The coach came out again onto the square crossroads with the tower and there was more messing about while they put the standard up again. Yet more men were waiting in their doctor’s robes and hats, all of them tense. The coach stopped near the tower, which would make a shot from its roof more difficult. Good. Dodd brought his horse round behind the coach, too many people pressing forward to see the Queen. Carey was staring around anxiously, squinting to see if one of the chilly half-naked painted people on the roof of the Cornmarket was armed. The light was suddenly bright and sharp between the banks of grey.
Somebody pulled on Dodd’s stirrup and Dodd scowled down at that bloody Scot Carey had hired, Hughie Tyndale.
“Ah’ve seen him, the greybeard that filled the flask wi’ poison, there. He’s there!”
“What?” Dodd couldn’t work out what the man was talking about. He was pointing at the crowd. There was a bunch of schoolboys in their best with their schoolmasters holding them back with whips, but no greybeard visible. Carey’s head craned round, he was squinting. Nothing.
Dodd stared hard at the top of the tower, couldn’t see anything there either. A movement caught at the corner of his eye, he couldn’t see who had suddenly bent in a bow. Then he heard a kind of scraping rolling sound under the roar of the crowd that bothered him. Tyndale’s dark face was there, looking ready to run.
“Under the coach, Sergeant,” shouted the lad, sprinting backwards. There was a disturbance going toward the tower.
What was under the coach? From his horse’s back, Dodd couldn’t see, so he slid sideways to the ground and bent and peered.
Something round and metallic was there, smoke coming out of it…
Dodd’s gut clenched hard and his mind slowed down and went cold. Quite calmly he looked at the grenado under the Queen’s coach. His horse behind him was stamping. No, it was worse, it was made of metal. It was a petard.
“Git her oot!” he shouted and threw himself down in the mud on all fours, scrambled under the belly of the coach. As he did that he heard creaking, more cheers and then the straps went up a bit. Someone must have helped the Queen down from the coach. From underneath, beyond the deadly iron ball with its burning fuse, Dodd could make out people kneeling and the large velvet folds of the Queen’s kirtle.
Damn it, he didn’t even have gloves. He grabbed for the petard, it rolled away, he stretched and grabbed again, caught it, brought it toward him, fanned away the choking smoke, saw that the fuse was nearly down to the priming chamber and tried to pull the whole fuse out with his fingers, scorched them, couldn’t do it. He grabbed his hat off, pulled the secret from his head and then carefully brought its iron edge down on the smouldering bit of fuse, cut the hot coal away and stubbed it out on the stones. As soon as it was cool, he pulled the fuse out with his teeth. Then he tipped the petard over and let the fine black priming powder scatter on the stones, then the charge smelling of bad eggs, rubbed wet mud on everything.
At that point the world speeded up again, he felt sweat dripping down his face and he heard more foreign windbaggery resounding from one of the kneelers to the Queen. All he could tell about it was that it was a different sort of foreign from the usual with a lot of oy-sounds in it so he supposed that was Greek.
Somebody was pulling on his boots, he eeled out backwards and bounced up ready to punch whoever it was and found Carey facing him. He held up the petard ball and saw Carey go as white as paper. Beside him was Jeronimo for God’s sake…Smiling?
“Bien, mi bravo! Benga, está en el torre!” said Jeronimo, “Hombres, vamonos!”
“But…”
Carey was already shoving through the crowd to the tower, Hunsdon’s men let him through, Jeronimo after him and Dodd scrambling behind, still holding the empty petard. Empty of powder but full of metal balls and scraps of iron.
There was a man lying unconscious at the door which was open. Dodd heard Carey’s boots, saw Jeronimo’s boots and sprinted blind up the narrow spiral staircase because he didn’t know if this was another elaborate trick or what was going on. First you put a petard under the Queen’s coach which was an excellent target whether the Queen was in it or not and then you…
Well, then of course you sat somewhere high up and shot into the confusion caused by the explosion.
He got to the platform at the top of the Carfax tower. Jeronimo was advancing on an old man standing by the parapet holding a crossbow. The old man had shaved recently from the pale skin round his mouth and one of his thumbs was bandaged.
“Amigo mio,” said Jeronimo, panting for breath, “Sam, no la mates, por Dios!”
The old man’s face crumpled for a moment. “Stop,” he whispered, “Let me finish it for you. I’ve waited so long.”
Jeronimo shook his head. His remaining hand was open as he advanced, unarmed. The old man set the crossbow stock to his shoulder, aimed squarely for Jeronimo’s chest.
Dodd threw the iron ball under arm. It skittered on the flagstones curving leftwards. Carey swung down with his sword from the other side and in that moment Jeronimo charged, the crossbow twanged, and as the men crashed together, Jeronimo’s stump lifted, punched under the old man’s jaw and into his throat.
Both of them thudded to the ground, the greybeard choking blood from his broken windpipe and Carey’s sword stuck in the bone of his shoulder. Other men were coming up the stairs too late, the Scot at the back, typically. Dodd left Carey to pull out his blade, peered over the parapet, caught Hunsdon’s eye and gave him the thumbs-up.
Below them, interminable Greek oratory continued and the Queen stood on the rug-covered cobbles beside her coach, glittering in the sudden sunshine, smiling and nodding attentively at the speech.
The old man was taking a while to die, Carey’s blow had only broken his shoulder blade. But he was drowning in the blood from where Jeronimo had punched his throat with his iron-capped stump, turning blue like a hanged man, threshing and straining to breathe. Dodd glanced at him briefly to make sure he wouldn’t get up again. Carey had turned Jeronimo on his back and found the bolt sticking out of his chest with water and blood leaking out.
The Spaniard was smiling. “Eh…Lucky,” he said, “She is well, the Queen?”
“Yes,” said Carey. “We thought you were trying to kill her as well.”
“No. Pardon that I struck you yesterday, Señor. When you said…poison…I knew poor Sam was still trying to finish the business after thirty years.”
“It was meant for the Queen after he heard your song?”
The blood was bubbling from around the bolt and more was coming out of the Spaniard’s mouth, staining his clenched teeth.
“I think so. Last night I tried…to change his mind. But I was too sick to reach him. It took me all my strength to reach Oxford, I had none to find where Sam had gone.”
Jeronimo shook his head. “I put the music and a finger of the Queen’s glove in her baggage as it passed me on the road to Rycote and asked to speak to her, to confess to her. If she would, she must cause it to be sung. I am so sorry I never heard it sung by you, Señor, because I was busy with Captain Leigh and his men to take your man prisoner after I found him at the inn.”
Carey shook his head a little.
“Pobre Sam,” said Jeronimo, his voice creaking and fading now as the blood filled his lungs. “He loved me and I did not love him. I was cruel to tell him to wait for my music to be played. So long a wait. I think he was taken by the Queen’s inquisitor and so lost the headdress and other glove he kept.” Carey nodded. “And so this…a petard, a crossbow. He had meant to try at Rycote as well, in my memory, but when he thought you were her spy, he used his poison on you, Señor, instead.”
“Perhaps I should be more grateful than I am, Señor.”
Jeronimo smiled again. “It has fallen out better than I ever hope,” he whispered. “I will not die screaming in bed of my canker, and Sam will be with me in Purgatory. Instead a death of honour. Ask the Queen, if she forgives me, of her mercy, ha
ve a Mass said for our souls.”
A frown passed over Carey’s face. “Well…”
“Yes, superstition, you say. I will know the truth sooner than you, Señor. Only put it to your Queen. Please.”
Carey ducked his head. Dodd folded his arms and waited, scowling at Hunsdon’s men and the Gentlemen of the Guard now uselessly crowding the top of the tower to keep them back. Soon both Don Jeronimo and his old friend were dead.
***
The Queen passed on down to Christ Church, cheered by the scholars and went immediately to the privy chamber to rest and hear reports. A couple of hours later, with their soaked tabards handed over to be dried and brushed down, Carey and Dodd were brought in to see her sitting under her cloth of estate in the professor’s parlour she was using as her presence chamber with the Earls of Cumberland, Essex and Oxford attending, along with her ladies-in-waiting, including the red-haired one from Cumnor.
Dodd was in a terrible state of nerves which seemed to amuse Carey. “Now you see why I made you go to the stews the other night?” said the cursed Courtier whose fault it was. “If you were doing this the way you smelled that night, the best you could hope would be that any lapdog she threw at you wouldn’t bite you. Though my main worry was that you might then throw it back.”
“Och,” gasped Dodd, trying to stop his knees knocking. For God’s sake, he wasn’t this afeared of the King of Scots, was he? Well he might be, if he was going to meet him. But this was a powerful Queen who had been ruling since before he was born and had a short way with people who offended her.
The Gentleman of the Guard led them in and Carey bowed three times with tremendous elegance and then knelt on both knees. Dodd managed one bow, nearly fell over his own boots and landed with a thud on his knees on the rush matting which hurt.
“Well, Sir Robert, I see you have redeemed yourself,” came the Queen’s voice, very sardonic, somehow familiar…
“Your Majesty is most kind and understanding. If I may mention…”
“You did well with the quest I gave you, but then you fell for an extremely simple trick which could have been very dangerous to me. I will give you both your warrant and your fee, you can be certain of it, and in good time. But not today.”
Carey’s shoulders sagged a little, though he didn’t look surprised.
“Then, ma’am, may I present Sergeant Henry Dodd of Gilsland who dived under Your Majesty’s coach this afternoon to grab the petard there and put the fuse out and then helped stop the assassin on Carfax Tower.”
“Yes, indeed,” said the Queen’s voice, sounding very amused. “Sergeant, your advice yesterday was excellent although I could not have followed it, even if my cousin had not let Don Jeronimo escape. And it seems in the event that it was better so.”
The face was familiar too. Dodd blinked at the beaky old woman under the red wig and suddenly recognised her. Put a black wig on her and she was the black-haired lady-in-waiting. Now he thought of it, that woman had had ginger eyebrows. Jesu, he had shouted at her only yesterday, wagged his finger at her. Jesu. Oh God. Why the hell hadn’t Carey warned him?
His horror was obviously leaking onto his face, because she laughed. Jeronimo must have known who she was despite her black wig. That’s why he said what he said, broke his parole. He only gave it until he saw the Queen, after all. God, oh God. What would she do to him for shouting at her like that?
“Come here, Sergeant.”
He didn’t want to shuffle about on his knees, so he stood up, stepped forward hiding a wince, and knelt again nearer to her, smelling both old lady and rosewater and the incense caught in the velvet of her gown.
“We have persuaded my lord the Earl of Cumberland of your merit and so, Sergeant, we are very happy to present you with this, as a small token of our thanks for your service to us this day.”
It was a parchment scroll. Dodd took it and nearly dropped it. The Queen was smiling at him. Something was snuffling at his other hand and he looked down to see a little fat lapdog licking it.
“Felipe likes you,” she said. “High praise. I, too, like you Sergeant Henry Dodd and am still in your debt for your actions today. I had considered a pension but Sir Robert thought you would prefer what is in the deed there.”
She gave him her hand, covered in white lead paste and powder and heavy with rings, so he kissed the air above it. Then she nodded to him and he realised he was supposed to stand up and back away. He managed it, just about. What had come over him? While he knelt again just in case, and also to take the weight off his feet, the Queen smiled at Carey, too.
“Robin, I know you won’t approve, but I have also written to ask the French ambassador to dedicate a special Mass for the repose of the souls of Don Jeronimo de la Quadra de Jimena and Sam Pauncefoot. Mr. Byrd will arrange the music for it.”
“Your Majesty…”
“Please be quiet, Robin. You know my opinion on the matter which is that there is one God and Jesus is His Son and the rest is argument over trifles. Now you may go.”
Outside on the staircase, Dodd blinked down at the parchment in his hand. Was it a thank you letter? A warrant?
“Aren’t you going to open it, Sergeant?” Carey asked, grinning stupidly.
He did. Bloody foreign again. But then he saw the word “Dedo” and then the word Gilsland. What? He looked up at Carey.
“They’re the deeds to Gilsland,” Carey explained. “You now own it outright, freehold, with the messuage appertaining. She got it off the Earl of Cumberland in exchange for cancelling one of her loans to him.”
“The deeds…” There was his name in foreign. Henricus Doddus, Praetor whatever that was. “To me?”
“Yes. Gilsland is now legally yours. You were Cumberland’s tenant-at-will, now you are the freeholder of the land and the tower, to you and your heirs in perpetuity unless you sell it.”
Dodd’s heart was pounding. “Ye mean I dinna owe rent?”
“No. You have the expenses of maintenance of course, but Gilsland is now yours. Blackrent is your own decision.”
“Och.” He couldn’t take it in. What would Janet say? By God, she’d be ecstatic, none of her brothers nor even her father was anything more than a tenant-at-will. Now he could not be evicted legally. Illegally, of course, he could be turned off it if he couldn’t defend it, but he was now safe from a landlord’s whims and lawyers.
“Of course it won’t change much now,” Carey was still blathering, “and I hope you’ll continue in the castle garrison as sergeant of the guard as well as of Gilsland. But in due course…when…er…the King of Scots eventually comes in and not for a long time, of course, but eventually…you will have a secure title to your lands. Much better than the Grahams, for instance, who are in fact simply squatting on the Storey lands. It could be very important.”
Dodd managed to get his mouth to shut and looked back down at the deeds and then at Carey again. He blinked around himself at the stairs and a world suddenly changed forever by a bit of parchment in his hand.
He couldn’t yet say thank you to Carey, in case he greeted like a bairn so he coughed several times and said gruffly, “Ay sir. Ay. I’ll need tae think about it. Ehm…where now?”
Carey grinned with perfect understanding, which was annoying. “Back to Trinity College to pick up my clerk and my manservant and some supplies and horses, gather up the new men.”
“Ay, and then?”
“North,” Carey was laughing, “north for Carlisle. God knows what the surnames are up to, it’s the full raiding season. We might make York by nightfall.”
Historical Note
Spoiler warning!
All historical novelists rely on proper historians to inspire and guide them. Often one particularly well-written and well-researched book becomes the main reference—if I’m lucky enough to find one. As I’ve said before, the whole of the Carey series of books was inspired by George Macdonald Fraser’s marvellously funny and accurate history of the Borders The Steel Bonnets. F
or the account of Queen Elizabeth’s ceremonial entry into Oxford in September 1592, I used the contemporaneous account in Nicholl’s Progresses [The Grand Reception and Entertainmen of Queen Elizabeth at Oxford, 1592]—and yes, it was indeed raining.
Amy Robsart, Lady Dudley died on Sunday 8th September 1560. Her suspicious death changed Elizabeth’s life story and the history of her reign. For An Air of Treason, I used a recent account of the mystery by Chris Skidmore titled Death and the Virgin: Elizabeth, Dudley and the Mysterious Fate of Amy Robsart. Chris Skidmore has remarkably tracked down the original coroner’s report into her death and prints it in an Appendix—in full, both Latin and an English translation. It makes eye-opening reading because it was clearly not a broken neck that killed Amy Robsart. There is also a throwaway comment in the wildly inaccurate Catholic propaganda libel “Leicester’s Commonwealth” where it says “she [Amy] had the chance to fall from a pair of stairs and so to break her neck, but yet without hurting of her hood that stood upon her head.” [Skidmore] This intrigued me despite the fact that pretty much everything in “Leicester’s Commonwealth” is a fancifully scurrilous attack on the Queen’s favourite that would put modern tabloid journalists to shame for venom and lack of interest in veracity. But what if that bit was based on truth?
There are other intriguing tidbits for which there is unimpeachable documentary evidence: Why did Lady Dudley send all her servants out of the house on that day—a very unusual and quite daring thing for a wealthy and respectable woman to do? She had only two women with her who were ordered to stay in the parlour. Why was Amy in such a panic over her clothes, ordering a new outfit from her tailor and then, when it didn’t arrive in time, sending another one into Oxford to have gold lace put on the collar? Who was she trying to impress?
Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) Page 33
