The magistrate continued to watch him while a mug was filled. Then, to Filib’s surprise, the man came over and sat down where his father had sat, right across from him. “I know you, don’t I?” the magistrate asked, smiling.
Filib nodded. Suddenly he could not find his voice. In the presence of one of them he always went mute. Men of power, class, and knowledge left him adrift upon the sea of his own inadequacy, knowing that if he spoke he would look the fool. It was the opposite of his own father, who spoke with such men as if they were equals even when both knew otherwise.
“Let me see,” said the magistrate. “You are the son of someone, aren’t you—well, how stupid an observation is that, hey? Of course you are. We all are.” His blue eyes glittered.
“Filib Lusk,” he managed to get out.
“Ah-ha. Your father is a tenant of Husbandman Cardden, is he not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Had you a good harvest, then? I’m guessing you aren’t here to sell more wool, hmm?” He smiled, showing his crooked teeth. Filib wondered if they’d been pushed about by the same thing that had flattened his nose. “Oh, I see, there’s your father. Yes, looks as if you have had a very good harvest. Let me stand you a second ale, son, and you can tell me about that thing up your sleeve.” He rose.
Filib gaped. How did he know? Could he hear thoughts? Know the impossible?
The magistrate sat down again with a new mug for Filib.
“How?” he asked. “How do you—” He drew the parchment out a little.
The magistrate grinned. “Oh, it’s nothing magical. When I came in, you were plucking at it unconsciously as if a flea was biting your wrist. Also, it does stick out past your sleeve.”
Filib, feeling idiotic, now drew the parchment all the way out. “Begging pardon, sir.” He slid the folded parchment onto the table.
Magistrate Baggi began to unfold it. “Goodness, this is your work?” He looked up, wide-eyed and admiring. “You are learning to write?”
Filib rocked a little, nodding. “Yes, sir.”
Baggi’s eyes flicked back and forth across the document. “Well, that is remarkable. Who is it teaching you?”
“The daughter of Husbandman Cardden, sir.”
“And this.” Eyes wide still, but different, ardent, the magistrate stabbed the parchment. “What is this?”
“I do not know, sir. I copied it without being able to read it as it’s not Latin, but I think it’s things her husband has said when he . . . when he falls down. He does, he used to, sometimes. Not so much anymore. I was hoping—”
Those blue chips of irises were fastened upon his eyes. “He falls down, you say? Her husband?”
“Tàmhas Lynn, sir. Our neighbor.”
Magistrate Baggi smiled broadly then. He pored over the document, his lips moving as he whispered the words to himself. “‘Who am I, brings calamity like weather? Best you don’t know me, else drown in the torrent, your blood or theirs.’ Dark words. My, my. Why, these read like imitations of this fellow they sing about in Ercildoun. Might you have heard a song or two by now—Thomas the Rhymer?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, he’s a famous legend there, it seems. Had a gift of prophecy. He is said to have warned of the flooding at Selkirk five years back. Riddled of the highwaymen who killed an alderman and landowner there. Oh, and predicted the storm that tore up the scaffolding at St. Mary’s Abbey at Melrose—when was that, six years ago? Aye. In one song he even names that fellow who was killed that night—Clacher, I think it was. Buried him there, the very first grave at the new abbey. Such a shame.” He smoothed down the parchment. “Oh, yes, these remarkable riddles are precisely like those ascribed to him. Might your neighbor by chance be writing his own ballad?”
“I don’t know, sir,” replied Filib.
Baggi looked Filib in the eye. “I don’t suppose, then, you know if your Master Lynn would have been acquainted with this Thomas the Rhymer at some point? He disappeared, you see. Just up and vanished one day.” He lifted his mug, but before taking a drink, set it down again. “Oh, but wait, I’ve met this fellow. At Cardden’s Christes Maesse celebration. Seems to me he said he wasn’t a local man. A stonemason turned mercenary, but taught by a local man. Arrived here with a scrip from King David. Where would he have acquired these?” He shook the parchment.
“I don’t know, sir,” he repeated. “They’re just the things he says, that his wife wrote down.”
The magistrate solemnly looked over the parchment again. “Well, your talent here is certainly evident, young man. If you continue in this vein, why, in a few years I might have a position for you. The ability to write is so rare. People outside of monasteries don’t value it. Now, I’m sure this parchment is dear to you, but I’m hoping you will allow me to acquire it. What say I give you ten silver pennies, newly minted in Roxburgh, for this, hey? You can buy all the parchment in Scotland with that.”
“But—” He tried to reach across for Janet’s parchment.
Baggi held it out of reach. “If it proves not to be the words of this Rhymer fellow, I’ll give it back to you. You keep the coins either way. And you keep practicing your letters on your new sheets of parchment. How’s that?”
Filib stared at the profile of King David on the shiny pennies. This was real money. No one had ever given him real money before. And if he applied himself to learning his lettering well enough, the magistrate would employ him. His mind glittered with possibilities, and while it did, Magistrate Baggi folded up the parchment and tucked it away in his tunic.
“There, that’s settled. Now, son,” he asked, “how do you like your ale?”
XX. The Visitors
The pilgrims arrived at the house of Tàmhas Lynn on a cold wet October evening, four men and two women all bound for the holy isle of Lindisfarne. The men wore wide-brimmed straw hats and capes. The women wore wimples and couvre-chefs to protect their heads. All of them wore necklaces of scalloped shells. They had been following along beside the Teviot, their squat leader explained, and assuming that the husbandman had a byre, hoped that they might make use of it to keep out of the rain for a night. As they had come upland from the river, they would not yet have observed the byre and stables, lying in the darkness beyond the house.
“You’re in luck,” Thomas said to their leader. He stood outside the door. He leaned farther out and pointed. “Go around to the far side, you’ll find a byre standing separate from the house. It’s good and dry.”
“Such a luxury to have it so, husbandman.” He leaned heavily on a staff as though standing still pained him. A scrip bag rested at his hip. Just behind him stood a woman. The longer gown beneath her tunic was soaked and muddy at the bottom. The rest of the pilgrims hung back, seemingly out of politeness, but he could not make out their features in the gloom.
“I’ll bring you some ale. No doubt you are all thirsty.”
“Oh, most kind, thank you. We are, indeed.” Leaning to one side and then the other, the pilgrim attempted to peer around Thomas and into the house. “You have family, do you?”
It was an innocent enough question. While the leader of the pilgrims attempted to hold his attention with his leaning to and fro, Thomas ignored him and focused on the odd stillness of the four who hung back. They didn’t shift about at all as he would have expected of someone who’d spent the day walking up and down hills on tired legs. They might have been standing stones. He imagined that, somewhere in the gloom, a tiny winged monstrosity darted about and would have flitted through the doorway if he hadn’t been standing in it. His windows were shuttered, too, keeping both the midge and their scrutiny out.
“No,” he answered, adding carefully, “it’s just me here now.”
