A Chorus of Innocents (20 page)

“Teeth drawn,” shouted Anricks.“Get your teeth drawn for one English shilling or four Scots shillings. Teeth drawn.” He had a weak voice that didn't shout very well, so Dodd offered his services and was soon strolling round the town with the innkeeper's youngest and his drum, bellowing “Teeth drawn! Get yer teeth drawn!” in broad Scots.

By the time he got back a queue had formed that was already out of the stableyard. He watched for a while, ready for drama and screams, but it was boring. The patients sat down in the chairs and told Anricks which tooth was giving them trouble. He poked about in their mouths, sometimes producing gasps and moans. Then he made them drink a great deal of brandy, supplied at double prices by the inn, and gave them a cloth in their hands to sniff. He was pouring out drops of something oily from a brown glass bottle onto it every so often. After a bit they fell asleep and then Anricks was onto them, opening their snoring mouths, reaching in with a steel instrument, placing it carefully round the bad tooth and then clenching his fist and drawing it out. And then he moved on to the next patient.

Dodd had a go at pulling a tooth himself and found it much harder than he expected for the grip was awkward and you needed all your strength to pull. Anricks did two more with crunching sounds and a lot of blood and pus while he was fumbling.

Then the patients would wake up, look around dizzily as if hungover, feel their mouths in wonder and then wander off with their friends, shaking their heads. A few people started scowling at Anricks and muttering about witchcraft, but the ones who had had their teeth drawn shushed them.

“Is it witchcraft, sir?” Dodd asked curiously as they waited for a stout woman to go to sleep. “Is it a secret?”

Anricks shook his head. “No, it's an alchemical miracle. No secret at all. Paracelsus first noticed its effect on chickens and I tried it on myself once I had made some. They are sniffing sweet oil of vitriol, distilled from aqua vitae and vitriol.” He gripped, clenched, the instrument slipping. “Hold her mouth more open, please. Thank you.” Not a sound from the patient. Again the hands tightened on the instrument and the cracking crunch told Dodd the tooth was out. Anricks produced a large long-rooted tooth that was black all along one side and had two holes in it. The root was full of pus. He dropped the tooth in the bucket and swabbed at the space with a cloth wet with aqua vitae while the woman slept on.

Dodd looked in the bucket, with all the other eaten-away teeth and suddenly felt sick. That was an ill sight to see, to be sure, how your actual teeth could be eaten away. Horrible. What did that for God's sake?

Anricks didn't need him anymore; he had a queue going down the hill now. Dodd wandered out to the yard and found a boy there asking for him, who told him to come and meet Sir Henry.

Young Henry was looking grim and Sir Henry was loudly raging. “Do you believe this about my wife, Mr Dodd, that she went off with persons unknown?” he demanded.

Dodd was about to correct him about what he was and then left it. “She didnae go voluntarily and she tried to escape, the signs were clearer than the nose on yer face,” he said stolidly. “And she left her mother's ring on a twig near the place where they caught her.”

Sir Henry swung about on his son. “So why didn't ye follow the tracks and catch them?”

“Perhaps because I had no desire to ride into an ambush, sir,” said Young Henry, with admirable calm. “Or not until I had enough of my men to back me.”

“My men, puppy, I'm the headman.”

“Yes, father.”

“How did you know where I was?”

Young Henry looked blank. “We thought it was worth trying Jedburgh because this is where you come to meet with Lord Spynie and we'd heard you were riding west.”

Suddenly Sir Henry slapped his son across the face and followed up with a nasty rabbit punch to the short ribs. Young Henry took the slap and only grunted a little with pain at the rib punch.

“Don't think ye can outguess me, boy,” hissed Sir Henry.

Young Henry said nothing. His face was a mask under the reddening print of his father's hand. Sir Henry was standing, scowling up at him and chewing his moustache.

“What would you like me to do, sir?” Young Henry asked steadily.

Suddenly Dodd saw fear in the man's face, and couldn't think why. Young Henry towered over him and yet was as respectful as a man should be to his father, no matter how unreasonable. Was that what he was afraid of? That his son was a better man than him?

“Weel weel, wha' ha' we here?” came broad Scotch tones. Dodd turned to see the handsome young man with gold hair that was still the King's lover come striding over to them. Lord Spynie was wearing a smart black satin doublet with diamond buttons and a very nice cutwork leather hunting jerkin over it. He wasn't very tall, a couple of inches shorter than Dodd himself and four inches shorter than Young Henry, but he swaggered and swung a whip in his hand.

Young Henry and his father both bowed to him and Dodd did the same, quietly stepping backwards out of the way. Sir Henry explained that his fool of a wife had got herself captured by reivers while fossicking about in Scotland where she had no business to be.

“I'm sorry you didn't get my message by Roger,” Young Henry said, “about the killing of Minister Jamie Burn?”

“I got it,” growled Sir Henry. “She had no business in Scotland. She should have minded my business in England.”

“Wives,” said Spynie, with an indulgent smile, “allus poking about in what doesnae concern them.”

Sir Henry stood irresolute, although what he had to do was obvious. He should gather his men, ride out with them and find out who had his wife. And then he should ransom her and follow up with some reprisal raids unless the kidnappers were too powerful, in which case he should wait and take reprisals later and more carefully. That's what Dodd would have done if anyone had been stupid enough to kidnap Janet. Although unfortunately he loved his wife, which would make everything much more complicated. He decided to go back to the inn and the tooth-drawing.

When he got there he found Anricks in an argument with a bunch of sour-looking men in black or brown clothes and white collars.

“Ye say it isn't witchcraft, Mr Anricks,” said one of them, “but ye canna deny that ye make them sleep and so they get out of the pain o' the tooth-drawing.”

“I do not deny it, that's why I do it. It makes my work easier for they are not fighting nor screaming.”

A heavy looking man shook his head. “The Scripture says, man is born tae sorrow…”

“Ay,” said a skinny man with hot eyes, “and it's wrong to try to evade Scripture, so it is.”

Anricks shut his eyes for a moment and then smiled brightly. “You are ordering me to stop using sweet oil of vitriol?”

“We are ordering ye to stop using the evil spells that make people sleep.”

“Your name, sir?”

“I am Elder Tobermory, he is Elder Stanehouse. That is Minister Birkin.”

“Very well, sirs. I will stop using the oil of vitriol and explain to each of my patients why. Thank you.”

Nonplussed, the sour men moved away in a body and then stood watching to see there was no witchcraft. Each tooth took longer now because they had to tell the patients why they couldn't sniff the magic cloth: Anricks explained that Elders Tobermory and Stanehouse and Minister Birkin had ordered him to stop using the sweet oil of vitriol, and the elders and the minister had to explain that they had stopped him from using witchcraft and imperilling their immortal souls. The people who still wanted their teeth drawn screamed and cried as he pulled their teeth, which was a lot noisier and the results were not nearly as good and everything took longer.

The elders and the minister were shouting themselves hoarse at some of Anricks' patients by the end of it and the queue had disappeared. When the second to the last one went, Dodd reached out and stopped a boy making off with the box that was now full of shillings. When the tooth was pulled from the last woman who cried steadily throughout but didn't scream, Anricks went and dumped all his instruments into a bucket of water and then used another just to wash his arms and hands, which was a bit dainty, Dodd thought. The woman was weepily thanking Anricks and telling him it didn't hurt nearly as much as having a baby and insisted on paying him an extra shilling for she already felt much better.

They moved to the commonroom of the inn to count the money which amounted to about one hundred shillings Scots and ten shillings English, which was very respectable. Then Anricks went to the market and bought three pack ponies' loads of oats which was good cheap, along with the pack ponies and led them all into the innyard where he paid the innkeeper, also in Scots shillings. The remaining Scots money he used to pay for the ordinary—a haggis and bashed neeps and some ale, which he shared with Dodd.

Anricks was tired and quiet. Dodd was wondering how quickly he could get him to Carlisle. It was too late in the day to make for Carlisle now.

“It's a puzzle,” said Anricks, suddenly, apropos of nothing, “why and by whom was the Minister Burn killed.”

“He wisnae against yer witchcraft?”

“It isn't witchcraft. It's as natural as a man falling asleep when he's drunk. Just quicker and easier…”

“Whatever. He wisna agin it?”

“He was at first, until I drew one of his teeth for him and then he admitted it might be a good idea. They usually do.”

“Has this happened before?”

“Oh yes, especially in Scotland. The elders get very outraged at the thought of people sleeping through something that will hurt. Also the resident barber surgeons usually stir them up. And usually by then my hands are tired anyway and so it works out well enough. They get the blame for the fact that I can't possibly treat all the people who want it.”

Anricks took a pull of beer and sighed, cut into the haggis and piled a lot on a silver spoon he took out of his pocket and polished. He ate it with his eyes shut, slowly munching until it was all gone.

“Mm,” he said, “it's good.”

Dodd tried some and it was good. Not as good as Janet's, but good enough—too much lung and oats and not enough liver in it probably.

Anricks concentrated on the food for a while and then leaned back and drank more ale. He called for some uisghe beagh as well, the northern firewater. Dodd tried a little and wasn't impressed; it tasted very smoky in his opinion.

“So. Minister Burn. Perhaps if I talk through what I know about it, you can find a pattern there.”

“I'm no' the man ye want for that. He's got a terrible toothache in Carlisle.”

“Even so.”

Anricks went through the tale of Minister Burn as he knew it and added that Lady Widdrington probably knew a lot more.

“Ay?” Dodd thought about it and had to agree that it was odd.

“And last month he went out on a raid of some kind,” Anricks added with a sigh. “I wish I knew where he went.”

“Did he gang oot wi' his family, they're right reivers?” Dodd asked.

“I don't think so, he'd fallen out with his father.”

“Who did he go with?”

“He went alone with one remount,” said Anricks. “That's what his wife says in her letter to me. Of course he could have met friends later. But he went wearing his best suit and carrying a crossbow and his sword, which was why she wasn't too concerned. It would have been a different matter if he'd worn harness and helmet of course.”

Dodd nodded. “Mebbe he had his jack and helmet somewhere else…”

Anricks shook his head. “They're still at Wendron, in a press in his study.”

Dodd was silent. “Was he going to kill someone?” he asked at last. “Mebbe my lord Spynie? Someone took a shot at him last month?”

Anricks frowned. “Why would he do that? Why take such a risk?”

Dodd shrugged. “Somebody wis paying him, perhaps?”

Anricks nodded wearily. His mouth was turned down at the ends, as if he had a bad taste in it. “I'm not sure why he suddenly needed money, but he did. I wish I'd…Well, I didn't. And there's a rumour he went to see Kerr of Cessford a week before he went out as well.”

Dodd let out a humourless bark of laughter. “Ay,” he said, “they're all murdering bastards too. And the Burns. I've tangled wi' them mesen. And Kerrs sometimes ally with Elliots.”

The commonroom suddenly started filling up with Widdringtons, followed by Sir Henry and his son who seemed upset about something.

“Sir,” he was saying, “will ye not give the man an answer?”

“I'll answer when I please, boy. If my fool of a wife hadn't taken it into her empty head to ride intae Scotland she wouldna be costing me a hundred pounds English now, would she? She can sit it out for a while.”

Sir Henry marched to the bar and ordered aqua vitae and pointedly got none for his son. Young Henry's face was swelling a little and his brows were down. He got his own ale and Dodd went up to him immediately.

“Sir,” he said, “have ye had a ransom demand?”

Young Henry looked weary as well. “One of the Burns' boys came in with it. We'll swap at the Reidswire meeting stone, each side just five men and the woman on her horse, and a hundred pounds English in exchange.”

“Ay. Does her husband have the money?” It wasn't excessive for the wife of a headman, but it was still a lot of money.

“No, of course not,” muttered Young Henry. “Who does? Spynie does, of course, and has offered my father a loan at twenty percent interest a week, secured on one of his sheilings and the pasture.”

“Ay,” said Dodd noncommittally.

“I suppose Father will roar a bit and then take the loan, to pay them off.”

“So it's the Burns that have her?”

“Yes. Jock Burn must have come up with the idea at the funeral and bought Ekie and Sim so he could do it.”