‘Ah’m here, sir.’
‘Not you, Red Sandy; your brother.’
Red Sandy looked puzzled and Carey stood in his stirrups and looked around. Ahead of them on the road was the golden flash of sun on a polished breastplate and the flourish of feathers in a hat.
Carey pressed his horse to a canter again. ‘Keep going no matter what happens,’ he snarled at the chief drover as he passed.
Lord Maxwell’s saturnine face was aggravatingly relaxed as Carey approached.
‘Good day to ye, Sir Robert,’ he called out.
‘Good day, my lord,’ said Carey, tipping his hat with the very barest minimum of civility.
‘We’ll escort ye to Lochmaben now.’
For a moment Carey thought of a variety of responses, ranging from the reproachful to the courteous. In the end he ditched them all in favour of honesty.
‘In a pig’s arse, my lord.’
This was not how Maxwell was accustomed to being addressed. He blinked and his heavy eyebrows came down.
‘What?’
‘I said, in a pig’s arse, my lord,’ repeated Carey with the distinctness usually reserved for the imbecilic or deaf.
‘I’ll have my guns one way or the other, Carey.’
‘To begin with, my lord, they are not your guns, they are guns belonging to the Queen’s Majesty of England.’
‘They’re mine now,’ said Maxwell with a shrug.
‘No,’ said Carey. ‘They’re not.’
‘Ye’re not in yer ain March now, Carey. If ye give me no trouble, I’ll let you and yer men go free without even asking ransom.’
The sound of a single gun firing boomed out like the crack of doom in the quiet hills and danced between them. Carey looked over to his right and saw the distant lanky figure of Sergeant Dodd standing on a low ridge to the south of the road, with a smoking caliver. He lowered it, handed it to the Johnstone standing beside him who began the process of swabbing and reloading, and took another caliver that also had its match lit, blew carefully on the end to make it hot and took painstaking aim at Lord Maxwell.
Maxwell knew that breastplates do not stop bullets and that where one Johnstone was visible there were likely to be plenty more. He darkened with fury.
Carey worked hard to keep his relief from showing on his face. He had known that Dodd and the laird Johnstone were both too experienced to show themselves before their enemies had done so, but he hadn’t been sure they would be there at all.
‘Now, my lord, unless you want a fight with the Johnstones over the packtrain in which the Johnstones have guns and you have not you’ll let us go on to Carlisle in peace.’
Maxwell’s face twisted. ‘Is that what ye think? D’ye believe the laird Johnstone will let your precious packtrain into Annan and ever let it out again?’
‘Nobody in Scotland is getting possession of these weapons,’ said Carey through his teeth, ‘though at the moment I am more inclined to trust the laird Johnstone whom I have never met than I am to trust you, my lord.’
Maxwell sneered.
‘But,’ Carey continued, ‘in the interests of peace on the Border and the amicable co-operation of the two Wardenries, I am willing to allow this arrangement. You and the laird Johnstone may accompany me to the Border itself along with your men to be sure that neither one of you lays hands on the guns.’
‘Ye’re in no condition to dictate terms.’
‘I believe I am, my lord. Think where I must have got these guns from. Think who’s sitting in Dumfries with an army.’
‘The King couldnae take Lochmaben.’
‘He could if we lent him our cannon from Carlisle.’
‘Well, ye’ve the Johnstones and the King to protect ye. Are ye not man enough to protect yourself?’
Perhaps it was just as well Carey couldn’t hold a sword at that moment. Maxwell’s gesture made his imputation clear enough.
‘Take it or leave it,’ said Carey when he could trust himself to speak, settled down in the saddle and stared at Maxwell.
He was never sure afterwards why Maxwell blinked first. Perhaps it was the ominous distant hiss of slowmatches from the hillside where the Johnstones were watching, or perhaps it was the drovers bringing the ponies up and past them as if neither side were there. Maxwell had not been Warden of the Scottish West March very long, perhaps he was uncertain enough of what King James might really do to be willing to wait for a better time to take on the Johnstones.
Never did a packtrain have a more puissant escort. All the long road into Annan, all the long night while Carey, Dodd and the King’s lancers stood guard in watches over the guns, and all the next day, the Johnstones and Maxwells watched balefully over the weapons that could tip the balance so lethally between them.
As they watched the ponies splash over the Longtown ford into England at last and start south on the old Roman road, Carey growled at Hutchin.
‘If your relatives turn up now, I’m taking you hostage.’
Young Hutchin grinned at him. ‘Ay, my Uncle Jimmy thought about it,’ he said disarmingly. ‘It’s very tempting after all.’
‘And?’
‘I persuaded them not to.’
