3 A Surfeit of Guns

by P. F. Chisholm

  She put the bowl of hot water on the floor by the bed and cold water on the table.

  “Put your hands in the cold water,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “To bring down the swelling.”

  She went to the door and shouted through it: “Bring me a crewel needle, embroidery snips and eyebrow tweezers and aqua vitae. And food and mild ale.” There was an answering shout. Carey was looking distinctly nervous when she came back to him, but he had his hands in the water.

  The bandage around his side was stained and smelled. She used the small knife to cut it off him and hot water to soak it away from his wound. The wound itself was not bad at all, mostly healed, only one end had opened again and exuded a trickle of blood and white fluid. The skin around Philadelphia’s neat silk stitches was red and angry and Elizabeth tightened her lips with annoyance at the congenital carelessness of men.

  There was a knock at the door again, and a page slid round it. He was carrying a small hussif and a leather bottle. He scooted across the floor, put them down on the table by the bowl and scooted out again. Elizabeth wondered what was scaring everyone so much and sat down beside Carey.

  With the eyebrow tweezers and embroidery snips she took out the stitches that were actually causing trouble now the rest of the wound had healed. She cleaned the part that had bled and bandaged it all carefully again.

  Carey sat in silence, not even wincing. He seemed to be far away, in a kind of daze. She took the withies, measured them, trimmed and cut them to size.

  “Now,” she said, mentally girding her loins, “I’m going to cut off that bit of rag holding your fingers together.”

  “It’s the Earl of Mar’s handkerchief.”

  “I’ll buy him a new one. Take your left hand out of the water, and put it on my lap.” After a moment’s hesitation, he did. Very carefully she cut the cloth with the small knife. As the fingers came free, Carey sucked in his breath and held it.

  The splints and bandages were beside her on the bed. She started by patting his swollen hand dry and examining the thumb, which was bruised, but not broken. There were marks and bruises around his wrists but nothing that needed attention.

  “Let me tell you a story,” she said, taking his forefinger and feeling it carefully. The swelling was down a little and she could feel the greenstick fracture inside the flesh. It would have needed no more than a splint only someone had twisted it sideways. “About two weeks ago, while I was still in Carlisle, my husband called out most of his kin at Widdrington and rode due west to the Border.” She knew Carey was watching her face intently, trying to ignore what she was doing to his hand. “Probably at Reidswire in the Middle March he met his friends from the Scottish court, come south from Jedburgh, and took command of a string of heavy-laden packponies, carrying handguns. Then he rode south and east again and, according to my steward, he met Sir Simon Musgrave and the arms convoy on the Newcastle Road at night. Sir Simon is an old friend of my husband’s, they collect blackrent off each other’s tenants. There they exchanged one set of guns for another.”

  He was interested now, listening properly. She held his forearm tightly under her arm, took his forefinger, pulled and stretched it straight, ignoring the jerk and his startled “Aahh”, until she felt the ends of bone grate into place. Quickly, she put the splint up against it and bandaged it on.

  “How do you feel?” she asked. “Dizzy?”

  His face had gone paper white, but he shook his head.

  “Warn me next time,” he said, panting a little.

  “Very well.” The next one would be harder, being the long middle finger. She took it and started stroking it again. This was more of a crushing fracture, badly out of place. Well, all she could do was her best.

  “Try not to clench your hand,” she said. “Ready?”

  He nodded, watching anxiously.

  “Robin,” she said. “Look over at the tapestry, over there.”

  He did, fixing his eyes on a place where the heavy folds swung gently as if in an invisible breeze. She took the finger, gripped his arm tight against her stays and set the bone into place. It took longer this time to get it to her satisfaction and splint it to the other withy, and at the end she had sweat running down under her smock and stinging the grazes there. Carey was green and clammy, eyes tightshut. She smeared ointment on, splinted the three fingers together, took the little bottle off the table, tasted it to make sure of what it was, and gave it to him.

  “Not too much,” she warned, watching his adam’s apple bob. “I haven’t finished yet.”

  “What the hell else is there to do?”

  “I can make your other fingers feel better if I release the pressure of the blood under the nails.”

  He was cradling his left hand against his chest and swaying slightly.

  “How?” he asked, not looking at her.

  “By making a hole in the nails.”

  “Oh, Christ. Are you working for Lord Spynie?”

  He meant it as a joke, though it was a very poor one. She tried to smile and failed. She was not enjoying this, although she might have thought she would, given the stupid man’s cavortings with Signora Bonnetti.

  “It doesn’t hurt so much,” she managed to say. “My mother did it for me when I caught my hand in a linen chest lid.”

  Now he was offended for some reason. “Get on with it then,” he growled.

  She got the strongest needle out of the hussif case, sharpened it on the carborundum and slipped the cobbler’s handstall on. There was a candle and tinderbox by the little fireplace. She lit the candle and heated up the end of the needle. The blood that came out from under his thumbs was sullen and dark, so she thought he would keep those nails, but when she drilled through into the nailbed of his right forefinger, the blood spurted up into her face and Carey yelped.

  She mopped herself with her makeshift apron, pressed to make sure it was all out and attacked the final one, leaning well away. There was pressure under that one as well. She cleaned them both up, once more fighting the distraction of his body. At last she bade him put just his right hand in the cold water again and wrapped a compress round the thumb of his left hand.

  “Are you finished?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll make you a sling when you’re dressed, but I see no point in bandaging your right hand when the bruising doesn’t need it. You can take it out of the water when it stops throbbing. What you need now is to sleep.”

  He shook his head, as much to clear it as to dismiss the notion. “What’s the rest of your tale? Who helped make the transfer on the Border? Was it the Littles? And why did they give guns in payment to the Littles who helped them?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Carey explained about Long George and his new pistol and Elizabeth shrugged cynically. “I have no doubt that Long George simply stole one. What else do you expect?”

  “All right. So the Scottish weapons are now on the Newcastle wagons and coming into Carlisle with Sir Simon. What happened to the English weapons?”

  “Apparently my husband took them north again to Reidswire where he handed them over to Lord Spynie’s men.”

  Carey sighed and tilted his head back. “Of course, where else? Put like that, it’s bloody obvious.”

  “What is?”

  “Everything. Who has our guns, where the bad ones came from, why they were swapped, who killed Long George.”

  “Well, I’m glad somebody understands what’s been happening,” said Elizabeth tartly.

  He grinned at her, ridiculously pleased with himself again, and kissed her smackingly on the lips.

  “You are a woman beyond pearls and beyond price,” he told her, putting his arms around her with great care. “I love you and I will never never chase Italian seductresses again.”

  She tried to hang onto her anger, but she couldn’t. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she muttered and he laughed softly.

  “Was
that tale about your husband what you told the King, to get me out? About the swapping of the firearms?”

  “I told him more than that,” she snapped, still unwilling to be mollified. “I told him what you did last month to stop Bothwell’s attempt at kidnapping him. Anyway, all I needed to do was tell him what Spynie was up to. You know the King likes you.”

  Carey shrugged, then grinned, tightened his arms around her bearlike. She could feel his heart beating against hers.

  “Magnificent, beautiful, capable woman,” he whispered. “Come back to Carlisle with me. Leave your old pig of a husband, come live with me and be my love.”

  For a moment she struggled with temptation, more amused than offended by his rapid recovery. He found her mouth, began kissing her intently. Why not, she thought, why not? I’ve taken my punishment for it, why shouldn’t I take the pleasure? She was letting him overwhelm her, she didn’t care that she had the taste of the blood from his lip in her mouth, that he smelled of blood and sweat and surprisingly of wine…And then one of the splints on his fingers jarred on one of the raw places on her back and they both winced away together. He was puzzled, she was suddenly enraged with herself and him.

  “No, no, no,” she snapped, jumping up and straightening her cap with shaking fingers. “How can you want me to break my marriage vows that I made in the sight of God?” The words sounded pompous and false because they were false; she knew she would have broken any vow in the world if she could have done it without destroying him.

  His face was nakedly distressed. “Because I am so afraid,” he said, quite softly. “I’m…I’m afraid that Sir Henry will kill you or break you before he dies. And I love you.”

  Infuriatingly, the door unlocked, opened and two boys and a manservant processed in carrying food: a cockaleekie soup, bread, cheese and some heels of pies, plus a large flagon of mild ale. The manservant stretched his eyes a little, to see her standing beside a half-naked man, even if she was fully dressed.

  “Now,” she said, turning to the Scot as businesslike as she could manage, considering that she was trembling and close to tears. “What’s your name?”

  “Archie Hamilton, ma’am.”

  “Well, Archie, do you think you could act as Sir Robert’s valet de chambre?”

  A short pause and then, “Ay, ma’am, I could.”

  “Excellent. Clear the table, lay the food. I shall leave while you help him to dress. Be very careful of his hands.”

  She walked out with the boys carrying the bowls of dirty water, waited in the little passageway and fought to get control of herself. At last Archie re-emerged and she went in again, quickly made a sling for his arm. They had laid the table for two and she sat herself down again at the other end of the bed, so the table was between them, and dipped some bread in the soup.

  Carey was in a plain black wool suit of good quality though a little small for him, with a plain shirt and falling band, a short-crowned black felt hat on his head. He was still pale and moved his left arm as little as possible, but somehow, despite it all, he was in good spirits. He ate and drank as if he were not facing another dangerous interview with the King of Scotland. Elizabeth could only nibble and sip.

  “What’s wrong, my lady?” he said. “This is good; it’s from the King’s table, I think. Are you very offended with me?”

  She shook her head, but she could see he had thought up something amorous and courtly to say by way of apology and further invitation.

  “If I burn with love…” he began and she interrupted him brusquely.

  “You’re still a prisoner,” she said. “I can’t think how to get you out.”

  He smiled, winced and touched his lip, drank his ale very carefully. Sometimes he was so easy to read: there went the courtly phrases back into the cupboard in his mind marked ‘For soothing offended females (young)’.

  “Never you worry about it,” he said, switching to irritating cheeriness. “I know the King and he’s a decent man. It’s hardly treason to sell your enemy eighteen dozen booby traps.”

  “Who were they for?”

  “The Wild Irish, I expect, poor sods.”

  “Don’t you feel sorry for them?”

  “Yes. I also feel sorry for Bonnetti if he hangs around in Ireland long enough for them to find out what he’s brought. I’ll ask the King to make sure he gets away with them.”

  “And the real guns?”

  Carey’s eyes were dancing, though he was careful not to smile again.

  “We’ll see what we can do.”

  They finished their meal, talking amiably and distantly about young Henry and his awkwardness, and the Grahams. Robin said nothing more about Elizabeth leaving her husband and coming to live with him. It was impossible anyway, and always had been. If news of any such behaviour came to the Queen’s ears, which it would, she would strip Carey of his office and call in all the loans she had made him. He would be bankrupt, on the run from his creditors and with no prospect of ever being able to satisfy them because the Queen would never allow him back at court again. Frankly, unless he turned raider, they would starve.

  When they had finished, Carey wandered to the locked door, kicked it and shouted out for the Earl of Mar. It opened and the Earl was standing there, his face as austere as before.

  “Ye’ll be wanting to see His Highness again.”

  “If he wants to see me, my lord.”

  “Ay, he’s cleared an hour for ye.”

  “Excellent. And thank him for sending Lady Widdrington to tend to me, she is unparalleled as a nurse and far better than any drunken surgeon.”

  “Hmf. Ay.”

  “My lord Earl,” said Elizabeth. “May I ask what’s happening to my husband?”

  The Earl sniffed. “That’s for the King to decide, seeing he’s under arrest.”

  “And Lord Spynie?”

  Another much longer sniff. “Ay, well,” said the Earl. “The King’s verra fond of him, ye ken.”

  “Yes,” she said with freezing politeness. “So it seems. Sir Robert, what would you suggest I do now? May I serve you further or should I tend to my husband?”

  “Tend to your husband by all means, my lady,” Carey said very gravely. “I am greatly beholden to you.”

  She curtseyed, he bowed. She walked away from him, refusing to look back, refusing to think of anything but dealing with her husband.

  “Lady Widdrington.” She stopped and turned, felt a touch from him on her shoulder where it was most tender and automatically shied away. Carey was there, smiling at her.

  “May I have my ring back?”

  She blushed, embarrassed to have forgotten, wondering at the sudden hardness in his eyes. She fished the ring out of her purse under her kirtle and put it into his hand. He fumbled it onto his undamaged little finger, bowed once more and turned back to the patiently waiting Earl and his escort.

  ***

  The King of Scotland had often enjoyed the use of the secret watching places he had ordered built into many of his castles. Through holes cunningly hidden by the swirling patterns of tapestries brought from France, he found the truth of many who swore they loved him and learned many things to his advantage about his nobles. It was something of a quest for him: he never stopped hoping for one man who could genuinely love him as d’Aubigny had, in despite of his Kingship, not because of it. And like a boy picking at a scab, he generally got more pain than satisfaction from his curiosity.

  At the Mayor’s house in Dumfries he had lacked such conveniences. But in the little rooms on the third storey there had been a few with interconnecting doors and it had not been difficult to set up some with tapestries hung to hide those doors. Thus he need only leave his room quietly, nip up the back stairs and into the next door chamber to the one where he had told Mar to put Carey. Sitting at his ease, with the connecting door open, he had quietly eavesdropped on Carey and his ladylove, as he had before on Lord Spynie and on some of his pages and others of the Border nobility. Some might have found it
undignified in a monarch: James held that nothing a monarch did could be undignified, since his dignity came from God’s appointment.

  This time, as he descended the narrow backstairs and stepped to his own suite of rooms, he wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or pleased. That Carey turned out to be a lecherous sinner was not a surprise to him; that Lady Widdrington was a virtuous wife astounded him. He was saddened that Carey was clearly a hopeless prospect for his own bed, but he did not want to make the mistake with him that he had as a younger and more impatient King with the Earl of Bothwell. And Carey had called him ‘a decent man’. It was a casual appraisal, something James had been taught to think of almost as blasphemous, but the accolade pleased him oddly because it was spoken innocently, in private and could not be self-interested. And further, it seemed that both of them were honest. Yes, there was disappointment that his suspicions were wrong; but on the other hand, honest men and women were not common in his life, they had all the charm of rarity.

  He was sitting at the head of a long table, reading tedious papers, when Carey at last made his appearance in the chamber, having been kept waiting for a while outside. He paced in, genuflected twice and then the third time stayed down on one knee looking up at the King and waiting for him to speak. King James watched him for a while, searching for signs of guilt or uneasiness. He was nervous and paler than was natural for him, his arm in a sling, but he was vastly more self-possessed than the bedraggled battered creature that the King had seen in the morning.

  “Well, Sir Robert, how are ye now?” he asked jovially.

  “Very much better, thank you, Your Majesty.”