2 A Season of Knives: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (5 page)

It would have hurt less if she had slapped him. They were the last to go through the postern gate, so Carey shut and locked it and threw the keys to Lord Scrope, who dropped them.

Philadelphia whisked the keys off the ground, took her husband’s arm in hers and practically frogmarched him to the rooms in the dilapidated old Keep where they were living while the Warden’s Lodgings at the Castle Gate were being cleaned and refurbished.

‘I’m sorry you think so little of me,’ Carey managed to say to Elizabeth, without sounding as bad as he felt.

‘Be sensible. I think very well of you, too well to think you’d let yourself be carried away by romantic nonsense.’ She hadn’t been looking at him, but now she did. ‘How much do you owe?’ He didn’t answer because he wasn’t quite sure himself. ‘Thousands, I’ll be bound. You’re neither rich enough nor poor enough to marry for love, and it’s a very fickle foundation for a proper marriage anyway. You’ve been at Court listening to silly poets vapouring about their goddesses for too long.’

Now they were facing each other, suddenly turned to adversaries, wasting a still summer night designed for dalliance. Elizabeth no longer had her arm in his.

For a moment Carey couldn’t think of anything to say, since she was completely right about his finances, and what she said was no more than what all his friends and his father had told him often. He didn’t care.

‘You haven’t told me you don’t love me,’ he said stubbornly.

‘That’s got nothing to do with anything,’ she said. ‘I’m married. Not to you, but to a…a rightful husband called Sir Henry Widdrington. That’s the beginning and end of it.’

She turned away, to follow the Scropes up to the Keep. Carey thought of his bed, with its musty curtains and its expanse of emptiness, and put his hand on her arm to hold her, turn her to him and kiss her until he relit the passion in her…She slapped his hand away and hissed, ‘Will you stop?’

She picked up her skirts and ran.

Carey went blindly after her through the covered way, through the Captain’s gate and under the starclad night to the Queen Mary Tower. He climbed the stairs feeling heavy and tired, found his bedchamber dark and empty. He lit a rush-dip from the one lighting the stair, poured himself some wine and sat looking at the pewter tankard for a long time. He had never seen tears on Elizabeth Widdrington’s face before.

***

At the Red Bull, Jemmy Atkinson counted out the money in front of the men he had employed to beat up his wife’s lover. Billy Little’s brother Long George had somehow come into the matter as well. Never mind, they weren’t asking any more for him.

‘You told him, Sergeant?’

‘Ay,’ said Ill-Willit Daniel Nixon.

Atkinson’s thin lips pursed with satisfaction.

‘Mr Atkinson?’ said Long George. ‘What happens if Andy Nixon remembers who we are and sues for assault and battery?’

‘You didn’t let him get a look at you?’

‘Not much of one. But he heard Sergeant Nixon’s voice at least.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Atkinson. ‘All of this has been arranged through Sir Richard Lowther. If there’s a court case Sir Richard will be your good lord and see to the jury, and Nixon knows he’ll not get off so lightly next time.’

They looked at each other and nodded, but Long George was still frowning worriedly. He wiped his runny nose on his sleeve again.

‘Well, but, master,’ he said, ‘Sir Richard’s not Deputy Warden any more.’

Atkinson’s face grew pinched and mean. The actual Deputy Warden, Sir Robert Carey, had wanted to sack him from his office as Armoury Clerk on discovering that most of the weapons in the Carlisle armoury had disappeared, to be replaced with wooden dummies. The Warden had been Atkinson’s good lord on that occasion, protesting that they didn’t have anyone else in Carlisle capable of dealing with the armoury. Carey had in fact sacked Atkinson from his other, even more lucrative, office of Paymaster to the Garrison, after somehow getting hold of and reading the garrison account books.

‘I have every confidence in Sir Richard’s ability to send that nosy long-shanked prick of a courtier running back to London crying for his mother,’ he said venomously.

‘Mm,’ said Long George. He started to say something and then thought better of it.

‘And in addition no one else will be witnesses, will they?’

‘No,’ said Ill-Willit Daniel.

Long George and his brother stayed in the common room until late, playing dice for pennies with their new-gotten wealth. Atkinson too seemed to be waiting for something, and sat drinking in solitary splendour. At last Billy touched Long George’s arm and he turned to see Lowther advancing towards Atkinson. Long George stayed still and hoped he’d be invisible.

Lowther was in a dour mood, greeted Atkinson and sat down in the booth with him. They talked quietly for a while and Atkinson finally beckoned Mick the Crow over from the knot of drinkers by the empty fireplace. Lowther had sent the potboy for pens and paper and was writing. Mick pulled his forelock to Lowther and went out with him into the yard. Lowther didn’t come back in again, but Mick the Crow did, nervously checking something he had inside his shirt. Long George opened his mouth to ask what was going on but Billy kicked him and they went out the back to the dormitory to sleep.

Atkinson went home to one of the few two-storey houses in Carlisle, in a row facing the marketplace and the end of Scotch street. He was savouring the sour pleasure of revenge. His wife had not waited up for him, so he drank home-brewed beer from the cask by himself in the downstairs living room until wife, lawyers, lovers, brothers-in-law all faded away, until he felt the horns on his head a little less sore, and he staggered up the narrow stairs, pulling his boots off on the way, and dropping his doublet and hose at the door to his bedchamber. Then hiccupping slightly he ripped the curtains aside and toppled into bed next to his bitch of a wife. For a while the room and the little watchlight on the bedhead whirled, so he sat up on his elbow and waited for it to settle. His wife was on her back, her smock pulled down off her shoulder to show her pitiful little pointed dug, her mouth half-open and snoring. The best you could say for her was that she had a reasonable dowry. What Andy Nixon saw in her was beyond him. For a moment he thought of waking her and telling her what he had done. Perhaps she would weep; certainly the bitch would deny everything. And then he could slap her, pull up her smock and have his rights there and then, but it was too much trouble and he was too drunk.

He passed out without even bothering to shut the bed-curtains or douse the candle, looking forward to telling her in the morning.

Sunday 2nd July 1592, midnight

Solomon Musgrave was a big fat man with one arm and no teeth; he had lost an arm in action under Lord Hunsdon during the Rising of the Northern Earls, and so he had a permanent position in the Carlisle garrison despite being useless for fighting. He generally kept the gate and slept happily through the day, living as nocturnally as the Castle cats. He was usually the first to see the beacons that told of reivers over the Border and had the job of waking the bellringer who lived permanently up at the keep. Occasionally he bribed one of the boys to do his job, but as a general rule he liked it. It was peaceful in the night and his eyes were so adjusted to darkness that he found daylight often too bright for him and hard-edged.

And he saw a great deal. To his private satisfaction, he knew more about what happened in the Castle than anyone else. He had watched the new Deputy try and coax his ladylove to bed and receive his setdown. He had heard the Scropes in their usual arguments as their yawning maid and manservant got them undressed and he knew that Young Hutchin Graham was doing his best to bed one of the scullery maids, with no success whatever.

He stood at his sentrypost, admiring the stars as they wheeled across the sky, and heard somebody approaching the barred main gate.

Solomon Musgrave tilted his halberd against the stone quietly and leaned over the battlements. There was a hiccup and a loud belch, followed by the noise of puking. The words that floated up to him were too slurred and distorted for understanding, though he recognised the voice and grinned.

Looking across at the Queen Mary Tower, which still had the shutters on the window open, he saw the faint light of a rush-dip still burning. The lusty and fire-eating young Deputy could wait all night for his servant. Barnabus Cooke had had a skinful: more than a skinful. Singing floated up in the silence, something mucky about a Hatter’s Daughter of Islington, wherever that was, and then more swearing.

‘Shut that noise,’ he called down. ‘Folks wantae sleep.’

‘Lemme in,’ came the answer. ‘C’mon, or I’ll sing.’

Solomon Musgrave grinned. ‘Ye can sleep there or find a bed. Ah dinnae care which, but if ye sing I’ll spear ye like a fish.’

There was another loud belch. ‘Come on,’ whined the Londoner below, ‘I’ve…got to shee to hish honour Sir Robert Carey inna morning.’

‘Then I’ll do his honour a right favour and keep ye out. Ye’d fell him with yer breath the way ye are, I can smell it from here. Go to sleep.’

‘He’ll beat me if I’m abess…abs…not there,’ came the pathetic bleat.

‘And nae more than ye deserve,’ said Solomon Musgrave primly. ‘Shame on ye, to be so drunk. Go to sleep.’

‘
She was only a ‘atter’s dooooorter an’ she…
’

Quietly Solomon went along the sentry walk, picked a slim javelin from its sheaf, went back and listened to the adventures of the Hatter’s Daughter for a few seconds until he was sure of his aim, then threw. There was a satisfying whipchunk sound, and the vibration of the wooden shaft. The caterwauling stopped. After a moment, Barnabus’s voice came again.

‘Wotcher do that for?’

‘I said I would.’

‘You could’ve killed me.’

‘Ay. Next time I willnae miss. Go to sleep.’

There was more sullen muttering and cursing, then shuffling and rustling sounds. Solomon Musgrave squinted down and saw that, from the look of it, Barnabus had picked up the javelin, rolled himself up in his cloak with his back against the wood of the door, pulled his hat over his eyes and gone to sleep. A noise that combined the music of a pigpen and the regularity of a sawpit rolled up towards him.

Solomon Musgrave sighed. ‘Ah wish Ah’d known the man sounded better drunk and awake.’

Feeling sorry for the Deputy who presumably shared a room with that awful noise, he went back to his contemplation of the heavens.

Monday 3rd July 1592, early morning

By the time Jemmy Atkinson’s wife Kate had tired of shrieking up the stairs to wake him, the sun was well up and her two eldest boys had eaten their porridge, fed the chickens in the yard and gone off to school. Her cousin Julia Coldale had been late arriving that morning and late starting work. At last she was in the scullery at the back of the house, plunging the paddle methodically in the butterchurn, trying to get the butter to come. By the sound it would be a while yet, because the girl would keep stopping for breath. Kate’s daughter Mary was sitting on a window seat in a patch of sunlight, blinking perplexedly at her sampler and occasionally putting her needle in as she held her breath and stuck out her tongue with the effort to do it right. The mousy ends of her hair hung out under her little white cap and her kirtle was a fine rose wool, with her petticoat showing crooked underneath. Kate Atkinson smiled at her fondly; after two boys, who spent most of their time finding new ways of almost killing themselves, her small girl’s anxiety to be good was lovable. Mary looked up at her mother and smiled back.

‘I’ll fetch your father his porridge,’ said Kate Atkinson. ‘And then I’ll come and show you a new stitch.’ She sighed. She needed more help in the house, but her husband refused to allow her to waste his money on idle girls so she could sit by a window and plot like his bitch of a half-sister.

‘I done this one almost straight,’ said little Mary proudly. ‘Look.’

Kate Atkinson looked and agreed that it was much straighter than the one above and in a little while all her stitching would be completely straight. The child wasn’t likely to be a beauty, with her mousy hair and sallow complexion, but she would have a good dowry and unimpeachable skills in housewifery; she should make a good enough match.

Suppressing the knowledge that her own marriage had been a good enough match according to her mother, Mrs Atkinson took the bowl of porridge, sprinkled salt on it, laid it on a tray with a mug of small ale and steeled herself to the unpleasantness that awaited her upstairs. He had been drinking half the night. She knew he had; she had woken in the dark to the pungent smell of beer and the lolling body of James half shoving her out of bed. The watch-light had burned down wastefully and he hadn’t even drawn the curtains to keep out the dangerous bad airs of the summer. She muttered to herself about it as she climbed the stairs carefully.

It was a long time before she came down again, and when she did she was as white as linen. Her hands shook as she found her husband’s black bottle of aqua vitae in the lock-up cupboard and took a couple of painful swallows.

Ten minutes later, Mary Atkinson trotted self-importantly through the broad streets of Carlisle, carefully lifting her kirtle away from the little midden heaps all around. Mrs Leigh their next door neighbour waved to her and asked how she was, and she explained that she was very well as her mam had told her to do, before trotting on. She avoided the courtyard with the Fierce Pig in it and said hallo to three cats and a friendly dog, which took a little time. She also waved to Susie Talyer but couldn’t stop to skip with her because she was taking a Message.