As the sun set behind its grey blanket of cloud, and the night closed in, they slowed down, letting their horses feel their way. It was a black night, blacker than mourning velvet, the sky robbed of diamonds and the countryside full of hushed noise. Most of the cattle were still up at the shielings but the small farms announced themselves with the snoring of pigs and occasionally sheep would wander abstractedly across the path they were using. The men were quiet behind him apart from the occasional clatter of a lance against stirrup or the jingle of a bridle.
However, most of the night passed in jingling boredom. And then at last they were passing by an outpost of forest not far from the Border and Carey was about to order them to turn for home, when they heard a crashing and clattering from between the trees. The men immediately began to spread themselves along the path and tighten their helmet laces. Carey put his hand up for caution. Long George was pouring powder into the pan of his new gun. But whatever was coming was four-legged and certainly not horses...
The deer burst from the wood, tightly bunched, a group of young staggards and other rascals from what he could see of their antlers, their nostrils flaring and their white rumps flashing. They came suddenly, blindly, upon a line of men downwind of them and dodged in their panic from place to place. Long George lifted his pistol two-handed, screwed up his face thoughtfully and fired. The boom of the shot caused the deer to leap and double their speed, but one of them was turned into a still-moving fountain of blood, with most of its neck destroyed by the bullet. Gradually catching up with the disaster its legs stopped running and its body slumped into the ground, flopping about until it lay still.
‘Good shot!’ shouted Carey, delighted at the prospect of fresh venison. Long George grinned with pleasure and blew the remnants of powder off his pan.
Carey and Dodd dismounted, waited for the blood to stop and then inspected the beast. It was nicely fat and at least a stag, so although there was no particular honour in killing it, at least there would be good eating.
‘We’ll gralloch it and drain it for half an hour,’ said Carey. ‘The butcher can do the rest when we get it home.’
Dodd nodded. ‘We’re not poaching, are we?’
Carey thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think so, we’re on English land and anyway, Long George only hit the animal by accident, isn’t that right, Long George?’
‘Ay, sir. Me gun went off wi’out warning, sir.’
The other men sniggered quietly.
‘Exactly. And it would be a pity to waste the meat.’
Carey did not have his set of hunting knives with him, but Dodd passed him a long heavy knife with a wicked edge that was suspiciously apt to the purpose. Stepping around to the back of the beast, Carey leaned over the carcass and made the belly-cut with a flourish, thinking of the many times he had broken a beast with full ceremony to the music of drums and trumpets in front of Queen Elizabeth at one of her various courtly hunts.
‘By God, he does it prettily,’ one of the men remarked in a mutter to Dodd, who happened to be standing next to him. ‘Will ye look at him, not a drop on him?’
‘Ah’ve seen it done faster,’ sniffed Dodd.
‘Ay well, so’ve I, but that’s with one ear out for the keeper...’ He paused, cocking his head thoughtfully. Far in the distance, there was more crashing in the deer’s wake through the forest.
‘That’s a man running,’ said Dodd, swinging up onto his horse again and taking his lance back from Red Sandy. Carey looked up, stopped, wiped his hands and blade sketchily on the grass and vaulted up onto his own horse’s back just as the sound of feet burst out of the undergrowth and shaped itself into the blur of a human being, head down, arms pumping. He saw them waiting in the darkness and skidded to a halt, mouth open in dismay.
Carey knew prey when he saw it; the man’s oddly cut doublet was flapping open and his fine shirt ripped and stained, his hose were in tatters and his boots broken. He had pale hair plastered to his face with sweat, a flushed face, a pale beard and a square jaw.
‘Hilfe, hilf mir,’ he gasped. ‘Freunde, helft mir...’ His legs buckled and he went to his knees involuntarily, chest shuddering for air. ‘Um Gottes willen.’
‘He’s a bastard Frenchman,’ said Red Sandy excitedly, aiming his lance at the man and riding forward.
‘Nay, he’s that Spanish agent...’ someone else shouted. Long George was reloading his pistol as fast as he could.
‘Nein, nein...’
‘Wait!’ roared Carey. ‘God damn your eyes, WAIT!’
In the distance, they could hear dogs giving tongue. The man heard it too, his eyes whitened, he tried to stand, but he was utterly spent and he pitched forward on his face, retching drily.
Carey dismounted and went over to the man.
‘He’s a French foreigner,’ said Red Sandy again. ‘Did ye no’ hear him speaking French, sir? Can I get his tail for a trophy, sir?’
‘It wasn’t French,’ said Carey. ‘It was something else, High or Low Dutch, I think. He’s a German.’
Red Sandy subsided, mystified at the thought of a foreigner who wasn’t French.
‘Like one of them foreign miners down by Derwentwater,’ put in Sim’s Will Croser helpfully. ‘Ye mind ’em, Red Sandy? They speak like that, ay, with all splutters and coughs and the like.’
‘Qu’est vostre nom, monsieur? Parlez-vous français?’ Carey asked as he approached the man who was lifting himself feebly on his elbows. Behind him he could hear the men muttering between themselves. They were arguing over whether the German miners had tails like Frenchmen.
‘Hans Schmidt, mein Herr, aus Augsburg. Ich spreche ein bischen... je parle un peu de Français.’
‘Well, that’s French, any road,’ said Dodd dubiously as the hounds in the distance gave tongue again, musical and haunting. The German winced at the sound and tried to climb to his feet, but his knees gave way. His fear was pitiful.
‘I know, Sergeant,’ said Carey, coming to a decision. ‘Have the men move off the road into the undergrowth over there, spread them out. Not much we can do about the venison seeing they’ve got dogs, so leave it. Red Sandy, you set the men and don’t move until we know what’s coming after this man. If I shoot, hit them hard. Dodd, you stay here with me.’
Dodd loosened his sword, took a grip on his lance and slouched down in the saddle, sighing in a martyred fashion as he stayed out in plain view to back up his Deputy Warden. Heart beating hard, Carey could hear the other horses now, crashing through the undergrowth behind the hounds.
The German, Hans Schmidt, had got to his feet, swaying with exhaustion, jabbering away desperately in High Dutch, not one word of which Carey could make out. He could talk to a whore or an innkeeper in Low Dutch, but that was the size of his ability. French came easier to him.
‘Nicht verstehe,’ he said. ‘Je ne comprends pas. Plus lentement, s’il vous plaist.’
For answer the man put his face in his hands and moaned. There was no time left, the hoofbeats were too close. The German began wobbling away, across the field. Carey shook his head, remounted his horse and pulled both his dags out of their cases. They were already shotted and he wound them up ready to fire, but from the sound of it two shots would not be enough.
‘Off, off. Allez!’ shouted Carey, riding over to protect his kill, looking around for the huntsmen.
For a moment it was hounds only, the horses heralded by sound. Then, like the elven-folk from a poet’s imagination, they cantered out of the tree shadows, three, four, eight, twelve of them, and more behind, some carrying torches, their white leather jacks pristine and lace complicating the hems of their falling bands and cuffs, flowing beards and glittering jewelled fingers, with the plump flash of brocade above their long boots. Carey was surprised: he had expected one of the Border headmen and his kin, like Scott of Buccleuch or Kerr of Ferniehurst, perhaps even Lord Maxwell. Certainly not these fine courtiers.
The Master of the Hunt whipped the hounds off, and the highest-ranking among them rode forward on a horse far too good for the rough ground. Carey recognised him immediately.
‘My lord Earl of Mar,’ he said in astonishment, looking from the dishevelled panting German to the King of Scotland’s most trusted advisor.
