“Ehm…”
“No matter. There’ll be a truckle bed or a pallet for you somewhere. Can you ride?”
“Ay, sir, well enough.” He’d ridden before he could walk of course, but he’d also been in Edinburgh learning to sew at the time when most lads got their mastery on horseback.
“You’ve used a pike, I expect. Sword and buckler work?”
“Ay, sir, a little. Wi’ the Edinburgh trained band.”
He’d loved the trained band as a lad, rushing off to the musters like an arrow from the bow to work off his pent-up energy, while his uncle complained at the loss of time. His uncle had been a hard man.…Too bad he’d-well, no reason to think about that. It hadn’t been his fault.
“Of course. We’ll play a veney or two when we get to Rycote,” said Carey. “Come along. You can have my spare horse and we’ll be going. They should have recovered enough from getting here and we’ll take an easy pace now.”
They had been heading all the while to the stables of the inn where two smart-looking horses stood ready, saddled and bridled, and the pack pony dozed stoically with one broad hoof tipped, the packs very badly stowed.
Carey saw this, narrowed his eyes, and checked them. “Nothing stolen,” he said, opening a very fine leather pistol case. Hughie glimpsed two matched dags inside and his mouth almost watered at them. Were they snaphaunce locks? Wheel-locks? Would Carey let him fire one?
Hughie and Carey between them took all the packs off and re-stowed them with a better balance. Naturally, Hughie got the smaller mount, but he was used to his legs dangling a bit. Carey was a tall man, too; Hughie wasn’t used to looking straight at anyone.
Carey mounted in a way Hughie hadn’t seen since his childhood-hands on the saddlebow and leaping straight up, not touching the stirrups until he was seated. He looked pleased with himself at the trick. “Hmf,” he said, as he found the stirrups. “Come on Hughie, up you get.”
Hughie tightened the girth a little to allow for his weight and climbed into the saddle the less showy way. Lack of practice made heavy weather of getting his leg over the beast’s back. He’d learnt the other way, but hadn’t done it for a long time and wasn’t about to risk landing on his back in the straw and dung of the inn stable.
Carey nodded and clicked to his horse, took the pack pony’s leading rein and led the way forward into the High Street and eastward, over Magdalen Bridge and into the countryside.
Carey put his heels in. “We’re going to Rycote, which is where the herald I talked to says she is at the moment. It belongs to Lord Norris, poor chap. I want to talk to my own lord, the Earl of Essex, very urgently so if you see anyone in tangerine-and-white livery, shout out to me. Same if you see anyone in black and yellow.”
They went up to a canter as soon as they were clear of the large herd of pigs being brought into the city as components of porkpies, sausages, and spit roasts for the arrival of the Court. The smell was acrid, catching at the back of Hughie’s throat, and several of the pigs seemed up for a fight.
Past them they were still heading upstream into a steady current of farm carts laden with fodder and wheat and apples and late raspberries and chickens in cages and, on one occasion, a cart laden with barrels of water that smelled horrible, probably containing crayfish for the Queen’s table. It was a flood tide of food, drawn in by the whirlpool of the Queen’s promised arrival.
Saturday 16th September 1592, noon
As he crested the brow of the hill, Sergeant Henry Dodd of Gilsland and Carlisle Castle, blinked and yawned. He had been up and very busy all the night before, getting even with Sir Thomas Heneage, and now he had been in the saddle since dawn. He thought he’d made good progress though the Oxford Road was terrible in some parts, great potholes where the winter rains had tunnelled between the rough stones laid by monks, laying bare the orderly even-sized cobbles that were the hallmark of the ancient giants that built the border wall as well. Or were they faeries? There were different tales that gave both possibilities and it stood to reason it couldn’t be both of them.
The Courtier had insisted it was all done by ordinary men called Romans who spoke Latin like the Papists, and had come over with Brutus thousands of years ago. That made some sense of the slabs of stone you sometimes found with well-carved letters in foreign, though Dodd doubted that grinding them up and drinking them in wine would cure you of gout.
He knew he had to stop because he urgently needed to find a bush. Unfortunately the road was very straight and the brush had been recently cleared back from the verges. He also had to water his horses at some stage. Straight roads were giants’ work as well, or Romans’. He wondered how they had done it so far across country.
Bushes had been rare among the great broad fields northwest of London, though he was coming into enclosed land now. At last he’d spotted a handy-looking small copse well back from the road a little way ahead.
Dodd shifted in the saddle and hoped he hadn’t caught a flux in London. He was riding the soft-mouthed mare and leading the horse he had decided to name Whitesock, on the grounds that he had the one white sock on him. The mare had a nice gentle pace to her but something made him prefer Whitesock for his sturdy determined canter and lack of nonsense. You didn’t often meet a sensible horse, especially here in the South where so many of them had been ruined by overbreeding. Dodd clicked his tongue and moved the horses closer to the bushes. The mare pulled a little and her trot got choppy while Whitesock blew out his nostrils.
Hmm. Dodd peered between the leaves to see if anyone was waiting there, sniffed hard, couldn’t smell anything except previous travellers’ leavings. And he couldn’t wait much longer, damn it.
So he loosened his sword, pushed into the bushes, which were luckily not entirely composed of thorns, saw nothing too worrying, and hitched the horses to the sturdiest branch. Then he found a bare patch, dug a hole with his boot heel, and started undoing the stupid multiple points of his stupid gentleman’s doublet so he could get his stupid gentleman’s fine woollen breeks down to do his business.
Just as he was about to drop them, he heard a stealthy movement behind him and turned around with his hand on his sword.
A bony creature was standing there in rags, holding out a rusty knife.
“Giss yer money!” hissed the creature that didn’t seem to have many teeth.
Dodd blinked at him in puzzlement for a moment.
“Whit?” he asked.
“Giss yer money.”
“Whit?” Dodd genuinely couldn’t work out what the creature was saying because the idea that something so pathetic might want to rob him was simply too unbelievable.
The creature came closer with his dull knife high. “Money!”
“Och,” said Dodd, pulling the breeks down, hoicking his shirt up and squatting anyway because he couldn’t wait any longer. “Whit d’ye want tae do that for?”
“I don’t want yer ’osses, just yer money.”
Dodd looked down and shook his head.
“Yer interfering with me opening ma bowels,” he growled. “Could ye no’ ha’ the decency tae wait?”
“What?” asked the creature, frowning with puzzlement and lowering the knife.
“Wait!” snarled Dodd as the little grove of bushes filled with London’s fumes. The creature stepped back and lowered the knife a little more.
“Now,” said Dodd, looking about for non-nettle leaves or even a stone so long as it was smooth, “Ah’ll gi’ ye a chance. If ye go now and pit yer silly dull blade awa’ Ah’ll no’ kill ye. Right? D’ye hear me?”