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A new omnibus in the highly acclaimed Sir Robert Carey Mysteries. Perfect for fans of C.J. Sansom and S.J. Parris.
1592. Sir Robert Carey abandoned the ambition and treachery of Queen Elizabeth I’s court to take up the post of Deputy Warden of the West March, aided by his surly, larcenous, and loyal henchman Henry Dodd, Land Sergeant of Gilsland.
As Carey struggles to solve the murder of a local minister, he battles with his deep adoration of Lady Elizabeth Widdrington, while despising her elderly, abusive husband – will the man never die? During his investigation, Carey encounters King James IV, his amoral favourite Lord Spynie, the fey Lady Hume, Mr Anricks – a surprisingly skilled tooth drawer – and, finally, a plot to topple the Scottish Court.
Plunging readers straight into the raucous world of late-sixteenth century border reivers and unfettered Elizabethan intrigue, Swords in the East, the third chronicle of Sir Robert Carey’s adventures, collects the novels A Chorus of Innocents and A Clash of Spheres under one volume.
A Chorus of Innocent © 2015
A Clash of Spheres © 2017.
Welcome Page
About Swords in the East
Dedication
A Chorus of Innocents
Prologue
Historical Note
Cast of Characters
A Clash of Spheres
Glossary
Cast of Characters
About P.F. Chisholm
About the Sir Robert Carey Mysteries
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright
To Jane Conway-Gordon, with many thanks
It was a small chapel, stone built and once dedicated to some Papist saint. Since then it had been whitewashed, had its superstitious coloured windows broken with stones and the head knocked off the saint, although her cow was left in peace. The old altar had been broken up as the reign of the King’s scandalous mother came to its riotous end, the relics hidden in it levered out and thrown on a bonfire to burn as superstitious trash. By the early 1570s there was a respectably plain altar table, well away from the eastern end so as not to be idolatrous and a very well-made plain and solid high pulpit for preaching. Mostly by visiting preachers, though, because who would choose to live in the village so close to the Border with England and the bastard English raiders?
Once upon a time, memorably, the Reverend Gilpin had come there after the mermaid Queen was safely locked up in England. This was very unusual. The Reverend’s summer journeys kept him on the southern side of the Faery Wall, among the God-cursed English, but a laird had heard him there and invited him to come and preach and paid his expenses forebye, and everyone for miles about had gone to listen. They still tutted about it.
They had heard some very strange things from the pulpit that day. For a start, Gilpin didn’t read the Bible texts they knew and liked, the good ones about smiting the Philistines or the book of Joshua or an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, which was good sense they wholeheartedly agreed with. Nor did he talk about the wickedness of starched ruffs, or vestments, even.
He read them some unfamiliar parts of the Gospels: nothing useful about Jesus bringing a sword, no. Strange unaccustomed things he read them about making peace with your brother before you laid your sacrifice on the altar and some outrageous stuff about loving your enemy.
The men and women shifted their feet where they stood and looked at each other sidelong. Did Christ really say that? Really? Loving your enemy? Was the English Reverend sure? It sounded…well, it sounded Papistical.
Love everybody? What? The English, too? Jesus never said that, did he?
And the Reverend had smiled with a twinkle in his small grey eyes and closed the Bible with a snap, then leaned his arms familiarly on the rail of the pulpit as if he was leaning on a fence.
“Did you ever in all your lives hear anything so mad?” he asked in reasonable Scotch and they all laughed with relief.
He must have been reading one of those wicked Papistical Bibles the Jesuits spread about, that must be it. Jesus couldn’t have said that about enemies. What you did with enemies was you hunted them down and killed them and all their kin, which made far better sense. Honestly, the idea!
But as the Reverend had spoken on, they felt uneasy again. It seemed Jesus had said those mad things. He had actually said, right out, that they must love each other, not just their own surnames—which was just about doable, mostly—but everybody. Even the English.
It seemed Jesus had said the thing about enemies too; he really had. There it was, in the Bible, which was as true and good as gold, golden words from God, incorruptible, like blasts of the trumpet against the ungodly. The foolish Papists had hidden the glorious words of Jesus in Latin black as pitch so only priests could know them; now the words were Englished and turned to Scotch as well, so anybody could read them, yes, even women.
So what were they to think? What should they think—that Jesus was mad? Crazy?
Everyone had goggled at such…surely it was blasphemy?
A stout woman spoke up from the back of the church where she was standing with the other women. “That’s blasphemy!” she shouted. “You can’t say Our Lord was mad…”
The English Reverend’s long finger stabbed the air as he pointed at her.
“That’s right, goodwife!” he bellowed. “You are the truest Christian here! It’s blasphemy to say or even to think that Jesus Christ was mad because he was the Son of God!”
He was standing up straight now, leaning over the rail. “And if he was the Son of God, then how dare we listen to his words in the Bible and not follow his orders? How dare we hate our enemies? How dare we feud and kill and raid and burn? For if we do, shall we not burn in Hell?”
And from there the sermon had turned both familiar and frightening. Familiar in the loud words and gestures, but frightening in the meaning. For the Reverend was not inveighing against the Papists nor the French nor the courtiers. He was preaching against themselves. Against any of them who went up against an enemy to fight him, steal his cows and sheep and burn his steadings—which meant pretty much every man there of fighting age. He bellowed against those who cooked and brewed ale for the fighting men or quilted their jacks in the old surname patterns—which meant every woman and girl there.
He told them that they were wrong and damned, that keeping a boychild’s right hand covered with a cloth at baptism so it was unblessed and could kill without sin was a wicked Papist superstition. That the whole of them, body and soul, was blessed in baptism, so that they could rise up, soul and body both, at the Judgement Day—which might be very soon.
Yet because they had not obeyed their true headman, Jesus Christ, then they would be damned just as infallibly as the Papists or the wicked Anabaptists.
Many of the men were scowling and putting their hands on their knives or swords. The women were gasping with outrage while the children stared in astonishment at the small man’s daring. What was an Anabaptist? Did it have a tail?
He quieted for a while, playing them like a violin. It was all right. Jesus was a just and kindly headman, unlike many of the lairds hereabouts (that got a small titter). They could make things right anytime they wanted: All they had to do was love their enemies, make peace with those they were at feud with, and…
“Die?” sneered the laird at the front, who had his arms folded across his barrel chest and his henchmen in a tight knot around him. As he was the one who had paid for the Reverend to preach he was understandably angry. “That’s what will happen if we make peace with the bastard English. We’ll die and our families with us!”
“You will not die,” said the Reverend Gilpin, pointing at the laird. “You will receive eternal life.”
The headman spat on the stones. “I didna pay your expenses for ye to preach this shite,” said the headman. “Get on wi’ yer job and curse the ungodly, man!”
“I am,” said Gilpin, seeming blithely unaware that every man there was on the point of drawing steel. Or perhaps he believed God would protect him. Or perhaps he didn’t care. “If you fail to do what our Lord Jesus ordered—love God and love each other—you are the ungodly! You and the English both. All of you, both sides of the Border, are the ungodly.”
The laird drew his sword and shouldered to the front. “I paid ye!” he bellowed. “Now do whit I paid ye to do!”
A purse full of money flew through the air and bounced off the headman’s doublet with a thump.
“I don’t need yer money,” said Gilpin. “Thanks to God and mine own weakness, I am a wealthy man. Ye’ve got a free sermon here. Now will ye listen to the Word of God, or not?”
There was a moment of total silence. Then the woman who had spoken before (against all scripture) started laughing.
“Och,” she shouted, “he’s a brave man at least, not an arselicker like the last one. You let him preach, Jock o’ the Coates.”
“So,” said Gilpin after a pause, with a friendly smile to all of them as some hands relaxed from the hilts of their weapons, “we have a problem. If the Lord Jesus wisnae a madman, then ye all are mad for ignoring his orders.”
There was a growl from some of the men and more laughter from the women, sniggers from the children. You had to say this: It was a more exciting sermon than the last preacher who had had a lot to say about the wickedness of vestments, whatever they were.
Over the next hour the Reverend Gilpin proved that Jesus had actually said they should love their enemies and that He had actually done that very thing when the Romans had nailed Him to a cross, which must have hurt. And then, to show them all what they were dealing with, hadn’t He risen from the dead, come back to life, not like a ghost or the curs’d knight in the ballad, but as a living, breathing man who ate grilled fish and drank with his friends?
There was no possible question that He had said it and meant it and done it.
Now they had to forgive their enemies, too, and live in peace with them. That was all there was to it. And once they set their minds to it, they would find it easier than they expected; for wouldn’t the Lord Jesus be right there at their side, helping them all the way?
By the end of the sermon some of the more impressionable had been weeping. One of the Burn grandsons was staring transfixed into space, as if he could see something marvellous there instead of just a smashed Papist window.
Gilpin left them all with the blessing, the full blessing from the evening service: “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”
Then he went calmly to his horse that was tethered outside and, with his servant behind him, mounted up and trotted slowly away so the laird could catch him if he wanted.
It was so memorable a sermon that the laird sent a message to an Edinburgh minister, in case Jesus really had said that about enemies.
He had, apparently. He really had, though according to the Edinburgh minister, that didn’t count for Papists and a number of other people—including, of course, the English.
So that was all right then.
Strangely, the laird invited Reverend Gilpin again and, even more strangely, he came, riding a solid ordinary hobby with his silent deacon behind him on a long-legged mare.
However as he came to unlock the wooden chapel door, he found a gauntlet nailed to it with a badly penned paper that said whoever took it down would be the Burns’ blood-enemy for life.
Gilpin looked at it for a moment and then ripped it down. He carried the gauntlet into the church with him where he explained to the assembled people why feud was wrong, challenges to single combat were wrong, and the headman who had challenged him was not only wrong but stupid. He was risking not only a lightning bolt, not only the wrath of God, but also an eternity in Hell, which was no laughing matter.
Foolishly, the headman wouldn’t leave it be. He sent to Gilpin to ask where he proposed to meet and what his weapon would be. Gilpin replied that it would be at the tower of his Lord with the sword and shield of God.
The headman arrived at the chapel the next day with his sword and buckler and a crowd of his surname who came to see him beat up the preacher who had defied him, or to laugh at him when he didn’t arrive.
They found Gilpin standing there in his plain cassock, holding a large Bible.
“Och,” Jock o’ the Coates said disgustedly. That wasn’t fair. The book looked heavy enough to do some damage if he threw it, but what if he made a lightning bolt come out of it?
“Well?” said Gilpin, coming forward with the Bible open and his thumb set in one of the end chapters. “Will you draw and strike, Jock Burn?”
“Ye’re not…ye’re not armed,” growled Jock, horribly suspecting some of his grandsons and nephews were laughing at him inside, which indeed they were.
“I am armed,” said the mad preacher. “I am armed with the sword of God’s Truth and the shield of God’s Word. Will ye not strike? Perhaps yer sword will not wither like a twig in the fire nor your whole surname go to dust and ashes with you left alone until your enemies catch ye. For those who live by the sword shall die by it.”
Jock Burn backed off, paling. No more was ever said about the challenge and the gauntlet.
That was the Reverend Gilpin. He helped broker the deal between the Dodds and the Elliots in the late 1570s, which calmed upper Tynedale no end, and saw to it that the worst offenders left the area. He kept coming every summer, at first with his quiet young manservant and then, after the man died of a fever, he came on his own, sadder, gentler now. He preached at several Warden Days, on the invitation of Sir John Forster, the English Middle March Warden. He carried no more than an eating knife and a Bible, he slept wherever he could find shelter, and he ate whatever the poor people he lodged with could give him. He preached from his Bible whenever anyone asked him to and always on Sundays.
Nobody had ever seen or heard of such a strong minister, such a mad churchman, who had said publicly that he gave not a feather for vestments and as for the Papists—well, hadn’t he been a Papist himself once, before he read the Bible and understood God’s Word better? And surely most of them were good men misguided, with only a few actively serving the Evil One.
What was more he never laid a hand on girl or boy, though he had no wife either. Many were the snares and traps set for him by cunning mothers with girls who would have liked to be mistress of his rumoured large and comfortable living in the south. When a gentlewoman twitted him on his wifeless state across her dinner table, with her daughters on either side of him, he smiled and toasted her and her daughters.
“You see,” he told her, “I swore before the altar of God to keep chastity and although I was certainly a sinner when I was young and hot-blooded, now I am old and tired and no use whatever to a woman.” He smiled and bowed to both the girls who blushed. The mother found herself wondering about his deacon who had died of the fever but she said nothing and nor did he. All the girls who had hopes of his rumoured magnificent house at Houghton le Spring were sadly disappointed.
He only came to the Borders in summer. For the rest of the year he kept a school at Houghton le Spring, boarded likely boys at his own expense, and paid for some of them to go to Oxford where he himself had studied Divinity and sung the Masses with the rest of the young men before Henry VIII’s divorce.
Slowly, little by little, some of the men of the surnames came to like him, the women too, despite his obstinate refusal to wed any of them. The children had loved him from the start and the lads ran to meet him when they saw his solitary silhouette with his soft flat churchman’s cap and warm cloak over a ridge along the road from Berwick.
Then in 1583 sad word came. He had been trampled by an escaped ox in Houghton market, lay wounded for a month and died of lungfever on the fourth of March. Both sides of the Border were stricken at the news and Jock o’ the Coates Burn and some of the headmen from south of the Border as well went to pay their respects in the south at Houghton le Spring, and with them they brought some of the boys Gilpin had taught, the bigger ones, to sing for him at his funeral. Jock died a few months later, leaving his grown son Ralph as headman and the grandsons grown as well—a lucky life Jock never admitted he attributed to not cutting Gilpin’s head off when they had met at the chapel in the early 1570s.
And the seeds that Gilpin had sown, dangerous and revolutionary seeds that they were, lay in the soil of the people’s minds, and here and there they set down their roots.
The men had been riding for two days, and were now into the broad fat lands of the East March of Scotland where the Humes held sway. They had instructions but those had been vague on the important point of position.
“Och, we’ll never find him,” complained the younger one. “A’ the villages look the same.”
The older one shook his head. “We ainly need his kirk,” he said.
“Ay, one kirk in hundreds.”
It was surprising and the older one thought a little shocking that there were so many kirks, and not all of them burnt or in ruins like in the Low Countries. Some old Catholic churches had been torn down and a new one put up, but more often they were just altered with the heads of the saints knocked off and the paintings whitewashed. Not every village had a kirk, by a long way, but a lot did.
They came over the top of a shallow hill and saw another little scatter of cottages and the kirk on the next hill, with a nice tower on it to keep an eye out for raids. It was October, so only a few women were out in the gardens, mostly tidying up for winter or planting winter cabbages. The surviving cattle and sheep were scattered over the infield and most of the pigs had gone to make sausages now so there wasn’t a lot of noise. There was ploughing going on nearby, with the village plow and its oxen struggling through some new Earth that might grow some wheat next year, while the children followed it gathering up the stones. The harvest had been poor thanks to the bad weather in July, and no doubt the people were hoping to grow a bit more on the new field next year.
The two of them didn’t need to talk much. They knew what they were about, had done it before, and so they decided to make for the church alehouse. That was a small thatched building next to the church in the old way and the church was one of those that had been altered, not demolished.
It was cold and damp and the men were out of their own country. They rode into the village, tethered their horses by the duck pond and walked up to the alehouse. They weren’t very many miles north of Berwick itself and hoped to get to the city that night and find lodgings there. They didn’t expect to find any in this village, any more than they had in the last two or three.
The village alehouse was no longer run by the church. A young man stood behind the bar and the usual people were there, despite it being afternoon. Two men sat in the corner playing dice, a third was hunched over his quart by the fire, a fourth was asleep. The fifth and sixth were standing by the bar, arguing over whether a billy goat could beat a ram in a fight, if you could get them to fight and how would you do that anyway. The seventh was a travelling barber surgeon, obvious from his pack, sitting in the corner, reading a book. As they came in, he stood up and stretched his back, put his book carefully in his large pack, and said in a London voice, “I’ll pay you now, shall I, Tim?”
“Nae need, Mr Anricks, ye paid for more than your tab when ye drew my tooth for me.”
“Are you sure? You paid me for it at the time.”
“Ay, but I never lost a tooth before so nice and easy. I’ll be telling ma dad about ye, that’s sure, he’s got a bad tooth too.”
“Well thank you, I appreciate it. I’m for Edinburgh now and after I think I’ll head west and see if there are any bad teeth in Dumfriesshire or even Carlisle.”
“Bound to be, Mr Anricks. Me dad’ll be waiting for when ye come back.”
“Now mind what I tell you, the invisible worms that eat your teeth, they love sugar and honey and so if you scrub your teeth with a cloth and salt, that’ll keep them away.”
“Ay, and I’ll keep the charm ye sold me too, that’s even better.”
“Hm. Good day to you.”
“Clem!” bellowed Tim. “Bring Mr Anricks’ pony round for him.”
A boy leapt out from under the counter and pelted out the door and the tooth-drawer followed him out, moving a little stiffly, as if his back hurt.
“Ehm…” said the older traveller, “good day to you.” Everybody turned and looked. “That’ll be two quarts, please.”
This was an event. Two strangers coming into the alehouse. A smaller boy was staring from where he’d been whittling under the counter. The older man hated the feeling of being conspicuous, but you couldn’t help it.
The quarts were drawn from the only barrel and the younger man paid, twice as much as usual on account of them being foreigners of course. That was all right, they had plenty of money.
After both had taken a drink, the older one said, “What’s the name of this village?”
Several people answered and it seemed you could choose between Lesser Wendron or Minor or the old one of Wendron St Cuthberts.
“Ah. St Cuthberts,” said the older man wisely, “would the minister here be a Mr Burn? A Mr James Burn?”
“Why?” asked the man at the bar, with narrow suspicious eyes.
“Well,” said the older one, not looking at the younger one, “we’re from a printer in Edinburgh to see about the printing of his sermons and selling them too.”
This was what he had been told to say by his principal and he was happy to see it worked like a charm. The man might well have been suspicious, after all, and it would be so much easier if they could get him alone.
“Yes,” said the barman, “that’d be the pastor.” He wasn’t at the alehouse which was a little odd for a pastor. What was more, he was at the manse and teaching the children.
The younger man choked on his beer. “Teaching?” he asked. “Why?”
This touched off a dispute. The dice players looked around and said it was all this new-fangled religion, the arguers agreed and sniggered about it, the barman said it was all very well learning your letters but then what could you do with it, the sleeper said nothing because he stayed asleep, and the man who was hunched over his quart straightened up and told them all that they were fools because the truth was in the Bible and the children would be able to read it for themselves, whereas they couldn’t. One of the dice players snorted and said that was all very well and the truth might be in the Bible at that, but what was the use of it?
The older man cut through the talk and asked where the manse might be, and learned it was right behind the alehouse from the days when the alehouse was the church’s and ran church ales.
Both men finished their ales, parried a couple of questions about where they came from. No need to send the boy with them, they could find the manse themselves from the sound of it.
They went out the door and round the back of the place and there, sure enough, was the manse, a handsome building of stone like the church, though perhaps older. It looked like part of it had once been something else, maybe a little house for monks or something.
The door flung open and twelve boys came pouring out, shouting and pummeling each other, two of them fell wrestling at the feet of the men. They stepped around the boys and spoke to the man standing at the door, smiling at them.
He bowed slightly and led them inside. The boys all scattered to their homes except for three who had planned a fishing expedition at the stream. A woman arrived in a hurry, and went in smiling. There was a quiet sound of talking, a woman’s voice, a man’s voice.
A pause. Then a sudden grunt, like a pig being stuck with a lance, a thump, then a sound like a cabbage being cut. Then the sound of a stifled scream, thumping and bumping and some muffled groans, going on for a while.
The two men walked out of the house, grinning and rearranging their hose and round the duck pond to where their horses were tethered. Unhurriedly they untied them, mounted and trotted away to the little copse nearby where they had some remounts and a boy guarding them.
Then they changed horses and went to a canter out of the copse and round by the little lanes that threaded across the countryside, although they could have crossed the ploughed fields in a straight line. As it happened they went north first on an errand and to throw anyone off the trail, and then they went south and west. The boy took the West March-branded horses straight south to a horse-trader.
Lady Widdrington looked at the farmer in front of her and waited for him to stop lying. The horses in question were nice beasts and she knew they were not local. The question was, where had they come from and had they been reived.
“Mr Tully,” she said, “I’ve never seen the brands before. Where are they from?”
“They’re Middle March horses, your ladyship,” he said promptly. “Bought from my brother-in-law in Jedburgh.”
She sighed. “Those aren’t Jedburgh brands.”
His face flinched a little and she read it easily. She was a woman; she wasn’t supposed to know about brands. It had taken Elizabeth two years to know all the main brands and variations hereabouts, but she knew them now. In fact she wasn’t completely sure she didn’t know these particular brands, only she couldn’t bring to mind which surname they belonged to, which was odd. They niggled her. Probably they came from the West March, Armstrong, Nixon, Graham? But they certainly weren’t from Jedburgh and they were good horses. Not as good as Robin Carey’s beautiful tournament charger Thunder, which he had sort of sold to the King of Scots that summer, but…
She sighed and pressed her lips together. That familiar ache in her chest had started up again. It had been three and a half months since she saw him riding Thunder, tipping his hat to her seriously as he rode past. Less time since she saw him at the Scottish Court where…
Mr Tully saw her face lengthen and become stern. It was a handsome face, rather than pretty, the long nose and chin would probably draw together eventually but hadn’t yet. He drew a couple of wrong conclusions and decided she must be a witch.
“A’ right,” he said sadly, “they’re no’ from Jedburgh.”
“I know that,” agreed Elizabeth.
“Fact is, I dinna ken where they’re from. So now…”
Elizabeth folded her gloved hands on the reins and leaned back slightly. Her horse tipped a hoof and gave a resigned snort.
“They were running loose in the woods.”
She looked around her at the plump farms and copses. There weren’t a lot of woods anywhere near.
“Which woods?”
“Aah…in Scotland.”
She could have asked what he was doing north of the Border, but she didn’t. She nodded invitingly.
“Ay, I’d been north of Berwick getting…ah…getting supplies and up to Edinburgh forebye for I couldna find what I was looking for and I got lost in the wood meself and so I found ’em.”
She waited patiently for him to start telling the truth. “They had nae tack on them or nae ither signs and they were sad and sorry for themselves, so they were, and when I found them they were hungry too…”
Likely since these weren’t tough little hobbies who could live on a couple of blades of grass a day, but taller bigger horses who would need more food.
“And one of them had thrown a shoe and the other was lame too, and so I brung them south with me to help and comfort them and that one’s called Blackie…”
“That’s the grey?”
“Ay and that one’s called Pinky.”
“The chestnut?”
“Ay,” Tully looked at her cautiously. “It’s a joke, ye ken, missus. Ah niver name my animals for their right colours.”
Elizabeth nodded. Why else would the man be riding a beast as black as pitch and known to all as Milky?
One of the Widdrington cousins who was riding with her and waiting a little way off, chuckled softly.
Elizabeth moved her own horse, a very dull dark chestnut called Mouse for good and sufficient reasons, to a nearby stone wall. She unhooked her knee from the sidesaddle and stepped down to the wall, then picked up her skirts and climbed down the other side to go into the paddock with the horses. There were other animals dotted around the pasture, which was looking bare and brown. Among them were two billy kids, nearly grown and making themselves useful by calming the horses while awaiting their inevitable fate.
She went among the horses and patted them, felt their legs, lifted their feet—yes, they had been shod a while ago, though Tully hadn’t re-shod them yet because that was expensive. She checked their teeth as well. Blackie, the grey, snickered with his lips and pushed his nose into her chest, looking for carrots, no doubt. She patted his neck and found Pinky on her other side also wanting attention.
“These are quite young and good horses,” she said.
“Ay, ladyship,” said Tully, looking at her sadly. “But I didna reive ’em.”
“No,” she agreed to his great surprise, “I don’t think you did but you’ll have to wait until I write to the Scotch Warden and ask about them.” Tully sighed. “I’ll try and get you a finder’s fee for them if I can,” she added since he had told her some of the truth eventually, and what he had been doing in Scotland was probably just smuggling and nothing worse.
“Or,” she said thoughtfully, “I could take them off your hands now and give you something for them and then keep the fee if we find the owner.”
Tully scratched the back of his head and looked at the sky scattered with clouds, though it was not raining yet. He was not a wealthy man and although there was horse feed available now, it would get short before spring because the harvest had been bad. The horses were geldings and she could put them to use, whereas he couldn’t. On the other hand, the Borderers all loved horses, which she did herself, of course, and were ridiculously sentimental about them, too, when they could be.
Slowly Tully nodded. If the horses did turn out to have been reived in some way, the Widdrington surname would be better able to deal with that than Tully, who had come to the area from further south and only had two sons and a daughter.
“Ay,” he said. “Ay, that’s fair, my lady. I dinna need them, only they was there, ye ken.”
“Of course.” She smiled at him. “I can give you twenty shillings each or take it off your rent.”
Tully nodded. It was less than the beasts were worth but not much less. It more or less split the difference between that and the risk that they would be trouble.
She came back across the field and climbed the stile, drew off her glove and spat in her palm to clap her hand to Tully’s and shake on it.
“There’s ma hand, there’s ma heart,” he said. “Ye can take ’em now if ye like. I trust ye.”
“Do you want money or credit?”
“Oh money, missus.”
She checked her purse which only had a couple of shillings in it.
“I’ll send the reeve to you tomorrow.”
Half an hour later she was riding back to Widdrington with the horses on rope halters and feeling quite pleased with the deal. They were nice horses with nothing obviously wrong with them, and she always needed horses for the eternal problem of dispatches. Sir Henry would probably tell her she should have paid less and he would probably find something else to complain about, but he knew they needed horses.
She took the horses up to a gallop along a little ridge of the road, feeling happy as she always did when she was riding. Sir Henry was in Berwick on Tweed doing his duty as a Deputy Warden. He would turn up to harass her at some stage but probably not yet because October was peak raiding season and he would be dealing with raiders from the Middle March or, indeed, doing a bit of raiding himself.
She came onto the Great North Road which actually passed through the village of Widdrington and cantered until she came to the stone tower and barnekin of her castle. Some of the women tidying gardens, or sitting on their doorsteps knitting or spinning, waved to her as she went by with her colour high and her hat pinned firmly to her cap so it didn’t come off. She found Mr Heron, the reeve, up to his knees in a collapsed drainage ditch and asked if he would take forty shillings to Tully the next day. Heron smiled at her, came and examined the two new horses and said he thought they were worth forty shillings each, unless they had some kind of horse disease, of course. “I think they’re healthy enough,” Elizabeth said, “but we’ll see.”
The boy on the gate opened to her and came to take her horses as she clattered into the yard. Two more boys were hard at work on the dung heap in the corner but they stopped to come and stare at the new horses.
“They’re nice,” said one of them, “not hobbies, though.”
She dismounted to the stone by herself and passed Mouse to the biggest boy to whisp down and feed. One of the empty stalls had a very tired hobby in it, snoozing on his feet. She knew him but couldn’t remember his name so she assumed it was a messenger’s. “Yes,” she said, “that’s Blackie and that’s Pinky.”
The youngest lad snickered and the middle boy elbowed him and told him whose they were. She let their curiosity fester and was about to go and check the new horse in the stable when a girl came running out of the manor house by the tower.
“Missus,” she shouted. “Ladyship, you’ve got to come quick.”
It was a Trevannion cousin, sent to her to learn huswifery, a scatterbrained good-hearted creature with brown hair and eyes, who was being assiduously stalked by several unsuitable men.
“What is it, Mary?” she asked, expecting some tale about a spider.
“It’s Mrs Burn, missus, she’s been crying and crying and I can’t get her to stop…” Mary’s eyes were full of tears. “I don’t know why either and I’m frightened for the babby…”
Elizabeth had already changed course and headed for the manor, the back way through the stableyard, into the kitchenyard, through the kitchen—where she saw that the last pig carcass for winter had been delivered and was awaiting her attention in the wet larder—into the hall and through into the parlour, which had been built by Sir Henry’s father soon after he had taken over the little chantry down the road. The chantry had provided the handsome stones and was now almost gone.
There sat Poppy Burn, otherwise Proserpina, one of the few women with whom Elizabeth could have a good conversation, and she was in a terrible state. Around seven months pregnant, in a blue velvet English gown that had some mysterious dark stains on it, hunched over like a little old woman and tears dripping steadily out of her eyes into a sodden wad of linen. She lifted her head slightly, saw Elizabeth, and tried to rise to curtsey to her but couldn’t get up.
Elizabeth went to her and put her arms around her as tight as she could and said things like “there there” and “now now” and signalled Mary closer with her eyes. There was a distinct metallic smell around Poppy.
“Fetch in some wine, mull it, and put in a tot of aqua vitae from the barrel in my still room,” she instructed Mary. “Where’s Young Henry?”
“He’s out checking drainage ditches.”
Probably findable then, but he wouldn’t want to be bothered. “Fine. Go and get the wine.”
Mary came clattering back grasping a tankard full of hot wine and Elizabeth put it in Poppy’s cold white fingers.
“You’re freezing, and wet through,” she said as she felt the heavy velvet of the gown. “What happened, Poppy? What happened?”
“It…it…” The woman started hiccupping and stared into space, as if seeing something terrible, her fingers gripping the hanky and the tankard until Elizabeth wondered if the handle would come off.
“Has something bad happened to James?” Elizabeth asked carefully, it was the only thing she could think of that could cause this. Poppy was not an hysterical person, though she was young and perhaps idealistic for the Borders.
Poppy nodded once and tears started to flow again.
“My dear, we must get you out of your wet clothes and into bed. I’m worried about your baby.”
She looked down in surprise at the mound of her stomach and then crossed her arms over it and started to wail. It was a terrifying sound that made Elizabeth’s hair stand on end.
Right, she said to herself, this is obviously worse than just James being dead. She sent Mary upstairs to get the smallest bedroom cleared of her sewing things and the bed made, and sent a boy out to find Young Henry and bid him come in at once with some men. Then she untangled herself from Poppy and went to the dairy to tell Jane and Fiona to come and help. When the two girls came with her, she told them to keep their mouths shut.
Jane and Fiona formed a bridge with their strong white arms smelling of cheese and milk. Elizabeth sat Poppy on their arms and they carried her up to bed that way, with Poppy still hunched and still weeping.
“Milk Dandelion—she still has good milk—and bring the milk straight to me,” said Elizabeth to Fiona. “And, Jane, bring me up a bowl of hot water and some clean cloths.” She settled Poppy on the bed and unbuttoned the doublet front of the English gown and the let-out petticoat and shift under it. The petticoat, too, had brown stains on it which Elizabeth sniffed and confirmed her suspicions.
“Poppy, my dear, are you miscarrying?” Elizabeth asked. Poppy shook her head and hunched over tighter. “Then is the blood someone else’s? James’?”
No answer and no sense. What in God’s name had happened to the woman to cause this? Elizabeth had to check to see if she was in fact miscarrying, because in that case she needed to call Mrs Stirling immediately. Luckily she lived in the village, though she might be out with a patient anywhere around the country from here to Alnwick.
When Jane came hurrying back with a big bowl of hot water, cloths, and—praise God—one of Elizabeth’s shifts under her arm, Elizabeth thanked her and sent her out. Then she stripped off the rest of Poppy’s clothes and found what had turned her from a bright-faced happy person into sobbing human wreckage.
She could see bruises and grazes all round the tops of Poppy’s legs and lower down as well, grazes and blood on Poppy’s privates, too. She stopped for a moment to take a breath and calm herself because Poppy had clearly been raped. She put her ear to the big belly and thought she heard a heartbeat, thought she felt movement but she wasn’t a midwife and she wasn’t sure. She put her head round the door and told the waiting Jane to run for Mrs Stirling at once. The dairymaid’s eyes met hers with understanding and then Jane turned and fairly sprinted down the stairs. Jane didn’t say much, and wasn’t pretty with her square young face and broad figure, but there was something steady about her that Elizabeth liked.
She looked out the window and saw Jane running at a good clip out of the gate and into the village with her skirts bundled up into her belt and her boots occasionally striking sparks from the cobbles. Elizabeth’s hat was still on her head and she had her velvet gown on, but Poppy needed to get warm as quickly as possible, so she turned back to her and started washing her gently with the hot water and cloths. Poppy let her do it, passively, only tears leaked out from under her shut eyelids. When that was done Elizabeth put her own smock over the woman’s head, chafed her freezing hands and feet, and went and got some socks from the linen cupboard. She had to pause again as she did it: What kind of man did that to a pregnant woman? And what had happened to James? It was clear he was dead, probably killed. Had there been a raid?
Poppy was still sitting on the side of the bed and so Elizabeth gently lifted up her legs, put the socks on her feet, and got her under the coverlets at last. She got the brandywine into her, which was the best thing to stop a miscarriage and seemed to relax Poppy a little.
Just as the last of the wine went down, Fiona came back with a bowl of Dandelion’s best creamy milk, still hot from the cow. Elizabeth left her with Poppy, went to her stillroom, and found the precious bottle of laudanum and put a few drops in the milk, then spooned it into Poppy while Fiona stared unselfconsciously at her. Elizabeth sent Fiona to finish up in the dairy, and in particular, wash and salt the butter. It was aggravating that the time of year when cows gave the most milk was in summer when it was too warm to keep butter very long, whereas in autumn and winter, the milk was much less in quantity and creaminess. The butter made now was paler than summer butter, but if the weather didn’t get warm it might keep to be used for Christmas.
The pig wouldn’t wait forever, either, but it could wait a while. Elizabeth went and got her work from her bedroom and took off her hat and gown while she was at it, put on an apron at last, and went back to Poppy.
Poppy was sitting bolt upright again, twisting her hands together and making little moaning sounds. It would take a while for the laudanum to work.
“Well, I think this gown is wet through,” Elizabeth burbled at random as she picked up the heavy weight. “I’ll hang it up and brush it once it’s dry. The colour’s good, though, it didn’t…er…get on your clothes so we’ll see if we can rescue it.”
She put a broomhandle through the arms and hung the gown up on the wall to dry, bundled Poppy’s shift and petticoats for the laundrywoman to have when they next did a wash, and put them in the bag. Then she sat down and started stitching a new shirt for Young Henry, who got through them faster than anyone she had ever heard of. She continued burbling about the cows and how she would keep Dandelion’s calf even though it was male because Dandelion’s milk was so good, and the old bull was getting on a bit, and Dandelion’s son might make a good replacement.
By that time, the sound of boots on the stairs told her that Jane had found and brought Mrs Stirling. There was a knock on the door and Elizabeth answered it to find a flushed and triumphant Jane and the small grey-haired midwife.
“I woke her up, missus,” said Jane, not breathing too hard.
“I’m very sorry, Mrs Stirling,” said Elizabeth politely, “but I think this is an emergency.”
“Ay,” said the midwife. “Ah heard fra Jane.”
“Jane, will you wait in the house? Fiona’s finishing up for you. And thank you for running so fast.”
“I like running,” Jane said. “Is Mrs Burn better?”
“I hope she will be.”
Jane nodded and plumped herself down on a bench in the corridor.
The midwife had already gone to Poppy and held her hand to feel the pulses. “Now, hinny, ye’re to be a brave big girl. Is there pains?” Poppy shook her head. “Did ye feel a great movement or turn at any time?” Poppy started leaking tears again.
“When he…when he…”
“Ay, when he was on ye, the filthy bastard. Were there pains after, coming in waves, like this? Like ghost-pains but stronger?” Mrs Stirling held up a fist and clenched and unclenched it. Poppy shook her head. “Now my dear, I need to have a feel of ye, inside, ye follow? Will ye let me?”
Poppy nodded. “I thought…the babe was killed for sure.” She was whispering but at least making sense.
“Well, mebbe not.”
Mrs Stirling was gentle as she slipped her strong wiry hands under the covers and felt Poppy. She smiled. “Well, ye’re still closed up tight there and the babe isna head down yet, so that’s a mercy. How did ye get here?”
“I…I rode. I got on Prince and rode to the Great North Road and rode south and…”
“Did you find lodgings in Berwick?”
Poppy shook her head. “I just rode round the walls because it was night and kept on because…because…I wanted to find you.”
Mrs Stirling and Elizabeth exchanged looks. “Wis there naebody nearer ye could ha’ gone to?” asked the midwife.
“I wanted Lady Widdrington,” said Poppy, as if this was obvious. “They killed Jamie and they…and they…”
Mrs Stirling held her hands for her.
“…and I want them hanged for it.”
“Them?”
“Two men, not from round here, strangers. They came when I was at the river with the laundry and I came back because I thought they were the men from the Edinburgh printers about James’ book of sermons, and they were talking awhile. I went to get some wafers and wine and while I was away…they killed Jamie. They stabbed him and he tried to fight so they cut half his head off.”
“God above,” said Mrs Stirling, shaking her head. “God a’mighty.”
“Then they…did this. Then they went. And then I thought, if I can find Lady Widdrington right away, she’ll help me find them again and hang them. So I tacked up Jamie’s hobby, Prince, and I rode.”
“When was this?”
“Yesterday. I don’t know when.”
Mrs Stirling had brought out her ear trumpet and put the large end on Poppy’s belly, moving it around with her ear pressed to the other end. She paused and a large smile briefly lit her face.
“Well now, that’s a lovely heartbeat,” she said. “Would ye like to listen?”
Elizabeth would, very much, but hadn’t liked to ask. She put her ear to the narrow part of the ear trumpet and heard Poppy’s own heartbeat and then the lighter quicker beat from the babe. Her face lit up too. “Oh yes,” she said, “That’s a good strong beat.”
“It didn’t get killed by the…by them?” asked Poppy.
Mrs Stirling took her hands and sat down next to her on the bed. “Listen, child,” she said, “it’s a terrible thing that happened and ye’ll want yer vengeance, I understand that. But you must try not to mither over it nor yer man’s death. Ye must be calm as ye can until the babe is born and then while it’s a little babby too. Take your vengeance late and cold.”
Poppy nodded. “The Good Book says, ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay.’”
“It does,” allowed Mrs Stirling, “though sometimes the Lord needs a little bit o’ prodding. Now go to sleep and think of the babby.”
Poppy lay down obediently and closed her eyes. Elizabeth led Mrs Stirling out of the room and took her downstairs to the parlour for wafers and wine and advice.
“She should be no worse for it than bruises and a sore quim for a few days, if she hasnae bin poxed,” said Mrs Stirling consideringly. “As to her body, with luck. As to her mind, who can say? There was a girl raped in a raid that never spoke again nor made any sense. Another girl who was treated the same in another raid by the same man, as it happens, was well enough in a month, though a mite jumpy and couldna abide the tolling of a bell.”
“Does it happen often?”
“Not often. But it happens. Especially when the raiders are far out of their ain country and they’ve caught a girl who’s not from a riding surname and think they willna be known.”
“I’ve never heard of it…”
“Ay, well, they dinna tell anyone but the midwife when they come to me for tansy tea and if they’re a married woman, especially, for they’ll be afeared their husbands will think they were willing, especially if they kindle.”
Mrs Stirling polished off her wine and Elizabeth paid her.
“Don’t leave her alone,” advised the midwife as Elizabeth saw her out the door. “She was alone when it happened, keep her company. I’ll call back in a day or two.”
Elizabeth nodded at this and went into the dairy first to see that the place was clean and tidy to keep the faeries happy. It was, so she told Fiona and Jane they could go home. She found young Mary sitting eating hazelnuts in the hall and told her to come with her and went back upstairs to Poppy who was lying rigid with her eyes open. She relaxed as they came in.
Mary she sent to get her crewelwork and sat down by Poppy.
“Will you be able to sleep with Mary here?” she asked. “I must make a start on salting the pig for winter.”
Poppy was weeping again and her poor eyes were already red and swollen.
“Read to me,” she whispered. “Please.”
“What shall I read?”
“Anything.”
Elizabeth went back to the bedroom and looked at her precious store of books, kept in a box under the bed where Sir Henry couldn’t see them. He didn’t see the point of women reading and had burned some of her books once. She chose a couple—one a book of sermons of staggering dullness that she used to get herself to sleep sometimes and the other a Tyndale Bible.