Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) (40 page)

The Spaniard was smiling. “Eh…Lucky,” he said, “She is well, the Queen?”

“Yes,” said Carey. “We thought you were trying to kill her as well.”

“No. Pardon that I struck you yesterday, Señor. When you said…poison…I knew poor Sam was still trying to finish the business after thirty years.”

“It was meant for the Queen after he heard your song?”

The blood was bubbling from around the bolt and more was coming out of the Spaniard’s mouth, staining his clenched teeth.

“I think so. Last night I tried…to change his mind. But I was too sick to reach him. It took me all my strength to reach Oxford, I had none to find where Sam had gone.”

Jeronimo shook his head. “I put the music and a finger of the Queen’s glove in her baggage as it passed me on the road to Rycote and asked to speak to her, to confess to her. If she would, she must cause it to be sung. I am so sorry I never heard it sung by you, Señor, because I was busy with Captain Leigh and his men to take your man prisoner after I found him at the inn.”

Carey shook his head a little.

“
Pobre Sam
,” said Jeronimo, his voice creaking and fading now as the blood filled his lungs. “He loved me and I did not love him. I was cruel to tell him to wait for my music to be played. So long a wait. I think he was taken by the Queen’s inquisitor and so lost the headdress and other glove he kept.” Carey nodded. “And so this…a petard, a crossbow. He had meant to try at Rycote as well, in my memory, but when he thought you were her spy, he used his poison on you, Señor, instead.”

“Perhaps I should be more grateful than I am, Señor.”

Jeronimo smiled again. “It has fallen out better than I ever hope,” he whispered. “I will not die screaming in bed of my canker, and Sam will be with me in Purgatory. Instead a death of honour. Ask the Queen, if she forgives me, of her mercy, have a Mass said for our souls.”

A frown passed over Carey’s face. “Well…”

“Yes, superstition, you say. I will know the truth sooner than you, Señor. Only put it to your Queen. Please.”

Carey ducked his head. Dodd folded his arms and waited, scowling at Hunsdon’s men and the Gentlemen of the Guard now uselessly crowding the top of the tower to keep them back. Soon both Don Jeronimo and his old friend were dead.

***

The Queen passed on down to Christ Church, cheered by the scholars and went immediately to the privy chamber to rest and hear reports. A couple of hours later, with their soaked tabards handed over to be dried and brushed down, Carey and Dodd were brought in to see her sitting under her cloth of estate in the professor’s parlour she was using as her presence chamber with the Earls of Cumberland, Essex and Oxford attending, along with her ladies-in-waiting, including the red-haired one from Cumnor.

Dodd was in a terrible state of nerves which seemed to amuse Carey. “Now you see why I made you go to the stews the other night?” said the cursed Courtier whose fault it was. “If you were doing this the way you smelled that night, the best you could hope would be that any lapdog she threw at you wouldn’t bite you. Though my main worry was that you might then throw it back.”

“Och,” gasped Dodd, trying to stop his knees knocking. For God’s sake, he wasn’t this afeared of the King of Scots, was he? Well he might be, if he was going to meet him. But this was a powerful Queen who had been ruling since before he was born and had a short way with people who offended her.

The Gentleman of the Guard led them in and Carey bowed three times with tremendous elegance and then knelt on both knees. Dodd managed one bow, nearly fell over his own boots and landed with a thud on his knees on the rush matting which hurt.

“Well, Sir Robert, I see you have redeemed yourself,” came the Queen’s voice, very sardonic, somehow familiar…

“Your Majesty is most kind and understanding. If I may mention…”

“You did well with the quest I gave you, but then you fell for an extremely simple trick which could have been very dangerous to me. I will give you both your warrant and your fee, you can be certain of it, and in good time. But not today.”

Carey’s shoulders sagged a little, though he didn’t look surprised.

“Then, ma’am, may I present Sergeant Henry Dodd of Gilsland who dived under Your Majesty’s coach this afternoon to grab the petard there and put the fuse out and then helped stop the assassin on Carfax Tower.”

“Yes, indeed,” said the Queen’s voice, sounding very amused. “Sergeant, your advice yesterday was excellent although I could not have followed it, even if my cousin had not let Don Jeronimo escape. And it seems in the event that it was better so.”

The face was familiar too. Dodd blinked at the beaky old woman under the red wig and suddenly recognised her. Put a black wig on her and she was the black-haired lady-in-waiting. Now he thought of it, that woman had had ginger eyebrows. Jesu, he had shouted at her only yesterday, wagged his finger at her. Jesu. Oh God. Why the hell hadn’t Carey warned him?

His horror was obviously leaking onto his face, because she laughed. Jeronimo must have known who she was despite her black wig. That’s why he said what he said, broke his parole. He only gave it until he saw the Queen, after all. God, oh God. What would she do to him for shouting at her like that?

“Come here, Sergeant.”

He didn’t want to shuffle about on his knees, so he stood up, stepped forward hiding a wince, and knelt again nearer to her, smelling both old lady and rosewater and the incense caught in the velvet of her gown.

“We have persuaded my lord the Earl of Cumberland of your merit and so, Sergeant, we are very happy to present you with this, as a small token of our thanks for your service to us this day.”

It was a parchment scroll. Dodd took it and nearly dropped it. The Queen was smiling at him. Something was snuffling at his other hand and he looked down to see a little fat lapdog licking it.

“Felipe likes you,” she said. “High praise. I, too, like you Sergeant Henry Dodd and am still in your debt for your actions today. I had considered a pension but Sir Robert thought you would prefer what is in the deed there.”

She gave him her hand, covered in white lead paste and powder and heavy with rings, so he kissed the air above it. Then she nodded to him and he realised he was supposed to stand up and back away. He managed it, just about. What had come over him? While he knelt again just in case, and also to take the weight off his feet, the Queen smiled at Carey, too.

“Robin, I know you won’t approve, but I have also written to ask the French ambassador to dedicate a special Mass for the repose of the souls of Don Jeronimo de la Quadra de Jimena and Sam Pauncefoot. Mr. Byrd will arrange the music for it.”

“Your Majesty…”

“Please be quiet, Robin. You know my opinion on the matter which is that there is one God and Jesus is His Son and the rest is argument over trifles. Now you may go.”

Outside on the staircase, Dodd blinked down at the parchment in his hand. Was it a thank you letter? A warrant?

“Aren’t you going to open it, Sergeant?” Carey asked, grinning stupidly.

He did. Bloody foreign again. But then he saw the word “Dedo” and then the word Gilsland. What? He looked up at Carey.

“They’re the deeds to Gilsland,” Carey explained. “You now own it outright, freehold, with the messuage appertaining. She got it off the Earl of Cumberland in exchange for cancelling one of her loans to him.”

“The deeds…” There was his name in foreign. Henricus Doddus, Praetor whatever that was. “To me?”

“Yes. Gilsland is now legally yours. You were Cumberland’s tenant-at-will, now you are the freeholder of the land and the tower, to you and your heirs in perpetuity unless you sell it.”

Dodd’s heart was pounding. “Ye mean I dinna owe rent?”

“No. You have the expenses of maintenance of course, but Gilsland is now yours. Blackrent is your own decision.”

“Och.” He couldn’t take it in. What would Janet say? By God, she’d be ecstatic, none of her brothers nor even her father was anything more than a tenant-at-will. Now he could not be evicted legally. Illegally, of course, he could be turned off it if he couldn’t defend it, but he was now safe from a landlord’s whims and lawyers.

“Of course it won’t change much now,” Carey was still blathering, “and I hope you’ll continue in the castle garrison as sergeant of the guard as well as of Gilsland. But in due course…when…er…the King of Scots eventually comes in and not for a long time, of course, but eventually…you will have a secure title to your lands. Much better than the Grahams, for instance, who are in fact simply squatting on the Storey lands. It could be very important.”

Dodd managed to get his mouth to shut and looked back down at the deeds and then at Carey again. He blinked around himself at the stairs and a world suddenly changed forever by a bit of parchment in his hand.

He couldn’t yet say thank you to Carey, in case he greeted like a bairn so he coughed several times and said gruffly, “Ay sir. Ay. I’ll need tae think about it. Ehm…where now?”

Carey grinned with perfect understanding, which was annoying. “Back to Trinity College to pick up my clerk and my manservant and some supplies and horses, gather up the new men.”

“Ay, and then?”

“North,” Carey was laughing, “north for Carlisle. God knows what the surnames are up to, it’s the full raiding season. We might make York by nightfall.”

Historical Note

Spoiler warning!

All historical novelists rely on proper historians to inspire and guide them. Often one particularly well-written and well-researched book becomes the main reference—if I’m lucky enough to find one. As I’ve said before, the whole of the Carey series of books was inspired by George Macdonald Fraser’s marvellously funny and accurate history of the Borders
The Steel Bonnets
. For the account of Queen Elizabeth’s ceremonial entry into Oxford in September 1592, I used the contemporaneous account in Nicholl’s Progresses [The Grand Reception and Entertainmen of Queen Elizabeth at Oxford, 1592]—and yes, it was indeed raining.

Amy Robsart, Lady Dudley died on Sunday 8th September 1560. Her suspicious death changed Elizabeth’s life story and the history of her reign. For
An Air of Treason
, I used a recent account of the mystery by Chris Skidmore titled
Death and the Virgin: Elizabeth, Dudley and the Mysterious Fate of Amy Robsart
. Chris Skidmore has remarkably tracked down the original coroner’s report into her death and prints it in an Appendix—in full, both Latin and an English translation. It makes eye-opening reading because it was clearly not a broken neck that killed Amy Robsart. There is also a throwaway comment in the wildly inaccurate Catholic propaganda libel “Leicester’s Commonwealth” where it says “she [Amy] had the chance to fall from a pair of stairs and so to break her neck, but yet without hurting of her hood that stood upon her head.” [Skidmore] This intrigued me despite the fact that pretty much everything in “Leicester’s Commonwealth” is a fancifully scurrilous attack on the Queen’s favourite that would put modern tabloid journalists to shame for venom and lack of interest in veracity. But what if that bit was based on truth?

There are other intriguing tidbits for which there is unimpeachable documentary evidence: Why did Lady Dudley send all her servants out of the house on that day—a very unusual and quite daring thing for a wealthy and respectable woman to do? She had only two women with her who were ordered to stay in the parlour. Why was Amy in such a panic over her clothes, ordering a new outfit from her tailor and then, when it didn’t arrive in time, sending another one into Oxford to have gold lace put on the collar? Who was she trying to impress?

I’m not a proper historian, I’m a novelist. I like to look at what the record says—and then speculate wildly about what might really have happened while trying to stay true to the era and the characters of the people I’m writing about. So that’s what I did.

I hope you enjoy the result—as painstakingly uncovered by that “concentrated essence of Elizabethan” Sir Robert Carey and his much put-upon Sergeant Dodd.

Glossary

Apothecary – drugstore/druggist

Aqua vitae – brandy

Board of Green Cloth – committee in charge of adminstration and discipline at Court and within three miles of the Queen’s person (within the Verge)

Boot, the – instrument of torture popular in Scotland which used wedges and hammers to break the victim’s legs

Boozing ken – a small alehouse, often full of thieves etc (Thieves’ Cant)

Border reiver – armed robbers on the Anglo-Scottish Border, organised in family groups called surnames who used the Border as a means of escape

Buff jerkin – long sleeveless jacket made of tough leather, originally from buffalo

Carlin – old woman (Scotch)

Carrels – study rooms in a monastery or library

Cloth of estate – a square tent of rich cloth traditionally set up over any seat occupied by a monarch

Cods – testicles, as in codpiece

Coining – forging money

Coney-catch – con-trick (thieves’ cant)

Cramoisie – dark purple red, a very popular colour in Elizabethan England.

Culverin – medium sized cannon with a long barrel

Chess – there have been various manifestations of chess over the years; one form of Medieval chess had a queen that could only move one square at a time in any direction. The modern mobile or puissant (powerful) queen was introduced some time around the sixteenth century and may have been a compliment to Elizabeth. When two pieces of equal power were in position to take you could throw dice to decide which piece won

Chorus of Kings – a winning hand at Primero (Aces were low)

Dag – large muzzle-loading pistol, decorated with a heavy ball on the base of the handgrip to balance the weight of the barrel and hit enemies with when you missed

Daybook – diary

Debateable Land – area to the north of Carlisle that was invaded and counterinvaded so often by England and Scotland that in the end it became semi-independent and a den of thieves, as often happens

Dominie – Scotch for a teacher

Dorter – dormitory

Faggots – bundles of firewood, hence also the name of a kind of traditional English meatball made with offal

Falling band – plain white turned down collar, Puritan style

Farthingale – like a crinoline, a petticoat shaped with steel or wooden hoops to make the kirtle stand out in a particular shape; bell-shaped early in the reign, then more or less barrel shaped by the 1590s.

Footpad – mugger

French hood – a style of headtire popular in the 1550s

French pox – syphilis

“Greeted like a bairn” – cried like a baby

Groat – coin worth four pennies

Harbinger – scouts sent out ahead of the Court on progress, specifically to requisition lodgings and food for it

Headtire – woman’s stiffened headdress which went over her linen cap, mandatory for married women

Henbane of Peru – an early name for tobacco

Henchman – a male servingman or hanger-on, often providing muscle and armed back-up to a lord, although a young page might be called a henchman as well

Humoral complexion – the personal mix of the humours which dictated your character and which caused disease when unbalanced – Sanguine (Blood), Choleric (Yellow Bile), Melancholic (Black Bile) and Phlegmatic (Phlegm).

Incognito – in disguise

Jack – padded jacket interlined with metal plates

Jakes – outside toilet

Kirtle – skirt over the petticoats

Lay – scam (thieves’ cant)

Limner – painter in colours, also meant a miniaturist

Morion – high curved steel helmet, standard in sixteenth century

Muliercula – little woman or midget

Ordinary, the – fixed price meal at an inn

Papist – Catholic

Parole – after surrendering, a gentleman would give his word (parole) that he wouldn’t try to escape

Patent – a monopoly on the sale of some luxury granted by the Queen in the later years of her reign as a way of rewarding courtiers without costing herself anything, very unpopular with the ordinary people who had to pay inflated prices as a result

Penny loaf – bread roll. A one pound loaf of bread had its price fixed at 1 d but with the inflation of the late sixteenth century and high wheat prices, the loaf shrank though it still cost a penny

Pinniwinks – Scottish term for thumbscrews, a conveniently portable instrument of torture which broke the victim’s fingers

Poinard – long thin duelling dagger with an elaborate hilt, big brother to a stiletto

Polearm – any weapon involving a long stick with something sharp on the end

Punk – whore

Pursuivant – literally chaser, someone who acted for the state in tracking down spies, criminals, and traitors. Often freelance and unscrupulous

Phlegm – mucus or snot, the cold and moist Humour, one of the four Humours of the body and a constant problem for the English who were renownedly Phlegmatic

Red lattices – the shutters of any place selling alcohol would be painted red

Rickets – soft bones caused by vitamin D and calcium deficiency in childhood, common among the Elizabethan upper classes if they allowed their childrens’ diet to be supervised by physicians who advised against fresh vegetables (too Cold of Humour) and fish (too lower class).

Screever – professional scribe, later a pavement artist

Sleuth dog – hunting dog specially bred for tracking

St. Paul’s Walk – the aisle of old St. Paul’s Cathedral where fashionable young men would parade up and down in their finery

Statute cap – blue woollen cap that all common men had to wear so as to support the Wool industry – a statute more honoured in the breach than the observance

Stews – Turkish bathhouses (descending ultimately from Roman baths) that tended also to be brothels

Swan Rampant – this was indeed apparently Hunsdon’s badge and looked as described.

Terceiro – elite Spanish soldier

Tiring room – dressing room (from attire)

Upright man – gang leader

Venery – persistent naughty sexual behaviour. Now called sexual addiction, very common.

Veney – exact equivalent of a kata in karate or pattern/tul in taekwondo, this was a set series of sword moves practised with a partner so as to build up strength and agility. To keep the deathrate down, pickaxe handles with hilts (veney-sticks) were used

Wood – woodwild, mad