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.
Bell looked down at his desk. ‘Sir Robert,’ he said, ‘I will be frank with you. I served the old lord faithfully and I will serve his son in the same way. If the lord Warden writes a letter like that to my lord Burghley, you will never see it and nor will I... er... improve it as I have with this. However, Lowther is not my lord and... I would rather be your friend than his.’
‘I already regard you as a friend, Mr Bell,’ said Carey, his heart lifting. Surely it couldn’t be as easy as this, surely the man would want money?
Bell smiled at him, a remarkably sweet smile for such a skull-like face.
‘May I have the other letters back, then sir?’
Carey handed them over, keeping the one that described, in withering terms, his doings of the Friday. Before his eyes, Richard Bell put the three letters into the dispatch bag and sealed it.
‘May I keep this?’ he asked, waving the paper.
‘I hope you’ll burn it.’
‘Naturally, I will,’ said Carey, ‘but I want to be sure I’ve understood it properly.’
Bell shrugged. ‘These are the only letters dictated by Sir Richard,’ he said, pointing to the dispatch bag. ‘That one in your hand must be a libellous forgery.’
Carey tucked the paper into the front of his doublet and grinned.
‘Of course it is,’ he agreed. ‘I’m in your debt, Mr Bell.’
‘No sir,’ said Bell, as he put the dispatch bag on a hook, ‘I regard this as fair exchange.’
‘Well, good night Mr Bell.’
‘Good night, Sir Robert.’
Even when he slept at last, Elizabeth Widdrington haunted his dreams with her hand bandaged and her gun smoking.
SATURDAY, 1ST JULY, MORNING
The week had passed with breathless quiet, since all the worst raiders among the Armstrongs and Grahams were busy deep in Scotland and the hay harvest was in full swing. After the hurry of the days before the funeral, Carey took life easy for a while and spent some of the time, once he felt more comfortable on a horse, riding out across the rough hills and learning how they lay. He even got in some hunting with dogs, since all the falcons were still in moult, though they returned empty-handed.
It was Young Hutchin Graham who came to Carey as he stood in the castle yard at dawn on the Saturday following Scrope’s funeral, and muttered that if he chose to ride up to the ford at Longtown, he might find some horses. This confirmed everything Carey had heard about Young Hutchin from Barnabus, but he only narrowed his eyes and said, ‘Anything else?’
‘Ay,’ said Young Hutchin, ‘if ye go alone, there might be someone to meet ye there.’
‘Will that someone be alone as well?’
‘Ay. He gives ye his word on it.’
‘I’ll be armed.’
Young Hutchin grinned. ‘So will he.’
Probably I shouldn’t do it, Carey thought, as he shotted both his guns and put them in their carrying case, probably it would be wise to have Dodd and the men follow at a distance.
Longtown was alive with horses, most of them too tired and footsore to do more than crop the grass ravenously. He rode through them and found Jock of the Peartree sitting in a tree by the ford, with the Widdrington nags tethered to the next bush.
‘Good day to you, Jock,’ he said.
‘Now then, Courtier.’
‘How was the raid?’
‘Och, it was beautiful,’ said Jock, showing the gaps in his teeth. ‘The horses... Ye told naught but the truth, I never saw such magnificent animals before.’
‘How many of them did you get?’
