P. Chisholm - A Season of Knives

Sergeant Dodd sat down on the bench facing Carey and leaned his elbows on the trestle table behind him. He looked up at the roof with its dusty martial banners and grinned suddenly.

‘What’s so funny?’

The bitch was restless. She rolled herself back onto her legs and put her muzzle on Carey’s leg, dribbling a little.

‘Only, I recall Lowther telling me more than once that I wasna paid to think.’

‘More fool him, then. Come on. I’m not paying you extra to think, by the way; I expect that as part of your ordinary duties. Anyway, I can’t afford it.’

Dodd smiled again. Two in ten minutes, Carey thought, what is the world coming to?

‘An’ that’s another thing I cannae understand, sir. There ye are, ye’re wearing more money in ironware on yer belts than I see from one year’s end to the next and ye say ye cannae afford this or that. Then ye go throwing money around: three pounds for Sergeant Nixon to buy bows; sixpence each for them to help with my haymaking.’

‘Oh.’ For the first time in his life it occurred to Carey to wonder if the way he spent money might have something to do with his debts.

‘It makes me curious, sir,’ said Dodd, quite loquacious now he’d been asked for his opinion. ‘I thought all courtiers were rolling in money. Are ye not rich?’

Carey could not be offended with him, his curiosity was so naked. Instead he sighed again.

‘Dodd, do you recall me telling you that the last time I was out of debt was in ’89 after I walked from London to Berwick in twelve days for a bet of two thousand pounds.’

‘Ay sir. I remember. You were taking one of my faggots off me.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Carey. ‘That reminds me, we haven’t recruited anybody for that place yet, have we?’

‘No sir,’ said Dodd, dourly.

‘I expect I’ll get round to it. Well, that was the last time I paid my various creditors. Since then…I’m a younger son, Dodd, as you are yourself. I get nothing from my father except the occasional loan and a good lecture. I’ve got no land and no assets at all, except my relatives and the people I know in London and Berwick.’

‘How d’ye live at Court, sir?’

‘The Queen likes me and she gives me money occasionally. Sometimes I can help someone get an office, or they believe I can.’

‘Is that all? I heard it was very expensive, living at Court.’

‘Oh Lord, Dodd, it is, it is. It’s crippling.’

‘So ye must have some means of earning money, sir; it stands to reason.’

‘I’ll tell you if you promise not to tell anyone else.’

‘Ay. My word on it.’

‘Gambling.’

‘Eh?’

‘I gamble. I play cards. Not dice, and I don’t bet on bears or dogs. Just cards.’

Dodd was fascinated. ‘Can ye win enough that way, sir?’

‘Yes, usually. There are plenty of people with more money than sense at Court, and a lot of them want to play me because I’m the Queen’s cousin and they’re snobs and want to boast about it, or they’ve heard I’m…good, and they want to beat me.’

‘And you get enough that way, sir?’

‘Yes. I paid Sergeant Nixon out of my winnings on Sunday night. Most of it was originally Lowther’s money anyway.’

Dodd laughed, an odd suppressed creaking noise. ‘No wonder he’s out for your blood.’

‘He would be anyway.’

‘No, but see, sir, he’s used to winning against your sister and my lord Scrope.’

‘Of course he is. They’re both appalling players.’

‘How about horses, sir? D’ye ever bet on them?’

‘What tournaments and suchlike? Yes, on myself to win, to try and cover the cost of it.’

‘Nay, racing.’

‘No. Cards are more reliable.’

‘That’s where I lose my money,’ confided Dodd. ‘At cards too, but on the horses as well. Will ye teach me to play, sir?’

Carey looked at him, astonished that the stiff-necked Sergeant could admit that he needed to learn. But then the only other person who had done that had been the famously proud Sir Walter Raleigh.

‘I expect so, I learnt it myself from a book. I’m afraid I don’t play seriously with you and the men, though, because you can’t afford to lose enough.’

‘Och, I’m happy to hear it. Take yer living off Lowther by all means. So why did ye leave London, sir, if ye could support yourself at play?’

‘Well, unless you cheat, which I don’t unless somebody’s trying to cheat me, it’s still fairly precarious. You can always have a run of bad luck. And things were getting a little…tense.’

Dodd had the tact not to ask directly. ‘Ye felt like a change?’

The lymer bitch was nudging at Carey’s leg and whining again. ‘I felt like not going to the Fleet prison, which was looking more and more likely. I could finish there yet, if Lowther hangs Barnabus.’

‘Ay,’ said Dodd. ‘Ye couldna keep on as Deputy then.’

‘Quite.’

‘Seems like ye’ll need to marry money or land, sir, like I did.’

Carey sighed again, cracked his knuckles. ‘That’s what everybody keeps telling me.’

But ye’ve lost your heart to Lady Widdrington, who’s married to someone else and not likely to inherit much either, thought Dodd sympathetically, though he didn’t say it.

‘So what do you think about who murdered Atkinson?’ Carey asked abruptly, obviously forcing his mind away from depressing thoughts and back to puzzles.

Dodd hesitated a moment longer and then answered slowly.

‘All I can say is, by my thinking there’s two kinds of murder. There’s the kind that happens in a right temper when ye go after a man that insulted you with a rock in yer hand and beat out his brains. Or there’s the kind where ye think about it beforehand and then do it when he’s not expecting ye. That’s the kind of murder that happened to Atkinson.’

‘Yes. Throat cut. I couldn’t see any signs on him that he’d fought at all.’

‘He wouldn’t know how any road. What about the man that got your glove off of Simon Barnet?’

Carey nodded, scratching the lymer bitch around her ears. She moaned with pleasure and rubbed her chin on his leg. A couple of the Keep servants came in and began laying the tables ready for the second of the two meals they served daily.

‘Either the murderer or his servant.’

‘Arm in a sling and bruised face. Shouldna be too hard to find if he’s in Carlisle still.’

‘If.’ Carey yawned jaw-crackingly. ‘It’s no good Sergeant, I’ve simply got to get some rest or I’ll fall asleep in the saddle tonight.’

‘Did ye not sleep well last night, then?’ Dodd asked solicitously. Once they had returned from talking to the Bell and Musgrave headmen, he had given Carey the best bed and he himself had taken Rowan’s truckle bed with his wife. After waking her up for his marital rights, he had slept like the dead until Carey woke him in the dark before dawn.

‘Not really,’ Carey admitted, not intending to explain that Dodd and his wife had kept him awake for the first half hour and then sea-green envy and a miserable worried longing for Elizabeth had wound him up too tight to do much more than doze after that. He came to his feet and the lymer bitch gazed up at him hopefully so he bent down and patted her broad yellow flank. ‘I’ll snatch an hour now before it’s time to gather the men together.’

‘Ay sir,’ said Dodd cheerily. ‘I’ll have a wander round the town and see if I canna find this man wi’ his arm in a sling for ye.’

Carey nodded, put his helmet under his arm and walked out of the Keep door, down the steps and across to the Queen Mary Tower where he was lodging. There was no Barnabus in his bedchamber to help him, and Simon Barnet was doubtless about to start stuffing his face with poor quality boiled salt beef and bread across in the Keep’s hall. The yellow lymer bitch had followed him all the way across and up the stairs and he hadn’t the heart to throw her out. He put his helmet and swordbelt on the top of his jackstand, wearily took his jack off, hung it up. He hadn’t the energy to struggle with his riding boots, so he drew the curtains of his bed to keep out the sunlight and threw himself full length on it as he was. The big lymer bitch whined a couple of times and lumbered up on to the bed next to him. Ancient strapping creaked alarmingly under their combined weights.