Janet punched him gently in the ribs and kissed his cheek. ‘He’s a light thing to look upon, isn’t he.’

Dodd forced himself to turn about, bid the churchman a gruff good day and walk away while Janet leapt hard-faced into the bargaining.

Afterwards, she took the horses by back routes to the castle so that fewer unscrupulous eyes would see the beauty, and tethered both in Bessie’s yard. When she went in she found Henry, Red Sandy, Long George and Archie Give-it-Them all playing primero with a tall handsome chestnut-haired man she didn’t know, who talked and laughed more than anyone she had ever met, and had skyblue eyes to melt your heart.

She sat down, watched the play which was tame, and waited to be noticed.

‘Oh Janet,’ said Dodd happily, drinking from his favourite leather mug. ‘Sir Robert, this is my wife; wife, this is Sir Robert Carey, the new Deputy Warden.’

Janet rose to curtsey to him and instantly took to him when he too rose and made his bow in return, smiling and addressing her courteously as Mrs Dodd rather than Goodwife. That arrogant lump Lowther would have grunted at her and told her to fetch him another quart. Though she would hardly need to be introduced to him.

‘Get me another quart, wife,’ said Dodd, oiled enough to make a point of it. Janet smiled, thinking what babes men were, picked up the jug and went to where Bessie was tapping another barrel, with her bodice sleeves unlaced and laid over a stool, the sleeves of her smock pushed back.

‘How are you, goodwife?’ Janet asked politely.

Bessie shook her head, her lips pressed tight, from which Janet concluded that her Andrew was in trouble and she didn’t want to talk about it.

The primero game was still in progress. Someone had dealt a new hand and Carey glanced at his, and called, ‘Vada. I’ve a flush here.’

Everyone laid down his cards, but Red Sandy held the highest points and pulled in the pot, grumbling at Carey’s sport-stopping flush.

Carey stood. ‘Good night, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘you’ve cleaned me out.’

‘You could stay and try and win it back,’ said Red Sandy unsubtly.

Carey smiled. ‘Another night, Sandy Dodd, I shall take you on and mend my fortunes, but not tonight. Thank you for your list, Sergeant.’

Janet watched him go, wondering how much his extremely well-cut dark cramoisie doublet and hose had cost him in London, and who had starched his ruff so nicely. He surely was a great deal easier on the eye than Lowther or Carleton. Archie had taken the pack and was shuffling the cards methodically, his tongue stuck out and his breath held in his effort not to drop them from his enormous hands.

‘I’m for home,’ she announced, ‘I’ll want to be there before nightfall with things as they are.’

Dodd followed her out where they ran smack into Bangtail coming from the midden. He smiled weakly at her and rejoined the game.

‘There he is,’ she said, pointing at where the beautiful horse was whickering and pulling at his tethering reins. Dodd went up and patted the silky neck, his face filled with happy dreams of golden bells and showers of silver. ‘What shall we call him?’

Dodd had unhitched him and was walking him up and down again.

‘He walks so nicely,’ Janet said consideringly, with her head on one side, ‘like your new Deputy Warden, somehow.’

Dodd grinned at the poetic fancy. ‘There’s his name. Courtier. How about it?’

‘I like it,’ said Janet approvingly, ‘they’ll know he’s out of the common. Do you want to keep him with you in the castle or shall I take him back to Gilsland?’

Dodd hesitated. ‘Lowther might spot him and take a fancy to him. Or the new Deputy. Better keep him in our tower. But will you be all right on the road back? It’s a long way and I canna come with ye.’

‘I willna be alone. My cousin Willie’s Simon is here today, I heard. I’ll offer him a good meal at Gilsland and a bed for the night if he’ll bear me company.’

Dodd nodded approvingly. It would help if some thought the horse belonged to the Armstrongs rather than him.

Janet kissed him and then took the horses out of the yard. Dodd went back into Bessie’s and set about losing the rest of his pay. He didn’t succeed, if only because Bangtail had already gone. Archie Give-it-Them said he’d muttered something about an errand for his wife and Dodd was too pleased at the possibility of winning to wonder at it.

WEDNESDAY, 21ST JUNE, 2 A.M.

That night Dodd dreamed he was about to be hanged for some crime he could not remember. He could hear the Reverend Turnbull intoning his neck-verse in a huckster’s gabble.

‘Have mercy upon me, oh God, according to thy loving kindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

‘Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin...’

He was just trying desperately to think of something to say as his last words when the drums leading him to the gigantic scaffold turned out to be a fist hammering on the door of his little chamber.

‘Sergeant!’ roared Carey’s voice. ‘Up and rouse out your men.’

Dodd was already hauling on his hose and shrugging on his doublet. He put on his second-best jack, the one Janet had spent hours reinforcing with bits of secondhand mail where ordinary steel plates would chafe. By the time his eyes were properly open he had laced himself up, buckled on his sword and found his helmet under the bed, and he was following Carey down the dark passage past the tackroom to the barracks door, as the Carlisle bell started ringing.

‘Where’s the raid?’ he asked.

‘A boy came in a quarter of an hour ago and he said the Grahams lifted ten head of cattle and three horses out of Lanercost at midnight.’

‘How many reivers?’

‘Between ten and twenty men, he thought.’

‘Forty in all then,’ said Dodd, and Carey nodded. He was already booted and spurred and his own jack seemed well-worn and serviceable. No way of telling the man’s courage though when it came to it, Dodd thought, he wished he’d seen Carey in a fight before having to follow him on a hot trod. What was wrong with a cold trod, anyway, they had six days to follow in for it to be legal, and nobody blinked much at a day or two to spare? Which would be worse? A fire-eater or a man who was all bully and brag and no blows? His face settling into its customary sullenness, Dodd decided he was hoping for a coward who would follow the trod well back and discharge his duty without too much sweat. But seeing Carey’s grin and the sparkle in his eyes, Dodd began to feel uneasy.

By the time the men had turned out and were in the castle yard, with sleepy hobbies snorting and stamping protestingly and blowing up their barrels to prevent their girths being fastened, another boy had ridden in with news of a herd of horses gone missing from Walter Ridley’s fields and a farmhouse broken into on the way. Estimates of the Grahams’ strength ranged from fifteen to forty men and Dodd nodded.

‘Where are the Elliots?’ he asked.

Carey turned to the most recent arrival, a lad of about twelve on his father’s fastest pony, his face flushed with the ride and the excitement.

‘We didna see them,’ he said.

‘The Grahams don’t always ride with the Elliots, though Sergeant?’ Carey asked, raising his voice to be heard above the clanging of the bell.

‘Not always,’ Dodd allowed. ‘Usually. It could be Johnstones or even Nixons or Scotch Armstrongs. Tom’s Watt Ridley,’ he called to the other boy, ‘did your uncle say aught about the Scots?’

‘Only he hadna seen none,’ said Tom’s Watt, helpfully. ‘It was all Grahams.’

Dodd sucked his teeth.

‘Are these out of Liddesdale, Tom’s Watt?’

‘Oh ay.’

Red Sandy came bustling up, with his steel bonnet in his hands and a crossbow under his arm, followed by his two sleuthhounds. The two dogs were bouncing around him, panting and leaping up with their paws and making the odd excited strangulated squeaks of dogs that have been taught not to give tongue.

‘No sign of Bangtail,’ he said, ‘no sign of Richard Lowther either. The Warden says Sir Robert’s to lead the whole castle guard.’