A Famine of Horses (20 page)

“Well, nothing in this life is free, sir, except the Grace of God,” he said. “I naturally hope to gain your…er…goodwill, perhaps even your friendship.”

“And on the right occasions a little blindness, perhaps even the occasional tip-off.”

Did he have to spell it out so baldly? “Yes,” said Thomas, embarrassed at such crassness, “of course.”

Carey put the goblet down on the little chest nearby so carefully you would think it made of Venetian glass, “And you have the same arrangement with Lowther, Carleton? Any others in the castle?”

“Naturally, although of course the matter is in confidence.”

Carey longed to bring his fist down on Thomas’s desk hard enough to make the windows rattle and the ledger hop in the air like a scared goat. He didn’t do it, though he knew Barnabus was tensed ready for him to roar. The insult of it! How dare the man? How dare he even
think
of buying the Queen’s cousin for less than ten pounds a week? And how dare he do it with such arrogant presumption, as if he were discussing no more than a business partnership.

Carey held onto his wrath because he had learned to his cost how it put men against him. In any case people had offered to buy his services often enough before, after being filtered expensively by Barnabus: at Court his friendship with the Queen, although it lacked the intensity of men like the Earl of Essex or even Sir Walter Raleigh, was still a valuable commodity. The Queen herself, when he was tactfully putting in a good word for some striving office seeker, would caustically ask him how much his words were priced at now and to be sure to make a profit. It never made any real difference so far as he could see, the Queen listened gravely to his request and would then decide for herself. Still people were occasionally willing to pay for the influence they sought so desperately.…And yet in over ten years of attendance at Court, he had never been approached so crassly or arrogantly by anyone.

“Mr Hetherington,” he began, and then changed his mind. He was up off his chair and had crossed the room to Thomas the Merchant’s desk and swept the ledger out from under his long thin nose before the Merchant could do no more than take in a gasp of surprise. Carey flipped quickly through the pages, squinting at the crabbed Secretary hand, lighted on a few names and laughed. “I’d be in noble company, I see. I wonder, does her Majesty know you have the Wardens of the West and Middle Marches in your pay?”

“Er…?” began Thomas the Merchant.

It was tempting to throw the ledger in the greasy skinny man’s face and march out, but Carey saw a better way of continuing to call his own tune. He shut the ledger and tapped it.

“I want information, Mr Hetherington, much more than I want money. And it’s not my way to enter into this kind of…business arrangement.” His servant made a desperate little whimper. “And so, I’ll thank you to tell me all you know about the horse that Janet Dodd bought, the one that came from Jock of the Peartree’s stable. To begin with.”

“Er…” Thomas the Merchant was staring wildly at Carey as if at a chimaera, which indeed Robert Carey was, thought Barnabus bitterly, being the only man ever at Court capable of turning down a bribe.

Carey leaned over him threateningly. Thomas the Merchant made a feeble swipe for his ledger, but Carey skimmed it across the room to Barnabus who scrambled and caught it.

“Now then,” said Carey with his hand suggestively on the hilt of his sword, “let’s hear the tale.”

Thomas the Merchant sat down on his high stool again and blinked at the fine set of plate he displayed every day on the chest in his room.

“A cadger brought the horse to me,” he admitted at last, “and I refused him because I had…er…seen him before, ridden by Sweetmilk. I wanted no trouble with the Grahams…”

“I thought they were clients of yours.”

“Sir!” protested Thomas. “The accusation was found clean six months ago and…”

“Never mind. When did you see the horse being ridden by Sweetmilk?”

“Oh. Er…on Saturday.”

“Where?”

“Where what? Oh, ay sir, he was riding out the gate on the nag.”

“Who with?”

Thomas the Merchant was sweating, gazing sincerely into Carey’s eyes. “Alone.”

“And when was the horse offered to you?”

“On Sunday. Naturally I refused to do business on the Sabbath.”

“Naturally,” agreed Carey drily. “But you were suspicious?”

Thomas the Merchant smiled. “A little,” he admitted. “It was a coincidence. I wanted nothing to do with any criminal proceedings.”

“Of course.”

Carey moved to the door, motioned his servant to give him the precious ledger and walked out of the door—simply took it in his hand and walked out of the door. Thomas the Merchant was appalled at such high-handedness.

“Sir, sir,” he protested, rushing after him, “my ledger, I must have it…”

“No, no, Mr Hetherington,” said Carey, with a smile and a familiar patting of the calfskin binding, “I’m taking your ledger as a pledge for your good behaviour, as my hostage, Mr Hetherington.”

“But…”

The rat-faced servant barred his passage.

“I wouldn’t if I was you, sir,” said Barnabus, sympathetically, “I know, he’s a little high-handed at times. It comes of being so closely related to Her Majesty, you know. His father is her half-brother, or so they say.”

Thomas wasn’t interested in Carey’s ancestry.

“My ledger…What shall I do…”

“Amazing how memory can serve you, sir, if you let it. I’d bet good money that if you sat down and rewrote it, you’d end up with exactly the same ledger.”

“But…”

“Also, I might as well warn you, Sir Robert is wary of taking regular money, but he might be persuaded to accept a gift.” The servant grinned widely, showing a very black set of teeth. “I can usually convince him if I set my mind to it.”

This Thomas understood. He nodded sadly. “But my ledger…”

“Well, you’ve lost it for the moment, sir, you might as well…”

Carey poked his head back round the door.

“I forgot to ask. What was the name of the peddler you didn’t buy the horse from?”

“Daniel Swanders.”

Carey’s face lit up.

“Splendid. At least that’s the truth,” he said. “Do you know where he is?”

“No sir.”

“Let me know if you find out. Goodbye to you.”

The servant was looking transfixed. Without another word, he hurried after his master and when Thomas the Merchant looked down into the street, he saw the two men conferring together, before Carey laughed and set off purposefully towards Scotch Street.

Thursday, 22nd June 11 a.m.

Barnabus had run back to the castle, stored the ledger in Carey’s lock-up chest, and run back again to find Carey drinking ale at a small boozing ken on the corner of Scotch Street.

“You know the establishment, do you?” said Carey, nodding at Barnabus to sit down and refresh himself.

“Of course, sir.”

Carey smiled. “Tell me about it.”

“There’s a backdoor leading into a courtyard and then into another alley and it’s backed onto the castle wall. Madam Hetherington…”

“Good God, another one?”

“Yes sir, I believe she’s a distant cousin.”

“Go on.”

“Madam Hetherington is from London and it’s a very well-ordered house: she has six girls, one Irish, two Scots, one French and two English…”

“Pox?”

“Not as far as I could see,” Carey grunted and drank. “It’s expensive, a shilling a room, not including food or drink or clean sheets…”

Carey was surprised. “She provides clean sheets, does she?”

“Only if you pay for it,” said Barnabus, who hadn’t bothered. “There’s a man called Arthur Musgrave acts as her henchman and this man Daniel Swanders…”

“Late of Berwick town…”

“…was playing dice there when I went yesterday.”

“Any good?”

“He had a couple of bales of crooked dice, a highman and a lowman and one with a bristle on the pip, but he hasn’t the way of using them properly yet. I was going to give him lessons.”

Carey laughed. “I’m sure you’ll make a fine teacher.”

“Well, it offends me, sir. I like to see a craft practised well and he was trying but it was no good. Madam Hetherington says she’ll pay me for the teaching, if you take my meaning, sir.”

“I have no intention of offending Madam Hetherington,” said Carey. “She might well object to me arresting someone in her house. On the other hand, I want a quiet chat with Swanders.”

By the light in his eyes and the impatient tapping of his fingers on his swordhilt, Barnabus was beginning to suspect that his master was cooking up some dangerous scheme. He had looked very much the same when he was planning to escape from the Queen’s suffocating care of him with the Earl of Cumberland and go and serve against the Armada. That adventure had very nearly been the death of him, though not, oddly enough, from Spanish steel nor even English provisions, but rather a jail fever picked up on board ship. He had collapsed at Tilbury after leaving the fleet when the Armada was safely fleeing northwards, and had had to be brought back to Westminster in a litter.

Suddenly he leaned forward.

“This is what we’ll do.”

Thursday, 22nd June, noon

Daniel Swanders had only just crawled blearily out of a tangle of blankets next to the fire in the kitchen of Madam Hetherington’s. The girls were all at their meal at the big table, laughing and chatting and making occasional snide comments to each other. The curling tongs were heating up on the hearth and a couple of pints of ointment, guaranteed to help a man’s prowess, were being strained into little pots by Madam Hetherington’s cook. The smell was awful: rendered lard and lavender, rosemary and pepper.

Daniel Swanders liked where he was: he was a strongly made young man with long hair to hide one ragged ear. Women usually took to his laughing face, and he was a peddler by choice and nature. He was never so happy as when he was persuading maidens to part with more than they planned for more ribbons, laces and beads than they needed, and if possible, with rather more than money later. His idea of heaven had been taking refuge in a bawdy house, rather than doing the obvious thing and running away. The only trouble was that none of the girls saw fit to give away what they normally sold and he knew Madam Hetherington would geld him personally if he tried to force one of them.

“Good morning, ladies,” he yawned as he pulled on his jerkin and shambled to the table. “Any room for a little one.”

Madam Hetherington was sitting in splendour in a carved chair with arms at the head of the table, almost as if she was the paterfamilias of the household. Which she was, really, thought Daniel, touching his forehead to her in respect. As usual the meal was Scots porridge with salt and very mild beer. Daniel Swanders wished he could get tobacco in Carlisle, but the nearest place for that was Edinburgh where he was not welcome at the moment. Or rather he would be a bit too welcome, but he hated the whole idea of his ear being nailed to the pillory and having to pull free because it had hurt so much the last time.

The girls shoved up for him, packing their petticoat-covered bumrolls together and making an enchanting sight with their hair pinned roughly and their breasts pushed up by their corsets. Two of them were magnificent that way and with typical female perversity, Madam Hetherington insisted that they wore high-necked smocks, the better to entice the customer into wanting to undress them.

By the time Daniel had finished his porridge and beer, Arthur Musgrave had gone into the courtyard to chop firewood and the girls were fluttering about in a complication of underwear, hairbrushes, make-up and pins, making ready for the day’s trade. Daniel sat back on the bench and watched them with admiration: perhaps if he did well with the ugly Londoner and learnt better dice play, Madam Hetherington would let him take Grainne or possibly Maria to bed, or perhaps, if he was very successful, both of them. Lost in happy dreams, he only noticed the Londoner had turned up when Madam Hetherington spoke to him sharply.

“This is Barnabus Cooke, Daniel,” she said, “Are you listening?”

“Yes mistress,” said Daniel humbly, “I’m sorry, I was only admiring Maria.”

“Maria, cover yourself, you’re not working now. I want you to pay attention to what Barnabus teaches you, since he’s a master craftsman at this game.”

“Yes mistress.”

Barnabus Cooke gave him a considering look and then said, “Madam Hetherington, I’m happy to teach Swanders some of my secrets but they’re worthless if everyone knows them, so…”

“Of course,” agreed Madam Hetherington, “you may use the private banqueting room at the back, no one is using it.”

Arthur Musgrave came struggling in with his arms full of firewood and glowered at Barnabus who smiled back and raised his hat.

“I was going to suggest the courtyard, but the private room is even better,” he said. “Come on, Daniel.”

The smell of roast beef and wine always clung to the walls of the private room which occasionally saw some very strange behaviour. Barnabus carefully cleared the rushes away from the floor at one end of the big table and then went to the glass-paned window and opened it.