P. Chisholm - An Air of Treason

“Ehm…?”

“I like a henchman who sticks at my back despite opportunities to dance with pretty girls,” Carey explained, pointing to the girls whirling between the trees. Some of the servingmen were partnering them since this was a jig, a dance for the common people. The Queen was fanning herself and talking to Essex again as she watched, her face alight with laughter.

“Ay, sir?”

“Nobody’s trying to kill me around here,” Carey said, watching his face carefully. Had Hughie shot that crossbow? “In Carlisle, though, it might be a serious matter if you weren’t near me.”

Hughie looked distasteful. “Ay, sir, Carlisle’s all fu’ wi’ English Borderers.”

“Yes, true.”

Carey was very thirsty and knew the wine was too strong to do any good. What he needed was at least a quart of mild ale to wet his throat, but where could he find some?

“Hughie, go fetch me a flagon of spiced wine.” Hughie nodded and plunged toward the scrum around the wine and brandy barrels at the corner of the tent.

Carey left the marquee again and picked his way around the hedges to the musicians’ entrance, where he found Mr. Byrd drinking tobacco smoke from a clay pipe and looking very disgruntled.

“I don’t suppose you play the viol, too, Sir Robert?” he asked.

“No, Mr. Byrd, not at all. I was taught the lute but can’t say I learnt it, since my playing is painfully poor.”

“And yet your voice is excellent, sir.”

“Thank you, but I can’t take any credit for it. Simply a gift from God, for reasons that He no doubt understands.”

Byrd proffered the pipe, lifting his eyebrows, and Carey took it and drank some smoke. The tobacco was good although it had no Moroccan incense in it and it didn’t make him cough, just smoothed some of the edges. Byrd smiled in the darkness.

“Yes, indeed, there’s music for you. Who knows where it comes from or where it goes or why.” He sniffed and scowled heavily. “Or musicians either.”

“Oh?”

“I’m one viol down in any case because the players from London had plague and have been forbidden the Court. So I hired me a replacement and now he’s gone off somewhere, I don’t know where.”

“I’m sorry I can’t help you, Mr. Byrd.”

“His face is annoying me now, I’m sure I’ve seen him before. So what did you want, sir?”

“Er…would you have any spare mild ale anywhere about you to wet my poor dry throat?”

Byrd smiled again. “We’ve got a proper Court ration, half a gallon apiece. You can have that damned viol player’s pottle, if you like.” The chapel master even ducked back into the tent to fetch it for him and Carey took the large heavy leather mug, toasted Byrd, and gulped a quarter of it in one. That was better. It was very good, the manor’s brewer had obviously taken care with it as the Queen herself was notorious for mainly drinking only mild ale. It was weak, refreshing, and slightly nutty.

“Did you know that Spanish air before you sang it?” Byrd asked. Carey shook his head.

“It was a pleasure to sing.”

Byrd bowed a little, looking thoughtful. “Funny thing that,” he said in an awkwardly casual voice. “The Queen asked for it particularly, but I didn’t make the tune. She played it for me herself.”

“Oh?” Carey didn’t say anything more, waited. Had Byrd been told to give him information?

“Yes, she picked it out on one of the lutes this afternoon and told me to set it at once so we could sing it this evening and then later in Oxford.”

“You did that in a couple of hours? I’m impressed, Mr. Chapel Master.”

Byrd smiled. “It wasn’t any trouble at all, just unrolled as easy as you like. Perhaps it could do with a little trimming, or perhaps more embellishment.”

“I wouldn’t touch it…I thought it was perfect as it was.”

Byrd wagged a finger at Carey. The pipe of tobacco was finished; he had knocked out the dottle and put it in his belt pouch, but was showing no sign of going into the tent again. “Only God is perfect, sir, that’s what the Moors say, isn’t it?”

Byrd was doing his best to look guileless so Carey resigned himself to having to probe. “So what made an old Spanish air so important to the Queen, I wonder?” he asked and then added on impulse, “She has asked me to look into an important but difficult matter for her and perhaps you can help me.”

Byrd nodded. “Sir Robert, I have a few moments before we must play again for the tumblers.” They drew aside, away from the tent and also clear of the hedge. “The air you sang was written on a piece of parchment, wrapped around something that looked like a piece of leather or a stick. I think it was found in the Queen’s privy baggage when we arrived here and it put Her Majesty out of countenance. It seems there was music written on it and that is what she had us sing.”

“What else was written on the parchment?”

Byrd shrugged. “I didn’t see that, Sir Robert, only the Queen saw it. I glimpsed the staves when she opened it out to pluck it on her lute for me to transcribe.” Byrd patted Carey’s arm. “I know Her Majesty ordered Mrs. de Paris to find you and set you on the scent. She said she had heard you were as fine a sleuth dog as Walsingham and thanked God you were here. But that’s all. She said nothing else about it, except that she has kept the parchment and bit of leather in a purse close under her stays.”

Carey nodded, bowed shallowly. “Thank you, Mr. Byrd. If you find out anything else, please will you tell me?”

Byrd bowed back. “Of course, sir.” He turned to the tent opening.

Carey had circled round and re-entered when the musicians struck up a bouncy martial tune with drums for the tumblers. The grave Moor with his walking stick was standing at the back, watching narrow-eyed as the boys and men danced and somer-saulted and swallowed swords and threw themselves at each other across the dance floor, and the boys climbed the trees and jumped off onto pyramids of men. Then Thomasina bounced from her place by the Queen’s skirts to shouts and cheers from the courtiers and threw herself into the air, bouncing, turning, and then at last leaping high onto the top of the pyramid of men and boys where she stood on the shoulders of the topmost boy and breathlessly sang a lewd song of triumph.

He looked around at the bright crowd. Hughie was by the banquet with the other men-at-arms and servingmen like Mr. Simmonds, staring at the tumblers’ show, the flagon still dangling empty in his left hand. He had clearly forgotten all about fetching spiced wine. Emilia was across the other side of the room, amongst Essex’s followers, talking to a Welshman, Essex’s current favourite. Thomasina was mimicking a different great man of the Court in each verse of her song and was doing a particularly good imitation of the haughty Sir Walter Raleigh who wasn’t there on account of still languishing in the Tower for sowing his seed in a maid of honour. Idiot. Serve him right. The soft Devon accent and haughty head were unmistakeable, even when a midget only three and a half foot high did them. Carey had thoroughly disliked the man, had got into a fistfight with him over a tennis court back in the eighties, which had been smoothed over by his father. The progress following that had been remarkable in that Carey was consistently billeted with Raleigh, who was not yet at all important, and had had to share a bed with him a couple of times. They had come to an understanding eventually over card games, but still…What an arrogant fool.

The rest of his mind was turning over the Amy Robsart problem, the one the inquest report pointed to with such shocking honesty. Surely the Queen hadn’t actually read that report? She was sitting under her cloth of estate now, laughing at Thomasina who was currently guying the hunchbacked Sir Robert Cecil. Mind you, there was no way of telling what the Queen was thinking; she had been at Court all her life and knew a thing or two about keeping her counsel.