The sword didn’t move, but Dodd blinked slightly. He moved to one of the half doors, still keeping his sword pointed at Hutchin, opened it a fraction and looked out. He was just in time to see the last Widdringtons leave the yard and the Maxwells on guard shut the gate behind them.

‘What was the charge?’ asked Dodd after a moment’s pause.

‘High treason and... er... trafficking with enemies.’

Dodd whitened and looked out into the empty yard again.

‘I told him,’ he muttered. ‘I told the fool.’

‘Ye mean it’s true?’ asked Hutchin, impressed. ‘Is the bill foul then?’

‘Near enough.’

‘Jesus. What shall we do, Sergeant?’

Dodd appeared to be thinking while he stared at Hutchin. Hutchin hoped very much that the Sergeant wouldn’t notice the thickening round his middle.

‘Well, we canna rescue the Courtier this time by calling out the Dodds or even the Grahams,’ he said with finality. ‘This is official business. Who was it came to arrest him?’

‘Sir Henry Widdrington and his kin.’

‘Was it now? That’s odd.’

Hutchin Graham nodded. ‘And they were in an awful hurry and it didn’t sound like they knocked him about much.’

‘How did you get away?’

‘The Courtier put me up under the roof through the trapdoor when he heard them and gave me this to take to Lady Widdrington.’ Hutchin showed him the ring on his thumb which he had been admiring for the size of its red stone and the letters of some kind carved in it. ‘Is it a ruby, d’ye think?’

‘Ay, no doubt.’

‘What are the letters?’

‘RC for Robert Carey,’ answered Dodd at once, impressing Young Hutchin for the first time with his clerkly knowledge. ‘Did he give ye anything else?’ Dodd asked casually. Hutchin shook his head. ‘They’ve got it then,’ he said sadly.

‘Got what?’ asked Hutchin with artful ignorance.

‘Nothing to concern ye, lad. Come on.’

‘Where to?’

‘Out of here first, and out of the town too. I dinna want to end up in the Dumfries hole with the Courtier.’

Hutchin shook his head. ‘I’m for going to Lady Widdrington,’ he heard himself say. ‘That’s what the Courtier wanted me to do, and that’s what I’ll do.’

‘Ye’ll come with me, lad.’

‘Where are you going?’

Dodd thought for a moment. ‘If the Maxwells are agin ye, who’s most like to back ye?’ he asked rhetorically. Hutchin nodded. It made sense to try the Johnstones. ‘Do you know a good way out of this place? Is there a garden gate?’

Hutchin thought about this professionally. ‘I heard tell from one of the other boys there’s a way by the new bowling alley, that Maxwell had built from the old monastery stone. The wall there’s nobbut the monastery wall and they werenae too choosy how they treated it.’

Dodd nodded. ‘If I can make it back to Carlisle, we’ll get the Warden to write to the King and see if we can ransom him out of there.’

Hutchin’s face twisted. ‘That’s nae good,’ he said. ‘Once it goes to the Warden, then he’s done for one way or the other, for the Queen will hear of it.’

Dodd had put on his jack and his helmet, giving him the familiar comforting silhouette of a fighting man, though the quilting on the leather was different from the Graham pattern. Now he was busy bundling up the shape of a man in the corner where he had been sleeping, out of straw and his cloak.

‘Lad,’ said Dodd gravely, almost kindly, ‘we cannae spring the Courtier out of the King’s prison.’

‘Why not? Ye saved him from my uncle when he was trapped on Netherby tower.’

‘That was different. Your uncle’s one thing, the King’s another.’

‘I dinnae see why,’ said Hutchin stubbornly. ‘They’re both men that have other men to do their bidding, only the King’s got more.’

‘That’s enough, Young Hutchin. We canna rescue the Courtier again because... Anyway, what can a woman do about it?’

‘He wanted me to take the ring to Lady Widdrington, so he must think she can do something. And that...’ said Hutchin virtuously, the decision somehow made for him by Dodd’s opposition, ‘...is what I’ll do, come ye or any man agin me.’

He slipped under the horse’s belly and whisked to the rear door that led to the midden heap. Sword still in his hand, Dodd didn’t try to stop him, so Hutchin checked that the backyard was clear and the Maxwells were watching outwards, and then turned again to the Sergeant with an impish grin.

‘He gets in a powerful lot of trouble, doesn’t he?’ he said. ‘For a Deputy Warden.’

‘Ay.’

FRIDAY, 14TH JULY 1592, DAWN

Elizabeth Widdrington always woke well before dawn to rise in the darkness and say her prayers. In the tiny Dumfries alehouse where they were lodging, it was easier for her to do it: firstly her husband had been out much of the night and had not been there to disturb her sleep with his snoring and moaning and occasional ineffectual fumbling. Secondly the new belting he had given her on top of the old ones the night before had kept her from sleeping very well in any case.

Fastening her stays was always the hardest part, as she pulled the laces up tight and the whalebone bit into the welts and bruises, but once that was done they paradoxically gave her support and armour. None of her clothes fastened fashionably at the back, since she did not like to be dependent on a lady’s maid, and so it was the work of a few minutes to tie on her bumroll, step into her kirtle and hook up the side of her bodice. She had changed the sleeves the night before and half-pinned her best embroidered stomacher to it and so once her cap was on her head she was respectable enough to meet the King if necessary.

She knelt to pray, composing her mind, firmly putting out of it her swallowed fury at her husband since it was, after all, according to all authority, his right to beat her if she displeased him, just as he could beat his horses. She worked to concentrate on the love and mercy of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

After a few minutes she said the Lord’s Prayer and stood up: it was hopeless and always happened. She couldn’t keep her mind on anything higher than the top of Robert Carey’s head. Since the age of seventeen she had been married to Sir Henry, happy as the fourth, gawky and dowryless Trevannion daughter to travel on the promise of marriage from the lushness of Cornwall to the bare bones of the north. Everything had been arranged through the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Hunsdon, as a kindness to one of his wife’s many kin. She had gone knowing perfectly well that her husband-to-be was gouty and in his fifties but determined to do her best to be a good wife to him, as God required of her. She had tried, failed and kept trying because there was no alternative. And then, seven miserable years later in 1587 the youngest son of that same Lord Hunsdon had spent weeks at Widdrington, waiting to be allowed to enter Scotland with his letter from the Queen of England which tried to explain to King James how Mary Queen of Scots had so unfortunately come to be executed. Robin had ridden south again at last, the message delivered by proxy, and she had wept bitter tears in her wet larder, where she could blame it on brine and onions. And then there had been the nervous plotting with her friend, his sister Philadelphia Scrope, so she could travel down to London the next year, the Armada year of 1588, and the year that shone golden in her memory, with Robert Carey the bright alarming jewel at its centre. But she had kept her honour, just. Only by the narrowest squeak of scruples on several occasions, true, but she had kept it.

Four years later she was still as much of a fool as ever, still burned to her core by nothing more than a glimpse of him caught as she dismounted in the street. She had accepted punishment from her husband for her loan to Robin of his horses the previous month, accepted it because ordained by God. But to be beaten for no more than a look, accused unjustly of cuckolding her husband and nothing she said believed...

I am wasting my time, she thought, trying to be firm. Besides, Robin has very properly abandoned his suit to me, look at how he was paying court to Signora Bonnetti...

Her stomach suddenly knotted up with bile and misery. How could he so publicly abandon me, he did not even try to speak to me at the dance the day before yesterday? (Ridiculous, of course he wouldn’t, Sir Henry was standing guard over me.) How could he dance with the vulgar little Italian in her whore’s crimson gown? (Whyever should he not, since he could not dance with me?) How could he disappear into the garden with her and what had he done there...(What business is it of mine, what he did, and do I really want to know?) How could he, the bastard, how could he...?

I will go for a walk outside, Elizabeth Widdrington said to herself, and escape this ridiculous vapouring. Anyone would think I was a maid of fifteen. I will not allow myself to hate Robin Carey for doing exactly as I told him to in my letter (bastard!).

She slipped her pattens on her feet and ducked out of the little alehouse. It had been very crowded with her husband’s kin, various cousins and tenants but now the place seemed half-empty. Her stepson Henry was lying asleep on one of the tables with his cloak huddled up round his ears, his pebbled face endearingly relaxed. He seemed to get broader every time she looked at him: his father’s squareness reproduced but almost doubled in size. Roger was nowhere to be seen. Because she was looking for sadness, she found more there. She had brought them up as well as she could and now they were growing away from her, abandoning her for their father’s influence.

Stop that, she commanded herself and walked briskly down the wynd that led behind the alehouse, past a couple of tents filled with more of King James’s soldiers, past three drunks lying clutching each other in the gutter, whether in affection or some half-hearted battle, past the jakes and the chickens and the pigpen and the shed where the goat was being milked, into the other wynd and back down the other side of the alehouse. Inside she still found no sign of her husband or half his men and climbed the stairs.