1 A Famine of Horses

by P. F. Chisholm

“Mphm.”

  The football match seemed to be breaking up, as the Earl’s side had seemingly won by five goals to none. The losers were sullen and some of them were nursing bruised shins and the man who’d taken the full force of the Earl’s elbow in his stomach was still coughing.

  Francis Stuart, Earl of Bothwell was a large handsome man with brown hair and a long face never at rest, its features oddly blurred by the continual succession of emotions crossing it, like weather. He was in a good mood from winning the football match and after slapping Wattie Graham on the back and promising him a rematch, he spotted Carey and came striding over to inspect him. Carey tensed a little: it wasn’t very likely the Earl would recognise him, he thought, having met the man only once, officially, and the Earl being the kind who is usually so wrapped up in his own importance that anyone not immediately useful to him is nothing more than a fleshly ghost. But still, Bothwell was the only one there who knew Carey at all.

  Carey doffed his cap and made a clumsy bow and repeated his story about the horses. He found himself being looked up and down in silence for a moment.

  “What’s the price on them?” asked Bothwell, his guttural Scottish bringing back memories of King James’s Court that Carey would have preferred to forget. At least he could understand it, once his ear was in, and it made it easier for him to slip into the Berwick manner of speaking that southerners thought of as Scottish in their ignorance.

  “Well, sir, I thought…”

  Bothwell laughed. “Makes no matter what ye think, man, I havnae got it. So now.”

  That was no surprise. Carey smiled ingratiatingly. “Sir, I thought I could lend them to ye, for the raid, and then get them back with a little extra for the trouble after. As an investment, see.”

  Bothwell’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What do ye know of the raid?”

  “Nothing, your honour, nothing. Only I canna see why ye would be collecting horses for fun.”

  Bothwell barked with laughter. “And the pack?”

  Carey coughed. “Well, I’m a peddler by trade, sir, I thought ye might let me open it and offer what I have to your ladies.”

  “And yourself?”

  “Myself, sir?”

  “You look a sturdy man, yourself, can you back a horse, hold a lance?”

  Carey hesitated. What would Daniel say? He decided on cunning. “I can ride as well as any man, but it’s no’ my trade, see.”

  “There’s more than cows where I’m riding, ye could come well out of it.”

  “Well sir…”

  “Tell me later,” said the Earl generously and clapped Carey’s shoulder. “Put your horses in the paddock with the others. If ye ride with us, ye’ve got your own remounts and I’ll see ye have a jack and a lance. If ye dinna, ye must bide here till we come back, if ye follow me?”

  “Ay sir.”

  There was a clanging of a bell from the castle and Carey trotted his horses over to the paddock, then joined the general rush of football players and watchers and horse tenders into the barnekin and so up the rickety wooden steps to the main room of the keep.

  Crammed up tight on a bench at a greasy trestle table between a man with only one ear and another Scott, who was one of Old Wat’s younger sons, Carey knew perfectly well that no one trusted him. With the number of outlaws around, it was a wonder anyone could trust enough to put their heads down to eat. Broad wooden platters lined the tables filled with porridge garnished with bacon and peas. Carey reached behind him for his pack and pulled out Daniel’s wooden bowl and spoon, drew his knife and wiped it on his hose, which only made it greasier.

  The braying of a trumpet behind him almost made him jump out of his skin. He craned his head round to see the dinner procession of servants in their blue caps, bearing steaming dishes: he caught the smell of cock-a-leekie and a roasted kid and even some bread. Odd to see all that food go by and know none of it was for him. It was a hard job for the servants to pass between the packed benches and up to the high table where the Earl sat, with his cronies on one side of him and Wattie Graham of Netherby on his right, then Old Walter Scott of Harden, each of them flanked by his eldest sons and the young laird of Johnstone. There didn’t seem to be a woman in the place, though Carey couldn’t blame their menfolk if they wanted them out of sight.

  As the procession reached the high table and the chief men were served, the Earl stood up and threw half a breadroll at a nervous-looking priest in the corner.

  “Say a grace for us, Reverend,” he shouted.

  The Reverend stood up and gabbled some Latin, which was in fact a part of the old wedding service, if Carey’s feeble classical knowledge served him right. Everyone shouted Amen, bent their heads and began shovelling food into their guts as if they were half starved.

  There was indeed a shortage of food: Carey was slow to help himself and wound up with watery porridge, a few bits of leek and kale and a minute piece of bacon that had hidden under a lump of oatmeal. He gulped the skimpy portion down, and hoped it wouldn’t give him the bellyache.

  At the high table the Earl of Bothwell was laughing at some joke told by the man beside him; a man, Carey saw with narrowed eyes, who wore a gold threaded brocade doublet and a snowy white falling band in the French style. Unfortunately, about five of the men around Bothwell, including Wattie Graham, had some gold thread in their doublets, being well-able to afford finery on their ill-gotten gains.

  “Where are ye from?” demanded the earless man beside him. Carey trotted out his story again and the man nodded.

  “One-Lug Johnstone,” he explained with his mouth full. “And that’s Old Wat’s Clemmie Scott.”

  The man on the other side who had been digging his elbows into Carey’s ribs as he struggled with a tough piece of bacon, nodded politely.

  “Ye’ve come up from Carlisle,” continued One-Lug, waving for an ale pot and being ignored by the group at the end of the table who had managed to lay hold of it. “What’s the news there?”

  “Old Scrope’s dead,” began Carey.

  “Ay, so I heard, Devil keep him. His son’s the Warden now, I heard tell. How’s Lowther?”

  “The Warden’s got a new Deputy,” said Carey.

  “Not Lowther?” One-Lug found that very funny and beckoned over two friends of his who’d been playing football. “Listen to this, Jemmie, the man’s saying Lowther’s not Deputy Warden.”

  “Who is it then?” demanded Jemmie.

  Carey coughed. “Some courtier the Queen’s sent up from London,” he said modestly, “they say he willna last the year out.”

  “Nor the month.” All three of them were hysterical with laughter at the idea. “Och save me,” said One-Lug, in what he thought was a London accent, “Please don’t stick that lance in me, Mr Graham, it hurts.”

  “A cow?” added Jemmie. “Why, what on earth’s a cow?”

  “Och, my lord Warden, the rude men have stolen my horses…”

  Carey laughed with them until Old Wat’s Clemmie finished chewing on his lump of bacon, swallowed what he could, spat out what he couldn’t onto the floor and grunted, “He faced down Sergeant Dodd at the castle yesterday, I saw him.”

  Ice trickling down his spine, Carey looked as interested as he could.

  “What with, a cannon?” asked One-Lug.

  “A sword. Mind you, it was to stop Dodd going out after his horses, when Jock of the Peartree was all set to catch him at the Strength of Liddesdale, lying out in the cold wood all night for nothing, thanks to the damned Courtier. They say he’s a sodomite…”

  “Ye canna be a courtier without ye sell your bum,” agreed Jemmie wisely. “He must have annoyed the old Queen something powerful.”

  “If ye ask me,” said Old Wat’s Clemmie, “he was short of money to pay his tailor’s bills, if ye looked at him with his great fat hose and his little doublet, ye never saw such a pretty suit.”

  “Ye canna pay a London tailor with a cow.”

  “What do ye know about it, the Edinburgh
tailors take horses.”

  While the argument raged across him, Carey scraped the last of the porridge off his bowl with his finger and put it away in his pack. He looked around the room idly and froze still.

  Bothwell was talking to one of the lesser Grahams who had acted as servants to bring in the meal, gesturing in Carey’s direction. The boy came struggling down to Carey just as he was helping to clear the trestle tables. The middle of the floor was being swept clean of rushes and sprinkled with sand.

  Bothwell had moved: he had the laird’s own carved armchair, was drinking wine from a goblet and beside him sat a sinewy grey-bearded man with a broken nose. The Graham boy who had come for Carey, threaded past the men who were now rearranging the benches ready for the evening’s entertainment, which was a cockfight. Carey saw the combatants being brought in, still in their cages, crowing defiance and fluttering aggressively and concluded that at least one of them had been got at.

  Remembering Bothwell’s vanity, when he came up onto the dais, he bobbed his knee to the Earl and stood holding his cap and successfully looking scared.

  “There’s the man, Jock,” said Bothwell, “he must have left Carlisle but a few hours gone.”

  Jock of the Peartree spent a good minute examining Carey, who smiled ingratiatingly and hoped the walnut juice wouldn’t dissolve in his sweat. The keep was infernally hot with all the bodies packed into it.

  “I heard,” said Jock of the Peartree in a very level voice, “That you was the man sold Sergeant Dodd’s wife Sweetmilk’s horse.”

  With a swooping in his gut, Carey remembered that she had in fact bought it from the Reverend Turnbull and that some sort of Reverend had said grace. He wanted to turn and look for him but didn’t. In any case, he didn’t know what Turnbull looked like.

  “No, master,” he said, bringing his voice down from a squeak, “I didnae.”

  “That’s the word,” said Jock. “You say you know nothing about it?”

  “Nowt, sir.”

  Jock watched him at his leisure for a while. Carey thought frantically. Surely to God, if Turnbull was here, he wouldn’t have admitted to his part in the trafficking in that thrice damned nag. Had he? Had he bought his own safety by selling them an intruder? Turnbull was the book-a-bosom priest Daniel sometimes travelled with, he must have known Carey wasn’t Daniel Swanders…Why should he? Carey had given the name only to Wat of Harden… Don’t speculate, ask.

  “Sir, who was it said it was me had the animal?”

  Jock and the Earl exchanged glances. “That was the word in Carlisle, last we heard,” said the Earl. “Do ye tell me on your honour that you never had the horse?”

  “Never clapped eyes on him, on my honour, my lord,” said Carey, only slightly mendaciously.

  Jock snorted slightly. “Do ye know aught ye could tell us about Sweetmilk’s killing?” he asked.

  “No sir,” said Carey, “but it wasnae Sergeant Dodd.”

  “How do ye know that?”

  “If what I’ve heard is right, sir, he wouldna make such a bodge of it.”

  The Earl laughed. “Any other news out of Carlisle?”

  “Er…they postponed the funeral of the old lord.”

  “I know that. They think we’re riding into England,” said Bothwell.

  “Are ye not?” asked Carey guilelessly, heart hammering again.

  Bothwell smiled, a little coldly. “That’s for me to know and you to learn in due course, Daniel.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Are you riding with us, Daniel?”

  No help for it. “Yes sir, though I’m not a right fighting man if I’m honest with ye.”

  Bothwell clapped him on the shoulder again and grinned: he had remarkably good, even teeth and it gave his smile an odd glaring quality. Carey smiled back.

  “If ye want custom, wait about a bit and Wattie Graham will take you to see the women, they’re all agog for whatever’s in your pack.”

  Wattie Graham was as good as his word: as the betting round the makeshift cockpit reached manic proportions, Carey followed the laird up the winding stair to the next floor, where his womenfolk were hiding from the untrustworthy men down below.

  There was a crowd of them, perhaps ten or eleven, and a bewildering number of Jeans and Marys with an occasional Maud and one Susan, sitting on little stools at a trestle table eating their own meal which looked even worse than the one still rattling about Carey’s stomach. There was no sign of even a speck of bacon in it.

  Wattie’s wife, Alison Graham, came to meet them at the door. Her broad, lined face lit up at sight of him and she took his hand in her own small rough one and led him into the feminine billow of skirts and aprons.

  Surrounded by them, Carey opened the pack, laid out what it contained in the way Daniel had shown him and gave tongue like a London stallman.

  “Ribbons, silks, beads and bracelets, laces, creams, garters and needles, what d’ye lack ladies, come buy.”

  They giggled and elbowed each other. Mrs Graham fingered the ribbons and another girl picked up a packet of hairpins.

  “How much for these?” she asked, and Carey told her.

  It was bedlam for a while after that, as Carey told prices, held bargaining sessions over quantities of needles and some perfumed soap direct from Castile, as he insisted, although he knew perfectly well it was boiled up in York, and so did they.

  At the end of the hour he had made Daniel a profit of about five shillings, and despite a throbbing head and a dry throat, he was feeling well-pleased with himself.

  Mrs Graham brought him a goblet of sour wine well-watered, which he drank gratefully and then told him to sit down and he’d shortly get better fare than he would downstairs.

  “Unless you want to go and watch the cockfighting?” said another girl, Jeanie Scott, extremely pregnant and glowing with it.

  Carey grinned and decided to risk it. “Nay, mistress,” he said, “I laid my bets before I came up.”

  “Don’t you want to see which wins?”

  “I know which cock’ll win,” said Carey, “it’s the one that wasna given beer beforehand to slow him down.”

  They all laughed knowingly at that. “What’s the news from Carlisle?” asked Alison Graham.

  “I wasna there but ten days,” said Carey, “I don’t know the doings yet.”

  “Is it right Jock of the Peartree raided the Dodds?” asked Jeanie Scott.

  “Och, you know he did,” said another woman impatiently, “He was a’ full of it when he came back.”

  “I heard Janet Dodd say her Cousin Willie’s Simon had an arrow in his arm during the raid,” ventured Carey. “And a woman called Margaret lost her bairn with the excitement.”

  Jeanie Scott tutted sadly. “That would be Margaret Pringle, Clem Pringle’s sister, poor lass. I hope she’s not poorly with it. D’ye know how she fares, cadger?”

  Carey shook his head.

  “How’s Young Jock?” asked another girl, a thin, small pale creature, with a startling head of burnished gold hair. One of her wrists was tightly bandaged.

  “He’s in the jail at Carlisle,” said Carey cautiously.

  “They havena chained him?”

  “Not that I know.”

  “Now Mary,” said Alison gently, “dinna disturb yourself so much.”

  Mary seemed on the brink of tears, which surprised Carey. “I couldna bear it to lose another brother…Will the Warden hang Young Jock, d’ye think.”

  Carey shrugged. “He was caught with the red hand, Mistress, the Deputy could have hanged him on the spot.”

  “Ay, you listen to him,” said Alison stoutly, “and dinna concern yourself; Lowther’ll see him well enough, mark my words, it’s only a matter of waiting.”

  “But after Sweetmilk…” began Mary, and the tears started trickling down her face. From the red rims round her eyes it looked something she did often.

  Alison rolled her eyes. “Now Mary, Sweetmilk’s dead and gone and that’s the end of
it. He’s with God now and your dad’ll get his revenge once he finds the man that did the killing.”

  Mary only cried harder and put her head on Susan’s shoulder.

  “Is she Sweetmilk’s betrothed?” asked Carey privately of Jeanie Scott, fetching out a hanky from his pack that was edged with lace and handing it to Mary. Service at Court had made it almost a reflex with him, when he saw a woman crying, although naturally what he really wanted to do was to cut and run.

  Jeanie didn’t look sympathetic. “No, she’s Sweetmilk’s sister and what she’s in such a taking about, I’m sure I dinna ken.”

  It was Mary who had bought a packet of extra-long staylaces as Carey was sure Mrs Graham had noticed. She was mopping her eyes again: Carey saw her fingernails were bitten down to the quick.

  “It’s a sad thing to lose a brother,” added Jeanie briskly, “but God knows, it’s worse to lose a wean, and she’s a fancy man here too, if I’m any judge.”

  “Is she not married yet?” added Carey in surprise.

  “Nay, she’s only sixteen, she’s but a flighty maid with her head full of stories. Jock has her betrothed to an Elliot but she doesna want him. She’ll change her tune in time.”

  “Better to marry than burn, the preachers say,” said Carey meaningfully.

  Jeanie Scott eyed him. “Ay,” she said at last, “that’s the way of it.”

  “Do you know who killed Sweetmilk?”

  Jeanie shrugged and patted her stomach. “Save for the way it was done, it could have been a Storey or a Bell or a Maxwell or anyone that found him with cows that didna belong to him.”

  “Hey, peddler,” sang out another Mary, “how much for the whalebone?”

  There was a little more selling and then the girl called Susan came in with a large wobbling junket, sweetened with rosewater and honey. They served it to him, laughing at his expression and told him a fine figure of a man like himself needed better feeding than what they were getting downstairs and it would settle his stomach nicely. Three of them had messages for friends in Carlisle, Jeanie Scott wanted him to tell the midwife Mrs Croser that the babe was head down at last, and a fifth wanted to know what a roll of green velvet would cost and if he could get it for her from Edinburgh next time he went. Carey promised he would find out from Thomas the Merchant which seemed to please them.