P. Chisholm - A Famine of Horses

When he ventured out into the courtyard again the chaos had given place to a semblance of order. There was a row of men pissing against one of the stable walls, and Dodd and Carleton were already mounted. Simon ran to the row of horses, brought out Carey’s best horse, Thunder, and led him over. Carey thought about it, joined the row of men to relieve himself, refastened himself carefully because one of his recurring nightmares while serving at Court had been attending the Queen with his codpiece untied, then went over to his horse, slipped off the pattens and mounted up carefully. Dodd lifted his cap to him, replaced it with his helmet and followed him as he rode down the short row of his own six men.

Carey went all round them in silence, eyes narrowed, while the horses shifted nervously and their riders did their best to stare stolidly ahead.

Bell was also waiting, watching out of the side of his eyes as he held Henry Lord Scrope’s old horse. It had been the work of two minutes to make the younger Scrope thoroughly ashamed of forgetting Richard Bell and secure him the position of honour, leading the riderless charger behind the bier. Carey approved of the fact that Bell had groomed the animal himself. He came round in front of the men again.

“Archie Give-it-Them,” he said gently.

“Ay sir,” said Archie nervously. Somebody had put him under the pump: his hair was still wet.

“You look fine. You could attend the Queen herself.” He addressed them generally. “In fact you all could.” This was stretching the truth slightly as the Queen insisted on handsome men about her at all times, and these looked like the thugs they were, but never mind. “I’m very pleased with your turn-out. You look like what you are, the best men of the garrison.” He paused to let that sink in. “Now a few words about processions. Firstly, don’t be in any hurry, especially as you’re near the front. For some reason, the natural tendency of a procession is to spread itself out and the rear is always in a hurry to catch up. So keep your horses down to as slow a walk as you can. Secondly, be alert because something always goes wrong.” There went Philadelphia and Elizabeth in their black finery, followed by half a dozen servants almost hidden under the weight of gowns for the paid mourners waiting by the gate. And Lowther had arrived. He ignored the man and continued.

“Dogs get tangled up in them, horses take a dislike to each other, people fall off their horses, women faint, children make rude remarks. With luck we won’t find a nightsoil wagon with a broken axle barring our path as we did at an Accession Day parade I took part in once.” Most of them sniggered at that. “It doesn’t matter. If it concerns you directly, sort it out quietly. If it doesn’t, ignore it and try not to laugh. If some idiot child gets himself trampled, and his mother is having blue screaming hysterics in the middle of the road, Red Sandy, Bangtail and Long George are to clear the path and join the tail end if they can.”

He smiled and caught young Simon’s eye: he was carrying the big drum. “Let me hear you give the double-pace beat, Simon.”

Simon blushed, dropped a drumstick, picked it up and banged a couple of times.

“Can you count?” asked Carey patiently. The sun was up, the Carlisle gate was open, the crowd of mourners, some of them drunk, were putting on their gowns, and the draft horses were hitched to the empty bier. In about two minutes the Carlisle bell would start tolling.

“Y-yes sir.” said Simon.

“Try again. Count one, two, one, two.”

“One, t-two, one, two…”

“Bang on the one.” Simon did so. “Better, much better.”

Two more boys with drums came running up and looked at him. One of them had his cap over his ear. Carey sighed.

“Can you remember that, Simon?”

Over in the corner Lowther was trying to shine the trumpeter’s instrument with his hankerchief.

“Don’t think of anything else. Say it to yourself: bang, two, bang, two.”

“A-ay sir.”

“And keep it slow. We’re not going into battle.”

That got a laugh. High overhead the bell at the top of the keep made its upswing and came down with a deep solid note. Normally sounded in the middle of the night when raiders came over the border, it was eery to hear it in the morning. The trumpeter snatched back his trumpet, made an accidental raspberry and began blowing an abysmally untuneful fanfare.

As they waited their turn to go out the gate, Carey nodded to himself. Dodd had done as he asked, though he suspected wheels within wheels, since one of Lowther’s men had a burst lip and Dodd had fresh grazes on his knuckles. His men were clearly smarter than Lowther’s and while he doubted anyone except himself really noticed that, still it pleased him…Oh Lord, he’d forgotten to put on his gloves.

Just as he finished drawing them on, it came his turn: he let Lowther and his men have precedence, followed with his horse on a tight rein. Thunder had been ridden in plenty of processions before but was apt to get overexcited at drumbeats and bells. Normally Carey was wearing full tilting armour and the extra eighty pounds on his back kept Thunder subdued. This time…

Somebody waved a wooden rattle right by Thunder’s head. Carey used the whip to stop the crow-hopping which jarred him painfully, and caught Lowther’s face turned over his shoulder expectantly. Damn, the man was a complete pillock.

Like all processions that one became a blur of sunlight, faces of crowds, drumbeats, horse tails, creaking and a jam of bodies waiting at narrow places like the gate. All the time the trumpeter valiantly kept up his corncrake blowing and the Carlisle keep bell tolled, to be joined in counterpoint by the Cathedral bells, telling out the age, sex and rank of the deceased. The bell-ringers knew their business, which they should do with the amount of practice they got. And somehow Simon and the two other drummer boys, kept the beat firmly so it was easy to match paces to it.

Once at the cathedral, they filled up the battered old building from the back. The churchyard was packed just as tight, with puffing blowing horses investigating each other’s necks and four of Lowther’s men set to guard them and keep the lesser Borderers from temptation to the sin of horsetheft.

Within, Carey stood, hat in hand, grave reverence on his face, long practice filtering out the mendacious eulogy of the bishop while his mind wandered where it would. There was Philadelphia behind her husband in the front pew, pert and handsome in black with her ruff slightly askew. For all the rehearsed wailing of the paid mourners, there was not a wet eye in the house. Old Scrope had been respected, but not loved, particularly not by his eldest son whom he regarded, rightly, as a fool. His younger son, a solid, pleasant man, had had less expected of him and earned less of his father’s impatience: he at least looked sad.

The cathedral choir managed the psalms well, if a little sharp, and the pall bearers succeeded in not dropping the coffin, now closed. In the rush to mount up again outside and form the procession once more, Carey was braced for disaster, but it all went astonishingly smoothly.

They were halfway down the road to the citadel when Carey suddenly knew that something was going on behind him. There was an odd yowling and the crowd was laughing at the bier.

He turned his horse, caught Hutchin Graham’s expression of panic and murderous outrage, looked past the glossy draft horses with their black trappings at Carlisle’s only bier where the coffin was and wondered how black velvet had become tawny…

There was a ginger cat tangled in the armorial cloth over the coffin. Wishing his ribs weren’t so sore and fighting not to grin, Carey brought Thunder alongside the bier, reached in, grabbed the cat by the scruff of its neck and hauled it out. It tried to bite his hand, was foiled by leather glove, and lashed a paw full of needles at his face.