The Fool's Mirror Page 2

  The bairn had started crying even as he slipped through the door and barred it behind him. He hadn’t seen him, simply woken with an empty belly and bawled for attention. The mother picked up the child at the same time that Heughan got his arm round her throat and his dagger in her back.

  “Quiet and we all live,” he said with low menace. She didn’t disobey.

  He dragged her backwards to a low rush chair, still clinging to the snivelling bairn. “Sit.”

  Heughan was tensely on edge, ears alert to the slightest sound that might be out of place. No dogs barking. No clattering of clumsily abandoned tools getting in the way of strange feet. No anxiety. No panic. Not yet. It would come. The child’s wailing started up again. It was an unwanted distraction.

  “Keep the brat quiet,” he growled warningly. The woman scowled at him defiantly and pulled the child closer. “I’ve no fight with you, lass. I just want some answers.”

  The furnishings were sparse in the small stone bothy. A few wizened vegetables hanging from spider-filled rafters spoke of survival being eked out over a long winter. Spring would come late this year yet again. There was a man’s presence too, though no sign of the man himself.

  “Where’s Sim?” Heughan queried. “I’d have words with him and payment for what he owes.” The woman shook her head with a small frozen movement.

  He held the tip of the blade under her chin and tried again. “How many men has he left here?”

  She flinched at his tone, and his dagger pricked out a bead of blood on her neck. Annoyed with his own clumsiness, he pulled away sharply and sheathed his knife. The law would not back him this time and failure could end in a hangman’s noose.

  She pulled the child tight to her breast with the desperation of threatened motherhood, making it cry anew. She put her hand over its mouth to mute the noise.

  “For heaven’s sake, woman, do what you have to but still the bairn,” he demanded.

  She glared sullenly at him before easing one breast out from her bodice and offering it to the child. Heughan resigned himself to wait, listening carefully for sounds other than the noisy suckling and the pounding of his own heart. Somewhere outside a horse snickered; every other noise was muffled, either by design or by the cover of the dark night. They would have circled the farmstead by now, checked the outbuildings, assessed the position of the cattle and livestock, looked for the sentries or other watchers.

  Keep to the plan, he urged them silently.

  It all went mad too quickly. A whoosh of fire hitting thatch nearby; guttural shouting from somewhere in the outer reaches of dark; animals screaming at one another in a language neither understood; bone and beast, muscle and will clashing and vying for control. Snorting, panting groups of creatures snarling at one another, the trampling of hooves, the bellows of despair, the panic of the fire-menace and then, finally, voices above the chaos resolved into something Heughan understood: reiving.

  * * *

  The party of hard men worked with economy of effort pared to the bone. Black crows flocking, they descended with raucous shouts. The fences were broken, bewildered animals rounded and herded and spirited away into the darkness. Fires were started to distract, confuse and deter. And suddenly, the menacing blight was gone as quickly as it had arrived.

  Or at least that was how it should have been if they had stuck to the plan.

  Heughan heard the cattle bellow, heard the pounding hooves of horse and beast wheeling about, heard the shouting and confusion, but it was all coming from the same direction. Someone had thrown a torch into the thatch of the bothy and now the cattle were being driven towards the flames instead of away from it. The terrified steers tried to turn, met only the men urging them destructively onwards, and careered into the stone walls of smaller buildings. Tons of prime beef fleeing on the hoof turned walls into rubble; crazed bullocks leaped and fell with ungainly momentum over broken ruins, escaping into the darkened fields beyond, with the men in furious pursuit.

  The fire, which should have been at the other end of the settlement to draw the inhabitants away and allow the reivers a free passage of escape, was now the focus of everyone’s attention. Heughan was inside a building dangerously alight. The help that was rushing towards him to put out the flames would quickly turn on him and lynch him when they discovered who he was and what he was doing.

  He readied himself in case he had to fight his way out and glanced at the woman, who was replacing the newly quiet child in its cradle. He marvelled at an innocence which could sleep at such a time. The woman looked down at the small bundle and back up to him before she snatched a knife from the table and launched herself at him, screaming.

  Heughan reacted reflexively and drew to protect himself. Before he could stop her, she was impaled on his dagger. She gurgled and pitched forwards onto her knees.

  Heughan dropped his own knife as he watched her collapse in a dying penitence. “I’m sorry…” he said helplessly. She mouthed silent words to him as her life guttered, blood pooling in a bright, vicious mess at his feet. His reflection in her dulling eyes had the glint of fire in hard metal and drew him unbidden into the darkest shadows of his memory.

  That familiar noise of confusion, men and horses screaming…He saw himself calling out pointlessly, “Mother!” as he stood mesmerised, lacking the sense to run, though others all around him clattered past, yelling and pulling at the burning thatch.

  Time and bitterness had tempered the once tearful boy he had been, his small fingers too short to reach. He hadn’t wanted to leave her when she fell, even though he knew she was dead.

  His own fear had been lost behind a dark wave of shimmering heat burning his reddened cheeks; the first flare of a guilt he had carried with him ever since. Rougher hands had plucked him away from that disaster, flung him up onto a hard saddle behind a nameless bulk of a man, who had held his small child’s hand sandwiched between steel and flesh through the desperate rout.

  The thick smoke grew greasy and acrid, stinging his eyes smartly. He blinked…

  The ghosts were gone. He was still in the bothy. He flexed his fingers to grip his long sword for reassurance. A bastard sword for a bastard whoreson, and it felt real enough. He bent to recover his knife, ducking quickly again when wisps of burning straw drifted down from too close above his head. As lumpen pieces of flaming reed thatch began to drop, Heughan grabbed a sturdy twill blanket from the hurdle bed in the alcove and flung the contents of the water bucket onto it. Lifting the sleepy child, he wrapped them both tightly and hunkered into a damp corner. A few more moments, a few more…help must come, he thought.

  Part of him judged that he deserved to perish, yet he was certain he was going to survive. It always cost a woman’s life for him to cheat the flames. How many more had to die so that he could go on living? The angry maelstrom licked hungrily towards him. Heughan’s eyes began to sting. He was fighting to keep them open, beginning to feel the prick of heat on his skin, just as the men burst through the wall at the door end, sending scorched limestone rubble hurtling into the confusion.

  He grasped the moment. As the rescuers grappled with the fire and fought to salvage what they could, Heughan carried the child out into the churned mud of the yard. More people flocked to him. Damn it but the whole vale must be here, he thought. He kept the blanket cloaked about his face, diverting attention to the child, whom he thrust into the nearest pair of hands. Heughan forced himself to move slowly between paroxysms of coughing, edging his way against the push of the crowd and back towards the muddle of smaller sheds.

  Beyond the outlying sties, he discarded the blanket in the midden and set off like the north wind over the fields, trusting his feet to find their own way. He felt the ground beneath him vibrate long before he caught sight of the pursuing horse manoeuvring alongside his thudding feet. Through sheer force of will, he urged his aching body to run faster, lungs burning, feet pounding, seeking the higher ground he needed to reach. He found an upland tussock and launched himself at the
rider with frantic resolve. One sinewy arm extended a splayed hand to him, which he grasped to the elbow as he leapt up behind onto the saddle and was spirited away into the ill-blackened night, rescued in the same way as he had been all those long years ago.

  Chapter 2: Double Dealing

  Caldbeck Fells, Near Carlisle

  It was some days later that Heughan hunched uncomfortably in the lee of the treeline, trying to avoid the incessant dripping of the day’s rain. He rolled his shoulders to ease the tension. Cold rivulets insinuated their way along the nape of his neck like a lover’s tongue licking his spine. He shivered.

  His horse, Aluino, testily pulled the reins to gain more slack for cropping the sodden grass, completely unperturbed by the downpour. Heughan loosed the leather straps wound round the saddle pommel and resumed his solitary vigil, wondering how much longer he should wait and fretting about lost opportunities.

  A few miserable crows mewed damply. He ignored their complaining. Across the boggy spikiness of Caldbeck Fell, he watched with keen eyes as spires of grey wood smoke struggled with the effort of rising through the menacing clouds rolling across the distance between them. Heughan fancied he could smell the acridity of potash and dung from the rural fires. He flared his nostrils expectantly but caught only the scent of his proximity; wet horse, wet mud and wet man.

  Making his decision, he shifted his weight in the saddle and jerked up the reins. Heughan squeezed with his thighs and urged his horse towards the hamlet. The large grey Andalusian bent his ears back, straining to detect the danger which had put Heughan so much on guard. He stumbled falteringly on the downward slope and snorted with exasperation. Heughan half-smiled to himself as he sensed that his edginess was taking its toll on his partner’s patience. He shifted his sword hand from its sentry on the quillon and leaned down to touch Aluino, stroking his palm along the strong muscle of the horse’s neck, reassuring them both.

  The village of Great Orton was barely an interruption of the rugged Border landscape. It cowered in the shade of ancient oaks, huddling from the rain with much the same unease that Heughan felt. Shaggy black cattle ambled along its winding footpaths with the aimless curiosity of wayfarers, though come dusk they would find those same lanes blocked with chains. Scattered around were numerous dry stone pens, temporary prisons for various small groups of wiry Border sheep. Nothing here belonged to the villagers.

  On the edge of the settlement squatted the aptly named ‘Black Sheep’ inn, offering reluctant hospitality to the few bewildered travellers who might find themselves thus utterly lost and dangerous men who particularly didn’t want to be found. Heughan rounded its adjoining stone barn. He appraised the securely barred doors of green oak and smiled to himself as he trotted up to the stables at the back. Ducking to ride straight in through the low, wide doors, he hesitated when he saw there were two other horses already hobbled. One glance reassured him that the jennet and the pony both had the look of rustic domestication but even so, he turned Aluino aside and tied him loosely to a post just under the eaves. He patted his ballock dagger with its two smaller throwing knives automatically, casting a wary eye over his surroundings one final time before he nipped into the back of the inn.

  There was welcome respite from the seeping dampness of the day’s rain, and he noted isolated groups of men around rough wooden tables, nursing pots of ale. A warm turf and log fire enticed but he refused to relax his guard. The barn housed contraband; his to sell but via a contact who was dangerously connected. Negotiations should be mutually profitable, he hoped optimistically, but wherever Ambrose Middlemore, Carlisle’s Lord Warden of the Border Marches was concerned, there was no guarantee. Not that Ross Middlemore would deign to come in person. More likely he’d send his quartermaster, known as Jon O’ the Ward, to try to fleece Heughan of his hard-won prizes. Heughan looked to Bill Thomson, the landlord, who nodded barely perceptibly at the far corner as he pushed a cup of ale into his hands. Heughan strode over decisively. “We have business,” he stated, without preamble, straddling the bench to sit at the table alongside the other person and slapping his cup onto the boards. A strange pair of steady Solway-grey eyes lifted to regard him from under a leather capuchin. Heughan checked his surprise even as he slid one hand towards his dagger.

  “What are you doing here? Where’s Jon O’?” he queried.

  The woman snuffed with feisty irritation. “Where’s Roddy?” She dismissed him with a cursory glance and looked expectantly behind him, anticipating another. Heughan bridled but made no reply and kept his hand where it was.

  She dragged her eyes back to him with a sigh, “Have it your own way. Jon’s indisposed. I came in his place.”

  “I know you, don’t I?” he asked, looking at her with more interest. She was wearing a man’s leather breeches, as many countrywomen did for riding a horse; unusual but not remarkable. He peered over the table to see what else she was concealing under her cloak. She coloured slightly under the penetration of his gaze and tilted her chin.

  “What if you do? Roddy knows me better. So does Bill; I nursed his wife through the ague last summer. Ask him, he’ll confirm that I am chatelaine to Ross Middlemore. I can make the negotiations on his behalf just as well as Jon,” she said defiantly, “and I have a message I believe is for Roddy.”

  Heughan raised his eyebrows, but she hadn’t finished and dropped her voice conspiratorially, “He said that the chatelaine holds the key.”

  She hadn’t expected him to laugh. “That’s your job, isn’t it?” Heughan said, making up his mind to charge an extra levy for whoever’s slip of judgement it was that thought he would find it acceptable to have to bargain terms with Ross’s woman.

  For brief minutes they haggled over the last details of the price. He let her enjoy a small victory of thinking that she had bartered successfully.

  Heughan slumped back on the bench and ventured a sup of ale. “And now,” he said calmly, “we need to discuss the vexatious matter of how you will get your new purchases back to Carlisle without further taxation.”

  She frowned, not understanding.

  “You’ve not done this on your own before, have you?” Heughan asked chirpily. “Jon O’ always has the sense to bring a couple of others with him.”

  “I’ve accompanied Jon before, and we’ve never needed others. Roddy knows me well enough to see things right. I thought he was supposed to be here.”

  “No doubt he’ll apologise in person when you next meet but right now, it would seem that it’s just me that you have to deal with.”

  He leaned forwards onto steepled fingers and explained patiently. “It’s a long way to the safety of the Castle. The roads are empty and, assuming those are your horses stabled out the back, you really are here alone. How do you propose to stop your newly acquired sheep from wandering off into Sceughmire? Will you drive them back the long way yourself?” he added mockingly. “And what about the cask of Madeira wine, the silk and linens? Fair lighting for the other riding families, wouldn’t you say? Who knows if you will meet friend or foe on the return journey?”

  Dawning comprehension smoothed her face. “You would have me pay you the blackmail?” she asked incredulously. “You would sell me goods and then threaten to rob them back unless I pay you twice for the protection?”

  Heughan shrugged indifferently. “I wouldn’t have set the price at double but now you mention it, that’s as good a place to start as any.”

  He watched her squirm with discomfort as she pondered the implications. He covered his chin to hide his smirk, challenging the woman with the arrogance of his eyes alone. “Your choice,” he said abruptly, putting his hands on the table and pushing to go.

  She caught at one of his wrists and looked pleadingly at him. “Please, I cannot return empty-handed. Ross would whip me. Where’s Roddy? Let me speak with him. He wouldn’t do this to me.”

  “Tough luck,” Heughan said. “He’s not here. Looks like you’re in for a beating.”

  She didn’t ask
again. She wiped her nose on her sleeve and levelled her gaze at him. “All the money, half the goods,” she bargained. “You see me safe to the outskirts.”

  “And what the fuck am I supposed to do with the other half?” he sneered, secretly liking the idea.

  “Hear me out,” she urged. “You can’t leave smuggled goods here long, I understand. Help me drive the sheep, the rest can go on my sumpter pony. There are coppicers at Willow Holme. They could take the flock to the Sheepmount, get a good price for you?” she shrugged helplessly, struggling with her improvisation.

  Heughan thought about it for a long moment. The plan suited him, though she was not to know it. Besides, the day was drawing on, and he had other places to be. “Come on,” he growled. “Hand over the money and let’s get going.”

  Her eyes glinted sharply with the catch of fire in glass. Knight of Swords; an unpredictable, opinionated man who was in for a surprise, she mused. He blinked, and in that split second, she crumpled her face once more into an anxious appeasement. She chinked a smaller bag of coin onto the table than he had been expecting. “I’ll pay you the rest when we’re in sight of the walls.”

  Heughan grabbed the leather pouch and stood to leave. “Anyone would think you didn’t trust me.”

  The rain had eased at last and the sheep went docilely enough. So did the woman, sulking along the length of the old Roman road as she lead the sumpter pony at a steady pace behind Heughan and Aluino. His steed was skittish and Heughan irritable from having to control the great prancing horse and keep the flock in tight formation. It was an otherwise uneventful journey, with no conversation between them.

  Of the coppicers there was no sign as they neared the rise of Willow Holme. There were many small clearings and evidence of the charcoaler’s craft; burnt-out fires, small huts, piles of withies, but no signs of human habitation. Aluino was dancing sideways, his flanks quivering with suppressed energy, and Heughan looked from left to right to see whether there was a reason for the horse’s nervousness that he himself hadn’t sensed.