P. Chisholm - A Surfeit of Guns

“Yes. I also feel sorry for Bonnetti if he hangs around in Ireland long enough for them to find out what he’s brought. I’ll ask the King to make sure he gets away with them.”

“And the real guns?”

Carey’s eyes were dancing, though he was careful not to smile again.

“We’ll see what we can do.”

They finished their meal, talking amiably and distantly about young Henry and his awkwardness, and the Grahams. Robin said nothing more about Elizabeth leaving her husband and coming to live with him. It was impossible anyway, and always had been. If news of any such behaviour came to the Queen’s ears, which it would, she would strip Carey of his office and call in all the loans she had made him. He would be bankrupt, on the run from his creditors and with no prospect of ever being able to satisfy them because the Queen would never allow him back at court again. Frankly, unless he turned raider, they would starve.

When they had finished, Carey wandered to the locked door, kicked it and shouted out for the Earl of Mar. It opened and the Earl was standing there, his face as austere as before.

“Ye’ll be wanting to see His Highness again.”

“If he wants to see me, my lord.”

“Ay, he’s cleared an hour for ye.”

“Excellent. And thank him for sending Lady Widdrington to tend to me, she is unparalleled as a nurse and far better than any drunken surgeon.”

“Hmf. Ay.”

“My lord Earl,” said Elizabeth. “May I ask what’s happening to my husband?”

The Earl sniffed. “That’s for the King to decide, seeing he’s under arrest.”

“And Lord Spynie?”

Another much longer sniff. “Ay, well,” said the Earl. “The King’s verra fond of him, ye ken.”

“Yes,” she said with freezing politeness. “So it seems. Sir Robert, what would you suggest I do now? May I serve you further or should I tend to my husband?”

“Tend to your husband by all means, my lady,” Carey said very gravely. “I am greatly beholden to you.”

She curtseyed, he bowed. She walked away from him, refusing to look back, refusing to think of anything but dealing with her husband.

“Lady Widdrington.” She stopped and turned, felt a touch from him on her shoulder where it was most tender and automatically shied away. Carey was there, smiling at her.

“May I have my ring back?”

She blushed, embarrassed to have forgotten, wondering at the sudden hardness in his eyes. She fished the ring out of her purse under her kirtle and put it into his hand. He fumbled it onto his undamaged little finger, bowed once more and turned back to the patiently waiting Earl and his escort.

***

The King of Scotland had often enjoyed the use of the secret watching places he had ordered built into many of his castles. Through holes cunningly hidden by the swirling patterns of tapestries brought from France, he found the truth of many who swore they loved him and learned many things to his advantage about his nobles. It was something of a quest for him: he never stopped hoping for one man who could genuinely love him as d’Aubigny had, in despite of his Kingship, not because of it. And like a boy picking at a scab, he generally got more pain than satisfaction from his curiosity.

At the Mayor’s house in Dumfries he had lacked such conveniences. But in the little rooms on the third storey there had been a few with interconnecting doors and it had not been difficult to set up some with tapestries hung to hide those doors. Thus he need only leave his room quietly, nip up the back stairs and into the next door chamber to the one where he had told Mar to put Carey. Sitting at his ease, with the connecting door open, he had quietly eavesdropped on Carey and his ladylove, as he had before on Lord Spynie and on some of his pages and others of the Border nobility. Some might have found it undignified in a monarch: James held that nothing a monarch did could be undignified, since his dignity came from God’s appointment.

This time, as he descended the narrow backstairs and stepped to his own suite of rooms, he wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or pleased. That Carey turned out to be a lecherous sinner was not a surprise to him; that Lady Widdrington was a virtuous wife astounded him. He was saddened that Carey was clearly a hopeless prospect for his own bed, but he did not want to make the mistake with him that he had as a younger and more impatient King with the Earl of Bothwell. And Carey had called him ‘a decent man’. It was a casual appraisal, something James had been taught to think of almost as blasphemous, but the accolade pleased him oddly because it was spoken innocently, in private and could not be self-interested. And further, it seemed that both of them were honest. Yes, there was disappointment that his suspicions were wrong; but on the other hand, honest men and women were not common in his life, they had all the charm of rarity.

He was sitting at the head of a long table, reading tedious papers, when Carey at last made his appearance in the chamber, having been kept waiting for a while outside. He paced in, genuflected twice and then the third time stayed down on one knee looking up at the King and waiting for him to speak. King James watched him for a while, searching for signs of guilt or uneasiness. He was nervous and paler than was natural for him, his arm in a sling, but he was vastly more self-possessed than the bedraggled battered creature that the King had seen in the morning.

“Well, Sir Robert, how are ye now?” he asked jovially.

“Very much better, thank you, Your Majesty.”

“We have made sundry investigations into your case,” the King pronounced, “and we are quite satisfied that there was no treason by you, either committed or intended, to this realm or that of our dear cousin of England. And we are further of the opinion that ye should be congratulated and no’ condemned for your dealings with the Spanish agent in the guise of an Italian wine merchant that some of our nobles were harbouring unknown to us.”

Carey’s head was bowed.

“We have therefore ordered that all charges be dropped and your good self released from the Warrant.”

Carey cleared his throat, looked up. “I am exceedingly grateful to Your Majesty for your mercy and justice.” Was there still a hint of wariness in the voice? Did the Englishman think there might be a price for it? Well, there would be, though not the one he feared. King James smiled.

“Well now, so that’s out o’ the way. Off your knees, man, I’m tired of looking down on ye. This isnae the English court here.” Carey stood, watching him.

King James tipped his chair back and put his boots comfortably on the tedious papers in front of him.

“Oh, Sir Robert,” he said, “would ye fetch me the wine on the sideboard there?”

Carey did so gracefully, though with some difficulty, without the offended hunch of the shoulders that King James often got from one of his own subjects. On occasion he was even read a lecture by one of the more Calvinistically inclined about the evils of drink. It would be so much more restful to rule the English; he was looking forward to it greatly, if the Queen would only oblige him by dying soon and if the Cecils could bring off a smooth succession for him.

Carey was standing still again after refilling his goblet, silently, a couple of paces from him. On the other hand, it was very hard to know what the English were thinking. Sometimes James suspected that with them, the greater the flattery, the worse the contempt. Buchanan had said that the lot of them were dyed in the wool hypocrites, as well as being greedy and ambitious. Well, well, it would be interesting at least.

“It’s a question of armaments, is it no’?” he said affably. “Ye canna tell the Queen that ye lost the weapons she sent ye and ye canna do without them.” He paused. “It seems,” he said slowly, “that I have a fair quantity of armament myself, more than I had thought. Lord Spynie was in charge of purveying my army’s handguns, and it seems he did a better job than I expected.”