3 A Surfeit of Guns: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (14 page)

Man? He seemed small and light, and there was a smear of gold above his face, beneath his dark woollen cap.

“Och,” said the Graham water-bailiff, visibly relaxing. “I ken who that is.” He shook his head and tutted.

“Well?” said Carey impatiently.

“That wild boy, Young Hutchin.”

It was. As the figure came closer he resolved into Young Hutchin, wearing the black livery he had worn for Scrope’s funeral, bending low over his hobby’s neck and riding like one demented.

As he came up to them at last, he reined in and grinned. “Do you have a message for me?” Carey demanded, tension showing in his voice. Young Hutchin looked surprised.

“Nay, sir. Your lady sister said I wis to serve ye for page if I could catch up to ye, sir. That’s why I’m here.”

The boy had a very guileless blue stare and for a moment even Dodd believed him.

“You’re lying,” said Carey with emphasis. “My sister would no more send you to be my page at King James’s court than parade ten naked virgins mounted on milkwhite mares through the Debateable Land at night.”

Hutchin’s face fell slightly. “She did so,” he muttered. “I’m to be yer page.”

“She did not. Go back to Carlisle.”

“Ah willna.”

“Young Hutchin,” said Carey through his teeth. “I have enough to do without nursemaiding you through the Scotch court. Go back to Carlisle.”

“Ye canna make me.”

“I can tan your impudent arse for you, if you don’t do as you’re damned well told!” roared Carey.

The water-bailiff tutted and rode forward. “Sir,” he murmured modestly. “A word wi’ ye.”

“Yes, what is it, Mr Graham?”

“The lad’s my cousin’s child and he’s three parts gone to the bad already.”

“Do you want King James’s court to complete the job?”

“Ye canna make him go back if he doesnae want to. He’ll only ride out o’ sight and then trail us intae Dumfries alone.”

Carey growled under his breath. “Are you telling me I have to take him as my page and under my protection or risk him coming to Dumfries on his own anyway?”

“Ay, sir. That’s the size of it.”

“God damn it to hell and perdition. What the Devil possessed you, Young Hutchin? I don’t need a bloody page.”

“Ye do sir, at court. Ye canna be at court without a servant to attend ye. What would the Scottish lords think?”

“Who gives a damn what the Scottish lords think? And anyway, that’s not why you came.”

Hutchin grinned knowingly. “Nay, sir. I had a fancy to see the Scotch court for maself.”

Carey stared at him narrow-eyed for a moment, as if trying to size up exactly how much he understood of the world. Eventually he shrugged.

“On your own head be it,” he said. “I don’t want you and if you’ve a particle of sense you’ll turn around and head back to Carlisle.”

Young Hutchin sat and waited Carey out. Carefully, the Courtier discharged his dags into the air, causing Young Hutchin’s horse to pirouette and rear. If Carey thought that would make Young Hutchin think twice, he was mistaken: the lad was a Borderer born and bred and had heard gunfire since babyhood. He waited until Carey had gestured his small party onwards with an impatient hand, and fell in at the back looking as meek and prim as a maiden. Although if what Dodd had heard about the Scottish court was true, one of Carey’s fanciful virgins on horseback would have been safer there.

They ate late of the food they had brought with them by the side of the track in Annan, after being refused point blank when they offered to buy anything the womenfolk happened to have around. The women claimed bitterly that there was not a scrap of food left anywhere since the King’s harbingers had been through and they had seen nothing but forest berries and fresh peas for two days. The water-bailiff was known there and got some guarded nods.

The afternoon passed wearily for Dodd in the long complex climb up and through low hills and bogs to Dumfries. Carey was enjoying himself again. Some of the way he was whistling one of the repetitive complicated ditties he and his brother-in-law seemed to set such store by, to Dodd’s mystification. What was the point of a song that had no story? Finally Dodd rode a little ahead, to get away from the wheedling little tune. The countryside gave him a bad feeling in his gut all the way: true, he was legal this time, and riding with the water-bailiff. It didn’t help. Every time previously that he had passed into Scotland, except for the occasional message to Edinburgh when he was a lad, had been at dead of night and very very quietly. He did know the area somewhat, different though it looked in daylight, although the Johnstones and the Maxwells were both a little spry to be stealing cows off too regularly. A few years back there had been some pickings when the two surnames had been at each other’s throats. They were quiet at the moment and Dodd wondered gloomily what they were brewing. There were plentiful signs of devastation about: broken walls, burnt cottages, even a roofless pele-tower here and there, many fields going out of cultivation. The Courtier seemed less morally outraged by it, though, presumably because the sufferers were only Scots.

Nearer Dumfries there was less waste, more fertile farmed land, but still it looked bad. Some of the farmers had taken their harvest in early, no doubt to take advantage of the King’s Court. But that meant the oats and wheat that was left over would be subject to rot later on. Oh, there was a famine brewing for next year and no mistake: first Bothwell and his men and then this, the Court and the Scottish army. Nowhere in the world could hope to feed so many people so suddenly and not suffer. Not to mention the horses. Dodd thought he would mention it to his wife, so she would keep any surplus from their harvest and not sell it.

Monday 10th July 1592, evening

They came into Dumfries at the southwesternmost end of the town, on the path from Bankend that splashed through the Goosedub bogs by the Catstrand burn, past the evil green of the Watslacks on their right before passing into the town itself at the Kirkgate Port. Dumfries had no walls. It was amply defended by being built on a soggy bend of the River Nith with river on two sides and bog on the other two.

To Dodd and Young Hutchin the town was a howling maze of chaos, full of people with strange ways of speaking and strange cuts and patterns to their jacks. The water-bailiff said he would go and stay with a woman of the town that he happened to know and disappeared among the beer-drinking crowds before either Carey or Dodd could find out where. Carey shrugged and began threading through the eternal evening twilight of July, patiently asking in his fluent Scots at the three inns and five alehouses if anyone had room for them. Mostly the Dumfries citizens laughed in his face and Dodd began to wonder if cobbles were as bad to sleep on as they looked. Typically, as the sky darkened a roof of cloud formed and it was coming on to rain a fine mizzle. Tents had ominously mushroomed in the Market Place itself, huddles of pavilions pitched between the Tolbooth and the Fish Cross, and rows of better quality, some of them painted and coloured with badges, behind the Mercat Cross. Crowds of men streamed in and out of the best house they had seen in Dumfries, a large solid stone building with pillared arches at its ground floor entrance, and more were sheltering under them, richly dressed and leaning against the stone or playing dice like men who were used to waiting.

Carey dismounted and led his horse to one group, spoke softly and handed over some coins. The Dodd brothers, Sim’s Will Croser and Young Hutchin watched hopefully until they saw the sneers.

Carey came back to them shaking his head.

“Sir?” asked Dodd, mentally girding his loins for a night in the open.

“I am reliably informed that the lad might have some chance of lodging,” Carey replied drily, “but none of us do.” If Young Hutchin understood what the Courtier meant by that, he gave no sign of it.

“If we go out of town a little way there might be a dry place we could light a fire…” Dodd said, preparing to make the best of it and hoping Carey would not sleep a wink on the hard cold ground.

Carey smiled. “One more place to try.”

They trailed back through the crowds and tents and horses, picking their way over the dung that already lay in heaps at street corners, to one of the smaller inns at the corner of Cavart’s Vennel.

Again Carey dismounted and spoke to one of the men lolling by the door picking his teeth, handed over some more money. They waited while the ponies behind stamped their feet tiredly, and ugly-looking men in jacks passed by eyeing the supplies and livestock. Dodd eyed them right back.

At last the servingman came back, shrugged and gestured. Carey smiled, led them forwards under the low arch, where men were already settled down for the night, bundled up in their cloaks with a little fire in a corner, and into the inn’s tiny yard. It was clogged with horses, tethered in rows and looked after by harassed grooms.

“Red Sandy, Sim’s Will and Hutchin, take care of the horses,” Carey ordered. “Unload the packs, pile them up and have a man guarding them at all times, no matter what happens. I’m going to see the old Warden.”

Sir John Carmichael was finishing a late supper in the tiny common room, seated at the head of one of the trestle tables, with his followers packed tight on the benches. He had his court clothes on which made him look incongruously gaudy in gold and red brocade, and a broad smile on his face.

“God’s blood,” he boomed as Carey walked in, followed by Dodd. “It’s Mr Carey.”

Carey smiled and made his bow, which Sir John returned.

“I’m Sir Robert now, my lord Warden,” he said. “And my father sends his best regards.”

“Ay, and how is he? How’s his gout? Och, sit ye down, and Jimmy, will ye go ben and fetch vittles for the Deputy. Ay, that’s fine, shove up, lads, make room.”

Dodd had never been so close to so many Scots in his life unless he was killing them, and certainly not in their own land. He sat down gingerly on the bench where a space appeared and wondered if there was any hope at all of getting out if they turned nasty. Carey perched on the end next to Carmichael and smiled.

“And also either his congratulations or his commiserations, depending on your mood, at your resignation from the Office of West March Warden,” Carey continued in the complicated way he could command without a tremor.

“Congratulations?” shouted Carmichael, his round red face beaming. “I wis never sae glad to get shot of an office in my life. D’ye ken what the King pays? Ain hundred pound Scots, that’s all, and I spend more than that on horsefeed in a season.”

Carmichael had a vigorous tufting of white hair all over his head, and broad capable hands, and his face had an almost childlike straightforwardness about it.

Carey winced sympathetically. “I had heard tell the place was ruination for anyone but a magnate,” he said.

“Ay, it’s the truth. And not a hope of justice fra the scurvy English either,” Carmichael added with a fake glower. “Ye’re Deputy Warden now under Scrope, I hear. How d’ye find it?”

“More complex than I expected,” Carey answered. “And harder work.”

“They do say peddling gie’s a man a terrible thirst,” said Carmichael with a grin. Carey had the grace to grin back and accept a horn mug filled with beer. To his surprise, Dodd was given one as well. The beer was sour. “By God, that was a good tale I heard about you at Netherby. Jock o’ the Peartree held prisoner in his own brother’s tower…Nae doubt that’s when Bothwell’s ruffians found out about the horses at Falkland.”

“It was. I can’t think how I let it slip out.”

Carmichael barked a laugh. “Ye did me an ill turn there, ye ken, lad. My cousin Willie Carmichael of Reidmire at Gretna’s in an awful taking about a black horse that was stolen that night and he reckons Willie Johnstone of Kirkhill’s got it.” Carey raised his brows and said nothing. “See, the horse is the devil of a fine racer, though he’s only a two year old, he’ll bear away the bells at every meet he goes to next year if Cousin Willie can get him back and he’s writing me letters every week giving me grief about it like an auld Edinburgh wifie. I’ve written to Scrope about it, but can ye do aught for me?”

“I’ll try,” said Carey. “You know what it’s like with horses.”

“Och, ye canna tell me anything about it. I mind the time some Dodds hit us for our stables, once, stripped out the lot of them.”

“Did they?” said Carey neutrally, not looking at the Sergeant. “What did they get?”

“Och, it was a while back, a fair few years now, but they were nice horses—there was Penny, and Crown, and Farthing and Shilling…”

Dodd buried his nose in his beer. Was the old Warden teasing him?

“Dodds and English Armstrongs it was, a nice clean job of it too. We never got them back nor a penny of compensation.”

Carey coughed. “I’m very sorry to hear of it, Sir John. I’m afraid I can’t help you with them, but I’ll see what I can do about your cousin Willie’s black horse. What’s it called?”

“Blackie, I expect,” said Carmichael. “The man’s got nae imagination.” He tossed a chicken leg at a pile of dogs in the corner which promptly dissolved into a growling fight. “Meantime, what can I do for ye, Sir Robert?”

“Tell me about your successor as Warden.”

“Lord Maxwell.” Carmichael nodded and smoothed out his white moustache. “He’s clever and he’s got something in the wind.”