“Och, the hell with it,” Young Hutchin said to himself, knowing the stables were only one storey high, and he let go of the cross-tie and let himself slide through and rolled into the thick straw between two alarmed horses. Brushing straw and reeds off himself he calmed the animals down, patting them and swearing at them gently under his breath, until he felt the iron prod of a sword in his back and stopped dead.
“Stealing horses again, eh, Young Hutchin?”
“Sergeant Dodd,” said Young Hutchin, his stomach lurching back from his throat with relief.
“Ay. And ye woke me up, ye little bastard.”
The sound of a yawn followed this, so Hutchin cautiously turned about. Sergeant Dodd had bits of straw in his hair and his eyes full of sleep. The hand not holding a sword was scratching fleabites on his stomach and his foul temper in the mornings was legendary.
“It’s a pity the men in the yard didnae do the like then,” Hutchin said in a triumphant hiss. “Sir Henry Widdrington just came with a Royal Warrant and arrested the Deputy Warden.”
The sword didn’t move, but Dodd blinked slightly. He moved to one of the half doors, still keeping his sword pointed at Hutchin, opened it a fraction and looked out. He was just in time to see the last Widdringtons leave the yard and the Maxwells on guard shut the gate behind them.
“What was the charge?” asked Dodd after a moment’s pause.
“High treason and…er…trafficking with enemies.”
Dodd whitened and looked out into the empty yard again.
“I told him,” he muttered. “I told the fool.”
“Ye mean it’s true?” asked Hutchin, impressed. “Is the bill foul then?”
“Near enough.”
“Jesus. What shall we do, Sergeant?”
Dodd appeared to be thinking while he stared at Hutchin. Hutchin hoped very much that the Sergeant wouldn’t notice the thickening round his middle.
“Well, we canna rescue the Courtier this time by calling out the Dodds or even the Grahams,” he said with finality. “This is official business. Who was it came to arrest him?”
“Sir Henry Widdrington and his kin.”
“Was it now? That’s odd.”
Hutchin Graham nodded. “And they were in an awful hurry and it didn’t sound like they knocked him about much.”
“How did you get away?”
“The Courtier put me up under the roof through the trapdoor when he heard them and gave me this to take to Lady Widdrington.” Hutchin showed him the ring on his thumb which he had been admiring for the size of its red stone and the letters of some kind carved in it. “Is it a ruby, d’ye think?”
“Ay, no doubt.”
“What are the letters?”
“RC for Robert Carey,” answered Dodd at once, impressing Young Hutchin for the first time with his clerkly knowledge. “Did he give ye anything else?” Dodd asked casually. Hutchin shook his head. “They’ve got it then,” he said sadly.
“Got what?” asked Hutchin with artful ignorance.
“Nothing to concern ye, lad. Come on.”
“Where to?”
“Out of here first, and out of the town too. I dinna want to end up in the Dumfries hole with the Courtier.”
Hutchin shook his head. “I’m for going to Lady Widdrington,” he heard himself say. “That’s what the Courtier wanted me to do, and that’s what I’ll do.”
“Ye’ll come with me, lad.”
“Where are you going?”
Dodd thought for a moment. “If the Maxwells are agin ye, who’s most like to back ye?” he asked rhetorically. Hutchin nodded. It made sense to try the Johnstones. “Do you know a good way out of this place? Is there a garden gate?”
Hutchin thought about this professionally. “I heard tell from one of the other boys there’s a way by the new bowling alley, that Maxwell had built from the old monastery stone. The wall there’s nobbut the monastery wall and they werenae too choosy how they treated it.”
Dodd nodded. “If I can make it back to Carlisle, we’ll get the Warden to write to the King and see if we can ransom him out of there.”
Hutchin’s face twisted. “That’s nae good,” he said. “Once it goes to the Warden, then he’s done for one way or the other, for the Queen will hear of it.”
Dodd had put on his jack and his helmet, giving him the familiar comforting silhouette of a fighting man, though the quilting on the leather was different from the Graham pattern. Now he was busy bundling up the shape of a man in the corner where he had been sleeping, out of straw and his cloak.
“Lad,” said Dodd gravely, almost kindly, “we cannae spring the Courtier out of the King’s prison.”
“Why not? Ye saved him from my uncle when he was trapped on Netherby tower.”
“That was different. Your uncle’s one thing, the King’s another.”
“I dinnae see why,” said Hutchin stubbornly. “They’re both men that have other men to do their bidding, only the King’s got more.”
“That’s enough, Young Hutchin. We canna rescue the Courtier again because…Anyway, what can a woman do about it?”
“He wanted me to take the ring to Lady Widdrington, so he must think she can do something. And that…” said Hutchin virtuously, the decision somehow made for him by Dodd’s opposition, “…is what I’ll do, come ye or any man agin me.”
He slipped under the horse’s belly and whisked to the rear door that led to the midden heap. Sword still in his hand, Dodd didn’t try to stop him, so Hutchin checked that the backyard was clear and the Maxwells were watching outwards, and then turned again to the Sergeant with an impish grin.
“He gets in a powerful lot of trouble, doesn’t he?” he said. “For a Deputy Warden.”
“Ay.”
Friday 14th July 1592, dawn
Elizabeth Widdrington always woke well before dawn to rise in the darkness and say her prayers. In the tiny Dumfries alehouse where they were lodging, it was easier for her to do it: firstly her husband had been out much of the night and had not been there to disturb her sleep with his snoring and moaning and occasional ineffectual fumbling. Secondly the new belting he had given her on top of the old ones the night before had kept her from sleeping very well in any case.
Fastening her stays was always the hardest part, as she pulled the laces up tight and the whalebone bit into the welts and bruises, but once that was done they paradoxically gave her support and armour. None of her clothes fastened fashionably at the back, since she did not like to be dependent on a lady’s maid, and so it was the work of a few minutes to tie on her bumroll, step into her kirtle and hook up the side of her bodice. She had changed the sleeves the night before and half-pinned her best embroidered stomacher to it and so once her cap was on her head she was respectable enough to meet the King if necessary.
She knelt to pray, composing her mind, firmly putting out of it her swallowed fury at her husband since it was, after all, according to all authority, his right to beat her if she displeased him, just as he could beat his horses. She worked to concentrate on the love and mercy of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
After a few minutes she said the Lord’s Prayer and stood up: it was hopeless and always happened. She couldn’t keep her mind on anything higher than the top of Robert Carey’s head. Since the age of seventeen she had been married to Sir Henry, happy as the fourth, gawky and dowryless Trevannion daughter to travel on the promise of marriage from the lushness of Cornwall to the bare bones of the north. Everything had been arranged through the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Hunsdon, as a kindness to one of his wife’s many kin. She had gone knowing perfectly well that her husband-to-be was gouty and in his fifties but determined to do her best to be a good wife to him, as God required of her. She had tried, failed and kept trying because there was no alternative. And then, seven miserable years later in 1587 the youngest son of that same Lord Hunsdon had spent weeks at Widdrington, waiting to be allowed to enter Scotland with his letter from the Queen of England which tried to explain to King James how Mary Queen of Scots had so unfortunately come to be executed. Robin had ridden south again at last, the message delivered by proxy, and she had wept bitter tears in her wet larder, where she could blame it on brine and onions. And then there had been the nervous plotting with her friend, his sister Philadelphia Scrope, so she could travel down to London the next year, the Armada year of 1588, and the year that shone golden in her memory, with Robert Carey the bright alarming jewel at its centre. But she had kept her honour, just. Only by the narrowest squeak of scruples on several occasions, true, but she had kept it.