P. Chisholm - An Air of Treason

“He could if we were in Oxford or London, but not here where nobody can read music even if they can sing and we daren’t let in any of the musicians from London. You can read pricksong, can’t you?”

“Well, yes, but I…”

The brown button eyes glared again and Carey realised that there was probably some purpose to all this. He bowed again.

“I’ll do my poor best, mistress.”

He got some very haughty looks from the chapel men who were understandably nervous at the idea of a courtier singing with them. That nettled him. He knew he could sing and in fact music had been one of only a few childhood lessons that could compete with football.

He stepped up to the candle and took the handwritten sheet of paper, squinted at it. A little tricky, but not impossibly difficult.

Mr. Byrd had him sight-sing the entire piece solo to a lute, then grunted and took him through it with the chapel men several times. The result was much better, he knew. With the spine of the music held for them by his voice, they could manage the complex interweavings required of them.

“Hmm,” said Mr. Byrd, “well done, Sir Robert, very accurate.”

“This is new, isn’t it? I feel sure I’ve never heard it before.”

Mr. Byrd and Thomasina exchanged looks and Byrd bowed. “Thank you, sir, I have only just finished it.”

Could it have anything to do with the death of Amy Robsart, then? Surely not. It was only a piece of music, an air in the Spanish style, magically worked by William Byrd, an excellent chapel master, perhaps even as good as his predecessor Mr. Tallis. True, he was a Catholic, but he had miraculously survived a brush with Walsingham’s pursuivants in the early eighties and had amply repaid the Queen for her backing of him.

Carey hummed through the whole thing again while he went to try on his dancing clothes. It turned out that the trunkhose and cannions of the suit were also a little tight but would do for now. Hughie had done wonders with his hard-used boots-stuffed rosemary and rue into them, polished them with beeswax and tallow, made them verging on respectable.

He had a little time before he needed to be in the transformed orchard. The inquest report and coroner’s report were, of course, written in Latin which had been a subject that had never once won a battle with football. He knew French very well, which gave him the Norman French you needed for legal documents, but he could only struggle and guess with Latin.

So he walked over to the small stone village church where the Queen’s secretaries would set up their office. He spoke to the Queen’s chief clerk, Mr. Hughes, asking for someone who knew Latin but wasn’t too busy. Hughes gestured at the row of men standing at high folding desks, busy writing. Carey walked past them intending to ask one of the greybeards who were experienced and fast, but then he spotted the second-to-last man, a gawky spotty young creature whose worn grey wool doublet was older than he was from its fashion. The boy looked up and blinked at him short-sightedly. On impulse, he stopped.

“What’s your name?”

“John Tovey, sir.” He had a strong Oxford town accent.

“Can you translate this for me?”

The boy took the paper and blinked at it. “This is quite simple. Are you sure you need it translated, sir?”

Carey smiled. “You don’t normally work for the Queen’s clerks, do you?”

The boy blushed. “I’m…I’m the priest’s son here,” he stuttered, “I…I came to help to…to…”

The boy’s fingers were inky and had a scholar’s callus on the right index finger, so he probably was a genuine clerk.

Carey fished out another groat, a little less than a screever in London would have charged. “Go on,” he said, “English it as quick as you can. I’m due at the dancing.”

John Tovey nodded, gulped his large Adam’s apple against his falling band, took the documents from Carey and spread them out on his desk in the pool of light made by his couple of candles. The light in the church was poor. What followed was remarkable enough that Carey blinked his eyes at it. The boy simply laid down a fresh piece of paper, picked up and dipped his pen and started scribbling, with his finger tracing along the lines of Latin. No muttering aloud, no scratching out, he just wrote down the English for the fiendish Latin.

Carey looked around at the whitewashed walls and carvings. It had been badly damaged at some time in the past, no doubt at the time of the stripping of the altars. There were headless statues and the windows were boarded up.

“Carey!” boomed a voice behind him and Carey spun to see a large boyish man with a curly red-blond beard and wearing an eye-watering combination of tawny slashed with white. His doublet was crusted with amber and topaz, the white damask sprinkled with diamond sparks.

Carey’s left knee hit the tiles as he genuflected. “My lord Earl of Essex,” he said formally, genuinely pleased to see his lord.

Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, favourite of the Queen, bustled across the aisle to Carey, gesturing for him to stand and slung an arm across his shoulders. Essex was a couple of inches taller and at least a hand’s breadth wider than Carey, who was neither short nor narrow. Essex was a man designed by God for the tourney and he loomed and laughed loudly.

“Sir Robert, how splendid! I thought you were still in Berwick chasing cattle raiders…”

“My noble father ordered me south, my lord,” Carey said and on that thought, he remembered why he had been so anxious to see Essex. His stomach tightened. He had important information for the Earl about some investments of his and what Carey thought had really been going on. Unfortunately the news was very bad and Carey had been the Queen’s messenger of bad news often enough that he was nervous about it.

“I heard about you being in some scandalous brawl in the Fleet Prison,” said Essex. “What the devil have you been up to? Is it true you gave Mr. Vice Chamberlain Heneage a bloody nose?”

“It is, my lord,” Carey said and told him an edited version of the last few weeks of activity. Some of it made Essex tip his head back and shake the church rafters with his bellow of laughter. John Tovey jumped like a startled cat at the noise.

“But it was the matter that happened later which brought me here, my lord,” he added. “I wanted to talk to you about some lands you’ve bought in Cornwall…”

Essex’s face suddenly shut down, switching from a handsome boy’s face to something quite masklike.

“I don’t own any lands in Cornwall.”

“You don’t?” Carey was shocked. He had been so certain that the code word Icarus meant the Earl of Essex.

“No. There was a man called Jackson hawking them about a few months ago-recusant lands with gold in ’em, he said-but I don’t own any.”

“That’s wonderful news, my lord,” Carey said, smiling with relief. “You were absolutely right not to buy. I was very concerned because the whole thing was a lay to coney-catch…people at Court.” He had been on the verge of explaining his theory as to who had set the lay and why, but something stopped him. Essex wasn’t looking at him and his arm was not heavy across his shoulders anymore.

“Hmm, shocking,” said Essex vaguely. “Well, I didn’t.”

Alternatively, Essex had indeed bought the lands but had heard rumours already about their worthlessness and was lying about it in hopes of selling them on. Carey studied his face. Most courtiers, like Carey, shaved or trimmed their beards short to a goatee or a Spanish-style spade-shape. Essex, blessed with a luxuriant bush of red curls, grew it as nature wished and combed and oiled it every day. It left less of his face to read. For all his easy manner, Essex was a true courtier. Carey couldn’t be certain if he was lying or not.