‘Are ye not?’ asked Carey guilelessly, heart hammering again.
Bothwell smiled, a little coldly. ‘That’s for me to know and you to learn in due course, Daniel.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Are you riding with us, Daniel?’
No help for it. ‘Yes sir, though I’m not a right fighting man if I’m honest with ye.’
Bothwell clapped him on the shoulder again and grinned: he had remarkably good, even teeth and it gave his smile an odd glaring quality. Carey smiled back.
‘If ye want custom, wait about a bit and Wattie Graham will take you to see the women, they’re all agog for whatever’s in your pack.’
Wattie Graham was as good as his word: as the betting round the makeshift cockpit reached manic proportions, Carey followed the laird up the winding stair to the next floor, where his womenfolk were hiding from the untrustworthy men down below.
There was a crowd of them, perhaps ten or eleven, and a bewildering number of Jeans and Marys with an occasional Maud and one Susan, sitting on little stools at a trestle table eating their own meal, which looked even worse than the one still rattling about Carey’s stomach. There was no sign of even a speck of bacon in it.
Wattie’s wife, Alison Graham, came to meet them at the door. Her broad, lined face lit up at sight of him and she took his hand in her own small rough one and led him into the feminine billow of skirts and aprons.
Surrounded by them, Carey opened the pack, laid out what it contained in the way Daniel had shown him and gave tongue like a London stallman.
‘Ribbons, silks, beads and bracelets, laces, creams, garters and needles, what d’ye lack ladies, come buy.’
They giggled and elbowed each other. Mrs Graham fingered the ribbons and another girl picked up a packet of hairpins.
‘How much for these?’ she asked, and Carey told her.
It was bedlam for a while after that, as Carey told prices, held bargaining sessions over quantities of needles and some perfumed soap direct from Castile, as he insisted, although he knew perfectly well it was boiled up in York, and so did they.
At the end of the hour he had made Daniel a profit of about five shillings, and despite a throbbing head and a dry throat, he was feeling well pleased with himself.
Mrs Graham brought him a goblet of sour wine well watered, which he drank gratefully and then told him to sit down and he’d shortly get better fare than he would downstairs.
‘Unless you want to go and watch the cockfighting?’ said another girl, Jeanie Scott, extremely pregnant and glowing with it.
Carey grinned and decided to risk it. ‘Nay, mistress,’ he said, ‘I laid my bets before I came up.’
‘Don’t you want to see which wins?’
‘I know which cock’ll win,’ said Carey, ‘it’s the one that wasna given beer beforehand to slow him down.’
They all laughed knowingly at that. ‘What’s the news from Carlisle?’ asked Alison Graham.
‘I wasna there but ten days,’ said Carey, ‘I don’t know the doings yet.’
‘Is it right Jock of the Peartree raided the Dodds?’ asked Jeanie Scott.
‘Och, you know he did,’ said another woman impatiently. ‘He was a’ full of it when he came back.’
‘I heard Janet Dodd say her Cousin Willie’s Simon had an arrow in his arm during the raid,’ ventured Carey. ‘And a woman called Margaret lost her bairn with the excitement.’
Jeanie Scott tutted sadly. ‘That would be Margaret Pringle, Clem Pringle’s sister, poor lass. I hope she’s not poorly with it. D’ye know how she fares, cadger?’
Carey shook his head.
‘How’s Young Jock?’ asked another girl, a thin, small pale creature, with a startling head of burnished gold hair. One of her wrists was tightly bandaged.
‘He’s in the jail at Carlisle,’ said Carey cautiously.
‘They havena chained him?’
‘Not that I know.’
Mary seemed on the brink of tears, which surprised Carey. ‘I couldna bear it to lose another brother... Will the Warden hang Young Jock, d’ye think?’
Carey shrugged. ‘He was caught with the red hand, Mistress, the Deputy could have hanged him on the spot.’
‘Ay, you listen to him,’ said Alison stoutly, ‘and dinna concern yourself; Lowther’ll see him well enough, mark my words, it’s only a matter of waiting.’
‘But after Sweetmilk...’ began Mary, and the tears started trickling down her face. From the red rims round her eyes it looked something she did often.
Alison rolled her eyes. ‘Now Mary, Sweetmilk’s dead and gone and that’s the end of it. He’s with God now and your dad’ll get his revenge once he finds the man that did the killing.’
Mary only cried harder and put her head on Susan’s shoulder.
‘Is she Sweetmilk’s betrothed?’ asked Carey privately of Jeanie Scott, fetching out a hanky from his pack that was edged with lace and handing it to Mary. Service at Court had made it almost a reflex with him, when he saw a woman crying, although naturally what he really wanted to do was to cut and run.
Jeanie didn’t look sympathetic. ‘No, she’s Sweetmilk’s sister and what she’s in such a taking about, I’m sure I dinna ken.’
