A boy was sitting swinging his legs on the sagging trucklebed she had been using, a rather handsome boy with cornflower-blue eyes and a tangled greasy mop of straight blond hair, the beginnings of adult bone lengthening his jaw already. Despite his magnificent black eye, she recognised him at once.

‘Is it Young... Young Hutchin?’

The boy stood up, made a sketchy bow and handed over a small piece of jewellery. It was a man’s signet ring with a great red stone in the centre, carved... Robert Carey had shown it to her at court.

The scene burst into her mind’s eye, the Queen’s Privy Garden at Westminster in 1588, the clipped box hedges and the wooden seat under the walnut tree, Robin peacock-bright in turquoise taffeta and black velvet, the day before he rode south with George Cumberland to sneak aboard the English fleet and go to fight the Spanish. ‘If ever you see this away from my hand,’ he had said in the overly dramatic style of the court, ‘then I am in trouble and need your help. Do not fail, my lady, I will need you to storm and take the Tower of London, for the Queen will have thrown me into gaol for loving you better than I love her.’ She had laughed at him, but she had also shown him the small handfasting ring with the diamond in the middle that had been her sole legacy from her mother, and told him the same thing. That had been one of her narrower escapes from dishonour; she had rashly let him kiss her that time.

So she took the ring, her heart beating slow and hard. She examined it carefully for blood or any other sign of having been cut from a dead hand, sat down on the bed with it clasped over her thumb and looked at Young Hutchin.

‘What’s happened to him?’ she asked as calmly as she could.

He told her the tale quite well, with not too many diversions and only a small amount of exaggeration about how he had climbed from a roof. So that was what her husband had been up to all night. She made Young Hutchin go through the whole thing again, listening carefully for alterations. Young Hutchin mentioned handguns; she made him tell her about them and more of her husband’s activities became clear to her. The rage she had stopped up for so long, which had killed her appetite and kept her dry-eyed through all her husband’s accusations and brutality, suddenly flowered forth in a cold torrent. She sat silent, letting it take possession of her, using it to form a plan.

‘Sir Henry and Lord Spynie are old allies,’ she said at last. ‘Sir Henry knew Alexander Lindsay’s father years before he was born. Take it from me, Young Hutchin, King James knew nothing of this outrage.’

She dug in her chest and found paper and a pencase, which she opened and scrabbled out pens and ink. She waited for a moment for her hands to stop shaking and her thoughts to settle. Although she was only a woman, she had influence if she chose to use it. Her husband was not the only one with friends at the Scottish court. She began with a letter begging urgent audience with the King.

‘Take this to the Earl of Mar,’ she said, folding the first letter and sealing it with wax from the candle. ‘Where is Sergeant Dodd?’

Young Hutchin spat expressively. ‘Run fra the town, mistress, I hope. He said he’d try the Johnstones.’

‘Good. When you have delivered the first letter, come back to me here. Don’t speak to any of the Widdringtons except me, do you understand?’

‘Ay, mistress. Will all this writing free the Deputy?’

‘It might. Off you go.’

The lad whisked out of the door and pelted down the stairs. Elizabeth took up her pen again, though her hand was starting to ache, and wrote another letter to Melville, King James’s chancellor, who had stayed in Edinburgh. They were old friends for she had fostered his son at Widdrington for a year, at a time when Scotland was too hot for him and he had been afraid of his child being used against him. In it she set down a precise account of what she guessed or knew about her husband and his activities, which she folded up, sealed and put crackling under her stays. Then she went downstairs again, face calm as she could make it. The few other men who had been sleeping there had woken and gone out to see to the horses. Her stepson had also woken up at last, and was sitting on his table, scratching and yawning and gloomily fingering yet another spectacular spot that had flowered on his nose in the night.

‘Good morning, Henry,’ she said sedately.

Henry coughed and winced: blood-shot eyes told her the rest of the tale.

‘Who gave you so much to drink?’

The young jaw stuck out and the adam’s apple bobbed. ‘Nobody,’ he said truculently. ‘Sir Henry’s still at the Red Boar.’

Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you know about the arrest of Sir Robert Carey?’

He looked away sullenly, his ears red and his feet twining together as they dangled off the table. Elizabeth went to the almost empty beer barrel, pushed aside the scrawny creature trying pathetically to clean up spillages with a revolting mop and tilted it to get the last of the beer out into a leather mug.

‘Drink that,’ commanded Elizabeth.

‘I’ll puke.’

‘You will not,’ said his stepmother drily. ‘You’ll find it has a miraculous effect. Go on.’

With an effort Henry drank, coughed again, wiped his mouth where the incipient fur on his top lip caught the drops and put the mug down.

‘Go on, tell me.’

‘Well, I had to do it, didn’t I? He’s my father, isn’t he?’

Elizabeth said nothing. Henry sighed.

‘Sir Henry rousted us all out about midnight or one o’clock, said he had clear evidence Sir Robert was trafficking guns with the Italian wine merchant.’

‘And how did he find out?’

‘Roger got the tale from his pageboy.’

‘On the pretext that I wanted to know?’

Henry nodded.

‘Go on. I shall speak to Roger later.’

‘And Sir Henry said Lord Maxwell had confirmed it and was very annoyed because he said Carey had cheated him on the deal. So we went up to the Mayor’s house with him, with Father I mean, and waited about a bit and then Father came down again with my Lord Spynie and the warrant. We went back to Maxwell’s Castle and Lord Maxwell let us in and we kicked Sir Robert’s door down and there he was with his sword in his hand and his hose and boots on, wanting to know what we wanted.’

‘Did he fight?’

‘No. Once he’d seen the Privy Seal on the warrant and the signature, he surrendered.’

‘What did he say about it? Did he say he was innocent?’

‘He didn’t get the chance.’

‘How badly was he beaten?’

Henry coughed and looked away again. ‘Not badly,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve had worse.’

Elizabeth nodded thoughtfully. ‘And where is he now?’

‘We took him back to the Mayor’s house again, to the wine cellar. Aside from the Dumfries gaol, which is full, it’s the only lock-up they’ve got here.’

‘Where did your father go?’

‘He’s off with Lord Spynie and his friends.’

‘So you came here and drank yourself asleep, instead of telling me.’

‘Father made me swear not to tell you.’

‘Oh, did he?’

Clearly Henry did not understand the significance of that, but it lightened Elizabeth’s heart. If Sir Henry didn’t want her to know something that he knew would cause her pain, then there was an excellent reason for it. She could think of only one good enough.

‘Smarten yourself up, Henry,’ she said with a wintry smile. ‘Or at least comb your hair. Then find the steward. When I’ve talked to him we’re going to see the King.’