A Suspicion of Silver

by P. F. Chisholm

  “No,” lied Dodd and blew his nose into the rushes. “I still dinna ken why ye didna slit ma throat when ye first saw me. I would ha’.”

  “Ay well, there’s a difference between ye and me, Henry. Ye allus was a wee bit too quick to kill.”

  She wrapped the cloth around her face again, folding the fine linen with practised fingers so it hid the blind eye and the half-gone nose. Her working green eye with its long lashes looked at him consideringly.

  “It was a beam that fell on me, or rather the end caught me,” she said, “while I was holding up the trapdoor so the childer could get into the crypt and out by the nether door, while ye and yer surname were whooping and yelling around outside like savages. It was old Mrs Hall that dragged me out of there and so we ainly lost about ten people, plus Mrs Elliot that hated her husband and ran to Edinburgh with her young son Hughie.”

  Dodd nodded, his mouth drawn down and sour.

  She was still considering something, watching him the way a cat watches a mousehole.

  “What?”

  “I’m wondering if I should tell ye or no’.”

  “What?”

  “That when the church burned, I wis with child.”

  Dodd felt as if he had been punched in the gut. He struggled round until he could look at her. “Ye mean you and me…?”

  “Naebody else to tek the blame. I was a virgin before I met ye at the haying. And I haven’t known a man since, of course.”

  It had been while he was haying as a seventeen-year-old day-labourer for some Kerrs, over the Border, and she had been raking. As plenty of youngsters had done before and since, they had bundled in the hay after the dancing and the beer when the hay was in, not asking surnames for fear of learning something they didn’t like. That was often the way on the Borders, where every surname lived cheek-by-jowl with their blood enemies.

  He was sweating. “Did he live?”

  “Ay,” she said thoughtfully.“I thought I wis sure to lose him but I didna. And after I wis churched, I gave him away to a cousin that had just lost her wean, for by then it was clear that nae man of worship would take me to wife and I wouldna marry a clown nor a hunchback.”

  “Can…can you tell me the name?”

  “Nay, Henry, I think not. Save that, of course, his surname is Elliot. He’ll be getting old enough to ride soon. Maybe he’s a big lad like you and he’s killed his first man by now.”

  “Ye won’t…”

  “Ah won’t. It’s like a tale in a ballad, Henry, any Elliot ye meet that’s young and around fourteen could be him.”

  Dodd’s mouth was open but he couldn’t think how to persuade her.

  “Ye see, Henry, ye allus was one for the killing and the fire, but I think this is a fine revenge in itself. Ye’ll never know. Even if ye come back when you’re healed and batter me, ye’ll never ken if I lie or no’.”

  And she stood with grace and finality and swept from the room, her well-spun and woven grey woollen kirtle whispering in the rushes.

  With infinite effort and care, Dodd put the half-finished bowl of pottage on the little table and laid the horn spoon down beside it and then collapsed on the pillows, breathing hard.

  Maybe she was lying. Maybe she had made the whole thing up just to vex him and make him doubt and weaken him. You could understand why, sure, but…no. He did not think she had made it up.

  Jesu, it wasn’t fair. Ten years of marriage with Janet and nothing, and one night under the stars with…her and…God!

  He turned to take the weight off his side and lay there, wound-up tight as a spindle and unable to sleep as the pale light blazed to pink and purple through the southwestern arrowslits.

  Suddenly decisive, he swung his legs over the side of the bed where they lay like withies. He planted them apart in his socks, braced his knees, and stood. He felt desperately dizzy, everything seemed the wrong way up. He grabbed the wall over the table and the painted cloth hanging with amateurish flowers and stars on it, clung to the painted cloth and shuffled his feet on the bundles of rushes until he could look through an arrowslit at the white moors painted with the pink and purple of the sun who had put his head down.

  “Henry!” came a sharp voice behind him and he saw Janet pale and angry. “It’s too soon to be on your feet…”

  “I just wanted to look for Gilsland.” How could he tell her that he had only wanted to see the sky, after day after day cooped up in a little room?

  “That’s too far away. We’re in Scotland, remember.” She came over and put her shoulder under Dodd’s arm so he could use her like a crutch to get him back to bed. It was a struggle and Dodd was gasping and sweating again by the time he was lying down and Janet insisted on checking his bandages for blood, muttering to herself.

  “Well I dinna think ye’ve made it bleed again,” she said grudgingly, “which would be nae more than ye deserve.”

  He thought of telling her what he did deserve and why, and then thought she probably knew the story of what he had done to the church anyway. She had never asked him about it yet.

  And of course he could never tell her anything about Mistress Elliot. He hadn’t told anyone about it, not even Red Sandy who had been with him, a lad then and on the cart. Dodd had been a virgin too and triumphant and happy, but the news she was an Elliot, which he saw on the farmer’s hiring list the next day, soured everything.

  So he grabbed Janet’s hand and wouldn’t let go until she stopped her bustling and sat on the stool.

  “What?” she asked.

  He couldn’t tell her, there was so much he couldn’t tell her, it lay inside his chest like one of those pig’s bladders you washed and blew up for boys to play football with barefoot, until it popped…his Dad had made one for him once. So he lay clutching her hand like a wean, somehow inexpressably glad that she was there with him, until he dozed off and his grip released. And still she sat there wondering how the devil he was going to kill Wee Colin Elliot with a sword when he could barely walk.

  In the morning after a sprinkling of snow in the night, Sir Robert Carey could be seen in his fashionable olive green doublet, black velvet sleeves and canions, and a tall Edinburgh hat, walking up the high street with his clerk to Allerdyce’s house, which had a warehouse in its basement and a line of patient packponies being unloaded. Allerdyce was standing to one side with his thumbs in his belt, watching the proceedings.

  Carey changed course and went up to him and they both timed their bows to the second.

  “Mr Allerdyce,” said Carey, sounding to Tovey just a little more soft and Southern than normal, “I wonder if I could trouble you for the name of the maidservant who claimed to see a ghost rider and where she works.”

  “Ah,” Allerdyce frowned. “She’s a dairymaid, lives in town, works in the town dairy and takes the cows out as her first job o’ the day. Betty’s her name. Why? You don’t believe her nonsense, do you?”

  “Certainly not, but I do think she may have seen something she didn’t understand.”

  “Ay well,” said Allerdyce, grinning, “good luck tae ye.”

  Carey found the dairy down a sidestreet near the bridge and reeking of cowdung, where, to his surprise, the cows were lined up being milked. He talked to the woman in charge who was large and embittered by the flibbertigibbets she employed. He asked her why she was still milking and found that although there was very little milk now, the cows had been seen to by the local bull, what there was made good hard cheese. Then he asked her about Betty and the woman rolled her eyes. It seemed that Betty was the worst of them.

  Eventually, a plump fair-haired girl was drying her hands and staring at him saucer-eyed.

  “This is Mr Carey,” sniffed the woman.

  “Sir Robert…” Carey murmured, but she ignored him.

  “Happen he’s interested in hearing tall tales, eh, Betty?”

&
nbsp; Betty curtseyed and clutched the damp rag.

  “Don’t keep him too long with all your nonsense. I’ve got three more cows needing milking and now we’re one short.” The woman stalked off to shout at another girl.

  “First, Betty,” said Carey cautiously, “can you show me where you live?”

  She walked him there to the little cottage tucked into the lane behind Carleton’s smithy, where she lived with her three brothers and two sisters. She pointed to her window which actually overlooked the street that led to the smithy.

  “Isn’t it noisy when the smithy is working?” Carey asked.

  “Oh ay, it is,” said Betty, “but I think it’s a pretty noise, sort of like a song, and I share the top room with my little sister, and she likes it too, she said so. That’s Sarah and she’s a pretty little thing and such a sweet way with her, why only last week she asked me if chickens can give milk too and I did laugh…”

  “So why did you wake in the middle of the night?”

  Her broad pink brow furrowed. “I’m not sure, truth to tell, maybe little Sarah turned over and kicked, she’s a terrible kicker in her sleep and I mind me she was worse when she was littler and…”

  “So perhaps she kicked you?”

  “Perhaps. It was too early for the birds to be up…there are pigeons that nest right next to my window and it’s funny to watch them in summer when the cocks prance and dance…”

  “Why did you go to the window?”

  “I heard a funny noise, like schssssh, schssssh schsssssh. So I opened the shutters a little, they don’t lock properly anymore because of our young Ben swinging on them last summer, ooh he did get in trouble wi’ our mum…”

  Now understanding Allerdyce’s grin, Carey asked doggedly, “What did you see?”

  “When, sir?”

  “When you looked out of the window.”

  “Oh, I saw a ghost, sir! He had no face. Just a round thing with holes.”

  “Was he wearing a cloak?”

  “Yes, sir, it looked like the snow…”

  “So it was white?”

  “White sir, white as the milk and heavy-looking because he was a ghost and he was walking funny, sort of scchhssss schssss and the horse was walking funny too.”

  The rider seen by Skinabake’s men had had a white cloak as well. “Was the horse white too?”

  “No, sir, brown.”

  “Can you show me how the ghost was walking funny?”

  Betty took a couple of sliding large steps. “And his feet were huge, sir, he was a monster, a ghost, something sent from the Devil, for sure, and I was frightened and I shut the shutters and blocked them with a broom handle and ran back to bed and hid under the bedclothes so the ghost wouldn’t get me.”

  “Before you went back to bed, do you remember which way the ghost was going?”

  “Yes, sir, he was going down to the lake, to Derwent Water, maybe he was a poor soul drownded in the lake…”

  “What colour was his face?”

  “I told you sir, he didna have no face, it were all round and smooth and yellow…”

  “Yellow?”

  “It looked yellow his face, though there weren’t no face there.”

  Carey nodded. “Is there anything else about this ghost that you can tell me, Betty, anything no matter how foolish?”

  “He had dark hands. Black they were, like night.”

  “Gloves?”

  Betty was a little annoyed. “Maybe,” she admitted.

  “Well, Betty, thank you very much. If anything else should come to mind, would you tell me? Or my secretary?” Carey gestured at Tovey who flushed to his ears at this promotion.

  Betsy curtseyed again. “Ah’m no’ silly,” she said all in a rush. “I looked for hoofprints when I went out to work in the morning, which was only a couple of hours later I think, and the snow was flat and scuffled but no hoofprints where I saw the ghost rider and his horse, no hoofprints at all and I thought, well, it must be a ghost, I mean, what else could it be…?”

  Carey nodded and gave her a farthing as well as one of his charming smiles which made her blush. She curtsied once more and hurried back to her cow.

  Carey and Tovey went back to the Oak for more of the Deutscher beer. “Can I see your notes?” said Carey and found Tovey’s notebook full of a chaos of Greek and Roman letters. “What’s this?”

  “It’s a method that makes writing quicker and also harder to read,” said Tovey. “I invented it myself.”

  “Ah, I think Mr Phelippes has invented something similar. That man is a genius with codes and he has his own alphabet.”

  “I’d like to meet him, sir. Maybe I could learn to make codes.”

  “I’m sure you could, Mr Tovey. I’ll see if I can arrange it. In the meantime could you read me your notes?”

  Tovey did so and Carey tapped his teeth and gazed into the distance or at least at the parlour wall which had a painted cloth on it.

  “To me it’s obvious,” he said to Tovey, “but how am I going to tell Allerdyce that his good friend and alderman John Carleton, knowingly or unknowingly, helped Hepburn set up an elaborate plot to kill the King of Scots? Hepburn came here to await the outcome of the plot and incidentally killed Carleton so he couldn’t inform against him.”

  “You think Betty’s ghost rider was Hepburn?”

  “Yes, of course, wearing some kind of mask and a white cloak from the masquing wardrobe, wearing pads on his own and his horse’s feet. That’s obvious.”

  “That might not have been him.”

  “True, it might not. Can you think of a plausible tale to explain why a citizen of Keswick on his perfectly lawful occasions, might have chosen to come into Keswick at around three or four in the morning, in the snow, wearing a mask and a white cloak, with his horse’s hooves muffled?”

  “Maybe something to do with Wattie Graham, sir?”

  Carey paused. “Very true,” he said. “Thank you, Mr Tovey, I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Tovey flushed again.

  “Even more clearly, I can’t, without evidence, make an accusation to Allerdyce against a man who allegedly isn’t here and another man who was his friend and is dead. What do you think the Mayor will say?”

  “He won’t believe you.”

  “More importantly, supposing he knows Hepburn is here and is hiding him and tells him that I’m in town and can link him to Mr Carleton’s murder?”

  “He might try to kill you, sir. Or he’ll run, maybe to Workington.”

  “Which is?”

  “It’s the local port, in the west. That’s where the drovers go with their packponies and some of the metal.”

  “Ah.” Carey had his chin on his chest. “Well, in the unlikely event that he is here, I think he’ll try and stay here. I think he has plans in Keswick, although I’m not clear what. And I don’t think he’s the kind of man to run. This is his home ground. We met his mother and his brothers earlier.”

  “Then he’ll try and kill you, sir,” said Tovey. “If he s…succeeds, then the man who can link the whole plot together is dead and he’ll be free and clear.”

  “He won’t be, because I have relatives too, but he might well think so. And King James has a very good memory. But yes, largely you’re right.” Carey sighed. “It seems that once again I’m painting a large round white target on my own back.”

  “We could go back to Carlisle.”

  “You’ve forgotten that Mr Secretary Cecil has taken an interest in the matter.”

  “Oh.”

  Carey sighed again and then brightened up. “Never mind,” he smiled. “Let’s poke the bushes anyway and see what sticks its head out.”

  It was a carefully edited story that Carey told with Tovey trotting along behind. They walked down to the lake edge where the boatman and two bee
fy looking Deutschers were unloading full beer barrels from the boat and loading empty ones. Mr Allerdyce was shocked to the core at the news that there had been a dangerous attempt on the King which Carey was not at liberty to disclose, but which involved alchemical matters and engineering. The man they were looking for was named Jonathan Hepburn, but he himself had told Carey that his name was Hochstetter.

  Allerdyce stopped on the path, his eyes narrowed until he was squinting.

  “So that’s why you’re here,” he said. “I was telling Frau Radagunda that I didn’t think you were really here to inspect the mines. I thought you were after Mr Gr…well, anyway.”

  “I still plan to inspect them and make a report,” said Carey blandly, “but I am more interested in Jonathan Hepburn, or Hochstetter. Of course he may have been lying to me about his real name.”

  “Is he a gentleman?”

  “Almost. He’s a very skilled engineer, which is a profession he can take anywhere, and an alchemist as well. For instance, part of his plot involved large quantities of vitriol, which only alchemists know how to make…”

  “And miners,” muttered Allerdyce.

  “So is there a man called Jonathan Hochstetter here, an engineer, curly light brown hair and beard, well-looking, soft-spoken, has an eye for women?”

  Allerdyce took breath to speak, paused and then said, “Joachim Hochstetter, that’s him.”

  “Do you know the man?”

  “Ay, ay, Ah do. Clever. Good engineer, he cut his teeth on the mining machines and made several of them better when he were nobbut a lad. Mr Emanuel and Mr David’s brother, he’s a son of Frau Radagunda.”

  “Ah.” Very gently and casually, Carey turned away from the lakeside where the men were working on the barrels and headed back to town.

  Mr Allerdyce was shaking his head. “He’s allus been a terrible worry tae his mother. And not very respectful to her either.”

  “Where is he? I’d like to meet him.”

  “He left home a long time ago, went to the Low Countries and Spain, I think. Last I heard of him he was working for one of the courtiers at the King’s Court as his builder.”