3 A Surfeit of Guns

by P. F. Chisholm

  She knelt to pray, composing her mind, firmly putting out of it her swallowed fury at her husband since it was, after all, according to all authority, his right to beat her if she displeased him, just as he could beat his horses. She worked to concentrate on the love and mercy of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

  After a few minutes she said the Lord’s Prayer and stood up: it was hopeless and always happened. She couldn’t keep her mind on anything higher than the top of Robert Carey’s head. Since the age of seventeen she had been married to Sir Henry, happy as the fourth, gawky and dowryless Trevannion daughter to travel on the promise of marriage from the lushness of Cornwall to the bare bones of the north. Everything had been arranged through the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Hunsdon, as a kindness to one of his wife’s many kin. She had gone knowing perfectly well that her husband-to-be was gouty and in his fifties but determined to do her best to be a good wife to him, as God required of her. She had tried, failed and kept trying because there was no alternative. And then, seven miserable years later in 1587 the youngest son of that same Lord Hunsdon had spent weeks at Widdrington, waiting to be allowed to enter Scotland with his letter from the Queen of England which tried to explain to King James how Mary Queen of Scots had so unfortunately come to be executed. Robin had ridden south again at last, the message delivered by proxy, and she had wept bitter tears in her wet larder, where she could blame it on brine and onions. And then there had been the nervous plotting with her friend, his sister Philadelphia Scrope, so she could travel down to London the next year, the Armada year of 1588, and the year that shone golden in her memory, with Robert Carey the bright alarming jewel at its centre. But she had kept her honour, just. Only by the narrowest squeak of scruples on several occasions, true, but she had kept it.

  Four years later she was still as much of a fool as ever, still burned to her core by nothing more than a glimpse of him caught as she dismounted in the street. She had accepted punishment from her husband for her loan to Robin of his horses the previous month, accepted it because ordained by God. But to be beaten for no more than a look, accused unjustly of cuckolding her husband and nothing she said believed…

  I am wasting my time, she thought, trying to be firm. Besides, Robin has very properly abandoned his suit to me, look at how he was paying court to Signora Bonnetti…

  Her stomach suddenly knotted up with bile and misery. How could he so publicly abandon me, he did not even try to speak to me at the dance the day before yesterday? (Ridiculous, of course he wouldn’t, Sir Henry was standing guard over me.) How could he dance with the vulgar little Italian in her whore’s crimson gown? (Whyever should he not, since he could not dance with me?) How could he disappear into the garden with her and what had he done there…(What business is it of mine, what he did, and do I really want to know?) How could he, the bastard, how could he…?

  I will go for a walk outside, Elizabeth Widdrington said to herself, and escape this ridiculous vapouring. Anyone would think I was a maid of fifteen. I will not allow myself to hate Robin Carey for doing exactly as I told him to in my letter (bastard!).

  She slipped her pattens on her feet and ducked out of the little alehouse. It had been very crowded with her husband’s kin, various cousins and tenants but now the place seemed half-empty. Her step-son Henry was lying asleep on one of the tables with his cloak huddled up round his ears, his pebbled face endearingly relaxed. He seemed to get broader every time she looked at him: his father’s squareness reproduced but almost doubled in size. Roger was nowhere to be seen. Because she was looking for sadness, she found more there. She had brought them up as well as she could and now they were growing away from her, abandoning her for their father’s influence.

  Stop that, she commanded herself and walked briskly down the wynd that led behind the alehouse, past a couple of tents filled with more of King James’s soldiers, past three drunks lying clutching each other in the gutter, whether in affection or some half-hearted battle, past the jakes and the chickens and the pigpen and the shed where the goat was being milked, into the other wynd and back down the other side of the alehouse. Inside she still found no sign of her husband or half his men and climbed the stairs.

  A boy was sitting swinging his legs on the sagging trucklebed she had been using, a rather handsome boy with cornflower blue eyes and a tangled greasy mop of straight blond hair, the beginnings of adult bone lengthening his jaw already. Despite his magnificent black eye, she recognised him at once.

  “Is it Young…Young Hutchin?”

  The boy stood up, made a sketchy bow and handed over a small piece of jewellery. It was a man’s signet ring with a great red stone in the centre, carved…Robert Carey had shown it to her at court.

  The scene burst into her mind’s eye, the Queen’s Privy Garden at Westminster in 1588, the clipped box hedges and the wooden seat under the walnut tree, Robin peacock-bright in turquoise taffeta and black velvet, the day before he rode south with George Cumberland to sneak aboard the English fleet and go to fight the Spanish. “If ever you see this away from my hand,” he had said in the overly dramatic style of the court, “then I am in trouble and need your help. Do not fail, my lady, I will need you to storm and take the Tower of London, for the Queen will have thrown me into gaol for loving you better than I love her.” She had laughed at him, but she had also shown him the small handfasting ring with the diamond in the middle that had been her sole legacy from her mother, and told him the same thing. That had been one of her narrower escapes from dishonour, she had rashly let him kiss her that time.

  So she took the ring, her heart beating slow and hard. She examined it carefully for blood or any other sign of having been cut from a dead hand, sat down on the bed with it clasped over her thumb and looked at Young Hutchin.

  “What’s happened to him?” she asked as calmly as she could.

  He told her the tale quite well, with not too many diversions and only a small amount of exaggeration about how he had climbed from a roof. So that was what her husband had been up to all night. She made Young Hutchin go through the whole thing again, listening carefully for alterations. Young Hutchin mentioned handguns; she made him tell her about them and more of her husband’s activities became clear to her. The rage she had stopped up for so long, which had killed her appetite and kept her dry-eyed through all her husband’s accusations and brutality, suddenly flowered forth in a cold torrent. She sat silent, letting it take possession of her, using it to form a plan.

  “Sir Henry and Lord Spynie are old allies,” she said at last. “Sir Henry knew Alexander Lindsay’s father years before he was born. Take it from me, Young Hutchin, King James knew nothing of this outrage.”

  She dug in her chest and found paper and a pencase, which she opened and scrabbled out pens and ink. She waited for a moment for her hands to stop shaking and her thoughts to settle. Although she was only a woman, she had influence if she chose to use it. Her husband was not the only one with friends at the Scottish court. She began with a letter begging urgent audience with the King.

  “Take this to the Earl of Mar,” she said, folding the first letter and sealing it with wax from the candle. “Where is Sergeant Dodd?”

  Young Hutchin spat expressively. “Run fra the town, mistress, I hope. He said he’d try the Johnstones.”

  “Good. When you have delivered the first letter, come back to me here. Don’t speak to any of the Widdringtons except me, do you understand?”

  “Ay, mistress. Will all this writing free the Deputy?”

  “It might. Off you go.”

  The lad whisked out of the door and pelted down the stairs. Elizabeth took up her pen again, though her hand was starting to ache and wrote another letter to Melville, King James’s chancellor, who had stayed in Edinburgh. They were old friends for she had fostered his son at Widdrington for a year, at a time when Scotland was too hot for him and he had been afraid of his child being used against him. In it she set down a precise account of what she guessed or knew about her husband
and his activities, which she folded up, sealed and put crackling under her stays. Then she went downstairs again, face calm as she could make it. The few other men who had been sleeping there had woken and gone out to see to the horses. Her step-son had also woken up at last, and was sitting on his table, scratching and yawning and gloomily fingering yet another spectacular spot that had flowered on his nose in the night.

  “Good morning, Henry,” she said sedately.

  Henry coughed and winced: blood-shot eyes told her the rest of the tale.

  “Who gave you so much to drink?”

  The young jaw stuck out and the adam’s apple bobbed. “Nobody,” he said truculently. “Sir Henry’s still at the Red Boar.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. “What do you know about the arrest of Sir Robert Carey?”

  He looked away sullenly, his ears red and his feet twining together as they dangled off the table. Elizabeth went to the almost empty beer barrel, pushed aside the scrawny creature trying pathetically to clean up spillages with a revolting mop and tilted it to get the last of the beer out into a leather mug.

  “Drink that,” commanded Elizabeth.

  “I’ll puke.”

  “You will not,” said his stepmother drily. “You’ll find it has a miraculous effect. Go on.”

  With an effort Henry drank, coughed again, wiped his mouth where the incipient fur on his top lip caught the drops and put the mug down.

  “Go on, tell me.”

  “Well, I had to do it, didn’t I? He’s my father, isn’t he?”

  Elizabeth said nothing. Henry sighed.

  “Sir Henry rousted us all out about midnight or one o’clock, said he had clear evidence Sir Robert was trafficking guns with the Italian wine merchant.”

  “And how did he find out?”

  “Roger got the tale from his pageboy.”

  “On the pretext that I wanted to know?”

  Henry nodded.

  “Go on. I shall speak to Roger later.”

  “And Sir Henry said Lord Maxwell had confirmed it and was very annoyed because he said Carey had cheated him on the deal. So we went up to the Mayor’s house with him, with father I mean, and waited about a bit and then father came down again with my Lord Spynie and the warrant. We went back to Maxwell’s Castle and Lord Maxwell let us in and we kicked Sir Robert’s door down and there he was with his sword in his hand and his hose and boots on, wanting to know what we wanted.”

  “Did he fight?”

  “No. Once he’d seen the Privy Seal on the warrant and the signature, he surrendered.”

  “What did he say about it? Did he say he was innocent?”

  “He didn’t get the chance.”

  “How badly was he beaten?”

  Henry coughed and looked away again. “Not badly,” he muttered. “I’ve had worse.”

  Elizabeth nodded thoughtfully. “And where is he now?”

  “We took him back to the Mayor’s house again, to the wine cellar. Aside from the Dumfries gaol, which is full, it’s the only lock-up they’ve got here.”

  “Where did your father go?”

  “He’s off with Lord Spynie and his friends.”

  “So you came here and drank yourself asleep, instead of telling me.”

  “Father made me swear not to tell you.”

  “Oh, did he?”

  Clearly Henry did not understand the significance of that, but it lightened Elizabeth’s heart. If Sir Henry didn’t want her to know something that he knew would cause her pain, then there was an excellent reason for it. She could think of only one good enough.

  “Smarten yourself up, Henry,” she said with a wintry smile. “Or at least comb your hair. Then find the steward. When I’ve talked to him we’re going to see the King.”

  ***

  Walking alone at dawn into the rough encampment of Johnstones in the part of Dumfries south of Fish Cross, Dodd had not been recognised at once. This was a relief to him since he still had a number of kine and sheep at Gilsland that had once belonged to various Johnstone families. When he insisted that he had important information about the Maxwells that he would give to the laird only, they brought him through the tents to the best one, which had been brightly painted and carried two flags.

  The laird was breaking his fast on bread and beer. He was a bony gangling young man with a shock of wiry brown hair and his face prematurely lined with responsibility. His great grandfather, the famous Johnny Johnstone, had been able to put two thousand fighting men in the saddle on the hour’s notice, but the King of those days had taken exception to such power being wielded by a subject. Johnny Johnstone had been inveigled into the King’s presence on a promise of safeconduct and summarily hanged. Now the power of the Johnstones was much less and their bitter enemies the Maxwells were stronger than them.

  “Your name?” asked the laird.

  Dodd took a deep breath and folded his arms. “Henry Dodd, Land-Sergeant of Gilsland.”

  Johnstone’s brown eyes narrowed and his jaw set.

  “Ay.”

  “I’m here with Sir Robert Carey, Deputy Warden of the English West March.”

  “Mphm. Last I heard, ye were staying with the Maxwell.”

  “That’s why I’ve come to ye, sir,” said Dodd. “Maxwell’s got the Deputy Warden arrested on a trumped-up charge.”

  “Well, ye shouldnae’ve trusted him, should ye?”

  “You’re right, sir,” said Dodd bitterly. “But Sir Robert wouldnae listen to me.”

  There was a very brief cynical smile. The Johnstone finished his beer.

  “And?”

  “Did ye know that the Maxwell recently bought at least two hundred firearms, powder and ammunition off Sir Richard Lowther in Carlisle?”

  Johnstone wiped his mouth fastidiously. “I had heard something about it. What of it?”

  “Would it interest ye to know more about the guns?”

  “It might.”

  Dodd stood there with his arms folded and his whole spine prickling, and waited.

  Johnstone smiled briefly again. “What d’ye want for the information?”

  “Your support, sir. Your protection against Maxwell for myself and Sir Robert. Your counsel.”

  Johnstone took his time thinking about this, looking Dodd up and down. He had a fair amount to consider, to be fair to him. What Dodd was offering, unauthorised and unstated, was a possible alliance between the Johnstones and the Wardenry of Carlisle. It wasn’t merely a matter of information.

  “Hm.”

  It all depended on whether the laird had any of the daring of his great grandfather. He would be taking a chance on Dodd’s faith, and the faith of Sir Robert, although Dodd thought he would also be quite grateful for the information as well, once he had it. But there again, the laird could then discard Dodd and Sir Robert if he chose: they were both taking a chance on faith.

  Johnstone stared into space for a moment. “Very well,” he said without preamble. “Ye have my backing agin the Maxwells for you and your Deputy Warden, and my counsel for what that’s worth.”

  So easily? Dodd was still suspicious. But there was nothing else he could do: he simply had to hope that the laird was a man of his word, unlike Lord Maxwell.

  He coughed. “The Maxwell’s weapons are all bad, worse than useless. They explode on the second firing. Maxwell knows this now and he’s got rid of them, but his men have practically no guns as a result.”

  Johnstone was sitting utterly still. “Ye’re sure of this?”

  “On my honour, sir.”

  Johnstone held his gaze for a long moment more. Then he banged his folding table with the flat of his hand and jumped to his feet. “By God,” he laughed. “Let’s have them.”

  After that, Dodd was almost forgotten as Johnstone strode from his tent trailing a flurry of orders and the camp began to stir and buzz like a kicked beeskep. Dodd knew he had just broken the strained peace between the two surnames and rekindled what amounted to open civil war in the Sc
ottish West March. It was extremely satisfactory.

  ***

  Carey had been in prison before. Paris had been expensive and in the end his creditors had caught him and thrown him in gaol until his father could send him funds and a scorching letter through the English ambassador. At the time he had been in the depths of misery, cooped up in a filthy crowded communal cell and away from his fascinating Duchesse (who, he found out later, had tired of him in any case). But it had only lasted a couple of weeks and he had not been chained nor in darkness.

  He tried to do something about his hands, flexing them and trying to shift the wooden manacles, which made his shoulders cramp and his fingers buzz with pins and needles. He had found out all he needed to know from the German, whatever he was really called—Hans Schmidt was clearly not his name—through a painful process of question and answer, guesswork and elimination. He had been merciless in his quest for hard facts and the exhausted man now slept, moaning softly every so often. Perhaps it would have been sensible to sleep as well, but he couldn’t, not with the stink of wine and pain in his nostrils, and the overwhelming pit of fear in his bowels.

  He thought back to what he had done, wondering if he had made a mistake. Perhaps…perhaps he had acted hastily, dealing on his own initiative with the Italian. Perhaps he should have talked to the King first. But the King had either lied about the guns or genuinely not known what was going on. And the opportunity had been there to be seized, with no time for careful letters to London. Naturally he would file a report back to Burghley when it was all over, but…He had not expected to be arrested. He had not expected Young Hutchin to be so willing to spy for the Widdringtons. Perhaps his greatest mistake had been prancing back to Maxwell’s Castle so blithely, trusting Maxwell at all. But he had done what the Maxwell wanted, he had gotten the man his money back and Lord Maxwell had been full of gratitude and favour. Seemingly. Damn him to hell.

  He had been caught rather easily. Perhaps he should have fought: but that would have given Sir Henry the excuse he needed to shoot. And what was his legal position anyway—arrested on a false warrant for a crime of which he was in fact guilty? Technically.