Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) (22 page)

She took the cup of watered wine he always offered and sipped it, no expression.

It was stupid really, but Edward Leigh found the child unnerving sometimes. She was so unchildlike.

“Now then Kat,” Leigh asked, rubbing the large bruise on his chin where their most recent target had punched him, “What have you found out?”

“His name is Colin Elliot, he’s a Northerner which I knew anyway because you can’t hardly make out what he do say.” Leigh nodded encouragingly. “He was taking a message to his master which is a courtier and one of the Earl of Essex’s men.”

Leigh stopped breathing and looked over at Jeronimo, sitting still with the dice cup still poised between his long fingers. His cadaverous hawk of a face was intent. Was it possible the Spaniard had been right?

“Where was he headed?”

“Oxford, of course, he says if the Queen ain’t there yet, she will be and his master is at Court to get money and a warrant out of her because he hasn’t any, no tower nor land, he’s just a bloody courtier with a smooth tongue.”

Leigh nodded carefully. The Court was at Oxford and so was the Earl, only ten miles away. Holed up in this old monastery for the last few weeks, it had been hard to get news. But perhaps at last, at last they could move.

Kat was still speaking. “…and he hurt his leg or it got hurt when you was kicking him, he says it’s broken, so he can’t work much…He says ‘canna,’ you know, and he’s good with his hands and with stock so he says he’ll help as much as he can until he’s well and his master’s father will give a reward for him if my granny will send me off to Oxford to tell him.”

“He’s a good fighter,” slurred John Arden whose black eye was flowering well, “took five of us to take him down. Could we get him to join us?”

Leigh shook his head. He didn’t want another fighter, he wanted someone who had connections with the Earl of Essex. And that, thank God, despite all his doubts, he seemingly had at last. Now how could he parlay the Northerner into what he really wanted much more than a simple reward or ransome?

“
Katarina, cariña
,” said Jeronimo, “who is the father of this courtier the man serves?”

“He told me not to tell the robbers but it’s my Lord Hunsdon, the Queen’s Chamberlain.”

Leigh blinked in awe at Jeronimo. “You were right,” he said. “His master is Captain Carey.”

Jeronimo nodded, took a deep breath, then winced and rubbed his stomach where it was swollen.

“We’ve got him this time,” he said in French so the child wouldn’t understand. “You can ask him for an audience with the Earl.”

The Earl of Essex owed him a large amount of back pay, owed all of them, and Leigh intended to get it. If necessary he would have marched his remaining men down Oxford High Street in their once-fancy tangerine-and-white livery and demanded his rightful pay from the man he had trusted while that man was in the act of licking the old Queen’s arse for her. In fact that had been his original plan.

“All right, Kat,” he said to her, handing over a bag of bread and apples from the remains of the monastery orchard. “I’ll likely come and take a look at him myself, so don’t be alarmed.”

Kat’s face looked cunning. “Will you be fierce?”

“Roaarrr!” Leigh shouted, showing his teeth as he used to at his little brothers and sisters. This unnatural child didn’t even flinch. “I’ll be fierce, Kat, so make sure you tremble and run away.”

She nodded disdainfully, hefted the bag, looked in it and scowled.

“I want paying. I want money, not just food.”

“Kat,” said Leigh, pulling her nose to nose with him by her kirtle, though not roughly, “I told you, we’re only here because we fought and died for the Earl in France for eighteen months and got not a penny of the shilling a day he promised us, not one penny, though he spent plenty on pennants and livery and feasting.”

She glared straight back at him. “I want a shilling like you promised. You got all the money from that Northerner, give me some.”

“What if you’re lying? What if he’s lying?” Leigh was still nose-to-nose with the child.

“Can’t help it if he’s lying but I’m not,” retorted the child, “and he said he’d lost the suit his master gave him to look more respectable than his homespun and he wished he hadn’t looked so rich and there’ll be the devil to pay for that too and there was money in it too, plenty of money.”

Nick Gorman was wearing the man’s suit now because it fit him best and it was certainly a gentleman’s suit. Smithson had his hat, being in most need of one. The money was Leigh’s now, naturally, as captain.

He let go of the fistful of rough kirtle he’d been gripping. Kat straightened herself and her apron with a brow of thunder.

“Give me my shilling,” she said shrilly. “You’ll just drink it and I need it for my dowry.”

“Don’t make me angry, Kat.”

“
I’m
angry! I bring you things you didn’t know that are important like he’s a Northerner and who his master is and everything and you won’t even give me a shilling like you said!”

“We could burn you and your old hag of a grandam out of your hovel!” Leigh shouted, outraged at being defied by a little girl. “I could send Harry Hunks down to you, do you want that?”

The ferocity of the child’s glare actually stopped him.

“Don’t be like that, sweeting,” he said after a moment in the kindest voice he could muster. “Of course, we won’t burn you out, you just made me cross.” Nothing. Stony brown eyes stared steadily back at him. He gave her a comfit of sugarpaste taken from a rich packtrain a week before. She held it in her fingers and didn’t even taste it, curtseyed silently and went out of the monastery parlour where Arden was waiting for her.

Jeronimo was shaking his head. “You should have paid her,” he said in the French he found more comfortable. “She’s right, she needs a dowry. It was only a shilling.”

Leigh shrugged, he was the captain, not the Spaniard. “I need it more than she does. How am I going to afford the ribbons we need otherwise?”

Jeronimo said nothing, only winced and drank more of the brandy after adding laudanum that he kept in a small bottle in his doublet pocket. He only had one arm, his right had been taken off above the elbow with the sleeve neatly folded and sewn up. Perhaps the arm that had been broken by a musket ball and cut off many years ago still pained him as sometimes happened. His doublet had once been a very rich silk brocade and had worn well, but his shirt and falling band were as frayed and grubby as everyone’s was. Perhaps he was ill: his dark skin had a greyish tinge that Leigh didn’t like, though he had no fever.

They finished the brandy and Leigh decided that he, John Arden, and Harry Hunks, the biggest man they had who was nursing bruised ballocks from the Northerner’s final headbutt, would go and chat to this Colin Elliot they had caught. Jeronimo he left in charge of the rest of the men, despite the fact that he was Spanish, because after you had fought together for a while, things like that didn’t matter anymore and the Spaniard was owed money by the Earl of Essex too. And the Spaniard had certainly been a captain in the past and knew how to do it, which was more than Leigh felt he did, even now.

So with the cold autumn sun already westering, they sauntered down the overgrown cobbled path to the cottage. Leigh knew that they could follow the path northwards for a couple of miles and find the village of Cumnor with its haunted almost empty manor house, then three miles north of that would take them to the city of Oxford. The Spaniard had found the place for them and it couldn’t be bettered.

The dog set up a-baying at Harry Hunks, whose real name was Percival but had been given the name of a famous London fighting bear because of his size and ferocity. Harry Hunks growled back at the dog and showed his teeth, at which the animal whined and hid behind the cottage.

The old woman came out still toothlessly chewing some of the bread her granddaughter had brought. Kat however was nowhere to be seen.

“Where is he?” shouted Leigh at the old woman, for general effect. “I know you’ve got him hidden, where is he?”

“Backyard sir,” she quavered. “He’s mending the chicken coop.”

Stupid old bat, why had she given him a job that involved a weapon? They tramped round the tiny cottage, Harry Hunks deliberately squashing some of the winter cabbages already planted, out into the little yard where the chickens pecked and the muckheap teetered.

The Northerner’s face and swollen nose was colouring nicely and he held his right leg awkwardly out to one side, tied with long hazel poles to keep it straight. He was weaving withies in and out to darn a gap in the side of the chicken coop. He stopped to look at them, didn’t stand but did duck his head. Leigh couldn’t see a hammer in his hands but assumed he’d have a knife to cut the withies.

The Northerner watched them from under his brows, his plain long face sullen. He was sizing them up, Leigh felt, including Harry Hunks, no doubt noting their Essex livery of tangerine and white despite its raggedness.

“Colin Elliot?” Leigh said as firmly as he could.

“Ay,” he said. “May I help ye, sirs?”

That was civil enough for a Northerner, perhaps someone had been teaching him manners. Leigh had fought with a few Northerners.

“Good day, Goodman,” said Leigh, doing his best to charm. “I hear from little Kat Layman that some wicked robbers attacked you at the ford. I came to see if there was anything we could do?”

Just for a second the man’s eyes flickered and then his face became even more mournful.

“Ay,” he said. “And they took ma maister’s suit that he lent me, these duds arenae mine, sir, ma wife’s capable o’ much better. And ma boots forbye.”

He looked disgustedly at his bare toes. His feet certainly were wide. Harry Hunks had been delighted with his share of the pickings and was wearing the boots now. A little too late, Leigh wondered if Elliot had noticed this.

“So who’s your master?”

“Sir Robert Carey, sir.”

Leigh nodded. It was wonderful news if true, but was it true?

“Yes,” he said, “I think I met your master in France when he was a captain. One of the Earl of Essex’s men? A very able captain, I think.”

The Northerner finished the end of the withy, put down the coop and sat back. “Ay,” he said, “I heard he wis knighted when he was in France wi’ the Earl.”

Lucky bastard, Leigh thought, who had once hoped to be knighted as well. “King of Navarre took quite a shine to him too, offered him a place, I believe.”

The Northerner shrugged. Fair enough, it was unlikely Carey would share anything of that sort with his henchmen.

“Tell me, my memory’s not too good I’m afraid, your master’s a dark man, isn’t he? Black hair?”

Contempt crossed the Northerner’s face briefly. “Nay, sir, he’s got dark red hair which he calls chestnut and blue eyes. And he’s allus dressed verra fine though he canna pay his tailor.”

Leigh had to smile. That was Carey all right. “He had one entire packpony for just his shirts, I remember, until the Earl of Cumberland got them off him for a night attack.”

The Northerner’s mouth turned down at the ends. “Ay, sir. It’s shocking.”

“So clearly I must help you get a message to Captain…er…Sir Robert Carey. Where do you think he’ll be?”

“At Court wi’ the Queen, wherever she is. Oxford, I heard.”

“And the message you were carrying?”

“Dinna ken, sir, it was a letter. The robbers got it nae doot along o’ ma purse and ma silver and ma sword,” said the Northerner bitterly.

Thank God nobody was actually wearing the man’s sword, Leigh thought, though it was a good solid weapon, clean, oiled, and would have been sharp if it hadn’t been using for something like gathering firewood. He wondered what had happened to that letter.

“Do you know what was in the letter?” he asked and the Northerner shrugged, looking highly offended.

“Cannae read, sir. Ah can make me mark and puzzle oot ma name but nae more, sir. I can fight, though. Ay, I could fight.” He looked gloomy and rubbed his broken leg.

Leigh clapped the dejected man on the back.

“Mr. Elliot,” he said encouragingly, “I’m sure your leg will get better soon enough. And I’m sure that as soon as we find Sir Robert and explain things to him he’ll…er…he’ll see you properly equipped again.”

“Ay, he might beat me though.”

“Oh I don’t think so, goodman, not his style at all.” Leigh had never seen Carey flog a man for anything less than unauthorised looting or rape. Generally the sheer volume of noise he could produce when he was angry did the job just as well. “I’ll send someone to Oxford to find Sir Robert,” he went on, “We’ll soon sort you out.”

“Ah doot he’ll mind ye,” he moaned. “He’s a courtier.”

“Well true,” said Leigh. “but my experience of Carey as a captain is that he did his best to keep his men alive and paid, even if he occasionally came up with mad plans to achieve that.”

At which point the Northerner gave a brief bark of laughter before turning sullen again, which was what convinced Leigh that he had actually struck gold at last.

“Is there anything else?”

“Ay, sir, I had a good post horse under me and a remount when the…eh…the broken men took me, and the nags might be runnin’ loose. I wouldnae want the broken men tae have the benefit of them. There’s a gelding with a white sock and a chestnut mare.”

That was interesting: they’d found the mare not far from the ford, but the other horse must have bolted further, perhaps heading for home. He’d send a couple of the boys out to track and find the animal; they needed horses desperately.

As he walked back to the monastery, he thought hard. Why the devil hadn’t his men found that letter? Admittedly, it had been a scramble at the ford and at one point the blasted man had almost got away—he fought better half-stunned than most men fully fit. However once they’d got him down they had stripped and searched him thoroughly, finding no papers, which was a surprise. Jeronimo had said he was connected with Essex which was why they had switched the waymarker stones so they could ambush him.

He called the men together. There were twenty-five of them left from the fifty men he had taken with him to France. It had been a long hard road back from France after the Earl betrayed them. The ruined monastery had been by far the best billet they’d had since Arles. They were in some of the Earl of Oxford’s neglected hunting forest and in the autumn there was a good amount of forage, including hazelnuts, mushrooms and berries, plus the game of course. But they only had two horses left of the twenty fine beasts that had gone to France.