‘Och,’ said Andy, thunderstruck. ‘But d’ye not mind the trouble we put ye to, sir?’

‘I’m blaming James Pennycook for that.’ Carey smiled. ‘I hardly think you came up with the idea, did you?’

‘Nay sir. Well...’

‘I doubt very much if Pennycook will be coming back south of the Border again. He’ll certainly not be purveying to the garrison any more.’ Why Scrope didn’t have his victuals supplied by a powerful local man like Aglionby was a mystery to Carey, which he intended to put right as soon as he could. ‘And so you’re in need of a new master.’

In his delight at Kate’s freedom and his relief at his own, Andy hadn’t thought of that and his square face clouded.

‘Ay, sir, you’re right.’

‘Well, then? I want good fighters, which you are, and you’ve shown yourself faithful, at least to your woman. The pay’s one shilling and thruppence a day and perks, including some of what we get in fees for rescuing cattle and such. And it’s steady work based in the Castle.’

‘But is there not a fee for the place?’ Andy asked with puzzlement.

‘You can owe it.’

Andy whispered quickly to Kate and then turned back to Carey.

‘I’ll do it, sir.’

‘Excellent. Talk to Sergeant Dodd in the morning.’

He left them wrapping themselves round each other again, and tried to suppress his burning envy of them as he hurried back to the Castle.

THURSDAY, 6TH JULY 1592, AFTERNOON

‘What happened to you?’ he asked Young Hutchin.

Young Hutchin grinned. ‘It was verra interesting.’

‘No doubt.’ Carey looked around for Barnabus, remembered he was in the Keep, waiting for Philadelphia to give him a draught of something cleansing and foul from her stillroom. He took his sword belt off and leant it against the wall, opened up the top buttons of his black velvet doublet in the approved melancholy style, so he could at last breathe properly. He gestured at the still-curtained bed.

‘Have you seen the pups?’ he asked Young Hutchin.

‘Ay. The kennelman came and moved Buttercup and all down to the pupping kennel where she should ha’ been to start with,’ said Hutchin. ‘But your counterpane’s in a terrible state.’

Carey wandered over, looked at it, and closed the curtains again. He went restlessly to the flagon standing on one of his clothes chests and found that without Barnabus about, nobody had refilled it. Curbing the impulse to throw it at the wall, he sat down on the chest and blinked at Young Hutchin.

‘Well?’ he asked.

‘I couldnae get through to Thirlwall Castle, sir, for my uncle had put too many men about it, and they had dogs forbye. So I slept under a bush and when she came out on the road, I went along wi’ her, to the north a bit.’

‘I thought you’d been caught by your relatives.’

‘Nay sir,’ said Hutchin, cheekily. ‘Not me, sir.’

At the end of that day’s travelling, Lady Widdrington and her small party had come in sight of Hexham without any incident, which had rather surprised Hutchin.

‘I stopped your uncle at the Irthing ford,’ Carey said shortly. ‘Sent him back to Netherby with his tail between his legs.’

‘Ay, I thought something like that had happened. So I rode down and joined Lady Widdrington and told her all about it and she went red but she didnae say nothing. Then she had me ride behind, and when she got to Hexham, there was the Middle March Warden and he had...’

‘Sir John Forster?’

‘Ay sir.’

‘How is he?’

‘Very old and a mite forgetful, but well enough. Anyway, he was there and so was her husband.’

‘What?’

‘Ay, Sir Henry Widdrington.’

Carey’s mouth had gone dry. ‘How did he greet her?’

Young Hutchin shrugged. ‘She curtseyed, he nodded at her. They went in. A while later, I was called for and gi’en a letter for ye. Then I come back wi’ the dispatch rider from Newcastle. The ordnance carts from Newcastle was there too, sir, and we passed a powerful lot of packtrains by the road. The Newcastle man said that Sir Henry was for Scotland, although he didna ken why.’

Silently Carey put out his hand and Hutchin laid the letter on it. If I don’t open it, he found himself thinking, then I won’t know what it says and can ignore it.

Meanwhile his fingers were breaking the seal and unfolding the paper. It was Lady Widdrington’s handwriting, her spelling as wild as most women’s.

‘From Lady Elizabeth Widdrington, to Sir Robert Carey.

Sir, I must ask you to have no more dealings with me in any shape or form and what friendship we may have had is now at an end.

Please honour my request as a knight of the Queen should.’

That was simple enough. Impossible to tell whose brain had framed the words: was it Elizabeth herself, or had she written at her husband’s dictation? She had made it plain enough she thought his courtship of her was foolish.

Carey looked up unseeingly. He was amazed to find he could not feel anything. Perhaps it wasn’t so amazing: after a fight or a football match he often found bruises and grazes he had not felt at the time.

‘Sir,’ came a boy’s alien voice.

‘What? You still there, Young Hutchin?’

‘Ay sir. She had a verbal message. She whispered it to me when she give me the letter, sir, under cover of straightening my jerkin.’

Young Hutchin shut his eyes tight and frowned. ‘It was in foreign, sir. She said to tell ye, ah mow tay, Robin, ah mah bow simper.’

Carey thought hard to rearrange the sounds. ‘Amo te, Robin, amabo semper?’ he asked.

Young Hutchin nodded vigorously. ‘Ay,’ he said. ‘That was it. Is it French?’

‘No. Latin. Please forget it, if you like Lady Widdrington.’

Young Hutchin nodded again, a mixture of cunning and an attempt at forthright honesty on his face.