P. Chisholm - An Air of Treason

That was interesting: they’d found the mare not far from the ford, but the other horse must have bolted further, perhaps heading for home. He’d send a couple of the boys out to track and find the animal; they needed horses desperately.

As he walked back to the monastery, he thought hard. Why the devil hadn’t his men found that letter? Admittedly, it had been a scramble at the ford and at one point the blasted man had almost got away-he fought better half-stunned than most men fully fit. However once they’d got him down they had stripped and searched him thoroughly, finding no papers, which was a surprise. Jeronimo had said he was connected with Essex which was why they had switched the waymarker stones so they could ambush him.

He called the men together. There were twenty-five of them left from the fifty men he had taken with him to France. It had been a long hard road back from France after the Earl betrayed them. The ruined monastery had been by far the best billet they’d had since Arles. They were in some of the Earl of Oxford’s neglected hunting forest and in the autumn there was a good amount of forage, including hazelnuts, mushrooms and berries, plus the game of course. But they only had two horses left of the twenty fine beasts that had gone to France.

Leigh sighed as he looked at his troop, all of them bony and bearded, grubby and ragged, very different from the strong brave young men who had followed him from their villages. Four of them, including Jeronimo, were strangers he’d picked up in France. A couple of them had persistent coughs that wouldn’t go away, several of the boniest also had squits that wouldn’t stop. All of them had a harder look in their eye than he liked to see. He sighed again. He had changed too. An older man looked back at him when he trimmed his beard and he knew he was going bald on top. War hadn’t been anything like that glorious adventure the Earl of Essex had so eloquently convinced him to expect.

“Gentlemen,” he said quietly, “is any of you hiding a letter that the Northerner was carrying? A letter to Captain Carey? Some of you may remember him from France?”

Nobody said anything.

“You know I need to see anything of the kind.” Silence. Nobody was blushing, some of them were looking suspiciously at each other.

Leigh felt the stirring of the angry unhappiness that had settled around his gut sometime during the first months in France, felt it twist around his entrails. Just in time, Nick Gorman who had got the Northerner’s suit to replace his remnants of Essex’s livery, he stepped forward.

“There was this in the doublet pocket, sir,” he said, holding out a stained bit of paper. “I didn’t know it was important.”

Leigh took the paper, glanced at it but it was all numbers. A cipher of some kind.

“Jeronimo, can you break codes?”

The Spaniard shrugged, stepped out of his place ahead of the line and took the paper. “I don’t know, Senor,” he said, squinting at it, “Perhaps in Espanish, but…I can try.”

“Thank you.” For a moment Leigh stared worried at Jeronimo. “It turns out you were right about the Northerner. Do you know anything about Captain Carey yourself?”

“The son of Henry Carey, milord Hunsdon?”

“Yes.” The Spaniard smiled radiantly at him, quite shocking in his normally tense face and said something that sounded like Gracias a Dios .

“Why? Do you know him too?”

“No Senor, I know of hees family. From when I play lute for the Queen.”

A likely story. Leigh had instantly dismissed Jeronimo’s colourful past as the usual nonsense old soldiers spouted. He thought about the problem. Whom should he send to Oxford with the all-important letter? He could go himself and also try and buy the ribbons they needed, but that meant leaving the men without a leader and that always meant trouble. He could send John Arden but with Arden there was a good chance that he might pop into an alehouse for half a quart and not come out again until all their money was spent. On the other hand, Arden was probably the best second-in-command he had, though he was standing there with his hip cocked, one hand on his sword and a bleary expression on his puffy once-handsome face. He was certainly better than Leigh at planning a fight, should probably have been the captain, but didn’t want the office. He preferred to get drunk every afternoon rather than worry about supplies and getting the men paid. Although it beat Leigh completely where he was getting his drink from.

Leigh sighed again. He couldn’t rely on any of the others and besides it would be better for Carey to be contacted by someone he knew, so it had to be him. He would leave Arden in charge along with Jeronimo and hope for the best.

“Nick,” he said, “I’m afraid we’ll have to swap clothes so I look more respectable and nobody realises what we are. You can have the suit again when I come back. And in the meantime I want you, Tarrant, and Clockface to go and find the Northerner’s remount, a good gelding with a white sock. As it came from the South it’s probably heading back in that direction, trying to find its home and we don’t want that, do we?”

Gorman nodded philosophically and then remembered and tipped his hat. “Yes, sir.”

Meantime Leigh had to make sure the Northerner didn’t take it into his head to make for Oxford on his own, barefoot as he was. He would have to be locked in at night, possibly chained, only they didn’t have any such things, of course. He’d just have to send Harry Hunks down to the carlin again and tell her to keep the man in the pit at night.

Monday 18th September 1592

Kat was munching stolidly through one of the crusts from the bread she brought back from the soldiers while Dodd did the same more cautiously because some of his teeth still felt loose. She had just finished counting up on her fingers.

“There’s twenty-one of ’em,” she said, scowling with the effort. “Then there’s Captain Leigh and John Arden and Jeronimo and Harry Hunks.”

Even Dodd had heard of Harry Hunks. “A bear?” he asked.

“What?”

He explained about the famous London fighting bear of the Eighties that could still be found engraved on horn cups and plates and in stories told on ballad sheets, though he’d died nearly ten years ago. Barnabus had told him all about the star of the bearbaiting.

Kat scowled even more. “I hate him,” she said. “He’s like a bear but he’s bad. He’s horrible. John Arden is nice and gives Granny nice things he finds in the monastery and she gives him her apple aquavitae. Captain Leigh is stupid and stingy and mean and I hate him too.”

“Jeronimo?”

“He’s a furriner,” Kat said dismissively, “a Spaniard who’s dark and skinny and hisses through his teeth sometimes.”

“Ay,” said Dodd.

“So there’s too many of ’em. What can you do?”

Dodd contemplated telling her, but decided not to in case she changed her mind again and went back to the soldiers.

Kat had come to him as he awkwardly dug a trench from a sitting position, using a small wooden trowel, for the old grandam to plant more winter cabbages in. Kat was still carrying her bag with the bread in it and her cheeks were flushed with fury and her eyes steely slits.

“If I tell you about the men at the old monastery, will you promise to kill them?” she had demanded. “Especially Captain Leigh?”

Well that was easy enough. “Ah cannae promise I’ll do it,” Dodd told her, “but I promise I’ll try.”

She paused, thinking about it.

“Yes well,” she said after a moment, “you don’t have to do all of them, just Captain Leigh.”

“Ay.”

“He promised me a shilling for what I could find out and didn’t pay me last time and he didn’t pay me this time so he owes me two shillings for my dowry and I hate him.”