Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) (39 page)

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….”

“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.

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.