2 A Season of Knives: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (21 page)

‘We need a warrant, sir…’

‘I’ll get the bloody warrant,’ Carey growled. ‘Fetch the men.’

Kate Atkinson was just about to lock up her house for the night when there came an almighty hammering on her door. She opened it and was faced with a waking nightmare: the tall Deputy Warden with a piece of paper in his hand that gave him the right to search her house, and behind him six men to do it. At the tail of them all was Janet Armstrong’s bad-tempered husband looking very uneasy.

They tramped their muddy boots up the stairs and into her bedroom; she hadn’t been sleeping on her marriage bed, but on the truckle bed beside it, as she told them. Two of them went out into the back yard and started gingerly raking through her midden heap. She didn’t go with them but sat on the window seat in the downstairs living room and looked at her clenched fists. When little Mary started to wail because she was frightened by the high comb of the Deputy’s helmet, she did nothing because there was really nothing comforting she could say to her. Occasionally wisps of thought would gust through her mind. I should have gone to Lowther. I should never have told Andy. What can I say?

‘Mrs Atkinson,’ came a powerful voice from upstairs. ‘Will you come here, please?’

She went and found the Deputy Warden and Henry Dodd staring at the mattress of her marriage bed. They had stripped the clean sheet off it and turned it up the other way again. The Deputy reached down a long glittering hand, prodded the large brown stain. It was still a little sticky, and he sniffed his fingers.

‘Where are the other sheets to this bed?’ he demanded.

‘Downstairs, in the yard,’ she said. ‘Hanging out to dry.’

‘And the blankets?’

‘The same.’

‘The hangings?’

‘Ay.’

‘Did all the blood come off?’

She looked down at her apron, which was greasy, and twisted her hands together.

‘This is blood. You won’t tell me, I hope, that you’ve been killing a chicken in your marriage bed?’

If he was making a joke, she didn’t find it funny.

‘Mrs Atkinson, look at me.’ The Deputy’s voice had an impersonal sound: not angry at all, which surprised her for Lowther would have been bellowing at her by now. She looked at him and oh, the bonny blue eyes he had; it was hard to concentrate, the way they looked into you.

‘Mrs Atkinson, did you murder your husband?’

At least she could answer that question honestly and yet she didn’t. She said nothing.

‘Do you know who did?’

She shook her head.

The blue eyes narrowed; a little surprise, a lot of cynicism, more contempt.

‘I think you do know.’

‘I dinna, sir.’

Janet Armstrong’s husband was staring at her in plain astonishment. Also suspicion. She must seem like every married man’s nightmare, she supposed, as they were hers.

‘I think either you or your lover Andy Nixon slit your husband’s throat. You and he then conspired to dump the body in an alley and lay the blame on me, for whatever reason, though heaven knows I’ve done nothing against you that I know of.’ The Deputy’s voice was heavy with authority.

Yes, that was the sin of it, to lay the blame on an innocent man. But Pennycook had said somebody had to be blamed, and it might as well be the upstart southerner who was interfering with business and had no kin around Carlisle to back him up.

‘We…er…’ She stopped speaking. How could she possibly explain? She didn’t even know for certain that Andy Nixon hadn’t done it. And she had helped to dump the body. Which made her guilty of something, she supposed. She couldn’t speak for the number of things she needed to say.

‘You know what happens if ye refuse to plead, Kate,’ said Dodd anxiously. ‘Ye must answer.’

At least she was able to speak to him, if not to the terrifying Deputy. ‘Ay,’ she whispered. ‘Pressing to death. Well, I didna kill my husband and nor did I plot with anybody to kill him. I dinna ken how he came to be dead. So now.’ There, it was done. When they found her guilty, she would burn.

Carey took a deep breath. ‘I’m afraid I must arrest you, Mrs Atkinson, for the crime of petty treason.’ he said formally. ‘Come with us.’

‘No, wait.’

‘What for?’

‘The children,’ she said wildly. ‘I must get someone in to see after the children.’

‘Oh,’ said the Deputy with the surprise of the bachelor. ‘Yes, I suppose you must.’

The next half hour passed in more chaos than the worst night terrors, Mary howling as her mother tried to explain, and the boys’ faces white and scared; this was a terrible thing for them on top of their father’s death. The Deputy Warden and his men stood around like lumps, getting in her way while she tried to sort things out. Of course, she couldn’t go to her sister-in-law, Mrs Leigh next door, so Sergeant Dodd accompanied her to her sister, Maggie Mulcaster over the road, who came bustling across, full of excited goodwill. Telling her what was happening was akin to using the Carlisle town crier, but it couldn’t be helped. Julia had gone home but she would go across to Mrs Mulcaster as well when she arrived in the morning to find the house shut. She could get in at the wynd to milk the cow and deal with the cream put to rise for today in the tiny dairy. Kate had to leave the plate-chest where it was under the bed and hope no one would find it. She closed and bolted the shutters. While they were all downstairs two of the men came in triumphantly from the midden heap, carrying sticky clumps of rushes that she had swept out of the bedroom, dropping bits of them on the new clean rushes.

At last they were organised, and Maggie herded the crying children across to her house in their shirts, carrying their day clothes in a bag over her arm. She paused to give Kate Atkinson’s shoulders a squeeze and then hurried away.

‘I can come with ye now, sir,’ she said, noticing that the Deputy was at least looking less triumphant, though still severe. Henry Dodd was upset, which he should be. Perhaps Janet could help her?

‘Take your cloak, Mrs Atkinson,’ said the Deputy, snagging it off its peg and handing it to her. ‘It’s cold in the gaol.’

That nearly did for her. She choked and bit her knuckle, but swallowed her tears. How to save Andy, that was the question now, since it seemed she was a dead woman. No doubt God was punishing her for her sin of adultery, though she had thought her dead baby of last year punishment enough. Clearly it was only a warning. Unseeing, she tied the cloak and put its hood up. Everyone would know from Maggie, but she wanted to hide her face all the same. The Deputy asked for the key to the house and locked the door.

Dodd nodded to the other men of the guard who were staring at her in shock as if she had suddenly grown a viper’s head, and they surrounded her. It was kindly of them, she thought, hiding her like that, since she was not likely to run away from them, but she almost had to run to keep up with them as they tramped her into the Castle gate, through the righthand door and up the tiny stairs into the upper of the two prison rooms there.

***

Mrs Atkinson refused point-blank to tell Carey where Andy Nixon lodged, but it didn’t matter because Sergeant Ill-Willit Daniel Nixon was willing to say where he was. His landlady answered the door to their knocking and said distractedly that he had gone, taken his baggage and left an hour earlier and she didn’t know where, and the rent not paid.

Running Sergeant Nixon to earth again took time since he had gone to an alehouse in Fisher street where he could drink in peace, as he put it. It cost a sixpence from Carey, but he finally admitted that while Andy was likely headed for the Debateable Land, as any sensible man would be, he might stay until nightfall at his father’s farm a couple of miles out of Carlisle where he could get horses and food. Nay, he wouldna simply leg it there, not in his condition. Oh ay, he had cousins aplenty in the Debateable Land; once he got in they’d never winkle him out, and good luck to him. No, Sergeant Nixon would not come with them to help; Dodd knew the place well enough. Who the hell cared if somebody cut Atkinson’s throat, it was no loss to man nor beast…

Carey and his men took horse and galloped from Carlisle, heading for a long low farmhouse with a surrounding brushwood fence, the walls made of stone halfway and wattle and daub the rest. It was close enough to Carlisle not to need its own peel tower, though there was a place on the next hill that was likely the Nixons’ refuge if necessary.

The Deputy Warden spoke to Andy Nixon’s father at the gate, a broad grizzled man with the habitual worried expression of someone who had to pay blackrent to Thomas Carleton as well as to the Grahams. John Nixon took the Deputy’s warrant and looked at it upside down, which was lucky since it only referred to Mrs Atkinson’s house.

‘He’s not here,’ said John Nixon. ‘He’s gone to the Debateable Land.’

Carey peered over the gate at a saddled and bridled hobby standing at a hitching post, a remount already tethered behind it.

‘I must make sure,’ said Carey charmingly. ‘You won’t object, will you, Mr Nixon?’

Carey had given Dodd one of his wheellock dags, ready wound, with orders not to point it unless necessary. The other men he had already told to station themselves all about the fence, in case Andy tried making a break for it.

At this point Carey simply walked past John Nixon and into the small yard, stood with one hand negligently on his swordhilt and his other dag under his arm and looked around.

‘Sergeant,’ he said.

‘Ay sir,’

‘You and Red Sandy start searching the way I told you.’

‘Ay sir.’

Carey settled himself with his back to the wall of the house, perched on the edge of a water trough, watching John Nixon’s face. As Dodd and Red Sandy trampled noisily around the farm and outbuildings, Carey quietly sat and watched, privately laying a bet with himself. Dodd had left the pigpen till last and sure enough as he went in, there was a flicker of John Nixon’s eyelids.

Carey stood upright, took the dag in his gauntleted hand and put it behind his back. Seconds later there came a lot of shouting from the stye, and a crunching sound. Dodd came reeling out to land in the mud. Andy Nixon charged past him, grabbed the dag out of his unresisting hand, vaulted two sows and the fence and then slowed. He advanced on Carey pointing the gun squarely at his chest. Carey smiled.

‘Well, Andy Nixon,’ he said, ‘I must arrest you in the name of the Queen for the murder of Jemmy Atkinson.’

‘I didna do it,’ said Nixon, still advancing. ‘Now get out of my way.’

Carey brought his gun out and levelled it at Nixon. ‘This dag is loaded. That one is not. Do you think the Sergeant would let you get your hands on a loaded gun so easily? Shame on you, Andy.’

He and Dodd had spent ten minutes discussing ways of arresting Andy Nixon without having to fight him, something Dodd was keen to avoid. It was the best they could come up with.

Andy growled inarticulately and threw the useless dag at Carey’s face. He jerked back, fired and missed at pointblank range, shooting one of the unfortunate pigs instead. It went berserk, charging round its pen and biting anything that got in its way, which included Dodd who was just trying to get to his feet.

Carey stayed upright, dropped his gun, pulled out his sword.

‘Carlisle garrison to me!’ he roared, and Andy Nixon looked over his shoulder to see Bangtail Graham and Long George crowding the gate, their lances ready. However, he could see that wave them though they might, neither of them were anxious to come and help. Andy drew his sword awkwardly, then transferred it to his left hand. Carey drew his poignard lefthanded and advanced on the man, his blades en garde before him: Dodd had been very insistent about the importance of not getting to close-quarters with Andy Nixon. On the other hand, Carey wanted him alive to confess, be tried and hanged, a scruple that Dodd clearly thought insane.

Dodd had managed to struggle stinking out of the pigpen and was menacing Andy’s father with his sword, in case he got excited. The wounded pig continued to buck round the pen squealing like a human child.

Andy Nixon and Carey moved around each other, Carey trying to keep himself between Nixon and the horses. Nixon, who was desperate, moved in swinging his sword awkwardly. Carey parried with his two crossed blades and tried a quick underarm stab with the poignard, but Nixon skipped backwards too fast. Not in fact left-handed, then, but holding his sword in his left hand because his right was hurt somehow. Simon Barnet had said something about his hand in a sling. And his face wasn’t only smudged with pig dirt but also badly bruised about the cheeks and jaw. It was a square young-looking face on a square barrel-chested body, solid all through and very determined. Now after the fizzing excitement of anticipation Carey felt that cold narrowing down of focus, the hard beat of his heart and the strange sensation of everything being very slow and crystal clear, which was there whenever he fought. He liked it. That feeling was one reason why he had come to the north.

Andy Nixon’s face tightened, the betraying flicker. Carey waited for him, caught the rhythm of his attack, slipped sideways and struck backhanded with his sword at Nixon’s. Metal screeched as the blades slid past each other, he flicked his wrist, and Andy’s sword was on the ground. Andy stared at it, panting slightly.

‘Now, Andy,’ Carey said reprovingly. ‘Why don’t you…?’