2 A Season of Knives: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (12 page)

Sergeant Nixon was frowning heavily, but then he shrugged. There was no love lost between him and Dodd, but neither were they enemies and nor were their families at feud.

Even so, Carey nodded at Long George and Bessie’s Andrew. Long George let his horse fall behind until he was at the rear of the men, while Bessie’s Andrew came up to Carey’s left shoulder and looked thoroughly nervous. God help me if Sergeant Nixon gets suspicious, Carey thought, then dismissed the thought from his mind. Sergeant Nixon wouldn’t get suspicious, that was all there was to it.

As Carey’s body swung rhythmically with the horse’s stride, he turned over and over in his mind the various loose combinations of ideas he was trying to form into a sensible plan. Scrope had been willing enough to let him try and deal with Wattie Graham’s raid, but was as hamstrung by lack of men as he was himself. He had barely ten men in the place and all of them were needed. He hadn’t even let Carey send off his clerk, Richard Bell, with a message to Forster because, as he pointed out, the Bells were yet another surname at feud with the Grahams and he didn’t want to lose the one man in the West March who had a thorough grasp of March Law. He had promised to send for a few of the gentlemen to the south of Carlisle, but had opined that they were unlikely to be reliable in a fight against the Grahams.

‘Most of ‘em pay blackrent to Richard Graham of Brackenhill,’ Scrope had said, looking tired. ‘None of them want any trouble with that family.’ Brackenhill was the acknowledged Graham headman and wealthy enough to arm most of his own men with guns.

What I need in this Godforsaken country is at least a hundred men I can trust and some decent ordnance, Carey thought bitterly. And pigs will fly before the Queen gives me the money to find them.

Monday 3rd July 1592, evening

Sergeant Henry Dodd nodded at his brother Red Sandy, and the laden cart creaked off towards their main hay barn. The two small English Armstrongs, cousins of Janet, who had been helping him load, sat quietly together on top. One of the sandy heads was nodding.

‘Lizzy,’ called Dodd, and a freckled face under a mucky white cap peeked over. ‘Stop your brother from sleeping or he’ll fall off.’

‘Ay, Mr Dodd,’ she said, hiding a yawn. ‘Will ye be wanting us back again?’

He did really, but hadn’t the heart. ‘No, sweeting, get to your bed.’

Red Sandy touched up the oxen and the cart creaked away, a plaintive yell floating from the top as Lizzy obediently pinched her brother to wake him up.

The sun was down and there was another field to get in, but after that, it was done. Janet was coming towards him across the stubbly meadow with bits of hay stuck to her cap and a large earthenware jug on her hip. She smiled at him, and the back of his throat, which felt as if it had glazed over with the haydust stuck to it, opened a little involuntarily in anticipation. He put his hands behind the collar of his working shirt and eased the hemp cloth off the sunburn he’d collected a few days before while mowing this same field. He resisted the urge to have a go at the itchy bits of skin that were coming off because if he started scratching, all the little bits of dust that had got inside his clothes and stuck to his skin would start itching too and drive him insane.

Janet arrived where he stood leaning on his pitchfork, gave him the leather quart mug she had in her other hand and filled it with mild beer. He croaked his thanks, put it to his lips, tilted his head and forgot to swallow for a while. It almost hurt, it felt so good. He finished two thirds of it before he came up for air.

‘Ahhh,’ he said, and leered at her. Janet had untied her smock and loosened the laces of her old blue bodice to free her arms for raking and there was a fine deep valley there, just begging for exploration. Not in a stubbly field though, and they were both too old and respectable now to bundle about in the haystack, but a marriage bed would do fine, later, if he wasn’t too tired. And if he was, well, there was the morning too before he had to set off for Carlisle. She leered back at him and took breath to say something that never was said.

‘Och, God damn him to hell,’ moaned Dodd, seeing movement, men on horseback breasting the hill in the distance over her shoulder, and instantly recognising the man in the fancy morion helmet at the head of the patrol riding towards them along the Roman road. ‘God rot his bloody bowels…’

‘Eh?’ said Janet, startled. She turned to look in the same direction as her husband, and her eyes narrowed.

‘But those are Lowther’s men he’s with.’

Dodd knew with awful clarity exactly what the thrice damned Deputy Warden was doing out at Gilsland with Lowther’s Sergeant and Lowther’s bunch of hard bargains. Full of wordless ill-usage, he picked up his pitchfork and drove it tines first into the ground, narrowly missing his own foot.

‘Make yerself decent, woman,’ he growled unfairly at his wife, who had only been behaving as a good wife should to her hardworking husband. She gave him a glint of a stare and he handed her what was left of his beer by way of apology. Still, she tied her old smock again, pulled up her bodice lacings and the curves of her breasts went back into their secret armour.

Dodd folded his arms and waited for the Deputy to come to him. There was some satisfaction in the thought that he must be hot wearing a jack and morion in this weather, followed by a gloomier memory of just how miserable a jack could be in summer.

Carey left Lowther’s men at the wall and came trotting over.

‘Good evening, Sergeant. How’s the haymaking?’

The bloody Courtier had probably been sitting on his arse all afternoon, unlike Dodd, who could only bring himself to grunt.

‘Well enow.’

‘Have you finished yet?’

Resisting the urge to snarl that if he was finished he wouldna be standing in a field like a lummock, he’d be at table stuffing his face, Dodd gestured in the direction of a long triangle of land which still had its neat rows of gold. Carey’s face clouded over.

‘Ah,’ he said.

‘What’s the trouble, Sir Robert?’ asked Janet. ‘Is it a raid?’

Carey sighed and slid from his horse. ‘In a manner of speaking, Mrs Dodd,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to trouble you when you’re so busy, Sergeant; if I had any other choice I wouldn’t be here.’

Dodd grunted again, only slightly mollified, jerked his pitchfork out of the ground, straightened the bent tine with his clog heel, put it on his shoulder and set off for the last field. Janet picked his abandoned jerkin off the ground, and her own rake, and went with him. The Courtier went too, leading his horse.

As they went he talked, and in Dodd’s mind a picture formed of what was happening. At the end of it, he commented, ‘Wattie Graham must be fair annoyed to be risking a foray into the Middle March and so close to Tynedale. Who put him up to it?’

‘I’ve no idea, though I could guess.’

‘Well, ye canna take fifty assorted Grahams and broken men with that lot over there.’

Carey half-smiled. ‘I’m aware of it, Sergeant.’

‘What’s she…what’s Lady Widdrington worth at ransom, then?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea and I have no intention of paying it in any case.’

‘No,’ agreed Dodd. ‘That’d be for her husband to do.’

‘Dodd,’ said Carey with a certain amount of effort. ‘I am not going to allow her to be taken.’

That’s what being at Court and listening to all them poets did for you, Dodd thought savagely; it rotted your brain.

‘I dinna ken what ye can do about it, sir,’ said Dodd, looking about for the other cart which should have finished and come back by now. Oh yes, there it was, being driven by Willie’s Simon with his bandaged arm. Janet had already set down her jug and his jerkin and started in on the furthest row to pile it up. Two of the other girls came down off the wall where they had been waiting and drinking, and started on two other rows. The cart creaked in at the gate and lined up, ready for him. Normally Willie’s Simon would have been helping Dodd pitch the hay, but the wound from an arrow in his arm ten days before was still not healed enough so Dodd had it all to do himself. Janet raked ferociously, muttering under her breath; Dodd knew she was calculating how much more food Sergeant Nixon and the others would require, when she was already feeding too many mouths.

‘How long would this normally take?’ Carey asked fatuously, waving at the field.

‘I’d leave it till the morrow, but it looks like rain,’ said Dodd, driving his pitchfork into a bundle and twisting to lift and throw. ‘It’ll be fair dark by the time we finish.’

‘How many pitchforks have you got?’

What was the Courtier blethering about now?

‘Four. Three over by the barn.’

Carey waved his arm at the men still sitting like puddings and letting their hobbies crop wildflowers from the wall’s base.

‘Sergeant
Nixon
,’ he roared. ‘
Over here
!’

Nixon came trotting over, looking very wary.

‘Send a man over to Sergeant Dodd’s barn and fetch the spare pitchforks.’

Nixon’s face became mutinous. ‘We’re on patrol,’ he said. ‘We didnae come here to help wi’ Sergeant Dodd’s…’

Carey didn’t appear to have heard him.

‘I will pay an extra sixpence to each man that gives a hand with a pitchfork,’ he said. ‘You can draw straws to decide which will be the lucky ones. The others can help rake if they want sixpence too.’

‘I done my own fields yesterday…’ whined Sergeant Nixon and then seemed to forget what he was going to say when Carey glared at him.

‘Nixon, either you can do what you’re told or you can go back to Carlisle, with no sixpence for a little bit of extra sweat and no chance of what’s at Brampton.’

Dodd pricked up his ears at that and exchanged glances with Janet. Sergeant Nixon’s mouth tightened, he turned his hobby and cantered sullenly off to his men. A chorus of whines and moans rose from them and then stopped, presumably at news of the sixpence which was a full day’s pay for haymaking.

‘Right,’ Carey said to Dodd. ‘I want your professional advice and I want men, and I can see I’ll get neither if you’re worrying about your hay.’

For a wonder, the men did come over, although not Sergeant Nixon who clearly regarded this as beneath his dignity, nor the Lowther cousin. Billy Little came back shortly after with the pitchforks. Then there was an argument over who would stand on the wagon to pack the cart. Willie’s Simon couldn’t do it because of his arm and the girls were busy raking with Janet. The others felt it was beneath their dignity to do a wean’s job and said so at length. Carey listened impatiently for a while, then tethered his hobby to a bush and started undoing the fastenings of his morion helmet and the lacings of his jack. What the devil was the man playing at, Dodd wondered, in the middle of explaining that as the head of the household he couldn’t possibly stand on the cart…

Carey took his morion off, scratched his hair and put the helmet down carefully on the wall. His sword belt he laid down beside it, followed by his knife-belt, then he slid his shoulders out of his jack, revealing a darned but very fine linen shirt. Janet was staring at him open-mouthed as he hung his armour over a stone, turned and grinned at Dodd who was just beginning to suspect what the madman had in mind.

‘I’m afraid I’d be a danger to man and beast with a pitchfork,’ he said. ‘But I know how to pack a cart, so I’ll do that.’

He turned and jumped up onto the empty cart, took the small rake lying in it.

Dodd made a short rattle in his throat. Carey was rolling up his sleeves.

‘Barnabus will want to kill me,’ he muttered to himself. ‘What’s the problem, Sergeant?’

What Dodd wanted to say was that he had never in all his life heard of a Courtier to the Queen helping to load a haywagon like a child. In fact his mouth was open to say it but no words came out.

Janet was better with her tongue. She came over to the cart and looked up at him severely.

‘Sir,’ she said. ‘It’s not fitting. You’re the Queen’s cousin.’

Carey raised his eyebrows at her. ‘Yes,’ he said down his nose. ‘I am. That’s why I can do what I bloody well choose.’

Sergeant Nixon and the Lowther cousin, who were looking after the horses leaned on their saddle horns and openly gawked at the insanity of the Deputy Warden. Carey was telling the truth; he coped perfectly well with the forkfuls of hay being tossed up to him and didn’t trample it down too much. Nor did he fall off when Willie’s Simon was too busy staring to warn him when the oxen moved on along the rows. In fact, the lunatic looked as if he was enjoying himself. Certainly he was whistling something irritating.

Dodd shook his head to clear it and bent to his work. After a while he began to see the funny side, and his ribs almost burst with the effort not to laugh. The last field was cleared in record time with so many helpers, and as Willie’s Simon goaded the oxen through the gate, Carey slotted his rake in behind the seat and jumped down.

‘What’s the joke, Sergeant?’ he asked as he came over, brushing bits of hay off himself.

Dodd snorted and put his pitchfork on his shoulder to follow the cart back behind the barnekin wall.

‘Only I was thinkin’ I’d be willin’ to take ye on for the harvest, sir, if ye was free,’ he said grudgingly while Carey hefted up his jack and put it back on again.