Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) (6 page)

Carey said nothing, watching carefully. Who the devil had died thirty-two years ago; why all the mystery?

“I say death,” Thomasina was being judicious again, “but at the time the word being whispered was
murder
.”

Well of course it was; that wasn’t surprising. After all, why bother to investigate a death if you didn’t think it was murder?

“Was there an inquest?”

“Oh yes,” said Thomasina, “though it took a year to decide on death by misadventure.”

That and her tone of voice did send Carey’s eyebrows upwards. “A year?” Most inquests had decided within a week.

“Yes. It didn’t matter, though. The suspicion was enough.”

Would the bloody midget give him the name? Why was he supposed to guess? He felt doltish at all these riddles, actually sighed for the brutal simplicity of Carlisle where people tended to tell you to your face that they hated you and had put a price on your head. He was quite proud of the fact that his own head was rumoured to be worth at least £10 in gold to the Graham surname.

Thomasina wasn’t even looking at him anymore but into a corner where there was nothing but a particularly fine Turkish rug, woven with strange squared-off houses and birds.

“I told her to let it be, that the trail was thirty-two years cold and that no one really cared anymore.…And she snapped at me that she cares and that as her goddamned nephew is so clever at ferreting out the truth of things that don’t concern him, he may as well make himself useful in her behalf for a change.”

He grinned. That had the authentic ring of the Queen’s voice. Thomasina was an excellent mimic. Carey could almost see his cousin’s high-bridged nose and snapping brown eyes under her red wig, the red lead giving bright colour to her white-leaded cheeks.

Nephew. That was an important message to him in itself. He was also her cousin through his grandmother, Mary Boleyn, sister to the beheaded Ann. But he was the Queen’s nephew through his father, bastard son of Henry VIII, and her half-brother. That meant that this was Tudor family business.

“Mistress,” he began as tactfully as he could, “I’m afraid I’m too young and ignorant to…”

“This death is that of Amy Dudley, née Robsart.”

All his breath puffed out of his chest. Carey knew that name.

“The Earl of Leicester’s first wife…” he asked, just to be sure, “who fell down the stairs at Cumnor Place and…?”

“And died,” said Thomasina. “Sir Robert, something happened two days ago that upset Her Majesty and put her clean out of countenance. She has been in a rage ever since and was even let blood out of season for it. When she had news that you were coming, she told me to…I was told to tell you to look into it.”

“Look into the death of Robert Dudley’s first wife?”

“Or her goddamned murder, as the Queen calls it,” added Thomasina quietly.

“She knows it was murder?”

Thomasina nodded. “But…but…” Carey was horrified. The Queen was telling him to look into it, a direct order. Usually she allowed at least the polite semblance of choice. Of all things the Queen could have ordered him to do, this was surely the most perverse, the most ridiculous, the most—well, for God’s sake, the most dangerous. To him. He was being ordered to go and stir up a thirty-two-year-old nest of vipers. There had indeed been family gossip about it when Carey was a boy and worse than that. Carey knew that his father had quietly bought up and burned a number of inflammatory pamphlets published secretly by the English Jesuits until the presses could be found and destroyed. Those pamphlets accused the Queen and her then-favourite, Robert Dudley of murdering Dudley’s innocent wife between them. Other suspects in the case were, of course, Sir William Cecil; later Lord Treasurer Burghley; Christopher Hatton, the attorney general who danced his way into the Queen’s favour and never married; even Lettice Knollys, the Earl of Leicester’s eventual second wife and the Earl of Essex’s scandalous mother. There had been something going on that his father dealt with when he was fourteen, something about a man called Appleyard, Amy Robsart’s brother.

Quite possibly every single member of the 1560 Privy Council could be a suspect for the killing.

“But why?” he burst out. “The woman has been in the ground for thirty-two years and…”

“In Gloucester Hall chapel in Oxford, in fact,” Thomasina corrected him.

“In Oxford and…Why now?”

“The last time she came to Oxford was in 1566,” said Thomasina, seemingly at random.

“Yes?”

“She’s very clear, Sir Robert. She wants the death investigated and she wants you to do it, but she will not tell you why. She shouted at me when I pressed her about it.”

“But, mistress,” said Carey carefully, “the Queen must know she is by far the most…er…the one most likely to be suspected as the murderer now as well as then. What were the words she used to you exactly?”

“You do it as you see fit, and you report to her through me—directly to her if necessary.”

“She knows that this is a very ugly swamp and she may not like the smells that come up if I stir the mud?”

Thomasina smiled shortly. “She wants it done and she will have you do it.”

“And if I find irrefutable proof that she was the murderer?”

The midget’s eyes were cold. “She didn’t tell me, but no doubt she would expect you to keep it quiet.”

He could do that, of course, he wasn’t a fool, but God, he hoped he wouldn’t have to. “And what if it is simply that the evidence I find points to her?”

Thomasina shrugged which made her look both worldly wise and girlish. “She didn’t say. But how could it have been her, Sir Robert? Surely she would simply have married Leicester anyway once the wife was dead and gone, no matter what the scandal? If she’d done it? Once she had damned her soul that way, where was the problem damning herself again? You can only hang once.”

Clearly Thomasina had been worrying about it, too. She sounded reasonable, but…the Queen was a woman and therefore by nature unreasonable.

“I’ll need to see the report by the coroner and the inquest jury’s verdict and any witness statements,” he said, hoping to play for time while the documents were searched for and copied.

Thomasina reached into a box beside her and brought out a sheaf of papers which she handed to him. They were all certified copies, written in the cramped secretary script of one of the older Exchequer clerks.

“I have to say what I’m investigating when I ask questions. I can’t possibly keep it secret.” Thomasina shrugged again. This was an impossible task, Carey thought with a sigh. “Does Her Majesty know I haven’t yet been paid my wardenry fee?”

Thomasina looked blank. “You had two chests of coin from her…”

“They were free loans. This is my fee of £400 which I was also promised. Separate and different.” Nothing. “Mention it to my loving aunt, will you, Mrs. Thomasina? Try and get it into her head that soldiers need to be paid or they won’t fight, that’s all I ask. And by the way…I wanted to ask your…advice on the Bonnettis.”

“The Italian spies?”

“Especially Signora Bonnetti.” He looked carefully into space. “I am hoping to introduce her to my lord of Essex to help him with his farm of sweet wines. I want to be sure that the Queen has no objection.” Yes, by God. He’d learned a lesson in Dumfries.

Thomasina tilted her head. “I will send you a message if there is a problem, Sir Robert. In the meantime…you’ll do it?”

“I shall think about it,” said Carey, “and then I shall give her an answer.”

This was the Queen’s invariable answer to anyone who wanted her to do anything at all, in particular marry. Thomasina knew that, too, and smiled briefly. He was joking. He had absolutely no choice in the matter.

He stood and bowed to the Queen’s Fool.

When he and the page boy had put back the ladder and climbed carefully down, he was nearly knocked over by two swordsmen hacking at each other with theatrical gusto. He circled the fight, saw it was simply the first veney against the second veney, and slipped out of the tithe barn where he found Hughie waiting for him.

They walked back to Cumberland’s camp. On the way, Carey spotted an elderly laundress with a big basket of shirts and bought a new shirt for Hughie from her on the spot, had him change into it, and gave her the old one to try and clean. It cost the same as fine linen would in London but was clearly some kind of hemp. Hughie seemed pleased. They walked on, Hughie admiring the whiteness of the shirtsleeves.

“Is it true,” he asked, “that the Queen canna stand a man wi’ a dirty shirt in her presence?”

“Very true,” said Carey. “She’s notorious for it.” Hughie was chuckling. “What?”

“Ah wis just wondering if she’d ever met the King of Scotland?” Hughie sniggered and Carey had to laugh as well. In the unlikely event of Her Majesty the Queen ever being in the same room as the young King, who rarely even wiped his face, let alone washed his body or shifted his shirt, a hail of slippers and fans would be the least His Majesty of Scotland could expect. For certain his subsidy from the English Treasury would suddenly dry up.

Hughie carried on, shaking his head, to the tiring room while Carey went in search of somewhere relatively peaceful with good light so he could read the inquest papers.

Saturday 16th September 1592,
late afternoon

Carey was impressed when he looked at the work young Hughie had done on his doublet shoulders. The young man had unpicked the lining, taken out just enough of the padding and rearranged the rest to make room for Carey’s extra sword muscles and then sewn it all up again as neat as you like. It seemed to be true he had been prenticed to a tailor.

“Well done, Hughie.” He put the watch candle down and felt for his purse. There was still a bit of money in it so he gave Hughie sixpence for the job. The amount of money he had seemed to be going down with its usual alarming speed. He wasn’t yet ready to encase himself in Court armour of velvet and pearls so he wandered out into the crowded afternoon.

The Earl of Cumberland’s men had finished enclosing the whole orchard in a large marquee, laying boards between the trees. Some of the later-fruiting trees still had apples, pears, and golden quinces hanging on them which scented the whole tent. The ones that had already been picked were being decorated with hanging pomanders and little silk bags of comfits. The banquet tables were against the further wall of the tent and the more open part of the orchard had been completely boarded over, with the raspberry and blackcurrant canes taken out, to make a dance floor. Her Majesty would dance that evening in the light of the banks of candles being carefully set up in readiness, but only a couple of them were lit so far.

Meanwhile in the other corner the musicians were tuning up and arguing over the playlist while the men of the chapel were still practising. Carey stopped and listened—Thomasina was right, there were only two tenors and one of them clearly had a bad sore throat and a head cold.

He was just thinking he should go back to the cottage tiring room and shift his shirt and change to his Court suit, when Thomasina swept in, followed by her two women who towered over her.

She stood on a stool and bade the choirmaster have his men sing an air for her, a piece of music which was ruined by the tenors any time they had a line to sing above
doh
. Carey was shaking his head at his cousin’s likely reaction to the singing and wondering why the chapel master didn’t simply change the air for something in a lower key, when suddenly Thomasina skewered him with a look.

“Could you sing that line, Sir Robert?” she snapped.

Carey remembered too late that she’d said something about his voice, bowed and smiled. “I’m no great musician, mistress, and I’m sure the chapel master could find a much better…”

“He could if we were in Oxford or London, but not here where nobody can read music even if they can sing and we daren’t let in any of the musicians from London. You can read pricksong, can’t you?”

“Well, yes, but I…”

The brown button eyes glared again and Carey realised that there was probably some purpose to all this. He bowed again.

“I’ll do my poor best, mistress.”

He got some very haughty looks from the chapel men who were understandably nervous at the idea of a courtier singing with them. That nettled him. He knew he could sing and in fact music had been one of only a few childhood lessons that could compete with football.

He stepped up to the candle and took the handwritten sheet of paper, squinted at it. A little tricky, but not impossibly difficult.

Mr. Byrd had him sight-sing the entire piece solo to a lute, then grunted and took him through it with the chapel men several times. The result was much better, he knew. With the spine of the music held for them by his voice, they could manage the complex interweavings required of them.

“Hmm,” said Mr. Byrd, “well done, Sir Robert, very accurate.”

“This is new, isn’t it? I feel sure I’ve never heard it before.”

Mr. Byrd and Thomasina exchanged looks and Byrd bowed. “Thank you, sir, I have only just finished it.”

Could it have anything to do with the death of Amy Robsart, then? Surely not. It was only a piece of music, an air in the Spanish style, magically worked by William Byrd, an excellent chapel master, perhaps even as good as his predecessor Mr. Tallis. True, he was a Catholic, but he had miraculously survived a brush with Walsingham’s pursuivants in the early eighties and had amply repaid the Queen for her backing of him.

Carey hummed through the whole thing again while he went to try on his dancing clothes. It turned out that the trunkhose and cannions of the suit were also a little tight but would do for now. Hughie had done wonders with his hard-used boots—stuffed rosemary and rue into them, polished them with beeswax and tallow, made them verging on respectable.

He had a little time before he needed to be in the transformed orchard. The inquest report and coroner’s report were, of course, written in Latin which had been a subject that had never once won a battle with football. He knew French very well, which gave him the Norman French you needed for legal documents, but he could only struggle and guess with Latin.