Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) (16 page)

“At the time,” he admitted, “it never occurred to me that anyone would try and poison me, but from now on I’ll bear it in mind.”

“Good.”

“Why are you here, Mistress? It’s late. And I think you weren’t even born when Amy Robsart died…”

“No, I remember the accession bonfires and getting drunk on spiced ale with my older brother,” she said. “Perhaps I was about two or three at the time as it’s one of my first memories.”

Good Lord, she was older than he was. Astonishing.

“Of course, I wasn’t then in Her Majesty’s service nor even imagining such a thing. I’m here, Sir Robert, to find out if the Queen can help you in your quest.”

“She can come and break the matter fully with me, tell me about the message that upset her, so I know where I am.”

Silence. “She won’t. Not yet.”

Damn it, he hated it when people wouldn’t tell you what you needed to know. But there it was, neither his father nor Thomasina would disobey the Queen just to make his life easier. So he shrugged.

“Is there anything else I can do?”

“While I’m stuck in this room and not able to see, I might as well keep busy. I want to interview all of Her Majesty’s Privy Councillors that served her then and are alive now.”

“Oh?” Carey couldn’t make out her face but he didn’t need to. He could imagine the expression on the midget’s face. “Who do you want to start with?”

In for a penny, in for a pound, Carey thought. Let’s see if my loving aunt, against all her normal habits, actually means what she says.

“My Lord Treasurer Burghley,” he said simply.

Well at least Thomasina didn’t laugh at the idea of the Queen’s penniless and frankly quite lowly cousin and nephew interviewing the person who in fact administered the realm for her and also ran the Queen’s finances, who was the chief man in the realm whatever the Earl of Essex thought, and had been since the Queen’s accession.

“When?”

“If he’s here at Rycote, now. Tonight. If not, as soon as he can come.”

Instead of a grim laugh, a flat refusal, or a placatory platitude, Thomasina said simply, “Very well, Sir Robert, I shall arrange it. He’s here, so don’t go back to sleep.”

Well, he hadn’t expected that. She hopped off the bed like a sizeable cat and trotted to the door.

Jesu, thought Carey, what have I asked for? I didn’t expect to be given it!

Burghley arrived only twenty minutes later. Carey had wrapped himself in his father’s dressing gown, feeling every limb as heavy as if he had just chased a raiding party across the Bewcastle Waste for two days. He was still sitting on the bed because the bed curtains gave him some protection from the light. He had also fastened a silk scarf across his eyes. Partly it was to protect them from the extra candles Tovey had lit so he could take notes, partly for dramatic purposes. He was nervous. Carey knew the Lord Treasurer, of course, had oftentimes seen his aunt lose her temper with her faithful servant and throw things at him. Walsingham had told him a few interesting tidbits but had respected the man greatly, despite his pragmatism and their many disagreements over how best to deal with Papists.

Burghley limped in, wincing from his gout and the man with him had an odd, quick uneven gait. Ah yes, Burghley must have brought his second son whose body was clenched and hunched from the rickets he had suffered in his youth, despite the careful supervision of three or four doctors.

“My Lord Treasurer, S…Sir Robert Cecil,” announced Tovey in awed tones. Carey stood for them, bowed, then felt behind him for the bed and sat again quickly, drawing his legs up. He had actually nearly overbalanced, his brain felt battered and bruised, and his mouth was dry again.

“My Lord Treasurer, Sir Robert, I am very grateful to you and honoured at your coming here. I apologise, my lord, that my temporary disability has prevented me from coming to you as would be more appropriate,” he said formally.

“Yes, yes, Sir Robert. Her Majesty asked me to speak to you about these matters but alas, I doubt very much that I can help you,” said Burghley’s voice. It was a deep voice and paradoxically able to make very dull subjects verge on interesting. Even Scottish politics became comprehensible when Burghley explained them, a remarkable and essential talent. Carey remembered the Lord Treasurer once explaining to him many years ago why it was that his debts kept mounting up. Probably his father had asked him to. Carey vaguely remembered that the lecture was about what four shillings in the pound interest could do given time. Burghley seemed to think that because he was interested in the clever Greek ways of planning cannon fire and siege towers and had read that manuscript Italian book about card play, he could understand accounting. He probably could, he just…wasn’t interested. Burghley had given up eventually.

Tovey brought up the one chair with arms and a cushion for Lord Burghley. Sir Robert Cecil quietly took a chair without arms that had been foraged specially from one of the manor’s storerooms. The room was too small for any more furniture with the big bed in it, the clothes chest, and Tovey’s pallet folded on top of it. Tovey was using the window sill as a desk.

“I have asked my clerk, Mr. Tovey, to keep a note,” Carey said and heard the creak of the starched linen ruff when Burghley nodded.

“Good. Good practice. My son will do the same for me.”

Carey wondered if the two records would look anything like each other. The chair creaked on its own note as Burghley settled himself in it.

“May I offer you wine, my lord?” Carey asked, then smiled, “though I may say I’ve been a little put off wine myself.”

It was annoying that he couldn’t see Burghley’s expression, that pouchy wary face with the knowing little smile.

“Alas, Sir Robert,” Burghley said, “Dr. Lopez has warned me off wine of any sort and I am sentenced to drink mild ale and nothing else apart from a foul and superstitious potion made of crocus-bulbs as penalty for my gout.”

Carey made a sympathetic noise. “How is your gout, my lord?”

“Bad,” was Burghley’s short answer. “Very painful. Get to the point, sir, Her Majesty will be waiting to cross-examine me after this meeting.”

Carey paused. He wanted straight answers and wasn’t about to start a verbal fencing match with the finest exponent in the kingdom.

“The point, my lord, is
cui bono
,” he said, plunging straight in. “Who benefits? There are those who would say that you were the one man who benefitted most from Amy Dudley’s murder.”

Both Sir Robert Cecil and Tovey sucked in their breaths with audible gasps. Carey sat with his legs folded, his father’s marten and tawny dressing gown round his shoulders and the scarf over his eyes and felt…good God, he was enjoying himself dicing with death again. His hearing seemed to be getting better as well–the cannonfire and shooting muskets and dags in France and on the Borders had blunted his hearing, taken away his ability to hear bat squeaks and noticeably dulled soft music for him. Perhaps with his eyes not working properly he was paying more attention to what he could hear. He had known the moment Tovey’s pen and Sir Robert Cecil’s pen had stopped their soft movements across paper.

“Explain yourself,” said Burghley with cold fury in his voice.

“My lord, with all due respect…” Carey began, knowing very well what the lawyer’s phrase meant, as did Burghley. “I am sure I am not the first person to point that out. From what I know of the first few years of Her Majesty’s blessed reign, she was very far from being the wise sovereign lady that she now is. She was, God save her, a flibbertigibbet, a flirt, and very disinclined to any business of ruling at all. She ran riot with Robert Dudley and other men of her Court in the first few years. It was a matter of desperate import to you and all her wiser councillors that she marry as quickly as possible so that she would have a man to direct and guide her and calm her unstable woman’s humours.”

A pause. Tovey cleared his throat. “Sir, d…did you want m…me to…”

“Record all of it, Mr. Tovey,” Carey ordered firmly. “I will repeat it to Her Majesty’s face and take the consequences.”

There was more creaking of chin against linen ruff. Someone, probably Burghley, was shaking his head.

“There was no shortage of good mates for her,” Carey went on, quoting his father. “Philip II of Spain offered for her and could not be rejected outright, several German and Swedish princes offered who were unexceptionable except that the Queen didn’t like them. Even a carefully chosen English nobleman might have been a possibility. Unfortunately the Queen had fallen head-over-heels in love with her horsemaster, Robert Dudley, the son and grandson of traitors, much hated by the older noble families and a man of very little common sense. He was the worst possible lover she could have chosen but she would not listen to reason.” The silence in the little chamber was oppressive.

“He was also utterly opposed to you, my lord, and your careful diplomacy, had no understanding of the financial situation which was in a desperate state, and was moreover an intemperate man who loved war, although he himself was disastrously untalented as a general.

“You, my Lord Treasurer, were in terror that the Queen would persuade Dudley to leave his wife and scandalously marry her, making himself king. This you saw as likely to drop the realm straight into civil war as the nobility picked their own candidates for the Queen’s husband and called out their tenants. In point of fact, the Northern Earls did revolt a few years later with the Howards at their head. And the Earl of Leicester hated you, my lord, and so with him once crowned, you would have lost your place and the realm gone to rack and ruin even if civil war was somehow avoided.” Somebody was breathing hard and Carey knew it wasn’t him, though his heart was pounding. God, this was fun—should he be enjoying himself so much?

“So, my lord, logic clearly shows that you were the one man who gained most by Amy Dudley’s death in the manner by which it occurred….”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Sir Robert,” snapped Burghley. “Amy Dudley’s death cleared Leicester’s way to the throne. However she died, the fact that she was dead made him a widower with no impediment to marriage. When I heard what had happened I was in the worst despair I have ever been in my life because I was sure they would marry immediately and that all would fall out exactly as you have suggested. In fact I started selling land and books so I could move to the Netherlands again if necessary. Amy Dudley was my best bulwark against Leicester’s kingship. I had men placed in her household to guard her, one in the kitchen against poison, one as her under-steward, and I was paying a fortune to one of her women, I forget the name, to keep me informed. I had all the letters to and from Cumnor Place opened and read, I took every precaution to keep Leicester’s wife safe and alive, and the bloody man somehow managed to kill her anyway!” Burghley was shouting by the end. Carey thought from the sound that he was leaning forward, quite possibly prodding the air with a finger as he often did.

“So, who did kill her?”

“Her husband, Sir Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, the obvious suspect, the man who wanted to be king.” Burghley was still shouting and Carey wondered if his face was going purple.

“With respect, no, my lord,” said Carey calmly. “It’s my belief that the Queen would not, could not marry a man who had killed his wife, no matter how, no matter why.”

“Of course she would. She was on heat for him, it was a disgraceful sight.”

“So why didn’t she, my lord?”

“What?”

“You say Leicester must have killed his wife so he could marry the Queen. Once he had done it, why didn’t they marry?”

“God knows, perhaps God managed to drive a particle of common sense into the Queen’s head, because God knows none of the rest of her council could.” Carey was momentarily entranced at the implied idea of Almighty God sitting on the Privy Council presided over by Burghley. “Or perhaps she realised that the scandal would destroy her. It was then only seventy-six years since the Queen’s grandfather ended the civil wars between York and Lancaster by taking the throne. There had been a decade of trouble, religious turns and twists, Queen Mary burning hundreds of good Protestant men and women, the Exchequer exhausted, the currency debased, the…”

“So, my lord, you say that you did not kill Amy Dudley in such a manner that the Earl would be blamed and thus the Queen would refuse to marry him?”

A fist came down on the arm of the chair. “No! That would have been madness! To take such a risk, take away the one thing putting a brake on Leicester’s cursed ambition? Never! Thank God, the Queen realised that a man who would kill one wife might also kill another wife, just as her father had, and that pulled her back from the disastrous marriage, much to Leicester’s disappointment.”

“But you could have done it?” Carey pursued, knowing he was dancing on the lip of a volcano.

“I had and still have the power…the men…to do such things,” said Burghley’s voice, heavy with menace. “As a general rule, I do not use it. As a general rule.”

Carey smiled back at the threat. “You’re sure it was Leicester, not realising that the Queen would react the way she did.”

There was the faint rustle of lifted shoulders. “I said so at the time and have said so since. It was that bloody man she fell in love with, clearing away the main impediment, despite all I could do to protect her.” The chair creaked. Carey wondered for the first time if Burghley might have been a little in love with the Queen all those years ago as well.

The Queen’s first Councillor must have read his mind.

“Of course I loved her, Sir Robert,” he rumbled into his ruff. “We all did. She was a marvel, a joy, a gift from God. She was enraging and magical, every room she entered was suddenly full of sunshine and lightning, a slender pale creature with a war-beacon of hair and the temper of a king and that laugh…God, yes, Sir Robert, I loved your aunt from the time I first saw her in her brother’s reign. I always knew I could never have her as my own. Yes, I hated Dudley because he made her happy and made her laugh and I could not—although I could indeed make her safer. And that was all I wanted. All I still want. All I have ever asked of God is that she should outlive me.”