Behind him his six patrolmen muttered into their chests and followed in sodden misery. They had been on their way home to Carlisle from a dull inspection of the fords on the River Sark when the Sergeant had seen the trail and taken it into his head to follow it. By the time they got to the guardroom, Lowther’s men would have taken the best beer and the least stale loaves and if there was cheese or meat left, it would be a wonder.

Dodd crested a small rise and paused. Ahead of him three crows yarped in alarm and flapped into the sky from a little stand of gorse, to which the trail led directly.

‘Sergeant...’ began Red Sandy Dodd, nervously.

‘We’re still in England.’

‘We could send some men out this afternoon...’

Dodd twisted in the saddle and looked gravely at his brother, who shrugged, smiled and subsided. The Sergeant turned and kicked his reluctant mare down the slope towards the gorse.

The others followed, sighing.

Beside the stand of gorse was a stone marked about by the prints of hooves where horses had stood. From there into the gorse there was a swathe of flattened and rubbed grass, stained here and there by smears of brown almost completely turned back to mud now. None of the horses wanted to approach, they neighed and sidled at the smell. The Sergeant’s mare tipped her hip and snorted long and liquidly in warning.

Dodd leaned on his saddle crupper and nodded at the youngest of them.

‘Right, Storey, go and fetch it out.’

Bessie’s Andrew Storey had a pleasant round face with a few carefully nurtured brown whiskers about the upper lip and he looked denser than he was.

‘In there, sir?’

You’re struggling against fate, said the Sergeant’s dour look.

‘Ay,’ he answered.

Dodd turned away to inspect the marks in the ground again. Bessie’s Andrew looked at the gorse and knew his horse had more sense than to venture in. He slid down from his saddle, knocking his helmet from its hook as he went and muttered as it landed in a puddle.

‘Bessie’ll have your guts if yon man’s got plague,’ said Bangtail Graham cheerily. Dodd grunted at him.

Nobody else spoke as Storey squelched through the scrub, following the trail, pushing spines aside with his elbows and sidling through the gaps as best he could. His sword caught on a low branch and another spined branch whipped back as he let go of it and caught him round the back of the head. Still cursing he disappeared from sight.

‘There’s a body here, Sergeant,’ he called at last.

‘Is there now,’ said Dodd in tones of sarcastic wonder. ‘Whose?’

‘I’m not sure, sir. The face...’ There was a pause and a sound of swallowing. ‘The face is pecked, sir.’

‘Guess.’

‘I dunno, sir. From the look of his jack, I’d say it might be a Graham.’

There was a general shifting in saddles. Dodd sighed deeply as Bangtail Graham came up beside him looking worried and intent. The other men looked covertly at the two of them from under their lashes.

‘Which Graham?’

‘Dunno, sir. He was shot in the back.’

More silence.

‘Fetch him out then, man,’ said Dodd gently, ‘it’s wet out here.’

SUNDAY, 18TH JUNE 1592, NOON

Barnabus Cooke had bruises and blisters on his backside and was filled with loathing for his master. The rain fell without cease, as it had since they left Newcastle, the horses were sulky and unwilling, two of the packs had been so ill-stowed by the grooms at their last inn that they forever threatened to break loose. In the meantime the expensive brocade trim on his cloak (that his master had told him not to bring) was ruined, and his velvet doublet would need an hour of brushing if it was not to dry to a lumpish roughness and his ruff was a choking wad of soaked linen that he had not the heart to take off and squeeze dry.

His master came trotting up to ride beside him and smiled.

‘Only another ten miles, Barnabus, and we’ll be in Carlisle.’

Ten more miles, only ten, thought Barnabus in despair, what’s sir’s bum made of then, cured leather? ‘Yes, Sir Robert,’ he said. ‘Any chance of a rest?’

‘Not around here, Barnabus,’ said Sir Robert Carey, looking about as if he was in some dubious alley in London. ‘Best keep going and rest once we’re inside the castle.’

Barnabus looked about as well, seeing nothing but disgusting empty green hills, close-packed small farms, coppices of trees, rain, sky, rain. No sign of civilisation except the miserable stone walls the barbarian northerners used in place of proper hedges, and the occasional ominous tower in the distance.

Behind him trailed the four garrison men from Berwick that Sir Robert’s brother had sent to meet them at Newcastle, and behind them Barnabus’s nephew Simon whose mother had terrorised him into taking her baby to learn him gentle ways. That was while he and Sir Robert had been at Court, serving Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, eating palace food and standing about in anterooms and galleries while Barnabus raked in fees from the unwary who thought, mistakenly, that the Queen’s favourite cousin might be able to put a good word in her ear. That was in the happy profitable time before the letter came for Sir Robert via the Carlisle Warden’s messenger riding post. Barnabus had been sent out to buy black velvet and see if Mr Bullard would give Carey a bit more credit and make a new suit in two days flat.

To be fair Sir Robert had offered to get Barnabus a job with his friend the Earl of Cumberland if he didn’t want to go into foreign northern parts. He’d even offered to pay some of the back wages he owed, but Barnabus Cooke had been too much of a fool to grab the offer and stay in London where he could understand what men said.

The four Berwick men were muttering incomprehensibly to each other again. One came cantering past Barnabus, spraying him with mud, to talk urgently to Sir Robert.

Barnabus hunched his back and shifted forwards a little to try and take the weight off the worst worn parts of him. Sir Robert was talking quickly with the soldier, his voice suddenly tinged with an ugly northern harshness, so Barnabus could no longer understand him either.

There were men with lances on one of the hills nearby, he could see that now. Sir Robert was staring at them, narrowing his eyes, peering north, then south.

Barnabus began to feel a little sick. Everyone was behaving exactly as if they were in Blackfriars coming out of a primero game and the alley was blocked by armed men.

There were eight lancers, to be precise.

Sir Robert was riding alongside him now.

‘Have Simon come up behind me,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Where’s your gun?’

Barnabus collected his scattered wits. ‘In the... er... in the case, sir.’

‘I told you to have it ready.’

‘Well, but... it’s raining, sir.’

‘Is it loaded?’

Barnabus was offended. ‘Of course.’ He saw that Sir Robert already had his own dag out under his cloak, and was winding the lock with a little square key he carried on his belt. Suddenly Sir Robert’s insistence on expensive modern wheel-lock guns without powderpans made sense—who could keep a powderpan dry in this weather?

‘Sir,’ ventured Barnabus, beginning to think, ‘if it’s footpads, I’ve my daggers.’

Sir Robert nodded. ‘Good man,’ he said. ‘Go to the rear with Robson. If there are eight on the hill, there’s another four behind us, somewhere. If they come up fast, kill them.’