2 A Season of Knives

by P. F. Chisholm

  She finished triumphantly, removed the offensive finger and folded her arms again.

  ‘Mrs Dodd,’ said Carey allowing a little of his annoyance to show through in his voice. ‘Please be seated.’

  She sat, not abashed.

  ‘Did you know Sir Richard Lowther thinks the same as you?’ Carey asked.

  She was stunned. ‘Does he now?’

  ‘He does. Mainly because he prefers to believe my servant Barnabus did it.’ Or so he says, Carey thought, struck anew by an old suspicion.

  ‘Oh.’ Her thoughts were plain to be read on her face and typically she gave voice to them. ‘Ay, well then, I expect poor Kate’s a dead woman.’

  Very few things annoyed Carey more about the whole business than everyone’s bland assumption that it mattered not at all who had actually done the murder, it only mattered who could be brought to hang for it. They assumed he was as little interested in justice as any of them, and would find the weakest victim he could to blame. At the moment it passed his capacity to think of words to persuade them that if he genuinely thought Barnabus had slit Atkinson’s throat, for whatever reason, he would hang the man himself. It was too outlandish a way of thinking for Borderers.

  After a moment he said, ‘I hear what you say, Mrs Dodd. Perhaps you’re right. But the problem is, it’s not enough. Andy Nixon, I think, is safe, but there is no denying that Mrs Atkinson was in the house at the time and had the opportunity of doing it. Now I’m not saying she did…’ he went on hurriedly as Janet Dodd took breath again, ‘…I’m only saying that she’ll have a hard job convincing the Coroner’s jury she didn’t even if she does withdraw her confession.’

  ‘Ay,’ said Janet thoughtfully. ‘I see. The jury will a’ be men, of course, and they’ll know naught of washing sheets either.’

  ‘Quite. And the confession will weigh heavy with them, unless I can convince them she was a woman distraught and unable to help herself. It weighs heavy with me and not only because I’m Barnabus’s master. We did nothing to make her confess, you know, Mrs Dodd, she came to us of her own free will.’

  ‘She was worriting about Andy Nixon, of course, the silly bitch,’ said Janet.

  ‘Do you think she should have let Nixon hang for her? He was willing to do it; that’s why he lied to us.’

  Janet looked at him as if he were mad.

  ‘Ay, of course,’ she said. ‘He’s a good man, is Andy, but she’s got her bairns to think of. But then she allus was featherheaded, was Katy Coldale, and allus did think the sun and the moon and the seven stars shone out of Andy Nixon’s…er…face.’

  She looked over her shoulder at Julia Coldale who seemed mildly shocked at this ruthlessness.

  ‘Well, go on,’ she said. ‘Tell him about the sheets anyway, Julia.’

  Julia wriggled a bit and told the story of the Monday morning in a breathless voice. She had arrived and been set to make the butter while Mrs Atkinson kneaded the bread. Then Mrs Atkinson had fetched some bread and beer for her husband and gone up with it. She came down in a dreadful state and had sent Mary for Nixon, then gone up with a laundry basket. She brought all the sheets and blankets down and they were dirty with blood. They had put the sheets in to soak in cold water in the big brewing bucks they had in the yard sheds, and Mrs Atkinson had gone up to sweep up the rushes and then come back down again saying it was better to do it later, which had puzzled Julia. At the same time, Mrs Atkinson had told her she had had a sudden issue of blood in the night, though it seemed a bit much even for a miscarriage, and Mrs Atkinson didn’t look ill enough for a woman who had had a miscarriage although she certainly was pale, and she hadn’t sent for the apothecary nor the midwife neither. Then most of the day was taken with scrubbing and soaping and bringing out the triple-strained lye to soak the sheets in again. Julia had been kept busy going to the street conduit with buckets and back again, and once she was sent over to Maggie Mulcaster to borrow another scrubbing brush, but they had done the sheets and blankets by the evening, pretty much, and left them to soak in fair water until the morrow when they had wrung them and hung them out on the hurdles. It had ruined the day completely.

  ‘Ye see,’ said Janet significantly. ‘Nobbut a man would make so much trouble.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Carey thoughtfully. ‘Now, Julia, what was it you did at dawn on Monday which you haven’t told us about?’

  The effect of this simple question was very interesting. Julia gasped and put her hand to her mouth as if the Deputy Warden had struck her. Janet swivelled round and glared at her.

  ‘Eh?’ she said.

  ‘You’ve left something out, haven’t you?’

  Julia put her hand down again. ‘No sir,’ she said quite calmly. ‘I told you just as it happened.’

  ‘How did you know that Mr Atkinson had his throat cut on Monday morning?’

  ‘It were the sheets,’ she said. ‘I knew from the sheets.’

  Carey gave her a very hard stare which she returned, quite recovered, and then lowered her eyes modestly to the rushes.

  ‘Hm,’ he said. ‘If you saw anything, Julia, I strongly advise you to tell me.’

  ‘Me, sir?’ said Julia. ‘I saw nothing, sir, only what I told you. I helped Mrs Atkinson with the bed covers and such.’

  Doubt crept into Carey’s mind; perhaps he had mistaken her reaction. She certainly seemed scared of him, which was a pity. He sighed, caught Janet Dodd’s expression and tried to hide the thoughts and speculations chasing themselves across the surface of his mind. There was a short awkward silence, of which only Julia seemed unconscious, for she picked up a letter she had knocked off the chest, smoothed it and put it back in a very distracting way.

  Deputy, the sooner you’re safely wed to Lady Widdrington the better for everyone, Janet thought to herself, wondering vaguely why there were soft squeaking noises coming from the curtained four poster bed; and as for you, Julia, you little hussy…

  ‘We’ll be off and out of your way, Sir Robert,’ she said briskly, rising and waving at Julia to come with her. ‘D’ye know where my husband is?’

  Carey shook his head, not really paying attention to Janet at all as Julia went to the door. Janet make an impatient noise and began hustling the girl out, but Carey beckoned her to him.

  ‘Ay sir?’ she said suspiciously.

  ‘Send Julia to find your husband,’ he murmured. ‘I want a word with you alone.’

  Janet’s expression cleared slightly. ‘Ay sir.’

  Julia went with a wiggle of her hips and a toss of her red curls while Janet darkly considered what she would do to the little bitch if she aimed her wiles at Henry while she was fetching him. Carey had a thoughtful expression on his face.

  ‘Mrs Dodd,’ he said. ‘I’m worried about that girl.’

  Me too, thought Janet, but she held her peace.

  ‘I think she may have seen something which she isn’t telling us because I’ve heard that she went upstairs at the Atkinson’s house around dawn, to fetch a ribbon, she said, and she hasn’t mentioned that although I invited her to.’

  ‘She might have forgotten,’ suggested Janet.

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘No, I dinna. Where did you hear that from?’

  ‘From Mary Atkinson, which means I can only wonder.’

  ‘Ye’ve questioned the little girl?’

  ‘We had a very long conversation. Dodd was there, he can tell you what she said, but she seemed to me to be a bright child and quite truthful.’

  Janet examined his face thoughtfully. It surprised her that he could have coaxed Mary to give him anything like a coherent tale after he had arrested her mother.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he said defensively. ‘I’ve no need to bully maids to get them to talk to me.’

  And isn’t that the truth, thought Janet.

  ‘Now, Mrs Dodd, I haven’t the time to go enquiring about Jemmy Atkinson’s death. My lord Warden considers the matter solved by Mrs Atkinson’s confes
sion and he has given me direct orders to get on with organising the muster for Sunday and the inquest for Thursday and as I have no clerk yet, I have to write the letters myself. But Sergeant Dodd is presumably at a loose end…’

  That thought made her blood run cold. With money in his pocket and Bangtail in town…She nodded.

  ‘First, I want him to subpoena Pennycook’s clerk, Michael Kerr, to appear at the inquest tomorrow. Then I want him to enquire into the matter for me. Poke around a bit and see what he finds. And you too, Mrs Dodd. Mrs Atkinson’s gossips will talk differently to you than they would to me.’

  Janet’s mouth fell open. Carey didn’t seem to have noticed what he had said and now he was cocking his head to listen to the funny noises from the bed. Next minute he was on his feet and beckoning her over to it. She followed suspiciously. He drew back one of the faded curtains gently; she peered in and then started to laugh. The yellow bitch lying there with her pups nuzzling up against her flank lifted a lip and gave a low growl.

  ‘Shame on you, Buttercup,’ said Carey. ‘Mrs Dodd, this is Buttercup and Buttercup this is Janet Dodd. Buttercup,’ he said with the first proper smile she had seen from him that day, ‘has evicted me from my own bed.’

  He let the curtains fall again as Dodd came shambling lankily in, looking injured and sorrowful as usual. At least his long dour face brightened when he saw Janet who came over to kiss him and then he remembered what he had been doing recently and his expression became wary.

  ‘Where’s Julia Coldale?’ she demanded.

  ‘Och, the maid with the red hair?’ he asked.

  ‘Ay.’

  ‘She said she had tae go back to the town again urgently and she didnae want to wait for ye, so I said she could go.’

  ‘By herself?’ sniffed Janet.

  ‘Er…no,’ admitted her husband. ‘Bangtail and Red Sandy went with her to see she was all right.’

  ‘They’re both married men.’

  ‘Ay, they’ll protect her right enough.’

  ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes,’ said Carey suddenly.

  ‘Eh, sir?’ asked Dodd.

  ‘“Who will protect her from the protectors?”’ Carey translated, and Janet laughed.

  ‘Now there’s a piece of sense,’ she said. ‘Who said that?’

  Carey thought for a moment. ‘I can’t remember,’ he admitted. ‘Some Roman or other.’

  ‘Well, it’s uncommon good sense for a foreigner,’ said Janet patronisingly. ‘Good afternoon to ye, sir.’

  ***

  In later days, Mrs Leigh often thought about what she saw from the window that afternoon. She was sitting sewing a baby’s nightshirt with the little window open as far as it would go to let in some cool air. It also let in pungent smells from the various yards round about and flies, despite the bunches of wormwood hanging from the ceiling, and the sounds of children playing. Her own brood were out in the garden at the back, apart from the boys who were at school still; the two big girls were playing with hoops and the baby was sitting happily with one of the maidservants gurgling as it ate a dandelion. It was too hot and she was too heavy and tired to go out. The night before she had dreamt of swimming in a river as she had when she was a child, but then a fierce pike had come along and bitten her stomach and she had woken up to the ghost pains that often rippled her stomach now. Mrs Croser, the midwife and apothecary, had attended her at noon and said that the babe was head-down and in the right place and it was only a matter of waiting on God’s decision. At least she was happier than she had been the day before, despite the heat, and the men were no longer hammering the roof.

  She saw Julia Coldale come along the street with two of the garrison men, one on each side, both of them as full of pride and preening as a couple of cock pheasants. The girl had a high colour and seemed to be enjoying herself. She left them outside as she went into the Leighs’ own draper’s shop.

  And then she saw Janet Dodd and her husband, also coming along the street. Janet paused to talk to Alison Talyer who was shelling peas in her door while Dodd came on and disappeared under the scaffolding. She heard creaking and realised he was climbing the ladder, very cautiously, and she heard his voice drone as he spoke to the foreman.

  Mrs Leigh put down her work, struggled herself off the window seat and went to the top of the stairs.

  ‘Jock!’ she yelled. ‘Jock Burn!’

  ‘Ay, mistress,’ came the answering shout. ‘I’ll be with ye in a minute.’

  It was quite a bit after a minute that the skinny little man finally came up the stairs and stood lowering at her in his greasy jerkin and the incongruous new blue suit her husband had given him. Julia left at the same time and could be seen through the window chatting and laughing with the garrison men.

  ‘What did Julia Coldale want?’ she demanded.

  He looked shiftily away from her. ‘Och,’ he said. ‘She was time-wastin’, only wantin’ to hear the price o’ this and that.’

  ‘Oh?’

  He gave her the straight stare of the experienced liar.

  ‘Where’s the master, Mrs Leigh?’ he asked.

  ‘Over at the new warehouse. Why?’

  ‘Ay,’ said Jock, taking off his shop apron. ‘I need to speak wi’ him; will ye excuse me, mistress?’

  She nodded, suddenly glad he could lie, and he turned and pattered down the stairs again. That perhaps was why she failed to notice that, when Dodd came creaking down the ladder again some time later, he was carrying a small bundle.

  Wednesday 5th July 1592, late afternoon

  Carey was deep in the tedium of paperwork again, his mind nibbling frustratedly at the problem of Jemmy Atkinson as he worked, when he had another visitor. After the first flash of fury, he saw it was the Bell headman who had called out his family against Wattie Graham the day before.

  ‘Mr Bell,’ he said courteously, wondering when he would be finished with his damned letters. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Archibald Bell came stumping in through his chamber looking uncomfortably hot in a homespun green suit and a new high-crowned hat.

  ‘Ah’ve come about the blackrent,’ said Bell. ‘To pay it, I mean.’

  For a moment, Carey didn’t understand.

  ‘Er…Lowther’s not here,’ he said cautiously.

  ‘Ay, I know that. I’ve come to pay it to ye, sir.’

  Carey sat down again, wondering how to handle this. On the one hand he direly needed the money because his winnings from Lowther wouldn’t last forever and he was sure nobody in Carlisle would make the mistake of playing primero for high stakes with him again. On the other hand, blackrent was one of the cankers of the Border, as poor men paid protection money to crooks like Lowther and Richie Graham of Brackenhill to keep their herds and houses safe from reivers. Since no one could live paying rent to two landlords, most of them got their living by reiving and demanding blackrent of their own.

  Archibald Bell had his purse in his hand, ready to do the business. He was looking puzzled.

  Carey stood again, went and poured two goblets of the diabolical wine which Goodwife Biltock had sent up by Simon Barnet who was, as usual, not around.

  ‘Mr Bell,’ he said, handing one to the headman, who looked astonished. ‘How much blackrent was Sir Richard demanding?’

  ‘Thirty shillings a quarter,’ Bell answered promptly. ‘But I havena paid it for a while, so I brung what we owe which is six pounds.’

  That was no less than extortionate.

  ‘I give you a toast,’ said Carey, while he struggled with temptation. ‘I give you, confusion to Richard Lowther and the Grahams.’

  Bell lifted his goblet and drank the lot without noticeable strain.

  ‘Ye willna be wanting more, sir?’ he said anxiously. ‘For we canna pay it.’

  ‘No,’ said Carey. ‘I’m sure you can’t. In fact, I’m not sure I should accept it.’

  ‘Eh?’ Bell was flabbergasted.

  ‘Well,’ said Carey reasonably, ‘you
give blackrent in return for protection from reivers, don’t you?’

  ‘Ay.’

  ‘To be frank with you, Mr Bell, I’m not sure how much more protection I can offer you. I haven’t Lowther’s contacts or his family backing. I’m only an officer of the Queen.’

  ‘Ye did well enough keeping my stock fra Wattie’s clutches yesterday.’

  ‘I have to admit it wasn’t my prime consideration.’

  ‘Nay, I ken that. I know well enough you was protecting Mr Aglionby’s packtrain.’

  Something in the pit of Carey’s stomach gave a lurch of excitement. Now that made sense of a fifty man raid at hay-making. Carefully he drank more of the sloe-coloured vinegar in his good silver goblet.

  ‘Ah,’ he said wisely. ‘And how did you find that out?’

  ‘It was one o’ the reivers we caught yesterday. He was in such a taking, yelling and shouting about what he’d lost by ye and how he hated ye, and the packtrain the heaviest to go into Carlisle for years and so on. So then I knew why ye were there, which was puzzling me; it was for the packtrain, to keep it fra Wattie Graham,’ Bell explained.

  Carey stared into space, his mind working furiously. He was remembering the cardgame at the Mayor’s house. Suddenly he knew who had killed Jemmy Atkinson.

  ‘I supposed you haven’t got the reiver any more?’

  ‘Nay, we ransomed all of them back, the minute Skinabake’s man turned up wi’ the money.’

  ‘Do you know his name?’

  ‘Ay, it was Fire the Braes Armstrong.’

  ‘And where does he live?’

  ‘The Debateable Land, seeing he’s at the horn for murder and arson in two Marches.’

  Carey came to a decision.

  ‘Mr Bell,’ he said. ‘I’ll be straight with you. I don’t want to take blackrent, which is against the law, but I’ll take my rightful Wardenry fee for protecting your cattle, which is two pounds.’

  ‘Ay,’ said Bell. ‘But I want yer protection in the future.’

  ‘You have that,’ Carey explained. ‘It’s one of the duties of the office of Deputy Warden to protect you from raiders.’ Dammit, thought Carey, really it’s the only one. ‘You shouldn’t have to pay me rent for that; the Queen’s supposed to do it.’ Not that she did, or not regularly. ‘You only pay me a fee for a particular raid.’