‘Either the murderer or his servant.’
‘Arm in a sling and bruised face. Shouldna be too hard to find if he’s in Carlisle still.’
‘If.’ Carey yawned jaw-crackingly. ‘It’s no good Sergeant, I’ve simply got to get some rest or I’ll fall asleep in the saddle tonight.’
‘Did ye not sleep well last night, then?’ Dodd asked solicitously. Once they had returned from talking to the Bell and Musgrave headmen, he had given Carey the best bed and he himself had taken Rowan’s truckle bed with his wife. After waking her up for his marital rights, he had slept like the dead until Carey woke him in the dark before dawn.
‘Not really,’ Carey admitted, not intending to explain that Dodd and his wife had kept him awake for the first half hour and then sea-green envy and a miserable worried longing for Elizabeth had wound him up too tight to do much more than doze after that. He came to his feet and the lymer bitch gazed up at him hopefully so he bent down and patted her broad yellow flank. ‘I’ll snatch an hour now before it’s time to gather the men together.’
‘Ay sir,’ said Dodd cheerily. ‘I’ll have a wander round the town and see if I canna find this man wi’ his arm in a sling for ye.’
Carey nodded, put his helmet under his arm and walked out of the Keep door, down the steps and across to the Queen Mary Tower where he was lodging. There was no Barnabus in his bedchamber to help him, and Simon Barnet was doubtless about to start stuffing his face with poor-quality boiled salt beef and bread across in the Keep’s hall. The yellow lymer bitch had followed him all the way across and up the stairs and he hadn’t the heart to throw her out. He put his helmet and swordbelt on the top of his jackstand, wearily took his jack off, hung it up. He hadn’t the energy to struggle with his riding boots, so he drew the curtains of his bed to keep out the sunlight and threw himself full length on it as he was. The big lymer bitch whined a couple of times and lumbered up on to the bed next to him. Ancient strapping creaked alarmingly under their combined weights.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Carey moaned, and tried to push her off, but she licked his face lovingly, turned round a couple of times and settled down against his stomach. He shoved her a couple of times, but she became a warm furry lump of immovability. If he wanted her off his bed, he knew he would have to get up and haul her off by the collar and he couldn’t be bothered. ‘You are not the kind of woman I want in my bed,’ he told her severely and she yawned and panted and licked at his nose, so he held her muzzle with his hand and told her severely to be still. She put her nose down between her paws and watched him with her soulful brown eyes until his own eyes blurred and he pitched into sleep.
***
Dodd stepped out into the sunlit courtyard and walked whistling out through the Captain’s Gate and the covered way into the town. He couldn’t have explained why, but the discovery that Carey the elegant courtier was only one step ahead of a warrant for debt in London made him like the man much more. Carey had the indefinable assets of birth and influence and the Queen’s favour; Dodd had a good solid tower, a hundred pounds’ worth of land at lease, and kin who would follow him if he asked them.
For a while Dodd quartered the town and then changed direction and went back to Bessie’s. There, as he had expected, he found the rest of his men. He explained his quest to them and they were happy to join in.
Eventually Bangtail came hurrying up, trailing a boy whom Dodd recognised as Ian Ogle, the steward’s young son.
‘Tell him,’ Bangtail encouraged the lad, who squinted up at Dodd and wanted to know what was in it for him.
Feeling inspired, Dodd resisted the impulse to shake the information out of the boy, and instead handed over a penny. Ian Ogle squinted at it ungratefully.
‘Ay,’ he said. ‘He were in here yesterday askin’ which lad was it served the Deputy Warden, so I tellt him. Why’d ye want to know?’
‘Who was?’
‘Who was what?’
‘Who was asking which lad...?’
‘Andy Nixon, Mr Pennycook’s rent-collector,’ said Ian Ogle with a contemptuous sneer. ‘And he’d had an argument he lost with somebody, by my reckoning.’
‘Andy Nixon,’ breathed Dodd, who knew more about Mrs Atkinson’s private life from Janet than he had let on to Carey.
‘Ay.’
‘Have you seen him today?’
‘No.’
‘Well then, be off wi’ ye. By God, Andy Nixon. I wouldnae have thought it.’
By the time Carey woke up to the sound of the yellow lymer bitch’s echoing snores, the light filtering through his curtains was as yellow as her coat. He got up, feeling irritable and aching, mainly the effect of being stupid enough to sleep in his hose and boots, but there was no point in taking them off now.
Dodd knocked on the door just as Carey drank the remains of the beer in the jug and wished Barnabus was around to bring him food. He would have to talk to Scrope about finding another servant to look after him while Barnabus was in gaol.
Dodd’s face was unrecognisable because it had a broad grin on it. That faded when he saw the frowstiness of the Deputy.
‘I wouldna recommend sleeping in your boots,’ he said helpfully.
‘Thank you, Dodd.’
Carey scratched his hair, smoothed it down again, put on his morion and finished buckling his swordbelt.
‘Well, we’ve got his name, sir,’ said Dodd, full of happiness and bonhomie.
‘Eh?’
‘The man that bribed Simon Barnet for your glove. We know his name.’
That woke him up properly. ‘Do you, by God?’
‘Ay, sir. His name’s Andy Nixon.’
Where had he heard that name before? He remembered the extremely pregnant Mrs Leigh with her nasty particles of gossip.
‘Andy Nixon?’
‘Ay. Mr Pennycook’s rent-collector.’
That fitted. That all fitted nicely into place. Carey’s jaw set. ‘He’s Mrs Atkinson’s lover, isn’t he?’
Dodd sighed regretfully. ‘Ay sir. They was childhood sweethearts, but Kate Coldale’s mother wouldna let her marry a man wi’ no land and no prospects, seeing she had a good dowry in property, and she was married off to Jemmy Atkinson instead. But I canna see Kate...’
