‘Oh ay?’ said Lowther, catching the implication.
‘Yes,’ said Scrope gleefully. ‘And she called her first son, her rather…er…premature first son, Henry. And the King let her. You see? You’ve never met Carey’s father, then?’
‘I have,’ said Lowther. ‘Twenty years ago at the Rising of the Northern Earls. But he was a younger man. Loud, I recall, and a bonny fighter too, the way he did for Lord Dacre.’
‘The resemblance to his…er…natural father has become more marked as he got older,’ agreed Scrope. ‘But you can see the Tudor blood coming out in my Lord Hunsdon’s sons, and indeed in Sir Robert-arrogance, vanity, impatience and terrible tempers-but generally speaking they do not arrange for their servants to cut the throats of functionaries. It isn’t their…style.’
Carey, who had been listening with rising irritation to this catalogue, nodded sourly. He supposed there was a little truth in it; he knew well enough he had a short temper, after all. He wasn’t arrogant, though. Look at the way he had helped Dodd with his haymaking. As for vanity-what the Devil did Scrope think he was on about? Just because Carey knew the importance of a smart turnout and Scrope looked like an expensive haystack…
Lowther was saying something dubious about there being a villain in every family.
‘True, true,’ said Scrope. ‘But although I wouldn’t put multiple murder in some berserk rage past Sir Robert, I would put backstreet assassination.’
Carey decided he had heard enough. Berserk rage, indeed! He went down the stairs quietly and came up them again, gave a cough as he did so and pushed the door open.
Lowther had one fist on his hip and the other on his sword hilt, with a scowl on his face as threatening as the sky outside. Scrope was also wearing a sword and his velvet official gown and pompous anxiety in every bony inch of him.
If he hadn’t been listening to Scrope’s opinion of his faults, Carey would have felt sorry for the man. As it was, he had decided that there was no point shilly-shallying; it would only confuse the overbred nitwit. He advanced on Lord Scrope who was behind a table he used as a spare desk, undoing his sword belt as he came. Then he bowed deeply and laid it with a clatter of buckles on the table in front of the Warden.
‘I assume I am under arrest, my lord,’ he said quietly, and waited.
Lowther snorted, and Scrope looked down at Carey’s new sword with alarm. It had only been properly blooded that morning, Carey thought, a hundred years ago or so. Scrope would know nothing about that, of course.
‘Well…er…not so fast, Sir Robert,’ faltered Scrope. ‘I…er… must ask you some questions, but…er…’
‘My servant is in the Castle dungeon on a charge of murder,’ Carey interrupted. ‘I understand from him and…others…that I am suspected of ordering him to kill Mr Atkinson.’
‘You deny it, of course,’ scoffed Lowther.
Carey looked at him. ‘Of course,’ he said evenly.
Scrope sat down behind the table, but did not invite Carey to be seated. ‘If you don’t mind, Sir Robert,’ he said, ‘I must ask you to account for your actions since yesterday afternoon.’
With an effort Carey thought back. He told the story baldly. He had learned from a good source of a large Graham raid out of Netherby, threatening Archibald Bell and also Lady Widdrington who would be vulnerable on the Stanegate road.
‘I take it that Mick the Crow is still in the Gatehouse gaol,’ Carey commented at this point. ‘I put him there because he wouldn’t tell me the name of the man that sent the letter to Wattie.’
Lowther’s heavy face was unmoved.
‘He’s not there now.’
‘Did you release him, Sir Richard?’ asked Carey innocently.
‘Ay, I did. There was no charge and no need to keep him when he’s wanted at home for haymaking.’
‘There was a charge. It was a charge of March treason for bringing in raiders.’
‘Pah,’ said Sir Richard. ‘He’d done nothing; I let him go.’
‘Do continue,’ said Scrope.
As a younger man, Carey would have argued about this but now he only gave Sir Richard a hard stare before telling how he had asked to borrow Lowther’s patrol and had done so.
‘Speaking of which, ye offered me my note of debt back, did ye not?’ said Lowther offensively.
Silently Carey took the paper out of his belt pouch and handed it over. It was no loss, he reflected, since it was very unlikely Lowther was the kind who worried overmuch about paying his gambling debts. Lowther took it, squinted at it and tore it in pieces.
‘Ye said you knew where to find some of King James’s horses,’ he accused. ‘Well, did ye find ‘em?’
‘No,’ admitted Carey. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Hah,’ said Lowther, rather theatrically, Carey thought.
‘Go on,’ put in Scrope.
‘I’m fairly sure the horses were there, my lord,’ he added. ‘But obviously the people holding them got word I was on my way and hid them.’
It suddenly struck him how that could have happened and he mentally cursed himself for a fool as he continued, ‘I didn’t want to take Lowther’s men into a fight against the Grahams…’
‘And why not?’ Lowther had the infernal impudence to demand.
‘Because, Sir Richard, I didn’t trust them,’ Carey said as insolently as he dared. Lowther’s bushy eyebrows were already almost meeting; he couldn’t scowl any more deeply. ‘So I went to my own Sergeant Dodd at Gilsland and he helped me call out the Bells and Musgraves. With their help, we met Wattie Graham and Skinabake Armstrong at the Irthing ford early this morning and put them to flight.’
‘Well done,’ said Scrope. ‘It seems you have had a busy time of it.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Doesna mean nothing,’ said Lowther. ‘It only shows he was anxious to be out of Carlisle last night. He could have given his order any time in the past week.’
Carey was itching to punch the evil old bastard, but he kept reminding himself that this was no time to lose his temper. He had had a swordmaster once, a big dark heavy man with wonderful lightness of foot, who deliberately goaded him into a fury, then disarmed him and knocked him on his arse in the mud to demonstrate how temper could undo him. Occasionally he remembered the lesson in time.
‘On what evidence, Sir Richard, do you base your accusations?’ he demanded, hearing his voice brittle with the effort not to shout.
‘On the evidence of a knife owned by your servant and a glove owned by yerself that I found by the body.’
‘How frightfully convenient for you,’ Carey drawled. ‘Did you have much trouble stealing one of my gloves?’
‘Are you suggesting that I put them there?’ roared Lowther, the veins standing out on his neck.
‘Really, Sir Robert…’ began Scrope.
‘With respect, my lord,’ Carey said through his teeth, ‘I’m sorry to find you have such a low opinion of my intelligence.’
‘How dare ye, sir? I never was so insulted in all my…’
‘For God’s sake, Sir Richard,’ Carey shouted back at him, temper finally gone. ‘What kind of fool do you think I am? Leave one of my gloves beside a corpse? Why not simply sign my name on his face and leave it at that? Or didn’t you think of it when you watched them cutting his throat, you old traitor?’
That did it. Lowther drew his sword and put himself between Carey and the table where his own weapon lay. Carey backed hurriedly into a fighting crouch, pulling his poignard from its sheath behind his back and his little eating knife from the one by his belt pouch.
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen…’ said Scrope, jumping to his feet. ‘Sir Richard, I insist you put up your weapon…’
Lowther ignored him. ‘Call me traitor, would ye, you ignorant puppy…?’ he hissed. ‘Ye prancing courtier, ye…You had his throat cut and ye know it, because the poor wee clerk was an obstacle to ye and ye couldnae see another way to it…’