A Clash of Spheres

by P. F. Chisholm

  “And we know you’ve fallen out with him over the very foolish way he let the Elliots go in October. Anyone would, really. My Lord Earl is also annoyed with him over the way he spoiled the raid on Falkland palace last summer.”

  Dodd said nothing. Then “No,” he said.

  “No?” asked Hepburn, looking puzzled. “You haven’t fallen out with him?”

  “I have, ay. But I willna kill him and there’s the end of it.”

  Hepburn smiled yet again. God, he was greasy. “No, no, we wouldn’t ask anything like that. Just a certain absence.”

  That was different. The Grahams had asked him not to be there a few nights before, when he was due to go on patrol and had been willing to pay him ten shillings, which he had taken. He hadn’t yet heard how that had played out, but judging from the deafening silence from Carlisle, not too well for the Grahams. One of the lads would have ridden out to tell him if Carey was dead, if only to bid him to the funeral.

  “Ay?”

  “We think Carey will soon be going into Scotland.”

  Dodd shrugged. “I doot it. And if he does, he may not ask me, he kens I’m mithered with him unless he’s a stupider man than I tek him for.”

  “If he asks you, we want you to say yes.”

  Dodd sighed deeply. More travelling into foreign parts, more sleeping who knew where. At least he would understand the people, his Scots was quite good.

  “Ay well, if he asks. And then what?”

  Hepburn handed over four crowns, a pound, not Scots but sterling.

  “At some point I will ask you not to accompany him and that is all.”

  “Ay?”

  “That’s all.”

  Dodd stared hard at the man. He was wearing a plain wool suit, some dark colour hard to tell in the firelight, with the indefinable look of having been tailored. His plain white falling band was clean and his cloak was a thick prickly grey wool with the oil left in it, you could see the way the damp dewed on it and didn’t soak, from hill sheep clearly. It was a nice cloak, densely woven, perhaps from the herds near the lakes to the southwest. His face was square and the beard neatly trimmed, somehow neutral. If it wasn’t for his unruly curly hair, it would be hard to remember him.

  “Ay,” he said, wanting to hand back the pound but somehow the money stuck to his hand. It was enough for a plain morion helmet. “We’ll see.”

  “Oh, Sergeant Dodd,” said the man softly, “not a word to Carey and don’t play me false, d’ye understand? We ken where yer wife lives.”

  Dodd said nothing. Of course he did, if he knew Dodd’s name. He didn’t like being threatened, although you had to expect it when you took money. He wasn’t worried. God help the man who took on Janet Armstrong in a fight. Perhaps Hepburn caught this for he smiled again.

  “It’s only a little thing we’re asking ye to do,” he said. “We’re not going to kill him. Just teach him a lesson and send him back to London.”

  Dodd said “Ay,” again and that seemed to satisfy Hepburn because he settled back on the bench and started asking questions about horses and the harvest like a normal man and Dodd didn’t feel like answering. The conversation petered out as Hepburn got tired of trying to hold up both ends of it. They finished their pottage and Hepburn paid a ridiculous amount in sterling because Widow Ridley had quadrupled her prices just for him.

  And that was all wrong because Dodd knew that the Earl of Bothwell was at the horn and he would have heard about it if the Earl had robbed a town or raided Lord Maxwell’s cows and insight which was the only way he could have laid his hands on so much cash.

  Gimlet-eyed, Widow Ridley watched from the door as Hepburn and Dixon mounted up and rode on the way they had come if they came from Edinburgh. Anyway, their horses were Edinburgh animals from the brands. Her knitting became louder as she spat after them.

  “I wouldnae trust them further nor I could throw them,” she snapped and Dodd nodded slowly.

  “Missus Ridley, can I sleep on yer bench here like your ither guest…?” The Thirlwall drunk hadn’t moved all the time he had been there. “Only it’s dark and the rain…”

  “Ay, ye can, Sergeant,” said Widow Ridley. “Mebbe ye’d like to bring in yer great tall horse if he’ll fit, since it’s the raiding season.”

  Dodd looked at her in astonishment. “I take that verra kindly, missus,” he said. “Ah’m fond of the beast and he’d make a good raid of a poor one.”

  Widow Ridley smiled a little for the first time, so her face wore the ghost of the way she looked forty years gone, before her teeth fell out and her wild hair went white.

  She did more than allow the horse in the house; she brought in some straw to lay in the corner and Dodd carefully walked Whitesock in through the door—he had to put his head down to get through though there was space under the rafters once he was in. Not even that spooked him, he just neighed curiously and then stood still to be untacked and whisped down and then she brought in a bucket of mash for him. He nickered his lips in thanks and she patted his strong brown neck.

  “Once upon a time, I’d ha’ got on my pony and ridden out into the rain to tell my father of such a horse,” she said. “Come quick, Da, I’d say, it’s a good one.”

  “Not now, though,” said Dodd, suddenly worried.

  “Nay, not now,” she laughed at him. “They’re a’ deid.”

  It made Dodd feel unaccountably better to know that the great London horse was in the same room with him, as the Thirlwall drunk snored and Whitesock blew and whickered in his sleep and eventually Dodd slept on the bench with an old homespun blanket over his shoulder and his saddle under his head.

  Ten miles away by then and following the wall carefully to Haltwhistle, the men were walking their horses and wishing they had stayed as the weather closed in.

  “God, he’s a dour one,” said Hepburn. Dixon grunted.

  “Do ye think he’ll do it?” Hepburn asked a mile later when they had realised they had overshot Haltwhistle and would do better heading for Hexham. Dixon shrugged.

  “What does it matter?” he asked. “When do we kill him?”

  “Probably after Carey’s been arrested,” said Hepburn thoughtfully. “Once the King is dead. Then we do Dodd.”

  Dixon grunted again. “I’m bringing my brothers in for that job,” he said. “I dinna like the looks of him.”

  Sometime in Autumn 1592

  Father William Crichton looked at the pieces of paper that had cost him such a lot of time and work. They were blank and at the bottom were the careless signatures of the Earls of Erroll, and Angus, also lesser fry like Auchinlech and even two Grooms of the Bedchamber. Not one of them was a forgery. Huntly had promised to sign a blank piece of paper too. Above the signatures, Crichton or anybody else could write anything he chose. As a guarantee for the Spanish King and a test of good faith, they were a triumph.

  He had met all the men when he was at Court, at Falkland, very secretly. One of his reasons to be there was that he had been meeting the King and doing his best to persuade him to join the scheme. His Highness had even invited him to a small hunting lodge in the park and then seen him alone except for a page, in the evening after the hunting was finished and the King was at his ease eating a light supper of partridges and venison.

  “Your Highness,” he said while the King drank wine by the pint. “My liege the King of Spain…”

  “Mr Crichton, ye are a Scot, are ye not?”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  “Then I am your liege, not the King of Spain.”

  Crichton had coloured up at that, embarrassed. “Your Highness,” he said humbly, dropping to one knee off the little stool he had been given, “I apologise, of course you are temporally. But I see the King of Spain as my spiritual liege because he is a Catholic.”

  “Surely then that’s the Pope?”

  �
�And the Pope, Your Highness.”

  “A man should have one, perhaps as many as two lieges. I canna tolerate three.”

  Crichton did not know what to say.

  King James smiled and beckoned a redheaded lad with a crumpled ear to pour some more wine for him. “Och, dinna fret. I’m no’ Her Majesty of England to have your bollocks off and burned and your guts intae the light of day and yer body cut in four parts so the angels will be at their wits’ end to put ye back together on Judgement Day.”

  Crichton, who had nightmares sometimes about being hanged, drawn, and quartered, made a little noise in his throat which had gone dry. “I’m very glad, Your Highness,” he managed sincerely.

  “Nay, the Boot and the pinniwinks will do for me,” grinned the King, buttering some manchet bread. “And then a nice rope.”

  “Ah…”

  “So get off yer poor aching knee and tell me about yer idea,” said the King. “Ye’d have the King of Spain land his troops at Dumfries and such like western ports and stay here over winter, then in the spring they march south and take England. Yes?”

  Damn it, thought Crichton, they weren’t supposed to spill the whole plan, Huntly was just to feel him out…

  “Well…”

  “Or is that no’ the plan?”

  “Not quite. For instance, problems with supplying the troops means they will likely bring them in the New Year to shorten the time of them being idle.”

  “Tell me all about it,” said the King with an expansive gesture. “That ye know, anyway.”

  “Well that is the plan, I don’t know all the bureaucratic details but the King gave me his fiat at the beginning of this year. He has read your paper about the possible benefits of Spanish rule which you wrote at the time of the Armada and liked it and asked that you be apprised of his…er plans. You see, I thought, and the King of Spain agrees with me, that perhaps it would cause less effusion of blood all round if the landing were not contested nor the troops troubled while they were in Scotland and perhaps we could buy some supplies from you at good prices and arms as well and…er…so on…”

  “I’ve got an idea to prevent the effusion of blood,” said the King, waving a partridge leg. “How about the King of Spain doesnae land troops anywhere in Scotland, doesnae keep sending Armadas for the storms to scuttle, and we all settle down and start trading and making money out of each other. Eh?”

  Crichton looked at him in bewilderment. Had he really just implied that trade was better than war? “But Mother Church…”

  “Ay, the Church,” said the King. “Now I’ve allus longed to be a Catholic.”

  “You have?”

  “Oh ay, it wis the religion of my dear martyred mother so it was, and I feel a great spiritual longing to be part of the great Universal Church again.”

  Crichton was nearly trembling with excitement. “Your Highness, this is wonderful news! I can…”

  “I’ve often thought of getting baptised into the Catholic Church and leading my poor benighted subjects back to their spiritual Mother,” said James, turning his eyes up to heaven. “The trouble is, at the moment if I did any such thing I would be in battle the following week and at the horn a week later. Which wouldna suit me, ye understand.”

  “You truly believe your subjects would revolt…”

  “Ay, they would. Some would not,” said the King, splitting another partridge with his black-nailed fingers, “but Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Fife, even little Leith, the cities would be up in arms. Ye recall what happened to my poor mother.”

  “But John Knox is dead and in Hell now.”

  “Ay, but Chancellor Melville of Aberdeen University isnae and he’s a strong puritan, he thinks of only one thing which is the advancement of Calvinism. I’ve just had tae sign a dreadful law that removes bishops in favour of presbyteries. Presbyteries! God save us, wi’ the poor silly creatures having tae decide for theirselves what’s right, which they mostly dinna want to nor cannot.”

  “Shocking!” said Crichton sincerely.

  “Ay. So any clue to anyone that I’d like to make a change in religion and I’d be oot, ye follow?”

  “Of course,” said Crichton, wondering if the King was actually talking treason. But no, he was the King. If he said it, it could not be treason.

  “So ye see, Father—I can call ye that?” Crichton nodded faintly. “Let’s take all this a little softly, a little quietly. And in any case, how can I possibly agree to troops building up fifty miles from Edinburgh? Even if I’m all for this plan to take England and cast down the auld bitch who’s docked ma subsidy this year, and if I’d be willing to form an alliance wi’ the King of Spain—which would be in the nature of a minnow forming an alliance wi’a perch, d’ye not think?—but even if I were…Thousands of soldiers and not mine running around the West March, I dinna like it.”

  “I can talk this over with Huntly and Angus. Perhaps we can find another place to land the soldiers, perhaps in the Highlands?” said Crichton, who loved maps but had never seen an accurate one.

  “Good idea,” beamed James, who had stalked deer all over the Highlands.

  Crichton dipped his head. His mind was racing. If the Scottish King would declare himself a Catholic that would change everything. Cuius regio eius religio was the maxim all over Christendom because it worked: as the King, so the religion.

  And of course a large number of Spanish troops in the West would certainly encourage the King to declare himself a Catholic, would give him a perfect excuse in fact. And then perhaps the King of Spain’s general, yet to be decided, could indeed join forces with James and then both of them could invade England from the north. The strategic possibilities were breathtaking.

  “Just tell ’em their old dad disnae want Spanish troops bothering him, eh?”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” said Crichton. “I am very honoured that Your Highness has seen fit to explain so much to this poor priest.” I’ll be a Cardinal, some part of him was singing, for a coup like this, a Cardinal’s hat at least!

  “Ay, ye should be. They’ll credit ye with ma conversion and make ye a saint, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” said Crichton with smug modesty while all the time the back of his mind was singing, Cardinal’s hat! Cardinal’s hat!

  “And not a word to anybody, eh?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Besides, I don’t want war with Spain. Why not wait until I inherit England so I’m King there by right and then make the change? Surprise ’em all one morning? What’s all the hurry?”

  Having been in Spain, Father Crichton could answer this. “His Catholic Majesty is not a well man and I think he reasonably fears to go to Judgement with his great failure to take England back into the fold on his conscience.”

  “Ah,” said the King, nodding wisely, “I see. I see. So tell my naughty northern earls, Huntly and Maxwell especially, no Spanish troops in Caerlaverock, not even to wipe out the Johnstones, or I’ll run the Justice Raid of all time into the west and burn it down.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  “We’ll meet again, Father Crichton, I’ve enjoyed talking tae ye.”

  Father Crichton bowed himself out, with a couple of partridges wrapped messily in a handkerchief to keep him going on the road back to Edinburgh. In fact, as soon as he was out of sight he had headed west again. He knew Huntly and Maxwell would instantly reject the idea of putting troops ashore anywhere other than Dumfries, no matter what the King thought, but he thought he could sell the rest to them.

  At the hunting lodge, the King, who was mentally drafting a very careful ciphered letter to Sir Robert Cecil in England, spotted that his young page was looking troubled.

  “Whit’s the matter, Rob?” asked the King.

  “Well, Your Highness, when ye met Chancellor Melville here last week, you told him how much ye love the pre
cious word of God and that you would always protect and save the church of Calvin and Knox in Scotland and that the Catholic earls are a thorn in your side…”

  James laughed, wiping his fingers on the napkin over his shoulder and dabbling them in the waterdish, wiping them sketchily again. “I’m caught,” he said. “Yes, I did.”

  “And then today you said to that priest that ye’d like to be a Papist?”

  “Ay, that’s true.”

  “Well, which is it, sir?”

  “What?”

  “Which one were ye lying to?”

  The King stopped laughing and looked grave. He beckoned the boy to him and the boy came and stood there with a frown of puzzlement on his face.

  “Now, Rob, ye know what a King is?”

  Rob opened his mouth and left it open. “He wears a crown.”

  “On special occasions, ay, I do.”

  “And he goes hunting and signs papers.”

  “Yes,” James laughed. “Anything else?”

  Rob scowled in thought, which James had already discovered didn’t come easily to him.

  “People do what you tell them to, usually.”

  “Sometimes,” said James, with a touch of bitterness.

  “And that’s it,” said Rob looking triumphant.

  “Well there’s an important bit about being a King that ye’ve left out.”

  “Och, and ye’ve a Queen…”

  “Ay, though that’s not it. The thing is, Rob my dear, God chose me to be King. God protected me all through my childhood when many ill-affected men kidnapped me and might have killt me. God made me King. Now when ye meet God on Judgement Day, He’ll say tae ye, ‘Rob, were ye a good boy and did ye allus tell the truth and did ye allus do whit yer elders and betters tellt ye to?’”

  Rob thought carefully, his handsome brows bulging with the effort. “Yes,” he said at last.

  “Well that’s verra good, lad, I’m pleased tae hear it. Whit do ye think He’ll ask me at Judgement?”

  “James, were ye a good man?”

  James shook his head. “Nay Rob, me dear, that’s whit he’d ask if I wis just another man. But I’m no’ a man, I’m a King. So I get another question. ‘James,’ He’ll say to me, ‘James me lad, were ye a good King? Were ye a King like David or Solomon or Hezekiah, did ye do yer best for every one of yer subjects, Catholic or Protestant? Did ye keep the peace as far as ye could? Were ye a good King?’”