A Chorus of Innocents (19 page)

“I've heard that name before.”

“It wis a priest and then a reverend a while back, in England. He had a living somewhere in the South and soft and plenty o' money and instead of sitting on it and getting fat he came oot here to the Borders and made schools for the boys, taught them hisself, he did, and the best he sent tae the university. All in England, though, but Jamie Burn heard him preach once and went tae him and lied and said he was an English Burn. He wis at the Reverend Gilpin's school in the South when the fighting over Queen Mary and the Earl of Bothwell wis on and came North again when his dad sent for him and wis a bonny reiver. But he could ha' gone to St Andrews and when he'd made enough as a reiver, that's where he went, tae the university, to learn him Latin and Greek and Divinity for to be a minister like Gilpin.”

“Oh. I never knew. What happened to Gilpin?”

“He wis killt by being run over by a bull, I know that, it got loose in the market and trampled him and he died a month later and all his boys came from far and wide to sing at his funeral, Jamie Burn too. It was in the early eighties, I think, before the Armada, and that's when the minister made up his mind to gae to university and so he did.”

“I see.”

“Gilpin used to preach wonderful sermons, he'd tell all about Hell and how there wis no Purgatory and how tae stay oot of Hell and get into Heaven—which he said wis easier nor anybody thought, because ye could just clap hands wi' God and He'd see ye right.”

“Did you hear him preach?”

“Nay, but in church the minister told us some of his old sermons, which was good ones, when he hadnae the time to think of one of his ain.”

“Hmm.”

“There's another one where Gilpin says every reiver ye teach to read is peradventure one reiver the less for if a clever man sees no fair way to make his living, why then he'll use foul ways and cause a lot more trouble than a stupid man.”

“Very true.”

“Ye should read them, they're good and comforting. Like the minister's ain sermons but not one o' his was more than an hour, ye ken.”

“So I heard.”

“It's a pity they willna make their journey tae Carlisle now,” said Mrs Trotter wistfully. “It's a real pity.”

As Elizabeth dropped off to sleep, her jaw was set and the expression on her face fierce.

Wednesday Morning 18th October 1592

She knelt to her prayers with a will the next morning, knelt and practically shouted at God that He should help her with what she thought of as the minister's legacy or she would want to know the reason why. An extraordinary thing happened then: She got the feeling of a vast and intimate smile, a warmth in her chest as if she had understood something important and lovely, except she didn't know what it was.

She stood up and went out, told Young Henry who was practising gunnery in the orchard that the noise was giving her a headache and she would ride over and see if Lady Hume was well. He sent one of the cousins, young Hector since nobody else was around, which she accepted with reservations. Hector was all smiles and “my lady” so perhaps he had learned his lesson. She took a satchel with her, with pens and ink for she had contacts at the Scottish Court, and in particular Lord Chancellor Maitland who had begun as a friend of her husband's and become a friend of hers.

She had already packed up all Poppy's shifts and caps and stockings with her spare kirtles and aprons in a tight bundle inside her cloak which had been loaded onto a pack pony at the alehouse. Right in the middle of the bundles were the three goblets and the dish with cherubs on it that were Poppy's dowry. She had Jamie's will in her petticoat pocket and she couldn't think of anything else apart from the books which would need a string of pack ponies.

On the ride she thought so hard about the letter she was thinking of sending that she didn't notice at first that a man on horseback was paralleling them. She looked about for Hector and saw him, a way away, riding hell for leather in the opposite direction. Her stomach twisted and turned to stone and she looked about, rising as high as she could and peering. Two more riders were just out of sight, popping up every so often.

That was enough. She took a deep and careful breath and thought about it. The track up to the Hume castle was muddy but it went into a wooded area about a mile ahead and since nobody was doing anything yet, she was willing to bet that there was somebody waiting for her in the wood. Three out there, three more in the wood, perhaps.

They knew she must have seen them and they knew she had no man with her to guard her. They were still about two miles from the castle which was a longish run.

Her heart was beating hard and heavy in her chest and her mouth was dry. What could she do? What should she do? If she had been a man her best bet might have been to turn her horse about and ride for the nearest one. Or go into the wood and fight them there. Stupid to think like that, she was not a man.

She really did not fancy the wood; it looked muddy as well as autumn dark. No, so she wouldn't go there. The castle wasn't big, it had a moat and a curtain wall and a gatehouse as well once you were past the wood, of course. It was a scrubby little wood, a copse really, that had been allowed to grow up since the Rough Wooing. Why? The Humes weren't fools, and nor was Lady Hume, away with the faeries half the time though she was. You didn't let stuff like that grow up on the main route into the castle—unless it wasn't the main route. Unless it had been allowed to grow to give a good ambush place for people who didn't know what the right route was?

She hadn't been to the castle but she felt a rightness to that. Why else would they do that? And forbye, they would want the main entrance to the north, toward Edinburgh, not the south.

All right. She put her hand up to her hat and pinned it on tight to her cap, which hid the sore place on her skull and the cut hair. She set herself down into the sidesaddle, gripped with her leg around the hook and put the heel of her other leg into the horse's side so the animal leaped forward and started to run.

She rode at the gallop under the eaves of the wood, bent low to avoid the branches, dodged round a couple of trees and bushes, and then burst out again and rode around the wood and round the edge of the moat. She didn't bother to check the riders to see what they were doing, but kicked the horse again to get some more speed and rode like a madwoman around the curve of the old mound and there it was, a moat and working drawbridge.

The drawbridge was up. She hauled back on the reins and managed not to go into the moat.

There was a shout behind her, there were five of them now. She gave them a fig with her right hand while she rode out her horse's bucking, speaking softly to him, poor soul.

There was a man on the wall, not Cousin William, looking down at her and the men.

“Let me in,” she shouted, “they're after me.”

“They are?” said the man. “They're no', are they?”

“Ay, they are.”

“Why?”

“I dinna ken,” she shrieked in broad Scots. “Will ye shoot one for me so Ah kin ax?”

To her fury, the man turned away, bent, picked up a loaded crossbow and aimed it at her. She knew the men behind her were coming up closer.

“Her ladyship says she's sorry, but ye canna come in. She canna help ye.”

Her horse was turning and crowhopping still. She only had seconds. She took off her mother's handfasting ring and threaded it onto a bare autumn twig of a hazel bush. Then somebody's strong fist caught the bridle and somebody else came up close to her with a scarf. She looked round at them, hard faces under helmets, wearing jacks that marked them as Burns, though she didn't recognise anybody. She was still buoyed by rage.

“How dare you!” she hissed in English now. “How
dare
you? You will regret this.”

“Ay, mebbe, missus. Meantime, ye come wi' us.”

Wednesday 18th October 1592

Dodd reached Wendron by mid-morning and found his bird flown again.

“Och,” he said when he found he had to ride another ten miles to Norwood Castle where Lady Widdrington had gone to pay her respects to Lady Hume. “I need another horse.”

Young Henry Widdrington gave him a little hobby with the warning that the beast had a nasty temper and would bite. He remembered to give the letter to the small man who came out of the house to see him and introduced himself as Simon Anricks. He was trotting up the road half an hour later with his belly growling. Since Lady Widdrington would keep, since she was no doubt blethering on to her friends and had forgotten the time as women did, he stopped by some trees and rocks and ate up the first of the packages that Mrs Burn had given him, which contained a hearty wedge of the pie, bread, cheese, a couple of pickled onions wrapped in waxed paper, and an apple. This was the nicest food he could think of and he ate all of it, especially the apple. Lady Widdrington must have an apple tree or know someone who did and he found he wanted one too. Not a sapling, mind, but a full tree, less for the apples than for what it meant, which was that nobody had burnt the country for at least twenty years.

Well, you never knew. When he had finished the apple which was quite sweet, he looked around to make sure no one was watching and then dug a hole and buried it in the Earth.

He rode on to the Hume castle and found the place open as he expected, though he wondered what had been going on nearby since there were hoofprints of a horse galloping and others overlaying it before heading off across country.

When he rode in there was a sprightly old lady in a hat and velvet gown and her stout middle-aged woman standing behind her.

“Och, yes,” said Lady Hume with a sweet smile. “She came to say good-bye and then turned about and went home tae England again.”

“Ay,” said Dodd, annoyed. How had he missed her then? Maybe when he was having his breakfast? “When was that?”

“A couple of hours ago,” said the woman, also smiling. “It wis nice tae see her.”

“Ay, thank 'ee kindly,” said Dodd and turned the hobby's head and aimed south.

He went quicker on the way back, despite the hobby's tricks, which kept trying to turn his head west instead of south, but Dodd prevailed after a couple of tussles. He didn't want to miss Lady Widdrington again.

He saw Anricks again to the north of the village, riding a hobby and leading a pack pony, looking worried—though from the lines on his face that expression was a habit. He tipped his hat to the man. Then he took another look at the pack which was currently stowed on the pack pony behind him. It was brightly painted with lurid pictures: one showed a man with a swollen face and a scarf wrapped round it. The middle one showed a set of pincers and a bloody tooth, and the third picture showed the same man without a swollen face, happily tucking into a dinner consisting of venison and pork ribs and pot herbs.

“Ye're never a tooth-drawer?” he asked, unable to believe his luck.

“Yes, I am, sir. Do you have the toothache?”

“Nay sir, but I know a man who does, something terrible. What d'ye say to coming tae Carlisle wi' me and drawing his tooth?” He was quite willing to kidnap the tooth-drawer if it was necessary, but he hoped it wouldn't be.

The man's face lit up. “I would be delighted, since I've been planning to go to the West March, but I must confess I was nervous of the notorious robbers and reivers there.”

“Ay,” said Dodd, not bothering to explain that they were no worse in the West March than the Middle and certainly better than here in Scotland. The man wasn't very large and didn't look at all dangerous with his balding pate and modest black wool suit. “Come wi' me whiles I find Lady Widdrington and give her my respects and then we'll be off.” Dodd wasn't that interested in the ordinary-looking woman who had so bewitched the Courtier, but he knew her and must at least greet her while he was in the area.

Back at Wendron, Young Henry was looking impatient. “Where is she?” he asked. “We've forty miles back to Widdrington and it's late.”

“They said she'd come back here,” said Dodd, also annoyed. Wasn't that just like a woman, gallivanting off on some notion when people wanted to get home.

“And I canna find Ekie nor Sim,” said Young Henry darkly. “I sent Ekie Widdrington with her to look after her.”

“Maybe she's fallen off her horse somewhere,” said Dodd, since he had heard that this was something that did happen to people occasionally. “She can't have gone more than five miles, mebbe less, let's circle the castle at about five miles out.”

They did that, heading in opposite directions to get it done quicker, and found nothing. Anricks came with them. When there was no trace of her, Dodd started to get worried as well. Kidnapping of women wasn't unknown in the Borders, although as he understood it, the Widdringtons were a mite tasty for that kind of behaviour.

Then he minded him of the marks near the castle of the galloping horse, overlaid by other hooves, and he cantered back to them, dismounted, and started using his eyes properly. He saw a shod horse, not a hobby, riding toward the castle, saw it slow and then change direction and yes, go into the wood a little, saw broken branches where someone had broken through them at the gallop, saw the swerve at the edge of the moat where the drawbridge was now down, saw the other horses, all of them unshod hobbies surrounding and overlaying the shod hoofprints. It couldn't have been clearer if somebody had set up a little play to show it to him.

“Och, Jesus Christ,” he swore disgustedly to the hobby who gave him a horsy leer and shook his head.

He hadn't a hunting horn to call the others so he had to ride around the castle again, now watched by a man on the walls, found Anricks first and told him to go and guard the traces, then Young Henry, who was already scowling. At least the ugly hobby was now cooperating.

“Come and see this,” he said without preamble and Young Henry followed him at once.

Anricks was looking at something on a hazel bush when they got there. He pulled it off and brought it over to them as they cantered up and Dodd saw it was a woman's ring, a gold handfasting circle.

“I found this,” he said. “It was on the bush over there. Is it Lady Widdrington's?”

“Ay, it is.” Young Henry's wonderfully spotty face darkened as they both dismounted and Dodd explained what he could see. Once it was pointed out to him, Young Henry could see it well enough himself.

He loosened his sword and pulled out his horn, winded it and then stood fingering the spot on the end of his nose.

“Four or five of them,” he said, “the traces are clear enough, heading southwest. But.”

“Ay, but.” Dodd shook his head. “Could be. How many men ha' ye?”

“Ekie and Sim are gone, so only two as well as myself, Mr Anricks if he'll come, and you.”

“Five, one not a fighter. It's no' enough to fight off an ambush.”

“It's a trod now. I could likely call on the Humes…?”

“Could you?” Dodd asked, “There's a boy, a few men, and two women in the castle and I dinna see nae more. And forebye, they could have seen what happened here, why did they not help?”

Why did the old lady in fact lie to him, eh? That was something he'd like the answer to.

“Are any of these tracks from Ekie or Sim?” he asked, casting about for more hoofprints.

“No,” Young Henry said after he'd taken another look, “I had Ekie on Butter which is a fat hobby and the tracks would be heavier.”

“Ay, so they sold her to the reivers and went off. At least it means they aren't seven.”

Young Henry was breathing hard through his nose.

“How long to get some men here?” Dodd asked, though he knew he wouldn't like the answer.

“Most of the Widdringtons are in the Middle March, a forty-mile ride at least. Say half a day to ride back for them and another half day to ride here again.”

He had been right. He didn't like the answer.

Anricks had been sitting on his pony, staring hard into space as if he was reading something there.

“I happen to know,” he said judiciously, “that Sir Henry Widdrington and my Lord Spynie are meeting near Jedburgh, which isn't nearly as far from here as Widdrington itself. And he'll have taken at least twenty men with him.”

Young Henry stared suspiciously at the man while Dodd asked curiously, “So are ye a Jesuit or not then?”

A strange almost fey smile curved the man's mouth under his skimpy beard. “No sirs, I am not,” he explained slowly and coldly. “I am unalterably opposed to his Catholic Majesty of Spain and at the moment I am by way of being a pursuivant in the service of Sir Robert Cecil.”

Dodd whistled. “Are ye now?” he said. “I've met the man, see ye.”

“Have you?” Anricks gave Dodd a look he was beginning to recognise as a reappraisal. “A very interesting personage—tall and handsome.”

Dodd laughed shortly. “Well ye havenae met him if ye think that. He's a hunchback, though I'd say he wis handsome, ay, and interesting.”

Anricks smiled again. He took a packet of paper out of his doublet pocket and unfolded a letter from it which he passed to Young Henry. “I am well aware of the fact that the last tooth-drawer in these parts, bar one that was a drunk, was in fact a Papist spy, but I am not and I took the precaution of obtaining this.”

Young Henry passed the paper without comment to Dodd who turned it the right way up and read it carefully.

“A' right,” he said, “let's see yer hands.”

Anricks showed his hands palms up. There was a dark scar across the middle of each hand as if he had clutched a bar of red hot iron once and been burnt.

Young Henry and Dodd looked in silence for a while. “What was it did that?” asked Dodd. “I havenae seen the like on naebody else.”

“The same thing which gave me the grip I need to pull teeth. Forgive me, gentlemen, but I prefer not to speak of it nor remember it. However the scars prove I have not stolen the commission from another man and I am in fact the Simon Anricks of whom he speaks.”

The commission had Sir Robert Cecil's seal on it and was written in a fine italic hand which might even have been his. It spoke of his confidence in Mr Anricks, described the scars on his hands, and asked whoever saw the paper and the scars to help him in all his enterprises.

“Please be so kind as not to mention this to anyone at all, especially not Sir Henry,” added Anricks. “I am truly a tooth-drawer as well.”

“How will we explain to Sir Henry how we found him?” asked Young Henry.

“I saw him riding west with his men when I was on the road from Edinburgh so I think there will be little difficulty. In any case, no doubt Sir Henry will be anxious to find and ransom his wife, if necessary.”

Dodd had listened to Carey ranting on about how he hated the man and how he mistreated his wife and wondered if he would be that eager. It didn't matter, because his wife being kidnapped put a brave on him that he could only ignore if he wanted to lose every scrap of credit or reputation that he had.

Young Henry nodded once. Dodd sighed. He supposed he should stick with the tooth-drawer so he couldn't get out of drawing Carey's tooth. Though now he thought about it, he supposed Carey wouldn't approve of him not taking an interest in Lady Widdrington's kidnapping.

He tried to imagine Carey's reaction to that and found his imagination failed him. Carey would be very upset, to put it mildly, and might take it into his head to do something even crazier than his normal notions, which was where Dodd's imagination gave up. It was hard to beat spying out Netherby tower dressed as a peddler, selling faulty guns to the Irish and causing a riot in a London jail—all things Carey had regarded as excellent ideas in the past.

Without further ado they headed west and south to Jedburgh. At least it was in the right direction, Dodd thought philosophically.

They found Jedburgh full of Widdringtons who greeted Young Henry respectfully, considering his youth, and told him his father wasn't there. He was hunting with Lord Spynie at a small hunting lodge northwards which was sometimes used by the king on his way to a justice raid in the Scots West March. They would be back later in the day, and meantime Young Henry and his men could wait for them. Some of Spynie's men were hanging around in the town as well, the same combination of popinjay vicious courtiers and hard nuts that Dodd had thoroughly disliked in the summer.

They came and insisted on searching Anricks' pack and two of them even dared to question Young Henry until his uncle Thomas Widdrington snarled that he'd vouch for the boy. One asked Dodd his business.

“Ay,” he said, “I'm a Dodd, sir.”

He was looking as wooden and stupid as he could, helped by his buff coat and lack of helmet and for good measure he tipped his statute cap to the lad in a magnificent purple and tawny padded doublet.

“That's well enough,” said the other one, glorious in bright green and yellow. “We ha' tae ask, goodman, for somebody took a potshot at my lord Spynie ainly last month.”

“Ay,” said Dodd, not bothering to look interested, “what with?”

“A crossbow. He got away too and then he tried again in the night and killed a bolt of linen Spynie had in his bed and then he got away again, so Spynie's no' pleased wi' us.”

“Ay, bad luck tae him.”

“Ay.”

Dodd was more interested in what Anricks was up to and wandered after him. He found him in the courtyard of the biggest inn at Jedburgh, the Spread Eagle, with his pack already taken off the packhorse and both horses in a loosebox.

Anricks took off his doublet and rolled his sleeves up, put on his blood-stained apron and unrolled his instruments in their canvas. The innkeeper brought a sturdy armchair out to the yard and then two more on further instructions and lined them up.