A Famine of Horses (18 page)

Barnabus twinkled his fingers together. “Delighted to oblige, I’m sure, mistress.”

Wednesday, 21st June, late afternoon

The muggy clouds chose to part as Philadelphia Scrope’s guests moved from the eight covers of meat and fish she had provided to the marmalades of quince and wet comfits. They admired her marzipan subtlety of a peel tower, complete with armed men, as an amusing variation on the usual themes. Sportingly they agreed not to eat it since it would keep to be used again on the Sunday as part of the old lord’s funeral banquet. As the yellow sunlight found the little narrow windows and drove probing fingers into the council chamber cum dining room, it lighted on her brother’s chestnut curls and laughing face. He put up a hand in protest and squinted at Elizabeth Widdrington who was frowning with mock severity.

“I refuse to believe that streams can chase you round the countryside,” she said.

“On my honour they did,” said Robin, picking up a date stuffed with marzipan and nibbling it, “and what’s more the hills followed us too, so the ones we struggled up on the way north turned themselves round and we had to struggle up them again on the way back south.” He winced slightly, put the date down and ate a piece of cheese instead.

“Did you find you were being adopted by a herd of brambles and gorse bushes as well?” asked young Henry Widdrington. “When I go out on a hot trod, I’d swear they follow me as lovingly as if I was their mother. Then when I fall off my horse one of them rushes forward bravely to break my fall.”

Listening to the laughter, Philadelphia felt a little wistful. She loved giving dinner parties and the pity of it was, there were so few people she could invite in Carlisle; most of them were dull merchants or tedious coarse creatures like Thomas Carleton who would keep beginning tales of conquests at Madam Hetherington’s and then remember where he was and fall silent at the best bit. It was a pity she had no pretty well-bred girl she could bring in to make up the numbers for Henry Widdrington, but she was used to there being an oversupply of men. After all, very few ladies would want to live in the West March and those that were bred to it were poor dinner party material. London was so much more fun. Somehow her husband’s 3,700 pounds per annum from his estates wasn’t the compensation her father had told her it would be.

“And all this on account of one horse stolen from the Grahams?” asked Elizabeth Widdrington.

“I don’t think so,” said Robin, “I think it was a long-planned raid for remounts and where they’re planning to go with them, I wish I knew.”

They were also eating up the food she had made ready for the funeral feast which couldn’t keep until the Sunday—it was typical of men when they high handedly postponed funerals that it never occurred to them to think of things like perishable fish—and it would serve her brother right if he got indigestion. Though as usual, he was too busy talking and being charming to eat very much.

They had sat down at 2.30, fashionably late, and when Lord Scrope had said grace, her guests had flatteringly spent most of the first twenty minutes eating and occasionally asking each other to pass the salt. She was particularly fond of the salt cellar, being newly inherited from the old lord, a massive silver bowl with ancient figures in armour on it and some elaborate crosses, but she would have to check on the kitchen supplies of salt to see what had happened there.

Elizabeth Widdrington caught her eye questioningly and she nodded with a smile that she should broach their expedition of the morning.

“Did you know that Janet Dodd bought the horse from that little priest, Reverend Turnbull?” asked Elizabeth casually.

“Damn,” said Carey. “I’m sorry, Philly,” he added at his sister’s automatic frown, “I meant to go and question the man about where he got the nag but it clean slipped my mind and I expect he’s halfway to Berwick by now…”

“We went and asked him a few questions,” offered Elizabeth. “And yes, he was on his way, but he very kindly stayed for us and told us what we wanted to know.”

Robert’s face lit up. “
You
talked to him?”

“Wasn’t that a little dangerous?” asked Henry Widdrington with a frown.

“Oh never fear, Henry, I went with Lady Scrope and Mrs Dodd,” Elizabeth said, hiding a smile at her stepson’s concern. “He was very helpful.”

“I’m sure he was,” murmured Robert, “poor man. I would have been.”

“He told us he’d bought the horse from a peddler called Swanders and…”

“Good God!” said Robert. “Sorry Philly, are you saying that Daniel Swanders is in Carlisle now?”

“I don’t know.” Elizabeth took a French biscuit and broke it in half. “Do you know him?”

“Yes, yes I do. He’s a Berwick man though, deals in anything small and portable or that has four legs and can walk. My brother almost hanged him once for bringing in of Scots raiders only he got enough respectable men to swear for him and got away with it.”

“How did he do that?” asked Henry naïvely.

“He bribed them, Henry,” said his stepmother. “Most of them do that can.”

“The thing was, Janet was surprised that he didn’t go straight to Thomas the Merchant to sell such a good animal since Thomas has been our agent to find decent horseflesh and would know we’d want him,” added Philadelphia.

“Good point,” said Carey, “and why didn’t he?”

“We went to speak to Thomas the Merchant as well,” said Elizabeth, biting elegantly into her half biscuit, “and I’m certain he lied in his teeth to us.”

“Did he now?” said Robert with an answering smile. “That was bad of him.”

“I do object to it,” Elizabeth agreed.

God help Thomas the Merchant for offending Elizabeth Widdrington, Philadelphia thought at the look in Carey’s eyes.

“What he
said
was that he didn’t know what we were talking about and he’d been cleared of the accusation that he collects blackrent for the Grahams,” added Elizabeth, finishing the biscuit and brushing her fingers. “He gave me the impression that he was a mite too big for his boots as well.”

“Hm.”

Thomas Lord Scrope had been listening to this. “I don’t know why this horse is so important to the Grahams or you. It’s just a horse, isn’t it? Dammit, don’t horses go missing every day of the week?”

“It’s only important because the Grahams think it important,” said Philly, resisting the impulse to shake her obtuse husband, “and because it was apparently the horse that Sweetmilk was riding when he was murdered.”

“Which makes me even more interested to know why Swanders happened to have it,” said Carey.

“Yes,” said Scrope, standing up and wandering restlessly to the virginals kept under cover in the corner of the room, “but why does anyone care that Sweetmilk was murdered? Apart from the hangman, that is?”

“Well, my lord,” said Carey with a patience Philly hadn’t seen in him before, “firstly the Grahams seem to believe that it was Sergeant Dodd did the killing because he had the horse, or his wife did. Secondly because of the way the killing was done.”

“Shot wasn’t he?”

“Yes. But from behind.”

“Best way to do it, I’ve always thought, especially dealing with a Graham.”

Carey coughed. “Well, my lord, I’d agree, except that I had a chance to look at the body and the back was black with powder burns and further, the body wasn’t robbed.”

Scrope began to press the keys gently, listening for sour notes. He found one and began hunting for the tuning key.

“Is that important?”

“It means he was shot from very close behind him, which argues that he knew his murderer and didn’t mind him being there. And then whoever did it wasn’t interested in theft, which cuts out practically anyone on the borders.”

“That or he was afraid the jewels would be recognised,” added Elizabeth Widdrington.

“And then,” continued Carey, as he dug in a canvas bag for the latest madrigal sheets he had carried with him faithfully from London, “there’s where he put the body. After all, Solway field’s a very odd place. The marshes or the sea would give him a better chance of the body never being found. It’s almost as if he couldn’t think of anywhere else. And how did Swanders come by the horse?”

“Killed Sweetmilk?” asked Henry Widdrington, picking up one of the sheets and squinting at it.

“Not Swanders. He doesn’t own a dag. A knife in the ribs would be more his mark. Can you take the bass part?”

Henry Widdrington whistled at the music. “I can try.”

Elizabeth had already taken the alto sheet. At least Robert had had the sense not to buy the four-way sheets which had the different parts printed as if on a four sided box, thought Philly—they were almost impossible to make out.

Robert carried the complete song to Scrope who was still fiddling with the fah string and humming to himself.

“Ah, mm, yes. Yes I see, dear me, they get more intricate every year, look at this bit…Philly, you mustn’t let your throat tighten on the higher notes, you know, or it will come out like cats.”

Robert laughed. “It usually comes out like cats anyway,” he said, “but it’s all the rage at Court at the moment, God help…I’m sorry, Philly.”

Robert had a good tenor voice which went well with Philadelphia’s high true but weak soprano. Elizabeth Widdrington had a powerful alto, but was out of practice at sight-reading and Henry Widdrington, with his still unformed bass, had a tendency to lose his place and blush furiously under his spots. Scrope who had an extraordinary reach on any keyboard and could sight read anything first time, though his voice was appalling, took each of them through twice separately, rapping with his toe to give the time. At last they all took deep breaths, waited on Lord Scrope’s signal and launched into “When Philomela Lost Her Love”. After three collapses and Philadelphia’s helpless attack of giggles when she got lost amongst the fa-la-las they managed to work through to the end and stood looking at each other with satisfaction. Then they sang it again with gusto and the beautiful intertwining medley of voices briefly turned the grim old Carlisle keep into an antechamber of Westminster.

Philly saw the happy dreamy smile on her husband’s face as the music fitted itself together into the filmy light-hearted bubble of a song that it was, and it touched her heart. She decided she would nag Scrope into travelling to London for the Christmas season if she possibly could and if not then, for the Hilary term. If necessary she would fabricate a lawsuit. It was such a pity he was born the eldest son of Henry Lord Scrope: his life would have been easier and happier if he could have been of the class of folk that supplied Royal musicians rather than soldiers and lawmen for the Crown. Still, God had made him what he was and no doubt He knew what He was about.

They tried three more of the madrigals, and then a fiendishly difficult one in Latin by the Queen’s Chapelmaster, William Byrd, until the sun had set and Carey could no longer hide his frequent yawns.

“I’m sorry, Robin,” said Philly, conscience-stricken, “you’ve been up since two this morning, I know. We can sing again tomorrow or play a little primero.”

Robert laughed and insisted he wasn’t tired, so Elizabeth Widdrington did the tactful thing and announced that she had been up since at least two hours before dawn herself and if Sir Robert was able to go with only four hours sleep a night like the Queen, she certainly couldn’t.

They left, making their bows and complimenting Philadelphia until she was alone in spirit, even if not in body. Thomas was adrift on seas of music, his spidery restless fingers become wizardly and loving as they coaxed long rambling digressions and ruminations ad libitum from the virginals. Philly kissed the top of his head and bade him good night and knew perfectly well as she went to her chamber and woke Alyson her tiring woman to unlace her stays, that he had forgotten altogether anything except the music. She slept with the waves of it carrying her into dreams as if she were a boat.

Thursday, 22nd June, before dawn

Coming as he did from the only respectable branch of Grahams, Bangtail had not been in jail before, not even as a pledge for somebody else’s good behaviour. The noise of singing from upstairs came down to him somehow fiendishly magnified by a quirk of the stone, the bench was hard as a rock because it was rock and the thin straw palliasse he had been given because he was one of the Guard also contained some voracious lice and fleas. Scratching, deafened and uncomfortable, he felt the blackness of the cell as a demon on his chest and woke half a dozen times out of a dream of being pressed to death for not pleading at his trial. It was no comfort to him that if Carey did press charges of March treason against him—and if he was found guilty, which might be a foregone conclusion with this new Deputy—he would hang for it. In which case he would struggle for breath on the end of a rope rather than feel his ribs and pelvis crushed under the weight of twenty flagstones…

Sitting on the bench, rubbing his sandy eyes, and trying to convince himself that the walls were not really coming towards him, Bangtail ventured to call out to his half-brother Ekie, in whom the Graham blood had run true and who was certain sure to hang, if only for the various bills against him that had been fouled in his absence.

“Ekie?” he asked, “Ekie, are ye there?”