Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) (13 page)

But this time he was looking at himself climbing a ladder to a wooden platform.

Two men were waiting for him in the cold sunlight, and a priest in a plain surplice, speaking the words “Oh Lord, wash me of my iniquity, cleanse me of my sin.…”

His own face was white, lips set in a line, but his eyes were sad. He heard himself speaking in the dawn to the small crowd waiting to see him die, apologising for his wicked rebellion against his most loving cousin, the Queen, thanking her for her gentle mercy to him of the axe, who was unworthy of it. Quite a good speech, really.

He saw himself turn, shuck off a worn green velvet doublet and kneel down to the block in his shirt and hose. He heard himself saying the Our Father in a creditably firm voice, words torn away by the wind, then bending to put his neck on the block and the headsman’s axe swinging up, glittering in the sunlight.

The blow knocked him out of his dream again and back into his body where someone was making him drink something filthy-tasting. Meekly he drank it and let his miraculously still-attached head down to the pillow again, heart drumming wildly inside him.

Rebellion? Against the Queen? Good God. And it must have been a foul bill that he confessed to because the vision of himself had had no injuries, no signs of torture at all. How could that have happened?

It’s a fever dream, he told himself somewhere deep inside himself where the drought didn’t matter so much—both of them were fever dreams. And why had he been so badly dressed for his execution? His doublet had looked ten years old and hard-worn. That could never happen. Rebellion was as ridiculous as the idea that he could become so…well, so shabby.

Which was the last thought he knew as the clouds wrapped him in silk again.…

Sunday 17th September 1592, noon

Dodd hauled the horse back on its haunches and cursed. He knew he was going the wrong way again…you wouldn’t think that riding northwest to Oxford would be so difficult. It hadn’t been while he stuck to the Oxford Road, but last night had worried him and so he’d left the Roman street and followed a signpost that took him along a nice road amongst the plump coppies and fields full of cattle and pigs eating up the stubble before they burnt it, ready for winter barley.

That had been early this morning. After a couple of hours of hard riding, he had spent some time in a copse rubbing chewed bark into the telltale brand on Whitesock’s hindquarters to stain it brown. It wouldn’t fool anyone who checked properly, but would do for the moment along with the mud he slapped on top. Now it was noon and he was tired. He hadn’t got any sleep on Friday night, had ridden hard most of Saturday, not got a full ration of sleep Saturday night, and here it was Sunday and he had no idea where he was. He knew the rutted track was taking him the wrong way, despite the waymarker that had pointed toward Oxford.

He would have struck off across country, but this land was separated out into little fields with newfangled tight-woven hedges and forbye; he didn’t want to leave so clear a trail as a broken hedge and a crossed field. The lanes between them headed in half a dozen different directions at once and it was all strange country to him—he didn’t know the lay of the land. He knew the right way to go, of course, even though the sky had clouded over, but the lanes wouldn’t let him and most of the fields had been deeply ploughed or were still stubbled.

He was starting to feel very thirsty and both horses were tired and sulky from being ridden without a saddle. Now the track was heading downhill into a boggy little wood. He went with it in the hope that he could find a stream in it, slipped from Whitesock’s back, and led him as well.

The wood closed around them. There were signs that there had been people living there, once long ago and some more recently, too. In one place there was an old fire and the marks of horses tethered to trees. In another he could see clear signs of wagons from only a few days ago. Perhaps there was some kind of manor house or village nearby.

Later Dodd wondered why he hadn’t been more careful and decided that as well as being tired, the rotten Southern air had made him as soft and soppy as the Southerners and he deserved what happened.

The track came at the stream from around a small mound and stones made a rough ford. The trees were thick overhead so he couldn’t see the sky and the horses pulled forward to the water so Dodd let them put their heads down to drink.

He was just looking at the deeper part in the bend behind him and wondering if there were any fish in it that he could tickle for his supper when something large and heavy landed on his shoulders and thudded on the back of his head.

Bright lights exploded and he went over like a toppled tree. He glimpsed an ugly scarred face with a broken nose under a morion helmet and a flash of bright orange-and-white rags, felt a hand across his mouth so he bit down hard and head-butted backwards at whoever was on his shoulders.

Next thing, two more heavy weights landed on him and his arms were wrestled up behind while his face went into the mud. Kicking and fighting as viciously as he could, he struggled to breathe, once even managing to rear up with the red rage all around him. Eventually another blow to his head took the world away into a deeper darkness than he’d ever known, although a part of him remained amused to note that he was still fighting as boots thudded into his ribs.

Sunday 17th September 1592, morning

The light was hurting Robert Carey’s eyes even through his eyelids and two people were shouting at each other right next to him, hurting his sore head with the noise.

“…you ordered
my son
to investigate the Robsart matter…?”

“Who else could I ask, Harry? Walsingham is dead and none of the others…”

“My son! You put my son in danger of poisoning…?”

“I had to do it!” roared the Queen, “I have to find out…”

“You did not have to find out anything, Eliza, for God’s sake, you’ve let it lie thirty years, you could let it lie another thirty. Why the hell didn’t you?”

“I could NOT let it lie, you old fool, look what they sent me!”

Silence. What? What did they send you? Who sent it? Carey fluttered his lids, only to find his eyes worse than ever, blurred and blazing with light that hurt him. He shut them again, tried to stretch his ears.

There was a long moment of silence and his father’s heavy breathing, then the sound of creaking joints and popping knees as Lord Hunsdon knelt to the Queen.

“I’m sorry, Eliza.”

“Why?”

“For shouting at you.”

“You understand now? Why I couldn’t let it lie?”

A heavy sigh. “Yes.”

There was movement, rustle of skirts. “What else could I do?” His aunt’s voice had lost its full-throated roar suddenly and the blurred shape was merging with the darker shape, his father kneeling to her. “I was horrified when I found it. What if it all came out now? And then I heard your boy Robin had turned up at Court and it seemed…it seemed as if God had sent him specially to help me.”

More creaking as Carey’s father stood again.

“I’m so sorry he was poisoned, Harry. I never thought they would try such a thing, it never…Oh, Harry!”

The two figures merged into one. His father had his arms around the Queen and she was…good Lord, she must be crying into his chest, from the snuffling sounds.

Carey was too weak and dry even to moan. Ask her for my fee and my warrant as Deputy Warden, he thought as forcibly as he could. Go on, Father! Fee! Warrant! Ask!

Baron Hunsdon was rumbling again. “There now, Eliza, there now. It’s all right. I have the Gentlemen of the Guard checking all the supplies and some of my other men are asking Norris’ servants and kitchen staff what happened. Mr. Byrd and Mrs. de Paris are making reports right now.”

“Be gentle…”

“Don’t worry, I’m certain both Byrd and Thomasina are loyal, but they must be asked, you know. Somehow enough belladonna got into the flagon of spiced wine that Robin drank from to half-kill him and his henchman.”

What? Young Hughie had been poisoned, too? That was interesting.

The Queen sniffed and blew her nose. “You’re sure it wasn’t the servingman? He’s a Scot, after all.”

“I very much doubt it. It was pure luck he didn’t die after drinking about half the contents of that flagon. Everybody thought he was just very drunk. Luckily he puked some of it up and after he collapsed, the other servingmen thought from his fever that it might be plague so they left him where he lay under the hedge. Once Tovey raised the alarm, of course, he was the first one we went looking for and we found him with the flagon beside him. It was very lucky that we did.”

“And you’re sure it was poison?”

“Certain, Your Majesty. We fed the flagon’s contents to a piglet which ran wild, then collapsed and died less than an hour later. Dr. Lopez says an infallible sign of belladonna poisoning is that the pupils of the eyes become fixed wide open and that light dazzles and hurts the victim. Hughie Tyndale is suffering from that, as well as Robin.”

So that was what was wrong with his goddamned eyes.

“The fever and the delirium are also typical.”

“Harry, your son…” The Queen was sniffling again which was very unlike her.

“What?”

“Your son insisted that the Earl of Essex be told before he would take anything to bring up the poison. He knew what had happened, but he was more worried about me drinking the spiced wine.”

There was a pause.

“Quite right,” came his father’s voice after a loud harrumph. “No more than I’d expect.”

“Oh, Harry…” The Queen’s voice had a smile in it. “I have a Court full of men who claim they would die for me, but so few of them who really would.”

There was another loud harrumph from his father, who seemed to have something stuck in his throat—a confounded nuisance, as far as Carey was concerned, as he needed his father to talk for him. Come on, Father. Ask her! Fee! Warrant! More money! shouted Carey in his mind, to no effect at all.

Through the watery flicker of his eyelids, he made out two blurred shapes embracing again. Very touching, you prize idiot, thought Carey in despair, why the hell won’t you get me some more money and a proper warrant, you old buffoon? Or a customs farm or a patent? How about a monopoly on the import of sugar? That would be nice.

“Eliza, may I beg a favour?” His father’s voice sounded tired.

Thank God, Carey thought. Come on, Father, you know how to do it.

“Of course.”

“Please, Eliza, for God’s sake, will you make sure the boy’s mother doesn’t get to hear of this?”

Arrgh, thought Carey. Then after a moment’s thought—well, yes, all right. Sensible.

Now there was something better than a smile in the Queen’s voice, more like a giggle.

“I’ll do my best, Harry, but you know that Annie has her ways of finding things out, just as I do. Nobody else need know since neither Robin nor his man actually died, thank God, so no inquest is needed and the Board of Green Cloth doesn’t need to sit, or not officially. The poison was only in that particular flagon, not in the rest of the spiced wine.”

There was the sound of a woman’s skirts on the rush mats again.

“In fact, I think the attempt was upon your son, not me.” Hunsdon said nothing. “And even so, brother,” continued the Queen awkwardly, “as soon as he’s well enough again, you understand that I want Robin to carry on with investigating the Robsart matter.”

Another pause and his father sighed. Now! thought Carey. A piece of land. A nice monopoly on the sale of…oh…I don’t know…brandy…Come on!

“Will you let me tell him what…?”

“No. He has to work under the same conditions.”

“For God’s sake…”

“Under the same conditions.”

“He’s working blind. Literally now, as well as metaphorically.”

“I have a reason for what I do, Harry.”

“Excellent. What is it?”

“I want your son to have an open mind, not to make assumptions about anything.”

“That could be dangerous, you know. Not just to his life, but to you. He might find out by himself or work it out but come to the wrong conclusion. Very clever boy, you know, in spite of the way he treated his tutors, probably the brightest of the litter.”

By now Carey had gone beyond thinking in words. His head was too full of pain and frustration at his father’s incredible dunderheadedness in not setting his penniless younger son up for life. That was mixed with some pleasure at his father at least acknowledging him as the brightest of his brothers—which he knew already, of course, but it was good to hear it from his father’s mouth. Even if he did keep calling him “boy” when Carey was over thirty-two years old and had fought and killed.

Suddenly the Queen laughed her amazingly magical laugh.

“Brightest of the litter?” she chided playfully. “Are you saying he’s a sleuthdog for tracking criminals?”

“Why not?”

“What does that make Annie?”

Hunsdon laughed too. “Nothing wrong with bitches. Some of my best trackers have been bitches.”

“And you, Harry?”

“Your Majesty’s old guard dog, always at your heel.”

Creaking of joints meant Hunsdon had genuflected again. Well done, Father, very courtly, Carey thought in despair, where’s my goddamned exclusive patent for the sale of silk ribbons, eh?

“Send Thomasina to me as soon as you can,” said the Queen’s voice.

“Ah yes, before I forget…one of the matters we’re investigating is the very fine gold and ruby necklace Robin had in his doublet pocket. His friend the Earl of Cumberland said it was a necklace he had given the Italian woman Signora Bonnetti.”

Somehow the Queen could make even a silence dangerously loud. “Interesting,” she said at last.

“Signora Bonnetti, however, had left the dancing tent with the Earl’s party by then and my lord of Essex says that she was playing cards with him while they discussed her husband’s management of the sweet wine farm for him. Two of my own men who were there say this is true.”

“So the necklace was a fee for the introduction?”

“I think so.”

“Nothing wrong with that and quite a reasonable amount considering the value of the sweet wine farm. I remember Thomasina mentioned it to me earlier. Do you think the Italians are spies, too?”