P. Chisholm - An Air of Treason

Carey had come over and was standing in front of Hughie, looking him up and down.

“Quhair are ye fra?” he asked in passable Scotch.

That shouldn’t have been a surprise to Hughie, yet it was. He stuttered.

“Ay…ah…Edinburgh.”

“Quhat are ye at sae far fra yer ain country?”

“Ah’m trying to get maself home, sir,” said Hughie, getting ahold of himself, switching to English and straightening his spine.

“Oh?” One of the man’s eyebrows had gone straight up his forehead.

“Ah come south on a ship wi’ a merchant, but we had a falling out and Ah’m heading north now.”

Carey came closer and looked Hughie up and down again, carefully. He stood still for it, feeling a blush coming up his neck.

“What’s yer trade?”

“Ma dad wis a tailor, sir, I prenticed tae him but it didna suit me well.…” That had been his uncle Jemmy, not his dad but no matter, near enough.

The other eyebrow went up and Carey crossed his arms and started stroking his goatee thoughtfully. “Did you grow too tall to sit sewing all day?”

Och thank God, thought Hughie, excitement rising in him. Is it working? Is it really working?

“Ay, sir.” It was quite true he had got too tall. Sitting cross-legged all day had cramped him something dreadful, though not as much as frowsting about indoors all the time. “Once Ah grew and got my size, I couldnae stick the tailoring, so I prenticed wi’ a barber for a while and then after I got…ah…intae a wee spot of bother…I hired on as a merchant’s henchman to come south, sir.”

Carey beckoned Hughie to turn his head and lift his hair. Ah, yes, looking for a ragged ear from having it nailed to the Edinburgh pillory for thieving. No, Hughie’s ears were still the shape God had given them.

“What was the spot of bother?”

This was the lie absolute, the only one completely adrift from the truth.

“It wis a riot, sir, in Edinburgh, after a football match. Ah killed a man and the procurator banished me from Edinburgh for a year and a day.”

“Hmm. How did you kill the man?”

Hughie improvised. “Ah hit him on the head with an inn table, sir.”

Carey nodded, looking cynical. It struck Hughie that lying about it was actually fine, so long as he could come up with a more believably serious killing-method when he needed it. Only not as serious as it had actually been, of course. Carey wouldn’t hire him if he boasted about killing his uncle.

Hughie knew he was too saturnine and large to be able to look innocent and so he settled for looking hopeful. Come on, man, Hughie begged silently, thinking of the pile of gold that would be his when he’d done the job. I’m what you need. Come on.

The man had his head on one side, appraising Hughie with his eyes narrowed. “Do you know who I am?” he asked.

“Ah, no, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“What’s your name?”

“Hughie Tyndale.”

“Like the translator of the Bible in King Henry’s reign?”

“Ah…maybe, sir?”

Who the hell was that? Hughie thought. He used the name Tyndale because he wasn’t inclined to tell them his right surname and that was where his family came from originally. “Ah dinna ken…”

“No matter. So you’re looking for a master who might take you north?”

“Ay, sir.” He risked it. “And disnae mind ma voice.”

Carey nodded absently. He seemed to be thinking, appraising Hughie again. There was a faint frown on his face. “Have I ever met you before? I was in Edinburgh as a young man.”

“Ah…” Oh God, oh God, he’d remembered. “Ah…when was it, sir?”

“Oh, about ten years ago now.”

“Och, Ah wisnae mair than a lad…”

“Yes, of course. Or perhaps one of your family?”

“Perhaps, sir.”

Hughie’s stomach was getting tighter and tighter. This might work. The Courtier hadn’t turned away. It might work. Please God, let it work.

The man in front of him in the mud-splashed hunting green and long boots, laughed and slapped his fine gloves on the palm of his hand.

“So you know how to tailor and barber and you can fight?”

“Ay, sir. That I can.”

“Fourpence a day, all lodging and food found. Will that do you?”

“Ay, sir?” Hughie heard his voice tremble. It wasn’t riches, but it wasn’t bad, a whole penny a day better than labouring, which he’d done before and didn’t like. “Ah, sir, that’d be fourpence a day English?”

Carey laughed again. “Oh, yes. I might even be able to get you some livery if my father’s feeling generous.”

“Ay, sir?” It was working. “Ay, that’s verra…ah…very good, sir.”

Carey stripped off his right glove and his right hand came down on Hughie’s right shoulder and gripped. Hughie looked down at it, with the bright golden ring on it and a couple of nails almost regrown.

“Excellent! Do you, Hughie Tyndale of Edinburgh town, swear to serve me faithfully according to my commands within Her Majesty’s law and your right honour, so help you God?”

“Ay, sir, I do.”

“Then I, Robert Carey, knight and deputy warden of Carlisle, swear to be your good lord as long as you serve me well, so help me God.”

They spat on their palms and shook hands. It was the old-fashioned way, the way of Hughie’s grandfather, when the duties had gone in both directions from man to master and back again. Hughie felt a vast golden bubble of relief escaping from his lungs. No matter that he’d sworn fealty to the man he was to spy on and, in due course, kill. He’d sort it out with God later. God would surely understand that he had no choice.

The first thing that Hughie Tyndale found after becoming Sir Robert’s henchman was that he hadn’t been walking fast enough. He kept getting left behind as Carey forged through the crowds of the hiring fair to the desk at the centre where the master of the fair kept his register. Carey signed his name and paid the tax, Hughie made his mark. He could in fact write but he had decided long ago not to make too much of that.

“Can you read?” Carey asked him when he saw the mark.

“Ay, sir,” Hughie said. “Ma dad put me tae the Dominie to learn ma letters.”

“Good, read that,” said Carey pointing at the words of the indenture the clerk was writing up three times. Hughie struggled through the easier words despite some of it being in some kind of foreign.

“Hmm, creditable,” said Carey as the clerk tore the indenture in three, gave Carey one part, Hughie himself the other part, and kept the third. It was for a year and a day from the hiring fair, plenty long enough to do what Hughie had to. On the other hand, making it official in the modern way as well meant that killing Carey would be petty treason and he might burn for it. If he got caught, of course, which he wouldn’t.

Gulping slightly he half-trotted after Carey’s long stride, out from under the roof and into the alehouse on Carfax opposite the tower, where Carey bought ale for both of them and they toasted each other, sitting in the window.

“Whit will ye have me do, sir?” Hughie asked, then stopped himself because you should really wait for the master to speak first.

Carey didn’t seem to mind. “I lost my body servant to…well, to a flux in London,” he said, drinking deep and looking surprisingly sad. “That’s why I hired you, so I hope you really did prentice with a tailor for a while. I urgently need someone to make sure my Court suit fits me properly.”

“Och,” Hughie frowned, “Ah dinna ken much about English Court fashion, sir.”

“You don’t need to, I know plenty. You only need to be able to sew.”

“Ay.”