3 A Surfeit of Guns: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (10 page)

“Going absent without leave,” said Carey.

“Ay, sir.”

Carey nodded in silence. “I keep forgetting to use the peculiar logic of the Borders,” he said to no one in particular.

Scrope was making the remarks his father had made last year and the year before that: they were to watch for outlaws but only to take note of their associates; they were to be tactful and alert to stop any trouble before it got out of hand. They were not to get drunk, on pain of the pillory.

He called Carey to go behind him with his men and led the way down Castle Street and out through the eastern gate. There were still a few people in town, holding packponies or leaning on lances giving desultory cheers as they went by.

The racecourse was heaving with men, already sorting themselves out into long lines, ready to be called. Carey had seen far more chaotic musters in the Armada summer, when numbers of excited peasants had turned out in their clogs with a touching faith that their billhooks, English blood and love for the Queen would shortly see them trampling down the veteran Spanish tercieros and scattering them like chaff. At the time he had agreed with them, but that was before he had done any serious fighting himself and found it to be as addictive as hunting, but much more dangerous for the undisciplined.

These, as he looked up and down straggling lines of footmen and bunches of mounted men, were better furnished than he had expected. Scrope’s father had always given miserable accounts of the musters, as his predecessor had done before him: there were no horses, there were no swords, nobody had proper armour…

Carey started to laugh. “You cunning old devils,” he said under his breath. “Look at them.” It was true that none but the richest headmen and gentry had back-and-breast-plates; almost everybody was in the pale elaborately quilted leather of their traditional jacks. But everybody had something hard on their head, even if it was only a clumsy cap of iron hidden under a hat. Not a single man there was without a weapon of some sort, a lance at the least, and often a sword as well, though few of them had firearms.

Dodd was watching him suspiciously and Carey swallowed his hilarity. So much for his oath faithfully to report to his Queen: Carey knew he would infallibly lie as much as any of the Wardens and no doubt his own father and brother in Berwick had done before him. If anyone had presumed to report the true level of general battleworthiness on the Marches to the Queen, two things would have happened: she would instantly have stopped sending arms and munitions north to Berwick and Carlisle; worse, she would have become suspicious of the power wielded by her three March Wardens and started moving them in and out of office as her cousin monarch, King James, did with his.

The morning was taken up with the main business of the muster, a very tedious matter. In the centre of the racecourse sat Scrope on his horse and in front of him Richard Bell with the muster books laid out on a folding table. There were two sets, Carey noted, and grinned.

Every half hour or so, a trumpet would sound and Richard Bell would call out a headman or a gentleman’s name. The Carlisle town crier repeated it at three times the volume, the cry was carried back through the crowd. After some confusion the worthy who had been called paraded before the March Warden with all his tenants or the men of his surname. Then each of the men came up to the table, repeated his name, landholding and his weapons for marking in the book, then stepped back among his kin. There was a considerable skill even to the business of calling the surnames, because it would be a sad mistake to call out two headmen who were at feud, especially when they had their riders behind them.

Once each surname had been mustered, the headman dismissed them and they fell to the real business of the day of eating, drinking, gossiping, listening to the educated among them reading out the handbills of the horses running in the races, argument and ferocious betting.

As the day wore on, the alewives and piesellers made stunning profits and the crowd grew ever less orderly and more genial. There would be occasional sporadic outbreaks of shouting and confused running about. At that moment, Carey, Dodd and his men rode over and physically pushed the combatants apart, leaving them to glare at each other and call names, but giving them a face-saving way out.

Later, when all but a few unimportant families had been called, the crowds drifted over to the racecourse fences and the stewards began lining up the horses that had been brought for the races. Carey was over in the paddock, patting Thunder’s neck and giving Young Hutchin Graham advice at length while the boy grinned piratically up at him.

Dodd saved his money in the first race, which was won by a Carleton filly, just as a long line of pack ponies trailed into Carlisle by the Rickersgate. The second race took a while to start because there was argument over who should be by the rail. Dodd had two shillings riding on a likely-looking unshod gelding which trailed in at the end, second to last, puffing, blowing and looking ashamed of itself, as well it might.

For the third race, Carey came over to him munching on a meat pie, having finally finished advising Young Hutchin. At the line up Thunder looked like a crow among starlings, towering over the mixed rough-coated hobbies and in particular an ugly little mare with a roman nose. Carey shouldered his way to the rail with a ruthlessness that belied his courtly nickname, with Dodd in his wake.

The gun fired, the horses charged forwards and bedlam broke out, Carey no different from any other man watching his horse run, bellowing and pounding the rail with his fist.

The first time the horses swept past, Thunder was up at the front, Young Hutchin’s tow head bobbing away above all the other riders. The second time he was still there and Dodd started yelling as well, in hopes of mending his fortunes a little. The big animal looked too big to be fast, but length of leg does no harm and he was pounding away willingly. By the third lap, many of the other horses had fallen behind and there was only Thunder, a brown gelding and the ugly little mare who swarmed along the ground like a caterpillar and yet stayed up at the front. They were close packed as they swept past, the riders laying on with their whips for the finish.

The disaster happened between there and the finishing line, with Young Hutchin’s head down close by Thunder’s neck. The brown gelding moved in close, there was a flurry of arms and legs and then Young Hutchin was pitched off over Thunder’s shoulder, hit the ground and rolled fast away from the other horses’s hooves, while the ugly little mare ran past the finish to ecstatic cheers from the Salkelds.

“God damn it to hell!” roared Carey and kicked a hole in the fencing beside him. “Did you see what that bastard did, did you see it, Dodd?”

“Ay,” said Dodd mournfully, thinking of all the garrison food he would be eating until whenever his next payday happened to be. “I saw.”

Carey was cursing as he vaulted the fence and went over to where Young Hutchin was picking himself up, flushed with fury and a knife in his hand. It took some argument from the Courtier to bring the lad over to Dodd, instead of going to wreak vengeance on the brown gelding’s rider and Dodd had every sympathy. It didn’t surprise him at all to see Sir Richard Lowther in the distance patting the brown gelding and its rider on the back and shaking Mr Salkeld’s hand. Carey saw it too and his eyes narrowed to wintry blue slits.

“Hell’s teeth,” he muttered. “I’ve been had.”

“Ay, sir,” said Dodd.

“Let me go, Deputy, I willnae kill the bastard until this evening, Ah swear it. There’ll be nae witnesses, or none that’ll make trouble…”

“Will you hold your tongue, Young Hutchin Graham?”

Ay, lad, thought Dodd, but didn’t say, do it quietly and keep your mouth shut.

“Ah wisnae expecting to be shoved like that, Ah wisnae, sir, if…”

“Be quiet. Did you take any hurt when you fell?”

“Nay, sir, but I cannae let that Lowther bastard…”

“He’s a Lowther, is he?”

“Ay, sir, he’s a cousin or similar, will ye no’ let me go and talk to him, just? Please, sir?”

“Absolutely not. Stay away from him.”

“But I lost the race because of him, for Christ’s sake, sir, will ye no’ let me…hurt him, at least, sir?”

“It was only a horserace,” said Carey, distantly, clearly doing some mental arithmetic of his own, “I’m sorry, but you don’t murder or assault people over a horserace.”

Hutchin’s young face was miserable with disappointment and uncomprehending resentment.

“But, sir…”

“And besides, he’s bigger than you are and he’ll be ready for you. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had some others of his kin waiting for you, so you stay by me.”

Young Hutchin’s face took on an evil look of cunning at this and he calmed at once.

“Ay,” he said thoughtfully. “Ay, ye’ve the right of it, sir, he will. Ay. Me dad allus says there’s time to take yer vengeance, all the time in the world.” Carey either wasn’t listening or tactfully pretended not to hear.

“Whit about Thunder, sir?” Hutchin asked after a moment.

“One of the boys has already caught him, don’t worry about it. You should have won and it wasn’t your fault you didn’t; just don’t get yourself hanged over it, understand?”

“Ay, sir,” said Young Hutchin ominously.

Carey smiled faintly. “Keep an eye on him, Dodd.”

He sighed, squared his shoulders and marched briskly over to the triumphantly grinning knot of Salkelds, taking his purse out from under his jack and doublet.

Even Dodd had to admit that there was more style in bowing graciously to Salkeld as he patted his mare’s nose and personally led her up and down to cool her off. Carey paid his losses with a negligent flourish, smiling and laughing good-humouredly with Salkeld and ignoring Lowther. You could see that it took the edge off the bastards’ pleasure that the Courtier didn’t seem to care about his losses.

Philadelphia Scrope was less suave as she presented the silver bells for prizes. She glowered ferociously at Mr Salkeld as well as at Sir Richard Lowther, from which Dodd guessed she was hurting in her purse as well. It couldn’t have helped that Sir Simon Musgrave had been sitting beside her and was looking as happy as Lowther. Dodd saw her hand a small fat purse to him and sighed. God damn it, if Carey and his sister had lost their shirts on the race, where were Dodd’s wages to come from?

The savour had gone out of the day for him, and it only confirmed his mood when his wife caught up with him and demanded briskly to know exactly how much he had lost on the Courtier’s big charger and didn’t he know better than to think a Salkeld would lose so easily?

He heard his name called and turned eagerly to see who it was. Red Sandy was standing on one of the marker stones of the race track gesturing over by the rail, where a crowd swirled around a knot of shouting men.

Dodd mumbled an excuse to his wife and arrived at the outskirts in time to see two Lowthers piling into a Salkeld with their fists. The Salkeld bucked and heaved and slipped away, started shouting for his kin, three more Salkelds attacked the Lowthers and then it seemed half the crowd was at it, swinging fists, shouting and roaring and pulling up hurdles from the fencing to use as weapons.

Dodd had more sense than to dive into that lot, even if Carey had not given them strict orders on no account to get into any fights on their own. He blew the horn he had on his baldric, dodged somebody with a club and heard hoofbeats behind him. Carey was riding up with four of the men, leading a horse for Dodd which the Sergeant took gratefully and vaulted into the saddle.

“Reverse lances,” Carey called. “Don’t stick them.”

In the early moments of a fight they could push the combatants apart; once it had got to this stage, the only thing they could do was stop it from spreading by using their horses as barriers and try and push the fighters over and away from the main crowd. The shouting swirled and spread, more of the garrison horse came over, Carleton with his troop and the rest of their own. There were knives flashing now, ugly and bright, someone was puking his guts up by the fence and the horses were whinnying as they objected to being used as mobile fences. Then Sir Richard Lowther rode over with Mr Salkeld behind him and instead of joining the line of garrison men, he rode straight into the middle of the mêlée and began laying about him with the flat of his sword. Evidently, thought Dodd, he had gone mad. There he was, bellowing that as God was his witness, he would shoot one of them—ay, Ritchie’s Clem, you too—if the fighting didn’t stop.

Astonishingly, it did. Men who had been at each others’ throats let go of each other, the knives disappeared, the fence posts were dropped. A few seconds later all of them had dispersed into the crowd.

Lowther sheathed his sword and rode over to where Carey was sitting with his fist on his hip, looking contemplative.

“That’s how ye keep order at a muster,” said Sir Richard, swelling like a turkey. “Ye know the men because ye’ve been ruling ‘em for years and ye call them by name.”

Carey ignored him pointedly.

Lowther’s jowls purpled above the tight ruff while Dodd gazed busily into the distance. Away in the hills to the north was a long line of animals, small as ants, no doubt heading for Dumfries where King James would be in need of supplies. Eventually Lowther rode away.

The muster of the West March didn’t come to an end so much as tail off. Those who lived less than ten miles away went home, those who lived further out went to their exorbitantly-priced, shared beds in the inns and taverns of Carlisle, or lit camp fires and prepared to doss down for the night, each surname forming its own small armed camp in the meadows and gardens around Carlisle. The competing smells of bacon pottage and salt fish rose here and there.