The King's Question

by Clare Hawkins

The Firth of Forth, Scotland, 1493

John Hepburn felt queasy. The jolting of the carriage over the road to Leith had unsettled his stomach, as did the prospect of setting sail over the choppy grey waters of the Firth. The nature of his duty troubled him too, though as an obedient subject, and the King’s former tutor, he had no choice but to proceed with the commission. He hoped it would be the last.

The carriage wheels grated on the cobbled roadway as the driver steered through the noisome port. Hepburn covered his mouth and nose with a kerchief to dull the stench of fish, animal dung, and all manner of human excrescences. Screeching gulls and shouts of hawkers, fisherfolk, boatmen and sailors added to the assault on his senses. He closed his eyes and conjured in his mind for a moment the still quietness of his study, with only his books for company and the sweet sound of a blackbird on the willow tree outside his window. He was too old for this.

With a sigh, he made to clamber down from the carriage, and found the driver there to lend him a steadying hand. Stepping onto the wharf, he surveyed the length of it, where river crafts of all sizes were moored. A wooden jetty projected into the water with a number of fishing boats clustered around it. At anchor off shore lay two larger vessels, most likely of the Baltic trade. 

A moment later he heard his name and saw a tall young man striding towards him. Hepburn recognised him immediately as Patrick Paniter, the handsome companion of King James, whom he had once tutored along with his royal master.

“Master Hepburn,” said Patrick Paniter, extending a welcoming hand.

Hepburn returned the greeting, noting that Paniter had another with him, a servant or clerk, with a leather bag slung over his shoulder.

“I’m honoured to join you in this venture, Master Hepburn,” said Paniter. “The King has always greatly valued your knowledge of the ancient languages.”

“Aye,” said Hepburn, unable to conceal his doubtful tone, “but will we discover anything of note for His Majesty?”

“That is my hope,” Paniter said. “He has waited long for the answer he seeks.”

Hepburn well remembered the insatiable curiosity of the youthful prince, now King James IV. His desire to gain wisdom and understanding of God’s created world led him to all manner of investigations. He had boldly undertaken many medical and surgical experiments, extracting teeth, stitching wounds and testing the products of the apothecary’s art. No field of knowledge escaped his interest, no ambition was too great. Whether at jousting, hawking or the study of scripture and learning foreign tongues, he excelled at all.

“And what is the King’s present interest?” Hepburn asked Paniter.

The courtier made no reply, as his attention was elsewhere. A call had come from one of the small boats tied to the jetty.

“The boatman is ready for us. We must depart,” said Paniter, then turning to indicate his companion. “I’ve brought my clerk, Guthrie, to record all that we observe and hear.” 

The pale young man bowed his head politely to Hepburn.

As they prepared to board the boat, Hepburn looked at the churning waters and felt the chill of the east wind. There were two boatmen, a sturdy father and son by the look of them, ready to row the craft. Paniter informed Hepburn that these two were also charged with the duty of ferrying supplies of food and fuel to the island. Hepburn wondered if these oarsmen had any inkling of the larger purpose of their trips. He supposed, however, that common men had long followed orders from their betters, with little question of the legitimacy or sense of what they were obliged to do. The boatmen would most likely have been under strict instructions as to their duties, on pain of severe punishment should they violate the rules of their employ.

The younger of the two boatmen helped Hepburn to board. Guthrie’s face had paled as he took a seat on the bench at the stern while Paniter, the heartiest of the three, looked out over the water.

“Have you visited the island before?” Hepburn asked him, as the oarsmen heaved the boat away from the wharfside, and he felt the first roll over the swelling water.

“Aye, I was there with the King once,” said Paniter. “He wished to train a young goshawk with seabirds. The island was once a place of quarantine for lepers, I believe, or those with plague. So it was thus that the King thought it a fitting place for this experiment.”

Hepburn peered to his left and noted a small rocky plug of land some distance out.

“Are any of the other islands in the Firth inhabited?” asked Hepburn.

“Aye, some are settled with a few folk,” said Paniter, “those places with towers and lighthouses. But Inchkeith’s inhabitants are long gone, until the woman and the bairns were taken there.”

“Three years is it?” Hepburn asked, feeling the whip of the wind, along with a fleeting unease at the thought of so long an abandonment.

Paniter nodded.

Some time later, the distant shape of the island became visible. Hepburn peered as the boat dipped and swayed. Guthrie, the clerk, vomited over the side, while the two boatmen pulled hard into the wind. Hepburn managed to distract himself from his own discomfort by scrutinising the detail of the island as they approached. It was a mix of rock and green scrub, rising from the water level to a mound, where Hepburn made out a cottage and a number of other small buildings. There was movement too, unless his eyes were deceiving him. He fancied he saw two small figures flitting to and fro upon the slope of the land. As his gaze travelled upwards to the cottage, he saw a figure standing by the door. Pity arose in him: a poor creature sent here on the whim of the King for the mere purpose of his curiosity.

Hepburn tried to dismiss the disloyalty of his thought. He had a great admiration for the King’s scholarship; he could not deny it. Hepburn believed too that the pursuit of knowledge through experiment and enquiry led people to great discoveries and to the revelation of the wonders of God’s world. Since ancient times man had been impelled to explore, observe and seek to understand. But this particular venture of the King’s he felt was an extravagance of some vanity and cruelty. 

“What of the woman, the nursemaid?” Hepburn said suddenly to Paniter. “Is it truly the case that she has no speech, nor any hearing?”

“She is mute, has never uttered a word, nor can hear even the loudest clamor,” said Paniter.

“And where was she found?”

“A nunnery, where she was left as an infant because of her infirmity. The nuns raised her, out of mercy and pity for her impairment, and set her to work.”

“I see,” said Hepburn, “so she would have used signs and mummery to the nuns I assume.”

Patrick Paniter nodded. “Aye, many of those in religious houses, when no talk is permitted, use such signals of the hands.”

“And the babes?” Hepburn asked.

“Pauper bairns, orphan brats from the poorhouse most likely.”

At the mention of infants, Hepburn recalled the moment when the King, then only a youth, had first mentioned the question that was to lead to this investigation. One day, when the young prince was translating aloud a section from the Greek testament, he paused and fixed Hepburn with his penetrating eyes.

“Master Hepburn,” he had said. “These words of God are from the ancient Hebrew are they not?”

“Aye, they are believed to be,” Hepburn had said. 

“So could it be that this ancient tongue was the original one, given to man by God to raise him above the beasts?”

“It is a profound question,” Hepburn said, “but I fear the answer is beyond the reach of man.”

“But do you not think it could be discovered?” said the Prince. “Speech is learned by babes from their mothers and nurses, without any written form of the words. Even the simplest, poorest beggar in the land, if he has command of the faculties God gave him, learns to speak.”

“Aye,” said Hepburn, “and regardless of the language the infant will learn it whether it be Gaelic, French or Scots. Any bairn will hear and copy the sounds of the speech around it.”

“But what if a babe heard none at all, no sound of any language of man?” said the Prince. “Would an innocent babe, its mind empty of thought and understanding, unadulterated by the utterances of others, speak first and foremost that God-given first language?”

So now, these years later, the King had fulfilled his need to discover the answer to this question. 

They drew close to a stone landing place on the island. The elder boatmen brought the boat to the edge and the younger leapt ashore and tied it to a post. Hepburn heaved himself up and was hauled out by Patrick Paniter and the young boatman. Guthrie’s color was returning and he adjusted the bag on his shoulder as they set off up the hill towards the cottage, leaving the boatmen to wait for their return journey.

Gorse, rough grasses and stunted bushes were the only vegetation on the island. The trees, if any had ever grown here, had most likely been felled by previous inhabitants. 

From the top of the hill came the sound of a goat bleating, but also a series of distant calls, not animal, nor scarcely human to Hepburn’s ears. He looked up at the sky, where bulging grey clouds moved slowly and saw the swooping seabirds, smelt the salt wind and heard again a high-pitched squealing of one or more voices. Then he saw the source, two small children of around three years, scampering like puppies up ahead between the clumps of bushes.

Patrick Paniter and the clerk had seen them too and all three stood and watched before proceeding up the slope. Hepburn’s breath came faster as he mounted the stony path, but Paniter was pushing ahead. Did he imagine that he would be the first to hear and record the tongue God gave to Adam and Eve? Maybe the courtier hoped that this discovery would lead to his further advancement and more favours from the King.

Hepburn, however, found that his doubts about the experiment were growing, now that he could see the island for himself. Inchkeith, it was true, was a place of isolation, lying a good few miles off the shore from Leith and Queensferry and a little less to the coast of Fife. But there was frequent shipping in the Firth, with the possibility of sailors, traders or renegades landing on the island, thus disturbing the total seclusion of those who were lodged upon it. The years of their abandonment would surely have resulted in some contact with others. And what of the two boatmen? Who could know that they had uttered no words to the infants or within their hearing? Could the infants have been truly deprived of language up until now?

Nearing the cottage, they could now see the woman standing by the door. She looked young, perhaps no more than twenty years, small and slim, clad in neat servant’s garb. She was watching them as they approached her. A few chickens clucked around her feet and a moment later the two children appeared, rushing to her, in fear of the approaching men and clutching at her skirts. 

Patrick Paniter took the lead, then hesitated, glancing back briefly at Hepburn and Guthrie, as though hoping for advice on the best approach to a deaf mute. Facing her again, he spoke in a loud declamatory voice.

“Good day to you. We have come to examine the children.”

The woman, who had a comely peasant face, looked back solemnly at Paniter and nodded, as though in full understanding of what he had said. She knelt down and put her arms around the two children. One was a pale fuzz-haired little girl child, clad in a tunic of hodden grey, while the other, a boy, wore breeks and a coarse shirt. Hepburn had seen many a pathetic waif, caked with filth in the gutters of Edinburgh. These children, though they dwelt in this primitive place, were well cared for and had about them a glowing sort of health. 

Their nursemaid then stood up and after pointing towards the cottage, led the way into the place. Hepburn found himself balancing his suspicion with surprise at this reception.

The stone cottage was a simple dwelling of one room. It was however, very orderly, with a griddle and cooking pot by the hearth, where a small fire burnt. Two cot beds stood in the corner and a rough mat covered the beaten earth floor. There was a table in the centre of the room and a number of joint stools. The young woman gestured to Hepburn and the other two to sit, while the children still clung to her skirts, staring, wide-eyed as only children can.

“Make yourself ready, man,” Paniter said briskly to Guthrie. “You must write every word that the infants say.”

It occurred to Hepburn that apart from strange bird-like squeals, the children had uttered no human sounds or words. Maybe, he reflected, like their nurse, they would have no speech at all. 

The clerk opened his leather bag and withdrew a parchment roll, an inkpot and several quills. The two children continued to stare in silence. Then the boy, pulling at the woman’s skirt, pointed at the quills and made a series of quick and intricate gestures of his fingers and hands. She smiled at him and responded with a similar sequence of movements, pinching her index finger and thumb, then splaying the fingers of one hand. The girl child, observing this, grinned and let out a clucking sound, clearly recognisable as the sound of a farmyard fowl.

Hepburn exchanged a look of puzzlement with Paniter. The woman and children were clearly conveying more meaning than was obvious to the visitors. Hepburn, intrigued, raised his hand and tried to imitate some of the hand gestures he had seen, which provoked squeaks of laughter from the children. The boy, giggling, repeated the same sequence of movements that he had first made.

Hepburn, now fascinated, tried the hand movements again and pointed to Guthrie’s writing implements.

“Can you make a depiction of these signs?” he said.

Guthrie looked dubiously at the parchment and dipped his pen.

“Look,” Hepburn said to Paniter, who was frowning in puzzlement. “I think they’re referring to the quill and feathers.”

Then Hepburn noticed that the woman was nodding.

“Can you see the words upon my lips?” he said to her, and again she nodded.

Hepburn, amazed, gazed back at her. “Then pray, will you show us all your words?” he said.

For an hour the woman used her signs and signals to the children and they in turn responded in like manner. She asked them first to bring items to the table, and then to perform simple acts, such as pouring ale into a cup. When the boy child spilled some, his little hands formed themselves prayer-like in a gesture, followed by touches to his breast and temple, as though requesting forgiveness. Guthrie was working furiously now, his pen scratching crude sketches of hands and fingers, the touching of faces, ears, mouths and the myriad ways in which the woman issued instructions, asked questions and the children replied. Some gestures were single words and others were sequences forming compound phrases: “all-over-cup-come”, “cup-my-drink”, “bring-bring-again”. Guthrie recorded the meanings that Hepburn, with increasing enthusiasm, managed to interpret.

Hepburn found himself enraptured by the mute woman and her extraordinary feats of communication with the children, to whom she seemed bound in affection as if they were her own.

“I would not have believed this, had I not witnessed it with my own eyes,” Paniter said.

“Nor I,” said Hepburn, charged with excitement, “and we must also go outside. There is much more to know.”

However, the woman pointed to the shelf and cups indicating that she intended to bring refreshment of some sort. She signed a complex series of gestures to the children who trotted to the shelf by the fireplace and brought some wooden cups, while she herself carried a jug of goat’s milk to the table. She cooked bannocks upon the griddle and the children chirruped like sparrows as they drank their milk. They gestured in a squabbling exchange about a piece of bannock left on the plate, which Hepburn interpreted as “not-you-have”, “me-have-hungry”, at which the woman divided it in half. Hepburn, partaking of this simple fare, thought this one of the most fascinating and unexpected repasts of his life and smiled to himself, then to the assembled company. 

Outside, Hepburn listened to the sounds of the children, their screeching seabird calls as they ran free. Now unafraid of the visitors, they pointed at distant boats on the river and signed to Hepburn their own observations about what they were seeing or thinking. Sometimes he thought he detected a few words of the Scots tongue, but he could not be sure, and surmised that these could simply be a coincidence of sounds in the mouths of these bairns. 

It was only when the older boatman appeared with a warning that the weather was about to turn, that they had to think of leaving. Hepburn felt that he would happily have stayed for days in this place to learn more of the language that these three had created. His mind was abuzz with thoughts about what this encounter had proved: that the race of humankind was born to speak, if not with tongues and voices, then by other means.

Hepburn led the thanks to the young woman, who appeared somewhat downcast at their going. The children and the woman stood watching as the men retreated down the slope and Hepburn felt troubled about what would become of them when the experiment was over, as now it would surely be. He had already determined to seek from the King a guarantee that the three would be provided for and protected for the part they had played in his investigation.

Hepburn knew also that these findings and observations would not answer the King’s question in the way he had hoped. But how could he not be struck with wonder at the account they would give, at the writings and illustrations that Guthrie had made of the language of the Inchkeith castaways? 

“The King will be disappointed, I fear, when we tell him of the nature of the children’s talk,” Paniter said to Hepburn on their return across the Firth.

“Maybe,” said Hepburn, “in that his theory was not correct; I can verify that the infants’ language is not ancient Hebrew, nor Aramaic, nor Greek. But what we have seen and heard are deeply significant. The sounds uttered by those children are those they hear in nature, but they have another language also, one of a very different sort.”

“Aye,” said Paniter dully, unconvinced by Hepburn’s enthusiasm. “The King’s question will remain a mystery known only to God, which it is perhaps not our place to discover.”

“Ah but think,” said Hepburn, still elated by their discovery. “Perhaps the original language given to man by God was in fact made by hands, not voices. And whatever the truth of it, these children and that clever nurturing young woman have shown us how magnificent is the mind that God has gifted to us all.”

About the author

Clare finds inspiration for her fiction from many different sources: sometimes from characters and stories fleetingly referred to in historical works on larger events; sometimes from gazing at striking rural landscapes and imagining the lives of those who had once walked on the hills, or fished in the rivers; sometimes from a beautiful ancient artefact fashioned by a person long dead, whose craft is no longer practised. She loves the challenge of trying to create the sense of a past world and entice readers to share in it.

https://clarehawkins.com/  

About the illustration

The illustration is a photograph of "Black house in Trotternish, Skye, Scotland" by Wojsyl. June 8, 2004. CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons.