1 A Famine of Horses

by P. F. Chisholm

  “Dogs get tangled up in them, horses take a dislike to each other, people fall off their horses, women faint, children make rude remarks. With luck we won’t find a nightsoil wagon with a broken axle barring our path as we did at an Accession Day parade I took part in once.” Most of them sniggered at that. “It doesn’t matter. If it concerns you directly, sort it out quietly. If it doesn’t, ignore it and try not to laugh. If some idiot child gets himself trampled, and his mother is having blue screaming hysterics in the middle of the road, Red Sandy, Bangtail and Long George are to clear the path and join the tail end if they can.”

  He smiled and caught young Simon’s eye: he was carrying the big drum. “Let me hear you give the double-pace beat, Simon.”

  Simon blushed, dropped a drumstick, picked it up and banged a couple of times.

  “Can you count?” asked Carey patiently. The sun was up, the Carlisle gate was open, the crowd of mourners, some of them drunk, were putting on their gowns, and the draft horses were hitched to the empty bier. In about two minutes the Carlisle bell would start tolling.

  “Y–yes sir.” said Simon.

  “Try again. Count one, two, one, two.”

  “One, t–two, one, two…”

  “Bang on the one.” Simon did so. “Better, much better.”

  Two more boys with drums came running up and looked at him. One of them had his cap over his ear. Carey sighed.

  “Can you remember that, Simon?”

  Over in the corner Lowther was trying to shine the trumpeter’s instrument with his hankerchief.

  “Don’t think of anything else. Say it to yourself: bang, two, bang, two.”

  “A–ay sir.”

  “And keep it slow. We’re not going into battle.”

  That got a laugh. High overhead the bell at the top of the keep made its upswing and came down with a deep solid note. Normally sounded in the middle of the night when raiders came over the border, it was eery to hear it in the morning. The trumpeter snatched back his trumpet, made an accidental raspberry and began blowing an abysmally untuneful fanfare.

  As they waited their turn to go out the gate, Carey nodded to himself. Dodd had done as he asked, though he suspected wheels within wheels, since one of Lowther’s men had a burst lip and Dodd had fresh grazes on his knuckles. His men were clearly smarter than Lowther’s and while he doubted anyone except himself really noticed that, still it pleased him…Oh Lord, he’d forgotten to put on his gloves.

  Just as he finished drawing them on, it came his turn: he let Lowther and his men have precedence, followed with his horse on a tight rein. Thunder had been ridden in plenty of processions before but was apt to get overexcited at drumbeats and bells. Normally Carey was wearing full tilting armour and the extra eighty pounds on his back kept Thunder subdued. This time…

  Somebody waved a wooden rattle right by Thunder’s head. Carey used the whip to stop the crow-hopping which jarred him painfully, and caught Lowther’s face turned over his shoulder expectantly. Damn, the man was a complete pillock.

  Like all processions that one became a blur of sunlight, faces of crowds, drumbeats, horse tails, creaking and a jam of bodies waiting at narrow places like the gate. All the time the trumpeter valiantly kept up his corncrake blowing and the Carlisle keep bell tolled, to be joined in counterpoint by the Cathedral bells, telling out the age, sex and rank of the deceased. The bell-ringers knew their business, which they should do with the amount of practice they got. And somehow Simon and the two other drummer boys, kept the beat firmly so it was easy to match paces to it.

  Once at the cathedral, they filled up the battered old building from the back. The churchyard was packed just as tight, with puffing blowing horses investigating each other’s necks and four of Lowther’s men set to guard them and keep the lesser Borderers from temptation to the sin of horsetheft.

  Within, Carey stood, hat in hand, grave reverence on his face, long practice filtering out the mendacious eulogy of the bishop while his mind wandered where it would. There was Philadelphia behind her husband in the front pew, pert and handsome in black with her ruff slightly askew. For all the rehearsed wailing of the paid mourners, there was not a wet eye in the house. Old Scrope had been respected, but not loved, particularly not by his eldest son whom he regarded, rightly, as a fool. His younger son, a solid, pleasant man, had had less expected of him and earned less of his father’s impatience: he at least looked sad.

  The cathedral choir managed the psalms well, if a little sharp, and the pall bearers succeeded in not dropping the coffin, now closed. In the rush to mount up again outside and form the procession once more, Carey was braced for disaster, but it all went astonishingly smoothly.

  They were halfway down the road to the citadel when Carey suddenly knew that something was going on behind him. There was an odd yowling and the crowd was laughing at the bier.

  He turned his horse, caught Hutchin Graham’s expression of panic and murderous outrage, looked past the glossy draft horses with their black trappings at Carlisle’s only bier where the coffin was and wondered how black velvet had become tawny…

  There was a ginger cat tangled in the armorial cloth over the coffin. Wishing his ribs weren’t so sore and fighting not to grin, Carey brought Thunder alongside the bier, reached in, grabbed the cat by the scruff of its neck and hauled it out. It tried to bite his hand, was foiled by leather glove, and lashed a paw full of needles at his face.

  “Jesus, does everyone in Carlisle want to spoil my beauty…” muttered Carey, holding the cat out in front of him. A little girl’s face swung into his vision, with her eyes full of tears and her arms out, so instead of simply wringing the cat’s neck as he was tempted, he jumped off his horse, rammed the aggressive bundle of fur into her hands and vaulted back into the saddle again. As he settled and found the stirrups, he suddenly knew that his girth strap was either loose or cut.

  Thunder side-stepped slightly, Carey had him lengthen his stride and came up alongside Dodd again.

  “My girthstrap’s been cut,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth at Dodd, whose long face blinked in incomprehension and then rage. “I know, I know. Take a look at it.”

  Dodd looked. “It’s hanging by a thread.”

  “Wonderful. Let me check yours.”

  Dodd’s was also half-severed. All the rest of his six men had half-cut girthstraps. Clearly, the men Lowther had left to guard the horses had spent a happy hour of sabotage. If he hadn’t been so furious with them and himself for not thinking of it first, Carey would have found the situation funny. Dodd’s expression was a picture.

  “Straighten your face, Dodd,” he hissed, “don’t let Lowther know we’ve spotted it. We’re supposed to fall off when we mount up after the burial.”

  “God rot the bastard…”

  “Shut up. This is what we do…”

  At the grave side he listened as the words of the burial service were intoned by the bishop, dropping like pebbles of mortality before them. The coffin was lowered into the grave, Scrope and his brother scooped earth on top of it.

  Carey backed away from the grave immediately, followed quietly by his men. At the edge of the graveyard were the horses with their reins looped around the fence posts. Choosing their mounts carefully, Carey had his men in the saddle, lined up just outside the gate in two rows, with their helmets off. As they left the burial, Scrope and the gentlemen of the March would pass between them. He kept his own head covered. When Scrope went by, he took his hat off and bowed gravely in the saddle. Scrope beamed with pleasure.

  Carey looked through the lychgate to see Lowther furiously trying to stop his men from mounting.

  “The Lord hath delivered him into my hands,” he intoned piously to Dodd opposite him, who snorted. In the graveyard there was a sequence of thuds, yells and complaint as eight of Lowther’s men discovered what had happened to the girthstraps of the horses that were left. Thunder was there, over by the fence, neighing at him reproachfully while the lad who
had taken him slid slowly sideways into the mud.

  “Tch,” said Dodd, “nae discipline.”

  “Now follow.”

  The gentlemen’s horses were on the other side of the gate, with grooms waiting to help the ladies into the saddle. There was a flurry of mounting. As the cavalcade rode off back up English Street to the waiting funeral feast, Carey and his men followed meekly, leaving confusion behind them.

  Sunday, 25th June, noon

  Carlisle castle was packed with gentlemen and attendants: the common folk got their meat and bread and ale in the barracks, while the gentlemen and their ladies filled the hall of the keep and attacked the carved beef, mutton, kid, venison and pork with gusto. In the centre of the main table was Philadelphia’s artistic subtlety of a marzipan peel tower under siege, only made more realistic by patching here and there where kitchen boys’ fingers had explored it.

  The various headmen of riding surnames south of the Border were shouting and talking: lines of tension sprang when the heads of two families at deadly feud happened to cross each other’s paths, and Richard Graham of Brackenhill and William Armstrong of Mangerton were moving among the throngs, not overtly unwelcome, but watched covertly wherever they went. There was, of course, an official truce until sunset the following day to let everyone get fairly home.

  Scrope came up to Carey busily.

  “Robin,” he said, clearing his throat and hunching his shoulders under his black silk gown, “that was well-done at the churchyard, quite a compliment, eh? Whose idea was it?”

  “Mine, my lord.”

  Scrope looked sideways at him and smiled nervously. “Well, thank you. Very graceful. Er…Lowther seems to think there was some kind of mischief, but I’m not clear what.”

  Does he indeed, thought Carey, who had felt honour was satisfied by swapping the horses and hadn’t planned to make any more of it.

  “Yes, my lord,” he said blandly, “despite Lowther’s guard on the horses outside the church, somehow our girthstraps were half-slit.”

  “Oh dear. Very difficult for you. Any idea who did it?”

  “No my lord,” lied Carey. “Perhaps Lowther had a better notion. It was his men who were supposed to be guarding the beasts, after all.”

  “Ah. Whose girths, exactly?”

  “Mine and those of my men.”

  “Ah. Oh.” Scrope sidled a bit, then reached past Carey’s elbow to grab a sweetmeat off a tray as it went by. The boy holding it skidded to a halt, and stood waiting respectfully, one cheek bulging. “Wonderful comfits Philadelphia made, do try one.”

  “No thanks, my lord. My teeth won’t stand it.”

  Scrope was full of sympathy. “Dear me, was it Jock…”

  Carey smiled. “No, they survived Jock well enough. It was the Queen feeding me sugar plums and suckets every time she thought I looked peaky that ruined them.”

  Scrope laughed and then caught sight of someone over Carey’s shoulder, hurried away to speak to another gentleman.

  Carey spoke to everyone once, even passed the time of day with Mangerton and Brackenhill. Armstrong of Mangerton was a tall quiet man whose carrotty head had faded into grey. Graham of Brackenhill could not have been anything except a Graham, with his long face and grey eyes, though he was twice the width of Jock of the Peartree his brother.

  “Brought your pack, eh, peddler?” he asked and guffawed.

  “It’s still in Netherby,” said Carey equably. “Would you go and fetch it for me, Mr Graham?”

  Graham laughed louder. “God’s truth, Sir Robert,” he said, wiping his eyes and munching a heroic piece of game pie. “Ah niver laughed so much in my life when I heard what ye did tae Jock. Wattie still hasnae forgiven ye for the damage to his peel tower. Bit of a tradition in your family, eh, damaging peel towers?”

  “I hope so,” said Carey with a little edge, “I’d like to think I could be as good as my father at it if I had to.”

  Graham of Brackenhill stopped laughing. “Ay, he burnt mine an’ all in ’69. Took fifteen kine and four horses too. But it’s a good variation, eh, having us break ‘em down ourselves?”

  Carey smiled at him. “You may speak truer than you know.”

  “Eh?”

  “If I had my way, I’d make you cast down every tower in the March.”

  “Nae doubt ye would, but we canna do that with the Scots ower the border. Even the Queen must ken that.”

  “Have you thought, Mr Graham,” said Carey softly, “of what will happen when the Queen dies, as she must eventually, God save her?”

  Clearly he hadn’t. Carey left him with the thought and decided he needed some fresh air. The London fashion for drinking tobacco smoke hadn’t travelled this far north yet, but still the air in the keep was thick enough to stick a pike in it.

  Out in the castle yard you might have thought it was a wedding, not a funeral, with the folk milling about and the queue for beer at the buttery. By the castle gate was a table, guarded by four men, piled high with weapons.

  On an impulse, Carey wandered over to it. There was a hideous array of death-dealing tools, most of them well-worn and extremely clean and sharp. In a neat pile over to one side was a collection of dags and calivers.

  “Whose are these?” he asked one of the men guarding the table, a Milburn if memory served him.

  “What, the guns, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re the women’s weapons, sir. Brackenhill’s women. All of them carry firearms when they’re in Carlisle.”

  “Good God, why?”

  “The Grahams dinnae like their women to be raped, so it seems.” said the man and grinned.

  “But the recoil would knock them over.”

  The man shrugged. “Most of them are broad enough.”

  Carey was staring open-mouthed at the weapons, with his mind spinning. Somebody took his arm and drew him to one side. It was Elizabeth Widdrington.

  “Mary Graham had hurt her wrist,” he said, seeing the pattern of it all fall into place. “She was there when Sweetmilk challenged Hepburn. Mary Graham shot Sweetmilk?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “To save her lover.”

  “Who then sent her back to Netherby so he could get rid of the body on Solway Moss.”

  “And would have nothing more to do with her.”

  “When did you know?”

  “When I heard Thomas the Merchant’s tale. Sweetmilk would never have let Hepburn get up behind him, but Mary…”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Elizabeth flushed. “I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know the Graham women carried dags. I might have made a mistake—all I had was guesswork.”

  Carey nodded. “And you felt sorry for her?”

  Elizabeth didn’t answer. Then she added firmly, “And sorry for Jock of the Peartree too. He’s lost a son, why take his daughter?”

  Carey stared at her. “For justice. Because she killed her brother.”

  To his astonishment, her face twisted into a sneer. “Oh yes, justice,” she said. “I’d forgotten. She’s sixteen, she’s with child, she’s a fool who lost her heart to a man, and we must put her on trial and bring witnesses and get her to confess, and then when her babe’s born, we must hang her.”

  “Yes,” said Carey simply.

  Elizabeth turned, walked away from him.

  Sunday, 25th June, evening

  Carey found himself put in charge of dealing with the leftovers when all the various gentlefolk had gone, or been carried, back to their lodgings in the town. He delegated it on to Dodd who was still fairly sober, and as the heels of the pies and the unusable remains of the carcasses and bread were carted down to the castle gate to feed beggars (some of them very well-dressed), Goodwife Biltock descended on the hall with an army of women with brooms to sweep out the rushes and scrub the floor clean of spiced wine stains.

  Carey went upstairs to the cubbyhole next to Scrope’s office used by Richard Bell. One of the boys had come to him in the afternoon askin
g if he would care to do so, and he went, wondering if Bell meant to thank him.

  Richard Bell was, as usual, writing when he came in. He wiped his pen and put it down at once, and came over holding some papers.

  Feeling tired and very sore, Carey leaned against the wall by the closed door, took the papers with his eyebrows raised, and skimmed through the Secretary script still used by Bell.

  “Lowther’s letters,” he said neutrally when he’s finished.

  “Ay sir.”

  “Not very flattering, are they?”

  “No sir. I have a second…er…draft of the letter referring to you.”

  Carey took that one, glanced at it, read it carefully and smiled.

  “Very subtly done, Mr Bell,” he said, “Burghley will make the same response to this as he would to the other if he disagreed with it.” He waited.

  Bell looked down at his desk. “Sir Robert,” he said, “I will be frank with you. I served the old lord faithfully and I will serve his son in the same way. If the lord Warden writes a letter like that to my lord Burghley, you will never see it and nor will I…er…improve it as I have with this. However, Lowther is not my lord and…I would rather be your friend than his.”

  “I already regard you as a friend, Mr Bell,” said Carey, his heart lifting. Surely it couldn’t be as easy as this, surely the man would want money?

  Bell smiled at him, a remarkably sweet smile for such a skull-like face.

  “May I have the other letters back, then sir?”

  Carey handed them over, keeping the one that described, in withering terms, his doings of the Friday. Before his eyes, Richard Bell put the three letters into the dispatch bag and sealed it.

  “May I keep this?” he asked, waving the paper.

  “I hope you’ll burn it.”

  “Naturally, I will,” said Carey, “but I want to be sure I’ve understood it properly.”