P. Chisholm - A Surfeit of Guns

Carey pressed his horse to a canter again. “Keep going no matter what happens,” he snarled at the chief drover as he passed.

Lord Maxwell’s saturnine face was aggravatingly relaxed as Carey approached.

“Good day to ye, Sir Robert,” he called out.

“Good day, my lord,” said Carey, tipping his hat with the very barest minimum of civility.

“We’ll escort ye to Lochmaben now.”

For a moment Carey thought of a variety of responses, ranging from the reproachful to the courteous. In the end he ditched them all in favour of honesty.

“In a pig’s arse, my lord.”

This was not how Maxwell was accustomed to being addressed. He blinked and his heavy eyebrows came down.

“What?”

“I said, in a pig’s arse, my lord,” repeated Carey with the distinctness usually reserved for the imbecilic or deaf.

“I’ll have my guns one way or the other, Carey.”

“To begin with, my lord, they are not your guns, they are guns belonging to the Queen’s Majesty of England.”

“They’re mine now,” said Maxwell with a shrug.

“No,” said Carey. “They’re not.”

“Ye’re not in yer ain March now, Carey. If ye give me no trouble, I’ll let you and yer men go free without even asking ransom.”

The sound of a single gun firing boomed out like the crack of doom in the quiet hills and danced between them. Carey looked over to his right and saw the distant lanky figure of Sergeant Dodd standing on a low ridge to the south of the road, with a smoking caliver. He lowered it, handed it to the Johnstone standing beside him who began the process of swabbing and reloading, and took another caliver that also had its match lit, blew carefully on the end to make it hot and took painstaking aim at Lord Maxwell.

Maxwell knew that breastplates do not stop bullets and that where one Johnstone was visible there were likely to be plenty more. He darkened with fury.

Carey worked hard to keep his relief from showing on his face. He had known that Dodd and the laird Johnstone were both too experienced to show themselves before their enemies had done so, but he hadn’t been sure they would be there at all.

“Now, my lord, unless you want a fight with the Johnstones over the packtrain in which the Johnstones have guns and you have not you’ll let us go on to Carlisle in peace.”

Maxwell’s face twisted. “Is that what ye think? D’ye believe the laird Johnstone will let your precious packtrain into Annan and ever let it out again?”

“Nobody in Scotland is getting possession of these weapons,” said Carey through his teeth, “though at the moment I am more inclined to trust the laird Johnstone whom I have never met than I am to trust you, my lord.”

Maxwell sneered.

“But,” Carey continued, “in the interests of peace on the Border and the amicable co-operation of the two Wardenries, I am willing to allow this arrangement. You and the laird Johnstone may accompany me to the Border itself along with your men to be sure that neither one of you lays hands on the guns.”

“Ye’re in no condition to dictate terms.”

“I believe I am, my lord. Think where I must have got these guns from. Think who’s sitting in Dumfries with an army.”

“The King couldnae take Lochmaben.”

“He could if we lent him our cannon from Carlisle.”

“Well, ye’ve the Johnstones and the King to protect ye. Are ye not man enough to protect yourself?”

Perhaps it was just as well Carey couldn’t hold a sword at that moment. Maxwell’s gesture made his imputation clear enough.

“Take it or leave it,” said Carey when he could trust himself to speak, settled down in the saddle and stared at Maxwell.

He was never sure afterwards why Maxwell blinked first. Perhaps it was the ominous distant hiss of slowmatches from the hillside where the Johnstones were watching, or perhaps it was the drovers bringing the ponies up and past them as if neither side were there. Maxwell had not been Warden of the Scottish West March very long, perhaps he was uncertain enough of what King James might really do to be willing to wait for a better time to take on the Johnstones.

Never did a packtrain have a more puissant escort. All the long road into Annan, all the long night while Carey, Dodd and the King’s lancers stood guard in watches over the guns, and all the next day, the Johnstones and Maxwells watched balefully over the weapons that could tip the balance so lethally between them.

As they watched the ponies splash over the Longtown ford into England at last and start south on the old Roman road, Carey growled at Hutchin.

“If your relatives turn up now, I’m taking you hostage.”

Young Hutchin grinned at him. “Ay, my Uncle Jimmy thought about it,” he said disarmingly. “It’s very tempting after all.”

“And?”

“I persuaded them not to.”

“Indeed.”

“We’ve the King after us wi’ blood in his eye for the Falkland raid, after all. We dinna want mither wi’ the Queen as well.”

“Oh? That sounds very statesmanlike.”

“Ay. And our friends the Johnstones shared the guns they got to keep after ye turned over the Armoury, and besides we wouldnae want to mix it with the Maxwells without all our men here.”

“Astonishing. Borderers thinking before they fight.”

“Ay, sir. We’re learning.”

The two surnames watched glowering from the other side of the Esk to be sure that neither one of them made a sudden attack. The ponies passed the ford and plodded on for the last eight miles of their journey, leaving them far behind. For the first time in his life, Carey felt quite weak with relief that there was not going to be a fight.

Lord Scrope, Warden of the English West March, was of course delighted to see Carey return from his trip to Scotland at the head of a pack train laden with guns, all of Tower-make, all of precisely the pattern that the Queen issued to the north, with only about ten missing. It was worrying to see he had somehow injured his left hand, which was bandaged and in a sling, and also from the evidence of his face he had been in at least one fistfight. Sergeant Dodd, Red Sandy and Sim’s Will Croser were looking uncharacteristically subdued, while a lad who had been missing from Carlisle had evidently tagged along with Carey unasked, and got into a fight as well. Heroically, Scrope suppressed his questions until they had dealt with the weapons. Those were stowed in the Armoury again while Richard Bell took a record of exactly what was there, Carey locked the door with a flourish and a suppressed wince and then turned to Scrope.

“Um…” said Scrope, bursting with curiosity to know what had happened to him. “Your report?”

“To you, verbally, my lord,” said Carey. “Now.”

That was worrying. They returned to Scrope’s dining-room cum council chamber and Carey sat down in one of the chairs with a sigh and blinked at him.

“Will you call for beer, my lord?”

“Of course.”

They waited, Carey tipping his head back against the chair and shutting his eyes. When the beer came, Carey reached out to take the nearest tankard and noticed he still had his gauntlet on. With his teeth he stripped the glove off. Scrope stared at his hand which was mottled purple and red, and missing two fingernails.

“Good God, man, what happened to your…?”

“Thumbscrews,” said Carey shortly and drank most of his beer. “I’ll give you my interpretation of events as I go along, shall I, my lord?”

Scrope nodded, clearly finding it hard to look at his damaged fingers. Carey didn’t blame him. The empurpled nailbeds made him feel queasy in a way that a much worse wound would not.