Friend & Foe (16 page)

‘Aye, very like,’ scowled Hew. His scorn for Robert Wood gave way to sympathy for George: the name of
George Buchanan
was a cruel trial to the boy, and one which plagued him daily in his life at college.

‘He is too old now for a tutor,’ Clare went on. ‘Our family has concluded he must have a curator, to manage his affairs until he comes of age.’

Hew nodded. ‘That is usual, in this kind of case. Your father’s man of law will draw the papers up. What do you want of me?’ He
saw that she wanted a common man of law, perhaps a friend for George. Then had she ever wanted more?

‘It is . . . it seems proper to us that the person to take charge is my husband, Robert Wood. But George will have a say in the choice of his curator. He is not a bairn, though he behaves as one. For some reason, it appears that he does not like my husband. When Robert is put forward, he is likely to refuse him.’

‘What does your father think?’

‘My father is not well enough to venture his opinion. But I hoped that you might explain to George that it is in his best interests to allow Robert Wood to be his curator. George will accept it, if it comes from you.’

‘Did your husband tell you to ask me this?’ Hew demanded. ‘Did he send you, Clare?’

She did not answer straight. ‘It is for the best,’ she said.

‘Tell him, the answer is no.’

‘I thought you were my friend. I know you do not care for Robert, but I thought you cared for George. I did not think you would refuse this,’ Clare accused him, ‘out of spite.’

‘You asked me to do well by George. And so I shall,’ he said. ‘I will not deliver George, and his father’s fortune, into Robert’s hands so that he may add them to the other things he owns – his house, his mill, his dogs and lands, his horses and his wife. Are you feared to tell him, Clare? Frightened to go back?’

‘You do not understand.’

Clare was on her feet. Tears pricked in her eyes.

‘If you are afeared of him, then come with me to Kenly Green, and I will see you safe.’

She was crying now. ‘Please, Hew, let it be.’

‘Look me in the eye, and tell me from the heart that you are not afraid of him, and I will let you be. Or, if you will, I will advise your brother to take you as his curator – no better and more proper than a loving sister to fulfil that role – if you can convince me that you are not in his thrall. I do not think you can.’ He reached out for her hand.

‘You do not understand,’ Clare repeated softly. ‘Robert is my husband, and I am his wife. He is my life. And I am with child.’

He walked her to the gate, of course. He would not for the world have let her go alone. He hid from her as best he could the turmoil in his heart.

The students saw them there, returning from the lecture to the dinner hall. Roger nudged his friend. ‘Is that your sister, George?’

With mingled pride and shame, George confessed it was. ‘She is not meant to come here.’

‘Aye, but she is bonny though. I’m not surprised he likes her.’

Uncertain whether to be flattered or offended, George puffed out his chest. ‘She’s marrit to a very wealthy man. His brother is—’

‘The coroner. You said. Ask what she was doing here.’

‘I cannot,’ bleated George.

‘Of course ye can,’ Roger urged. ‘She is your sister, not his. Mebbe he is going out. Ask if he will play at caich.’

He pushed George in Hew’s path, so that Hew stopped short, and George was forced, against his will, to raise his eyes and cap to him, ‘
Mihi ignosce, Magister
.’

‘Libenter
, George,’ Hew responded absently. He barely saw the boys.

‘Salve, Magister
. Was that my sister?’ George persisted.

Hew replied, ‘It was. She will not come again – at your own request.’ In Latin, he was terser than he was in Scots, and George had found his manner difficult to read. He retreated back to Roger, who whispered, sympathetically, ‘They have had a falling out, and he blames it on you. No more caich for George.’

‘Shut your mouth,’ said George. ‘It does not depend on that.’

‘Oh aye? Ask him, then!’

George was in a hard place then, for he could not avoid the risk of loss of face. He knew, before he started, that the case was hopeless.

‘Salve, Magister
. . .’

‘George. What is it now?’

‘Are you going out? Will you take me with you, to the tennis court?’

‘Not today.’

‘But you will take me with you, when you do?’

Hew could not mistake the plea in George’s voice, for even in the Latin, it was clearly audible. He chose his answer carefully. ‘I do not think so, George. Your regent tells me you are failing in your Cicero, and laggard at your books. So no more play at tennis for a while.’

George slunk back so woebegone that Roger almost pitied him. ‘Did I not tell you so?’

‘You shut your mouth,’ said George.

‘I can help you with your Latin, if you like,’ Roger offered kindly. ‘For I am awfy guid at it.’

‘Oh, are you, then?’ George turned upon his friend in a show of such fierce spirit it took Roger by surprise. ‘If you are so clever, then how come they found you out? We all ken what ye did. But folk are too decent and polite to point it out. And you were in the shit, all right. If you are as cunning as you think you are, how come that they caught you there?’

‘Because he . . .’ Roger stopped and checked himself, for they were speaking Scots. ‘Because, you silly loun, I
wanted
to be caught.’

Chapter 16

Stirring the Pot

Roger took some care with the writing of his letter. The paper he acquired from Hew, who bought the whitest quairs from Italy and France. Though it was expensive, and of the finest quality, Hew had let him help himself to several precious sheets. He gave him too a pot of alum mixed with gum and showed him how to rub the resin on the paper, so to staunch the grain before it met the ink. Roger had explained that he was writing to his mother, to inform her of the progress he had made. ‘Tell her,’ Hew suggested, ‘that Doctor Locke, our principal, is well disposed and pleased with you, and that I am, too.’

‘Thank you, sir, I will.’

‘You like it here, I think?’

‘Doctor Locke has shown me his anatomies and he has let me help him in some of his experiments.’

It was just as Hew had hoped. Giles had encouraged Roger to pursue his interests, and to hone his art and skills, under careful watch. The boy had thrived and blossomed underneath his hand. There were no more nighttime wanderings, no dismembered creatures kept below his bed. Even Roger’s colour had improved, to a healthsome, human pink, and he had put on weight, as though he was an acolyte, a miniature of Giles.

‘You have done full well, and will make your mother proud. Sign your name like this, in a fair italic script.’ Hew showed to him the shape of it, and how to cut the pen. ‘And she will see at once you have the makings of a scholar, and a proper man. But soon it will be summer, and the end of term. Will you not go home?’

‘At Lammas, sir,’ the boy agreed. ‘But I want to have the letter come to her before that, so that she will look out for my coming with a gladsome heart, not troubled with the knowledge that I am a trial to her.’

Hew was touched by this. ‘Then so much shall she have, and more than that besides, for I myself shall write, with none but good report of you, and so will Doctor Locke.’

‘You are kind, Magister. She will be amazed. She is used to hearing ill of me, and all good things and welcome of my brother, James. They say that I am like my father, sir.’

For the first time in Hew’s hearing he had mentioned Richard. Hew responded tactfully. ‘You are like him in a way, a good way, as I think. There were qualities in him I recognise in you, of subtlety, and wit, of which there is no cause for you to feel ashamed, and if he saw you now, he would well approve of you.’

He could not tell the feeling woken by his words, for Roger looked away. ‘May I seal my letter with the college seal?’

The master hesitated. ‘Why would you want to do that?’

‘Because,’ the boy explained, ‘when my mother sees the paper, and the college seal, she will think the worst. She will think I am dismissed, as I was from St Leonard’s, and will open up the letter in a tremble and in fear, to read that I am grown into a scholar and a man, and all well and approved of, by the college stamp. When she has feared the worst, and finds the best of news, then think you how relieved and contented she will be.’

Hew had laughed aloud. ‘What heartless trick is that, from a gentle mother’s son! You are a wicked boy. But take it, if you will. My blessing to your mother, and to your sister, Grace.’

He gave the boy use of the seal, by which the college papers often were enclosed, the seal of his approval, sealing his own fate.

Roger wrote his letter on a quiet afternoon, when the rest of the students were about their play. George was at the butts, practising his archery. Left to his own devices, George would rather play at caich, but Giles declared it high time he resumed the bow.

‘Are ye sure ye will not come?’

Roger shook his head. ‘No. I have a headache.’

‘You should go to Mistress Meg. She will give you something for it.’

George Buchanan was a milksop, to Roger’s turn of mind, and, since his accident, was often sullen sick. He had stayed for several weeks at the house of Doctor Locke, where the doctor’s wife had suffered and indulged him, with a plethora of potions, pessaries and pills. At the smallest slip or snuffle, he was grening to go back there. But he was not, considered Roger, altogether bad. With a little education, he might make a decent friend. All he wanted was direction, and a kick up the backside.

‘What I need is rest.’

George left him in peace, to settle to his task. He placed Hew’s paper carefully upon the writing slope, and began to write the letter he had carried in his head, embellished and elaborated, over several days.

‘Sir . . .’

It was hard to work out how he should begin. Not hard to put what followed, with the bitterness of gall, that flowed from Roger’s pen as easily as ink.

‘Forgive me for the plainness of my words. I see no other course but to write to you direct, to tell you, you are wronged. If such hurt were done to me, then I would hope to ken of it, and see the limmar shamed and stripped, and face the justice he has courted, routed and scorned.

‘I write this not from malice nor from spite, but to save you from that shame, that no man whisper cuckold when your back is turned, or call you for a coward when ye do not ken. Sir, the truth of it is that Master Hew Cullan has mellit with your wife, here at the college where he is professor, and also at the house of his brother Doctor Locke.

‘This I have witnessed with my own eyes, coming from the lecture with my Euclid in my hand.’

The Euclid, Roger reasoned, was a clever touch. It hinted that the writer was Professor Bartie Groat, or someone else proficient in the mathematics.

‘I saw from a window Mistress Clare Buchanan, standing in our square, supposing that she came to seek her brother George. She comes often there, on the understanding that her brother is not well, and in truth, he is a mauchtless, feeble boy, that would fare the better were he not indulged, and if ye have the governance of him, and would see him strong, ye would do well to relieve him o the care of women, and put him to strait learning how to be a man, and weather him with stripes, or ye will find the miniard weeping wi’ the lassies. He wants toughening up.’

The digression on George – though satisfying in itself, and what a college master ought to wish to say – had taken Roger some way from the task in hand. He hoped that George would benefit, and suffer on the way, as he retraced his steps.

‘The rule is, women may not pass into the square, and I know not how she comes there, and it were not by the express command of Master Hew, for when the principal Giles Locke is out of the college Master Hew is the first master and is left in charge. I would swear, sir, that Professor Locke kens nothing of her visits, which occur when he is with a patient, or absent from the town on business of the Crown, which since he is a great important man, is often, sir. And it is on those occasions, as though there were some secret signal made and kept betwixt them, that Mistress Clare Buchanan calls upon her brother, or, as I would have it, to engage with Master Hew, such dealings and exchanges as would make a brave man blush.

‘You will ask me, I doubt, what proof do I have? The answer is the evidence of my ain ears and eyes. For to see her there – standing in our courtyard like a common whore – you maun forgive, sir, the excess and violence of the phrase, but my fears are for her brother and the students in the college, any one of whom might see and be corrupted, wherefore in my heart I felt I must speak out. I came
running from my staircase to cry fie upon her, when I saw Master Hew come stealing from the chapel – aye, from such a place – who caught her by the waist and lisped in her lug,
Ah, sweet luvit lass. Come in to my chamber; let us steir the pot.’

Roger read this back, and was unconvinced. He did not think it likely Hew would have asked Clare to come and stir the pot with him. This part was the hardest part to write; unlike his scorn for George, and bitterness to Hew, which were fierce and genuine, he must make it up. Of what went on between a lad and lass, he had no experience. And as to what Hew might have said to Clare, or Clare might have replied, he had no idea, and could not ask of George. Most of what he heard from Hew, intelligent and kindly meant, was spoken in the Latin tongue. Though there were Latin epithets of a thrilling filthiness, sniggered in the cloisters and exchanged in the latrines, a woman was unlikely to respond to those. He cut out the last part, and began afresh.

‘He stole upon her as she waited, watching for the prayers to end, and dropped his kisses, soft, upon her gentle neck. He took her hand and she went willing, up the turret stair. And there the two were closeted, all that afternoon.’

He hoped that was enough. It was the mirror of a moment, far off in his mind, where his father kissed his mother, coming home from work on a quiet summer evening; that was long ago, before his world had changed.

Among the letters of the college, this was duly passed, and delivered by the carrier to the hand of Robert Wood. Robert owned farmland and a country house in the valley that lay south beyond the Kinness Burn, together with the New Mill, lying to its west, which had caused him so much trouble when the miller drowned. Robert did not count the loss in simple human terms, but in cost and inconvenience, which had been considerable. The New mill had stood idle for the space of several months. Since it was not channelled to the common lade, its stopping had no impact on the other mills, but to increase their profits, while his own ran still. The
New Mill pond grew stagnant, and a red rust settled over its machinery, its locks and levers seized, and would not turn again. When Robert found a miller to take it over at last, it had to be restored. The rents were much reduced, and he had trouble in impressing on the tenants to his land, who took their corn elsewhere, that their ancient obligations still applied. His profits had run through his hands, like the finest white flour through a sieve. To make matters worse, his hopes of a windmill, coming on a ship, had been cruelly dashed. Rightly or wrongly, he blamed that on Hew.

Since Robert Wood was no man’s fool, he recognised the letter for the fraud it was. The content left him irritated, rather than dismayed. It did not surprise him in the least that someone at the college shared his rage at Hew, and his contempt for George. He resented, nonetheless, the slur against his wife. He resolved to see the writer choke upon his words, which Robert would serve up to him when he was least expecting it, when he would find the cold cuts rising in his gorge. For Robert Wood was not a man who acted, fierce and hotly, in a flash of rage. He was calculating always, weighing up the cost, and how he could adapt things to his own advantage, and he was unpredictable and dangerous for that. He locked the letter in his desk, while he bided time, deciding what to do.

The letter in the desk was not disposed to cool. For each time he looked back on Clare’s fair gentle face, or bent to take her kiss, he sensed it glowing hot, like a spark of kindling cool ash could not quell. He felt it like a spelk, that had worked into his thumb, until he knew there was no remedy, but to take the pincers, heat them in the fire, and tweak the malice out. He could see no option but to put Clare to the test, which, since she was innocent, she would surely pass. Then he would take a dog leash to her brother George, and find out who the liar was, hiding in his tails.

Clare was at her sewing, cutting out small clothes.

‘What are you making?’ he asked her.

‘Some things for the babby.’ She broke off, confused, at the look on his face. ‘Is it too soon, d’ye think?’

Robert Wood thought it was not soon enough. It had taken her a while to fall for his child. He had sent her to consult with the professor, Doctor Locke, and also with his wife, each of whom shared remedies and views of different kinds. Doctor Locke prescribed a diet, which Robert had enforced on her, intended to provoke the getting of a boy. Meg commended patience; they had not been married long. But what remedy was that? He knew the fault could not have lain with him, for he dealt with his wife daily, if he felt like it or not, and did her through and thoroughly, both old and modern style. Robert knew he came from solid breeding stock: his brother Andrew Wood had sired a flock of weans. They never saw his wife without she had a bellyful.

He bent down over Clare, picked up a scrap of lace.

‘I had it from Meg Cullan. Her brother brought it back for her, when he went out to Flanders. I thought that it might trim a sarket or a cap,’ she told him, guilelessly.

‘Did you go to the college, like we said?’

He sensed a shifting, then. A small prick up of fear. But there was nothing, surely, Clare should be afeared of. Had Hew Cullan harmed her?

‘I did what you said.’

‘And you told the lawman he must speak to George?’ He could not bring himself to say the devil’s name.

Clare was wary now. What cause had she had to flush? She was holding scissors, and he took them from her palm. Her felt her small hand shiver, closely clasped in his.

‘I told him. But I do not think he has that influence on George that we had supposed. He may not, after all, be able to persuade him.’

That was a lie, Robert knew. He had spoken with her brother George, when he had his accident. The boy had talked of little but the man of law; his letters since to Clare had shown that nothing changed.

‘Do you mean to say that the lawman has refused? Then I will ask my brother to bring force to bear on both of them. George must be instructed in the course that serves him best.’

‘I wish you will not do that, Robert,’ Clare replied, unhappily. ‘George will come round to understanding it, in his own way, and in his own time. Please do not press him. Such a course will confuse George, and make him resentful. Do not involve Andrew in this.’

He was irked at her, then. To spite her, he said. ‘I know what you did.’ He did not for a moment think that she would fall for it. He saw the flush of colour fading from her face, the flutter of a heartbeat quickening in her breast. ‘What do you mean?’ she said.

‘I took you for my wife.’

‘Robert, I am your wife.’ But she could not conceal, in that faux faint brightness, the quiver in her voice.

‘I never thought a moment, Clare, that you would ever lie to me. Or with another man.’