“Morning, Sergeant,” he said cheerily as he went past combing his hair, and Dodd grunted at him.
They ate a good breakfast of bread and ale and then left Red Sandy and Sim’s Will with the packs to go and visit Lord Maxwell in his town house at the other end of Dumfries. Carey took Thunder as his mount, which seemed a further piece of complacent lunacy to Dodd, and Young Hutchin rode one of the packponies.
The market-place was heaving like a ten-day-old corpse. The reason was easy to see: drawn up in a circle around the Mercat Cross were wagons and handcarts full of food, round loaves of rye and oat bread, round cheeses of varying levels of decrepitude and serving men crowding up to buy from the barkers sitting on the wagons. Dodd recognised a JP stamped on the cheeses and pointed it out to Carey who seemed to find it funny. If King James’s court was eating rations originally intended for the Carlisle garrison (and rejected on grounds of age), that was fine by Dodd.
The press of people was so tight, it was hard to get their horses to push through, so Dodd and Young Hutchin dismounted and led them forward. Carey stayed mounted for the better vantage point. Then, just as they came to the schoolhouse on the corner of Friar’s Vennel, empty of schoolboys but filled with men, Carey saw something that made him stop and turn his horse’s head away and to the right.
Dodd followed his stare and saw the tall severely-dressed woman in her grey riding habit and white lacy falling band, riding pillion behind a groom among the crowds by one of the wagons. He struggled to keep up with Carey who was shouldering Thunder through the close-packed obdurate Scotsmen. Just as Carey almost reached her, she touched the groom’s shoulder, their horse stopped, and the groom dismounted to hand her down. Dodd wondered if she was pregnant, because there was something oddly stiff in the way she moved.
“Lady Widdrington, Lady Widdrington,” called out Carey with a boyish laugh of excitement, sliding from his horse and ducking around the animal to follow her. “My lady, I…”
She paused just long enough to look over her shoulder at him. The long grave face coloured up and the grey eyes sparkled, but she shook her head severely and turned her back on him. Carey stopped in mid-bow with a guilty expression.
“Bugger,” said Dodd.
Facing Carey now was a wide balding Englishman in a magnificent black velvet suit and furred gown. He had corrugated ears and a long sharp nose. Carey straightened up quickly.
“What business do you have with my wife, Sir Robert?” demanded Sir Henry Widdrington in a very ugly tone of voice.
For once in his life it was clear Carey couldn’t think of anything to say. Dodd loosened his sword and pushed through the crowd: in his experience, elderly English headmen with the gout never went anywhere without their men and they were in lawless Scotland now. Carey seemed to have remembered it too: his hand was also on his swordhilt.
Sir Henry Widdrington limped up close to Carey and pushed him in the chest with a knobbly finger. Instinctively the crowd widened around them.
“I have forbidden my wife-my wife, Sir Robert-to have any further conversation with you under any circumstances at all.”
Yes, thought Dodd, he does have backing: there’s that spotty Widdrington boy over by the inn gate and four more I don’t like the look of in the crowd behind the Deputy, and what about those two over by the horses…Why the hell didn’t we bring the patrol, at least, poor silly men though they are, we’re almost naked in this pack of Scotsmen and thieves. He began to sweat and look for good ways out of the marketplace.
Carey was still silent which seemed to enrage Widdrington.
“I know, ye see,” he hissed, still poking Carey in the chest. “I know what ye were at when I made the mistake of letting her go to London in the Armada year, you and your pandering sister between ye.”
Och God, groaned Dodd inwardly, knowing how Carey loved his sister and spotting another knot of six men at their ease just within the courtyard. Carey however gave the impression of being struck to stone, with only his eyes too bright a blue for a statue.
“…and as for Netherby…” Rage made Widdrington quiver and gulp air. “What did ye give her for the loan of my horses, eh, Carey? How did ye persuade the bitch, eh?” Poke, poke went the finger. “Eh? Eh?”
Carey’s face was a mask of contempt.
“You know your lady wife very little, Sir Henry,” he said, in a soft icy voice. “She has too much honour for your grubby suspicious little mind. As Christ is my witness, there has never been anything improper between us.”
Sir Henry Widdrington spat copiously on Carey’s boots.
Dodd was directly behind Carey when this happened. Knowingly risking his life, he held Carey’s right elbow and whispered urgently, “Dinna hit him, sir, he’s got backing.”
Carey’s face was masklike and remote. Sir Henry seemed to be waiting for something, watching them both closely.
“Hit him?” Carey repeated coldly and clearly. “I only hit my equals or my superiors, Dodd. I would never strike a poor senile gouty old man, that has the breeding of a London trull and the manners of a Dutch pig.”
Well, it was nice to see the way he turned his back on Widdrington, insolence in every line of him, and remount Thunder. Perhaps having Thunder prance a showy curvette was taking defiance a little far, but it at least cleared the area around them slightly so that Dodd and Young Hutchin could mount as well. Carey led the way to the Town Head where Maxwell’s house was. Dodd showed his teeth at Widdrington who was bright red and gobbling with fury, and followed him. Still, his back itched ferociously right up to the gate of the magnificent stone-built fortified town house that the Dumfries men called Maxwell’s Castle. It continued to itch while Carey talked to the men standing guard at the gate and passed over the usual bribes, and went on itching even as they passed through into the small courtyard. That too was packed tight, though here all the men were either in livery or wearing Maxwell or Herries jacks and no lack of family resemblance either. As usual Thunder drew a chorus of covetous looks and some quietly appraising talk. Carey beckoned that Dodd was to follow him.
Back still pricking like a hedgehog’s, Dodd gave Young Hutchin his horn with orders to wind it if one of the scurvy Scots so much as laid a finger on anything of theirs. Young Hutchin grinned and touched his forelock.
The servingman was leading them through the crowded hall and out the back past the kitchens into a long low modern building tethered to the castle like a barge. Dodd followed Carey in through the door and blinked in the morning light coming through the high windows.
The shock of the caliver blast almost by his ear nearly caused Dodd to leap under the table. Even Carey jumped like a skittish horse, whisked round and half drew his sword.
Loud laughter made Dodd’s ears burn and he turned to snarl at whoever had frightened them. A blurred glimpse of an elaborate padded black and red slashed doublet and a wonderfully feathered velvet hat made him bite back his indignation. It was the tall man who had fired a caliver at a target surrounded by sandbags at the other end of the bowling alley. The barrel was smoking as he blew away the powder remnants from the pan.
“Whae’s after ye and what did ye reive?” asked the man, still laughing. “Ye baith jumped like frogs at a cat.”
Carey took in the magnificent clothes, dropped his sword back in its scabbard and managed a fairly good laugh and shallow bow in return.
“We did, sir,” he said in Scots. “Ye have the better of us. I am Sir Robert Carey, Deputy Warden of Carlisle, and I am in search of the honourable Lord Maxwell, newly made Lord Warden of this March. Would ye ken where we could find him?”