P. Chisholm - A Season of Knives

‘Do something about the pigshit, Dodd,’ he said drily. Dodd went to the water trough, picked up a bucket and poured the water over himself, which helped a little.

They mounted up. Red Sandy took the reins of the hobby carrying Andy Nixon because Long George was in the middle of a sneezing fit, and they started back to Carlisle. At the Eden bridge Carey told Dodd to begin the patrol and wait for him at the Gelt ford. He led the hobby himself as he turned the horses in towards Carlisle town with the sun dying in fire behind the Castle and the clouds. He had Archie-Give-It-Them Musgrave on the other side to help if Nixon should get free.

Andy Nixon was conscious again, turning his face sideways to keep his graze away from the horse’s flank and wriggling occasionally when the horse jerked. He had already been sick, there were traces of it on the horse’s belly. Carey supposed the head-down position, the motion and the smell would make you sick, come to think of it. Good. Serve the bastard right. Not a scratch on him after fighting fifty-odd Grahams and outlaws that morning-and then he went to arrest one rent-collector and ended up feeling as if he had been run over by a cart and nursed by the Spanish Inquisition. His whole shoulder was aching with pulled muscles, his ribs were griping him again, his hip was sore though his jack had softened some of the force of the kick, and his face was bruised which made him talk out of one side of his mouth. He doubted there was an inch of his body which didn’t have some complaint and he sincerely hoped Nixon was feeling much worse.

Nixon croaked something inaudible.

‘What was that?’ Carey asked.

Nixon lifted his head and yelled. ‘I didna do it.’

Carey rode along in silence for a moment, thinking. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Nixon,’ he said flatly. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you were the kind of man that would let a woman face burning alone.’

The head flopped to hang downwards again. ‘Ah Christ,’ came a muffled groan.

There was no more chat until they got back into Carlisle and tethered their horses at the Keep. Carey had to keep fighting the illusion caused by taking an afternoon nap, that in fact he had fought the Grahams the day before.

A young man called William Barker was keeping the dungeons for Scrope, deputy to his grandfather who was officially the Gaoler. He stared with surprise as they rode into the inner yard and Archie-Give-It-Them heaved Andy Nixon down from the horse.

‘Fetch the irons, Barker,’ Carey said.

The youth fetched them out of the little locker. Carey put them on Nixon’s wrists before he cut the ropes binding him. Nixon’s eyes looked like a cow at the slaughter. When he cut the rope, Carey saw the puffiness of Nixon’s right hand.

‘What happened there?’ he asked.

Nixon’s lip lifted. ‘Some whore’s get trod on it in an alley, Sunday night,’ he said. He looked down and shifted his feet; Archie was putting leg irons round his boots.

Carey took the keys from Barker in the passage by the wine cellar, opened up the heavy door to the outer dungeon and Nixon shuffled clankingly inside, sat down on the stone bench. He looked at Carey hopelessly.

‘Where’s Kate?’ he asked.

‘In the Gatehouse prison,’ Carey said as he swung the door shut and locked it. ‘You can’t see her.’

Leaving Barker in charge, Carey and Archie-Give-It-Them changed horses and hurried back to the gate which was just closing. They cantered out of Carlisle and over the Eden bridge to catch up with Dodd for the patrol. Carey squinted up at the sky as he rode. The roof of clouds had an ugly grey bulbous look and the sun’s last rays squeezed under its lower fringes.

‘More rain, Archie,’ he said conversationally.

‘Ay,’ said Archie. ‘At least Dodd will get his jack cleaned for him.’

The clouds were as good as their promise: halfway through their patrol it began to pour and continued until they came back to Carlisle in the pitch darkness well after midnight. Carey thought that at least he now knew for certain where King James’s horses were not, since neither hide nor hair of them had they seen anywhere. Long George kept up a monotonous sneezing, wheezing and snortling all through the patrol. Carey was sure nobody could be fool enough to be raiding in that kind of rain, so they turned for home early and after some argument with the City gate guard came in by the postern gate. Solomon Musgrave was more co-operative, trotting down to open up the Keep gate and let the soaked men and horses in.

‘Ay, sir,’ he said, as Carey came through. ‘It’s a foul night.’ Carey remembered him from when he was a boy, but was too depressed to do more than nod. Generally speaking he was not a worrier, so the way thoughts and imaginings about Elizabeth Widdrington kept attacking him was a new experience for him. It happened whenever he was not positively thinking of something different: his thoughts wandered down a well-beaten path that began with what Elizabeth might be doing or thinking about now, continued with plans for the future that were always stumped by the fact of her husband, and then came to a new juddering halt with the certainty that Sir Henry Widdrington was ill-treating his wife and that Carey could do nothing whatsoever about it.

They dealt with the horses, drying them off as well as possible, picking mud out of their feet, feeding and watering them. Carey was not sure he could feel his own feet as he left his men at the barracks door and headed through the dark for the Queen Mary Tower. Upstairs in his chamber, somebody had left a watch-light burning for him and put out a clean shirt-probably Goodwife Biltock, with Barnabus in quod. For a while Carey simply stared at it, too stupid to think what to do next.

‘Ye’ll not be sleepin’ in yer boots again,’ nagged Dodd’s voice from the door. He was standing there, stinking only slightly now, holding a trencher of bread and cheese and a jug of beer and looking embarrassed.

‘Er…no, Sergeant,’ said Carey, starting to undo his laces slowly.

‘Ay,’ said Dodd dubiously. ‘Well, I brung ye some vittles, seeing ye dinna have the sense of a child that way.’

‘Well, I…’

‘Nobbut a fool sleeps in his boots if he doesnae have to,’ continued Dodd in an aggressively sulky tone. ‘And even a fool will eat occasionally.’

He put the food on the largest chest, came over and helped Carey take off his armour, shook it and hung it on the jackstand to drip. The feeling of lightness and freedom that came with the sudden removal from his body of about fifty pounds’ weight of iron plates and leather padding, almost made Carey’s head spin. With the dour expression that said he was a free man doing favours, Dodd helped Carey pull off his riding boots, always a two-man job if they fitted properly. Then he lit a couple of tapers off the watch-light, went to the bed and started to draw the still shut curtains aside.

‘Och,’ he said in a strangled tone of voice.

Carey was pulling off his smelly dank shirt streaked with brown from his wet jack. He went to look at what Dodd had found. Could it be worse than the corpse of Sweetmilk Graham which had welcomed him to Carlisle a couple of weeks ago?

It could. The yellow lymer bitch who had been his bedfellow earlier lifted her head and growled softly in her throat. She had pupped on the bed; there were three yellow naked ratlings squirming in the curve of her belly.

Carey looked at her and blinked. ‘Oh God,’ he sighed.

‘Shall I have her off there?’ asked Dodd, obviously working hard not to laugh.

Carey had to smile. It was funny, in a perverse sort of way.

‘No. Leave her.’

He turned to put on his fresh shirt and then paused, looked again, having difficulty focusing his eyes. The bitch was whining softly, nosing at her tail end. Her flanks heaved, but nothing happened.