Philly scowled ferociously. ‘I’ll steal it if I have to, silly man. Where are you going?’

Carey chucked her under the chin. ‘If I don’t tell you, then you can tell the truth to your husband if he asks.’

‘I wish you’d take your jack off; it’s sodden.’

‘I haven’t got time.’

‘And you haven’t even got a hat...’

Dodd gave Carey the morion he’d been carrying, which Carey put on.

‘Better?’

Philly’s brow wrinkled. ‘No, you look tired.’

‘At least if I have to ride for the Debateable Land, I’ll be properly dressed,’ Carey said with a crooked smile.

Philly swallowed very hard. ‘Do you really think it’ll be all right? I mean, the Queen’s an awfully long way away.’

‘Yes. God looks after me always, remember?’

Philly snorted. ‘Hmf. He didn’t look after Jemmy Atkinson very well, did he?’

‘Philly, you’re being heretical. Anyway, Jemmy Atkinson was a bad corrupt man and I’m not.’ He kissed her bunched-up forehead and tried unsuccessfully to straighten her cap which had been pinned on crooked. She batted him off and marched away across the courtyard.

Dodd kept on at Carey’s heels as he lengthened his stride to pass through the Castle gate and down the covered way, his hands clasped behind his back and his head thrust forward.

‘Where are we going, sir?’

‘Hm? You still there, Sergeant?’

‘Ay, sir.’

‘It might be better for you if you got back to the Castle.’

Dodd considered this. ‘Nay, sir,’ he said. ‘If Lowther’s gonnae foul a bill against me, I’d rather it was in my absence.’

‘Why should he?’

Dodd was surprised to hear Carey being so naïve. ‘He reckons I’m one o’ yourn now.’

‘Ah. Of course.’

‘Any road, I’ve always had a fancy to live in the Debateable Land.’

‘Have you? I haven’t.’

‘Oh, it’s no’ sae bad, sir. Skinabake Armstrong, that’s my brother-in-law, Janet’s half-brother...’

‘You’re related to Skinabake Armstrong?’

‘Oh ay, sir. Or Janet is.’

‘Why didn’t you say?’

‘Och, sir. If I told ye all the reivers I’m related to through Janet, we’d be all day about it. Besides, what difference does it make?’

‘Was that why you wouldn’t let me fight Wattie Graham at the ford?’

‘Ay, of course. I know Skinabake. He’d ha’ put a lance in yer back the minute ye was busy with Wattie. I know him, he’s no’ a very nice man. That’s why he likes it in the Debateable Land. He says he’d never live anywhere else, even if he wasnae at the horn in both countries.’

‘Lowther might not include you in his feud.’

‘Only if I turned Queen’s evidence and swore ye ordered Barnabus to dae it, sir.’

‘Ah. Well, let’s see what we can do to prove I didn’t order it and Barnabus didn’t do it.’

‘Ye didnae, did ye, sir?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Well, he wasnae what ye could call a good armoury clerk and Scrope wouldnae let ye sack him, if ye see...’

Carey had stopped and he was an odd greyish colour. ‘If you think I’m stupid enough to set my own servant on to cut someone’s throat for me...’

‘I wouldna hold it against ye, sir. I’ve known others do the like.’

‘Who?’

‘Lowther for one.’

‘When?’

Dodd shrugged. ‘When somebody didna pay him blackrent and give him cheek when he went round to collect. He had some of the Grahams drop by and kill the man. It’s no’ so unusual, ye ken.’

Carey took one of those deep breaths that signalled he was holding on to his anger. Then he laughed and carried on walking.

‘Christ’s guts, Dodd, I’m a bloody innocent in this place. Will you believe me if I give ye my word that, aside from a couple of hangings, I never killed nobody in my life without it was me holding the weapon?’

Dodd nodded gravely, noting with interest how Carey’s voice had changed to pure Berwick.

‘Ay,’ he said. ‘I know ye’re a man of your word, Courtier. Ye’re a bloody hen’s tooth in Carlisle and no mistake.’

TUESDAY, 4TH JULY 1592, LATE MORNING

The hen’s tooth had several lines of inquiry in mind and was in a fever of impatience to follow all of them. Carey knew he had to be able to present an alternative theory to Scrope. After some thought, he sent Dodd to Bessie’s to find out what he could of Barnabus’s movements the night before, while he himself went to the two-storey house by the market that had belonged to Atkinson.

He knocked at the door, poked his head round it into the ground-floor living room. She was surrounded by her gossips: one was making bread and milk for the children by the fire, while two others held her hands and talked in low voices.