2 A Season of Knives

by P. F. Chisholm

  Goodwife Crawe screwed her face up anxiously. ‘It’ll be a sad thing for the boys if he hangs, for they like him.’

  ‘If he did the murder, Goodwife, it’s only right he should hang for it,’ said Carey pompously.

  She sniffed and started the wheel turning again. ‘Ay, well,’ she said. ‘He’s nobbut one man. He’s no’ rich nor a gentleman nor a gentleman’s servant and his father’s not strong enough to save him either, so nae doubt he’ll hang whether he did it or no’. Poor lad.’

  Carey looked annoyed. Why was he so touchy, Dodd wondered. Goodwife Crawe had only stated the obvious.

  ‘I give you my word, Goodwife, if he isn’t guilty I’ll try and make sure he doesn’t hang.’

  ‘Hmf. But ye willna favour him over your ain servant, now will ye, sir?’

  ‘I might,’ Carey’s voice was cold. He went to the door and opened it. Goodwife Crawe curtseyed as she walked with her spinning. ‘Thank you for your help, Goodwife.’

  Carey was looking thoughtful as they left the alley. He stopped in the middle of the way and Dodd nearly bumped into him.’

  ‘You still there, Dodd?’

  ‘Ay,’ said Dodd.

  ‘Why are you following me around?’

  ‘It’s no’ fitting for the Deputy Warden to be wandering around Carlisle town wi’out any man of his ain to back him,’ said Dodd, highly offended at this example of southern ignorance. ‘And dangerous, what’s more. D’ye think the Grahams willna kill ye if they have the chance?’

  Carey had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘To be honest, I hadn’t thought I was in danger in Carlisle.’

  ‘Ay, well,’ said Dodd. ‘Would ye go out unattended in London?’

  ‘I might. If I didn’t see any need to make a fuss.’

  ‘Ye’re not the Deputy Warden in London. Ye’re but one o’ thousands of rich courtiers milling about the place, nae doubt.’

  ‘And you weren’t trotting after me like a calf with his mother yesterday either.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Dodd patiently. ‘The way ye flourish around upsetting folk, has it never crossed your mind that somebody might put a price on ye? Wattie Graham for sure; if he didnae after Netherby, he will now, and Sir Richard Lowther as well, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Carey, evidently rather taken with the idea. ‘Do you really think they have? How much do you suppose it’s for?’

  The man was impossible. Dodd grunted and decided he would hold his tongue in future, no matter how charmingly Carey asked his opinion. And there was, according to Will the Tod, a strong rumour that somebody was offering ten pounds in cash for Carey’s head.

  Their next visit, Dodd was relieved to see, was to Bessie’s alehouse because Dodd for one was parched from all the wool fluff filling the air of Goodwife Crawe’s house. Carey asked Nancy if he could speak to Bessie and she came out from her brewing shed with smoke smuts on her face, wiping her hands on her apron, and curtseyed to him. In silence, Carey counted out the ten shillings and seven pence he had run up as his tab while Bessie watched him with an odd expression of mingled satisfaction and alarm on her broad red face. He turned to leave, which Dodd thought was a pity and Bessie called out to him. ‘Will ye not take a quart before ye go, sir?

  Carey turned and looked at her with his eyebrows raised.

  ‘I don’t usually go back to a place where I’m refused credit,’ he said to Dodd’s horror. Where else did the silly fool think he was going to get beer as good as Bessie’s?

  Bessie clearly wasn’t thinking straight. She beamed at him as friendly as she knew how. ‘Och no,’ she said. ‘That was all a mistake and a lot of gossip I was fool enough to believe. Sit down sir, and take a drink…on the…on the…’ she nearly choked saying it, ‘on the house, sir. A quart of my best double-double.’

  ‘What will you have, Dodd?’ Carey asked him.

  ‘The same.’ Dodd’s mouth was watering.

  ‘Two quarts of double-double on the house, Nancy,’ cried Bessie with painful gaiety as she bustled back into the yard and Nancy served them in a booth.

  ‘Cheers,’ said Carey with a sly grin and lifted his tankard. Unwillingly Dodd found himself tempted to smile back so he drank quickly to hide it.

  Carey was the first to break the companionable silence. ‘It’s all sounding very black for Andy Nixon,’ he said.

  ‘Ay sir,’ said Dodd regretfully. Lord, how his wife would give him trouble for being part of the process that led to Andy Nixon on the end of a rope. Not to mention Kate Atkinson at the stake. Carey was drawing pictures again with beer spillage on the wooden table between them. The alehouse was almost empty at that time of the morning, but would be full by noon, full and bursting with all the men come in from the haymaking with their money burning holes in their purses.

  ‘This is how I see it,’ Carey went on more to himself than to Dodd. ‘On Sunday night Long George, Sergeant Ill-Willit Daniel Nixon and two others of Lowther’s troop waylay the unfortunate Andy Nixon in the alley and beat him up. They tell him to stay away from Atkinson’s wife, because Atkinson paid for it.’

  ‘How d’ye ken that, sir?’

  ‘Long George told me.’

  ‘Ah.’ Long George was always a fool, Dodd thought; why did nobody know how to keep his mouth shut? And he had never liked Ill-Willit Daniel.

  ‘Andy Nixon is helped into his doorway by my appalling servant, Barnabus Cooke, who completes Andy’s happy evening by cutting his purse.’

  ‘Ay.’

  ‘Next morning, Andy Nixon is full of wrath and vengeance. He comes up with a plan for landing Barnabus in trouble and getting his own back on Atkinson. Probably he asks his master Pennycook for help, and Pennycook agrees to loan him a handcart and get hold of one of Barnabus’s knives. Nixon himself comes up to the Keep to get one of my gloves—perhaps at Pennycook’s suggestion, who has reason not to like me.’

  ‘Why’s that, sir?’

  ‘Oh, I’m interfering with the smooth corrupting of the victualling contracts for Carlisle. He was very upset.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Andy Nixon with Kate Atkinson’s help then cuts Jemmy Atkinson’s throat in his bedroom; they bundle the body onto the handcart after dark and take it to Frank’s vennel, where they dump it along with Barnabus’s knife and my glove, and there you are.’

  Dodd sipped some more of his beer and thought for a while.

  ‘Hm,’ he said.

  ‘Is that all? Hm? I think that’s what happened, don’t you?’

  ‘Ay, perhaps.’

  ‘Why don’t you agree?’

  ‘I didna say I dinnae agree.’

  ‘You don’t look as if you do.’

  It occurred to Dodd that perhaps one of the things you learnt at Court was bald-headed persistence. Certainly Carey had that. He gave up trying to keep his counsel. After all, the Deputy kept saying he wanted to know Dodd’s opinion.

  ‘Ay well, sir, it’s in the character. He’s no’ a clever courtier like yourself, sir, Andy isnae. He’s a fine wrestler and a bonny fighter…’

  ‘So everybody keeps telling me.’

  ‘But he’s no’ a clever man. If he was angered enough to kill Jemmy Atkinson then he wisnae cool enough to think out all yon about gloves and knives.’

  ‘Perhaps Pennycook helped him.’

  ‘Ay. Perhaps. Will ye ask him yet?’

  ‘No, I want to find out what was going on at the Atkinsons’ place.’

  And the Deputy Warden swallowed down his beer at a sinful pace seeing how good it was and that it was on the house, came to his feet again. ‘Come on Dodd, unless you want to sit there supping.’

  Sighing deeply Dodd finished his quart and followed Carey on his self-imposed mission to prevent the Deputy getting a knife in the ribs before he had a chance to do for Lowther.

  ***

  They went straight to Maggie Mulcaster’s house, across the road from the shut-up Atkinsons’ place, and found Kate’s little girl Mary sitting by t
he door very slowly shelling peas. She had her tongue stuck out and she held her breath every time she pressed open a peapod which made her gasp occasionally when she forgot to breathe again.

  Mary looked up at Carey and immediately flinched back. Her face crumpled up and she started to cry. The bowl slipped off her knees and Dodd bent down just in time to catch it from going into the mud.

  Dodd squatted in front of her and put the bowl down on the doorstep.

  ‘Mary, Mary,’ he said gently, ‘D’ye know me?’

  She nodded, very big-eyed. ‘You’re Mrs Dodd’s bad-tempered husband.’

  Carey who had looked glum at finding the little maid frightened of him, grinned at this, though Dodd failed to see what was funny.

  ‘I’m her husband, ay,’ he said. ‘Now, Mary, is Mrs Mulcaster in?’

  She nodded and then shook her head. ‘She’s gone to fetch in Clover. She said it wis soft to leave her in our garden since there’s nobody there and she’s need of the milk as well for the extra pack of weans the Deputy put to her, the southern bugger, and what was he thinkin’ of arresting Kate and her a poor widow and us poor orphans. And I’m shelling peas,’ she finished with a sunny smile.

  It faded and she shrank back again because the Deputy Warden had sat himself down on the step beside her. He took off his hat, put it beside him and scratched vigorously at his head. There wasn’t room for Dodd so he leaned against the wall.

  ‘Do you mind if I sit here and wait for her?’ said Carey politely to the small girl. She shook her head. She was staring at him wide-eyed. What was the mad Courtier playing at now? For a few moments there was a silence until curiosity got the better of Mary’s fear.

  ‘Is it true you know the Queen, sir?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Carey simply. ‘She’s my aunt.’

  Mary’s mouth opened, revealing a gap where she had lost one of her teeth.

  ‘What does she look like?’

  Carey took a penny out of his belt-pouch, tossed it up and showed her the head.

  ‘She looks like that only her skin is pink and white and her hair is red.’

  ‘Does she really have a hundred smocks and kirtles and petticoats?’

  ‘More like a thousand.’

  Mary’s mouth opened wider. ‘Why?’

  ‘People give them to her because they know she likes to look pretty.’

  ‘What colours are they?’

  ‘Most of them are black and white with some different coloured trimming, but some of them are cloth of gold or cloth of silver and a lot of them have pearls sewn on them loose enough to drop off when she walks.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So people will pick them up and keep them and remember her by them.’

  ‘Will she come here?’

  ‘It’s very unlikely. She doesn’t travel so much now she’s…er…a little older.’

  Dodd had learnt enough about the Queen from Carey by now to know that mentioning her age was skimming dangerously close to treason as far as Her Majesty was concerned.

  ‘Is she very old?’

  ‘She was already a grown woman and Queen when I was born. But she’s still beautiful,’ said Carey diplomatically.

  ‘Will she die soon?’

  ‘It isn’t polite to talk about it.’

  ‘How many gowns has she got?’

  ‘A couple of hundred, most of them made of velvet.’

  ‘Like your doublet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I like your clothes. They’re pretty. Do you have lots of pretty clothes like the Queen?’

  ‘Not nearly as many,’ said Carey straightfaced. ‘And not a tenth as pretty.’

  ‘Why are your hose so fat?’

  ‘Because it’s fashionable.’

  ‘Does it no’ make it hard to walk?’

  Carey grinned. ‘A bit. But you get used to it.’

  ‘Do you like pretty clothes?’

  ‘Yes, very much.’

  Now there’s the truth, thought Dodd.

  ‘I have a yellow kirtle with rose velvet trimmings,’ said Mary proudly. ‘And a going-to-church petticoat with a false-front like your hose.’

  ‘What, made of brocade?’

  ‘Yes, only it’s purple. Mrs Dodd gave the bits to me mam when she made hers. It’s very beautiful.’

  ‘It sounds it. You’re a lucky girl.’

  For God’s sake, Dodd thought to himself, what is the Courtier on about, prattling over clothes with a child?

  ‘And I am learning to sew. I made a purse for money.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘Will ye give me the penny to remember the Queen by to put in my new purse?’ asked the dimpled child artlessly.

  Carey made a small choking sound which he turned into a cough and then smiled.

  ‘I’ll give you two pennies if you can show me you have a good memory.’

  Eh? thought Dodd.

  ‘I have a very good memory,’ said Mary. ‘Me mam says so. She says she canna speak her mind without I’ll repeat it after.’ Her face clouded over momentarily as she remembered how the Deputy had come and taken her mam away.

  ‘I thought so. But I bet you can’t remember what happened on Monday.’

  What? Dodd stood up straight with outrage. This was going too far, questioning a little girl about her mother’s crime. He took breath to speak and found himself on the receiving end of a very blue glare from Carey. He scowled back but held his peace.

  ‘That was the day before me dad died?’ said Mary anxiously.

  ‘Yes,’ said Carey simply. ‘And I’m sorry for your dad dying.’

  Mary blinked at him for a moment. ‘Why? Ye didnae like him, ye sacked him.’

  ‘Er…yes.’

  ‘I didna like him neither,’ Mary pronounced. ‘Is he no’ in heaven now?’

  ‘I…expect so,’ said Carey cautiously, who doubted it.

  ‘Well, then, it’s no’ sad, is it? Because we dinna have to be sae quiet when he’s about wi’ a sore head and there’s no sore heads in heaven. That’s happy, is that.’ Her face clouded and threatened rain. ‘It’s me mam I’m sad for,’ she whispered.

  ‘Do you think you can remember such a long time ago as the day before yesterday?’ Carey prompted hurriedly.

  Mary paused, thought for a moment. ‘I can so,’ she said complacently. ‘Will ye gi’ me the pennies now?’

  ‘No. Prove it to me. What happened on Monday? Start with when you got up.’

  She took a deep breath, frowned, closed her eyes and began. She had come downstairs when her mother called with her kirtle and petticoat already on, but her mother had to do up her laces because she couldn’t do bows yet. Did the Deputy Warden think bows were pretty? He did; Her Majesty had a kirtle all covered over with them made in blue satin. What happened next? Well, the boys came down in a hurry and ran off to school with the reverend and she ate her porridge and Julia came in late and she went hurrying up the stairs to find a ribbon she lost and then she came down again and her mother told her to start making the butter before the day got too hot and where had she been and Julia said nowhere and her mother was kneading bread and she said oh ay, then ye’d best be at the butter. So Julia said humph and went to the dairy for the yesterday’s cream to pour it in the churn and her mam said…

  ‘What colour was Julia’s ribbon?’ asked Carey inanely.

  ‘Oh,’ said Mary, frowning. ‘I dinna remember.’

  ‘Never mind. What happened after you ate your porridge?’

  Mary had got out her sewing and started making some stitches and her mam had promised to show her a new one when she came down from taking her dad’s porridge and beer up to him and she went up with a full tray.

  Mary paused here and frowned. ‘She was up a long time,’ she said. ‘And she came down and she’d forgot all about my sewing and wouldnae teach me the stitch but she sent me with a Message to fetch Andy Nixon.’

  Carey nodded. ‘What was she wearing?’

  ‘Och
, what she allus wears, her blue kirtle and petticoat, with the black bodice, nothing fine.’

  ‘What about her apron.’

  ‘Ay, she allus has her apron.’

  ‘Was it…was there anything different about her when she came down the stairs?’

  Mary frowned again and shook her head. ‘Nay, only her voice was soft, like a whisper.’

  Off went Mary in her memory to fetch Mr Nixon, with a long digression on Susan Talyer and how fine she thought herself because she had black velvet trim on her everyday kirtle, found him in the street with his arm in a sling and brought him back and he almost forgot to give her a penny, but then he did, and he went up the stairs to see her dad.

  ‘What did he say about your dad?’

  ‘Och,’ said Mary, frowning again. ‘He said he didnae want to see him at all and me mam said it didna matter, he’d see anyway and up he went and I had the buttermilk from Julia in the kitchen while she washed the butter and she asked what was happening and I said I didnae ken. I like Mr Nixon,’ she added.

  ‘And then what happened?’

  Andy Nixon had come running down the stairs and out the door.

  ‘Ahah,’ said Carey grimly. ‘What did he look like? Was he dirty?’

  Mary gave him a sidelong look of pity. ‘A bit. He was in his working clothes, but he doesnae labour, he’s a rent collector.’

  ‘Was there anything on them? Like mud or…er…blood?’

  Mary shook her head.

  ‘Did you hear anything, a shout or a call?’

  ‘Nay, they was talking quietly.’

  ‘Can you remember seeing blood anywhere around?’

  ‘Oh ay,’ said Mary seriously. ‘There was blood all over the sheets to me mam’s bed, for she said she’d lost a wean in the night, and she was in a state about washing them before it could set worse.’

  Carey frowned at this. ‘Was the blood dry?’

  ‘Ay, mostly.’

  ‘When did she strip the bed?’

  ‘While I wis running for Mr Nixon, see, she had them in the basket by the door when I come back with him. It took all day to wash them sheets, ye should have seen them, all stiff they were…’ The ghoulish child sighed at the thought. ‘Me mam gave me a penny for grating the soap for it.’

  ‘And then what happened?’