A Suspicion of Silver

by P. F. Chisholm

  As expected, the town Mayor turned up as they struggled through the stale bread and thin ale, complete with his crimson gown in the style of Henry VIII. He bowed to Carey and introduced himself as Aloysius Allerdyce.

  Carey bowed back and eyed him. He was short and wide-built and smiling broadly so Carey too painted a smile on his face and sat himself down on the bench with the wall at his back.

  “I am Sir Robert Carey, knight, Deputy Warden of the English West March at Carlisle.”

  “That’s what I heard. Are ye here on a hot or cold trod, Sir Robert?” asked Allerdyce with a frown. “I don’t think there are any cattle raiders here except for…well, there aren’t any and he’s respectable enough when he visits.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, just Mr Graham. They say he’s a notable reiver but…”

  Carey narrowed his eyes. “Which Graham?”

  “Er…” Clearly Allerdyce was wishing his tongue hadn’t run away with him. “Mr Walter Graham.”

  “Are you talking about Wattie Graham of Netherby, by any chance?”

  “Happen I am.”

  Both eyebrows went up. “Really? Respectable?”

  “He owns some woods hereabouts in Borrowdale, nearly the only good-sized timber left and he often comes to…er…inspect it.”

  Carey blinked and did his best to hide his instant fascination. What was Wattie Graham doing, owning woods like a lord? The Grahams famously didn’t even legally own or rent the lands they lived on, but were squatting on Storey lands. They had driven that family off in the 1520s when the original five Graham brothers came south from wherever the devil they came from, probably Hell.

  “Ah,” he said. “Well, no, I’m not precisely on a trod. I am interested in the mines and miners hereabouts.”

  Very deliberately, Allerdyce spat into the fireplace. “The Dutch miners?”

  “Yes. Can you take me to their headman or captain?”

  “Why d’ye want to talk to they, they’re not even Christians?”

  “Oh?”

  “Anabaptists and devil-worshippers, I heard.”

  “Really? Well, I have been directed by the Queen to inspect the mines, make sure that the Queen is getting her rights and so on.”

  An interesting expression crossed Allerdyce’s broad face, equal parts disappointment and disgust. “Ay well, we thought ye wis something to do with the murder.”

  “The murder?”

  “Ay, the murder of one of my aldermen, three days after New Year’s Even.”

  “I am also, of course, warranted to investigate any and all breaches of the Queen’s peace,” Carey lied briskly, “so certainly I would want to find out who committed such a terrible crime. Do you have anyone locked up?”

  “Nay, it’s still a mystery.”

  “Ah. Perhaps I can assist you to find the guilty party.”

  “Hmf. And the miners?”

  “Who is the headman of the miners? I believe it was originally a man called Daniel Hochstetter of the Augsburg company Haug and Co, but that he died more than ten years ago and Haug and Company have gone bankrupt.”

  “Ay, he did. There are the shareholders in the Company of Mines Royal, but they’re in London now. I suppose the nearest to a headman would be Hans Loser but really ye should talk to Frau Hochstetter, Radagunda Hochstetter, Mr Daniel’s widow, or mebbe her son, Mr Emanuel.”

  “Ahah. And when can I meet the widow?”

  Allerdyce moved uncomfortably. “Oh, I don’t think there’s any need. She doesn’t speak English, ye ken, even after all this time in England. Mester Daniel did, but not her.”

  “Are there any shareholders at all here in Keswick? Surely there should be at least one to keep the accounts and so on?”

  “Ay,” said Allerdyce, clearly thinking hard. “Though Mr Nedham’s awa’ from the town at the moment. I heard tell he’s gone to Bristol, looking for good charcoal.” There was a short silence.

  “Well,” said Carey, “if you haven’t buried your murdered alderman yet or had the inquest, perhaps you could tell me what happened and then I could view the body?”

  “Ay, o’ course, ay.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Eh?”

  “With the alderman. What was his name to start with?”

  “Oh, it was Carleton, not from the riding Carletons, ye know, the southerly branch and it surely is a mystery.”

  Carey steepled his fingers, hooded his eyes and waited.

  “Ay, John Carleton. It’s hard to think who could have done it, he wis found in the morning, stone dead and his smithy fire out for he hadn’t curfewed it. That was shocking.”

  “He was found in his smithy?”

  “Ay, he was a plumber too, very clever man, he could make lead pipes and sheets for the church roof but mainly he was the smith and he could make all kinds of new things with iron and copper and lead and such. He made a little thing to help with whisking eggs for his mother, a very respectable woman, and she died last year of the stomach ache.”

  “You say he was found in his smithy? Why did you think it was a murder? Perhaps he just dropped dead from an imposthume?”

  “That’s what we thought at first and it was only when Mrs Carleton laid the body out with her gossips and washed it that she found…she discovered.” Allerdyce was almost purple. “…er…a bruise on his skull under his hair and…”

  To Carey’s horror, Allerdyce had tears in his eyes.

  “He was a good man, ye ken, allus willing to help, would allus put hisself out for his friends, he didn’t deserve such a…such a death.”

  “What kind of death?”

  Allerdyce took a deep breath, put his two fists together in front of his chest and whispered, “A heated swordblank or…or a spit…up…up his arse, Sir Robert, it were all burnt…and…” He stopped.

  Carey was silent. “That is indeed terrible,” he said quietly.

  “Somebody said the like wis done tae a king once, but he wis a pervert and deserved it.”

  “I think it was but I don’t remember which king. There’s a poet down in London who was writing a play about him too. Good God.”

  “But John…he wasnae a pervert, he was a right fine man.” Tears were coursing freely down Allerdyce’s face now. “And that was how we knew he’d been murdered by somebody, but nobody else was there. And everybody in the town, every man, even the apprentice boys, was in bed that night for it was snowing.”

  “I suppose you’ve buried him by now?”

  “Ay, poor fellow. We had a funeral as soon as the snow stopped and we could get the grave dug for he wis a big man too, we had paid mourners and all, it were quite an occasion. Even some of the Deutschers came for he spoke Dutch and he was married to one of their women too. Everybody was sad to lose him.”

  Carey was deep in thought. “Perhaps I can view his smithy?”

  “Ay, his son will have it in the end, though he’s ainly young, still an apprentice. We’re on the lookout for a good smith that isnae a drunk to teach the boy until he can take over.”

  “The murder happened after New Year, when there was snow on the moors?”

  “Ay, and here too, there’s been snow since November. We looked for cloven hoofprints or some such but there were so many from everybody who came to see, all scuffling around before we realised he hadna just up and died…”

  Carey nodded. “You weren’t to know. Had anyone new come to town, since New Year’s Eve?”

  “There’s allus a coming and a going here, especially if there’s a good freeze in the winter, so the packponies can move more easily. But not in a blizzard. There was a maidservant who claimed she saw a ghost on horseback during that night but Betty has more phantasy than most and likely she was dreaming.”

  “Hm.” Carey was tapping his teeth thoughtfully.


  “Well, Sir Robert, if ye’d help us find the man that did such a horrible murther, we’ll not be ungrateful. The last murder we had in Keswick was that Deutscher preacher, Leonard Stoltz, back in 1566 and nobody hanged for that either, though we all knew Toby Fisher that was the Earl of Northumberland’s reeve was the man who killed him right enough, though it took twenty more of Northumberland’s tenants together to pull Stoltz down.”

  “Hm. I would like to know more about that as well.”

  “It was a’cause Stoltz was an Anabaptist preacher and the Earl of Northumberland was a Catholic who didn’t like any of that sort of stuff.”

  “I have heard something about the religious wars in Allemayne, but that was back in the 1520s, wasn’t it?”

  “Ay,” said Allerdyce, dismissing the whole deadly war with his shoulder. “That’s furriners for ye. I’ll bid ye welcome tae Keswick, Sir Robert, and yer men with ye and I’ll be with ye in the morning to bear ye company to poor Carleton’s smithy.”

  For courtesy’s sake, Carey went with him to the main door of the inn and then went across the yard to the snug with its roaring fire where Bangtail and Red Sandy were playing quoits with four hard-bitten weather-beaten men who turned out to be the packpony drovers. Everybody was doing their level best to get rid of their money as fast as possible. He sat down with a cup of red wine, a smart silver cup in honour of the Mayor probably, but the wine was so awful he slung it in the fireplace and got some of the beer which was much more drinkable and nothing like the thin ale they had had with supper which the innkeeper clearly kept for strangers. In fact the beer was so good, he complimented the innkeeper on it, who immediately looked guilty, as well he should.

  “Ay, it’s fra the Deutscher brewery on the island, ye ken. Ye can say what ye like about the furriners but they do know how to brew beer, that’s for sure.”

  Carey toasted him and took another quart, sat down again by the fire and watched the proceedings. Bangtail was pretty good at quoits and Red Sandy was adequate, and the drovers were drunk but surprisingly accurate and so the game ended at evens.

  The bed in the private room was lumpy but at least not damp though the room was cold with no fireplace. Tovey was deep in some book he was reading by the light of two candles, in his shirt and wrapped in his threadbare scholar’s gown. He came hesitantly to help Carey take off his arming doublet, fumbling irritatingly at the laces and forgetting the right order. Carey bit his lip to stop himself shouting at the youngster because shouting at him only made him more clumsy and he was at least trying.

  When the whole process was finished and Carey in his shirt and fur dressing gown against the sharpness in the air, he looked at the large tome Tovey had put down carefully marked with a bit of paper.

  “What are you reading?” he asked, “It looks…er…heavy.”

  Tovey’s shy smile lit his pale bony face. “Yes sir, it is,” he said eagerly, “but it’s fascinating and I was very lucky to find a copy in Carlisle cathedral library and they let me borrow it too, though I had to leave my cloak as a surety.”

  “So what is it?”

  “De Re Metallica of Agricola, sir,” he said. “All about mining and smelting metals and so on.”

  “Really? I’d like to read that myself.”

  “Well…er…it is in Latin, sir…”

  “Damn. As so often happens I find myself stymied by my youthful idleness.” Carey often wondered if he could have learned Latin the way he learned French and caught himself in a promising fantasy about the legendary harlots of Rome who spoke very good Latin because all their best customers in the Vatican were bishops and priests…

  “Yes, sir, but see, sir, there are pictures, lots of them. It’s a very expensive book, it cost the cathedral a whole five pounds and that was back in the 1550s.”

  Carey was squinting at one of the woodcuts. “What on earth is that?”

  “It’s a waterwheel sir, powering the hammers that break the ore into smaller lumps.”

  “Ingenious. A good way of saving on workmen.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Carey flipped to the end. “And is that a kind of furnace?”

  “Yes, though it’s a cupellating furnace to use when separating silver and gold from the copper.”

  “So there is gold here?”

  “Only very small amounts and the Queen gets half of that.”

  He had helped his cousin Trevannion out over some Cornish mines in the early eighties but had been busy at Court and couldn’t recall the details. He thought it had been very expensive but Trevannion had got what he wanted.

  “And silver?”

  “It depends how rich the ore is.”

  Carey looked at the very clear, detailed, and neatly labelled pictures until Tovey coughed apologetically and said, “Sir, if I can read through all of it, I will be able to help you much better with the Deutschers in the morning.”

  “Certainly.”

  He dozed off with the bedcurtain drawn and the candles still burning, but no sound because Tovey read even Latin internally.

  The morning was equally irritating as Tovey helped him put on his olive brocade doublet he had brought along, fumbling short-sightedly at the points again. So Carey clattered down to breakfast in slightly less good a mood than usual, for Carey was a man who rejoiced in mornings, the earlier the better.

  The inn was already serving breakfast because the drovers needed to get their packponies back to Goldscope mine in Newlands valley with food and gear for the miners. Not all of them were laden which helped with the climb, according to a drunken drover who was explaining to the host, how the unladen ponies went ahead to help pull the laden ones along.

  Carey and a heavy-eyed Tovey tucked into a new kind of meaty sausage with plenty of pepper, black pudding and bacon and fried bread sippets, no fancy New World roots from Newcastle here. Red Sandy and Bangtail appeared, followed by Leamus, and they also tucked in.

  “Did ye ken there was a man killed here the week after New Year’s?” said Red Sandy to Carey. “And they’d no’ had a murder in Keswick for near thirty years. Did ye ever hear the like?”

  Bangtail shook his head. “I dinna believe it, me. Whit aboot the raiding season, whit aboot blackrent?”

  “I heard there had been a murder, yes,” Carey said, wondering if it would be worth the effort to explain to Bangtail about peaceful countryside and so on.

  “Thirty years wi’ nae killing!” jeered Bangtail, “it’s no’ possible.”

  “It is,” Carey corrected him, “if you’re far enough away from the Border. And sixty miles is far enough. And the hills help.”

  Bangtail was struck silent by this and Carey wandered out into the stableyard to check the horses who had been fed and watered by the men, or more probably by Leamus who was technically the most junior and foreign to boot.

  He came back and met Aloysius Allerdyce, resplendent in his Sunday best of dark grey wool with expensive velvet trim, who smiled and bowed, so Carey bowed back. “Ah’m pleased to see ye, Sir Robert. Will ye come and see the smithy now?”

  Bangtail was standing behind him in the yard, looking puzzled so Carey asked, “Did you want something, Bangtail?”

  “Ay, sir, it’s what ye said. Ye said if ye’re far enough from the Border, there isn’t much murthering.”

  “Yes. There’s also hardly any cattle raiding, sheep-rustling, kidnapping, and arson.”

  Bangtail gulped. “Ye’re telling me that the normal killing and fighting and reiving is just on the Border.”

  “Yes.”

  “But why?”

  “Er…perhaps it’s because England and Scotland have been at war most of the time since about two hundred years ago. The Borderers…well they couldn’t beat the soldiers and men-at-arms, so they joined them.”

  Bangtail nodded slowly. “So if I got maself a farm, say, sixty m
iles from Carlisle, south, say, I might hold it?”

  “Yes, if you had bought it fairly.”

  Bangtail’s eyes were big, a child looking at a confectioner’s window. “And naebody would raid me nor burn it nor kill me.”

  “Probably not.”

  Bangtail shook his head. “Jesus!” he said and rubbed his face. “Jesus Christ. Ah’m moving.” He went into the stables looking like a man who had been hit on the head.

  Carey took Tovey with him to the smithy since the lad was clearly eager to make himself into an expert on metals as well as herbs—at least intellectually. Men with the practical knowledge from apprenticeship and journeying would obviously be better at making swords and tools and perhaps even guns, though that would be more a specialist trade like they had in Dumfries. However men like that often couldn’t read and weren’t good at talking.

  They went to Mr Carleton’s house on the small high street, where his wife and young son were waiting for him in the hall, their silver all on display and freshly polished and both in their Sunday best as well. Carey instantly became the courtier again, bowed to Mrs Carleton’s curtsey and gravely returned the boy’s clumsy bow.

  “I am so sorry to intrude on your grief, ma’am,” he said to the widow who was a pale blonde and very self-possessed. The black veil did not suit her at all. She curtseyed again. “May I see your late husband’s workshop please, in case I can help find the evil murderer?”

  “Of course you may, Sir Robert, and I am honoured by your interest in my poor husband.” Her English was perfect.

  “And may I talk to you about it after I look at the smithy?”

  She dipped her head.

  “D’ye think there was more than one, like a gang of men?” asked Allerdyce eagerly.

  “Was there a gang of men in town—like the drovers, for instance?”

  “Nay, not them, we know them, they’re friends. I meant, maybe a gang come down from Carlisle or summat?”

  “With all the snow? I doubt it, Mr Allerdyce. And why would they go to so much trouble? They’d be more likely to lance him and then fire the smithy. But they would be much more likely to spot your house as being better than the others and come and take your silver and insight and maybe your wife for ransom. Reivers want money. Killing is just the quickest way to get it, in their view.” Allerdyce shuddered a little.