The Queen swept in at the sound of a trumpet, magnificent in black velvet and pearls. Like Papists at their idolatry, Gage and Carey both knelt, as did Lord Hunsdon.
With Lady Bedford arranging her gown, the Queen stepped up to her throne, sat down and beckoned Lord Hunsdon to her. He brought her the swords Carey and Gage had been using, knelt on the top step and let her feel the edges.
“Well?” said the Queen, nodding for Hunsdon to save his legs and stand again. “What is the meaning of this outrage, Mr Gage?”
Very stupidly Gage tried to lie. “Your gracious Majesty, my lord Chamberlain has made a mistake,” he said, “Mr Carey and I were not duelling but practising our sword-play . . .”
“With edged weapons?”
“For . . . for greater verisimilitude,” said Gage.
“In a field in Lambeth?”
“For . . . for privacy.”
The silence rang with disbelief. The Queen sniffed disdainfully.
“Mr Carey?”
I owe you nothing, Gage, thought Carey and I’m damned if I am lying to the Queen for your sake. Life is going to be difficult enough without deliberately making it shorter.
“I throw myself on Your Majesty’s mercy,” said Carey, staring firmly at the Queen’s feet in their red-and-gold shoes. “I have nothing to say in explanation and no defence to make. I am entirely at fault.” Would it be advisable to kiss a shoe? No. The gesture would be courtly but she might kick him in the mouth.
“What is? Are you admitting that you two were fighting a duel, clean contrary to our express will and statute?”
Carey ignored Gage’s desperate sidelong stare. Wake up, John, he thought, this is no game. Lie to the Queen and she will never forgive you.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
She settled herself back on the red velvet cushions, leaned an elbow on the carved and gilded arm and tapped her lower lip with one long ringed finger.
“What was it about?”
This surprised him. He had expected her to start shouting at him at once, telling him what stupidity it was to fight Englishmen when there were Spaniards aplenty over the water, demanding to know how she was supposed to explain to their mothers how they died, swearing at them and throwing slippers and goblets as usual. This icy calm was far more frightening.
“Y . . . Your Majesty?” he stammered.
“Generally we find that there is some reason for a duel, half-witted though it no doubt was,” said the Queen frostily, “We desire to know what was the reason. The casus belli.”
Carey cleared his throat.
“As I said, it was my fault,” he said, still not daring to look up. “Mr Gage wanted satisfaction of me because I . . . er . . . well, I hit him.”
“Why did you hit him?”
“He . . . er . . . he insulted my family.”
“And why did you do that, Mr Gage?”
Gage said nothing.
“Well, Mr Gage?”
Gage licked his lips. “I have forgotten,” he said lamely.
More silence. The Queen’s forefinger continued to tap her lip below the stunning scarlet of her lip-paint.
“Which one of you is the father of Bethany Davison’s child?” she asked quietly.
Oh my God, thought Carey, she knows, she’s found out. And then: Davison thinks it was me. Oh Christ. I am a dead man.
“When we ask a question of our so-called gentlemen, we expect an answer,” rapped the Queen’s voice. “Which of you was the father?”
Gage said nothing and Carey found he could not speak. Not one of the maids of honour was whispering. Raleigh was still leaning on the windowsill, watching with dispassionate interest.
The Queen rose and taffeta rustled as she paced down the two steps and stood in front of them.
“We are ashamed,” she said, her voice vibrating with fury. “We are ashamed to think that one of our women has been dishonoured by some gentleman of ours. And further, I am ashamed that Mr Davison has seen fit to tell me it is one of mine own cousins. Well, Mr Carey? Do you admit it was you?”
Mentally Carey said goodbye to any hopes of office from his attendance at court. He would be in the Tower or the Fleet by nightfall, he thought, but his problems would really start when the Queen let him out. She would probably not receive him at Court and he could not evade his creditors forever. He would have to go and fight in the Netherlands. Vaguely he wondered why that prospect no longer dismayed him quite as much as it had.
She was standing directly in front of him, her hands on her hips.
“Robert Carey!” she roared. “Answer me.”
Astounding how much noise a medium-sized middle-aged woman could produce when she wanted. Carey flinched at it. And then he got hold of himself and looked up at her.
“No, Your Majesty,” he said steadily. “It was not me. If it had been me, I would have married the maiden.”
“Without our permission?” the Queen hissed.
“If necessary, Your Majesty,” said Carey. “I would rather face Your Majesty’s righteous anger for marrying without permission than face it for getting a bastard. I am not Mistress Bethany’s lover and never have been.”
“Mr Davison says that you are.”
“Mr Davison is not infallible and on this occasion he is mistaken.”
She sniffed instead of slapping him as he expected and stared at him. “Who is the father then?”
“I do not know,” he said, still steadily. It was true enough. He did not know, not for certain, he only suspected. He tried to return the Queen’s gaze as a man with the clearest conscience in the world. Lord, this was a mess. Perhaps he could go north and serve as a captain under his brother, who was Marshal of Berwick Castle. Not such a bad idea. The bailiffs would be expecting him to make for Tilbury. But if he could get hold of a decent horse . . .
“Well, Mr Gage. Was it you?”
“No, Your Majesty,” Gage lied boldly.
“Oh? Then why did she say on her deathbed that it was you?”
Carey felt his mouth drop open and shut it quickly, with an audible click of his teeth. He swallowed hard. Bethany? Deathbed? What in God’s name had happened?
Gage was as stunned as he was. “Your . . . Your Majesty?”
“Bethany Davison died last night of a childbed fever after miscarrying your bastard, Mr Gage. I saw her before she died because she was a dear child to me, despite her dishonour and incontinence. She spoke of many things in her fever and among them was the fact that you, Mr Gage, were the father and that you refused to marry her because your father had bought a valuable ward for you.”
Carey risked a sideways look at Gage. He had shut his eyes.
“No doubt this is the true root of your duel, although it seems Mr Carey will not admit it. Bethany never loved any other man but you, Mr Gage, and you betrayed her. Well?”
You are done for, Gage, Carey thought without regret; throw yourself on her mercy, kiss her foot or something, and hope for the best. Another part of his mind, the less cynical part, was struck with sorrow. Bethany, dead. Lord God, what a waste.
Gage stuttered and muttered something about fever dreams.
“I beg your pardon?”
“She must have been dreaming,” Gage said, busily digging his grave with his tongue. “If she was sick of a fever, she invented it. Or Mr Davison is right and Carey is the father.”
With astonishing calm the Queen tilted her head, considering. “Certainly, that is possible,” she said. “However, this trinket says otherwise.” She help up Gage’s New Year’s Gift and opened it. “Last night I had a pursuivant take it to the Cheapside jewellers that serve the Court and found out who ordered it made. And this lock of hair was clearly precious to her. You will note, Mr Gage, that the colour matches your hair, not Mr Carey’s, since his is chestnut and this is blond.”
Gage shrugged, growing bolder as he began to believe his own denials. “The jeweller was mistaken. I am not the only blond man at this Court, Your Majesty. It co
uld have been any one of half a dozen men, and it certainly was not me . . .” With a tremendous sweep of her arm, the Queen slapped his face, almost knocking him over. The crack rang through the Presence Chamber and one of the maids of honour snorted with nervous giggles.
The Queen marched back to the throne and sat down, breathing hard through her nose.
“Get him out of here,” she ordered the sergeant-at-arms. “Put him in the Fleet. I will never receive him again. My lord Chamberlain, he is not to be admitted to Court again under any circumstances and you may write to his father and tell him why.”
Gage was marched out, the Queen’s handprint livid on his face, still denying he had even met Bethany.
Carey stayed where he was since he had not been dismissed, thinking again of Bethany the last time he had seen her, when she said she was not pregnant any more, when she asked where she could find Kate . . . Why had it not occurred to him to question why a high-born maid of honour would want to find a common trollop? Oh, Lord. Was that what she had done? He had heard whispers about it while he was in Paris as a youth, being very well educated by a high-born Countess twice his age. Had Bethany gone to a witch?
“Mr Carey,” said the Queen and he dragged his attention back to her, “you will now tell me the full story.”
Naturally he told it to her, not omitting the detail that Davison had been blackmailing Bethany for privy information about the Queen. If he was going down, he would make sure he took at least one man who deserved it with him. The Queen cross-questioned him and took him through the story twice, in detail, with a grasp of forensic inquiry very unsuitable to a woman. He might have admired it if he had not been the sweating object of her dissection.
At last she stopped and sat watching him narrowly, while he surreptitiously moved his weight from one knee to the other.
“We have one more question to ask of you, Mr Carey,” she said at last. “Why did you not come to me when Mistress Bethany first told you of her condition?”
For a moment he could not answer because it had never occurred to him that he should. Of all the various things he had considered doing to help Bethany, that one had simply not been present. Tell the Queen? When most of Bethany’s terror had been at her likely reaction?
Well, it was a question he dared not answer. If he told the Queen how her favourite bedfellow had feared her anger, there was no predicting how she might react. And his wits were far too battered to come up with a convincing reason other than that.
He opened his mouth to try and excuse himself and then decided that he was damned if he would. In fact, he had answered enough. He shut his mouth again and knelt there, letting the silence stretch around him.
It became a kind of covert battle between them, but Carey held the queen’s stare, silently defying her, resigned to losing all place at Court, resigned to the Tower, but absolutely determined not to say another word unless she resorted to thumbscrews.
And then, astonishingly, after what seemed like an hour or two, the Queen sighed, very heartfelt and heavy, and nodded at him.
“My lord Chamberlain,” she said to Hunsdon, who was standing by the throne with his arms crossed and all of Henry VIII’s thunder on his brow. Seen side by side with the Queen like that, their shared paternity was almost comically obvious.
Hunsdon went stiffly on one knee to the Queen and bowed his head.
“Apart from the fact that he apparently tried to stop the duel himself, do you have anything to say for your son?” she asked.
Hunsdon harrumphed loudly. “Your Majesty . . .” he began, obviously struggling not to shout, “other than that I think the boy is a half-witted ungrateful numb-skulled popinjay of a pillock, no.”
Carey began to feel annoyed with his father.
“Do you think he has acted dishonourably?” the Queen pursued.
Hunsdon shrugged massive shoulder. “Stupidly, yes. Dishonourably, no.”
The Queen’s mouth curved as if she shared some obscure secret with her half-brother.
“I give him to you then, my lord, to deal with as you think fit. He is in your wardship until I release him. For the moment he is under house arrest in your rooms here in Whitehall. But, he may not attend at Court and he is forbidden my presence.”
“Your Majesty is a most wise and merciful Prince,” growled Hunsdon. “I shall see to it that the boy does not offend again.”
Wait a minute, Carey wanted to say, I am not a boy, I am a man of twenty-six. I will not be put into my father’s ward . . . Damn it.
“Have you anything further to say, Mr Carey?”
Well, he did, a very great deal, but some particle of sense and experience at Court told him that it seemed he might get off quite lightly, and this was not a time to push his luck. As least he was not being sent to the Tower.
“I am, as always, at Your Majesty’s command,” he answered, and when she waited, with her head tilted imperiously, for his to kiss the rod, he managed to add, “And I am grateful for Your Majesty’s kindness and mercy to this unworthy subject.”
She nodded, his father clicked his fingers at the men-at-arms and Carey creaked to his feet. He bowed, they marched out, led by Lord Hunsdon to the couple of chambers at the end of the Stone Gallery where the Lord Chamberlain had Bouge of Court. Carey was beginning to feel aggrieved as Hunsdon dismissed the men-at-arms. Once they were alone, he glowered back at his father.
“What the hell did she expect me to do?” he demanded hotly. “How dare she think I would inform on Bethany; does she think I am one of her God-damned pursuivants like –”
His father simply roared incoherently and kicked him in the balls.
LIX
“ARE YOU NOT PERHAPS judging him too harshly?” said Thomas Hart, as he pulled a leg off the spit-roasted chicken he was sharing with Becket. Becket grunted and took the other leg, his mouth full of manchet bread.
“The man is an inquisitor, a pursuivant,” he growled indistinctly. “He once admitted to me himself that he was one of the men who questioned Father Campion. Believe me, nothing I have done to him is worse than what he and his like have done to others.”
Father Hart said nothing at first, but raised his eyebrows. “Or what was done to you?” he commented.
Becket winced. “I can take no credit for standing firm,” he muttered. “By some miracle, God sent His angel to hide away my memory from Davison and his men, may the pox rot them in this life and the Devil take them in the next.”
“Amen,” said Father Hart.
“As for him,” Becket pointed with his thumb, “that bastard made believe to be my friend when they put me in the Fleet and I have no doubt at all they put me there so that he could better worm his way into my confidence. Pursuivants have often enough done the like before.”
“It might have been better to leave him in the stocks then.”
Becket smiled wolfishly. “No,” he said, “this way is better. This way we have a lever against them. We can find out what the Queen knows of us, and when we have finished with him, why, we ransom him to his family again to give us money to get us back to France or we cut his throat, whichever is easier.”
“If he lives.”
Becket shrugged again. They finished their meal while the sounds of London morning arose from nearby Fleet Street, and then Tom Hart brought out the files and blacksmith’s gear and they set to work on Becket’s leg-irons.
At last Becket could straighten up and scratch his bruised ankles properly.
“Thank God,” he said. “Now, Father, are you ready?”
“Where are we going?”
“The Falcon Inn, picking up where Davison made us leave off. And this time, no saying Mass for your friends, Father.”
“You know I am the only priest in London; if they ask me to say Mass for them . . .”
“Not this time, Father. Somebody betrayed us that time and they will again. We do it my way, or not at all.” For a moment Father Hart looked as if he would argue it further, but changed his
mind.
“Very well. You believe she will be there?”
“There or thereabouts. Are you coming?”
“What about him?” The priest glanced back at the bed. “When will you question him?”
“In my own good time, Father. He can spend a while thinking improving thoughts about poetic justice and methods for getting the truth out of a prisoner.”
“He might escape.”
“Lock the door. He’s not the man I take him for if he can escape from those knots.”
They put on hats and cloaks, and left Simon Ames bound and gagged in the silence, with the carcass of chicken and no fire. If they thought of the rats, they were not troubled by them.
LX
DAWN HAD LONG SINCE come up like the maiden of the Ancient Greeks, wearing rainbow jewels of thick frost that had grown as ethereal moss on every surface, including the empty pillory and stocks. Moments later Newton came lumbering out of his quarters, wiping breakfast beer off his beard and began veritably howling in anguish. He was like a farmer’s wife at a fox-raided hen-house and quite amusing to watch, thought Thomasina. She had been sleeping by the bread-oven in a little next of rags she had made her own, until the banging and shouting and hurrying hither and yon of the prison servants woke her up. Every prisoner in the Fleet was hustled to the courtyard and the wards were searched and searched again, while Newton marched up and down threatening floggings, the Hole and worse to any who had helped Strangways and Anriques.
Thomasina was amused but also frightened. She had known the riot in the courtyard the day before for the ruse it was and had run to the Strand to leave a message to that effect at the Earl of Leicester’s house. She had barely been in time to get in at the gates before they were locked at sunset.
Now she squatted quietly in a corner, watching while Newton shouted and threatened the upright man who really ran the prison. Cyclops could hardly contain his grim amusement, only shrugged and denied that he had had any hand in the escape. Annoyingly, her view was then casually cut off by a woman’s skirts. She shifted to try and see until she heard the woman’s voice, soft and firm.
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