Dodd was surprised to hear Carey being so naïve. ‘He reckons I’m one o’ yourn now.’
‘Ah. Of course.’
‘Any road, I’ve always had a fancy to live in the Debateable Land.’
‘Have you? I haven’t.’
‘Oh, it’s no’ sae bad, sir. Skinabake Armstrong, that’s my brother-in-law, Janet’s half-brother...’
‘You’re related to Skinabake Armstrong?’
‘Oh ay, sir. Or Janet is.’
‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘Och, sir. If I told ye all the reivers I’m related to through Janet, we’d be all day about it. Besides, what difference does it make?’
‘Was that why you wouldn’t let me fight Wattie Graham at the ford?’
‘Ay, of course. I know Skinabake. He’d ha’ put a lance in yer back the minute ye was busy with Wattie. I know him, he’s no’ a very nice man. That’s why he likes it in the Debateable Land. He says he’d never live anywhere else, even if he wasnae at the horn in both countries.’
‘Lowther might not include you in his feud.’
‘Only if I turned Queen’s evidence and swore ye ordered Barnabus to dae it, sir.’
‘Ah. Well, let’s see what we can do to prove I didn’t order it and Barnabus didn’t do it.’
‘Ye didnae, did ye, sir?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Well, he wasnae what ye could call a good armoury clerk and Scrope wouldnae let ye sack him, if ye see...’
Carey had stopped and he was an odd greyish colour. ‘If you think I’m stupid enough to set my own servant on to cut someone’s throat for me...’
‘I wouldna hold it against ye, sir. I’ve known others do the like.’
‘Who?’
‘Lowther for one.’
‘When?’
Dodd shrugged. ‘When somebody didna pay him blackrent and give him cheek when he went round to collect. He had some of the Grahams drop by and kill the man. It’s no’ so unusual, ye ken.’
Carey took one of those deep breaths that signalled he was holding on to his anger. Then he laughed and carried on walking.
‘Christ’s guts, Dodd, I’m a bloody innocent in this place. Will you believe me if I give ye my word that, aside from a couple of hangings, I never killed nobody in my life without it was me holding the weapon?’
Dodd nodded gravely, noting with interest how Carey’s voice had changed to pure Berwick.
‘Ay,’ he said. ‘I know ye’re a man of your word, Courtier. Ye’re a bloody hen’s tooth in Carlisle and no mistake.’
TUESDAY, 4TH JULY 1592, LATE MORNING
The hen’s tooth had several lines of inquiry in mind and was in a fever of impatience to follow all of them. Carey knew he had to be able to present an alternative theory to Scrope. After some thought, he sent Dodd to Bessie’s to find out what he could of Barnabus’s movements the night before, while he himself went to the two-storey house by the market that had belonged to Atkinson.
He knocked at the door, poked his head round it into the ground-floor living room. She was surrounded by her gossips: one was making bread and milk for the children by the fire, while two others held her hands and talked in low voices.
‘What d’ye want, Deputy?’ demanded the largest of Mrs Atkinson’s gossips, looming up before him.
‘I want to find out who cut Mr Atkinson’s throat,’ said Carey, politely taking off his morion and putting it on a bench as he came in. His head was crammed against the ceiling beams even without it on.
‘Oh, ay?’ said another, a middle-aged woman with a withered hand. ‘From what I heard, ye should be asking yerself the question.’
Carey looked at her in silence for a while, without anger. He had spent much of the night before with Dodd riding about Gilsland, calling individually on the local Bell and Musgrave headmen. They had mustered two hours before dawn in order to catch Wattie when he crossed the Irthing. Perhaps he had slept for two hours in total. His thinking was slower than usual, that was all, but the women read threat into his lack of reaction. They all fell silent as well and the one who had spoken shrank back.
‘Who are you, goodwife?’ he asked.
‘I am Mrs Maggie Mulcaster, Mrs Atkinson’s sister,’ she said stoutly.
‘Well, you heard wrong, Mrs Mulcaster,’ he said mildly. ‘Who did you hear it from?’
‘Lowther,’ she admitted.
‘You should know better than to trust a man that kills anyone who won’t pay him blackrent.’
The women muttered between each other and Mrs Atkinson stood up, curtseyed and wiped her hands in her apron.
