CHAPTER 6: INTRIGUE FROM EMBRO

CHAPTER 6: INTRIGUE FROM EMBRO

Copyright: Thomas Hoskyns Leonard, Edinburgh, October 2017

                                                                           

During early November the snow flurries and the brisk winds came and went and Lady Fiona McLachlan was still surviving in isolated sanctuary in the well-furbished St. Cecilia's Wing on the Soutra, even though her husband was long since recovered from his lurge in Edinburgh.

But on St. Acisclus's Day, Lady Fiona's favourite novice nun Bink Quick burst into her quarters in an utter tizzy.

“Three officers of the law have arrived to question you, my lady,” shrieked Bink, untwisting the ripped breeks in which she'd been labouring in the rose garden.

“I am discovered!” wailed Lady Fiona, shaking all over. “All is lost.”

“Think about the beauty of your youth, lest you perish at their hands!”

“But they will throw me in all my desperate glory over the humps of a dirty camel.”

Bink threw herself into Lady Fiona's arms. “I don't want you to suffer the death of a Frankish queen, my noble lady.”

At that, two sheriff's officers from Edinburgh burst into the room, threw Bink backwards onto the bed, sat on her, and gave her a gentle, pacifying caress. But as a white witch of Sowtry, Bink knew all the tricks.

“Prithee, it's the lovely Lady McLachlan!” exclaimed Sir Brodie Crichton-Cruikshank, making a grand entrance in all his finery. “My agents discovered as early as September that you were hiding here like a shrill-tongued monkey, but I preferred to give you time to fester in your misery.”

“What is to become of me?” shrieked Lady Fiona, her feet all a-flutter.

“After your good husband of Comely Brae recovered so unexpectedly from St. Cornelius's Lurge following a timely visit by the White Witches of Cramond, he was convinced that it was you who poisoned his soup with a spider and snail potion. However, further information has recently come to light following the torture and interrogation of your servants during which they lost two ears and a nose or so. Would you care to attend to my more subtle pleasures while I explain the full ramifications to you?”

Michty me! lamented Lady Fiona. I do believe that the old fogey is expecting me to fawn up to his gracious body for my freedom.

Lady Fiona sighed heftily. “Methinks you want me to behave like a grasshopper on heat for your own titillation. How outrageous!”

Sir Brodie pouted like a spoilt devil-child.

My, how he reeks! lamented Bink, squeezing her nostrils. What a fearsome piece of work.

“You do me discredit, my lady,” responded Sir Brodie, preening himself. “I am a gentleman of not inconsiderable honour.”

Later that afternoon, Richard returned early from a cosy stroll with Pigfoot along the Brothershiels Burn, since she needed to tend to the chickens for her highly demanding uncle, and he decided, on impulse, to visit Duncan Cotter in his shepherd's cottage on the eastern slopes of the Soutra. The sheep were few and far between.

Maybe the sheep will grow larger and larger over the years, wondered Richard, going goggle-eyed. Then they'll reap a more handsome profit.

“Good morrow, Richard,” said Duncan, with a twitch of his nose. “A voice inside my head composed a ditty while I was staring like a banded owl at the Firth, convalescing from the dreaded sheep sweat.”

“I hope that it was a jolly one,” replied Richard, with a grin. “Please sit on that tuffet and recite it to me.”

“My poem is as serious as the day is long,” said Duncan, as a grass snake slithered off the tuffet into the undergrowth. “It is about the celebrated morell hie groun of antiquity, on which Scots, Picts, and civilised Vikings settlers have stood together for many centuries. Please listen carefully:

“We, God's honest ones, hold the moral high ground

While millions suffer and die in the world around

Some bow down, others offend

We, by our integrity will Scotland defend

Let them come to us, not us beg to them,

As the administrators, lords, and prosecutors spew their phlegm

All good Scots will eventually see what's what

And the bad ones? Stew them in the pot.”

“The voice in your head has the wisdom of Cicero and the perception of Caesar, fair Duncan,” said Richard, with a kindly look.

“My voice is that of the Grand Wizard of Bruchton Village, a most colourful character. He also tells me in my head that knights can become peasants and peasants can become serfs, but all that is important is to hold the morell hie groun of our forefathers.”

“I'll take that to heart even if it is the opinion of a dastardly wizard,” replied Richard, feeling genuinely touched. “We should meet more often to compose ballads together.”

That evening, Lady Fiona entertained the sheriff-depute in her quarters, most exhaustively, while Bink Quick massaged his bunions with a sweet-smelling citrus spice from the Algarve. Lady Fiona had been relieved to hear that it was the Lord of the Isles who'd orchestrated her husband of Comely Brae's poisoning during a plot against the king.

“Are you planning to become Sheriff of Edinburgh or, better still, Lieutenant General of Scotland one day?” inquired the prying Lady Fiona. “Methinks you're heading for magnificence and greatness.”

Sir Brodie ruffled Bink's hair in a most curious manner.

“The thought ne'er entered my imaginative mind, my child,” he replied, with a smirk. “Indeed, I intend to relinquish my current entitlement a fortnicht before Yuletide, in order to more fully participate in my new venture in Leith.”

“Are you planning to arrest the Spanish smugglers, French shysters, and Embro keelies, and to send them to be splattered with wet horses' dung in the stocks?” asked Bink, with a flick of her eel-like tongue.

“If fortune permits, coiffeuse from Hell,” replied Sir Brodie, with a chuckle. “More to the poignant point, I will be opening an Asylum for Lunatics in the Preceptory of St. Anthony. My accreditation as a physician has been restored to me upon rectification of an extremely stupid clerical error a number of years ago in Leuchars. I will thereby be enabled to resume my earlier career and to restore to good health those of our wretched citizens who suffer disorders of the mind. If they hear loud voices in their head or see colourful and unnatural visions, then trepanning will restore their wits in next to no time.”

Bink patted the sheriff-depute's fat, porcine belly.

“I saw a huge bear walking out of the scullery this very morning,” she said, with an apish grin. “A mouse was nibbling its tail.”

“Did you verily? You remind me in your pagan manner of dress of Jeanne of Lorraine, who imagined crosses falling from the sky, and whose sanity I questioned at Poitiers in 1429 on behalf of the Dauphin of France. Jeanne would have greatly benefited from several burr holes in her skull, and might well have saved herself from her painful frazzling on the stake in Norman Rouen two years later. When the grey flux comes pouring out, the mind returns to its God-given lucidity.”

“How terrifically miraculous,” purred Lady Fiona, like a lazy lioness. “It suits God's purpose.”

“Thank you kindly. I propose to call my hospital the Strachan-Crichton Asylum for Lunatics, thus named for my strangely cat-faced grandfather, a high-faluting man of rhetoric of some repute who experienced visions of flying monsters, giant cats, and winged chariots himself. Those blasted giant cats still get on my wick!”

“How quaint and exquisitely charming!” purred Lady Fiona. “Goodness gracious! You're much more relaxed and kindly than ever before, and the strange sneer has departed from your sturdy Schwein-Gesicht. Do I detect a new love in your life?”

Sir Brodie blushed a curious shade of beetroot all over.

“In a manner of speaking yes, my dear Fiona, and my precious Sprot wants us to inspire each other by performing great deeds together, as demanded by the flap-eared James the Lesser himself.”

“How apt,” purred Bink, arching her back. “Sprot sounds like an angel from Heaven. How would you prefer to savour me this time?”

“By the way, precious Brodie, dear,” asked Lady Fiona, during a well-earned break for rest and meditation. “Whatever did happen to my heavenly soul-mate, Sir Richard de Liddell?”

“That adventurous beast-eater was suspected of plotting with the Teutonic knights of Tallinn against good King James,” Sir Brodie nonchalently replied, “only for his faithless wife and cuckolding squire to die most mysteriously of poison in Óengus House. Thereupon, Sir Richard vanished like a black dove, into oblivion. My companion Sprot has advised me that the foolish fellow planned to escape to Vilnius in Lithuania. Until then I'd felt a modicum of sympathy for Sir Richard myself.”

I'm sure there's more to that story than meets the eye, realised Lady Fiona, wriggling her fast-tiring hips.

By the end of November, Richard had settled into a pleasant and peaceable routine. He ate three times a day in the St. Mungus Chapel, helped the novice nuns to tend the sheep in the next field, composed ballads in his head, took frequent walks with Pigfoot McEigg along the burns, up and down the Lindean gorge, and into the Celtic groves, and visited Duncan Cotter in his shepherd's cottage. Friar Francis and the highly knowledgeable Brother Marmaduke dropped by Richard's barn occasionally to discuss Medicine, History, and the Classics.

Richard occasionally supplemented his diet by creeping up behind one of the ptarmigans waddling around near his barn, and throttling it. These amicable game birds were somewhat plumper than partridges, and totally white in winter except for their black tails and eye-patches. The monks gladly roasted them up on a spit, and they were delicious when served with turnips and cabbage.

Life could not have been better!

But during the early hours of St. Fingas' Day, Richard was brusquely awoken by the novice nun Bink Quick, who was shaking in her muddy breeks in a frantic state.

“Do awake, if you be Richard de Liddell,” shrieked Bink, stamping on the sleepy fellow's chest. “The sheriff's officers from Edinburgh are raiding our blessed House, pulling fugitives out of the dark corners, and violating their sanctuary. You must flee immediately or put the freedom of your kindly hosts at risk.”

“Do keep calm, panic-stricken wood urchin that you are,” replied Richard, pulling up his trews. “But do not fret yourself; I will away to the good shepherd Duncan Cotter's cottage until this storm in a tea-cup has fizzed itself out.”

“Duncan Cotter?” enthused Bink, with a tender smile. “Would you kindly take me with you, good Sir? I have a wont to avoid the new sheriff-depute. I fear that he may be pursuing my pretty hide with too much relish.”

“I will protect your honour as if you were La Vièrge Marie,” promised Richard, and they both set off, trudging through the snow, along the farm track to the east.

When the sheriff's officers burst into St. Cecilia's Wing, they discovered two totally evil fugitives from justice, both wealthy fraudsters from Flanders, hiding under the raven-haired mother superior's four poster bed. The sturdy officers arrested and manacled the handsome fraudsters, shaved the voluptuous mother superior pate-headed, stripped her of her multi-coloured Mesopotamian kaftan, and threw her on the back of a donkey for trial by ordeal on the stinking Nor Loch in Edinburgh.

When the officers entered St. Columba's Hospice, the royal knight, Sir Cuthbert Arbuthnot, a fair haired man in late middle age with the look of a Viking, ushered two limping sheep stealers out through a door for their own self-protection.

A reiver from Peterhead, who was playing possum among the lepers, was a mite less fortunate.

The tight-limbed, new sheriff-depute recognised the leprechaunish fellow from an incident in Hawick, ran him through with his sword, and arrested a noted Bohemian physician on a charge of accomplice to grievous robbery and foul murder.

The short, balding, oval-faced gentleman from Klodzko was dressed in an immaculate black costume and red cravat, and resembled a giant sparrow. He was taken away without e'er a squeak or a flutter while reciting a verse of his fine sonnet, 'Onwards Galashiels into Compostia'.

The leading Jewish physician Henri Lustiger tried to object, only to be knocked unconscious by a blow from a mace. Two meretricious minions ran up and dragged poor Henri away.

When the sheriff's officers broke into the Iron Age broch on the Witherspoon knoll, a conglomeration of smelly travellers and fugitives from justice were in unhealthy residence. They chained them all together, willy nilly, one arm to the next leg, and marched them like a grovelling English slave gang into a cavernous cellar in the isolated parish of Keith Hundeby.

“What is your legal justification?” howled Friar Francis Philpott. “Where is your Royal warrant?”

“Have no fear,” replied the prickly sheriff-depute, peering down his quirky nose. “The sheriffs of Edinburgh and the Lothians are well-grounded in Roman law.”

Meanwhile, Bink Quick and Duncan Cotter were taking fresh delight, erstwhile sweethearts as they were, in each other's company. They agreed to ride to the deep woods of Dirleton together as soon as the weather might permit it. While Richard decried the notion of playing gooseberry, he was enraptured by their bonhomie, and was sad when Bink departed a few hours later to investigate what was ado in the House of the Holy Trinity.

Bink returned to Duncan's cottage in the evening to advise Richard that it was safe to return to his barn and the St. Mungus Chapel, since the sheriff-depute and his officers had long-since departed for Edinburgh with their surviving prisoners, leaving horror and carnage behind them. But Bink decided to stay with Duncan Cotter, and to spend the night in harmony with her paramour of the moment.

When Friar Francis and Kate Sprat met him in the chapel, Richard knew what to expect; his marching orders were, he thought, long overdue. The worthy friar was in a terrible flap because the nuns in St. Cecilia's Wing had run amok following the arrest of their much beloved mother superior, and the monks had needed to calm them all down with stiff doses of schlerozium while indulging in opium and clovis from the East themselves,

Furthermore, the Master of the Hospital, the irritable Thomas de Lawedre had stomped into the friar's office expressing concern as to whether their Royal Charter and his occupancy of his grace and favour mansion in Meusdenhead might be in direst jeopardy.

“Methinks we will have to cease offering sanctuary to fugitives from the King's justice for a while, Richard,” explained Friar Francis. “It would, in all verity, be better for all concerned if you made plans to find yourself a safer abode, in case the sheriff's officers return in the New Year and ferret you from your hiding place. Please don't feel that you should rush off straightaway. You would certainly be welcome to celebrate Yuletide with us.”

“I understand completely, dear Francis,” replied Richard, though somewhat despondently, “and I will plan to leave the Soutra during the Feast Day of St. Wenceslas, following celebrations of good cheer with you and your kind monks.”

“Thank you so much, Richard. The Master is behaving like the Devil Incarnate. Methinks that he, as with some masters before and maybe hence, could be a wolf in sheep's clothing like so many of the wretched power mongers in Edinburgh.”

“Prithee! I beg you a favour, dear Francis. I wish to bind myself in holy matrimony before I leave Soutra Hill for sad England. Would your priests marry me to my one true love?”

Friar Francis stared at Richard in disbelief.

“What! To whom?” he inquired, as Kate perked her ears in her crass eagerness.

“To my sweet Pigfoot, daughter of a nose-less pig-swiller, and his deceased wedded wife, the Black Witch of the Dark Womb. I love Pigfoot in Christ Jesus.”

“Not her!!” shrieked Kate, in her anguish.

Friar Francis took a step backwards, but recovered himself.

“Shame on you, Kate,” he gasped. “We are all equal in God's eyes, whatever our Devil-driven deformities. I will gladly hear your vows myself, dear Richard. On Heilige Nacht, in this chapel.”

Why on earth do I actually want to marry Pigfoot? agonised Richard. Perhaps this is simply a rush of blood to my head, or maybe there is an insight lost in the recesses of my mind which tells me that good will come out of it. Maybe I wish to retain some tortuous link with windswept Scotland, the land of my forefathers. I could be trying to seek the 'honourable course' when this might not be the desirable course to take. But sometimes men do the most ridiculous things without understanding the reason why, not one single iota.

During the next few days, Richard enjoyed some relaxing moments walking with Pigfoot, and with Duncan and Bink, around the Soutra.

“These are the best times of my humble life,” explained Duncan the Good Shepherd, embracing Bink and Pigfoot together in his muscular arms.

“I love Pigfoot too,” said Bink, giving the homely ragamuffin a hearty kiss on her severely scarred cheek.

“You are like a sister to me, Bink,” said Richard, in fond dalliance.

“Why don't we all visit Mhairead's Grove together?” suggested Pigfoot.

And so they did, though nought about that can pass civilised lips.

Maybe the spell of the Black Witch of Lawedre was cast in that sweaty grove, or perhaps it was the Goddess of Chance who was to play her grievous hand, out of the dastardly blue.

Thou can behave like an evil reptile at times, foul Fortuna! Shame, shame, shame!

While the four love-mates were supping on haddock and parsnips in the St. Mungus Chapel that very evening, Duncan Cotter grew crimson in pallor and swayed to and fro in his seat.

“Is there a bone lodged in your throat, dear Duncan?” asked Richard, squeezing his friend's knee with manly tendresse.

Bink hurriedly slapped Duncan's back, whereupon Duncan rattled like a serpent of Rameses and crashed spread-eagled to the ground, with black eschars covering his face.

“Don't die, my love!” shrieked Bink.

“No!!!!!” shrieked Pigfoot, throwing herself over Duncan's body.

My poor, dear kindred friend! agonised Richard. His fever has caught up with him. Methinks he was living on borrowed time

And an hour or so later, Duncan's soul entered Heaven through the pearly gates. The Apostles Peter and James, and the twelve sheep-angels were there to greet him. They promptly restored his complexion, and his carefree existence in that divine City of Light commenced.

Richard grieved hard and long for his dear Duncan, but to distract his thoughts he tried to make plans for his new life in England.

I will away to York, he mused, a fine Christian city where my Aunt Drusilla lived until she died like a fading white rose in her pretty house by the Foss. I will try to find a living which is more humble than that of the knight I was, and to help the sick and the poor for the rest of my life. If Fortuna permits, I will also found a Society of Natural Philosophy and the Art of the Rhetoric in old Jorvik, develop an interest in algebra and become more of a scholar myself.

Richard was at peace with himself when Friar Francis appeared in his barn like a wise man from the woods.

“I fear that the King's spies may pursue you far and wide,” said the friar, “whence-with I have a suggestion to make. You may wish to change your identity, and shed the proud name Richard de Liddell for good and honourable purpose.”

“And how would I do that?” asked Richard, with an encouraging smile.

“Here is an affadavit which authenticated poor Duncan Cotter's identity, which I retrieved from his garments before he was interred. It was signed and sealed by the Lord Sheriff Simon Paton of Haddington in 1421. Duncan was born of Christian parentage in Linton on the Summer Solstice of 1409.”

“Tell me more about this Paton.”

“He is now Lord Provost of St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, and hence a man whose integrity is undeniable on this matter.”

“In that case, this is an ingenious suggestion,” replied Richard, meticulously perusing the yellow parchment. “Methinks I could take one of Duncan's peasant tunics from his cottage. I will wear it to York, leaving my better garb in my bag, so as not to raise suspicion that I might be worth robbing or arresting. I will introduce myself as the shepherd Duncan Cotter when I arrive in York.”

“You may also take his heavy woollen cloak to keep you warm. It was woven on Lewis in the Hebrides by freezing serfs of Irish stock while they were starving in the corn and turnip famine.”

“It will cover me well below my knobbly knees!”

“Capital! And in the meantime, Sir Richard de Liddell has vanished into thin air, and no longer exists for any intent or purpose.”

“So perishes a not so valiant knight,” mourned Richard, hanging his head.

“Oh! One more thing. Brother Marmaduke has asked me to give you this inscribed copy of his recipe for marmelada. He hopes that it will serve you in good stead in some way in the future.”

“Thank you. I will store it with Duncan's parchment in my waist pouch, which is secured next to my jangling leather bag. Maybe Marmaduke's marmalade would be a better way of describing it.”

“Will you be taking your sword with you? It may raise suspicions that you are a touch more dangerous than a shepherd.”

“Please hang Vindicta in the Chapel of St. Michael in posterity for me,” Richard forlornly replied. “My faithful dagger will suffice my needs.”

Friar Francis smiled, benignly. “For all your faithfulness, Vindicta will take pride of place above the Altar of Almighty God, and may the archangels protect the right.”

And so it came to pass. On Christmas Eve 1436, Richard and Pigfoot were entwined together as one as husband and wife, with a hint of pagan ceremony, in the St. Mungus Chapel. After great feasting and merriment, and worship of false idols on Christmas Day, Richard, now Duncan Cotter in name and by shabby appearance, left the Soutra astride Xanthos at crack of dawn, and headed for the English border across the Tweed wondering whether he would ever return to the homeland he loved.

Pigfoot de Liddell stood on the summit of the Soutra staring at the rising sun, and cosseted her painted Pictish belly. She'd hidden five of her gold nobles in a mossy nook in a Witches' Tree, where Granny McGinty and the night owl kept watch over them. When a vision of the Archangel Gabriel appeared on a hillock to her right, she blinked and told him to go away.

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