P. Chisholm - An Air of Treason

“Missus, I dinna ken…know ye and I’m grateful for the duds ye’ve lent me, but until we’re better friends I’d be happier in my mind not to gi’ ye my master’s name, seeing he’s a courtier.”

The old eyes were narrowing and the child’s as well. You could see they were related.

“Is he rich?”

“Not him, his family,” said Dodd truthfully, “but Ah dinna ken if they’d ransome me…”

That was a dangerous thing to say because there were people on the Border who would just slit your throat if they thought you weren’t worth anything. On the other hand, it was worth it to see the reactions-disappointment, guilt, then…

“We wouldn’t ask for ransome, Goodman, we’re not robbers and you’re not our prisoner,” said the old woman, working hard to look pious. “We only want to help you.”

“I’m sorry, missus,” Dodd said, with as charming a smile as he could get his bruised face to stretch to. “I meant a reward, payment for yer trouble…”

The carlin smiled and nodded, the child continued her very hard stare.

Ay, thought Dodd with some satisfaction, I know ye, missus, and how you’re placed and what you’re up to.

In fact, there was no chance whatever that a little cottage with a garden and…yes…from the smell, goats…could have survived next to a troop of broken men like the bastards who had temporarily bested him, without they paid blackrent of some kind. They were the carrion crows to the wolf pack of the broken men. What did he want the wolves to know? That was the question.

Captain Leigh was playing dice with the old Spaniard in the still watertight monastery parlour, when little Kat Layman came trotting in ahead of John Arden who was drunk again. Her grim little face was less tight than usual which meant she had good news. She curtseyed nicely to him and waited to be spoken to, manners he had taught her with the back of his hand.

She took the cup of watered wine he always offered and sipped it, no expression.

It was stupid really, but Edward Leigh found the child unnerving sometimes. She was so unchildlike.

“Now then Kat,” Leigh asked, rubbing the large bruise on his chin where their most recent target had punched him, “What have you found out?”

“His name is Colin Elliot, he’s a Northerner which I knew anyway because you can’t hardly make out what he do say.” Leigh nodded encouragingly. “He was taking a message to his master which is a courtier and one of the Earl of Essex’s men.”

Leigh stopped breathing and looked over at Jeronimo, sitting still with the dice cup still poised between his long fingers. His cadaverous hawk of a face was intent. Was it possible the Spaniard had been right?

“Where was he headed?”

“Oxford, of course, he says if the Queen ain’t there yet, she will be and his master is at Court to get money and a warrant out of her because he hasn’t any, no tower nor land, he’s just a bloody courtier with a smooth tongue.”

Leigh nodded carefully. The Court was at Oxford and so was the Earl, only ten miles away. Holed up in this old monastery for the last few weeks, it had been hard to get news. But perhaps at last, at last they could move.

Kat was still speaking. “…and he hurt his leg or it got hurt when you was kicking him, he says it’s broken, so he can’t work much…He says ‘canna,’ you know, and he’s good with his hands and with stock so he says he’ll help as much as he can until he’s well and his master’s father will give a reward for him if my granny will send me off to Oxford to tell him.”

“He’s a good fighter,” slurred John Arden whose black eye was flowering well, “took five of us to take him down. Could we get him to join us?”

Leigh shook his head. He didn’t want another fighter, he wanted someone who had connections with the Earl of Essex. And that, thank God, despite all his doubts, he seemingly had at last. Now how could he parlay the Northerner into what he really wanted much more than a simple reward or ransome?

“ Katarina, carina ,” said Jeronimo, “who is the father of this courtier the man serves?”

“He told me not to tell the robbers but it’s my Lord Hunsdon, the Queen’s Chamberlain.”

Leigh blinked in awe at Jeronimo. “You were right,” he said. “His master is Captain Carey.”

Jeronimo nodded, took a deep breath, then winced and rubbed his stomach where it was swollen.

“We’ve got him this time,” he said in French so the child wouldn’t understand. “You can ask him for an audience with the Earl.”

The Earl of Essex owed him a large amount of back pay, owed all of them, and Leigh intended to get it. If necessary he would have marched his remaining men down Oxford High Street in their once-fancy tangerine-and-white livery and demanded his rightful pay from the man he had trusted while that man was in the act of licking the old Queen’s arse for her. In fact that had been his original plan.

“All right, Kat,” he said to her, handing over a bag of bread and apples from the remains of the monastery orchard. “I’ll likely come and take a look at him myself, so don’t be alarmed.”

Kat’s face looked cunning. “Will you be fierce?”

“Roaarrr!” Leigh shouted, showing his teeth as he used to at his little brothers and sisters. This unnatural child didn’t even flinch. “I’ll be fierce, Kat, so make sure you tremble and run away.”

She nodded disdainfully, hefted the bag, looked in it and scowled.

“I want paying. I want money, not just food.”

“Kat,” said Leigh, pulling her nose to nose with him by her kirtle, though not roughly, “I told you, we’re only here because we fought and died for the Earl in France for eighteen months and got not a penny of the shilling a day he promised us, not one penny, though he spent plenty on pennants and livery and feasting.”

She glared straight back at him. “I want a shilling like you promised. You got all the money from that Northerner, give me some.”

“What if you’re lying? What if he’s lying?” Leigh was still nose-to-nose with the child.

“Can’t help it if he’s lying but I’m not,” retorted the child, “and he said he’d lost the suit his master gave him to look more respectable than his homespun and he wished he hadn’t looked so rich and there’ll be the devil to pay for that too and there was money in it too, plenty of money.”

Nick Gorman was wearing the man’s suit now because it fit him best and it was certainly a gentleman’s suit. Smithson had his hat, being in most need of one. The money was Leigh’s now, naturally, as captain.

He let go of the fistful of rough kirtle he’d been gripping. Kat straightened herself and her apron with a brow of thunder.

“Give me my shilling,” she said shrilly. “You’ll just drink it and I need it for my dowry.”

“Don’t make me angry, Kat.”

“ I’m angry! I bring you things you didn’t know that are important like he’s a Northerner and who his master is and everything and you won’t even give me a shilling like you said!”

“We could burn you and your old hag of a grandam out of your hovel!” Leigh shouted, outraged at being defied by a little girl. “I could send Harry Hunks down to you, do you want that?”

The ferocity of the child’s glare actually stopped him.

“Don’t be like that, sweeting,” he said after a moment in the kindest voice he could muster. “Of course, we won’t burn you out, you just made me cross.” Nothing. Stony brown eyes stared steadily back at him. He gave her a comfit of sugarpaste taken from a rich packtrain a week before. She held it in her fingers and didn’t even taste it, curtseyed silently and went out of the monastery parlour where Arden was waiting for her.