A Famine of Horses (25 page)

“That’s the word,” said Jock. “You say you know nothing about it?”

“Nowt, sir.”

Jock watched him at his leisure for a while. Carey thought frantically. Surely to God, if Turnbull was here, he wouldn’t have admitted to his part in the trafficking in that thrice damned nag. Had he? Had he bought his own safety by selling them an intruder? Turnbull was the book-a-bosom priest Daniel sometimes travelled with, he must have known Carey wasn’t Daniel Swanders…Why should he? Carey had given the name only to Wat of Harden… Don’t speculate, ask.

“Sir, who was it said it was me had the animal?”

Jock and the Earl exchanged glances. “That was the word in Carlisle, last we heard,” said the Earl. “Do ye tell me on your honour that you never had the horse?”

“Never clapped eyes on him, on my honour, my lord,” said Carey, only slightly mendaciously.

Jock snorted slightly. “Do ye know aught ye could tell us about Sweetmilk’s killing?” he asked.

“No sir,” said Carey, “but it wasnae Sergeant Dodd.”

“How do ye know that?”

“If what I’ve heard is right, sir, he wouldna make such a bodge of it.”

The Earl laughed. “Any other news out of Carlisle?”

“Er…they postponed the funeral of the old lord.”

“I know that. They think we’re riding into England,” said Bothwell.

“Are ye not?” asked Carey guilelessly, heart hammering again.

Bothwell smiled, a little coldly. “That’s for me to know and you to learn in due course, Daniel.”

“Yes sir.”

“Are you riding with us, Daniel?”

No help for it. “Yes sir, though I’m not a right fighting man if I’m honest with ye.”

Bothwell clapped him on the shoulder again and grinned: he had remarkably good, even teeth and it gave his smile an odd glaring quality. Carey smiled back.

“If ye want custom, wait about a bit and Wattie Graham will take you to see the women, they’re all agog for whatever’s in your pack.”

Wattie Graham was as good as his word: as the betting round the makeshift cockpit reached manic proportions, Carey followed the laird up the winding stair to the next floor, where his womenfolk were hiding from the untrustworthy men down below.

There was a crowd of them, perhaps ten or eleven, and a bewildering number of Jeans and Marys with an occasional Maud and one Susan, sitting on little stools at a trestle table eating their own meal which looked even worse than the one still rattling about Carey’s stomach. There was no sign of even a speck of bacon in it.

Wattie’s wife, Alison Graham, came to meet them at the door. Her broad, lined face lit up at sight of him and she took his hand in her own small rough one and led him into the feminine billow of skirts and aprons.

Surrounded by them, Carey opened the pack, laid out what it contained in the way Daniel had shown him and gave tongue like a London stallman.

“Ribbons, silks, beads and bracelets, laces, creams, garters and needles, what d’ye lack ladies, come buy.”

They giggled and elbowed each other. Mrs Graham fingered the ribbons and another girl picked up a packet of hairpins.

“How much for these?” she asked, and Carey told her.

It was bedlam for a while after that, as Carey told prices, held bargaining sessions over quantities of needles and some perfumed soap direct from Castile, as he insisted, although he knew perfectly well it was boiled up in York, and so did they.

At the end of the hour he had made Daniel a profit of about five shillings, and despite a throbbing head and a dry throat, he was feeling well-pleased with himself.

Mrs Graham brought him a goblet of sour wine well-watered, which he drank gratefully and then told him to sit down and he’d shortly get better fare than he would downstairs.

“Unless you want to go and watch the cockfighting?” said another girl, Jeanie Scott, extremely pregnant and glowing with it.

Carey grinned and decided to risk it. “Nay, mistress,” he said, “I laid my bets before I came up.”

“Don’t you want to see which wins?”

“I know which cock’ll win,” said Carey, “it’s the one that wasna given beer beforehand to slow him down.”

They all laughed knowingly at that. “What’s the news from Carlisle?” asked Alison Graham.

“I wasna there but ten days,” said Carey, “I don’t know the doings yet.”

“Is it right Jock of the Peartree raided the Dodds?” asked Jeanie Scott.

“Och, you know he did,” said another woman impatiently, “He was a’ full of it when he came back.”

“I heard Janet Dodd say her Cousin Willie’s Simon had an arrow in his arm during the raid,” ventured Carey. “And a woman called Margaret lost her bairn with the excitement.”

Jeanie Scott tutted sadly. “That would be Margaret Pringle, Clem Pringle’s sister, poor lass. I hope she’s not poorly with it. D’ye know how she fares, cadger?”

Carey shook his head.

“How’s Young Jock?” asked another girl, a thin, small pale creature, with a startling head of burnished gold hair. One of her wrists was tightly bandaged.

“He’s in the jail at Carlisle,” said Carey cautiously.

“They havena chained him?”

“Not that I know.”

“Now Mary,” said Alison gently, “dinna disturb yourself so much.”

Mary seemed on the brink of tears, which surprised Carey. “I couldna bear it to lose another brother…Will the Warden hang Young Jock, d’ye think.”

Carey shrugged. “He was caught with the red hand, Mistress, the Deputy could have hanged him on the spot.”

“Ay, you listen to him,” said Alison stoutly, “and dinna concern yourself; Lowther’ll see him well enough, mark my words, it’s only a matter of waiting.”

“But after Sweetmilk…” began Mary, and the tears started trickling down her face. From the red rims round her eyes it looked something she did often.

Alison rolled her eyes. “Now Mary, Sweetmilk’s dead and gone and that’s the end of it. He’s with God now and your dad’ll get his revenge once he finds the man that did the killing.”

Mary only cried harder and put her head on Susan’s shoulder.

“Is she Sweetmilk’s betrothed?” asked Carey privately of Jeanie Scott, fetching out a hanky from his pack that was edged with lace and handing it to Mary. Service at Court had made it almost a reflex with him, when he saw a woman crying, although naturally what he really wanted to do was to cut and run.

Jeanie didn’t look sympathetic. “No, she’s Sweetmilk’s sister and what she’s in such a taking about, I’m sure I dinna ken.”

It was Mary who had bought a packet of extra-long staylaces as Carey was sure Mrs Graham had noticed. She was mopping her eyes again: Carey saw her fingernails were bitten down to the quick.

“It’s a sad thing to lose a brother,” added Jeanie briskly, “but God knows, it’s worse to lose a wean, and she’s a fancy man here too, if I’m any judge.”

“Is she not married yet?” added Carey in surprise.

“Nay, she’s only sixteen, she’s but a flighty maid with her head full of stories. Jock has her betrothed to an Elliot but she doesna want him. She’ll change her tune in time.”

“Better to marry than burn, the preachers say,” said Carey meaningfully.

Jeanie Scott eyed him. “Ay,” she said at last, “that’s the way of it.”

“Do you know who killed Sweetmilk?”

Jeanie shrugged and patted her stomach. “Save for the way it was done, it could have been a Storey or a Bell or a Maxwell or anyone that found him with cows that didna belong to him.”

“Hey, peddler,” sang out another Mary, “how much for the whalebone?”

There was a little more selling and then the girl called Susan came in with a large wobbling junket, sweetened with rosewater and honey. They served it to him, laughing at his expression and told him a fine figure of a man like himself needed better feeding than what they were getting downstairs and it would settle his stomach nicely. Three of them had messages for friends in Carlisle, Jeanie Scott wanted him to tell the midwife Mrs Croser that the babe was head down at last, and a fifth wanted to know what a roll of green velvet would cost and if he could get it for her from Edinburgh next time he went. Carey promised he would find out from Thomas the Merchant which seemed to please them.

At last with his pack a good bit lighter than before and his purse considerably heavier, Carey went to the door. Mrs Graham followed him with a roll of cloth.

“Here,” she said, “ye dinna want to jingle among that lot downstairs, roll your money in this.”

He did as she suggested and behind the door, he slipped it down inside his shirt and tied it round his waist. At the bottom of the stairs he found Wattie Graham, frowning.

“Ye took your time.”

Carey shrugged. “I canna rush the ladies when they canna make up their minds,” he said reasonably. “Who won the cockfight?”

“The Duke of Guise, Old Wat of Harden’s best cock,” said Wattie Graham dourly, “and if ye ask me, it was fixed.”

Carey went over to One-Lug and Jemmie to collect his winnings, and then agreed to join a game of primero with them. As soon as he took the cards in his hands, he knew they had been marked with pin pricks on the back and had to hide a smile. With a quick shuffle, he had the system worked out, and it was one that the London card-sharps had abandoned five years before.

It was quite pleasant to let himself slip into a card-playing frame of mind, finding a clearer colder self as he watched the cards and the play and calculated the odds according to the Italian book he had read ten years before and which had saved his life. At Court it could sometimes be far more dangerous to win than to lose: he won steadily but had never taken more than he lost off the Earl of Leicester, nor from his successor at Court, the Earl of Essex. Sir Walter Raleigh was a different matter: he had spotted Carey’s careful odds playing at once and had insisted on learning it from him.

Carey ended the evening by paying back to Old Wat’s Clemmie and One-Lug and Jemmie exactly what he had won off them at the cockfight, which made them feel they were somehow one up on him. There was music as well: a scrawny old man with a plaited beard took up a little harp like the ones they had in Ireland and strummed and sang a whining ugly song about a fight of some sort. There followed a scurrilous and probably truthful ballad about Scrope and his personal habits and a wistful lament for Sweetmilk Graham that had Jock of the Peartree dabbing his eyes and nodding and sighing.

It hardly seemed possible for the number of men they had fed there to be able to sleep, even after some of them had been set to watch the horses and guard the Longtown ford. And to Carey’s frustration, there was still no word on where the raid was headed. But there was no help for it, and so with his pack pillowing his head and a thread from it wound round his thumb, his dagger in his hand and Daniel’s thin greasy cloak wrapped round him, he lay down to sleep, with One-Lug’s boots by his head and Jemmie’s backside wedging him into the wall. Which hardly seemed a coincidence, though if they were watching him they were doing it in their sleep. For a long time he was too tight-strung to shut his eyes as he lay in the smoky darkness listening to an orchestra of snores and grunts and farting. In the end, even he slept.

Friday 23rd June, before dawn

All her life Elizabeth Widdrington had risen well before dawn to dress herself and pray in the quiet pale time before the world sprang to life. It calmed her and gave her space to breathe before she must plunge into managing her husband’s house and lands and nursing her husband himself. It was a precious thing to be able to speak to God without interruption by maid-servants wanting to know if the linen should be washed despite the rain and menservants needing the tools out of the lockup.

Of course, sometimes she was hard put to it to keep her mind on her prayers: Philadelphia’s brother would keep marching into her thoughts. It had been a long time since her lawfully arranged husband Sir Henry had been well enough for the marriage bed and sometimes she despaired of ever having children. At twenty-eight she was getting on for childbearing…And there was the memory of Robert Carey again, courteously determined, blue eyes smoky and intent, whispering his desire to her in the little garden at the palace, while the rain of that stormy summer fell and the whole land held its breath and waited for the Armada. And afterwards…No, she wouldn’t think of it.

She rose and started to dress. On this particular morning she was in one of the little apartments in the Carlisle Keep, since Lady Scrope refused to hear of her lodging in the town. As always she padded silently about in her shift, not needing a tiring woman since her stays laced unfashionably at the front, and once she was into her grey-woollen gown and her ruff tied at her neck, she crept out through Philadelphia and Thomas Scrope’s chamber with her boots in her hand. The two of them were invisible behind the curtains of their bed and the maidservant snoring at a high pitch by the wall. None of them woke as she opened the heavy door and went down the stair.

It was a little more difficult to pick her way amongst the servants asleep in the rushes in the main room, but she managed it with no more than a few grunts and a feeble grope after her by one of the men. She was on the point of opening the heavy main door, when she heard stealthy footsteps and whispered conversation, and the rattle of keys.