Fate and Fortune (9 page)

Hew dreamt that he had come to rest upon a drying green. Waking, he saw lines of washing hanging slack and swollen in the breathless air. The place where he had landed was sooty and enclosed, heavy with the scent of ash and fire. He lay close to the hearth on blankets and straw. He was dressed in a plain woollen shirt, in place of his fine suit of clothes, and his wrists were bound in cloth, through which a little blood began to seep. Though he felt stiff and raw, he found no broken bones. His limbs were scratched and ribboned with a score of tiny cuts, and a dull throb in his thigh disclosed a mass of livid bruising, searing to the touch. The hoofmark of Dun Scottis, clean as though the hot iron of the blacksmith had impressed it there, explained the pain.

As he struggled to stand up, he heard a faint scuffle and squeal, and found himself watched by a clutch of small girls wearing ribands of plum-coloured silk. Before he could speak, they had scattered and fled. Hew was left alone in the strangest house that he had ever seen. Cups and bowls and spoons were roughly carved from driftwood, and an ancient, splintered sea chest opened like a flower, or like the
sun-bleached
skeleton of some enormous fish, stripped of all its flesh. Fragments of bone were scattered on shelves, with bright polished pebbles and pieces of pot. The rafters were strung with old rope, tackle and gear swung rusting on hooks, and propped above the chimney grate, Hew could see a masthead, holding up the washing lines
recovered
from his dreams. Like a ship-wrecked sailor fallen into faerie land, he felt part of the seawrack that made up this little house.

‘The bairns cried ye were waking. Mind, you’re unco shakit on your feet.’

He jumped at the sound of the voice. An old woman stood in the doorway, gazing at him curiously. ‘I brought you bread,’ she offered. ‘For you have eaten nothing for the past twa days. You must be famished. I will heat some broth.’

She placed the bread upon the board and moved quickly to the fire, where she ladled thick grey slurry from a bowl into a pot. She was small and lithe and nimble; not so old, perhaps, but weathered like the fisher wives. Her eyes were bright and sharp beneath her plaid.

‘Faerie magic,’ murmured Hew.

‘What was that?’ She turned to stare at him. ‘You have had a wee dunt to the heid,’ she concluded kindly.

Hew felt exposed and naked in his borrowed shirt. Sensing his discomfort, the gude wife broke into a smile. ‘You’re nothing that I have not seen. Though you may be a gentleman, we’re a’ the same uncled.’

‘Madam, where am I?’ he asked her, bewildered.

‘Madam? Ah, what dainty manners!’ the gude wife replied. ‘I never was called
that
before. Tis plain you have forgot your place. Do you ken your name?’

‘Aye, for sure, it’s Hew Cullan,’ Hew whispered. ‘The ferry was closed for repair.’

‘Is that what he telt ye? The limmar!’ she tutted. ‘Yon Guthrie is a rogue and no mistake. I am Jonet Bell, an’ my man is Sandy Matheson the ferryman. That quent horse of yourn harled you here across the wattir. That’s a brave wee hobin that you have there. My man it was that found ye lying traikit on the rocks.’

Hew struggled to make sense of this. ‘Is this Queensferrie?’ he hazarded.

‘North Ferrie. Aye, ye are back where ye began. Come lad, sit ye down, you’re greener than a herring gill.’

Hew sat down unsteadily upon his makeshift bed. ‘What happened to Guthrie? Did he drown?’ If the boatman had drowned, then it was because of Dun Scottis. Hew closed his eyes. However construed, that was his fault.

But Jonet snorted. ‘Drooned? Not he! The devil guards his ain. I heard he fetched up by Inchgarvie, clinging to his wreck, and the souldiers waded in to pull him out. The ferrymen will let him stew awhile afore they fetch him hame. Here now, there’s a cup of pottage will see you right. There’s nothing in your belly but Forth mud.’

She ladled barley broth into a bowl. It tasted hot and wet, and little more, but Hew drank it gratefully.

‘Mistress, I do thank you, and give thanks to God that he lives still. For if my horse – what happened to my horse?’ He felt a sudden rush of grief, for the foolish, faithless friend that had been Dun Scottis, lying at the bottom of the Forth.

‘Your horse is well. He landed in less traikit than yersel; though he were fair forfochten, he came nimmill as a kitling,’ Jonet answered cryptically, from which Hew understood,
your horse is well
.

‘He is stabled at the inn at Inverkeithing,’ she went on, ‘where the innkeeper thoct, if ye did not recover, fit to buy him back, he’d earn his keep. He dealt you quite a kick forby, that has left his hoofprint on your hough.’

‘That I had remarked upon,’ Hew grimaced.

‘According to my man, yon would ha broke your leg, but for they stuffit brekis.’

‘I don’t suppose you have the trunk hose still?’ he ventured shyly.

Jonet shook her head. ‘Brekis like that were no built for the wattir. And when your brave horse harled you up upon the rocks, your clothes were cut to shreds. Be thankful that they served their turn, and saved you from a deeper hurt. What was left was only fit for scraps.’

And all the ferry lasses, realised Hew, were wearing little strips of him, as laces on their gowns and ribbons in their hair. No doubt his boots and saddle bag had found another home. He had been picked over, and properly stripped, before Jonet and her man had taken pity on him, and had brought him in. Or else, they had merely come late, to all that was left.

But Jonet cut through these thoughts, with a kindness that made him ashamed, handing him a pair of woollen breeks. ‘These will fit. They were my son’s. And you are very like him in your look. That is his shirt you wear. It suits you well.’

Hew buttoned up the breeches, a little more assured once safely dressed, though he had no points or doublet to secure them to his shirt.

‘I think there was a jacket,’ Jonet murmured. She gazed at him a moment as she rummaged through a kist. ‘You are like him, though.’

‘Then I thank him for his clothes.’

‘He will not want them, where he lies. He has been dead these twenty years.’

‘Madam, I am so very sorry,’ Hew told her earnestly.

She threw off his pity, shaking her head. ‘He drooned in that same stretch of wattir, where you tipped from your boat. When Sandy saw you lying on the shore …’ Jonet let the sentence hang, concluding fiercely, ‘They are rogues and swingeours, all, and they would have had your horse, if Sandy had not stopped them. He could not save the rest. Except,’ she pointed to the rafters, ‘he found a sack still wrapped around your back. And you were clutching it so tight, he said, he had an unco’ task to pull it off. There were papers inside, that we hung up to dry.’

Hanging from the mast Hew saw his leather backpack, battered by the tides. The sheets of sodden washing were his father’s manuscript, whose dripping outer edges had begun to fuse and blur. Inexplicably, he felt the prick of tears.

‘Some of the papers were turned into pap,’ Jonet went on, ‘and could not be saved. But these had been wrapped in a clout, and Sandy thought it best to hang them out.’

‘Madam,’ Hew said, overcome, ‘I know not how to thank you, or your husband. My father made that book. And though those salvaged pages may be nothing worth, they are worth the world to me, and I had not realised it. I shall be forever in your debt.’

Embarrassed, she brushed this aside. ‘Whisht, son, with your madams and your thank yous and your bonny flatterings! What
daftness
, to be sure! You’re as saft as a bairn, and quent as your dun horse. I doubt you want the proudness of your birth, or else you lost it in the wattir with your clathes. There is no debt. For what, wee bits of paper? It is your proper life you should give thanks for, and for that to God, and not to us. Now that you are well, Sandy will give you passage to the south side. Only do not mention, what I said about our son. It is an auld wife’s fancy, and it does not want repeating. For the truth is Sandy cannot bear to think of Johnnie, so we never speak of him.’

‘You never speak of it,’ repeated Hew, ‘after twenty years?’

‘It is how it is,’ said Jonet simply. ‘Sandy took it hard, and he does not care to greet.’

‘And yet you kept his clothes.’

Jonet forced a smile. ‘I kept them far too long. Tis brave enough, to see them now, upon a living back.’

Hew began to gather up the manuscript. He folded the dried pages back inside their cloth and placed them in his sack. He said nothing else, for he could not find the words.

The ferryman proved as kind as his wife, allowing Hew free passage to the other side. He walked with him into South Queensferrie, pointing out the road to Cramond. ‘It is a hard trek, for a man that is used to a horse. I can give you bread and ale enough, to last you through the day, but more than that, I fear I cannot help you. I am richt sorry you were tret so badly at North Ferrie.’

‘In truth, I could not have met with greater kindness,’ Hew protested. ‘When I return for my horse, I will make good the debt.’

The ferryman looked pleased. ‘There is no debt to us, son. You are more than welcome. I ask you, if you do come back, to call on Jonet. She has taken to you, and your passing through has brought a
gladness
to her heart. She will not have telt you this, for she never speaks of him, but you are the blessed image of our boy that died. You will forgive my saying,’ he concluded anxiously, ‘for you are a gentleman, and Johnnie was a boatman’s son, and all.’

Hew ignored this last. ‘You say she never speaks of him?’ he queried.

‘Aye, she is stubborn that way. For almost twenty years, she has not said his name. I sometimes think … no matter, then,’ the old man broke abruptly. ‘If you will shake my hand, I’ll wish you better fortune, sir, and see you on your way.’

The last ten miles into Edinburgh were more arduous than Hew had imagined. The track was steep and sodden, and he soon grew hot and tired. The stone drinking bottle leaked in his sack, its stopper no more than a wedge of damp rag, and his father’s manuscript, so newly dried, again became sticky and stained. He refilled the bottle as he walked, drinking from the river and the burns. He was partially dressed, in jerkin, shirt and breeks, for Johnnie had possessed no nether hose. His legs were bruised and scratched, where Dun Scottis had dragged him over the rocks, and the reins had left cuts to his wrists. His borrowed shoes were small and tight, and his thigh throbbed stiff and sore from the horse’s flailing hoof. He found the going hard. But at last he came to the Dene, and to the village of the Water of Leith, where the river ran fast and the mills ground the corn for the town. From here he could see the town itself, the castle on its crag and the high crown of the kirk, a spine of spires and rooftops falling to the east, its long tail flicking backwards to the hills. It seemed, to Hew’s tired eyes, like the fair enchanted city of a traveller’s tale. A north easterly wind from the estuary at Leith soon blew the notion clear, bringing with it waves of that delicate effluvium, the foul and foetid perfume of Nor’ Loch.

Skirting the north loch, Hew continued south until he came below the castle through the west port in the Flodden wall. Outside this wall, a settlement had sprung to serve the town, like followers of camp beyond the battlefield, a hotchpotch of inns and small country gardens, stables and breweries, potters and craftsmen. Since they were not free to trade from buiths in town, they sold their wares at the landmarket, and Hew entered Edinburgh in the middle of a crowd, stacked high with baskets and crates. A young lass drove a flock of geese, that scattered like musket shot into the grassmarket. In the midst of this commotion, Hew was not questioned at the gate. He climbed the crooked west bow to the high street. And passing through the over bow, triumphal arch of kings, he came at last to the place he had known as a boy. For a moment, he stood dizzy by the butter tron, where the lawnmarket met castle hill. He had forgotten the exuberance, the noise and dirt and sweat, of market day. All directions seemed to chime, from the hoarse cries of the hawkers to the barking of the geese, from the ringing of the smiths to the hammering of timmermen, to the bleating of stray lambs and the squawk of flustered hens. Hew leant back against the wall. As he drew his breath he heard a tiny tinkling in the midst of the cacophony, and saw a silver penny drop beside him, rolling to a standstill in the dust. The coin was a half-merk, a good pint of claret and six wheaten loaves. He bent to pick it up, looking round to see who had dropped it.

‘You, man, show up your token!’

Two men were approaching, councillors perhaps, appointed to oversee trade. One of them carried a long wooden measure or stick.

Misunderstanding, Hew held out the coin. ‘Is this yours?’ he offered politely.

The bailies exchanged cunning glances. The shorter of the two, who, by way of compensation, had the stick, held up the stout badge of his office. It was clear that he meant to have the full measure of Hew. Hew felt his spirits drain. ‘Good sirs, what are your names?’ he asked them with a sigh.

The taller man replied, ‘Thomas and I will be asking the questions,’ which at least went some way to an answer, and Thomas glanced at his friend with a faint air of reproach before he resumed the attack. ‘Where is your licence to beg?’

Hew felt himself flush. ‘You misunderstand, sir,’ he told his inquisitor stiffly. ‘I am no beggar.’

‘Ah,’ the burgess smiled unpleasantly, ‘then you did not pick up that penny we saw.’

‘No … or rather, aye, I did. I did not mean to keep it.’

‘He did not mean to keep it,’ the squat inquisitor confided to his friend. ‘What say you then, we let it pass?’ His companion gave this some thought.

‘Well now, he speaks well,’ he conceded at last. ‘Perhaps he can make good account. Where are you from, friend?’ he said
encouragingly
to Hew. ‘Where is your parish?’