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

Based on a few portraits, I think he was quite good-looking—as he had to be to serve at Court at all, since Queen Elizabeth had firm views on the sort of human scenery she wanted around her. As he admits himself, he was a serious fashion victim. Nobody wears a satin doublet AND a sash of pearls unless that’s what they are, which is how he’s peacocking it in one of his portraits. Most remarkable of all, he married for love not money—and was evidently thought very odd for it, since he was perpetually broke.

And that’s it, the original man, an absolute charmer I have lifted practically undiluted from his own writings. The various stories I tell are mostly made up, though all are based on actual incidents in the history of the Borders. About half of the characters (and most of the bad guys) really lived and were often even worse than I have described. As I say in most of the historical talks I give, we like to think we’re terribly violent and dangerous people but really we’re a bunch of wusses. The murder rate has dropped to a tenth of what it was in the Middle Ages—and they didn’t have automatic pistols. It took real work to kill somebody then.

And yes, I’m afraid I have fallen, hook, line and sinker, for the elegant and charming Sir Robert Carey. I hope you do too.

—
Patricia Finney

Cornwall, 1999

A Season of Knives

Sunday 2nd July 1592, evening

If he had been doing his duty as a husband and a father, Long George Little would not have been in Carlisle town at all that evening. All the other men of his troop were out on their family farms, frantically trying to get the hay made while the good weather lasted. Some of them were also taking delivery of very tall handsome-looking horses recently raided by their less respectable relatives from the King of Scotland’s stables.

Long George hated haymaking. It wasn’t his fault, he reflected gloomily, as he came out of the alehouse by the castle wall and ambled down through the orchards and into Castlegate street in the warm and shining dusk. There was something in hay which disagreed with him. It was fine while the grass was growing, and he could even mow with impunity, but put him in a hayfield among neat rows of drying grass, and within minutes he was wheezing and sneezing, his eyes had swollen, his nose was running and his chest felt tight. His wife refused to believe in these summer colds. It stood to reason, she would snap, that you got colds in the cold weather, not the hot. That was logic. It didn’t matter; whatever the logic of it, haymaking made him ill and if he started pitchforking the hay onto a wagon, he would also come up in a bright red rash that made his life a misery for another week at least.

On the other hand, his wife was going to make his life a misery as well because there were two fields to mow, and none of the children were old enough to do more than bind and stack. Without her man the whole weight of it fell on her alone since she had no brothers and Long George’s family were busy with their own fields.

Long George didn’t even want to leave the town. His nose was running already: if he went out into the countryside, it wouldn’t be as awful as if he were haymaking, but it would be bad enough. Life was unfair. He didn’t want to be a bad husband…

He paused, his hair prickling upright on the back of his neck. Perhaps unwisely he had been taking a shortcut through an alleyway called St. Alban’s vennel between Fisher street and Scotch street. The thatched rooves hung over, within an easy arm’s reach of each other and although it was light enough outside, in the alley night had already fallen. A tabby cat was watching with interest from a yard wall.

And he could smell sweat and leather and just make out the ominous shapes of three men hiding in various doorways.

Long George drew his dagger and picked up a half-brick, began backing away. His heart was pounding and he wished he had on better protection than a leather jerkin and his blue wool statute cap. He took a glance over his shoulder to check if there was someone coming up behind him, tensed himself ready to make a dash for Fisher street.

‘Andy Nixon, is that you?’ came a low growl.

‘No. No, it’s not. It’s me, Long George Little.’

‘Och,’ said someone else in a mixture of relief and disgust. Long George recognised the voice and let his breath out again.

His brother detached himself from the shadows and came towards him. He had a cloth wrapped round the bottom half of his face.

‘What’s going on?’ Long George asked.

The cat blinked and sat up. The smell of an imminent fight faded as the three other men came out of their hiding places and joined Long George. Their voices growled and muttered for a while, arguing at first and then gradually came to some agreement. Long George grinned and wiped his nose triumphantly on his shirt sleeve. All four of them went back into hiding, with Long George putting his knife away and climbing over the cat’s wall, to hide behind the rainbarrel there.

The cat blinked again, licked a paw. Her ears swivelled to the familiar sound of whistling from the other end of the alley and her whiskers twitched as all four of the waiting men tensed to attack.

On a warm Sunday night, a little the worse for drink, Andy Nixon was in a good mood as he turned into St. Alban’s vennel, thinking of his bed and the various jobs he had to do in the morning. He still had bits of hay in his hair from his usual Sunday night tryst with his mistress and the smug warmth that came from making the two of them happy. He savoured the memory of her again as he ambled along the alley, picking his way instinctively between the small piles of dung left by a neighbour’s pig and the old broken henhouse quietly rotting against a wall, replaying the feel of his woman’s thighs entwined with his own and…

Two heavy shadows jumped out behind him, grabbed for his arms. Andy tried to dodge them, managed to punch one on the nose and knock him over, swung about and tried to run back into Fisher Street.

Another shape vaulted the wall and got in his way as he ran, both of them went over, wrestling against the henhouse and breaking it. Andy tried a headbutt and missed, almost got free from the other man’s grip and then felt his arms caught again and locked painfully behind him. He took breath to yell but one of the attackers clamped a large horny palm over his mouth.

‘We’ve a message for ye fra Mr Jemmy Atkinson, Andy,’ said the muffled voice. ‘Ye’re to leave his wife alone. Understand?’

Andy’s eyes widened as he realised what was coming. He heaved convulsively, throwing one man into the wall and almost getting away, but by then the one whose nose was bleeding had picked himself up, waiting his moment, and punched Andy vengefully several times in the stomach.

Andy doubled over and fought to breathe, but before he could, somebody else drove the toe of a boot deep into his groin and he toppled over into a black pit of pain. More pain exploded in his right hand as someone trod on it; he put his arms up to protect his head and his knees up to protect his stomach. He was walled in by boots that thudded into his back and shins and pounded his bones to jelly and faded the world into a distant island in a sea of hurt.

From far away he realised one of the men was pulling the others off, spoiling their fun. He could just make out the words of the man who had given him the reason for the beating.

‘He isnae supposed to be deid,’ snarled the man. ‘So leave off when I tell ye. Ay, and ye, for God’s sake, what d’ye think ye’re doin’ wi’ a rock? Mr Atkinson said to warn him, no’ kill him.’

There were mutinous grumbles and whining. Somebody felt inside the front of his jerkin.

‘An’ he’s no’ to be robbed,’ came the imperious voice. ‘Get off, will ye.’

They caught their breaths while he lay there in a heap, gradually coming back to the sickening pain all through his body, and trying not to moan in case they started again. There was a sound of them brushing each other down.

‘Mind,’ said another, lighter voice, ‘It wasnae a fair fight, four on one.’

‘It wasnae meant to be,’ grunted the man giving the orders. ‘Did ye mind the lad in the wrestling at the last Day of Truce?’

‘Ay. I won a shilling, thanks to him.’

‘Well, that’s thirty-one shillings he’s earned ye,’ said a third, cheerful voice. ‘And Pennycook’s one rent-collector the less for a bit.’

They laughed and gave him a couple more kicks in the back for luck as they passed by, going on to Scotch street.

Andy Nixon lay still for a long long time, waves of blackness passing through him every so often and moving the stars round the heavens above him. He waited between them for the simple act of breathing to hurt a bit less and nursed his swelling right hand, sick with anger and humiliation and fear for Kate Atkinson, his mistress. The cat jumped down and sniffed curiously at his ear, but then trotted silently off and left him in peace.

A serving girl had lit the wax candles in the Mayor of Carlisle’s dining room, although the long dusk was still burning in the west. The combination of lights fell about the card players, complicating the shadows and flattering the ladies outrageously. Sir Robert Carey, the new Deputy Warden of the English West March, had glanced at his own four cards, known immediately that he had the makings of a chorus and put them down again with an instinctive caution he had learned at Queen Elizabeth’s Court. He looked around idly.

His sister Philadelphia, Lady Scrope, was as pert and tousled as ever in black velvet and burgundy taffeta. She was frowning at her cards. Laboriously she totted up her primero points, while her husband watched her, his gaunt, beaky, under-chinned face quite softened for that moment. Even the Lord Warden of the English West March could lose his heart to a woman and it was right that the woman was his wife. Unfortunately, his wife did not return the sentiment.

To Carey’s left sat Sir Richard Lowther, his enemy and rival for the Deputy Wardenship. Sir Richard was glowering at his cards as if they were reivers he planned to hang, but might be persuaded to let go for a bribe.

Nothing interesting would happen for a while, Carey thought, and let his attention wander again. Two of the players in the second game at the other end of the table were not very well known to him. There was Edward Aglionby, the Mayor, who had invited them to the card party and whose house this was. He was a handsome solidly-built man with fine wavy grey hair under his hat and a grave pleasant manner. There was a local merchant, John Leigh, like Aglionby a Carlisle draper and grocer. He was not paying proper attention to his cards and had lost heavily. Now he was blinking at them again, but clearly not seeing them. Then there was Young Henry Widdrington, heir to the headship of one of the major English East March surnames, painfully spotted. And the one Carey knew so well, who had methodically been taking John Leigh’s money off him all evening, was sitting upright and alert on the bench beside him, with the rose-tinted light from the window falling just so on her face and making her beautiful.

She isn’t beautiful, Carey thought to himself while he waited for his sister to finish counting under her breath. Not even the most maddened poet in the world could say Elizabeth Widdrington was like Cynthia or Diana or Thetis or whoever. She had a long nose and an extremely determined chin and there was no question but that age would make her even beakier. Her hair was a wavy brown, her eyes were the blue-grey of a steel helmet and her mouth would never ever be a rosebud. Wisely she didn’t put red lead on it to make it something it wasn’t.

She felt the warmth of his stare, looked up, caught his eyes and coloured. He smiled, and her cheeks became rosy and her eyes sparkled. It delighted him privately that she blushed when she saw him, more prized in her because otherwise she was distressingly self-possessed. He wondered idly where the blush started and how far down it went and from there went on to his perennial speculations about what he would see when he finally lifted her smock over her head and…

‘Honestly, Robin, you should pay attention to the game.’ He looked round to see his sister grinning at him naughtily. Young Henry Widdrington on Elizabeth’s right was gazing elaborately into space so as not to see the byplay between his young step-mother and Carey. What little skin that could be seen between his outrageous collection of spots was redder than Elizabeth’s. He had folded.

Carey coughed and pushed five shillings into the middle of the table. Sir Richard Lowther breathed hard through his nose and put in his own five shillings with a resolute thump of his hand. He gave Carey what Carey mentally tagged as the bad gambler’s glare and upped the stake by two shillings. Equably Carey shoved his own two shillings into the pot and waited for Lord Scrope, who was dealing, to make his decision. Philly, he knew, was trying to mature her flush and so would stay in for the draw and then fold when she didn’t get it. Nobody could fathom what Lord Scrope thought he was doing at the best of times, and Carey wasn’t going to start now.

Elizabeth was watching him and he looked steadily back at her. Her eyes were still sparkling and she lifted her chin, her mouth curving. Carey moved his padded hose on the bench, the ruff round his neck suddenly feeling tight and uncomfortable. Lord, Lord, her husband, Sir Henry, was a lucky man. Damn the old villain for marrying her; damn Carey’s own father for arranging the match; and damn Elizabeth too for being a great deal more high-principled than most of the married women he had met at Court.

‘Er…’ said Scrope, and pushed his stake into the middle. Philly exchanged three cards—what on earth does she think she’s doing, Carey wondered briefly, as he dropped one card on the table for replacement. Lowther exchanged two, glanced at the cards, and his bushy grey eyebrows almost met in the effort to look disappointed. His fingers started drumming on his thigh. Scrope took two cards, squinted and humphed.