P. Chisholm - A Surfeit of Guns

With typical barbarian lack of finesse, Carey insisted on half his fifteen per cent bribe in advance, in gold, as well as a banker’s draft for half the price of the guns. If he had not been desperate, Bonnetti would never have agreed, but he had no choice, as the Englishman blandly pointed out. Without some good faith from him, Carey had no reason to take any risks to help him.

Roger Widdrington had been sitting at the crowded alehouse waiting for the tow-headed Graham boy to meet him for at least an hour and a half. The boy finally appeared, at the trot, looking flushed and excited and in a tearing hurry.

“I canna stay long, Sir Robert sent me out for a pie and I must be back. Ye can tell her ladyship that Sir Robert’s got to make friends with my lord Maxwell again, to fetch Red Sandy and Sim’s Will out of gaol, and so he’s gonnae buy a big load of guns off him. He’s going out to Lochmaben to get them.”

“Where is he getting the money from?” Roger Widdrington asked.

“I wouldnae ken that,” said Hutchin.

“Did he bring it with him?”

“Nay, he couldn’t have, he had to pawn some rings for travelling money, or so Red Sandy said. He’s got it here in Dumfries but who knows how?”

“Anything to do with the Italian woman he’s been paying court to?”

Hutchin’s face became so craftily noncommittal, Roger almost laughed.

“I wouldnae ken. Any road, I must go. Will ye tell my lady that she mustnae put too much on the Italian woman, he couldnae help it for she all but flung herself at his head.”

Roger nodded gravely, not trusting himself to speak, and paid the boy a shilling. He had heard different but there was no reason to argue. He watched Hutchin Graham hurry away to find a pie-seller and as soon as he was safely out of sight, he went back to report to his father.

***

Signor Bonnetti fully expected the Deputy Warden never to reappear again, but to his astonishment he was back within the hour, slightly flushed and looking very pleased with himself.

“They are in wagons in the forest, five miles northeast of Dumfries,” he explained. “Would you like to come and inspect them, Signor Bonnetti?”

Bonnetti had the feeling of being watched as he rode on the mean little soft-footed long-coated mare behind Carey and his young golden-haired pageboy. His heart had not yet stilled its thumping: the Englishman could simply be inveigling him out to the forest the better to put a knife in him, though the King’s protection might possibly help him…No, not in a forest. But if what this cousin of the Queen of England said was right, then Giovanni Bonnetti had done what he had set out to do and might even see Rome again by the end of the year. Assuming the shipment to Ireland went well…

The wagons full of armaments were in a clearing under guard by some Scots wearing their native padded jacks-miserably poor as they were, they could not afford breastplates. Carey was in a jocular mood: he made some incomprehensible comment as he handed over a letter and a ring as identification to one of the thugs who greeted them and the man laughed shortly.

Giovanni examined the guns. They seemed well enough, but then you never knew unless you fired one.

“Fire this one for me, monsieur,” he said to Carey in French.

“What about the noise?”

Giovanni shrugged. “I will certainly not buy any weapons without seeing at least one of them fired first.”

Carey bowed, loaded and primed the caliver with long fingers that seemed slightly clumsy about it, borrowed slowmatch from one of the men and lit the gun’s match. It hissed, lighting his face eerily from below.

“What shall I shoot?” he asked.

“The knot in the middle of that oak over there.”

Carey smiled a little tightly, raised the caliver to his shoulder, brought it down and fired.

Giovanni went to inspect the hole left by the bullet while Carey cleaned the gun. The long fingers were shaking again, which reassured Giovanni: it was right and proper for a man probably committing high treason out of greed to be nervous.

“Good,” he said, coming back. “It fires a little to the left, I see.”

“Perhaps my aim was off.”

“You are modest, monsieur.”

Giovanni took the caliver, which was still hot, examined the pan and the barrel and then nodded.

“The shape of the stock is unusual,” he said. “Almost a German fashion.”

“I understand that some Germans work for the Dumfries armourers,” said Carey.

“And this is from Dumfries?”

“Indirectly.”

Giovanni waited for further explanation on the guns’ provenance and got none.

“Well, monsieur,” said Carey politely. “Are you satisfied, or shall I fire another?”

Giovanni went over to the wagon, pulled out a pistol, looked it over and put it back. He did the same with a number of the other weapons. They seemed well enough.

“No,” he said. “I am satisfied.”

In fact, although he was pulling out guns and looking at them, flicking the locks and squinting down the barrels, in his relief Bonnetti was thinking far ahead, about the next stage. He would have the weapons greased and packed in winebarrels for the journey on barges down the River Nith to Glencaple where he had a small ship lying ready. Given God’s grace (which surely would be forthcoming for such a noble cause) he would cross the narrow sea to Ireland in two stages, stopping off at the Isle of Man. Providing he met no English or Irish or Scots pirates, and the weather was calm and the ship sprang no leaks, he might be back in a month or so, God willing.

Carey confirmed the legendary reputation of the English for avarice in the way he dickered over the hiring fee for the wagons to take the guns into Dumfries. The Lord Maxwell was even willing to furnish guards and men to help load the weapons on barges, again for a fee. It would have to be done that night, Carey said, for there were no guarantees and the King himself might well decide to confiscate the weapons if he heard what was happening, since he had need of them too. At last it was all agreed and Giovanni was the proud possessor of eighteen dozen assorted guns which he could now send to the O’Neill in Ireland. He felt quite light-headed with the relief of it. And he also had a valuable lever to use against the noble English official who had sold him the weapons: as the Englishman mounted up and rode away, Giovanni was already framing the letters he would send to his brother in London and to the King of Spain in his palace at San Lorenzo and thinking about how he would return to this miserable northern country next year and begin to apply a little pressure. Dodd was still awake in a corner of Maxwell’s hall when Carey finally returned, although it was well past sunset and he was yawning fit to crack his jaw. He had spent an uncomfortable and tense day cooped up in the crowded house, finding that whatever he did and wherever he went, two large Maxwell cousins went with him. At any moment he expected an order to be given and himself hustled into some small cell and the door locked. It would almost be a relief, he tried to convince himself, because then at least he would know where he stood. But he knew too much about the accidents that could happen to any man held hostage by a Border lord, and he knew as well that there was nothing he could do to help himself. He had to rely on Carey finding some way to mollify Lord Maxwell and pay him off, and for the life of him he didn’t see how that was possible.

In the end, he had taken refuge from being followed and watched by sitting in a corner of the hall, next to Maxwell’s plateboard set with gold and silver dishes, put his feet up on the bench and started whittling a toy out of a piece of firewood.