Mrs Leigh smiled back at him wanly. ‘It is…very wearing, but she screams if we prevent her.’
‘I won’t keep you, Mrs Leigh; I can see you need your rest. All I wanted to ask you was whether you had happened to see Mr Atkinson leave his house yesterday morning on business. Nobody else seems to have done so.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Can you tell me anything else about the Atkinsons?’
Mrs Leigh lifted her head and sniffed. ‘I have nothing to do with either of them.’
‘But you are neighbours and kin.’
‘He is…was my youngest half-brother. Unfortunately he made a bad marriage. We have not spoken for several years. I did not wish to have anything to do with him or…her.’
‘Why not?’
Mrs Leigh’s small pink mouth pouched in at the corners in disapproval.
‘Mrs Atkinson is a disgrace to the family.’
Carey’s eyebrows went up and he waited.
‘She is…er…she is fraudulently preventing me from inheriting her house which was clearly intended to be mine and she is also a wicked unchaste woman.’
‘Oh?’
Mrs Leigh looked prim. ‘It’s too disgraceful to repeat.’
‘That’s a pity. Any little information, no matter how… disgraceful, might help me clear my servant.’
Squeak, squeak, rattle, rattle, crash! ‘Waaauuugh!’
Mrs Leigh stayed silent looking out of the little diamond-paned window beside her. She had a baby’s nightshirt on her lap and was stitching at it desultorily.
‘My husband, you know,’ she said, ‘is John Leigh, brother to Henry Leigh who holds Rockcliffe Castle for my Lord Scrope.’
‘I know,’ said Carey. ‘I was playing cards with him the other night-at the same card party, I mean, not actually with him.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Leigh distantly, obviously not knowing or not wishing to think about John Leigh’s losses. ‘He is a prominent citizen and has a position to maintain. We are impossibly crowded in this house, what with the children and the servants, and the warehouse and showroom downstairs. My aunt always intended me to have the house next door, though she leased it to…my half-brother out of charity. Perhaps he would have let us have the house, but she has taken wicked advantage and the case is in Chancery at the moment.’
Carey tutted sympathetically. ‘Legal disputes are very wearing,’ he said. ‘I have one rumbling along myself with one of my brothers.’
‘And very expensive,’ agreed Mrs Leigh. ‘What the barrister charges is…criminal.’
Carey nodded with a straight face. Sometimes he wished he had become a lawyer, but he soon came to his senses again.
‘I hope he’s a good one?’ he said.
‘Very good, I understand,’ said Mrs Leigh unhappily. ‘Or he should be. Unfortunately, that woman has managed to get the services of a young man who has just become the judge’s son-in-law.’
‘Oh dear.’
Mrs Leigh nodded at him. ‘It seems very hard. We are not unreasonable. We even offered the Atkinsons another house, a better house, that we own on Scotch street, but she will not see reason. And she keeps a cow in her yard.’
‘Oh,’ said Carey, not knowing if he was supposed to be shocked about something so normal.
‘That’s where she meets her lover,’ said Mrs Leigh.
‘Ah…?’
‘In the cow byre. He creeps in from the garden backing on behind, she goes out in the morning and evening and that’s where they meet, the dirty sinful…Anyway, she disgraces the whole street.’
‘Do her other neighbours know about this.’
‘Of course they do. It’s common knowledge she’s got no use for her rightful husband and wants to marry Andy Nixon.’
Carey blinked a little at the venom in Mrs Leigh’s voice. ‘Are you saying that Mrs Atkinson might have killed her own husband?’
Mrs Leigh looked away. ‘I would not wish to lay such accusations against anyone,’ she said primly. ‘However, it’s a fact that she has a lover.’
‘Is it, by God?’ said Carey thoughtfully. ‘Well, well.’
Squeak, rattle, rattle, crash…crash! ‘Waah! Waah! Mama!’
‘She’s fallen over,’ Carey explained helpfully. Mrs Leigh wearily moved her sore feet to the floor and started the rocking movements that would get her out of her chair. The Deputy Warden offered her his arm which she took gratefully.
‘I’ll see to her,’ she said. ‘The idiot girls are useless besoms. Did you want to know anything else, Sir Robert?’
He was looking satisfactorily thoughtful and absent-mindedly helped her to the door.
‘I may do later,’ he said. ‘May I come back some time, Mrs Leigh?’
She smiled at him. ‘Of course, Sir Robert,’ she said. ‘Whatever I can do to help.’
He smiled in return and clattered down the narrow stairs, leaning back and ducking his head to avoid the low ceiling beams. He went through the shop where Jock Burn was serving. Mrs Leigh longed to shout down and send the man for her husband so she could talk to him, but she couldn’t yet. She waddled off to see after her smallest daughter who was still screeching.
***
Carey was deep in thought as he walked up Castlegate towards Bessie’s alehouse, at last noticing properly how clammy and uncomfortable his jack was. The outer leather was beginning to dry, but the inner padding still squelched whenever he moved his arms. He was supposed to be out on patrol tonight as well and he refused to think about going to bed for a nap as he had planned. He simply didn’t have the time if he wanted to find out as much as he could before the trail went cold. Also, he was putting off going back to his chambers in the Castle. He didn’t know what he might find there, whether Scrope would believe Lowther against him or give him the benefit of the doubt. The whole thing was ridiculous, but still very dangerous. He didn’t seriously think Scrope would dare to execute him on such a trumped-up charge, for all Philadelphia’s worries. But he might well find himself in gaol with no ability to help Barnabus, while evil tales galloped down the roads to London and the Queen. The whole thing could ruin him, in which case he might as well be dead, because if he went back to London with no prospect of office and no hope of favour from the Queen, his creditors would certainly put him in the Fleet prison for his mountainous debts. And there he would rot.
He paused to look unseeingly at one of the shops, a cobbler’s, with a bright striped awning over the counter to keep the rain off the samples of leather and made shoes displayed there.
He heard his own voice out of the past, assuring Scrope that he could deal with Lowther when they had been talking the day after he arrived. Evidently he had seriously underestimated the man and his influence. That had been stupid of him.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ asked the man behind the counter hopefully.
‘Er…no. Thank you.’
He left the shop behind him and carried on to where Bessie’s alehouse squatted, unofficial but tolerated, by the wall of the Castle, feeling a thousand years old and heavier than a cannon. For a moment he thought about simply going into the inn courtyard, fetching a horse out of Bessie’s stables and heading north for the Debateable Land. Jock of the Peartree would receive him, might even take him in; they had come to an odd sort of understanding at the top of Netherby tower, despite the old reiver’s deplorable character. He had his sword and his harness, he could hire out as one of the many broken men of the area…
It was a fantasy. It wasn’t that he was too brave to do it, rather the reverse: he was afraid to turn his back on everything he knew, on his cousin the Queen, on his sister…And furthermore he was feeling too tired, he’d probably fall asleep on his horse and wander into a bog.
Bessie’s was packed, with no sign of Dodd or anyone else of Carey’s troop. As he stood in the doorway, peering into the smoky shadows, Carey knew that every eye in the place was on him and that conversations were stopping in each direction. He smiled faintly and shouldered his way through the throng to the bar.