Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) (18 page)

A tray was placed on the bed next to him by her woman and good smells came from it to distract him. He recognised a mess of rhubarb and prunes which were clearly on prescription from Lopez who must have the usual doctor’s faith in purging. He groped up a napkin and tied it round his neck to save his father’s dressing gown as he ate.

“Who the hell was the bastard talking about?” he asked with his mouth full of pottage and bread. “Do you know, mistress?”

“No, but I’m sure the Queen does and I’ll ask her the minute you finish your dinner.”

“Did you get a record of that meeting, Mr. Tovey?”

“Y…yes, sir.”

“Good. Make a copy of it for my father. Make a copy of the meeting with Lord Burghley as well.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m impressed at your ability to keep my Lord Treasurer from his bed, Mrs. de Paris,” Carey admitted. “When can I speak with the Queen?”

“When she chooses.”

Instead of protesting, Carey attacked a couple of very good braised quail in wine with his fingers and teeth. “Why the devil is she being so coy?”

No answer from Thomasina. And the quail had been stuffed with prunes as well. Jesu, he’d have the squits soon. He felt carefully amongst the dazzle and found a penny loaf to mop up the sauce. It was enraging, having to fumble around for food and he snarled at Thomasina when she offered to feed him. He found the salat of autumn herbs was too messy to eat and he didn’t like herbs much anyway, couldn’t understand why the Queen seemed to be so addicted to them, ignored the goddamned rhubarb. Tovey brought a bowl and ewer over to him and he washed grease off his fingers and face. Please God he never got blinded permanently or ever again.

“I don’t know how much more I can do before I’m better. I want to go and visit Cumnor Place,” he said to Thomasina. “But I don’t see the point if I can’t see. Most of the people I want to talk to are dead or otherwise unavailable.”

The chief of those he wanted to talk to was, of course, the late Earl of Leicester. Despite what he had said to Burghley, Leicester was the second most likely suspect still.

“When’s the Court removing to Oxford at last?”

“We’re going privately to Woodstock palace tomorrow so that the Queen can rest for a few days and deal with business before she makes her full public entrance on Friday.”

“The word was that the Queen was in Oxford a month ago—why has it taken so long?”

“Yes, we were due in August, but they had some cases of suspected plague and we took a detour while the town was checked. That’s why we’ve doubled back on ourselves from Rycote to Woodstock again. There haven’t been any more cases in Oxford.”

“Where is Cumnor Place, by the way?” Carey asked casually as he absentmindedly picked up the horn spoon and started eating Dr. Lopez’ medical dish. At least they had put sugar and spice in it.

“It’s about ten miles from here, due south,” said Thomasina.

“And from Oxford?”

“About three miles, southwest. But the Queen would prefer you to wait until you’re fully recovered.”

“Of course.” He drank more ale and then yawned. Thomasina clapped her little hands together briskly and a woman came and took the tray. He yawned again, rubbed his face.

“Sleep well, Sir Robert,” said Thomasina. “I’ll bring you more Privy Councillors to question in the morning.”

“Thank you, mistress,” said Carey, suppressing another yawn.

Once the door had shut behind her, he beckoned Tovey over to the bed and whispered to him very quietly. “Would you do me a favour, Mr. Tovey? Would you take this ring to the Earl of Cumberland? I lost it to him yesterday at a very peculiar game of chess and only just remembered.” It was his ruby ring with his initials carved in it that the Queen had given him for daring to take the news of Mary Queen of Scots’ execution into Scotland. He almost never hocked it. Tovey wouldn’t know its meaning but Cumberland did and would almost certainly be game for what he purposed. Be damned to his blindness, horses have eyes, after all.

Bless him, Cumberland was there quickly, swaggering in wearing a particularly loud combination of red and tawny, no doubt for the masque Carey had missed.

“What’s this I hear about you having been struck blind for general venery, Sir Robert?”

“Somebody put belladonna in my spiced wine last night. Was it you, my lord?”

“Damn, I never thought of that. Good idea, though. What were you playing at? You introduced my luscious Emilia to m’lord of Essex and next minute she’s gone off with him and you’re puking and raving all over the church. Completely wrecked my plans.”

“And mine. I’m sorry to tell you, my lord, that my eyes should get better soon enough but at the moment I can’t see properly which is a confounded nuisance as I have a lot to do.”

“And what do you want me to do?” Cumberland sat on the side of the bed and gave Carey back his ring. “Break you out again?”

“Yes, my lord,” said Carey and explained his plan.

The Earl put his head back and laughed. “By God, Carey, I’ll say this, you’re reliably entertaining. Two hours before dawn do you?”

“Yes, my lord. Thank you.”

“The Queen will know by sun-up.”

“She can hardly complain when I’m simply obeying her own orders.”

“She most certainly can, as you know as well as I do. Never mind. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Cumberland laughed again as he walked out past Sergeant Ross. Carey beckoned the swordmaster over.

“Where’s my father?”

“He went to Oxford as soon as he was sure you would recover, sir. He left about midday.”

Carey told Ross what he planned and why. “I don’t intend to try evading you if you want to stop me,” he told the man. “But I hope you won’t.”

“Your father ordered me to see you wisnae annoyed, sir,” Ross pronounced. “Seems I’d be annoying you if I tried to stop you.”

“Exactly, Sergeant.”

“So I’ll come with ye, sir.”

In the worrying absence of Sergeant Dodd, that was quite a comforting thought. Carey turned over and lay down in the welcome darkness of the curtained bed, only to have to get up again as Dr. Lopez’s prescriptions did their work. Finally he got to sleep, and was grateful not to remember any dreams.

Monday 18th September 1592, morning

Somebody had left the door open and he was freezing cold, shivering. The blankets had crumbled to useless papery things and some evil bastard had clamped a black helmet over the whole of his head so it was hard to breathe or see because whoever had done it was hitting the helmet over and over with a hammer.

Dodd tried to turn over and punch him and somebody poked a gun in his ribs. His fingers felt for his knife and found nothing but goosebumped skin and some painful bruises, plus his knuckles hurt.

“Och,” he muttered and tried to open his eyes. They were clamped shut which froze his arse even more with fright. Was he blind? Blindfolded?

The banging on his head was getting worse now. Shaking, he put his hand up to his eyes and found crusting all over them and crusting around his nose which he thought might be broken. The bit at the end of his nose was bent. Damn it, somebody had broken his nose. Again.

Before he could think too much about it, he gripped his fingers on the bent part and twisted it back to where it belonged.

Bright white pain flared through the middle of his face and then faded down through red and violet to a dull brown. His nose was bleeding again but not too badly and he could breathe a bit better.

From the feel of them, his lips were busted and a front tooth was loose but not lost. Whoever had kicked him had done it more than once but not aimed well.

The wind was blowing a gale and he was freezing cold. With straining hard work he could turn over and curl up a bit in the rustling leaves and sticks and stones and bright spikes of bramble and twigs.

His mouth was shockingly dry. And he was naked. Bare as a peeled twig. That was why he was so cold. The bastards hadn’t even left him a shirt to keep him decent.

Dodd lay still in the little dip full of leaves that his body had apparently crawled into by itself at some time during the night. Something of what had happened was coming back to him. He had been watering Whitesock and the mare at the stream and somebody had managed to creep up behind him and hit him…or more likely, drop on him from a tree. Ay, that was likely since his horses hadn’t noticed anything. Stupid bloody soft Southron horses, no Northern hobby would have let anyone ambush him like that.

He thought he’d done his best, fighting in the fog of being hit on the head to start with, mainly by instinct. The front of his head was sore as well as the back so perhaps he’d managed to headbutt someone. He hoped so.

Lying in the darkness of his sealed eyelids in the little stand of coppiced hazels from the smell, Dodd felt the black ball of rage in him that never really went away. It was in the pit of his stomach, swelling. It worried part of him even though the heat of it was giving him strength.

Somebody—several somebodies—had dared to rob him and beat him like a dog. They had taken everything. Carey’s loaned suit, his boots, his shirt, his sword that he was fond of, his knife that he’d had since he was a boy and lost several times in mad card games or bets on horse races, but always won back, his hat, his nice new horses reived from Heneage himself…Christ, they’d even taken his underbreeks. And they must have spent quite some time kicking him once he was on the ground too, the bastards, though they’d made the mistake of failing to slit his throat while they had the chance and for that they would pay. All of them would pay. Firstly in money and fire, and then in blood as they died screaming and, if he was feeling merciful, he might not wipe out their entire families unto their babes and seventh cousins. Possibly. If they died painfully enough.

Rage was making his breath come short and he still couldn’t get his blood-caked eyes open and find out if he really was blind. Though from the racket the bastard birds were making over his head, he knew it was probably dawn.

Cursing to himself he worked his tongue and snorted to get some spit up, then rubbed and peeled away some of the blood on his eyelashes. His head was full of metal from the blood smell. His whole body hurt, but he didn’t think he’d broken any bones—maybe there was a rib busted from the way it hurt to breathe.

Obscurely he blamed the Deputy Warden. It had to be his fault for bringing him south from Carlisle and into foreign parts where they were barbarians and committed long-winded complicated suicide by beating him up and robbing him. Goddamn the bastards. And the Deputy and…

He actually heard the sticky sound as his eyelids parted and he could see past them into the world.

A lovely golden sunrise was stirring up the birds who were shouting at each other with no need at all, it being September. He hated them.

Slowly and carefully, Dodd sat up in the leaf litter and moss. He scraped his head on one of the hazel branches above and was chittered at by a squirrel with a nut in its mouth. Dodd reached for it to strangle it and stop the noise but it “Kikikikkked” at him and escaped with a flirt of its russet tail.

While he waited trembling for all the various parts of him to stop banging and throbbing, he looked at the twigs above. There were cobnuts aplenty and more had fallen. He picked them out of the moss and broke them with his backteeth, ate a few. As the birds calmed down, he heard the sound of the stream nearby, which stood to reason since he couldn’t have crawled very far.

His other eye wouldn’t open properly because it was swollen. So he squinted his good eye and looked at his hands where the knuckles were raw and a cut in the web of skin between thumb and forefinger of his left hand so he had probably wrestled someone for a sword or dagger.

His knees and elbows were grazed, probably from crawling into the clump he’d been lying in through the damp cold night. Christ, he was cold. He pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms round them and shivered. He hadn’t been this low since…Well, ever. He’d had uglier awakenings but never one more humiliating and lonely. Him! Henry Dodd, Land-Sergeant of Gilsland, husband of Janet, Will the Tod’s red-headed Armstrong firecracker of a daughter, properly stolen from her father’s tower one wild night and her laughing behind him on the galloping horse and her arms tight around his waist and her hands distracting him, ay, that was a warm thing to think of…Of course, lately he had been playing the part of a respectable gentleman in fine wool loaned him by the Courtier, but he was also the rightful winner of the feud between himself and Vice Chamberlain Thomas Heneage which counted for something. Him! Beaten up, stripped and left naked in a ditch to die of cold. They’d got his money too. Forged and true, they’d got the lot.

Jesus God, he was angry. His hands were shaking with it as well as the cold.

And he was affeared as well. What if the bastards came back to finish the job they had so foolishly left undone? What if they were working for Heneage? He didn’t know who they were, mind, but if they came back…

He didn’t know he was showing his teeth in a snarl. He wasnae deid yet and until he was, they were as good as dead themselves. Once he knew who they were.

All he could remember from the fog and rage of the fight was a flash of dirty orange and white. That was all. Not much to go on.

The sun was fully up now and starting to warm him a little but he sat and listened a little longer. Nothing at all except what you’d expect in a hazel wood turning over to autumn. A little rustling sounded like a blackbird; there were other brown birds still arguing in the further branches and from the sharp smell now attacking his slightly cleared nose, he’d used a fox run to get into the bushes.

Grunting with effort and his left hand cupped to keep his bruised tackle from brambles, Dodd eeled and crawled along the small stinking corridor through the dense brush until he shoved out into the morning sunlight by the banks of the stream.

The mud around it was well stirred up. Further away he could hear deer, nearby the animals had fled the man in their midst. Well he wasn’t in a fit state to catch one for breakfast, so they could save their effort.