Carey went all round them in silence, eyes narrowed, while the horses shifted nervously and their riders did their best to stare stolidly ahead.

Bell was also waiting, watching out of the side of his eyes as he held Henry Lord Scrope’s old horse. It had been the work of two minutes to make the younger Scrope thoroughly ashamed of forgetting Richard Bell and secure him the position of honour, leading the riderless charger behind the bier. Carey approved of the fact that Bell had groomed the animal himself. He came round in front of the men again.

‘Archie Give-it-Them,’ he said gently.

‘Ay sir,’ said Archie nervously. Somebody had put him under the pump: his hair was still wet.

‘Dogs get tangled up in them, horses take a dislike to each other, people fall off their horses, women faint, children make rude remarks. With luck we won’t find a nightsoil wagon with a broken axle barring our path as we did at an Accession Day parade I took part in once.’ Most of them sniggered at that. ‘It doesn’t matter. If it concerns you directly, sort it out quietly. If it doesn’t, ignore it and try not to laugh. If some idiot child gets himself trampled, and his mother is having blue screaming hysterics in the middle of the road, Red Sandy, Bangtail and Long George are to clear the path and join the tail end if they can.’

He smiled and caught young Simon’s eye: he was carrying the big drum. ‘Let me hear you give the double-pace beat, Simon.’

Simon blushed, dropped a drumstick, picked it up and banged a couple of times.

‘Can you count?’ asked Carey patiently. The sun was up, the Carlisle gate was open, the crowd of mourners, some of them drunk, were putting on their gowns, and the draught horses were hitched to the empty bier. In about two minutes the Carlisle bell would start tolling.

‘Y-yes sir,’ said Simon.

‘Try again. Count one, two, one, two.’

‘One, t-two, one, two...’

‘Bang on the one.’ Simon did so. ‘Better, much better.’

Two more boys with drums came running up and looked at him. One of them had his cap over his ear. Carey sighed.

‘Can you remember that, Simon?’

Over in the corner Lowther was trying to shine the trumpeter’s instrument with his hankerchief.

‘Don’t think of anything else. Say it to yourself: bang, two, bang, two.’

‘A-ay sir.’

‘And keep it slow. We’re not going into battle.’

That got a laugh. High overhead the bell at the top of the keep made its upswing and came down with a deep solid note. Normally sounded in the middle of the night when raiders came over the border, it was eerie to hear it in the morning. The trumpeter snatched back his trumpet, made an accidental raspberry and began blowing an abysmally untuneful fanfare.

As they waited their turn to go out the gate, Carey nodded to himself. Dodd had done as he asked, though he suspected wheels within wheels, since one of Lowther’s men had a burst lip and Dodd had fresh grazes on his knuckles. His men were clearly smarter than Lowther’s and while he doubted anyone except himself really noticed that, still it pleased him... Oh Lord, he’d forgotten to put on his gloves.

Somebody waved a wooden rattle right by Thunder’s head. Carey used the whip to stop the crow-hopping which jarred him painfully, and caught Lowther’s face turned over his shoulder expectantly. Damn, the man was a complete pillock.

Once at the cathedral, they filled up the battered old building from the back. The churchyard was packed just as tight, with puffing blowing horses investigating each other’s necks and four of Lowther’s men set to guard them and keep the lesser Borderers from temptation to the sin of horsetheft.

Within, Carey stood, hat in hand, grave reverence on his face, long practice filtering out the mendacious eulogy of the bishop while his mind wandered where it would. There was Philadelphia behind her husband in the front pew, pert and handsome in black with her ruff slightly askew. For all the rehearsed wailing of the paid mourners, there was not a wet eye in the house. Old Scrope had been respected, but not loved, particularly not by his eldest son whom he regarded, rightly, as a fool. His younger son, a solid, pleasant man, had had less expected of him and earned less of his father’s impatience: he at least looked sad.

The cathedral choir managed the psalms well, if a little sharp, and the pall bearers succeeded in not dropping the coffin, now closed. In the rush to mount up again outside and form the procession once more, Carey was braced for disaster, but it all went astonishingly smoothly.

They were halfway down the road to the citadel when Carey suddenly knew that something was going on behind him. There was an odd yowling and the crowd was laughing at the bier.

‘Straighten your face, Dodd,’ he hissed, ‘don’t let Lowther know we’ve spotted it. We’re supposed to fall off when we mount up after the burial.’

‘God rot the bastard...’

‘Shut up. This is what we do...’

At the graveside he listened as the words of the burial service were intoned by the bishop, dropping like pebbles of mortality before them. The coffin was lowered into the grave, Scrope and his brother scooped earth on top of it.

Carey backed away from the grave immediately, followed quietly by his men. At the edge of the graveyard were the horses with their reins looped around the fence posts. Choosing their mounts carefully, Carey had his men in the saddle, lined up just outside the gate in two rows, with their helmets off. As they left the burial, Scrope and the gentlemen of the March would pass between them. He kept his own head covered. When Scrope went by, he took his hat off and bowed gravely in the saddle. Scrope beamed with pleasure.

Carey looked through the lychgate to see Lowther furiously trying to stop his men from mounting.

‘The Lord hath delivered him into my hands,’ he intoned piously to Dodd opposite him, who snorted. In the graveyard there was a sequence of thuds, yells and complaint as eight of Lowther’s men discovered what had happened to the girthstraps of the horses that were left. Thunder was there, over by the fence, neighing at him reproachfully while the lad who had taken him slid slowly sideways into the mud.

‘Tch,’ said Dodd, ‘nae discipline.’

‘Now follow.’

The gentlemen’s horses were on the other side of the gate, with grooms waiting to help the ladies into the saddle. There was a flurry of mounting. As the cavalcade rode off back up English Street to the waiting funeral feast, Carey and his men followed meekly, leaving confusion behind them.

SUNDAY, 25TH JUNE, NOON

Carlisle Castle was packed with gentlemen and attendants: the common folk got their meat and bread and ale in the barracks, while the gentlemen and their ladies filled the hall of the keep and attacked the carved beef, mutton, kid, venison and pork with gusto. In the centre of the main table was Philadelphia’s artistic subtlety of a marzipan peel tower under siege, only made more realistic by patching here and there where kitchen boys’ fingers had explored it.

The various headmen of riding surnames south of the Border were shouting and talking: lines of tension sprang when the heads of two families at deadly feud happened to cross each other’s paths, and Richard Graham of Brackenhill and William Armstrong of Mangerton were moving among the throngs, not overtly unwelcome, but watched covertly wherever they went. There was, of course, an official truce until sunset the following day to let everyone get fairly home.

Scrope came up to Carey busily.

‘Robin,’ he said, clearing his throat and hunching his shoulders under his black silk gown, ‘that was well done at the churchyard, quite a compliment, eh? Whose idea was it?’

‘Mine, my lord.’

Scrope looked sideways at him and smiled nervously. ‘Well, thank you. Very graceful. Er... Lowther seems to think there was some kind of mischief, but I’m not clear what.’

Does he indeed, thought Carey, who had felt honour was satisfied by swapping the horses and hadn’t planned to make any more of it.

‘Yes, my lord,’ he said blandly, ‘despite Lowther’s guard on the horses outside the church, somehow our girthstraps were half-slit.’

‘Oh dear. Very difficult for you. Any idea who did it?’

‘No my lord,’ lied Carey. ‘Perhaps Lowther had a better notion. It was his men who were supposed to be guarding the beasts, after all.’

‘Ah. Whose girths, exactly?’

‘Mine and those of my men.’

‘Ah. Oh.’ Scrope sidled a bit, then reached past Carey’s elbow to grab a sweetmeat off a tray as it went by. The boy holding it skidded to a halt, and stood waiting respectfully, one cheek bulging. ‘Wonderful comfits Philadelphia made, do try one.’

‘No thanks, my lord. My teeth won’t stand it.’