P. Chisholm - An Air of Treason

You’ve a cousin in Carlisle, Dodd thought, highly amused and wishing the Courtier was there to manage the conversation with an angry little maid. She cocked her head on one side.

“So I’ll tell you everything the captain told me not to tell anyone and then you can decide how to kill him.”

Dodd had listened carefully while the child spilled out her fierce heart to him. It seemed the tale of the broken men was a disgraceful one of noble promises unkept, but common enough. You hardly ever got paid for soldiering, bar what you could steal or kill for, everyone knew that. It seemed that the unfortunate Captain Leigh still hadn’t worked it out.

“What happened to the last messenger they caught?”

“Oh, he was all right. They just knocked him out and took his stuff and then when he was a bit better, Captain Leigh came along and said they’d got his duds and message back from the robbers and off he went again, on foot of course, as they had his horse. They got some wagons a while ago too and they were pleased with that and the men guarding it didn’t fancy a fight and ran off back to London.”

“So Leigh will use me to get hisself an audience with the Earl of Essex?”

“I suppose so. He thinks he can talk his lord into paying him.”

Dodd laughed once at this and then clamped down again. It was a serious matter. The men of Leigh’s troop had put a brave on him but they hadn’t killed him when it would have been easy to do it. At first he had taken this as an insult like Heneage’s, that they thought him some nithing that need not be feared for vengeance. But perhaps it hadn’t occurred to them that he might be a man of parts, even if he was in a foreign county. On the other hand, he intended to get his gear back, particularly his sword, his knife, and his boots. His hip felt very strange without the weight of a weapon on it and his feet were already cold and sore.

Who would go to put the bite on Carey? He hadn’t seen the Spaniard, but had seen the drunken walk of John Arden and the large shaggy man with a slight limp that had looked coldly at him. Probably Leigh would go himself as he already knew Carey from France. Hmm. That would be good.

“Whit happened to the monks in the monastery when the King’s men came?” Dodd asked.

Kat shrugged. “My grandam said they were just a few stupid old men and boys by then and they tried to fight so they all got killed and they burnt some of the monastery. So it’s haunted, of course.”

“Ay, do the soldiers ken that?”

“Grandam told Captain Leigh when he came but he laughed at her and said he didn’t think so. But it is haunted.”

“Ay.” Dodd rubbed his bottom lip with his thumb. The glimmerings of an idea was coming to him. For complexity and madness it was one nearly worthy of Carey himself, perhaps being near the Courtier was causing him to catch courtierlike ways of thinking. Still.

“Grandam told the boy Nick Gorman when he came to get cheese from us, she warned him about the ghosts of the burnt monks and he didn’t laugh. Captain Leigh came and told her off, he said no good Protestant believed in superstition like that and Papists couldn’t hurt Godly men like them anyway.”

Dodd tutted. He’d never heard of a ghost that cared about such things.

“Kat,” he said, “I want ye to go back to Captain Leigh and act verra nice tae him. Can ye do that?” She frowned, opened her mouth to say something. “Not to be friends again but to find things out from him. I want ye to find oot who he’s sending tae my master and what he’s doing next. And get me some paper.”

“Can you write then?”

“Ay, but dinna let on.”

It was a useful test. If she came back with paper as he hoped, then he’d know he might trust her which was important for the most complicated part of his plan. If she came back alongside Leigh demanding to know why he’d lied about his ability to read, then he might be in for another leathering but he’d know what he needed to about Kat. Her face had suddenly fallen.

“But what about your leg? How can you kill Captain Leigh with that?”

“Whit about it?”

She looked at the splint and then stopped. He put his finger on his lips and winked and got from her the first real smile he’d ever seen on her face.

Then she dusted crumbs from her greasy kirtle and jumped to her feet and trotted determinedly away with her wooden clogs clacking on the cobblestones of the path.

The old woman came out later and watched him at his digging with her hands on her hips.

“Will ye have that ready by this evening, Goodman?” she demanded.

“Ay,” he said, “the dog’s helping.”

The dog had done some digging and found a greenish bone which he was gnawing on quite happily. Suddenly he lifted his head and sniffed the air, then whined nervously, pawed the bone back into the earth and skulked round to hide behind Dodd.

The carlin went out to the front of the cottage and Dodd could hear the big bearlike man called Harry Hunks tramping to the front door in Dodd’s own boots. The sound of talking came to him. Quick as he could, he hopped over to listen by the path and caught Harry Hunks’ last sentence.

“…and make sure he sleeps, we don’t want him getting out.”

“The pit will hold him, Harry, he’s broken his leg.”

“Make sure he don’t get out or I’ll burn your cottage.”

“Captain Leigh wouldn’t like that.”

“Then I’ll kill your dog.”

Nothing more, so Dodd hopped back and sat down by his trench just in time. Harry Hunks loured round the side of the cottage and pointed at him.

“You!” he shouted. “You stay put or I’ll break your other leg.”

Dodd did his best to look cowed, touched his capless head and quavered “Yes, sir!” at the big lout. Harry Hunks turned about and stamped away, damaging Dodd’s good boots by kicking a hole in the hurdles of the goat pen as he went.

Dodd’s belly gave a great growl and grumble then which wasn’t surprising since he hadn’t eaten all day. He went over and shoved back the inquiring goat’s head that instantly came through the gap.

“Missus,” he called, “ye’ll need tae move yer goats.”

The grandam came out the back of the cottage, saw the damage and shook her head. Then she hobbled over and put a halter round the billy kid’s neck. There was a nanny kid as well that she haltered and the two others were nannies with still-heavy udders.

The grandam dragged the two half-grown kids back toward the cottage, both protesting at being separated from their mothers. The nannies pushed through the gate to follow.

“You can herd the nannies, if you’re minded to, Goodman,” shouted the carlin.

“Ay missus,” said Dodd, who caught the nannies by a horn each and looked them in the long-pupilled eyes. One said “Neh!” in a testy way, so she was the one he led ahead of the others and they came quietly enough. It was as well to respect rank among goats as well as men.

Kat had joined them by the time the goats were in their tumbledown shed beside the cottage and Dodd had already mended the hurdle. She was looking smug and she whispered at him,

“Can you milk goats?”

The question irritated him. Of course he could milk goats, he could milk anything with teats and had once milked a sow for a bet and nearly got his nose bitten off. “Ay,” he said.

“Can Mr. Elliot help me with the milking, Grandam?” asked Kat artlessly and the old woman nodded. The day was cooling and Dodd wondered where the pit was where he’d sleep that night. He hadn’t expected that there would be room for all three of them in the bothy with its yard-high walls, quite apart from the propriety of it.

The child brought a stool and two good big earthenware bowls to the shed, sat down and started on the younger nanny’s udder, pulling at the teats roughly and impatiently. Dodd squatted by the older one, rubbed her flanks, butted his head a couple of times where a kid would nuzzle and made a quiet goat noise. Then he licked his fingers and wibbled the teats, rubbed the spit on. As soon as the first few drops had oozed out, he started the rhythmic work with his hands which he hadn’t done since he went to Carlisle. It took him right back to his boyhood when he’d had four goats to milk every morning and evening. The goat let down her milk almost at once and he soon filled the bowl with warm milk to the brim. Then because his stomach was griping him something terrible and he wasn’t convinced the carlin would waste any supper on him, he ducked his head and milked a stream of warm creamy milk straight into his mouth.