Dodd squatted next to the fire where the carlin had a stone bench and Kat had her milking stool, took the wooden bowl of pottage and the wooden spoon. He took a few spoonfuls which was hard on him since it was good stuff with some bacon in it, even, beans, lentils, even carrots. He had a bit of old bread as well, so he made the most of it.
The dog was prowling about the yard to keep the foxes off the chickens. When the carlin went to tap some of her own wine from a barrel at the back of the cottage, he put his head quickly out the top half of the door and dumped most of his pottage on the ground, whistled softly through his teeth.
He had to squat down again quickly and happy snortlings told him the dog was slurping up the drugged pottage.
She came bustling back with a horn cup of her elderflower wine so he took that and it was excellent, such a pity she’d put laudanum in it too.
“Ah’ve a need for the jakes,” he said yawning deliberately.
“Dungheap’s behind the cottage.”
He knew where that was, so he caught Kat’s eye as he went to the door, cocked his head.
She was a cunning little piece. She waited until he finished, then came out with his wine cup.
“She’s put more sleeping potion in it,” she hissed at him. “She didn’t see you finish the pottage.”
Dodd tipped out the wine and refilled it with water from the water butt. He’d been busy while he’d squatted at the furthest end of the dungheap.
He showed Kat the charcoal writing on the nice paper.
“Ye know the way to the market in Oxford, ay?” he said to Kat who nodded intently. “D’ye know the man that rules the market, one of the Mayor’s men, mebbe?”
“You have to pay him even if you don’t sell nothing,” she sniffed.
“Early tomorrow morning, I want ye to walk tae Oxford, fast as ye can. Go to the market clerk or whoever it is, curtsey, call him sir, say ye’ve bin sent by a…a man at arms in service to Sir Robert Carey, son of Lord Hunsdon, and give him that paper. Tell him where ye live and a’ that and warn him of the broken men. But be sure and gi’ that bit o’ paper tae somebody of worship, official, mind? Naebody that disnae wear a gown.”
She nodded slowly. “Why?”
“Ye asked me tae kill Captain Leigh for ye?” he reminded her. She nodded, eyes narrowing with suspicion. “How’d ye like to watch him hang for coining and maybe horsetheft, eh?”
Her eyes went round and her mouth opened in delight.
“Really? Truly?”
“Ay. This letter is laying information agin him. I happen tae know that a lot of the money that he’s gonnae be spending on ribbons is false coin. That’s a hanging offence, is uttering false coin. And he’ll be riding a reived horse forbye.”
She blinked in puzzlement and then nodded firmly. “I’ll do it. I know the way really well and once when Grandam was ill I ran to the ’pothecary in the Cornmarket and got laudanum for her.” Dodd didn’t tell her the final refinement to a plan that he was quite modestly proud of. Suddenly she laughed. “Did you really steal the white-socked gelding?”
“Ay,” he said heavily. “It wis a mistake.”
Monday 18th September 1592, afternoon
For the first time since Saturday, Carey woke feeling more like himself. The day had greyed over and so the light wasn’t so bad for his eyes, besides he fancied that they were improving a little. He was also hungry.
John Tovey appeared when he stuck his head out of the tent to see who was about and came to help him on with his doublet.
“Any idea where my henchman is, Mr. Tovey?” he asked the boy who seemed to be as bad at tying points as he was good at penmanship.
“Um…sorry, sir,” said Tovey, fumbling about at the back of Carey’s doublet, “Who?”
“Hughie Tyndale? He was poisoned at the same time.”
“Ah. My lord Earl said your f…father had taken him into the rest of his household when they moved into Trinity College.”
“Excellent. Go find me some food and then we’ll take a walk round the corner and talk to him.”
Tovey came back with a couple of pies and bread and ale which Carey demolished at speed. He then strapped on his sword and poinard, crammed his hat as low on his head as he could and stepped outside the tent, past Henshawe sitting wittling something and the Earl at his peculiar chess play and various rehearsals for a masque going on.
The traffic would be far too bad to bother with a horse, so Carey simply walked out of the makeshift gate between the bright flags onto the muddy rutted path that joined Broad Street which went alongside the old Oxford city wall and was at least cobbled for the horse market there. The alehouse on the corner with the lane that went down to New College was crammed with menservants shouting at each other. The schools and the Bodleian library loomed opposite.
Even in the annoying dazzle Carey could see the men in his father’s livery at the door of Trinity College, tucked between a field and a small bookshop. He went straight over, made a few enquiries and ten minutes later was unbolting the chamber door where Hughie was still recovering.
The window was shuttered and although Hughie didn’t rate a proper fourposter bed, somebody had rigged up a curtain of old-fashioned tapestry with pointy hatted women and moth-holes.
Hughie looked pale and frightened, which was an odd sight in a young man as large and well-shouldered as he was, with his black hair and square shuttered face and his beard starting to come in strongly.
When he’d blinked at Carey, he tried to get up but Carey stopped him with a raised hand.
“Hughie, don’t trouble yourself, I came to see how you were doing.”
“It wisnae me, sir,” growled Hughie in Scotch. “Ah tellt ’em, Ah didnae spike yer drink…”
No doubt his father had made sure the lad was well-questioned, but Carey had better methods. He pulled up the stool and sat himself down, blinking and rubbing his eyes.
“I’ve only just been well enough to get up,” he said affably. “How are your eyes doing?”
“Mebbe I’ve bin struck blind,” muttered Hughie dolefully, “I cannae mek out…”
“No, that’s what belladonna does to you, it seems, fixes your pupils open so you can’t see in daylight. Dreadful stuff. It’s lucky I didn’t drink as much of that flagon as you did. You should start being able to see properly again tomorrow.”
“Ay?”
“Oh yes. Now I’m completely certain it wasn’t you who put the belladonna in my booze, but you must have seen who did it because…”
“But I canna remember, sir, I’m so sorry.”
That might be true. Carey couldn’t think how he’d got to the church and couldn’t remember much of what happened there either, apart from the puking which he would have preferred to forget.
“Well we’ll start with your last clear memory and see what more you can remember? Do try, there’s a good fellow, you’re my only chance at tracking down whoever did it.”
“Ay,” Hughie looked very gloomy, his jaw was set. “I wantae ken that masen.”
“All right. Do you recall me sending you off for spiced wine?”
It was like pulling teeth. Hughie remembered the girls dancing the country dance. He remembered seeing Carey speak to the pretty Italian woman and he remembered heading for the spiced wine bowl and pushing through the other servingmen. He couldn’t remember any more.
“Did you see who was serving?”
He shook his head, there were too many people around the table, he couldn’t get through.
“So how did you get your flagon filled?”
He’d passed it forward to the table and got it back filled with spiced wine…
“Ach,” he said, scowling, “that’s when it happened.”
Carey nodded. “They wouldn’t take the risk of poisoning the whole bowl, it had to be very specific. So when whoever it was saw you with the flagon, he knew you were my man, he blocks your path to the spiced wine and he helpfully gets it filled then adds the be
lladonna. The idea, I think, was that you would be blamed for it.”
“Ay?”
“Well of course. It’s only because you illicitly drank enough to half-kill yourself that my father doesn’t have you banged up in the Oxford jailhouse right now.”
There was a long thoughtful pause while Hughie digested this.
“Ah hadnae thocht o’that, sir.”
“No? Well, think about it now. You bring me wine which is poisoned, ideally I die and it’s only thanks to God that I didn’t, and then as my henchman who brought the wine, you would be the first and probably last suspect.”
“But I didna…”
Carey leaned forward, blinking at the young man’s sullen face and wishing he could see more clearly. “Hughie, I’m sure you didn’t but if I was dead and you unpoisoned, you would be in very big trouble no matter how innocent you were. I can’t guarantee that my father wouldn’t have you put to the question to find out what had happened; he’s a decent man and doesn’t like that kind of foreign rubbish, but he would be very upset if he had my corpse to bury. To put it mildly.”
More silence. “Ay, sir,” said Hughie heavily. There was some kind of rage smouldering in him somewhere. Carey hoped Hughie would put the rage to good use, by finding the poisoner, for instance.
Carey stood and clapped a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “I’ll talk to my father, make sure he releases you to me once you’re better. Think about it. Oh and Hughie…”
“Ay, sir?”
“I’m a very tolerant man, you know. I served at Court for ten years before I decided it would be more fun to do some fighting on the Borders. I know how Courts work and I know how the King of Scotland’s Court works as well because I was there with Walsingham years ago and I’ve been back a few times since. The only thing I don’t forgive in a man of mine is lying to me. Understand?”
More silence.
“If you’re taking money from someone to keep an eye on me and report back, I don’t mind at all—so long as you tell me about it.”
Nothing. Carey nodded and crammed his hat further down over his eyes. “See if you remember anything more, drink plenty of mild ale and if you feel up it you can be back at work for me tomorrow. God knows, Mr. Tovey my new clerk doesn’t know one end of a doublet from another.”
Not a glimmer of a smile, the saturnine young face was clearly masking a brain that was thinking furiously.
Quite pleased with himself, Carey went out and found Tovey sitting on a window ledge peering out the window into the quad. His face was wistful.
“Happy memories, Mr. Tovey?”
“Yes, sir. Though I was at Balliol not Trinity and working my keep, I loved it here.” The shy smile among the spots was like that of a man remembering an old love. “All the books, it was just…It was heaven here. So many books to read.”
Carey nodded politely. While he liked reading and enjoyed romances like the Roman de la Rose or adventure stories like Mallory’s Morte d’Arthur, he usually got restless after an hour or so. He wasn’t a clerk.
“Let’s go find one of my brothers,” he said. Tovey hopped down and trotted after him obediently.
Luckily the one he found was George who was unenviably in charge of organising the Hunsdon household. The household was enormous even on progress and spilled out of the main college quad and into the gardens behind. George was Hunsdon’s heir, in his forties and very harassed by the lack of provisions.
“What?” he snapped irritably when Carey asked him the question for the fourth time. “You want to know whether your man Dodd’s turned up and also about Aunt Katherine’s riding habit thirty years ago? For God’s sake, Robin, why?”
“For a good and sufficient reason,” Carey said. His hat was helping the dazzle but he was getting another headache and his guts were in a sad state, no doubt thanks to Dr. Lopez’ prescriptions. And he was now seriously worried about Dodd—none of his father’s men had any idea whether he had been found yet. It was as if he had been stolen away by the faery folk. And Carey did not personally want to think about a faery that could do that to Dodd.
Carey passed a hand down the leg of the horse that seemed skittish, while his elder brother gloomily checked the hay stores which had clearly been got at by rats and possibly humans.
“I don’t know what the devil happened to her skirt,” said George pettishly. “And as for Dodd, my bloody wagons left London ten days ago with food supplies and they haven’t arrived yet either. Maybe the sergeant ran off with them.”
Not impossible with Dodd, but unlikely, Carey thought. The skittish gelding next to him blew out its lips and hopped a bit. Running his hand down again, Carey found the hot sore place on the knee which he suspected would need a bran poultice. He pointed this out to George who wasn’t pleased to hear about it as he was also short of horses. In Carey’s experience nobody, in any situation, ever had enough horses.
“Come on, George,” he insisted, “I’ll leave you alone if you tell me. You must remember more than I do and I remember quite a fuss years later. Aunt Katherine’s riding habit?”
“God, I don’t know,” snorted George, sounding very like a lame horse himself, “I’m not so bloody interested in fine clothes as you, I don’t…”
“I don’t wear kirtles, George,” Carey said coldly, wishing his brother wasn’t so pompous. “I’m asking for a reason. Do I have to show you my warrant?”
“Oh. That. Well…” George sighed and stared at the ground. “Far as I can remember she was at Court early in the Queen’s reign. Lettice hadn’t come to Court yet. I was a page still, and yes, her riding habit went mysteriously missing. And then one of her tiring women was complaining that it was ruined but then the Queen was very kind and gave Aunt Katherine a dress length—a whole twelve yards—of fine green Lincoln wool, and arranged for her own tailor to make a new habit for her.”
“Anything else? How was the kirtle ruined?”
“Got splashed with blood or something. And the headtire had been lost as well. Aunt Katherine probably fell off her horse and didn’t want to admit it, she was never a very good rider.”
Yes! Carey stood stock still, staring into space. “I don’t remember Aunt Katherine ever liking the hunt,” he said carefully. “What style was the headtire?”
George shrugged. “She was very old-fashioned, usually wore French hoods that went out with Bloody Mary, I don’t know.”
Carey’s heart was pounding and the hair up on the back of his neck, it was like what you felt when you saw a chorus of Kings in your hand and a fat pot on the table.
George was still droning on. “Sorry, brother?”
“I said, Robin, if you’d care to listen for a change, that Aunt Kat was very upset about it and so was Father and he told us not to mention it at all.”
“Right.” That fitted too. Carey decided he had to find his father and talk to him. “Where is Father?”
“He’s out with some men, trying to find out what happened to the pack train—and your Sergeant Dodd as well. He was saying if you hadn’t been so infernally careless and got yourself poisoned, you could have been very useful. He wants to know when you think you’ll be fit to ride?”
Leaving out the detail of where he had gone that morning, Carey shrugged. “Maybe tomorrow if my eyes are better. I’m quite busy too, you know. In addition to the warrant matter, I’m also trying to find out who poisoned me. Thank you, George.”
He walked carefully out of the Hunsdon camp, still trailed by Tovey, with the sunlight peering under a sheet of dirty linen cloud to dazzle him again and make his head hurt. He would have to find out from Cumberland who was serving the spiced wine on Saturday and then talk to the man to see if he could remember any of the people crowding round the table. Meantime his head was buzzing because he had thought of a possible reason for the Queen to be at Cumnor Place on the 8th September 1560. It was far-fetched but it made better sense than the notion that she would personally murder Amy, that was sure. He might have to go bac
k to Cumnor Place and press Mrs. Odingsells for whatever it was she had kept. And his Aunt’s missing headtire made sense of something else.
Unfortunately the new explanation once again made a prime suspect of Lord Burghley.
Monday 18th September 1592, night
Back with the Earl of Cumberland’s encampment, he found the man who served the spiced wine who was understandably extremely nervous. It took some time to calm him enough to get any sense out of him at all. He said he was certain there had been no woman at all amongst the servingmen wanting spiced wine for their masters, which took out Emilia’s direct intervention. As for which of them had passed forward Hughie’s flagon—the man had no idea at all, blinked helplessly at the flagon Carey showed him and said he’d filled hundreds that looked just like it, he was sorry, sir, but…Carey sighed, gave him thruppence for his time and promised him another ninepence if he could remember anything else.
Carey would bet a lot of money that whichever man it had been, he’d left Rycote on Saturday night, but so had plenty of other people. Or had he? There were so many servingmen, henchmen, and general hangers on at Court, even on progress, the poisoner could easily have stayed with the Court if he kept his nerve.
He was restless and out of sorts. He couldn’t even enjoy playing cards with Cumberland when he could hardly make out the pips. Darkness fell which eased him somewhat. And so Carey sat and drank mild ale in the little alehouse on the corner of the Hollywell Street, staring into space, trying to filter out the noise of a lute being played by an idiot and some extremely bad singing.
The hammering and sawing died down and the workmen started filling up the alehouse, spending their wages. Flocks of students moved restlessly along the street in their black gowns, arguing and drinking and, occasionally, fighting.
Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) Page 21
