P. Chisholm - A Famine of Horses

“Whose are these?” he asked one of the men guarding the table, a Milburn if memory served him.

“What, the guns, sir?”

“Yes.”

“They’re the women’s weapons, sir. Brackenhill’s women. All of them carry firearms when they’re in Carlisle.”

“Good God, why?”

“The Grahams dinnae like their women to be raped, so it seems.” said the man and grinned.

“But the recoil would knock them over.”

The man shrugged. “Most of them are broad enough.”

Carey was staring open-mouthed at the weapons, with his mind spinning. Somebody took his arm and drew him to one side. It was Elizabeth Widdrington.

“Mary Graham had hurt her wrist,” he said, seeing the pattern of it all fall into place. “She was there when Sweetmilk challenged Hepburn. Mary Graham shot Sweetmilk?”

Elizabeth nodded. “To save her lover.”

“Who then sent her back to Netherby so he could get rid of the body on Solway Moss.”

“And would have nothing more to do with her.”

“When did you know?”

“When I heard Thomas the Merchant’s tale. Sweetmilk would never have let Hepburn get up behind him, but Mary…”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Elizabeth flushed. “I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know the Graham women carried dags. I might have made a mistake-all I had was guesswork.”

Carey nodded. “And you felt sorry for her?”

Elizabeth didn’t answer. Then she added firmly, “And sorry for Jock of the Peartree too. He’s lost a son, why take his daughter?”

Carey stared at her. “For justice. Because she killed her brother.”

To his astonishment, her face twisted into a sneer. “Oh yes, justice,” she said. “I’d forgotten. She’s sixteen, she’s with child, she’s a fool who lost her heart to a man, and we must put her on trial and bring witnesses and get her to confess, and then when her babe’s born, we must hang her.”

“Yes,” said Carey simply.

Elizabeth turned, walked away from him.

Carey found himself put in charge of dealing with the leftovers when all the various gentlefolk had gone, or been carried, back to their lodgings in the town. He delegated it on to Dodd who was still fairly sober, and as the heels of the pies and the unusable remains of the carcasses and bread were carted down to the castle gate to feed beggars (some of them very well-dressed), Goodwife Biltock descended on the hall with an army of women with brooms to sweep out the rushes and scrub the floor clean of spiced wine stains.

Carey went upstairs to the cubbyhole next to Scrope’s office used by Richard Bell. One of the boys had come to him in the afternoon asking if he would care to do so, and he went, wondering if Bell meant to thank him.

Richard Bell was, as usual, writing when he came in. He wiped his pen and put it down at once, and came over holding some papers.

Feeling tired and very sore, Carey leaned against the wall by the closed door, took the papers with his eyebrows raised, and skimmed through the Secretary script still used by Bell.

“Lowther’s letters,” he said neutrally when he’s finished.

“Ay sir.”

“Not very flattering, are they?”

“No sir. I have a second…er…draft of the letter referring to you.”

Carey took that one, glanced at it, read it carefully and smiled.

“Very subtly done, Mr Bell,” he said, “Burghley will make the same response to this as he would to the other if he disagreed with it.” He waited.

Bell looked down at his desk. “Sir Robert,” he said, “I will be frank with you. I served the old lord faithfully and I will serve his son in the same way. If the lord Warden writes a letter like that to my lord Burghley, you will never see it and nor will I…er…improve it as I have with this. However, Lowther is not my lord and…I would rather be your friend than his.”

“I already regard you as a friend, Mr Bell,” said Carey, his heart lifting. Surely it couldn’t be as easy as this, surely the man would want money?

Bell smiled at him, a remarkably sweet smile for such a skull-like face.

“May I have the other letters back, then sir?”

Carey handed them over, keeping the one that described, in withering terms, his doings of the Friday. Before his eyes, Richard Bell put the three letters into the dispatch bag and sealed it.

“May I keep this?” he asked, waving the paper.

“I hope you’ll burn it.”

“Naturally, I will,” said Carey, “but I want to be sure I’ve understood it properly.”

Bell shrugged. “These are the only letters dictated by Sir Richard,” he said, pointing to the dispatch bag. “That one in your hand must be a libellous forgery.”

Carey tucked the paper into the front of his doublet and grinned.

“Of course it is,” he agreed, “I’m in your debt, Mr Bell.”

“No sir,” said Bell, as he put the dispatch bag on a hook, “I regard this as fair exchange.”

“Well, good night Mr Bell.”

“Good night, Sir Robert.”

Back in his chamber in the Queen Mary Tower, Carey bit down on his rage and forced himself to read again what Lowther thought of him. It wasn’t at all complimentary. In fact, there might have been a disaster if the Queen had seen it. Lowther described Carey as an impudent, ignorant young puppy, an unprincipled gloryhound, whose ridiculous, irresponsible and foolhardy attempt to spy out what Bothwell was up to at Netherby had imperilled Lowther’s clever intelligence work et cetera, et cetera.

Carey committed it to memory as a way of drawing the sting of his anger, then watched with satisfaction as his candleflame caught the edge and curled the whole epistle into a little pile of ash in the grate. But Elizabeth’s astonishing defence of Mary Graham kept rising up in his mind causing confusion and irritation, and when Barnabus arrived with a bowl of rosewater and a pile of cloths to take the white lead off his master’s face at last, he was snarled at. That night Carey lay for a long time staring into the darkness of the bedcurtains, listening to the snoring of his servant and the Carlisle bell telling the hours, unwilling to risk his ribs in turning over. He wished he could put his arms around some warm cuddly girl, bury all his doubts in her, perhaps even ask her what she thought…No, perhaps not.

Even when he slept at last, Elizabeth Widdrington haunted his dreams with her hand bandaged and her gun smoking.

The week had passed with breathless quiet, since all the worst raiders among the Armstrongs and Grahams were busy deep in Scotland and the hay harvest was in full swing. After the hurry of the days before the funeral, Carey took life easy for a while and spent some of the time, once he felt more comfortable on a horse, riding out across the rough hills and learning how they lay. He even got in some hunting with dogs, since all the falcons were still in moult, though they returned empty-handed.

It was Young Hutchin Graham who came to Carey as he stood in the castle yard at dawn on the Saturday following Scrope’s funeral, and muttered that if he chose to ride up to the ford at Longtown, he might find some horses. This confirmed everything Carey had heard about Young Hutchin from Barnabus, but he only narrowed his eyes and said, “Anything else?”

“Ay,” said Young Hutchin, “if ye go alone, there might be someone to meet ye there.”

“Will that someone be alone as well?”

“Ay. He gives ye his word on it.”

“I’ll be armed.”

Young Hutchin grinned. “So will he.”

Probably I shouldn’t do it, Carey thought, as he shotted both his guns and put them in their carrying case, probably it would be wise to have Dodd and the men follow at a distance.