3 A Surfeit of Guns Read online

  “Ah’ve seen it done faster,” sniffed Dodd.

  “Ay well, so’ve I, but that’s with one ear out for the keeper…” He paused, cocking his head thoughtfully. Far in the distance, there was more crashing in the deer’s wake through the forest.

  “That’s a man running,” said Dodd, swinging up onto his horse again and taking his lance back from Red Sandy. Carey looked up, stopped, wiped his hands and blade sketchily on the grass and vaulted up onto his own horse’s back just as the sound of feet burst out of the undergrowth and shaped itself into the blur of a human being, head down, arms pumping. He saw them waiting in the darkness and skidded to a halt, mouth open in dismay.

  Carey knew prey when he saw it; the man’s oddly-cut doublet was flapping open and his fine shirt ripped and stained, his hose were in tatters and his boots broken. He had pale hair plastered to his face with sweat, a flushed face, a pale beard and a square jaw.

  “Hilfe, hilf mir,” he gasped. “Freunde, helft mir…” His legs buckled and he went to his knees involuntarily, chest shuddering for air. “Um Gottes willen.”

  “He’s a bastard Frenchman,” said Red Sandy excitedly, aiming his lance at the man and riding forward.

  “Nay, he’s that Spanish agent…” someone else shouted. Long George was reloading his pistol as fast as he could.

  “Nein, nein…”

  “Wait!” roared Carey. “God damn your eyes, WAIT!”

  In the distance, they could hear dogs giving tongue. The man heard it too, his eyes whitened, he tried to stand, but he was utterly spent and he pitched forward on his face, retching drily.

  Carey dismounted and went over to the man.

  “He’s a French foreigner,” said Red Sandy again. “Did ye no’ hear him speaking French, sir? Can I get his tail for a trophy, sir?”

  “It wasn’t French,” said Carey. “It was something else, High or Low Dutch, I think. He’s a German.”

  Red Sandy subsided, mystified at the thought of a foreigner who wasn’t French.

  “Like one of them foreign miners down by Derwentwater,” put in Sim’s Will Croser helpfully. “Ye mind ‘em, Red Sandy? They speak like that, ay, with all splutters and coughs and the like.”

  “Qu’est vostre nom, monsieur? Parlez-vous français?” Carey asked as he approached the man who was lifting himself feebly on his elbows. Behind him he could hear the men muttering between themselves. They were arguing over whether the German miners had tails like Frenchmen.

  “Hans Schmidt, mein Herr, aus Augsburg. Ich spreche ein bischen…je parle un peu de Français.”

  “Well, that’s French, any road,” said Dodd dubiously as the hounds in the distance gave tongue again, musical and haunting. The German winced at the sound and tried to climb to his feet, but his knees gave way. His fear was pitiful.

  “I know, Sergeant,” said Carey, coming to a decision, “Have the men move off the road into the undergrowth over there, spread them out. Not much we can do about the venison seeing they’ve got dogs, so leave it. Red Sandy, you set the men and don’t move until we know what’s coming after this man. If I shoot, hit them hard. Dodd, you stay here with me.”

  This they understood. Red Sandy swung his horse back the way they had come and the other six melted briskly into the bushes with their mounts. As the leaves hid them, Long George had the slowmatch lit for his pistol and was cupping it with his hand to hide it. Sim’s Will Croser was taking his bow out of the quiver and stringing it. It was ridiculous that in this day and age most of his men had no modern firearms but must still rely on the longbows of their great-grandfathers, Carey thought to himself. They were waiting the devil of a long time for the ordnance carts from Newcastle.

  Dodd loosened his sword, took a grip on his lance and slouched down in the saddle, sighing in a martyred fashion as he stayed out in plain view to back up his Deputy Warden. Heart beating hard, Carey could hear the other horses now, crashing through the undergrowth behind the hounds.

  The German, Hans Schmidt, had got to his feet, swaying with exhaustion, jabbering away desperately in High Dutch, not one word of which Carey could make out. He could talk to a whore or an innkeeper in Low Dutch, but that was the size of his ability. French came easier to him.

  “Nicht verstehe,” he said. “Je ne comprends pas. Plus lentement, s’il vous plaist.”

  For answer the man put his face in his hands and moaned. There was no time left, the hoofbeats were too close. The German began wobbling away, across the field. Carey shook his head, remounted his horse and pulled both his dags out of their cases. They were already shotted and he wound them up ready to fire, but from the sound of it two shots would not be enough.

  The dogs broke from the woods in a yelping tide, making his horse snort and sidle. Lymers and sleuth-hounds flowed around them, yelping excitedly, sniffing ground, hooves, bellies. The fugitive at least had sense enough not to run, or perhaps he could not. He had fallen and was curled into a ball with his hands over his face. The dogs gathered round, tails wagging furiously, sniffed curiously at the man, then caught scent of the partly-gralloched deer and gave tongue. They entirely lost interest in their original quarry and gathered about the deer. Some began pulling guiltily at the entrails.

  “Off, off. Allez!” shouted Carey, riding over to protect his kill, looking around for the huntsmen.

  For a moment it was hounds only, the horses heralded by sound. Then, like the elven-folk from a poet’s imagination, they cantered out of the tree shadows, three, four, eight, twelve of them, and more behind, some carrying torches, their white leather jacks pristine and lace complicating the hems of their falling bands and cuffs, flowing beards and glittering jewelled fingers, with the plump flash of brocade above their long boots. Carey was surprised: he had expected one of the Border headmen and his kin, like Scott of Buccleuch or Kerr of Ferniehurst, perhaps even Lord Maxwell. Certainly not these fine courtiers.

  The Master of the Hunt whipped the hounds off, and the highest ranking among them rode forward on a horse far too good for the rough ground. Carey recognised him immediately.

  “My lord Earl of Mar,” he said in astonishment, looking from the dishevelled panting German to the King of Scotland’s most trusted advisor.

  “Eh?” said the earl, squinting through the mirk. “Who’s that?”

  “Sir Robert Carey, my lord, Deputy Warden of the English West March.”

  “Eh? Speak oot, mon.”

  Carey repeated himself in Scots. Behind him he could feel Dodd sitting quiet and watchful, his lance pointed upwards, managing expertly to project a combination of relaxation and menace without actually doing anything.

  The Earl of Mar was glaring at Carey’s dags. Rather pointedly, he did not put them away. Out of the corners of his eyes he could see a further six or eight riders milling about in the forest, rounding up stray dogs, while three of the other huntsmen tried to reassert discipline over the hounds who felt they had a right to the deer’s innards after their run.

  “What are ye doing here?”

  “Well, my lord, I could ask you the same question since we’re on English land.”

  “We’re on a lawful hot trod.”

  “Oh?” said Carey neutrally.

  “Ay, we are. My lord Spynie, where the devil’s that bit of turf?”

  A young round-faced man with a velvet bonnet tipped over his ear rode forward. Some crumbs of turf still stuck to the point of his lance, and he was frowning at it in irritation. He was a handsome young man, of whom Carey had heard but had never met, known variously as Alexander Lindsay, Lord Spynie, King James’s favourite and the King’s bloody bum-boy.

  “I see,” said Carey, relaxing slightly and putting his dags away but leaving the case open. “Well, my lord, in that case, as Deputy Warden of the English West March, I am a proper person for you to tell the cause of the trod to, and if necessary, I will render you what assistance I can.”

  The Earl of Mar glared at him. Two of his men had dismounted and were liftin
g the German to his feet, not very gently.

  Knowing he was well within his rights, but feeling a bit of oil might be appropriate in the circumstances, Carey bowed lavishly in the saddle and added, “If my lord will be so very kind.”

  The Earl of Mar harrumphed. He either ignored or did not understand the edge to Carey’s obsequity. “Ay, well,” he said. “Ye’ve already assisted me, by stopping this traitor here, so I’ll thank ye kindly and we’ll be awa’ again.”

  “Ich bin nicht…” the German began yelling. His arm slipped out of one of his helpers’ hands, he swung a wild punch at the other which connected by sheer chance. Hands plucking at the empty scabbard on his belt, he shouldered past another would-be helper, running at a desperate stagger for the forest, only to be knocked off his feet by a kick in the face from one of the other horsemen. He was hefted up again and his hands tied briskly behind him. Carey had tensed when he made his break, every instinct telling him to help one against so many, but intelligence and self-preservation ordering him not to be such a fool. He had eight men—the Scottish courtiers had at least thirty plus the law of the Borders on their side. And the man was a foreigner.

  “I see,” he said, looking away as the German was hauled to a riderless horse, still half-stunned and bleeding from the nose, and slung across it like dead game. “May I ask what form his treason took? Is there anything likely to be a threat to Her Majesty the Queen?”

  “Nay,” said the Earl of Mar, backing his horse with a rather showy curvette. “Tis a private matter between yon loon and our King. We’ll be off now.”

  With great difficulty the hounds where whipped off the stag, some of them still trailing bits of entrail from their mouths as they lolloped unwillingly away. The whole cavalcade plunged back into the forest, heading north again, with the unfortunate German occasionally visible, like a feebly struggling sack of flour across his horse’s back. Cheekily the Earl of Mar winded his horn as they disappeared from sight.

  ***

  Dodd said nothing as Carey dismounted and went back to the stag to see what could be salvaged. The stag was quite a bit the worse for wear but much of the gralloching had been done. The skin would not be useable though. The men reappeared and, unasked, hung the stag up on a tree branch by its back legs to drain.

  They waited by the tree while the most part of the deer’s remaining blood trickled out. With suspicious efficiency the men constructed a travois out of hazel branches and argued quietly over whose horse should pull it.

  Dodd was still saying nothing, and cocking his head northwards occasionally with an abstracted expression.

  “What’s the problem, Sergeant?” asked Carey.

  Dodd coughed. “It’s the trod, sir.”

  “The Earl of Mar’s taken his captive back into Scotland by now, I should think.”

  “Ay, sir.”

  “So?”

  “Sir, did ye never follow on behind a hot trod so ye could claim the beasts ye took were part of it?”

  “You mean there might be a Scots raiding party following the Earl of Mar’s trail so they can claim they’re legally coming into England as part of the pursuit?” Carey asked carefully.

  Dodd clearly wondered why he was belabouring something so obvious. “Ay, after about an hour or so,” he agreed. “To let the…excitement die down, see.”

  “I do see, Sergeant. Do you think they’ll come by here?”

  Dodd’s wooden expression told Carey he had asked another stupid question.

  “Only, ye can mix the trails about, sir.”

  “Fine. What would you suggest, Sergeant?”

  Dodd’s suggestion took shape: they took the deer carcass down from the tree and lashed it to its travois, which Long George and Croser hauled into the branches of an oak to keep it away from foxes.

  “We can’t actually stop them coming south,” Carey said while the others cleared the ground of their own tracks. “They haven’t committed any crime and they’re following a lawful hot trod, so…”

  Dodd and his brother Red Sandy exchanged patient glances.

  “No, see, sir, if we stop them before they’ve lifted aught, then we’ll get nae fee for it, will we? We’ll stop ‘em after.”

  “I see. Very interesting. Do you ever…arrange for raids, so you can stop them and get the fees for them?”

  “Ay, sir,” said Sandy. “Why, last year the Sergeant and…”

  Dodd coughed loudly.

  “…ay, well, Lowther’s done it,” his brother finished, managing to look virtuously indignant. “But we wouldnae, would we, Sergeant?”

  Even in the darkness, Dodd’s glare could have withered a field of wheat.

  “One of us must track them on foot,” he said judiciously. “Sandy’s the best man for that job, seeing he’s the fastest runner and he knows the land.” Red Sandy made a wry face. “Then when he’s seen them find the beasts they’re after, he comes back to us and we stop them on their way home, red-handed.”

  “What if they take a different route?”

  Dodd rubbed his chin with his thumb. “They might,” he allowed. “But I doubt it. They’ll keep to the trail the Earl of Mar made with a’ his fine men to confuse us from following.”

  Carey nodded.

  “I rely on your judgement, Sergeant. Shall we take cover now?”

  “Ay, sir, it’d be best. Though it might be a long wait.”

  Dodd and Red Sandy had a quiet conversation as all of them carefully pushed in among the undergrowth. Carey watched in fascination as each man of his troop then took his horse’s head and forced the animal to lie down with great rustling surges in the bracken and leaves. Long George swore because he’d found a patch of nettles, a couple of the horses snorted and resisted. Carey found that the right pressure on his own animal’s neck and head laid the rough body down with a great lurch and grunting and splaying of legs. They were completely out of sight. He copied Dodd, lying down as well, with one arm over his horse’s head, the other arm supporting his own head.

  Red Sandy was nowhere to be seen. Carey realised then that he was already outside the woodland, where it met the rough pasture of the hillside, and inspecting them all for concealment.

  “There’s a man wi’ a shiny helmet moving,” Red Sandy said accusingly. Carey turned his head to see who was revealing them. “Ay, there he goes again.”

  Luckily the dark hid his flush as he realised that he was the guilty man. Dodd reached over with some leafy twigs and stuck them in Carey’s plume-tube.

  “Tha’s better,” called Red Sandy. “Tell the silly get to stay still, Henry.”

  Dodd grunted softly and didn’t look at Carey. Red Sandy hardly rustled the bushes as he took cover himself.

  The silence clamped down around them, like the forest and the night. Not even the horses moved, though Carey could see the wide eyes of his own mount, alert but very well trained and not moving a hoof.

  Time passed. The damp coolness of the earth began working its way through the layers of leather and cloth to his stomach, the warmth of a sultry summer night was weight on his back. Little trickles of sweat began seeking water’s own level down the muscles of his shoulders. There was an ant’s nest under his knee. Perhaps the ants wouldn’t mind.

  Strain his ears though he might, he could hear absolutely nothing of the eight other men hiding only a few feet away from him. Not a snort, not a rustle. He could swear they were even breathing quieter than him.

  The back of his head was itching where the leather padding of his helmet was making his scalp sweat. Also he was convinced there were ants running up his legs. Also he had a cramp starting in one foot. Where the hell were these theoretical raiders?

  There was a loud rustling and crunching sound. For a moment Carey wondered which idiot could be making it, when he saw a small bundle of spines wander into his field of vision. It stopped short, stared at him out of little black eyes. He stared back. Never before in his life had he been nose to nose with a hedgehog, though he had once eate
n one, baked in clay.

  The hedgehog snuffled out a slug and began eating it noisily with every sign of enjoyment. Carey was irresistibly reminded of one of the Queen’s councillors eating a bag pudding and had to swallow hard not to laugh. He swallowed too loudly. Disdainfully, the hedgehog finished the slug and trundled off into the leaves like a small battering ram.

  The cramp in his foot was getting worse. And the ants were exploring dangerously high up his thigh. And he desperately wanted to scratch his scalp. Where were the raiders?

  Without moving his head, Carey looked for Dodd. Between the leaves the Sergeant seemed quite at ease, his long limbs sprawled and relaxed, peering over his horse’s neck. He wasn’t like a statue, more along the lines of a bolster on a bed. Blast him.

  Nothing happened. Carey wondered what a German from Augsburg was doing in the Scottish Borders and why King James wanted him and what for: he wove several wonderful webs of possibility, but the facts would have to wait until he got back to Carlisle and even then he might never know unless he went into Scotland. The ants seemed to be excited about the discovery of his boot-top. Perhaps they were planning a new nest. Would they have time to build it? Probably the itch in his hair was a louse. Perhaps the ants would form an alliance with whatever other vermin he had picked up in Carlisle…

  Wondering how much longer he would have to stand this torture, Carey began trying to distract his mind. Inevitably he thought of Elizabeth Widdrington. The last he heard, she had been at Hexham on her way home to the East March. The smile dropped off his face. Her husband, Sir Henry Widdrington, had met her there. She had sent Carey a letter breaking off their friendship, and a verbal message continuing it. God knew what Sir Henry had done to her, to make her write the letter, might even be doing to her now.

  He thought of the Latin poem he had recited for her a few days before, one of the muckier ones by Catullus that every schoolboy found easy to remember.

  His tutor had translated it, disapprovingly, “Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand…” It was pleasant to imagine kissing Elizabeth Widdrington, breaking through all her honourable propriety, her entirely misguided faithfulness to her elderly husband, lifting her skirts and petticoat and the hoops of her farthingale and her smock and…