Friend & Foe (9 page)

Giles responded sagely, ‘You have not consulted me.’

‘Then make free with my closet, sir. The privy pots are filled. Sin such are meat and drink, the raw stuff of your trade, let my poor carcage be.’

The doctor shook his head. ‘Ye cannot tell a sickness simply from the waters, and he that claims to do so is a liar and a fraud. No man may make a diagnosis, without a full examination. Which is to say, first, for the history, and that in the patient’s own words – though
patient
in this case were not so apt perhaps – for none shall have so thorough apprehension of an ailment as he who has to suffer it. The first step to a cure is the patient’s own account. Though that comes with the caveat, we speak of
kenning
sickness, rather than of curing it. The next step is the taking of the pulse, and whether it be weak or strong, quick or slow, with the perusing of the excrements, not the urine merely but all bodily discharges, as ordure, spittle, sweat, and spawn, taking note of diet, habit, air and exercise; and finally, essentially, we examine that place where the disease is keenly felt. Therefore, to begin, can you say what ails you, sir?’

‘A trembling fever, and the flux, and a thristing and a thrawe in the belly, and the ripples in my back and loins, sometime hot, sometime
cold,’ Patrick answered fretfully. ‘A foulness, sir, a fedity. I ken no other word for it.’

‘Excellent,’ Giles beamed. ‘The excremental elements we lay by for the while; I notice they are present in abundance. Perhaps you will oblige me, now, by taking off your shirt?’

Patrick stared at him. ‘You wish me to divest?’

‘So that I can examine you, your kernels and your wam, and also in the fundament.’

‘And must I be abased, and nethered to your friends? Is this your vengeance, Andro? That I am stripped of dignity?’

Giles glanced back at his colleagues. ‘It is usual,’ he observed, ‘to allow a little privacy. When a man is naked, he may not dissemble, yet there are some matters you should take on trust. There are some parts of his body, known to God and his physician, that a man is not expected to uncover to the world.’

Hew had no desire to see the man defrocked. He touched at Andrew’s sleeve. ‘Will it be prejudicial, if we wait outside?’

Melville had been slow to act, staring at the doctor with a fascinated horror. He capitulated hurriedly as Giles rolled up his sleeves. ‘Aye, for sure. Indeed.’

‘Tell that strutting sergeant,’ Giles commanded after, ‘I shall want my lance.’ Patrick shrank back like a paddock, cowering in his shell.

They parted at the steps, for Melville would not stay. ‘There is a foulness in this place I cannot thole nor stomach, even in the breeze. Can you not smell it, Hew? That fedity of Patrick’s seeps into the stone. I will ask them at the gate to send the doctor’s instruments. Here a reeking rankness vexes and corrupts.’

Hew smelt nothing but the salt in the white swell of the sea, a cool sharp cleansing wind. ‘I shall wait for Giles.’ He hoped that while he waited he could look around, and cross the cobbled courtyard to the northern range.

‘Tell Giles Locke to send his report. Whatever he concludes, the brethren will accept. I am right sorry he has had to suffer this unwholesome stew. I have not been well-mannered to your sister or
your friend. There are matters here that weigh upon my conscience; for I would do right by those who place their trust in me, and I do not always see so clearly what is right, for sometimes God is moved to hide his purpose from me. Patrick has the knack of stirring me to anger, he has always had it, and he is aware of it. I have a temper quick to arouse. That is my fault, and not his,’ Andrew confessed. He looked exhausted, spent, and Hew understood how hard this task had been for him, how heavily it weighed on him. He saw him slip and stumble, passing to the gate.

For all that, once Andrew had left, a cloud seemed to lift from the day. Hew was alone to explore. A boy was drawing water from the castle well, a servant from the kitchens brought a breakfast on a tray, and Hew smelled buttered haddocks as he passed. Both were in a hurry, neither looked at Hew, but he was in no doubt that he was being watched. In the passages around him he saw signs of life, the archbishop’s household at breakfast in the hall or their stations in a the kitchen, or at their prayers in chapel or their ease in their chambers, coming off the night watch, falling into beds. Figures passed by windows, noting without watching, went about their work. Hew had lived in colleges almost half his life – St Leonard’s and St Salvator’s, the Collège des Ecossais – and he understood the workings of those worlds in miniature, where small lives were lived out, intensified and amplified, without the intervention of the worlds they replicated, narrowed and enclosed. Here Bartie Groats and Ninian Scrymgeours dreamt and spent their days. The castle, he supposed, was different in its outlook, the watchmen on its towers were trained back to the town, and outward to the sea, turning a blind eye to what went on below.

Hew walked a little on in the direction of the chapel, which was built above a colonnade, in the Italian style. The castle had been mapped out like a summer palace, pleasing in the cool haze of the early morning sun. But since the range looked north, to blistering sea winds, it could not please for long. On the second floor, above the bishop’s chamber, a gallery was built to overlook the court, and
to the sea beyond. Here Hew glimpsed a flash of white, flitting at the windowsill, and heard, momentarily, the careless flute of laughter, high pitched like a child’s. It came like the wind, and through the clear blue sky, and was gone as quickly. He supposed that it had been the mewling of the gulls that had begun to circle, high above the cliff. The tide was coming in, and with it brought the fishing boats, and raucous fleet of sea-maws, darting in its wake, dipping with the waves.

He was not left to roam. Within minutes, he was halted by the same red-headed soldier who had met them at the gate. ‘I am sorry for it, sir, but it is not permitted that ye be here on your own.’

To his credit, and to Hew’s surprise, he did look sorry for it. Hew conceded reluctantly, ‘I suppose not.’

‘If you wanted to wait for the doctor, there is a seat in the pend. The main gate is open now, sir. Or else you can wait in the guard house. The new man on duty will give you your sword. Or, if ye prefer it, I can show you round, and tell to you the secrets shored up in the stone.’

This was unexpected, and by far preferred. ‘Does the stone keep secrets?’ Hew asked with a smile.

‘All stones have secrets, sir, if ye ken where to look. Would ye like to see some?’

‘Aye, then, very much.’ Hew recalled the name: ‘Harry, is it not?’

‘Harry Petrie, aye. We have met before, though you will not remember it. I was with the guard that was called out to your college, when there was a fray. You may recall our captain, sir. He is no longer with us.’

‘Ah, then that explains it.’ The flame red hair and freckled face had struck Hew as familiar. He remembered now. The captain had discharged his pistol in the air, and brought an end to the affray between the students and the baxters, that had torn apart the college. ‘I am sorry that you saw it. Though your help was welcome, it was not our finest hour.’

The soldier grinned at him. ‘In truth, we were glad of it; we see no action here. But I mind that a student was hurt there. Not badly, I hope?’

‘His arm was broken. Giles Locke and my sister restored it to health. He recovered completely, no thanks to the surgeon.’

‘It that a fact, now?’ marvelled Harry. ‘Is the doctor good with arms?’

‘And other things,’ Hew smiled. He turned the subject deftly. ‘Pray God, that he may cure your master. Has he been sick for long?’

‘I cannot rightly say; we futemen dinna deal wi’ him.’ Harry did not seem to want to talk of that. Hew supposed he had been warned against it, by the bumptious sergeant or the feeble clerk. ‘But you did know he was ill?’ he pressed.

‘That is my understanding. He keeps to his room. This, where we are standing, is the old fore tower.’ Harry had begun his tour, with a keen abruptness that discouraged further questions. ‘If you wad like tae follow, sir, I will show you where the auld stane butts upon the new, and where the wicked cardinal was wrung out like a rag.’

Chapter 9

Set in Stone

The floor above them had been lowered, Harry said. He showed Hew all the places where the building had been altered, leaving nooks and crannies in the layers of stone. ‘It is not level, see? There are hollows deep enough for a man to hide in, or at least a bairn.’ His interest seemed to rest in the castle’s first foundations, in its bare bones and roots, sunk deep in the rock. ‘There is coal, if ye go deeper. I will show ye at the pit.’

‘I thought I saw a child, upstairs in the gallery. Perhaps it was a shade,’ said Hew, ‘a phantom of the light.’

Harry laughed at that. ‘More likely what you saw was Tam Fairlie’s little lass. It pleases her to play there, though it rattles the archbishop, lying in his bed. Her footsteps drum through him like thunder he says, though she is as light as the wind.’

‘Tam Fairlie has a child?’

‘She has lived with him in the castle since his mother died, by grace o’ the archbishop, who thinks well of Tam.’ What happened to the bairn’s own mother Harry did not tell. ‘The place where you heard her is called the lang gallery, and runs the length of the floor above the archbishop’s lodging. There are fine dormer windows looking to the town, and on this side, a promontory that looks out to the sea. It is not partitioned into quarters, like the chamber underneath, but kept as one long trance, where the little lass can run about the lang o’ it.’

‘Can we go up?’ Hew asked.

The soldier shook his head. ‘It is accessed from the west, by the same route you took up to the bishop’s chamber, but there is no
doorway on this side. You will not catch the lassie there, if that is what you hope, for she will be long gone.

‘There are two things I should tell to you about Tam Fairlie’s lass, the first is that you will not see her, she is quick, and wild, and fickle as the breeze. And second, if ye do see her, you maun look away, or Tam will break your nose for you,’ Harry promised cheerfully. ‘Now, with your forbearance, sir, I will not tak ye up here to the second floor. The chamber at the top is used mostly by the guard, for up there is a doorway leading to the parapet, where the sentry walks who keeps the south side watch. A guid view ye may have there o’ the doctor’s house, an’ muckle mair besides. And there, sir, is the window where they say the cardinal Beaton watched George Wishart burning, while he took his supper. Which I beg leave to doubt, for the window as ye see it has been altered since, by the archbishop Hamilton.’

‘It seems you make a study if it. You are well-informed.’ Hew smiled.

‘It is my passion, sir. My father was a mason here, and taught me all he knew. He was still a prentice when they killed the cardinal, and hung him to the wind, like washer wifies’ sheets.’

The assassins, Hew had heard, had pretended to be masons, mingling with the builders who were working for the cardinal. ‘Was he there, then, when it happened?’

‘He was prenticed to a man who was working on the walls, and came up for his shift, to find a crowd of folk had gathered in the street. He saw a coloured cloth unfurling from the battlements; he thought it was a pennant or a flag, or mebbe else the servants beating out bright tapestries, shaking out the dust. It was the body of the cardinal, hung out in a sheet. They took him at his prayers, and slit him to his soul. Blood soaked through the stone, and stained it like a blush.
Incarnatene
, my father called that deep and fleshly red; though some have called it cardinal. You can see the trace of it, weathered to flesh pink, for forty years of wind and rain have not yet washed it clean, nor worn it into sand.

‘After that cardinal was killed, then came a bloody siege, that lasted many months, and much of this front part of the castle was destroyed, together with the gun towers. My father came to work for the archbishop Hamilton, who had these parts restored. He built for himself a palace fae the ruins, and he did not suppose that he would see it fall, so little did he care for the business of reform. I have shown you where the divers curtains met, and where the new was grafted on the old, as gardeners grow new apples on established trees – he made the gardens too, that lie out to the west. My father worked for him until he was struck down, with many other masons he had brought from France and others that were Scots. Besides the castle he built bridges, as the new one at Garbrig, and much of the New College, that the cardinal began. You can see his cinquefoil up above the gate here, painted on the walls, and woven into tapestries, and carved into the panels, too, that line the bishop’s hall. He did not recover, though, all the wealth and finery that perished with the cardinal, for much of that was damaged in the siege, and what was not was spoiled by the reformers, or else lost to France. Such lavishness ye will not see again, and that, we must suppose, were no bad thing.’

Hew nodded his agreement. ‘Then your father helped to build St Mary’s college too? I would like to talk to him.’

‘He has been dead, thirteen years,’ Harry said simply. ‘Else I should be a mason too and not here at the garrison.’

‘Ah, then I am sorry for it. May I ask what happened to him?’

‘He died in an accident, at the New College. Master John Douglas was the principal there, while Hamilton was chancellor, and making his repairs. Perhaps ye might mind him?’

Hew did. John Douglas had been one of the reformers who had subscribed the Scots confession, the foundation of his faith. He had transformed St Mary’s College from the Catholic seminary hoped for by John Hamilton to a college in the service of the national kirk and faith, to train men in the ministry. He had taught Andrew Melville as a fledgling student there, set him on his path
and recognised his worth. He had also, when Hamilton was hanged, accepted the archbishopric from the regent Morton, and so had become the first of the
tulchans
, savaged by his church. That decision had marred the last years of his life; elderly, and frail, he was accused by his brethren of a supple kind of treachery, and a cruel indifference to his former flock. In failing health and spirits, he was called upon to preach. It was said he had died in the pulpit, during Hew’s first year in France.

‘The building at St Mary’s never was completed, after the reforms. The cardinal intended there should be a chapel, on the site of the old chapel of the college of St John.’

‘The ruins are there still.’ And Hew had been among them, just the day before.

Harry’s voice dropped low. ‘There was more left of it then. My father was employed to take the old walls down; and sin I had expressed an interest in his work, he thocht to tak me wi’ him on that day. I was, by then, eleven years of age, old enough and strong enough to be a help to him, and I can mind it well, how proud I felt that day. They do say, sir, that pride brings on a fall. I cannot rightly tell you what it was that happened, for since then, I have made a study of walls, the old and the new, and of their construction, and it never has made sense to me. For some years after, I concluded that it must have been my fault, for my father was a careful man, and skilled. I no longer think that. I was nowhere near it when the wall collapsed on him, and pressed him to the ground.’

‘Sweet Jesus,’ whispered Hew. ‘Then you saw him killed?’

When Harry was eleven, Hew had been a student still, close by at St Leonard’s, fourteen or fifteen. Had he heard about this accident? He could not remember. Would it have moved him so much at that time?

‘He did not die outright.’ Harry answered, bleakly. ‘It took them many hours, to pull my father out, and when they brought him hame, he took many months to die.’

‘Then I am very sorry. So what happened to you, then? How did you come here?’

‘Master John, the principal, was unco fair and guid to me. For since I lost my father on New College land, and since I could no longer hope to come in to his craft, he sent me to the grammar school, at his ain expense. And, had I proved my worth, I should have been a bursar at the university.’ Harry pulled a face. ‘But it was clear to all that I had not the wit for it, and that the Latin grammar that they grafted on tae me, howsoever carefully, never really took. And, I maun confess, I was no comfort to my mother, but a sorry trial to her. I was wayward, bold and bad, and always in a fight. Then that guid John Douglas, brave man that he was, did not cast me off, as my black heart deserved, but took me to his knee and said, “Now then, Harry Petrie, what are we to dae wi’ you, you silly, reckless bairn, for it is plain to see we will not mak a scholar of ye.”

‘And bold loun that I was, I telt him I was mindit for to be a soldier, fighting for the faith, in the foreign wars. The old man shook his head. “That will not do,” says he, “Your mother’s heart was broken, when your father died, and I will not be at fault, for breaking it again.”

‘He was the bishop by then. And so, says he, I will find for you a place at the castle garrison, where you may learn to stand and fight, and do as you are telt – which latter I confess to you, the master at the grammar school never did dint in to me, starting off too late. An’ when the time comes for to fight, says he, you may do your fighting for the earl of Morton – for that was his liege – and on hamely soil. So I was taught to stand, to fight and haud my tongue, though never did take arms up for the Regent Morton, nor now ever will, sin they hanged him too. When John Douglas died before the year was up, I was kept on in the service of Archbishop Patrick Adamson.’

‘And here,’ concluded Hew, ‘you have been ever since.’

‘Just so,’ Harry grinned.

Hew had warmed immensely to the red-haired soldier, and his tale had touched him. It explained his passion and his ease about the castle, which he had inhabited since he was a lad, his interest in its history, and kenning of the stone. But he was curious, too, about the
father’s accident, which wrought another link between St Mary’s and the castle, another kind of mystery, which could not be explained. ‘Can we see a little more? The chapel and the hall?’

‘By all means,’ accepted Harry. ‘I will take you to the pit, where the cardinal was slung, pickled in a barrel, like a piece of meat.’

He showed to Hew the chapel with its high arched windows traced in coloured glass, and ornate pillared walkways, ports and colonnades; the great hall, to the east, lined in solid oak, the kitchen, vaults and oven serving from the north. A small metal postern led down to the shore, winding down a precipice of sharply turning steps.

‘When the tide is out, you can pass here to the jetty on the shore. But when the tide is high, the postern is kept locked. The drop is sheer and hazardous.’

The tide was coming in, whipped up by the wind. It resounded like the pounding of a thunderous artillery, that laid siege to the castle at the northern point, more damaging and treacherous than any fleet of guns. Hew shouted to be heard. ‘Who lives in the north range?’

‘Servants of the bishop’s household, certain soldiers of the guard.’ Harry’s call came faint and weak, carried on the flood and flux, ‘. . . Cardinal Beaton’s . . . several hundred . . .’

Hew took a step back from the swell of the waves. ‘And the tower on the west side?’ he roared.

‘The sea tower?’ mouthed Harry. ‘Come see!’

The parapet, he said, had been damaged by the siege, and being at the back, had never been repaired. Within it, for the most part, it remained intact, containing divers chambers for ‘our special guests’. ‘There is a room above as airy and as comfortable as any you may see, that has a painted ceiling and a fine fair view, while under it . . . well, sir, come see . . . Here is the place where the cardinal lay, his corpus stripped and drained, deep in the rock.’ Harry turned the handle of a small door on the right. ‘Ach, the port is locked. I do not have the key.’

Hew had wandered off, to a chamber to the left, the door of which stood open, to the morning air. The walls inside were painted white, and had a cool, reflective feel. A deep high window looked out to the sea, its roar subdued and muffled by the flank of stone. A narrow long low ledge was built into the western wall, the only piece of furniture.

‘What place is this? A prison cell?’ he called.

Harry answered at his back, kept a watchful eye on him, both friendly and alert. ‘A place, in truth, for a gentle man to reflect upon his sins, not grand enough to lodge above nor foul enough to lie below.’

‘What is this hollow here? A place where food is passed?’ Hew had found the channel where the thick walls intersected, angled like a tunnel to the other side.

‘It is used for that purpose,’ Harry confirmed, ‘since the door has no grill. But whether by design, or it came about by accident, I cannot rightly say.’

‘Was someone kept here lately?’ Hew felt some loose object deep inside the cavity. His fingers closed upon it. ‘There is something here.’

‘Not for many years. What is it ye have found?’

Hew withdrew his hand, bringing out a wreath of supple plaited hawthorn, shaped into a crown. The blossoms were decayed, and distilled a heady perfume of sweetly rotting flesh, that brought to mind the rankness of the bishop’s rooms. The hawthorn, Hew supposed, produced the carrion scent that carried on the wind; the gardens to the west of them were filled with dropping trees, heavily in bloom. The sea breeze seemed to catch at and disperse the fragrance, playing with it, amplifying, as it did with sound. In this little space, it felt overpowering.

‘Whatever is this?’

Harry stared at it. ‘I wadna like to say. Tis likely it belongs—’

‘What do you men there?’

Hew had not heard the sergeant at their back. His presence seemed to strip the room of air and light. He stood square at the door, a dark and present force.

Harry answered easily. ‘Master Hew here has a grening to be shown in to the pit. The pity is, the doors are locked.’

‘Tis well, then,’ Tam countered, ‘that I have the key.’ He rattled at the tackle he wore hanging at his belt, a chain of heavy keys. The sound brought a pricking to the hairs upon Hew’s neck.

‘Though ye will want a lantern, and a piece of rope. Harry here will fetch them.’

‘Indeed,’ protested Hew, ‘he need not take that trouble. For there is no need. I should be getting back.’