There were mutinous grumbles and whining. Somebody felt inside the front of his jerkin.

‘An’ he’s no’ to be robbed,’ came the imperious voice. ‘Get off, will ye.’

They caught their breaths while he lay there in a heap, gradually coming back to the sickening pain all through his body, and trying not to moan in case they started again. There was a sound of them brushing each other down.

‘Mind,’ said another, lighter voice, ‘it wasnae a fair fight, four on one.’

‘It wasnae meant to be,’ grunted the man giving the orders. ‘Did ye mind the lad in the wrestling at the last Day of Truce?’

‘Ay. I won a shilling, thanks to him.’

‘Well, that’s thirty-one shillings he’s earned ye,’ said a third, cheerful voice. ‘And Pennycook’s one rent-collector the less for a bit.’

They laughed and gave him a couple more kicks in the back for luck as they passed by, going on to Scotch Street.

Andy Nixon lay still for a long long time, waves of blackness passing through him every so often and moving the stars round the heavens above him. He waited between them for the simple act of breathing to hurt a bit less and nursed his swelling right hand, sick with anger and humiliation and fear for Kate Atkinson, his mistress. The cat jumped down and sniffed curiously at his ear, but then trotted silently off and left him in peace.

A serving girl had lit the wax candles in the Mayor of Carlisle’s dining room, although the long dusk was still burning in the west. The combination of lights fell about the card players, complicating the shadows and flattering the ladies outrageously. Sir Robert Carey, the new Deputy Warden of the English West March, had glanced at his own four cards, known immediately that he had the makings of a chorus and put them down again with an instinctive caution he had learned at Queen Elizabeth’s Court. He looked around idly.

His sister Philadelphia, Lady Scrope, was as pert and tousled as ever in black velvet and burgundy taffeta. She was frowning at her cards. Laboriously she totted up her primero points, while her husband watched her, his gaunt, beaky, under-chinned face quite softened for that moment. Even the Lord Warden of the English West March could lose his heart to a woman and it was right that the woman was his wife. Unfortunately, his wife did not return the sentiment.

To Carey’s left sat Sir Richard Lowther, his enemy and rival for the Deputy Wardenship. Sir Richard was glowering at his cards as if they were reivers he planned to hang, but might be persuaded to let go for a bribe.

Nothing interesting would happen for a while, Carey thought, and let his attention wander again. Two of the players in the second game at the other end of the table were not very well known to him. There was Edward Aglionby, the Mayor, who had invited them to the card party and whose house this was. He was a handsome solidly built man with fine wavy grey hair under his hat and a grave pleasant manner. There was a local merchant, John Leigh, like Aglionby a Carlisle draper and grocer. He was not paying proper attention to his cards and had lost heavily. Now he was blinking at them again, but clearly not seeing them. Then there was Young Henry Widdrington, heir to the headship of one of the major English East March surnames, painfully spotted. And the one Carey knew so well, who had methodically been taking John Leigh’s money off him all evening, was sitting upright and alert on the bench beside him, with the rose-tinted light from the window falling just so on her face and making her beautiful.

She isn’t beautiful, Carey thought to himself while he waited for his sister to finish counting under her breath. Not even the most maddened poet in the world could say Elizabeth Widdrington was like Cynthia or Diana or Thetis or whoever. She had a long nose and an extremely determined chin and there was no question but that age would make her even beakier. Her hair was a wavy brown, her eyes were the blue-grey of a steel helmet and her mouth would never ever be a rosebud. Wisely she didn’t put red lead on it to make it something it wasn’t.

She felt the warmth of his stare, looked up, caught his eyes and coloured. He smiled, and her cheeks became rosy and her eyes sparkled. It delighted him privately that she blushed when she saw him, more prized in her because otherwise she was distressingly self-possessed. He wondered idly where the blush started and how far down it went and from there went on to his perennial speculations about what he would see when he finally lifted her smock over her head and...

‘Honestly, Robin, you should pay attention to the game.’ He looked round to see his sister grinning at him naughtily. Young Henry Widdrington on Elizabeth’s right was gazing elaborately into space so as not to see the byplay between his young step-mother and Carey. What little skin that could be seen between his outrageous collection of spots was redder than Elizabeth’s. He had folded.

Elizabeth was watching him and he looked steadily back at her. Her eyes were still sparkling and she lifted her chin, her mouth curving. Carey moved his padded hose on the bench, the ruff round his neck suddenly feeling tight and uncomfortable. Lord, Lord, her husband, Sir Henry, was a lucky man. Damn the old villain for marrying her; damn Carey’s own father for arranging the match; and damn Elizabeth too for being a great deal more high-principled than most of the married women he had met at Court.

‘Er...’ said Scrope, and pushed his stake into the middle. Philly exchanged three cards—what on earth does she think she’s doing, Carey wondered briefly, as he dropped one card on the table for replacement. Lowther exchanged two, glanced at the cards, and his bushy grey eyebrows almost met in the effort to look disappointed. His fingers started drumming on his thigh. Scrope took two cards, squinted and humphed.

Carey got his new card which was a bit of a long shot, looked at it and relaxed. Most of the time he played strictly on the odds but every so often he gambled wildly on an unlikely hand, just to keep people guessing. On this occasion his gamble had suddenly turned into a much better bet. He was holding all of the fives—a chorus, with a point score of sixty. There were only three hands that could better it: a chorus of aces, sixes or sevens. Naturally it was possible somebody had one—he hadn’t seen any aces, sixes or sevens discarded. The next stage in the game was the vying; it was a peculiarity of primero that you must announce how many points you held in your hand and while you could exaggerate your score, you couldn’t understate it.

‘As I have sixty points I think I’ll raise you,’ said Scrope, with his habitual nervous smile. Philadelphia looked annoyed and folded.

‘Have you indeed?’ sniffed Lowther. ‘I’ve seventy-two and I’ll see you and raise you.’

Carey smiled lazily. ‘Eighty-four,’ he said, as he often did, and raised the both of them. As they had all folded on the last deal, there were now about three pounds in the pot. Philly tutted under her breath and frowned, while Scrope looked from him to Lowther and back again, trying to read their minds. It was Lowther that Scrope was really worried about, Carey noted with interest; obviously Lowther’s overbid was likely to mean something.

After a lot of hesitation, Scrope folded as well. Lowther glowered at Carey who looked back, still smiling. He scratched the itch on his cheekbone of the glorious green and yellow remnants of a black eye he had got a week before. A prominent local reiver had given it to him, along with many other grazes and bruises and a couple of cracked ribs, but the fault lay entirely with Sir Richard Lowther, who had once been Deputy Warden of the West March and intended to be so again, soon. Carey found that baiting Lowther had added greatly to his enjoyment of the evening; otherwise the play was too slow for him and too inept.

For ten years he had attended at Court and occasionally played cards with his cousin and aunt, the Queen; tense high-stake sessions lasting past midnight, sometimes with the Earl of Leicester, before his death; more recently with the magnificent and prickly Sir Walter Raleigh and Carey’s own patron the Earl of Essex. Nothing could be more different from Carlisle. The hot faintly honeyed smell of expensive beeswax candles had brought it all back to him. At Court there were also occasional yawns from dozing maids-in-waiting and men-at-arms, the rustle of silk and velvet around the table, and the soft clatter of the Queen’s pearl-ropes as she moved to bet. To his surprise he felt wistful for it: the brilliant colours and decorous smells, the sense of finding the edge of himself, every nerve stretched with the necessity for being witty as well as playing cleverly. The Queen was an excellent player with a good memory for the cards and absolute intolerance of hesitation or ineptitude. She expected to win much of the time but she also despised cheating to make sure she would and could spot it better than many coney-catchers in the City. Carey generally found it took five or six sessions with less dangerous courtiers in order to finance one evening playing the Queen.

He brought himself back to the present because Lowther had raised him again by two pounds, so he thought of his bed and of the walk back to the castle postern gate with Elizabeth.

‘Well, Sir Richard,’ he mused. ‘What should I do?’

‘You could try folding,’ suggested Sir Richard.

Carey shook his head. Sir Richard had misunderstood the reasons why he had folded most of his hands in the first part of the evening; he had been betting only on the odds and very cautiously at that, in order to build himself up. Carey was flat broke again, needed to buy a new suit and pay for a new sword, and had borrowed three pounds off his own servant Barnabus in order to join the game.

‘I’ll have to hurry you, I’m afraid, Robin,’ said Scrope’s reedy voice.

Suppressing his instant irritation at Scrope’s use of his nickname, which he preferred to restrict to relatives and women, Carey nodded and continued to pretend indecision.

‘I have a number of letters which need urgent attention,’ Scrope continued in an injured tone. ‘And a message from the King of Scotland too.’

That was portentously spoken. Quite happy to let Lowther’s tension build, Carey looked up at his brother-in-law and raised an eyebrow.

‘What does His Majesty want, my lord?’ he asked.

‘Well, as you know, he’s bringing an army of three thousand men into Jedburgh soon to try and hunt down the Earl of Bothwell,’ said Scrope, looking at his fingernails. ‘He’s asked me to hold a muster for the defensible gentlemen of the March, to support him if he needs it during his justice raid.’

From the other end of the table Young Henry Widdrington whistled. ‘Won’t three thousand men be enough?’ he asked naïvely.

Lowther barked a laugh. ‘Not if he’s going into Liddesdale after the Earl.’

‘Mm,’ said Carey casually. ‘Of course, he’ll be disappointed. The Earl’s not there.’

‘Oh?’ That took Scrope’s attention from his fingers. ‘Where is he? Not in England, I hope?’

Carey shook his head. ‘I understand he’s gone north to the Highlands.’

‘And how d’ye know that, Sir Robert?’ rumbled Lowther.

‘I have my sources,’ said Carey blandly.

Carey had been distracted by Elizabeth again. The other card game seemed to have finished for the moment. They were drinking spiced beer brought by John Leigh’s ugly little Scottish whippet of a servant and Elizabeth was listening gravely to some involved story from John Leigh while she counted her money. One of the two footmen standing by the door yawned suddenly and looked embarrassed.

‘Half of the horses are in England at any rate,’ said Philadelphia. ‘Thirlwall Castle’s captain had to go off in an awful hurry and I’m sure it’s because his steward told him he had the chance of some superb horseflesh while the going was good. It’s quite lucky really, because it means Lady Widdrington can stay with him on her way home.’ She stopped. ‘Oh, no, she can’t,’ she contradicted herself. ‘The packtrain’s due. Isn’t it, Mr Aglionby?’

The Mayor smiled tightly across at her.

‘Well, Lady Scrope, we try not tae gossip about the packtrains too much.’

There was a movement over by the window where Mrs Aglionby was sitting stitching at a frame underneath a candle. The woman was sitting up and looking worried.

Philadelphia’s expression became very sweet and innocent which Carey knew from experience meant that the Mayor had annoyed her.

‘I’m sure we’re all friends here,’ she said. ‘And your dear wife told me she thought I would be able to get some black velvet to mend my old bodice by Saturday.’

The dear wife shut her eyes and bit her lip. Aglionby cast a single glance at her before he answered Philadelphia.

‘Ay,’ said the Mayor, just as sweetly. ‘There’s nae doubt we’ll have a piece in the warehouse for ye when we’ve turned it out, and a pleasure to make a gift of it to the Warden’s Lady.’