1 A Famine of Horses

by P. F. Chisholm

  He climbed one tread at a time, gasping through his teeth, with the sweat making a marsh of his shirt. Halfway up, Jock came to and started to struggle and swear: they swayed dangerously and the ladder creaked.

  “STAY STILL!” roared Carey. “Or I’ll dump you on your head.”

  Jock threshed once more, then saw how far they were from the floor and stayed still. Carey went the rest of the way up the ladder, heaved Jock onto the roof.

  He kicked Jock in the stomach again to slow him down, turned, pulled up the ladder with his abused arm muscles shrieking at him, heaved the trapdoor into its hole and bolted it, then sat with his back against the parapet and waited until he had stopped crowing for breath and the spots had gone from his vision.

  Jock glared at him, sprawled like a trussed chicken on the roof flags, bleeding from his nose and a nasty lump on his head.

  “That’s better,” said Carey and coughed. He didn’t think he’d ruptured anything, which was a miracle. His heartbeat seemed to be slowing at last. “Now we can talk, Jock”

  Friday, 23rd June, late morning

  It so happened that Will the Tod Armstrong was out in the horse paddock of his tower with a young horse that he was breaking on the lungeing rein. His youngest grandson was watching admiringly from the gate. Dodd came at a fast jogtrot to the fence, ducked under it and walked up close to his father-in-law, who took one look at his battered sweaty face and became serious.

  “Is Janet all right?” he asked at once. “Where’s the raid?”

  Never mind Janet, Dodd thought, what about me, I’m half dead of thirst.

  “She’s fine…” he said in between deep breaths, “she’s in Carlisle. It’s not a raid, exactly, it’s the new Deputy Warden and Richard Lowther.”

  “Sit down, rest yourself. What happened to your horse? Did ye come on foot from Carlisle, ay well, ye’re young. Little Will, run down to the house and bring back some beer for your uncle. No, you may not ride the horse, use your legs.”

  Both Dodd’s calves chose that moment to start cramping. He swore and tried rubbing them.

  “Walk about a bit,” advised Will the Tod, “I mind I ran twenty miles to fetch Kinmont’s father once when I was a lad, and if ye stop too suddenly, ye cramp.”

  Twenty miles, was it? thought Dodd bitterly, ay it would be. Nine and a half miles over rough country and mostly uphill in much less than two hours, and Will the Tod will have done twice that in half the time in his youth.

  “Well, what’s the news?”

  Dodd told him. Will the Tod found the whole thing hilariously funny. His broad red face under its grey-streaked bush of red hair shone with the joke, he slapped his knee, he slapped Dodd’s back, he slapped the fence.

  “Ye ran from Carlisle to save the Deputy Warden?” hooted Will the Tod. “Jesus save me. Why didn’t ye run to fetch his dad? There’s a man that has a quick way with a tower.”

  “He never burnt yours,” Dodd pointed out. There were still bitter memories on the border of Lord Hunsdon’s reprisals after the Rising of the Northern Earls.

  “Only because I paid him.”

  “He could have taken the money and still burnt you out.”

  “Ay well, that’s true. So his boy’s in trouble, eh?”

  Dodd explained, as patiently as he could, that he was.

  “What do ye expect me to do about it?”

  Dodd suggested, still patiently, that if he could really put sixty men in the saddle at an hour’s notice as he’d boasted the last time they met, then he might give the Deputy Warden cause to be grateful to him. Not to mention pleasing his daughter Janet, who was in such a taking about the blasted man, it might have worried a husband less trusting than himself.

  “Oh ay, call out my men for the Deputy Warden.” Will the Tod found that funny too. Dodd, who had blisters on both his feet and his shoulders, not to mention the damage he’d taken struggling through the secret passage, failed to see the joke. He waited for the bellowing stupid laugh to stop and the said, “Well, sir, if ye’ve come over to loving Richard Lowther in your old age, I’ll be on my way to the Dodds at Gilsland.”

  Will the Tod’s laugh stopped in mid-chuckle. He glowered at his son-in-law.

  “Lowther’s the man the old lord Warden would have made Deputy Warden. Carey’s the young Lord Scrope’s friend,” explained Dodd through his teeth. “Carey may be a fool of a courtier who’s too big for his boots, but he’s not Lowther. According to Janet he snuck into Netherby to try and steal back our reived horses because he knew a proper hot trod would be cut to pieces. Now Lowther’s let out some raiders Carey took that can identify him to Bothwell, who’ll likely string him up.”

  At least Will the Tod was listening. He nodded and Dodd continued.

  “Lowther doesna want to lose his hold over the West March and Carey’s bent on taking the power from him. If he can get Carey killed it’ll clear the way for him and we’ll have him back in the saddle, taking blackrent off us, favouring his kin and bringing in the Grahams and the Johnstones and the Elliots every time any one of us dares to make a squeak about it. There’ll be nae chance of justice in this March with Carey gone, believe me. But as it seems ye’ve made your peace with the Lowthers…”

  Will the Tod’s face darkened. “Make peace with the Lowthers? Never!” he growled. “You’re saying, if I bring out my men and save Carey’s skin as you ask, we’ll stop Richard Lowther from becoming Deputy Warden under the new lord?”

  “Ay sir,” said Dodd, “that’s what I’ve been saying. For the moment, anyway, seeing how well Lowther’s dug in.”

  Will the Tod clapped Dodd on his back. “I like you, Henry,” he said expansively, “ye think well.”

  “It’s your daughter’s plan,” Dodd muttered.

  “Of course it is, but you’ve the sense to see the sense in it.”

  And I did all the bloody running and crawling through shit pipes, Dodd thought, but didn’t say. Will the Tod stared into space for a moment, and then rubbed his hands together.

  “Off ye go, Dodd,” he said, “up to the tower and ring the bell. I’ll have a horse saddled up for you when ye come back.”

  Run up there, thought Dodd, despairingly.

  “Get on, lad, we havnae got all day. Ye dinna want to get to Netherby and find your man swinging in the breeze.”

  It was hard going up to the tower now he’d lost the rhythm, but he wasn’t going to give Will the Tod any opportunity to tell him more tales of notable runs by Will the Tod in his youth. It half killed him but he gasped his way up the bank, almost fell through the door, found the rope to the bell and started ringing it.

  Perhaps he rang it for longer than he need have done, but when he came back down the hill to the house where Will the Tod normally lived, he saw the sight that still lifted his heart no matter how often it happened: the men were coming in at the run from the fields, the women were rushing from their work to the horse paddock to round up the horses—thank God Will the Tod had not been raided by the Grahams, even if he wasn’t respectable enough to lend horses to Scrope—and some of the boys were already coming out of the stables with the saddles and bridles, the jacks and helmets.

  Will the Tod was standing on a high mounting stone, his thumbs in his broad belt, yelling orders as his family ran purposefully past him in all directions. His second wife, the pretty, nervous little creature whose name Dodd could never remember, came running up with a large ugly gelding snorting behind her and then Will the Tod was in the saddle, closely followed by his five sons, two of his sons-in-law, four nearly grown grandsons, and fifteen assorted cousins already riding in with their families from their own farms nearby.

  Henry was brought a large Roman-nosed mare he remembered as having an evil temper at odds with her name which was Rosy, and he mounted up with relief. If God had meant men to run around the countryside he wouldn’t have provided them with horses.

  “Off you go then, Henry,” shouted Will the Tod, waving his lance. “Rouse out the D
odds.”

  Dodd brought Rosy up alongside Will the Tod, who was letting his mount sidestep and paw the air and roaring with laughter at his surname crowding up around him, all asking where was the raid and whose cows were gone, and how big was it, to be out in daylight? Rosy tried to nip Will the Tod’s leg.

  “Wait,” Dodd said, hauling on the reins, “we’ve got Netherby to crack. Where will we meet?”

  “Longtownmoor meeting stone,” said Will the Tod, “where we always meet when we’re hitting Liddesdale, ye know that Henry. Shall I send to Kinmont?”

  “Send to anybody ye can think of that would like to see Lowther’s nose rubbed in the shite.”

  “Och God, there’d be no room for them all. I’ll just send to the ones that werena burnt out of house and home by your young Deputy’s father in ’69, eh?”

  Dodd nodded impatiently, set his heels to the horse’s flank, and headed on up the road for Gilsland after a sharp tussle with Rosy’s contrariness, which he won. Behind him Will the Tod stood up in his stirrups and addressed his immediate surname in a bellow. Dodd knew when he explained the Deputy Warden’s problem because the laughter rolled after him over the hill like the breaker of a sea.

  It occurred to him that perhaps Carey would have preferred to hang rather than be rescued from Bothwell’s clutches in quite this way.

  Friday, 23rd June, noon

  Netherby tower was roofed with stone against fire and had a narrow fighting parapet running round it behind the battlements. In the south-east corner was the beacon, a large blackened metal basket raised up on a ten foot pole with a pile of firewood faggots under tarpaulin at the base. Carey cleared the wood away and tied Jock of the Peartree to the pole in a sitting position, using the rope binding the faggots. The firewood he piled as makeshift barricades across the parapet by the trapdoor.

  Every so often he would poke his head over the wall and shoot an arrow at the men with the battering ram, so they’d run for cover. Way down below him, he could see Bothwell, his brocade doublet shining in the sun, foreshortened like a chessman, waving his arms and shouting more orders. He popped his head over and dropped one of the stones kept ready for sieges, close enough to the earl to make him dive for cover.

  Arrows came sailing over and clattered harmlessly onto the roof. That roof could have done with some attention, Carey thought, much of the mortar around the stones was cracked and rotten. On a sudden inspiration, he heaved up a couple of the loosest stones and dragged them over to the trapdoor, piled them on top.

  “Who the hell are ye?” demanded Jock.

  Carey told him.

  Jock mulled it over for a bit, then growled: “Ye’ll never get out of this.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve got you as a hostage. You’re an important man,” said Carey, sitting down again and taking a sip of beer from the leather bottle. He wasn’t too worried about thirst since there was a full rainwater butt at the north-western corner, set there to put out besieger’s fires. On the other hand, his belly was cramping him.

  Jock spat. “D’ye think the Earl willna shoot to save my skin?”

  “No,” said Carey agreeably, “I think with the mood he’s in, he’d perfectly happily shoot through you to get me, but Wattie’s your brother…”

  “They must be aye sentimental in the south,” sniffed Jock, “Wattie’d shoot as well.”

  “Well, I suppose, so would John,” admitted Carey, thinking of his pompous whingeing elder brother in a similar situation. “Still, he might hesitate. His aim might be off. He might even talk to me, negotiate some arrangement.”

  “Are ye hoping for ransom?” demanded Jock of the Peartree.

  “No. I hadn’t thought about it.”

  Jock laughed shortly.

  “There’s no other way ye’ll get off this tower still breathing, lad, so ye’d best think about it now and right hard.”

  It was in fact perfectly true that Carey had no idea how he was going to get off the top of Netherby tower in one piece. When he came to Netherby he had had a vague plan that involved stealing the Dodd and Widdrington horses quietly early in the morning as soon as he knew where Bothwell was planning to raid and making off back to Carlisle as fast as one of them could carry him. Once that was no longer possible, thanks to Lowther’s machinations, he had simply reacted according to instinct.

  “What do you think I’m worth on the hoof?” Carey asked after a pause.

  “Everyone knows Scrope’s a rich man. A thousand pounds, perhaps,” said Jock consideringly. Carey whistled.

  “He might not pay that much.”

  Jock clearly regarded this as a feeble attempt at bargaining.

  “Well, if ye’re Lord Hunsdon’s son, he’ll stump up for you. Of course, first ye’ve got to get yon Earl to talk civilly to ye, and that might take a while.”

  “He is very upset. What are my chances?”

  “It’s always possible,” Jock allowed, “a one-legged donkey with spavins could win the Carlisle horserace, but I wouldnae put my shirt on it.”

  “I think you’re a bit of an optimist, Jock,” said Carey drily.

  Jock laughed again, then winced. “Ye could loosen my arms a bit,” he suggested, “I canna feel my hands.”

  Carey leaned over cautiously and felt one of the hands. It was a little swollen, but not too bad.

  “No,” he said, “I’ve got too much respect for you, Jock. I don’t want to waste all the care I had of you if you take it in your head to jump off the top of the tower.”

  “I think it’s you’ll be making the jump from a high place in the end.”

  “No,” said Carey, leaning his head back and feeling very tired, “he won’t hang me.” Jock looked dubious. “That’d be too quick for Bothwell.”

  Jock grunted. “I never said he’d hang you first. That’d be after he’d skelped and roasted you. And I’ll be first in with the whip, believe me.”

  Carey had his eyes half-shut. “Oh, I believe you, Jock. And yet, you know, one reason I came here was so I could find out who killed Sweetmilk.”

  Jock’s face changed. The long craggy canyons in it deepened, the mouth lengthened, and his chin fell on his chest.

  “Poor Sweetmilk,” he said, “he was such a bonny wee bairn, running after me and laughing.” Jock’s chin quivered, then hardened again. “Anyway, what do ye care, Deputy, he’s one less Graham you’ve got to chase over the Bewcastle waste.”

  Carey thought of trying to explain the idea of an impartial law enforcement officer, as interested in the wanton killing of Grahams as in cattle raids and suchlike, but decided it would take too long.

  “I don’t want you blaming Dodd,” he said at last, “and I’m puzzled about it.”

  “What’s to puzzle about, the lad was shot in the back.”

  Carey shook his head. “You wouldn’t be interested, it was only a theory of mine.”

  Friday, 23rd June, early afternoon

  Jock was watching the bottle as Carey drank from it, too stiff-necked to admit he needed a drink. Carey found one of the rags for lighting the beacon, went to the rainbutt to wet it and came back to Jock. He held the bottle for Jock to drink, then mopped the dried blood off Jock’s face with the rag. Jock tolerated this in grim silence. On a thought Carey went back to the rainbutt, found two buckets there, filled both of them and brought them to where he was sitting with Jock.

  “Does Netherby have any long ladders about?” he asked.

  “I hope so.”

  Carey peered over the parapet again, saw somebody with an arquebus taking aim and ducked down just in time. The crack sounded in the distance, but the bullet didn’t even splinter the wall. He picked up one of the buckets and poured it over the side, producing a yell of anger from below, then went and refilled it.

  The next time the men with the battering ram from the log pile backed up, Carey shot at them with one of their own arrows. Three more came sailing over the wall, before Bothwell yelled for them to stop.

  “Why did you do
this?” asked Jock.

  “A number of reasons,” Carey said. “Firstly, I wanted to know what Bothwell needed all the horses in the West March for.”

  “Och, that’s easy. I’ll tell you, since you’re going nae further with it. We’re running a big raid deep into Scotland, to Falkland Palace, to lift the King and hold him to ransom for a big pot of gold. It’s about two hundred miles, so we’ve all needed remounts.”

  Carey breathed cautiously. “Right,” he said, “you’re kidnapping King James.”

  “Ay,” said Jock. “Bothwell says he’s worth the Kingdom if we can get him.”

  “Right,” said Carey again. “Of course, Bothwell tried before at Holyrood and he didn’t manage it. That’s why he’s an outlaw.”

  “He didna have us with him.”

  “No. Don’t you think somebody might notice, a big pack of Border raiders riding into Scotland like that? Don’t you think they might take it into their heads to warn the King?”

  “Not if we ride fast enough and keep to the waste ground.”

  “And there are the horses, of course.”

  “Eh? Oh ay, we’ve got enough horses now. We’ll be off tomorrow.”

  “Is that so?” Carey’s voice was carefully casual. “No, I didn’t mean the little nags you’ve been reiving. I meant the King’s horses. But I suppose you’re not interested in them.”

  “No,” said Jock, “we’re not. It’s the King we’re reiving.”

  “Right.”

  “What theory?” demanded Jock.

  “Eh?”

  “What theory were ye talking about before? Your theory concerning Sweetmilk.”

  “You wouldn’t be interested.”

  “How the Devil do you know that if ye won’t tell me what it is?”

  Carey peeked over again, saw Bothwell, shot at him, missed and ducked down again as two more arquebuses cracked down below.

  “I suppose the nearest cannon are in Carlisle?”