P. Chisholm - A Surfeit of Guns

“Ay, sir,” said Dodd, still trying to rotate his head on his neck like an owl. “I’m verra glad to hear it. Will we be there by nightfall at this pace, sir?”

He paused, stark horror chilling his blood like winter. “And what’s that, sir?”

There was movement in the distance, the characteristic purposeful movement of a man riding towards them at speed. They sat and watched for a few seconds and then Carey was quietly loading his dags, and Red Sandy and Sim’s Will Croser drawing their swords. Dodd spun his horse about, staring suspiciously at the farmlands and waste ground about them. Nothing. The land was empty save for the inevitable women weeding gardens and harvesting peas. Only there was the lone horseman riding like the clappers.

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.

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.