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

“What are ye doing here?”

“Well, my lord, I could ask you the same question since we’re on English land.”

“We’re on a lawful hot trod.”

“Oh?” said Carey neutrally.

“Ay, we are. My lord Spynie, where the devil’s that bit of turf?”

A young round-faced man with a velvet bonnet tipped over his ear rode forward. Some crumbs of turf still stuck to the point of his lance, and he was frowning at it in irritation. He was a handsome young man, of whom Carey had heard but had never met, known variously as Alexander Lindsay, Lord Spynie, King James’s favourite and the King’s bloody bum-boy.

“I see,” said Carey, relaxing slightly and putting his dags away but leaving the case open. “Well, my lord, in that case, as Deputy Warden of the English West March, I am a proper person for you to tell the cause of the trod to, and if necessary, I will render you what assistance I can.”

The Earl of Mar glared at him. Two of his men had dismounted and were lifting the German to his feet, not very gently.

Knowing he was well within his rights, but feeling a bit of oil might be appropriate in the circumstances, Carey bowed lavishly in the saddle and added, “If my lord will be so very kind.”

The Earl of Mar harrumphed. He either ignored or did not understand the edge to Carey’s obsequity. “Ay, well,” he said. “Ye’ve already assisted me, by stopping this traitor here, so I’ll thank ye kindly and we’ll be awa’ again.”

“Ich bin nicht…” the German began yelling. His arm slipped out of one of his helpers’ hands, he swung a wild punch at the other which connected by sheer chance. Hands plucking at the empty scabbard on his belt, he shouldered past another would-be helper, running at a desperate stagger for the forest, only to be knocked off his feet by a kick in the face from one of the other horsemen. He was hefted up again and his hands tied briskly behind him. Carey had tensed when he made his break, every instinct telling him to help one against so many, but intelligence and self-preservation ordering him not to be such a fool. He had eight men—the Scottish courtiers had at least thirty plus the law of the Borders on their side. And the man was a foreigner.

“I see,” he said, looking away as the German was hauled to a riderless horse, still half-stunned and bleeding from the nose, and slung across it like dead game. “May I ask what form his treason took? Is there anything likely to be a threat to Her Majesty the Queen?”

“Nay,” said the Earl of Mar, backing his horse with a rather showy curvette. “Tis a private matter between yon loon and our King. We’ll be off now.”

With great difficulty the hounds where whipped off the stag, some of them still trailing bits of entrail from their mouths as they lolloped unwillingly away. The whole cavalcade plunged back into the forest, heading north again, with the unfortunate German occasionally visible, like a feebly struggling sack of flour across his horse’s back. Cheekily the Earl of Mar winded his horn as they disappeared from sight.

***

Dodd said nothing as Carey dismounted and went back to the stag to see what could be salvaged. The stag was quite a bit the worse for wear but much of the gralloching had been done. The skin would not be useable though. The men reappeared and, unasked, hung the stag up on a tree branch by its back legs to drain.

They waited by the tree while the most part of the deer’s remaining blood trickled out. With suspicious efficiency the men constructed a travois out of hazel branches and argued quietly over whose horse should pull it.

Dodd was still saying nothing, and cocking his head northwards occasionally with an abstracted expression.

“What’s the problem, Sergeant?” asked Carey.

Dodd coughed. “It’s the trod, sir.”

“The Earl of Mar’s taken his captive back into Scotland by now, I should think.”

“Ay, sir.”

“So?”

“Sir, did ye never follow on behind a hot trod so ye could claim the beasts ye took were part of it?”

“You mean there might be a Scots raiding party following the Earl of Mar’s trail so they can claim they’re legally coming into England as part of the pursuit?” Carey asked carefully.

Dodd clearly wondered why he was belabouring something so obvious. “Ay, after about an hour or so,” he agreed. “To let the…excitement die down, see.”

“I do see, Sergeant. Do you think they’ll come by here?”

Dodd’s wooden expression told Carey he had asked another stupid question.

“Only, ye can mix the trails about, sir.”

“Fine. What would you suggest, Sergeant?”

Dodd’s suggestion took shape: they took the deer carcass down from the tree and lashed it to its travois, which Long George and Croser hauled into the branches of an oak to keep it away from foxes.

“We can’t actually stop them coming south,” Carey said while the others cleared the ground of their own tracks. “They haven’t committed any crime and they’re following a lawful hot trod, so…”

Dodd and his brother Red Sandy exchanged patient glances.

“No, see, sir, if we stop them before they’ve lifted aught, then we’ll get nae fee for it, will we? We’ll stop ‘em after.”

“I see. Very interesting. Do you ever…
arrange
for raids, so you can stop them and get the fees for them?”

“Ay, sir,” said Sandy. “Why, last year the Sergeant and…”

Dodd coughed loudly.

“…ay, well, Lowther’s done it,” his brother finished, managing to look virtuously indignant. “But
we
wouldnae, would we, Sergeant?”

Even in the darkness, Dodd’s glare could have withered a field of wheat.

“One of us must track them on foot,” he said judiciously. “Sandy’s the best man for that job, seeing he’s the fastest runner and he knows the land.” Red Sandy made a wry face. “Then when he’s seen them find the beasts they’re after, he comes back to us and we stop them on their way home, red-handed.”

“What if they take a different route?”

Dodd rubbed his chin with his thumb. “They might,” he allowed. “But I doubt it. They’ll keep to the trail the Earl of Mar made with a’ his fine men to confuse us from following.”

Carey nodded.

“I rely on your judgement, Sergeant. Shall we take cover now?”

“Ay, sir, it’d be best. Though it might be a long wait.”

Dodd and Red Sandy had a quiet conversation as all of them carefully pushed in among the undergrowth. Carey watched in fascination as each man of his troop then took his horse’s head and forced the animal to lie down with great rustling surges in the bracken and leaves. Long George swore because he’d found a patch of nettles, a couple of the horses snorted and resisted. Carey found that the right pressure on his own animal’s neck and head laid the rough body down with a great lurch and grunting and splaying of legs. They were completely out of sight. He copied Dodd, lying down as well, with one arm over his horse’s head, the other arm supporting his own head.

Red Sandy was nowhere to be seen. Carey realised then that he was already outside the woodland, where it met the rough pasture of the hillside, and inspecting them all for concealment.

“There’s a man wi’ a shiny helmet moving,” Red Sandy said accusingly. Carey turned his head to see who was revealing them. “Ay, there he goes again.”

Luckily the dark hid his flush as he realised that he was the guilty man. Dodd reached over with some leafy twigs and stuck them in Carey’s plume-tube.

“Tha’s better,” called Red Sandy. “Tell the silly get to stay still, Henry.”

Dodd grunted softly and didn’t look at Carey. Red Sandy hardly rustled the bushes as he took cover himself.

The silence clamped down around them, like the forest and the night. Not even the horses moved, though Carey could see the wide eyes of his own mount, alert but very well trained and not moving a hoof.

Time passed. The damp coolness of the earth began working its way through the layers of leather and cloth to his stomach, the warmth of a sultry summer night was weight on his back. Little trickles of sweat began seeking water’s own level down the muscles of his shoulders. There was an ant’s nest under his knee. Perhaps the ants wouldn’t mind.

Strain his ears though he might, he could hear absolutely nothing of the eight other men hiding only a few feet away from him. Not a snort, not a rustle. He could swear they were even breathing quieter than him.

The back of his head was itching where the leather padding of his helmet was making his scalp sweat. Also he was convinced there were ants running up his legs. Also he had a cramp starting in one foot. Where the hell were these theoretical raiders?

There was a loud rustling and crunching sound. For a moment Carey wondered which idiot could be making it, when he saw a small bundle of spines wander into his field of vision. It stopped short, stared at him out of little black eyes. He stared back. Never before in his life had he been nose to nose with a hedgehog, though he had once eaten one, baked in clay.

The hedgehog snuffled out a slug and began eating it noisily with every sign of enjoyment. Carey was irresistibly reminded of one of the Queen’s councillors eating a bag pudding and had to swallow hard not to laugh. He swallowed too loudly. Disdainfully, the hedgehog finished the slug and trundled off into the leaves like a small battering ram.

The cramp in his foot was getting worse. And the ants were exploring dangerously high up his thigh. And he desperately wanted to scratch his scalp. Where were the raiders?

Without moving his head, Carey looked for Dodd. Between the leaves the Sergeant seemed quite at ease, his long limbs sprawled and relaxed, peering over his horse’s neck. He wasn’t like a statue, more along the lines of a bolster on a bed. Blast him.

Nothing happened. Carey wondered what a German from Augsburg was doing in the Scottish Borders and why King James wanted him and what for: he wove several wonderful webs of possibility, but the facts would have to wait until he got back to Carlisle and even then he might never know unless he went into Scotland. The ants seemed to be excited about the discovery of his boot-top. Perhaps they were planning a new nest. Would they have time to build it? Probably the itch in his hair was a louse. Perhaps the ants would form an alliance with whatever other vermin he had picked up in Carlisle…

Wondering how much longer he would have to stand this torture, Carey began trying to distract his mind. Inevitably he thought of Elizabeth Widdrington. The last he heard, she had been at Hexham on her way home to the East March. The smile dropped off his face. Her husband, Sir Henry Widdrington, had met her there. She had sent Carey a letter breaking off their friendship, and a verbal message continuing it. God knew what Sir Henry had done to her, to make her write the letter, might even be doing to her now.

He thought of the Latin poem he had recited for her a few days before, one of the muckier ones by Catullus that every schoolboy found easy to remember.

His tutor had translated it, disapprovingly, “Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand…” It was pleasant to imagine kissing Elizabeth Widdrington, breaking through all her honourable propriety, her entirely misguided faithfulness to her elderly husband, lifting her skirts and petticoat and the hoops of her farthingale and her smock and…

No, it wasn’t only his heartbeat. Hooves pointed the metre: soft unshod hooves on the turf. Carey peered through leaves cautiously and saw horses pass like shadows nearby. There was a pause and another shadow departed, on foot, loping like a wolf in their tracks.

“Sir!” That was Dodd’s scandalised hiss. “Sir, wake up!”

“I wasn’t asleep,” he hissed back quickly. “I was thinking.”

“Oh aye. Well, they’ve come and gone whilst ye was thinking and Red Sandy’s gone off after them. Ye can let your hobby up to stamp about a bit now.”

Knowing he was bright red and still hindered by the effects of thinking about Elizabeth, not to mention the cramp in his instep, Carey staggered to his feet. The horse lurched up and shook out its mane, Carey brushed astonished ants off his boots and got bitten half a dozen times.

They stayed in the bushes, for what seemed like another hour while Carey tried to keep his mind on his job and off his fantasies. Girls he had known at Court flitted irritatingly to and fro before his mind’s eye—he surely was in desperate need of a woman. Sorrel nuzzled at him with his broad low-bred nose, and Carey patted him absently.

At last they heard pelting feet, a single man, sprinting down the hill towards them. Dodd cocked his head, led his horse out of the bushes.

Red Sandy himself arrived, breathing hard.

“Bastard Elliots, about seven of them, all mounted,” he whispered triumphantly. “Wee Colin Elliot’s wi’ them. They’ve taken twelve sheep off one of the Routledges an’ they’re on their way.”

In the distance the sound of protesting baas floated to them, and horses.

Dodd’s mouth thinned and his face lengthened, which meant he was delighted. He and Carey swung up into the saddle together and Carey opened his guncase again. Behind them, he heard Long George cursing as he burnt his fingers trying to relight a slow match from the little clay pot of coals he carried on his saddle bow.

“Keep the light hidden,” Carey said and got a protesting “Ah know that, sir.”