Disgrace And Favour

by Jeremy Potter

  As the echo of the blow resounded Kerr rose slowly to his feet, the mark of Carey’s hand imprinted on his cheek. He was still grasping the dagger. The boys jumped up in alarm and Lady Carey with them. Carey himself sat calmly with folded arms. His expression spoke for him. It declared that the Border was small beer and the whole clan of Kerrs beneath the serious notice of a man acquainted with kings and queens, a man who had aided the conquest of Spanish fleets and French armies, a man whose feet could carry him more than three hundred miles at a stretch when he chose.

  ‘I am unarmed,’ he announced, ‘but if you draw that weapon you are a dead man.’

  ‘Call your henchmen then, fit cousin of the English Queen. Bid them do your butchery if they can.’

  ‘Do you take me for one of your own kind?’ Carey made a pretence of being amused. ‘It is Kerrs who summon others to do their killing. Your ambush outside Carlisle was a pretty piece of gallantry, was it not? Careys do not stoop so low. I intend to pay you the compliment of squeezing the lying breath from your crooked body with my own hands.’

  Kerr stood pale and irresolute. Overbury hurried the younger boy to the far end of the hall, while Lady Carey moved between the two men. Bones were broken when her husband lost his temper, but when he became quarrelsome and quiet together she scented death.

  ‘Enough! When your sovereigns hear of this you will both be punished. If wardens behave like common brawlers, what government can Border folk expect?’

  ‘Address yourself to this Laird of Cesspool then,’ her husband bade her. ‘Ask him when and where he received that wound which you tended so lovingly.’

  ‘I suffered it last night. An English outlaw attacked me from behind in my own march. He stole my horse and left me for dead. When I find him, the cowardly dog shall hang.’

  ‘Ask him his purpose in riding last night.’

  ‘What else but to prevent the Bournes from raiding your territory? I was myself prevented, but at least my servant discovered me in time for me to send a message to Berwick and forestall further mischief.’

  ‘Ask him how he could be attacked from behind unless he were fleeing. The wound betrays him.’

  ‘It was an ambush in the forest. I had no time to turn. As for that other ambush, it was no affair of mine. The Grahams prepared it. They are accustomed to Nevilles on the English West March and resented an interloper. My family and followers are willing to accept you. If you would be less severe, we might well become friends. I have not made the journey to Norham to quarrel with you but to seek a favour.’ As a token of reconciliation Kerr slid his weapon across the table.

  ‘Your apology for the slight on my Queen,’ Carey insisted.

  ‘If I was first to break the laws of hospitality, you have it.’

  ‘State plainly that the Queen of England is not a miser.’

  Kerr sighed. ‘If you say not, it is so. And pray remember that my castle is at Cessford, not Cesspool.’

  ‘Now you may ask your favour.’

  ‘You know it. I solicit the release of Geordie Bourne.’

  ‘In an age of treachery it seems that I cannot even trust my ears,’ declared Carey, now feigning surprise and returning Kerr’s dawning smile with his fiercest scowl. ‘Surely it cannot be that the King’s officer responsible for law and order throughout the Middle March of Scotland has come to demand freedom for the vilest miscreant on either side of the Border?’

  ‘Worse will follow if he is not set free. The Bournes have many friends. My cousin of Fernyhurst supports me in this request, as his son will tell you.’

  Before Carey could stop him the boy ran across the room and knelt in front of him like a suppliant, seeking to enchant him with pleading eyes. Carey pushed him away so roughly that the heir to Fernyhurst fell sprawling in the dirt among the rushes.

  ‘What you beg for cannot be.’ Now Carey turned his scowl on his wife, who went to pick up the boy and appeared about to intercede for him.

  ‘How so?’ asked the elder Kerr while the child whimpered. ‘This morning you hanged ten brave Scotsmen, which I take amiss. You have had blood enough for last night’s raid. If you spare Geordie, we may yet forget our quarrels.’

  Carey made no response. He sat with his lips obstinately pursed and Overbury braved the silence.

  ‘If another Englishman may speak, sir, it is my belief that harmony between England and Scotland transcends all other considerations. One day our two countries will be united under James Stuart. Should it not be the aim of all true Britons to prepare for that eventuality?’

  Carey stared at the young man as though seeing him for the first time and not liking what he saw. ‘So, Master Overbury, you have travelled north to salute the rising sun? Beware lest your forethought be judged treasonable to our sovereign lady, who happily still reigns in full vigour. You are to be a lawyer, I am told. Give me your opinion then whether I should set at liberty a man who has confessed to seven murders and forty-nine rapes.’

  ‘Forty-nine rapes!’ Lady Carey clapped a hand over her mouth in disbelief.

  ‘Yours was to be the fiftieth, my love,’ said Carey evenly. ‘Yesterday you begged me spare the wretch. If you are still of a like mind with our guests, let us hear what you have to say.’

  Overcome, Lady Carey said nothing.

  ‘The facts of the case are not known to me, sir.’ Overbury spoke instead, not at all put down. ‘But if the miscreant is a Scotsman it would surely be fitting, not to release him, but to hand him over to the Scottish warden who would administer punishment for his crimes according to the Scottish law.’

  ‘His crimes were committed on English soil, against English men and women. Moreover, I fear that Sir Robert Kerr would rather embrace the villain than punish him.’

  Overbury and Kerr protested in unison, but Carey cut them short.

  ‘Sir Robert Kerr tells me that he rode last night against Bourne and his men. He lies, as he lies about the ambush. He rode with them.’

  ‘By God, you shall pay for those words!’ Kerr was on his feet again.

  ‘Silence!’ Carey shouted. ‘I pursued one of the leaders of Bourne’s night riders myself. That wound was inflicted by me. The honest Scottish warden - honest, as he would have us believe - will find his horse in my stables. Misguided by my conscience, I did not leave him for dead. Out of respect for his office I spared his treacherous, double-dealing life.’

  His bid for friendship flung back in his face, Kerr dived savagely across the table for his dagger. Carey swept it away with a flourish of his arm. In an instant the two men were locked together struggling desperately on the floor. An instant more and Carey had his adversary by the throat, jerking him to his feet again with force enough to stretch his neck. He stood him against the wall, one hand pinning him to it while the other punched him in the face, blow after blow until Kerr, no match in strength, sagged and crumpled to his knees. Each blow knocked his wound against the ragged stones until blood ran down the wall like thick dark rivers of muddied rain. Carey stood back contemptuously and let him fall.

  ‘Take each blow as a reward for one act of villainy,’ he panted: ‘the last for your lecherous intent towards my wife. I shall not grant your request because I cannot. Bourne is better in the hands of God than tormenting miserable peasants with your connivance. Before leaving Berwick, I gave orders for him to be hanged in the hour before sunset. I swore by Great Harry that it should be so, and so it is. I care nothing for you or your friendship or your threats. Geordie Bourne is dead.’

  4

  Struggling for breath, Kerr hoisted himself unsteadily to his feet. The blood ran down his forehead and trickled into his eyes. He groped for a stool to serve as a crutch. His body was trembling with pain.

  Lady Carey made to go to his assistance but her husband forbade her. The two boys watched from a distance, open-eyed with fear. Carey helped himself to more wine. He examined his knuckles and smiled at the bruises.

  ‘You have insulted and assaulted me while a guest in your
house,’ gasped Kerr when he could speak. ‘You have confessed that last night you attacked me foully, wounded me and stole my horse. I –’

  ‘It is less than you deserve,’ Carey interrupted. ‘You are aptly named Sir Robert Cur.’

  At this further insult the Scottish warden’s body stiffened. He wiped the blood from his eyes and cleared it from his mouth by spitting on the rushes. When he spoke again the sentences were disjointed with rage.

  ‘May the curse of the Kerrs fall on you - and all your clan! We have been lords of the Border - when your ancestors were peasants. Our word is the law here. Every man, woman and child knows it. I declare a feud - they shall be witnesses to our vengeance. You are but a meddling stranger - the penniless son of an upstart warden of a bastard Queen. The Border will outlive - you and your kind.’

  ‘You are mistaken,’ replied Carey unruffled. ‘You belong to the past and your curses are empty. On this side of the Border your like are gone already. I do not doubt the Percys would have made a good bargain with you and returned your precious Geordie Bourne, but where are they now? They thought their word was law until my father hunted them down in the name of the Queen. They became overmighty subjects and paid the penalty, as you will too unless you recognize that there is England and Scotland and no country between. The days of lawlessness are over.’

  ‘The Percys will return. Like the Kerrs, they have roots too deep for common Careys to dig up.’

  ‘We shall see. If King James should indeed rule both kingdoms, he may charge me with dealing with his treasonable Kerrs and Grahams as my father did with Percys and Nevilles.’

  ‘Who doubts my loyalty to King James?’

  ‘Have you not declared your word to be law on his soil? That is treason and I do not consort with traitors except at sword point. An officer who is false to his own sovereign lord shall find no refuge under my roof.’

  ‘I no longer seek it. Let me away.’

  Kerr stretched out his hand for the flagon of wine and Carey let him have it. While he drank and summoned his strength for the journey, a servant entered the room with despatches from Berwick.

  Carey took the letters. There were two. In the first his brother John upbraided him for his violence and the hanging of Bourne. The Marshal of Berwick was at pains to disclaim all responsibility for the consequences and wanted his brother to know that he had made a report to the Privy Council. Timorous, whey-faced John, thought Carey scornfully. He threw the letter to the ground and opened the second.

  This came from London, from his brother George. It was addressed to Sir John, who had forwarded it with a scribbled note that it had arrived after his own was written.

  Betraying no emotion to the others, Carey read through the ill-scrawled message in his eldest brother’s hand. It told of another bitter quarrel between their father and the Queen. Their bone of contention was the dormant earldom of Wiltshire. To this their father had a double claim which she refused to recognize. The stone had long troubled him and after high words he had taken to his bed so seriously ill that she was persuaded to relent and grant him the honour. The robes and letters patent had been sent to him and laid on the bed. Yet with true Carey choler he had returned them, and with them a curt message: since she had not counted him worthy of them while he lived, he did not count himself worthy of them now that he was dying. It had been the last of his valiant deeds. He had died during the night, complaining of her ingratitude until speech failed him.

  ‘His death is ill news enough,’ wrote the new Lord Hunsdon, ‘but the manner of it far worse. His pride has imperilled the fortunes of all the family.’

  ‘What tidings?’ inquired Lady Carey, growing anxious at his long face and perusal.

  ‘My father is dead, God rest his soul.’ He knelt in prayer, thinking how the old man had loved him best of all his sons.

  ‘God rot his soul,’ amended Kerr, striding across the room. ‘Now we shall have you - you and your brother at Berwick. You are deputies to a dead man. It will give me great joy to welcome your successors. Come, boy.’ He beckoned to his cousin to follow him.

  ‘Let them go,’ Carey ordered his servant, who had seized Kerr by the throat to choke any further words. ‘Give Sir Robert his horse, give him both his horses, and escort him to the ford. He may bathe his wounds there. See that he suffers no further harm this side of the Border. On the other side let the devil look after his own.’

  Kerr shook himself free and the two boys exchanged tender God-be-with-you’s. When the cousins had gone, Thomas Overbury inquired stiffly whether it would be thought unmannerly if he remained for the night and departed at dawn. ‘My uncle awaits me in London,’ he declared, ‘and the road to the south is long.’

  ‘If you are a loyal Englishman you may stay,’ Carey told him. ‘In the morning, if you are ready to ride hard, I shall accompany you.’

  ‘To London!’ his wife exclaimed. ‘But you cannot leave your post without the Council’s permission. You will be arrested.’

  ‘This letter is a week old. Whatever he pretends, I’ll wager John kept it from me for a day or two.’ Carey rapped the paper with his knuckles as though it were part of his brother or the Scottish warden. ‘Do you think there is time for niceties? Unless I secure the wardenship in my own right, all is lost.’

  ‘Be less headstrong,’ she begged. ‘What difference does a day make? Take time for consideration - and for sleep. You had little enough last night.’

  ‘Nor shall I sleep tonight if I am to leave you in the morning.’ His brow unknit and his look grew tender. Lady Carey blushed, conscious of young Overbury’s eyes on her.

  Whatever the ardour of his love during the night, it did not serve to delay his departure. When she woke it was to find him gone. With Thomas Overbury and their attendant grooms he was already ten miles along the poor and pitted road which led south from Norham. In his haste he had intended to abandon his English guest, but he found Overbury dressed and ready, not one to be left behind.

  Tall for his age, the boy rode upright. His body was sparsely framed, but not lacking in strength or determination. His confidence in himself was rarely shaken, but after the events of the previous evening he stood doubly in awe of Carey: on the one hand he felt respect, on the other fear and resentment. Keeping resolutely abreast, he adopted a prudent policy of silence.

  After a day on the road together and ale with his supper at an inn, his confidence returned and he became talkative, plying Carey with questions about the court and those who were nourished by the Queen’s favour.

  ‘Is it in your mind to make a career at court, Master

  Overbury?’ Carey’s thoughts were on his own advancement.

  ‘That is my intention, Sir Robert. Do you count it foolish?’

  ‘If you have brains to equal your looks you may succeed, but you will find it dangerous living.’

  ‘At court lies the only path to fame and fortune.’

  ‘If you would be a poet, there are other paths.’

  ‘Poets require patrons.’

  ‘Have you friends at court, Master Overbury?’

  ‘None, sir. My father learned his law at the Middle Temple, but he has shunned London since and is a justice in Gloucestershire. When I become a lawyer I shall remain in town. If they prove themselves useful to their betters, all doors are open to men of law.’

  Carey shook his head. ‘Unless you are a Coke or a Bacon you will not succeed. A courtier needs to be well born - and even that does not suffice. Take warning from my example. I am near-related to the Queen and the blood of the Plantagenets runs in my veins. Yet I am reduced to living on my wits. The Queen has not paid me for twelve months and now I am like to lose my post.’

  ‘New times are approaching. New men will be in demand. You will return to favour and I shall climb the ladder to success.’

  Overbury spoke with the confidence of youth. Carey looked into his face and saw his pride naked.

  ‘If you will take advice,’ he said, ‘you will cloak y
our ambition and curb your impatience. You are too young for intrigue, too tender to throw scruples overboard, too innocent to protect yourself against the enemies you will make. At court you must be wily and pliant, as soft as butter yet as hard as rock, practised in when to yield and when to strike. Your countenance must not betray the secrets of your mind.’

  ‘You will teach me?’

  ‘It takes generations to learn the rules of court craft. No family succeeds without losing one head or more to the executioner’s axe. You would do well to stay in Gloucestershire.’

  ‘I mean to make my way in the world. Nothing shall deter me.’

  ‘You are stubborn, but is your stomach strong?’

  ‘As strong as yours.’

  ‘Are you honest?’

  Overbury hesitated for the first time. ‘To myself,’ he replied after thought.

  Carey laughed. ‘Then you are a rogue and may succeed. If you are determined, my counsel is this: avoid making enemies. Your manner is too unbending for your lack of years.’

  ‘I have brooded on enmity. To make enemies is a sign of strength. Only a weakling is every man’s friend. Those with power will stand in my way: how can I make progress but by challenging them? They will not yield to smiles.’

  ‘Experience will teach you other tactics. In war there are flanking movements as well as direct assaults.’

  ‘There is speed in directness. Life is short and I aim to climb while young.’

  During the next day’s journey, urging as fast a pace as before, Carey appraised his companion with a new eye. The boy was tired but unflagging. True mettle lay behind the boasts.

  ‘We shall part within the hour,’ said Carey. ‘Study hard at Oxford and consider well the perils of ambition. You still have time enough for that, Thomas.’

  Overbury turned in the saddle, swept off his hat and inclined his head in the attitude of a suppliant. ‘In the name of our Lord, grant me one favour before we part.’ He raised his eyes. They were glowing.

  ‘What do you seek of me?’