Philadelphia whisked the keys off the ground, took her husband’s arm in hers and practically frogmarched him to the rooms in the dilapidated old Keep where they were living while the Warden’s Lodgings at the Castle Gate were being cleaned and refurbished.
‘I’m sorry you think so little of me,’ Carey managed to say to Elizabeth, without sounding as bad as he felt.
‘Be sensible. I think very well of you, too well to think you’d let yourself be carried away by romantic nonsense.’ She hadn’t been looking at him, but now she did. ‘How much do you owe?’ He didn’t answer because he wasn’t quite sure himself. ‘Thousands, I’ll be bound. You’re neither rich enough nor poor enough to marry for love, and it’s a very fickle foundation for a proper marriage anyway. You’ve been at Court listening to silly poets vapouring about their goddesses for too long.’
Now they were facing each other, suddenly turned to adversaries, wasting a still summer night designed for dalliance. Elizabeth no longer had her arm in his.
For a moment Carey couldn’t think of anything to say, since she was completely right about his finances, and what she said was no more than what all his friends and his father had told him often. He didn’t care.
‘You haven’t told me you don’t love me,’ he said stubbornly.
‘That’s got nothing to do with anything,’ she said. ‘I’m married. Not to you, but to a…a rightful husband called Sir Henry Widdrington. That’s the beginning and end of it.’
She turned away, to follow the Scropes up to the Keep. Carey thought of his bed, with its musty curtains and its expanse of emptiness, and put his hand on her arm to hold her, turn her to him and kiss her until he relit the passion in her…She slapped his hand away and hissed, ‘Will you stop?’
She picked up her skirts and ran.
Carey went blindly after her through the covered way, through the Captain’s gate and under the starclad night to the Queen Mary Tower. He climbed the stairs feeling heavy and tired, found his bedchamber dark and empty. He lit a rush-dip from the one lighting the stair, poured himself some wine and sat looking at the pewter tankard for a long time. He had never seen tears on Elizabeth Widdrington’s face before.
***
At the Red Bull, Jemmy Atkinson counted out the money in front of the men he had employed to beat up his wife’s lover. Billy Little’s brother Long George had somehow come into the matter as well. Never mind, they weren’t asking any more for him.
‘You told him, Sergeant?’
‘Ay,’ said Ill-Willit Daniel Nixon.
Atkinson’s thin lips pursed with satisfaction.
‘Mr Atkinson?’ said Long George. ‘What happens if Andy Nixon remembers who we are and sues for assault and battery?’
‘You didn’t let him get a look at you?’
‘Not much of one. But he heard Sergeant Nixon’s voice at least.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Atkinson. ‘All of this has been arranged through Sir Richard Lowther. If there’s a court case Sir Richard will be your good lord and see to the jury, and Nixon knows he’ll not get off so lightly next time.’
They looked at each other and nodded, but Long George was still frowning worriedly. He wiped his runny nose on his sleeve again.
‘Well, but, master,’ he said, ‘Sir Richard’s not Deputy Warden any more.’
Atkinson’s face grew pinched and mean. The actual Deputy Warden, Sir Robert Carey, had wanted to sack him from his office as Armoury Clerk on discovering that most of the weapons in the Carlisle armoury had disappeared, to be replaced with wooden dummies. The Warden had been Atkinson’s good lord on that occasion, protesting that they didn’t have anyone else in Carlisle capable of dealing with the armoury. Carey had in fact sacked Atkinson from his other, even more lucrative, office of Paymaster to the Garrison, after somehow getting hold of and reading the garrison account books.
‘I have every confidence in Sir Richard’s ability to send that nosy long-shanked prick of a courtier running back to London crying for his mother,’ he said venomously.
‘Mm,’ said Long George. He started to say something and then thought better of it.
‘And in addition no one else will be witnesses, will they?’
‘No,’ said Ill-Willit Daniel.
Long George and his brother stayed in the common room until late, playing dice for pennies with their new-gotten wealth. Atkinson too seemed to be waiting for something, and sat drinking in solitary splendour. At last Billy touched Long George’s arm and he turned to see Lowther advancing towards Atkinson. Long George stayed still and hoped he’d be invisible.
Lowther was in a dour mood, greeted Atkinson and sat down in the booth with him. They talked quietly for a while and Atkinson finally beckoned Mick the Crow over from the knot of drinkers by the empty fireplace. Lowther had sent the potboy for pens and paper and was writing. Mick pulled his forelock to Lowther and went out with him into the yard. Lowther didn’t come back in again, but Mick the Crow did, nervously checking something he had inside his shirt. Long George opened his mouth to ask what was going on but Billy kicked him and they went out the back to the dormitory to sleep.
Atkinson went home to one of the few two-storey houses in Carlisle, in a row facing the marketplace and the end of Scotch street. He was savouring the sour pleasure of revenge. His wife had not waited up for him, so he drank home-brewed beer from the cask by himself in the downstairs living room until wife, lawyers, lovers, brothers-in-law all faded away, until he felt the horns on his head a little less sore, and he staggered up the narrow stairs, pulling his boots off on the way, and dropping his doublet and hose at the door to his bedchamber. Then hiccupping slightly he ripped the curtains aside and toppled into bed next to his bitch of a wife. For a while the room and the little watchlight on the bedhead whirled, so he sat up on his elbow and waited for it to settle. His wife was on her back, her smock pulled down off her shoulder to show her pitiful little pointed dug, her mouth half-open and snoring. The best you could say for her was that she had a reasonable dowry. What Andy Nixon saw in her was beyond him. For a moment he thought of waking her and telling her what he had done. Perhaps she would weep; certainly the bitch would deny everything. And then he could slap her, pull up her smock and have his rights there and then, but it was too much trouble and he was too drunk.
He passed out without even bothering to shut the bed-curtains or douse the candle, looking forward to telling her in the morning.
Sunday 2nd July 1592, midnight
Solomon Musgrave was a big fat man with one arm and no teeth; he had lost an arm in action under Lord Hunsdon during the Rising of the Northern Earls, and so he had a permanent position in the Carlisle garrison despite being useless for fighting. He generally kept the gate and slept happily through the day, living as nocturnally as the Castle cats. He was usually the first to see the beacons that told of reivers over the Border and had the job of waking the bellringer who lived permanently up at the keep. Occasionally he bribed one of the boys to do his job, but as a general rule he liked it. It was peaceful in the night and his eyes were so adjusted to darkness that he found daylight often too bright for him and hard-edged.
And he saw a great deal. To his private satisfaction, he knew more about what happened in the Castle than anyone else. He had watched the new Deputy try and coax his ladylove to bed and receive his setdown. He had heard the Scropes in their usual arguments as their yawning maid and manservant got them undressed and he knew that Young Hutchin Graham was doing his best to bed one of the scullery maids, with no success whatever.
He stood at his sentrypost, admiring the stars as they wheeled across the sky, and heard somebody approaching the barred main gate.