“Nay, sir, they do not.” Let Bangtail’s dad talk his way out of this.
“Six of them, and very nice they are too, if a little short of food.”
“Och, them fancy French horses eat their heads off…” Dodd began and stopped. “…Or so I’ve heard.”
“Hmm.” Carey looked sideways at him and Dodd wondered what it was about Carey that caused Dodd’s own tongue to become so loose. He made his face go blank and stared severely at the foreign horses trotting about in the field ahead of them.
Carey did nothing much about the horses: simply pulled out a leather notebook and a pen and little bottle of ink and scribbled down the descriptions of each one of the horses in the field, resting the book on his saddle bow. They carried on, noting eight more horses of suspiciously fine breeding in lands owned by Musgraves and Carletons.
At last, to Henry Dodd’s relief, Carey picked up his heels a bit as they approached the Border country itself. They crossed at the Longtown ford and then covered the five miles of Debateable Land at a good clip. They took the horse-smugglers’ path by the old battlefield and followed it into the Johnstone lands north of Gretna, where Carey had them slow down to bate the horses.
We have thirty-five miles to ride to Dumfries before night, Dodd thought sourly, through some of the wildest robber country in the world, and hardly a man with us, just a bloody Graham water-bailiff and a Deputy Warden who thinks he’s immune to bullets.
To Dodd’s mind, Carey rode like a man going to a wedding with a cess of two hundred behind him. He took his time, never doing more than a canter, and stared around with interest at what he called the lie of the land, which looked like rocks and hills to Dodd, asked the few people in the villages they passed through what surname they were and generally behaved as if he was somewhere in soft and silly Yorkshire, where no one was likely to attack him at all.
When Dodd tactfully tried to reason with him, he got nowhere.
“Dodd, Dodd,” Carey said with that tinge of tolerant amusement in his voice that Dodd found intensely irritating, “nobody is going to attack us at this time of all times. King James is on the Border with three thousand men and he would just love to suck up to the Queen by hanging anyone who attacked me.”
Ye think ye’re very important, Courtier, thought Dodd, but heroically didn’t say. Has it crossed your mind that there are broken men all over the place here and not a one of them that gives a year-old cowpat for King James and all his men? He glanced across at the leathery water-bailiff, with the telltale long bony Graham face and cold grey eyes. He was riding along on his tough little pony looking as if he was half-asleep. No help from there.
“Ay, sir,” said Dodd, still trying to rotate his head on his neck like an owl. “I’m verra glad to hear it. Will we be there by nightfall at this pace, sir?”
He paused, stark horror chilling his blood like winter. “And what’s that, sir?”
There was movement in the distance, the characteristic purposeful movement of a man riding towards them at speed. They sat and watched for a few seconds and then Carey was quietly loading his dags, and Red Sandy and Sim’s Will Croser drawing their swords. Dodd spun his horse about, staring suspiciously at the farmlands and waste ground about them. Nothing. The land was empty save for the inevitable women weeding gardens and harvesting peas. Only there was the lone horseman riding like the clappers.
Man? He seemed small and light, and there was a smear of gold above his face, beneath his dark woollen cap.
“Och,” said the Graham water-bailiff, visibly relaxing. “I ken who that is.” He shook his head and tutted.
“Well?” said Carey impatiently.
“That wild boy, Young Hutchin.”
It was. As the figure came closer he resolved into Young Hutchin, wearing the black livery he had worn for Scrope’s funeral, bending low over his hobby’s neck and riding like one demented.
As he came up to them at last, he reined in and grinned. “Do you have a message for me?” Carey demanded, tension showing in his voice. Young Hutchin looked surprised.
“Nay, sir. Your lady sister said I wis to serve ye for page if I could catch up to ye, sir. That’s why I’m here.”
The boy had a very guileless blue stare and for a moment even Dodd believed him.
“You’re lying,” said Carey with emphasis. “My sister would no more send you to be my page at King James’s court than parade ten naked virgins mounted on milkwhite mares through the Debateable Land at night.”
Hutchin’s face fell slightly. “She did so,” he muttered. “I’m to be yer page.”
“She did not. Go back to Carlisle.”
“Ah willna.”
“Young Hutchin,” said Carey through his teeth. “I have enough to do without nursemaiding you through the Scotch court. Go back to Carlisle.”
“Ye canna make me.”
“I can tan your impudent arse for you, if you don’t do as you’re damned well told!” roared Carey.
The water-bailiff tutted and rode forward. “Sir,” he murmured modestly. “A word wi’ ye.”
“Yes, what is it, Mr Graham?”
“The lad’s my cousin’s child and he’s three parts gone to the bad already.”
“Do you want King James’s court to complete the job?”
“Ye canna make him go back if he doesnae want to. He’ll only ride out o’ sight and then trail us intae Dumfries alone.”
Carey growled under his breath. “Are you telling me I have to take him as my page and under my protection or risk him coming to Dumfries on his own anyway?”
“Ay, sir. That’s the size of it.”
“God damn it to hell and perdition. What the Devil possessed you, Young Hutchin? I don’t need a bloody page.”
“Ye do sir, at court. Ye canna be at court without a servant to attend ye. What would the Scottish lords think?”
“Who gives a damn what the Scottish lords think? And anyway, that’s not why you came.”
Hutchin grinned knowingly. “Nay, sir. I had a fancy to see the Scotch court for maself.”
Carey stared at him narrow-eyed for a moment, as if trying to size up exactly how much he understood of the world. Eventually he shrugged.
“On your own head be it,” he said. “I don’t want you and if you’ve a particle of sense you’ll turn around and head back to Carlisle.”
Young Hutchin sat and waited Carey out. Carefully, the Courtier discharged his dags into the air, causing Young Hutchin’s horse to pirouette and rear. If Carey thought that would make Young Hutchin think twice, he was mistaken: the lad was a Borderer born and bred and had heard gunfire since babyhood. He waited until Carey had gestured his small party onwards with an impatient hand, and fell in at the back looking as meek and prim as a maiden. Although if what Dodd had heard about the Scottish court was true, one of Carey’s fanciful virgins on horseback would have been safer there.
They ate late of the food they had brought with them by the side of the track in Annan, after being refused point blank when they offered to buy anything the womenfolk happened to have around. The women claimed bitterly that there was not a scrap of food left anywhere since the King’s harbingers had been through and they had seen nothing but forest berries and fresh peas for two days. The water-bailiff was known there and got some guarded nods.
The afternoon passed wearily for Dodd in the long complex climb up and through low hills and bogs to Dumfries. Carey was enjoying himself again. Some of the way he was whistling one of the repetitive complicated ditties he and his brother-in-law seemed to set such store by, to Dodd’s mystification. What was the point of a song that had no story? Finally Dodd rode a little ahead, to get away from the wheedling little tune. The countryside gave him a bad feeling in his gut all the way: true, he was legal this time, and riding with the water-bailiff. It didn’t help. Every time previously that he had passed into Scotland, except for the occasional message to Edinburgh when he was a lad, had been at dead of night and very very quietly. He did know the area somewhat, different though it looked in daylight, although the Johnstones and the Maxwells were both a little spry to be stealing cows off too regularly. A few years back there had been some pickings when the two surnames had been at each other’s throats. They were quiet at the moment and Dodd wondered gloomily what they were brewing. There were plentiful signs of devastation about: broken walls, burnt cottages, even a roofless pele-tower here and there, many fields going out of cultivation. The Courtier seemed less morally outraged by it, though, presumably because the sufferers were only Scots.