2 A Season of Knives

by P. F. Chisholm

  At last they were organised, and Maggie herded the crying children across to her house in their shirts, carrying their day clothes in a bag over her arm. She paused to give Kate Atkinson’s shoulders a squeeze and then hurried away.

  ‘I can come with ye now, sir,’ she said, noticing that the Deputy was at least looking less triumphant, though still severe. Henry Dodd was upset, which he should be. Perhaps Janet could help her?

  ‘Take your cloak, Mrs Atkinson,’ said the Deputy, snagging it off its peg and handing it to her. ‘It’s cold in the gaol.’

  That nearly did for her. She choked and bit her knuckle, but swallowed her tears. How to save Andy, that was the question now, since it seemed she was a dead woman. No doubt God was punishing her for her sin of adultery, though she had thought her dead baby of last year punishment enough. Clearly it was only a warning. Unseeing, she tied the cloak and put its hood up. Everyone would know from Maggie, but she wanted to hide her face all the same. The Deputy asked for the key to the house and locked the door.

  Dodd nodded to the other men of the guard who were staring at her in shock as if she had suddenly grown a viper’s head, and they surrounded her. It was kindly of them, she thought, hiding her like that, since she was not likely to run away from them, but she almost had to run to keep up with them as they tramped her into the Castle gate, through the righthand door and up the tiny stairs into the upper of the two prison rooms there.

  ***

  Mrs Atkinson refused point-blank to tell Carey where Andy Nixon lodged, but it didn’t matter because Sergeant Ill-Willit Daniel Nixon was willing to say where he was. His landlady answered the door to their knocking and said distractedly that he had gone, taken his baggage and left an hour earlier and she didn’t know where, and the rent not paid.

  Running Sergeant Nixon to earth again took time since he had gone to an alehouse in Fisher street where he could drink in peace, as he put it. It cost a sixpence from Carey, but he finally admitted that while Andy was likely headed for the Debateable Land, as any sensible man would be, he might stay until nightfall at his father’s farm a couple of miles out of Carlisle where he could get horses and food. Nay, he wouldna simply leg it there, not in his condition. Oh ay, he had cousins aplenty in the Debateable Land; once he got in they’d never winkle him out, and good luck to him. No, Sergeant Nixon would not come with them to help; Dodd knew the place well enough. Who the hell cared if somebody cut Atkinson’s throat, it was no loss to man nor beast…

  Carey and his men took horse and galloped from Carlisle, heading for a long low farmhouse with a surrounding brushwood fence, the walls made of stone halfway and wattle and daub the rest. It was close enough to Carlisle not to need its own peel tower, though there was a place on the next hill that was likely the Nixons’ refuge if necessary.

  The Deputy Warden spoke to Andy Nixon’s father at the gate, a broad grizzled man with the habitual worried expression of someone who had to pay blackrent to Thomas Carleton as well as to the Grahams. John Nixon took the Deputy’s warrant and looked at it upside down, which was lucky since it only referred to Mrs Atkinson’s house.

  ‘He’s not here,’ said John Nixon. ‘He’s gone to the Debateable Land.’

  Carey peered over the gate at a saddled and bridled hobby standing at a hitching post, a remount already tethered behind it.

  ‘I must make sure,’ said Carey charmingly. ‘You won’t object, will you, Mr Nixon?’

  Carey had given Dodd one of his wheellock dags, ready wound, with orders not to point it unless necessary. The other men he had already told to station themselves all about the fence, in case Andy tried making a break for it.

  At this point Carey simply walked past John Nixon and into the small yard, stood with one hand negligently on his swordhilt and his other dag under his arm and looked around.

  ‘Sergeant,’ he said.

  ‘Ay sir,’

  ‘You and Red Sandy start searching the way I told you.’

  ‘Ay sir.’

  Carey settled himself with his back to the wall of the house, perched on the edge of a water trough, watching John Nixon’s face. As Dodd and Red Sandy trampled noisily around the farm and outbuildings, Carey quietly sat and watched, privately laying a bet with himself. Dodd had left the pigpen till last and sure enough as he went in, there was a flicker of John Nixon’s eyelids.

  Carey stood upright, took the dag in his gauntleted hand and put it behind his back. Seconds later there came a lot of shouting from the stye, and a crunching sound. Dodd came reeling out to land in the mud. Andy Nixon charged past him, grabbed the dag out of his unresisting hand, vaulted two sows and the fence and then slowed. He advanced on Carey pointing the gun squarely at his chest. Carey smiled.

  ‘Well, Andy Nixon,’ he said, ‘I must arrest you in the name of the Queen for the murder of Jemmy Atkinson.’

  ‘I didna do it,’ said Nixon, still advancing. ‘Now get out of my way.’

  Carey brought his gun out and levelled it at Nixon. ‘This dag is loaded. That one is not. Do you think the Sergeant would let you get your hands on a loaded gun so easily? Shame on you, Andy.’

  He and Dodd had spent ten minutes discussing ways of arresting Andy Nixon without having to fight him, something Dodd was keen to avoid. It was the best they could come up with.

  Andy growled inarticulately and threw the useless dag at Carey’s face. He jerked back, fired and missed at pointblank range, shooting one of the unfortunate pigs instead. It went berserk, charging round its pen and biting anything that got in its way, which included Dodd who was just trying to get to his feet.

  Carey stayed upright, dropped his gun, pulled out his sword.

  ‘Carlisle garrison to me!’ he roared, and Andy Nixon looked over his shoulder to see Bangtail Graham and Long George crowding the gate, their lances ready. However, he could see that wave them though they might, neither of them were anxious to come and help. Andy drew his sword awkwardly, then transferred it to his left hand. Carey drew his poignard lefthanded and advanced on the man, his blades en garde before him: Dodd had been very insistent about the importance of not getting to close-quarters with Andy Nixon. On the other hand, Carey wanted him alive to confess, be tried and hanged, a scruple that Dodd clearly thought insane.

  Dodd had managed to struggle stinking out of the pigpen and was menacing Andy’s father with his sword, in case he got excited. The wounded pig continued to buck round the pen squealing like a human child.

  Andy Nixon and Carey moved around each other, Carey trying to keep himself between Nixon and the horses. Nixon, who was desperate, moved in swinging his sword awkwardly. Carey parried with his two crossed blades and tried a quick underarm stab with the poignard, but Nixon skipped backwards too fast. Not in fact left-handed, then, but holding his sword in his left hand because his right was hurt somehow. Simon Barnet had said something about his hand in a sling. And his face wasn’t only smudged with pig dirt but also badly bruised about the cheeks and jaw. It was a square young-looking face on a square barrel-chested body, solid all through and very determined. Now after the fizzing excitement of anticipation Carey felt that cold narrowing down of focus, the hard beat of his heart and the strange sensation of everything being very slow and crystal clear, which was there whenever he fought. He liked it. That feeling was one reason why he had come to the north.

  Andy Nixon’s face tightened, the betraying flicker. Carey waited for him, caught the rhythm of his attack, slipped sideways and struck backhanded with his sword at Nixon’s. Metal screeched as the blades slid past each other, he flicked his wrist, and Andy’s sword was on the ground. Andy stared at it, panting slightly.

  ‘Now, Andy,’ Carey said reprovingly. ‘Why don’t you…?’

  Andy cannoned into him frontally from low down and Carey was knocked backwards onto the ground practically under the hobbies’ hooves. He had dropped his sword with the shock. The horses skittered nervously backwards and forwards, hooves coming and going, distractingly enormous
right next to his face, while Carey found himself held down by immensely strong shoulders. He could have used his poignard, which he still had, but he wanted Andy Nixon alive, and anyway, Andy was holding his left wrist down. There was something flawed in that grip; Carey couldn’t move the rest of him—where the hell was Dodd?—but he twisted his arm, jerked up on his elbow, reversed the poignard and managed to hit Andy across the head with the pommel.

  He didn’t even notice, except to land a punch on Carey’s face which sent stars whirling through the sky. The horrible weight came off Carey’s shoulders; Andy Nixon was getting into the saddle of one of the hobbies. Carey gasped some air into his lungs, heaved himself up still blind, grabbed Nixon’s foot and shoved him up and off the horses’s back on the other side. Nixon landed with a crunch on the ground. Carey ducked under the horse’s head to grab him and was met with a kick like a mule which he saw coming just in time to turn and take it on his hip instead of his crotch. The force of it knocked him back and into the hobby which whinnied and swung about until stopped by the tether. Somehow he had dropped the poignard. Andy was on his feet again, rocking, gasping for breath, but up. Jesus, the man wasn’t human, what was he made of—and where the bloody hell was Dodd? Carey dimly heard a sound of cheering…Cheering? Were his troop of useless scum enjoying this?

  More enraged by that thought than by anything Andy Nixon had done, Carey forgot all about not coming to close-quarters with Nixon and launched himself at him. There was a confused moment, during which his legs and Andy’s seemed to become mysteriously tangled, and then the ground was leaping up; he had landed bruisingly on his stomach and Andy was about to break his arm backwards over his shoulder. Carey kicked and bucked, there was a second when he thought he might get free at the cost of dislocating his arm and then there was a brisk movement above him, a dull thud and Nixon was keeling over with a sigh. Carey lay for a moment, cawing for breath, and then levered himself up off the ground with his hands, came to his knees. Dodd was there, a large rock in one hand, offering him the other. He took it and climbed back onto his feet. He stood for a moment while he concentrated on breathing and felt his wrenched arm and his incompletely healed ribs. Then he looked at Nixon who was lying there, bleeding from a graze on his head.

  ‘Where the…hell…were you…, Sergeant?’ he rasped.

  Bangtail and Archie-Give-It-Them came forward with care, picked up the floppy Andy Nixon and tied his hands before him as fast as they could. Then they hefted him up over the lead hobby’s saddle just as he began to mutter and connected his bound hands with a rope under the horse’s belly to his feet.

  Sergeant Dodd was grinning inanely. ‘Och, I thought ye were making such a bonny fight of it wi’ Nixon, ya didna need my help.’

  If he had had the energy he would have punched Henry Dodd.

  ‘B…bonny fight…’ he got out, ‘The…bastard…nearly broke my arm.’

  ‘Ay,’ said Dodd, not at all abashed. ‘Ye did verra well, sir. Andy Nixon won the wrestling last summer for a’ Cumberland, knocked Archie-Give-It-Them out cold, and beat three Scots after.’

  Carey sat on the edge of the water trough and spat some blood out. Nixon’s punch to his face had cut the inside of his mouth against his teeth.

  ‘The…the bastard nearly…broke my arm,’ he said to Dodd again, still unable to believe such perfidy.

  ‘Ay,’ said Dodd. ‘He beat ye right enough. I’ve won half a crown off Bangtail and…’

  ‘Wait a minute. You…you bet on me to lose?’

  ‘Ay sir. It were a safe bet.’

  ‘Jesus Christ! I am going to kill you, Dodd.’

  ‘In that state? I wouldna bet on it, sir,’ said Dodd with great good humour.

  Carey shook his head to clear it and picked up his morion whose chin strap had broken at some stage in the fight. He looked round at his men who were settling bets and nodding approvingly at him, then saw John Nixon who was being held by Red Sandy and Long George.

  ‘Mr Nixon,’ he croaked. ‘I’m arresting your son Andrew on the charge of conspiracy and premeditated murder. If I have any trouble on the way home, I’ll cut his head off. Understand?

  John Nixon nodded.

  Weapons were scattered all over the yard. Dodd had already retrieved both of his valuable Tower armoury dags; Carey himself picked up his sword and poignard, sheathed them, went over to Dodd to take his guns and reeled at the smell.

  ‘Do something about the pigshit, Dodd,’ he said drily. Dodd went to the water trough, picked up a bucket and poured the water over himself, which helped a little.

  They mounted up. Red Sandy took the reins of the hobby carrying Andy Nixon because Long George was in the middle of a sneezing fit, and they started back to Carlisle. At the Eden bridge Carey told Dodd to begin the patrol and wait for him at the Gelt ford. He led the hobby himself as he turned the horses in towards Carlisle town with the sun dying in fire behind the Castle and the clouds. He had Archie-Give-It-Them Musgrave on the other side to help if Nixon should get free.

  Andy Nixon was conscious again, turning his face sideways to keep his graze away from the horse’s flank and wriggling occasionally when the horse jerked. He had already been sick, there were traces of it on the horse’s belly. Carey supposed the head-down position, the motion and the smell would make you sick, come to think of it. Good. Serve the bastard right. Not a scratch on him after fighting fifty-odd Grahams and outlaws that morning—and then he went to arrest one rent-collector and ended up feeling as if he had been run over by a cart and nursed by the Spanish Inquisition. His whole shoulder was aching with pulled muscles, his ribs were griping him again, his hip was sore though his jack had softened some of the force of the kick, and his face was bruised which made him talk out of one side of his mouth. He doubted there was an inch of his body which didn’t have some complaint and he sincerely hoped Nixon was feeling much worse.

  Nixon croaked something inaudible.

  ‘What was that?’ Carey asked.

  Nixon lifted his head and yelled. ‘I didna do it.’

  Carey rode along in silence for a moment, thinking. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Nixon,’ he said flatly. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you were the kind of man that would let a woman face burning alone.’

  The head flopped to hang downwards again. ‘Ah Christ,’ came a muffled groan.

  There was no more chat until they got back into Carlisle and tethered their horses at the Keep. Carey had to keep fighting the illusion caused by taking an afternoon nap, that in fact he had fought the Grahams the day before.

  A young man called William Barker was keeping the dungeons for Scrope, deputy to his grandfather who was officially the Gaoler. He stared with surprise as they rode into the inner yard and Archie-Give-It-Them heaved Andy Nixon down from the horse.

  ‘Fetch the irons, Barker,’ Carey said.

  The youth fetched them out of the little locker. Carey put them on Nixon’s wrists before he cut the ropes binding him. Nixon’s eyes looked like a cow at the slaughter. When he cut the rope, Carey saw the puffiness of Nixon’s right hand.

  ‘What happened there?’ he asked.

  Nixon’s lip lifted. ‘Some whore’s get trod on it in an alley, Sunday night,’ he said. He looked down and shifted his feet; Archie was putting leg irons round his boots.

  Carey took the keys from Barker in the passage by the wine cellar, opened up the heavy door to the outer dungeon and Nixon shuffled clankingly inside, sat down on the stone bench. He looked at Carey hopelessly.

  ‘Where’s Kate?’ he asked.

  ‘In the Gatehouse prison,’ Carey said as he swung the door shut and locked it. ‘You can’t see her.’

  Leaving Barker in charge, Carey and Archie-Give-It-Them changed horses and hurried back to the gate which was just closing. They cantered out of Carlisle and over the Eden bridge to catch up with Dodd for the patrol. Carey squinted up at the sky as he rode. The roof of clouds had an ugly grey bulbous look and the sun’s last rays squeezed under it
s lower fringes.

  ‘More rain, Archie,’ he said conversationally.

  ‘Ay,’ said Archie. ‘At least Dodd will get his jack cleaned for him.’

  The clouds were as good as their promise: halfway through their patrol it began to pour and continued until they came back to Carlisle in the pitch darkness well after midnight. Carey thought that at least he now knew for certain where King James’s horses were not, since neither hide nor hair of them had they seen anywhere. Long George kept up a monotonous sneezing, wheezing and snortling all through the patrol. Carey was sure nobody could be fool enough to be raiding in that kind of rain, so they turned for home early and after some argument with the City gate guard came in by the postern gate. Solomon Musgrave was more co-operative, trotting down to open up the Keep gate and let the soaked men and horses in.

  ‘Ay, sir,’ he said, as Carey came through. ‘It’s a foul night.’ Carey remembered him from when he was a boy, but was too depressed to do more than nod. Generally speaking he was not a worrier, so the way thoughts and imaginings about Elizabeth Widdrington kept attacking him was a new experience for him. It happened whenever he was not positively thinking of something different: his thoughts wandered down a well-beaten path that began with what Elizabeth might be doing or thinking about now, continued with plans for the future that were always stumped by the fact of her husband, and then came to a new juddering halt with the certainty that Sir Henry Widdrington was ill-treating his wife and that Carey could do nothing whatsoever about it.

  They dealt with the horses, drying them off as well as possible, picking mud out of their feet, feeding and watering them. Carey was not sure he could feel his own feet as he left his men at the barracks door and headed through the dark for the Queen Mary Tower. Upstairs in his chamber, somebody had left a watch-light burning for him and put out a clean shirt—probably Goodwife Biltock, with Barnabus in quod. For a while Carey simply stared at it, too stupid to think what to do next.