P. Chisholm - An Air of Treason

The door was swollen with damp and needed a firm shove from Cumberland’s shoulder. Inside the stairwell the only light came from a large boarded trefoil window. Once in semi-darkness again, Carey took the scarf off and blinked around, looked up the famous staircase.

The steps went up along the wall from the small square hall, turned sharp left at a small landing, up again and right to a doorway. The stairwell had been built onto the end of the long gallery, probably for convenience so that family members could come straight out into the courtyard. The door they had come through was large and the stairs were in a line with it so they went forward, stepping carefully on the slippery stones spattered with white. There was a clatter of wings. Cumberland looked up and felt a chill down his neck as he saw little leather gloves hanging from the roof beams and a few bony heaps on the floor. The air was chokingly musty.

“Ugh,” he couldn’t help saying. “Bloody bats.”

Carey shrugged and went forward.

Had anybody been in here since they took Amy’s body out and locked the door? Cumberland wondered. “I expect it’s haunted too,” he added, trying to make light of it. “Stands to reason she’d walk.”

Carey said nothing to that either. Probably nobody had been here since the 8th September 1560. They must have locked the door and left it. Carey put his foot on the stairs, stamped a couple of times in case the wood was rotten, and went up to the turn. He stopped, blinked, peered to his right and started fumbling with the keys.

Cumberland had shaken himself like a dog and went up the stairs to find Carey opening another small door from halfway up which seemed the start of a small corridor. It was dark, lit only by what light came through the door behind them.

Carey went through the little door, having to stoop, and followed the narrow passage which led to another door. That one wasn’t locked, only latched, but it hadn’t been opened for a long time and creaked. Mainly because he didn’t want to be on his own with a possible angry female ghost, Cumberland followed.

Carey was looking out into the dimness. They were high up in the high-beamed great hall of Cumnor Place, clearly also unused for decades, standing on the narrow musicians gallery. The small door they had come from must have been for the musicians’ use, so they could come in from the back stairs and not bother the family or the rest of the household. Treading extremely carefully and looking out for holes, he stepped onto the gallery, creaked to the rail, and looked over. Cumberland, followed, teeth bared.

Below, benches and trestle tables for feeding a large household were stacked against the panelling and spattered with white, the high walls festooned with old swallows’ nests and the carved beams of the roof well-inhabited with creatures that rustled and moved. The lantern window gave only small light due to ivy but some slats of wood were broken and a couple of pigeons fluttered out in a panic. Cumberland had a sensation of eyes watching him and hoped devoutly it was only rats.

“A desolation and an habitation of owls,” Carey quoted conversationally to the Earl who nodded without commenting in case his voice shook. They went back to the door they had come through and along the short corridor that connected with the stairs leading up to the long gallery.

Once back on landing at the turn of the stairs, Carey looked about him carefully. Cumberland took his tinderbox out, but Carey touched his arm.

“No need, my lord, I can see better without it.”

“Damn it’s dark in here,” said the Earl. “Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“What if she…er…”

“If Amy Robsart’s ghost turns up, I’ll be delighted, my lord. I’ll be able to ask her directly who killed her and save myself some trouble.”

Cumberland knew his short laugh wasn’t very convincing. He was starting to sweat as Carey stood still and looked about. Why wasn’t he getting on with it, whatever it was?

Suddenly Carey moved. He went up the steps and touched something on the wall at a little lower than his chest height.

“Look at this, George,” he said in a soft voice full of suppressed excitement.

Cumberland was doing his best not to think of the rustling bats above and the probable rats below. He didn’t mind rats, didn’t like bats.…What if the rustling wasn’t bats? What if it was…? What was that? Carey’s sudden movement had made his heart thud, and he followed his friend, felt the small round hole Carey had somehow seen.

Well, that certainly was interesting. They both knew-from the way the edges of the hole were punched inward but the wood not broken-exactly what it was.

Carey was looking about for the bolt, but found nothing. He put his finger in the hole, followed its flight down the stairs to the turn where they had been standing, with the door to the minstrels’ gallery behind them.

Carey’s eyes narrowed and he stepped backwards through the small door again, looked up, blinked and smiled.

“Would you give me a boost, my lord?”

Sighing, Cumberland went through the door, couldn’t see anything at all up above the wall which Carey seemed to find of interest. He went on one knee and let Carey use his thigh as a step, which was less painful than using his cupped hands for the boost.

Nobody had bothered to finish plastering the musicians’ corridor. Above where the wall ended on the inside was the darkness of the roofspace and beams above. Carey had caught one of the supporting beams there and was pulling himself up into the space, knocking down choking dust and mummified owl pellets in a rain on Cumberland.

There was a triumphant “Hah!” Either Carey had taken leave of his senses or he had found something. There was a clatter, a grunt from Carey, scraping, and then the madman dropped back to the floorboards with something large in his hand.

That something was a crossbow. It was probably brother, or more likely grandfather, to the crossbow that had been fired at the two of them at the duckpond the day before, a large hunting bow, no need for a windlass to wind it up if you had the strength to bend it, but very lethal.

“What the…”

“This was hidden behind one of the roofbeams, hooked on a nail.”

Carey was triumphant, holding the rusted thing, covered in nameless white and black stuff, insects and spiders bailing out as fast as they could. He waved it, set it to his shoulder, and took aim at the hole in the wall that Cumberland could no longer see. Cumberland’s gorge suddenly rose because he had looked at the other end of the bow. It was dented, some small threads caught in the splintered wood there.

Carey saw it too and his eyes narrowed as he looked carefully at the place where the steel of the bow crossed the wood of the stock. To Cumberland’s horror he pulled off a couple of the caught threads, put them carefully in a leather purse he kept in his doublet sleeve pocket.

“Hmm.” he said.

“Jesu,” was all Cumberland could say.

“According to the inquest report, before she broke her neck, Amy was already dead from two large dents in her head, one two inches deep, the other one an inch deep.” They both looked at the crossbow. “See here? He fired at her, missed, then when she tried to run past him and out the door, he hit her on the back of the head with the crossbow hard enough to kill her. The stock itself made the two-inch dent, the metal bow the one-inch dent.”

“Jesu.”

In the pause, Cumberland thought that now if ever would be the moment for Amy’s ghost to show herself. But she didn’t. All the movement came from Carey who leaned the crossbow, stock down, against the wall and went up the second set of steps, turned right at the top of the second set of steps where there was a much larger carved door.