P. Chisholm - An Air of Treason

Well, said the sensible part of him, it couldn’t be a jail fever because that was what nearly killed me in 1588 and you never get it twice.

Was it plague? Christ Jesus, had he caught plague in London and brought it to the Queen?

His distant hands trembled as Carey felt himself for buboes, as his head started to swell to twice its size and then four times. No lumps, nothing. He wasn’t bleeding anywhere either, but the furnace of his heart was pounding louder and louder like the drum for the acrobats and the church itself was dissolving around him into gauzy billowing curtains.

He had to get out. But he couldn’t. He was standing still, his legs too far away to command. He was panting like a hound. He needed help. Was there anyone? The clerk? What was his name?

“Mr. Tovey,” he croaked, “Mr. Tovey…”

He tried again, he couldn’t shout, the voice that had flowed so well earlier was now a cracked whisper. He had to lie down or fall down. So he carefully put his goblet on the bench again and sat cross-legged on the flagstones as if he was in camp in France. His whole body had turned into an oven and at least the stones were cool. In fact they looked very inviting and as the stone church had somehow turned to a tapestried tent and billowing fine linen, so the broken stones of the Lady chapel were becoming pillows and bolsters specially for him.

He lay down full length on them, liking the cool and softness on his burning face.

There was quiet movement behind him. Somebody was lighting a candle end at the watchlight by the altar.

He moaned in protest, the light was far too bright as it came too close, it hurt his eyes. He tried to push it away, punch whoever was trying to hurt him with a spear made of light. Through tears he saw Tovey’s bony anxious face, shape-shifting to a skull amongst the soft billowing stones and the saints singing headless.

“Sir Robert!” Tovey’s voice cracked through his headache. “Are you sick, sir?”

“Ah’m not drunk,” Carey told him. “Don’t think s’plague…”

Tovey flinched back for a moment but to his credit, didn’t run. Carey felt a bony hand on his forehead, saw the frown, the candle brought close to his face, Tovey feeling his armpits and groin, oh God, do I have the tokens on my face? Carey wondered, because he felt as if there was a bonfire on each cheek.

Tovey frowned suddenly, one of his fingers brushed Carey’s leather lips, then the damned candle came near again.

“Sir, please look at the candle flame,” Tovey said. The boy suddenly had some authority in his voice. Carey frowned at the yellow-white blaze in his eyes but did his best to look straight at it. Splots of light danced in his vision, strangely coloured, and the stone saints sang the Spanish air from earlier, rather well in chorus in a different setting.

Maybe it was plague after all? “Don’t…come…near…” he whispered. “Get everyone out…Might be plague…”

The boy felt his forehead again as if he was a mother. He shook his head.

“Sir Robert, what have you drunk?”

“’M not drunk…” He knew that. It took more than a couple of quarts of mild ale and a goblet of not very good spiced wine to make him drunk.

“I know.” The boy looked about, spotted the goblet, took it from the bench, sniffed the remnants in it, stuck a finger in them and licked it. There was recognition on his face, “Mother of God,” he said, papistically. Then something in his expression hardened. “Sir Robert, you’ve been poisoned.”

Had he? Good Lord, why? Or was it an accident when the poisoner was after bigger game? Fear swooped through him and the saints started singing a nasty discord. He reached up and grabbed the boy’s woollen doublet front. “Tell the Earl…of…” Damnit, who? Wossname? “Essex, tell Essex. Don’t le’ the Queen…”

“I have to make you purge, Sir Robert,” he said. “Get the poison out of your stomach…”

Rage gave him more strength than he realised, and he swiped the boy away, got to his feet. “Tell…Essex first!” he shouted. “Queen! Lord Norris! Don’ le’ ’er drink spiced wine.…”

Burning with rage at whoever had done this, he started for the door, heard shouts, found more people around him, holding him back. Lots of them. He knocked a couple of them down, found his arms held, damn it, somebody swept his legs from under him and he landed on the stones, half a dozen people were sitting on him. He was fighting and roaring incoherently at them to stop the Queen drinking spiced wine and then Tovey’s face with a fat lip and a bruised chin was close to him again and the mouth moving and making words and he finally heard the boy.

“Coleman and Hughes have already run to the manor house, s…sir,” said Tovey. “We’ve warned her. If she hasn’t already drunk it, she won’t.”

It penetrated. Tovey was shakily holding a wooden cup and the other clerks were cautiously letting him sit up enough to drink. He was even more thirsty than before, dry as dust, dry as death. Interesting, who could have done it? Emilia? Hughie? One of the musicians or chapel men? Somebody else? Please God, the Queen was all right. She had survived so many attempts, many not recorded, let God keep her safe still…

Somebody else had arrived, was panting breathlessly, saying something to Tovey. “Sir, the Queen’s people have been warned,” he said slowly and clearly, “P…please drink this, sir, we must purge you.”

He drank whatever it was and found to his annoyance it was salted water, spat it out. The young clerks still sitting on him and holding his shoulders were turning themselves into the singing saints and the whole church was billowing. He gulped more seawater, damn it, the storm was terrible, he was sinking through the floor and…ach…Jesu…

Suddenly the wisps of church had blown away and he was lying on something soft, saints holding his arms and legs whenever he tried to shake them off. Was he in heaven? Well, he couldn’t hear harps though the singing of that Spanish air was starting to annoy him, no visible angels. Maybe? He was looking down on something that looked like a wonderful map made of cloth with green velvet grass and fringed trees and blocks of stone poking through. Perhaps he’d turned into a bird.

Green, came the thought, so not autumn.

“Sir Robert, please drink this, sir, please…”

Christ, he was thirsty. The lip of a wooden cup (they had wooden cups in heaven?) knocked his teeth and he smelled water, downed it in one. Seawater again, ach, salty…

His belly twisted and heaved and his body jackknifed. Sour stuff gushed out of his mouth. He couldn’t see properly, everything was flaring and blurred, part of him was on a cloud somewhere high up, the other part felt the rough staves of a bucket and he puked into it helplessly.

“Again, please, sir.”

He drank again, hoping for plain water or mild ale, but no, more brine. Ach. He hated being sick, but sick as a dog he was, violently, coughing and sputtering disgusting bitterness. In a distant part of his overheated skull, the wry thought came: At least I don’t have the squits as well, that’s a small mercy.

“Good, that’s better. Sip this please sir, just sip.”

He was cautious after the saltwater, but this time it was just well-water with a little brandy. He sipped, then gulped, had to puke again.

“This is good, sir,” Tovey’s voice said soothingly. “It’s washing you out…”

There were voices above him, Tovey answering steadily. Somebody else looked in his face with the candle held near again, he recognised one of the older Gentlemen Pensioners, behind him one of the Queen’s ladies in a fur-trimmed dressing gown, red-haired, didn’t know which one, might be a cousin, tried to blink at the goddamned candle still blazing like the sun in his sight.