Carey watched with attention and then said to Dodd quietly, “If you want to recoup your horse-racing losses…”
“I cannae,” said Dodd gloomily. “The wife has all that was left.”
“I thought you managed to give her the slip at the muster?”
“Her brothers found me afterwards in Bessie’s once we’d gone back up to the Keep and she wouldna take no for an answer.”
Carey tutted sympathetically.
“Ay,” said Dodd. “She even took the money I had back for my new helmet and said she’d pay it herself or we’d end up in debt to the armourer.”
“Very disrespectful of her.”
“Ay,” moaned Dodd. “And I’ll be getting an earful of it every time I see her no matter what I do. I’d beat her for it, I surely would, sir, but the trouble is it wouldnae make her any better and there’d be some disaster come of it after.”
The last time Dodd had tried to assert his authority with his wife he had wound up in ward at Jedburgh as a pledge for one of her brothers’ good behaviour and spent three months in the gaol there because the bastard had seen fit to disappear immediately after. Dodd still wasn’t sure how it had come about, but he had no intention of making the experiment to find the connection. Besides she was fully capable of putting a pillow over his face while he slept if he offended her badly enough and she’d never burn for the crime of petty treason because Kinmont Willie would take her in as his favourite niece, no matter what she did. That thought alone had kept Dodd remarkably chaste while he did his duty at Carlisle and his wife spent most of her time running Gilsland. Still no bairn though, which was a pity. There was no wealth like a string of sons.
Applause and ironical cheers distracted him from his normal worries. The archery contest had been won by a Gowrie. Now the gun shooting contest began and it seemed as if Carey had been busy laying bets. The laird Johnstone shot first and did reasonably well; Maxwell stepped forward and managed to put his first shot in the bull. Then a tall broadshouldered young Englishman with a face as spotty as a plum pudding stepped out. Carey groaned.
“Damnation,” he said to Dodd. “It’s Henry Widdrington the younger. I hadn’t realised he was in it or I’d have put all my money on him.”
“Good, is he?” asked Dodd with gloomy satisfaction that Carey was going to get a set down. Of course, Carey was craning his neck, looking about in the crowd: no sign of Lady Widdrington or her husband, thank God, thought Dodd, though Carey was disappointed.
“Too good, and he has a decent gun as well.”
“Who’s the lad standing by him?”
“His brother Roger, I think.”
They watched the competition in an atmosphere of deepening dismay, shared by the rest of the crowd who disliked watching an Englishman beat a Scot at any martial exercise. To scattered applause and some booing, young Henry Widdrington easily bore away the bell which was presented by the King’s foster-brother and erstwhile guardian, the Earl of Mar.
Carey sighed deeply, counted about twenty pounds out of his purse and went off to pay his debts. He wound up in the knot of men congratulating Widdrington on his shooting, and when Dodd wandered over nosily to find out what they were about, discovered that Carey was being persuaded to come into the football match and steadfastly refusing.
The King arrived at that point, announced by appalling trumpet playing, surrounded by a crowd of brilliantly dressed men and riding on a white horse from which he dismounted ungracefully and stumped to his chair. Lord Spynie was there, a little back from the main bunch about the King, talking intently with the wide balding figure of Sir Henry Widdrington. Elizabeth paced stately at her husband’s side, curtseyed poker-backed to the King and took up a place nearby. Spynie laughed at some comment of Widdrington’s, then went and stood by a stool beside the carven chair.
Dodd stole a look at Carey’s face as he watched Lady Widdrington. Unguarded by charm or mockery, for a moment the Courtier’s heart was nakedly visible there as his eyes burned the air between him and the woman. It was the face of a starving man gazing at a banquet.
Dodd elbowed the Courtier gently. “Sir,” he growled. “If I was Sir Henry, I’d shoot ye for no more than the look of your face.”
Carey blinked at him, evidently not all there. Dodd tried again.
“Sir Robert,” he said, gruff with annoyance at feeling sorry for the silly man. “Ye’ll do her more harm if ye stare like that.”
For a moment the blue glare was ferociously hostile and then Carey coloured up and looked at the ground. He cleared his throat.
“Er…yes, you’re right. Quite right.”
Watching the way he settled himself, it was exactly like watching a mummer put on a mask. Dear Lord, thought Dodd, he’s caught a midsummer madness to be sure. Carey was moving again, to the background noise of the Dumfries town crier announcing the King’s pleasure at the football match to be held and making a hash of it.
When the sheep-like bleating had finished, Carey moved up to the awning, swept his hat off, muttered quickly to the town crier and genuflected on one knee to the King. Sweat shining on his face the town crier shouted something incomprehensible about Sir Ronald Starey, Deputy Warden of the English West March.
King James squinted his eyes suspiciously for a moment as he looked down on the Courtier and then his face cleared and lightened with a surprisingly pleasant smile as he spoke. Against his will, Dodd was impressed: it seemed the King of Scots did know Carey and was willing to acknowledge him. Carey held out the other letter he had brought from Carlisle. The King took it and read it with heavy-lidded boredom and let Carey stay there with one knee in the damp grass for a considerable time while he sat and talked to Lord Spynie and the Earl of Mar on his other side about the contents. Eventually the King nodded his head affably and said a few words. Carey rose to his feet, backed away, bowed again.
This time Dodd watched Lady Widdrington. She looked once at Carey, when his attention was on the King, and for a moment, if Dodd had been Sir Henry, he would have shot her too. Then her lips compressed and she stared into the middle distance instead.
Carey arrived, busy undoing the many buttons and points of his fine black velvet doublet. He unbuckled his belts and shrugged it off his shoulders, handing it to Young Hutchin.
“I wouldn’t lay any bets on this match,” he said conversationally to Dodd as he rebelted his hose, rolled up his shirtsleeves and undid the ties of his small ruff, which ended coiled in his hat. “Not with the number of Johnstones on the one side and Maxwells on the other.”
“Ye’re not going to play at the football, are you, sir?” asked Dodd, appalled at this further evidence of the Deputy’s insanity.
“Well, I can hardly refuse when the King asked me to, now can I? Even if he told me to play for the Johnstones, since they’re a man short.”
“Have ye played at the football?”
Carey’s eyes were cold and surprised. “What do you take me for, Dodd? Of course I have, and in Scotland too. The King likes watching football. He has a notion that it promotes friendliness and reconciliation.”
“Friendliness and reconciliation?” Dodd repeated hollowly, remembering some football games he had played.
“That’s right.”
“Och, God.”
Carey nonchalantly handed over to Dodd what was left of his winnings from Maxwell, which felt as if it amounted to some eighty pounds or so and was much more money than Dodd had ever met in one place in his life before. Wild thoughts came to him of slipping away from the match and riding like hell for Gilsland to give it to his wife and calm her down, but Dodd was not daft. He slung the purse round his own neck and felt martyred.