Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) (4 page)

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 trouble 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?”

Carey’s expression chilled and he cocked his head as his hand dropped to his sword hilt. The Earl put his hands up, palms out placatingly.

“All right, all right, let’s not fight about it, I completely agree that your cousin Elizabeth is a wonderful, sagacious, virtuous, and beautiful woman and a perfect match for you, but for pity’s sake…”

“Yes?” growled Carey.

“She’s poor!”

“So what?”

“And she’s married. I heard something about your last run-in with her husband. But even once he’s dead, how can you ever afford to marry her? It’s just not practical.”

Carey’s expression was mulish. “I love her,” he said.

Cumberland shook his head at his friend’s lunacy. “What does your father say?”

“He married for love, too.”

“Maniacs, the lot of you. I blame the Royal blood. Come on then, which way should I go here?”

Carey blinked down at the board. Simmonds’ face was carefully neutral so Carey looked for a trap. There were two obvious moves that would lead to a very nice ambush, but there was one move that wasn’t obvious at all. Carey was willing to bet that Cumberland hadn’t noticed it. Damn it, what his friend said was perfectly true and only what all his friends had been telling him for the last five years, but…

He didn’t care. He was a landless younger son and common sense dictated he must marry money or land. But he had to have Elizabeth. There was simply no alternative.

“You could move your puissant queen from here to here,” he said. Simmonds’ granite face shifted infinitesimally to sadness. “Sorry, Mr. Simmonds,” Carey added, because he had just destroyed a very nice march on the king.

Cumberland stared, frowned, stared again. “By God, Carey, how do you see these things? Amazing! Right.” He moved the carved ivory queen. “Check, I think.”

Carey was sitting down, playing Mr. Simmonds at the new style of chess with no veneys, dice, or coins plus the puissant queen who shook everything up so well, when he heard a caressingly familiar voice beside him.

“
Alors, M. le Deputé
,” came the Italianate French. “
Je suis vraiment enchanté de vous voir autrefois.
”

Carey shot to his feet. There was a tiny pause during which he checked to make sure that it was indeed none other than Signora Emilia Bonnetti, looking amused. Cumberland had a very unattractive smirk on his handsome face.

“Emilia!” he said, bowing to hide the fact that his memory was in an uproar. “Signora Bonnetti, I, too, am utterly delighted to find you here in such an unworthy setting.” He said it in English because that was a dig at Cumberland who was clearly playing his very own puissant queen. Anyway, it would be rude to speak French in front of the earl who was no linguist.

Emilia smiled again, with her head tilted perkily. This time instead of a feathered mask and crimson silk gown and dancing slippers, Signora Bonnetti was modestly dressed in a black
devoré
velvet slashed with grey satin in a Parisian style and was wearing small but determined hobnail boots. Her black hair was modestly tucked under a white linen cap, but she wore a crazily tilted little black hat with a feather in it, making every other woman in the world look unforgivably dowdy.

“Hey, less of the unworthy, Sir Robert,” boomed Cumberland, putting his arm around Emilia’s waist. “Signor Bonnetti is helping me find good wines from Italy for my household and his delightful wife has been…advising me.”

Carey nodded, cynically wondering how far the advice had gone. He found himself looking at the place just below the modest neckline of her bodice where, a month or two ago, he had bitten her very gently on a summer night in a rose garden. She brushed the place with her hand, which made him smile.

Signora Bonnetti wound her arm into Cumberland’s elbow and looked up at him, smiled back.

“So you do know each other?” Cumberland asked, very smug.

It wouldn’t be the first time he and Cumberland had collided over a woman, but he thought the Earl was making a point here about his romantic notions. And, uncomfortably for him, it was a good one. He wondered exactly how much the fascinating Signora might have told her new lover about Carey’s disastrous plottings at the King of Scotland’s Court. Emilia was watching him carefully, her black eyes full of amusement and something else—he wasn’t sure what.

“Yes,” he said, deciding to push his luck a little, “we met at the King’s Court in Dumfries.”

“Ah,” said Cumberland, “so that was before your unfortunate journey to Ireland and your problems there, my dear.”

Emilia Bonnetti, who must know by now exactly who had caused those potentially lethal problems, laughed a little. “Oh, yes,” she said, “but my lovely Lord of Cumberland save my life, Sir Robert, after my poor husband was forced to leave Ormonde’s Court in such a hurry. My lord gave us passage from Dublin in his ship…”

“The
Elizabeth
Bonaventure
,” Cumberland put in. “You remember her, Carey, we faced the armada in her and I’ve had a new mast fitted…”

“Thank heavens!” said Carey with complete insincerity. Oh God, this complicated everything horribly. Was she looking to get back at him? What had she told Cumberland? What had she told everyone else? The Court was a nest of gossip that made a ladies’ flower-water party look like a collection of Trappist monks. Had any of what she must have been saying got as far as the Queen? Not directly, of course; the Queen was very unlikely to receive an Italian adventuress into her presence, despite the sweet wines.…