Philadelphia Scrope was less suave as she presented the silver bells for prizes. She glowered ferociously at Mr Salkeld as well as at Sir Richard Lowther, from which Dodd guessed she was hurting in her purse as well. It couldn’t have helped that Sir Simon Musgrave had been sitting beside her and was looking as happy as Lowther. Dodd saw her hand a small fat purse to him and sighed. God damn it, if Carey and his sister had lost their shirts on the race, where were Dodd’s wages to come from?
The savour had gone out of the day for him, and it only confirmed his mood when his wife caught up with him and demanded briskly to know exactly how much he had lost on the Courtier’s big charger and didn’t he know better than to think a Salkeld would lose so easily?
He heard his name called and turned eagerly to see who it was. Red Sandy was standing on one of the marker stones of the race track gesturing over by the rail, where a crowd swirled around a knot of shouting men.
Dodd mumbled an excuse to his wife and arrived at the outskirts in time to see two Lowthers piling into a Salkeld with their fists. The Salkeld bucked and heaved and slipped away, started shouting for his kin, three more Salkelds attacked the Lowthers and then it seemed half the crowd was at it, swinging fists, shouting and roaring and pulling up hurdles from the fencing to use as weapons.
Dodd had more sense than to dive into that lot, even if Carey had not given them strict orders on no account to get into any fights on their own. He blew the horn he had on his baldric, dodged somebody with a club and heard hoofbeats behind him. Carey was riding up with four of the men, leading a horse for Dodd which the Sergeant took gratefully and vaulted into the saddle.
‘Reverse lances,’ Carey called. ‘Don’t stick them.’
In the early moments of a fight they could push the combatants apart; once it had got to this stage, the only thing they could do was stop it from spreading by using their horses as barriers and try and push the fighters over and away from the main crowd. The shouting swirled and spread, more of the garrison horse came over, Carleton with his troop and the rest of their own. There were knives flashing now, ugly and bright, someone was puking his guts up by the fence and the horses were whinnying as they objected to being used as mobile fences. Then Sir Richard Lowther rode over with Mr Salkeld behind him and instead of joining the line of garrison men, he rode straight into the middle of the mêlée and began laying about him with the flat of his sword. Evidently, thought Dodd, he had gone mad. There he was, bellowing that as God was his witness, he would shoot one of them—ay, Ritchie’s Clem, you too—if the fighting didn’t stop.
Astonishingly, it did. Men who had been at each other’s throats let go of each other, the knives disappeared, the fence posts were dropped. A few seconds later all of them had dispersed into the crowd.
Lowther sheathed his sword and rode over to where Carey was sitting with his fist on his hip, looking contemplative.
‘That’s how ye keep order at a muster,’ said Sir Richard, swelling like a turkey. ‘Ye know the men because ye’ve been ruling ’em for years and ye call them by name.’
Carey ignored him pointedly.
Lowther’s jowls purpled above the tight ruff while Dodd gazed busily into the distance. Away in the hills to the north was a long line of animals, small as ants, no doubt heading for Dumfries where King James would be in need of supplies. Eventually Lowther rode away.
The muster of the West March didn’t come to an end so much as tail off. Those who lived less than ten miles away went home, those who lived further out went to their exorbitantly priced, shared beds in the inns and taverns of Carlisle, or lit camp fires and prepared to doss down for the night, each surname forming its own small armed camp in the meadows and gardens around Carlisle. The competing smells of bacon pottage and salt fish rose here and there.
Carey caught up with Scrope at last and found him deep in conference with Sir Simon. He waited politely for a while and finding himself to be somehow invisible, turned his horse away to go and seek out Thunder and give him some carrots. You couldn’t blame the horse: he had been doing his best to win and it wasn’t his fault that he had mislaid his rider.
Carey had got as far as the paddock when he heard a shrill cry behind him.
‘Deputy, Deputy!’
He realised that a woman had been chasing after him and shouting for some time, so he turned his horse to look down at her. It was a skinny whippet of a woman, with her blue homespun kirtle held up and her feet bare.
‘Goodwife Little,’ Carey said courteously. ‘What can I do for you?’
She came up to him, skidded to a halt and dropped a sketchy curtsey which he acknowledged.
‘Deputy, I want Long George’s back wages and a pension.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘How am I to look after his bairns? We havenae land of our own, he was a younger son, and now I must pay the blackrent we owe the Graham and...’
‘Goodwife, wait a minute.’ Carey dismounted and stepped towards her. ‘Are you saying Long George is dead?’
She blinked up at him, bewildered that he didn’t yet know of her world-shattering disaster.
‘He died in the night,’ she said bleakly. ‘The surgeon said if he saw the dawn, he’d likely be well enough. But he didnae. He went to sleep and he died. He were stiff as a board this morning.’
Carey shut his eyes briefly. ‘I’m very sorry to hear of it,’ he said. ‘My condolences, goodwife.’
‘Whit about his wages?’
‘I haven’t the money on me now.’
‘Well, what do I do about getting it?’
Carey struggled to make his thoughts behave themselves. He kept thinking how the little girl’s feet had twisted themselves together under her kirtle.
‘I’m not sure I can help you myself at the moment,’ he said. ‘Do you need shroud-money for the burial?’
Goodwife Little sniffed. ‘He’s in the ground already, his dad did it this morning. I need the money for the blackrent to Richie Graham of Brackenhill, or they’ll burn us out again.’
For a moment Carey stood still, thinking of Long George being buried in unconsecrated ground like a dog or a suicide, wondering if his ghost would walk. He shook himself, felt inside his doublet and shirt and found his purse which had a couple of shillings in it, his entire fortune.
‘That’s all I have, goodwife,’ he said, handing it to her. ‘I’ve troubles of my own at the moment, but I’ll try and see what I can do for you.’
She curtseyed again, muttered her thanks as she took the purse and ran off into the crowd. Hitching Sorrel to the fence and ducking under the poles, Carey found Thunder in the middle of an admiring circle of boys and men, mainly English Grahams, with Young Hutchin holding his bridle and enlarging on the wickedness of that poxed pig of a Lowther that tipped him out of the saddle. Thunder whickered and nuzzled Carey. There was no question that Hutchin had kept him in beautiful condition, his coat gleamed and felt like warm damask, and he hardly seemed tired by his race. Nor was it Hutchin’s fault that his uncle was one of the worst gangsters on the Border. Carey gave him the rest of the day off.
It was soothing to Carey to ride Thunder back to the castle at the head of his troop, patting his withers while the big animal shook his head and pranced a little. Dodd, who had drunk enough at the end of the day to be imaginative, could have sworn the animal looked embarrassed and puzzled not to be wearing the victor’s bell. Dodd himself was weary and miserable and his stomach queasy with the after-effects of four meat pies, a strawberry turnover and a gallon or two of beer.
However there was no rest in prospect once they got back to the Keep. Something was happening in the courtyard when they rode in through the golden evening. It was full of shouting men carrying lanterns and torches, with Lord Scrope standing wringing his hands in the middle.
Carey frowned and looked in the same direction as the Lord Warden. Then he checked his horse and sat completely still, his lips parted as if he was about to say something and had forgotten what.
Dodd followed his gaze and thought, that armoury door is a mess, will ye look at it, bust apart and off its hinges... Je-esus Christ!
Somebody had raided the armoury while the Carlisle garrison was at the muster. In broad daylight, under the noses of the Warden, Deputy Warden and all the defensible men of the March, they had raided it and emptied it of every single caliver and pistol that it contained.
