3 A Surfeit of Guns

by P. F. Chisholm

  Naturally, neither of the two surname-headmen had admitted to knowing anything about the Earl of Bothwell’s raid on Falkland Palace which was the main reason for their sovereign’s sudden arrival with three thousand soldiers behind him. However, both had come in and composed with him, promising in writing to behave themselves, not raid, not feud and not intrigue. Both of them were hoping very much that King James would not find out what they had really been up to.

  Trumpets rang out a fanfare for the third time as the cavalcade came up to the gate, led by five hundred footmen from Edinburgh. Behind them on a prime white French-bred horse, came the King. As to his dress, he was not at all a martial sight, wearing a high-crowned black hat with a feather and a multiply slashed and embroidered purple doublet. His linen was somewhat grey. Hats and caps came off raggedly as he passed, a few sorry souls actually bent their knees as if he were the Queen of England. Most bowed dourly.

  James Stuart, sixth of that name, was twenty-nine years old, a small man the shape of a tadpole, with powerful shoulders and short, very bandy legs. Luckily he was an excellent horseman. His face had never looked anything other than cautious, canny and slightly self-satisfied. He was the son of Mary Queen of Scots, but had last seen his mother when he was a baby. Certainly he had not remembered her well enough to intervene when Queen Elizabeth of England had decided to execute her five years back. Having been a king since babyhood he was accustomed to deference; having been a king of Scotland, he was well-inured to powerlessness, poverty, kidnapping, ferocious court faction fights and the suicidal lunacy of many of his most prominent nobles.

  Everyone in the cavalcade was sweating freely into their fine linen, since the day was dull and heavy with moisture. Ever since the king’s harbingers had arrived in Dumfries in search of lodging, provisioning and entertainment for the King, his court and the three thousand men, the town had been in a ferment, wagons and packtrains of provisions arriving every day, barns being cleared, pretty sons, daughters and cattle being driven up into the hills round about. Food prices had become farcical, what with the bad harvest weather and the press of people into the area.

  The desperate trumpeters excelled themselves as the King stopped at the Lochmaben gate, escorted by the outgoing Warden, Sir John Carmichael. The King was feeling the heat as well, the sweat making runnels down the grease on his face. All his clothes were heavily padded because he was, rightly, afraid of daggers. Behind him his courtiers affected the same portly, soft-edged style, not because they themselves were in the least afraid of daggers, but because he was the King.

  The King’s heavy-lidded eyes flickered from the Johnstone to the Maxwell and back again. He was waiting, very patiently, for something.

  Lord Maxwell came to himself with a start, dismounted, stepped to the King’s stirrup and kissed the long heavily-ringed hand that was stretched down to him.

  “Welcome to the West March, Your Highness,” he said.

  King James suppressed a sigh. No doubt it was foolish to wish that his subjects would address their monarch with the more respectful ‘Your Majesty’ introduced by the Tudors in England. ‘Your Highness’ would have to do.

  “Ay,” said the King. “My lord Maxwell, have ye heard anything of the outlaw Hepburn?”

  This was the erratic Earl of Bothwell, nephew of that dashing Border earl who had raped the King’s mother (according to her story) in the tumultuous year after James’s birth. The younger Bothwell had been an outlaw for over a year, but his latest outrage had taken place only a week before when he had raided the King’s hunting lodge three hundred miles away at Falkland, trying to kidnap James.

  “No, your highness,” said Lord Maxwell. “Naebody kens where he is.”

  “Playing at the football on the Esk in England, last I heard,” said the King drily. “Well, let’s go in.”

  Sunday 9th July 1592, morning

  Standing at the back of the cathedral while the Bishop of Carlisle battered his way through the Communion service before the serried rows of gentlemen and their attendants, Dodd watched the Courtier out of the corner of his eye. Somewhat to his surprise, he realised Carey was paying full attention to the words he was following in a little black-bound prayerbook.

  Dodd was shocked. He hadn’t taken Carey for a religious man and yet here he was, clearly praying. Then obscurely he found the thing reassuring.

  After all, if the Courtier had some pull in heaven, that might be no bad thing. And there was no question he was a lucky man, the way he kept giving death the slip: he should have been hanged by the Grahams two weeks before, never mind the knife fight at the inquest and the caliver that morning.

  The Bishop began to preach on the text “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay.” Dodd listened for a few words in case the Bishop had any new ideas on how to take revenge and then lost track amongst the Latin and Hebrew.

  They slipped out early to be ahead of the rush to mount up. The people of Carlisle were streaming towards the Rickersgate, lines of packponies shouldering through the bedlam with barrels and parcels on their backs, storeholders with handcarts shouting at each other and the women with their baskets worse than the rest of them put together.

  Scrope had ordered the garrison and townbands to muster in the open space before the Keep, by the orchard. They were first there, and lined up by the fence. Carey watched critically as the rest of the men who were supposed to keep the peace arrived and settled themselves. When Lowther arrived, high coloured and wearing a serviceable back-and-breast-plate, Carey actually put his heels to his horse’s flank and rode over before Dodd could stop him. For all Carey’s elegant bow, Lowther cut him dead and after a couple of attempts Carey rode back again, his lips compressed.

  “I could have told ye he wouldnae speak to ye,” said Dodd in an undertone. “What did ye want him for? Ye could likely talk to Carleton just as well.”

  “I wanted to discuss firearms with him.”

  Dodd’s mouth fell open. “Ye werenae hoping to tell Lowther the guns are rotten, were ye, sir?”

  Carey raised his eyebrows. “Why not?”

  “Well, but if it’s right he doesnae ken about the guns, all ye need to do is keep your gob shut about it and ye could get yer ain back on Lowther and a’ the trouble he’s caused you…”

  Something about Carey’s look made a dew pop out on Dodd’s forehead.

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that witless suggestion, Sergeant.”

  It was such a lovely opportunity, it was awful to see the Courtier missing a way of paying back Lowther that was neater than anything Dodd had ever seen.

  “But, sir…”

  Carey turned in the saddle. “Dodd, shut up. I’m not making more cripples like Long George for the sake of scoring off Lowther,” he said.

  Offended, Dodd fell sullenly silent. That’s what religion did for you, he thought, made you sentimental. Who the hell cared if Lowther or any one of his kin had his hand blown off? Serve him right for being a bastard.

  A group of wives from the castle hurried past them, carrying bundles and baskets, surrounded by squealing running flocks of children. Everyone was in their finery with even the babes in arms wearing ribbons on their swaddling clothes, all treking out to the muster, ready to watch the fine gentlemen and horses in hopes of some major disaster.

  “It looks like a fair,” Carey commented to Dodd. He was being pleasant again: Lord, the man’s moods were like a weathercock.

  “Ay, sir,” growled Dodd.

  “Poor old Barnabus won’t be coming, says he’s too sore and he’d rather have the day off in bed.”

  Dodd, who knew that Barnabus had picked up a dose at the bawdyhouse, grunted. That was what venery and immorality got you, he thought, and tried not to speculate on which of the six whores in Carlisle Barnabus had been bedding. It must have been Maria, she was the youngest and juiciest and…

  There was the sound of a single trumpet from the Keep and the two drums following. Scrope appeared, Philadelphia b
ehind him, mounted and followed by her women. Carey’s sister looked well on a horse, Dodd had to admit, in black satin and pink velvet, with a pretty beaver hat set perkily on her cap and finished with a long curled feather. Behind them came the Keep servants, all in their best liveries, and at the end an excited looking Young Hutchin Graham in the suit he had been given for the old Lord’s funeral, leading Thunder, Carey’s tournament charger. So it was true the Courtier was entering him in a race to show off his paces. Dodd narrowed his eyes and looked carefully at the gleaming black animal.

  Scrope himself was resplendent in his shining back-and-breast, with a plumed morion and a brocade cloak—he had attended church in the Keep chapel. He trotted down under the Queen’s banner and took up position facing the lines of garrison men.

  Carey spurred his horse across the green, made his bow lavishly from the saddle and spoke quickly under his breath to Scrope. Scrope smiled reassuringly, patted Carey’s shoulder and shook his head. Carey’s eyebrows did their usual dubious dance, but he bowed again and trotted back elegantly across the cobbles.

  “If ye’d asked me, sir,” droned Dodd. “I would ha’ tellt ye we dinnae take the armoury guns out on a muster.”

  “Just making sure,” said Carey. “Though isn’t that what a muster’s for, to reckon up the strength of the countryside?”

  “Ay, sir,” said Dodd, still as tonelessly as a preacher at bier. “But we ken very well how many guns is in the armoury, sir, we want tae know what’s out in the countryside, and we dinnae want any of our guns…”

  “Going absent without leave,” said Carey.

  “Ay, sir.”

  Carey nodded in silence. “I keep forgetting to use the peculiar logic of the Borders,” he said to no one in particular.

  Scrope was making the remarks his father had made last year and the year before that: they were to watch for outlaws but only to take note of their associates; they were to be tactful and alert to stop any trouble before it got out of hand. They were not to get drunk, on pain of the pillory.

  He called Carey to go behind him with his men and led the way down Castle Street and out through the eastern gate. There were still a few people in town, holding packponies or leaning on lances giving desultory cheers as they went by.

  The racecourse was heaving with men, already sorting themselves out into long lines, ready to be called. Carey had seen far more chaotic musters in the Armada summer, when numbers of excited peasants had turned out in their clogs with a touching faith that their billhooks, English blood and love for the Queen would shortly see them trampling down the veteran Spanish tercieros and scattering them like chaff. At the time he had agreed with them, but that was before he had done any serious fighting himself and found it to be as addictive as hunting, but much more dangerous for the undisciplined.

  These, as he looked up and down straggling lines of footmen and bunches of mounted men, were better furnished than he had expected. Scrope’s father had always given miserable accounts of the musters, as his predecessor had done before him: there were no horses, there were no swords, nobody had proper armour…

  Carey started to laugh. “You cunning old devils,” he said under his breath. “Look at them.” It was true that none but the richest headmen and gentry had back-and-breast-plates; almost everybody was in the pale elaborately quilted leather of their traditional jacks. But everybody had something hard on their head, even if it was only a clumsy cap of iron hidden under a hat. Not a single man there was without a weapon of some sort, a lance at the least, and often a sword as well, though few of them had firearms.

  Dodd was watching him suspiciously and Carey swallowed his hilarity. So much for his oath faithfully to report to his Queen: Carey knew he would infallibly lie as much as any of the Wardens and no doubt his own father and brother in Berwick had done before him. If anyone had presumed to report the true level of general battleworthiness on the Marches to the Queen, two things would have happened: she would instantly have stopped sending arms and munitions north to Berwick and Carlisle; worse, she would have become suspicious of the power wielded by her three March Wardens and started moving them in and out of office as her cousin monarch, King James, did with his.

  The morning was taken up with the main business of the muster, a very tedious matter. In the centre of the racecourse sat Scrope on his horse and in front of him Richard Bell with the muster books laid out on a folding table. There were two sets, Carey noted, and grinned.

  Every half hour or so, a trumpet would sound and Richard Bell would call out a headman or a gentleman’s name. The Carlisle town crier repeated it at three times the volume, the cry was carried back through the crowd. After some confusion the worthy who had been called paraded before the March Warden with all his tenants or the men of his surname. Then each of the men came up to the table, repeated his name, landholding and his weapons for marking in the book, then stepped back among his kin. There was a considerable skill even to the business of calling the surnames, because it would be a sad mistake to call out two headmen who were at feud, especially when they had their riders behind them.

  Once each surname had been mustered, the headman dismissed them and they fell to the real business of the day of eating, drinking, gossiping, listening to the educated among them reading out the handbills of the horses running in the races, argument and ferocious betting.

  As the day wore on, the alewives and piesellers made stunning profits and the crowd grew ever less orderly and more genial. There would be occasional sporadic outbreaks of shouting and confused running about. At that moment, Carey, Dodd and his men rode over and physically pushed the combatants apart, leaving them to glare at each other and call names, but giving them a face-saving way out.

  Later, when all but a few unimportant families had been called, the crowds drifted over to the racecourse fences and the stewards began lining up the horses that had been brought for the races. Carey was over in the paddock, patting Thunder’s neck and giving Young Hutchin Graham advice at length while the boy grinned piratically up at him.

  Dodd saved his money in the first race, which was won by a Carleton filly, just as a long line of pack ponies trailed into Carlisle by the Rickersgate. The second race took a while to start because there was argument over who should be by the rail. Dodd had two shillings riding on a likely-looking unshod gelding which trailed in at the end, second to last, puffing, blowing and looking ashamed of itself, as well it might.

  For the third race, Carey came over to him munching on a meat pie, having finally finished advising Young Hutchin. At the line up Thunder looked like a crow among starlings, towering over the mixed rough-coated hobbies and in particular an ugly little mare with a roman nose. Carey shouldered his way to the rail with a ruthlessness that belied his courtly nickname, with Dodd in his wake.

  The gun fired, the horses charged forwards and bedlam broke out, Carey no different from any other man watching his horse run, bellowing and pounding the rail with his fist.

  The first time the horses swept past, Thunder was up at the front, Young Hutchin’s tow head bobbing away above all the other riders. The second time he was still there and Dodd started yelling as well, in hopes of mending his fortunes a little. The big animal looked too big to be fast, but length of leg does no harm and he was pounding away willingly. By the third lap, many of the other horses had fallen behind and there was only Thunder, a brown gelding and the ugly little mare who swarmed along the ground like a caterpillar and yet stayed up at the front. They were close packed as they swept past, the riders laying on with their whips for the finish.

  The disaster happened between there and the finishing line, with Young Hutchin’s head down close by Thunder’s neck. The brown gelding moved in close, there was a flurry of arms and legs and then Young Hutchin was pitched off over Thunder’s shoulder, hit the ground and rolled fast away from the other horses’s hooves, while the ugly little mare ran past the finish to ecstatic cheers from the Salkelds.

  “God dam
n it to hell!” roared Carey and kicked a hole in the fencing beside him. “Did you see what that bastard did, did you see it, Dodd?”

  “Ay,” said Dodd mournfully, thinking of all the garrison food he would be eating until whenever his next payday happened to be. “I saw.”

  Carey was cursing as he vaulted the fence and went over to where Young Hutchin was picking himself up, flushed with fury and a knife in his hand. It took some argument from the Courtier to bring the lad over to Dodd, instead of going to wreak vengeance on the brown gelding’s rider and Dodd had every sympathy. It didn’t surprise him at all to see Sir Richard Lowther in the distance patting the brown gelding and its rider on the back and shaking Mr Salkeld’s hand. Carey saw it too and his eyes narrowed to wintry blue slits.

  “Hell’s teeth,” he muttered. “I’ve been had.”

  “Ay, sir,” said Dodd.

  “Let me go, Deputy, I willnae kill the bastard until this evening, Ah swear it. There’ll be nae witnesses, or none that’ll make trouble…”

  “Will you hold your tongue, Young Hutchin Graham?”

  Ay, lad, thought Dodd, but didn’t say, do it quietly and keep your mouth shut.

  “Ah wisnae expecting to be shoved like that, Ah wisnae, sir, if…”

  “Be quiet. Did you take any hurt when you fell?”

  “Nay, sir, but I cannae let that Lowther bastard…”

  “He’s a Lowther, is he?”

  “Ay, sir, he’s a cousin or similar, will ye no’ let me go and talk to him, just? Please, sir?”