P. Chisholm - A Season of Knives

Oh, it was agony to watch him. His hand came up to rub his moustache. The sensible thing for him to do, of course, and what Carey himself would infallibly have done, was to fold gracefully. Unless he actually had a chorus of aces, sixes or sevens.

‘Well?’ asked Scrope tetchily. ‘I must get back to my bed before midnight, Sir Richard, if I’m putting out a muster in the morning.’

Carey felt the outlines of his new goatee beard which was just at the itchy stage, tapped his fingers on his teeth and hummed a little tune. He had decided to shave it in the morning because it was a different colour from his hair at the moment. Lowther had started to sweat. Couldn’t he afford to play? Then he should learn to do it better, thought Carey unsympathetically, who had never been able to afford bad card-playing in his life. Philadelphia had got a grip on herself and was beckoning over John Leigh’s servant.

‘Jock Burn,’ she said, ‘is there any spiced beer left?’

‘Ainly the wine, my lady,’ said Burn after checking the flagons.

‘Oh well, I suppose it’ll have to do,’ said Philadelphia, holding out her goblet imperiously.

Jock Burn came over into the pool of silence that had formed around them and poured for Philadelphia and then for everybody else. He was a dour enough man, and strictly should not have been employed south of the Border at all, since he was a Scot. It was a law everybody flouted since the Scots would work for half the cost of an English servant.

John Leigh was watching the play anxiously, with occasional glances at the window.

‘Sir Richard?’ whined Scrope again.

‘My Lord Warden,’ reproved Carey gently. ‘Take all the time you want, Sir Richard,’ he added generously to Lowther.

Lowther made a strangulated noise.

‘Will ye accept my note of debt, Sir Robert?’ he asked in the tone of a man telling a tooth-drawer to do his job.

‘Of course,’ beamed Carey.

Lowther snapped his fingers irritably at Jock Burn who came over with paper and pens. Lowther scribbled for a moment and then added the note to the pot along with the remnants of his cash.

Carey reached across, picked it up, checked it, nodded and put it back.

‘Just making sure you haven’t raised me,’ he explained to Lowther who seemed close to explosion.

‘Get on with it.’

‘You first, Sir Richard,’ Carey said courteously, wondering for a single icy moment whether Lowther had fooled him.

Lowther laid down a chorus of kings, with a total point score of forty.

Carey laid down his own hand showing sixty points. Everyone, including Philadelphia, sighed and Lowther let out a high little whine. Thought you had me there, did you, you old pillock, Carey thought with savage satisfaction as he scooped in his large pile of cash. There was actually too much to fit in his purse, but Jock Burn was at his elbow with a velvet bag, supplied like magic from under his sister’s kirtle. Elizabeth Widdrington was also receiving a sum of money from John Leigh and smiling triumphantly across at him. Carey smiled back, wanting to laugh.

‘Well,’ said Philadelphia almost truthfully, ‘this has been a very exciting evening.’ She was standing up, shaking out her petticoats and farthingale and smoothing down the back of her kirtle where it had rumpled. Lady Widdrington was doing the same as she rose from her own padded stool. ‘Mr Mayor, Mrs Aglionby, thank you so much for a delightful dinner and some splendid play.’ Tactfully, Philadelphia did not mention the wine which had been terrible. Carey had left all of his, although Philadelphia had finished hers, he noticed. Philly was curtseying to Aglionby and his wife, who curtseyed back in mute distress.

‘Ah, yes, indeed,’ said Scrope benignly. ‘Most excellent. Greatly enjoyed myself.’

Edward Aglionby bowed to both of them and then slightly less deeply to Carey and Lowther. Carey returned the courtesy, Lowther hadn’t noticed since he was staring into space looking very green above his ruff.

It seemed John Leigh was in a hurry to go and had already made his bows while Philadelphia was speaking and left the room, followed by Jock Burn.

Down the stairs and into the darkened street where two yawning, blinking servants were waiting for them with torches to see them back into the Castle. The main gate had long shut but of course Scrope had the key to the postern gate. Carey looked around in irritation.

‘Where’s my man Barnabus?’ he demanded of the oldest torchman.

‘Ah dinna ken, sir,’ came the answer. ‘When we were having our dinners in the kitchen, he said he knew a place he could get better fare and went off, sir.’

‘Blast him,’ said Carey, who had the ingrained caution about walking around with a large sum of money acquired by anyone who had lived in London for any time at all. ‘Oh, well. We should look dangerous enough.’

Lowther said goodnight to Scrope and departed to his home, and the rest of them set off up the side of the market place, past the stocks and into Castle street. The town was empty so close to midnight, even in summer when the sky never really darkened down to black but hung above, a canopy of deepest royal blue, studded with stars.

All about them the scent of haymaking thrust its way across the usual town smells of horse dung and kitchen refuse and the butchers’ shambles on their right. Carey breathed deep and happily before offering Lady Widdrington his arm.

‘You truly like Carlisle, don’t you, Sir Robert?’ she said.

He paused, looked at her and put his own hand on her firm square one.

‘My lady,’ he said. ‘I have won enough money to pay for my new sword and buy me a suit; I have infuriated Sir Richard Lowther; I am away from London and best, best of all, I have your arm in mine.’

She smiled quickly and then looked down.

‘It would take very little more to make me the happiest man in England,’ he hinted delicately and found himself skewered by a grey glare.

‘I don’t think you should tease Sir Richard Lowther,’ she said after an awful pause. ‘You should know by now how dangerous he is.’

This was sensible; Lowther had almost succeeded in getting Carey killed the week before, although Scrope had insisted on an insincere reconciliation. Lowther had been Deputy Warden under the old Lord Warden and had run the March pretty much as he liked. After the Warden’s death, he had confidently expected old Scrope’s son Thomas to make him Deputy Warden in turn and had been very displeased to find that Scrope had asked his brother-in-law to do the job instead. The five hundred pounds per year that the office was worth was only the beginning of the financial loss this had caused Lowther, never mind the set-down to his prestige and power.

‘I can’t help it,’ said Carey trying to look contrite and failing. ‘He’s so eminently teasable. Blast and damn Barnabus! I was looking forward to returning the money I borrowed off him so Lowther could see that even if he didn’t have a better hand, he only had to raise me again and I’d have had to fold.’

Elizabeth snorted, trying not to laugh.

***

Barnabus had been drinking happily in the company of six beautiful women, when they weren’t busy, and playing dice with some of their few customers. He rolled out of the door having drunk all his money, sad to be leaving the common room still bright with rush dips and a good singsong just beginning. Madam Hetherington had a policy which forbade credit and so he had to leave. Anyway, he remembered that he was supposed to help light his master home from his card-party. He waved goodbye to the juiciest trollop who was leaning out of the window in her smock, and started down the street humming to himself.

Unlike London, Carlisle was dead at night, most of the crime taking place outside its walls rather than inside. And with the hay harvest even the reivers were working hard. If there was a footpad in Carlisle with more practical experience than Barnabus, then Barnabus thought it would be interesting to meet him. He was like a cat at night, automatically silent and stealthy, even when seriously over-oiled and not actively looking for trouble.