The King’s Witches, page 3
I am sweating from the walk, for it’s a braw day. You’d call it a belter, Ma. The August sun beats down and bounces off the low tide and the wet beach. The gulls are hot and crabbit and swoop and screech, hunting for dead things. My hands ache from lugging my bags already, and I’d aye stop for a rest but the Kincaids need me at great speed. I first heard about the vacancy at kirk; all the lassies were gossiping about it, lifting their psalters and ducking their heads to hide their lips. The Kincaids’ old maid ran off in disgrace and Guidwife Kincaid was at her wits’ end. It is better to trust the Lord than put confidence in man.
After the service I sought out Guidwife Kincaid and found her in the kirkyard. She was standing in a huddle of guidwives all grumbling about their aches and their husbands and their hoorish maids. Her lassie Hazel stood nearby with all the other well-to-do girls, spying on the farm boys from under their caps.
I’d caught Guidwife Kincaid’s eye and she’d stepped away, irritated at the interruption.
‘I’ll come and be your maid,’ I told her, mustering up all the bravery I could find. ‘I’m guid with brushes and cloths and laundering paddles, and I don’t take more than my fair share at the dinner table. And I don’t take fright at spiders and mice, but I’ll tell you now, I’m terrible feared of wasps.’
She’d looked me up and down and I’d wished I’d washed my face that morning. She wore a cream fustian coif, unfussy but expensive-looking, knotted particularly tight under her chin as if someone might steal it.
‘I need a lass about the house who can get out of bed on time and knows better than to complain about everything. But I pay a decent wage, with bed and board, and I provide three kirtles – two for work and one for best. Master Kincaid deals with the wasps, but you’ll be up at five doing the hearths. Do you think you can manage that?’
I thought I could manage that.
‘And have you a sweetheart? For I don’t want any more maids getting themselves into trouble.’
I shook my head. I’d assisted Ma so long that my twenty-two summers had passed with no sweetheart. The way Ma was, odd and missing half her teeth, folk visited when they needed to, not because they wanted to. I hope that’s why no sweetheart came, for the alternative – that I am too plain a dumpling to get a marriage proposal, even from a drunkard or an idiot or that lad who cleans the ferryboats, the one with the lugs like jug handles – is no cheery thought.
Guidwife Kincaid nodded, looking satisfied. ‘I was sorry to hear about your ma,’ she added, her voice low. ‘Your ma was a cunning wifie – have you her knowledge?’
I wondered what charmes Guidwife Kincaid had ever needed, because I couldn’t recall her come knocking at our door.
‘I have some knowledge,’ I said. ‘But she was still teaching me when she passed, and her healing was never enough to make ends meet.’
‘Well, we all must make ends meet somehow,’ she said, then she straightened herself. ‘You can start with us right away. Guid news, Hazel,’ she called to her daughter. ‘A new maid, so you won’t have to do the scrubbing and the fires.’
The other guidwives laughed and said Hazel Kincaid wouldn’t know how to lay a fire, even if it was so cold hell was freezing over. Hazel dragged her gaze from the farm boys and stared at me with open curiosity, before turning to Guidwife Kincaid.
‘If she has the cunning wifie’s gift,’ she said, ‘that might be a blessing on us all.’
It takes three raps of the Kincaids’ brass door-knocker before anyone comes, and I am beginning to lose my nerve. The front garden is walled and filled with tall, shady trees that nod down at the village, most pleased with themselves. I haven’t been in a nice house before, and I’m worrying if I should take off my pattens when the door swings open and I am faced with a short man with curly silver hair and a red bulbous nose, upon which are balanced a pair of eyeglasses, slightly askew, giving his face the appearance of a set of weighing scales.
‘No vagrants,’ he says, adjusting his spectacles. ‘There are alms down at the kirk, and you should take yourself there before I have you whipped for trespassing.’
‘I’m not a vagrant, sir,’ I stammer, ‘I am Mistress Jura Craig, come at the guidwife’s summoning to work as your new maid.’
The man runs his fingers over his moustache.
‘My new maid,’ he says, slowly. He takes off his eyeglasses and lets his gaze slide over me. ‘You look like a beggar.’
‘I most certainly am not, sir,’ I tell him. ‘I am from down in North Berwick village and I have never begged in my life.
‘Have I seen you in kirk?’ he asks.
‘I’m there every week,’ I say, ‘and so are you, Master Kincaid, as I always see you in the front pew, worshipping God Almighty in the most devout way, as I do myself.’
He looks satisfied at this and stands back, allowing me into the cool, dark hallway. The rush mats are clean and the air has the faint scent of lavender, but I don’t see any, nor any ornaments or pictures at all, save for a single small looking-glass hung by the door. This is a house without fripperies.
‘The maid’s chamber is on the top floor,’ he says. ‘I’ll take you up. The mistress and Hazel are down in the town, and Lord knows when they’ll be back.
I don’t know what masters should and shouldn’t do with their maids, which is why I don’t tell Baillie Kincaid that I’ll wait for them to get back or ask him to go and find Cook. Instead I let Baillie Kincaid show me up to my chamber, and that is when the trouble with him starts.
Chapter Five
JURA
The Kincaids seem odd to me, but mibbie I’m the odd one and, having been raised in a home with a drinker and a cunning wifie, I don’t know right from wrong.
Most I ever see of the mistress is the hump of her back, and that suits me fine. She passes her instructions through Cook, and Betsy the housekeeper, and they have an abhorrence of all things slovenly – which includes dirty fingernails and slouching and sniffing – so much that within the week I have lost all my habits.
Hazel Kincaid is pasty-faced, but with an angry-looking rash on her foreheid that I am desperate to dab a poultice on. She is tutored in reading and writing and numbers twice a week, and has reached the age of sixteen, which is marrying age, yet I hear no talk of any arrangements. The Kincaids also detest beauty and art in all its forms and will not adorn their home with anything but candlesticks and books – the plainer and the holier, the better. I think of the sea-shells and smooth pebbles and bottles and jars that adorned our wee cottage and I consider it most sad, not to like nice things.
Master Kincaid is a problem.
It started in my attic room on that first day. He watched at the door as I took in my new surroundings. The creaky floorboards and the low eaves and the small window that looks right across the Firth of Forth to the Bass Rock and to Fife. A cream wool blanket on the bed and a thin grey shawl hanging over a chair. I thanked him, expecting him to take his leave. He did not.
‘The last maid left that shawl,’ he said, nodding to it. ‘I suppose it’s yours now.’
‘I’ll hang it up when I unpack,’ I replied, folding my arms and waiting for him to go.
‘She was a wicked girl, the last maid,’ he said. ‘She was idle and sluttish and let the fishermen have their way with her. We cannot have wickedness under this roof.’
‘I don’t plan on being wicked, sir,’ I said.
‘I shall be watching you,’ he warned. ‘The mistress thinks she’s in charge of this household, but she’s not. I am the master of this house.’
And he has been true to his word. He watches me. He watches my arse as I clean the fireplace in his study, and he watches my hands as I serve him his supper, and he watches my face to see how much it unsettles me.
I do not let him know how much it unsettles me.
By the time the Kincaids have provided me with new kirtles and Bristol grey soap and two pristine white caps, I hardly recognize myself. The work is no more taxing than looking after a dying ma and a drinking da. I am up at five to do the fires, and I spend most of the day dusting and sweeping and cleaning kitchen pots and chamberpots, and trying to avoid scalding myself on the big pottage cauldron that hangs over the hearth in the middle of the kitchen.
Master Kincaid pays me my wages on a Friday morning, watching my bosom as I count the pennies out, and I keep them in a drawstring bag in the bottom drawer in my room. It was the same drawstring bag that Ma kept her pennies in, from the people who came to the door. She had to keep it hidden from Da, else he would have drunk it.
‘Will you visit your da on your day off?’ Hazel Kincaid has an open curiosity about me. Between her and the master, I feel like a specimen in one of Ma’s jars.
‘Perhaps,’ I lie. I could take him some pennies, but I would rather go to the kirkyard and take flowers to Ma’s grave, or sit by the beach and think of her and share my grief with the wind that comes in off the Forth, for both elements are wild and can take you unawares.
‘Is it true your ma could cure all manner of sicknesses?’ Hazel comes closer. She has a way of breathing through her mouth that is unsettling and makes her breath smell a wee bit foosty.
‘She knew inchantments and charmes,’ I say.
Hazel touches her forehead where the rash is flaring.
‘You want a poultice on that,’ I suggest.
‘Ma’s tried giving me poultices. They don’t work,’ she replies.
‘Then you need one of my poultices,’ I say. ‘I’m going to market on my day off. Meet me down there and we’ll have a wee daunder and get something together.’
There’s a heaving crowd at Saturday market. I’ve had my sit on the beach and my think about Ma and I’ve taken a posy of daisies to her grave. No sign of any blooms from Da. I almost go to the cottage, but I am scared he’ll be in such a state that I’ll get caught up with his troubles and I’ll never leave again. I have a nice yellow kirtle on, the colour of sunshine, bound firm at the bodice. My face shines from the Bristol grey soap, and my hair is plaited under my cap.
Hazel is waiting for me. We daunder to the ribbon stall and buy a ribbon each. She buys a white one and I buy a red one. Red is for love. Ribbons are for binding, but I’m not thinking of that when I buy it; I’m only thinking of my hair, which is a fine shade of brown like chestnuts, if I do say so myself, and about the bonniest thing about me.
Next we buy oats and honey for the poultice I will give her, but I have found the extra ingredient we need on the beach: a stone that leaves white marks like chalk. I show it to Hazel.
‘Is it for a spell?’ She looks worried. ‘I don’t want anything divvilish.’
‘It is nothing to do with the Divvil,’ I tell her. ‘He has no interest in you or me.’
We pass the poultry stall before we leave, piled with caged chickens and boxes of eggs. Robbie, Poulterer Bathgate’s son, winks at us. Hazel pulls her cap over her rash and blushes so bright I can feel the heat coming off her.
‘How about half a dozen eggs for tonight’s supper? I’ve saved my best ones for you,’ he calls to Hazel and she blushes even harder.
‘We have our own chickens up at the Kincaids’,’ I tell him.
‘Jura Craig,’ he says, ‘I’d hardly recognized you, looking so smart.’
Hazel bristles.
‘It’s very cheeky to comment on a lassie’s appearance,’ I tell him. ‘Especially when your boots are covered in chicken shit.’
He laughs and wraps two eggs in a cloth. ‘Take these,’ he says, ‘by way of an apology. But I can’t help admiring your fine looks today.’
Hazel flounces off. I take the eggs. I have no shame when it comes to free food. Robbie smiles as he watches me. Brown eyes, bright and light-brown hair turning fair at the tips – a funny combination, like sweet on top of savoury. Hazel has disappeared into the crowd.
‘So you are with the Kincaids now,’ he says. ‘You should watch old Baillie Kincaid. He gets through a lot of maids.’
‘I can look after myself,’ I reply.
He brushes his fringe out of his eyes. Sweet on top of savoury. I wish I had my new red ribbon in my hair. He lowers his voice, so I have to lean in.
‘Come and meet me at start of the Berwick Law footpath tonight and I’ll bring you something special that you’ve never seen in your life,’ he suggests.
‘Never in a million years,’ I say. Everyone knows you don’t go there at night unless you’re up to no guid, and everyone knows that when boys brag of special somethings, they are talking about their pricks.
‘I’ll be there tonight, waiting anyway,’ he says. ‘With a treat.’
‘Pff, what treats does a poulterer’s laddie know of?’ I answer, thinking he’ll bring another egg, in full expectation of a grope.
He sees the thoughts behind my eyes.
‘I’m a gentleman, I promise you that. But have you ever tasted Tipsy Laird?’
As soon as he says it, I can taste it. Cream and whisky and raspberries spring to my tongue. He sees that thought too.
‘My ma makes the best. I’ll bring a dish of it tonight,’ he says. ‘Tipsy Laird under the moon. Nine o’clock. Come on, we’ll have a laugh.’
Hazel is up the road ahead of me, but I catch her up.
‘What was he saying?’ she asks.
‘Nothing of any importance,’ I say.
I take the eggs back to Master Kincaid’s kitchen, crack them into a cup, whisk them and drink them. Fresh and thick and yellow. I decide that I will go to Berwick Law. It’s about time I did something with a lad.
I leave just before nine, telling Cook I am off out for a walk. She eyes me suspiciously, but says nothing. The sun is setting, bathing the fields pink. The sheep are settling, and the air is high with the first flutter of bats.
Robbie is waiting with a bright candle-lantern and a glass dish and he looks as daft as I feel.
‘I thought you wouldn’t come,’ he says.
‘I’m only here for the Tipsy Laird,’ I reply.
He lets me eat it all. Och, it is some tasty dish, that Tipsy Laird! I have never supped the like. I end up with cream on my fingers and lick it off each and every one of them, and I think Robbie Bathgate’s eyes will pop out of his heid, watching me do that.
‘Don’t tell Hazel Kincaid about this,’ I say. ‘In fact, don’t you tell anyone.’
‘I’ll not tell a soul,’ he says, looking friskier by the minute. ‘Shall we have a bit of a kiss?’
Afterwards, when I get to bed at midnight, my lips tingling from his kisses, I tie a knot in the red ribbon, to keep him true to me. No lass wants to be unwed at twenty-two. Och, Robbie won’t want to marry me, what with him being a poulterer’s boy and me being the lass of the cunning wifie. But it’s worth a try. Ribbon magic is simple enough to do.
19th August 1589
From George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal
To His High and Mighty Majesty, King James
the Sixth of Scotland, at Holyroodhouse
Sir – We have safely arrived, and preparations are complete for the proxy ceremony. Your bride is as I remembered from the negotiations: sweet in nature but quite nervous, which is a trait she will have to overcome. Her spoken Scots is still weak, so it was wise to bring Lord Henry, even though we had our doubts about his maturity for such a task. His knowledge of the Danish language appears to be as good as he claimed it to be, for they certainly seem to have no problem in understanding him. Her own chief lady-of-the-bedchamber, a Mistress Kirsten Sørensen, is also fluent. But she has a shrewdness about her that I cannot quite make up my mind about.
We are now in possession of the dowry, which means the ceremony can go ahead and I am most honoured, Your Majesty, to be saying the vows on your behalf.
I enclose details of the Danish fleet, so that you can oversee the preparations for the welcoming parades and make space at Holyroodhouse.
Kissing Your Majesty’s hand, I rest ever your most humble servant.
Inventory of the fleet:
Led by Josaphad (the flagship), Gideon, Samson, Joshua, Dragon, Raphael, St Michael, Gabriel, Lille Fortuna, Mouse, Rose, Falcon of Birren, Blue Lion, Blaa Due and Hvide Due.
On the Gideon with Her Royal Highness: Peder Munk, admiral of the fleet.
Two Danish ambassadors
Her Royal Highness’s goldsmith (he will not travel on any other ship, despite offers)
Keeper of Her Royal Highness’s wardrobe
One tailor
Three of Her Royal Highness’s ladies
Three servants
One small bird, called a canary, in a cage that travels with Her Royal Highness (this was a last-minute request, and I do feel it is necessary to catalogue all livestock in transit, even pets)
The most valuable cargo will be sent on the Raphael:
Six horses
One riding carriage of solid silver with upholstery of gold and purple velvet, to carry you both from the Port of Leith to Holyroodhouse (this is quite a sensational carriage, Your Majesty. I have viewed it myself).
Other sundry items of Her Royal Highness’s wardrobe and chambers (a multitude of gowns, slippers, boots, furs and hats; the jewellery is being catalogued separately by the goldsmith).
In addition: I will travel on the Gideon with Her Royal Highness, as planned, and I will bring Lord Henry, and he will use the days at sea to coach Her Royal Highness in the language.
There had been a concern over the seaworthiness of the Gideon, but our own carpenters have inspected it themselves and have declared it to be in robust shape.
Chapter Six
ANNA
Kronborg Castle, Denmark
August 1589
We have the proxy ceremony in the chapel at Kronborg, as though it was a real wedding.
