Facing Carey now was a wide balding Englishman in a magnificent black velvet suit and furred gown. He had corrugated ears and a long sharp nose. Carey straightened up quickly.
‘What business do you have with my wife, Sir Robert?’ demanded Sir Henry Widdrington in a very ugly tone of voice.
For once in his life it was clear Carey couldn’t think of anything to say. Dodd loosened his sword and pushed through the crowd: in his experience, elderly English headmen with the gout never went anywhere without their men and they were in lawless Scotland now. Carey seemed to have remembered it too: his hand was also on his swordhilt.
Sir Henry Widdrington limped up close to Carey and pushed him in the chest with a knobbly finger. Instinctively the crowd widened around them.
‘I have forbidden my wife—my wife, Sir Robert—to have any further conversation with you under any circumstances at all.’
Yes, thought Dodd, he does have backing: there’s that spotty Widdrington boy over by the inn gate and four more I don’t like the look of in the crowd behind the Deputy, and what about those two over by the horses... Why the hell didn’t we bring the patrol, at least, poor silly men though they are, we’re almost naked in this pack of Scotsmen and thieves. He began to sweat and look for good ways out of the marketplace.
Carey was still silent which seemed to enrage Widdrington.
‘I know, ye see,’ he hissed, still poking Carey in the chest. ‘I know what ye were at when I made the mistake of letting her go to London in the Armada year, you and your pandering sister between ye.’
Och God, groaned Dodd inwardly, knowing how Carey loved his sister and spotting another knot of six men at their ease just within the courtyard. Carey however gave the impression of being struck to stone, with only his eyes too bright a blue for a statue.
‘...and as for Netherby...’ Rage made Widdrington quiver and gulp air. ‘What did ye give her for the loan of my horses, eh, Carey? How did ye persuade the bitch, eh?’ Poke, poke went the finger. ‘Eh? Eh?’
Carey’s face was a mask of contempt.
‘You know your lady wife very little, Sir Henry,’ he said, in a soft icy voice. ‘She has too much honour for your grubby suspicious little mind. As Christ is my witness, there has never been anything improper between us.’
Sir Henry Widdrington spat copiously on Carey’s boots.
Dodd was directly behind Carey when this happened. Knowingly risking his life, he held Carey’s right elbow and whispered urgently, ‘Dinna hit him, sir, he’s got backing.’
Carey’s face was masklike and remote. Sir Henry seemed to be waiting for something, watching them both closely.
‘Hit him?’ Carey repeated coldly and clearly. ‘I only hit my equals or my superiors, Dodd. I would never strike a poor senile gouty old man, that has the breeding of a London trull and the manners of a Dutch pig.’
Well, it was nice to see the way he turned his back on Widdrington, insolence in every line of him, and remount Thunder. Perhaps having Thunder prance a showy curvette was taking defiance a little far, but it at least cleared the area around them slightly so that Dodd and Young Hutchin could mount as well. Carey led the way to the Town Head where Maxwell’s house was. Dodd showed his teeth at Widdrington who was bright red and gobbling with fury, and followed him. Still, his back itched ferociously right up to the gate of the magnificent stone-built fortified town house that the Dumfries men called Maxwell’s Castle. It continued to itch while Carey talked to the men standing guard at the gate and passed over the usual bribes, and went on itching even as they passed through into the small courtyard. That too was packed tight, though here all the men were either in livery or wearing Maxwell or Herries jacks and no lack of family resemblance either. As usual Thunder drew a chorus of covetous looks and some quietly appraising talk. Carey beckoned that Dodd was to follow him.
Back still pricking like a hedgehog’s, Dodd gave Young Hutchin his horn with orders to wind it if one of the scurvy Scots so much as laid a finger on anything of theirs. Young Hutchin grinned and touched his forelock.
The servingman was leading them through the crowded hall and out the back past the kitchens into a long low modern building tethered to the castle like a barge. Dodd followed Carey in through the door and blinked in the morning light coming through the high windows.
The shock of the caliver blast almost by his ear nearly caused Dodd to leap under the table. Even Carey jumped like a skittish horse, whisked round and half drew his sword.
Loud laughter made Dodd’s ears burn and he turned to snarl at whoever had frightened them. A blurred glimpse of an elaborate padded black and red slashed doublet and a wonderfully feathered velvet hat made him bite back his indignation. It was the tall man who had fired a caliver at a target surrounded by sandbags at the other end of the bowling alley. The barrel was smoking as he blew away the powder remnants from the pan.
‘Whae’s after ye and what did ye reive?’ asked the man, still laughing. ‘Ye baith jumped like frogs at a cat.’
Carey took in the magnificent clothes, dropped his sword back in its scabbard and managed a fairly good laugh and shallow bow in return.
‘We did, sir,’ he said in Scots. ‘Ye have the better of us. I am Sir Robert Carey, Deputy Warden of Carlisle, and I am in search of the honourable Lord Maxwell, newly made Lord Warden of this March. Would ye ken where we could find him?’
‘Ay, ye’re looking at him.’
Carey did a further, splendid court bow, the gradations of which Dodd was just beginning to appreciate, and took out of his belt pouch the exquisitely penned and sealed letter that Scrope had dictated and Richard Bell written the night before.
‘I am sent to bring congratulations to you, my lord, from my Lord Scrope, Warden of the English West March, with the hopes of a meeting soon to discuss justice upon the Border and in Liddesdale.’
Maxwell was a tall well-made man with dark straight hair and beard and hazel eyes under a pair of eyebrows that ran right across his face like a scrivener’s mark.
‘Well,’ said Maxwell, handing the letter to a smaller, subfusc man behind him in a plain blue stuff gown. ‘I’m honoured at the rank of the messenger, Sir Robert.’ He tilted a finger at the clerk.
The clerk coughed hard, unrolled the paper and began to read in a nasal drone that Scrope greeted his brother officer of the peace right lovingly and made no doubt that now justice would be done impartially and immediately upon the Borders and out of Liddesdale with such an excellent and noble lord... And so on and so forth. Dodd understood about half of it, despite it being seemingly written in English, but no doubt that was the lawyers’ part in the writing of it.
Meanwhile Maxwell was cleaning and reloading his caliver. Carey watched, looked at the target which already had a hole in it not far from the bull’s eye. Then as Maxwell settled the stock into his shoulder, squinted along the barrel and prepared to squeeze the trigger and bring the match down into the powderpan, he suddenly stepped forward with a cry and pinched out the glowing slowmatch end with his gloved hand. There was a flurry as Maxwell pulled away from him and Carey cursed, flapping his hand as the leather smouldered.
‘What the hell d’ye think ye’re playing at?’ thundered Maxwell, outraged. Carey reached over to one of the wine goblets standing on the table behind Maxwell and doused his fingers in the wine.
‘I’m very sorry, my lord,’ he said, swirling them about and wincing. ‘But that caliver’s faulty.’
‘It is no’,’ roared Maxwell. ‘It’s brand new.’
‘If you fire it again, it will burst in your hand,’ Carey said stolidly, stripping off his gloves and examining his fingers.
‘It willna.’
‘It will. I’ll bet a hundred pounds on it.’
‘It’s a new weapon fra... Ain hundred pounds?’
The Courtier hasn’t got a hundred pounds, Dodd thought; as far as I know he hasn’t got ten pounds at the moment, bar the travelling money.
Maxwell’s eyes had lit up at the thought of the bet.
