3 A Surfeit of Guns: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (29 page)

“What’s happening, sir?” Young Hutchin asked, kneeling at the edge of the hole. “Where does this go?”

“There’ll be an escape route via the roof, no doubt. I never heard of a Border lord yet that didn’t have one. Use it.”

“What about ye, sir?”

“Thanks to you, I think I’m about to be arrested by the King of Scotland.”

“But can ye not come with me?”

“Use your head, Hutchin. This is Maxwell’s bolthole. It’s me they’re after, and if I’m not here, his lordship will know where I’ve gone and they’ll catch both of us. Whereas nobody’s interested in you.”

“Och, Jesus, sir. Will they hang ye?”

“Certainly not. Being of noble blood, I’ve a right to ask for beheading. Here, catch this ring.”

“Whit d’ye want me tae do, sir?”

“You’ve a choice, haven’t you? You could go to Dodd if he’s still at liberty, or try and see Lady Elizabeth Widdrington, herself, in person this time and not through intermediaries. Show her the ring and ask for her help. She might even give it.”

“Or?”

“Or you could pelt off to your cousins and run for the Debateable Land with the gold that’s in that belt. Which might be safer for you in the short term.”

Young Hutchin said nothing.

***

Young Hutchin silently scrabbled at the heavy trap and put it back in its hole. Carey scrubbed the fingermarks off with his shirtsleeve, jumped down, pushed the chest back against the wall, kicked the rucked-up rushes about a bit and ran back to his anteroom, shutting and bolting the door behind him while the dogs milled around him looking puzzled, and the tramp of boots echoed on the spiral stair. First one and then both of the wolfhounds began to bark and growl menacingly, standing to face the door with their hackles up and their teeth bared. Carey patted them both affectionately. If he had wanted to make a fight of it, they would have given their lives for him, but he saw no point in that.

There’s nothing like a bolted door to please a searcher, old Mr Phelippes had told him once, it is so exactly the kind of thing one is looking for. Also the bolt gave Carey time to pull on his hose and boots, before the end of it cracked out of the doorjamb to the multiple kicking. He faced Sir Henry Widdrington and about five other Widdringtons with his sword in his hand. The wolfhounds began baying like the Wild Hunt.

“What in the name of God is going on?” he demanded over the noise.

Sir Henry Widdrington had a loaded wheellock dag in one hand and an official-looking paper in the other. He hobbled forwards a few paces on his swollen gouty feet, his face turned to a gargoyle’s by the torches and deep personal satisfaction. Like a town crier he read out the terms of the warrant in a booming tone.

From behind him Lord Maxwell called his dogs to him and they stopped barking, looked very puzzled, whined sadly at Carey and padded out to their master. Maxwell then, rather pointedly, left.

All was perfectly legal: the King of Scotland had made out a warrant for the arrest on a charge of high treason and trafficking with enemies of the realms of both Scotland and England (nice touch) of one Sir Robert Carey.

“Let me see the seal,” said Carey.

“You’re not suggesting, I hope, that I would forge the King’s Warrant?” said Sir Henry.

“Lord above, Sir Henry, I wouldn’t put anything past you.” Carey was still holding out his left hand for the warrant, his sword en garde between them. Sir Henry reddened and swelled like a frog, then shrugged and gave it to him, the dag’s muzzle not moving an inch from the direction of Carey’s heart. Carey wondered how much insolence it would take from him for the weapon to go off unexpectedly and shoot him dead. Also the seal was genuine.

Carey handed back the warrant and laid his sword down on the truckle bed. He was immediately grabbed by four of Widdrington’s henchmen and his arms twisted painfully up behind his back, which started to make him angry as well as afraid.

“I’ve surrendered to you, Sir Henry,” he managed to say through his teeth. “There’s no need for this.”

Sir Henry answered with a punch in Carey’s belly which almost had him spewing up the sour remains of the aqua vitae he had drunk earlier.

“Ye chose the wrong man to put the horns on, boy,” hissed Sir Henry in his ear as he tried to straighten up. “Any more lip from ye an’ I’ll send ye to the King with your tackle mashed to pulp.”

Carey didn’t answer because he hadn’t got the breath. Somebody was putting wooden manacles on his wrists behind him, some kind of primitive portable stocks.

They propelled him downstairs and through the parlour where Maxwell was standing with his men, watching impassively. Over his shoulder, Carey called to him, “I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this from you, my lord Warden.”

Maxwell shrugged and looked away, which was not worth the further fist in the gut administered by Sir Henry.

Widdrington’s keeping away from my face, Carey thought, when he could think again, which means he’s been ordered to bring me in unharmed. That’s good. Or is it? Perhaps King James just wants a fresh field for his interrogators to start work on. No, they’re not that subtle.

It was hard to keep his feet as they shoved him along, through the hall, through the courtyard now filled with sleepy watchers, and out into the Town Head. One of the Widdringtons held him up when he missed his footing on the cobbles and would have sprawled full length. Carey caught a glimpse of looming breadth and heroic spottiness and recognised young Henry, Widdrington’s eldest son. Henry was wearing a steady flush and a sullen expression and kept his head turned away from Carey’s as he helped him.

They were hustling him on foot down towards the Mercat Cross and the town lock-up, but that was not where they were going. Instead, before they reached it, Sir Henry and his men turned and went under the arcades of the Mayor’s house, through the side door and into the broad kitchen. There a baker was firing his oven and woodmen beginning the work of relighting the fires on the hearths for cooking, while the older scullery boys still slept near the heat and the flagstones gleamed from washing by the yawning younger ones.

Next to the massive table in the centre, under the hams and strings of onions dangling from the roof, Carey tried to slow down, turn, demand to know what the hell was going on here. Somebody, not young Henry, grabbed his shirt and shoved him forwards, causing him to skid on the wet stones and land on his side, which winded him once more. Until his eyes unblurred it was confusing: a whirl of flames from the main hearth and the bread-oven, and men with hard faces, but at least nobody had kicked him while he was on the ground. He got his feet under him and stood up with some difficulty.

“Keep yer mouth shut,” hissed Sir Henry Widdrington, dag at the ready once more.

And yet, Carey still had the feeling that this was cautious handling: certainly they had not been so gentle with the German. Once more he was grabbed by the shoulders and hurried across the kitchen and into a dark passageway. Yes, there was a sense of furtiveness and hurry, definitely. Surely this was far less official than it appeared? Or why use an English gentleman for the dirty work? King James might be short of loyal soldiers, but any one of his nobles would have been highly delighted to arrest and ill-treat an English official.

They went down stairs echoing with the clatter of boots and his own heavy breathing, into another narrow corridor that smelled headily of wine. A massive iron-bound door was unlocked, swung briefly open and somebody, Sir Henry no doubt, booted him into the opening. He stumbled on the slippery bits of straw on the floor and barked his shoulder as he rammed into the opposite wall. The door slammed shut immediately to a clashing of keys and bolts, leaving him in a darkness that put him in doubt whether his eyes were open or shut. The smell of wine permeated everything, so strong it made his head reel almost at once, though there was another less pleasant smell mixed in with it.

Carey set his back against the wall he had hit and caught his breath. For a while all he could hear was the beating of his own heart and the air in his own throat. Then gradually his nose told him what the other smell was: there was someone else in the wine cellar, someone who had been there for some time. For a moment he was afraid it was a corpse and then he made out the other man’s harsh breathing.

“Who’s there?” he asked tentatively.

A kind of moan, nothing more.

“Well, where are you?”

This time, a kind of grunt. How badly injured was he? Had the other man been tortured? Or was he a plant of the kind that Walsingham had used to get information from Catholics in prison?

Wishing he had the use of his hands, Carey began shuffling cautiously across the wine cellar from one wall to the other, trying to learn its geography. The huge wine tuns were in a row by the furthest wall, with smaller barrels set at random on the floor, lying in wait so he could stub his toes and bark his shins on them. Sawdust and straw on the floor to soak up spillage, cool dampness and that maddening Dionysian smell. At last his feet struck something soft and he squatted down. More incomprehensible muttering. What the Devil was wrong with the man?

On impulse Carey tried the few words of High Dutch that he knew: “Wie sind sie?”

Silence and then the sound of soft sobbing. “Oh, Christ,” said Carey, suddenly understanding almost everything. “You’re the German—what was it—you’re Hans Schmidt? Das ist Ihre Name, ja?”

“Jawohl.”

“What the hell did they do to you?”

A high whining, choked with sobs.

For a while, Carey was too sickened and depressed to do more than sit uncomfortably on the damp straw beside the German. Somewhere at the back of his mind a large and complicated structure was forming to explain all that had been going on, but what he was mainly conscious of was the fact that the chill of the wine cellar was cutting through his shirt and giving him goosepimples, he was already dizzy from the fumes, his stomach hurt and so did his shoulder, and that whatever was left of the man beside him was weeping its heart out.

“All right,” said Carey awkwardly at last, as if talking to a horse gone lame. “All right now. Ich…er…ich help sie.”

Sniffling, coughing, thick swallowing, well, there was at least enough of the German’s pride for him to try and get a grip on himself. And this was no plant: none of that kind of crew were good enough actors. Carey deliberately pulled his thoughts away from what might have happened to the unfortunate foreigner. He couldn’t find out anyway, with his hands bolted behind him. The rough wooden shackle hanging on his wristbones was already causing his fingers to prickle and tingle painfully.

“All right,” he said pointlessly again. “I’m Sir Robert Carey, Deputy Warden of Carlisle. It seems we share an enemy. I want to talk to you. Ich will mit sie sprache.”

There was something a little like a bitter laugh. “Nonsense,” Carey snapped. “If it’s too hard to talk, just grunt. Give one grunt for yes, two grunts for no and three for I don’t know. Eins fur ja, swei fur nein, drei fur ich kenne nicht. Ja?”

“Ja.”

So far, so good, thought Carey, shifting his back up against the wall again and trying to get his legs comfortable. He wished with all his heart he spoke more German, or the German more English. Though from the mushy sounds next to him he suspected the man was having to talk out of a mouthful of broken teeth. “Now, do you understand French? Sprechen sie Franzosich?”

“Oui. Meilleur qu’anglais.”

“Thank God,” said Carey, mentally switching gears into that language. “Alors, parlons nous.”

***

Young Hutchin sat in Maxwell’s loft with his arms wrapped round his knees and watched the rats watching him in the light squeezing up through the ceiling boards from the candles and lanterns below. The cold heavy belt wrapped round his waist was warming up. In his imagination he saw the gold there, thick heavy roundels of it, straight from Spain, stamped with letters he could not read and, no doubt, a few with bite marks in them. He had seen gold when his father had had a good raid, he knew what it looked like and what it could buy.

Below him and to the right there were bangs and thumps and talk. Sir Henry and his men were searching Carey’s sleeping place for the gold, but although Hutchin could feel his heart beating hard and slow, he was less afraid than excited. Hiding from searchers was something he had done many times after thieving; it was only a matter of staying still and silent. He had already taken the precaution of putting one of the main roof beams between himself and the trapdoor, in case someone should come up for a look, treading softly and carefully over the narrow boards while Carey argued with Sir Henry below. He could see an escape route where the slates were loose on one side. Picturing the building in his mind, he thought it was at a point on the roof where there was a way down to the roof of the bowling alley and from there to the ground. Or he could go down through the trapdoor when the men below had given up and gone. After that, once out of Maxwell’s Castle—there were horses aplenty in the town, or he could find his cousins on foot, an unremarked boy among dozens in Dumfries. And then…

Young Hutchin shook his head with exasperation. The Courtier had somehow caught him neatly in a trap of words and loyalty. What had he said, after outlining precisely the things Hutchin could do? He had said the choice was Hutchin’s. No hint there of which he should choose, only the bald stating of it. And yet, Young Hutchin knew perfectly well that the Deputy Warden would be hoping he would find Dodd or Lady Widdrington and get him out of whatever dungeon the Scottish King had thrown him in. What could they do? Ransom him perhaps with the gold around Hutchin’s middle. Jesus, what a waste of a fortune.