2 A Season of Knives: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (4 page)

‘Well,’ said Philadelphia almost truthfully, ‘this has been a very exciting evening.’ She was standing up, shaking out her petticoats and farthingale and smoothing down the back of her kirtle where it had rumpled. Lady Widdrington was doing the same as she rose from her own padded stool. ‘Mr Mayor, Mrs Aglionby, thank you so much for a delightful dinner and some splendid play.’ Tactfully, Philadelphia did not mention the wine which had been terrible. Carey had left all of his, although Philadelphia had finished hers, he noticed. Philly was curtseying to Aglionby and his wife, who curtseyed back in mute distress.

‘Ah, yes, indeed,’ said Scrope benignly. ‘Most excellent. Greatly enjoyed myself.’

Edward Aglionby bowed to both of them and then slightly less deeply to Carey and Lowther. Carey returned the courtesy, Lowther hadn’t noticed since he was staring into space looking very green above his ruff.

It seemed John Leigh was in a hurry to go and had already made his bows while Philadelphia was speaking and left the room, followed by Jock Burn.

Down the stairs and into the darkened street where two yawning, blinking servants were waiting for them with torches to see them back into the Castle. The main gate had long shut but of course Scrope had the key to the postern gate. Carey looked around in irritation.

‘Where’s my man Barnabus?’ he demanded of the oldest torchman.

‘Ah dinna ken, sir,’ came the answer. ‘When we were having our dinners in the kitchen, he said he knew a place he could get better fare and went off, sir.’

‘Blast him,’ said Carey, who had the ingrained caution about walking around with a large sum of money acquired by anyone who had lived in London for any time at all. ‘Oh, well. We should look dangerous enough.’

Lowther said goodnight to Scrope and departed to his home, and the rest of them set off up the side of the market place, past the stocks and into Castle street. The town was empty so close to midnight, even in summer when the sky never really darkened down to black but hung above, a canopy of deepest royal blue, studded with stars.

All about them the scent of haymaking thrust its way across the usual town smells of horse dung and kitchen refuse and the butchers’ shambles on their right. Carey breathed deep and happily before offering Lady Widdrington his arm.

‘You truly like Carlisle, don’t you, Sir Robert?’ she said.

He paused, looked at her and put his own hand on her firm square one.

‘My lady,’ he said. ‘I have won enough money to pay for my new sword and buy me a suit; I have infuriated Sir Richard Lowther; I am away from London and best, best of all, I have your arm in mine.’

She smiled quickly and then looked down.

‘It would take very little more to make me the happiest man in England,’ he hinted delicately and found himself skewered by a grey glare.

‘I don’t think you should tease Sir Richard Lowther,’ she said after an awful pause. ‘You should know by now how dangerous he is.’

This was sensible; Lowther had almost succeeded in getting Carey killed the week before, although Scrope had insisted on an insincere reconciliation. Lowther had been Deputy Warden under the old Lord Warden and had run the March pretty much as he liked. After the Warden’s death, he had confidently expected old Scrope’s son Thomas to make him Deputy Warden in turn and had been very displeased to find that Scrope had asked his brother-in-law to do the job instead. The five hundred pounds per year that the office was worth was only the beginning of the financial loss this had caused Lowther, never mind the set-down to his prestige and power.

‘I can’t help it,’ said Carey trying to look contrite and failing. ‘He’s so eminently teasable. Blast and damn Barnabus! I was looking forward to returning the money I borrowed off him so Lowther could see that even if he didn’t have a better hand, he only had to raise me again and I’d have had to fold.’

Elizabeth snorted, trying not to laugh.

***

Barnabus had been drinking happily in the company of six beautiful women, when they weren’t busy, and playing dice with some of their few customers. He rolled out of the door having drunk all his money, sad to be leaving the common room still bright with rush dips and a good singsong just beginning. Madam Hetherington had a policy which forbade credit and so he had to leave. Anyway, he remembered that he was supposed to help light his master home from his card-party. He waved goodbye to the juiciest trollop who was leaning out of the window in her smock, and started down the street humming to himself.

Unlike London, Carlisle was dead at night, most of the crime taking place outside its walls rather than inside. And with the hay harvest even the reivers were working hard. If there was a footpad in Carlisle with more practical experience than Barnabus, then Barnabus thought it would be interesting to meet him. He was like a cat at night, automatically silent and stealthy, even when seriously over-oiled and not actively looking for trouble.

It so happened that he took a shortcut through St. Alban’s vennel between Scotch street and Fisher street and tripped on a soft bundle that moaned.

Knowing one of the nastier games played in London, he drew his dagger and looked carefully all about him. There were no bulky shadows lurking that he could see. He bent down again and squinted at the man at his feet, whistled softly.

‘You bin done over good and proper, ain’t you?’ he said.

As Carey said later, if Barnabus had ever in his life paid attention to the Gospel on the Sundays when he had to attend church, he might have behaved differently. As it was, he did at least see the door the beaten man was feebly trying to crawl through, and he lifted the latch and pushed it open, even hefted the man through it. Unfortunately, that was an excuse for him to find the man’s purse on his belt and quietly cut it.

Leaving whoever it was in a heap on the other side of his door, Barnabus turned on his heel and hurried back to Madam Hetherington’s bawdy-house.

***

What story did John Leigh tell you that persuaded you to let him have his money back?’ Carey asked Elizabeth conversationally as they walked slowly back to the Castle.

‘Oh, a tediously long tale about roof mending and the cost of litigation. He has to pay the thatchers in the morning and a barrister in London is bleeding him dry over a suit in Chancery for some property of his wife’s.’

‘What’s the property?’

‘I really can’t remember the details, Robin, but I think it’s the house next door to his own in Carlisle, which was apparently supposed to be inherited by his wife and instead was somehow wrongly inherited by her half-brother. He wants it because he has five children and another on the way. Also, it’s prime property and he could expand his business conveniently into the shop-front on the ground floor.’

‘What did you say to him?’ Carey led her around a large soft patch where the market beasts were usually tethered near the Cathedral. Ahead of them walked Young Henry Widdrington, being very tactful; before him were Lord and Lady Scrope, and at the tail and head of the little procession, the two torchbearers.

‘I said there was no substitute for overseeing litigation personally and that when Michaelmas Term begins he should post down to London and deal with it himself.’

‘Have you been in Westminster Hall?’

‘You know I was, Robert. In 1588 I dealt with that problem over the chantry lands Sir Henry was supposed to get from the man who murdered his brother.’

‘What happened?’

‘We won.’

Carey hid a smile.

‘That must have been when I was ill,’ he said.

‘No, you were convalescing by then, but you weren’t very interested.’

This time he had to laugh a little. ‘I could have been a barrister, you know.’

Elizabeth turned her face to him and looked disbelieving, the Castle looming behind her shoulder.

‘It’s true. Father suggested it to me; he said he’d pay for me to go to one of the Inns of Court if I wanted and he would find me a good pupil-master. After that I would be on my own, naturally.’

‘They say it’s a good way to office at court,’ Elizabeth said neutrally.

‘Hmf. Is it indeed? Take that catamite, Francis Bacon. They say Bacon’s the best lawyer of his generation but he gets nowhere because the Queen doesn’t like him, so what good was all his studying? I went to Paris and learnt to dress well and play cards.’ And make love to women, he thought privately, but didn’t say.

‘Besides,’ added Elizabeth, ‘put you in Westminster with some jowelly lawyer insinuating that you must be either insane or lying, while his father-in-law the judge agrees with him, and your sword would be out in a moment.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Carey, quite offended. ‘I can orate, if I must. It’s the studying law that would have been hopeless. The only Latin I ever learned was Catullus and that was because my brother told me what it meant.
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus
…’

‘Good Lord,’ said Elizabeth, curiously. ‘Are you trying to impress me with Latin poetry? I’m not the Queen, I know hardly any Latin.’

‘Yes,’ said Carey truculently. ‘Why not? I even remember what it means. “
Let us live and love, my…Elizabeth…And judge the jealous rumours of old men worth but a penny
”.’

That was a little too apposite, given the age of Sir Henry Widdrington. Elizabeth turned away and sniffed briefly. Carey touched her hand with his to draw her attention, and went on insistently. Damn it, the beatings his tutor had inflicted in his youth to try and drive at least one declension into his head must be good for something! Besides, this was a crib he had learned by heart for some much-feared lesson long ago, and miraculously it had stuck, perhaps because it was scandalous. And God knew he was no hand at making up stuff like that for himself; he had learned not to embarrass himself that way before he was twenty. Other men’s plumage would do for him. He smiled and recited softly, like the very gentlest passage of a madrigal.

‘“
The sun may set and return again, but when our brief light is doused, we sleep in endless night. So give me a thousand kisses, and then a hundred more, and a thousand yet again, and a further hundred, and then when we have kissed so many thousand times, let us tumble them together, that neither we nor evil jealousy may ever tell, how very many were our kisses
”.’

She was watching him steadily with those clear grey eyes, and as they walked, Carey leaned over and down a little, and kissed her lips.

‘One,’ he said and smiled for sheer delight at the taste of her, for all it had been quite a decorous kiss. Her chin trembled for a moment before she set it firmly.

‘Did the Queen’s maids-in-waiting find your Latin impressive?’ she asked. The harshness of the words was a little tempered by the softness in her voice. He couldn’t take offence; why should he? He wanted her in his bed that night, he was determined on it and she knew it.

‘Of course not,’ he laughed. ‘There are far better Latinists than me about the Queen. Hundreds of them. I expect her laundress knows more than I do.’

‘Card-players?’

‘No. There, I’m the best.’

Again the dubious snort. He found it charming. But, as he had to admit, he found everything about her unreasonably charming.

‘Why did you leave?’

‘To be closer to you.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Elizabeth Widdrington with that same hard grey stare. ‘I think you were bored.’

He gestured with his free hand. ‘That too, of course. But I could have gone back to the Netherlands. I could have gone to Ireland…’

‘What?’

‘Well, no; perhaps not Ireland—but France. I could have wangled a place with the King of Navarre. I know the man and he likes me.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly, Robin. This is all very flattering, but you’re here on the Border because it’s closer to the King of Scots, and you know Burghley and his son want King James on the Queen’s throne when she dies.’

For a moment he examined her face quite seriously. As a younger man he might have been annoyed at her unwomanly astuteness; now he thought how refreshing she was after the greedy empty-headed girls of the Court.

They had passed the orchards and the sweet smell of the Castle’s physic garden, and had come, very unhelpfully, to the postern in the main gate which Scrope was trying to unlock. Young Henry Widdrington took his leave of them and ambled off to his lodgings. Carey drew Elizabeth aside a little.

‘Are you offended with me, my heart?’ he asked softly. ‘There’s no need to try and create a quarrel. I love you. If you don’t love me, say so now, and I will leave you in peace.’

Elizabeth frowned and looked down. ‘I am…I am only offended because…I’m married.’

‘To an old bully with the gout.’

‘It’s easy to despise the old when you’re young and healthy.’

‘I’m not that young and I…’

‘Robin, even if I were a widow you would be mad to marry me.’ Her voice had taken a metallic tinge as she cut across his words. ‘No friend of yours would let you. I’ve no more than four hundred pounds in jointure; Young Henry gets the land and houses when his father dies. You should marry some rich lady of the Court and settle your fortunes properly.’