CHAPTER 20: EDWIN'S FAIR CITY REVISITED

CHAPTER 20: EDWIN'S FAIR CITY, REVISITED

Copyright: Thomas Hoskyns Leonard, Edinburgh, October 2017

                                                                           

The long-deceased Rabbi of Dene appeared to Duncan Le Cottier in a dream during July 1462, while the aging chevalier was asleep in the bow of a giant long-ship voyaging from the thriving banks of the Liffey near Dublin to the bustling seaport of Dumbarton with two score wailing slaves packed like kippers in the hold.

“Your life is about to start anew in fair Alba, my son,” said the rabbi, “though the lives of your children will be far more important to you than your own.”

“But how many children do I have, learned Rabbi?” asked a voice.

“You and your blessed soul-mate Bagoas both fathered the same number of children,” said the rabbi. “If Yahweh so wishes then you may discover who they all are before you die. Half of your sons are Jewish by birth and ready to conquer the Earth.”

“Prithee tell me,” said the voice. “Who is the fourth mother?”

The rabbi turned into a bright red reindeer, and sighed. “That I cannot tell you. The Countess Ruth bore fruits to honour her love for the twain though not for the courageous gooseberry. It will be sweet Xavier who fathers the rest from your very bed, in the manner in which Bagoas once progressed. Xavier is Jewish too, as you will well know.”

“And just as manly,” said the voice. “Maybe I should visit Meg and Simeon in their faraway inn in the ancient Kingdom of Dumnonia. She may know the answer to the riddle.”

“If you get lost on the Moor of the Dart, then point your head to the triple peaks of Sharpitor and thence to the Leg o' Mutton corner for Tavistoke,” said the reindeer, flashing his dark blue eyes, “and take care not to trip over the sheep.”.

During mid-July 1462, Baron Harry de Burgogne rode into the pretty village of Bothans, East-Lothian on the penultimate leg of his journey from York. The aged priest in the Kirk of Bothans gave him a polite greeting, and confirmed from the mural behind the double pulpit that the true identity of 'Horatio P' was one Sir Richard de Liddell.

“I remember Sir Richard well from his youth and you are his spitting image,” explained the priest, with a tender smile. “You are, in all verity, his son.”

“Appearances can be deceptive,” protested Lord Harry, taken aback. “But do any of Sir Richard's relatives live locally? I have it in mind to resolve this issue with them.”

“Yes indeed!” replied the priest, twisting his necklace of beads. “Sir Richard's nephew Lord Lulach's mother the Dowager Lady Matilda lives in Malbork House here in Bothans at the bottom of Common Lane. But as you are Sir Richard's son rather than his nephew, I have a matter of some import to impart.”

Lord Harry blinked. “What's that?”

“The writer James MacMillan visited me here from Edinburgh about twelve years ago. You should drop by his town house at No. 37, the Canongate. In 1449, he sealed a document with the King's Signet. It had been signed by Sir Richard's Norse brother-in-law Father Baldr Sigurdsen and referred to matters of great importance relating to the tragic deaths by poisoning in 1436 of Sir Richard's dear wife the Lady Ingibiorg and faithful squire Cedric de Porthos.”

One eventuality led to another, and Lord Harry was invited to stay with Lord Lulach in Óengus House in Edinburgh for the remainder of his visit to the Lothians.

And the serene woman of learning, Adaira McTaggart stuck pins high on Calton Hill into an effigy of the King's Physician, Lulach, Lord of Roslands, whilst her apprentice, the scary-eyed sorceress Fidra O'Flint of Berwick Law lit the flame, and the kelpies and wood faeries danced in the lush.

“When will my husband arrive this year,” wailed Fidra, jigging around the fire, “the next Adonis for a Grecian orgy? The letter X, after last year's W, begins his name.

“Perhaps it's Xenos, though maybe it's Xander,” raved Adaira, poking the embers. “But come as well-hung as Xerxes for your gift to the goddesses, whatever your name! And bring me a burnt offering too.”

The portly Lady Fiona McLachlan caught a glimmer of the flame through her stained glass window, as she lay on her feather bed high in her tower above the Village of Dene, while the wool barges sped past far below on the Water of Leith. She sprung to her feet and wiped clean the window, so that the poor souls on the pavement could admire her once glorious beauty.

Fat Hamish Douglas, the physician of renown, saw the flame while he was hauling a lunatic, who was out for the day, over a tombstone in the infamous graveyard of South Leith Parish Church.

“There's a wild boar devouring the sweet Lady Guinevere behind the statue of Mordred,” shrieked Hamish's love-puppet, all askance.

“Steady on there, sassy fellow,” demanded Hamish, enjoying his pleasures, “and watch out for the ants.”

Duncan Le Cottier's fine son of the Holy blood, Seth Liddell was by then working with Hamish as a physician in the Strachan-Crichton Asylum for Lunatics by the harbour in Leith, though trying to moderate some of nutty Hamish's more curious forms of treatment.

Seth lived hidden, deep in the Cowgate in the writer Macduff Cameron's large house. Cameron's faithful servant, Seth's fair sister Sansa, waited on them both, hand and foot, while maintaining her excellent attitude towards common sense.

When the toothless and fast fading royal knight Sir Cuthbert Arbuthnot tottered into St. Giles Cathedral, still suffering from his battle wounds of 1460, he fell on his knees before the high altar in remorse.

My sadly deceased friend Peregrine Flynn and I once captured the brave knight Sir Richard de Liddell in a net, dear Lord, he prayed, and we took him to be tortured in the Tollbooth. I heard yesterday from Lord Burgogne that dear Richard is returning to Embro with his face scorched to shreds. I beg forgiveness for the grave injustice I did to him and hope that he will now be my friend.

Two mornings after Lord Harry de Burgogne's arrival in Edwin's Burgh, Le Chevalier Duncan le Cottier crept like a snail into the back garden of Óengus House wishing to retrieve his looted treasure from the chest hidden in the wall behind the dovecot.

Duncan had arrived in Edinburgh the day before after a horse-ride from Dumbarton with his graceful squire Xavier de Rougerie of Toulon, on the last leg of their journey, via Dublin, from Marseilles. He and sweaty Xavier had spent the night sleeping cuddled between their steeds in a stable in the Grassmarket. The young man from Toulon dreamt while he slumbered about building a row of inns and hostelries along the Via Regia for travellers proceeding to Perth, and pilgrims heading for Dunkeld and St. Andrews.

But before Duncan could even approach the ancient dovecot, Lord Harry emerged through the back door to take a quick piddle.

Duncan gasped in amazement. He was looking at his own spitting image of three decades

before.

“Hello, my son,” said Duncan, his face burnt awry.

“I don't want to touch that issue with a bargepole,” replied Sir Harry, cocking a snoot. “But you're Sir Richard de Liddell, I presume?”

“That's me, I suppose, dear Harry.”

“In that case, Sir Richard, you might in your craziness wish to visit the writer James MacMillan in his town-house at Number 37, the Canongate. I did exactly that on your behalf only yesterday. Macmillan has a matter of great import to discuss with you. Something to do with your crass brother-in-law, as I understand. He died a leper on Lismore bottling his guilt-ridden grief.”

That piece of goat's turd? deliberated Duncan. Aha! Fat Baldr jogs a memory. We enter the sick realms of incest.

“Thank you so much, Harry,” Duncan dutifully replied, while realising how curtly he'd been treated by his natural born son.

While he was walking, sheepishly, to the Canongate with his attentive squire Xavier, Duncan realised that he'd always sensed that Ingibiorg's relationship with her far older brother was not a natural one.

I must have blocked this from my memory, decided Duncan. The truth was with me all the time.

“I know your sweet son and daughter from the Soutra well”, said James MacMillan, as Duncan nestled with Xavier onto a plush sofa.

Duncan watched with trepidation when the writer pulled a yellowing manuscript from a mahogany drawer.

The document signed by Father Baldr Sigurdsen in 1449, and sealed by James MacMillan, read...

Z (death)

A (you).. B (Ingy).. Ω (jealous me)

My early fun…. BBBBBBBBBBB…. with …. ω (young me)

C (Cedric coot) B (Ingy) Ω (me)…. All ZZZ (poison by me)

You?……… A… A...A… kaput…….. Ha, Ha, Hee!

Beelzebub wept balls of tears! reacted wretched Richard, as he now saw fit to call himself. The unspeakably despicable Baldr was much more simple-minded than me when he wrote his crass messages. There are myriads of forms of craziness, and we all have our forms of madness. What was his malady of the mind?

“Thank you, M'sieur MacMillan,” said Sir Richard de Liddell, clearing his head. “That certainly puts the cat among the pidgeons.”

“Perchance Father Sigurdsen was not of his right mind,” replied MacMillan. “Perhaps I should add that any charges which might have been filed against you during the year 1436 are no longer on record. It appears that Sheriff-Depute Crichton-Cruikshank removed them for reasons best known to himself.”

A wonder whether my dear Hamish Douglas had anything to do with that? deliberated Sir Richard.

“Come take a stroll up the High Street with me to see the magnificent views from the Castle in all directions at once,” said Xavier de Rougerie, holding Sir Richard's well-gnarled right hand. “This is your city once again.”

“One moment!” said James McMillan. “We have more business to discuss.”

That night, Sir Richard and Xavier stayed in the Bees Nest Inn on the Cowgate. Richard had brought a chunk of his dowry with him, and had also made arrangements to receive his share of the revenue from his wife's family estate outside Saint-Tropez, where the turk hens were multiplying in number from month to month. The happy couple discussed James MacMillan's plans for retrieving Óengus House in Edinburgh and the Malbork mansion in Bothans from Lord Lulach de Liddell's greedy grasp, together with, of course, the St. Clotilde herb garden on Calton Hill.

There was a tap on the horn-paned window, when a fledgeling witch peered in. And lo and behold! In walked Sir Richard's old flame Adaira McTaggart. The haughty lady was accompanied by one Fidra O'Flint, with her eyes set on the well-hung Frenchman of her dreams.

“And now we can both come to terms with ourselves,” said Xavier de Rougerie, with a sly wink.

I, Anna, the White Witch of the Esk Burn curse Baldr Sigurdsen's name throughout the Eternal Universe, and to all blossoming twigs of the Tree of Life.

Baldr Sigurdsen abused his much younger sister Ingibiorg throughout her childhood on fair Orkney. And when Cedric de Porthos discovered, on that accursed evening, that Baldr had resumed that exploitative liaison, the evil priest poisoned Ingibiorg's claret with a hedrium-glavium concoction and sent them both to their tortuous deaths.

What havoc Father Baldr caused to Sir Richard's life!

The omniscient Asherah perceived the influences of Sir Richard's five blood children, Seth and Sansa, Harry, Simeon and Didier, on his reputation during their own lifetimes. But that saga is yet to be told. and retold by the bold.
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