‘Can you remember seeing blood anywhere around?’

‘Oh ay,’ said Mary seriously. ‘There was blood all over the sheets to me mam’s bed, for she said she’d lost a wean in the night, and she was in a state about washing them before it could set worse.’

Carey frowned at this. ‘Was the blood dry?’

‘Ay, mostly.’

‘When did she strip the bed?’

‘While I wis running for Mr Nixon, see, she had them in the basket by the door when I come back with him. It took all day to wash them sheets, ye should have seen them, all stiff they were...’ The ghoulish child sighed at the thought. ‘Me mam gave me a penny for grating the soap for it.’

‘And then what happened?’

The day was overwhelmed with sheet and blanket washing and Mary was sent out to play with Susan Talyer which she didn’t want to do but went because her mother gave her another penny and they skipped and played at Queens and Princesses and then Susan Talyer wanted to be the mam and have Mary as the child and Mary wanted to be the mam and when Susan Talyer pinched her she only tapped her a very little with her hand, hardly at all, and accidentally pulled a little of her hair and is wisnae fair...

‘When did you go to bed?’

She had eaten her bread and milk with the boys when they came back from school and then they had all gone up to bed though it was still light and they had seen Andy Nixon coming out the back wynd from Clover’s byre with a handcart with a whole lot of hay on it. And their mam had come in and told them a long story about Tam Lin and how the Queen of the Elves had taken him and Janet and gone to fetch him back—not Janet Dodd, another Janet—and how he changed into all different things by magic... Did the Deputy Warden know the Queen of the Elves too?

‘No,’ said Carey thoughtfully. ‘I’ve not met that Queen at all. Perhaps I will one day.’

‘Ye mustnae eat nothing they give ye in Elfland,’ said Mary seriously. ‘If ye do ye’ll be bound to serve for seven years and when ye come back all your kin will be dead and gone for they’ll be seven hundred years here.’

‘That’s good advice,’ said Carey.

‘Can I have my pennies now?’ said Mary and Carey handed them over. ‘I’ve got five pennies to my dowry,’ she said happily.

‘Mary Atkinson, what are you doing there?’ demanded the voice of Maggie Mulcaster. She was holding a very obstinate-looking cow by a halter and breathing hard. Carey unfolded himself to stand up, put his hat back on.

‘We were waiting for you, Mrs Mulcaster,’ he said mildly. ‘I was telling Mary about the Queen’s gowns.’

Maggie Mulcaster snorted and gave a mighty tug at the cow’s halter.

‘Give me five minutes and I’ll have this thrawn beast into our yard. You get on wi’ those peas, Mary; we’re eating them tonight.’

‘Ay, Aunt Maggie.’

‘Get on wi’ ye, Clover! Will ye get on...’

‘Er... Sergeant,’ said Carey with a meaningful look at the cow. Dodd sighed, slapped the beast’s bony hindquarters and helped Maggie Mulcaster drive her round by the wynd and shut her up in their own small byre for the night. There was just room for Clover and Maggie Mulcaster’s cow to stand in there.

‘I dinna like to leave kine on their own at all. You never know what might happen to them,’ she confided in him. ‘This one’s upset. Kate’s the only one can do anything with her.’ Her eyes narrowed as she remembered the last time she had seen him. ‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘Have ye come to arrest me as well, Sergeant?’

‘Nay, Mrs Mulcaster,’ he said hurriedly. ‘It’s all some notion of the Deputy Warden’s, none o’ mine.’

‘Hmf.’

Very pointedly, Maggie Mulcaster did not invite them over the threshold, but stood stalwart in her doorway with her arms folded, and little Mary shaded by her skirts, while Carey asked her what she remembered of the Monday. There wasn’t much, a day like any other, in fact. It was the next day that stuck in her memory, she said heavily, what with Mr Atkinson found dead in Frank’s vennel in the morning and Kate arrested after. Carey thanked and left her and went to her next-door neighbour.

He painstakingly asked each of them the same question. One had helped Julia and Kate Atkinson with washing the sheets from Mrs Atkinson’s miscarriage. She told of that only with much coaxing from Carey, who was starting to look very puzzled indeed.

Mrs Leigh was at home, more enormous and lethargic than ever, and very pale. She pushed at wisps of her hair, shoving them back under her cap in such a way that they immediately came out again and whispered that she hadn’t been watching.

Carey started back to the Castle as Dodd’s stomach began growling for its dinner.

‘What’ll we do now sir?’ he asked, hoping to hear the name Bessie in the answer.

‘Hm?’ said Carey, still lost in thought. ‘Oh, I think we’ll talk to Andy Nixon now.’

Why not before we did all this prancing about the town and spending an hour prattling with little maids about pretty clothes, wondered Dodd. Aloud he said sadly, ‘Ay sir.’

WEDNESDAY, 5TH JULY 1592, EARLY AFTERNOON

That was all the conversation they had as they walked back up to the Castle, while Dodd reflected that Carey wasn’t deliberately keeping him from his meat; it was simply he was too caught up in thinking to remember food. At this rate Dodd would be reduced to eating garrison rations in the Keep hall simply to keep body and soul together.

Carey was frowning as he knocked on Barker’s door.

‘You know, up until I talked to the child I was quite certain what had happened,’ he told Dodd quietly. ‘Now I’m not so sure.’

‘Ay, but ye willna put too much faith in what a little maid would say?’ protested Dodd.

Barker unlocked the Keep door and led them into the passage full of the cool pungent smell of wine and then the throat-scraping stink of old piss from the dungeons.

‘I don’t think she was lying and there were a number of things she said which don’t fit.’ Carey opened the Judas hole for Andy Nixon’s cell and saw he was lying perched uncomfortably on the narrow stone ledge.

‘Well, she got them mixed up,’ said Dodd. ‘She’s only small. Ye canna call her as a witness in any case.’

‘Of course not.’

Their voices woke Andy Nixon, and he turned and sat up with a clank.

‘Is that ye, Deputy?’

‘It is.’

‘I want tae confess.’

Carey’s mood lightened at once although he was astonished. He had been wondering how to persuade the man. ‘Excellent. Can you wait until I get witnesses and a clerk?’

‘Willna make no odds, will it?’

At last they assembled in Scrope’s council chamber, with Scrope behind his desk and Richard Bell taking notes behind him. Just as Andy Nixon was brought shuffling in, Sir Richard Lowther arrived with his usual foul-weather face. There was quite a crowd in there, including Dodd and Archie Give-it-Them who were guarding the white-faced Nixon. Carey told Scrope briskly how he had discovered the name of the man who wanted his glove, gone after him and arrested him.

‘What have you to say for yourself?’ asked Scrope gravely.

Andy Nixon took a deep breath. ‘That I killed Jemmy Atkinson. His missus didnae ken a thing about it until the deed was done.’

Lowther snorted disbelievingly.