“How much would you take to compose your feud?”
Dodd thought carefully. “Ah dinna ken, sir. Whit would be the London price for twenty kine and ten sheep and five good horses.”
At that moment they heard a muttered “God’s truth!” from Hunsdon in the prow. He stood and gestured so that the rowers backed water. Then he beckoned the boatful of importunate musicians even closer.
“How much for your viol?” he roared across to them.
The musicians elbowed each other and there was a fierce argument. “He doesn’t want to sell, my lord,” shouted a harpist with long hair.
Hunsdon fished out a purse of silver and hefted it. “This much?”
There was a scuffle in the boat and one of the flautists brandished the viol in the air while the drummer sat on the viol player. Hunsdon gently threw the purse of silver into the boat and, despite wild protests from the viol player, the instrument was lobbed spinning across the water to be caught by Hunsdon’s man Turner. He handed it to Hunsdon, who took the instrument by the neck and smashed it to pieces against the side of the boat. Carey looked mildly pained, then shrugged.
“That’s better,” shouted Hunsdon, “and don’t for God’s sake let the man buy another bloody instrument.”
The Hunsdon liverymen bent grinning to their oars again and they left the musicians well behind.
Carey and his father were uncharacteristically quiet as the boat sped downriver, helped by the current. As they rounded the bend and came in sight of Somerset House, both men gasped and stood up in the boat, nearly upsetting it.
Another boat was tied up at Somerset steps, a long gig from a ship, also sporting the Swan Rampant that was Hunsdon’s badge. Men were standing on the boatlanding who were clearly not Londoners, being barrel-shaped, mainly red-haired and short, and sporting long pigtails down their backs.
Dodd stared with interest at the play of expressions on Carey’s face-absolute horror predominating. Strangely Hunsdon was grinning with delight from ear to ear and let out a bellow of laughter.
“Good God, it can’t be,” groaned Carey.
“It is!” laughed Hunsdon, slapping his son on the back and taking him unawares so he nearly went in the Thames. “I’d recognise that crew of Cornish wreckers and pirates anywhere. Ho, Trevasker!”
The most evil-looking of the men touched his cap to Hunsdon and said something to one of the others.
“Oh Jesus, this is all I need,” said Carey, sitting down and putting his head in his hands.
His father stayed standing all the way to the steps and jumped off onto the jetty before the boat was even tied up. The crew of Cornish wreckers and pirates touched their foreheads respectfully to Hunsdon as he hurried past them, through the gate in the wall, and up through the gardens. Carey followed nearly as quickly with a face of thunder while Dodd scrambled after, near to dying of curiosity. He caught up with Carey in the orchard.
“Is it one o’ yer creditors?”
“No, much worse. You saw the badge, didn’t you? It’s much, much worse.”
Dodd shook his head, loosened his sword just in case Carey wasn’t exaggerating again, and followed up to the house which was blazing with candles in the grey afternoon.
In the magnificent entrance hall stood more short, broad, pigtailed men with hands like hams and a strong smell of the sea on them. Hunsdon hurried through to the parlour where a smallish woman in her sixties with very bright blue eyes was just taking off a large sealskin cloak and handing it to a pink-cheeked girl.
She turned, smiled, and curtseyed to Lord Hunsdon who bowed formally, then opened his arms and bellowed “Annie!” as he scooped her up and swing her round in a delighted hug.
“Put me down, Harry, you old fool!” shouted the woman as she hugged him back with just as much violence, laughing with an infectious gurgle in her throat. “You’ll knock my hat off.”
Although she otherwise spoke like Hunsdon there was a strong flavour in her voice. It was the sound of the Cornish sailors who plied up and down the Irish Sea in appalling weather, trading tin, hides, wood, and contraband in all directions.
Hunsdon put her down gently and she straightened her smart French hood and smiled lovingly at Carey. “Where’s my little man to, then, eh?” she demanded.
Real pain crossed Carey’s face. Dodd’s mouth dropped open as he finally worked out who he was looking at. Carey stepped past him, swept a very fine Court bow, and bent over the lady’s hand with unimpeachable respect.
“My lady mother,” murmured Carey in a resigned tone of voice. “What a delightful surprise.”
She laughed a gravelly laugh and thumped him in the ribs. “No it ain’t, Robin.” she said, “Don’t try that Court soft soap with me. You’re shaking in your fine boots.”
Carey smiled wanly.
“Er…”
“You’re worried I know what you’ve been at, boy, and you’re right. I do.”
“Ah…”
“Meanwhile, who’s this henchman of yours?”
Guts cramping, ribs aching, and his face stiff with the effort not to laugh, Dodd stepped forward and made the best bow he could manage.
“Ma’am, may I present Land-Sergeant Henry Dodd of Gilsland, presently serving under me in Carlisle,” said Carey in the tones of one going to his execution.
Dodd found himself being looked sharply up and down.
“Hm. So you’re the Dodd headman that came out for my son with your kin when he got himself in trouble at Netherby,” she said.
“Ay, my lady. Wi’ the English Armstrongs o’ course.”
“And as I heard it, you convinced the Johnston to back you and ran a nice little ambush on the Maxwell to bring the handguns back from Dumfries in the summer.”
Dodd could only nod. How the hell could she know so much? Carey had his eyes shut and his hands clasped firmly behind his back like a boy reciting a lesson.
Lady Hunsdon swung on her husband. “I take a little trip to Dumfries in summer with Captain Trevasker and the Judith of Penryn in Irish whiskey and some vittles for the Scottish court and what do I hear? My youngest son’s doings all over the town although the King’s gone back to Edinburgh and his mangy pack of lordlings with him.”
“Did you sell the cargo?” asked Hunsdon.
“Of course I did, husband, that’s why I went. I knew the Court would have eaten and drunk the place bare. Triple prices for the whisky from my Lord Maxwell, no less.”
She was advancing on Carey now who backed before her with his shoulders up like a boy expecting to have his ears boxed for scrumping apples. Dodd held his breath in mingled hope and fascination.
“Now one of the things I heard was not at all to my liking,” she said, prodding Carey in his well-velveted chest which was as high as she could reach. He flinched. “Not at all. What’s this about Lord Spynie and Sir Henry Widdrington, eh?”
Carey smiled placatingly and spread his hands. “I couldn’t possibly say, ma’am, are they in bed together?”
“All but.” Pouncing like a cat, Lady Hunsdon grabbed her son’s left hand and pulled off his embroidered glove. After a moment when it seemed Carey would snatch his hand away and possibly run for it, he stood and let her look, towering over her and yet somehow gangling like the lad he must have been fifteen years before.
In silence Lady Hunsdon reached for his other hand. Carey sighed and pulled the glove off for her. More thunderous silence. Dodd saw tears rising to Lady Hunsdon’s eyes and suddenly she pulled Carey to her and hugged him.
“Mother!” protested the muffled voice of Carey. She let go at once and turned to her husband.
“We shall set a price of five thousand crowns on Spynie’s head and the same on Widdrington’s,” she said coldly.
“Er…no, my lady,” said Hunsdon, “I think not. Spynie’s still the King’s Minion, though there are hopes of Robert Kerr, and John needs the Widdrington surname to help him rule the East March.”