3 A Surfeit of Guns: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (15 page)

“Against the Johnstones?”

“Of course. Who else? He was uncommon willing to be made Warden, which means he’ll use his Wardenry against Johnstone, and he’s rich and he’s cunning. I dinna like the man myself, ye ken, but he’s a good soldier.”

“Catholic too, I understand.”

“Ay, and that’s another matter. Ye may mind the trouble he caused hereabouts in the Armada year?”

“Didn’t the King arrest him for backing the Spanish?”

“Ay, and executed a couple of dozen of his kin.”

Carey whistled. “And he’s going to be made the new Lord Warden?”

Carmichael shrugged. “The King’s a very forgiving prince when he wants.”

“Must be.”

“Ay, well, Maxwell’s been in Spain and France and all over, brought home some fancy foreign tastes. A while back he had his ain personal wine merchant fra foreign parts, and his ain personal wine merchant’s wifie as well.” Carey raised his eyebrows quizzically and Carmichael barked with laughter. “Ye wait till ye see her, lad. She’s moved on fra the Maxwell now, dropped him like an auld glove once the Earl of Mar showed an interest in her. Even the King tolerates her and God knows, he’s no love o’ women nor foreigners.”

“Spanish?” asked Carey.

Carmichael shook his head. “Italians.”

“How very cosmopolitan of the Maxwell.” Carmichael snorted and finished his beer. “Tell me, my lord Warden,” Carey went on, “any Germans about the Court at the moment?”

This produced an interesting result. Carmichael drew back and went still.

“What d’ye know of him?”

“I saw him arrested by the Earl of Mar.” Carey described the sinister encounter, which had been coloured over for Dodd and almost obscured by the wounding of Long George.

“Well, I dinna ken meself, because I’ve not been in Edinburgh inside a year, but I think he was an alchemist. I think he was going to make the King a Philosopher’s Stone or gold or some such, in Jedburgh, and it all went wrong. He made an enemy of the King and that’s an ill thing to do, mark my words.”

“What happened to him?”

“I heard, he got the Boot to learn him better manners and then the King handed him over to some Hanse merchanters from Lubeck who hanged him for some bill he’d fouled over in Germany.”

Carey sighed. “Damn,” he said. “I wanted to talk to him.”

Carmichael shrugged.

“How about his Majesty the King, God bless him?” Carey continued after a moment. “Do you know what he’s planning to do with his army?”

“Hit Liddesdale and burn a lot of towers, nae doubt,” said Carmichael comfortably. “He’s got blood in his eye for the Grahams and nae mistake, he blames them entirely for the raid and he says they’re all enchanters and witches like the Earl of Bothwell for the way they could carry off so many horses from so far away.”

“They’re highly experienced raiders…” said Carey.

Carmichael smiled. “Don’t tell him,” he said. “Ye’ll make him worse.”

“And the Italians?”

“Who knows?” Carmichael belched softly into his napkin and wiped his moustache. “Now then, Sir Robert, how’re ye for a place to lay your head the night?”

Carey shook his head. “Worse than the Holy Family on tax night in Bethlehem.”

“How many have ye got?”

“Myself, Sergeant Dodd here, two men and a boy.”

Carmichael’s eyebrows drew together. “A boy?”

Carey spread his hands helplessly. “The bloody child followed me half way here on some half-witted whim of his own, and rather than have him come into Dumfries by himself and take his chances, I let him join me.”

Carmichael harrumphed and shook his head. “Ay, well.”

“We’ve our own supplies though.”

“Hmn. Let’s take a look at them.”

Carmichael came to his feet, followed politely by Carey and picked his way round the benches and men, went through into the yard. There Sim’s Will and Red Sandy had found a clear patch of ground where they had hobbled the ponies in a circle and put Thunder and the packs in the middle. Hutchin had his doublet off and was rubbing the animals down at a frenetic speed.

Carmichael spotted Thunder instantly, and was naturally transfixed. Other horsemen in the yard, some of them worryingly well-dressed and armed, were standing eyeing the animal too. Carmichael smiled with the pure childlike pleasure of a Borderer faced with prime stock.

“Now there’s a handsome beast,” he said to Carey. Carey nodded noncommittally.

“My tournament charger, Thunder. I brought him in case there was any tilting.”

Carmichael evidently didn’t believe this. “Ay,” he said knowingly, pushing between the hobbies to pat Thunder’s nose and feel his legs. Dodd instantly bristled at the sight of a Scot sizing up one of their horses, but Carey seemed relaxed. Carmichael slapped the high arched neck lovingly.

“By God, this one puts Blackie in his place. Would ye be interested in selling him?”

Carey looked indifferent. “I hadn’t considered it, my lord Warden,” he lied. “I wouldn’t have thought anyone at this Court could afford him.”

Carmichael’s smile stiffened slightly. “Och, I don’t know about that,” he said. “It’s only we dinna choose to throw our money awa’. Would ye be open to offers?”

Carey examined his fingernails. “That would depend on what they were,” he said.

Carmichael’s smile relaxed to naturalness again. “Ay,” he said. “Nae doubt. Well, Sir Robert, if ye’ll have yer men bring the packs intae the inn we can all budge up and find space for ye this night at least. Would ye mind a pallet on the floor, if I put ye in wi’ my steward?”

“Not in the least, my lord. Half an hour ago I was bracing myself for cobbles.”

“Och,” said Carmichael. “They’d be soft enough by now, what wi’ all the animals in town. Would ye credit the place?”

“Oh, I’ve seen worse, my lord. Far far worse.”

“Ay, the Queen’s progresses are said to be a marvel to behold.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

Tuesday 11th July 1592, dawn

Dodd slept extremely badly that night, his head on one of the packs, a knife in his hand and one of the horse-tethers in the other, under a canvas awning. The night was warm enough but the noise of drinking and fighting in the town never stopped and it seemed that every time he shut his eyes he was in the middle of some horrible nightmare in which he was a mouse in a den of cats, all speaking broad Scots. The Courtier was inside on a straw pallet, bundled into his cloak and no doubt giving grief to Carmichael’s steward with his snores. That was some satisfaction.

Bleary-eyed and itchy with ferocious Scotch vermin at dawn, Dodd relieved his brother to try and snatch an extra hour, and began feeding and watering the horses. Young Hutchin was curled up among the packs still asleep; Dodd had excused him standing a watch on the grounds that he was one of the valuables they were guarding.

Noises and lights inside the inn announced that Carmichael was no stranger to brutally early rising. The Courtier appeared in the doorway, also scratching like an old hound, and went to wash his face in a bucket of water.

“Morning, Sergeant,” he said cheerily as he went past combing his hair, and Dodd grunted at him.

They ate a good breakfast of bread and ale and then left Red Sandy and Sim’s Will with the packs to go and visit Lord Maxwell in his town house at the other end of Dumfries. Carey took Thunder as his mount, which seemed a further piece of complacent lunacy to Dodd, and Young Hutchin rode one of the packponies.

The market-place was heaving like a ten-day-old corpse. The reason was easy to see: drawn up in a circle around the Mercat Cross were wagons and handcarts full of food, round loaves of rye and oat bread, round cheeses of varying levels of decrepitude and serving men crowding up to buy from the barkers sitting on the wagons. Dodd recognised a JP stamped on the cheeses and pointed it out to Carey who seemed to find it funny. If King James’s court was eating rations originally intended for the Carlisle garrison (and rejected on grounds of age), that was fine by Dodd.

The press of people was so tight, it was hard to get their horses to push through, so Dodd and Young Hutchin dismounted and led them forward. Carey stayed mounted for the better vantage point. Then, just as they came to the schoolhouse on the corner of Friar’s Vennel, empty of schoolboys but filled with men, Carey saw something that made him stop and turn his horse’s head away and to the right.

Dodd followed his stare and saw the tall severely-dressed woman in her grey riding habit and white lacy falling band, riding pillion behind a groom among the crowds by one of the wagons. He struggled to keep up with Carey who was shouldering Thunder through the close-packed obdurate Scotsmen. Just as Carey almost reached her, she touched the groom’s shoulder, their horse stopped, and the groom dismounted to hand her down. Dodd wondered if she was pregnant, because there was something oddly stiff in the way she moved.

“Lady Widdrington, Lady Widdrington,” called out Carey with a boyish laugh of excitement, sliding from his horse and ducking around the animal to follow her. “My lady, I…”

She paused just long enough to look over her shoulder at him. The long grave face coloured up and the grey eyes sparkled, but she shook her head severely and turned her back on him. Carey stopped in mid-bow with a guilty expression.

“Bugger,” said Dodd.

Facing Carey now was a wide balding Englishman in a magnificent black velvet suit and furred gown. He had corrugated ears and a long sharp nose. Carey straightened up quickly.

“What business do you have with my wife, Sir Robert?” demanded Sir Henry Widdrington in a very ugly tone of voice.

For once in his life it was clear Carey couldn’t think of anything to say. Dodd loosened his sword and pushed through the crowd: in his experience, elderly English headmen with the gout never went anywhere without their men and they were in lawless Scotland now. Carey seemed to have remembered it too: his hand was also on his swordhilt.

Sir Henry Widdrington limped up close to Carey and pushed him in the chest with a knobbly finger. Instinctively the crowd widened around them.

“I have forbidden my wife—
my wife
, Sir Robert—to have any further conversation with you under any circumstances at all.”

Yes, thought Dodd, he does have backing: there’s that spotty Widdrington boy over by the inn gate and four more I don’t like the look of in the crowd behind the Deputy, and what about those two over by the horses…Why the hell didn’t we bring the patrol, at least, poor silly men though they are, we’re almost naked in this pack of Scotsmen and thieves. He began to sweat and look for good ways out of the marketplace.

Carey was still silent which seemed to enrage Widdrington.

“I know, ye see,” he hissed, still poking Carey in the chest. “I know what ye were at when I made the mistake of letting her go to London in the Armada year, you and your pandering sister between ye.”

Och God, groaned Dodd inwardly, knowing how Carey loved his sister and spotting another knot of six men at their ease just within the courtyard. Carey however gave the impression of being struck to stone, with only his eyes too bright a blue for a statue.

“…and as for Netherby…” Rage made Widdrington quiver and gulp air. “What did ye give her for the loan of my horses, eh, Carey? How did ye persuade the bitch, eh?” Poke, poke went the finger. “Eh?
Eh
?”

Carey’s face was a mask of contempt.

“You know your lady wife very little, Sir Henry,” he said, in a soft icy voice. “She has too much honour for your grubby suspicious little mind. As Christ is my witness, there has never been anything improper between us.”

Sir Henry Widdrington spat copiously on Carey’s boots.

Dodd was directly behind Carey when this happened. Knowingly risking his life, he held Carey’s right elbow and whispered urgently, “Dinna hit him, sir, he’s got backing.”

Carey’s face was masklike and remote. Sir Henry seemed to be waiting for something, watching them both closely.

“Hit him?” Carey repeated coldly and clearly. “I only hit my equals or my superiors, Dodd. I would never strike a poor senile gouty old man, that has the breeding of a London trull and the manners of a Dutch pig.”

Well, it was nice to see the way he turned his back on Widdrington, insolence in every line of him, and remount Thunder. Perhaps having Thunder prance a showy curvette was taking defiance a little far, but it at least cleared the area around them slightly so that Dodd and Young Hutchin could mount as well. Carey led the way to the Town Head where Maxwell’s house was. Dodd showed his teeth at Widdrington who was bright red and gobbling with fury, and followed him. Still, his back itched ferociously right up to the gate of the magnificent stone-built fortified town house that the Dumfries men called Maxwell’s Castle. It continued to itch while Carey talked to the men standing guard at the gate and passed over the usual bribes, and went on itching even as they passed through into the small courtyard. That too was packed tight, though here all the men were either in livery or wearing Maxwell or Herries jacks and no lack of family resemblance either. As usual Thunder drew a chorus of covetous looks and some quietly appraising talk. Carey beckoned that Dodd was to follow him.