“And both horses had been ridden a long way.”
“Anything else?”
“One said he thought it was a ghost for his cloak wis white.”
“Thank you, Skinabake,” said Carey. “That’s interesting.” It was, though there was no guarantee it was Hepburn.
“Will it save ma neck?”
“That’s for Mrs Dodd to decide since it was her you sold to the Elliots and not me.”
“Och,” said Skinabake. “He said he wouldna harm her and he didna.”
Carey tilted his head. “It’s a neck-verse,” he said. “I’ll talk to her.”
Skinabake looked miserable. “I’m allus unlucky, me,” he whined. “Tisnae fair!”
Carey left him and went back out to the bailey where Janet was deep in conference with her sister-in-law over the stinking retting tubs. He waited a little way off and then drew her aside as she hurried past.
“Mrs Dodd, will I hang Skinabake or ransom him?”
She scowled and then said, “Och, naebody will pay a penny for him, they’d likely pay you to keep him. I’ll keep him here a couple of days and then I’ll let him go, he’s ma second cousin and I ken my kin even if he disnae.”
Although Carey privately thought it would considerably assist the tenuous peace of the Marches if Skinabake wound up kicking on the end of a halter, he only nodded.
They ate well that night, beef stew from the autumn and bean pottage and the last remaining wrinkled apples which must have come from afar since there were no surviving fruit trees so close to the Border. The beef was good with carrots and parsnips, and a herb suet bag pudding to soak up the juices. They all did their best not to notice Sergeant Dodd’s empty chair, where not even Janet would sit. Nobody said a word, though some people tipped their alemugs to it.
Dodd was more exhausted than ever with fighting the monster behind him, he was hot and he just wanted to stop, but he couldn’t.
Voices called him back from the borderlands where he was stumbling about tripping on tussocks, nearly falling in a stream. There were the firm woman’s voice and a man’s voice he recognised but couldn’t put a name to. At least it wasn’t that bastard Wee Colin Elliot.
“Well?”
“Ay, I’m amazed he’s still alive. I can lance the abscess and drain it and then cauterise the site, but I dinna ken whether he’s got another abscess further in. Just cauterising it could kill him.”
“But, Mr Lugg, if it disnae kill him, he may get better.”
“Ay.”
“That’s as good as we can hope for. A’right, let’s dae it. I’ll have the blacksmith put an iron in the fire, give it an hour until it’s hot enough.”
While Dodd writhed sweatily and feebly in the bed under the digging of the monster’s claw in his back he heard the two women and Mr Lugg talking between themselves, how the courtier was now back in Carlisle and James’ troops had gone home directly to Edinburgh with a safeconduct from Carey.
“Has anyone sent to Sir Robert to tell him where his man is?” asked Mr Lugg. “I heard tell he was planning to go out again with the entire Castle guard to find Dodd when the snow melts.”
Carey? thought Dodd foggily, I know that name. The woman gave him a beaker of a thick syrup mixed with brandy which made everything distant and the claw in his back almost stop hurting. Then the giant grabbed him and laid him down on the bed bent over on his side, and the wound in his back oozing pus. The claw went in again, deeper than before and he screamed and tried to fight but his hands were tied together. There was a feeling of relief as foul-smelling stuff poured out of the wound and the woman giant mopped it up with a cloth that smelled of aquavitae. Mr Lugg held the wound open and said he thought he’d got all of it.
Then there was a thunder of feet on the stairs and a feeling of heat passed over him.
“Hold him,” said Mr Lugg and somebody put his weight on his shoulders and somebody else held his arms. Then the heat came into his poor sore back and he screamed again and again at the red bar of agony driving right through him.
The woman’s veil slipped but she couldn’t put it back because she was holding his arms down.
“Jesus Christ, Henry!” she gasped. “Stop fighting!”
And the linen cloth slipped some more and fell off and showed her monster face where it had been destroyed long ago by the burning rafters of a church, taking one eye and some of her nose, the skin still red and tender fifteen years later. But he knew her, knew her too well. She had been buried deep in his mind because he had known Alyson was dead and he killed her, and here she was still alive.
All the breath gasped out of his body and he lay still and stayed still, staring at her, despite the smell of roast pork and she looked straight at him with her one good green eye and knew he knew her.
And then darkness took him from below and he fell into it. He fell down and down and down, a lifetime of falling.
And then he landed on the same bed with fresh sheets on it and with more bandages tight around his middle and the claw in his back turned to just a spike.
He gasped, breathed deep. He was on his side, covered by blankets and was no longer hot, in fact he felt cold. The light coming through the arrowslit was luminous and white so perhaps more snow had fallen. A fire was chuckling to itself in a brazier and the veiled woman was sitting beside the bed which had a respectable half-tester over it, though it was old.
“Good morning, Henry,” said Alyson, “How are ye?”
“Uh…” his lips were bone-dry. He felt as light as an autumn leaf. “Ah’ve been better.”
She tilted her neck, lifted his head and gave him some warm chicken broth. It tasted good. He slurped greedily from the horn spoon, trying to lift his own head rather than letting her do it, but he couldn’t.
“What happened?”
“I think somebody shot you with a crossbow…”
“Ay, I remember that and I remember getting on Whitesock’s back as it got dark, though I dinna ken how. Then it’s a’ black night and snow.”
“Ah well, the day after the snow, a tenant of mine, a Turnbull, was out to find his sheep and bring them into the infield, and couldna find them and went further and came upon you on your horse with the white sock, and you were lying on his withers with a crossbow bolt sticking out of yer back, not quite dead. The horse wouldn’t let the man near enough to take the reins but followed him when he headed for my tower, which pleased him because he marked yer jack and that the horse was shod so he wondered if there might be a ransom for ye. Which nae doubt is why he didna dump ye in a ditch and tek the horse. When I saw who ye were, I gave him an English shilling for bringing ye.”
Dodd submitted to more spooning of broth and gathered his strength for more talking.
“Is ma horse here?”
She shook her head. “Once we had got you down from him, he bolted and nobody could catch him.”
“Och.” Dodd was annoyed to find tears pricking his eyes. God, he was weak. He dimly remembered lying on his face with snow and mud in his mouth and the long shape of the horse on his belly in the mud beside him, nickering anxiously. He had spent what felt like at least an hour mountaineering up the side of the horse to get his leg across, while Whitesock waited patiently, only flicking snowflakes off his ears.
What had happened to Hughie, the man who had dared to try and kill him from behind? He couldn’t say. One minute he was there riding behind Dodd, the next minute he was towering over him, talking about how he was an Elliot while Dodd fought the breathless agony in his back, managed to pull his knife out of its scabbard and stick it in Hughie’s calf. Then he caught the iron smell of a sword, heard the outraged scream of the horse and thought he could hear sounds of fighting which made no sense, until it went to silence. Then he had the horse-mountain to climb until finally Whitesock scrambled to his feet and he clung with his hands and teeth
in Whitesock’s mane and the saddle pommel digging into his stomach and the claw in his back. No more, there was only endless clinging to the horse’s warm back in a black night full of snow, the life in him leaking away slowly but surely, until it was all black. And then the heat of the burning church woke him.
“Why?” he whispered to Alyson. “Why are ye looking after me? Why didn’t ye kill me?”
Her face behind the veil was unreadable, even if it hadn’t been burned into immobility.
She didn’t answer, just spooned broth into him until he slept.
Carey was sitting in Bessie’s while the place racketed with a grand shove-groat competition that Bangtail was near to winning. The prize was worth having, since it was free beer for the winner for the evening. Carey was not as talented as Bangtail at shove-groat and couldn’t get anybody in Carlisle to play cards with him anymore, so he was watching the proceedings, thinking about who he would take to Keswick with him and fantasizing about Elizabeth and Janet co-operatively in the same bed with him, which was about as likely as…hills flying, crows turning white, oceans running dry, as they said in ballads. Well, it may not have been realistic, but it was a very nice idea, so long as it never left the safety of his own skull.
A solid black-haired man came and stood in front of him and took his cap off, so Carey returned the courtesy with a tilt of his head. “It’s Mr Lugg, isn’t it?” he said with an effort, thinking back to haying and his man that had had his hand blown to pieces by a badly made caliver, before the disastrous trip to Dumfries.
“Ay, sir,” said the surgeon, smiling a little. Carey gestured at the bench and Lugg sat down, set his pewter mug in front of him. “I’ve some news for ye, Sir Robert.”
Carey raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“Ay. Yestereven Ah lanced an abscess in the back of your man, Sergeant Dodd…”
“You did?” Carey was almost on his feet, laughed aloud. “He’s still alive?”
“He was when I left Stobbs this morning, cannae say if he still is for he’s been bad wi’ a crossbow bolt in his back nigh his kidney, but ay. Happen he’s still alive.”
“Good God!” Carey paused just long enough for the fleeting unworthy thought to pass across his mind that now Mrs Dodd was untouchable again and that was a sad thing. Then he laughed again because of course Dodd was still alive, that man was unkillable by anything short of a halter or an axe. Even a petard at Oxford hadn’t done it. And fighting men of Dodd’s quality were not common even here on the Borders, where right fighting men were two a penny. “God’s Blood, Mr Lugg, that’s the best news I’ve heard since New Years’ Eve. He’s at Stobbs tower, you say?”
“Ay, Mistress Elliot took him in and Wee Colin Elliot sent for me.”
“Elliots took him in?”
“Ay, and looked after him—Mistress Elliot is a fine horse-leech and kens when summat’s beyond her, too.”
“I’m…I’m astonished.”
“Ay,” said Lugg with a pull at his ale, “I wis surprised meself, but there ye go. He’s at Stobbs and likely to bide there a while.”
Carey felt in his purse and found a stray sixpence, gave it to Lugg who touched his cap. “Thank you,” he said, standing up and looking round for Red Sandy who was sinking another quart and shouting for Bangtail in the competition. “Thank you for treating the Sergeant and thank you for taking the trouble to tell me.”
“Nae bother, sir,” said Lugg, finishing his beer and getting up to go to Bessie again for a refill.
Carey got up as well, and struggled through the excited crowd as Bangtail slapped the board again and got his groat further than the other finalist in the last round of the game. Half the watchers cheered, half groaned and then the business of settling the bets started while Bangtail stood up, raised his jack, and downed his quart of beer in one before holding it out to Bessie.
Carey put his hand on Red Sandy’s shoulder, who was grinning drunk and cheering the victor. He had to shout and say it twice but eventually Red Sandy got the message.
“Are ye telling me ma brother’s no’ dead?”
“I am,” said Carey and explained what Lugg had told him. Red Sandy stood stock still for a moment when he heard where Dodd was, with a very peculiar expression on his face, and then a slow smile lit it up.
“Ay,” he said, “ay.”
Dodd woke again and found Alyson standing by the bed with a long-necked glass pot in her hand.
“Now, Henry,” she said, “could ye see yer way clear to filling this?”
Piss in it, she meant. He was in fact desperate to piss but it was hard and embarrassing, because the clouts round his hips had to come off and then he had to go to all fours because he couldn’t even sit up and she had to hold the pot and then he had to let go which at least felt good. At last the pot was full of piss that was a funny colour. She put a shirt on him afterwards, his own, it was washed clean of the blood and the bolt hole carefully darned.
Alyson lifted the pot to the arrowslit and squinted her one good eye at it like a physician. “I think that’s old blood,” she said, “not fresh. We’ll keep it to show Mr Lugg when he comes tomorrow.”
She put the pot down and helped him to lie on his side and then started spooning more broth into him. He was very thirsty and gulped and then suddenly he was full.
“Now, d’ye feel strong enough for visitors?” she asked and her voice sounded as if she was smiling, though how could she smile? “Mr Lugg said he’d tell yer Deputy Warden where you are last night and sure enough, here he is. But ye have to bide quiet and not fight anyone, Henry, d’ye understand? No fighting yet.”
He felt weaker than a baby, panting for breath, a newborn kitten could have mauled him. “Ay,” he croaked.
She opened the heavy door and there stood the courtier in his jack, his morion in his hand, his Court goatee nicely trimmed again and his chestnut head brushing the ceiling.
“Och,” said Dodd to himself.
“Sergeant Henry Dodd!” said Carey, coming forward wreathed in smiles. “I’m delighted to see that you’re clearly born to be hanged, since it seems that not even a crossbow bolt in the back an inch from your kidney can kill you.”
For a moment Dodd tried to hold onto the grudge he had been enjoying against the courtier since Dick of Dryhope’s tower, but it now seemed a distant and a dead coal, no longer smouldering in his heart. He was surprised at that. Somehow, when he wasn’t looking, so to speak, he seemed to have forgiven the courtier for giving the Elliots a second chance. Then he relaxed and pulled a weak smile back.
“Ay.”
Carey put his morion carefully on the table next to the piss bottle and sat down on the stool next to the bed. Alyson stood watchfully by the arrowslit.
“D’ye ken what happened to yer servant, Hughie Elliot?” Dodd asked.
“Elliot? You mean Tyndale?”
“Nay, Elliot. He told me he was Wee Colin’s younger brother after the bastard shot me.”
Carey’s face cleared and he smiled with enlightenment. “Aha,” he said with great satisfaction, “now I understand. Well, we found his corpse on the hills and I found this in his calf muscle.”
With some ceremony, Carey put Dodd’s knife on the table and Dodd tried to reach for it but couldn’t manage, and had to settle for looking at it lovingly. It was his, had been his since he was a wean and his father had given it to him. It was like seeing an old friend.
“In his calf, eh? So I got him fra the ground while he wis jawing at me?”
“You did. And your horse…Whitesock killed him. He was lying on his back with Whitesock’s hoofprints on his chest.”
“Och,” said Dodd, emotion swelling in him and making his chest feel thick. “Ye’re telling me ma horse killed ma enemy?”
“Yes. It’s all over the Border and I’ll bet someone is making up a ballad about it right now.”
/>
Dodd couldn’t speak for a moment. “Did ye ever hear the like?”
“I didn’t. I have heard of trained warhorses killing men in battle but never anything like that.”
“Did ye find him, ma horse, Whitesock?”
“Yes, that’s how we knew something had happened. He came back to us in Edinburgh with a bloody saddle.”
Dodd was silent again. Was there ever such a horse? He had killed Dodd’s enemy, taken Dodd to safety, and then gone for help. Plenty of men wouldn’t have done so well.
There was wet on his face and he lifted his hand to wipe the stuff off and saw a stranger’s wet hand, frail and bony.
“He’s in Carlisle stables now,” said Carey, “though he’s too wild to ride. But how are ye yerself, Henry?”
“Ah cannae hardly move but my back doesnae hurt so much now,” Dodd admitted. Carey took his hand, felt it, smiled again.
“I can’t feel any fever,” he said. “Can you move your legs?”
It took concentration and a lot of effort but he managed to bend his legs and straighten them, wiggle his toes.
“Or possibly you’re fated to be beheaded like me, because I honestly can’t think of another reason you survived a foul snowy night like that one with a crossbow bolt in you.”
For some reason Dodd found the idea funny, that he might lose his head to the axe when hanging was so much more likely. He began a laugh, then winced because it hurt him.
“Ay,” he said.
“Now I’m riding straight to Gilsland to tell Mrs Dodd you’ve turned up. Mistress Elliot says you can’t move back there for a week at least because the wound might open up, but after that we’ll take you to Gilsland on a litter…”
“Ye will not,” snorted Dodd. “Ah’ll ride my horse, Whitesock, so I will.”
Carey tactfully said nothing to this preposterous plan but clasped Dodd’s almost transparent hand and left the room with a courteous bow to Alyson.
A Suspicion of Silver Page 13
