1 A Famine of Horses

by P. F. Chisholm

  “Don’t worry,” he reassured the boy, “I was doing your job down in London before you was born. Now, as soon as you see him go in after me, you follow and put your knife against his back first opportunity you get.”

  “I canna…” began Young Hutchin indignantly. The large man was standing by another shop, staring elaborately at the sky. Barnabus hid a grin.

  “I’m not asking you to knife the bugger, did I say that? No, so don’t jump to conclusions, I want you to prick him enough to let him know you’re there and tell him to stop what he’s doing.”

  “But…”

  “Listen, son. If you don’t want to do it, just say so now and you can hop along up the castle and we’ll say no more about it. But if you want to learn something from a real craftsman, you do as I say and I’ll pay you for it too out of my dice winnings.”

  Hutchin’s mouth dropped open. “You won the dice game?” he gasped.

  “‘Course I did, I told you, I’m a craftsman. Well, what do you say?”

  “I’ll help ye,” said Young Hutchin.

  “Just one thing to bear in mind, my son. I don’t want to kill this man, but I will if I have to, and the thing that’ll make me have to kill him is you buggering me about, you got that? And if you do that, son, I’ll find you and I’ll teach you better manners, you got that?”

  “Yes, master,” said Young Hutchin in a subdued tone.

  “Never mind,” said Barnabus kindly, “you’re doing your best, don’t worry, it gets easier as you know more.”

  Arthur Musgrave saw his quarry disappearing down a wynd that was almost blocked out by the heavy buildings straining towards each other overhead. He’d had the all clear from Young Hutchin. He hurried after the plump ferret-faced southerner, taking out his cudgel as he went, hoping this would square it with Madam Hetherington who was enraged at him and Danny losing the bawdy house stake. He paused to take his bearings, wondered where the bastard Londoner had got to and felt a heavy weight thump down on his shoulders from above. The lights went out.

  Fighting his way clear of the cloak, he got his head free only to find somebody’s knee crunching into his nose. He lost his temper and managed to grab the Londoner by the doublet front and bash him against the wattle and daub wall of one of the houses, making a man-shaped dent in the plaster. Suddenly he felt the cold prickle of a knife at his back and stopped still.

  Somebody’s fist smashed into his gut three or four times and he toppled onto his face, mewing and fighting to breathe. The cloak went over his head again, his belt was undone with unbelievable speed and then wrapped around his body and arms at the bend of the elbow and buckled tight, all before he’d even managed to breathe once. So he lay there, choked with muddy cloak, waiting for the worst and found himself being lifted upright.

  It was the bastard bloody southerner again, with that mangling of consonants and dropping of aitches which made him impossible to understand.

  “Speak slower, man,” he shouted, wincing at the pain in his belly and tasting blood from his battered nose, “I canna understand ye.”

  “I don’t want your purse because I know there’s nothing in it and I don’t want your life yet,” repeated Barnabus patiently, “I want to know who’s the King of Carlisle.”

  “What?”

  The would-be footpad tangled up in Barnabus’ cloak couldn’t show the bewilderment he felt, but Young Hutchin’s face said it all.

  “Bloody hell,” said Barnabus, “are you telling me there isn’t one? Isn’t there anybody collecting rent off the thieves here to keep them safe from the law?”

  Young Hutchin snorted with laughter. “No, master, generally it’s the thieves that collect the rent from the lawful folk.”

  “If ye mean surnames, mine’s Musgrave, and my father’s cousin to Captain Musgrave, so if ye…”

  “Shut up,” said Barnabus, kicking him. “Young Hutchin, are you saying that none of the thieves and beggars in Carlisle are properly organised?”

  Young Hutchin nodded. “There’s never been enough of them in the city,” he explained. “Outside, well, I suppose every man takes a hand in a bit of cattle-lifting and horse-thieving now and again, even the Warden or the Captain of Bewcastle.”

  “Especially the Captain of Bewcastle,” muttered Arthur Musgrave, who hated all Carletons.

  “Who do you work for then?” demanded Barnabus of Arthur, “Your father?”

  Arthur Musgrave’s father was humiliated by Arthur’s inability to get on with horses and had kicked him out of the house five years before. “No,” said Arthur, “it’s Madam Hetherington’s stake you’ve got there.”

  “The madam?”

  “Ay.”

  Barnabus nodded. It stood to reason, of course, seeing she was a southerner. Well, that changed his plans a bit.

  “All right, on yer feet,” he said, giving Arthur Musgrave a heft and leading back into Scotch Street. A few people glanced at them but didn’t feel inclined to interfere. It gave Barnabus great satisfaction to navigate his way back to the Rainbow without Hutchin’s help, and yell for Madam Hetherington.

  A moment later she appeared on the top step with a primed caliver and lit slowmatch in her hand. Barnabus grinned at her and toed Arthur forwards until he landed on the bottom step, and lay there, feebly struggling.

  “I’ve got no argument with you, Madam,” he said cheerily. “And just to show what a generous sort of man I am, here’s half of your stake back.” He took out the twenty shillings he’d earned and tossed the half-full leather purse onto the step at her feet.

  Madam Hetherington’s eyes narrowed and the gun did not move. “Why?” she demanded.

  “Well, I’ve charged you the money for the useful lesson in diceplay I gave your lads…”

  “No, why did you come back?”

  Barnabus’s smile went from ear to ear of his narrow face. “I want to be a friend, not a coney,” he said, “I know you won’t try this on me again, but I’d like to be welcome here to join the girls if I want.”

  Madam Hetherington finally smiled. “I welcome anyone with the money to pay me.”

  “Seriously,” said Barnabus.

  “And I would be willing to pay for more lessons in diceplay.”

  Barnabus twinkled his fingers together. “Delighted to oblige, I’m sure, mistress.”

  Wednesday, 21st June, late afternoon

  The muggy clouds chose to part as Philadelphia Scrope’s guests moved from the eight covers of meat and fish she had provided to the marmalades of quince and wet comfits. They admired her marzipan subtlety of a peel tower, complete with armed men, as an amusing variation on the usual themes. Sportingly they agreed not to eat it since it would keep to be used again on the Sunday as part of the old lord’s funeral banquet. As the yellow sunlight found the little narrow windows and drove probing fingers into the council chamber cum dining room, it lighted on her brother’s chestnut curls and laughing face. He put up a hand in protest and squinted at Elizabeth Widdrington who was frowning with mock severity.

  “I refuse to believe that streams can chase you round the countryside,” she said.

  “On my honour they did,” said Robin, picking up a date stuffed with marzipan and nibbling it, “and what’s more the hills followed us too, so the ones we struggled up on the way north turned themselves round and we had to struggle up them again on the way back south.” He winced slightly, put the date down and ate a piece of cheese instead.

  “Did you find you were being adopted by a herd of brambles and gorse bushes as well?” asked young Henry Widdrington. “When I go out on a hot trod, I’d swear they follow me as lovingly as if I was their mother. Then when I fall off my horse one of them rushes forward bravely to break my fall.”

  Listening to the laughter, Philadelphia felt a little wistful. She loved giving dinner parties and the pity of it was, there were so few people she could invite in Carlisle; most of them were dull merchants or tedious coarse creatures like Thomas Carleton who would keep begin
ning tales of conquests at Madam Hetherington’s and then remember where he was and fall silent at the best bit. It was a pity she had no pretty well-bred girl she could bring in to make up the numbers for Henry Widdrington, but she was used to there being an oversupply of men. After all, very few ladies would want to live in the West March and those that were bred to it were poor dinner party material. London was so much more fun. Somehow her husband’s 3,700 pounds per annum from his estates wasn’t the compensation her father had told her it would be.

  “And all this on account of one horse stolen from the Grahams?” asked Elizabeth Widdrington.

  “I don’t think so,” said Robin, “I think it was a long-planned raid for remounts and where they’re planning to go with them, I wish I knew.”

  They were also eating up the food she had made ready for the funeral feast which couldn’t keep until the Sunday—it was typical of men when they high handedly postponed funerals that it never occurred to them to think of things like perishable fish—and it would serve her brother right if he got indigestion. Though as usual, he was too busy talking and being charming to eat very much.

  They had sat down at 2.30, fashionably late, and when Lord Scrope had said grace, her guests had flatteringly spent most of the first twenty minutes eating and occasionally asking each other to pass the salt. She was particularly fond of the salt cellar, being newly inherited from the old lord, a massive silver bowl with ancient figures in armour on it and some elaborate crosses, but she would have to check on the kitchen supplies of salt to see what had happened there.

  Elizabeth Widdrington caught her eye questioningly and she nodded with a smile that she should broach their expedition of the morning.

  “Did you know that Janet Dodd bought the horse from that little priest, Reverend Turnbull?” asked Elizabeth casually.

  “Damn,” said Carey. “I’m sorry, Philly,” he added at his sister’s automatic frown, “I meant to go and question the man about where he got the nag but it clean slipped my mind and I expect he’s halfway to Berwick by now…”

  “We went and asked him a few questions,” offered Elizabeth. “And yes, he was on his way, but he very kindly stayed for us and told us what we wanted to know.”

  Robert’s face lit up. “You talked to him?”

  “Wasn’t that a little dangerous?” asked Henry Widdrington with a frown.

  “Oh never fear, Henry, I went with Lady Scrope and Mrs Dodd,” Elizabeth said, hiding a smile at her stepson’s concern. “He was very helpful.”

  “I’m sure he was,” murmured Robert, “poor man. I would have been.”

  “He told us he’d bought the horse from a peddler called Swanders and…”

  “Good God!” said Robert. “Sorry Philly, are you saying that Daniel Swanders is in Carlisle now?”

  “I don’t know.” Elizabeth took a French biscuit and broke it in half. “Do you know him?”

  “Yes, yes I do. He’s a Berwick man though, deals in anything small and portable or that has four legs and can walk. My brother almost hanged him once for bringing in of Scots raiders only he got enough respectable men to swear for him and got away with it.”

  “How did he do that?” asked Henry naïvely.

  “He bribed them, Henry,” said his stepmother. “Most of them do that can.”

  “The thing was, Janet was surprised that he didn’t go straight to Thomas the Merchant to sell such a good animal since Thomas has been our agent to find decent horseflesh and would know we’d want him,” added Philadelphia.

  “Good point,” said Carey, “and why didn’t he?”

  “We went to speak to Thomas the Merchant as well,” said Elizabeth, biting elegantly into her half biscuit, “and I’m certain he lied in his teeth to us.”

  “Did he now?” said Robert with an answering smile. “That was bad of him.”

  “I do object to it,” Elizabeth agreed.

  God help Thomas the Merchant for offending Elizabeth Widdrington, Philadelphia thought at the look in Carey’s eyes.

  “What he said was that he didn’t know what we were talking about and he’d been cleared of the accusation that he collects blackrent for the Grahams,” added Elizabeth, finishing the biscuit and brushing her fingers. “He gave me the impression that he was a mite too big for his boots as well.”

  “Hm.”

  Thomas Lord Scrope had been listening to this. “I don’t know why this horse is so important to the Grahams or you. It’s just a horse, isn’t it? Dammit, don’t horses go missing every day of the week?”

  “It’s only important because the Grahams think it important,” said Philly, resisting the impulse to shake her obtuse husband, “and because it was apparently the horse that Sweetmilk was riding when he was murdered.”

  “Which makes me even more interested to know why Swanders happened to have it,” said Carey.

  “Yes,” said Scrope, standing up and wandering restlessly to the virginals kept under cover in the corner of the room, “but why does anyone care that Sweetmilk was murdered? Apart from the hangman, that is?”

  “Well, my lord,” said Carey with a patience Philly hadn’t seen in him before, “firstly the Grahams seem to believe that it was Sergeant Dodd did the killing because he had the horse, or his wife did. Secondly because of the way the killing was done.”

  “Shot wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. But from behind.”

  “Best way to do it, I’ve always thought, especially dealing with a Graham.”

  Carey coughed. “Well, my lord, I’d agree, except that I had a chance to look at the body and the back was black with powder burns and further, the body wasn’t robbed.”

  Scrope began to press the keys gently, listening for sour notes. He found one and began hunting for the tuning key.

  “Is that important?”

  “It means he was shot from very close behind him, which argues that he knew his murderer and didn’t mind him being there. And then whoever did it wasn’t interested in theft, which cuts out practically anyone on the borders.”

  “That or he was afraid the jewels would be recognised,” added Elizabeth Widdrington.

  “And then,” continued Carey, as he dug in a canvas bag for the latest madrigal sheets he had carried with him faithfully from London, “there’s where he put the body. After all, Solway field’s a very odd place. The marshes or the sea would give him a better chance of the body never being found. It’s almost as if he couldn’t think of anywhere else. And how did Swanders come by the horse?”

  “Killed Sweetmilk?” asked Henry Widdrington, picking up one of the sheets and squinting at it.

  “Not Swanders. He doesn’t own a dag. A knife in the ribs would be more his mark. Can you take the bass part?”

  Henry Widdrington whistled at the music. “I can try.”

  Elizabeth had already taken the alto sheet. At least Robert had had the sense not to buy the four-way sheets which had the different parts printed as if on a four sided box, thought Philly—they were almost impossible to make out.

  Robert carried the complete song to Scrope who was still fiddling with the fah string and humming to himself.

  “Ah, mm, yes. Yes I see, dear me, they get more intricate every year, look at this bit…Philly, you mustn’t let your throat tighten on the higher notes, you know, or it will come out like cats.”

  Robert laughed. “It usually comes out like cats anyway,” he said, “but it’s all the rage at Court at the moment, God help…I’m sorry, Philly.”

  Robert had a good tenor voice which went well with Philadelphia’s high true but weak soprano. Elizabeth Widdrington had a powerful alto, but was out of practice at sight-reading and Henry Widdrington, with his still unformed bass, had a tendency to lose his place and blush furiously under his spots. Scrope who had an extraordinary reach on any keyboard and could sight read anything first time, though his voice was appalling, took each of them through twice separately, rapping with his toe to give the time. At last they all took dee
p breaths, waited on Lord Scrope’s signal and launched into “When Philomela Lost Her Love”. After three collapses and Philadelphia’s helpless attack of giggles when she got lost amongst the fa-la-las they managed to work through to the end and stood looking at each other with satisfaction. Then they sang it again with gusto and the beautiful intertwining medley of voices briefly turned the grim old Carlisle keep into an antechamber of Westminster.

  Philly saw the happy dreamy smile on her husband’s face as the music fitted itself together into the filmy light-hearted bubble of a song that it was, and it touched her heart. She decided she would nag Scrope into travelling to London for the Christmas season if she possibly could and if not then, for the Hilary term. If necessary she would fabricate a lawsuit. It was such a pity he was born the eldest son of Henry Lord Scrope: his life would have been easier and happier if he could have been of the class of folk that supplied Royal musicians rather than soldiers and lawmen for the Crown. Still, God had made him what he was and no doubt He knew what He was about.

  They tried three more of the madrigals, and then a fiendishly difficult one in Latin by the Queen’s Chapelmaster, William Byrd, until the sun had set and Carey could no longer hide his frequent yawns.

  “I’m sorry, Robin,” said Philly, conscience-stricken, “you’ve been up since two this morning, I know. We can sing again tomorrow or play a little primero.”

  Robert laughed and insisted he wasn’t tired, so Elizabeth Widdrington did the tactful thing and announced that she had been up since at least two hours before dawn herself and if Sir Robert was able to go with only four hours sleep a night like the Queen, she certainly couldn’t.