Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) (14 page)

“Probably. They were at the Scottish Court this summer.”

“Ah.”

Carey’s lids fluttered again and he croaked, trying to explain that he didn’t think it was Emilia who had poisoned him, despite it being with belladonna, but that she definitely was a spy.

At last they paid attention to him. He caught the Queen’s smell of rosewater and peppermint comfits to sweeten her breath. She was leaning over him with a smooth ivory cup of water with brandy in it. Behind her loomed the wide shape of his father in black Lucca velvet and gold brocade as usual.

He’d better drink whatever the Queen was giving him. With enormous difficulty he lifted his head and gulped to soothe his leathery throat. Something bumped his teeth and he just managed to avoid choking on a large dark bitter-tasting stone, rattling around in the bottom of the cup.

“There,” said the Queen, letting his head rest on the pillow again, “how are you, my dear?”

“Better,” he managed to say. And he did indeed feel better, though for some reason there was a sharp uncomfortable pain at the base of his belly. The window shutters were closed so the room was not so full of painful light as it had been.

The Queen stroked his cheek. “Your fever’s gone,” she said. “We’ll talk later, Robin.”

The blur of black and white topped with red swished out of the room. Carey’s father came closer to the bed.

“Well done, son,” he said, gripping Carey’s bruised shoulder, “She won’t forget this. It’s a good thing you’d stripped off your clothes and dropped your knife belt in the fever. You were in such a rage, laying about you and roaring about saving Elizabeth, it took every single clerk in the church to hold you down. But at least nobody’s dead. Now let’s hope we can keep it away from my esteemed lady wife, your mother, eh?”

“Yes, Father,” said Carey with difficulty. It had just occurred to him what the pain in his groin was. He urgently, desperately, needed a piss. Christ, he needed it right now!

“Father,” he croaked, “Ah…pot…please?”

“Eh?” Hunsdon was deep in thought.

“A chamber pot?”

“Oh…ah…I’ll send for a servant.…”

“Now!”

Carey was sweating, so perhaps Hunsdon could see the urgency because he bent, looked under the bed and, thank God and all His holy angels, brought out what Carey needed, which was miraculously empty. It took a moment to let go but the relief almost brought tears to his eyes.

As Lord Hunsdon put the pot very carefully down on the rush mat next to the bed, Carey smiled. Amazing the way your body ambushed you and the joy in even the basest things when it hadn’t been working for a while. He realised his father had gone to the door and he was afraid of being left alone, the first time he had felt like that since…must be the Armada year, when he was ill before.

“Father?”

Baron Hunsdon loomed over him again. “I’ve sent for your new clerk,” he said. “We’ve checked Mr. Tovey. I think it was a good idea hiring the boy—he’s got sense.”

“Hughie?”

“Not out of the woods yet—he’s in Lord Norris’ servant quarters here. He must have drunk more spiced wine than you did. Dr. Lopez says whether he lives or dies depends entirely upon his humoral complexion and there’s little he can do save prescribe his sovereign decoction of beanpods. The man so nearly died last night, we don’t suspect him of the poisoning, though we haven’t been able to find out much about him as he’s Scotch. We’ve not made any progress on who actually did it, but the two prime suspects seem to be out of it.”

“How…long…?”

“Have you been asleep? Well, it’s Sunday, you missed Divine Service in the church where you were fighting the poor clerks last night, missed a damned prosy sermon, and you’re missing Sunday dinner to be followed by a very fine allegorical masque. It’s Sunday afternoon.”

Carey groped for the water cup and his father caught his hand just before he knocked it over, put it into his fingers and poured more water for him. Carey tried to fish out the stone he’d nearly swallowed.

“Leave that, it’s a bezoar stone against poisoning,” said his father, “Dr. Lopez recommended it. The Queen’s lent you her unicorn’s horn cup as well.”

“Nearly swallowed…”

“I don’t think you should eat it, I think it’s actually a goat’s gallstone. I’ll drop it in the flagon.”

Carey couldn’t make out anything in the blur, not the cup, not the flagon, not his father apart from as a large shape. The world was a dazzle that made his eyes hurt again so he shut them tight and frowned unhappily.

“Mr. Tovey thinks your eyes will recover by tomorrow,” rumbled his father. “Dr. Lopez thinks it might take a couple of days.”

The full cup was in his fingers again so he drank the brandy-and-water mix. Now that he’d dealt with his immediate physical problems, he felt better. Slowly his mouth was getting less dry but he still had to keep his eyes shut.

“Father, would you close the bed curtains? Light hurts my eyes.”

“Can’t see a damned thing in here, but very well.” The curtains swept across making the bed stuffy but the pain in his eyes reduced.

“That necklace…fee for introducing Emilia Bonnetti to Essex.”

“Want me to warn him about her?”

Carey hesitated. Perhaps that hadn’t been a favour to his lord, after all? Would Essex understand how useful a spy so close to him could be? Or would he blame Carey? He couldn’t decide. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

“We’ll keep an eye on her. Young Cecil knows about her, too,” said his father. “What happened with the bad guns you sold her in Dumfries?”

“I’m not sure but I think my lord of Cumberland got the Bonnettis out of Ireland just in time, unfortunately.”

“Would she bear you a grudge?”

He thought about it. After all, she was Italian. “Probably, but once I made the introduction, she was in Essex’s party and nowhere near Hughie. And I don’t see why she would jeopardise managing the sweet wine farm by poisoning me. If it wasn’t Hughie either, I can’t think who else it could have been. Most of my enemies are in and around Carlisle now.”

“And the rest of them are creditors who want you alive,” growled his father. Carey said nothing because this was manifestly unfair even if it was true. “We haven’t had any luck with witnesses. They were all too drunk or busy dancing. Ridiculous bunch of popinjays.”

For some reason that reminded him of the incident at the duck pond. He told the story to his father, annoyed that he couldn’t see Hunsdon’s face for the reaction.

It was a mistake because Hunsdon sat down on the bed and took him through the story twice more. Carey’s throat was dry again and he was suddenly exhausted.

“A crossbow argues against Signora Bonnetti because of the difficulty for a woman of drawing and carrying it. You say it was a deer-bolt?” Carey nodded once. “So it must have been a full size crossbow. Hmm. I’ll set a guard on your door, Robin, and I don’t want you going out without at least three men with you.”

Carey shrugged. “God looks after me always.”

“God likes us to look after ourselves as well, so He doesn’t have to do all the work. Be careful in the Queen’s matter, Robin.”

“What is it that she doesn’t want you to tell me? What was the message she got with the music?”

He thought his father was smiling at his boldness. Well, it was worth a try. He got no answer though. His head was pounding again and he felt too tired to do anything else. Hunsdon patted his hand, lying on the coverlet. Carey felt the roughness of sword callouses there which could only mean his sixty-year-old father was still employing a swordmaster to play veneys with him regularly.

“I’ll work on her, but she’s a Tudor and she knows the value of information. She wants you to come at the Robsart killing with a fresh mind, since nobody else has got anywhere with it.”

“But Father, what if…”

“Ah, Mr. Tovey, thank you for coming.”

“M…my lord, how is he?”

“Very much better,” Carey said, “thanks to you knowing what was happening.” Could that mean Tovey was…No. Surely not. Without the clerk’s prompt action, he would probably be dead by now. “But I still can’t see a bloody thing at the moment,” he added resentfully. “And do you know what happened to my Court suit, I left it hanging on a couple of saints in the church…?”

“Yes, sir, I got Mr. Coleman to help me bring it up before Divine Service this morning. It’s hanging on the wall here.”

Well thank God for that at least, as the Court suit was probably worth more than the church building itself.

“My lord, Dr. Lopez wants a sample of Sir Robert’s water…”

There were careful movements around the pot, someone was filling a flask. The pot was then removed and emptied, no doubt by one of his father’s men. He didn’t really care. He was falling asleep where he lay propped on pillows in the darkness of the bed curtains. He yawned and struggled to remember something else that was very important. Oh, yes…

“Father, where’s Sergeant Dodd? Should be here by now.”

His father was moving, preparing to leave. “I’ve been looking out for him,” came the rumble. “No sign of him yet. I’ll send him straight up when he arrives. Sleep well, Robin. I’ll have a man at your door.”

Blackness welcomed him with strange dreams that broke apart and fought each other. One was of Elizabeth Widdrington holding him tight and him kissing her the way he had longed to since the Armada year. One was of a prison cell.

Sunday 17th September 1592, late afternoon

He woke up to a darker chamber, restless, his stomach aching and his head hurting again, so he sat up on the bed among the pillows and tried to think.

The important things were the inquest report and witness statements. Had Thomasina herself realised just how damning they were? The men of the jury had clearly been stout honest gentlemen because despite extreme pressure from powerful people, they had reported some things that made a nonsense of their obedient verdict of accidental death. Everyone knew that Amy Robsart had died of a broken neck. What everyone knew was wrong.

A little while later someone knocked. It was John Tovey, coming in carrying candles which hurt Carey’s eyes. He got the fire going again.

“Mr. Tovey, I want you to go to whichever kitchen is serving the Queen and ask them for food for me and when you come back, bring your penner and paper. Make sure the food is taken from a common pot, no small meat pies or penny loaves, for instance.”

“Will you want me to taste the meal, sir?”

The lad caught on quickly; that was good. “Yes please, Mr. Tovey, if you would. When you come back.”

“Yes, sir.”

Was Tovey the poisoner or in league with him or her? Very unlikely since all he’d had to do when Carey called him the night before was set up a cry of “Plague” and leave him until he was dead. Certainly the poisoner or his or her accomplice wouldn’t instantly identify what was wrong and get him to purge. Besides, Carey had picked him out personally, almost at random.

By the time Tovey got back with more food from the Queen’s kitchen, set up in one of the manor’s parlours, Carey was hungry and bored. He’d tried reading his papers but he couldn’t make anything out, in fact he couldn’t even look out of the windows for the dazzle. Goddamn it. Although come to think of it, that was a very promising metaphor to use on the Queen sometime—being dazzled blind by Cynthia, the Moon Goddess and so on and so forth.

Tovey ate most of the bread, cheese, butter, and sausage plus a good half of the large wedge of game pie he’d brought. Once he started eating, Carey found his stomach and gullet were still sore from being sick and so he mostly just drank the ale.

“Mr. Tovey, where did you learn to spot belladonna poisoning?”

“Ah…my mother was a wise woman, sir. She taught me some things. When she died, I went to my father. He sent me to a good Oxford apothecary to prentice to him and learn my letters better than he could teach me.”

“And then?”

“My master taught me Latin as well as many other things and when he found I was an apt pupil he sent me to the grammar school. I was able for all things to do with letters so I went to study at Balliol, sir, as a servitor. He died of plague a little after I took my degree, alas. God keep him. He was a good and kindly master—we often spoke about the mysteries of alchemy and the different qualities of matter. I found it hard to get work in Oxford where there are so many clerks, so I went back to my father and that’s why I came to clerk for the Queen’s secretaries, in hopes of finding a place.”

“Good thing for me you did. Now then, those papers I asked you to translate. You understood the significance of them?”

Silence. Carey couldn’t even see the boy’s face, much less read it. His voice came as a whisper. “Yes, sir.”

“Explain it to me.”

“I have friends at Gloucester College where she was buried. Everyone knows Lady Dudley fell down the stairs at Cumnor Place and broke her neck and everyone says she was murdered, but I didn’t…I couldn’t understand why the inquest found for accidental death.”

“Somebody very important told them to,” Carey said.

“Well yes, sir, but why then did they say she had neither stain nor bruise on her?”

“Go on.”

“She fell down the stairs and hit her head with two dints, one-half an inch, the other a couple of inches deep so her skull must have been broken. How come she didn’t bleed?”

“And?”

“And what, sir?”

Carey was surprised he hadn’t spotted the other ridiculous thing. “According to witnesses, her headdress was untouched and on her head.”

A pause. “Oh.”

“Yes, oh. No bruises—possibly that could be because when she actually fell down the stairs she was already dead, though I doubt it. You can bruise for a while after death. No stains—maybe, just perhaps, her skin wasn’t broken even though her skull was and so she didn’t bleed. But her headdress untouched? With a two-inch dent in her head? I don’t think so.”

Silence. Carey continued, “They reported it truly even though they had been told what their verdict should be, because they were under oath. I assume that whoever was pressuring them didn’t bother to read the whole report because if they had, I expect they would have sent it back to be rewritten.”