‘Now,’ she said, mentally girding her loins, ‘I’m going to cut off that bit of rag holding your fingers together.’
‘It’s the Earl of Mar’s handkerchief.’
‘I’ll buy him a new one. Take your left hand out of the water, and put it on my lap.’ After a moment’s hesitation, he did. Very carefully she cut the cloth with the small knife. As the fingers came free, Carey sucked in his breath and held it.
The splints and bandages were beside her on the bed. She started by patting his swollen hand dry and examining the thumb, which was bruised, but not broken. There were marks and bruises around his wrists but nothing that needed attention.
‘Let me tell you a story,’ she said, taking his forefinger and feeling it carefully. The swelling was down a little and she could feel the greenstick fracture inside the flesh. It would have needed no more than a splint only someone had twisted it sideways. ‘About two weeks ago, while I was still in Carlisle, my husband called out most of his kin at Widdrington and rode due west to the Border.’ She knew Carey was watching her face intently, trying to ignore what she was doing to his hand. ‘Probably at Reidswire in the Middle March he met his friends from the Scottish court, come south from Jedburgh, and took command of a string of heavy-laden packponies, carrying handguns. Then he rode south and east again and, according to my steward, he met Sir Simon Musgrave and the arms convoy on the Newcastle Road at night. Sir Simon is an old friend of my husband’s, they collect blackrent off each other’s tenants. There they exchanged one set of guns for another.’
He was interested now, listening properly. She held his forearm tightly under her arm, took his forefinger, pulled and stretched it straight, ignoring the jerk and his startled ‘Aahh’, until she felt the ends of bone grate into place. Quickly, she put the splint up against it and bandaged it on.
‘How do you feel?’ she asked. ‘Dizzy?’
His face had gone paper white, but he shook his head.
‘Warn me next time,’ he said, panting a little.
‘Very well.’ The next one would be harder, being the long middle finger. She took it and started stroking it again. This was more of a crushing fracture, badly out of place. Well, all she could do was her best.
‘Try not to clench your hand,’ she said. ‘Ready?’
He nodded, watching anxiously.
‘Robin,’ she said. ‘Look over at the tapestry, over there.’
He did, fixing his eyes on a place where the heavy folds swung gently as if in an invisible breeze. She took the finger, gripped his arm tight against her stays and set the bone into place. It took longer this time to get it to her satisfaction and splint it to the other withy, and at the end she had sweat running down under her smock and stinging the grazes there. Carey was green and clammy, eyes tight shut. She smeared ointment on, splinted the three fingers together, took the little bottle off the table, tasted it to make sure of what it was, and gave it to him.
‘Not too much,’ she warned, watching his adam’s apple bob. ‘I haven’t finished yet.’
‘What the hell else is there to do?’
‘I can make your other fingers feel better if I release the pressure of the blood under the nails.’
He was cradling his left hand against his chest and swaying slightly.
‘How?’ he asked, not looking at her.
‘By making a hole in the nails.’
‘Oh, Christ. Are you working for Lord Spynie?’
He meant it as a joke, though it was a very poor one. She tried to smile and failed. She was not enjoying this, although she might have thought she would, given the stupid man’s cavortings with Signora Bonnetti.
‘It doesn’t hurt so much,’ she managed to say. ‘My mother did it for me when I caught my hand in a linen chest lid.’
Now he was offended for some reason. ‘Get on with it then,’ he growled.
She got the strongest needle out of the hussif case, sharpened it on the carborundum and slipped the cobbler’s handstall on. There was a candle and tinderbox by the little fireplace. She lit the candle and heated up the end of the needle. The blood that came out from under his thumbs was sullen and dark, so she thought he would keep those nails, but when she drilled through into the nailbed of his right forefinger, the blood spurted up into her face and Carey yelped.
She mopped herself with her makeshift apron, pressed to make sure it was all out and attacked the final one, leaning well away. There was pressure under that one as well. She cleaned them both up, once more fighting the distraction of his body. At last she bade him put just his right hand in the cold water again and wrapped a compress round the thumb of his left hand.
‘Are you finished?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll make you a sling when you’re dressed, but I see no point in bandaging your right hand when the bruising doesn’t need it. You can take it out of the water when it stops throbbing. What you need now is to sleep.’
He shook his head, as much to clear it as to dismiss the notion. ‘What’s the rest of your tale? Who helped make the transfer on the Border? Was it the Littles? And why did they give guns in payment to the Littles who helped them?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Carey explained about Long George and his new pistol and Elizabeth shrugged cynically. ‘I have no doubt that Long George simply stole one. What else do you expect?’
‘All right. So the Scottish weapons are now on the Newcastle wagons and coming into Carlisle with Sir Simon. What happened to the English weapons?’
‘Apparently my husband took them north again to Reidswire where he handed them over to Lord Spynie’s men.’
Carey sighed and tilted his head back. ‘Of course, where else? Put like that, it’s bloody obvious.’
‘What is?’
‘Everything. Who has our guns, where the bad ones came from, why they were swapped, who killed Long George.’
‘Well, I’m glad somebody understands what’s been happening,’ said Elizabeth tartly.
He grinned at her, ridiculously pleased with himself again, and kissed her smackingly on the lips.
‘You are a woman beyond pearls and beyond price,’ he told her, putting his arms around her with great care. ‘I love you and I will never never chase Italian seductresses again.’
She tried to hang onto her anger, but she couldn’t. ‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep,’ she muttered and he laughed softly.
