A Famine of Horses (39 page)

Bell looked down at his desk. “Sir Robert,” he said, “I will be frank with you. I served the old lord faithfully and I will serve his son in the same way. If the lord Warden writes a letter like that to my lord Burghley, you will never see it and nor will I…er…improve it as I have with this. However, Lowther is not my lord and…I would rather be your friend than his.”

“I already regard you as a friend, Mr Bell,” said Carey, his heart lifting. Surely it couldn’t be as easy as this, surely the man would want money?

Bell smiled at him, a remarkably sweet smile for such a skull-like face.

“May I have the other letters back, then sir?”

Carey handed them over, keeping the one that described, in withering terms, his doings of the Friday. Before his eyes, Richard Bell put the three letters into the dispatch bag and sealed it.

“May I keep this?” he asked, waving the paper.

“I hope you’ll burn it.”

“Naturally, I will,” said Carey, “but I want to be sure I’ve understood it properly.”

Bell shrugged. “These are the only letters dictated by Sir Richard,” he said, pointing to the dispatch bag. “That one in your hand must be a libellous forgery.”

Carey tucked the paper into the front of his doublet and grinned.

“Of course it is,” he agreed, “I’m in your debt, Mr Bell.”

“No sir,” said Bell, as he put the dispatch bag on a hook, “I regard this as fair exchange.”

“Well, good night Mr Bell.”

“Good night, Sir Robert.”

Back in his chamber in the Queen Mary Tower, Carey bit down on his rage and forced himself to read again what Lowther thought of him. It wasn’t at all complimentary. In fact, there might have been a disaster if the Queen had seen it. Lowther described Carey as an impudent, ignorant young puppy, an unprincipled gloryhound, whose ridiculous, irresponsible and foolhardy attempt to spy out what Bothwell was up to at Netherby had imperilled Lowther’s clever intelligence work et cetera, et cetera.

Carey committed it to memory as a way of drawing the sting of his anger, then watched with satisfaction as his candleflame caught the edge and curled the whole epistle into a little pile of ash in the grate. But Elizabeth’s astonishing defence of Mary Graham kept rising up in his mind causing confusion and irritation, and when Barnabus arrived with a bowl of rosewater and a pile of cloths to take the white lead off his master’s face at last, he was snarled at. That night Carey lay for a long time staring into the darkness of the bedcurtains, listening to the snoring of his servant and the Carlisle bell telling the hours, unwilling to risk his ribs in turning over. He wished he could put his arms around some warm cuddly girl, bury all his doubts in her, perhaps even ask her what she thought…No, perhaps not.

Even when he slept at last, Elizabeth Widdrington haunted his dreams with her hand bandaged and her gun smoking.

Saturday, 1st July, morning

The week had passed with breathless quiet, since all the worst raiders among the Armstrongs and Grahams were busy deep in Scotland and the hay harvest was in full swing. After the hurry of the days before the funeral, Carey took life easy for a while and spent some of the time, once he felt more comfortable on a horse, riding out across the rough hills and learning how they lay. He even got in some hunting with dogs, since all the falcons were still in moult, though they returned empty-handed.

It was Young Hutchin Graham who came to Carey as he stood in the castle yard at dawn on the Saturday following Scrope’s funeral, and muttered that if he chose to ride up to the ford at Longtown, he might find some horses. This confirmed everything Carey had heard about Young Hutchin from Barnabus, but he only narrowed his eyes and said, “Anything else?”

“Ay,” said Young Hutchin, “if ye go alone, there might be someone to meet ye there.”

“Will that someone be alone as well?”

“Ay. He gives ye his word on it.”

“I’ll be armed.”

Young Hutchin grinned. “So will he.”

Probably I shouldn’t do it, Carey thought, as he shotted both his guns and put them in their carrying case, probably it would be wise to have Dodd and the men follow at a distance.

In the end he did take Dodd and the men, but he told them to wait for him a mile down the road and come if he blew on his horn.

Longtown was alive with horses, most of them too tired and footsore to do more than crop the grass ravenously. He rode through them and found Jock of the Peartree sitting in a tree by the ford, with the Widdrington nags tethered to the next bush.

“Good day to you, Jock,” he said.

“Now then, Courtier.”

“How was the raid?”

“Och, it was beautiful,” said Jock, showing the gaps in his teeth. “The horses…Ye told naught but the truth, I never saw such magnificent animals before.”

“How many of them did you get?”

“I’m not sure. About five hundred, give or take a few.”

“And the King?”

“He’s well enough. He was a wee bit upset when we banged his door in and he still canna understand it how the sixty men he had with him in the house managed to drive off two hundred Borderers. He thinks it was God saved him, though Chancellor Melville did his best when ye sent him word.”

“Is that all, a wee bit upset?”

“Well, he’s verra upset, to tell ye the truth. I hear he’s on his way to Jedburgh with 3,000 men to do some justice.”

“And Bothwell?”

“Gone north to the Highlands. He’s worn out his welcome here and he knows it.”

They looked at each other in silence for a moment, Carey wondering if he dared ask.

“Ay,” said Jock, “I dinna like his way of doing things. About Sweetmilk.”

“Yes.”

“I know who killed him.”

“Oh?” said Carey carefully. “Did…er…did Mary tell you?”

Jock spat. “Not a peep out of her and I broke a stick thrashing her.”

“Then how do you know?”

Jock stared off into the distance, one hand on the bough beside him.

“All the time we were conversing on top of Netherby tower there was something about your face that was troubling me, Courtier. I didna mind me what it was until we’d let ye go and then it came to me. It was the cut on your cheek.”

Carey had forgotten all about it, though he put his finger to the scar now. “What about it?”

“I spent a full night before he was buried, looking at my Sweetmilk’s poor dead face,” said Jock, “and it was sorrowful what the crows had done to it, but none of the peckmarks had bled. Except one, the one on his cheek, like yours, that had bled, ay and clotted too. It was the same shape, ye mind, like a star, made by a fancy ring.”

Jock’s mouth worked. “I asked the Earl if anyone hit ye while ye were at Netherby playing at peddlers. He said it was Jock Hepburn that struck you for not calling him sir. Nobody else until I got to work on ye. And Hepburn had a ring like a star, with emeralds on it.”

“Had?” asked Carey, feeling hollow and tired.

“Ay, had,” said Jock, “I asked him, he admitted he hit Sweetmilk, he admitted Sweetmilk called him out. He denied shooting my son in the back, but he lied.”

“Did he have a trial?” demanded Carey, his voice shaking with a sudden surprising rage. “Did he get a chance at justice?”

“Justice? There ye go again, Courtier, you’re ower impractical. What justice did he give my Sweetmilk? If he’d killed him honourably in a duel, ay well, it would have been sorrowful, but what he did…He’s had all the justice he deserves.”

It was on the tip of Carey’s tongue to tell Jock the truth about his daughter, but somehow the words stuck there. The silence broken by horse noises was all around him while he tried to decide: would justice truly be served by her hanging? Would Jock even believe him? Mary’s death would bring back neither Sweetmilk nor Hepburn. Perhaps Elizabeth was right; he remembered her anger, which had puzzled him. At last he said, “Where is Hepburn now?”

“His soul’s in hell, but ye’ll find his body where he left Sweetmilk’s, if you’ve a mind to go fetch it. I wouldnae bother, myself. It’s no’ very pretty, ye follow.”

“You could have waited, Jock,” said Carey tightly, “I was planning to arrest the murderer. You could have waited for a trial and proper justice.”

Jock shrugged. “Why?” he asked. “Ye’re begrudging an old man healing his heart? Besides Hepburn could likely buy his way clear—who cares about the killing of a reiver? This way Sweetmilk can rest quiet.”

“Very neat,” said Carey bitterly.

He turned his horse away to return to Dodd and start the long wearisome job of rounding up the horses, sorting them out by brand and knowledge, and take them back to their rightful owners. Jock called after him, “I’m in debt to ye, Courtier. I’ll mind ye if we meet in a fight and if ye need aid from the Grahams, ye’ve only to call on me.”

Carey turned back.

“God forbid,” he said, “that I should ever need help from the likes of you.”

Jock was not offended. “Ay, perhaps He will. But if He doesna, my offer stands. Good day to ye, Courtier.”

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