‘Eh? Oh, yes, very clear. A model of clarity, my dear Robin. Would you prefer to continue with this tomorrow, after you’ve had some sleep? You can have had none at all last night—you must be exhausted.’

‘I am tired,’ Carey admitted in a wintry voice. ‘But I prefer to make my report while it’s fresh in my mind.’

Scrope inclined his head politely.

‘Now we must switch to another plot. Quite separately, Lord Maxwell was very anxious to lay hands on a good supply of firearms to continue and, he hoped, finish his feud with the Johnstones. He needed them because the Johnstones appear to be very well armed, again with guns corruptly acquired from the Carlisle Armoury.’

‘I wish one lot or the other would win,’ interrupted Scrope wistfully. ‘It would cut in half the amount of trouble from the West.’

‘Maxwell made contact with Sir Richard Lowther and asked for the longterm hire of the weapons in the Armoury, on the usual illegal and damnably corrupt terms. Not in any way realising that the guns were faulty—in fact they hadn’t arrived at this point—Sir Richard agreed.’

Scrope nodded.

‘But with me around and his pet Armoury clerk, Jemmy Atkinson, dead, he realised the old system could no longer work. At the same time, he wanted Maxwell’s money. And so Lowther arranged to break into the Armoury while we were at the muster and steal the guns out of Carlisle. The plan was he would eventually “find” them again once Maxwell had finished off the last Johnstone and no longer needed them. While he was about it, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he had found clear evidence that it was I stole ’em.’

Scrope let out a humourless little ‘Heh, heh, heh.’ Then he added anxiously, ‘Unfortunately you have no proof it was Lowther who organised the theft.’

‘No, my lord, I haven’t. There’s nothing you could call proof for any of this.’

Scrope tutted.

Carey paused, editing his story. Would it be wise to tell Scrope he had broken into the Armoury the night before the guns were stolen, marked them and borrowed two for target practice? Scrope would quite probably be finicky about that and also about why Carey hadn’t told him. No, there was no point.

‘At any rate, the bad guns went to Lord Maxwell and nobody knew there was anything wrong with them.’ Carey’s expression changed to disgust. ‘That man has the luck of the Devil. If I hadn’t happened to be in Dumfries and saw that the gun he was using looked like Long George’s, we’d be shot of one major Border nuisance.’

Scrope nodded, poured aqua vitae into his tankard and sipped. ‘Never mind,’ he said comfortingly. ‘You weren’t to know, after all.’

Matters were getting a bit delicate here. Carey decided to skate over some of the details.

‘The long and the short of it is, my lord, that Maxwell was highly offended with me when I told him his new guns were all faulty. As a result of his treachery and Sir Henry Widdrington’s, I was arrested by Lord Spynie on a trumped-up charge of treason.’

‘Ah,’ said Scrope sympathetically. ‘The thumbscrews.’

‘Yes. Fortunately, I have friends at the Scottish court who told the King what had happened and His Majesty was pleased to release me as soon as I had explained myself.’

‘How very lucky for you,’ said Scrope neutrally. Carey did not respond to his unspoken question.

‘Yes. His Majesty was also munificent enough to return to me in recompense the guns that Spynie had stolen from our arms convoy and provide me with an escort to bring them to Carlisle.’

‘How extremely... er... munificent. And that’s the story, is it?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Carey.

‘The full story?’

All of it that I’m prepared to tell you, Tom Scrope, Carey thought to himself. Too tired to talk, he simply nodded.

‘How much of this should we pass on to the Queen?’

‘None,’ Carey answered instantly.

Scrope’s face broke into a childlike smile of pure relief.

‘Absolutely. I quite agree, my dear Robin, Her Majesty shouldn’t be troubled with any of these little difficulties at all.’

‘That’s what I said to King James.’

‘Splendid, splendid,’ said Scrope, leaning over to pat Carey’s arm and then, after thinking better of it, his knee. ‘His Majesty’s very wise and so are you. Discretion, clearly, is in order here.’

‘Yes.’

‘Right. Well. You’ll be wanting to get to your bed, I expect. Barnabus is waiting for you in your chamber. We’ll house and feed your escort and the ponies and send them back in a couple of days. Where’s Thunder, by the way?’

‘Oh,’ said Carey distantly, stumbling over another reason to feel depressed, ‘I sold him to the King.’

‘Excellent,’ beamed his inane brother-in-law. ‘Dreadfully expensive to feed and far too good for this part of the world. He’ll be much happier in the King’s stables. Did you... er... get enough for him?’

‘Yes, my lord, I can pay the men next month.’ He hoped Dodd still had his winnings from the bet with Maxwell that he had given him to look after. Even without that, he thought he could make shift.

Scrope leaned over and aggravatingly patted his knee again. ‘You’re a miracle-worker, Robin,’ he said. ‘Absolutely extraordinary.’

***

Never had the spiral stair up to his chambers at the top of the Queen Mary Tower seemed so long. He actually had to stop halfway up with his better hand on the stone central spine to catch his breath and wait for his head to stop spinning.

The door of his chamber was open wide with Barnabus getting the fire going and Philadelphia standing there, hands on hips, imperiously overseeing. Carey paused again on the threshold, wondering how much more he could deal with before he fell over.

Philadelphia turned, saw him and ran to him, then skidded to a halt and frowned severely at him. With uncharacteristic gentleness, she folded her arms around him. God, thought Carey, I must look bloody terrible.

However bad he looked, he felt worse. He went and sat on the bed, which had yet another new counterpane on it. Philadelphia sent Barnabus away and then sat down next to him.

‘I heard,’ she whispered. ‘I heard it all from Hutchin and Dodd. Let me see.’

‘For God’s sake, Philly, I...’

‘Oh, shut up.’ She picked up his right hand, examined it with her lip caught in her teeth, then took his splinted left hand. ‘This is Elizabeth Widdrington’s work.’

‘Yes,’ said Carey, trying to remove it from her grasp. ‘And it hurt like hell when she did it, so don’t undo it...Aagh! Christ Jesus, woman, what the hell do you think you’re...’

‘I only pressed the ends of your fingers to make sure you still have feeling in them.’

‘Well, I do.’

‘Don’t growl at me like Father; numbness is the first sign of gangrene.’

‘Philly, I’ve had about as much nursing as I can take.’

‘Then you won’t want the spiced wine I brought you with laudanum in it to help you sleep.’