3 A Surfeit of Guns: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (5 page)

She shook her head, screwed up her face and dug her fingers in deeper. Her bare feet under her muddy homespun kirtle twisted together.

All of them listened but there was no more noise.

“How did ye know, sir?” asked Cuddy.

Carey coughed, looked at the ground. Somehow he felt the boy should know, that imagination would be worse than the facts.

“The first cry is when the surgeon begins to cut. Then you can’t get your breath for a bit, but just as he finishes you can get out another yell, and then the final one is when they put pitch on the end.”

“Oh,” said the boy, inspecting him for missing limbs. “Ye’ve watched before then?”

“Yes,” said Carey.

“Who was it? Did he live?”

“Oh yes. He’s got a hook instead of a hand now.”

“Will it no’ grow back?” asked the smallest boy anxiously. “Will it no’ get better again?”

“Ye’re soft,” sneered the middle boy. “It’s no’ like a cut.”

“It will get better, but it won’t grow again,” Carey explained. The little girl had taken one finger out of her ear and was blinking at him with the tears still wet on her cheeks. “He should be well enough by harvest time, there’s no need to cry.”

“If he doesnae die of the rot,” said Cuddy brutally.

The girl nodded. “Ay, that’s what me mam said.”

“Anyway,” Cuddy added, “she’s only crying because mam wouldna let her watch.”

“Me mam said it’s your fault, if ye’re the Deputy,” accused the middle boy.

“Call him sir,” snarled Dodd.

“Is it yer fault,
sir
?”

Carey took a deep breath and began to stride to the house.

“Nay, ye soft bairns,” Dodd said. “It were the Elliots, that’s who we were fighting.”

Cuddy nodded fiercely. “When I’m big enough I’ll find the man that did it and cut his hand off.”

“That’s the spirit lad,” said Dodd approvingly.

***

Long George’s farmhouse was one of those built quickly after a raid, out of wattle and daub, with turves for a roof and pounded dirt bound with oxblood and eggwhite for a floor. George was lying in a corner on a straw pallet covered over with bracken, gasping for breath and moaning. One man who looked like his brother and another older one who seemed to be his father, were standing next to him talking in low voices, while Long George’s wife tended the fire on the hearth in the middle of the floor to keep the broth boiling. Smoke shimmered upwards into the hooded hole in the roof. She stood up and wiped her hands on her apron and blinked at Carey as he stood hesitating in the doorway, his morion making a monster out of him.

The father stepped forward protectively, while Long George’s brother moved unobtrusively for an axe hanging on the wall.

“Who’re ye?”

“I’m the Deputy Warden.”

There was a sequence of grunts from the men and a sniff from the wife. Carey saw that the barber-surgeon was squatting beside his patient, tending the stump. Finally he wrapped the remains of George’s hand in a bloody cloth and rinsed his arms in water from one of the three buckets. George’s tightly bandaged stump was partly hidden by a cage of withies that the surgeon had bound around it. It lay stiffly inert beside George, not seeming to be part of him.

“Did ye kill the man that did it?” demanded George’s father with his eyes narrowed. “What family was he, sir?”

“I killed one Elliot myself, I don’t know who killed the other.”

“Did ye not hang the rest?”

“They escaped.”

George’s brother spat eloquently into the bucket of blood by the bed. The surgeon stood up, nodded to Carey, handed the gory package to George’s wife.

“Bury that with a live rat tied to it to draw out any morbidus,” he prescribed reassuringly. “Give him as much to drink of small beer as he’ll take but no food till tomorrow and I’ll come the day after to see to him. My fee…”

Carey caught the man’s eye and shook his head. The man looked puzzled, then caught on, and nodded happily, no doubt tripling his fee on the instant. He began wiping, oiling and packing his tools away in his leather satchel, whistling between his teeth.

Long George’s family stared at him and Carey went over to the bed, squatted down beside it. Carey had visited wounded men of his before; he knew there was not much he could say that would make anything better, but he was very curious about the cause of Long George’s maiming.

“Long George,” he said softly. “Can you hear me?”

“Ay, Courtier.” The voice was down to a croak and Long George’s face had the grey inward-turned look of someone in too much pain to think of anything else. He was panting softly like an overheated hound. It was a pity he had been too tough to faint while the surgeon did his work.

“I’m sorry to see you like this, Long George,” Carey said inadequately.

“Ay.” Long George tried to lick his grey lips. “What about ma place?”

For a moment, Carey was nonplussed.

“Ah canna fight now, see ye.”

“Oh for God’s sake, don’t worry about it. I’ll look into a pension for you.”

“Ay.” Long George sounded unconvinced.

“What happened to your new pistol?”

A long long pause for thought. “I dinna ken.”

“Did it blow up in your hand? Is that what happened?”

One of the men behind him sucked in a breath suddenly, but said nothing.

Another long pause. “Ay. Must’ve.”

“Did you load it twice?”

Long George couldn’t understand this, the unbandaged bits of his face drew together in a puzzled frown.

“Why would he do that?” demanded his father. “He wouldnae waste the powder.”

“It might happen, in the excitement.”

“Nay,” whispered Long George. “Once.”

Carey sighed. “Where did you get the pistol?”

No answer.

“He canna talk,” said the woman sharply. “He’s sick and hurt, sir. Can ye no’ wait till he’s better?”

Carey straightened up, nearly hitting his head on a roofbeam, and turned to her.

“Do you know where Long George got his pistol, goodwife?” he asked.

Her thin lips tightened and she folded her arms. “Nay, sir, it’s nae business of mine.”

“Or either of you?” Both the other men shook their heads, faces impenetrably blank.

Carey sighed again. Almost certainly the pistol was stolen goods from somewhere and completely untraceable now it was in bits on the Scottish border. Trying to swallow the coughing caused by woodsmoke and a foul mosaic of other smells, Carey moved to the doorway, bent ready to duck under the half-tanned cowhide they had pegged up out of the way so that the surgeon could see to cut.

On an afterthought he felt in his belt pouch and found a couple of shillings which he put into the hard dirty hand of Goodwife Little. From the smell of it, the pot on the fire had nothing in it except oatmeal.

“I’ll ask the surgeon if he has any laudanum,” he said. “If he hasn’t, I’ll talk to my sister about it.”

Oppressed by the hostility of their stares and the smells of blood and sickness in the little hut, Carey went out to where the surgeon was waiting and told him to come for his fee to the castle in Carlisle, and come to him personally. The surgeon did not carry laudanum, since that was verra expensive, and an apothecary’s trade foreby. Carey returned to Dodd, mounted and they continued wearily back to Carlisle. Behind them the children stood in a hesitant row outside their hut, arguing over whether they should ask to be let back in again.

***

They went into Carlisle Castle by the sally-port in the north-east wall and led their horses between the buttery and the Queen Mary Tower to the castle yard which was bare save for two empty wagons parked in the corner. Carey handed Sorrel’s bridle to Red Sandy and told Dodd to see to the horses and put their rebellious fee in the pen by the kitchens and then try and make sure all of them got some sleep and food before evening. There was no chance any of his men would go prudently to bed early that night, when the taverns would be full of their friends and relatives come in for the Sunday muster. In the meantime, if he could get his report to Lord Burghley written and ciphered quickly he might catch the regular Newcastle courier before he left at noon.

He climbed the stairs to his chambers in the Queen Mary Tower, found nobody there at all. Damn it, where were the two servants he paid exorbitantly to look after him? Feeling hard done by, he stripped off his filthy helmet and jack and left them on the stand. He opened his doublet buttons to take the pressure off his side, then answered the heavy door himself to a timid knock.

Surgeon’s fee paid, he decided he could stay awake until the evening. Sleeping during the day always made him feel frowsty and ill-tempered, and he was surprised to find himself so soggy and weary after only one night’s lost sleep. He stamped into his office, rubbing his itchy face, his head aching but the memory of the night’s doings clear. One of the many things he had learned when he attended Sir Francis Walsingham on an embassy to Scotland in the early eighties had been the vital importance of timeliness in intelligence. Burghley was not the spymaster that Sir Francis had been, but he needed to know about James VI’s mysterious German as soon as possible—which meant by Tuesday, with luck. Carey took a sheet of paper, dipped his pen and began to write, hoping that what he was writing was reasonably comprehensible.

An hour later Philadelphia came hurrying up the stairs, knocked and entered her brother’s bedchamber and found it empty. She heard snoring from the office, went through and found Carey with his head on his arms fast asleep at his desk.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” she sniffed, and shook his shoulder gently. “Robin, if that’s a letter to Lord Burghley, you’ll drool on it and smear the ink…”

Robin grunted. Philly saw his doublet was open, pulled it back and saw blood on his shirt. Her lips tightened.

Moments later she was in the castle courtyard, sending every available boy scurrying to find Barnabus. The small ferret-faced London servant eventually arrived looking hungover and even uglier than usual.

“Good day, Barnabus,” she said with freezing civility. “Did you have a pleasant evening?”

“Er…” said Barnabus.

“I’m delighted to hear it. Are you free to do your job now?”

“I didn’t know ‘e was…”

“When I want to hear your excuses, I’ll ask for them. Now get up there and help me put your master to bed, you lazy, idle, good-for-nothing…”

“What’s wrong with him?” muttered Barnabus resentfully as they climbed the stairs. “‘E drunk then…?”

A tremendous backhanded buffet over his ears from Philadelphia almost knocked him over. Barnabus shook his ringing head and blinked at her in astonishment. Seeing her fury, and remembering whose sister she was, he decided not to say the various things he thought of, and carried on up the stairs.

Carey was extremely unwilling to be woken, but finally came groaning to consciousness and let his doublet and shirt be taken off him so that Philadelphia could attack the re-opened cut with rosewater, aqua vitae and hot water. She peeled the bandages off, making him wince.

“God damn it, Philly…”

“Don’t swear, and hold still. You’ve another bad lump on your head, what did that?”

Carey thought for a moment. “Sim’s Will Croser’s horse kicked me,” he said. “My helmet’s dented.”

“I’m not surprised. What was he thinking of?”

Carey blinked and said with dignity, “Insofar as Sim’s Will is capable of thought, I should think he was thinking I was an Elliot.”

“Hmf. I wish you wouldn’t get into fights.”

Carey began laughing. “Philadelphia, my sweet, it’s my job.”

“Hah! Hold still while I…”

“Ouch!”

“I told you to hold still. Barnabus, where are you going?”

“I was only getting a fresh shirt from the laundry.”

“Bring bandages and the St John’s wort ointment from the stillroom and small beer and some bread and cheese too.”

“I’m not hungry, Philly.” She bit her lip worriedly and felt his forehead, her gesture exactly like their mother. “No, I’m not sickening. I’m not as delicate as you think me. It’s Long George. He had to have his right hand cut off this morning. His pistol exploded and took most of the fingers from it.”

“I don’t see what Long George’s hand has got to do with you not eating,” said Philly, with deliberate obtuseness, getting out her hussif from the pouch hanging on her belt and cutting a length of silk. “Are you feeling dizzy, seeing double?”

“No, no,” said Carey. “I’m perfectly all right, Philadelphia.” She stepped back and stared at him consideringly. In truth he looked mainly embarrassed at having fallen asleep over his work, like some nightowl schoolboy. “Can you send out some laudanum to Long George’s farm? And some food?”

Her face softened a little. “Of course.” Carey nodded, not looking at her and she frowned again.

“I think you should be in bed so your cut can heal,” she said.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Well, anyway, I’m going to sew the edges up and then bandage it again to try and stop it from taking sick and don’t argue with me. Don’t you know you can die from a little cut on your finger, if it goes bad, never mind a great long slash like that? Go on. Sit on the bed and lean over sideways so I can get at it.”