Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) (19 page)

The brambles that had prickled him were heavy with berries so Dodd ate all he could reach of them and the riper cobnuts. Then he slipped and slid down the bank to the stream snickering at him over the stones of the little ford.

He looked about for tracks and signs very carefully. Yes, as he’d thought, there was a yew tree over the stream with a wide branch that hung over where he’d been watering his horse. Nobody there now, though the bark was scraped. He’d been unforgivably careless. The mud of the bank was rucked up, broken branches all around, a gash in the trunk of a willow tree where the horse had kicked. You could see there had been a fight.

Him against how many? Two? Three? Hard to tell with the way all the signs were over each other. He picked his way about the place on his tiptoes, squinting. There was a drier spot where the nettles were flattened and a few threads of grey wool caught on them. So that was where they must have laid him down while he was unconscious and stripped off his clothes. He could see where the heels of his boots had made dents in the soft mud and been dragged off by the bootprints of the man that did it. There was a scrap of good linen from his shirt there on a bramble.

Another scrap of thread, this time of a faded but once virulent orange. Tawny they called it at Court. So he hadn’t dreamed the orange and white clownlike clothes. Dodd felt the thread with his fingers—it was silky, so he kept it by wrapping it round his little finger like a ring. It might make a fishing line anyway.

It was easy to see which way the robbers had gone—at right angles to the stream, following a faint path but heading uphill, single file. Three, maybe four of them, and one very big and heavy, with big feet so it wasn’t just something he was carrying. And unless Dodd had forgotten all he knew about tracking, that was the one who had reived his boots.

He found the deepest part of the stream, took a deep breath and waded in, stood there shivering with his toes clenching around the weed-covered stones while minnows investigated his heels. Then he carefully washed himself all over in the icy water, swearing and shivering at it until all the dirt and gravel was out of his various grazes and the blood from the blow to his head was out of his hair and beard and his eyes could open properly again, even the swollen one. His nose was still singing to him and his black eye had that stupid puffy stiff feeling. He drank deep of the water despite the way it made his teeth ache.

Just as he finished turning the water rust-coloured he noticed that the water coming toward him was swirling with little white clouds.

“Och,” he said quietly to himself.

He climbed out of the stream, careful of thorns in the leaf litter. Still shivering he squeezed his hair and shook himself all over like a dog, jogged on the spot and waved his arms. Jesu, he was cold, it was a sharp morning and had been a sharper night. He was hungry, too, despite the ball of rage in his stomach. He needed a fire by nightfall and since the bastards had taken his tinderbox along with everything else, that meant he had to find whoever was living upstream.

For a few seconds he stood looking at the blades of sunlight stabbing through the turning leaves and thought wistfully of the faeries magicking his own tower into reach and him going there and Janet putting salve on his grazes and bandaging his head for him and giving him another shirt and wrapping him warm by the fire in blankets of her own weaving. And him then calling out his surname and her surname and anyone else who owed him a favour and taking a fiery bloody revenge on anyone he could find in orange-and-white velvet.

Monday 18th September 1592, before dawn

Carey and Cumberland were old hands at slipping away illicitly from the Queen’s Court. When he arrived at the door of the small bedchamber, Cumberland found Carey was already awake and irritably instructing Tovey on the art of helping him dress. They hadn’t lit any candles although the sky was overcast so the night was very dark. Carey however seemed to be able to see without difficulty.

Cumberland led the way out of the manor house and they picked their way over servants and page boys sleeping in all the corridors while their Courtier masters shared beds and had to dice for pallets in the bedrooms. The courtyard was filled with tents and tethered horses, four of them being led out by Kielder, the most discreet of Cumberland’s grooms. Carey picked the second best mount out of deference to the Earl and unthinkingly jumped to the saddle.

“I thought you said you were blind?” accused Cumberland as Carey adjusted his stirrups.

“Only in daytime, my lord,” Carey said, highly pleased. “I can see like an owl now.”

They walked the horses out through the gate, past the Yeoman of the Guard whom Cumberland had bribed, found the southward road and put their heels in.

After getting lost among the maze of lanes only twice, they found Cumnor Place was tidily kept but quite empty-looking in the grey dawnlight. There were no grooms hurrying about to feed horses, nor kitchen staff nor bakers, nor smoke from the chimneys. Hunsdon’s excellent swordmaster, Nathaniel Ross, knocked on the least ivy-choked door. An elderly man slowly opened another door to one side of the house and came shuffling out to blink at them.

Carey was already squinting and shading his eyes though the sun wasn’t up yet. Cumberland spoke to the man.

“Well,” he answered dubiously, “You don’t look like them sturdy beggars. What do you want?”

“Goodman,” Carey put in, “my name is Sir Robert Carey and the Queen has charged me with investigating a matter that happened here many years ago…” He handed down his warrant upside down and the old man didn’t turn it.

“Ah yes, the death of Lady Dudley. I wasn’t here then, sirs.”

“May we look around the house where it happened?”

“I’ll have to ask my mistress, Mrs. Odingsells.”

“Is that the Mrs. Odingsells who attended Lady Dudley back then?”

“Yes, sir, nearing a hundred years now.”

“Are her wits…Is she able to talk to me?”

“Dunno, sir, I can but ask her. Sir Anthony Forster pays me and my wife to take care of her, sir, she won’t leave. Says she likes it here and…well, I’ll ask her.”

“Thank you, Mr.…?”

“Forster, sir, I’m a cousin of Sir Anthony’s.”

The kitchen door banged open and a clucking mass of chickens and ducks came out and spread themselves to peck at the overgrown cobbles of the yard, followed by a plump woman in an apron and cap.

Cumberland and his groom had already dismounted and Kielder took the horses and tethered them to a ring in the corner. When Carey dismounted as well, Cumberland saw that he was letting his horse lead him and he tripped on a pothole. The old woman following the fowl stopped still and stared with her mouth open, then started curtseying anxiously.

“S’all right, Mrs. Forster,” said the old man, “They’re from the Court, not the monastery. I’ll just go ask the mistress.” He set off to a different door, still holding the warrant. While they waited, Carey cursed under his breath and wrapped a silk scarf around his eyes again.

Forster came back without the warrant. “Mistress says she in’t ready to receive you yet, sirs, but you can look to your heart’s content.” His voice was deeply disapproving. “Here’s the keys cos it’s all locked up.”

Carey clearly couldn’t see where the old man holding out the keys, so Cumberland came forward and scooped them up, offered Carey his arm to be led. Carey swore again and shook his head, but took it.

“Remind me never to go blind again, my lord,” he muttered through his teeth, ramming his hat down on his head to shade his eyes. It was very clear to Cumberland that his friend should have stayed in bed and given himself time to recover.

“I know what you’re doing, Carey,” he said quietly. “But why the hell are you doing it?”

“The Queen told me to, my lord.”

“Ah.” Cumberland started to whistle a very rude ballad about the Mother Superior of Clerkenwell Convent, that famous London bawdy house.

They walked across the courtyard, Carey tripping on a couple of chickens who were fighting each other over a slug, and Cumberland found the door that the old man had pointed to.

“According to all official accounts, this is where Amy Dudley fell down the back stairs from the long gallery, broke her neck and died.” Carey explained.

The door was swollen with damp and needed a firm shove from Cumberland’s shoulder. Inside the stairwell the only light came from a large boarded trefoil window. Once in semi-darkness again, Carey took the scarf off and blinked around, looked up the famous staircase.

The steps went up along the wall from the small square hall, turned sharp left at a small landing, up again and right to a doorway. The stairwell had been built onto the end of the long gallery, probably for convenience so that family members could come straight out into the courtyard. The door they had come through was large and the stairs were in a line with it so they went forward, stepping carefully on the slippery stones spattered with white. There was a clatter of wings. Cumberland looked up and felt a chill down his neck as he saw little leather gloves hanging from the roof beams and a few bony heaps on the floor. The air was chokingly musty.

“Ugh,” he couldn’t help saying. “Bloody bats.”

Carey shrugged and went forward.

Had anybody been in here since they took Amy’s body out and locked the door? Cumberland wondered. “I expect it’s haunted too,” he added, trying to make light of it. “Stands to reason she’d walk.”

Carey said nothing to that either. Probably nobody had been here since the 8th September 1560. They must have locked the door and left it. Carey put his foot on the stairs, stamped a couple of times in case the wood was rotten, and went up to the turn. He stopped, blinked, peered to his right and started fumbling with the keys.

Cumberland had shaken himself like a dog and went up the stairs to find Carey opening another small door from halfway up which seemed the start of a small corridor. It was dark, lit only by what light came through the door behind them.

Carey went through the little door, having to stoop, and followed the narrow passage which led to another door. That one wasn’t locked, only latched, but it hadn’t been opened for a long time and creaked. Mainly because he didn’t want to be on his own with a possible angry female ghost, Cumberland followed.

Carey was looking out into the dimness. They were high up in the high-beamed great hall of Cumnor Place, clearly also unused for decades, standing on the narrow musicians gallery. The small door they had come from must have been for the musicians’ use, so they could come in from the back stairs and not bother the family or the rest of the household. Treading extremely carefully and looking out for holes, he stepped onto the gallery, creaked to the rail, and looked over. Cumberland, followed, teeth bared.

Below, benches and trestle tables for feeding a large household were stacked against the panelling and spattered with white, the high walls festooned with old swallows’ nests and the carved beams of the roof well-inhabited with creatures that rustled and moved. The lantern window gave only small light due to ivy but some slats of wood were broken and a couple of pigeons fluttered out in a panic. Cumberland had a sensation of eyes watching him and hoped devoutly it was only rats.

“A desolation and an habitation of owls,” Carey quoted conversationally to the Earl who nodded without commenting in case his voice shook. They went back to the door they had come through and along the short corridor that connected with the stairs leading up to the long gallery.

Once back on landing at the turn of the stairs, Carey looked about him carefully. Cumberland took his tinderbox out, but Carey touched his arm.

“No need, my lord, I can see better without it.”

“Damn it’s dark in here,” said the Earl. “Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“What if she…er…”

“If Amy Robsart’s ghost turns up, I’ll be delighted, my lord. I’ll be able to ask her directly who killed her and save myself some trouble.”

Cumberland knew his short laugh wasn’t very convincing. He was starting to sweat as Carey stood still and looked about. Why wasn’t he getting on with it, whatever it was?

Suddenly Carey moved. He went up the steps and touched something on the wall at a little lower than his chest height.

“Look at this, George,” he said in a soft voice full of suppressed excitement.

Cumberland was doing his best not to think of the rustling bats above and the probable rats below. He didn’t mind rats, didn’t like bats.…What if the rustling wasn’t bats? What if it was…? What was that? Carey’s sudden movement had made his heart thud, and he followed his friend, felt the small round hole Carey had somehow seen.

Well, that certainly was interesting. They both knew—from the way the edges of the hole were punched inward but the wood not broken—exactly what it was.

Carey was looking about for the bolt, but found nothing. He put his finger in the hole, followed its flight down the stairs to the turn where they had been standing, with the door to the minstrels’ gallery behind them.

Carey’s eyes narrowed and he stepped backwards through the small door again, looked up, blinked and smiled.

“Would you give me a boost, my lord?”

Sighing, Cumberland went through the door, couldn’t see anything at all up above the wall which Carey seemed to find of interest. He went on one knee and let Carey use his thigh as a step, which was less painful than using his cupped hands for the boost.

Nobody had bothered to finish plastering the musicians’ corridor. Above where the wall ended on the inside was the darkness of the roofspace and beams above. Carey had caught one of the supporting beams there and was pulling himself up into the space, knocking down choking dust and mummified owl pellets in a rain on Cumberland.

There was a triumphant “Hah!” Either Carey had taken leave of his senses or he had found something. There was a clatter, a grunt from Carey, scraping, and then the madman dropped back to the floorboards with something large in his hand.

That something was a crossbow. It was probably brother, or more likely grandfather, to the crossbow that had been fired at the two of them at the duckpond the day before, a large hunting bow, no need for a windlass to wind it up if you had the strength to bend it, but very lethal.