Scrope was full of sympathy. ‘Dear me, was it Jock...’

Carey smiled. ‘No, they survived Jock well enough. It was the Queen feeding me sugar plums and suckets every time she thought I looked peaky that ruined them.’

Scrope laughed and then caught sight of someone over Carey’s shoulder, hurried away to speak to another gentleman.

Carey spoke to everyone once, even passed the time of day with Mangerton and Brackenhill. Armstrong of Mangerton was a tall quiet man whose carroty head had faded into grey. Graham of Brackenhill could not have been anything except a Graham, with his long face and grey eyes, though he was twice the width of Jock of the Peartree his brother.

‘Brought your pack, eh, pedlar?’ he asked and guffawed.

‘It’s still in Netherby,’ said Carey equably. ‘Would you go and fetch it for me, Mr Graham?’

Graham laughed louder. ‘God’s truth, Sir Robert,’ he said, wiping his eyes and munching a heroic piece of game pie. ‘Ah niver laughed so much in my life when I heard what ye did tae Jock. Wattie still hasnae forgiven ye for the damage to his peel tower. Bit of a tradition in your family, eh, damaging peel towers?’

‘I hope so,’ said Carey with a little edge, ‘I’d like to think I could be as good as my father at it if I had to.’

Graham of Brackenhill stopped laughing. ‘Ay, he burnt mine an’ all in ’69. Took fifteen kine and four horses too. But it’s a good variation, eh, having us break ’em down ourselves?’

Carey smiled at him. ‘You may speak truer than you know.’

‘Eh?’

‘If I had my way, I’d make you cast down every tower in the March.’

‘Nae doubt ye would, but we canna do that with the Scots ower the border. Even the Queen must ken that.’

‘Have you thought, Mr Graham,’ said Carey softly, ‘of what will happen when the Queen dies, as she must eventually, God save her?’

Clearly he hadn’t. Carey left him with the thought and decided he needed some fresh air. The London fashion for drinking tobacco smoke hadn’t travelled this far north yet, but still the air in the keep was thick enough to stick a pike in it.

Out in the castle yard you might have thought it was a wedding, not a funeral, with the folk milling about and the queue for beer at the buttery. By the castle gate was a table, guarded by four men, piled high with weapons.

On an impulse, Carey wandered over to it. There was a hideous array of death-dealing tools, most of them well-worn and extremely clean and sharp. In a neat pile over to one side was a collection of dags and calivers.

‘Whose are these?’ he asked one of the men guarding the table, a Milburn if memory served him.

‘What, the guns, sir?’

‘Yes.’

‘They’re the women’s weapons, sir. Brackenhill’s women. All of them carry firearms when they’re in Carlisle.’

‘Good God, why?’

‘The Grahams dinnae like their women to be raped, so it seems,’ said the man and grinned.

‘But the recoil would knock them over.’

The man shrugged. ‘Most of them are broad enough.’

Carey was staring open-mouthed at the weapons, with his mind spinning. Somebody took his arm and drew him to one side. It was Elizabeth Widdrington.

‘Mary Graham had hurt her wrist,’ he said, seeing the pattern of it all fall into place. ‘She was there when Sweetmilk challenged Hepburn. Mary Graham shot Sweetmilk?’

Elizabeth nodded. ‘To save her lover.’

‘Who then sent her back to Netherby so he could get rid of the body on Solway Moss.’

‘And would have nothing more to do with her.’

‘When did you know?’

‘When I heard Thomas the Merchant’s tale. Sweetmilk would never have let Hepburn get up behind him, but Mary...’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Elizabeth flushed. ‘I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know the Graham women carried dags. I might have made a mistake—all I had was guesswork.’

Carey nodded. ‘And you felt sorry for her?’

Elizabeth didn’t answer. Then she added firmly, ‘And sorry for Jock of the Peartree too. He’s lost a son, why take his daughter?’

Carey stared at her. ‘For justice. Because she killed her brother.’

To his astonishment, her face twisted into a sneer. ‘Oh yes, justice,’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten. She’s sixteen, she’s with child, she’s a fool who lost her heart to a man, and we must put her on trial and bring witnesses and get her to confess, and then when her babe’s born, we must hang her.’

‘Yes,’ said Carey simply.

Elizabeth turned, walked away from him.

SUNDAY, 25TH JUNE, EVENING

Carey went upstairs to the cubbyhole next to Scrope’s office used by Richard Bell. One of the boys had come to him in the afternoon asking if he would care to do so, and he went, wondering if Bell meant to thank him.

Richard Bell was, as usual, writing when he came in. He wiped his pen and put it down at once, and came over holding some papers.

Feeling tired and very sore, Carey leaned against the wall by the closed door, took the papers with his eyebrows raised, and skimmed through the Secretary script still used by Bell.

‘Lowther’s letters,’ he said neutrally when he’d finished.

‘Ay sir.’

‘Not very flattering, are they?’

‘No sir. I have a second... er... draft of the letter referring to you.’

Carey took that one, glanced at it, read it carefully and smiled.

‘Very subtly done, Mr Bell,’ he said, ‘Burghley will make the same response to this as he would to the other if he disagreed with it.’ He waited.