2 A Season of Knives

by P. F. Chisholm

  Atkinson’s thin lips pursed with satisfaction.

  ‘Mr Atkinson?’ said Long George. ‘What happens if Andy Nixon remembers who we are and sues for assault and battery?’

  ‘You didn’t let him get a look at you?’

  ‘Not much of one. But he heard Sergeant Nixon’s voice at least.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Atkinson. ‘All of this has been arranged through Sir Richard Lowther. If there’s a court case Sir Richard will be your good lord and see to the jury, and Nixon knows he’ll not get off so lightly next time.’

  They looked at each other and nodded, but Long George was still frowning worriedly. He wiped his runny nose on his sleeve again.

  ‘Well, but, master,’ he said, ‘Sir Richard’s not Deputy Warden any more.’

  Atkinson’s face grew pinched and mean. The actual Deputy Warden, Sir Robert Carey, had wanted to sack him from his office as Armoury Clerk on discovering that most of the weapons in the Carlisle armoury had disappeared, to be replaced with wooden dummies. The Warden had been Atkinson’s good lord on that occasion, protesting that they didn’t have anyone else in Carlisle capable of dealing with the armoury. Carey had in fact sacked Atkinson from his other, even more lucrative, office of Paymaster to the Garrison, after somehow getting hold of and reading the garrison account books.

  ‘I have every confidence in Sir Richard’s ability to send that nosy long-shanked prick of a courtier running back to London crying for his mother,’ he said venomously.

  ‘Mm,’ said Long George. He started to say something and then thought better of it.

  ‘And in addition no one else will be witnesses, will they?’

  ‘No,’ said Ill-Willit Daniel.

  Long George and his brother stayed in the common room until late, playing dice for pennies with their new-gotten wealth. Atkinson too seemed to be waiting for something, and sat drinking in solitary splendour. At last Billy touched Long George’s arm and he turned to see Lowther advancing towards Atkinson. Long George stayed still and hoped he’d be invisible.

  Lowther was in a dour mood, greeted Atkinson and sat down in the booth with him. They talked quietly for a while and Atkinson finally beckoned Mick the Crow over from the knot of drinkers by the empty fireplace. Lowther had sent the potboy for pens and paper and was writing. Mick pulled his forelock to Lowther and went out with him into the yard. Lowther didn’t come back in again, but Mick the Crow did, nervously checking something he had inside his shirt. Long George opened his mouth to ask what was going on but Billy kicked him and they went out the back to the dormitory to sleep.

  Atkinson went home to one of the few two-storey houses in Carlisle, in a row facing the marketplace and the end of Scotch street. He was savouring the sour pleasure of revenge. His wife had not waited up for him, so he drank home-brewed beer from the cask by himself in the downstairs living room until wife, lawyers, lovers, brothers-in-law all faded away, until he felt the horns on his head a little less sore, and he staggered up the narrow stairs, pulling his boots off on the way, and dropping his doublet and hose at the door to his bedchamber. Then hiccupping slightly he ripped the curtains aside and toppled into bed next to his bitch of a wife. For a while the room and the little watchlight on the bedhead whirled, so he sat up on his elbow and waited for it to settle. His wife was on her back, her smock pulled down off her shoulder to show her pitiful little pointed dug, her mouth half-open and snoring. The best you could say for her was that she had a reasonable dowry. What Andy Nixon saw in her was beyond him. For a moment he thought of waking her and telling her what he had done. Perhaps she would weep; certainly the bitch would deny everything. And then he could slap her, pull up her smock and have his rights there and then, but it was too much trouble and he was too drunk.

  He passed out without even bothering to shut the bed-curtains or douse the candle, looking forward to telling her in the morning.

  Sunday 2nd July 1592, midnight

  Solomon Musgrave was a big fat man with one arm and no teeth; he had lost an arm in action under Lord Hunsdon during the Rising of the Northern Earls, and so he had a permanent position in the Carlisle garrison despite being useless for fighting. He generally kept the gate and slept happily through the day, living as nocturnally as the Castle cats. He was usually the first to see the beacons that told of reivers over the Border and had the job of waking the bellringer who lived permanently up at the keep. Occasionally he bribed one of the boys to do his job, but as a general rule he liked it. It was peaceful in the night and his eyes were so adjusted to darkness that he found daylight often too bright for him and hard-edged.

  And he saw a great deal. To his private satisfaction, he knew more about what happened in the Castle than anyone else. He had watched the new Deputy try and coax his ladylove to bed and receive his setdown. He had heard the Scropes in their usual arguments as their yawning maid and manservant got them undressed and he knew that Young Hutchin Graham was doing his best to bed one of the scullery maids, with no success whatever.

  He stood at his sentrypost, admiring the stars as they wheeled across the sky, and heard somebody approaching the barred main gate.

  Solomon Musgrave tilted his halberd against the stone quietly and leaned over the battlements. There was a hiccup and a loud belch, followed by the noise of puking. The words that floated up to him were too slurred and distorted for understanding, though he recognised the voice and grinned.

  Looking across at the Queen Mary Tower, which still had the shutters on the window open, he saw the faint light of a rush-dip still burning. The lusty and fire-eating young Deputy could wait all night for his servant. Barnabus Cooke had had a skinful: more than a skinful. Singing floated up in the silence, something mucky about a Hatter’s Daughter of Islington, wherever that was, and then more swearing.

  ‘Shut that noise,’ he called down. ‘Folks wantae sleep.’

  ‘Lemme in,’ came the answer. ‘C’mon, or I’ll sing.’

  Solomon Musgrave grinned. ‘Ye can sleep there or find a bed. Ah dinnae care which, but if ye sing I’ll spear ye like a fish.’

  There was another loud belch. ‘Come on,’ whined the Londoner below, ‘I’ve…got to shee to hish honour Sir Robert Carey inna morning.’

  ‘Then I’ll do his honour a right favour and keep ye out. Ye’d fell him with yer breath the way ye are, I can smell it from here. Go to sleep.’

  ‘He’ll beat me if I’m abess…abs…not there,’ came the pathetic bleat.

  ‘And nae more than ye deserve,’ said Solomon Musgrave primly. ‘Shame on ye, to be so drunk. Go to sleep.’

  ‘She was only a ‘atter’s dooooorter an’ she…’

  Quietly Solomon went along the sentry walk, picked a slim javelin from its sheaf, went back and listened to the adventures of the Hatter’s Daughter for a few seconds until he was sure of his aim, then threw. There was a satisfying whipchunk sound, and the vibration of the wooden shaft. The caterwauling stopped. After a moment, Barnabus’s voice came again.

  ‘Wotcher do that for?’

  ‘I said I would.’

  ‘You could’ve killed me.’

  ‘Ay. Next time I willnae miss. Go to sleep.’

  There was more sullen muttering and cursing, then shuffling and rustling sounds. Solomon Musgrave squinted down and saw that, from the look of it, Barnabus had picked up the javelin, rolled himself up in his cloak with his back against the wood of the door, pulled his hat over his eyes and gone to sleep. A noise that combined the music of a pigpen and the regularity of a sawpit rolled up towards him.

  Solomon Musgrave sighed. ‘Ah wish Ah’d known the man sounded better drunk and awake.’

  Feeling sorry for the Deputy who presumably shared a room with that awful noise, he went back to his contemplation of the heavens.

  Monday 3rd July 1592, early morning

  By the time Jemmy Atkinson’s wife Kate had tired of shrieking up the stairs to wake him, the sun was well up and her two eldest boys had eaten their porridge
, fed the chickens in the yard and gone off to school. Her cousin Julia Coldale had been late arriving that morning and late starting work. At last she was in the scullery at the back of the house, plunging the paddle methodically in the butterchurn, trying to get the butter to come. By the sound it would be a while yet, because the girl would keep stopping for breath. Kate’s daughter Mary was sitting on a window seat in a patch of sunlight, blinking perplexedly at her sampler and occasionally putting her needle in as she held her breath and stuck out her tongue with the effort to do it right. The mousy ends of her hair hung out under her little white cap and her kirtle was a fine rose wool, with her petticoat showing crooked underneath. Kate Atkinson smiled at her fondly; after two boys, who spent most of their time finding new ways of almost killing themselves, her small girl’s anxiety to be good was lovable. Mary looked up at her mother and smiled back.

  ‘I’ll fetch your father his porridge,’ said Kate Atkinson. ‘And then I’ll come and show you a new stitch.’ She sighed. She needed more help in the house, but her husband refused to allow her to waste his money on idle girls so she could sit by a window and plot like his bitch of a half-sister.

  ‘I done this one almost straight,’ said little Mary proudly. ‘Look.’

  Kate Atkinson looked and agreed that it was much straighter than the one above and in a little while all her stitching would be completely straight. The child wasn’t likely to be a beauty, with her mousy hair and sallow complexion, but she would have a good dowry and unimpeachable skills in housewifery; she should make a good enough match.

  Suppressing the knowledge that her own marriage had been a good enough match according to her mother, Mrs Atkinson took the bowl of porridge, sprinkled salt on it, laid it on a tray with a mug of small ale and steeled herself to the unpleasantness that awaited her upstairs. He had been drinking half the night. She knew he had; she had woken in the dark to the pungent smell of beer and the lolling body of James half shoving her out of bed. The watch-light had burned down wastefully and he hadn’t even drawn the curtains to keep out the dangerous bad airs of the summer. She muttered to herself about it as she climbed the stairs carefully.

  It was a long time before she came down again, and when she did she was as white as linen. Her hands shook as she found her husband’s black bottle of aqua vitae in the lock-up cupboard and took a couple of painful swallows.

  Ten minutes later, Mary Atkinson trotted self-importantly through the broad streets of Carlisle, carefully lifting her kirtle away from the little midden heaps all around. Mrs Leigh their next door neighbour waved to her and asked how she was, and she explained that she was very well as her mam had told her to do, before trotting on. She avoided the courtyard with the Fierce Pig in it and said hallo to three cats and a friendly dog, which took a little time. She also waved to Susie Talyer but couldn’t stop to skip with her because she was taking a Message.

  She was picturing herself walking up St. Alban’s vennel to Mr Nixon’s door and banging on it and explaining her Message, when she was very disappointed to see Mr Nixon coming down the street towards her. He looked funny; his mouth was all swollen, his eyes were bruised and he was walking with a limp and his arm in a sling. It was sad she wouldn’t be able to knock on his door now, but she could still take her Message and she liked him, so she squealed his name and when he looked, she ran straight for him and cannoned into his legs.

  Mr Nixon made an odd little squeak-grunting noise and held onto her tightly.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ he growled at her.

  Her face crumpled and puckered and tears started into her eyes.

  Mr Nixon sighed, let go of her arms and patted her head.

  ‘There,’ he said awkwardly and rather hoarsely. ‘Dinna cry, Mary my sweet, I’m not angry at ye, only ye hurt ma legs which is sore this morning.’

  She might get a penny off him to quiet her, so she cried all the harder.

  ‘Is yer father in?’ he asked her cautiously, without taking proper notice of her tears.

  A bit surprised that her magic power hadn’t worked this time, she nodded and gulped. ‘But me mam said for ye to come anyway, she said ye mun come right now and never mind what ye’re at, she said she needs ye bad.’

  Mr Nixon’s face looked very odd and he stood still for a long while. He looked angry and afraid at the same time.

  ‘Me dad’s still asleep,’ she said helpfully. ‘He wouldna wake when mam yelled for him. She said he’d drunk too much last night.’

  ‘Did he, by God?’ said Mr Nixon in a nasty voice. He put his left hand on his dagger hilt and made the lift and drop movement that even Mary knew was the prelude to a fight. She took the arm that wasn’t in a sling and started pulling him after her.

  ‘Ye must come, Mr Nixon, please,’ she said. ‘Me mam’s very upset, her face is as white as her apron, it is so, and she wouldna show me the new stitch like she promised, so please come.’

  Mr Nixon’s face took on a new set of lines under the bruising, his lips went all thin and into a straight line.

  ‘Ay,’ he said. ‘I will.’

  In the end, she couldn’t keep up with him because he strode ahead of her forgetting her short legs and petticoats. She scooped them all up in an immodest bunch and ran as fast as she could and reached their door just as he did, completely out of breath. Her mam opened the door without him knocking and let him in without a word, putting down a big basket of soiled sheets.

  ‘I did it, mam,’ she said plaintively. ‘I did the Message.’

  Her mam looked at her vaguely as if not seeing her. ‘Go help Julia with the buttermaking,’ she said, as if Mary had not just delivered an important message for her. Mary was thinking about crying again, but Mr Nixon did a sort of smile for her and nodded. ‘I’ll give ye the money for a penny bun if ye go off like a good lass now,’ he said, so she held out her hand and after a pause he put the penny in it and she trotted off to the scullery where the paddle in the milk was finally beginning to make the plunk plunk noises that heralded butter. Perhaps she could get some buttermilk to drink as well.

  Kate Atkinson blinked at Andy Nixon for several seconds after her daughter had gone. Her mind seemed not to be working properly, or at least it was some while behind what her eyes saw. She didn’t look as if Atkinson had beaten her, or he had kept away from her face if he had. She frowned suddenly.

  ‘Andy, what happened to your face…and your arm?’ she asked.

  ‘What d’ye think, Kate?’

  ‘I…don’t know.’

  ‘Och, work it out, woman.’

  ‘Did something fall on you?’

  Andy Nixon managed a mirthless smile. ‘In a manner of speaking. Four men, if ye want to know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your husband paid four men to beat me last night.’

  It seemed impossible but her face grew whiter. Both hands went to her mouth.

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘Ay,’ agreed Andy. ‘Ah was comin’ to tell ye we canna go on; I willnae come to see ye any more. Not for a while, any road. I’m going back to my father.’

  Well, he hadn’t expected her to like it, but whatever he had expected it wasn’t a peculiar high-pitched little laugh.

  She saw it frightened him, so she swallowed hard and took a deep breath.

  ‘Come and see him,’ she said, taking his good arm and leading him to the stairs.

  ‘Kate, are ye mad? I dinna wantae see him. After what he had done to me last night, I willna be responsible for what I…’

  ‘Oh, shut yer clamour and come wi’ me,’ snapped Kate. ‘Ye’ll understand when ye see him.’

  He did indeed. While Mary had done her message, Kate had already stripped the sheets off the bed, but left her husband half wrapped in the worst-stained blanket. Dead bodies were nothing new to Andy Nixon, but he had never before seen anyone grinning so nastily from his throat, with all severed tubes and the like showing as if he were a slaughtered pig.

  Kate bolted the door behi
nd him as he took in the scene. It was all too much for his aching head and aching body. He sat down on the clothes chest beside a tray of cold porridge, and put his face in his hand.

  ‘Oh, good Christ,’ he croaked.

  ‘Ay,’ she said. ‘What am I to do?’

  ‘What happened?’ he asked eventually, with a horrible cold suspicion fully formed in his heart. Atkinson had boasted of what he had done to his wife’s lover and his wife had taken a knife and…

  ‘Why? D’ye think I did it?’ Kate’s voice was shaking. ‘I left him as alive as you are, and after I’d milked the cow and skimmed the cream for Julia and made the porridge and seen to the children and sent them off to school, I came back and this is what I saw. And…and the blood all over everywhere.’

  He was still staring at her and for all his trying, she saw the doubt in his eyes. Her hands clenched into her apron.

  ‘As God is my witness,’ she said, very low and intense. ‘I did not kill my husband.’

  ‘Ay,’ he said, still not able to deal with it. Kate laughed that high silly noise again.

  ‘I was going to ask ye if ye’d done it yourself,’ she said.

  Andy’s mouth fell open and he felt sick. He hadn’t thought of that, but there was no denying the fact that he had wanted the little bastard dead as well.

  ‘But I didna,’ he said.

  ‘No more did I,’ she told him.

  The two of them stared at each other while each could see the other wondering and wondering. Finally, Kate Atkinson made a helpless gesture and turned back to the corpse.

  ‘Well, he’s dead now. What’s to be done?’

  ‘I…I suppose I’d best get Sir Richard Lowther, and tell Fenwick to come for the body and…’

  She whirled back to face him with her fists clenched. ‘For God’s sake, Andy, think!’ she hissed at him. ‘Who d’ye think they’ll say did it? You and me, for sure. You think the women round about here havenae seen us? Well, they have and they’ll delight in making sure Lowther knows the lot, and the Warden too. They won’t know how it was done for sure, but they’ll know I was in the house and that ye would likely be angry with him. What do ye think will happen? We’re not reivers, ye’re only Mr Pennycook’s rent collector and I’m just a woman. You’ll hang and I’ll burn.’