Lammas Read online

  ‘You?’ Hew’s wits were not awoken yet. ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘How strange you are today. Wherefore would I not? I want to call on Meg. There are certain matters I want to discuss with her, and some things I need to buy.’

  ‘Lammas is no place for you. Tis filthy, loud and lewd. You will not like it there,’ Hew said.

  She fixed him with a look. ‘Do you suppose I have not been to fairs at Leadenhall?’

  ‘That is what I mean,’ he countered desperately. ‘It is not like London. It will disappoint you. There are no good stalls.’

  Frances was intent, and would not let it lie. ‘How will it be different from the other fairs? I have been to those.’

  ‘Because the town is different now. The colleges are closed. Lammas is the harvest fair, for those who work the land.’ It was, he recognised, the worst thing he could say. For Frances was involved as closely in the land as he was in the law and the university. She kept a close surveillance over his estates. The paradox had not escaped her. ‘And when were you so bound up in the land you oversaw yourself the hiring of your hands? Robert Lachlan might. But you? What are you about? Bella says it is a coupling fair.’

  ‘You cannot think—’ said Hew.

  ‘What am I to think, when you will not say? I do not like it when you are so shifting, Hew. Do not look so stricken, for I know full well what it is you do. There is one reason only why you look to Robert Lachlan, and it is not for the wenches or the drinking games. Robert is a fighting man, and we are at war.’

  ‘You have seen my mind. But we are not at war. I seek but to defend against that possibility. I did not want to frighten you,’ he said.

  ‘You cannot frighten me by telling me the truth. My country is at war, in peril as we stand. I feel it all the time.’

  ‘Forgive me, then. I did not think.’

  ‘No,’ Frances said. ‘You did think. You have been thinking of us, while I was thinking of them. Tis like you.’

  ‘Does Bella ken too?’

  ‘Bella does not ken. She does not know Robert quite as well as I know you.’

  ‘Perhaps she does,’ said Hew.

  Frances kissed him fondly. ‘Ah, perhaps she does. Now you must wash and dress, and come with me to Meg’s; I cannot go alone, and I must speak with her.’

  ‘Why today?’ asked Hew.

  ‘You should know that women have their secrets too.’

  As soon as he was dressed, they set out to walk together to the town. His spirits lifted then, to see the carts and crowds in all their coloured finery, the fields of ripening corn that lined the country way. Hew felt like a boy again, with his English bride, among the lads and lasses in their play day clothes. They left the infant Flora home with Bella Frew, who had told them that she felt her coupling days were done. ‘And if ye see that man of mine, up to his old tricks, tell him that his coupling will be over too.’ Hew, for all her fears, doubted Rob would stray. For though he was red-blooded with a belly fu’, he was milk-and-wattir when it came to Bella.

  (3)

  There were four strangers staying at the inn, come for the fair. One was a chapman, with a great pack full of trinkets and toys. Two of them were tumblers, young Egyptian brothers, who could walk on ropes and stilts that made them giants, tottering and tall. The last was a juglar, expert in legerdemain. Marie liked the juglar best. He had cut an apple open with a knife, and placed the cut side down upon the board, where it had spun round without any touch; the drinkers marvelled at it.

  For Marie, he had turned the apple on its back, showing the black beetle that was trapped inside. He had shown no one else. At first she had thought that he had found it in his bed, and was making a complaint. The beds were none too clean, though Marie shook them out. The tumbling brothers shared, and as she imagined, woke up from their dreams tangled in the sheets, while the juglar had been quartered with the chapman and his wares. But the juglar had not come to complain. He showed her a box where he kept the beetle and a little frog, and clinging to the lid, no bigger than a mouse, a creeping blind-eyed bat. He showed her a goose egg blown and sucked out, and put the bat inside, curled up in its wings. Then he covered up the place where the shell was cracked with paper and paste, smoothing it out until the crack was gone, and no one would guess that there had been a hole. He had given her the mended egg to hold. And she had felt it solid in her hand. Its weight was anchored still, as though the yellow yolk was still inside its bowl, and Marie had wondered if the bat was dead. The juglar had told her that it was asleep. When it was dusk, the bat would wake up, and the egg would fly up in the air. Probably. It was a trick that did not always work.

  There were other marvels that he would not show her, saying she must come and see them for herself. He had taught her a trick, and he asked her to show her secrets in return, giving her a shiny English shilling on account.

  She let him have a kiss, promising her secrets if the egg should fly. She did not think it would. When he first arrived, he had had a boy with him, enchanted with a charm. The boy had gone bow wow, running on all fours, like a little dog, and everyone had laughed. He had done a dance, and when the juglar telt him to take off his clothes he had stripped them off, right down to his hose. But when he was telt to take them off too, he took it in great snuff, bursting into tears. He said that if his pintle must be bared for all to see, he would want to have another half a crown. The crowd had roared at that. The juglar then was sad, though she did not see why. When the morning came, the juglar’s boy was gone. ‘He was my confederate,’ he confided in her. Marie liked the word. ‘But he was nae good.’

  She had served the men breakfast early that morning, of bannock and butter and ale. All four of them were going to the fair. And Marie wanted badly to be going too. The shilling she had won was squirrelled in her purse. But Walter had determined it was not to be. He had made Joan and Marie draw a straw to see which one of them should go, and it was Joan who won. Elspet had leave to go out as well. She did not even have to pick one of the straws.

  Marie said, ‘It’s no fair. You always favour her.’

  ‘Ach,’ Walter said. ‘Elspet is no use to us on a day like this. Her face is so sour it turns men awa’. The drinkers want a bonny one, like yours.’

  He always spoke like that, no word of truth in it, and Marie was put out.

  ‘You are a fool for her,’ she said. ‘Ye widnae be so fond if ye kent.’

  She had the devil in her then. For Elspet’s sake, she ought to haud her tongue. But she felt in her throat a kernel of spite, a tight angry knot she could not swallow down. Venting it afforded her a vicious kind of pride. ‘Oh, you think her chastely. I tell you, she is not. She is flesh, like us. And the first lusty laddie comes laiking with her, she is up and efter in the twinkling of an ee.’

  ‘Aye? What lad is that?’ He humoured her. Marie saw he did. He thought that Elspet, precious as she was, kept no secret from him. He took her for his own. Marie thought the spark between them an uncanny thing; they were like brother and sister, twin scrapping bairns, or a husband and wife, who long ago had lost all front before the other, mellowed to a comfort that was closed to her. Marie would not dare to flyte with him like that. She was jealous of the favour Elspet had from him, swaddled as it was in a loose contempt; their casual warmth of humour made her feel shut out, excluded from the jest.

  ‘He came at the seedtime, and now he has come back. His lustrous blue een and bright yellow hair have spun sic a charm upon your ain pet lass that it will be seedtime, for sure. Elspet is ripe. He is reaping her now, at the fair.’

  She stopped then, aware that she went too far. The hard little knot that gathered in her mouth was suddenly undone, at the pricking of remorse. Yet the words were said; she could not take them back. Walter said nothing at all. And the longer he went without making reply, the more ashamed she felt. Finally, she challenged him. ‘Have ye nought to say?’

  ‘You have a foulsum tongue,’ was all he said, and mild, as though he did
not mind. Perhaps, after all, he kenned it all along; it was a part of the game that they played.

  She told herself that, consoling her conscience, a sharp little thing that was pointed and sore. She liked Elspet too, did she not?

  Walter worked on for an hour, drawing up the barrels from the cellar down below, preparing for the influx later on that day. At the close of the fair, the business would transfer to the inns and taverns, and, if the night stayed dry, spill out on the sands and the harbour shore. The merchants from the market would be ready for their drink. The house was quiet in the meantime; one or two stray creel men, who had sold their crabs, came to slake their thirst; most fishermen were absent, with the herring fleet. Noon trade would be slow, for people took their dinner at the fair. By twelve o’clock, the place was bare, but for one old man, too old and deaf to traffic with the crowd, who drank his solitary pint on a stool outside, sipping in the quiet of an August sun.

  Walter Bone took off his apron. ‘I maun go out for a while.’

  ‘Where will ye go?’ Marie asked, alarmed.

  ‘I have rin out o physic I take for my back. It is hurting me sair.’

  It was true enough that he did not look well. He had shifted half a dozen kegs that day, and the crates of wine. It was easy to forget that Walter was not strong. He rarely made complaint of it. ‘I can go,’ she said.

  Walter shook his head. He saw through her tricks. The disappointment soured her. ‘Ye will not leave me here, to labour on ma ain? Suppose there is a crowd?’

  She knew as well as he did that there would not be a crowd, until four or five. But it took her by surprise when Walter Bone replied, ‘Give poor Geordie there another stoup of ale, and ye may go till four. Close the door when ye gang. I will be back in an hour.’

  She could not believe her good fortune. ‘Go to the fair?’

  ‘Did I not say so? Here.’ He gave her two bright pennies from the counter cash box. ‘Buy a wee treat to yerself.’

  It was her due, was it not? The money no more than her worth. Her pleasure in the fee eclipsed all sense of guilt. Marie smiled at Geordie as she filled his cup.

  Walter Bone made his way up Kirk Heugh. He did not go at once to the house on the South Street where the woman was who made up his pills. She might be at the fair. He hoped that she was not. He might find her at the market close to the apothecar, stocking up on spices, sugarloaf and herbs. He would not purchase physic she did not prescribe; he trusted her. The medicines she distilled for the torment in his bones brought him some relief. They could not yet dispel the underlying cause. Relief was transitory. And, when it returned, the hurt was sharper, crueller than before. He had not telt a lie to Marie about the pain. But for Elspet, he could have borne it, he thought. He could have borne much more.

  It strained him to walk up the hill. The market was in full thrang, in the mercat place. But at the west sands, by the golf links, there were sports and games, and races on the shore, while the tide was low. In mid-water, there were horses chasing through the spray. And up at the butts were archery contests, for young boys and men in all stages of life. Walter Bone had never taken part. The gripping in his banes had afflicted him since childhood. Yet he was a sharp man, no less; it had not afflicted his mind.

  (4)

  Henry Balfour too was going to the fair. He had left his college at the end of term, and moved across the street with the regent Robert Black. He looked forward to a summer of adventure and excess. If the Spanish came, he would take up arms, and place himself where practical upon the winning side. Meanwhile he would ride and spend time with his lass. The future augured well, despite prognostications that the world would end. Breakfast had been served. Henry had an egg, herrings and a cheese, while Robert’s interest in his bread and ale was watered by the tone of the letter in his hand, which he read aloud with increasing gloom. ‘Your father’s word is clear. And though I find the manner of it somewhat strict and strained, I cannot in good conscience let you go against it, while you are in my care,’ he said.

  Henry took advantage of his tutor’s loss of appetite to relieve him of the best part of his bread. He was not at all dismayed by the thunder of a father who was far away, when he had a summer’s day in hand. He pointed out simply, ‘He does not prohibit the fair.’

  ‘Not,’ conceded Robert, ‘in so many words.’

  ‘When there are so many words, you can be quite certain that his silence is assent.’

  Robert hesitated. He suspected Henry’s father would make short work of that argument. ‘Does he even ken there is a fair today?’

  Henry said, ‘He has sent a present of a bow. At Lammas there are always contests at the butts. Therefore he must mean that I should try it there. I am sure to win.’

  The bow was a reward for passing the black stane, where Henry had received, on his third attempt, his bachelor’s degree. Henry had shown promise through the years in archery, the only distraction which his parent had approved. And it was more than likely he would take the prize.

  ‘Well, you may go,’ Robert Black agreed, ‘if you give your word to me that you will not converse or meddle with your lass in any secret place. Though she is free and willing, please remember this. Your father will not furnish you a fart for buttock-mail.’ Lord Balfour knew his son, perhaps a little better than his son knew him, and a full page of his letter was devoted to a case which, should it arise, would not be well received.

  ‘I noticed he said that,’ Henry took a pat of butter on his knife, and smeared in on the bread, ‘and wondered what he meant. What is buttock-mail? Is it like a flankart, armour for the arse?’

  ‘It is the penalty you pay for the sin of fornication, as no doubt you ken,’ Robert answered grimly. ‘The wages of sin. But that is futling in respect of the cost to you, if you are found out. Your father will disown you, and the college too. It will be the ruin of you, and me as well, no doubt. I make no mention of the lass, for her welfare must fall to your conscience, as yours does to mine.’

  Henry had not looked for, and had not expected, so severe a lecture on the first day of his holiday, and Robert was encouraged when he looked a bit abashed. Less so, when he said, ‘Oh, but we are careful.’

  ‘Careful not to sin, or that you are not caught?’

  Henry answered vaguely, ‘Aye, for certain, that.’

  ‘To that end,’ Robert said, ‘come back here by nine. I will not have you prey to the evils of the night. Otherwise, you have my blessing and my trust.’

  ‘I thank you for your kindness, sir. I will keep your trust,’ Henry said.

  He showed he had a gentle heart, and Robert Black was pleased, for he believed that with a steady hand, Henry would be set upon a constant path, naturally inclined to follow what was right. The father was at fault. Savage yet indulgent, both severe and lax, he had set a course designed to ruin the boy.

  Henry, nothing daunted, went to meet his lass. His converse with her secret place was fairly well advanced, a fluency which he thought wise to hide from Robert Black. But he supposed that Robert meant they should not leave the crowd.

  Dozens of young men were gathered in the market place, looking for employment from the factors and the farmers who judged them on experience, provenance and strength. Bargains were made quickly, and were sealed with drink, before the chosen ones took their pick themselves of the giggling lassies waiting in the ranks. Henry found the company, of country lads and lasses let loose from their bounds, a rough and rowdy one. He looked for Mary through the crowd, and found her with her baskets by the butter tron. Beside her was a woman who was full with child, and a little boy with a filthy face. Mary caught his eye, and left the woman’s side, taking up the small boy by the hand. Henry sensed a straining in her smile. Perhaps she felt, like him, uneasy at the herd. She did not offer up a kiss. Instead she whispered to him, ‘What have ye got on?’

  ‘Do you like it?’ Henry said. Mary had not seen him out of scholar’s weeds. He had dressed that morning in a dark green hunting coat
his father had sent up. It was made of fair fine cloth, and cut to flatter him, with a trail of ivy quilted in the sleeve. Lord Balfour had devoted far more thought to choosing it than Henry had that morning when he put it on. The king would be at Falkland for the summer months, and Henry might be called upon to join him at the hunt. The colour of the coat would show off his dark looks, with no thread of gold to cause the king offence. Then Henry might look forward to a place at court. They were close in age.

  Though Henry was aware of his father’s hopes, he did not care for them. He lived for the day, and took chance where it came. The moment was the fair, and he wore the coat because the cut allowed him to move freely with his bow. He thought it good but plain. It perplexed him to find Mary fingering the cuff, tracing with her fingers through the fine relief, as though she had not come across such delicate embroidery. ‘It’s awfy fine,’ she answered him, uncertainly.

  ‘Fine it is,’ he said. ‘But who is this?’ He gestured to the bairn, a squat, stolid child, who stared back, unsmiling.

  ‘This is wee Jock, my sister’s boy. Big Jock is my daddie,’ Mary said.

  The naming of Big Jock caused Henry some alarm. Mary had not mentioned him by name before. He wondered, fleetingly, just how big he was. ‘Has your father come here to the fair?’ he asked.

  Mary shook her head. ‘He disnae like to, since my mother died. It was here they met.’

  Henry answered, ‘Oh,’ conscious his relief ought not to be expressed. There were complications here he had not met before, and he felt, for the moment, out of his depth.

  ‘Jockie has been hoping he will see the puppet play.’

  Mary’s meaning dawned on Henry, showing in his face. She anticipated quickly, ‘Tis only for a while, until the eggs are gone. They’re sure to sell today. My sister had been guid enough to take the stand till then.’