A Clash of Spheres

by P. F. Chisholm

  “Who else could Solomon be?”

  “It is a foul calumny on the honour of Queen Mary…”

  “Of course, but…”

  “We’ve men doing naething but guarding him. We’ve asked at the Steelyard and Herr Kauffman Hochstetter has nae idea who it could be—they don’t want the King dead either.”

  “Of course not. There would be chaos…”

  “Ah dinna see what else we can do,” concluded the Lord Chamberlain, with a superior little smile. “The King is safe.”

  You could try and use your imagination, Carey thought, considering what his own father, Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon, would be doing down in London if he had a warning like that. Oh sorry, you don’t have an imagination. Based on something that had happened once at Kenilworth a long time ago when he was a lad, Carey went back and asked the firework makers if you could aim a rocket for the King.

  “Well, ye could, if ye knew in advance where he was gaunae be, but the King likes to move around and so likely as not ye’d end up killing somebody else and ye wouldnae get a second chance.”

  “Could you not bring a gun into the Court and fire it under cover of the explosions from the fireworks?”

  “Ay, ye could, if ye can get one in range, but he doesnae like anyone near him he doesnae ken and certainly naebody with a gun, he really doesnae like that and I heard tell he has armour under his clothes, which is why he willna shift his shirt.”

  “Really?”

  “Ay, it’s ainly chainmail they say, but it’s good and fine and it’ll keep knives and spears off. Not bullets, though, unless they’re from a distance. And guns are terrible for accuracy. A pistol maybe, but ye’d need to be up close and it’s verra hard for anybody he doesnae know to get sae close.”

  Carey was thinking of King James with new respect—he had clearly put some careful thought into not getting murdered like so many of his ancestors.

  ***

  Dodd found that Young Hutchin Graham had seemingly attached himself to him and so Dodd, who was bored at Court and really only needed to attend Carey when he went hunting, paced around Holyrood with the boy, who was interested in Lord Spynie’s rooms—and while following Dodd was less noticeable and less vulnerable.

  He found them, like most Royal apartments, to be a series of rooms leading into each other with an antechamber and a single set of double doors giving entrance at one end and a small spiral staircase for the servants at the other. He haunted the servants’ end of the rooms and was kicked out twice and then came to Dodd who was waiting in the courtyard for him, shaking his head.

  “Ay, it’s too hard to get to him in his bed.”

  “Unless ye sell yer arse.”

  “I’ve been talking to Crispin, the youngest of his henchmen, down in the buttery, and they all have to sit around in his parlour of an evening, playing lute or cards or some such, and then he picks one of them tae gae to bed with, and it’s usually different, though half the time it’s Jeremy, the biggest one.”

  “Ay,” said Dodd, considering, “are ye thinking of killing him or warning him?”

  “Killing him,” said Young Hutchin, “o’ course.”

  “Well he didna kill you. Nor any of yourn.”

  “So what?”

  “So mebbe ye could try warning him, or frightening him.”

  “Why?”

  “If ye kill him, ye’ll likely hang for it. D’ye want that?”

  “Ah will no’, I’ll get away wi’ it…”

  “Ye might, sure. But this is Edinburgh and ye’ve a powerful long way back to the Graham lands and if ye kill Lord Spynie, I’m thinking the King will be a tad mithered wi’ ye.”

  “I’m mithered wi’ Spynie.”

  “Ay,” said Dodd drily, “but it’ll take ye longer tae die when they hang ye. Think about it.”

  “Well what else can I do? I’ve come all this way and spent a ton of money on this.”

  “Ay, and boasted about it.”

  Hutchin didn’t answer that. “Well? Are ye saying I shouldna kill him nor knife him nor beat him up…?”

  Dodd sighed. “I’m saying ye canna. Ye’re nobbut a reiver and ye havenae the men nor the way of getting at him. He’s got henchmen, ye havenae. He’s rich, ye’re not. He’s the King’s Minion and ye’re the son of Hutchin Graham, that got caught and hanged two years ago for reiving the Fenwicks’ cattle and killing two of their men.”

  Young Hutchin’s face got longer and sourer. “Ye’re saying I canna…”

  “I am. Let it be. Come back when ye’re older and…?”

  “Would ye say that about the Elliots?”

  “It’s different.”

  “I may not get the chance again. Mebbe I’ll be dead by next year like me dad?”

  “Ay,” said Dodd, staring into space, “that’s likely.”

  “Ye’re useless,” snarled Young Hutchin. “I willna. I’ll get him somehow.”

  He marched off with his head held high and Dodd shrugged and started whittling a piece of firewood with his knife.

  ***

  Nobody could just up and go a hundred miles to Edinburgh from Carlisle, unless you were a young man riding post. It took complicated organisation and a lot of people. First Janet called on her younger brother, Geordie, at a loose end at her father’s tower, to come and run Gilsland for her in her absence. She gave him a long list of things he must do or not do: what if she wasn’t back in a month, what if they got raided, although he protested he knew all about that—and made him repeat the list three times. Then she got hold of her sister-in-law, another Eliza, and gave her a longer list of things she needed to cope with, including getting the flax retted when it was ready because that was the only crop not ruined by the wet weather and she was very glad she had planted so much of it. Eliza was young but steady and seemed to have good sense, whereas her brother Geordie was as flighty as a maid, like all men.

  If she had been a man she might have ridden over to Keswick where the Allemayne miners were and asked some questions, but Keswick was sixty miles in the wrong direction entirely and she didn’t have the time.

  Widow Ridley was charmed at the idea of going on a trip to Edinburgh for the first time in her life and sent her grandson ten miles there and back to her inn to lock it up properly and get her best kirtle and hat and some other things. She couldn’t ride anymore, of course, but Janet knew they would need a cart anyway and she could sit on that. At least the weather was frosty, and looked set to stay that way, which had hardened up the mud. They would go on the drovers roads, winding through the hills until they got to Hawick and then they would continue over the main road from the south to Edinburgh.

  Janet couldn’t empty Gilsland in the raiding season, but she took as many of the men as she dared, six of them, all in their Armstrong jacks and helmets, one Ridley, and a boy to run messages. Widow Ridley was chatting nineteen to the dozen in the cart and Janet had managed some kind of horse for each of the men, and old Shilling for herself.

  They needed at least half a stone of food a day for all those people and thriftily Janet took the oldest sausages still hanging on from last year’s pigkilling, not the new ones that weren’t properly smoked yet. That was one reason why she needed the cart and also for last year’s linen as well.

  She thought it might take as long as ten days to get to Edinburgh, considering the cart, and she quailed at the dangerous country they would be travelling through, and how much the whole expedition would cost. Or rather her head quailed; her heart was telling her that this was no impulse, she needed to be in Edinburgh. She needed to rescue Henry from himself.

  On the cart, under all the linen and uninteresting loaves of bread, was also a carefully calculated three small barrels of her own flowerwater, distilled in the summer, of elderflower, of raspberry, of blackberry, when it had been too wet to go out. Around Janet’s waist,
under her stays, was Dodd’s moneybelt with half of Dodd’s money from London in it.

  And so she set off, her face set, her hat pinned to her cap, her second-best kirtle on her back and a shawl over her shoulders that her mother had knitted, for luck, her best kirtle and spare shift and her London hat stowed in the cart as well. She had two ponies pulling it but she soon decided to put two more in the traces, for it was heavy.

  It was dark, long before dawn, the winter stars across the sky like silver dust and Widow Ridley stepping out instead of sitting in the cart on the beautifully made and fulled linen. Janet was proud of that, it wasn’t easy to find places to stretch the linen where it wouldn’t get muddy but she had done it and she was proud of the bolts of cloth she and her gossips had spun and woven last winter. Maybe it wasn’t fine enough to pass through a gold wedding ring, like in the ballads, but fine enough.

  She had changed her mind about buying Scots shillings from Ritchie Graham of Brackenhill since Brackenhill was in the Debateable Land. Better not on the whole to alert the March to her existence. She would use the little smuggler’s road through Newcastleton, to avoid the Debateable Land and Liddesdale, join the road that led through Hawick and so to Edinburgh. She hoped. Once she was past Hawick she should be well enough. It was seventy-five miles, she thought, or thereabouts, all the way to Edinburgh, nobody really knew for sure, and she hoped the weather would stay frosty and that they made the fifteen miles or more to Newcastleton before nightfall.

  As the hours passed she moved back and forth on Shilling, seeing the tidied winter gardens, seeing the infield where they had plowed in the barley and the wheat since it had gone bad in the wet, seeing some outfield that had been abandoned to marsh grasses, seeing horses and cattle penned up away from the road. They got past Bewcastle and she thought of stopping there but they had made good time so she tried for Newcastleton. She knew there were eyes on the hills that were watching her little party and it was only a matter of time before…

  It was almost a relief when a patch of hillside moved and became twenty men in jacks and helmets as the sun westered behind them and shot rays of copper and gold under the grey clouds. Who were they? Were they Elliots or Grahams or Armstrongs…?

  Widow Ridley woke up from her snooze on the cart and began knitting again and the two men who were helping to push, mounted up.

  Janet drove her heels into Shilling who had been stumbling along like the most exhausted horse in the world and the old hobby caught the scent of the other horses and sidestepped then drove forward. He even lifted his mane and whinneyed and she patted him to calm him.

  Thanks be to God and Our Lady, she knew the man at the head of the troop. In fact he was her second cousin.

  “Now then, Skinabake Armstrong,” she said to him as he came towards her and he tipped his steel cap to her.

  “Now then, Missus Armstrong,” he said, using her family name not her married name. But still he knew who she was married to.

  “Och,” said Janet with a big smile, “I’m glad to see ye, Skinabake, there’s terrible thieves and reivers hereabouts.”

  “Ay,” said Skinabake, since in fact his troop of twenty were some of the worst of them.

  He fell in on her left and his men paced on either side of the road, hemming them in. Under strict instructions, the men didn’t look to right or left but kept on going, except for Widow Ridley’s grandson, who peered nervously from one reiver to the other.

  “Sergeant Dodd ordered me tae Edinburgh,” she lied, “he wants tae buy some feed and so we’ve got the linen to sell, o’ course. He’s busy off somewhere at the moment.”

  “Ay, where is he?” asked Skinabake, his brow creasing. Sergeant Dodd in a known location was one thing, Sergeant Dodd roaming around anywhere was another.

  “Ah dinna ken, Skinabake, d’ye think he tells me everything?” she laughed and the frown deepened. “Now I wis just thinking, it would be great to see some of my ain family for this part of the March is allus tickle and worse at the moment, and I could do with some right fighters to protect maself and Widow Ridley here.”

  “Ay,” said Skinabake, looking back at the cart and seeing Widow Ridley waving cheerily from the top where she was driving.

  Janet skewered Skinabake with another smile.

  “How’s yer mother, Mariam Ridley?” she asked, then over her shoulder to the cart, “is that a cousin of yours, Widow Ridley?”

  “Ay, mebbe.”

  “Well enough,” said Skinabake, not liking to admit he often hid out with his mother when Sir John Forster was on the trod. “Going on for sixty now.”

  “Is she, by God? I wouldnae have thought of her as fifty yet,” said Janet. “So, Skinabake, could ye see yer way to protecting me and Widow Ridley and my people until we get to Edinburgh? Ye’ll come well oot of it, I promise, I’ll sell the linen and pay ye.”

  It was notorious that reivers didn’t like cloth, although they took it, of course. It couldn’t run.

  The six young men in their English Armstrong jacks continued stolidly, as instructed and young Andy Ridley, Widow Ridley’s grandson was well back and almost out of sight on a fast pony so he could ride for help if need be.

  “Ay,” said Skinabake, his brow frowning ever more deeply.

  “Come on,” said Janet, “Ye can do it—or are ye out on the trod yerselves?”

  She knew that they weren’t, nobody had a lump of burning turf on his lance and they had been heading towards England at sunset. That meant they were on a raid, she knew it and so did they, but she had some hope they wouldn’t know that she knew it.

  “Nay,” said Skinabake, “ainly…ah…visiting.”

  Visiting Carletons and Tailors and Musgraves, I’ll be bound, Janet thought but didn’t say.

  Skinabake licked his lips. She moved Shilling to block his sight of the cart and smiled. “Will ye dae it, Skinabake?” she said winningly. “I’d feel much safer wi’ you and yer men guarding us.”

  Of course he could easily tell his men to take the cart and the horses and leave them to walk home. He could but she was his second cousin. If he did rob her he would have to kill all of them, especially Janet herself, and word might still get back to Will the Tod, Janet’s father, which would be bad for him, and also to Sergeant Dodd, which would probably be fatal. Janet had just offered him a way to get money with much less risk.

  His brow suddenly cleared and straightened and he smiled his gap-toothed grin at Janet.

  “Ay, o’ course missus, we’d be pleased tae.”

  “Ye will?” gushed Janet, “Och, that makes me feel so much safer, I heard there wis Elliots round about.”

  “Ay,” said Skinabake wisely, “Ah heard Wee Colin’s trying to rescue his reputation after Dick o’ Dryhope’s tower. Did ye ever hear the like?”

  “Nay, I didnae.”

  Skinabake sent half his men off with instructions she didn’t hear but could guess at perfectly well. They were to wait until whoever they were raiding had heard that Skinabake’s troop was guarding Janet Dodd’s expedition to Edinburgh and then they were to hit them hard and fast and drive off the prime stock.

  Oh well, thought Janet, at least he’s guarding us. He put five men ahead and five behind and rode alongside Janet until she took pity on Shilling’s theatrical stumbles and dismounted to walk for a bit as the sun disappeared and the evening came on and it got colder. She really hoped she hadn’t missed the drover’s road and that Newcastleton was close and then she saw the little red lights of the village over a brow of the hill and put two of the men at the front of the cart to stop it going too fast down the hill. Widow Ridley hopped off the cart and walked next to her, making eyes at Skinabake who pretended not to see. With luck there would be a packtrain she could add herself to, and say goodbye to Skinabake, who could not be trusted.

  At the tiny inn she found that the regular packtrain from Carlisle was a d
ay ahead of her which was a pity but couldn’t be helped.

  She and Widow Ridley doubled up in one bed and half the men went in the other bed and the other half of her Armstrongs kept watch in the stables to see nothing surprising happened to the horses. Skinabake and his lot refused her offer of a room for them, on the grounds that the village was full of Liddles, and disappeared to somewhere on the dark hills, probably stealing chickens. And they were halfway through the most difficult part of the journey and the linen and the booze and herself and Widow Ridley were still intact and the weather was still frosty so the mud was hard as iron. Perhaps only four more days to go, thought Janet, as she dozed off with Widow Ridley snorting in her ear.

  Christmas Week 1592

  Carey was checking the kitchens as Christmas loomed and the Court filled up with holly and ivy. He was painstakingly wandering into and poking around each of the four different kitchens at Holyrood, talking charmingly to the cooks and finding out what manner of men were working there and who they were. He found that, as with the Queen’s kitchens in Whitehall, their fathers and grandfathers had served the Kings and Queens of Scotland for generations and also none of them knew when or if the King would eat the food they produced. There were no new cooks except a boy of eight newly apprenticed and all of them were Protestants. Peculation there was in plenty, so that King James was probably paying for three times as much food as the Court actually ate, but that was traditional.

  He talked to the gardeners, he talked to the huntsmen, he made a foray with Lady Schevengen into the Queen’s apartments and talked to her servants, and he found nothing. He checked among the holly and ivy hanging around the carvings and found no knives or crossbows there, he searched carefully through all the public rooms and found no weapons, he interviewed each member of the guard with Maitland beside him, and found again, no Catholics, only Protestants.

  The King went hunting almost every day and when he could he went too, and found that the beaters and attendants were sometimes Catholics, coming as they sometimes did from the Highlands, but that the King was happy with this and that the kind of Catholics they were had barely heard of the Pope and generally gave their allegiance to some abbot or other.