3 A Surfeit of Guns: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (18 page)

They sat down again to eat with Lord Maxwell who had polished off much of the haggis and half the chicken, Carey waving Dodd to a seat on the bench next to him. Mollified as to his dignity, Dodd took the rest of the haggis, though it wasn’t as good as the ones his wife made when they had done some successful raiding.

“Boy keep his maidenhead then?” asked Maxwell casually.

“Just about.”

“I could have warned you not to bring a lad that pretty here.” Carey sighed.

“I know, my lord.”

Maxwell swilled down some more of the terrible wine. “Ye ken what it’s like,” he said. “Lord Spynie’s friends and relations reckon they can do as they please, and mainly they can…”

“On her last progress, the Queen hanged a man that was caught raping a girl—after a fair trial, of course.”

Maxwell nodded. “The King should do it too, but Spynie begs him and the King always gives in. Any road, who knows; most of the time, the girls are willing enough for a ring or a couple of shillings. It’s the boys I feel sorry for.”

The talk wandered on in a desultory way until it came back, remarkably enough, to the topic of the mysterious German.

“No one knows,” said Maxwell flatly. “I heard he was a mining engineer from the Black Forest and he was to find the King a rich gold mine at Jedburgh and work it for him, by a new and Hermetic system for seeking out metals in the earth, but the mine collapsed and the King hanged him for lying about his knowledge.”

Carey nodded wisely at this.

“I heard he was from Augsburg,” he said.

“Nay, the Black Forest, I’m certain of it.”

“What was his name?”

Maxwell made a small moue of ignorance and shook his head. “I never saw him, only heard tell of him.” He poured himself some more of the wine, sipped, seemed to notice the taste for the first time and spat it out into the rushes. “Jesus Christ, this stuff is shite.”

Carey looked sympathetic again. “I had heard that you had found a decent wine merchant to supply you with…”

Maxwell’s face darkened with anger. “I found a slimy bastard of an Italian catamite, that’s what I found, Sir Robert, him and his wife together.”

The depth of sympathy in Carey’s face was masterly.

“Oh?” he said.

Maxwell grunted. “Brought them into Scotland, introduced them to the Court and what thanks do I get for it? None. Bonnetti’s bringing in French and Italian wine by the tun for His Highness and do I get a drop of it? I do not. As for his whore of a wife…” Maxwell spat into the rushes again. “If I didnae ken very well it’s not likely, I’d say she was in the King’s bed and Queen Anne should watch out.” He drank some more of his inferior wine and made a face. “Mind, she’s nothing so special there either, for all her looks.”

“You’ve…er…”

Maxwell shrugged elaborately. “Ye ken what these Southern bitches are like, Sir Robert. Allus on heat. But I dinna care to eat another man’s leavings, if ye understand me.”

Carey nodded, completely straight-faced, while Dodd hurriedly buried his nose in his beermug.

“She might be slipping out of favour wi’ the King as well,” Maxwell added, “seeing she came making up to me a couple o’ days since. I soon settled her, though. Bitch.”

He stared up at his family’s battle trophies with an expression of gloomy reminiscence. There was a short awkward silence. Carey broke it.

“And how is the King finding Dumfries?” he asked.

Maxwell shrugged. “His Highness says he likes roughing it in the best house in town, after mine, but he wouldna stay here with me for all the assurances I gave him. He said he doesnae like castles much, for all he wouldnae be surprised by Bothwell here with me as he was at Falkland and Holyrood as well.”

“No,” agreed Carey in a tactful voice.

“At least he said he’s coming to my banquet tomorrow, though, after he’s been hunting.”

“Mm. Where is he hunting?”

“Five miles west of Dumfries, over by Craigmore Hill. My gamekeepers and huntsmen have been finding game for him all week, and we’ll beat the drive tomorrow.”

“Mm.”

“Of course, we canna use guns in the hunting, the King doesnae like them.”

“Of course. Will this be a private hunt or…”

Maxwell laughed at Carey’s tact. “Och, God, ye can come along if ye want, everyone else will. The King’s always in a good mood after a hunt, ye canna pick a better time to ask him for something.”

Carey smiled back. “Splendid,” he said. “I wonder if he’ll remember me.”

“And then there’s my banquet. It’s a masked ball and he said last time I spoke to him, he’ll be here incognito and seduce all the ladies. Good God,” Maxwell added with distaste, “who does he think he’s fooling?”

Carey said nothing to that. He spent an hour after the meal showing Maxwell how to wind up the fancy lock of one of his dags and arguing with him over the right charge and how much it threw to the left. Maxwell was enchanted by a firearm not completely crippled by rain and further one where you did not have the bother of hiding the bright end of a slowmatch if you were lying in wait in some covert. Carey and he had a long technical discussion on the rival merits of wheel-locks and snaphaunces compared with matchlocks, but as the Maxwell pointed out, when you were talking about a fight, the key was numbers and anything more complicated than a matchlock was fiendishly expensive. The thought of the Maxwell clan armed with weapons like that made Dodd shudder, but Carey didn’t seem to see it. On the other hand, the Courtier’s fancy dags missed fire often enough for Dodd to feel that if you had to use the infernal things, perhaps you were better off with ones you were more sure might work in a tight spot.

The bowling alley reverberated to the booms from the gun while Maxwell got its measure, and then all of them went out to the pasture on the other side of the river where the earthbank and targets had been set up. The King was not there, though an awning with a cloth of estate and carven chair had been set up ready for him. He was only a little less frightened of guns than he was of knives and would not come out until the contest was over and the football match ready to begin. The legend was that his unnatural fear of weapons had come about while he was still in his mother’s belly: Mary Queen of Scots had been six months pregnant with him when her husband Lord Darnley and the Scottish barons of the day had dragged her advisor and musician David Riccio from her presence at gunpoint and stabbed him to death in the next room. Or it could have been the shock of seeing his foster father bleed to death from stab wounds when the King was five years of age. Whatever the reason, King James was seriously handicapped as King of Scotland by being probably the least martial man in his entire kingdom. On the other hand he was at least still alive after twenty seven years on the throne, a rare boast for a Stuart.

Dodd stood with Carey as the various lords who had come out with their followers to provide James with his army, stood forward one at a time to show off their prowess at shooting. For the archery they shot at a popinjay: not a real parrot, being too expensive for the burghers of Dumfries, but a bunch of feathers on a high stick, that wobbled in the soft wind. It was a far harder mark than the targets set up against an earthbank ready for the musketry competition.

Carey watched with attention and then said to Dodd quietly, “If you want to recoup your horse-racing losses…”

“I cannae,” said Dodd gloomily. “The wife has all that was left.”

“I thought you managed to give her the slip at the muster?”

“Her brothers found me afterwards in Bessie’s once we’d gone back up to the Keep and she wouldna take no for an answer.”

Carey tutted sympathetically.

“Ay,” said Dodd. “She even took the money I had back for my new helmet and said she’d pay it herself or we’d end up in debt to the armourer.”

“Very disrespectful of her.”

“Ay,” moaned Dodd. “And I’ll be getting an earful of it every time I see her no matter what I do. I’d beat her for it, I surely would, sir, but the trouble is it wouldnae make her any better and there’d be some disaster come of it after.”

The last time Dodd had tried to assert his authority with his wife he had wound up in ward at Jedburgh as a pledge for one of her brothers’ good behaviour and spent three months in the gaol there because the bastard had seen fit to disappear immediately after. Dodd still wasn’t sure how it had come about, but he had no intention of making the experiment to find the connection. Besides she was fully capable of putting a pillow over his face while he slept if he offended her badly enough and she’d never burn for the crime of petty treason because Kinmont Willie would take her in as his favourite niece, no matter what she did. That thought alone had kept Dodd remarkably chaste while he did his duty at Carlisle and his wife spent most of her time running Gilsland. Still no bairn though, which was a pity. There was no wealth like a string of sons.

Applause and ironical cheers distracted him from his normal worries. The archery contest had been won by a Gowrie. Now the gun shooting contest began and it seemed as if Carey had been busy laying bets. The laird Johnstone shot first and did reasonably well; Maxwell stepped forward and managed to put his first shot in the bull. Then a tall broadshouldered young Englishman with a face as spotty as a plum pudding stepped out. Carey groaned.

“Damnation,” he said to Dodd. “It’s Henry Widdrington the younger. I hadn’t realised he was in it or I’d have put all my money on him.”

“Good, is he?” asked Dodd with gloomy satisfaction that Carey was going to get a set down. Of course, Carey was craning his neck, looking about in the crowd: no sign of Lady Widdrington or her husband, thank God, thought Dodd, though Carey was disappointed.

“Too good, and he has a decent gun as well.”

“Who’s the lad standing by him?”

“His brother Roger, I think.”

They watched the competition in an atmosphere of deepening dismay, shared by the rest of the crowd who disliked watching an Englishman beat a Scot at any martial exercise. To scattered applause and some booing, young Henry Widdrington easily bore away the bell which was presented by the King’s foster-brother and erstwhile guardian, the Earl of Mar.

Carey sighed deeply, counted about twenty pounds out of his purse and went off to pay his debts. He wound up in the knot of men congratulating Widdrington on his shooting, and when Dodd wandered over nosily to find out what they were about, discovered that Carey was being persuaded to come into the football match and steadfastly refusing.

The King arrived at that point, announced by appalling trumpet playing, surrounded by a crowd of brilliantly dressed men and riding on a white horse from which he dismounted ungracefully and stumped to his chair. Lord Spynie was there, a little back from the main bunch about the King, talking intently with the wide balding figure of Sir Henry Widdrington. Elizabeth paced stately at her husband’s side, curtseyed poker-backed to the King and took up a place nearby. Spynie laughed at some comment of Widdrington’s, then went and stood by a stool beside the carven chair.

Dodd stole a look at Carey’s face as he watched Lady Widdrington. Unguarded by charm or mockery, for a moment the Courtier’s heart was nakedly visible there as his eyes burned the air between him and the woman. It was the face of a starving man gazing at a banquet.

Dodd elbowed the Courtier gently. “Sir,” he growled. “If I was Sir Henry, I’d shoot ye for no more than the look of your face.”

Carey blinked at him, evidently not all there. Dodd tried again.

“Sir Robert,” he said, gruff with annoyance at feeling sorry for the silly man. “Ye’ll do her more harm if ye stare like that.”

For a moment the blue glare was ferociously hostile and then Carey coloured up and looked at the ground. He cleared his throat.

“Er…yes, you’re right. Quite right.”

Watching the way he settled himself, it was exactly like watching a mummer put on a mask. Dear Lord, thought Dodd, he’s caught a midsummer madness to be sure. Carey was moving again, to the background noise of the Dumfries town crier announcing the King’s pleasure at the football match to be held and making a hash of it.

When the sheep-like bleating had finished, Carey moved up to the awning, swept his hat off, muttered quickly to the town crier and genuflected on one knee to the King. Sweat shining on his face the town crier shouted something incomprehensible about Sir Ronald Starey, Deputy Warden of the English West March.

King James squinted his eyes suspiciously for a moment as he looked down on the Courtier and then his face cleared and lightened with a surprisingly pleasant smile as he spoke. Against his will, Dodd was impressed: it seemed the King of Scots did know Carey and was willing to acknowledge him. Carey held out the other letter he had brought from Carlisle. The King took it and read it with heavy-lidded boredom and let Carey stay there with one knee in the damp grass for a considerable time while he sat and talked to Lord Spynie and the Earl of Mar on his other side about the contents. Eventually the King nodded his head affably and said a few words. Carey rose to his feet, backed away, bowed again.

This time Dodd watched Lady Widdrington. She looked once at Carey, when his attention was on the King, and for a moment, if Dodd had been Sir Henry, he would have shot her too. Then her lips compressed and she stared into the middle distance instead.