Read A Chorus of Innocents Online
Authors: P F Chisholm
A Chorus of Innocents (31 page)
Dodd couldn't stand it anymore. He rode over to Carey, followed by Andy Nixon and Bessie's Andrew Storey. He was first to speak.
“Sir, will ye not order the onset?”
“No,” said Carey.
“Why not? Sir?”
“I don't want a battle.”
“What?” Dodd's eyes were nearly popping out of his head with fury. “Ye dinna want aâ¦Sir, give us leave to set upon them now!”
“No.”
“Sir⦔ Dodd fought for control, breathed deep. “Sir, these men killed my father and my brothers and my uncles and my cousins and they've come thinking to surprise ye upon weak grass nags such as they could get on a sudden⦔
“No.”
Dodd leaned forward, trying to get him to understand. “And God has put them into our hands. Into our hands so that we should take our revenge of them for much blood they have spilt of ours.”
“Ay,” came Andy Nixon's bass rumble, “and ours.”
“And ours, sir,” said Storey. The Ridleys and the Hodgsons nodded and grumbled. In a moment Dodd thought, perhaps he could lead the onset himself.
“Gentlemen,” said Carey in a carrying voice, “I'm only asking you to be patient for five minutes. That's all. If I were not here and ye were, ye could do as ye please, but being as I am here present wi'ye, if I give ye leave to kill all these men, then the blood ye spill will lie very heavy upon my conscience. So I pray ye gentlemen, forbear for five minutes. I'll send a messenger tae the Scots to bid them be off, and if they do not go before the messenger turns back, then ye may have at 'em and me with ye.”
“I'll be yer messenger, sir,” said Dodd, thinking that there's more than one way a message can be delivered. Carey eyed him coldly.
“That's Wee Colin Elliot, isn't it?” and Dodd's face must have given him the answer because he nodded once. “Andrew Storey, will ye take the message?”
“Ay, sir⦔
“Sir Robert,” said Anricks who had finally arrived with his cart, “may I be your messenger since I have no family interests here?”
Carey looked at him sharply too and nodded. “Thank you, Mr Anricks. Please be good enough to tell Wee Colin that I can hold back my men for as long as you are there with them and not longer.”
Anricks swung himself down from his cart, took out his handkerchief to wave and walked across the intervening land. There was a rise to the tower so most of his way was downhill. He stopped, reconsidered, and took a hobby from one of the Ridleys. Then he continued uphill to where the Elliots and some loose Grahams were milling about Wee Colin and his brothers and uncles and cousins.
He spoke for a while, Dodd straining to hear, although he couldn't of course. Once Anricks flung out his hand in a gesture at the wagon. He turned his horse to go back and Dodd tensed, ready for the charge.
There was confusion and then he saw that the bastard Elliots were galloping away, almost tripping over each other in their haste to get back over the Border. Minutes later they were all gone and Dodd had a pain in the pit of his stomach and a sick feeling. They were gone.
Carey gestured for the men to wait in case it was a feint. Dodd watched hopefully but there was no feint. The Elliots were well away.
The ranks of pikes broke up and the men with the arquebuses grounded their slow matches and started the painstaking dangerous process of fishing out the wadding and balls and emptying the barrels of powder since they couldn't afford to waste it.
There was laughter and joking, men shaking each others' hands and saying it was worth it to see Wee Colin Elliot on the run, and they'd make sure the Courtier wasn't around next time, boasting of what they would have done, could have done but highly delighted to have got out of a battle and actually having to do it.
Dodd sat there with the ball of rage still in the pit of his stomach as Carey led out the men that had been in the tower and found out which of them were Archie and Jemmy Burn. The Grahams were already talking philosophically about ransom.
“We'll take ye back to Carlisle,” he said as Dodd rode up, his face long and sour.
“Ay,” said Archie with a grin. “If ye send to my Lord Spynie ye'll find he'll buy us out, so he will.”
“I think we're worth ane hundert pounds English to him,” added Jemmy, his hands also bound behind him. “Each eh? Ye heard right. Ye'd like that, would ye not? I've a letter in my doublet that says so.”
Andy Nixon felt in Jemmy's doublet, found paper and brought it to Carey. He read it to himself.
Carey paused. “One question,” he said. “Which of you two is it that likes women?”
“Och both of us, sir, they're allus hot for it,” said Jemmy with a sly grin. “Are they no', Archie?”
“Ay, the bitches like it strong. The minister's wifey was fun, the way she cried and squealed and that woman in the manse at Wendron, she'd have been good, too, only a man wi' a gun turned up.”
“Ah,” said Carey. He beckoned Carleton with the firepot, dipped the corner of Spynie's letter into the hot coals, waited as it caught, let the fire climb the paper and dropped it onto the turf when it was well alight before stamping it out. Archie and Jemmy watched as if they didn't understand what they were seeing.
Carey turned formally to Andy Nixon and Dodd. “As acting Deputy Warden, I can say of my own knowing that these men have committed March Treason, in that they brought in the Scots in their behalf to wit Wee Colin Elliot and his surname. Do you agree?”
Andy Nixon nodded seriously. Dodd thought for a moment. “Ay,” he said eventually, “even apart fra the murder of the churchman, it's March Treason, right enough.”
Carey's face was cold. He paused a moment longer. Then he said, very clearly, “Hang them.”
“Whatâ¦?” spluttered Jemmy. “Ye canna⦔
“Lord Spynie⦔ began Archie.
Andy Nixon knocked Archie down and lifted his large fist to Jemmy who subsided.
There weren't any good trees so close to Carlisle but they set up the ladder against the side of the tower again and wrapped ropes around two of the battlements. They took Archie up first, who was crying and begging, making wild claims about Lord Spynie. They put the noose around his neck, asked if he had anything to say and when it was just more of the same, Dodd kicked him off the ladder. Damn it, the rope broke his neck so he didn't even dance. Jemmy went in silence, white as a sheet and his eyes rolling. Andy Nixon kicked him off and he hardly danced either.
From below, Carey watched with a bleak expression on his face, waited for twenty minutes to be sure they were dead. Waited another twenty minutes, still and cold, and then allowed them to be lowered to the ground and their corpses put on Anricks' wagon. In the wagon was hidden one of Carlisle Castle's smaller cannon under piles of arrows and sacks of arquebus balls and a couple of barrels of gunpowder and a tarpaulin over the top. God, what a chance they had missed.
They headed back for Carlisle, harnessing two more hobbies to the cart to help with the extra weight. You would have thought it was a wedding party, everyone was so happy.
Dodd went too, no longer nearly weeping with frustration and rage, but with the ugly sour anger settled back in his stomach for good. They could have had them. They could have wiped out every Elliot, been done with the bloodfeud the right way, the way it should be. Right then Wee Colin and his bastard Elliots could have been staring at the sky and the undersides of crows. But they weren't. They were over the Border and still alive, an offence every one of them, personally, to Henry Dodd.
He would never ever forgive Carey for letting the Elliots get away.
With this book we finally come into the purview of Carey's own memoirsâthe incident at the end is pretty much as I describe itâ¦.The reason for it, according to Carey, was that a churchman had been murdered in Scotland. That's all he says, which I found irresistible. Well, yes, I use some artistic licence but not that much. I quote directly from the memoirs as well. Annoyingly, I remember finding a reference to the incident in a letter from Lord Scrope but I haven't been able to find it again. No doubt it will turn up after this book is published.
The Reverend Gilpin is also a real historical person who seems to have taken on his mission to the Borderers for no better reason than that he knew they needed it and he believed God wanted him to do it.
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