Carey watched with attention and then said to Dodd quietly, ‘If you want to recoup your horse-racing losses...’

‘I cannae,’ said Dodd gloomily. ‘The wife has all that was left.’

‘I thought you managed to give her the slip at the muster?’

‘Her brothers found me afterwards in Bessie’s once we’d gone back up to the Keep and she wouldna take no for an answer.’

Carey tutted sympathetically.

‘Ay,’ said Dodd. ‘She even took the money I had back for my new helmet and said she’d pay it herself or we’d end up in debt to the armourer.’

‘Very disrespectful of her.’

‘Ay,’ moaned Dodd. ‘And I’ll be getting an earful of it every time I see her no matter what I do. I’d beat her for it, I surely would, sir, but the trouble is it wouldnae make her any better and there’d be some disaster come of it after.’

The last time Dodd had tried to assert his authority with his wife he had wound up in ward at Jedburgh as a pledge for one of her brothers’ good behaviour and spent three months in the gaol there because the bastard had seen fit to disappear immediately after. Dodd still wasn’t sure how it had come about, but he had no intention of making the experiment to find the connection. Besides she was fully capable of putting a pillow over his face while he slept if he offended her badly enough and she’d never burn for the crime of petty treason because Kinmont Willie would take her in as his favourite niece, no matter what she did. That thought alone had kept Dodd remarkably chaste while he did his duty at Carlisle and his wife spent most of her time running Gilsland. Still no bairn though, which was a pity. There was no wealth like a string of sons.

Applause and ironical cheers distracted him from his normal worries. The archery contest had been won by a Gowrie. Now the gun shooting contest began and it seemed as if Carey had been busy laying bets. The laird Johnstone shot first and did reasonably well; Maxwell stepped forward and managed to put his first shot in the bull. Then a tall broad-shouldered young Englishman with a face as spotty as a plum pudding stepped out. Carey groaned.

‘Damnation,’ he said to Dodd. ‘It’s Henry Widdrington the younger. I hadn’t realised he was in it or I’d have put all my money on him.’

‘Good, is he?’ asked Dodd with gloomy satisfaction that Carey was going to get a set down. Of course, Carey was craning his neck, looking about in the crowd: no sign of Lady Widdrington or her husband, thank God, thought Dodd, though Carey was disappointed.

‘Too good, and he has a decent gun as well.’

‘Who’s the lad standing by him?’

‘His brother Roger, I think.’

They watched the competition in an atmosphere of deepening dismay, shared by the rest of the crowd who disliked watching an Englishman beat a Scot at any martial exercise. To scattered applause and some booing, young Henry Widdrington easily bore away the bell which was presented by the King’s foster-brother and erstwhile guardian, the Earl of Mar.

Carey sighed deeply, counted about twenty pounds out of his purse and went off to pay his debts. He wound up in the knot of men congratulating Widdrington on his shooting, and when Dodd wandered over nosily to find out what they were about, discovered that Carey was being persuaded to come into the football match and steadfastly refusing.

The King arrived at that point, announced by appalling trumpet playing, surrounded by a crowd of brilliantly dressed men and riding on a white horse from which he dismounted ungracefully and stumped to his chair. Lord Spynie was there, a little back from the main bunch about the King, talking intently with the wide balding figure of Sir Henry Widdrington. Elizabeth paced stately at her husband’s side, curtseyed poker-backed to the King and took up a place nearby. Spynie laughed at some comment of Widdrington’s, then went and stood by a stool beside the carven chair.

Dodd stole a look at Carey’s face as he watched Lady Widdrington. Unguarded by charm or mockery, for a moment the Courtier’s heart was nakedly visible there as his eyes burned the air between him and the woman. It was the face of a starving man gazing at a banquet.

Dodd elbowed the Courtier gently. ‘Sir,’ he growled. ‘If I was Sir Henry, I’d shoot ye for no more than the look of your face.’

Carey blinked at him, evidently not all there. Dodd tried again.

‘Sir Robert,’ he said, gruff with annoyance at feeling sorry for the silly man. ‘Ye’ll do her more harm if ye stare like that.’

For a moment the blue glare was ferociously hostile and then Carey coloured up and looked at the ground. He cleared his throat.

‘Er... yes, you’re right. Quite right.’

Watching the way he settled himself, it was exactly like watching a mummer put on a mask. Dear Lord, thought Dodd, he’s caught a midsummer madness to be sure. Carey was moving again, to the background noise of the Dumfries town crier announcing the King’s pleasure at the football match to be held and making a hash of it.

When the sheep-like bleating had finished, Carey moved up to the awning, swept his hat off, muttered quickly to the town crier and genuflected on one knee to the King. Sweat shining on his face the town crier shouted something incomprehensible about Sir Ronald Starey, Deputy Warden of the English West March.

King James squinted his eyes suspiciously for a moment as he looked down on the Courtier and then his face cleared and lightened with a surprisingly pleasant smile as he spoke. Against his will, Dodd was impressed: it seemed the King of Scots did know Carey and was willing to acknowledge him. Carey held out the other letter he had brought from Carlisle. The King took it and read it with heavy-lidded boredom and let Carey stay there with one knee in the damp grass for a considerable time while he sat and talked to Lord Spynie and the Earl of Mar on his other side about the contents. Eventually the King nodded his head affably and said a few words. Carey rose to his feet, backed away, bowed again.

This time Dodd watched Lady Widdrington. She looked once at Carey, when his attention was on the King, and for a moment, if Dodd had been Sir Henry, he would have shot her too. Then her lips compressed and she stared into the middle distance instead.

Carey arrived, busy undoing the many buttons and points of his fine black velvet doublet. He unbuckled his belts and shrugged it off his shoulders, handing it to Young Hutchin.

‘I wouldn’t lay any bets on this match,’ he said conversationally to Dodd as he rebelted his hose, rolled up his shirtsleeves and undid the ties of his small ruff, which ended coiled in his hat. ‘Not with the number of Johnstones on the one side and Maxwells on the other.’

‘Ye’re not going to play at the football, are you, sir?’ asked Dodd, appalled at this further evidence of the Deputy’s insanity.

‘Well, I can hardly refuse when the King asked me to, now can I? Even if he told me to play for the Johnstones, since they’re a man short.’

‘Have ye played at the football?’

Carey’s eyes were cold and surprised. ‘What do you take me for, Dodd? Of course I have, and in Scotland too. The King likes watching football. He has a notion that it promotes friendliness and reconciliation.’

‘Friendliness and reconciliation?’ Dodd repeated hollowly, remembering some football games he had played.

‘That’s right.’

‘Och, God.’

Carey nonchalantly handed over to Dodd what was left of his winnings from Maxwell, which felt as if it amounted to some eighty pounds or so and was much more money than Dodd had ever met in one place in his life before. Wild thoughts came to him of slipping away from the match and riding like hell for Gilsland to give it to his wife and calm her down, but Dodd was not daft. He slung the purse round his own neck and felt martyred.

Dodd looked across at the young laird Johnstone who was disaccoutring with his men. The Lord Maxwell was stripping off as well. Silks, velvets and brocades piled one on top of the other, producing two anonymous herds of men in shirts, hose and boots, who glowered at each other across a grassy chasm of competitive rivalry and family ill-feeling. Carey spoke briefly to Maxwell, who laughed and shrugged. Then he sauntered over and joined the other lot.

Dodd shook his head and stepped back with the crowd. Young Hutchin was sitting up on a fence. The Earl of Mar stood on a small hillock in the middle of the field and announced that the holes dug at each end of the pasture were the goals and no man was to touch the ball with his hands or run with it under his arm. And further no weapons of any kind were to be used or even brought on the pitch.

King James smiled kindly from his carved seat, said a few words about playing in a Godly and respectable way, raised a white handkerchief. Lord Spynie threw the ball into the middle of the crowd of men, the handkerchief dropped and the game began.

***

Elizabeth Widdrington stood beside her husband near Lord Spynie and stared at the field full of desperately struggling football players, trying not to squint in order to focus on one particular man among them. She could feel her husband simmering with spleen beside her, waiting for her to make some slip he could punish her for. She prayed automatically for strength, but could not help thinking that it was very unfair of God to put Robin Carey across her path so persistently when it hurt her heart to look at him and know she could never speak to him again. Her husband had decreed it and backed his orders with the threat, which she had no doubt he was capable of carrying out, that he would personally geld Carey if she disobeyed. She would have obeyed him in any case, naturally, since that was her duty, or she thought she would, but... She trembled for Robin’s impetuosity, his odd contradictory nature: he could plan and organise as wisely as an old soldier or the Queen of England herself, and then suddenly he would take some wild notion and throw himself into the middle of hair-raising risks with blithe self-confidence and trust in his luck. She loved him for it but she was certain that Sir Henry could use his daring to outmanoeuvre and destroy him very easily. And even though she felt as if a stone was hanging from her heartstrings in the middle of her chest at the thought of never talking to him or smiling at him, there was some comfort at least in his still being alive, whole, running like a deer over the rough grass with the ball at his feet, his elbows flying and his face alight with laughter at the pack of Maxwells behind him.

Christ have mercy, she could not take her eyes off him.

Sir Henry’s fingers bit into her arm. ‘Enjoying the match, wife?’

She could feel her cheeks reddening, but she managed to look gravely down at her grizzled husband. Remotely she wondered if her life would have been easier if she had been of a more womanly height: it had been the source of the first contention between them, the simple fact that she was taller.

‘No, my lord,’ she said evenly. ‘It has always seemed to me much like watching a herd of noisy cows lumbering from one end of the field to the other.’

Sir Henry snorted and peered at her, looking for deceit. There was none; how could she enjoy the match? What if Robin was hurt or killed?

‘Do you want to go back to our lodgings?’

She thought for a moment, what her answer should be. The words were kind and solicitous, but the tone of voice was ugly. She ducked her head humbly.