She stared at Mrs Hogg. “Henry…”
“Ay,” said Mrs Hogg, “so I heard.”
After a moment Janet let out a kind of cross between a laugh and a sob. “So that’s why none of the potions nor the Lady’s springs nor anything has worked and there’s never been a babe.”
“Ay.”
“Jesus!”
Mrs Hogg leaned forward over her clean and polished bowl. “That’s a fine pottage, missus. May Ah have some more?”
Janet moved like someone who had been hit on the head, got the soup, brought the bowl back. There was a large lump of rabbit in it. She didn’t bring any for herself.
“So..?”
“So,” said Mrs Hogg, scooping up beans, “ye’ve a problem, for a man that’s nobbut a tenant may want to keep his tenancy and pass it to his son, ay, but he canna know if his lord will say yes. But the man that has the freehold of a place must have a son to inherit.”
Janet swallowed. Was that why Henry had turned so sour? Was he wanting to get rid of her because he thought she was barren?
No, surely not. Not Henry. They hadn’t talked about it…but no. She thought of the wicker basket wrapped in linen under her bed, that she took out carefully every Sunday to wear the green velvet London hat to church. She knew that word was spreading of Henry’s stroke of luck in the South, when he had somehow persuaded the Queen to give him Gilsland’s freehold, and none of the stories about it were half as wild as the truth.
“Mrs Aglionby told me about the freehold,” enlarged Mrs Hogg. “She was quite amazed at it. And the Carletons are fit to be tied, so I’ve heard.”
Janet grunted. She didn’t care about the Carletons.
“There’s no chance of him making a babe in me? Or anyone else?”
“None. Willie’s Simon got the mumps too and he’s made no babes.”
“But…”
“Ellen came to me for a potion last year.”
“I was wondering did ye have anything…”
“…and I told her to go a-maying,” said Mrs Hogg, dipping her spoon. “Go a-maying, jump the fire on St John’s night, light Lammas torches, scare off the Devil on All Soul’s night, dance on Christmas night, and light the candles on Candlemas. Do ye follow, missus?”
Janet didn’t know how pale she had gone, her freckles were stark on her milk white skin. She only felt the wild whirling in her stomach.
She didn’t want to go with another man. She hadn’t even looked at another man since she clapped eyes on Henry, for all his dourness, for all his silences and the ridiculous way he would never let himself laugh at anything and the strange shy sweetness of his smile when he let it happen…She didn’t want anyone else.
Yet if Dodd couldn’t plant a babe in her, that was a disaster. A disaster for them both.
“That’s what I said to Ellen,” said Mrs Hogg, “and she greeted for she’s an honest woman and she didna want to, but I told her it didnae count when the man couldn’t make a baby. It seems she saw the sense.”
“Ay, and lost the baby. Is that not a punishment from God?”
Mrs Hogg paused thoughtfully. “It may be,” she allowed, “but God also said go forth and multiply to us and if your right husband canna make a baby in ye, what are ye to do? Eh?” Janet said nothing. It depended how much you believed of what the pastors said God was like. “Besides, ye could say that Our Lady herself played St Joseph false when she went with the Holy Ghost, eh?”
Janet had never heard it put like that, was that some kind of heresy? Yet it made sense. You could say Jesus Himself had been God’s bastard. She was shocked at herself for thinking such a thing but…
“I know plenty of women who have gone a-maying to find a babe, and plenty of them have their babes safe and well, ay, and growed up too,” said Mrs Hogg. “I say, think on it and do what seems to you to be right.”
Janet wasn’t aware she was nodding.
“Well that’s a very nice pottage, missus,” said Mrs Hogg in the same tone of voice. “Thank ee kindly for it.”
“Your fee is five shillings?”
Mrs Hogg shook her head. “Nay, missus, I only take half for a dead baby. 2/6 is fine.”
“Five shillings,” said Janet firmly.
***
Carey was whistling a little ditty that explained how autumn was mellow and fruitful as he went to find his brother-in-law, Lord Scrope.
As usual, the overbred ninny was in the stables. Today he was preparing to take Buttercup’s litter out in couples on a hunting expedition and there was Jack with his yellow coat and enormous clumsy paws and floppy ears, shoving past his brothers and sisters to get patted by Carey.
“Good morning, my lord, and what a very pleasant morning it is, too…And Sir Richard, I’m delighted to see you too,” breezed Carey loudly. He smiled at everyone. This was joyous because Sir Richard Lowther was scowling at him suspiciously from over by the kennels. Carey favoured him with an especially bright smile and let him stew for a while.
He looked over the dogs, agreed that they needed exercise, opined that perhaps it was too blowy and damp to fly the hawks and then allowed himself to be persuaded to take one of the merlins. That was really a woman’s bird, but Philadelphia had gone south to serve at the Queen’s Court again. She hadn’t been happy in Carlisle but her hawks still needed exercise. Would it be possible to send her favourite hawks south to London so she could fly them in Finsbury Fields? He would need to find a good cadger for the journey; it was a long way.
“You seem very happy, Robin,” said Scrope pettishly.
“Oh, I like it here in the north, my lord,” Carey told him. “And of course there’s the letter from the Queen that I received today.” Oh, it was fun, the way Lowther glowered and stared to move away. “I’m sure you’ve seen it, my lord, there is always a copy that goes to the Lord Warden, isn’t there, Sir Richard?”
Habet, thought Carey, I’ve got you. Scrope stood there, his scrubby little goatee not improving his face by adding chin at all. The hawk on his fist looked twice the lord he was. “Oh,” he wittered, “And what did she write?”
Carey could not help himself, he practically crowed. But he kept his voice casual as he explained, “She’s pleased with me, my lord. She thoroughly approves of the way I dealt with the Elliots and she has kindly sent me my warrant as Deputy Warden of the English West March.” He paused theatrically. “Surely you have your copy of it, my lord, I’m sure Mr Secretary Cecil is very careful about such things.”
Scrope stood like a halfwit with his mouth open for at least a heartbeat and then he frowned at Lowther, who seemed to be trying to find an exit from the stableyard where there wasn’t one by the kennels.
“How peculiar, I should have got it by now. I’ll ask Richard Bell about it.”
“No need, my lord,” said Carey, very helpfully, “Here’s my copy and the Queen’s letter as well.”
Scrope scanned the letter, checked the warrant and said, “Er…yes, I wrote a report about the incident at Dick of Dryhope’s tower to Her Majesty, saying that you not only prevented what could have been a very nasty battle but you made Wee Colin Elliott look like a fool and a coward, which has done his reputation no end of harm. I heard from the King’s Court that two of his cousins have come in and composed with His Highness and given hostages. I was both surprised and pleased, Robin.”
Despite his instant irritation at being called Robin by Scrope, Carey bowed to him. “My lord, I am exceedingly obliged and grateful to you.”
A long liquid snort was Lowther’s only comment on this as he finally found his way round by the door and stalked away from the stableyard.
In the end because the western sky was looking ominous with rain, they only went out to Eden meadows to fly the hawks at the lure and they brought the young dogs to run alongside the cow-shattered fence which was still being mended. The her
d of kine was penned in the upper half of the racecourse because there were a couple of hundred of them, and no wonder Archie Fire the Braes Graham had been upset. The real owners would have to come in and identify their animals and pay the Warden’s fee for the finding of them and were slowly doing so as word spread.
Carey flew the little merlin at the lure and laughed to see how fiercely she flew and how much she looked like his sister. She even had the same way of cocking her head impertinently. He would write to her about the birds with the next dispatch bag.
He also took the time to tell Scrope what he thought had been going on with the ambush under the Eden Bridge. His theory was that the Grahams had been intending to ambush and kill him before he could receive his warrant so he would still be unofficial, which begged the interesting question of how they knew about the warrant before he did.
Scrope looked shocked and worried. “I’m sure you don’t mean that Lowther purloined the warrant and then set the Grahams on to kill you? I’m sure he wouldn’t do a thing like that, Robin.”
Carey, who had been about to suggest that Lowther was doing exactly that and worse, stopped and stared at his brother-in-law. Surely nobody could be that obtuse, could they? He absentmindedly fed bits of meat to the merlin and nearly got his finger bitten. Jack was staring at a distant figure on a pony with a packpony following. Suddenly the dog gave a joyful bark and galloped off, pulling along the older dog he was coupled with to teach him hunting, busted through a part of the fence that had just been mended and ran across the Eden Bridge. “Anyway,” said Scrope, his reedy voice taking on an admonitory note, “you simply have to get along with Sir Richard while I’m away at my estates because both of you will be in charge.”
“Surely Lowther can’t still be Deputy Warden…?”
“Of course he can, his warrant is during pleasure, as yours is, and Her Majesty has said nothing about him quitting the office.”
“Well I am sure the question slipped her mind when she…”
“It’s not like the Wardenry itself, where there is only one warden at a time. Theoretically I can have as many Deputy Wardens as I like.”
Carey was furious and frustrated and trying to think of something he could say to squash the ridiculous idea, when Jack came galloping back, wagging his tail like a flail and still pulling the older dog along who was looking martyred.
Carey gave the merlin to the falconer, took his hawking glove off and dismounted to uncouple Jack who barked happily, ran off for a couple of yards, came back, barked, looked at the slowly approaching horseman, barked again, galloped away, came back and barked.“Seems very excited about something,” commented Scrope.
“Yes, my lord,” said Carey. To get away from the idiot before he said something unwise, jumped back on his horse and sent it uphill to the road where he let the horse go to a full gallop after Jack.
He soon recognised the smallish plain-looking, balding man and while he wasn’t quite as delighted as Jack, he was pleased to see him. “Mr Anricks!”
“Sir Robert,” said Anricks, taking off his hat and making a shallow bow in the saddle, which Carey acknowledged with a tip of his hat. “I am very pleased to see you, sir.”
Carey grinned at the expectant Jack who was looking up at Anricks with an expression of such hopeful pleading on his face. “Jack never forgets any man who feeds him. You are forever his best friend.”
Anricks shook his head at the dog. “I’m sorry,” he said to the dog, “I have no food left.”
Jack continued to look hopeful and Anricks sighed, produced half of a small pasty from his doublet front and threw it to Jack, who caught it with a single snap and gulp and went on looking hopeful.
“Come and meet my brother-in-law,” said Carey. “I don’t think you have yet, have you?”
Anricks shook his head and so Carey accompanied him to where Scrope was flying a tiercel falcon at the lure and introduced him as a scholar and sometime-toothdrawer and by way of being a merchant as well. Anricks made a very competent bow, though it also said to anyone with an eye for such nuances that he had been a royal clerk as well. He added with a cough, “Sir Robert, how is your tooth and jaw?”
“Very well, Mr Anricks, nearly healed up completely.”
“I should like to inspect it later, I prefer to do that if the tooth was very bad…”
“Oh don’t worry, I…” Anricks gave Carey a hard stare and Carey thought of the warrant the man carried from Sir Robert Cecil. “Of course.”
Anricks included both of them in another tidy bow and then kicked his pony and continued into Carlisle, with the packpony sighing and plodding along behind and Jack running up and down a couple of times and looking surprised.
Scrope’s huntsman caught the dog and coupled him up with a different and sturdier hound and they went after hidden rags and jumped stiles until the short morning had already turned itself around the low noon and become afternoon. Carey was suddenly beset with tiredness. He yawned for the fourth time and remembered that he hadn’t had dinner, breakfast was hours in the past, and he hadn’t slept since the night before last.
He made his excuses and went back to the keep, came into the Queen Mary tower whistling again because at last he had his warrant and the fees from the herd of kine and all was right with the world, trotted up the stairs and went into his chambers.
John Tovey was in his study at his desk, coping with the routine correspondence that Carey hated so well whilst Hughie Tyndale had gone down into the town to work with the trained bands. He was a good pikeman, was Hughie, which was no surprise when you considered his size and the breadth of his shoulders. There was something else about Hughie, something oddly off about him, as if he was a lutestring not tuned aright, but Carey hadn’t worked out what it was yet. Hughie gave satisfaction as a tailor and was big enough to back Carey when he needed a henchman. Carey was sure he was being paid by somebody to give news reports of his doings, which was no problem at all—he was the son of Lord Hunsdon and used to being spied on by servants. Was there anything more than normal bribery? He wasn’t sure.
Carey shucked off his nearly respectable arming doublet at last, took off his shoes, canions, and stockings—the stockings needed darning again—and got into bed with a sigh. “Will you draw the curtains for me?” he called out to John, and his secretary came and did that, pulling cautiously, for the curtains were at least fifty years old. According to legend, that spectacularly silly woman, Mary Queen of Scots, had slept in that very bed, probably under the very blanket, when she came south on the run from her own subjects.
Carey always wondered where her ghost was and then fell asleep at once.
***
Hughie Tyndale was coming back from the muster feeling happy. He had tripped that bastard Hetherington and then blamed it on someone else, he had drunk a lot of beer afterwards. He had called in on Thomas the Merchant Hetherington to give in his usual letter and receive his shilling. The letter went to the mysterious hunchback in the south called Mr Philpotts.
When was he going to kill Carey? It was a good question, complicated by the fact that Carey seemed to have a lot of people queuing up to kill him and didn’t care. Of course, if somebody else succeeded in doing it, Hughie could always claim it was him really, but he wondered if Mr Philpotts would know the truth.
There was another complicating factor which he had not seen fit to tell anyone since it was his business. Henry Dodd, the most evil man in the world. That wasn’t business like Carey was; Hughie had no feelings one way or the other for Carey. He would get thirty pounds in his hand for killing the Deputy Warden, according to the man who said he worked for the Earl of Bothwell. Mr Philpotts’ money made him pause, but in the end he would kill his man and get his money. He liked killing, and the fact that he could tailor, often made people forget that he was not weedy or round-shouldered the way his late uncle had been. And hadn’t that been a satisfying li
fe to take, his uncle choking on the garotte and never knowing who it was killed him?
But Dodd? Hughie knew that Dodd was the man he had been put on this Earth to kill. That was personal, that was family, that was vengeance sweet and late.
So should he do Dodd before or after Carey? Either of them was hard enough, for they were both right fighting men. Together they would probably be impossible unless he could get Wee Colin to attack them.
So it had to be separately. Poison for Carey? Since Oxford, Hughie had more respect for poisoners—it was ticklish to get the right dose into the right man—hadn’t the dose intended for Carey gotten into him and nearly killed him? Although white arsenic was always good, odourless, tasteless, slow-acting. Yes, he would have to investigate where he could get arsenic. He thought he could buy it from an apothecary to kill rats. Not in Carlisle, though. Too much risk of a busybody finding out. And Carey didn’t have any routine food for himself: he generally ate in Bessie’s or even in the castle if he was short of money. So maybe not arsenic either.
Hughie shook his head with all the thinking which was giving him a headache. He wanted to kill somebody soon. It was more than a month since he had last seen the pretty sight of the red on the white.
And Dodd? Well, Dodd would be a big swordblade through the head or crossbow bolt in the back or better yet a knife in the guts so he would die slow and screaming to pay him back for what he did, or all of them, or torture. Hughie made pretty patterns of red and white on the defenceless chained white body of Henry Dodd in his imagination with Dodd naked in a dungeon somewhere, or even just one of the Elliot towers in Tynedale, chained, hurt, weeping. Maybe Hughie would chop his fingers off one by one and his toes or better yet use the Boot on him and the pinniwinks and then chop his mashed fingers off…
It made Hughie feel warm and happy but he knew it was unlikely and risky and he would probably have to settle for a knife in the guts, but that would do. That would do perfectly well.
A Clash of Spheres Page 7
