“Yer previous captain is in jail in Oxford,” Dodd told them. “His lieutenant is tied up and has surrendered. Now then, I have a proposition…”
“What about that God-rotted Spanish traitor?” demanded a hollow-eyed man with a cough and flushed cheeks.
“He’s my ally,” said Dodd coldly, “and the ainly decent soldier among the pack of ye dozy idle catamites. Ye can be polite tae him or fight me.”
“Or fight me,” said Jeronimo, with a lazy smile. “Pendejos. Assholes.”
“I have a business proposition for ye,” Dodd continued. “Here I am, I’ve taken the lot of ye and it would ha’ bin easier to cut all yer throats and save myself a lot of bother. It’s only thanks to my kindness ye’ve still got gullets to gobble wi’. So. Now. I’m making myself yer captain. Is there anybody here wants tae tell me no? And make it stick?”
Behind him, Jeronimo made a noise between a snort and a laugh.
“I mean it. I’ll fight any man of ye that wants the captainship instead o’ me. Come on.” There was a moment of balance while Dodd waited, consciously breathing out and relaxing. He didn’t think a man of them had the ballocks to try it, but you never knew.
At the corner of his eye, he saw movement, saw something before he knew what it was, something raised to strike from the other side and so he slipped out of the way, ducked, brought his sword round almost gently and cut the man’s head part off. There was no thought in the movement at all.
The others sighed as John Arden collapsed to his knees, dropping the veney stick in his fist, blood pumping in a fountain from his neck and a look of surprise on his face. Dodd watched him as he crumpled over into the black pool of his life. That was a nice stroke, probably one of his best. You rarely got the neck so neatly that you cut through because it was a small target and there was so much meat and bone in the way, you usually got the shoulder or the jaw by mistake.
“Ay,” he said, “anybody else?”
They huddled together like the scared boys most of them were.
“What about our pay from the Earl of Essex?” shouted one of the youngest. “That’s why Captain Leigh went to Oxford.”
“Och God, is that what it was?” Dodd said, scratching his ear which was sticky. “Was that why Leigh was sae hot for the Deputy Warden?”
“He was going to get us into the Queen’s procession and then petition the Earl in front of all the people and Her Majesty herself!”
For a moment Dodd was honestly flummoxed. “Did ye truly think it would work? That ye could just walk into a procession like that?”
“He was going to buy us white-and-orange ribbons so we could fit in,” said another lad.
“And then we got you and he was going to talk to Captain Carey about us.”
Dodd shook his head sadly. “Ye never had any chance of getting any of your pay nae matter what,” he said explained, “for the reason Essex has nae ready cash to pay ye and even if he did, he’s got no reason to do it.”
“But he promised us,” wailed the youngest boy.
“Listen,” said Dodd, patiently, “the Earl of Essex is a lord and he disnae give a rat’s shit for any of ye. Ask him if ye like. Jesus, as yer new Captain, I’ll ask him, but trust me, ye willna get what’s owing. You went to fight and if ye didna keep any plunder, then ye’ll take home nae more than stories.”
He looked about at the young dismayed faces and felt pity for them. “But,” he shouted, “if ye follow me as yer Captain, I can get ye home if ye’re so minded or it might be if ye dinna care to go home wi’ nothing, I could find ye places as fighters at Carlisle, where I’m from. I willna promise it, but if ye can back a horse and heft a pike, there might be a place for ye in Carlisle. I willna promise it, but if ye come, ye’ll get a share of the Deputy Warden’s fees and ye’ll have a place in the mostly dry and food ye can mostly eat. What d’ye say?”
Another babel of voices broke out while Dodd waited for them to settle it amongst themselves, ready to fight if they decided to rush him together. If they did that, he could only give himself a medium chance so he stayed ready with his sword still out. He cleaned it again before John Arden’s blood dried.
What was Carey’s main problem? Not money as he thought, because money could always be stolen. No. It was that he did not have enough men that would fight only for him. And here Dodd had a solution if Carey was clever enough to take it. And if not, well, he might take the men over to Gilsland anyway and put his wife in charge of them. They had been easy meat for a night raid but they must be good for something or at least might shape up with some shouting and kicking.
And the raiding season was fast coming, already here. God only knew what outrages had happened in the Debateable Land or what the Grahams or the Scottish Armstrongs had been up to, or, God sakes, the Maxwells and the Johnstones, no doubt at each others’ throats again and lesser surnames taking the scraps.
This was something Dodd had been thinking hard about. He had seen what it was like in the South, where there were no pele towers but there were orchards and fat cows and sheep and sure, there were broken men and troubles, but still mainly people who could live their lives without being raided. It made them soft, true. But a sudden decision had come upon him that afternoon while he thought of Janet and the child he fully intended to plant in her the minute he got her on her own in their tower. He wanted his sons and daughters to grow up where the cows were fat and there were orchards, not raiding and killing the way he’d had to all his life.
And how could you do that? Well, among other things, clearly you needed soldiers, men who were not related to anybody they were fighting. Men who would do what they were told and not hold back in a fight because they were swapping blows with their brother-in-law. Men who had no feuds. That was hard to achieve on the Borders from the way all the surnames went at the marrying and breeding and killing there. But here, right here, he had the start of a solution. So.
Dodd had already taken the swords he could find. The lad Nick Smithson was leaving the huddle of young men, coming toward him with an eating knife laid across his two palms. Dodd waited, said nothing but shook his head when Smithson made to bend the knee to him. The lad genuflected anyway and Dodd let him.
“Sir,” said Smithson, “Mr. Elliot, we would like to ask you to be our Captain.”
He offered Dodd the knife and Dodd put his sword in his left hand and took the knife with his right as dignified as he could.
“Ay,” he said. “Now. My right name’s not Colin Elliott, that’s the name of my blood enemy in Tynedale. My true name is Sergeant Henry Dodd, headman of Gilsland and I’ll be your Captain under my own lord, Sir Robert Carey. Understand?”
He had all of them line up and swear allegiance to him, the old way, kneeling, their hands in his while he looked at their faces. Some looked a little shifty but most seemed relieved. It was hard to decide things for yourself, but harder still to know in your heart that the man who was leading you couldn’t or wouldn’t do the job properly. He knew what that felt like. So they had been easy meat for him and had now got themselves a captain who could do the job.
“Get yerselves ready to move out,” Dodd said. “We’ll leave tomorrow morning at dawn. We’ll take everything with us. I want all of ye to take turns on watch.”
The only thing that still annoyed him was that he hadn’t found his boots yet. Ah yes, Harry Hunks had been wearing them, of course, and he must have gone to Oxford with Leigh so his boots were probably being damaged kicking against the door of the Oxford lock-up.
***