2 A Season of Knives: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (18 page)

Scrope and Lowther were waiting for him in the sitting room on the top floor of the Keep that Scrope was also using as his office, where Carey had first met both Dodd and Lowther. As Carey put his hand to the axemarked door, he heard Lowther’s voice growling dubiously, ‘He’ll never come.’

That was enough to make him pause. Carey eavesdropped shamelessly, having learnt the skill at Court and been grateful for it on several occasions.

‘I don’t know, Sir Richard,’ came Scrope’s reedy voice. ‘I hear what you say, but I still don’t believe it.’

‘What more do you need, my lord?’

‘I admit, the evidence is…er…damning, but you see, you’ve ignored one very important factor.’

‘Which is?’

‘Character. It doesn’t make any sense, you see. I know the Careys. I can’t claim to know Sir Robert as well as I know my lady wife, but…er…nothing I’ve seen from him since he got here has changed my mind.’

This was fascinating. Carey held his breath, wondering what would come next. Lowther grumbled something inaudible.

‘Of course, I understand your point of view, Sir Richard, but even so…They’re all extremely arrogant, of course, despite being upstarts. The cousinship with the Queen is the reason for their prominence, that and…er…my Lord Hunsdon’s paternity.’

‘I heard there was a bastardy in there somewhere,’ said Lowther who was obviously not well up on Court gossip.

‘Ah, well,’ said Scrope. Being of an ancient family himself, he found lineage in men, horses or hounds deeply interesting. ‘Y’ see, Mary Boleyn, Lord Hunsdon’s mother, was Anne Boleyn’s older sister and thus Her Majesty’s aunt.’

‘Ay,’ said Lowther. ‘He’s her cousin. I know that.’

‘But also…’ said Scrope’s voice, rising with extra scholarly interest, ‘Mary Boleyn was King Henry VIII’s official mistress
before
Anne Boleyn…er…came to Court. She was married off to William Carey in a bit of a hurry.’

‘Oh ay?’ said Lowther, catching the implication.

‘Yes,’ said Scrope gleefully. ‘And she called her first son, her rather…er…
premature
first son, Henry. And the King let her. You see? You’ve never met Carey’s father, then?’

‘I have,’ said Lowther. ‘Twenty years ago at the Rising of the Northern Earls. But he was a younger man. Loud, I recall, and a bonny fighter too, the way he did for Lord Dacre.’

‘The resemblance to his…er…natural father has become more marked as he got older,’ agreed Scrope. ‘But you can see the Tudor blood coming out in my Lord Hunsdon’s sons, and indeed in Sir Robert—arrogance, vanity, impatience and terrible tempers—but generally speaking they do not arrange for their servants to cut the throats of functionaries. It isn’t their…style.’

Carey, who had been listening with rising irritation to this catalogue, nodded sourly. He supposed there was a little truth in it; he knew well enough he had a short temper, after all. He wasn’t arrogant, though. Look at the way he had helped Dodd with his haymaking. As for vanity—what the Devil did Scrope think he was on about? Just because Carey knew the importance of a smart turnout and Scrope looked like an expensive haystack…

Lowther was saying something dubious about there being a villain in every family.

‘True, true,’ said Scrope. ‘But although I wouldn’t put multiple murder in some berserk rage past Sir Robert, I would put backstreet assassination.’

Carey decided he had heard enough. Berserk rage, indeed! He went down the stairs quietly and came up them again, gave a cough as he did so and pushed the door open.

Lowther had one fist on his hip and the other on his sword hilt, with a scowl on his face as threatening as the sky outside. Scrope was also wearing a sword and his velvet official gown and pompous anxiety in every bony inch of him.

If he hadn’t been listening to Scrope’s opinion of his faults, Carey would have felt sorry for the man. As it was, he had decided that there was no point shilly-shallying; it would only confuse the overbred nitwit. He advanced on Lord Scrope who was behind a table he used as a spare desk, undoing his sword belt as he came. Then he bowed deeply and laid it with a clatter of buckles on the table in front of the Warden.

‘I assume I am under arrest, my lord,’ he said quietly, and waited.

Lowther snorted, and Scrope looked down at Carey’s new sword with alarm. It had only been properly blooded that morning, Carey thought, a hundred years ago or so. Scrope would know nothing about that, of course.

‘Well…er…not so fast, Sir Robert,’ faltered Scrope. ‘I…er… must ask you some questions, but…er…’

‘My servant is in the Castle dungeon on a charge of murder,’ Carey interrupted. ‘I understand from him and…others…that I am suspected of ordering him to kill Mr Atkinson.’

‘You deny it, of course,’ scoffed Lowther.

Carey looked at him. ‘Of course,’ he said evenly.

Scrope sat down behind the table, but did not invite Carey to be seated. ‘If you don’t mind, Sir Robert,’ he said, ‘I must ask you to account for your actions since yesterday afternoon.’

With an effort Carey thought back. He told the story baldly. He had learned from a good source of a large Graham raid out of Netherby, threatening Archibald Bell and also Lady Widdrington who would be vulnerable on the Stanegate road.

‘I take it that Mick the Crow is still in the Gatehouse gaol,’ Carey commented at this point. ‘I put him there because he wouldn’t tell me the name of the man that sent the letter to Wattie.’

Lowther’s heavy face was unmoved.

‘He’s not there now.’

‘Did you release him, Sir Richard?’ asked Carey innocently.

‘Ay, I did. There was no charge and no need to keep him when he’s wanted at home for haymaking.’

‘There was a charge. It was a charge of March treason for bringing in raiders.’

‘Pah,’ said Sir Richard. ‘He’d done nothing; I let him go.’

‘Do continue,’ said Scrope.

As a younger man, Carey would have argued about this but now he only gave Sir Richard a hard stare before telling how he had asked to borrow Lowther’s patrol and had done so.

‘Speaking of which, ye offered me my note of debt back, did ye not?’ said Lowther offensively.

Silently Carey took the paper out of his belt pouch and handed it over. It was no loss, he reflected, since it was very unlikely Lowther was the kind who worried overmuch about paying his gambling debts. Lowther took it, squinted at it and tore it in pieces.

‘Ye said you knew where to find some of King James’s horses,’ he accused. ‘Well, did ye find ‘em?’

‘No,’ admitted Carey. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Hah,’ said Lowther, rather theatrically, Carey thought.

‘Go on,’ put in Scrope.

‘I’m fairly sure the horses were there, my lord,’ he added. ‘But obviously the people holding them got word I was on my way and hid them.’

It suddenly struck him how that could have happened and he mentally cursed himself for a fool as he continued, ‘I didn’t want to take Lowther’s men into a fight against the Grahams…’

‘And why not?’ Lowther had the infernal impudence to demand.

‘Because, Sir Richard, I didn’t trust them,’ Carey said as insolently as he dared. Lowther’s bushy eyebrows were already almost meeting; he couldn’t scowl any more deeply. ‘So I went to my own Sergeant Dodd at Gilsland and he helped me call out the Bells and Musgraves. With their help, we met Wattie Graham and Skinabake Armstrong at the Irthing ford early this morning and put them to flight.’

‘Well done,’ said Scrope. ‘It seems you have had a busy time of it.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Doesna mean nothing,’ said Lowther. ‘It only shows he was anxious to be out of Carlisle last night. He could have given his order any time in the past week.’

Carey was itching to punch the evil old bastard, but he kept reminding himself that this was no time to lose his temper. He had had a swordmaster once, a big dark heavy man with wonderful lightness of foot, who deliberately goaded him into a fury, then disarmed him and knocked him on his arse in the mud to demonstrate how temper could undo him. Occasionally he remembered the lesson in time.

‘On what evidence, Sir Richard, do you base your accusations?’ he demanded, hearing his voice brittle with the effort not to shout.

‘On the evidence of a knife owned by your servant and a glove owned by yerself that I found by the body.’

‘How frightfully convenient for you,’ Carey drawled. ‘Did you have much trouble stealing one of my gloves?’

‘Are you suggesting that
I put them there
?’ roared Lowther, the veins standing out on his neck.

‘Really, Sir Robert…’ began Scrope.

‘With respect, my lord,’ Carey said through his teeth, ‘I’m sorry to find you have such a low opinion of my intelligence.’

‘How dare ye, sir? I never was so insulted in all my…’

‘For God’s sake, Sir Richard,’ Carey shouted back at him, temper finally gone. ‘What kind of fool do you think I am? Leave one of my
gloves
beside a
corpse
? Why not simply sign my name on his face and leave it at that? Or didn’t you think of it when you watched them cutting his throat, you old traitor?’

That did it. Lowther drew his sword and put himself between Carey and the table where his own weapon lay. Carey backed hurriedly into a fighting crouch, pulling his poignard from its sheath behind his back and his little eating knife from the one by his belt pouch.

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen…’ said Scrope, jumping to his feet. ‘Sir Richard, I insist you put up your weapon…’

Lowther ignored him. ‘Call me traitor, would ye, you ignorant puppy…?’ he hissed. ‘Ye prancing courtier, ye…You had his throat cut and ye know it, because the poor wee clerk was an obstacle to ye and ye couldnae see another way to it…’

Carey circled, part of him vividly aware Lowther was trying to put him in one of the corners of the room. That same part was looking at Lowther’s stance and the very experienced way he held his sword, and furthermore its length compared to a poignard, and not liking what it saw. Surely Scrope would do something. He did.

‘Sir Richard,’ he wailed. ‘I will not have my officers duelling…’

‘He’s ignoring you, my lord,’ Carey said. ‘You’d better…’

‘Your officers,’ snarled Lowther sideways to Scrope, but not taking his eyes off Carey. ‘
I’m
the Deputy Warden in this March. What was good enough for yer father is good enough for ye, boy, and don’t you forget it.’

Of course, thought the part of Carey that was getting ready to fight for his life, I’m wearing a jack and morion and he isn’t; that’s something, isn’t it?

‘Put your sword away, Sir Richard,’ pleaded Scrope. ‘I order you to stop.’

Don’t order him, you fucking fool, Carey thought; make him. Your father would have killed him just for drawing blade in a council chamber.

There was a faint creak of hinges behind Carey. He didn’t dare turn his head to look. Then came a long clearing of somebody’s throat.

‘Sir Robert,’ said Sergeant Dodd’s doleful moan. ‘We’ve found Simon Barnet for ye. If ye’re busy, we can come back.’

Much of the murderous rage went out of Lowther’s face to be replaced by something resembling embarrassment. Carey straightened a little, moved sideways so he could look at both Lowther and the door. Dodd was wearing his most stolid expression, but he had his stillsheathed sword in his hand, ready to throw to Carey. By God, Carey thought affectionately, I was in luck the day Scrope put you under my command.

To Carey’s surprise, the presence of Dodd alone tipped the scales for Lowther. Belatedly, he realised what he was doing, put his weapon back in its sheath and folded his arms.

‘Thank you,’ said Scrope with unwarranted dignity. ‘Sir Robert?’

Carey put his own blades away meekly enough, not sure what he felt nor why he was shaking. Was it anger or fear or relief? All of them, probably. He wondered a little at the shake since it never happened after he had been in a proper fight. Dodd rebuckled his sword belt, still looking dismal.

‘We are…ahem…somewhat busy,’ Scrope said to Dodd. ‘Why have you brought the boy here?’

‘Because he has a tale to tell I thought ye might wish to hear, my lord,’ said Dodd.

‘What on earth could a boy…’

‘It’s a tale about a glove, sir,’ said Dodd. ‘Which was found by Atkinson’s corpse, sir.’

Scrope sat down again. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Well, bring him in then.’

Simon Barnet came into view, an unremarkable snub-nosed lad of twelve with brown curly hair and brown eyes. He looked dusty and miserable, as if he had been hiding in a loft somewhere. There were muddy tear stains down his face, but he didn’t look as if Dodd had beaten him.

Lowther drew a deep breath and glowered.

‘Hiding behind a boy…’ he muttered disdainfully. Carey chose not to hear him.

‘Well, Sir Robert,’ Scrope said. ‘What does your boy have to say?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea, my lord,’ said Carey. ‘I haven’t seen him since…When did I see you last, Simon?’