A Suspicion of Silver

by P. F. Chisholm

  “Ye-es,” said Carey who was long experienced in flinging himself up and down the country at the Queen’s command. “The only trouble with it is if you have a deadline, because then you can be certain that all the winds will be contrary. Riding post you can do London to Berwick reliably in three days and in 1589 I did London to Berwick in twelve days on foot.”

  “Why on foot?”

  “It was a bet,” said Carey, “with pretty much the whole of the Court, to rescue me from my creditors. The book was immense with the sidebets running to hundreds of pounds and I’m happy to say, I won three thousand pounds. Although I still have creditors, I’m really not sure why.”

  Anricks took breath to speak and then thought better of it and sucked smoke instead. Carey was grateful for that because he was tired of being lectured by well-meaning people about compound interest. Instead he broached a problem he had with Young Hutchin, and Anricks listened carefully.

  “You’re worried that Young Hutchin will abscond while you are on your way to Gilsland and inform his uncles, particularly Wattie Graham of Netherby, about Mrs Dodd’s cart full of grain and horsefeed, and that the Grahams will then raid you in force.”

  “Yes.”

  Anricks nodded. “I assume Young Hutchin is as easily bought as any of them.”

  “Yes. I thought of sending him with a message for the King, but of course that then puts him in the path of Lord Spynie again. He isn’t anything like as pretty as he was last summer but still…”

  “Hm. And I think it would be better if his mission were dressed up as something else, so he doesn’t suspect anything and decide to head for Brackenhill anyway.”

  “A good point.”

  “I have the very thing,” said Anricks.

  They gathered themselves together to get packed up and the cart ready—it could have done with new axles after its ordeal over the drover’s roads, but Carey had the Court’s wheelwright look at it and after considerable tooth-sucking, the man opined that the axles were well enough and the wheels too and he thought it would do if they stayed on the Giant’s Road. Just on the offchance, Carey invested in a spare axle which was balanced on one of the packponies’ backs and strapped down carefully.

  James’ ten men were the usual gutter-sweepings of Edinburgh and Leith, his two draft horses at least strong-looking and not obviously sickening for anything serious like the glanders. The cart itself was full of grain and fodder and there were five hired packponies as well. Janet had turned almost all her worthless Scotch shillings into far more valuable food. Whitesock was tethered to the cart since he would not have a man on his back and had bitten the groom who tried to put a pack on him. Nobody had dared to try and put the spare axle on his back since even an experienced packpony didn’t like it and needed blinkers.

  Carey found Young Hutchin sucking a dairymaid’s tit behind a stable wall, raised his eyebrows and said nothing as he went out again and waited in the yard. Young Hutchin came running out, adjusting himself and full of excuses which Carey waved away. Carey gave him a letter to carry to Mr Anricks at John Napier’s house in Edinburgh and a verbal message, promised him thruppence and sent him off at a fast jogtrot into Edinburgh. Carey watched him go with a distinct feeling of relief. Whether he would in fact have told his uncles about the valuable fodder and grain on the cart was a moot point, but at least, with luck, Carey wouldn’t have to face a raiding band of Grahams. Gilsland was sixteen miles east of Carlisle and nowhere near the Grahams’ lands stolen from the Storeys, but he thought Ritchie Graham of Brackenhill’s reward of fifteen pounds English for his head might inspire them and there were plenty of Elliots in the area too. Luckily, the pele tower at Gilsland was extremely strong and well-built and had withstood several attempts to burn it down.

  Young Hutchin came back an hour later to say that Mr Anricks had offered him a temporary job and could he take it, which impressed Carey because he had bothered to ask. Carey then spent half an hour complaining about his shortage of grooms and messenger boys and only grudgingly said yes, when he heard how much the wages were to be. Young Hutchin trotted off, looking happy.

  They set off before dawn the next day, with Janet riding Shilling and her green eyes narrowed and anxious.

  “Word will ha’ got out about Sergeant Dodd,” she said. “Whit’ll we do if Skinabake hits us for the grain?”

  “Fight him,” said Carey who was in his jack and morion, “or anyone else that wants to take us on.”

  He had had a quiet word with Leamus, and had sent the man out early in the morning to find out where the reivers were. Leamus went in Hughie’s buffcoat, but with bare lower legs and feet which looked very odd indeed. Carey was particularly interested in Skinabake who needed a set-down for the way he had sold Janet to Colin Elliot. The fact that Wee Colin hadn’t harmed her or even held her very long was not Skinabake’s fault.

  And so they clattered and creaked their way along the Great North Road, heading south through the usual scattering of peasants and craftsmen and the occasional messenger galloping past, shouting at them to get out of his way. They started collecting travellers going to Berwick and Newcastle almost at once. The road had big potholes but was relatively safe, thanks to the Earls Hume who were Wardens of the Scottish East March and had beaten and terrorised it into relative calmness. Which was to say, not really safe at all by the standards of the rest of the country, and so lone travellers tagged along with them.

  They took a right turn by a drover’s road and got into a coaching inn some time after sunset. The place was a post stop on the way to Edinburgh with regular trade from the King’s messengers riding north with the sealed packets of letters from the Queen’s Court in London and others via Newcastle, so it was bigger than a village inn. Still they overwhelmed it, with their cart and Carey’s followers, John Tovey and Red Sandy and Bangtail and Leamus and Mrs Ridley and Janet Dodd and King James’ men and the taggers-along who dossed down in the courtyard, since the common room and the stables were all taken. The innkeeper, a wide man wearing a jack and helmet with a Jeddart axe at his belt, was deeply disapproving of the women, put them in the smallest of his three rooms, with barely space for a bed in it. Carey and Tovey shared a bed in the biggest room along with a stranger who took the truckle, a stern bald silent man in grey wool and a falling band who spent a remarkably long time on his prayers.

  Carey went out in the depths of the night and found the door to the women’s room locked from inside, and so he sighed and visited the jakes and went back to bed feeling chilly. He supposed it would have been a little snug in the bed with Widow Ridley there too and the crowd of men-at-arms from Edinburgh dossing down in the common room underneath, at least one of whom was likely to be King James’ informer. Tovey was full of some news about the man sharing the room who hadn’t bothered to introduce himself and had closed the curtains.

  “He’s got which book in his saddlebag?”

  “Malleus maleficarum!” hissed Tovey. “Hammer of evildoers. It’s about witches, sir. I wonder if there are any round here.”

  “He’s probably heading for Edinburgh,” said Carey. “King James is very interested in witches, especially since the Earl of Bothwell nearly put a spell on him a few years ago.”

  Before dawn they were off again on the dangerous leg of the journey. Around sunrise they came onto the Giant’s Road, south of the Wall, the one that had been built by the Fay, the Giants, or the Romans, take your pick. Most of it was patched, often badly.

  Leamus turned up as they passed the remains of a mile castle, sitting on one of the snowy walls like a troll. He came trotting softly up to Carey, smiled and said, “There’s a big clan of men, north of you and shadowing you.”

  “Friends?” asked Carey cynically.

  Leamus smiled wider. “If your friends are likely to cut your throat.”

  “How many?”

  “I saw twenty.”

 
“Sounds like Skinabake again,” said Carey. “Are they armed?”

  “Carrying lilies and roses, sure.”

  “Guns?”

  “None that I saw.”

  “Where will they hit us?”

  “When I was listening at their campfire a while before dawn, they had made up their minds to take us between milecastles, but they were still arguing it out over which.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Last I saw of them, they were camping in one of the milecastles.”

  “Can you take us straight there?”

  “Sure, sorr,” said Leamus and his teeth gleamed.

  Carey took King James’ men and Bangtail, leaving Red Sandy and John Tovey in charge of the cart and the women. He bunched the men round him and loaded and wound his pistols while he told them that he couldn’t pay them extra for fighting, but they could have any plunder they found, to which they agreed. He was taking a big risk because another band of Border robbers such as the Scotts or the Kerrs could happen on the cart, or even the Grahams without Young Hutchin’s help, but on the whole he felt it would be safer to take out the main problem in one go. Word would spread and as none of the local reivers were any braver than they had to be, that would help keep other vultures off their backs. The snow was lying and looking worn but it hadn’t snowed again yet, which would have helped. The bracken was frozen and too wet to fire. So speed would have to do.

  Leamus loped next to Carey’s horse as Carey took everybody off up a path to the north, his bare feet and lower legs as surefooted as an unshod hobby.

  “Aren’t your feet cold?” Carey asked the Irishman, thinking about Dodd’s suffering with his feet in the autumn.

  “Not while I’m running, sorr,” said Leamus. “And I take them for a little run a few mornings a week, now.”

  They came to the first milecastle, nobody there, cantered up to the next and as they came up heard shouts of “A l’arme!” Carey kicked his horse to a gallop, felt Leamus let go of his stirrup and saw him sprinting like a goat over the fallen stones of the wall, unplaiting his hair as he went. Carey opened his pistol case and took out his pistols, felt Bangtail close behind and King James’ men not nearly as fast, as he galloped into the middle of Skinabake’s little band which was mostly engaged in making a late breakfast of porridge. One man stood staring and stock still with a spirtle halfway to his mouth for a taste.

  He stood in the stirrups to aim, shot the one with the spirtle in the face, shot at another who was diving and may have hit him, dropped the smoking pistols back in the case, and swept out his sword. The bunch of King James’ men charged, not very enthusiastically, at a knot of Skinabake’s louts, who swapped blows and then tried to run. They might prey happily on lone travellers and women, but they didn’t fancy an actual fight with even odds. Which was good because Carey suspected King James’ men felt the same way.

  He stood up in the stirrups again, looked around with his sword bloody, he had no idea how, saw Skinabake in the distance, fighting one of James’ men and driving him back. He sent his pony scrambling over the stones and snow and knocked Skinabake over with the flat of his blade and saw Leamus jump down on the man with a bloody knife in his hand.

  “Don’t kill him,” he shouted, as he dealt with a couple of Skinabake’s men and then jumped from his pony.

  Skinabake was rolling his eyes as Leamus knelt on his back, his long knife digging in Skinabake’s neck, whispering in his ear.

  “Get him off me!” he shouted, “Chrissakes, get him off!”

  “Why?” asked Carey, as Bangtail came up and tied Skinabake’s hands behind him and took his sword and helmet, tried the morion on.

  “Bastard kern said he’d eat mah heart!”

  “Don’t be daft,” said Carey, “you haven’t got one, otherwise you wouldn’t have sold your own cousin to Wee Colin Elliot. Do as you like, Leamus.”

  Leamus grinned broadly, turned his head and bit Skinabake’s ear, then got up and let him go, yelping.

  “Ow! Och!” shouted Skinabake, staring wide-eyed at Leamus who licked his lips and said “Yum.” Skinabake scowled and shuddered.

  Most of Skinabake’s twenty hard-faced tough lads had run. A couple were dead and a couple more were wounded and bleeding. They flinched when Leamus passed them to stab his knife into the turf and rub it dry with a cloth. He hadn’t drawn the sword he had taken from Hughie’s corpse.

  Carey got them organized with King James’ men guarding Skinabake and the other lad who had a broken arm and was crying quietly. The ones with holes in them ran away. Two corpses lay on the ground, not even worth the robbing. Then he headed back to where Janet, Red Sandy, Mrs Ridley, and the cart and packponies and Whitesock of course, were rattling along. Mrs Ridley was still on the cart, knitting away, Janet was astride Shilling looking like a mother fox defending her cubs because half her hair had escaped from her cap.

  Carey took his helmet off to her. “Mrs Dodd,” he said formally, “here is Cuthbert Armstrong, known as Skinabake. Shall we find a tree and hang him?” Carey looked about. There weren’t any trees. “Or maybe we could hang him off a milecastle’s wall.”

  Janet skewered the cowering Skinabake with a look and lifted her chin.

  “I dinna ken,” she said. “I’ll think aboot it.”

  Dodd was fighting a monster on the moors, it was invisible and it kept coming up behind him and before he could get a good blow on it, digging its claw deep into his back. He was hot again and exhausted because he had been fighting it all his life, forever, he couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been fighting it, and once he caught a glimpse and thought he knew the man but couldn’t think of his name. It wasn’t a man, really. It was a grim-faced giant, twice, thrice his size, and seemed to be playing with him.

  Over and over he wondered what would happen if he just stopped fighting and let the giant kill him, but he couldn’t. It simply wasn’t in him to give up.

  So he blinked sweat out of his eyes and tried to stand and something pulled him down and stabbed him in the back. He heard women’s voices and the sound of someone sniffing hard, close to him.

  “God, he’s got an abscess,” said the firm one wearily. “Well that’ll kill him right enough. Maybe we should call Mr Lugg?”

  A man’s voice again, he knew the man, but he was too battleweary even to feel rage at the Elliot headman.

  “Mr Lugg, the barber surgeon. Ay, I’ve heard he’s good. Well, if you think it might help…”

  “I do—so far as anything can help.”

  “I’ll send a boy to fetch the surgeon,” said Wee Colin Elliot. “It’s the least we can do.”

  Joachim had spent several days happily checking all the mining machinery with the carpenter, Matthew Ormathwaite, who was far more expert than he was at making the wooden cogs and wheels and straps, but had never had an original idea in his life. They decided to straighten the course of Newlands Beck and bank it, to make it run faster and give more power to the ore-stampers and persuaded Hans Moser, one of the mine captains, to lend them three men to do the digging. It was a good opportunity since the snow had locked up a lot of the water that usually ran through it down to Bassenthwaite Lake, parallel with the River Derwent, but of course the earth was frozen which was why they needed three men.

  Joachim was standing watching as the men dug, listening to the rough music from the ore-stampers a little way from the mine, when he felt himself being watched and looked up. He sighed. It was inevitable but it had been pleasant to pretend it wouldn’t happen: his eldest brother, Emanuel, was watching from the back of a pony with Hans Rössle beside him on a fat donkey.

  Joachim bowed to his brother and his brother came and immediately started to ask anxious questions about the works in Deutsch, why was he interfering with Newlands Beck, didn’t he know how important it was, he should stop immediately until he had authorisation
from Emanuel himself.

  Just for a moment Joachim boiled with anger and then he let it go. He had learnt to do that when stupid patrons and employers couldn’t understand why something needed to be done. Emanuel was no different. So he told the men to stop digging and go back to the mine, they would get a full day’s pay from Emanuel for what they had already done.

  Then Joachim put his hat back on and stood there with his arms folded, breathing deeply to try and quell his anger.

  “We should go to the alehouse,” said Emanuel. Joachim thanked Ormathwaite elaborately in English for his tour of the mining machinery. Emanuel looked even more worried about that, as if Joachim would deliberately interfere with the machines, which showed how little Emanuel knew his younger brother because Joachim was far more willing to kill a man than to damage a machine.

  Emanuel sent Rössle on to Keswick and they walked to the small hut where the miners got their beer and sausages and sauerkraut. With two pewter mugs of the best ale at their elbows, Joachim and Emanuel sat opposite each other. Emanuel was going bald, Joachim noted, who wasn’t. His thick yellow hair wasn’t as thick as it had been and there was a little island in the middle of the straw and two encroaching areas of bare skull on either side. Heroically, Joachim didn’t twit him on it.

  “Did you get my letter?” asked Emanuel after a long silence.

  “Yes, I did,” said Joachim. That was the letter from Emanuel in a simple cipher asking him if he was planning to kill the Scottish king, since their cousin at the Leith Steelyard had been worried enough about it to write to Emanuel. “I thought it a remarkably stupid thing to do, all things considered. Did you get my reply?”

  “Yes,” said Emanuel, “but I heard a worrying rumour at Workington that there was an attempt made on the King at New Year, although it didn’t work. Was that you?”

  “No,” said Joachim, smiling at him, “that was the Deputy Warden Sir Robert Carey’s attempt.”