Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) (32 page)

He was distracted by the sound of singing from the church halfway up Cornmarket and went in to hear it. These weren’t the chapelmen, but a choir of boys, anxiously practising a very complicated piece in Latin with five parts. They were good but they hadn’t quite got it yet. He stood at the back of the church, holding his hat, far away from the candles so as not to be troubled by them, thinking.

The signs all pointed in one direction. Well perhaps two. Carey realised that was why he had a headache. He would rather think that Burghley had done the deed, fearing Amy Robsart’s divorce from Dudley and Dudley as king—quite rightly. But there was a much better suspect if Amy had balked. Possibly two of them.

He had lost track of the music with his anxious thinking, found that his fingers were holding his hat tightly enough to bend the brim. He wanted to broach the matter privately with the Queen but knew that was both unwise and impossible. He would have to talk to his father; there was no help for it, but he didn’t want to because he was actually afraid of what might happen when he did. Was this where his dreams of being in the Tower on a charge of treason had come from? Were they just devilish phantasms or true warnings? How could you tell? Was that why his doublet in the dream had been so worn and faded? Would the Queen execute him for high treason just for asking?

Surely not. But he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t even sure if he could ask his father. He didn’t mind if his father lost his temper and hit him, though he really didn’t want to get in a brawl with the old man. And he certainly didn’t want to be locked up by him. There was a polite cough beside him and he realised that someone had come in and was standing next to him, a round man in the Queen’s livery gown.

“The tenor’s good,” said Mr. Byrd, “Perhaps I’ll poach him for the chapel men. Not as good as you, sir, he don’t have your round tone.”

Carey tilted his head at the compliment though as always when being told he had a good voice, he didn’t feel he could take the credit.

“It’s a pity you weren’t born of lesser stock, sir,” Byrd went on, “we could have made something of you.”

“Hmm. I’d have enjoyed that trade, Mr. Byrd, though my instrument playing is atrocious.”

“Lack of practice, no doubt.”

“I truly did try with the lute…I don’t know. Singing seems so natural and playing the lute so complicated. I can tune it and make a perfectly reasonable sound but it’s wooden, lumpish. I can hear the fault but I can’t mend it.” That was true, he had been very disappointed not to be able to master the lute as he wished.

“Hmm. Fighting practice won’t improve your playing, veneys coarsen your hands.”

“Perhaps.”

Byrd smiled. “I remembered something that might help you, sir, so I’m pleased to have found you. You know the musician who ran away on Saturday night?”

“The viol player you hired from the waits?”

“Yes. I finally remembered when I’d seen him before. It was when I was a singer for Mr. Tallis at the Chapel Royal, he used to play for the Queen then. It was in the early part of her reign, but he and his Spanish friend that played the harp and the lute, they ran away from Court, didn’t even collect their arrears of pay and we never saw them again.”

Carey frowned. “When did they do that?”

Byrd shook his head. “I’m not sure, sir, I think it was very early, perhaps the summer of 1560.”

Carey blinked. “His friend was Spanish?” It was common enough then to have Spaniards still at Court, since there had been so many of them during the Queen’s sister Mary’s reign. “Do you know the names?”

Byrd shook his head. “I can’t remember, I’m afraid. I remember his Spanish friend better, a very handsome proud man, like a hawk. He could play any stringed instrument like an angel but his voice was worse than a crow’s. He was base-born, his father was a Spanish grandee.”

“What was the viol player’s name when you hired him?”

“Sam Pauncefoot. That’s what he told me last week—he may have changed it.”

“To Pauncefoot? Thank you very much, Mr. Byrd. I’m not sure what I can do with this, but it might fit in somewhere.”

There was no point waiting any longer, Carey had to go and see his father. He wanted to know what had happened to Emilia’s necklace which he needed to sell for ready funds and he urgently wanted to borrow some men to go looking for Dodd, and most importantly, he needed his father to tell him the truth for the first time in thirty-two years.

Outside an immense arch was being covered with canvas and painted. He stood squinting at it sightlessly, his hat pulled down against the watery daylight. Where did a Spanish musician fit in?

He had to talk to his father. He set off, walking fast, trying to make out the pattern forming in his head somewhere just out of reach. And what was the worst that could happen? Well his father might well lose his temper at what Carey was going to put to him. Probably would, in fact. If what he suspected was true, then he wasn’t at all sure what he himself would do.

Once on Broad Street he went in at the gate of Trinity College where the usual porter and one of his father’s under-stewards were sitting glowering at each other.

For a moment, he hesitated. He had a bit of money. He could hire a horse from Hobson’s stables in St Giles, ride to Bristol in probably no more than a day, take ship for the Netherlands and sell his sword there or to the King of Navarre…

He’d wondered about it before; he always did. It was a dream of freedom he had acted on the summer before last, going to France with the Earl of Essex in the tidal wave of enthusiasm that the Earl had somehow generated. He had done well there, learnt that the Court was stifling an important part of him.

So he didn’t have to confront his father, he could just go. Dodd was no longer worrying him; he didn’t believe a word of the damaged leg, he thought the problem with the horses last night was definitely thanks to Dodd who would clearly cope perfectly well without him. So he could join a crew of Dutch sea-beggars and raid the coast of Northumberland and carry off Elizabeth Widdrington from under the nose of her foul husband and make her a widow in the most satisfying way possible. He could. He knew he could. He was able for it, wanted it, what was standing in his way?

He had his hand on his swordhilt again which was making the porter eye him fishily.

“Your father is here, sir,” said Mungey the steward.

What if his father hit him and he lost his own temper like that misunderstanding when he first arrived in London?

Carey smiled sunnily at the college porter and unbuckled his swordbelt, lifted it off and laid the ironmongery on the wooden counter in front of him.

“Look after these, will you?” he said. “Mr. Mungey, where’s my father?”

“In the walled garden, sir, he was asking for you.” Both of them were blinking nervously at the bundle of Carey’s sword, poinard and eating knife before them. Carey felt odd with no weight on his hip, but much happier. He paced out into the quadrangle as if marking out a battlefield.

Tuesday 19th September 1592, evening

Harry Hunks was coming after him, breathing hard but not shouting, Dodd’s own stolen boots crushing the brambles and stones that were ruining Dodd’s bare soles and toes, too close, too fast for such a big man, Christ, come on move, ye bastard.

He sprinted the last bit in the open, legs and elbows pumping, mouth open and gasping, and at the last second jumped over the pit he’d been in. Its ladder was still sticking out, but he cleared it, landed in a soft muddy bit and rolled again to his feet, turned and…

Yes! Harry Hunks was teetering on the stone edge of the pit, heavy for such a leap and he fell in, scrabbling as he went.

Dodd swapped sword and dagger so the poinard was in his right, went in a crouch to the side of the pit where the ladder was, stuck his sword in the earth where he could grab it again if he had to. Harry Hunks came up the ladder, he heard the creaking and puffing. Just before his head would clear the top of the pitwall, Dodd reached out, grabbed his hair and stabbed the man in the eye with the poinard, hard as he could, felt the soft jelly, the slight resistance of the bony back of the eye socket and then the give as the blade went into the man’s brain and stuck in the bone of his skull on the other side.

The hilt was wrenched from his fist as Harry Hunks roared and struck blindly for him, then toppled backwards into the pit, screaming and clawing at his eye. He landed with a thud and a clatter and then his back arched and his feet drummed and the smell of shit told Dodd he was dead.

Dodd sat down next to the pit, gasping for breath and shaking. Christ, that had been close. Christ. All he could do was sit there and pant until the shaking had gone down a bit.

Then he wiped his wet hands on the ground, looked down into the pit and wondered if he wanted that poinard back at all. He’d leave it in Hunks’ head until he decided. But he had to get up and find who Harry Hunks had killed before he arrived. He avoided looking at his feet and forced himself up onto still-trembling legs.

The goats were wildly indignant but unharmed. The old woman lay across the door of her cottage, nearly cut in two by the axe, her cooking knife in her hand unbloodied. Dodd pulled the old body away from the door and called softly through into the darkness, only a few embers of fire still lighting it. Was she still alive?

“Kat?” he said, “Kat, I killed the big yin, are ye there, hinny?”

Nothing at first. For no reason he understood, his belly swooped and clenched itself against his backbone. Was the brave little maid split in two as well?

Then there was a stealthy sniffle. “Kat, I’m coming in, will ye no’ stick me? I’m tired and ma feet are sore.”

They were burning with pain, bleeding badly from their stickiness, cut to ribbons when he sprinted desperately away from Harry Hunks. He ducked and limped in, leaving prints on the tiles under the rucked up rushes. The sniffle had come from under the marble shelf where the bowls of goatmilk were still sitting to let the cream rise for cheese.

Dodd sat down next to the place, cross-legged, partly to have a feel of how bad his feet were and partly so as not to get stuck by the little maid in her panic.

“Kat,” he said conversationally, “how many were they? Ainly Harry Hunks or another man as well?”

No answer.

“I killt Harry Hunks. He’s in the pit I was in, but deid, ye follow? D’ye want tae come and look and be sure?”

Her head poked out with its grubby little cap sideways and her face covered in mud. “Is he completely dead?”

“Ay. I put a knife in his eye. Was he alone?”

She nodded grimly, not a tear shed, still shaking. “I think so, he tried to come in for me and Grandam kicked him and he pretended to go away and she made me hide and then…and then…”

“He come back wi’ his axe?”

“He chopped her and then he was feeling about for me and I shut my eyes because I heard you whistling as you came back and I prayed to the Lady very hard…”

Good God, had he been
whistling
? The South was having a terrible effect on him and he would never ever come here again.

“So nobody else?”

She shook her head.

“Did ye see Captain Leigh taken?”

A lovely smile broke out across her grim little face. “I did and he went purple and shouted and that was when I just moved away so they wouldn’t make me stay with them and talk to Captain Carey and I ran back as quick as I could but I was very tired.”

“I’ve taken over the broken men as Captain, we’re packin’ up and leavin’ for Oxford in the morning. I came to ask you if ye’d care to come wi’ us.”

She was staring at his poor feet now, making a face. “Tsk,” she said, “How will you walk?”

He gave a grim snort of laughter. “I willna, I’ll ride. And we’ll take the goats and sell ’em.”

She nodded. “We can take the cheeses too. What about the curds? Can I give them to Wolfie, he loves the curds and there’s no point straining them for…Oh!”

Dodd was slightly ahead of her. He tried to beat her out of the cottage door but his feet were too painful and she slipped past him and out into the darkness and then he heard a scream. He was swearing and wincing and hobbling after her now he wasn’t fighting for his life and the fighting rage wasn’t carrying him and he found her weeping over the lump of dead fur and meat that was all that was left of the poor dog. She certainly wept more for the dog than for the grandam which showed you something, he supposed.

Since he was up and out he limped over to the pit and found Harry Hunks still lying there on his back with the poinard sticking out of the eye.

The ladder was unbroken so he put it straight and went down carefully, unreasonably scared that the big man would suddenly rear up and attack him again like the Cursed Knight in the ballad. But Harry Hunks was cooling now. Dodd hauled the poinard out and cleaned it by driving it deep into the earth a couple of times, its point was a little bent. That would have to do, he’d sort it properly with an oil rag and a whetstone when he had the time.

Then he set to pulling his boots off the man’s feet and managed it finally. He felt about in the man’s old doublet and found the little luckcharm Janet gave him and that made him smile. He didn’t know what was inside the little leather pouch and he didn’t want to know, but he felt quite pleased with it and his wife for playing his enemy false for him. There were a couple of shillings that he took and the buff coat which was too big but would at least make him a bit more decent than the hemp shirt and ragged breeks he had on. Climbing up the ladder again took most of what was left of his strength and then when he tried to put the boots on again he found that his feet were so swollen, it hurt too much.

“If you didn’t give me that message then Harry Hunks wouldn’t of killed Wolfie and my Grandam,” said Kat, standing by the dead dog, hands on hips, narrow-eyed. “Would he?”

Dodd was too tired to deal with this. “Ay, and Harry Hunks is deid, I killed three ither men this night and now I’m master of them all and Leigh will hang for horsetheft and forgery. Whit more d’ye want?”

“I didn’t know Wolfie would get killed!” Her voice was going up in pitch and it went right through Dodd’s head. He could almost hear his temper snap.