A Famine of Horses (21 page)

“Well, here we are,” he said loudly, breathing deeply. “Let’s begin with the basics of palming dice. After all, it’s no good using highmen if you can’t swap them for lowmen when your opponent is playing, is it?”

Daniel nodded and sat down next to Barnabus on the bench. Barnabus brought out half a dozen dice from his own purse and separated them into their various families, asking Daniel to identify them. He then began a game with three pewter beakers taken from the sideboard, and one of the dice where he switched them round and magically moved the die from one to the other.

“This is called Find the Lady,” said Barnabus wisely, “and it’s not much good for catching coneys in London now, since even the coneys have heard of it, but you might find it worthwhile here or in Scotland. The idea is they bet on where the Lady—the die—is going to end up. See it’s all done with the fingers, like that. All right? Now you try.”

Daniel tried and found it much harder than he had thought at first and very different from the way he usually palmed dice. For ten minutes he moved the beakers and tried to shift the dice without being spotted by Barnabus’s beady eye, and although Barnabus said he was improving, he felt a little the way he had when his father had first begun teaching him the ways of persuading people to buy. There was so much to learn, so little time, and so many men who were better at it than him, he became quite depressed. Though that could have been the effect of living with so many beautiful girls and no money to pay them.

He was trying again to move a die from his sleeve to the table and back again without being spotted, when he heard the sound of someone at the window. He turned to look and saw to his horror that Robert Carey was sitting on the sill with one knee drawn up, ready to jump down.

Barnabus had drawn a knife, but Daniel was in too much of a panic to be afraid of it. He simply fell backwards off the bench, scattering dice in all directions, rolled, headed for the door. By some miracle, he got through it first, slammed it, tried to lock it, dropped the key in his haste and ran up the stairs to the bedrooms, with Carey hot on his heels.

It was Maria’s room they barged into, and she already had her first client of the day. Daniel dodged, tried to hide behind the bed, but Carey skidded to a halt and stared.

“What the Devil…” wailed the man on the bed, whose shirt had tangled round his armpits as Maria worked on him. He sat up, throwing Maria aside and tried desperately to pull down his shirt.

Carey had turned his back.

“I’m very sorry, my lord,” he said in a strangled voice, “I was chasing a horse-thief…I had no idea.”

Barnabus, who had seen Burghley’s hunchbacked son Robert Cecil in circumstances too wonderful to tell and was not at all concerned, went behind the bed like a ferret and hauled out Daniel, with a knife at his neck.

“You’ve caused a lot of trouble, you,” he hissed into Daniel’s ear as he twisted Daniel’s arm behind him very painfully. “That’s the Lord Warden of the West March you’ve offended. What did you think you was doing, running like that, we only wanted a little chat. Guilty conscience, that’s what it is. Come on.”

“For God’s sake,” said Thomas Lord Scrope, realising he looked worse standing up than he did in bed, sat down again and pulled the covers up to hide his embarrassment, “Robin. You won’t tell Philly, please. I know she’s your sister, but…”

Carey still had his back turned, but his fists were clenched. At last he turned with a perfectly calm expression on his face.

“Don’t worry, my lord,” he said, “I would never do anything to hurt her.”

Scrope winced and looked at the floor. “She’s a good woman,” he said lamely, “she’d never…well, you know. I’m only flesh and blood…”

Carey had got a proper grip on himself. “I think we should both forget that this happened, my lord,” he said.

Scrope’s face was full of relief. “Er…yes, forget it, absolutely right, of course.”

Barnabus was at the door with Daniel, not being too careful with his knife point either. Daniel squawked and struggled as he nearly lost his earlobe but the pain from his arm stopped him. Carey took a step closer to the bed.

“One thing, though, my lord,” he said very quietly.

“Er, yes, Robin,” said Scrope vaguely. He was being distracted by Maria’s busy fingers under the covers, Daniel saw jealously.

“If you pox my sister, I will personally see to it that you never have the opportunity again. Do you understand me?”

“Well…er…”

“I’ll make a woman of you, my lord, is that clear?”

Thomas Lord Scrope quivered and shrank back under the bedclothes.

Carey didn’t wait to see his reaction, but waved Barnabus on and walked out of the room, shutting it very carefully behind him.

They processed down the passage, where they met Madam Hetherington, with her dag.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. “And who are you?”

“I am the Deputy Warden of the West March and I am arresting your man Daniel Swanders, for horse theft and murder.”

“He’s not my man, he’s only staying here,” said Madam Hetherington quickly.

“So we are absolutely clear, madam, I have…ahem…checked the matter with the Lord Warden, who is in agreement. I apologise for the disruption to your establishment, but I had hoped to take him quietly out of the courtyard, without bothering you at all. Circumstances…”

Madam Hetherington’s eyes narrowed. “Are you taking him to the castle, sir?”

“Not yet. I would like to use your private room, if that’s possible.”

Madam Hetherington nodded curtly, led the way down the passage and handed him the key to the room.

“Please make sure he only bleeds into the rushes,” she said curtly, opened the door for them courteously, and left them. Barnabus kicked Daniel into the room, Carey shut the door and locked it. Barnabus shut the window and stood with his arms folded.

Carey was staring into space, his face working oddly. Barnabus wondered if there was going to be an explosion, and there was. It was Carey roaring with laughter.

“Oh Barnabus, did you see his face…Jesus, I nearly died.”

“I think so did he, sir,” said Barnabus primly. “Very unhealthy for any man, that sort of shock.” Carey creased up again.

“Oh…oh…God, I must stop this, it’s a very serious matter…with his shirt up and his prick all covered with lard…” Carey bent over and howled.

Daniel had picked himself up off the floor, felt his ear where blood was oozing and rubbed his arm and shoulder. He smiled at them uncertainly, took two of the dice from the floor near his feet and tossed them from hand to hand.

Carey was recovering himself, wiping his eyes with his hankerchief, blowing his nose and coughing. “Oh Lord, oh Lord, I wish I could tell Philly. No, Barnabus, I know I can’t, but…All right. Enough. To business.”

Carey hitched the padding of his trunkhose onto the table and stared down its length at him. Daniel sat on the bench and continued to juggle, staring back guilelessly.

The silence suddenly became very thick, a little decorated round the edges by sounds of chatter from the kitchen and the creaking of beds upstairs.

“Get on, Robin,” Daniel said at last, “ye know me. I take it, you’re saying was it me killed Sweetmilk Graham and stole his horse? You know I’d never be mad enough to do such a thing.”

Carey sighed. Barnabus had at first stared at his impudence in using Carey’s nickname, then narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

“Danny,” said Carey, “I don’t know you. I knew you five years ago, but how do I know what you might have done since then? I’ve fought in three separate wars since then, and what I couldn’t have done in 1587, I might well be capable of now given reason enough. So tell me what happened. And please, Daniel, tell me the truth.”

Daniel Swanders had been travelling on foot across the little nook of a border that lay north and west of the Solway firth, around the site of the Battle of Solway Moss. It was the Saturday, and he was on his way back to Carlisle from some successful business conducted with both the Maxwells and the Johnstones, involving horses, which it was forbidden to export to Scotland, and whisky which was heavily taxed. Thomas the Merchant trusted no one with the whisky which would follow later as part of a pack train, so Daniel was travelling light.

He thought he was very lucky at about sunset, when he saw two horses in the distance, lightly tethered to the root of a gorse bush and no one guarding them.

He came up on them cautiously, using the cover, watching to see if a guard should appear. Both of them looked tried, as if they had been ridden hard for a while. One was an ordinary hobby, a sturdy short beast with shaggy coat, no different from any of the others that rode the borders, but the other horse was another matter altogether. He was a beautiful tall animal, with a graceful neck and a noble head, a black coat with a white blaze on his forehead and two white socks and every line of him proclaimed speed, endurance and even intelligence. He was a horse any lord would covet. He was also a stallion, which meant he must have a sweet nature and that meant that his worth at stud was enough to give a man heart failure.

Daniel wrestled with his conscience for at least four seconds, before conscience won out over caution. It would have been a crime to leave the animal behind him and not even try to steal him.

There was still no sign of any owner or rider, so Daniel simply walked up to the beautiful creature, untied him, offered him an apple from his pack, let himself be smelled and inspected, and then jumped on his back. The stallion hopped a little, then snorted and turned his head eagerly north, so Daniel let him have his head, went to a trot.

A yell from behind made him turn in the saddle. A tall man was struggling out of the gorse bush: he was in his doublet, and he had his fighting jack in one hand and a cloth in the other which he was waving.

Daniel didn’t wait to see any more, put his heels to the horse’s flank and galloped away.

“He’s a beauty, he’s the Lord God’s own delight to ride, you know, Robin, so fast and so smooth,” said Daniel, waving his arms in horse-shaped gestures at Carey and Barnabus. “I had him hammering over rough country and I could have been in my bed at home, oh he’ll bear away a few bells in his time, that horse, mark my words.”

Daniel brought the horse round in a wide circle, coming only a few miles short of Netherby tower at one point, before he got on the southern road to Carlisle. All the time he was nervous, in case the horse’s rightful owner came after him on the hobby, but he needn’t have worried. Nobody chased him and he rode happily to Carlisle. He got there too late to get in before the gate was shut, so he stayed the night in one of the little inns that made up part of the overspill at the southern gate, beside the River Calder, and then first thing on the Sunday morning he went proudly to Thomas the Merchant to sell him the horse.

“I couldna hope to keep him,” Daniel said sadly, “not having a tower of my own nor a surname to back me, but oh it broke my heart…”

Much to Daniel’s surprise, Thomas the Merchant went white when he saw the animal and refused point blank to have anything to do with him. This Daniel had not expected, but when he asked if the horse belonged to some important man on the border, Thomas the Merchant simply shook his head and bade him be gone.

“So then I thought I’d see the Reverend Turnbull who’s a book-a-bosom man that sometimes travels with me, and ask his advice, him being educated and all. And I thought it might be best to be rid of the horse, in case it belonged to old Wat of Harden or Cessford or some unchancy bastard like that.”

“Jock of the Peartree,” said Carey.

“Ay, I know it now,” agreed Daniel ruefully, “and Turnbull said he couldna offer what the beast was worth, but he could offer me two pounds English because it was all he had, and then he’d sell it on for me and split the profit. So I agreed and then because I was nearly sure the horse was owned by some headman of a riding surname, I decided it might be healthier to wait a while in Carlisle, here, until the fuss was over with.”

Carey looked at him gravely for a long time, so long that Daniel became nervous.

“Well, what more do you want?” he demanded. “That’s what happened, it’s God’s truth, that’s all. And I’ve admitted to horse-stealing, what more do you want?”

“I’m not quite certain what the legal position is when you steal a horse from the thief that stole it,” said Carey, “but you haven’t told me the most important thing.”

“What’s that?” Daniel was wary.

“Who you saw in the gorse bush?”

Daniel threw up his hands, palms upwards. “If I’d known him, I’d tell you, of course I would, especially when the bastard must have done a murder for the beast. But I didnae know him, I’d never seen him before. And he didna look like a Borderer, forbye.”

“Why not?”

Daniel shrugged. “Too glossy, too elegant, with his pretty doublet with the gold thread in it, looking like some sodomite of a courtier, is what he looked like, saving your presence, sir.” He grinned disrespectfully at Carey, who looked stern.

“Could you recognise him again?”

“Oh ay,” said Daniel, “I could, if you think I make a good witness.”

“Experienced, anyway,” muttered Carey, tapping his forefinger on his front teeth and staring out the window with an abstracted expression on his face. “Tell me, how well known are you in these parts, how long have you been here?”