P. Chisholm - A Surfeit of Guns

He was standing like that, quite close to mindless panic, vaguely wondering how it was possible for him to be sweating while he was also shivering, when the door rattled and creaked open. He had to blink and squint from the light of lanterns. The German didn’t because his eyes were too swollen. In fact his whole face was a horrible foreboding, like an obscene cushion, pounded until it was barely human. No wonder the poor bastard had had difficulty speaking. His arms had been chained to a bolt above his head, his fingers were also grotesquely swollen and black, as was his right foot and ankle. Carey looked away from him.

Sir Henry again, three henchmen at his back, Lord Spynie at his side. Lord Spynie was at the head of a different group of three men, luridly brocaded and padded as were all King James’s courtiers. Had none of them heard of good taste?

Spynie looked extremely pleased with himself, but also a little furtive. Carey wondered again if he had really been arrested by the King’s warrant, or did Spynie have access to some legally trained clerks and the Privy Seal of the Kingdom? Given James’s sloppiness with his favourites, surely it was possible? Lord Spynie came up close to him, sneered something he couldn’t quite catch in Scots and spat messily in his face. Rage boiled in Carey, it was all he could do to keep from childishly spitting back.

Two Widdringtons gripped him under the arms while one of Spynie’s men dragged a little stool into the middle of the wine cellar floor, next to a barrel on its end. On the barrel top, as on a table, another courtier with a puffy eye ceremoniously placed a bunch of small things made of metal.

Carey recognised the courtiers. Two of them still bore the marks of his fist, and one had Hutchin’s toothprints in his arm. They all crowded the little space of the wine cellar and fogged it with their breath and heat, and the smoke from their torches and lanterns.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” said Carey, his mouth completely dry and his stomach gone into a hard knot of recognition. Those were thumbscrews lying on the barrel top.

“Why are his legs free?” demanded Lord Spynie.

“We havenae brought legirons,” said a courtier. “Shall I fetch some?”

“No,” said Spynie. “Use his.” He pointed at the German still slumped against the wall. A key was produced, and the chains holding him to the ring in the wall were unlocked, allowing him to crumble down into a lying position at last. He lay still as a corpse, hardly breathing.

One of the Widdringtons who had brought him here took the irons and knelt to lock them round Carey’s ankles.

“Sit down, traitor,” said Lord Spynie.

Carey looked at him, knowing dozens like him at the Queen’s court. Alexander Lindsay, Lord Spynie was a young man, around twenty years old, and already beginning to lose the freshness of his beauty. He had a young man’s cockiness and sensitivity to slights, and he had acquired a taste for power as the King’s minion. Now he knew he was losing it, although he was not intelligent enough to know why. But he was hiding his uncertainty. Carey could read it there, in the way he stood, the way his hand gripped his swordhilt, just as if Spynie was bidding up his cards in a primero game. Instinctively Carey felt it was true: this was unofficial, a favourite taking revenge, not King’s men about the King’s business.

“I appeal to Caesar,” Carey said softly, pointedly not sitting.

“What?”

“I want to see the King.”

Sir Henry backhanded him across the mouth, having to reach up to do it.

“I’ll want satisfaction for that, Widdrington,” Carey said to him, anger at last beginning to fill up the cold terrified spaces inside.

Sir Henry sneered at him. “Satisfaction? You’re getting above yourself, boy. Tell us what we want to know and we might recommend a merciful beheading to the King.”

“If your warrant came from my cousin the King, then he is the one I will talk to,” Carey said coldly and distinctly, hoping they could not hear how his tongue had turned to wool. “If it did not, then you have no right to hold me and I demand to be released.”

Spynie stepped up close. “Do you know who I am?” he demanded rhetorically.

Carey smiled. “Your fame is legendary even at the Queen’s Court,” he said, sucking blood from the split in his lip. “You are the King’s catamite.”

Spynie drew his dagger and brought it up slowly under Carey’s chin, pricking him slightly.

“Sit down,” whispered Spynie.

“I can’t,” Carey said reasonably. “Your dagger’s in the way.”

Spynie took the dagger away, pointed it at Carey’s eye.

“Sit down.”

“Why? You can talk to me just as well if I’m standing. Take me to the King.”

“Where’s the Spaniard gone?” demanded Sir Henry suddenly.

Carey shrugged. “I’ve no idea,” he said. “And as my lord Spynie knows perfectly well, he’s an Italian.”

“You admit talking to him then?”

“Of course. One of my functions as Deputy Warden is to discover what foreign plots are being made against Her Majesty the Queen.”

“How much did ye sell him the guns for?”

“What guns?”

Spynie lost patience and grabbed the front of his shirt. “Where’s the gold?”

“What gold?”

“The gold Bonnetti gave you for the guns?”

“It surprises me,” Carey said looking down at Spynie’s grip, “that you think he had any money left at all, after being at the Scottish court for as long as he had. The bribes to all of you gentlemen must have been costing him a fortune. Take me to the King.”

“What were you doing in the forest this afternoon?” gravelled Sir Henry.

“Hunting. Take me to the King.”

“Where’s the fucking gold?” shouted Lord Spynie. “You got it from him, I ken very well ye did, so what did ye do with it?”

“Take me to the King and I’ll tell him.”

Spynie finally lost control and started hitting him across the face with the jewelled pommel of the dagger. As if that were the signal for all pretence at civilisation to disappear, there was a flurry of blows and hands grabbing him, his arms were twisted up behind his back until he thought they would break. By sheer weight of numbers they made him sit on the stool and they forced his head down until his cheek rested on the barrel-top. It smelled of aqua vitae. Cold metal slipped down over the thumb and first two fingers of his left hand behind him and tightened. He went on struggling uselessly, blind with panic, not feeling it when they hit him.

Then somebody was tightening the things on his hands until shooting pains ran up his arms, until he knew beyond doubt that his fingers would break if they tightened any further and then they did and more pain scudded through his hand. It was astonishing how much pressure it took to break a bone. There was more metal slipping onto the fingers and thumb of his right hand, tightening, biting, until his palms contracted reflexively and he shut his eyes and gasped.

“Now,” hissed Lord Spynie. “Ye’ve one more chance. Half a turn more and your fingers will break and ye’ll never hold a sword nor shoot a gun again. Where’s the gold?”

“Take me to…my cousin the King.”

Spynie banged Carey’s head down on the table, bruising the place where Jock of the Peartree had cracked his cheekbone the month before.

“The King doesnae ken ye’re here. It’s me and my friends, naebody else. I’ll give ye ten minutes to think about it.”

Carey had stopped struggling. He did think about it, despite the shrieking from the trapped nerves in his fingers, and he decided he had nothing whatever to lose by keeping silent until he had to talk. If Young Hutchin had indeed gone to Lady Widdrington it would give her time to act, if she wished, and if he had not, it would give the boy a chance to get into the Debateable Land, away from Spynie and his friends, which would be some satisfaction at least. God help me, thought Carey, how long can I hold out?