Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) (11 page)

She held the purse tightly, cocked her head a little against the uncomfortable standing ruff behind her head. In Ireland she had learned not to hand over the bribe before the paid-for favour had been done. Carey smiled, half bowed to her and headed across the dance floor, through a violent volta that was spinning and thundering on the boards. The musicians were sweating in the heat from the candles and the bodies as they played, but Emilia noticed that one of them was missing—the viol player who had wept at the Spanish air.

Mr. Byrd was looking very annoyed, speaking with the Earl of Essex. “…you can’t trust any of these yokels,” he was complaining. “He was only one of the Oxford waits but good enough to play for the Queen and this is how he repays me for the chance I gave him? Damn it, I was hoping to take him to London with us.…Ah yes, Sir Robert, thank you for singing with us earlier.”

“Yes, indeed,” added the Earl of Essex. “Her Majesty was very pleased with it, she told me so. Also she asked if your nose is better now?”

“It will be, my lord,” murmured Carey. “When she has given me my warrant as Deputy Warden and, of course, my fee.”

Essex laughed. “Good luck!” he shouted. “You’d do better to sing with the travelling gleemen and save up your fees.…”

Shut up about his goddamn voice, you stupid lout, Emilia thought, and smiled brilliantly at Carey.

“You nearly caused terrible damage to me, Sir Rrrobert,” she purred at him in English.

“I did?” said Carey, “How, Signora Bonnetti?”

“Why you made me cry, rremembering the South, and that would have made my face all swollen and ugly.”

“Impossible,” boomed Essex gallantly in French, accented but fluent, “No amount of tears could do that.” And, yes, he had swung from a stare at her cleavage to looking at Carey questioningly. Right. She had done all she could. Now he had to earn the necklace.

“Of course, my lord,” said Carey smoothly, already ahead of her. “May I present the brilliant and extraordinary Signora Emilia Bonnetti, wife to the merchant Giovanni Bonnetti, who was arranging the wholesale import of excellent sweet wines to the Scottish Court, last time I met them?”

Essex smiled and held out his hand. Emilia took it and curtsied low, her lashes modestly lowered and, she hoped, a fetching blush on her cheek.

“And where is your husband, Signora?”

Where was the little man now? Oh yes. “He is in Oxford, talking to the butlers of the colleges, I think.” They were all speaking French now. Most of the English were good linguists because who could possibly want to learn their awful ugly uncouth bastard tongue, the spawn of Dutch and French?

“He has reliable suppliers?”

“Of course, directly from Italy with no interference from the London vintners at all.” That interested the Earl—fewer middlemen meant cheaper wholesale prices, of course. And the London vintners were notoriously greedy in a land full of greedy men. “He is very experienced with all kinds of wine and importing and exporting all kinds of things.…You must talk to him, milord, because I am only a poor foolish woman.…”

“But you are interested in the farm of sweet wines?” Essex asked with typical English unsubtlety. “Which I hold?”

Emilia managed not to sigh. When in England…“Yes, milord,” she said, “of course. We are not wealthy enough to farm it directly for you, but we can manage the farm and bring in the very best wines from Italy.”

The price the Earl named was breathtaking and impossible. “Plus one barrel in every ten as a gift to me, directly,” he added.

Outrageous! God, how greedy the English were. But in fact, it could be done, because the English couldn’t grow drinkable wine in their horrible damp country but did drink wine, and in astonishing quantities. And there were things they made that you could send south—dull boring things like finished wool and iron guns and coal, that you could exchange for a lot of wine which the English wouldn’t know was cheap.

“Milorrd,” she giggled, curtsied again. “I would be honoured if I can speak to my husband about this matter and my husband, too, will be honoured but…”

They bargained carefully until the number of barrels they had to give the Earl was one in twenty. No matter. She had made the connection. Now she needed to strengthen it.

She offered her hand to the Earl, who gripped it with surprising strength, then turned it over and kissed the palm like a lover. He stood between her and the Queen so she couldn’t see, but the meaning was plain. She tingled all over, caught Carey’s cynical smile, also found herself smiling with pure delight. Hooked, by God, she could still hook them. She gave a little tremble as she curtseyed once more—ay, her poor knees and her pinched toes—fluttered her eyelids as she looked up at the towering gold and white of the favourite.

“Milord, I must not trouble you anymore with my foolishness,” she whispered.

He leaned in, gingery and pink under the white lead paste on his face. “Will you join us for the card game afterward, Signora?” he breathed.

“I am a terrible card-player,” she lied. “My poor woman’s brain cannot even remember the points.”

“Perhaps I can teach you,” smiled the Earl.

“That would be such an honour, milorrd,” she said in English. “Then yes, if you will ’elp me not lose too much and make my ’usband angrry. Thank you, thank you, milorrd.”

She stepped neatly away, retrieving her hand from the Earl’s grip, and dived into the group of women trying to get a drink of spiced wine from one of the silver mixing bowls. Emilia’s teeth were creaking with thirst in the heat, and as soon as she tasted the stuff they were drinking she knew she could make the sweet wine farm work for her, Signor Bonnetti, and even the Earl.

Carey stood behind her, blocking her escape from the group of women, so she finished the deal by handing him the black velvet bag with the necklace in it. His fingers explored it expertly to be sure she hadn’t coney-catched him, then he smiled down at her as she curtseyed to him with her best modest smile.

“Are you happy, Signora?” asked the chestnut-headed reiver. She had to curtsey again while she sorted her thoughts. Would he be jealous? That would be nice.

“Oh very happy, M. le deputé, it is easy to see why the Queen loves milord of Essex. And you? Are you happy?”

He shook his head and put the bag containing fifty pounds’ worth of gold and garnets that might be rubies into his inside doublet pocket. “What is it that makes me fear we may never meet again?” he said with a creditable attempt at an abandoned lover’s face, so Emilia had to laugh at him. He was quite right. He had cheated her, sold her bad guns, caused a nightmare in horrible Ireland, made the Spanish keep her two surviving children in the Flemish convent and forget their Italian, become prim, prosy, boring little Flemings.…But still there was that thread of lust between them. Clearly they would not meet again—now that she had hooked the Queen’s favourite—no matter what her stupid body felt about it. And she would try and find a way for him to die because he clearly knew too much about her and her husband. She might even be able to get her necklace back.

Saturday 16th September 1592, night

Carey went outside the hot tent to blow his nose properly and rub it. The Queen had practically broken it with the end of her fan and meant to as well. He had naturally taken the opportunity when he knelt to her of reminding her of the warrant for his office at Carlisle and his fee. She had told him he already had a very good warrant and should use it.

“Without any money to pay my men…?” he had begun pathetically and that was when her fan clipped the end of his nose so painfully his eyes had watered.

“Do as I bid you,” she had said, steely-eyed.

At least I’ve made sure that it’s really the Queen who wants me to investigate the Amy Robsart death, he thought, trumpeting into his handkerchief again. And then along had come Emilia Bonnetti insisting on her introduction and even paying his fee with her necklace. He knew where she must have got it—perhaps Cumberland would be willing to buy it back? Perhaps not.

And Emilia had done it all very nicely, from the “accidental” bump at the banquet table to her conversation with the Earl who was, as always, clearly in desperate need of ready cash. Carey just hoped the Bonnettis could find a good financier to buy the farm and actually do what Emilia said they could. The fact that they were obviously spies mattered not at all, so long as Essex used them carefully, the way Walsingham would. It was Walsingham who had taught Carey that the way to deal with spies and informers was to know who they were and keep them close so you controlled what they found out and what they told their handlers. Spies were only dangerous if you didn’t know their identities and whereabouts. It was notorious that Essex was trying to take over Walsingham’s networks and the Bonnettis would probably lead him to some very juicy information. Perhaps Giovanni could be turned, the way his brother the sword master had been. He hoped in a detached way that they would survive somehow, for Emilia’s sake. What a woman!

When he went back in, he saw Hughie hanging around looking nervous and smiled at him. “Thank you,” he said. Hughie blushed and looked surprised.

“Ehm…?”

“I like a henchman who sticks at my back despite opportunities to dance with pretty girls,” Carey explained, pointing to the girls whirling between the trees. Some of the servingmen were partnering them since this was a jig, a dance for the common people. The Queen was fanning herself and talking to Essex again as she watched, her face alight with laughter.

“Ay, sir?”

“Nobody’s trying to kill me around here,” Carey said, watching his face carefully. Had Hughie shot that crossbow? “In Carlisle, though, it might be a serious matter if you weren’t near me.”

Hughie looked distasteful. “Ay, sir, Carlisle’s all fu’ wi’ English Borderers.”

“Yes, true.”

Carey was very thirsty and knew the wine was too strong to do any good. What he needed was at least a quart of mild ale to wet his throat, but where could he find some?

“Hughie, go fetch me a flagon of spiced wine.” Hughie nodded and plunged toward the scrum around the wine and brandy barrels at the corner of the tent.

Carey left the marquee again and picked his way around the hedges to the musicians’ entrance, where he found Mr. Byrd drinking tobacco smoke from a clay pipe and looking very disgruntled.

“I don’t suppose you play the viol, too, Sir Robert?” he asked.

“No, Mr. Byrd, not at all. I was taught the lute but can’t say I learnt it, since my playing is painfully poor.”

“And yet your voice is excellent, sir.”

“Thank you, but I can’t take any credit for it. Simply a gift from God, for reasons that He no doubt understands.”

Byrd proffered the pipe, lifting his eyebrows, and Carey took it and drank some smoke. The tobacco was good although it had no Moroccan incense in it and it didn’t make him cough, just smoothed some of the edges. Byrd smiled in the darkness.

“Yes, indeed, there’s music for you. Who knows where it comes from or where it goes or why.” He sniffed and scowled heavily. “Or musicians either.”

“Oh?”

“I’m one viol down in any case because the players from London had plague and have been forbidden the Court. So I hired me a replacement and now he’s gone off somewhere, I don’t know where.”

“I’m sorry I can’t help you, Mr. Byrd.”

“His face is annoying me now, I’m sure I’ve seen him before. So what did you want, sir?”

“Er…would you have any spare mild ale anywhere about you to wet my poor dry throat?”

Byrd smiled again. “We’ve got a proper Court ration, half a gallon apiece. You can have that damned viol player’s pottle, if you like.” The chapel master even ducked back into the tent to fetch it for him and Carey took the large heavy leather mug, toasted Byrd, and gulped a quarter of it in one. That was better. It was very good, the manor’s brewer had obviously taken care with it as the Queen herself was notorious for mainly drinking only mild ale. It was weak, refreshing, and slightly nutty.

“Did you know that Spanish air before you sang it?” Byrd asked. Carey shook his head.

“It was a pleasure to sing.”

Byrd bowed a little, looking thoughtful. “Funny thing that,” he said in an awkwardly casual voice. “The Queen asked for it particularly, but I didn’t make the tune. She played it for me herself.”

“Oh?” Carey didn’t say anything more, waited. Had Byrd been told to give him information?

“Yes, she picked it out on one of the lutes this afternoon and told me to set it at once so we could sing it this evening and then later in Oxford.”

“You did that in a couple of hours? I’m impressed, Mr. Chapel Master.”

Byrd smiled. “It wasn’t any trouble at all, just unrolled as easy as you like. Perhaps it could do with a little trimming, or perhaps more embellishment.”

“I wouldn’t touch it…I thought it was perfect as it was.”

Byrd wagged a finger at Carey. The pipe of tobacco was finished; he had knocked out the dottle and put it in his belt pouch, but was showing no sign of going into the tent again. “Only God is perfect, sir, that’s what the Moors say, isn’t it?”

Byrd was doing his best to look guileless so Carey resigned himself to having to probe. “So what made an old Spanish air so important to the Queen, I wonder?” he asked and then added on impulse, “She has asked me to look into an important but difficult matter for her and perhaps you can help me.”

Byrd nodded. “Sir Robert, I have a few moments before we must play again for the tumblers.” They drew aside, away from the tent and also clear of the hedge. “The air you sang was written on a piece of parchment, wrapped around something that looked like a piece of leather or a stick. I think it was found in the Queen’s privy baggage when we arrived here and it put Her Majesty out of countenance. It seems there was music written on it and that is what she had us sing.”

“What else was written on the parchment?”

Byrd shrugged. “I didn’t see that, Sir Robert, only the Queen saw it. I glimpsed the staves when she opened it out to pluck it on her lute for me to transcribe.” Byrd patted Carey’s arm. “I know Her Majesty ordered Mrs. de Paris to find you and set you on the scent. She said she had heard you were as fine a sleuth dog as Walsingham and thanked God you were here. But that’s all. She said nothing else about it, except that she has kept the parchment and bit of leather in a purse close under her stays.”

Carey nodded, bowed shallowly. “Thank you, Mr. Byrd. If you find out anything else, please will you tell me?”

Byrd bowed back. “Of course, sir.” He turned to the tent opening.

Carey had circled round and re-entered when the musicians struck up a bouncy martial tune with drums for the tumblers. The grave Moor with his walking stick was standing at the back, watching narrow-eyed as the boys and men danced and somer-saulted and swallowed swords and threw themselves at each other across the dance floor, and the boys climbed the trees and jumped off onto pyramids of men. Then Thomasina bounced from her place by the Queen’s skirts to shouts and cheers from the courtiers and threw herself into the air, bouncing, turning, and then at last leaping high onto the top of the pyramid of men and boys where she stood on the shoulders of the topmost boy and breathlessly sang a lewd song of triumph.

He looked around at the bright crowd. Hughie was by the banquet with the other men-at-arms and servingmen like Mr. Simmonds, staring at the tumblers’ show, the flagon still dangling empty in his left hand. He had clearly forgotten all about fetching spiced wine. Emilia was across the other side of the room, amongst Essex’s followers, talking to a Welshman, Essex’s current favourite. Thomasina was mimicking a different great man of the Court in each verse of her song and was doing a particularly good imitation of the haughty Sir Walter Raleigh who wasn’t there on account of still languishing in the Tower for sowing his seed in a maid of honour. Idiot. Serve him right. The soft Devon accent and haughty head were unmistakeable, even when a midget only three and a half foot high did them. Carey had thoroughly disliked the man, had got into a fistfight with him over a tennis court back in the eighties, which had been smoothed over by his father. The progress following that had been remarkable in that Carey was consistently billeted with Raleigh, who was not yet at all important, and had had to share a bed with him a couple of times. They had come to an understanding eventually over card games, but still…What an arrogant fool.

The rest of his mind was turning over the Amy Robsart problem, the one the inquest report pointed to with such shocking honesty. Surely the Queen hadn’t actually read that report? She was sitting under her cloth of estate now, laughing at Thomasina who was currently guying the hunchbacked Sir Robert Cecil. Mind you, there was no way of telling what the Queen was thinking; she had been at Court all her life and knew a thing or two about keeping her counsel.

Why the devil did she want the thing brought up again? Why now? Did it have something to do with the scrap of parchment written with music? Why?

The Queen was standing and holding out her arms to her people. All the Court went to their knees again, Carey included, just missing a lurking patch of mud with one of his knees and nearly staining his last remaining good pair of hose. He really hoped Hughie knew how to darn. Maybe when he met his father at Oxford, he could snaffle a few new pairs?

Her Majesty said a loving goodnight to her people and then paced out to the sound of trumpets, leaning on the arm of the Earl of Essex, who was looking pleased with himself. The Gentlemen of the Queen’s Guard went ahead and behind, making red and gold borders around the maids of honour and the ladies-in-waiting, who were following the Queen, the younger ones rolling their eyes sulkily at having to leave the dancing so early.

Carey could see Emilia amongst the Earl’s followers at the end of the procession, the tilt of her feathered hat unmistakeable. Ah well. Perhaps another time. (A lucky escape, you idiot, said the puritanical part of him.)

Carey caught Hughie’s eye and beckoned him to bring over the flagon and pour for him. The lad started and looked guilty, dived into the scrum of servingmen by the large silver spiced wine bowl and disappeared. Finally he emerged, wading upstream against the flood of other servingmen, dodged a couple of whirling dancers, and came over. Carey lifted his silver cup and Hughie served him quite well, pouring carefully and using a linen napkin on his arm to wipe any drips.

When Carey sipped the wine, he nearly gagged—it was a spiced wine water, very sweet, mixed with brandy and spices and a hint of bitterness from the cloves. The attempt to hide its dreadful quality hadn’t worked. Still it was wine, so he drank it.

As soon as the Queen had gone, the musicians had struck up an alemain and the roar of voices went up another notch. He watched the peasant dance for a while, wondering if he wanted to dance anymore.

God, it was hot. Carey changed his mind about dancing, moved out again into the darkness, feeling for rain first because he did not want to damage his (still only half paid-for) Court doublet and hose. There were torches on some of the trees so you could see something in the flickering shadows.

Carey was still thirsty, so he followed the sound of water back to the stream, tipped out half of the syrupy wine in his goblet and refilled it with water caught carefully from a small rapid over a mossy stone. You never knew with water, but he’d found in France that wine generally cleaned it well.

Sipping cautiously, Carey decided it was much better and even the bitterness of cloves in it was refreshing, like well-hopped beer. Away from the torches and candle-lit tent, the evening was still and some stars were coming out, powdering the velvet cloak of the sky with diamond dust. The evening must be much warmer than you’d expect at this time of year, despite the clearing sky. Carey was burning up in his Court suit.

He spotted the dim outline of the church spire and went toward it. The clerks would no doubt be bundled up asleep inside, along with other courtiers’ servants, since there, at least, they wouldn’t be rained on despite the hardness of the floor.

Once in the churchyard he wondered what he was there for, since he wasn’t about to go and roust out John Tovey from his sleep just for the sake of it, after all. Still the church pulled him as he gulped the watered wine. Perhaps it would be cooler in there. He opened the door carefully, shut it behind him carefully and paced with great caution down the aisle. On either side were dozens of bundled figures, quite tightly packed, wrapped in their cloaks. Some had managed to beg, borrow, or steal straw pallets to ease the stone flags under them.

It wasn’t cooler in here, damn it. He went up toward the altar, still too hot and still dry-mouthed with thirst. All the Papistic nonsense had been cleared away years ago, the altar had been moved so that it was a proper communion table, the saints of the altar screen had lost their heads and been whitewashed, the Lady chapel had no figure of the Madonna on the plinth at all, though there was a puzzling carved frieze of deer around the walls. They looked oddly alive, even seemed to move.

The soft snoring from behind him was forming itself into a strange rhythmic music. He looked up at the boarded windows, one or two left intact with the old style full of scriptural pictures for the illiterate. Those were their only way of learning the gospels as they were denied hearing the Word of the Lord by the Vulgate Latin of the old Mass. That you couldn’t see the sky though the silvery light told him that the moon had risen. What were the reiving surnames up to on the Border? It was a church. Perhaps he should pray?

He drank again, took his hat off belatedly and thought about Amy Dudley née Robsart, poor lady. She had died on the 8th September 1560, the year of his own birth, perhaps not very long after he was born, a summer baby. He smiled, thinking vaguely of his wet nurse and how he had loved her when he was tiny, when his mother sometimes frightened him on her visits back from Court with his quite terrifying father. They had become better friends when once he was breeched and he had realised how kind they were, compared to the parents of most of his friends.

He knocked back most of the rest of his wine, wondering why nothing seemed to ease his dry mouth, and sat on one of the benches against the wall. Nobody was sleeping there, perhaps because the stones were broken. There was more old destruction in the Lady chapel than the rest of the church. The plinth the statue had stood on still had a crescent moon, stars, and a snake carved on it.

Why was he so hot and thirsty after drinking so much ale earlier and then a whole flagon of watered wine? And another peculiar thing was that he didn’t need a piss at all. His insides seemed to have turned suddenly into a strange desert.

And now something really odd was happening. The whitewashed stone of the church was seeming to billow around him slowly, as if it were only painted curtains at a play. The whitewashed walls thinned and thinned and swayed in and out and back and forth like the dancers, to the rhythm of the snore-music around him.

He couldn’t stand the heat anymore and his head was hurting, his mouth glued with drought. He had to cool down. He fumbled for the buttons of his doublet, undid them with hands full of thumbs, then had to feel around the back where his poinard hung for the points and then he thought of taking his belts off, which he did, and then he broke a couple of laces and the doublet came away at last. He took the thing off his shoulders, wondering why it had got so much lighter and hung it on a headless woman saint holding a wheel.