Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [269]
He tried to dissuade him. Conducting choirs developed the shoulders, but the rest of Whistle Willie’s appearance—furious eyes, tousled locks and meagre physique—was more the March hare than the March harrier.
The insult (sweetly transmitted at once) displeased the musician. ‘I ride more than you do, back and forth to bloody St Andrews. If I can just bring back some altos, I wouldn’t need to ride quite as much.’
‘You won’t get any altos at Eccles,’ said Nicholas. ‘If you get three cracked sopranos, you’ll be lucky.’ The Prioress, by name Euphemia, was a half-sister of the late Bishop Kennedy and aged sixty at least. Ysabeau, the only other nun he had heard of, had died touching eighty.
‘Then I’ll go to Coldingham,’ Roger said.
This was defiant idiocy. The King had enraged the entire wealthy foundation of Coldingham and their patrons the Homes by milking the monastery to fund Willie’s Chapel Royal music.
There was no point in going into all that. Nicholas said, ‘Well, you’re on your own if you do. I’m not going to Eccles by the east coast. And they won’t have any altos there anyway: they’ll have moved them somewhere safe with their gold cups and their charters.’ Crackbene’s wife had once worked at Coldingham, in between being a wet nurse. She was the best contralto Willie had ever had: he used to say her neck resonated down to her navel; a statement with which Crackbene took serious issue, the first time he heard it.
After some persuasion, Willie agreed that Coldingham was too far, but still insisted on coming to Eccles. So be it.
It was a cheerful enough ride: south through Dalkeith and up the steep hill of Soutra, from which all the world could be seen, from the distant smoke of the town to the far hills of Fife, with the flat grey Forth lying between; from the expanse of the wide Eastern Sea to the Bass Rock close to its shore, thumbing its nose at the cone of North Berwick Law. Then they entered the hills. Every track over the Lammermuirs was busy with traffic both ways: troops like their own, going south with their arms and their provisions, and some coming the opposite way, with their service over. There were also elderly people, and younger women with children, of the kind who regularly moved out during raids. Others took shelter in the nearest stone keep of their lord.
Townspeople did much the same. You could defend your town for a while, but it was liable to fall, or be encouraged to surrender. Before that moment came, the provident took to the hills, or got themselves and their goods into the castle. And a long, successful siege of a castle was a different matter.
Genoa was the supreme example of that: the citadel could hold out for weeks, while the town was in quite different hands. Trebizond had done it while Nicholas was there: he had laid the plans that let the Turks overrun the town, while the army stayed safe in the fortress. Edinburgh had employed the strategy over and over, emerging to rebuild its houses once the besieger had gone. And, of course, Berwick-upon-Tweed, like Famagusta, had provided the theatre for most types of assault: the decision by single combat, the pitched battle, the siege, the contingency pact, the dialogue with hostages. It changed with people, and circumstances. It didn’t change.
Jodi was looking at him. For a boy, it ought to be a great day: Nicholas emerged from his thoughts and proceeded to make it so. Julius capped all his stories. Willie had unpacked his whistles and drums and was frightening the horses. They rode through the small township of Lauder, or meant to, but were persuaded to stop and eat by some of the farmers he knew, all of them spilling out of the tavern into the yard that sloped down to the merry, chuckling Leader, on its way through its broad vale. Willie took out his whistle and played, sweet as a lark, until he had them singing and clapping at the sheer exuberance of it, and then dancing with each other, lumbering men, while he tripped out a tune, stopping to swill his free ale.
They all knew Willie Roger.