P. Chisholm - An Air of Treason

Another search through the keys eventually found the one that opened it and they looked into a very fine long gallery running above the wing of the manor house that adjoined the hall. That, too, had shuttered windows but it seemed in better condition, though it was dusty and smelled pungently of mice and rats. Thank God there were no bats. Somehow it didn’t…feel haunted.

Carey was frowning. “So. Somebody shot at her with the crossbow, she tried to get out the door at the bottom of the stairs, which meant she had to run past him, and that’s when he hit her with the crossbow.”

Cumberland nodded. It made sense of a gruesome kind.

Carey stepped out into the long gallery where Amy Dudley had walked on rainy days and probably practised dancing. He paced all the way to the end, where there was another locked door, blinking rapidly when he passed a window that let daylight squeeze through the shutters. The portraits and hangings that must have been there once had long since been taken away. Only the things built in were still there, like the window seats and the carved linenfold panels on the walls.

Carey moved purposefully back to the long gallery door onto the back stairs. They stood looking down into the entrance hall.

“Right, George. I’m Amy…”

“And very pretty you are, too…”

“Thanks, my lord,” said Carey drily. “You are the assassin.”

“Grr.”

“So you stand inside the musicians’ door until you hear the sound of my steps.”

Cumberland did as he was asked with great theatricality. Carey came down the stairs slowly, stopped on the landing. Cumberland stepped out from the musicians’ door, aimed an imaginary crossbow because he didn’t feel like picking up the one that probably killed Amy Dudley.

“Kerchunk!” he said, firing an invisible bolt at Carey.

“By some fortune, you miss at point-blank range and I see you. Then I run down the stairs past you…”

Carey came down the stairs past Cumberland who mimed hitting him on the head with the imaginary crossbow.

“And down she goes and breaks her neck in the bargain,” finished Carey looking annoyed. “It’s wrong. It can’t be right.”

“Makes sense to me.”

“But why would she run past the doorway where a man was standing who had just tried to kill her? She could have turned and run up to the long gallery again, screaming blue murder and escaped through the door at the other end.”

“Tried to fight him?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, my lord, she’s a woman.”

“My wife would.”

“Your lady wife is made of stronger stuff.”

“Your lady mother would, too.”

Carey sighed. “All right. I don’t know where the dents on her head were, back or front. They might have been on the…No, the inquest report would have said so, said they were on her face, not her head. She must have run past him…no.” Carey shook his head irritably.

“What’s the problem? You’ve found the murder weapon. Amy Robsart was killed by someone who tried to shoot her with a crossbow bolt and then used the crossbow to bludgeon her when he missed. You should be pleased. You’ve solved a thirty-year-old mystery.”

“No, I haven’t, I’ve made it worse.”

“How?”

“For God’s sake, my lord, why didn’t she run back into the long gallery?”

“Panicked?”

“When you panic, you run away from the danger, not straight past it!”

“Not necessarily,” said Cumberland who believed he had never panicked in his life.

“You do!” Carey went back to the small door and looked at it again, seemingly found nothing that pleased him. He went back up to the long gallery door, opened the door, looked through it, locked it again, came down the stairs, counting them, checked the bolt hole in the panelling, went past Cumberland and clattered on down the stairs to the bottom. Through the open door to the courtyard, they could see Forster waiting for them.

Monday 18th September 1592, morning

Dodd decided to take a closer look at the clear trail left by the robbers before it rained or something. He knew he was conspicuous in his unpeeled state and also completely unarmed, but he needed to move to keep warm and he might as well do that by finding out more about his enemies.

He found the narrow path again with the footprints and some hoofprints from Whitesock, a tail hair on a branch. The path turned, went two ways. Upstream there was a dog turd, downstream the footpads’ feet, and Whitesock’s hooves continued in a different direction, heading south.

Dodd went carefully and quietly along the path by the stream. His feet told him that the path had once been a better-made road because it had smooth blocks of stone in places, some robbed out, some covered in weeds. It wasn’t as deep down as the Giants’ Road up on the borders, though. He bent to look at the stones more carefully. One was freshly chipped by a shod horse’s hoof.

He carried on up the path, his feet already prickling and sore from the stones and twigs. Once the soles of his feet had been like leather, when he was a wild boy, but he still knew how to go quietly.

He smelled them first. There were men somewhere up ahead, smoking.

His nose tingled. He recognised that smell. The bastards had stolen his pipe and expensive henbane of Peru, mixed with that magical Moroccan incense that made the world soft-edged and his rage far away. He scowled. Jesu, what he would give for a pipe and some smoke to drink.

He slipped among the stands of bracken and gone-over shepherd’s purse and mallow. There had been buildings here once, the path had a tumbled masonry wall beside it and a great multi-trunked yew tree growing from it.

It was a while since he’d needed to do it, being senior enough now that he could send Bessie’s boy or Bangtail up a tree for him, but you never forgot how. He circled the tree to be sure there weren’t any crows in it, found a place to start. He hoisted himself up onto a branch and then climbed slowly to the crown of the tree, and then out along a branch where he lay down and got his breath with the sun dappling on his bare back.

They were sloppy. Imagine leaving a tree that gave an overview of their tower? It wasn’t a tower of course; they didn’t have those in the soft South. Below he could see crooked flat stones and lumps of stone sticking out of the earth at angles. Ahead was another well-robbed wall. Beyond that was…

Once it must have been a small monastery, a hive of industry, no doubt, full of monks. The roof was gone and the walls showed the old blackening of fire and the green flourish of plants breaking it apart. Perhaps the monks had rebelled against King Henry’s men and so been burned out. That had happened in other places.

By squinting and leaning over, Dodd could just make out the two men standing on a bend in the path. It wasn’t so hard. Every so often puffs of smoke could go up from them and he could hear quiet talk.

Past them, further on, where the monastery gatehouse must have been, there were signs of thatch having been added to some of the building which was roughly planked along one side.

Dodd nodded to himself. They had a bolthole, that was why they were so bold. Who was their headman? He’d give a lot to know that and his surname. For a moment he thought about carrying on round the place and working out where the weak spots were.

He was more tempted to stay in the tree and wait for nightfall and then go in quietly and slit some throats. It was a very attractive thought, but in the end that would be stupid. He might well slit a few throats but at some stage someone would wake up or catch him and it stood to reason there were a lot more of them and then they wouldn’t make the same mistake again.