straggling weeds; a secret garden hidden in the hills, a stone’s throw from the bustle of the town. A meeting place for lovers, Hew thought bitterly. It was cold in the cottage, and he lit a fire, trailing smoke against the pale blue sky. He sat thoughtful in the gloom, prepared to wait. It would be a while yet, for the sermon at the kirk had just begun. So he did not expect the rapping at the door. He started to his feet. It was doubtless Paul, he reassured himself. Then he heard the rattle of the lock, and a voice calling loudly, ‘Christian, are you here?’

Hew cursed as he climbed the low steps from the kitchen, throwing open the door into the hall. Full square on the hearth, glaring and glowering, stood Phillip.

Without pausing to speak, Phillip lunged at him. Hew was prepared, and caught him with a blow upon his shoulder that send him
staggering
against the wall. As he stood up again, Hew drew his sword. ‘I do not recommend it,’ he said coldly.

Phillip rubbed his shoulder, sulking like a bairn. ‘Where is she?’ he demanded.

Hew ignored the question. ‘How did you know to come here?’ he returned.

‘Christian told me. This was her home as a child.’

‘Aye, I was afraid that she might tell you,’ Hew admitted. ‘Therefore it is fortunate they are no longer here.’

‘Villain! Where is she?’ screamed Phillip.

‘Don’t you mean, where are they? Did you forget little William?’ Hew taunted. ‘Or does he not fit with your plan?’

‘I will kill you,’ swore Phillip.

‘How do you mean to do that? When you are unarmed, and I have a sword? With which, I can assure you, I am quite adept.’

‘You think you are so very subtle,’ Phillip sneered, ‘That you can have and hurt her, when you do not even want her, that you can have her at your beck and call. Be assured, you swingeour, that she is not yours.’

‘You are mistaken, if you think I make a claim to her,’ Hew
countered
coldly.

‘I know you don’t,’ said Phillip. ‘That makes it all the worse.’

Hew sighed. ‘It is infernal luck, to set a snare and catch a rabbit, when I want the fox,’ he remarked. ‘Phillip, you can see that Christian is not here. Now go away, or I will have to hurt you.’

There was a sudden clatter at the door, and the servant Paul appeared, alarmed and breathless. ‘I went off for a piss, and missed your whistle. Is all well?’

Hew groaned aloud. ‘God’s truth! Are you armed, Paul?’ he asked wearily.

‘Aye, sir, armed and ready.’ Paul drew his dagger with a flourish.

‘This man is not wanted here. May I trouble you to take him back to town?’

Phillip scowled. ‘Since Christian is not here, I’m going anyway. There’s no need for that.’

Paul looked disappointed. ‘Then the danger is averted, sir?’

‘Aye, then, it is,’ agreed Hew. ‘If you will see him out of sight and earshot, I shall have no further need for you. Stop to talk to no one on the way.’

He watched as Paul escorted Phillip from the house and prodded him, protesting, down towards the water port. Having dealt with these distractions, Hew settled down to wait.

It was several hours before he heard the lifting of the latch, and the visitor at last came in, so quietly that he thought perhaps it was the wind. The shutters were still closed. Hew had allowed his lamp to burn out, leaving only the soft smudge of candlelight in the corner by the window and the last sooty embers of the fire. He listened, taut among the shadows. The visitor removed a bundle from his back, and slid it softly to the floor. He stood for a moment, considering. Then he took the candle from the sill and let it cast its light around the room. Hew stepped out into its glow. ‘They are not here.’

‘Aye, so I see,’ the answer came soft, with a trace of amusement. ‘And yet you sit here in the dark. May we light the lamp?’

‘By all means.’ Hew took the flame and applied it to the lamp. He held the lantern high to show his face.

Richard smiled wryly. ‘Not gone to Lauder, Hew? Then what about the letter?’

‘The letter was a forgery, written by Giles Locke.’

‘How singular. Your brother has become adept in forgeries, I think.’

‘I doubt he has,’ Hew agreed. ‘He learned his trade from you.’

‘Then I suppose the minister at Lauder isn’t called John Knox?’

‘Curiously, he is,’ admitted Hew. ‘I have learned, also from you, that the best way to lie is to build the lie on truths. I did go to Balcanquall, and he did write to Lauder, though his friend John Knox has not replied. But Balcanquall was helpful to me in another way. He told me Catherine’s poems were brought to him by you. He said that you had had them from a friend, though he was somewhat shy of breaking confidence. He is a proper man.’

Richard grimaced. ‘Never trust the kirk, Hew.’

Hew ignored this. ‘So I did not care to leave Christian on her own.’

‘That I understand. I felt the same.’

‘Ah, did you now?’

‘And so I resolved to look in on them, on my way to the tennis court,’ Richard said smoothly. ‘May I inquire where they are?’

‘Far from here.’

‘You are secretive indeed,’ noticed Richard, smiling. ‘Yet we were once so close. Is there no one that you trust?’

‘Certainly, not you,’ acknowledged Hew.

‘Surely, you do not suspect me, on the word of Walter Balcanquall? Well then, that’s a pity.’ Richard made a move towards his bag. ‘For I thought that we were friends.’

‘Why did you have to come here?’ Hew asked him softly. He could not mask the note of sadness in his voice.

‘Much like yourself, I wanted to make sure they were quite safe.’

‘And what is in your bag?’

Richard stared at him. ‘My tennis things.’ Suddenly, he laughed, and opened up his sack. ‘Racquets for the caichpule, apples, and a knife. The apples, I confess, were a present for the child. I thought that he might like them. Was I wrong?’

‘You sent apples to the house.’

‘I know that Giles insists they are the devil’s shitting potion, but you cannot think I meant to harm the bairn,’ objected Richard,
buckling
up his bag. ‘You have read too many nursery tales. Now, I should like a game, before it grows too dark. Since I have no partner, will you play with me?’

Hew blew out the lamp. ‘You wish to play a game of chases,’ he said slowly.

Richard smiled indulgently. ‘I do.’

Patrick Fleming’s caichpule had been built into a courtyard overlooked in every sense, enclosed by lands and tenements that turned their backs upon an accidental space. Within this space, a timber frame was lined with panels painted black. The caichpule was left open to the elements, to make the best use of the light. A gutter in the centre of its floor allowed collected rainfall to escape into a drain, channelled to the entrance of the close. The steep slope was levelled, to fall gently to the centre from both ends, and the floor was paved with stone. It was smaller than the courts that Hew had played upon in France, perhaps seventy feet long, by twenty feet wide, running slightly angled, north to south. The tenements that flanked it on all sides extended far above the penthouse roofs, and kept high curving
services
from landing in the street. Of the surrounding lands, only Robert Fletcher’s on the south side had windows that looked out onto the court, with a small timbered gallery high above the service end
recklessly
exposed to flying balls.

Since it was the Sabbath, both the court and Fletcher’s gallery were closed. Richard led Hew through a passageway in Patrick Fleming’s close, opening to the caichpule from the west. He unlocked a little doorway in the galleries, upon the penthouse side, and locked this door behind them as they entered, securing the key in his pocket. At first he did not speak, but strode out to the centre of the court to inspect the net, a loose rope strung with tassels, hanging to the floor. The trough beneath the net was clean and dry, for it had not rained for several days. This inspection complete, Richard opened up his bag and removed a pair of racquets, which he examined thoughtfully, before handing one to Hew. ‘I always play with racquets,’ he remarked. ‘I never have much cared to use my hands.’

At the other side of the net, the caichpuler had left a large basket of balls, covered with a canvas cloth. Richard removed the cloth and inspected the balls with the same exaggerated care he had focused on the racquets, before he made his choice.

‘I wonder,’ he reflected next, ‘what should be the stakes?’

‘The stakes are high,’ Hew assured him.

Richard smiled. ‘Incalculably. May I propose,’ he went on politely, ‘that we spin your sword, to determine who has service? Then, for safety’s sake, we’ll place it in the trough, for fear that you may fall on it, in the Roman style. And against that same risk, I shall lay down my dagger.’

Cautiously, Hew removed his weapon, handing it to Richard, who spun it lightly on the court. The handle fell to Hew, upon the service side.

Richard bowed. ‘There you have won the advantage.’ He placed his dagger in the dip below the net and Hew placed his own sword beside it, stepping back to take his serve. The court was a simple
jeu quarré
with four winning openings on the service side, and a wooden
ais
or target strip behind him to the left, and a grille upon the hazard side, which Richard stood defending. The floor was drawn with lines to mark the chases.

Richard called out, ‘Since we have no boy to mark us, we must note the chases where they fall, and trust ourselves, as gentlemen, to keep each other’s score.’

They watched each other warily, like strangers. The timber walls distorted sound, holding in the dull thud of the balls, and their voices echoed oddly, forced and strained. At the same time, the panelling muffled and confused the noises from the street, enhancing the
impression
of enclosure. For a while, they played in silence, focused on the game, until Richard laid a chase and called out, ‘Worse than four, I think.’

Hew picked up the ball, but did not return it. He turned it over in his hand. ‘How did you mean to do it?’ he asked softly.

‘Do you wish to rest? I should say
pause
. It always makes me smile that we describe as rests the moments when the ball’s in play,’ Richard observed. ‘Will you rest awhile, or play the rest?’

Hew shook his head, fingering the ball. ‘Did you mean to cut their throats? To kill Christian first, and then the child?’

Richard winced a little. ‘I suppose you will not believe me when I say I did not want to kill the child,’ he protested mildly.

‘I do not believe it.’ Hew stepped back to take his serve. It clipped the penthouse roof above the door and spun down to bounce a second time, halfway between the net and the back wall. Hew grimaced. ‘Hazard half a yard?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ Richard nodded. ‘That’s the second chase.’ He took a ball out of his pocket, preparing to change ends.

‘What I told you was the truth,’ he went on, as Hew assumed the hazard end. The service took Hew by surprise.

‘Ah, pardon, for you were not ready,’ Richard offered generously. ‘I will play the shot again. I did not seek them out, intent on killing. The apples were a gift, a present for the child. But the intention was to let him see my face, to see if he remembered it. If the child had screamed – and only if he screamed – then I meant to kill them both. If not, you will allow, I did not mean to hurt them. The apples must be proof of that.’

Chilled by Richard’s calmness, Hew mirrored the cool frankness of his tone. ‘
You
will allow, though, surely, that it would not have been enough that William did not scream. He knew you as the printer Davie. You could not have risked him calling you that name,’ he pointed out.

‘Ah, that is true. Still, I must protest, I did not want to hurt the child. I prayed to God I need not do it. Still, I hope,’ Richard
whispered
, almost to himself, ‘I may not need to do it.’ Suddenly, he took his serve, and lunged too late for Hew’s return.

Hew cried, ‘Won it!’ He had bettered Richard’s chase.

Richard pulled a face. ‘Forty:thirty, then, to you. You must allow though,’ he reflected, delaying the service once more, ‘that I did not kill the child upon the moor. That signifies for something, surely?’ He let the ball spin, and embarked on a rest that went on for several minutes, until Hew lured him to the net and won the second chase.

‘It signifies for nothing,’ Hew replied, as Richard caught his breath. ‘You left him there to die.’

Richard said indifferently, ‘Perhaps.’ He served into the grille and called out, ‘Fifteen:love.’

Hew wiped his face with his sleeve. His shirt was streaked with sweat, yet he felt cold. The light in the court was beginning to fade.

‘Are you ready to play on?’ Richard called abruptly. ‘It’s growing dark.’

Hew had lost his concentration, and they played several games before another chase was laid. At last, when they changed ends, they did not speak. Then Richard said again, ‘The apples were intended as a gift. I did not wish to harm the child.’

Hew shook his head. ‘You left the child exposed, assuming he would die. Do not dress as pity, what was simple cowardice.’

‘Aye, you are right,’ Richard conceded. ‘I could not bring myself to kill him. Yet I’m glad I do not have his death upon my conscience now.’

‘You speak of conscience, like a proper man, with human thoughts and feelings,’ Hew said bitterly.

‘You know me, Hew. We have been good friends, and I have made you welcome in my house. How can you doubt my proper thoughts and feeling?’ Richard sighed.

‘You forget I found the body of that girl, that you left torn and ravaged on the moor. It looked as though the wild dogs had dismembered her, and made their savage banquet in her heart. What sort of man is capable of that?’

Richard let the ball drop. ‘Dead,’ he answered quietly.

‘What did you say?’

‘It is a
dead
ball, no longer in play. You cannot understand,’ his tone was more defensive now, ‘how
difficult
it was, to make her die.’ He stood for a moment, reflecting, and then observed, ‘I find I cannot talk and play.’

‘Which would you prefer to do?’

‘Talk, I think. Then play.’

Richard lay against the wall and closed his eyes. For a while, he seemed to be asleep, and then he murmured dreamily, ‘When I brought you to my house, I had no idea you were the devil’s
instrument
. I loved you like a brother, almost as a son.’

‘What do you mean?’ Hew asked uneasily.

Richard smiled. ‘I see that the familiar terms disturb you. Do not be alarmed, for we are not related. I had no notion then that you were the corbie messenger.’

‘How was I the messenger? You sent the bird,’ objected Hew.

‘That was a little crude,’ his friend allowed. ‘But I could not resist it. Roger killed the corbie with his bow; a single arrow through the eye. He is the most ingenious boy. He wanted to dissect it, and was vexed to find it gone. Aye, you were the messenger, late by twenty years.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘You are precipitate. Listen, and I shall explain. Show a little grace, and do not interrupt, until the tale is done. You have played a part in this, and you must share the blame. At your father’s funeral, I mentioned my first case. Perhaps you will remember it? It concerned a writer in our close. His name was David Corbie, and he died a traitor’s death – I notice you remark the name, though you did not ask it then. He was hanged for the making of false letters, in the forging of a pardon for a prisoner at Blackness. A crime, I can assure you, he did not commit.’

‘How can you be certain?’ murmured Hew.

Richard smiled. ‘Poor fool! Don’t you see it yet? I stole the writer’s seal, and made the forgery myself. Ah, do not judge me, till you know the whole. I was very young. The prisoner was a kinsman of my father, like to name my father as accomplice to his crime. Not without cause, I may say. If he had spoken out, my family would be ruined; my mother would be destitute, my father would have hanged. Everything I did, I did for them.

‘I did not think, you understand, that Corbie would be blamed. I did not
think
. For I am not the monster you suppose. And when he was, I tried to save him, on my life. Well, not quite my life,’ he conceded wryly, ‘
that
I could not spare. But all else I possessed, I placed at his disposal. Your father found me out. He knew the truth.’

‘I do not believe you!’ Hew objected hotly, ‘for my father would never have colluded in your crime.’

‘He came to it too late for David Corbie,’ Richard sighed. ‘Matthew was distracted by your mother’s death, for which he blamed himself. He found the way to show me he suspected, when he made me witness Corbie’s execution. I think I did not mention, how
unkindly
Corbie died. They struck off his right hand, and nailed it to the cross, where he could look on it before he hanged. And since he was a traitor, they did violence to his corpse, and tore it into four. The body on the muir disgusted you, yet Alison was ravaged in the savage heat of passion; David’s flesh was wrenched by the iron cold grip of law. You may wonder which was worse.’

‘You can excuse neither one by the other,’ argued Hew.

‘Aye, perhaps not. Yet hear me out. After Corbie died, my training was complete,’ Richard went on, with a touch of irony, ‘and Matthew’s own career fell in decline. Six years later, he retired, to your house in Kenly Green, and our paths no longer crossed. Yet all the while, I sensed he knew my secret. When I saw him last, before he died, I came ready to confess. If he had given any hint, in gesture, word, or look, then I should have wept, and knelt before him, pouring out my conscience, making clean my sin. And yet he gave no sign; he received me civilly, and kindly, and with hopes that I might act as tutor to his son.’

‘Then you can be sure, he did not know. It was the fevered product of your guilt, that made you think it,’ Hew assured him.

‘So I believed,’ said Richard sadly. ‘Something lifted from my heart. When your father died, I felt a peace I had not known for twenty years. I asked you to my house, in open friendship, with a glad full heart, out of love for Matthew. I might as well have asked the devil in to sup with me, for I did not foresee that Matthew had designed in you my end.’

‘This is madness,’ Hew protested.

‘Do you not see, that from the start, he meant you for his
instrument
? He sent you with a book of his old cases. And I made you welcome in my house, not knowing you brought hell and fury in your wake. For where did he send his book? To David Corbie’s child.’

‘Dear God! I thought—’

‘Of course you did,’ Richard nodded sympathetically. ‘For that was what I wanted you to think. Christian Hall is not your sister. What Matthew did for her, he did from pity, and perhaps, in part, from guilt. He took my dereliction on himself, and sought to make amends for it. I did not know, at first, who Christian was. I was as much perplexed as you, until you told me her device, and that Matthew had selected it. And then I knew the book must prove my guilt.’

Hew shook his head. ‘You are mistaken. Alison has died for nought, for there was nothing there.’

‘You underestimate your father’s subtlety. Matthew planned this from the start. I had to have that manuscript. I began to watch the shop, from Robert Fletcher’s tavern. I saw the nursemaid in the street, playing with the child. Later, I saw Catherine come and go. I knew Catherine well. She gave Grace a poppet once, that strumpet called Celeste. But I digress,’ Richard smiled. ‘I meant to speak of Alison. I followed her upon the muir, and became her friend. Such simple souls are cheap to buy. I knew that she would help me. She knew me as the printer, Davie. We were sweethearts, she supposed. I met her in the afternoons when you were in the printing house. I changed at the tennis court, into workman’s clothes. A strange thing, is it not, how men judge us by our dress? You will remark this most of all, for when you came in boatman’s rags they cast you in the prison house. Likewise, in the law courts, none may speak, without the proper clothes. My fear was that this would not work so well upon the child, that he would know me by my face, because he does not understand the ordering of rank. To Alison, I was her Davie, and a printer. I persuaded her to bring me printed papers from the shop, by way of an exemplar, that I promised to return. I wanted, in particular a textbook on the law. The silly girl had no notion what I wanted, for she could not read. She brought me Catherine’s poems. And though they were not quite what I was looking for, I realised I could make good use of them. I passed them on to Balcanquall, in the hope of closing Christian’s press. I hold no grudge against Catherine,’ he paused to reflect. ‘Her husband was one of my clients, whose heart stopped in the throes of passion with a whore. Robert gave Catherine the grandgore. I expect she has passed it to you.’