A Chorus of Innocents (18 page)

Now she had thought of it, it gave her a bad feeling in her stomach, an anxious unhappy feeling. Henry made a few more pompous speeches about being more careful and she waited him out because he was right. She wasn't at Widdrington now, where the only real danger to her was Sir Henry.

“You're quite right,” she said. “I'll start for home tomorrow.”

Well that was no good, either, apparently. Was she quite sure she was all right, had she felt dizzy…? She had, but she certainly didn't want to tell him. “I'll decide in the morning,” she said after she had listened patiently to about enough of it. “I'm for my bed.”

She went upstairs to the big bed with its tester and curtains and found herself the only occupant, not even a girl sleeping on the truckle. Henry and the cousins were sleeping downstairs and where, she wondered, was Anricks?

Before she got undressed, she took a look in his room with the old bed in it and saw his pack still there, half open and with his instrument case taken out so presumably he was treating someone.

She thought about it, and went downstairs again. A little later she had young Cuddy Trotter's mam coming pink-faced and flustered up the stairs to sleep in her bedroom with her and keep the proprieties. Henry had the grace to be embarrassed about that, he'd forgotten about the barber surgeon.

When Anricks came back, with blood still under his nails, Henry asked him belligerently if he still wanted to sleep upstairs.

“It's perfectly all right, Mr Widdrington,” said Elizabeth to her stepson. “I have Mrs Trotter to sleep with me.”

Henry scowled at Anricks as if it was his fault everyone thought he might be a Jesuit.

Anricks took his instrument case into the scullery and used a bucket of water there to wash his instruments, which were fine ones of steel and looked fragile for the heavy work of pulling teeth.

“Mr Widdrington, would you like to inspect my mirror and my tools?” asked Anricks with a perfectly straight face. “I assure you I'm not any kind of Jesuit or Papist.”

“So you say, sir,” said Henry who was clearly still upset about something, although Elizabeth had no idea what.

Anricks brought the pack over and the instruments and plopped them down in front of him. “There you are, sir,” he said. “Will you be wanting to search me personally?”

“Er…no.”

Henry made a half-hearted search of the pack which contained shirts, hose, breeks, bandages, a packet of mouldy lamb pasties that had to go out into the yard and onto the dung heap, several small books including Ascham's
The Schoolmaster
, and a great deal of writing paper thickly scrawled.

“What's this?” asked Henry, holding up a page between thumb and forefinger.

“My book, sir,” said Anricks, still equably. “My accounts of the North and my thoughts on the tooth-drawing trade and also my speculations on the nature of toothworms.”

“Yours?”

“Ay sir, perhaps I may get it published next time I am in London. If I can come up with a way to prevent holes and rotten teeth, I will be famous and rich.”

“What way is that?”

“I think the avoidance of sugar is one thing, for toothworms seem to be attracted to it. In a family where one child loved sugar plums and the other child preferred cheese, it was the sugar plum-eater who had the worms and the holes, although…” Henry grunted and squinted at the writing.

“Why can't I read it?”

“I don't know, it's in English.”

Henry flushed and turned it the right way up and started to puzzle out some of the words. “For toothworms, if they exist, must live in the stomach and come into the mouth by way of the throat…”

Elizabeth smiled. Anricks had a strange kind of patience, a watchful intelligent kind that does not allow emotions such as doubt or anger to interfere. Suddenly she found herself wondering about him again. Jesuits were supposed not to lie about being priests, though according to the pamphlets, they could equivocate.

Perhaps she could find out more about Jamie Burn from him.

“Gentlemen,” she said, “none of us have had supper and I'm hungry. Shall we eat whatever's left in the larder and be friends?”

There was the end of a hambone, there was more pottage, there were quite a lot of bits of calf, though no one had thought of the perfectly simple operation of putting the bones and some potherbs to a large pot of water and making soup, and there was the remains of the sheep as well.

They served it up in the Burns' dining parlour as one remove with some bread that needed to be toasted to make it edible. They brought in the remains of the beer and the ale, which was just on the turn and would be spoiled by the morrow. Elizabeth invited Mrs Trotter to join them and the Widdrington cousins as well, although they were on watch, strictly speaking, since Henry wasn't about to allow another incident like the last. But they agreed to take it in turns, and she reserved plates for the two on watch first who were Humphrey and Daniel. Hector and Sim were understandably nervous of eating at her table but she reckoned honour was satisfied and served them some of everything and some of the ale they had nearly allowed to be reived as well.

She sat at the other end with Young Henry and Cuddy's mam, Mrs Trotter, and Mr Anricks as well and as the eldest man there Young Henry gave place to him. Mr Anricks said grace. It was slightly unusual. “Blessed be you, Lord God of the World, of your goodness we have this meat and drink to our dinner, which Earth has given and human hands have made.” But it wasn't Catholic, not being in Latin.

“Amen,” she answered to it firmly and took some of the veal which was excellent even cold; she'd boil it up into a soup tomorrow just on general principles.

They talked of neutral things until Elizabeth thought that you can but ask again and said to Hector, “By the way, were you working for anybody the other night or was it just a bit of foolishness?”

“Foolishness,” said Hector who had come at her with a knife.

“Jock Tait,” said Sim with a lowering look at Hector. “It were Jock that tellt us he had some buyers for the beer and what would we say to a shilling?”

Young Henry put down his knife and glared at Sim and Hector. Elizabeth managed a repressive glance and smiled at the two lads, neither of them over nineteen, she thought.

“Och,” said Hector.

“Did he say who the buyers were?”

Both of them shook their heads. Sim too had a splendid crop of spots though he wasn't as big and broad as Young Henry.

“Did you get your shilling?” Two heads shook sadly. “I thought not. Have you ever ridden with Jock Tait?”

“Ay, o' course,” said Hector and Young Henry was now staring busily at his food and stirring the pottage.

“Ay, well, ma'am,” said Young Henry. “It's when we're hitting the Routledges and the Carletons that we…eh…well we ride wi' the Taits and the Burns.”

“And the Elliots?”

“Wee Colin? No, he's an unchancy bastard though him and Geordie Burn are thick as porridge together.”

“So Jock Tait's a good man, is he?”

“Ay,” said Sim, “he's no' extra special wi' anything like Young Henry can shoot wi' a gun, but he's a good solid all round man, good wi' a lance and a sword if he had one, and he's good at scouting too.”

“I heard tell it was the Elliots who wanted the beer?”

“Nay, ma'am,” said Henry, “they like the Burns.”

“So who wanted the beer?”

“Perhaps it was Jock Tait himself,” said Simon Anricks thoughtfully. “To spoil the funeral, since you say he doesn't like…didn't like the minister.”

“Perhaps,” she said, “and I heard that Jamie Burn was out last month, reiving. Surely that's not true?”

How very interesting the faces were. Young Henry was surprised, and then thoughtful as if it wasn't such a surprise after all. Hector and Sim were not surprised. Simon Anricks, just for a second had an extraordinary look on his face, of understanding and regret and worry, which closed up at once into conventional shock.

“Ah dinna ken, missus,” said Hector with a warning look at Sim that should have molten his helmet which was sitting beside him on the table.

“Well, never mind, I expect it was just gossip,” agreed Elizabeth brightly. “You two can go and relieve Humphrey and Daniel now.”

They clattered off while Elizabeth served some more of the mutton to Young Henry and Simon Anricks, then helped herself to half of what was left.

“Jock Tait's the hero of another tale I heard, too,” she said while Humphrey and Daniel shovelled food into their mouths. They weren't brothers like Ekie and Sim, sons of one of Sir Henry's younger half-brothers, but cousins. Sir Henry had many sisters and brothers and half-brothers and they all lived round about Widdrington. As a surname it was numerous and had a name for being fierce for the Middle March, where the village actually was. She told how she had found out the horses were looked after by young Jimmy Tait and the scrap of dialogue the boys had given her, how someone called Spiny could wait.

Young Henry put down his eating knife and looked appalled.

“The Earl of Spynie?” he asked.

“I don't know,” she answered regretfully. “It could just be a reiver with very wiry hair.”

“Good God, if it's him…”

“It doesn't actually help us find the murderers,” she told him, “but Jock Tait could. If we could persuade him to give us the men's names and be a witness.”

“I suppose going to him with the cousins, grabbing him and hitting him until he told us wouldn't be a plan you'd like?” said Young Henry, good humouredly.

“No, Henry,” she said, “it's like all short-cuts—gets very long in the end. If we did that do you think he would stick around to be a witness at the trial? If there is one? He might not tell you anyway, he looks a tough nut to crack. And besides,” she added, “you have no jurisdiction of any kind here, this is Scotland.”

“I have the right to follow the trod,” said Young Henry, “same as anyone else.”

“You aren't here on a trod, you're here for a funeral.”

He didn't answer and looked mulish. Simon Anricks was looking very thoughtful and she thought she'd do some more stirring, again on general principles. It sometimes made her very tired the way menfolk tried to keep their reiving and other dubious behaviour secret, as if women could be fooled so easily.

“Mr Anricks,” she said, “you were friends with the minister. You don't think he really was out last month?”

Anricks answered slowly. “I knew he wanted some money quickly because he asked me about it, but I said I couldn't help him. And he said something then that worried me but I put it out of my mind. I shouldn't have done, I regret it greatly.”

“What was it he said?”

“When I said I couldn't help him, he said, no matter, he already knew another way to get the money and he'd look into that.”

“Did he say what the other way was?”

“He said he'd talk to the Kerrs, that's all.”

“The Kerrs?” The Kings and Princes of the Middle March, in other words. Some of the worst reivers on the Border, north or south. “Cessford? Ferniehurst?”

Anricks shrugged. “That's all he said, I wish I'd asked him but I didn't. I just told him to be careful.”

In the end they could come to no conclusion about Jock Tait except to see if they could bribe him. And also Elizabeth had a worry that Tait would know who had told Elizabeth about the horses and young Jimmy might be badly beaten, or even killed. It had to be done with great care, as with everything else on the frontier. The only person she knew who really rejoiced at such complexities and loved working them out was Robin, whom she was duty bound not to contact. Where was he now? Was he well? She'd have heard if he was married because her husband would tell her, immediately, but had he met anyone else? It was right for him to marry someone else, God knew he needed the money, but…

Anricks went to his little guest chamber and Elizabeth recruited Humphrey and Daniel to take the trenchers and dishes into the scullery. They put them in to soak in the bucket of water Anricks had used and left them.

In the bedroom, Elizabeth invited Mrs Trotter to share the big bed rather than the truckle with the hole in it and listened drowsily to a very interesting account of young Cuddy Trotter and how he loved his lessons and how he could read all manner of things like a Bible in the church and a ballad sheet too, read it right off as if he had just heard it and how excited he'd been the month before. The minister had been full of excitement as well; they were talking of all making a journey to Carlisle, all the boys in the school in October and…

“All the boys in the school?” she asked, wide awake again.

“Ay, my lady,” said Cuddy's mam, “they wis all to walk tae Carlisle together, him and them and they'd go the long way about it fra here down the Great North Road tae Berwick and they hadnae decided whether to go across the tops of the Cheviots or take the long way round from Newcastle by the old Faery Road behind the Faery Wall, tae Carlisle. He thought it would take a week but…”

“Why not go to Newcastle? It's much nearer?”

“Ay well, it's the choir at Carlisle. He wanted tae see if any o' the boys could be 'prenticed singers there.”

“Would you like Cuddy to do that?”

“Ay, I would, for Cuddy could be a clerk or even a minister like Minister Burn hisself but Cuddy canna sing at all so I doot they'd take him. Still, it's an adventure and the boys wis all for it and maist o' the parents. Maist.”

“Not Jock Tait.”

“Ay and one o' the ithers, but the minister said it was a' or none and he'd see tae it. He was planning to take Lord Hughie as well.”

“Why was he doing all this? He didn't have to.”

“Ah, that's the Reverend Gilpin for ye.”