P. Chisholm - A Famine of Horses

She still wanted to fold him into her arms and kiss his poor face, but she knew how that would drive him away. So she put one hand out to touch his arm and said, “Thank God you’re alive, Sir Robert.”

He looked at the floor. She had, after all, tried to dissuade him. No doubt he was waiting for her to tell him she’d told him so.

“Thank you,” he managed to say.

“Are you still interested in Sweetmilk?”

Carey looked up. “I beg your pardon?”

“Do you still want to know who killed him? If you’ve found out already, I won’t waste any more of your time. But if you haven’t, Thomas the Merchant has a tale he’d like to tell you.”

Good, that distracted him, he’d always liked puzzles and challenges. There went that silly eyebrow of his, ridiculous the effect it had on her.

Carey led the way through to the room he used as an office and sat down behind his desk.

“Well?” he said to Thomas the Merchant, pointedly not offering a seat.

Thomas the Merchant harrumphed, clasped his hands under his belly.

“Early on the Saturday,” he began, harrumphed again.

“Yes.”

“Jock Hepburn and Mary Graham came to me wanting rings. They were handfasting one another in secret.” Thomas look distasteful at this evidence of sin, seemed to consider commenting on it, but changed his mind at Carey’s expression. He went on quickly in his resentful drone. “While they were here, Sweetmilk came in, wanting horses and caught them. He was verra put out. He called Jock Hepburn a bastard that had dishonoured his sister, and Hepburn struck him on his face, so he threw down his glove. Hepburn picked it up, but Mary Graham was clinging to Sweetmilk and begging him not to kill her man. He only threw her down and walked out with Hepburn.”

Carey’s good eye was narrowed with interest. “How were they armed?”

“They werena clad for business. Sweetmilk had his best jack and nae lance and Hepburn was very fine in a French brocade, three pounds the ell, I’d say, and a jack as well, but foreign make. Nice rings too.”

“I know,” said Carey. “Their arms?”

Thomas the Merchant pulled the corners of his mouth down in thought. “Swords, daggers, the usual.”

“Who had a gun?”

“Neither of them.”

“Did you look out into the street?”

“I did. Hepburn and Sweetmilk were riding down tae the gate together, with Mary chasing after them on her pony still crying to Sweetmilk not to do it.”

“She didn’t think Hepburn would win?”

Thomas smiled broadly. “Och, no, he’s a bonny man, but Sweetmilk had the experience. I was betting on him meself.”

“Think hard, Mr Hetherington. Did any man there have a firearm?”

“Nay, neither of them had more than swords.”

“Thank you, Mr Hetherington. I want you to make a proper statement for Richard Bell to take down and I’ll be calling you as a witness against Hepburn at the next Warden’s Day.”

“Sir…”

“Quiet. Off you go.”

Thomas the Merchant went, but Elizabeth Widdrington stayed for a moment.

“Will you try and arrest Jock Hepburn?”

“Yes,” said Carey. “It might have to wait until after Bothwell’s raid and we can lift him quietly without too much trouble, but yes.”

“Why? He only killed a Graham, an outlaw.”

“Sweetmilk wasn’t an outlaw, yet. He wasn’t killed in a fair fight, he was murdered so Jock Hepburn could avoid a fight.”

“Why…” Elizabeth paused, “Why did you take so much trouble over it?”

Carey looked down at his hands. “Do you know what justice is?” he asked at last, in an oddly remote voice. “Justice is an accident, really. It’s law that’s important. Do you know what the rule of law is?”

“I think so. When people obey the laws so there’s peace…”

Carey was shaking his head. “No. It’s the transfer of the duty of revenge to the Queen. It’s the officers of the Crown avenging a man’s murder, not the man’s father or the family. Without law what you have is feud, tangling between themselves, and murder repaying murder down the generations. As we have here. But if the Queen’s Officers can be relied on to take revenge for a killing, then the feuding must stop because if you feud against the Queen, it’s high treason. That’s all. That’s all that happens in a law-abiding country: the dead man’s family know that the Crown will carry their feud for them. Without it you have bloody chaos.”

It was strange to hear anyone talk so intensely of such a dusty subject as law; and yet there was a fire and passion in Carey’s words as if the rule of law was infinitely precious to him.

“All we can do to stop the borderers killing each other is give them the promise of justice-which is the accidental result when the Crown hangs the man who did the killing,” he said, watching his linked fingers. They were still empty of rings and look oddly bare. “You see, if it was only a bloodfeud, anyone of the right surname would do. But with the law, it should be the man that did the killing, and that’s justice. Not just to take vengeance but to take vengeance on the right man.”

“So you’ll make out a bill for Sweetmilk Graham and go through all the trouble of trying Hepburn and producing witnesses and finding him guilty…”

“And then hanging him, when a word to Jock of the Peartree would produce the same result a lot more easily. But that wouldn’t be justice, you see, that would only be more feuding, more private revenge which has nothing to do with justice or law or anything else. Justice requires that the man have a trial and face his accusers.”

“But you think Jock Hepburn did it.”

“Who else was there?” said Carey. Elizabeth opened her mouth to speak, took a breath, and then paused. “But at least at a trial he could argue against my suspicions.”

“It’s a complicated thing, this law.” Elizabeth said, trying to speak lightly. “Do you think you’ll be able to explain it to Jock of the Peartree?”

Carey smiled lopsidedly. “No, never in a thousand years.”

It was so hard to sit there and not move nearer, not hold her hands out to him. Why was it so hard, even after all this time? After all they had first met in ’87 when he was on that difficult and dangerous embassy to King James, and again in the Armada year when she had been at Court with Philadelphia. They had played at all the light, silly, sweet confections of loverlike convention, half joking, half deadly serious.

He looked awful, but despite the brown walnut stain and clownish bruising, there was something in his blue eyes and the way he smiled that had the power to hypnotise her, make her forget all her faith in God and hard-held virtue, everything. When she had read sceptically the verses about the romantic disease of love poured out by the sonneteers, she had never believed it was such a dangerous uncomfortable beast. But she had been wrong. She looked at the floor so as not to be caught, flushed and struggled. No, she thought harshly, I’m a married woman and unfaithfulness is breaking a vow I made in God’s presence. That’s all. And now I have to go, so I can think straight.

She stood up. Carey stood as well, moved towards her.

“Thank you,” he said gently, “I know what you did for me.”

No, she couldn’t stand it, in another moment she would burst into tears and tell him how she had paced the castle through the day in terror of his death and let him kiss her and then it would be too late to stop. He wanted to kiss her, any fool could see he needed less than half an excuse to reach out and catch her to him…her face as flushed as a girl’s, she hung her head, muttered something half-gracious, and fled through the door.

Behind her Carey stared after her, reddening with frustration. Then he yelled, “GOD DAMN IT!” and threw his stool at the wall.