P. Chisholm - A Surfeit of Guns

“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.”

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…”