‘Ah,’ said Thomas the Merchant, smiling in perfect understanding, ‘I see.’

‘I am in search of some help.’

‘Of course,’ murmured Thomas the Merchant, pulling his ledger from the shelf, the one that gave details of his interests in the Carlisle garrisons. ‘I am delighted to see you, sir. Who was it recommended you to see me? Captain Carleton or Sir Richard?’

Carey opened his mouth to answer and then shut it again, wondering if Thomas the Merchant was carrying on the same conversation he was. Barnabus solicitously pulled up a gracefully carved chair that was standing by the wall and he sat down in it.

The two of them looked at each other for a moment. ‘Well,’ said Thomas the Merchant, dusting his fingers, ‘as you know, I have always been very generous when it comes to the gentlemen who protect us from the Scots.’

Carey’s eyebrows went up but he said nothing, which made Thomas the Merchant a little uneasy. Thomas’s servant entered with the wine, served it out and made his bows. Carey drank cautiously, then drank again looking pleased and surprised.

Let’s get on with it, thought Thomas, surprised that the conversation was taking so long. ‘Have you a sum in mind, sir?’

‘For what?’ asked the Courtier. Behind him his servant was looking nervous.

‘For your... er... pension, of course,’ said Thomas, astonished at such obtuseness. ‘I must warn you that business has been very bad this year and I cannot afford to pay you as much as I paid Lowther while the old lord was sick. Shall we say three pounds a week, English?’

‘For me?’ asked Carey slowly.

Thomas sighed. ‘And of course, for your servant, I can offer one pound a week—really sir, I can afford no more.’ Thomas was hoping wildly that Lowther hadn’t told him the truth about what he was really getting from Thomas the Merchant.

He noticed that Carey’s fingers had gone bone white on the metal of the goblet. Well, happiness took people differently, perhaps Thomas had made the mistake of offering too much. Alas, too late now. Carey’s servant had backed into a corner next to the door and was looking terrified. Good, thought Thomas, that’s the way to deal with serving men, keep them in fear of you and then they have no time to be plotting rebellion or...

‘Have I understood you correctly, Mr Hetherington?’ asked Carey in a soft, almost breathless voice. ‘Are you offering me a free gift of 156 pounds per annum?’

Thomas the Merchant beamed. This one would last about three minutes; what possessed the Queen to send someone so naïve into the cockpit of her kingdom?

‘Well, nothing in this life is free, sir, except the Grace of God,’ he said. ‘I naturally hope to gain your... er... goodwill, perhaps even your friendship.’

‘And on the right occasions a little blindness, perhaps even the occasional tip-off.’

Did he have to spell it out so baldly? ‘Yes,’ said Thomas, embarrassed at such crassness, ‘of course.’

‘Naturally, although of course the matter is in confidence.’

Carey longed to bring his fist down on Thomas’s desk hard enough to make the windows rattle and the ledger hop in the air like a scared goat. He didn’t do it, though he knew Barnabus was tensed ready for him to roar. The insult of it! How dare the man? How dare he even think of buying the Queen’s cousin for less than ten pounds a week? And how dare he do it with such arrogant presumption, as if he were discussing no more than a business partnership.

‘Mr Hetherington,’ he began, and then changed his mind. He was up off his chair and had crossed the room to Thomas the Merchant’s desk and swept the ledger out from under his long thin nose before the Merchant could do more than take in a gasp of surprise. Carey flipped quickly through the pages, squinting at the crabbed Secretary hand, lighted on a few names and laughed. ‘I’d be in noble company, I see. I wonder, does Her Majesty know you have the Wardens of the West and Middle Marches in your pay?’

‘Er...?’ began Thomas the Merchant.

It was tempting to throw the ledger in the greasy skinny man’s face and march out, but Carey saw a better way of continuing to call his own tune. He shut the ledger and tapped it.

‘I want information, Mr Hetherington, much more than I want money. And it’s not my way to enter into this kind of... business arrangement.’ His servant made a desperate little whimper. ‘And so, I’ll thank you to tell me all you know about the horse that Janet Dodd bought, the one that came from Jock of the Peartree’s stable. To begin with.’

‘Er...’ Thomas the Merchant was staring wildly at Carey as if at a chimaera, which indeed Robert Carey was, thought Barnabus bitterly, being the only man ever at Court capable of turning down a bribe.

Carey leaned over him threateningly. Thomas the Merchant made a feeble swipe for his ledger, but Carey skimmed it across the room to Barnabus who scrambled and caught it.

‘Now then,’ said Carey with his hand suggestively on the hilt of his sword, ‘let’s hear the tale.’

Thomas the Merchant sat down on his high stool again and blinked at the fine set of plate he displayed every day on the chest in his room.

‘A cadger brought the horse to me,’ he admitted at last, ‘and I refused him because I had... er... seen him before, ridden by Sweetmilk. I wanted no trouble with the Grahams...’

‘I thought they were clients of yours.’

‘Sir!’ protested Thomas. ‘The accusation was found clean six months ago and...’

‘Never mind. When did you see the horse being ridden by Sweetmilk?’

‘Oh. Er... on Saturday.’

‘Where?’

‘Where what? Oh, ay sir, he was riding out the gate on the nag.’

‘Who with?’

Thomas the Merchant was sweating, gazing sincerely into Carey’s eyes. ‘Alone.’

‘And when was the horse offered to you?’

‘On Sunday. Naturally I refused to do business on the Sabbath.’

‘Naturally,’ agreed Carey drily. ‘But you were suspicious?’

Thomas the Merchant smiled. ‘A little,’ he admitted. ‘It was a coincidence. I wanted nothing to do with any criminal proceedings.’

‘Of course.’

Carey moved to the door, motioned his servant to give him the precious ledger and walked out of the door—simply took it in his hand and walked out of the door. Thomas the Merchant was appalled at such high-handedness.

‘Sir, sir,’ he protested, rushing after him, ‘my ledger, I must have it...’

‘No, no, Mr Hetherington,’ said Carey, with a smile and a familiar patting of the calfskin binding, ‘I’m taking your ledger as a pledge for your good behaviour, as my hostage, Mr Hetherington.’

‘But...’

The rat-faced servant barred his passage.

‘I wouldn’t if I was you, sir,’ said Barnabus, sympathetically. ‘I know, he’s a little high-handed at times. It comes of being so closely related to Her Majesty, you know. His father is her half-brother, or so they say.’

Thomas wasn’t interested in Carey’s ancestry.

‘My ledger... What shall I do...’

‘Amazing how memory can serve you, sir, if you let it. I’d bet good money that if you sat down and rewrote it, you’d end up with exactly the same ledger.’