3 A Surfeit of Guns: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (26 page)

“Entirely your affair, my lord. But if I were you, I’d let them sweat until you’re ready.”

“And stay bloody Warden all that time?”

Carey made a self-deprecating half-bow from the saddle. “It might not be so bad,” he suggested. “Perhaps you and my lord Scrope could even agree on a Day of Truce and clear up some of the bills that have been accumulating for the past sixteen years.”

Maxwell glowered at him. “Good God, whatever for?”

“For peace, my lord. For the rule of law.”

The sneer on Maxwell’s handsome features was magnificently comprehensive. “While I’ve my men at my back, I’ll make my ain laws and my ain peace.”

Carey said nothing. Maxwell was silent for a time which seemed very long to Dodd’s stretched nerves. Carey sat patiently, seeming intent on the stitching of his riding gloves, the growth of the nearest tree.

Maxwell jerked his horse round and came close to him.

“Well?” he demanded.

“What can I do for you, my lord?” said Carey softly.

“I want my money back.”

“What?”

“Ay.” Maxwell leaned on his saddle horn and spat words. “The Deputy Warden of Carlisle sold me a pile of scrap-iron that half-killed my cousin, and I want my money back.”

“Not this Deputy Warden,” said Carey.

Maxwell shrugged. “Who cares. Ye get me my money back. I want it and it’s mine.”

“From Lowther?”

“I never said that. From whoever. D’ye understand me?”

There was something almost amusing about one of the richest lords in the Scottish West March demanding his money back like an Edinburgh wife waving a bad fish at a stallholder, almost but not quite. The fact that the whole thing was ludicrously irrational and unjust hardly mattered when they were surrounded by Maxwell’s kinsmen and Maxwell himself looked like a primed caliver ready to go off at any minute. Dodd began praying fervently. Please God, let the Courtier keep a civil tongue in his head, please God…

“I’ll do my best, my lord,” Carey said, prim as a maiden.

“Ye’d better.”

Maxwell turned his horse foaming back towards the wagon and shouted orders, then whipped the beast to a canter in the direction of the road to Dumfries. Perforce, Carey and Dodd rode with them, less escorted than guarded now.

***

They returned quickly to Maxwell’s townhouse, recipients of a double-edged hospitality. Carey strode into the stall where Thunder stood stamping and tossing his head impatiently and found Hutchin there already.

When the boy turned to greet him, they saw a magnificent black eye, a bust lip and pure rage.

“Oh, Lord,” said Carey, wearily stripping off his gloves. “What happened? Did Lord Spynie…”

The boy spat. “Red Sandy and Sim’s Will got intae a fight.”

“How?”

“Wee Colin Elliot was in the Black Bear wi’ some of his kin and when Red Sandy come in, Wee Colin asked him if he’d lost any sheep lately and Red Sandy went for him. An’ they’re both in the town lock-up now. It wasnae my fault,” finished Hutchin self-righteously.

“Who’s in the lock-up? Wee Colin as well?”

“Nay, sir. Just Red Sandy and Sim’s Will, of course.”

Carey glared at Dodd as if it was his fault his brother was an idiot.

“That’s all I bloody need,” said Carey. “Come on, we’ll go and see them.”

They were stopped at the gate to Maxwell’s Castle by a stern-faced Herries.

“Ye canna all go out,” he said to Carey. “My lord Maxwell says one of ye must stay here.”

“As a hostage,” said the Courtier, coldly.

“Ay, if ye wantae put it that way.”

Carey looked at Dodd and Hutchin, calculating. “Then it’s you, Dodd, I’m sorry. I’ll see what I can do to bail your brother.”

Dodd wanted to protest at being left in the middle of a heaving mass of Maxwells, but could see there was no point. It was better for Carey to have freedom of action since he at least had some friends among the Scots. Hutchin was a bit young to play the hostage and a Graham furthermore. It had to be him. He nodded gloomily.

“Ay,” he said. “I’ll be wi’ the horses.”

Carey hurried down the street, Hutchin trotting at his heels, until he came to the small round lock-up by the Tolbooth. As expected, it was packed full of brawlers, half of them still drunk, and it took a while for Sim’s Will to struggle out of the crowd and peer through the little barred window.

“Well?” said Carey, furious at this complication.

“Ah…Sorry, sir,” said Sim’s Will, looking very sheepish. He was battered, though not too badly, considering the idiocy of taking on a pack of Elliots on their own ground.

“How’s Red Sandy?”

“No’ so bad. He lost a tooth but he found it again, and he’s put it back now and his nose stopped bleeding a while ago,” Sim’s Will said.

“Tell me how the fight started.”

Sim’s Will recounted a very pathetic tale in which Wee Colin Elliot had snarled scandalous and wounding insults about Red Sandy and Sim’s Will, impugning their birth, breeding, courage and wives. To this unprovoked attack Sim’s Will and Red Sandy had responded with mild reproach, until the evil Wee Colin had sunk so low as to attack the sacred honour of the Deputy Warden, at which point, driven beyond endurance, Red Sandy had tapped him lightly, almost playfully, on the nose and…

Carey rolled his eyes. “Red Sandy hit Wee Colin Elliot first.”

In a manner of speaking, allowed Sim’s Will, you could say that, although the way Wee Colin Elliot had been ranting you could see it was only a matter of seconds before…

“I don’t suppose you found out anything of use before that, did you?” Carey asked.

Sim’s Will Croser’s face was blank for a moment before, rather guiltily, recollection returned. “Ah. No, sir,” he said.

“No rumour of somebody suddenly having quite a lot of guns where before they had none?”

“Nay, sir. Nothing like that. And we did ask before we met…”

“Wee Colin Elliot. God’s truth. Well, you can tell Red Sandy I’ll do what I can to bail you out of there, but since the matter’s ultimately a decision for the Lord Warden of this March, I don’t know how long it will take.”

“Ay, but is that not Lord Maxwell?” said Sim’s Will. “Red Sandy said ye’re friends wi’ him.”

“Well, I was. I’ll see what I can do.”

An attempt to talk to the King at the Mayor’s house produced the information that His Majesty was out inspecting some of his cavalry and likely to go hunting after that.

And so Carey found himself heading for the alehouse known as The Thistle, as crowded as any of the others with the King’s attendants and minor lords. The common room was a bedlam of arguing, dicing and drinking and as no one stopped him, he and Hutchin quietly went and climbed the stairs to the next floor. Four doors off a narrow landing faced him and after listening for a moment, he tried the one on his right. No answer, so he tried the next one and heard Signora Bonnetti’s voice answer, “Chi é? Who is?”

“C’est moi, Emilia,” said Carey, trying the latch and finding the door bolted.

A moment later it opened a crack and Carey stepped through, firmly stopping Hutchin with a hand on the chest.

“Sit at the top of the stairs and shout if someone tries to come in,” said Carey and Young Hutchin grinned with understanding beyond his years. “And if I catch you listening or peeping at the latch-hole, I’ll leather you, understand?”

“Ay, sir,” said Hutchin.

In fact, Hutchin managed to restrain his curiosity for nearly twenty minutes until the muffled noises coming through the door told him he was safe enough. He put his eye to the latch-hole and was rewarded by the sight of two pairs of legs on a bed playing the old game of the two-backed beast. For all his efforts at squinting and seeing through wood, he could see nothing else and had to use his imagination. Fortunately he had more than most.

The red feather mask had flattered Signora Emilia Bonnetti because it had hidden the fine tracery of lines around her magnificent dark eyes. Carey no longer doubted that she had borne children, for she had the marks of it on her belly and her deliciously dark and pointed nipples. He didn’t care. He had always preferred older married women for dalliance and not simply because, at the Queen’s Court in London, to meddle with the virgin Maids of Honour was to risk the Queen’s fury and a ruinous stay in the Tower. His first woman had been a much older and more experienced French lady in Paris, and he had never got over his awed pleasure at finding the truth in the saying that women burned hotter the older they got.

Now he lay full length in the little half-curtained bed and watched sleepy-eyed as Emilia, full of vigour and mischief, poured him wine and chatted to him in French and Italian mixed.

It seemed he could do her some great service, if he chose. Ah, he thought, we’re coming to the point at last now. Ten years before he might have been disappointed that sheer desire for him had not been Emilia’s motive after all. No more. He had long ago decided that women rarely had fewer than four different motives for anything they did.

He took the goblet of wine and drank as Emilia pulled a white smock over her head and disappeared briefly, still talking.

At first he wasn’t certain he had heard right. “I beg your pardon?”

“I want to buy firearms,” repeated the Signora. “You know, guns.” She said the word in English to be sure he could understand.

Mind working furiously, he watched her and waited for her to explain herself.

“Signor Bonnetti has a commission to buy at least twelve dozen calivers and twelve dozen pistols, with perhaps more later. It has been very difficult, we came to Dumfries full of hope to buy them here where so many are made, but now we find that so many are used here as well the gunsmiths are fat and lazy, and they will not sell to us.”

“Who are the guns for?”

She shrugged her creamy shoulders and made a moue of disdain. “I do not know; for the Netherlanders perhaps, or the Swedes. Even the French Huguenots might want them; Signor Bonnetti has not told me.”

She’s lying, Carey thought to himself, every one of those people have better sources nearer home than Dumfries.

“Have you any money to pay for them?”

“We have gold and banker’s drafts,” she said. “But none will take them. Or they will take them, but they will give us nothing but promises in exchange. Where can I find guns to buy, Robin chéri, so that I may leave this cold and uncivilized place and go back to my beautiful Roma?” She sat next to him on the bed and put her head down on his chest. “We have sold all the wine, but we cannot leave without the guns, and we are both miserable.”

“Why are you asking me?” Carey wondered, twiddling his fingers in her black ringlets. “Why do you think I have guns?”

“Well, the Scots all say it. If you canna get guns here, they say, try the Deputy Warden of Carlisle. And then they laugh.”

Carey smiled and stroked her cheek. “Hmm,” he said. “And why do they laugh?”

She shrugged and sat up, tidying her hair with a busy pulling out and pushing in of hairpins. “Because many of them have very beautiful firearms from Carlisle and are proud of it. The laird Johnstone has many of the finest Tower-made, which is why my lord Maxwell is so worried.”

“Have you tried asking Maxwell?”

Her face screwed up with distaste. “He was the first one I tried and he said he might be able to help me in a little while, but he is untrue and a liar and he will not speak to me any more. The laird Johnstone says he needs his guns against the Maxwells. The Earl of Mar has been very kind…”

“Lucky Earl of Mar.”

She sniffed. “But he is only trying to delay me because I think he takes money from the English. And the King, of course, is not very approachable and the Queen has no influence with him. Huntly is in too much disgrace and poor beautiful Moray is dead. I have no one to turn to.”

“Poor darling,” said Carey not entirely listening to her sad tale. He gave her an inquiring squeeze. She disentwined his arms and frowned at him.

“You must get up and dress,” she scolded. “You have already been here a very long time.”

“But if I find you some guns, I will never see you again,” Carey protested, putting his hand to his brow sorrowfully. Emilia prodded him in a sensitive spot without warning and made him gasp.

“You might. But if I have not guns in the next few weeks, the Signor and I shall be ruined and so you will never see us more at all.”

“And if I can find you a few guns?”

“We will pay you perhaps forty shillings each for them.”

Carey stared hard at her as she busied herself pulling on her stays. He was thinking and calculating and wondering how far he could trust his luck this time. Imperiously she ordered him to help her with her backlaces, and he obediently did the office of a lady’s maid, with a few additions of his own invention. Unfortunately, she was no longer in the mood and they didn’t work. The complex layers went over her inexorably, one after the other, and when she was fully dressed and pinning on her cap, she turned on him and frowned again.

“And you are still disgraceful, why will you not put your shirt on?”