Lammas Read Online Free Page B

naming of Big Jock caused Henry some alarm. Mary had not mentioned him by name before. He wondered, fleetingly, just how big he was. ‘Has your father come here to the fair?’ he asked.
    Mary shook her head. ‘He disnae like to, since my mother died. It was here they met.’
    Henry answered, ‘Oh,’ conscious his relief ought not to be expressed. There were complications here he had not met before, and he felt, for the moment, out of his depth.
    â€˜Jockie has been hoping he will see the puppet play.’
    Mary’s meaning dawned on Henry, showing in his face. She anticipated quickly, ‘Tis only for a while, until the eggs are gone. They’re sure to sell today. My sister had been guid enough to take the stand till then.’
    Henry glanced back at the sister by the butter tron. The eyes she returned to him were shadowed and unfriendly. Mary’s sister served her as both mother and a friend. She had taught her all that Mary knew of men. Which was quite a lot. Henry was obliged to her. Yet he found no warmth of welcome in her face. He could easily have bought the whole stock of her eggs, freeing her to see the puppets with her son. The thought occurred at once, and he almost acted on it. Good sense held him back. For it would have seemed that he was buying Mary, and he would not for the world have it look like that. The eggs he had no want of would be left to lie, snatched up by the gulls or splattered at the stocks. For Mary and her hens, they were of some worth, and Henry did not care to cheapen her, or them. And so he took the bairn on with a gracious nod, to trail them in their pleasures like a spectre at the feast.
    There were no puppet players at the fair that day. But Jockie saw a monkey in a velvet coat, and two Egyptian tumblers burling over hoops. He saw a juglar slice off his own nose and restore it whole again. Henry had once seen a pickpocket cropped of his nose at the cross, with a less happy result, and did not find the magic quite so entertaining. He yawned when the juglar brought out yards of silk, in every rainbow colour, streaming from his mouth, and when he fished a groat out of Jockie’s ear. Jockie gulped and gawped, but did not speak a word.
    â€˜Can the bairn not talk?’ Henry asked.
    â€˜He is five years old. Of course he can,’ Mary said.
    Jock was like no bairn that Henry was acquainted with, of the gentle sort. His flat, sullen face, like the face of the monkey he had prodded with a stick, had the fixed expression of a hardened labourer. Nothing could effect in him a movement of excitement. He was gloomy as a butcher at the start of Lent. Henry bought a whistle for him, and some sooking candy twisted in a poke. Jockie sucked on both, adamantly grim.
    The fair was sweaty, foul and raucous. Henry smelt around him the ripeness of the crowd, rancid flesh and fish blackened over coals, sickly fruits and sweetmeats curdled in the sun. The shows were surrounded by stalls, spilling from the market square to the wynds and lanes and further to the South Street. A ballad singer sang a song against the Pope, pleasing to the kirk in whose yard he stood. The fiddle and the drums and the pipes were played. Chapmen cried their wares: ribbons, tinsels, lace. Mary paused to look.
    â€˜Let me buy you something. Ribands, or a handkerchief. A hat,’ Henry said, uncertain what might please her, in amongst the trash.
    Mary shook her head.
    â€˜Well then, a book.’
    Mary hesitated. She liked to hear him read to her, for she had not had the chance to learn to read herself. His voice was fine, and grand, she said. It was part of the pattern of the nights they spent together. She asked him to speak Latin once, but Henry had refused. He had enough of that at the university. She had wanted to attend his last examinations, to cheer him in the schools. ‘If they are public, why can’t I?’
    â€˜Because you are a lass,’ Henry had explained. He