“No. I am a Jew.”
Cecil smiled again. “I know no legal nor chivalric reason why you may not be knighted, but admit that a Herald might correct me on that point. But there is always a first time for anything.”
“No, it would be ridiculous.”
“If money and honour don’t move you, what might?” Cecil asked almost playfully. “Safety? The safety of your people? It moved you before?”
Simon narrowed his eyes and looked at Cecil in silence for a long moment. Cecil at last moved uneasily.
“Sir,” said Cecil, “I could tell you that your people’s continued quietness rests on your continued service to Her Majesty, but you would know it for a black lie. Her Majesty has told me that you are all of you forever her own Jews, and yours and your wife’s service to her at the time of the Armada was of such an order that she will not again blackmail you.”
Anricks tilted his head in acknowledgement. “That is good to know,” he said, his pale brown eyes still cold.
Cecil sighed. “However, the Queen will not, no matter how we pray that she may, live forever and after her comes, we hope, King James, VIth of Scotland, Ist of England. God willing and if his luck holds.”
“Yes,” said Anricks. “Or the King of Spain, of course, which I would prefer not to see.”
“Amen,” said Cecil. “There is at least no Inquisition in Scotland.”
“Are there Jews?”
“I don’t know. Nor does anyone know what the King thinks of Jews.”
“Hm.” Anricks was thoughtful. “Well, Mr Secretary, you appear to have found the key that will unlock my retirement.”
“It does you honour that you will do for your tribe what you will not do for money or honour.”
Anricks made no answer to this. He seemed depressed and poured a large glass of Oporto wine and drank half of it.
“Ah…would you care to see some of the documents I have had copied or would you…?”
“Tomorrow,” said Anricks firmly, “Today I am going to get drunk on this excellent booze and mourn my shattered peace.”
“Would you prefer me to leave, sir?”
“No, Sir Robert, my wife has had the guestroom cleaned, swept, piled high with pillows, and new candles arrayed everywhere. She is at this minute in camera with the cook, devising a dinner of spectacular opulence in your honour. She would kill me if you went to an inn.”
“That sounds delightful…Er…the dinner, I mean…”
“And besides, I don’t hold it against you, for I am sure you are at the orders of that red-haired…”
“Termagent? Amazon?”
“Careful, Sir Robert, we are skirting treason here.”
“Witch, perhaps. I would give a great deal to know how she is always one step ahead of me in intelligence-gathering.”
“She has her own intelligence service, mostly of women, commanded by her muliercula, Mrs Thomasina de Paris.”
“Good God!”
“I thought you knew.”
Cecil laughed. “No, I was blind.”
Anricks refilled his glass and Cecil’s with Oporto wine, lifted it. “Then to the redhead, long may she reign!”
“To the redhead, Mr Anricks! Hear hear!”
Anricks knocked back the wine, then paused. “Oh, all right, Mr Secretary, let’s see these documents.”
It had been worth it although as with most raw intelligence there were a lot of documents and very little pattern. A couple of reports on the activities of a Jesuit called Father William Crichton who seemed the dangerous kind, since there was nothing suspicious about him except that he had been in northern Spain and was now in Scotland. An incoherent tale told by a Herries cousin who had guarded a private supper for the Maxwell, the Earls of Huntly, Erroll, and Angus at which Crichton had said grace and then talked for a long time. Some accounts in Spanish, copied by someone Simon suspected might be one of his brothers, detailing the kind of refitting going on at La Corunna. An account from a mad Irish chieftain that his two best pilots, expert in the Irish sea and its wildly treacherous currents, had disappeared from Ireland and reappeared in Spain where someone had stuck a knife in one and knocked the other on the head so hard that he could remember nothing any more, and thus had returned. Anricks smiled: that was definitely one of his brothers, probably Joshua.
“Not much to go on,” said Anricks, putting his spectacles down and refilling the glasses again. He wondered what sort of hangover you got from Oporto wine.
“Straws show which way the wind blows,” said Cecil owlishly.
“Or they don’t.”
It had been a very bad hangover and Anricks had resolved never again to get drunk on Portuguese sweet red wines.
In the name of the Almighty, thought Anricks, coming back to the bacon-smelling fug of Bessy’s common room, Carey is still burbling about his Court suit…Anricks stared in honest amazement and was caught.
Carey laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.
“Ah well, Mr Anricks, we all must have our enthusiasms. Mine for fashion and making good clothes, yours for the new gospel of the heavens according to Capricorn…”
“Copernicus, as explained by Thomas Digges.”
“Yes, quite so.”
“Have you come to a conclusion about your new Court suit?”
“Indeed I have.” There followed a tirade of quite extraordinary detail and dullness, in which it became clear that while the Carlisle tailor was good enough for a mere philosopher, and indeed for Carey’s ordinary clothes, he was not at all adequate for Carey’s outfit to wear at Court at Christmas and so they would take Carey’s best black silk velvet doublet and hose with a few trifling alterations, but that when they arrived in Edinburgh, Carey would have the Edinburgh tailors make a proper Court suit for him in the very highest fashion and all that remained to be settled was the fabric, linings, trim, and buttons, particularly the buttons.
Anricks wondered aloud how much high Edinburgh fashion might cost, heard the sum of eight hundred pounds mentioned which nearly made him faint until he realised Carey was speaking in pounds Scots, which were only worth a quarter of an English pound because the Scottish King debased his money, while the English Queen was very particular about her money and its fineness.
Two hundred pounds English was still a substantial sum and Anricks darkly suspected that Carey might be very good at telling good clothes, but might not be very good at knowing what they cost on account of not wanting to know.
However the clothes certainly had given Carey enthusiasm for going to Scotland and he had the excuse that it was politic for the new official English Deputy Warden of the West March to introduce himself as such to the Scottish King and councillors and ask for a Warden’s Day after sixteen years without one.
At any rate that was what he said to Lord Scrope when the ninny got querulous about not being able to go to his estates just yet.
“What am I supposed to do while you’re away? The Grahams are riding and the Armstrongs and Elliots and the Maxwells are hitting the Johnstones…They all seem to have gone mad.”
“Yes, my lord,” said Carey, “It is because of the harvest.”
“What? Why would the harvest make the surnames raid?”
Was it possible he didn’t know, Carey wondered. “The harvest was very bad and so they haven’t much barley or oats and so they’re raiding to get the animals to sell so they can buy some. The trouble is, prices everywhere in the north are high because nobody in Scotland has much barley either.”
“Oh. Well, why don’t they ship some in?”
Have you looked at a map recently or ever, Carey wanted to ask. It’s hard to get ships here from anywhere. Ireland is in as bad case or worse than Scotland. That means you have to bring it in from the Hansa or even further south. Anricks had said something about writing to his family about the dearth,
but the seas were closed for winter and it would take a week for a ship to travel all the way up the Irish Sea from Bristol, even if the weather stayed calm, which it wouldn’t.
“Yes, my lord,” he said because he couldn’t be bothered to explain it to his idiot brother-in-law. He added an outright lie. “I hope I’ll be back before Christmas.”
December 1592 Gilsland
Sergeant Dodd was comfy in his old jack, with the padding worked in the Dodd pattern, though he had been thinking that maybe now Janet had a new hat, he could buy a new helmet, maybe even a morion, with some of the money from London. He would talk to his wife about it when he got back…
Then he remembered their quarrel and his long face soured. It hadn’t been so very much, all things considered, it was just…
She had asked him why he was so silent and miserable, and he had finally told her, venting his fury at Carey for letting Wee Colin Elliot and all the bastard Elliots get away. He could not understand why the man had done it, could not, when he had them so nicely in a trap. He had tried to put it down to madness, plain and simple, since the Courtier did many things that were crazy, but in fact Carey had not been acting as crazy as usual and had in fact run the whole encounter beautifully, right up to the moment when he had casually swept the world from under Dodd’s feet, and let them go.
Dodd still felt sick every time he thought about it. And then, what had his wife said about it, when he told her why he was upset? She had said that sure, it was annoying, but wasn’t it grand that Wee Colin Elliot had taken such a blow to his credit with no one having to die, especially Dodd. And he had stared at her and stared at her, thinking, where’s the woman who kicked Bangtail in the balls last summer for betraying them to the Grahams?
“Whit does it matter about dying,” he had managed to say, despite the shock, “so long as the Elliots do too?”
“Matter?” Janet had said. “Weren’t ye telling me about how fat the South is where they have nae feuds? It’s over ten years since the Dodds and the Elliots were at each other’s throats, ye beat ’em fair and square then, let’s leave them be so long as they leave us be.”
Dodd had sat by the fire with his mouth too full of what the Elliots had done to his dad and his mum and his uncles and his cousins, too full to say a word and she knew the story anyway. Wasn’t she an Armstrong, English branch, but still, they had a plenty of feuds. And what you did in a deadly feud was you wiped out the other side, if you could, first chance you got.
She had kissed him lightly on the head, not noticing his stillness and gone out to make sure everything was locked up tight and the girls upstairs, and Ellen still recovering in the stillroom and the men downstairs on the first floor of the tower or out guarding the outfield and the boys in the stables and each animal where it should be.
She came back, went up the narrow spiral stair and still he sat, howling winds flying through him and the black ball of rage filling his chest. His wife agreed with Carey, the arch traitor. Why?
At last he had gone upstairs and lain down next to his wife in their proud half-testered marriage bed, and then when she turned to him and snuggled up, he had turned away silently, turned his shoulder to her again, shutting her out completely.
He hadn’t slept much that night and rose in the morning early, feeling even worse than usual. God, he wished there was a potion that could wake you up.
Janet was already up of course, and that was when he had decided to ride out on Whitesock again and continue inspecting the boundaries of Gilsland, making sure no boundary stones had gone wandering and checking were the ditches clear and the fences strong around the coppices to stop the deer eating all the new shoots. He would also take a look at the large sections of the Giant’s Wall that ran right through Gilsland, and think whether they were ready to be mined for more stone. He had meant to do it weeks before but had been busy.
Whitesock was a friend at least, a horse with a steady commonsense most unusual in any beast. Dodd had not found anything yet that could make Whitesock shy or bolt and he let the big brown head nuzzle his chest and fed him some carrots. All horses were mad for carrots and they also liked apples.
Out on the bare hills, he felt a little better again with the wind blowing and no actual rain for a change. The land was as dour and ugly in winter as he felt himself to be and even pushing Whitesock up to a gallop on the top of the wall and jumping the broken parts didn’t make him feel happy for more than a minute or two.
He had not taken any men with him, although now he thought of it, Willie’s Simon needed distraction because of the dead baby after years of trying to make one. At least Willie’s wife wasn’t barren like Janet, though. Dodd had his sword and his lance but that was normal, he wouldn’t have felt dressed without them.
So he loosened his sword and took his lance in his right hand and had Whitesock jump down to the Road from the Wall when he saw two men riding towards him in the direction of his tower.
They were wearing cloaks which in Dodd’s opinion was a waste of time in the wind and there was one in the front with a clever canny face and loose brown curls, while the other man was clearly a bodyguard of some kind, with the battered face and lance to prove it. His jack looked Scottish, East March, perhaps he was a Dixon or a Trotter.
He slowed Whitesock to a walk and then stopped where the Wall would give him some shelter to his back if it came to a fight and Whitesock nickered and stood silent, all four hooves planted, also staring hard at the strangers.
They picked their way down from the higher bit of road by the Wall and also slowed down. Finally they came close enough to be heard.
“We are looking for a man called Sergeant Henry Dodd,” the foremost one said loudly, “Land Sergeant of this place.” That one was wearing a hat and no helmet, whereas his bodyguard had an iron cap. The hat had a small brim and was tied to his head with a scarf.
“Ay,” said Dodd after a moment’s thought. “Ye’ve found him.”
The first man untied the scarf, nearly lost his hat immediately, took it off and bowed in the saddle and then tied it back on again.
“My name is Jonathan Hepburn and I work for the Earl of Bothwell. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, sir.”
Dodd leaned slightly, not feeling in the mood for courtliness. “Ay,” he said.
“Well,” said the man brightly after another moment of silence, “This is lucky. I was expecting to have to go all the way to Gilsland to find you, sir. I would like to talk to you if I may, if we can find a place to get out of the wind and perhaps get a bite to eat and something to drink…”
Dodd sighed; he didn’t want to talk to anyone. And why was the man calling him “sir”, when it should have been “Sergeant.” For a moment Dodd thought of taking both of them back to Gilsland tower but then thought better of it. “Well,” he said reluctantly, “there’s a Widow Ridley keeps a little alehouse not far from here. We could go there.”
Half an hour later they were at a cottage in a little knot of cottages a little way into the Middle March, only different from the others because it had the statutory red lattices, last painted ten years before and almost invisible in the grey dusk. An old woman with white hair like a dandelion clock exploding out from under her cap was sitting just inside the door, out of the wind, knitting a stocking at a startling rate. She came out as they dismounted.
Dodd, she knew of course, and she bobbed a curtsey to him which always made him feel uneasy, so he tilted his neck in return.
“Widow Ridley,” he began but the stranger interrupted him.
“We were hoping for something to drink, Goodwife Ridley,” said Hepburn with a charming smile. “And would ye have aught to eat for we’ve not eaten since this morning?”
Widow Ridley’s eyes travelled up and down both of the strangers and then she bobbed a tiny curtsey and led them into the small front room where the Thirlwall drunk was asleep in a corner,
and sat them down on the other side of the fire from him. The curfew was taken off, the peat turves brightened up though they put out more heat than light, and Widow Ridley went to tap three quarts from a barrel into leather jacks.
“Is this double beer?” grunted the bodyguard.
“It’s ale and it’s good,” said Widow Ridley snippily. “Ye can have water out of the well if ye want.”
“Not beer? Ale upsets ma stomach.”
Widow Ridley looked outraged. “This wilnae do ye anything but good, ye great lummock, d’ye want it or no’?”
“You want it, Dixon,” said Hepburn, looking amused. “Do you have any stew or pottage, goodwife?”
“Hmf. It’s no’got saffron in it, wilna be good enough for the likes of him.”
“Please mistress, I’m very hungry,” said Hepburn.
She went into the little kitchen and brought back three bowls of what was probably her own supper, a thick bean pottage. Dodd accepted his which had a lot of bacon in it, Hepburn said thank you and Dixon got the bowl without any bacon and what looked like a big gob of spit on it. He started eating it anyway. She disappeared again and they heard her clogs in the mud. A moment later she was back with two hunks of bread and a burned bit of crust, all probably borrowed from a neighbour, and, of course, Dixon got the crust.
“Will there be anything else, sirs?” said Widow Ridley haughtily.
“No thank you, mistress,” said Hepburn obsequiously and was rewarded by a complex sniff. She went and sat down in the kitchen again and they could hear the furious clicking of her needles.
“Well,” said Hepburn with a smile, “I expect you would like to know what this is all about, Sergeant Dodd.”
Dodd didn’t answer. He would, but why admit it?
“I am under the orders of my Lord Earl of Bothwell to make you a certain offer.” Another inviting pause which Dodd didn’t bother to fill. He liked silence.
“We understand you work for Sir Robert Carey?”
“I’m Sergeant of the guard at Carlisle, ay.”
A Clash of Spheres Page 10
