P. Chisholm - A Surfeit of Guns

“Oh,” said Carey distantly, stumbling over another reason to feel depressed, “I sold him to the King.”

“Excellent,” beamed his inane brother-in-law. “Dreadfully expensive to feed and far too good for this part of the world. He’ll be much happier in the King’s stables. Did you…er…get enough for him?”

“Yes, my lord, I can pay the men next month.” He hoped Dodd still had his winnings from the bet with Maxwell that he had given him to look after. Even without that, he thought he could make shift.

Scrope leaned over and aggravatingly patted his knee again. “You’re a miracle-worker, Robin,” he said. “Absolutely extraordinary.”

***

Never had the spiral stair up to his chambers at the top of the Queen Mary Tower seemed so long. He actually had to stop halfway up with his better hand on the stone central spine to catch his breath and wait for his head to stop spinning.

The door of his chamber was open wide with Barnabus getting the fire going and Philadelphia standing there, hands on hips, imperiously overseeing. Carey paused again on the threshold, wondering how much more he could deal with before he fell over.

Philadelphia turned, saw him and ran to him, then skidded to a halt and frowned severely at him. With uncharacteristic gentleness, she folded her arms around him. God, thought Carey, I must look bloody terrible.

However bad he looked, he felt worse. He went and sat on the bed, which had yet another new counterpane on it. Philadelphia sent Barnabus away and then sat down next to him.

“I heard,” she whispered. “I heard it all from Hutchin and Dodd. Let me see.”

“For God’s sake, Philly, I…”

“Oh, shut up.” She picked up his right hand, examined it with her lip caught in her teeth, then took his splinted left hand. “This is Elizabeth Widdrington’s work.”

“Yes,” said Carey, trying to remove it from her grasp. “And it hurt like hell when she did it, so don’t undo it… Aagh ! Christ Jesus , woman, what the hell do you think you’re…”

“I only pressed the ends of your fingers to make sure you still have feeling in them.”

“Well, I do.”

“Don’t growl at me like father, numbness is the first sign of gangrene.”

“Philly, I’ve had about as much nursing as I can take.”

“Then you won’t want the spiced wine I brought you with laudanum in it to help you sleep.”

“No, I…”

“And you won’t want to hear what I found out about my lord Scrope.”

Pure curiosity helped to clear his bleary head. He blinked at her questioningly.

“Scrope knew all about it, about swapping our proper guns for the faulty ones on the Newcastle road. And I’ll bet he knew of Lowther’s little scheme to steal the faulty ones out of our Armoury too.”

“How do you know that?” he asked. “When did you find out?”

Philadelphia sniffed eloquently.

“When I read King James’s letter about it to Scrope, the night after you left for Scotland. He had it in that stupid secret drawer in his desk which I check every so often to make sure he isn’t doing anything idiotic like dealing with Spanish agents and the like.”

She looked at him with kittenish satisfaction at knowing something he didn’t, and her face fell. “Oh,” she said. “You knew?”

Carey shook his head. “I suspected,” he said. “Who arranges the bearfight?” he said. “The bear or the bearwarden? No, it had to be King James operating through Lord Spynie. I remember the Earl of Mar said that the King wanted the German, that night when we saw them capture him in the forest.”

Philly nodded vigorously. “They had it all cooked up between them. Scrope kept quiet about the guns being swapped, King James could use our firearms to settle matters with the Debateable Land, and then he would return the guns to us. They only used the bad guns as dummies because you were about, causing trouble. It wasn’t exactly official, but the King did pay my lord a consideration.”

“A consideration,” said Carey bleakly. “Philly, Scrope’s lands yield three thousand pounds a year.”

“Oh they do, but we spend an awful lot.”

“So then what about Lowther…”

“I expect Scrope thought he had nothing to lose and plenty to gain by letting Lowther steal the bad guns. Maxwell might be badly weakened by the guns exploding in people’s hands, he might even lose a big battle with the Johnstones as a result, which would sort him out and even up the balance in the Scottish West March.”

“He might have died himself.”

“Yes, true. And of course, if he didn’t, he would be very annoyed with Lowther for selling him bad weapons, so Lowther would be weakened as well.”

“So why in God’s name did Scrope send me into Scotland without telling me any of this so I could protect myself?”

Philly smiled crookedly at him. “The silly idiot doesn’t trust anyone and he didn’t think you’d work it out. And I couldn’t send Young Hutchin to you because the silly boy had disappeared. Scrope knew you’d want to go. You were the mechanism for King James to return the good guns to us in the end.”

Carey laughed a little hollowly. “So I’ve been rooked,” he said.

“You knew all this, didn’t you?” Philly said intently. “Or you guessed?”

Carey nodded and rubbed the heel of his right palm into his eyes, yawning mightily. “I guessed,” he said. “I guessed because of the way Scrope kept me away from the firearms; not at the time, unfortunately, but later, on the way back. Oh God, Philly, why does everything have to be so complicated?”

“Well,” said Philly judiciously, “I suppose to Scrope it wasn’t a lot different from King James borrowing our cannon to reduce some noble’s fortress, which he does occasionally; it was just on a private basis, instead of officially.”

“Yes. That wasn’t what I meant.”

“He didn’t know Lord Spynie would do that to you.”

“No. Did he know Sir Henry Widdrington would be there, trying to curry favour with King James in readiness for when the Queen dies?”

Philadelphia shrugged. “I don’t think so. And you were eager enough to go and curry favour too.”

“So I was.”

“How’s Elizabeth?”

“Her husband beat her black and blue for lending me his horses last month, and I think he beat her again after she dared to look at me across a street in Dumfries,” said Carey bleakly.

Philadelphia nodded, unsurprised. “She told me she thought he might,” she said. “About the horses, I mean. I’m not surprised he did it again either. For all his gout, he’s very jealous of her.”

“How long does it take an old man to die of the gout?”

“Too long.”

Neither of them said anything for a while. At last, mercifully without a word, she undid his doublet buttons and laces for him, gave him the goblet of spiced wine and kissed him on the cheek when he had drunk some.

“I’ll send Barnabus in to see to you,” she said.

“Philly,” Carey’s voice was remote. “You don’t think he’ll kill her, do you?”

She considered gravely. “He might. But there’s no point challenging him to a duel because he’d be bound to appoint a champion, so the whole thing would be a waste of time.”

Carey smiled wanly. “I thought of that. When I talked to him in Dumfries, after King James had arrested him, I told him that whatever way he hurt his wife, I would infallibly do the same to him twice over and be damned to my honour.”

“Well, you’d have to catch him first and beat off his surname, but I don’t think he will kill her. He’s old and he’s sick and he needs her to nurse him when he’s having an attack. In a way, I feel sorry for him despite what he does to Elizabeth.”