A little to his surprise, they reached the road without anyone shooting at them and from there they went to a canter and then a full gallop with one of Hunsdon’s men out front shouting at the people on the road to make way, make way! The red-haired woman was looking uncomfortable and frightened, the child-sized one was narrow-eyed all the way, but the black-haired woman seemed to be enjoying herself and even Dodd had to admit, she rode very well in her fancy side-saddle.
They got back to the bridge in record time, but instead of going into any of the colleges, they rode straight on through the crowded streets, bowed through at once by the gate guards, and trotted right up wide St. Giles to the northward road. From there it was perhaps ten miles to a village Carey called Woodstock. There, overlooking the valley, was a small fancy castle, probably once defensible but quite decayed now. It was surrounded by tents and horses. The ladies-in-waiting immediately disappeared into the castle. Then Hunsdon turned his horses and they took it easier as they rode back down the road to Oxford at last.
Dodd and Carey took their horses to the stabling at the back of Trinity College themselves and walked them round the courtyard a few times to cool them down. It was only mid-morning and no grooms to be seen, of course.
“Whit were ye talking about wi’ Jeronimo when he got ye?” Dodd asked casually as he rubbed his horse down with a wisp of hay. Carey was still looking pale as he did the same and kept rubbing his chin where a very well-aimed bruise was darkening the point of it. His lip was puffing too. You had to admit, a Court goatee gave a good target to aim at if you wanted to knock a man down.
“I was talking about music,” he said in a puzzled voice. “I said I’d sung the Spanish air he’d sent to the Queen as the signal that she was willing to meet him. I hummed it for him. He said he was hanging around Oxford to hear it, but then he came on you at the inn and decided it would be easier and safer to take you prisoner and use you directly as a lever. He asked me if anyone else had known it and I said no, but then I remembered…goddamn it!” Carey had gone even paler. He was standing like a post staring into space while his horse stamped uneasily. “Goddamn it to Hell and perdition.”
“What?”
Carey took a deep breath and shook his head. “I’d forgotten about it. I’d just learnt the tune and was humming it when someone…an old man asked me if I was sent by Heron Nimmo. That’s how I heard it. Of course, that was Jeronimo if you pronounce it the Spanish way. But I had no idea what the old man was talking about so I told him, no, the Queen wanted me to sing it specially.”
“Ay?”
“About an hour later, someone tried to shoot me with a crossbow. It was pure luck they missed. And that night someone put belladonna in my spiced wine and nearly killed me.”
“Ay?” Well, that explained the pallor and slowness. Poison? Jesu, that was a new one even for Carey. “Did ye tell Jeronimo those things?”
“Yes, I asked him if it had been him with the crossbow and the belladonna on Saturday, and why he had been trying to kill me not the Queen, not that I minded, of course. Moments later, he started puking and then when I came to help, he hit me.”
“How? His wrist was roped to his belt.”
“With his stump—it must have a leather and iron cap over the end from the way it felt.”
“Och!” Dodd was reluctantly admiring.
“Then while I was stunned, he part-drew my sword with his teeth and sawed through the rope, then he was gone. Damn it.”
“Would ye know that old man again?”
“That whole Saturday evening is very blurred. I don’t know. Jeronimo said there were two of them that tried to kill the Queen, his friend and him. The friend who had family in Oxford and gave him shelter. And now I think about it, I wonder if he was the musician from the Oxford waits that played cello for Mr. Byrd when I sang the song again and then disappeared halfway through the Earl of Oxford’s ball. Mr. Byrd was very annoyed. I even drank his ration of ale.”
They were silent a moment. “I’ll tell my father,” Carey said. “We’ll let the men comb through the forest with dogs, I doubt they’ll find Jeronimo. He’ll be in Oxford meeting his bloody friend…What was his name? Sam? Punch…no Pauncefoot. Right. We’ll get them cried at the Carfax and St Giles.” Carey smiled wanly at Dodd. “Even out in the courtyard, I could hear you shouting at the…the lady to hang Jeronimo immediately. That was good advice, but it probably helped make his mind up to escape.”
“Ay,” said Dodd bitterly, wondering when someone would listen to his good sense soon enough to do something about it.
Thursday 21st September 1592, evening
It was a hopeless business, trying to search Oxford for just two men, even if one of them had only one arm. The place was full of strangers, not just courtiers and their attendants and hangers-on, but also scholars and lecturers and readers, all there ahead of the start of Michaelmas term to cheer the Queen, along with any peasants from the surrounding countryside who could bring anything into the market to sell. Oxford roared with people and horses, pigs, goats, sheep, cattle, innumerable chickens and geese, barrels, carts…Dumfries had been more chaotic but there were far more people in Oxford which was a bigger town to start with.
Dodd was fascinated by the idea of the colleges, fortresses where you went to learn things from books. He had never heard of the like, although he vaguely thought that the Reverend Gilpin had studied Divinity somewhere like Oxford. He had a look at Christ Church which was where the Queen was going to stay and thought it well-defensible so long as no one had cannon. However the proposed processional route was a nightmare, lined with painted allegorical scenery, any one of which gave beautiful cover for a man with a crossbow and no shortage of high windows in the houses either.
Halfway through the afternoon it started spitting with rain but then stopped. Dodd was sitting at a table in the White Horse on Broad Street in a private room at the back with Lord Hunsdon, Carey, Lord Hunsdon’s steward Mungey, the Captain of the Queen’s Gentlemen Pensioners of the Guard and some other men, including Carey’s two new servants, the skinny clerk Tovey and the large dark Scot who was as pale and unhealthy-looking as his master. Dodd gave the man an ugly look: he didn’t like Scots. The Scot gave him an ugly look right back: no doubt he had his nation’s usual irrational hatred of the English. His voice was pure Edinburgh but there was something about him that tickled Dodd’s memory.
The Captain of the Queen’s Guard was speaking, Dodd forgot his name. He was deputising for Sir Walter Raleigh who was still in the Tower of London for getting a Maid of Honour with child and then marrying her without the Queen’s permission.
“Her Majesty will not cancel her entry into Oxford.” Nobody looked surprised though Dodd was. He had heard that the Queen was nervous about her safety and very careful of poison. “That’s final.”
Hunsdon and Carey looked at each other. “Did you bring the Royal coach?” Carey asked.
“Yes we did, although she hasn’t used it yet. She hates it, claims it makes her feel seasick,” said Hunsdon thoughtfully. Dodd agreed with the Queen, he hated coaches too.
“Well then, I’d persuade her to at least ride in the coach. That makes it much harder to shoot at her and the coach should stop a crossbow bolt.”
Hunsdon nodded and his clerk made a note. “She won’t like it, but she will do it,” he said.
“Would she wear a jack or a breastplate?” Dodd asked. “For when she’s out of the coach listening to speeches? The King o’ Scotland has a specially padded doublet for entries and the like.”
Everyone exchanged looks. “It was hard enough to get her to do it in ’88,” said Hunsdon, “for Tilbury. There’s no reason we can give now and I think she won’t do it. It would look mistrustful of the people.”
Dodd wondered why a sovereign Queen cared about that. He sighed. “We just have tae find them, then,” he said.
As the futile search wore on into the night, Tovey and Tyndale were not much use, Carey was looking more an
d more glum and said very little. It seemed Tyndale had had a chance to catch Jeronimo’s friend the night before but had messed it up. At last it was Dodd who called a halt and they went back to Trinity College. They drank a late night cup of brandy by the fire in Dodd’s chamber while Tovey and Tyndale got themselves settled for the night in the parlour.
“Dinna fret yersen,” Dodd said awkwardly to the Courtier who was staring at the flames with a remote expression on his face. “Onybody might ha’ made that mistake wi’ Jeronimo.”
“It never occurred to me that he might hit me with his stump.”
“Nor to me,” Dodd said, though he hoped he would have thought of it. Still, as Jock o’ the Peartree had established, the Courtier was soft.
“Come on, Henry, what would you do to find Jeronimo and his friend before they kill the Queen?”
“I wouldna bother searching the town the day,” he said after a moment’s thought. “I would search her route but yer dad will do it anyway. What I would do is think like Jeronimo. He hasnae kin in Oxford but his friend is one of the waits, so we need to keep a good eye out for them. But yer dad will do that too. So. Where would I put myself to kill the Queen?”
“Somewhere high. No shortage what with all the displays and allegorical arches around, not to mention the buildings.”
“What would I use?”
Carey’s laugh was humourless. “A crossbow, a dag, Christ, a dagger will do if he can get close. She’s only flesh and blood.”
Dodd narrowed his eyes and thought. He’d never actually assassinated anyone, in the strict sense, but you couldn’t deny, it was an interesting problem. You had to be close, within about ten feet to have any hope at all of hitting the target. Or you needed to know exactly where she would be and lay a trap of some kind. His money was on a trap. Everyone knew her route through Oxford—down the Woodstock Road, St. Giles, Cornmarket, Carfax, and on down to Christ Church.
They talked it over for a while and then went to bed because it was late and they had to be up before dawn. They had come up with a large number of outlandish ideas, including gunpowder, which even worried Dodd. He was shocked to hear Carey praying quietly before he fell asleep.
Friday 22nd September 1592, midday
Unlike her cousin who was up before dawn, though at least not too happy, it seemed the Queen did not like mornings. She got up at about seven o’clock and spent the next hour and a half dressing, heard Divine service, and then, on the Lord Chamberlain’s insistence, delayed all morning dealing with papers and business with Lord Burghley and his son while Oxford and its environs was searched again.
No sign of Don Jeronimo nor his friend Sam Pauncefoot. After a quick dinner around noon, Carey and Dodd left Tovey and Tyndale with Hunsdon’s liverymen and rode north to Woodstock. There they found the Queen, magnificent in a black velvet bodice and black velvet kirtle trimmed with pearls, ribbons, diamonds, rubies, and peacock feathers, a high cambric ruff standing behind her head and her small gold crown pinned to her bright red wig in a cobweb of diamonds, in a very bad mood. There was something familiar about the beaky nose and the shrewd eyes but Dodd couldn’t place it, put it down to Carey being related to her.
They were given royal tabards to wear and ordered to ride alongside her coach. Dodd wished for a jack or breastplate, he was only wearing a wool doublet and not even the buffcoat he had taken from Harry Hunks on the specious grounds that it smelled too bad. The bloody tabard was nothing but embroidered silk, of all useless things. At least Carey had managed to find a couple of secrets to put under their hats, iron caps that fitted over your skull and were devilishly uncomfortable but at least gave you a chance if somebody hit you on the head.
The Queen was helped into her coach by Lord Hunsdon who was looking tired himself. She sat there, glowering. The large green and white coach flying the Royal standard like a castle, jerked off along the rutted road, creaking and groaning like any cart though there were leather straps that supposedly made it more comfortable. There were eight stolid carthorses in silk trappings drawing it, with plumes on their heads. Nice beasts too, much the biggest Dodd had seen since Carey’s tournament charger was sold to the King of Scots, heavy-boned, powerful and big-footed. They had hairy feet, perhaps there was Flemish blood in them? There were two black geldings, a half-gelding and three mares, originally piebald but dyed black, sixteen to seventeen hands high, their tails docked and plaited up and their coats shining with…
“You’re supposed to be looking out for Jeronimo. Pay attention to the crowd and the Queen, not the bloody horses,” growled Carey out of the side of his mouth and Dodd coughed and dragged his eyes away from the alluring horseflesh.
His heart was beating hard and slow and his back itched and so did his head under the iron cap. He didn’t like any of this though the first mile or so was easy enough, along a road that had been tidied up, the undergrowth cut back from the road properly and some holes filled, lined with peasants from the villages, all cheering for all they were worth and waving tree branches and the occasional banner. About halfway down the louring grey clouds clenched and dumped their rain so the courtiers in the train all covered themselves with cloaks. Neither Carey nor Dodd had brought one so they got wet.
Then they came to a bridge where a large group of men were waiting on foot, some wearing bright red gowns trimmed with marten and behind them more men in black and grey gowns and some in buff coats which Dodd looked at enviously. Their ruffs were sadly bedraggled.
“Vice chancellor of the university, the doctors of the colleges.” Carey muttered to him.
The Queen ordered her coach stopped and said she would hear speeches so long as they were short. She stood on the step of it with two of her grooms holding her cloth of estate over her head to keep off the rain. The vice chancellor knelt to her on the stones of the bridge and made a speech in foreign that seemed long to Dodd. He then gave her a bundle of white sticks with more speechifying and the Queen speechified right back in more foreign and gave the sticks back too. Then one of the others knelt to her and spoke even more in foreign and then, thank God, the lot of them arranged themselves ahead of the coach, the rain dripping from their nice gowns going pink from the red dye running, and walked ahead into Oxford.
There was rain dripping off Dodd’s nose too and he carefully tipped his hat so the rain collecting in the brim wouldn’t spill down his back. At least the weather made a gun unlikely, who could keep a match alight in this? Though if Jeronimo or his friend had a wheel-lock dag…No. Carey’s only fired properly one time in four, you wouldn’t risk it. Even a crossbow would be chancy if you let the wet get at the string.
Another half mile down the road, you could see a very wide street where another road joined from the north, with another of those odd monkish fortresses of learning, flying a lamb and flag on its banners. More men, this time the mayor with his chain and the aldermen, even Dodd could spot that. They made speeches too, but this time in English and a bit shorter, thank God. They too went into the procession with the mayor and the vice chancellor exactly level at the front and a little bit of shoving behind them between the aldermen and the red-gowned doctors of the colleges.
Now the procession went down past a church and into the lead-roofed street called Cornmarket. The streets were lined with young men in their gowns and odd-looking square caps from the days of the Queen’s father. They shouted “Hurrah!” for the Queen and threw the caps up as the Queen went past, which frightened the life out of Dodd for a second who thought they might be throwing stones.
The street’s cobbles clattered and groaned under the iron-shod wheels of the royal coach, and Dodd caught a glimpse of the Queen looking very tense under all her red and white paint. She beckoned Carey over. He actually dared to argue and was clearly told to shut his mouth. Carey moved his horse around the coach so he could speak to Dodd, his mouth in a grim line.
“She says she’s feeling sick, so she’s going to stop the coach at Carfax. And she knows the risk….”
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“Ay,” he said, “there’s a tower there.”
“She won’t get out of the coach but she’ll stop there as long as she can. She thinks it will be quite a while because one of Essex’s pets, Henry Cuffe, is the Greek Reader and will be making a speech in Greek to her.”
What was it with lords? Why did they like speaking foreign so much?
“Can she no’ ride on and have Cuffe come tae her later?”
“She could but she won’t. She ordered me to flush the Spaniard out at Carfax for she won’t have this nuisance all through her visit to Oxford.”
“Och.” Dodd saw the young Scot’s face behind and below Carey looking as if he was actually enjoying himself. Carey must have told the lad to stick around on foot as backup which Dodd doubted was a good idea.
At that point the rain stopped, blast it, and the sun came out. Typical southron weather, you couldn’t even rely on it to rain when you wanted.
Carey was thinking the same. “Now she’ll insist on getting out,” he said gloomily. “She says she’s near to puking with the motion of the coach already.”
“Och,” You had to say this for the King of Scots, coward as he was. He wouldn’t do any such thing. And the result? Nobody had succeeded in killing him yet, despite plenty of good tries and a couple of kidnap attempts.
The crowds were closer now, held back by the Gentlemen of the Guard, the Beadles of the university in their buffcoats who had joined them from the university procession and Hunsdon’s liverymen as well. There were townsfolk as well as black-robed scholars, shouting and cheering the Queen and waving their hats.
At least the Cornmarket’s lead roof had kept some of the rain off and would stop any attempt from above. It was nicely decorated with allegorical people standing on it to greet the Queen by singing, half naked, painted gold and silver, still streaming with rainwater and shivering. The coach had to stop so the standard could be taken down as the roof of the coach just went under the roof. The corn merchants were lined up on either side in their best, the only dry spectators of the day, cheering the Queen.
Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) Page 32
