“Shut yer face, old man…”
Brother Aurelius’ face was as red as Sir Henry’s and he had the same full-throated roar despite being bent backwards.
“Old man, is it? Ye’re auld yerself, Henry. Ye’re the headman of the Widdringtons, and ye bring shame on all of us by treating her the way ye do. There’s no kinsman of yourn older than ye are, save me, and so I’ll do it, I’ll put the shame and the disgrace of it back on your own heid, Sir Henry. If ye do not treat your wife better and kindlier than ye have, may ye be cursed, may all your doings miscarry and may yer life be short.”
Sir Henry seemed to be turned to stone by this. Lord Spynie backed away from him and space opened up around him in the crowded commonroom.
Brother Aurelius flicked away the hand still holding him, stood upright and breathed deep. “See if that’ll change your ways,” he said. “But I doot it.” He shook himself and walked to the door of the commonroom. “Ye’re not long for this life, Sir Henry. I willna see ye again, I think. Good night to ye.”
When he came into the warm little parlour where Elizabeth was starting to doze off after an excellent meal, she saw at once he was still annoyed.
“Never mind,” she said to him. “I never thought you talking to him would help.”
“Nay missus, I mishandled it and let him sting me. I’m sorry—that, I am.” The old man looked so rueful she could have kissed him. Instead she brushed as much of the mud from her gown as she could and repinned her hat and cap to her head. Then she settled back.
“He knows I’m here. He can come and get me when he chooses and he’ll want to keep me waiting so I’ll be more affeared of him,” she said. “So I shall get some sleep.”
In the commonroom the shouting was louder yet, though Sir Henry’s face had lost the bonhomie it had. Simon Anricks was watching him carefully, the way he looked at Lord Spynie, the way Lord Spynie looked at him. He was also casting ugly glances at Anricks, although Simon could think of no way in which he could have offended the man.
At last Sir Henry came over and sat down heavily in the chair next to Anricks. “Is it true ye use witchcraft to take out teeth?”
“No,” sighed Anricks, “I use sweet oil of vitriol which makes men sleepy so they pass out. It works on chickens as well. I can take out teeth without it but it’s very much easier for me to use it.”
“Are you lying to me?”
“No, I’m not,” said Anricks. His voice had become very level.
“Well it’s a pity because I could find a use for a witch or a warlock now.”
Anricks nodded. “The friar’s curse. Yes.”
Sir Henry drank, aqua vitae this time, and wiped his moustache. “I’ll treat me wife as I choose.”
“Why?”
“What d’ye mean, why?”
“She’s only a woman. If you’re…ah…worried by the curse, you’ve only to treat her better and kindlier. That’s what he said, isn’t it? “If ye do not treat your wife better and kindlier then ye have, may ye be cursed, may all your doings miscarry and may yer life be short.” To avoid the curse, treat your wife better and kindlier than you have.”
Anricks met the man’s eyes full on and Sir Henry found he had a cold acute look to them which chilled him. Anricks went on with the same deadly quiet in him.
“It isn’t her fault that you’re in debt to Lord Spynie and you can’t pay it back. It isn’t her fault that you haven’t made anything like as much money as you thought you would from the Deputy Wardenship of the East March. And it isn’t her fault that you’ve the gout and stones in your bladder and that causes you pain. But something about her is important to you, Sir Henry, and I’m surprised you’ve forgotten it.”
“What?” Sir Henry’s moustache was jutting and his brows were right down. Anricks’ voice was quite weak and whispery and it went softer still.
“Remember whose niece she is, Sir Henry. She is the beloved niece of my Lady Hunsdon and she is thus the niece of Henry Carey, Baron Hunsdon, who is the actual Warden of the East March, not you. He gave her to you in marriage as a part of the governance of the East March, not for your own satisfaction, nor in fact, hers. His wife is very unhappy at the way you treat her and so, naturally enough, is he. Because it embarrasses him too. Being a kindly man, he is angry at your cruelty.”
Sir Henry was staring at Anricks as though at a cockatrice. “How do you know…?”
The smile became colder and the weak voice softer. “If Hunsdon chose to come north to Berwick, he would find out a lot about the Deputy Wardenship you would prefer him not to know. If he were to kick you out of the Deputy Wardenship, which he might, you wouldn’t be naked, no, you’d still have your surname. But your life would be considerably harder.”
“Are ye threatening me?”
“No, Sir Henry, I am telling you the facts of life. But you might consider kindness as a better policy all round. I’ve been married for years, and I like it. I have five children and another on the way and I love my wife. But you do not have to love your wife to have a perfectly pleasant life with her, if you treat her with some respect.”
Sir Henry had a baffled ugly look in his eyes which did not bode well for Elizabeth but Anricks had done his best. He had given Sir Henry a very quotidian reason for treating his wife better and his Uncle Roger or Brother Aurelius had given him a superstitious reason. If it didn’t work, then Anricks thought Sir Henry’s life would indeed be short, if only because of the fire-eating youngest son of Baron Hunsdon, if nothing else.
Friday 20th October 1592
The next morning, when the sky was grey though the Sun was fully up, Dodd felt someone step stealthily over him and go out onto the flat area leading down to the river. He came to his feet with his sword in his hand only to find Carey standing there, while he pissed, staring to the north.
Considering the probable time, Carey must have slept for twelve hours straight through, maybe more. His face was pale but the swelling was almost gone and he looked better, though his expression was unhappy.
“She’s there, at Jedburgh,” said the Courtier, more to himself than to Dodd. “She’s there with her bastard husband who arranged for her to be kidnapped and I’m here and…”
“Ay,” said Dodd, doing the same as the Courtier against a stone and then going into the second part of the little shelter where the hobbies were and bringing them both out, stamping and snorting and sulking because they were hungry and didn’t have any food. He hobbled both of them and let them go onto the turf by the river where there was some sour tough grass and a few thistles. He didn’t have any food either so he wasn’t inclined to sympathise with them. He couldn’t eat grass, could he, though he’d tried once. The dogs came out and marked the corners of the shelter again, then came hopefully to him. They found he had no food either and started sniffing around for rabbits, though probably all the game in the area was hidden in its burrows.
“She wisnae intended to be ransomed either. It was all a scheme of Sir Henry and Lord Spynie’s.”
“Do you think I’ll ever have her?” asked the Courtier in a self-pitying voice, “or will I have wait even longer, until I’m an old man of forty or fifty?”
“Och, God,” said Dodd. “Ah’ve tellt ye and tellt ye. Ye’ve enough credit in the West March to call out fifty men who’d follow ye and I’ll bring the Dodds and the English Armstrongs, ay and mebbe Jock o’ the Peartree Graham would come oot for ye for the mischief and then we’ll run the rode of all time to Widdrington and take her from him and ye can kill him yerself, personally.”
“Yes, but then she wouldn’t marry me.”
“She would. She’d come round in the end. They allus do.”
“I just…I can’t think straight without her. Seeing her, holding her yesterday…”
It’s given it to ye bad again, thought Dodd, but didn’t say. The dogs had wandered off in their q
uest for food.
He started to look around for firewood to replace the stuff they had burned and let Carey blether on about the woman.
“And she’s so beautiful and I don’t know how she takes the knocking around she gets from her husband and…What the devil is that?”
Dodd was very glad to have a break from Carey’s perpetual mooning over the woman. “What?” He realised the dogs had suddenly started galloping across the valley, barking.
They squinted against the rain on the other side of the valley and saw first the dogs, especially the yellow pup, and then the riders, five of them, surrounding one man who had three laden pack ponies behind him. Dodd recognised the horses more than the man himself who was small and unprepossessing and growled,
“They’re stealing Mr Anrick’s pack ponies from him.”
“So they are. Well, we can’t have that.”
The two of them sprinted to where their hobbies were cropping the grass and unlooped the hobbles. The dogs were in among the horses now, doing as they’d been trained, leaping up and down, biting at the hobbies’ bellies and dodging sword blows. Dodd jumped up to the biting hobby’s back and Carey jumped onto Sorrel and they charged straight across the valley and into the five men. There was a quick exchange of blows and then the five Elliots thought they didn’t want the pack ponies that much anyway and turned their horses about and ran away, with Carey singing “T’il y est haut!” after them as if he was in the hunting field and the dogs giving chase ahead of him, barking their heads off. A dag fired behind them and clipped one of the horses who stood on his head and galloped off at an angle up the hill with his rider clinging to his back like a monkey.
That had put a bit of colour in Carey’s cheeks. He cantered back to Anricks who had his dag in one hand and the leading rein for the pack ponies in his other hand. The pack ponies were heavy laden and swinging about and neighing in protest and one of the packs was about to come loose and fall off. Carey dismounted quickly to secure it while Dodd chased after the lymers who were already coming back, wagging their tails joyfully. The pup was triumphantly holding a man’s riding boot in his teeth which he proceeded to worry to death.
“What’s in the packs, Mr Anricks?” asked Carey with a smile. “Gold dust?”
“Oats that I bought in Jedburgh with my earnings from drawing their teeth.”
“Ah, gold dust, indeed. I might be interested in them if we can get them to Carlisle. We need to get a move on, for the Elliots will go and fetch their friend Geordie Burn and all of his friends to come at us again.”
Ay, thought Dodd, with the Bewcastle waste to get through and all. Lovely.
They went back to the shelter and packed up as quickly as they could. Anricks had been shopping in Jedburgh, for one of the ponies had a good faggot of hazel withies to replace the wood they had burned, and some penny loaves and cheese and a pottle of beer for them as well as some scraps from the inn for the dogs who fell on it ferociously and had finished it all in four seconds.
They ate as they rode and Carey took Anrick’s gun and cleaned it for him since he was curious about why it hadn’t needed a match. It had an improved kind of lock on it, Anricks explained, the latest technology, much better than the wheel locks with their complicated winding up clockwork arrangements. He had two pistols, the other one was a normal matchlock. His new one came from Germany and Anricks had bought it from an armourer in London and this was the first time he had actually fired it in anger, what with the rain. Dodd took a look at it too as they rode south and west and the rain came down and made everything smell of wet leather and wet steel and wet human. Oh, and of pungently wet dog. He didn’t like guns, thought a longbow was better because you could loose thirty shafts a minute once you had the way of it, and longbows didn’t explode in your hand either. But even he had to admit the German gunsmithing was impressive. And the dag hadn’t misfired, the way Carey’s normally did, even if Anricks only hit a horse’s rump. He insisted that was what he had been aiming at. It was obvious that Carey was now on fire to get a German gun like that as well and was cross-examining Anricks about where and how much, when Dodd caught a glimpse of helmets behind a veil of rain.
“Och,” he said, giving the dag back to Anricks to reload, and drew his sword again, wishing and wishing he was wearing his comfy jack, not the buffcoat and statute cap. Carey was of course in a jack and morion, but at least Anricks had no armour at all. That made him feel a little better. The dogs had noticed and were growling with their hackles up, though wisely not running forward.
Carey had seen them as well, there were fifteen of them now, though at a good distance so he couldn’t be sure if they were Burns or some other bunch of reivers who fancied getting themselves sorted for horse fodder for the winter. Someone in Jedburgh would have told them all about it.
“I suppose it was stupid of me to try and bring the ponies across the Border by myself,” said Anricks in an abstracted tone of voice as if it was someone else he was talking about.
“Ay it was,” said Dodd, “but ye werenae to know. Shall we give ’em one of the ponies as blackrent and try and take the rest on to Carlisle?”
Carey was standing up in his stirrups trying to see the other riders better; they were coming closer in a bunch now.
“One of them’s got a morion,” he said in a thoughtful tone of voice and then laughed and put his heels in, urging his horse up to a gallop in the direction of the riders.
Was it Geordie? No, Geordie didn’t have a fancy helmet, his helmet was a plain metal cap like most men wore. Kerr of Cessford? Could be, God forbid, or Ferniehurst or…
Swearing under his breath, Dodd got his hobby to run in an ugly lumpish way behind Carey who was clearly driven woodwild by thinking about his woman and was tired of life. At least Anricks was sensible, as he was continuing south with the ponies at a reluctant trot. The dogs stayed with Anricks, growling menacingly but clearly not fancying their chances against that many.
Halfway to the riders, Dodd saw what Carey had seen and put his sword away again. Good Lord, hadn’t the spot on Young Henry’s nose burst yet? It was like a beacon.
Carey was already leaning over to shake young Widdrington’s hand. “I’m delighted to see you, Mr Widdrington, I thought ye were some of Geordie Burn’s ugly crew.”
Young Henry nodded. “Ay, we’re on a trod, sir,” he said. “We’ve a witness statement in the killing of Minister Burn fra Jock Tait and there’s hue and cry for Archie and Jemmy Burn.”
“Same surname?”
“Ay sir, and it’s not even as if they’re at feud like the Kerrs of Cessford and Ferniehurst. They wis paid tae kill him by a courtier, Lord Spynie.” Young Henry’s expression was one of disgust. There was nothing wrong with killing somebody for money, of course, but killing one of your own surname for an outsider? That was disgraceful.
“Well I don’t like to hold you up, but we have a small packtrain with horsefodder over there and the man who drew my bloody tooth is trying to get it to Carlisle unpillaged so…er…”
“Of course we’ll ride with ye over the Bewcastle waste, sir, we heard they’ve gone to Carlisle in any case.”
“Where are they headed after, do you think?”
“Bound to be the Low Countries or Ireland, sir, nowhere else for them to go. And they’ve been there before. That’s why nobody knew them hereabouts. They were exiled eight years ago for something about a girl and a man gelded.”
Carey nodded as he swung in with the men, and Dodd took up his usual place behind him and to the left to watch his back. The dogs were wagging their tails again and stuck close to Anricks since he had the food.
Anricks had recognised Young Henry as well and shook hands with him, eyeing the flamboyant spot on his nose as if professionally interested. There were plenty of other spots on the man’s face, but that was definitely the worst. Dodd remembered getting a few spots when he was a
lad but Young Henry’s crop was something special. And as a youth, Dodd had had more important things to worry about—like killing Elliots and not dying.
They skirted the Bewcastle waste in the wind and the rain but nothing worse than that. Though this was the wind that left your skin feeling like it had been scoured with wire wool and rain that found its way down your neck and into your boots and made all the leather you were wearing weigh four times as much as it should.
The horses were tired by then, especially Anricks’ ponies and his hobby which had done an extra twenty miles to and from Jedburgh, so they called in at Thirlwall Castle. Carleton welcomed them and even gave them some food, pig’s liver and onions of course, though he explained that his wife made a kind of meat paste with liver with fat on top which made it keep longer. The younger dog had sore pads and was exhausted and the older lymer was tired too, so they left the dogs there along with Anricks and the pack ponies and ten men to guard him.
Carey was impatient to get to Carlisle and so Carleton lent them horses and they rode the final sixteen miles almost in silence, Carey, Dodd, Young Henry, and the five remaining Widdringtons, along the Giant’s Road which was a little bit safer than the Waste.
They went into the castle where the Scropes were clearly packing up to leave, Philadelphia standing imperiously in the castleyard where her own trunks were being packed with a remarkable number of velvet kirtles and black bodices and white damask aprons that had never once seen the light of Carlisle. It was evening by then and the trunks were being shut. Philadelphia instantly stopped what she was doing to scold her brother for going off like that again. She had been so worried, all sorts of rumours were coming from the Middle March, had they heard that a churchman had been done to death in Scotland, in his own home as well?
Over a gigantic meat pie of Philadelphia’s own raising and sundry potherbs and bread, Young Henry told the full tale of what had happened to the churchman, dabbing away at the end of his nose with a handkerchief where his spot had messily burst at the most humiliating moment for him. Carey had already heard it from him on the way over and he excused himself toward the end of the meal so he could avoid eating any of Philadelphia’s legendary kissing comfits. Dodd followed after him nosily and found Carey in the stables talking to the boys, chief among them Young Hutchin Graham, who was starting to grow seriously now, had big hands and feet and was wearing clogs because his feet had got too big for his boots.
A Chorus of Innocents Page 26