2 A Season of Knives

by P. F. Chisholm

  Bell was looking deeply suspicious.

  ‘Are ye tellin’ me to pay my blackrent to Lowther?’

  ‘No, Mr Bell, I’m telling you to give me two pounds sterling and call it quits. Keep the money. Buy weapons or steel bonnets for your family or even a new plough or whatever. Just give me information when it comes to you and turn out to fight for me when I call and that’s all the blackrent I want.’

  Bell’s mouth was hanging open. Carey was glad neither Dodd nor Barnabus were there to tell him he was mad turning down good cash; he even felt a little mad and reckless doing it. But he was grateful to Bell for solving Atkinson’s murder for him and besides, if he himself took blackrent like Lowther, how could he stop anyone else from doing it?

  Bell had a broad spreading grin of incredulity on his face.

  ‘Are ye tellin’ me ye willna set on anybody to raid me if I dinna pay ye off?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Carey, wondering if every Borderer would now think him soft, as well as Dodd, the garrison and Jock of the Peartree. ‘I want my Wardenry fee, though. I have to live too.’

  ‘Ay,’ said Bell, still grinning. ‘Ay, o’ course ye do. Ay.’

  He took two handfuls of crowns and shillings from his purse and carefully counted them out. Then he spat on the palm of his hand and held it out to Carey.

  ‘Ah’ll come out for ye, Deputy,’ he said. ‘There’s ma hand, there’s ma heart.’

  Carey spat on his own palm and grasped Bell’s firmly.

  ‘And mine, Mr Bell,’ he said. ‘Pass the word, if you will.’

  ‘Ay,’ said Bell, still grinning as he put away his purse and moved to the door quickly before Carey could change his mind. ‘Ay, I will. By God,’ he added, shaking his head and Carey heard him laugh as his hobnails clattered down the stairs.

  ***

  Edward Aglionby, Mayor of Carlisle, was expecting a visit from the new Deputy Warden and was ready for it when, belatedly, it came. The Deputy arrived on horseback and seemed to be in a tearing hurry, but he invited the young man into his solar for wine and wafers and even asked him to dinner.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Aglionby, I’m bidden to my sister’s table and in fact I’m going to be late. But I must talk to you first.’

  Edward Aglionby stood with his arms crossed, waiting.

  ‘You know, of course, that there was an attempt made on your packtrain by Wattie Graham…’

  ‘And Skinabake Armstrong. Yes, Sir Robert. I also know that it was you who prevented it, thereby saving me a great deal of gold and trouble.’

  Aglionby waited for the new Deputy’s demand, but it seemed Carey wanted to shillyshally first, asking irrelevantly about Atkinson’s inquest.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered the Courtier. ‘The case does fall under City jurisdiction. In fact my lord Warden was quite willing for the Carlisle Coroner to hear the inquest, although my lord has empanelled the jury.’

  Carey nodded. Given a very tight spot, with Lowther on the one hand badgering him to find Carey or his servant guilty and Philadelphia badgering him on every other hand to find someone else, Scrope would gratefully wriggle out.

  ‘Who is the Coroner?’ he asked.

  Aglionby smiled. ‘I am.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Carey beamed back. ‘I have a favour to ask of you, Mr Aglionby, which I hope you will…at least consider.’

  ‘Mm,’ said the Mayor cautiously.

  ‘We have a multiplicity of suspects for murderer,’ said Carey. ‘Among them, though I think no longer the most suspected of them, is my servant Barnabus. Now I have no way of being his good lord here—I have no influence with the jury and would not dream of insulting you by attempting to influence you yourself—excepting if I can put my case against the man I think truly did the deed, directly in open Court.’

  ‘Are you a lawyer, Sir Robert?’

  Carey coughed, not willing to lie directly. ‘I have some small experience of law and lawyers, though I never was a member of an Inn of Court. I would like to act as amicus curiae, a friend of the Court, in an unofficial capacity.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘It’s the best way I can think of helping my unfortunate servant who was only accused as a way of attacking me. Obviously I can’t hire him a barrister since he’s accused of a capital crime.’

  ‘Hm. Amicus curiae. Is that all?’

  Carey’s face was guileless, though in fact he was wondering how long Aglionby would take to decide and how furious Philadelphia would be when he was late.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  Aglionby was very suspicious at such a cheap discharge of an obligation. There was no question that the Deputy Warden had saved him large sums of money. On the other hand, why look a gift horse in the mouth?

  ‘I see no reason to deny you, Sir Robert; in fact, I’m happy to be of service in the matter.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Mr Mayor,’ said Carey, and then decided that since he was going to be late anyway, he might as well drop a little poison. ‘Do you know who it was who passed on word of your packtrain to the Grahams?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Aglionby. ‘Though I have suspicions.’

  ‘It was Sir Richard Lowther.’

  Aglionby did not look surprised. His square smooth-chinned face changed only slightly.

  ‘He was at the cardgame where your lady sister…’

  ‘Was indiscreet. Yes. And one of my men saw him at the Red Bull…er…later. Mick the Crow was certainly there too and I know Mick was the messenger to Wattie that brought in the raid.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Aglionby. ‘Mick the Crow hasn’t named Lowther?’

  ‘Of course not. I deduced it.’

  ‘It isn’t enough to accuse him.’

  It will be, thought Carey; when I indict him for ordering Atkinson’s murder, it will. Aloud he said, ‘No. But straws show which way the wind blows.’

  It was obvious. Lowther needed money and would have got it as his cut from the packtrain profits. Also he would be undermining Carey in the City of Carlisle with the implication that commerce wasn’t safe under his rule. Why had he let Carey take his patrol out? Simple greed, perhaps, coupled with the hope that if Carey came on Skinabake with Sergeant Ill-Willit Daniel Nixon behind him, that was Carey out of his way forever. And Atkinson was killed to keep him quiet about it.

  ‘Mm,’ said Aglionby again.

  ‘Mr Mayor,’ Carey said, making for the door. ‘I simply must get back to the Castle or my sister will skin me alive. It’s arranged for tomorrow?’

  ‘Ay,’ said Aglionby. ‘You can be amicus curiae for the inquest, no bother. Good evening to you, Deputy.’

  Wednesday, 5th July 1592, early evening

  It was a quiet little supper party, with only Philadelphia, Scrope and Carey himself, eating his way voraciously through five covers of meat and a number of summer sallets, sharp with herbs and nasturtium flowers. Philadelphia forgave him for being so late and exerted herself to keep the conversation going; she was worried by Carey’s rather remote politeness. She even asked Carey’s advice about her son who was away south at school and perpetually in trouble, but with typical masculine obtuseness all he would say was that she should worry more if the boy didn’t get into scrapes now and then.

  Eventually, Scrope wandered over to the virginals in the corner. He opened it and began plinking the notes gently, head cocked, listening for sourness, face dreamy. After a moment of struggle, he sat down and began playing.

  ‘My lord,’ said Carey tactfully, watching the spider-like hands move. ‘What can I do or say that might convince you to release Barnabus…’

  ‘My dear fellow, I know perfectly well that you didn’t have anything to do with Atkinson getting his throat slit; it isn’t your style at all.’

  ‘Lowther thinks different.’

  ‘Yes, he does, doesn’t he? Now isn’t that interesting?’

  ‘Interesting, my lord?’

  ‘Fascinating, in fact. At one time I was quite sure Lowther himself had done it, for some re
ason, or at any rate, paid somebody to do it. When he came to see me yesterday morning he was in such a rage and was so certain it was you, I was almost convinced he was simply overdoing things a bit.’

  ‘My lord,’ Carey interrupted. ‘Surely you see that whoever actually did the killing, it must have been Lowther who ordered it.’

  ‘Must have been?’

  Scrope had stopped playing. Carey lifted up one finger. ‘Imprimis, he was the last man to see Atkinson the night before he was killed. He was at the Red Bull when Atkinson was paying Long George and his friends for beating up Andy Nixon.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He was also, by the way, the man who sent Mick the Crow to Netherby with the information that not only was my Lady Widdrington on the road, but so was a large packtrain from Newcastle. Unfortunately, I’ve no way of proving it.’

  ‘How did he know about the packtrain?’ put in his sister. Carey looked at her.

  ‘You let it slip at the card party,’ he said, careful to keep accusation out of his voice. ‘Remember?’

  Philadelphia flushed and fell silent.

  ‘Ah,’ said Scrope, trying to look wise. ‘You know you did have a little too much wine that evening, my dear. I have often said…’

  ‘No doubt Atkinson was threatening to tell Aglionby,’ Carey trampled on, hoping to distract the Scropes from a quarrel. ‘Perhaps he was no longer so useful since I’d sacked him from the Paymastership. Perhaps they quarrelled. And I’m not at all sure Lowther didn’t have a hand in Andy Nixon’s attempt to frame Barnabus and me for it. He wanted to get rid of me. A man like Lowther does it the indirect way…’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Scrope, unhappily. ‘But then there’s his offer to you.’

  Carey paled and then flushed. ‘You mean his suggestion that if I took myself back to London, he would stop with Barnabus?’

  ‘Yes. Very unlike him.’ Scrope started playing at venture again, warming his hands up.

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘Sorry, got caught up in the music.’

  There was a clattering as Hughie, John Ogle’s eldest son, cleared the dirty plates and Philadelphia followed him to supervise their scouring and locking away. Scrope’s long fingers were at home and at ease on the rosewood keys; they moved by themselves and gave expression to his thoughts in a tangled elaboration of a haunting tune Scrope had heard sung by one of the local headmen’s harpers.

  ‘Where was I?’

  ‘We were speaking about Lowther, my lord.’ The smooth voice was thinning with impatience.

  ‘Um…yes. You see, he’s not a man to let his prey escape. If all of this was some elaborate trap to catch you, he’d not rest until you were beheaded or at the horn.’

  ‘No doubt that is what he wants.’

  ‘Oh, no doubt at all. But offering you a way out and keeping hold of your servant…I’d almost say he genuinely thinks Barnabus is the killer and will settle for losing his chance of you, if he can have his way with Barnabus.’

  ‘Or he’s cleverer than you think him and offering me a way out is a trap as well, a means of getting me to admit my guilt by running away.’

  Scrope looked sideways at him. That was the irritating thing about the Careys; sometimes they were sharper than they seemed.

  ‘Yes, that’s also a possibility. If so, then you must have disappointed him.’

  Carey looked away and swallowed, still clearly furious at Lowther’s imputation that he was threatening little Mary Atkinson in order to maker her mother confess to the murder.

  Scrope stopped playing, stood and started digging in the casket of sheet music.

  ‘I’m sorry, Robin, I don’t believe it. The whole thing is far too elaborate and complicated for Lowther. Oh, he’s capable of it, but if he’d been the man behind the killing Jemmy Atkinson would have wound up in your bed with his throat slit, not his own or Frank’s vennel or wherever it was. Lowther’s simply grabbing at an opportunity he sees to oust you. While I’m not at all surprised about the packtrain, I doubt very much he made that opportunity himself.’

  Philadelphia had come back into the room and sat down quietly.

  ‘But that leaves only Mrs Atkinson as the murderer.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Scrope complacently. ‘I think she did it, just as she confessed.’

  Carey held onto his temper.

  ‘My lord, I’m sorry, but I think she was lying to save Andy Nixon’s skin, just as Andy Nixon lied to save hers. I have to admit I think Lowther was right about that; cutting someone’s throat is not a woman’s means of murder. And Mrs Dodd has pointed out to me that doing the deed in her own bedchamber let her in for a great deal of work in washing the sheets.’

  Philadelphia nodded vigorously.

  ‘Janet Dodd is talking good sense,’ she said. ‘And in any case, what on earth could Mrs Atkinson hope to gain by it?’

  Scrope smiled at her kindly for her womanly obtuseness. ‘She wanted to marry Andy Nixon,’ he explained. ‘So of course she had to kill her husband.’

  Philadelphia glared at him for some reason, then turned and picked up her workbag, delved in it, pulled out some blackwork and began stitching with short vicious movements.

  ‘Let’s make up a fairy tale,’ she said at large. ‘Let’s pretend, Robin, that you wanted to marry someone who was married to another man.’

  Carey gave her a glare of warning but she wasn’t looking at him, she was squinting at a caterpillar made of black thread, which was eating a delicately worked quince.

  ‘Now let’s suppose that you and this other man’s wife plot together and you decide to solve your problems by killing the woman’s husband. Would you cut his throat?’

  Carey harumphed. ‘What are you getting at, Philly?’ he asked in a strained voice.

  ‘Robin, I’m not accusing you of anything improper. I’m playing let’s pretend. Go on. Would you cut his throat?’

  ‘Probably not.’ Carey’s voice was wintry in the extreme.

  ‘Do you think Eli…the woman would cut her husband’s throat?’

  ‘Er…no.’

  ‘And why not?’

  ‘Well, obviously, you would want to make his death look like an accident so no one would be blamed. If his throat was cut people would look around for the murderer and unless his wife had an excellent alibi, they would think of her.’

  ‘She would be risking a charge of petty treason?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And burning for it?’

  ‘Er…yes.’

  ‘So do you think Mrs Atkinson wanted to die at the stake?’

  The question was actually intended for Scrope, although it was aimed at her brother. Neither man answered her.

  ‘I mean, burning to death is a very painful way to die,’ Philly continued thoughtfully as she elaborated on the caterpillar’s markings, ‘I’m not sure hanging, drawing and quartering is that much more painful. Think of the Book of Martyrs and Cranmer and Latymer burning for their faith under Queen Mary—half the point is that they faced a much worse death than just hanging or the axe. Isn’t it?’

  ‘I was intending to order the executioner to strangle Mrs Atkinson at the stake,’ said Scrope gently, ‘before the fire was lit.’

  Philly didn’t look at him. ‘Well, she couldn’t know you would do that. Nobody bothers with witches, do they? Do you really think Mrs Atkinson is stupid enough to kill her husband by cutting his throat in bed, where the blood alone is likely to accuse her, never mind the corpse? I mean, there’s nothing much less accidental than a cut throat, is there?’

  ‘Well, she might not have thought of it…’ said Scrope lamely.

  Philadelphia found her snips and cut her thread peremptorily.

  ‘Oh, my lord,’ she cooed. ‘Every woman knows the loyalty she owes her husband as her God-given lord. Every preacher makes it clear, every marriage sermon tells her. It’s not a secret. Mrs Atkinson isn’t half-witted. Cutting his throat would have been idiocy for her.’

  ‘But Philadelphia,
’ wailed Scrope. ‘Who did it then? If it wasn’t Barnabus and it wasn’t Andy Nixon and it certainly wasn’t Lowther and it wasn’t even Kate Atkinson, who did it?’

  His wife was stitching a cabbage quite near the caterpillar. She stopped and looked up at Carey.

  ‘Ask the question nobody seems to have thought of yet,’ she said to him simply. ‘You remember, Robin, Walsingham’s question.’

  ‘What’s she talking about?’ demanded Scrope, his brow furrowed.

  It wasn’t exactly the light of revelation, more the promise of it, the moment when Alexander the Great drew his sword when faced with the Gordian knot.

  ‘She means the lawyer’s question. Cui bono? Who benefits?’ Carey explained slowly. ‘It was what Sir Francis Walsingham always asked when faced with some complicated political puzzle.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Scrope, not sounding very enlightened. ‘Well, you’d best be quick about it, Robin. The inquest opens at 11 o’clock tomorrow which is the earliest the jury can get here.’

  And I’ve been wasting my time with damn silly letters about lodgings, Carey thought to himself.

  ‘Plenty of time if you get up early enough,’ said Philadelphia brightly, reading his mind. ‘And my lord gives you leave.’

  ‘Oh, ah, yes, of course,’ said Scrope, his attention already diverted back to the music in front of him. He squinted at the close-printed notes and began playing again.

  ‘Thank you, my lord.’ Carey said nothing more, blinked past the candles on the virginals lid at the copper sunset light slowly seeping into the bright sky. He shook his head suddenly like a horse with a fly in its ear, as if he had almost fallen into a dream standing up.

  Philadelphia was silent at last. Scrope looked sideways at him, saw the frustration and annoyance still in him and rambled into a madrigal accompaniment that he was sure Carey knew. For a moment Scrope wondered if his brother-in-law was still too tense to take the musical bait, but then he opened his mouth and began singing the tenor line to it, which happened to be a very graceful melody. Scrope closed his eyes: God had made a miracle in the human voice, there was no instrument like it, and Carey’s tenor was very good, clear, like a bronze bell, entirely free of affectation. When he forgot the words in the third verse, he made some up and they came to a flourishing end with a cascade of nonny-nos which Carey miraculously managed to negotiate without getting his tongue tangled. Philadelphia had listened to the end without moving, her heart-shaped little face tilted to one side, and then she rose, kissed her brother on the cheek and silently left the room, went down the stone stairs.