1 A Famine of Horses

by P. F. Chisholm

  Lowther humphed to himself.

  “You’ll not forget where your true interests lie, Sergeant.” he said with heavy meaning.

  Christ man, thought Dodd to himself, if you’re here demanding blackrent off me, say so out clear, ye’ve not the talent for subtle hinting.

  Aloud he said stolidly, “No sir.”

  “So what did they say?”

  Dodd thought again. “It was some chatter about Court factions and Carey said he wasna the Queen’s favourite, the Earl of Essex was, and they’d need to be careful of you.”

  Lowther humphed again. “Was that all?”

  Inspiration struck Dodd. “All I understood, sir, seeing they were talking foreign.”

  “What, southern English.”

  “No, I can make that out usually: foreign, French maybe or Latin even. I don’t know.”

  Lowther looked sideways at him under his flourishing grey brows and Dodd stared into space. Lowther snapped his fingers at John Ogle who bristled, but came towards them.

  “Find me and the sergeant some beer,” he said, stepping over a snoring pile of sleuthdogs and sitting on one of the benches. At his gesture Dodd sat down next to him, itching to get back to the barracks and find out what his men had done with Sweetmilk. He gulped the beer when it came, from Scrope’s brewhouse, not the garrison’s, and not half bad.

  “Scrope’s mad,” said Lowther dourly. “A bloody courtier, what does he know about the Border?”

  He knew enough to identify immediately where most of Dodd’s surname lived and that Gilsland was full of Armstrongs, Dodd thought, but said nothing and nodded.

  “Still, that might not be so ill a thing…” muttered Lowther, thinking aloud. “What do you make of him, Sergeant?”

  Dodd forebore to point out that he had exchanged perhaps three sentences with the man, and shrugged.

  “He’s got very polished manners.”

  “He might not be here long,” said Lowther pointedly. Dodd didn’t reply because in his present mood he might have said something he would regret later. And Janet would have his guts if he lost his place before he had his investment back. Which on current showing might be well into the next century, assuming he lived that long.

  “Keep an eye on him for me, will you Henry?” Lowther said, the firelight catching his pale prominent eyes and the broken veins on his cheeks and nose. To complete the effect, he made a face which might, if practised, have counted for a smile one day.

  “Ay sir,” said Dodd woodenly.

  “Good lad.” Lowther clapped him on the shoulder and headed purposefully across the room to the fire, threading between benches and trestle tables.

  Dodd hurried out the door. At the dark foot of the stairs outside, he looked about him impatiently.

  “Hey Sergeant,” came a voice from the door of the new barracks and Dodd changed direction to find four of his men sheltering there, Red Sandy fiddling with a lantern that had almost no wick left.

  “Where have you put it then?” Dodd asked, thinking longingly of his bed.

  Archie Give-it-Them coughed and the others looked sheepishly at each other. Dodd sighed again.

  “Well?” he said.

  “We tried, Sergeant,” said Bangtail Graham, “but the new Deputy had a man on the door already and he wouldna let us in, but.”

  There was a long moment of silence. Dodd thought of the thirty good English pounds he had given for the sergeant’s post, which was a loan from Janet’s father as an investment, and decided that if he lost his place he would ride to Berwick and take ship for the Low Countries.

  “Good night,” he said, turned on his heel and walked off to the stables to think.

  Sunday, 18th June, night

  Carey saw his sister up the stairs to the Warden’s bedchamber, and she leant on his arm smiling and chattering so happily that he knew how hard it had been for her. Goodwife Biltock was pulling a warming pan out of the great bed.

  “God’s sake, this weather, June, who could believe it…” she was muttering as she turned and saw him. “Oh now,” she flustered, dropping a curtsey, “well, Robin, what a sight…”

  Carey crossed the floor in three strides and picked her up to give her a smacking kiss on the cheek. She cuffed his ear.

  “Put me down, bad child, put me…”

  Carey put her down and handed her his hankerchief, while Philadelphia smiled and brought her to the stool by the fire until she could collect herself.

  “Every time I see you,” Goodwife Biltock snuffled, scrubbing at her eyes, “every time, silly old cow…”

  Carey was pouring her wine from the flagon on the plate chest, since women’s tears had always had him come out in a sweat. He brought it to her and squatted down beside her.

  “So it’s true Scrope offered you the deputyship,” she said at last. “I never thought…”

  “…I could drag myself away from London?” Carey made a wry face. “Nothing easier when I could feast my eyes on you Goodwife…”

  “Pfff, get away, Robin, your tongue’s been worn too smooth at Court. Well you’re a sight for sore eyes and no mistake and I see you can find a clean hankerchief now which is more than I could say for you once. Will you stay do you think?”

  Carey coughed. “I don’t know, Goodwife, it depends.”

  “You take care for that Lowther fellow…”

  “Nurse…” warned Philadelphia.

  “I speak as I find, I’m sure. Where are you lying, Robin, is it warm and dry?”

  “Nowhere better in the castle, it’s in the Queen Mary Tower.”

  “Hah, warm and dry, I doubt. They use the place as a store room…”

  “Do they?” said Carey, straightfaced.

  “Oh they do, flour mostly, and I’ll be struck dumb with amazement if the lummocks even thought to air the place, let alone light a fire, I’ll go and…”

  “No need, Nurse,” said Carey, “I’ve a man in there already, and my own body servant will be seeing after making it comfortable, you’re not to trouble yourself.”

  “Well, have you eaten?”

  “I had a bit with the men in the…”

  “Oh in the Lord’s name, old bread and last year’s cheese, and the beer brewed by idiots, I’ll go and fetch something out of my lord’s kitchen, you stay there, Robin, and dry your hose…”

  “Would you have it sent up to my chamber, Nurse. I’ll be going to bed soon.”

  Goodwife Biltock opened her mouth to argue, then smiled. “There’ll be enough for your servants too,” she said. “Be sure you eat your share, I know you. Good night, Robin.” She reached over and ruffled his hair, heaved herself up and bustled out, rump swinging beneath a let out gown of Philadelphia’s. She looked very fine in green velvet, though worn and of an old style. But then the Goodwife had always liked to look well, even when she was nursing Carey babies.

  “Didn’t you tell her?” Carey asked as he took her place on the stool.

  “No one was sure you were coming until your messenger arrived this morning while we were all in church. I made Scrope send Carleton out. And I didn’t want to disappoint her in case the Queen called you back before you got here.”

  Philadelphia brought up the other stool and settled down facing him.

  “Be very careful of Lowther, Robin, he’s the reason…”

  “…why I’m here. So I gathered.”

  “I wish you had fought him, right there and then,” whispered Philadelphia, screwing up her fists on her apron and causing it to crumple.

  “Philly…” Carey saw she meant it and changed what he had to say. “It might have been a little messy. Have you ever seen a real sword fight?”

  “No, but I’ve nursed enough sword cuts. I’d nurse Lowther too, I would, nurse him good and proper.”

  Carey looked away from her vehemence. “What was it you couldn’t tell me in your letter?”

  “Only that he has this March closed up tight in his fist. He has most of the lucrative offices and he takes
the tenths of recovered cattle, not the Warden.”

  Carey’s lips moved in a soundless whistle.

  “What’s left? Just the thirds from fines.”

  “What there are of them, we’ve had no justice out of Liddesdale for fourteen years. Sir John Carmichael…”

  “He’s still the Scots West March Warden?”

  “For the moment, but the rumours are he wants to resign.”

  “Wise man.”

  “He’s well enough, he’s an honest decent gentleman, too good for this country. Did you ever meet him?”

  “I think I did. Last time I was at King James’s Court he was there, I remember.”

  “He does his best, but the Maxwells and the Johnstones ignore him and the Armstrongs and Grahams…”

  “Who will bind the wind?”

  “Exactly. Old Lord Scrope held it together because towards the end he simply did what Lowther told him and let the rest go hang and Lowther kept the peace as far as it suited him.”

  “Not far?”

  “Well, it’s remarkable how often people who offend him get raided and their houses burned.”

  “Who by?”

  “Grahams or Elliots mostly, but Nixons and Crosers too.”

  Carey rubbed his bottom lip with his thumb. “This is no restful sinecure I think,” he said.

  “Did you think it would be?”

  Carey laughed. “Christ, no, or I’d never have come.”

  “Don’t swear, Robin, you’re getting worse than father.”

  “He warned me that things were rotten here, but he didn’t know the details.”

  “How would he, staying warm in London with the Queen and messing about with players.”

  “Why Philly, you sound bitter.”

  She put her face in her hands.

  “John does his best in the East March but…”

  “He makes an ass of himself from time to time and the Berwick townsmen can’t stand him, I know.”

  “We need father to run a good strong Warden’s Raid,” said his sister ferociously, “burn all their towers down for them. Then they’d behave.”

  Carey put his arm round her shoulders and held her tight.

  “You don’t need father, you’ve got me, Philly my dear,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

  “You won’t let him make you leave?” She was blinking up at him with a frown.

  Carey sucked wind through his teeth. “If the Queen orders me back to Westminster, you know I have to go.”

  “She won’t, will she?”

  “Not if we can forestall whatever Lowther writes to Burghley.”

  “You could send a letter with the Berwick men and have John put it in his usual package to London.”

  “Yes,” said Carey, thoughtfully, “I’ll do that.” He yawned. “I’ll do it in the morning before I go out with Dodd. There’ll be no time later, I want to inspect my men before I call a paymuster for them. And I must go to bed, Philly, or I’ll fall asleep here and you’ll have to turf Nurse out of her trundle bed and put me in it.”

  Philly grinned at him. “Nonsense, she’d carry you down the stairs on her back and dump you with the other servants in the hall and then she’d give you a thick ear in the morning.”

  “She would,” Carey said as he stood up, and kissed his sister on the forehead. “Thank you for your good word to Scrope.”

  “You don’t mind that I made him send for you?”

  “Sweetheart, you did me the best favour a sister could, you got me out of London and saved my life.”

  “Oh?’ said Philly naughtily, “And who was she?”

  “None of your business. Good night.”

  Monday, 19th June, morning

  Dawn came to Carlisle with a feeble clearing of the sky and a wind to strip the skin and cause a dilemma over cloaks: wear one, be marginally warmer and risk having it ripped from your back by a gust, or leave it off and freeze. Dodd put on an extra shirt, a padded doublet and his better jack and decided to freeze.

  Carey was already in the stableyard when he arrived, between two of the castle’s rough-coated hobbies, checking girth straps and saddle leathers and passing a knowledgeable hand down the horses’ legs. He had on a clean but worn buff jerkin, his well-cut suit of green wool trimmed with olive velvet and his small ruff was freshly starched. He looked repulsively sprightly.

  “Do you never shoe your horses, Sergeant?” he asked as Dodd came into view.

  Dodd considered an explanation and decided against it. “No sir.” Carey patted a foreleg and lifted the foot to inspect the sturdy, well-grown hoof. He smiled quizzically and Dodd relented a little. “Not hobbies, sir.”

  “I like a sure-footed horse myself,” said Carey agreeably and mounted.

  As Carlisle’s stolid red walls and rabble of huts dropped behind them Carey seemed for some reason to be quite happy. Dodd failed to see why: the vicious wind was harrying clouds across the blue like a defeated army and the land was soused with the rain of the previous days. This was June, for Heaven’s sake, and it felt like February. Dodd began to run through his normal tally of worries: lack of money, the hay harvest likely to fail, lack of money, the barley crop poor, the rye and oats only middling and the wheat gone to the Devil, lack of money, pasturage poor and sour and Mildred, one of Janet’s work-horses, mysteriously off her feed, Janet in general, lack of money, the dead Graham…

  Dodd glanced sideways at the present occupant of the Queen Mary Tower. He was riding loosely along, looking all about him, whistling slightly and half-smiling and when his hobby tried an exaggerated shy at a limp dandelion, he rode the hopping good-humouredly and hardly used the whip. He did not look like a man whose sleep had been upset by a corpse in his bed. Why hadn’t he mentioned it? And if his servants had dealt with the body, what in God’s name had they done with it?

  Privately deciding to send Red Sandy out to Gilsland to warn Janet of a possible raid by Jock of the Peartree if he hadn’t found the dead man by the evening, Dodd cleared his throat.

  “Different from London I doubt, sir.”

  Carey was deep in thought. “Hm? London? Yes. Have you ever been there?”

  “No sir. I’ve been to Edinburgh though, carrying messages.”

  “What did you think of the place?”

  Dodd tried to be just. “It had some fair houses. Too many…”

  “Scots?”

  “Er…people.”

  Carey grinned. “You wouldn’t believe how many people there are in London. And every man jack of them with some complaint to bring as a petition to Her Majesty.”

  “You’ve been at Court, sir?”

  “Too much. However, the Queen likes me, so I do the best I can.”

  Dodd struggled for a moment, then gave in. “What’s she like, the Queen?”

  Carey raised an eyebrow. “Well,” he said consideringly, “a scurvy Scotsman might say she is a wild old bat who knows more of governorship and statecraft than the Privy Councils of both realms put together, but I say she is like Aurora in her beauty, her hair puts the sun in splendour to shame, her face holds the heavens within its compass and her glance is like the falling dew.”

  “You say that do you, sir?”

  “Certainly I do, frequently, and she laughs at me, tells me that I am her Robin Redbreast and I’m a naughty boy and too plainspoken for the Court.”

  “Christ.”

  “And then I kiss her hand and she bids me rise and tells me that my brother is being tedious again and my father should get up to Berwick and birch him well, and that poor fool of a boy Thomas Scrope apparently wants me for a deputy in the West March, which shows he has at least enough sense to cover his little fingernail, which surprised her, and what would I say to wasting my life on the windswept Borders chasing cattle-thieves.”

  “What did you say, sir?” Dodd asked, fascinated. Carey’s eyes danced.

  “I groaned, covered my face, fell to my knees and besought her not to send me so far from her glorious countenance,
although if it were not for the sorrow of leaving her august presence, I would rejoice in wind, borders and cattle-thieves, and if she be so hard of heart as to drive me away from the fountain of her delight, then I shall go and serve her with all my heart and soul and try and keep Scrope out of trouble.

  Despite himself, Dodd cracked a laugh. “Is that how they speak at the Court?”

  “If they want to keep out of the Tower, they do. I’m good at it and she likes my looks, so we get on well enough. And here I am, thank God.”

  He looked around with the air of a man escaped from jail, before some memory, no doubt of Lowther, clouded him over.

  “For the moment anyway. Burghley may convince her she wants me back at Court.”

  Dodd grunted as they turned from the main trail, heading north, taking a wide sweep around the town, and passing the steady stream of folk going out from the city to work in their farms and market gardens.

  They were almost back at the south gate when Carey said, “Longtown would be a little far to go now, no doubt.”

  Here it comes, thought Dodd, bracing himself. “I could take you with some men.”

  “I thought things were calmer in summer with the men up at the shielings.”

  “Well they are, sir, but ’tisn’t seemly for the Warden’s Deputy to be out with no attendant but the Sergeant of the Guard.”

  “Much going on near the Sark, at the moment? My lord Scrope said you were there yesterday.”

  Was the man taunting him? “I came on Jock of the Peartree at the Esk ford…”

  “I know. Any of them get shot in the back?”

  In a way it was better to have it out in the open, at least he would know the worst. As often happened to Dodd his mind came up with three dozen things to say, all of which sounded inside him full of the ring of excuses and blame-passing, and in the end he said nothing save a stolid “No sir”.

  Carey sighed. “All right, Sergeant,” he said, “I give in. Let’s call vada and I’ll see your prime. Tell me about my would-be bedfellow of last night.”

  “I only put him there for lack of any other place…”

  “Is there no undertaker in Carlisle?”

  “Three,” said Dodd, “but they would know him and…”

  “Who is he…was he?”