P. Chisholm - A Surfeit of Guns

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.”

His heart settling to a steady fast thumping, Carey came up close to Dodd.

“This wasn’t done by any arrangement, was it?”

“With Elliots, sir?” Dodd was scandalised and Carey remembered that the Sergeant’s surname had a fifty-year-old blood-feud running with the Elliots.

“No, obviously not. Well then, let’s see if we can catch a few to hang.”

Dodd nodded dourly. Clearly, taking the trouble to capture Elliots was not his highest priority. Carey grinned at him, the prospect of a fight raising his spirits as always.

“One or two will do,” he amended.

Was that the faintest flicker of an answering smile at the edge of Dodd’s mouth? Probably not.

The sheep arrived first, milling about confusedly and baaing. Dodd and he rode between them, straight at the reivers, while the rest came around from both sides of the flock. For a moment there was confused shouting; the reivers weren’t sure what was happening: Carey fired both his dags, missed both times. A couple of arrows whipped into the ground, Sim’s Will rode past with his lance in rest and his horse tripped over a sheep.

“A Tynedale, a Tynedale, Out, Out!” roared Dodd happily, barrelling lance first at the widest mounted shadow.

Carey hauled his sword out, felt rather than saw something coming at him through the night, turned his horse and struck sideways. The sword went into something, there was a splash of hot blood and the blade stuck. He twisted and wrenched it out. Then a horse cantered past on his other side, its rider jumped onto his back and hauled him to the ground, giving him a headful of spinning lights and a nasty twinge from the ribs he had cracked two weeks before. A snarling face was lit up briefly by a bright red flash; dimly somewhere in the distance he heard a very loud bang and a sound of shrieking, but he was too busy to wonder who had been hit.