CHAPTER 17: LIFE IN PROVENCE AND ELSEWHERE

CHAPTER 17: LIFE IN PROVENCE AND ELSEWHERE

Copyright: Thomas Hoskyns Leonard, Edinburgh, October 2017                                                                         

At Pope Calixtus's wise suggestion, Duke Ladislaus of Austria's rebellious relatives kindly donated a one in ten portion of the gold ornaments from Patowmeck to the City of Marseilles, following the extravagant Ladislaus' unexpected and mysterious death in Prague. Furthermore, the patatas which Duncan brought back in the Yvonne were planted in a vegetable garden to the east of Marseilles, for the provision of food for the poor. The lively clutch of turk birds was sent to the home farm on the Countess Ruth's family estate outside Saint-Tropez, where they were inbred to improve the quality of the strain.

When Duncan returned to his château in Sephora, a couple of circumstances had changed. When he walked into the lilac-coloured parlour, he was greeted by five lively, dark-haired children demanding toys and sweetmeats, but he also heard a shrill wailing from the drawing room where tiny Didier Le Cottier was nibbling his mother's breasts.

How did that happen? wondered Duncan, counting the months on his fingers, only to be assured by the Countess Ruth that noisy Didier was his very own conception.

If that wasn't enough, tall Bernard Bernoulli was lurking in the background, having moved into the château, lock, stock, and barrel, to be closer to Duncan's wedded wife.

Duncan scrutinized Didier's sullen face and came to the conclusion that Bernoulli was the father, whereas Ruth's first five children were more likely sired by the virile Bagoas.

During the months that followed, Duncan's wife occasionally welcomed him into her bed. However, their relationship was less passionate than before. Duncan wondered whether this was because he no longer wore a face-mask or because he was being cuckooed. Several specks of tar still besmirched his neck and face where his skin had been so horribly scarred, at Rouen, eight years before.

Meanwhile, Bagoas focussed most of his attentions on his good wife Meg, while sometimes feeling generous enough to give Duncan a piece of the action.

I'm getting old and ugly, lamented Duncan, though he was only 48. Maybe I should concentrate on my herb and rose gardens, my forays into Marseilles, and drifting along the beach.

During a sultry summer's evening in 1458, the highly studious, twenty-one year old Seth Liddell sat in his attic room in Meusdenhead Hall reviewing his copious notes and wishing that he was the apple of his father's eye.

Seth was now an accredited physician in the Soutra Abbey Hospital, with expertise in both medicine and disorders of the mind, and a barber surgeon to boot. While his mentor Henri Lustiger had sadly left Scotland to take up his appointment of distinguished professor at the University of Montpellier in Provence, Seth's kindly, exceedingly well-built friend Hamish Douglas still visited him from the Strachan-Crichton Asylum in Leith to advise him concerning the treatment of states of minds, though in an increasingly haphazard fashion.

Sandy-haired Seth still completed various less than enjoyable tasks for Stephanus Le Fleming, the Master of the Hospital at Soutra (who'd shortened his name to Stephen Fleming according to the prevailing fashion). Seth didn't like the man, and he felt limitless guilt and remorse for the ways he'd let Fleming bamboozle and mistreat him during his youth.

Seth suddenly heard a loud brouhaha in the courtyard below. When he peered through his small window, with panes of soaked horns, four crown agents from Edinburgh, all knights of the realm, were slapping the fat pageboy around his thick head.

“Seth Liddell's in the attic,” howled the fat boy, shielding his belly.

Thereupon, up the three staircases charged the four victors of nothingness, followed by their obsequious squires.

“Here's a warrant signed by the noble Queen Mary of Guelders and sealed on the King's Signet,” announced the knight with the buck teeth, “We've been appointed to investigate your Master, Stephen Fleming, concerning the rumours that abound pertaining to his lewd and scandalous behaviour.”

“Such rumours are like water off a duck's back to me,” retorted Seth, keeping his cards close to his chest, “and I do not know of any.”

“You verily jest,” howled the knight with the pock-ridden face. “The monks say Fleming organizes black witch's covens in the Lindean Gorge. The good villagers of Aberlady claim that he is the Hittite High Priest whose minions drink the blood of bulls on their beach. Even the dreadful Druids complain about the severity of his human sacrifices. He is said to make his victims eat their fried offal before he slits their throats.”

“Rumours abound,” responded Seth, “but truth is more profound, and these ridiculous tales do basic common sense confound.”

“How dare you proselytize at us, trumped up physician that you are!” howled the knight with the spruce moustache, striking Seth in his face with his gauntlet. “I'll give you one last chance before we dangle your nuts from a beam. We know that Fleming treated you as his whelp when you were a youth. Are you too yellow-bellied to snitch on him as an adult?”

“Death to you, pox-ridden fool!” howled Seth, reeling from the blow.

At that grievous insult, two squires stepped forwards with ropes, chains, and a bull-whip. The Crown agents hung poor, screaming Seth upside down by his ankles, like a twisted contortionist, from the rafters, his head fully four feet off the ground.

“Let's try my favourite little trick with this corkscrew before we thrash him to the flesh,” suggested the prickly Sir Clunus Abernathy, with a deft twist.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaarg!” shrieked Seth, writhing like a conger eel with a hook in its jaw.

“Out with it!” roared Sir Clunus, merrily turning the screw.

“Aaaaaaaaaarg!” howled Seth, turning to jelly. “He humps horses stupid.”

“What!!!!!!” howled Sir Clunus, recoiling in shock. “Do you mean old mares?”

“Those too, but mainly steeds and stallions.”

“How many?” inquired the calculating knight with the pock-ridden face, without batting an eyelid.

“A thousand,” wailed Seth, at a guess.

“And how many cattle?” asked the knight with the spruce moustache, rubbing his jittery thigh.

“A hundred cows, twenty pigs, and a mere dozen sheep.”

At that, the buck-toothed knight flourished his arms with fond affection. “Thank you, Seth Liddell, you are our star witness. Cut him down, sweet Clunus, and give the dear boy some lotion for his ear.”

“Would you care to indulge in some malt with us?” inquired the sprucest of the knights, producing a half-empty flagon. “You are the greatest of friends.”

“I need to take a pish,” replied Seth, whereupon he rushed down the three flights of stairs and into the forest and the shadows of the sunset.

The wise owl hooted from her tree, and the witches alerted themselves, black and white together.

Seth staggered through the woods to the leafy spot where his long dead mother Pigfoot

McEigg de Liddell lay in a mass grave, her skeletal head protruding like a burnt Banduri above the surface.

“Cast a spell for me, wild Wizard of Meusdenhead,” howled Seth Liddell, “and conjure up the Devil!”

[Author's Notes: Another fictional representation of Stephen Fleming's scandalous behaviour is described by Margaret Cook in Border Brothers (Amazon, 2017).]

During September 1458, Duncan learnt that, following the death of Pope Callixtus in August, the holier-than-thou Aeneas P., by then Bishop of Siena, had frustrated the efforts of the talented Cardinal Guillaume of Rouen to be elected to the Holy See. Following a delightful spot of further intrigue, Aeneas secured enough votes for himself on the second ballot, and was thereupon himself crowned pope, as Pius the Second. He was God's representative on Earth, no less.

“Goodness gracious me!” he equivocated. “I've risen higher than the false Apostle Paul ever aspired. Now all I have to do is keep my head.”

What a meteoric rise to power! mused Duncan. My dear Aeneas has led a dissipated life, and can't even cork his own piddle. Now could be the start of an even more liberal era in the already paganized Vatican, when the scatter-brained German princes are allowed to run roughshod over us.

Perhaps dissolute Aeneas will reform himself while maintaining a higher moral standard, and put Christian Europe to right by sending us on further crusades. It may well be advantageous to fight the Muslims in places like the Peloponnese, the western Balkans, and southern Italy, or where they forever try to encroach on us.

Maybe the deep-thinking Aeneas could also reshape the Christian view of Islam, and seek to develop a common thread with the Muslims based on the notions of freedom, religious tolerance, and peaceful life, as has been suggested by Sultan Mehmed himself. The impact on society, culture, and government could be enormous.

If the much-revered Aeneas is unsuccessful, then what further dissolute line of popes can be expected to succeed him? The papacy could even be subsumed by some tyrannical oligarch who seeks to control the finances and the people of what is left of Christian Europe like puppets on a string.

Duncan visited the Hospital of St. John by the harbour of Marseilles a couple of times a month, and usually took the opportunity to spend time drinking in Bagoas and Meg's inn, Le Soldat de L'Étain, close to the moored fishing boats.

When Duncan was in Marseilles, Meg's dark-haired, eight year old son Simeon de Frêne ran errands for him as his pageboy, and brought along several of his tiny, metal toy soldiers to join in the fun.

Duncan suggested treating the patients in the hospital with some of the herbs in his medicine bag from Patowmeck, while remembering a few of the pearls of wisdom the tall Shaman had expressed to him during his stay with the Sac.

Duncan helped a dour nurse from Nice to administer some wretched tasting bitter root to a girl with a fever, to rid her body of the worms. The nurse sniffed, and smiled weakly in appreciation when the remedy was partly successful. Thereupon, Duncan mixed some noxious skunk cabbage in a hot stew and offered it to a knight with the dropsy.

“Take a care with that toxic stuff,” protested an eminent-looking gentleman, clearing his nostrils. “It could create a hole in his throat before it evaporates the excess fluids.”

“That's why it's cooked hot,” retorted Duncan. “It's a magical talisman in Nouveau Gaulle.”

“I don't believe that place even exists. What else can your supposed remedy be used for?”

Duncan suddenly recognised the Jewish physician from way in the past. It was Henri Lustiger, who'd once worked it the Abbey Hospital on the Soutra. When he was the bold Sir Richard de Liddell, Duncan had became well-acquainted with Henri during Richard's visits to Soutra Hill.

“It can be used to remove the phlegm during shortness of breath in the chest, my dear Henri,” Duncan replied, with a huff and a puff.

“How do you know my Christian name, good knight?” asked Henri, in surprise. “I am referred to in these parts as Professor 'Lustig' Lustiger of Montpellier, since I am known for my funny humour.”

“I must have dreamt it,” mithered Duncan, whose own face was of course scarred to shreds. “Methinks you would like to drink a glass of malt with me later in the inn on the harbour, to discuss these matters of medical import further?”

“That would with high propensity be possible,” replied the gracious Henri, turning his attention to a lady much too fat with water and searching for his surgeon's knife.

A couple of hours later, Duncan Le Cottier went for a merry drink in Le Soldat de L'Étain Inn with his whipper snapper of a pageboy Simeon de Frêne, who skipped to and fro among the well kept tables while Duncan chattered with an energetic waitress, a dwarf from Toulouse with black, piercing eyes, about the courageous Queens of the Visigoths.

A quarter-hour later, the celebrated physician Henri Lustiger came wandering in, carrying the large leather bag that contained his instruments of surgery.

“I've just taken off the leprous ears of a monk from Frioul Island to prevent further suffering,” explained Henri, tweaking his elegant nose. “And I'd like a large whisky well-blended with mead, if you please, young lady.”

“Be my guest,” said Duncan, as the green-eyed midget scurried away, “and I'll ask my page Simeon to play you a tune on his lute.”

“But how do you know me?” asked Henri, looking extremely puzzled. “When did we last meet?”

Duncan stared at a spider scampering across the floor until it was eaten by a mouse.

“I knew of you many years ago on the Soutra,” he stuttered, “but I was a mere peasant, and you would have scarce known me.”

“A likely story!” scoffed Henri. “I can believe you're Scottish by your manner of speech, but you're no peasant. You were in all verity born into the noble gentry.”

“But the Dauphin knighted me as a Chevalier of France at the Battle of St. Jakob an der Birs after I rose from the humble, downtrodden ranks to save the life of Count René of Provence,”

“That does you tremendous credit,” replied Henri, with a gasp, “and how is your knowledge of medicine?”

“I helped plant the seeds in a herb garden in Edinburgh, and learnt even more about such remedies on the Soutra. I've bred refined herbs in my garden in Sephora, and I have some knowledge of the practices of the Shaman in Nouveau Gaulle.”

Henri took a gulp of his well-blended whisky, and winked at the dwarf from Toulouse.

“That's most impressive! Perchance you will see fit to visit us at the University of Montpellier soon, so that we may record your vast knowledge of herbal medicine for posterity.”

“You honour me greatly,” replied Duncan. “But please tell me more about the recent happenings in the hospitals on the Soutra. When did you leave?”

“During the Autumn of 1457, when the leaves were dropping from the colourful trees along the Tweed. The House of the Holy Trinity was at that time falling into some disrepute because of the crass organisational abilities of its dissolute Master, Stephen Fleming. In all verity, rumours abounded that a new hospital might be built with a kirk, to the east of Edinburgh's Nor Loch. I don't know whether these plans have progressed, but if they have, the international reputation of Soutra Abbey Hospital could well decline in consequence.”

Perchance the dissolute Master is the wretched monk Stephanus Le Fleming who I once saw flagellating his stupid self during Evensong, deliberated Duncan. If so, then the hospices on the Soutra are in a bundle of trouble.

“That would be tragic!” replied Duncan. “But there are surely numerous splendidly qualified physicians who still work on the Soutra, are there not?”

Henri Lustiger replied by entering into a lengthy discourse regarding the merits and foibles of every physician he could remember who'd ever potioned a patient on the Soutra. Duncan was becoming bored to Kingdom come when Henri added, “… and then there was that fine young man Seth Liddell who was seeking accreditation as a physician. His speciality was disorders of the mind.”

“Seth Liddell?” exclaimed Duncan with a start, his scarred face giving way to all sorts of emotions. “I do believe that I know of him. Could you please describe him to me very carefully indeed, as if your life depended on it?”

“He was about twenty years old when I left, sandy-haired, of fine physique and quiet temperament,” replied Henri, narrowing his eyebrows. “He lived with Stephen Fleming in Meusdenhead Hall as his much stomped upon lackey, though he was born to a homely shepherdess in an isolated hut in the Lindean Gorge. He has a talkative twin sister called Sansa. She was working when I left as a servant for an outrageously colourful King's writer in Edinburgh, though she is quite fanciful about her future good influence on the world at large.”

At that, Duncan broke into tears.

“Please forgive me,” he burbled. “I didn't know that I had a Scottish son and daughter.”

“You should visit them soon,” Henri compassionately replied, “and I can recognize you now from your dialect. You're Sir Richard de Liddell.”

Meanwhile, the sixteen year old Harry de Burgogne, Lady Rosamund's son from her tragic liaison with one Duncan Cotter during the early 1440s, spent much of his time studying linguistics and jurisprudence with his tutors in Crécy House on the Micklegate in York, while his all too frequently cuckolded papa, Lord Sheridan de Burgogne tended to the roses.

Harry spent several days each month a long ride to the south-west in Sandal Castle, Duke Richard's key stronghold in Yorkshire. Harry was expected to engage in military training there, though he frequently managed to escape to the nearby Borough of Wakefield for a drink and some fun with the ladies. When a sturdy girl from Helmsley deliquesced into his arms, he felt gooey all over and told her to lighten up.

Harry's brother Sir 'Sticky Percy' de Burgogne commanded the garrison at Sandal Castle, with an iron fist, while Duke Richard spent much of his time causing trouble trying to rule in London.

And 'Sticky Percy' made his soldiers jump through all sorts of painful hoops while practising sorties in case of a Lancastrian attack.

The studious Harry was not inclined to become a knight. He certainly didn't want to be like Percy. Nevertheless, he found it necessary to dodge the irritating attentions of the deputy commander Sir Bronco de Bullivant, who kept demanding that handsome Harry should be his squire and attentive minion.

A renowned ladies' man, the sturdy Sir Bronco sported a dark, spruce moustache. He played football during his youth in the nearby town of Berneslai, and was proud to have been publicly admonished by a sheriff's officer with a birch rod for not practising his archery. He was a self-made man, having risen from the ranks on account of his prowess at jousting, for which he could not be equalled in the whole of Yorkshire.

During one practice sortie from the postern gate, Harry fell head over heels and ended up in a ditch.

Sir Bronco picked Harry up by the nape of his neck.

“'I'll make you scale the castle walls for a week,” snorted Sir Bronco. “That should knock you into shape.”

“Curse you!” exclaimed Harry, as he wriggled away. “I'll be the Lord of Poxforth's squire instead. He'll treat me with velvet gloves.”

“Poxforth?” howled Sir Bronco. “I'll take the skin off your back for that!”

Meanwhile, the grey-haired Lord Callum de Liddell lay sick of the palsy on his deathbed in Roslands Castle outside the town of Duns in the Scottish County of Berwickshire. His prematurely wizened, hard-chested wife, the Lady Matilda moped over him and poured unboiled water from a garden jug onto his sweaty brow.

When Sir Lulach de Liddell, by then in his late twenties, arrived from St. Andrews, where he worked as a physician of notorious repute in St. Leonard's Hospital, his father briefly recovered consciousness and scratched the bleeding black wart on his nose.

“I've left you everything,” mithered Lord Callum, slurping yellow puss onto his pillow, “but spare a thought for your mother.”

“And your long lost brother Richard?” asked Sir Lulach, a rhetoric question.

“We took everything off the coot,” spluttered Lord Callum, with a croak. “...brazen forgery!...whoops.”

“How long has sweet Papa been like this?” asked Sir Lulach

“At least six weeks,” burbled his mother.

“In that case, it's time to award him the Royal Order of the Stifling Pillow.”

“I'm sure you're well practised at that,” replied the Lady Matilda, nodding in stern agreement.

As the winter of 1458 began in earnest, Duncan Le Cottier dropped, well-wrapped in furs, into Le Soldat de L'Étain Inn late one freezing evening suffering from an appalling toothache. No manner of wort from his herb garden had helped ease the pain.

Duncan was tergiversating to a particularly short, raven-haired waiter from Ravenna about the merits of hot malt wine, when a sullen, lightly dressed young man stumbled in, and headed for the beer table shaking with cold.

“How can you afford the price of an ale, derelict that you are?” inquired the dwarf with the grumpy face.

“I'm looking for work,” wailed Xavier de Rougerie of Toulon. “Can I wash the dishes or clean the tables in this God-forsaken place?”

“Out, scroundrel!” howled the dwarf with a spike for a nose. “Before I put a boot into your icy flesh. The nobility come here, and it's no place for the likes of scum like you. Go and screech in the snow.”

“Firkins!” howled Xavier, shuddering with cold. “Please let me warm myself and give me something to eat.”

“No!”

Duncan recognised Xavier as the once delightful deckhand on the Yvonne who'd rowed him across the Patowmeck river in a skiff.

“I think you should leave, Xavier,” said Duncan, unusually unsympathetically, “or you may well find yourself freezing in the conciergerie for the night, and flogged even stupider at crack of dawn.”

Xavier turned, and recognised the one-time idol of his dreams.

“Please, Lord Duncan,” he begged. “At least buy me a potage pie, 'cos I'm starving. I did serve you well in Nouveau Gaulle when all's said and done.”

I suppose that he did save a squaw from the Aztalan claws, deliberated Duncan.

Duncan didn't think it was worth inquiring where Xavier slept during the icy cold. Instead, he stared at a shivering mouse running across the floor until it was clawed by the tomcat.

“In that case you may stay for a single night in the poor room in this very inn,” Duncan grudgingly conceded, chewing his decaying tooth. “I will consider these matters in more detail in the Palace Augustus tonight and discuss them with you further in the morning.”

After the angry dwarfs had taken the ever hungry de Rougerie up to his tiny, draughty room in the rafters, Duncan slowly climbed the stairs, holding a luke warm potage pie, and knocked on poor Xavier's dilapidated door. The shivering deckhand from Toulon opened the door, grinned, and let Duncan in.

During 1459 a furious scandal rocked Scotland concerning the purported behaviour of Stephen Fleming, the nefarious Master of the Hospital of the Holy Trinity at Soutra. Numerous allegations were flaunted around, some of them quite fanciful.

The highly respectable Seth Liddell was called upon by a writer [in modern parlance a solicitor], acting on behalf of the Crown Agents to sign an affidavit describing his evidence that Fleming had committed acts of bestiality with horses and other animals on hundreds of occasions.

The perceptive Seth had, quite amazingly, frequently seen Fleming mounting grunting horses in the stables of Meusdenhead Hall, and had once seen him in flagrante delicto with a happy goat with its hoofs in the air.

The writer was of such standing that he was able to arrange for Seth's signed affidavit to be sealed with the King's Signet.

Seth's sister Sansa Liddell was a servant of a writer of similar standing who lived in a spacious house on the Cowgate and who'd taught her a great deal about the machinations of the law. Sansa advised Seth that it was very unlikely that he would receive adverse publicity from his allegations in the affidavit.

“I'm relieved by that,” said Seth, shuffling in his seat.

“They'll bury all the evidence against Fleming in a deep vault,” claimed Sansa, smoothing her sandy locks, “and discredit and dismiss him while referring to mere rumour and aspersion. By what I've heard, the evidence is much too hot to handle since a number of other prominent Scots were involved in Fleming's ghastly activities. Even the Royal succession could be threatened.”

“I wouldn't be surprised,” said Seth, with a humorous grin. “I saw the Countess of Morton drinking the blood of bulls during a Hittite ceremony on Aberlady beach. Her tiny whelp of a nephew Prince James asked the High Priest to sacrifice a novice nun on the altar. But the High Priest, who was well-masked, cut the throats of ten pink piglets instead and carried the wretched girl off through the curl beam bushes in his arms.”

“Not another of your woolly sheep stories!” protested Sansa. “Do keep your gob shut.”

But Seth didn't think that his story was as woolly as all that.

Meanwhile, the construction of the magnificent new Trinity College Kirk and Trinity College Hospital at the east end of the smelly Nor Loch was close to completion. The buildings were funded by the saintly Queen Mary of Guelder's own foundation. The mistrustful Queen Mary held dim, misguided views about the House of the Holy Trinity on the Soutra, and the eminent physicians there were left wondering what would happen next.

Methinks the queen wishes to ensure her speedy canonisation before she drops dead of the pox, deliberated Sansa Liddell. Maybe she intends to transfer anything of medical merit on the Soutra to her capital city of Edinburgh, lock, stock, and barrel.

During 1459 Duncan Le Cottier's sensitive though rocky relationship with his former deckhand Xavier de Rougerie blossomed to truly wonderful, and in November of that year the assertive Xavier agreed to become Duncan's squire.

Duncan felt he'd achieved the zenith of his ambitions as a lover, and he was most content with his life once again.

It's like being a squaw who hunts and gathers, he fantasised, and Xavier is a chieftain among the bold warriors.

Nevertheless, Duncan longed to meet his children Seth and Sansa in Scotland, and wondered whether and when he'd be able to make a trip home to sweet Edinburgh.

The last few months of 1460 proved to be highly dramatic, in terms of events of historical importance, for Duncan Le Cottier's two oldest sons Seth Liddell and Sir Harry de Burgogne. The highly reluctant eighteen year old Harry been knighted by King Henry the Sixth earlier in the year during a brief ceremony in Westminster, following a large donation by the much too wealthy Lord Sheridan de Burgoyne to the coffers of the volatile Richard, Duke of York. In such manner was the useless king by the errant duke manipulated.

During October 1460, Seth Liddell rode to the Land of Floors, within sight of Kelso Abbey on that worthier side of the Tweed, with a band of physicians and nurses from the Soutra. Their purpose was to tend to the casualties of the Scottish army while they lay siege to the English contingent led by an unknown warrior, who'd occupied Roxburghe Castle high on the opposite bank of the peacefully flowing river.

Seth treated a soldier who'd been stung by a bee by soothing the sting with hedge woundwort lotion, whereupon kindly Nurse Kate Sprat, now in her late thirties, offered the poor fellow a mug of hot mead.

The fiery-faced King James the Second had taken a number of recently purchased Dutch cannon with him to Floors. He was particularly proud of 'the Lion'. Even though the King enjoyed putting paid to traitorous Douglases in bad ways, his forces were led on the field of action by the Earl of Angus, himself a Red Douglas.

The wrinkled and ageing royal knight Sir Cuthbert Arbuthnot was a survivor of the ancient Battle of Harlaw and various antics as a mercenary for the French, but was bereft of his once fine head of hair. During a lull in the bombardment, Sir Cuthbert took a company of men-at-arms across the river on rafts, at the crass suggestion of the overbearing queen consort herself.

The company of brave Scottish troopers were repulsed, with heavy loss of life, when they tried to storm the castle gate. Sir Cuthbert was struck in his side by an arrow, but managed to swim to safety after clinging on to a floating branch. Seth and Kate ran to the river bank to tend to his grievous wound, and Seth succeeded in pulling the arrow, with its head perfectly preserved, from Sir Cuthbert's writhing body as they pulled him out of the water.

“Thank you, my son,” groaned the elderly knight. “Now we should try to keep our skulls intact.”

“Are they Yorkists or Lancastrians in yonder castle?” inquired a dour knight from Aberdeen. “Queen Mary doesn't know which to favour in her machinations with the English.”

“Who gives a shit?” moaned Sir Cuthbert. “And fuck the whole caboodle of them with sharp marlinespikes.”

The cannon were beginning to crumble and shatter the castle walls from across the Tweed Water, when the vengeful king ran up to 'the Lion' from behind a since fabled beech-bush.

The still sprightly Kate Sprat yelled, “Watch for yourself, Sire!”

The red birthmark which covers half his face does not portend well for his fate, agonized the stoic nurse from the Soutra,

And, lo and behold! The stupid king ignored the sensible nurse completely and told the gunners to ' bloody well fire'.

Thereupon, the Lion suddenly exploded, right out of the blue, blowing the artillery men to smithereens.

In the words of the historian Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie 'as the King stood near a piece of artillery, his thigh bone was dug in two with a piece of misframed gun that brake in shooting, by which he was stricken to the ground.'

George the Red Douglas, the brave Earl of Angus, fell wounded at the King's side, but retained his consciousness and recovered later.

Seth Liddell and Nurse Sprat ran up with a tourniquet in a desperate attempt to save the life of the cruel and turbulent king, but he died hastily while screaming scorn on the blasted English.

Kate Sprat fell to the ground and burst into tears, whilst Seth tried to pick up the pieces.

Seth thought later that the death of the despotic king, whose reign had been littered with the foul murder of Douglases, would enhance the power of the politically-minded dowager queen, in lieu of her devil-child of a son. Indeed, on her orders, Roxburghe Castle was speedily obliterated from history, apart from a small fragment of wall.

Sansa Liddell arrived with her hawk-eyed employer in his carriage while the castle was still turning to dust. They were both upset beyond belief when the Scots proceeded to destroy the remains of the once thriving Royal Burgh of Roxburghe at the confluence of the Teviot and the Tweed.

A few days later, Seth and Sansa dutifully waited by the Queen Joan Beaufort Tavern outside nearby Kelso Abbey as the gnome-faced James the Third was crowned King of Scotland while soiling his breeks. The monks tried to preserve the drips of shit on the tiles by the altar for posterity, and a eunuch from Turkey collected the drips in a porcelain bowl. When Seth and Sansa heard about that, they found some dark comedy in it. The head of the King's deceased English grandmother Joan, which was depicted on the sign outside the tavern, seemed to droop in displeasure.

Meanwhile, the ghosts of the anonymous, cut-throat, English living dead rode one more time across the Cheviots to derelict Roxburghe by the swan-ridden Tweed while the down-trodden inhabitants of Jedburghe quivered in fear of the Yorkist torch.

During October 1460, Seth Liddell was to learn that the devilish dowager queen, Mary of Guelders, had exploited a loophole in canon law that permitted her to supplicate the highly suspicious Pope Pius the Second for the annexation of the House of the Holy Trinity at Soutra to her Trinity College Foundation. His sister Sansa was shocked out of her mind when she realised that the revenues from the lands and estates controlled by Stephen Fleming would thereby be transferred into Queen Mary's own miserable coffers.

The politically astute Seth Liddell was aghast at these measures. He perceived the beginning of the downfall of the House of the Holy Trinity, as skilled physicians left and pirate builders began to remove the bricks.

Queen Mary tried to cunningly justify her claims by referring to the appalling, though unspecified, scandals which surrounded the evil Master.

The meticulous Pope Pius travelled incognito to Marseilles to consult with the perceptive Duncan Le Cottier on these contentious matters. His Holiness told Duncan that he was appalled by the dowager queen's request, particularly as he'd himself been well-treated on the Soutra after he'd injured his legs in the icy snow upon landing at Dunbar on a spying mission all those years previously.

While Duncan and the pope were in close agreement on these issues, Duncan saw fit to mention Stephen Fleming's deviant behaviours in the Soutra friary during the 1430s. As this confirmed that Fleming was an evil renegade, Pius grudgingly gave way to the prevalent political forces in Scotland, though he regretted his decision until his death.

During March 1462, Sansa heard that the forceful dowager queen had issued a charter detailing a constitution for Trinity College, while allocating sparse resources to the Soutra. The Abbey Hospital on that celebrated hill had by then become a skeleton of its former self and in large part only treated people from the local community. Seth only visited the small hospice occasionally.

Trinity College's Kirk and Hospital opened to great fanfare as 1460 drew to a close, and Seth Liddell's brilliant medical career moved in a somewhat different direction. Unknown to Seth, his noble cousin Lord Lulach de Liddell felt set to transfer to Trinity College from his eminent position in St. Leonard's Hospital in St. Andrews. A new era in Scottish medicine had begun.

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