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  Copyright © 2011 George MacDonald Fraser

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Fraser, George MacDonald, 1925-2008.

  The Candlemass Road / George MacDonald Fraser. p. cm.

  9781616080990

  1. Heirs--Fiction. 2. Border reivers--Fiction. 3. Scotland--History--16th century--Fiction. 4. Great Britain--History--Elizabeth, 1558-1603--Fiction. 5. Scotland--History--16th century--Fiction. 6.

  Scottish Borders (Scotland)--Fiction. 7. Scottish Borders (England and Scotland)--Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6056.R287C36 2011

  823’.914--dc22

  2010039284

  Printed in Canada

  Special thanks to Tom Moss, www.reiverhistory.co.uk, [email protected]. and Bill Ewart, [email protected].

  The Candlemass Road

  George MacDonald Fraser

  IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF

  JOSEPH BAIN

  EDITOR OF THE CALENDAR

  OF BORDER PAPERS

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Title Page

  Dedication

  THE CANDLEMASS ROAD

  Historical postscript

  GLOSSARY

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  THE CANDLEMASS ROAD

  A FELLOW OF CLARE HALL, being in that state where another hour’s tippling should render him swine drunk, asked me, if I had a choice of all mankind that ever lived, which would I choose to sit by me as a guest at the next college feast. I made excuse that I was not of his learned society, but he said all was one for that, and I must choose or be fined in stoupes for the company. Still I would have put him off, for I longed to be quiet in my corner by the fire, away from the babble and ass-laughter of him and his companions, and have no part in their silly conceits designed to show off their wit and learning (and little they had of either) in their cups. They (and I) had been at the great masque “Ignoramus” given before his majesty, to his seeming content if not mine, but it may be that his Latin was better than I knew, or that he laughed out of courtesy, for a windier piece of dullness I never saw than that masque, that was well titled for them that applauded it, being men of the colleges. His majesty clapped patiently, so I clapped too.

  It put them in a learning mood afterwards that were in the buttery, with such follies as what folk lived on the stars, and what part of the anatomy was the seat of mirth, and anon to debating what cup companion they would choose for their feast. One said Julius Caesar, and another St Francis, and others Aristotle and Ptolemy and Roger Bacon, their vanity supposing they could have held equal discourse with these champions and sages, and then seeing me that sat withdrawn, cried out that the old Portingale should speak his mind, “for he hath travelled in his time, and been a priest, too, so sure he is ignorant enough.” Seeing their canary humour, I begged again to be let be.

  “Nay, but ye shall answer, or be fined!” said they. “And after we’ll have the breeches off thee for a sullen old rascal that hops of his left foot. Choose, now, or pay forfeit!”

  Seeing no help, I said if one must sit by me at any feast of theirs, it should be Attila the Hun, so should I be spared their rudeness and intrusion. Some accounted it a good answer, and laughed, but he that had speered at me scowled and said they had none at their feasts but those they might have good of, and I must name another, since Attila was a monstrous beast that none could have any good of, being curst and altogether abominable.

  At this, I, being part drunk myself, said he lied, for good might be had of the worst that ever were, in certain cases. At this he swore that if I could not prove it by logic, I should pay double forfeit and swim in the Cam for my impudence, so let me say how one could have good of Attila or any like him. His fellows grinned and gleeked about me, and some cried, “At him, old Papist!” but others “Confound the Jesuit, he mocks us, to the river with him!” and bade me make good mine argument.

  First, I told them, they should name any two from whom they might hope to have the greatest good (other than Our Lord, for it was not fit to name Him in such a question). They that had named Aristotle and St Francis as their chosen guests again cried out their names, and with those I was content, saying that against them I would justify Attila and another like him, as Chingis Khan or Hulagu (of whom I doubt these scholars had heard, though they cried aye to him). I would do it, I said, on an hypothesis, as thus:

  “Here is any one of you, in a lonely place, as a little cabin in the wilderness, with no neighbours or friends by, and ye are sick and feeble, and with you your wife and two fair daughters.”

  Hereon they cried that being young they had no daughters, and would other men’s daughters do, to give them solace in that lonely place, whereof they doubted not they would soon be enfeebled if not sick! I let them bray it out, and when they were quiet, continued:

  “As ye lie there helpless, there approach three great thieves and murderers that ye know to be crueller than any devils, who will surely torment and slay you and ravish your wife and fair daughters, and take and burn all besides. There is no help for you at all, being at their mercy if they come in, but as ye lie in terror for what is to come, a knock falls on the nether door of your poor cabin, as it may be some wayfarer seeking lodging or refreshment. Aye, and it may be he will lend you aid against your enemies approaching! You bid your wife open in haste. Now tell me, scholars, what men do you hope to see there when she opens? The learned, gentle Aristotle and St Francis the meek, or Attila the great Hun armed cap-a-pie with Chingis at his elbow? From which pair, in your sore need, shall you hope to have the greater good, the saintly philosophers or the lusty men of war?”

  They cried out with scorn that between the enemies before and Attila at their back, it was all one, they should have nothing but evil at the hands of either.

  “Not so,” says I, and bade them look in the chronicles, “for there you shall read that the Scythian and the Mungul both, though in their conquests they were monsters of cruelty that put whole nations to the sword, yet in their private and domestic ways were zealous for good order and discipline of law, being such as would not suffer weak or poor folk to be despoiled or hurt by thieves and ravishers. Aye, of that Chingis was it said that while he carpeted all Asia with bones, yet might a virgin with a bag of gold walk the length of his dominions without harm, so perfect was his governance. So, again I say, who shall better serve you in time of peril, the philosophers who wish you well but cannot front the murderers save with words, or the bloody ravagers of empires who are yet ready to turn their weapons against common spoilers?”

  At this they fell to babbling and dispute, and one fell down drunk crying “Paradox! Paradox!” while another said that for all he knew Aristotle might be a right swashing boy when it came to a fray. I asked would he wager on him with sword and buckler against my two savages, let roaring Francis give what aid he might, and he said, no, not at any odds. And while a few of them held that such as Attila and Chingis would do no good service to any, the more held that I had
made my case, and should not be fined or insulted, but pressed more drink upon me that I durst not refuse for fear of their rough merriment, and called me a jolly old Pope, and how I came home I know not, for they found me sodden among the cabbages in the almshouse garden, and I was two weeks abed thereafter with the sciatica.

  And lying there, and not able to read more than a little for the infirmity of mine eyes that are worn with looking on the world’s wickedness four score years, I fell to meditating on the good that evil men may do, by design or more commonly by chance, and was vexed that I had not told the Clare fellows how this same Attila, through his ravaging of Lombardy, had caused the folk to flee to those lagoons where they made the town of Venice, which is now surely a great state that hath given much of commerce and art to mankind, and all because of Attila his wickedness! Which I doubt not would have confused their debate that was confused enough already with their bowsing. Howbeit, I say, I thought on the good of evildoers, and concluded to my satisfaction that it is not one-thousandth of the evil that good and wise men do with their blundering, well as they intend.

  Thinking on this wise, and looking to mine own past, I remembered sundry instances that I had seen, and in especial the man Waitabout, that I knew only for a little season, yet it changed my life’s course, and indeed had been like to lose my poor life for me, yet was I spared, “by God’s grace”, a phrase I speak now but by habit and long use, for if He hath any grace (or indeed any being at all save in men’s minds only) I have long been removed from it. Which is a blasphemy, as they say, yet I have known worse. No, I am no priest, nor ever was except to the outer eye, for what priest ever doubted, and with long doubting, gave over his belief at last?

  As to the Waitabout, he was no Attila yet had done ill enough in his time, and if he did good it was upon compulsion and for a brief hour only, and still I know not whether it was good or no. But certain it is he was no common man, though common seeming, a robber and slayer and broken wanderer that had in him, I think, the making of a sage if not a saint. He read me a lesson, aye, and so too did my Lady Dacre, though what it was I can hardly tell even now. Yet I would tell of them both that have been out of my mind these many years, saving that visit my lady paid me five years agone, fair and smiling still and brought me a gift of candles of fine Italian wax, though not scented, “for we shall burn no incense between us, nor make graven images neither,” as she said, which was an old jest between us. “A remembrance of Candlemass,” says she, “aye, of the Candlemass road,” and told me they had made a ballad of it, and of what befell betwixt the fires at Triermain, which I marvelled to hear her speak of so lightly. But of Waitabout she spake not at all.

  If I am to tell of that road, I cannot come to it direct, for that would be to begin in medias res, as we clerks say when we mean in the midst of things but wish to awe the commonalty with our learning (give us a fourth tassel, good Lord, for vanity!), but must needs give some preamble, about myself, and then come in proper order to Waitabout, or Archie Noble as his name was, called Lang Archie, or Wait-about-him, or Master Noble as my lady styled him once or twice, I think to his content, for broken men are not used to such courtesies. Of myself first then, not out of pride, but for your better understanding of that which follows. And it is right, too, that the gown should take precedence of the renegado.

  I, Luis Guevara, once a priest and ever a sinner, was born in Portugal, and came to England by a long road which it would weary you as much to hear as me to travel. It took me to the Americas, and the coasts of Barbary and Africa, in the service of God, and at last to London, no matter why, in the twenty-fourth year of the old Queen’s reign, where chance took me in the way of Ralph, Lord Dacre. We were as little like as could be, he the great noble, favoured of the Queen, with the honours of soldiery upon him and all trappings of wealth and power, which he carried like a conqueror, for he was a terrible man – and I, the little foreign priest that feared for my very life in a land where priests were welcome as the plague. It was the time of the great bill against the Jesuits, when to be a Roman priest was treason, and the harbouring of us a felony; there were many then burned for the Faith.

  “A poor candle you would make,” says my lord. “Why, man, ye would not light me up the stair!” And laughed at me, a great bull of a man as he was, all in crimson save for the blue charge upon his breast that bare a bull indeed, the red bull of his house, and stood on legs like tree trunks, grinning from a face great as a ham, bald of crown with white hair to his shoulders. “Aye, we are tonsured, the two of us, but you can say Mass and I cannot nor would not, but since the half of my folk are recusant and will not be turned, needs must I a priest, go to!”

  I told him it was treason, and that if he sheltered me, let alone gave employ, he would be liable before the law.

  “The law! Pish on the law!” and put his head on one side. “Have ye heard o’ the Leges Marchiarum, priest – the Law of the Marches? No? It is the only law in my whereabouts, and says naught of religion. Let be, I make my own law, and if I take the Pope himself into my house to minister to my silly poor folk, not the Queen’s Grace herself shall say cheep! No, nor all the bishops. For I am Dacre. Will fifty shillings a year content you?”

  I trembled to hear him, but asked sixty shillings and a chapel decently kept, whereon he laughed till he shook and said I should have them for my boldness. And gripped my hand in a hard clasp, looking narrowly on me, and said we would do well together being of a middle age and not loth to speak our minds one to the other, “but not of your old faith, for I’ll none of it. Keep it for my vassals.” Which I did and have ever done, without fear of the law, for all that he said was true. He had done such service against Scotch invaders and English rebels, and was in such fair regard of my Lord Burleigh and the Queen, who called him “cousin Dacre” and “my red steer”, there being some kinship through the Grays, I believe, that he might do as he pleased in his barony far off on the border. They had need of him yonder, and my Lord Cecil was wont to jest on the words of the King of France, that the Scotch frontier was worth a Mass so it was said quietly.

  My Lord Ralph was down to London only to put his grandchild into the Court as ward of Her Grace. I saw the little maid but once, a sweet pretty child of four years, proper and toward and well grown, straight in her petty gown and proud of her kerchief of French point. “See my kercher,” says she. “’Tis white, and I keep it clean. You are my grandad’s Italian man, but you must not sing at me.” To her all Romans were Italians. She passed by with her head in air, playing with her kerchief.

  So my lord went north to his estate in Cumberland hard by the border line, taking in his train his “Portingale preacher”, as he pleased to call me.

  Now I have been about the world, as I said, and travelled far for the Faith in my nonage and after. I was with those Spaniards who sought the Strait of Anian which men say lies beyond the Americas, and suffered shipwreck on that arid coast beneath Guaymas where I was captive of the wild Indians. I have been among their savage brethren of Mexico, and undergone the torments with which they afflict their prisoners before the great step-temples of the forest which rise higher than Salisbury spire, and so far forgot my vows to take part against them when Mendoza the Good defended the silver mines on the Compostela road. I have journeyed in the black lands of Lower Africa where the people cut their faces for adornment, and make sacrifice of their enemies and eat their flesh for meat. And for a time I was a slave of the Algerines, and saw such horrors as would blast the sight, of men impaled and torn asunder and flung upon great hooks. All this I have seen among the heathen, but I have yet to see such savages as were in the Marches of England and Scotland when first I went there with my Lord Dacre.

  You may think I have an old man’s memories that swell up with age, but you do not know, you who live in this green quiet country with its fair pleasaunces by the Cam, and the little towns and hamlets where they cry alarm if a deer is potched or a schoolboy robs an orchard. You may journey now, from York t
o the Kingdom of Fife, through what you have been taught to call the Middle Shires, and meet with nothing more fierce than a beggar crying for alms by the roadside. You forget, if you ever knew, that a bare five and twenty years since there were three realms in this country that we call Great Britain: there was England and Scotland—and the Borderland between. Two realms at peace, civil and quiet under their native laws, with good governance from London and Edinborough, the folk giving glad allegiance (for the most part) to royal Elizabeth and royal James – and where they joined, a land neglected and cursed, peopled by two-legged beasts who lived by robbery and feud and murder and terror, a country where reprisal followed raid by the clock, where every nightfall brought its toll of men butchered and dwellings burned and cattle reft and hostages carried away. It was spoil, spoil, spoil, from Tweed mouth to Sark; never a moment but there were thieves in the saddle, Scot against Englishman, Englishman against Scot, and both together against each and every, and no peace any way. I have gone a-horseback one day east from Carlisle town, and seen thirty churches in ruin, and great abbeys tumbled down on the Scotch side, and the conies running through what had been fair hamlets a week before, and now all black and smoking, and bodies unburied on every hand, and women and babes wandering in the desolation.

  And this was no war. It was, they said, the custom of the country, and no help for it. The laws of England and Scotland were clean withdrawn, and only the Leges Marchiarum, of which my lord spoke, that Border law, under which a great thief might compound for the most horrid crime with a fine and interest, and assurance of good behaviour, but no other punishment — and so to the next riding and slaughter. And this in Christendom, only a score of years ago.