It took some argument to get Carey, afire with impatience to put his head in the noose, to pause for a beer at the Golden Bell. As soon as they entered the common room, a tall figure in fine grey wool, piped with murrey, snapped her fingers at Barnabus and beckoned them over.

‘What the...’ hissed Carey. ‘God’s blood, you told her, you sneaking little bastard, I’ll tan your backside for you...’

‘Well, Danny,’ said Barnabus, deliberately insolent, ‘I don’t know what good getting in a fight with me would do you, but if that’s what you want, I’m game.’

Carey growled at him. Lady Widdrington had lifted her head haughtily and was beckoning again.

‘I think there’s business to be done with the lady, mate,’ said Barnabus. ‘Ain’t you going to find out what it is?’

In fact, Barnabus nearly gave himself a rupture trying not to laugh as he watched his elegant master slouch over to Lady Widdrington, haul off his statute cap and make an ugly-looking bow. In a minute he had his pack off his back and had opened the top and was delving in the depths. She apparently wanted a thimble, and when he pulled out five in a little packet, she examined them carefully and asked if he was mad.

Barnabus loafed over with the beer, so as not to miss the fun.

His face hidden by digging in the pack, Carey was muttering his reasons for sneaking into Netherby to Lady Widdrington, who listened with regal calmness.

‘I see why you want to do it,’ she said, to Barnabus’s shocked disappointment, ‘but have you thought it through?’

‘I think so, ma’am,’ said Carey, producing a card wound with stay laces.

‘Do you? Well, I don’t. What’s your excuse for going to Netherby? Why are you there at all? To sell Bothwell broidery silks and some pretty ribbons for his hair?’

This nonplussed Carey, who had been so charmed at the idea of getting into Netherby, he had not in fact thought it through. Lady Widdrington examined the laces and talked rapidly out of the side of her mouth.

‘In the stables are three northern horses, with Fairburn brands on them, and also the Widdrington mark which might not be known here. They are my horses which I am lending to you as cover. You take them into Netherby and offer them to Bothwell and if he’s as anxious for remounts as you say he is, then he’ll be delighted. We’ll work out a way of getting them back later.’

Carey opened his mouth to argue, stopped, thought, then nodded intently.

‘Now you’ll have trouble getting out in the morning, because if the raid is due in the next couple of days, I expect Bothwell will simply close up the castle and let no one out for any reason. He may be mad but he isn’t stupid. So if you find it hard to get out, put all of this powder...’ She put down a twist of paper next to some lace bobbins, ‘...into your wine or beer and it’ll give you all the symptoms of a man with the first stages of the plague—fever, headache, sneezing, and if you complain of pains in your neck, groin and armpits that should frighten the life out of them.’

‘It isn’t... er... plague...?’

‘No, Robin, it’s poison, a very mild one and you’ll feel very ill too, but that will help convince them. They’ll kick you out of Netherby themselves and then you’ll have to do the best you can. If I haven’t heard from you by late afternoon tomorrow, I’ll tell Scrope and we’ll come and get you out.’

‘Elizabeth, my dear...’

‘One of the hardest things to disguise in a voice is endearment,’ interrupted Elizabeth Widdrington frostily. ‘This is a lunatic scheme, but if your heart is set on it, well... And I most certainly will not pay five pence for stay laces Daniel Swanders may have paid a penny for at the most, what can he be thinking of? I’ll take this thimble though.’

She picked up a small ivory thimble and paid for it, and then watched impassively as Carey thanked her with extravagant obsequity and started shoving his things back in the pack.

‘Go carefully with those silk stockings, they fray and they’re your stock in trade, remember. I’ll leave, and Barnabus will go for the horses, while you stay here. Barnabus will walk them up to the gate with me and then he’ll go on round the walls and wait for you at Eden bridge. You follow when you’ve drunk your beer.’

Carey was smiling fondly at her. Many men might have resented her high-handedness, but he was used to managing women. He thought she never looked handsomer than when she was taking charge of something.

‘Is there anything else I can do to help?’ she asked.

‘I wish I could kiss you,’ said Carey. That put colour in the lady’s cheeks. It was a good thing the light was so bad, no doubt to assist the diceplayers in the corner. Barnabus would have been over there to investigate if Lady Widdrington hadn’t included him in her plan.

‘It would be unseemly,’ said Lady Widdrington sternly. ‘If any cadger... I’d have my steward throw him out.’

‘No steward here, my lady,’ said Carey with a wicked grin, caught her hand and bent over it with a kiss. ‘Now you’d better slap me.’

She was a quick-thinking woman, thought Barnabus approvingly, because she didn’t slap him, she boxed his ears as she would any servant who behaved like that. One of the innkeeper’s large sons came looming over with a cudgel in his hand.

‘Is he bothering ye, ma’am?’ he asked.

‘Yes, he is,’ said Lady Widdrington coldly, wiping her hand with her napkin, ‘but I think he’s drunk. You’d better throw him out.’

‘Tut, and it’s only the afternoon too,’ said the innkeeper’s son primly.

It did Barnabus’s heart good to see his master frogmarched to the door and kicked into the mud outside, where he landed on his face. For good measure, Barnabus picked up the pack, stuffed the rest of the gear inside along with the twist of paper, and slung it after him.

‘And stay out,’ he ordered sternly. ‘That’ll learn you better manners wiv her ladyship.’

Knowing Carey, he turned away quickly, but he wasn’t quick enough to avoid the clot of mud that hit his back. Not such a bad shot as all that, he thought, though of course knives were a different matter.

He went back to Lady Widdrington, who was drinking a tot of whisky on the house, to settle her nerves after her nasty experience, with the landlord making excuses and promising that the drunken sot would never be allowed to darken his respectable door again. Lady Widdrington nodded and generously said that she couldn’t possibly hold it against him since the man had no doubt been drinking all day somewhere else and had been the best her servant could find.

Once the landlord had subsided and gone back to his less prestigious but more valuable customers, Barnabus attended on her assiduously, and murmured the story of Carey’s visit to Thomas the Merchant.

‘I think he was in too much of a hurry, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I think Thomas hadn’t told us the half of what he knew, but once he heard the name Swanders confirmed, of course sir had to be off.’

‘He is like that,’ agreed Lady Widdrington. ‘Straight into the thick of it at top speed. Well, he’s done it before and never a scratch on him, so God must be watching over him.’

‘Ma’am,’ said Barnabus slowly, ‘I don’t want to pry, but... er... why didn’t you stop him?’

‘Stop Robin Carey when he’s got the bit between his teeth?’ She smiled at him. ‘Could you?’

‘Well no, ma’am, though I tried. But I thought...’

‘I wouldn’t back the Queen herself against him, once he’s in that state. In fact she couldn’t stop him running off to fight the Armada though she threatened him with the Tower. So if I can’t prevent him, I can help him to do whatever mad scheme he’s hatched more efficiently.’ She let out a little sigh and clasped her hands together. They were not very ladylike hands, being large, square and strong, though they were as white and neat as lemon juice and buffing could make them.

‘I see, ma’am,’ said Barnabus sympathetically, who did indeed see. ‘Do you think he’ll manage it?’

She folded her lips consideringly as he refilled her larger goblet with wine, mopped a tiny spill with a cloth. Eventually, Barnabus thought, her long nose and determined chin would begin to curl towards each other as she got old and her teeth fell out.

‘I don’t know, Barnabus,’ she said at last, her voice firm and quiet. ‘At worst they might shoot him or hang him, or even torture him if they take it into their heads he might tell them something they want to know. At best they might ransom him, if he can overcome his pride long enough to tell them who he is. I’m sure Scrope will buy him free if he has to.’

Barnabus, who remembered the scene at the bawdy house, wasn’t so sure, but didn’t feel inclined to say so. He bowed to her and she smiled radiantly at him.

‘And of course, he might even succeed. After all, he has unexpectedness on his side. I think he will if God watches over him as He always has so far.’

That was good enough for Barnabus and he smiled back.

‘Come along,’ said Lady Widdrington. ‘You’d best get those horses for me. They’re in the end stable, if Young Hutchin got it right, the bay, the dapple mare and the chestnut.’

She walked to the door with her back straight as an arquebusier’s ramrod.

THURSDAY, 22ND JUNE, LATE AFTERNOON