P. Chisholm - A Famine of Horses

The day was hot for the first time in weeks, and Dodd thought seriously about hiding his jack in a bush and coming back for it later. In the end he simply couldn’t bring himself to do it and risk losing an old friend.

As he loped along, he kept watching for horses though he knew there was less than no hope of finding a loose horse to steal this close to the marauders denned up at Netherby. Most of the men were at the shielings anyway, so not even cows were visible, and the womenfolk hard at work in the fields and gardens near their houses. Some of them unbent their backs to look at him, a couple recognised him, but as they could hear no tolling of the Carlisle bell, they were puzzled to know what to do and simply stood watching. He ignored the ones who called out.

Perhaps his father-in-law would take pity on him and lend him a horse to carry him the further seven miles to Gilsland where he could rouse out his own surname.

God help Carey if he’s had the bad taste to get himself hanged before I can bring help to Netherby, was all Dodd could think, as he pounded along the rutted gravel of the Roman road. I’ll hunt him down and beat his brains out in Hell itself.

Elizabeth Widdrington roused her stepson Henry from his lodgings at Bessie’s and told him the tale as he ate his bread and cheese. He laughed aloud at the thought of Dodd being banged up in his own jail, until he saw his young stepmother tapping her foot and swallowed his amusement. She’s a handsome woman, he thought, a little shocked at himself. What shreds of filial piety Henry had ever felt had been long destroyed by his father’s ill-temper and complex doings with the Fenwicks, the Kerrs and every gang of ruffians that chose to terrorise the East March when Sir John Carey’s back was turned. As a boy of ten Henry had been prudishly shocked when his father chose to marry again, and found himself a young Cornish girl through the good offices of Lord Hunsdon. But Elizabeth Trevannion had won him over in the end by treating him as a brother, rather than a son.

She was talking again.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked, not sure he had heard it right.

“You and I are going to Thomas the Merchant and we’re going to get the full story he’s hiding about what he knows of Sweetmilk. And then, depending on what we find, you might go straight to Netherby to tell Jock of the Peartree of it.”

Henry chocked on a lump of cheese. “But I haven’t got a pass to go into Scotland.”

“You will by the time you need one, Philadelphia Scrope is seeing to it. Now come along.”

Thomas the Merchant had a very fine wooden town house on English Street, solidly built of Irish timber and the walls coloured faint pink with a bull’s blood wash. Elizabeth Widdrington swept in, with the top of her high-crowned hat brushing the door lintel and servants scattering behind her like chaff. Henry knew his job for this kind of thing, at least, having collected rents with his stepmother in the past. When an ugly man his own height dared to bar their path, he drew his sword, put it on the man’s chest and walked straight on so he had the choice of giving way or being spitted. The man gave way.

At the end of the hallway stood a middle-aged slightly built merchant in rich black brocade, trimmed with citron velvet and green braid, clasping his hands nervously.

“Lady Widdrington, Lady Widdrington, what is the meaning of this…”

Henry set his face in an ugly scowl and advanced on the man with his sword. Occasionally he was grateful for the spots and pockmarks that ruined his face for the girls, because they made him look so much more unsavoury than he knew he really was.

“Thomas Hetherington,” said Elizabeth in tones that would have skewered a wild boar, “you will tell me what you know about the killing of Sweetmilk Graham and what happened to his horse and you will do it this instant ! Sit down.”

“How dare you come breaking into my house and threatening my servants, I have never been so slighted…”

“Then it’s about time you were,” said Elizabeth. “By God, I have had enough of your patronage and your shilly-shallying and this time you shall tell me what I ask and you shall tell the truth or I will destroy you and everything you own.”

Thomas the Merchant’s face went putty-coloured. “This is unseemly,” he said, and Henry had to give him credit for courage. “Madam, I must ask you to leave or I shall call…”

“Oh?” asked Elizabeth, “and whom, pray, shall you call? The Warden? He’s in bed. The Grahams? They’re busy. However, I am here and I will have no arguments, do you understand?”

“I’ll sue, I’ll…”

Elizabeth smiled very unpleasantly. “Nothing would please me more than to meet you in Westminster Hall. In the meantime, tell me what I ask, God damn you, or I’LL LOSE MY TEMPER.”

Henry thought it was wonderful how his God-fearing stepmother could swear when she was angry, but he kept his face straight and his sword ready. She had another advantage, in that she was tall and when she shouted her voice deepened, rather than becoming shrill. Personally, he would have told her everything he knew, down to the place he’d buried his gold, if he was Thomas.

Thomas the Merchant had the sense to sit down. Elizabeth pulled up a heavy chair and sat down opposite him.

“I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman,” she said, quoting the Queen whom she greatly admired, “but I have the heart and stomach of a lord, by God, and I’ll have your heart and stomach out in the light of day if I must, Thomas the Merchant, and swear you tried to rape me. So. Tell me about Sweetmilk.”

With a couple of hundred stolen horse gathered at Netherby alone-never mind the others being kept further up Liddesdale-there was a stunning amount of work to do. Carey was at the bottom of the heap as far as importance and the backing of a surname was concerned, and so inevitably he found himself lumbered with most of it. He trotted about the churned up paddock, carrying buckets of water and bales of hay while his stomach groaned and rumbled. It was empty because his conversation with Mary Graham had meant he was late for breakfast and all that was left of the porridge was the grey scrapings at the bottom of the pot.

The man in charge of caring for the horses was called Jock Hepburn, a by-blow cousin of Bothwell’s, who claimed to have Mary Queen of Scot’s second husband the fourth Earl of Bothwell for his father. He explained this to Carey and the sixteen other men who had been set to do the work, told them to call him ‘sir’ or ‘your honour’ since he was noble and they weren’t, and then sat on the paddock fence, played with the rings on his long noble fingers and shouted orders all morning.

Some surname men were in the paddock too, seeing after favourite animals, but since most of the horses were stolen, the work fell to Carey and his fellows. At least it gave him the chance to mark out Dodd’s horses, which he did by the brands. They were standing together, heads down, as horses often did when they were miserable.

Once the feed and water had been brought in, Hepburn took it into his head that the horses needed grooming, since most of them still had mud caked in their coats from when they were reived. In fact, Carey thought, as he worked away with a straw wisp and a brush at the warm rough coat in front of him, Hepburn was perfectly right, but he could have called in some of the idlers playing football in the next field to help: at this rate they’d be at it all day. He was getting a headache and his arms were tiring from unaccustomed work. If Dodd could see me now, he’d surely die laughing, thought Carey grimly as he scrubbed at the hobby’s legs, and there’s still been no word from Bothwell where we’re supposed to be going.