A Chorus of Innocents (30 page)

Sunday 22nd October 1592

One of the men on the roof of the Grahams' tower was finally hit and while the other three dragged him down, the men of the castle guard ran with the two long ladders, up to the corners of the tower, placed them and started climbing as fast as they could. Dodd was first over the top and took out one of the men there with one sweep of his sword, and the other defenders ran to the trapdoor and scurried down it, locked it on them.

They had the roof. Dodd gave the thumbs-up to Carey down below who stopped the firing. Then he looked about on the slate roof and found a corner where the slates were loose. They started taking the slates off with the picks and mattocks and found they could look straight down into the tower's upper room where nine Grahams and two Burns were standing about arguing and shouting at each other. Dodd got off as many slates as he could by kicking them, held onto the roof beam underneath with the tips of his fingers, swung over the gap, and dropped straight on top of Archie Burn—as he later found out—who broke his fall nicely. He punched the man in the head just to make sure, though. Red Sandy followed him through and then Bangtail and the rest of the men, and after a couple of blows and one man gone with a sword through his leg and a fountain of bright red blood, the Grahams in the tower started laying their swords down and asking for quarter. Dodd insisted they be given it. He didn't want a feud with the Grahams.

He went down the ladder into the bottom half of the tower to make sure, found only frightened hobbies there, and so he opened the first floor iron gate and put the ladder down again.

Carey was first up it at speed.

“The Elliots are on the horizon,” he said. “We're moving into the tower.”

The ten men and one corpse who had been in the tower were now tied up and dropped temporarily in with the hobbies while all the twenty-two men of the castle guard scurried into the tower and the several hundred Ridleys, Hodgsons, and Littles came in close, surrounding it and facing out.

“There,” said Carey in a pleased voice when all the rushing around was done, “that's the nicest turnabout I've seen in a while. Well done, gentlemen, that went like clockwork.”

There was a shout from outside and Carey went to see through the open iron gate. “The Trained Bands are on their way, too,” he said with a stupidly happy grin. “Look there!”

Dodd squinted into the distance, annoyed that Carey had seen them first and saw Blennerhassets Troop, Denham's Troop, and Beverly's Troop jog-trotting along the road from Carlisle with their jacks and helmets on, one with pikes, one with arquebuses, and one with mixed weapons. You could always tell the pikes; it looked so sinister, a block of sharp long spears all moving as one, rippling with the pace of the men.

“Oh yes, my beauties!” Carey crowed and even Dodd had to swallow down a grin at the sight of the four hundred and fifty reinforcements coming at a very nice pace along the road with Andy Nixon jogging at their head along with the captain of the Trained Bands. Behind them was Nick Smithson, the de facto leader of Essex' deserters, and all seven of his men behind him, which was nice to see.

Over on the Border hills a troop of cavalry was coming at a much faster pace because they had further to go and somehow hadn't spotted the Trained Bands yet. The Trained Bands saw them and picked up the pace from a jog to a run, and ran that last half mile to where the Ridleys, Littles, and Hodgsons were cheering them on.

“Thank you for coming out to me, gentlemen,” sang Carey in an effortless bellow. “In your troops now, pikes to the fore, arquebuses back, FORM SQUARES!”

Dodd knew that Carey had been training the city bands since the summer, but was impressed when the men of the city of Carlisle sorted themselves out into two neat pike squares, backed by arquebuses facing in the direction of the Elliots. Meanwhile the men from the nearest surnames had collected their hobbies and mounted and grouped themselves loosely in families at the back and sides.

And there was a wagon coming down the road with Anricks sitting on it. He was too far away to see, and yet Dodd knew it was him from the set of his hat. He decided he preferred to meet his blood enemies on a horse and so he followed Carey as he slid down the ladder, boots either side of it and went for his own hobby.

Carey was mounted on Sorrel. Andy Nixon came over to him.

“The men of the Trained Bands of Carell City are ready, sir,” he said and tipped his helmet to both Carey and Dodd.

Carey sent some of the youngest of the surnames out into the countryside to scout for any more Elliots on their way. Carleton came out of the farmhouse at that moment and blinked at the battle lines with men running to and fro into place by their mates and the arquebusiers all busy with their weapons, loading them, and lighting slow matches.

Then he looked at Carey and stated the obvious. “So we'll have a battle?”

Carey smiled at him. “No need to worry, Captain,” he said affably, “ye can get back to yer fire if ye like.”

Carleton's smile almost slipped and he paused.

“So is this how ye do things in France and the Low Countries?”

“Ay,” said Carey, the Berwick man showing, “sometimes. Wait till ye see what guid foot troops can do to light cavalry, given pikes and guns.”

Carleton didn't answer. Dodd felt a warm and savage smile across his face as he sat on his restive hobby and waited for the Elliots to arrive. There were five hundred of them he thought, squinting into the rain on its way, at a rough guess, maybe seven hundred, more than enough to take the twenty-five men of the guard but now quite evenly matched. And this way of running a battle was new to him but he was seeing the implications of the pikes and guns already. Every man with an arquebus had it loaded now and a slow match lit and they had done the loading with that precise sequence of motions that Carey had used when he loaded a caliver in the summer. They had done it quickly, too. There was every chance that with the pikes to fend off the horses, they could reload two or three times in the battle. What could that do to a bunch of lightly armoured horsemen? There was no armour could keep off an arquebus ball, that he knew.

The Elliots rode closer, down to the trot now, they could see in the dawnlight what was waiting for them. He saw Wee Colin Elliot at their head and his smile got broader and he started to laugh. Och, God, this was wonderful; this was worth all the riding about and going down to London and being up all night again, even bathing. This was worth it. He wasn't even going against the agreement between the Dodds and the Elliots, brokered by Gilpin and Lord Hunsdon that had sent him to Carlisle because the Elliots were coming into the West March of England armed and arrayed for battle. Just not expecting the battle they would get, of course.

The men of the guard had seen him laughing and looked at each other in wonder, then they started to laugh, too. Carey glanced once at Dodd, raised his brows and then settled himself on his horse, a little to the fore, in his plain English jack and his fancy gold-chased morion helmet, his beard showing strongly now since he hadn't been able to bear a razor on his face with his toothache. No sign of swelling now, he looked quite impressive and dangerous, what was more, with that light devil-may-care smile on his face. Och, God, yes! Dodd almost found himself liking the Courtier.

Dodd allowed himself to think of his father for the first time in years, dead on the end of an Elliot spear in a nasty little mess of an ambush, just after telling Dodd a joke so the remains of the laugh were still in his throat as he saw his father shudder and stare and his eyes roll up. The end of Dodd's boyhood right there in that second as he got the rest of his uncles and cousins to run, as they ran away from the Elliots who came after them on horseback and cut them down, as they hid on the hill in the bracken and the Elliots came by on foot to finish them off and he lay still and marked them, every one in his memory. For this. This glorious moment when he would kill Wee Colin and his brothers and uncles and cousins, all of them. Maybe he would leave the girls alive, he wasn't as bloodthirsty now as he'd been in his teens. Maybe.

The Elliots had come to a stop and were looking uncertainly at the pikes and the arquebuses. Carey watched them with interest. Nothing happened. Horses stamped and jingled bridles, the men breathed. Nothing happened.

Friday 20th October 1592

She stood there so long that her arm got tired and then a man came up behind Lord Spynie. It was Cousin William.

“My lord,” he said, “the King is here.”

Spynie turned, his gun wavered and then Cousin William punched him on the point of his jaw and knocked him down. Two men behind him took Spynie's gun and picked him up, hanging.

“Is the King really here?” asked Elizabeth, after a deep shaky breath. “Because if he is, I have something to say to him.”

“Ay, he is.”

“He is?”

“Ay, ma'am, and my lord Chancellor Maitland as well.”

Elizabeth turned to Lord Hughie in delight just in time to see him sway dangerously where he stood on the battlement wall. How she moved so fast she never knew but one moment she saw him sway, the next she had hold of his shirt and the moment after that, Cousin William had caught his arms and was lifting him up and over onto the stone flags.

Lord Hughie was pale but he rallied. “Jesu,” he said, “as soon as I didn't want to, I nearly did.”

Elizabeth almost laughed. She turned to one of the men, Humphrey Fenwick it was. “Where is my husband?” she asked.

“He wouldna come up with Lord Spynie,” he said with utter contempt. “He was affeared.”

Lord Spynie was shaking off his helpers and rubbing his jaw. Then he found that somebody had taken his sword. “I want to see the King?” he said desperately to some more men coming up to the tower roof.

“All in good time,” said one wearing Maitland of Lethington's livery. “My lady's first tae see the King.”

She went slowly down the stairs, her legs wobbling inconveniently with reaction so she had to keep stopping to steady herself. The constant turning made her feel giddy as well and she stopped at the bottom for a while. Then she went out into the green that had once been cloisters and was still a garden, if winter-blasted. There, in his padded black and tawny doublet, high hat and grubby linen was the canny twenty-eight-year old who was still, somehow, ruling Scotland—and had been since he was two years old. She stepped forward, breathing through her mouth so she wouldn't smell him, and went to both knees in front of him.

“Lady Widdrington?” he asked.

“Your Majesty,” she said, purely out of habit, though the Scottish custom was to call him “Your Highness.” She saw that it was just like calling a goodman ‘Mister'—he liked it. So she stayed where she was and said it again.

He smiled at her. “Lady Widdrington,” he said, “I'm fair delighted to see you again. I suppose your friend Sir Robert Carey is…”

“In Carlisle, sire,” she said, carefully not thinking about how it felt to hold Robin tight against her, “as far as I know.”

He looked disappointed. “Weel, weel, off yer puir knees, come ben and tell me all about it. The Humes are well stirred up and we canna have that, can we?”

Ah. That was good. She looked for Cousin William who being Scottish was standing behind her with his neck bent and saw what had happened. It was one thing for Lord Spynie to collect bumboys from among the unimportant, but Lord Hughie was a laird in his own right, or would be. So it was quite a different matter for one of the family that ruled the Scottish East March, even a cadet branch. That was why Cousin William hadn't come after Lord Hughie as Jock Tait had come after Jimmy; he must have been talking to Earl Hume.

So she stood and took the King's arm when he offered it to her. As the rain came down in spots and sheets, they walked to the part of the abbey that was most watertight and warm, the old warming room where there were three rough bunkbeds for the monks and all their clutter as well. Every single sock in the place had holes in it.

She told the King almost all of the tale of the killing of Jamie Burn as they walked, and he clucked and tutted like an old Edinburgh wifey. Brother Aurelius came in proudly with a big bowl of some horrible stew which the King took one spoonful of and then ignored. He kept on listening.

And at the end of it all he gave her a kiss on the forehead. “My, you're clever for a woman,” he said. “Sir Henry is lucky to have ye and I shall tell him so. My lord Earl Hume is taking over Laird Hughie's wardship so the land will not be wasted.”

No, she wouldn't be patted on the head and dismissed like a good dog. She wondered how she could say what she needed to say, and then she decided to just say it and hope for the best.

“Your Majesty…” she started, changed her mind then changed it back. “Your Majesty is an honourable prince. Why do you allow my Lord Spynie to behave so dishonourably with his pages?”

There was a long silence, too long. She sank to her knees again and waited for the blow, the arrest. At least she had tried.

There was a long liquid sniff. The King was wiping his eyes with a disgustingly dirty handkerchief. “I think it no harm if a man loves another man, as King David loved Jonathan,” said the King softly. “No harm at all.”

She shook her head. “That's not what I mean,” she said. “Men, yes, if they must. But children? Surely it's a black dishonour to a man that lies with a boy or girl that is too young, that is only nine or ten.”

The King half shrugged. “Yer arse heals up,” he said. “My old tutor George Buchanan would have laughed at ye. He'd say it was none of your business.”

Elizabeth could hardly believe what she was hearing. “It's no dishonour to the children,” she said carefully, “only to the strong men who force them.”

“Ay,” said the King after another long silence that made Elizabeth nervous again. “Ay, mebbe I'm too soft with those I've loved.”

He looked into the excellent fire in the warming room's hearth and sighed. “Ay,” he said very quietly, “ay, ye're right. He willna like it, but ye're right.”

Surprisingly strong hands lifted her off her knees. “Now my Lady Widdrington, I heard tell of a wonder the ither day, of a barber surgeon that pulls teeth by magic, Simon Anricks by name. Eh?”

“Well I don't know how he pulls teeth, sire, but…”

“D'ye think he's a Jesuit?”

She paused. “I don't think so. I don't know for sure but I don't think so because he was a friend of Jamie Burn, who was a minister in the Kirk and very firm for the new religion. He's a clever man, though. He did tell me something quite horrible. He thinks the Earth goes around the Sun not the other way about.”

“Does he now?” laughed the King with delight, “Och, God, I must meet him and dispute with him. Whit a mad idea!”

And she laughed with the King at the craziness of the notion.