Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) Read online

  “A few days…” started the hangdog boy.

  “Last spring,” shouted the man hoarsely. “We’ve not been in London since…April.”

  “And where’s your Fool?”

  The boy started to cry. “Left us!” shouted the man. “Went his own way.”

  “How dare you!” shrieked Thomasina. “How dare you bring plague near the Queen’s Court? Get away! Go back to London at once and stay there until you’ve got better or died.” The high voice was tinged with the London stews and the mummer stepped back at her fury.

  The old mummer swayed by his cart, his mouth opening and shutting, bright blood on his lips.

  Carey began loading his pistol. Sometimes men went crazy in the first onset of plague, as their fever rose and they became delirious. That’s why they had to be shut up in their houses, cruel though it was, because if you came within ten feet of them you could catch it and die and all your family with you. Half the purpose of the Queen’s summer progresses was to get her out of London and away from the plague.

  “We’ve got no money,” sniffled the boy. “He said we had to come because we haven’t got no money what with the theatres all shut and Mr. Byrd wanted singers.”

  Thomasina pulled a small purse from her saddlebag and threw it to the boy. “Get yourselves back to London,” she said to him more gently. “Keep away from people. If any of you are alive in six weeks’ time, you may apply to the Master of the Revels again.”

  The old man was shouting hoarsely again, making no sense at all, about how he was owed money and he had a new play and the rest would catch up with them. The boy started crying again. Neither of the Master of the Revels’ men had firearms and were standing there looking as if they were about to bolt.

  Carey rode up beside Thomasina and aimed his pistol at the man. It was a long shot and he hadn’t wound his other dag, so he rested the gun’s barrel on his left wrist and breathed out to steady his pounding heart. With those death-tokens on him, shooting the old man would be doing him a kindness.

  Another lad, with bandages round his neck, climbed trembling out of the cart and persuaded the old man back into it. Thomasina had acknowledged Carey’s backing with a quick glance and a lift of her shoulder. He saw she had a throwing knife in her right hand, from the sheaf she kept under her wide sleeves. Although she was only three-and-a-half-foot tall, her childlike round face had a few lines on it. She could still pass as a child if she wanted to, and perhaps she did. She had begun as a tumbler at Paris Garden and was as good with throwing knives as Carey’s previous servant, Barnabus.

  They took their mounts widely around the stricken cart, Carey keeping his pistol pointed at the mummers all the way. One of the Master of the Revels’ men stayed on the road to be sure the mummers didn’t try coming into Rycote again. No doubt all of them would die out there in the field.

  Thomasina was shaking her head and puffing out her breath as she slipped her knife back under her brocade sleeve. Once they had put some distance between themselves and the plague, Carey bowed to Thomasina from the saddle. “Mistress Thomasina,” he said to her, “what an unexpected pleasure!”

  “Ha! You’re not sickening for anyfing yourself, are you?” she snapped at him, “I heard your servant got plague and died of it.”

  “Mistress,” said Carey reproachfully, “do you think I would be coming to Court if I had knowingly been near the plague? That wasn’t what he died of.” And how the devil did she know that?

  “What about him? Is that Sergeant Henry Dodd that I hear so much about?”

  Hughie’s mount pecked suddenly. “Er…no, that’s Hughie Tyndale, my new manservant.”

  Hughie’s mouth was half-open and he looked shocked. Perhaps he was recovering from his new master treating someone who looked like an overdressed little girl with such respect. Or maybe he was frightened by the plague.

  “Oh, ’e got plague then?” asked Thomasina.

  “Not as far as I know, mistress. There hasn’t been plague at Court, surely?”

  She shook her head. “We’ve been on progress since before it started to spread in London. If I had my way, I’d let nobody come near the Queen what hadn’t been in quarantine at least forty days and scrubbed with vinegar as well.”

  “Surely with the Court around her…”

  “It’s the idiot players and musicians all coming up from London to make their fortunes. As if there weren’t enough of them in Oxford already.” Her voice was changing back to the way courtiers spoke but she turned and fixed him with gimlet eyes. “So what are you doing here?”

  Carey almost coughed but stopped himself. “Really I’m on my way north for the raiding season after my father very inconveniently ordered me south,” he said. “I want to speak to my lord Earl of Essex urgently. After that I’ll be on my…”

  Thomasina snorted. “So you won’t want to talk to the Queen?”

  “Of course,” Carey continued smoothly, “I would be utterly delighted if you could arrange an audience for me, Mistress Thomasina, but I know what it’s like on progress and…”

  Thomasina’s brown eyes were narrowed. “Hmm. Well, there might be something you could do for me. I can’t promise, but…”

  Heart hammering again with the hope that he might actually be able to talk to the Queen directly and even (please God!) get his wardenry fee and warrant, Carey took off his hat, held it against his heart and bowed low in the saddle.

  “Mistress, if you can bring me to the Queen, I will forever be in your debt…”

  “Yes, yes, Sir Robert, I know all about you and your debts, no need to add to them. You can do me a small service first and then we’ll see, eh?”

  “Whatever you want, mistress.”

  He couldn’t leave his dag shotted and wound when he put it back in the case and he didn’t like the thought of trying to unload it while riding—always a ticklish business which could take your hand off if the powder exploded at the wrong moment. He aimed at a crow sitting on a branch ahead and pulled the trigger.

  He missed. The crow flew off the branch in a puff of feathers and the other crows rose up into the sky cawing and diving. Thomasina’s pony skittered, the pack pony came to a dead stop, and Hughie’s horse pirouetted for a moment before he got it under control again. Carey’s own horse was a hunter and not at all concerned. Thomasina’s two women were walking and one of them jumped and clutched the other, while the Master of the Revels man looked near fainting. He smiled at the thought of what Dodd would likely think of such jumpiness at gunfire.

  “Where are you planning to stay?” Thomasina wanted to know. “With your elder brother? Your father’s already in Oxford, I think.”

  “Er…no.”

  “Suing him, are you?”

  “No, that’s my brother Henry who stole my legacy. But George thinks he can still order me around.”

  “You won’t find space with his grace the Earl of Essex. He’s just sent most of his men ahead to find a good place for his pavilions at Oxford, so he’s in the manor house with the Queen and Lord Norris.”

  “I would very much like to see him…”

  “Don’t push it, Sir Robert. I have no pull at all with Essex.” Her face was wry with distaste. “How’s your reverend father?”

  “Very well, mistress, thank you…in good health.”

  She smiled then. “Now he’s a good lord, keeps the old-fashioned ways.” Once upon a time, Thomasina had been one of his creatures on display at Paris Garden stews, bought from Gypsies. She had learned her tumbling there and Lord Hunsdon had been the person who showed her to the Queen at a masque.

  “In trouble with him again, are you?” she asked, seeing through him as usual.

  “Er…possibly.”

  “Well, try the Master of the Revels then.” She tapped the white palfrey onward with a whip decorated with crystal beads that flashed in the sun. “You could make yourself useful there.”

  “How? My tumbling is middling to poor and my acting…”

&nbs
p; She sniffed at his sarcasm. “You can sing, Sir Robert, and he now has a desperate need for good tenors ’cos one of ’em’s dead of plague and the other’s dying on that cart. I’ll find you later.”

  She gestured for Carey to go past her and so he went to a canter up the path.

  Saturday 16th September 1592, afternoon

  They had to rein in well before they got to the church, the place was such a bedlam of tents, carts, fashionable carriages bogged in the mud, servingmen, people generally. You could hardly move at all. No women under the age of thirty were visible, but boys were running about everywhere because this was the Queen’s Court, not the King of Scotland’s, and propriety was usually observed.

  All the main barns were guarded by the Queen’s Gentlemen Pensioners in the red-and-black livery from her father’s Court that they wore on ordinary days, no doubt because the harbingers and heralds would have stockpiled food in them for the progress, bought on treasury tickets in advance. They were oases of order.

  The rest of the village was essentially a fair. At the back of the church some large makeshift clay ovens stood surrounded by faggots of wood with more being brought in on the backs of trudging peasants.

  Carey took one look at the only alehouse in the place, where a skinny middle-aged woman with a hectic look in her eyes was raking in cash. He didn’t fancy his chances with the queue.

  Still the smell of pies was making his mouth water. He’d eaten the pie he was buying when he heard Hughie’s Scotch accent; he’d had bread and ale as usual when he got up but that was all. Now he was starving. So he did what he often did on progress, and come to think of it, at war. He turned his horse to the left and rode slowly around the mass of humanity.

  At last he saw what he was looking for—the Earl of Cumberland’s blue-and-yellow-chequered flags around a small cottage surround by a mushroom ring of tents.

  Carey immediately rode toward the cluster, followed by Hughie, who was looking nervous, and by the pony which was busily taking mouthfuls of everything green and poisonous it could find in its path.

  A large henchman in a Clifford jack barred his way.

  “What’s yer name and what’s yer business?” he demanded, his voice from the Clifford lands in Chester.

  “Sir Robert Carey, come to see my lord, one follower, two horses, and a pack pony,” said Carey, looking around for the Earl. There was a table set up in a muddy orchard behind the cottage and sitting there was definitely none other than Sir George Clifford, third Earl of Cumberland, known as the Pirate Earl. Only now he was standing up and playing a veney with his opponent, a man in the buff coat of a master at arms.

  A yell announced a hit by the earl on his opponent. They saluted each other, then dropped their veney sticks and sat down at the table again. Carey wasn’t sure what was on the table, but it didn’t look like playing cards.

  The henchman had sent a lad to talk to the earl. Carey watched with a smile.

  Next moment, Cumberland had bounced to his feet and was striding across what remained of the vegetable garden to where Carey was waiting. He slid down from the saddle, prodded Hughie to do the same, and bowed as Cumberland came up to them, wreathed in smiles.

  “My Lord Earl,” Carey said formally.

  “By God, Sir Robert,” laughed Cumberland, “where the devil have you been? How’s Carell Castle treating you? What’s this I hear about the Grahams and the King of Scotland and…?”

  Cumberland pumped his hand and clapped him round the shoulders.

  “My new servingman, Hughie Tyndale,” Carey said. Hughie managed a reasonable bow, then reconsidered and went on one knee to the Earl.

  “Tyndale? Are you from there?” the Earl asked with interest, waving him up again.

  “Ah…ma family…is…was…m’lord,” Hughie stuttered, “I think…”

  “Ran away to Edinburgh, did they?” asked Cumberland. “What’s your trade then?”

  “Ay sir, Ah wis prenticed tae a tailor sir but it didnae suit and…”

  Cumberland bellowed with laughter.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve got yourself the perfect combination at last?” he shouted. “I thought that was your little thief Barnabus. Where’s he gone?”

  “I’m afraid he died of the flux in London.” No point in going into details.

  “Not plague?”

  “What do you take me for, my lord?”

  “Well, I’m sorry to hear it. I was hoping he could teach me knife-throwing one of these days. Speaking of which, come and look at this.”

  Carey told Hughie to find somewhere to put the horses and fetch some food for them, and to make sure the baggage stayed with them and not to unload the pony until they were under cover. Then he went over to the orchard with Cumberland.

  “Now then. D’ye see what we’re doing here?”

  The master at arms was standing four square by the table, arms folded. Carey looked down at the very nicely carved ivory and ebony chess set on a gold and silver board that Cumberland had robbed out of a Spanish ship a season before. It looked as if Cumberland was losing as usual, but Carey thought he could see some useful opportunities for the queen, possibly.

  “Now then…” said Cumberland, his dark face beaming. He was sporting a gold earring in his right earlobe like the Spanish grandee he took it from, and Carey thought it looked better on him than on Sir Walter Raleigh. None of his portraits showed that he had a piratical crooked smile with a tooth missing that somehow caused devastation among the ladies of the Queen’s bedchamber and worse than that amongst the Maids of Honour. However, like Carey himself, Cumberland had the sense to leave the maids strictly alone, for all their sighing and fluttering. He wouldn’t risk joining Sir Walter in the Tower for marrying a Maid of Honour in a hurry. Anyway, he was already married to the formidable Margaret Clifford.

  “Mr. Simmonds, would you mind if we went back a move?”

  The master at arms nodded and Cumberland replaced two pawns, which were in position to take.

  “Now then, see here. Chess is a dreadfully dull game, in my opinion, but this makes it fun. Normally with two pieces of equal power we’d throw a die or a coin to decide which wins the fight.”

  “Yes,” said Carey who actually preferred the newfangled way of doing it where the first that was in place took, regardless of power. That removed chance from the game and made it a matter of pure skill which suited him better. “And you’re fighting a veney instead?”

  “Exactly! First hit wins the piece.”

  Carey laughed. Cumberland was a very good fighter. “What an excellent martial exercise.”

  “Of course. I think I’m doing better with this game than the last one, Mr. Simmonds.”

  “Yes, my lord,” said Simmonds tactfully and Carey smiled knowingly at him because it was obvious to him from the board that in the long term, the Earl would lose no matter how good his veneys.

  “Are you playing a puissant queen?” Carey asked.

  “Oh yes, compliment to Her Majesty and all that. Makes it a better game anyway. We should play a game, Sir Robert.”

  “I’d be delighted, my lord,” said Carey, quite truthfully with a little tickle of excitement under his ribs at the idea he suddenly had for some side bets on himself to win.

  “So, what are you doing here anyway?” asked Cumberland later as they sat on a couple of stools and Carey munched the heel of a game pie from the Earl’s table. “Lowther already kicked you out of Carell?”

  “Not yet, though it’s a tricky situation,” Carey explained as much as he was willing of the tricky situation, then changed the subject. “I’m really here to talk to the Queen about my warrant and get my fee…”

  “Hah! Good luck. She’s in a terrible mood at the moment.”

  “Why? She’s usually happy on progress.”

  “No idea. Everything was fine until just after we got to Rycote and then suddenly…clouds! Thunder! Kaboom! Zap! Poor Devereux didn’t know what had hit him.…”

  “How much t
rouble is he in?”

  Cumberland smiled. “On Friday Devereux was driven from the presence in a hail of shoes, muffs, and one surprised lapdog, and today is out hunting to recover his spirits and bring Her Majesty some suitable trophy to calm her down…ideally venison.”

  “So what did he do?”

  The elegant tawny shoulders shrugged. “Nothing. For once he’s been angelic. He’s starting to get the benefit of the customs farm of sweet wines though he hasn’t found anyone to manage it for him yet. He’s recovered financially from his forays into France, more or less, though there are the usual rumours that he’s done something stupid with his money again.”

  Carey said nothing to this despite Cumberland’s expectant look. He also didn’t mention that the Earl of Cumberland himself was famous as the man who was taking good fertile land and pouring it into the sea as he fitted out one privateer after another in hopes of taking a big enough prize to recoup himself. The Royal Spanish treasure fleet probably wouldn’t be enough by now.

  “So you don’t know the reason for Her Majesty’s ill humour?”

  “No, it’s probably just the wind changing in her internal weather, that’s all. What do you expect if you call her Astraea?”

  “Do you know where my lord of Essex is hunting?”

  “No idea. He’s ignoring me at the moment. It’s all Cromwell and Mountjoy and his other cronies. Maybe tonight at my ball—poor Norris asked me to arrange it so the Queen won’t be bored.”

  They look around at the destroyed hedges, foraged apple trees, dung heaps, and escaped dogs that made a ragged new perimeter to the village. Every landowner dreaded the arrival of the Queen and all her Court on progress, and many had been known to fake absence so as to avoid the honour.

  “My Lord Norris was saying he’ll have to remit all the rents for the next five years until the place recovers,” Cumberland commented as he went back to his chess-veney game. “Thank God I live too far north for her to turn up at my place.”

  Carey laughed. “Your wife would love it.”

  “She wouldn’t. She’s not a fool. What about you? My Lord Hunsdon found you a juicy little heiress yet?” Carey shook his head. Cumberland looked comically appalled. “Oh, for God’s sake, Carey, you’re not still mooning after Lady Widdrington?”