Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) (34 page)

“Would she? I doubt it, Robin. You didn’t know her then. She learnt a lot from the troubles of her cousin Mary Queen of Scots.”

“The only thing I don’t understand is why the Queen took the risk of meeting with her at all.”

“Amy Dudley was an appallingly obstinate woman, no doubt how she trapped a Dudley in the first place. She was a God-fearing dull woman who loved her husband deeply and could never understand how Eliza could fascinate men, the magic she had—still has, for God’s sake. Amy struggled terribly with her conscience, I think because she would have to testify on oath that the marriage had not been consummated when of course it had been. She was just barren.” Hunsdon sighed. He could no longer see the matter as he had as a young man. “She kept changing her mind and asking for more money, more guarantees and she insisted she had to meet the Queen and see her sign the agreement. Nobody would do as a go-between, it had to be the Queen herself. Eliza was furious about it.”

“I’m sure.”

“They looked extraordinarily alike, you know, red hair, white skin. Amy was like the Queen diluted with milk. I’ll ride over and see Her Majesty tomorrow, to talk about the arrangements for Friday and I can ask her…”

“Can I ride with you?”

Hunsdon was surprised. “Robin, won’t you be bailing Sergeant Dodd and negotiating with Heneage…” Robin’s grin of triumph did his heart good to see as he hadn’t been looking forward to dealing with Heneage for the man’s release. He bellowed with laughter when he heard what had happened.

“Colin Elliot? He’s called himself…?” Hunsdon knew more than he really wanted to about the Border surnames and he knew that there was a vicious bloodfeud between the Dodds and the Elliots which had burst out with spectacular nastiness in the 1570s after the Revolt of the Northern Earls. Wee Colin Elliot was a very dangerous raider and headman about the same age as Robin.

“Yes,” said Robin, “Dodd always uses that name as an alias, it means anyone who knows him gives himself away with shock and any crimes he might commit are blamed on Wee Colin by the ignorant.”

“Excellent. You can certainly ride with me to Her Majesty tomorrow, Robin, if your eyes are recovered completely.”

“They’re much better, thank you father, though to be honest I was never blind, only dazzled. I could actually see better in the dark. That’s how I found the murder weapon at Cumnor.”

“You found the crossbow? Where was it?”

“High up in the space between the passage ceiling and the roof of the hall. The man came through the little door to the minstrel’s gallery.”

“I know that, damnit, I chased him. How the devil did he have time to hide the crossbow there, I thought he threw it away. We spent a day looking for it with blood hounds a couple of days later.”

They stared at each other and came to the answer at the same moment.

Hunsdon felt the blood leave his face. “Oh my God, there were two of them.” He actually staggered at the enormity of what he had done all those years ago. Robin was at his shoulder at once, supporting him to the bench again, holding his arm. Hunsdon’s legs had suddenly gone to water.

“I left her alone,” he croaked, “I chased after the man I saw and I left her alone with a killer…”

“Father,” came Robin’s distant voice in the roaring, sounding worried, “He didn’t kill her, didn’t do anything…”

Hunsdon shook his head slowly. Suddenly there was a band around his chest and his left arm was aching. I need to be bled, he thought distantly, I’ll see Dr. Lopez when I can.

Robin was anxiously patting his hand and looking around for a servant.

“I have…some physic in my sleeve pocket,” Hunsdon wheezed.

Carey felt for it, pulled out the little flask, poured some of it into the cap.

“That’s enough,” Hunsdon said, took it, pinched his nose and drank it down. While Robin fumbled his flask back, Hunsdon waited for the pounding to subside and the roaring to quiet.

“Father,” said Robin tactfully, “You mustn’t blame yourself. In the event, she wasn’t killed!”

“You’re right,” Hunsdon said with an effort, “But I was an impulsive fool and I chased the man that had shot at Amy and then clubbed her down with his crossbow while Eliza tried to help Amy. I didn’t catch the bastard, even then I wasn’t fast enough and all the time the man had a confederate. Well, if I didn’t know it before I know it now: Almighty God wanted her for Queen.”

“What did the Queen do while she was alone?”

“I’m not sure. She must have been crazy with the shock for she took off your Aunt’s headdress that she was wearing and put it on Amy’s head—I suppose to make her respectable because Amy’s was dented beyond wearing. She supported Amy on her skirt I think, from the way it was dirtied and used it to wipe off the blood that came out of Amy’s ears and eyes. I forced her to leave the woman though she was crying with frustration and we rode away. Stupidly, I made her throw away the bundle she had made, into a bush by the old monastery, and that was one of the few times she obeyed me. I wish she hadn’t.”

“I expect that bundle was what Topcliffe found in 1566.”

Hunsdon shook his head. “Perhaps. I went back with bloodhounds, I told you, Robin. We didn’t find the crossbow and nor did we find that bundle. They must have tidied them up and taken them away.”

The pain was subsiding from his arm and the invisible iron band was loosening. Hunsdon suddenly felt exhausted.

“So why on earth did she suddenly bring it all up again?”

Hunsdon shook his head again, trying to clear it, his brain was no longer working. “I’m sorry, Robin, I have to get to my bed. Would you…er…accompany me?”

“With good heart, Father,” Robin said, considerably more filial than normal, must still need money. He gathered up Hunsdon’s stick and supported him on his arm back across the garden and with some trouble up the stairs to the Master’s lodgings. Hunsdon’s manservant came to help him undress and bring him watered brandy. Hunsdon could hear them muttering to each other, that he had had a couple of these attacks before, that Dr. Lopez thought it was a syncope of the heart and had prescribed an empiric dose of foxglove extract to reduce Hunsdon’s choleric humours. Of course my choleric humour is unbalanced, he thought, there’s my devil of a sister to deal with.

“Don’t go to the Queen tomorrow, sir,” Robin urged. “You need to rest first. Please?”

“Nothing wrong with me,” growled Hunsdon, leaning against his high-piled pillows. “Just need bleeding. I’ll see a barber surgeon tomorrow and go in the afternoon.”

“But…”

“Damn it, I can still play a veney, I shall be perfectly well tomorrow. I’m just overwrought at the moment, what with the progress, Her Majesty’s tantrums, your bloody inconsiderate and careless drinking of poisoned wine and now this…”

Robin grinned exactly like the boy Hunsdon had so often had to shout at for running away to play football with the stable hands and dogboys and occasionally beat for more serious crimes. “There may well have been two of them but God looked after Her Majesty as He always seems to look after me.”

“Can’t think why, it must be a time-consuming business keeping a bloody fool like you safe…”

Quite surprisingly Robin put his arms around his father’s shoulders and hugged him tight. Hunsdon gripped back which eased his heart a little more.

Wednesday 20th September 1592,
early morning

They had left well before dawn from the old monastery, with two of the three remaining horses drawing two of the three carts still left from the Lord Chamberlain’s provision train. A couple of the men had run in the night after refusing to dig graves for the three men of the troop Dodd had killed there. He had sixteen men following him and they walked reasonably well for the ragged starveling creatures that they were. No doubt they had done a lot of walking.

Nobody except Kat had got any sleep—she was curled up in a blanket on one of the carts. The rest of them had spent some time making themselves as tidy as they could and their weapons as clean and sharp as they could under Dodd’s tongue-lashing. What had come over him, he wondered? It was only a few months since he had furiously resented Carey’s ridiculous whims in the matter of cleanliness and tidiness, but here he was forcing his new followers to clean and sharpen their swords, knives or pikes and their faces as well. He himself spent an hour cleaning and straightening his new poinard and his familiar friendly sword, sharpening them and oiling them.

All three of the carts had a mark he recognised instantly, the mad duck of the Careys, or, as Carey called it, the Swan Rampant. The two remaining carthorses were in bad condition, mainly from neglect and bad feed, so Dodd set two stronger men to each cart to help it along on the rutted track north from the monastery, and four of the ones he thought might make trouble to pull the third cart and really give them something to moan about.

They had reached Oxford city gate after it opened and joined the queue of farmer’s wives laden with produce to sell, some nasty covert looks from them as well. Dodd was comfortable on the bare back of the mare he had part-ridden from London, bandages round his feet, Harry Hunks’ large buffcoat making him a bit more respectable and his recovered hat on his head. And he had his sword at his side and his own boots in the cart next to Kat.

He didn’t dismount to talk to the sheriff’s man at the gate, noticing a couple of the Queen’s Gentlemen Pensioners of the Guard behind him. He did strain his Adam’s apple to talk Southern.

“Ay’ve the baggage train sent up from London by may lord Baron Hunsdon that wis waylaid by sturdy beggars. These men helped me get it back.”

“And you are?”

The goats at the back being led by the youngest man, rightly suspecting something was up, started making a racket and trying to escape. The gateman was eyeing him with distaste.

“And you are?” he repeated.

Dodd drew himself up to his full height and glared down at the man. He knew the black eye and bruising that flowered green and yellow on his face and nose were hardly helping him but why should he care?

“Ma name is…” he started, then caught himself. “Ach…Mr. Colin Elliot, Sir Robert Carey’s man.”

Now that got a reaction. The gateman turned and shouted at one of the lads quietly collecting weapons from the men wanting to come into the town. The boy touched his forehead and pelted off and Dodd and his party were waved aside into the space by the gatehouse, where another merchant was protesting about paying so much tax.

Dodd sat back and tried not to doze. It was hard work being a captain, that was sure, especially when you had no wife to threaten people with. And his belly was rumbling too—when was the last time he had a decent meal, he wondered. Saturday?

There was a stir and a shout: Carey was riding through the crowds at a trot, followed by four mounted liverymen of his father’s, his face full of delight. Dodd was appalled to find that he was glad to see the courtier too, so he scowled and his mouth turned down with the effort of not smiling back.

“By God!” shouted Carey, “Mr. Elliot, I’m very happy to see you at last. That wicked man Dodd is safely locked up in the town jail. Now is that the baggage train my brother so carelessly lost?”

“Ay, sir, I think it is, there’s a bit left o’the supplies.”

“Do you know who took it?”

Dodd was trying to communicate urgently without words. Carey’s eyes passed over the men behind him who were looking self-conscious.

“Nay sir, but these lads helped me…ehm…get the supplies back.”

Eyebrows up, a look of perfect comprehension on Carey’s face.

“Spendid, splendid! My lord father’s in Trinity College and my brother will be very happy to hear that at least some of the train is here. Do you know what happened to the carters bringing it?”

“Ah think they went back tae London, I dinna think they was killed.”

“That’s a relief. Perhaps they’ll turn up again at Somerset House. Now then, gentlemen, I think I recognise some of you from France.”

Dodd made a few introductions, ending with the Spaniard who swept off his hat in an accomplished Court bow. “Don Jeronimo de la Quadra de Jimena,” he said.

Dodd hadn’t often seen Carey do a double take. “Indeed?” he said, responding with a fractionally shallower bow. “The musician?”

Something in Jeronimo’s lean weary face settled and hardened. “
Si, Señor
,” he said, “
El músico
.”

“Ehm…” Dodd put in with a clearing of his throat. With great reluctance he slid down from his horse and hobbled into a corner of the yard, beckoning Carey to follow him.

“What happened to your feet, Sergeant?” Carey asked, looking at the rags Dodd had wrapped around them.

“Ah’ll tell y the whole of it over a meal, sir, but first I want ye tae arrest Don Jeronimo and keep him safe.”

“Why?”

“He’s asked for a meeting wi’ the Queen…”

“He has?”

“And he says she’ll grant it.”

Carey’s eyes narrowed and he took breath to shout an order. “Take him quietly,” Dodd put in, “so the lads arenae upset by it.”

Both of them moved toward where Jeronimo was waiting, his back set against the guardhouse wall, eyes hooded.

“He helped me for nae reason but that he wanted tae talk to ye. I think he was the one convinced Captain Leigh to come this way in the first place and I seen him at the inn the night before the bastards took me and robbed me in the forest.”

“Of course they’re the sturdy beggars who have been making the Oxford road so dangerous.”

“Ay, sir, I wis careless and they had me easy an’ ma suit and horse and ma boots and sword. They’re wanting their pay fra the Earl of Essex and had nae ither way of making a living. I cannae say I wouldna do the like in their place, though I’d do it better, I hope.” He vaulted back onto the mare to save his feet again and scowled at them.

Back with the little knot of worried looking men, Carey went over to Jeronimo, leaning on his wall, and made himself extremely affable, speaking French to the man. That was ama-zing, in Dodd’s opinion, how Carey could suddenly switch into speaking foreign, easy as you like. Mind, when you looked at Jeronimo carefully, you could see he was hollow-eyed and often drank his medicine now. Perhaps it was true he had a canker.