“Of course, it’s plain Amy was in fact killed no matter what the inquest says. And there are plenty of other suspects.”
Tovey moved restlessly. “Sir,” he said awkwardly, “I…I’m only a c…clerk and you haven’t known me long. Should you be…er…opening your mind to me like this?”
Carey beamed at the area of blur where he was. “Probably not,” he agreed, “if you’re working for someone else apart from me.”
“No, sir, of course not.”
“Mr. Tovey,” Carey admonished, “if you aren’t yet, you will be when word gets round you’re my clerk now. The people who are likely to offer you money to pass information to them are Sir Thomas Heneage, the Earl of Essex, my father, Sir Robert Cecil—any number of people here and more once we get back to Carlisle.”
“I’ll tell them ‘no,’ sir.”
“No you won’t.” He could actually hear the click of Tovey’s jaw as he shut his mouth after a shocked pause. Bless him, he was as a newborn lamb to the greedy wolves of the Court. Better educate him quickly.
“What you do is you tell me about it. Whoever it is, whatever they offer, you take it and then you tell me. Especially if it’s Sir Robert Cecil. Don’t be too quick, play innocent and shocked—they’ll expect it. Let them pressure you, especially that bastard Heneage, but then give in. Whoever it is, whatever they ask, no matter how much money you’re offered, you swear you’ll tell no one, especially not me, and you’ll work for them only, and then we’ll decide together what I want them to know. I won’t charge you commission on your bribes, so long as you tell me about each one.”
Another pause and then Tovey chuckled softly. “Was that why my father was so happy not to pay a fee for the place as your clerk?”
“Absolutely. Don’t let him drink all your bribes. And learn to lie.”
Tovey dipped his pen in a businesslike way. “Shall I put my lord of Leicester at the top of your list of suspects?”
“Why not? Make five columns, head them Nomine, quomodo, quando ubique, quare, cui bono.”
“Name, how, where, and when, why, whose benefit?”
Carey was quite proud of himself for remembering all that Latin.
“Yes, Walsingham’s system. He taught it to me when I was serving him in Scotland, along with many other things. He always said that practically any tangle could be solved by asking Cui bono, who benefits? So, Dudley first. His best method was poison, despite Lord Burghley having a man placed in Amy’s kitchen. Where and when was any where and any time since she was his wife. The why is obvious but the benefit—he could not benefit from the way the murder was actually done.”
The pen was slipping smoothly across the paper. “Unless it was a double bluff?”
“I doubt it. He hardly bluffed at primero. I don’t think he would bluff with the chance of becoming King.”
“You said there were other suspects?”
“Sir William Cecil, my lord Treasurer Burghley now.”
The pen stopped moving. “Sir?” The fear in the boy’s voice now did credit to Burghley.
“Write it down, Mr. Tovey.” Carey had an idea of what he would do with the paper later, despite the risk. “In fact put in any of the old guard, the Privy Council of the early years, the men who danced around the young Queen. By blocking out the favourite, the killing of Amy Robsart benefited anyone who hoped to marry the Queen—therefore the Spanish, all of her suitors foreign or English. Hatton, possibly even Heneage. He had the Queen’s eye once, I believe, for a couple of months.” He laughed at the thought. “Burghley is top of the list because he was desperate to stop her marrying Dudley as they hated each other then and he would have lost his place the instant King Robert was crowned.”
He paused to let Tovey catch up. “And then there’s the most obvious suspect of all,” he said softly, “the Queen herself.”
That stopped him. “I’m not writing that, sir,” said Tovey.
“Put her down as 1500,” Carey agreed, harking back to the code name for the Queen that Walsingham had used. Of course the Queen probably knew it, but it kept the thing decorous. The fact that Tovey wrote it down without arguing further showed he had a brain and could use it.
Because the fact was that the Queen was by far the most likely suspect. Not as she was now, a wise and politic prince, but as she had been in Carey’s father’s stories of the early days of her Court, when Carey himself had been a baby in swaddling bands in his wet nurse’s arms. When the Queen had been a wild laughing young woman with red hair, a flaming temper, and the power to draw men like moths to a flame. That she was ruthless enough to kill her lover’s wife could not be doubted. But was she foolish enough, impetuous enough? Had she done that?
He shook his head. If she had, why ask him to investigate? Why not, as his father had advised, leave it lie another thirty years until she was safely dead and nobody cared anymore?
Since the Queen was a woman, she might have any number of reasons, but from the information that Byrd had given him, Carey rather thought that someone else knew for sure who had done it and had sent her a message demanding money along with some kind of token proving he did. Which made things look very bad for the Queen, indeed. Had she really done as her far stupider cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, had done? As her father had done? Had she murdered to clear her path to marriage?
He shook his head, which was aching again. If it really had been the Queen who killed Amy Robsart, how had she done it and kept it secret so long? She was constantly surrounded by her women and had been even when she was running wild with Robert Dudley. The Papists were always claiming that some bastard or other was hers, even one of his father’s own byblows had been taken up in France as the Queen’s baseborn son, but nobody who knew anything about the Court ever believed a word of it. And if she had done it, surely she would have done a better job, just as Dudley would have? There would have been somebody available to swing for the murder, surely? Carey could think of half a dozen ways the Queen could have quietly abolished Dudley’s first wife, not one of which involved pushing the woman down a few stairs. That was why, if he even thought about it, he had assumed what most people now at Court did, that Dudley’s first wife had been unlucky or unwell and the thing truly was an accident. Until he read the inquest papers.
If she was being blackmailed about it, she might well ask him to investigate—but surely then she would have given him the message with the Spanish air on it and the token, whatever that was, and told him to quietly find and kill the blackmailer. Surely?
He was feeling tired again, surprisingly so. Sitting in shadows with only one candle lit for Tovey and his eyes shut was making him sleepy. He realised he had been silent a long while.
“Is that all, sir?” Tovey asked hopefully.
“Yes, thank you. I think I’ll go back to sleep now though it’s far too early. It’s infernally boring not being able to see but that might help my bloody eyes recover.”
“It might, sir. M…may I advise you to cover them when daylight comes? Your eyes pain you because they have no defence against the sunlight and too much light might actually damage them and blind you permanently.”
“Jesu.” That put fear in the pit of his stomach. “Is Mr. Henshawe on guard at the door?”
Tovey checked. “Yes, sir. And I’ve brought my pallet and I’ll sleep here tonight.”
“Good. Has Sergeant Dodd arrived?”
“No, sir, when I fetched the food, your father’s under-steward said my lord was sending riders out along the London road to see if he’d fallen off his horse, as he must have left London early on Saturday. “
Carey frowned. That didn’t sound at all plausible; Dodd had practically been born on a horse. But perhaps he was in some kind of trouble. You never knew: after all, who would have thought Carey might end up being poisoned in the Queen’s Court? Dodd’s absence was worrying—surely he wouldn’t have decided to simply head north and bypass Oxford altogether? Even if he’d walked from London to Oxford, he should hav
e been here by now.
***
Somebody knocked on the door. Carey was instantly awake, feeling for a dagger under his pillow where there wasn’t one, blinking in the darkness of the brocade bed curtains with a pattern of fleur de lis. He heard Tovey’s voice murmuring.
“Mrs. de Paris to see Sir Robert,” said one of Thomasina’s women.
“Let her in, Mr. Tovey,” called Carey with resignation, groping at the end of the bed for his dressing gown and finding none. What was the time? He wasn’t sure because when he peered through the curtains the room seemed brighter than it should have been with just one blurry watch-candle in it. He heard people talking. “Damnit, Mistress Thomasina, wait a minute, I’m only in my shirt…”
Tovey handed him a fur dressing gown of his father’s, marten and velvet, which Carey pulled around his shoulders, opened one of the bed curtains and sat with his legs crossed.
The door was opened a little by Mr. Henshawe, and Carey could make out the small colourful blur of Thomasina still in her tumbling clothes.
“Sir, would you like me to make notes?”
“No,” said Thomasina’s high-pitched childlike voice. “Please leave us.”
Tovey stood where he was. Carey heard him swallow. “Er…?” he said. Carey was liking the scrawny clerk more and more. “It’s all right, Mr. Tovey,” he said. “Mrs. de Paris is an old friend.”
Tovey bowed awkwardly and went out into the passage to stand with Thomasina’s women.
Carey felt Thomasina jump up on the bed like a man mounting a horse and then she sat with her legs folded under her, looking like a small lump of forest of tawny and green brocade in the general blur. He smiled in her direction.
“Next time your spiced wine tastes bitter, Sir Robert, may I suggest you throw it away?”
Her voice was withering.
“At the time,” he admitted, “it never occurred to me that anyone would try and poison me, but from now on I’ll bear it in mind.”
“Good.”
“Why are you here, Mistress? It’s late. And I think you weren’t even born when Amy Robsart died…”
“No, I remember the accession bonfires and getting drunk on spiced ale with my older brother,” she said. “Perhaps I was about two or three at the time as it’s one of my first memories.”
Good Lord, she was older than he was. Astonishing.
“Of course, I wasn’t then in Her Majesty’s service nor even imagining such a thing. I’m here, Sir Robert, to find out if the Queen can help you in your quest.”
“She can come and break the matter fully with me, tell me about the message that upset her, so I know where I am.”
Silence. “She won’t. Not yet.”
Damn it, he hated it when people wouldn’t tell you what you needed to know. But there it was, neither his father nor Thomasina would disobey the Queen just to make his life easier. So he shrugged.
“Is there anything else I can do?”
“While I’m stuck in this room and not able to see, I might as well keep busy. I want to interview all of Her Majesty’s Privy Councillors that served her then and are alive now.”
“Oh?” Carey couldn’t make out her face but he didn’t need to. He could imagine the expression on the midget’s face. “Who do you want to start with?”
In for a penny, in for a pound, Carey thought. Let’s see if my loving aunt, against all her normal habits, actually means what she says.
“My Lord Treasurer Burghley,” he said simply.
Well at least Thomasina didn’t laugh at the idea of the Queen’s penniless and frankly quite lowly cousin and nephew interviewing the person who in fact administered the realm for her and also ran the Queen’s finances, who was the chief man in the realm whatever the Earl of Essex thought, and had been since the Queen’s accession.
“When?”
“If he’s here at Rycote, now. Tonight. If not, as soon as he can come.”
Instead of a grim laugh, a flat refusal, or a placatory platitude, Thomasina said simply, “Very well, Sir Robert, I shall arrange it. He’s here, so don’t go back to sleep.”
Well, he hadn’t expected that. She hopped off the bed like a sizeable cat and trotted to the door.
Jesu, thought Carey, what have I asked for? I didn’t expect to be given it!
Burghley arrived only twenty minutes later. Carey had wrapped himself in his father’s dressing gown, feeling every limb as heavy as if he had just chased a raiding party across the Bewcastle Waste for two days. He was still sitting on the bed because the bed curtains gave him some protection from the light. He had also fastened a silk scarf across his eyes. Partly it was to protect them from the extra candles Tovey had lit so he could take notes, partly for dramatic purposes. He was nervous. Carey knew the Lord Treasurer, of course, had oftentimes seen his aunt lose her temper with her faithful servant and throw things at him. Walsingham had told him a few interesting tidbits but had respected the man greatly, despite his pragmatism and their many disagreements over how best to deal with Papists.
Burghley limped in, wincing from his gout and the man with him had an odd, quick uneven gait. Ah yes, Burghley must have brought his second son whose body was clenched and hunched from the rickets he had suffered in his youth, despite the careful supervision of three or four doctors.
“My Lord Treasurer, S…Sir Robert Cecil,” announced Tovey in awed tones. Carey stood for them, bowed, then felt behind him for the bed and sat again quickly, drawing his legs up. He had actually nearly overbalanced, his brain felt battered and bruised, and his mouth was dry again.
“My Lord Treasurer, Sir Robert, I am very grateful to you and honoured at your coming here. I apologise, my lord, that my temporary disability has prevented me from coming to you as would be more appropriate,” he said formally.
“Yes, yes, Sir Robert. Her Majesty asked me to speak to you about these matters but alas, I doubt very much that I can help you,” said Burghley’s voice. It was a deep voice and paradoxically able to make very dull subjects verge on interesting. Even Scottish politics became comprehensible when Burghley explained them, a remarkable and essential talent. Carey remembered the Lord Treasurer once explaining to him many years ago why it was that his debts kept mounting up. Probably his father had asked him to. Carey vaguely remembered that the lecture was about what four shillings in the pound interest could do given time. Burghley seemed to think that because he was interested in the clever Greek ways of planning cannon fire and siege towers and had read that manuscript Italian book about card play, he could understand accounting. He probably could, he just…wasn’t interested. Burghley had given up eventually.
Tovey brought up the one chair with arms and a cushion for Lord Burghley. Sir Robert Cecil quietly took a chair without arms that had been foraged specially from one of the manor’s storerooms. The room was too small for any more furniture with the big bed in it, the clothes chest, and Tovey’s pallet folded on top of it. Tovey was using the window sill as a desk.
“I have asked my clerk, Mr. Tovey, to keep a note,” Carey said and heard the creak of the starched linen ruff when Burghley nodded.
“Good. Good practice. My son will do the same for me.”
Carey wondered if the two records would look anything like each other. The chair creaked on its own note as Burghley settled himself in it.
“May I offer you wine, my lord?” Carey asked, then smiled, “though I may say I’ve been a little put off wine myself.”
It was annoying that he couldn’t see Burghley’s expression, that pouchy wary face with the knowing little smile.
“Alas, Sir Robert,” Burghley said, “Dr. Lopez has warned me off wine of any sort and I am sentenced to drink mild ale and nothing else apart from a foul and superstitious potion made of crocus-bulbs as penalty for my gout.”
Carey made a sympathetic noise. “How is your gout, my lord?”
“Bad,” was Burghley’s short answer. “Very painful. Get to the point, sir, Her Majesty will
be waiting to cross-examine me after this meeting.”
Carey paused. He wanted straight answers and wasn’t about to start a verbal fencing match with the finest exponent in the kingdom.
“The point, my lord, is cui bono,” he said, plunging straight in. “Who benefits? There are those who would say that you were the one man who benefitted most from Amy Dudley’s murder.”
Both Sir Robert Cecil and Tovey sucked in their breaths with audible gasps. Carey sat with his legs folded, his father’s marten and tawny dressing gown round his shoulders and the scarf over his eyes and felt…good God, he was enjoying himself dicing with death again. His hearing seemed to be getting better as well–the cannonfire and shooting muskets and dags in France and on the Borders had blunted his hearing, taken away his ability to hear bat squeaks and noticeably dulled soft music for him. Perhaps with his eyes not working properly he was paying more attention to what he could hear. He had known the moment Tovey’s pen and Sir Robert Cecil’s pen had stopped their soft movements across paper.
“Explain yourself,” said Burghley with cold fury in his voice.
“My lord, with all due respect…” Carey began, knowing very well what the lawyer’s phrase meant, as did Burghley. “I am sure I am not the first person to point that out. From what I know of the first few years of Her Majesty’s blessed reign, she was very far from being the wise sovereign lady that she now is. She was, God save her, a flibbertigibbet, a flirt, and very disinclined to any business of ruling at all. She ran riot with Robert Dudley and other men of her Court in the first few years. It was a matter of desperate import to you and all her wiser councillors that she marry as quickly as possible so that she would have a man to direct and guide her and calm her unstable woman’s humours.”
A pause. Tovey cleared his throat. “Sir, d…did you want m…me to…”
“Record all of it, Mr. Tovey,” Carey ordered firmly. “I will repeat it to Her Majesty’s face and take the consequences.”
There was more creaking of chin against linen ruff. Someone, probably Burghley, was shaking his head.
“There was no shortage of good mates for her,” Carey went on, quoting his father. “Philip II of Spain offered for her and could not be rejected outright, several German and Swedish princes offered who were unexceptionable except that the Queen didn’t like them. Even a carefully chosen English nobleman might have been a possibility. Unfortunately the Queen had fallen head-over-heels in love with her horsemaster, Robert Dudley, the son and grandson of traitors, much hated by the older noble families and a man of very little common sense. He was the worst possible lover she could have chosen but she would not listen to reason.” The silence in the little chamber was oppressive.
Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) Page 13
