‘Sir, how did ye guess so fine what they were after?’

‘Come on, Dodd, you know I’ve been at King James’s court before? Though I have to say it wasn’t this bad then.’

Dodd shut his gaping mouth before he said something he would regret. Wild speculation and surmise began to crowd through his mind. He managed to nod stolidly.

‘Ay,’ he said. ‘Will I go and fetch Sim’s Will and my brother now?’

Carey considered this. ‘No,’ he answered. ‘Not on your own, not yet. I’ll get my lord Warden to send one of his servants with a letter to Carmichael and a couple of his men as backup.’

Dodd nodded approvingly at this. The two of them took Thunder round to the stables and settled him in the best stall which had been cleared by Maxwell’s head groom. Carey unstrapped the dag-cases and slung them on his shoulder.

‘More shooting, sir?’ Dodd asked sadly.

‘My lord wants to win the shooting match and I promised him the loan of my dags for it, though I think he’d be better off with a longer barrel. Come on. You can have a few shots too, if you like.’

‘No thank ye, sir,’ said Dodd with dignity. ‘I dinna care for firearms.’

***

They sat down again to eat with Lord Maxwell who had polished off much of the haggis and half the chicken, Carey waving Dodd to a seat on the bench next to him. Mollified as to his dignity, Dodd took the rest of the haggis, though it wasn’t as good as the ones his wife made when they had done some successful raiding.

‘Boy keep his maidenhead then?’ asked Maxwell casually.

‘Just about.’

‘I could have warned you not to bring a lad that pretty here.’

Carey sighed. ‘I know, my lord.’

Maxwell swilled down some more of the terrible wine. ‘Ye ken what it’s like,’ he said. ‘Lord Spynie’s friends and relations reckon they can do as they please, and mainly they can...’

‘On her last progress, the Queen hanged a man that was caught raping a girl—after a fair trial, of course.’

Maxwell nodded. ‘The King should do it too, but Spynie begs him and the King always gives in. Any road, who knows; most of the time, the girls are willing enough for a ring or a couple of shillings. It’s the boys I feel sorry for.’

The talk wandered on in a desultory way until it came back, remarkably enough, to the topic of the mysterious German.

‘No one knows,’ said Maxwell flatly. ‘I heard he was a mining engineer from the Black Forest and he was to find the King a rich gold mine at Jedburgh and work it for him, by a new and Hermetic system for seeking out metals in the earth, but the mine collapsed and the King hanged him for lying about his knowledge.’

Carey nodded wisely at this.

‘I heard he was from Augsburg,’ he said.

‘Nay, the Black Forest, I’m certain of it.’

‘What was his name?’

Maxwell made a small moue of ignorance and shook his head. ‘I never saw him, only heard tell of him.’ He poured himself some more of the wine, sipped, seemed to notice the taste for the first time and spat it out into the rushes. ‘Jesus Christ, this stuff is shite.’

Carey looked sympathetic again. ‘I had heard that you had found a decent wine merchant to supply you with...’

Maxwell’s face darkened with anger. ‘I found a slimy bastard of an Italian catamite, that’s what I found, Sir Robert, him and his wife together.’

The depth of sympathy in Carey’s face was masterly.

‘Oh?’ he said.

Maxwell grunted. ‘Brought them into Scotland, introduced them to the Court and what thanks do I get for it? None. Bonnetti’s bringing in French and Italian wine by the tun for His Highness and do I get a drop of it? I do not. As for his whore of a wife...’ Maxwell spat into the rushes again. ‘If I didnae ken very well it’s not likely, I’d say she was in the King’s bed and Queen Anne should watch out.’ He drank some more of his inferior wine and made a face. ‘Mind, she’s nothing so special there either, for all her looks.’

‘You’ve... er...’

Maxwell shrugged elaborately. ‘Ye ken what these Southern bitches are like, Sir Robert. Allus on heat. But I dinna care to eat another man’s leavings, if ye understand me.’

Carey nodded, completely straight-faced, while Dodd hurriedly buried his nose in his beer mug.

‘She might be slipping out of favour wi’ the King as well,’ Maxwell added, ‘seeing she came making up to me a couple o’ days since. I soon settled her, though. Bitch.’

He stared up at his family’s battle trophies with an expression of gloomy reminiscence. There was a short awkward silence. Carey broke it.

‘And how is the King finding Dumfries?’ he asked.

Maxwell shrugged. ‘His Highness says he likes roughing it in the best house in town, after mine, but he wouldna stay here with me for all the assurances I gave him. He said he doesnae like castles much, for all he wouldnae be surprised by Bothwell here with me as he was at Falkland and Holyrood as well.’

‘No,’ agreed Carey in a tactful voice.

‘At least he said he’s coming to my banquet tomorrow, though, after he’s been hunting.’

‘Mm. Where is he hunting?’

‘Five miles west of Dumfries, over by Craigmore Hill. My gamekeepers and huntsmen have been finding game for him all week, and we’ll beat the drive tomorrow.’

‘Mm.’

‘Of course, we canna use guns in the hunting, the King doesnae like them.’

‘Of course. Will this be a private hunt or...’

Maxwell laughed at Carey’s tact. ‘Och, God, ye can come along if ye want, everyone else will. The King’s always in a good mood after a hunt, ye canna pick a better time to ask him for something.’

Carey smiled back. ‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘I wonder if he’ll remember me.’

‘And then there’s my banquet. It’s a masked ball and he said last time I spoke to him, he’ll be here incognito and seduce all the ladies. Good God,’ Maxwell added with distaste, ‘who does he think he’s fooling?’

Carey said nothing to that. He spent an hour after the meal showing Maxwell how to wind up the fancy lock of one of his dags and arguing with him over the right charge and how much it threw to the left. Maxwell was enchanted by a firearm not completely crippled by rain and further one where you did not have the bother of hiding the bright end of a slowmatch if you were lying in wait in some covert. Carey and he had a long technical discussion on the rival merits of wheel-locks and snaphaunces compared with matchlocks, but as the Maxwell pointed out, when you were talking about a fight, the key was numbers and anything more complicated than a matchlock was fiendishly expensive. The thought of the Maxwell clan armed with weapons like that made Dodd shudder, but Carey didn’t seem to see it. On the other hand, the Courtier’s fancy dags missed fire often enough for Dodd to feel that if you had to use the infernal things, perhaps you were better off with ones you were more sure might work in a tight spot.

The bowling alley reverberated to the booms from the gun while Maxwell got its measure, and then all of them went out to the pasture on the other side of the river where the earthbank and targets had been set up. The King was not there, though an awning with a cloth of estate and carven chair had been set up ready for him. He was only a little less frightened of guns than he was of knives and would not come out until the contest was over and the football match ready to begin. The legend was that his unnatural fear of weapons had come about while he was still in his mother’s belly: Mary Queen of Scots had been six months pregnant with him when her husband Lord Darnley and the Scottish barons of the day had dragged her advisor and musician David Riccio from her presence at gunpoint and stabbed him to death in the next room. Or it could have been the shock of seeing his foster father bleed to death from stab wounds when the King was five years of age. Whatever the reason, King James was seriously handicapped as King of Scotland by being probably the least martial man in his entire kingdom. On the other hand he was at least still alive after twenty-seven years on the throne, a rare boast for a Stuart.

Dodd stood with Carey as the various lords who had come out with their followers to provide James with his army, stood forward one at a time to show off their prowess at shooting. For the archery they shot at a popinjay: not a real parrot, being too expensive for the burghers of Dumfries, but a bunch of feathers on a high stick, that wobbled in the soft wind. It was a far harder mark than the targets set up against an earthbank ready for the musketry competition.