P. Chisholm - An Air of Treason

“She’s put more sleeping potion in it,” she hissed at him. “She didn’t see you finish the pottage.”

Dodd tipped out the wine and refilled it with water from the water butt. He’d been busy while he’d squatted at the furthest end of the dungheap.

He showed Kat the charcoal writing on the nice paper.

“Ye know the way to the market in Oxford, ay?” he said to Kat who nodded intently. “D’ye know the man that rules the market, one of the Mayor’s men, mebbe?”

“You have to pay him even if you don’t sell nothing,” she sniffed.

“Early tomorrow morning, I want ye to walk tae Oxford, fast as ye can. Go to the market clerk or whoever it is, curtsey, call him sir, say ye’ve bin sent by a…a man at arms in service to Sir Robert Carey, son of Lord Hunsdon, and give him that paper. Tell him where ye live and a’ that and warn him of the broken men. But be sure and gi’ that bit o’ paper tae somebody of worship, official, mind? Naebody that disnae wear a gown.”

She nodded slowly. “Why?”

“Ye asked me tae kill Captain Leigh for ye?” he reminded her. She nodded, eyes narrowing with suspicion. “How’d ye like to watch him hang for coining and maybe horsetheft, eh?”

Her eyes went round and her mouth opened in delight.

“Really? Truly?”

“Ay. This letter is laying information agin him. I happen tae know that a lot of the money that he’s gonnae be spending on ribbons is false coin. That’s a hanging offence, is uttering false coin. And he’ll be riding a reived horse forbye.”

She blinked in puzzlement and then nodded firmly. “I’ll do it. I know the way really well and once when Grandam was ill I ran to the ’pothecary in the Cornmarket and got laudanum for her.” Dodd didn’t tell her the final refinement to a plan that he was quite modestly proud of. Suddenly she laughed. “Did you really steal the white-socked gelding?”

“Ay,” he said heavily. “It wis a mistake.”

For the first time since Saturday, Carey woke feeling more like himself. The day had greyed over and so the light wasn’t so bad for his eyes, besides he fancied that they were improving a little. He was also hungry.

John Tovey appeared when he stuck his head out of the tent to see who was about and came to help him on with his doublet.

“Any idea where my henchman is, Mr. Tovey?” he asked the boy who seemed to be as bad at tying points as he was good at penmanship.

“Um…sorry, sir,” said Tovey, fumbling about at the back of Carey’s doublet, “Who?”

“Hughie Tyndale? He was poisoned at the same time.”

“Ah. My lord Earl said your f…father had taken him into the rest of his household when they moved into Trinity College.”

“Excellent. Go find me some food and then we’ll take a walk round the corner and talk to him.”

Tovey came back with a couple of pies and bread and ale which Carey demolished at speed. He then strapped on his sword and poinard, crammed his hat as low on his head as he could and stepped outside the tent, past Henshawe sitting wittling something and the Earl at his peculiar chess play and various rehearsals for a masque going on.

The traffic would be far too bad to bother with a horse, so Carey simply walked out of the makeshift gate between the bright flags onto the muddy rutted path that joined Broad Street which went alongside the old Oxford city wall and was at least cobbled for the horse market there. The alehouse on the corner with the lane that went down to New College was crammed with menservants shouting at each other. The schools and the Bodleian library loomed opposite.

Even in the annoying dazzle Carey could see the men in his father’s livery at the door of Trinity College, tucked between a field and a small bookshop. He went straight over, made a few enquiries and ten minutes later was unbolting the chamber door where Hughie was still recovering.

The window was shuttered and although Hughie didn’t rate a proper fourposter bed, somebody had rigged up a curtain of old-fashioned tapestry with pointy hatted women and moth-holes.

Hughie looked pale and frightened, which was an odd sight in a young man as large and well-shouldered as he was, with his black hair and square shuttered face and his beard starting to come in strongly.

When he’d blinked at Carey, he tried to get up but Carey stopped him with a raised hand.

“Hughie, don’t trouble yourself, I came to see how you were doing.”

“It wisnae me, sir,” growled Hughie in Scotch. “Ah tellt ’em, Ah didnae spike yer drink…”

No doubt his father had made sure the lad was well-questioned, but Carey had better methods. He pulled up the stool and sat himself down, blinking and rubbing his eyes.

“I’ve only just been well enough to get up,” he said affably. “How are your eyes doing?”

“Mebbe I’ve bin struck blind,” muttered Hughie dolefully, “I cannae mek out…”

“No, that’s what belladonna does to you, it seems, fixes your pupils open so you can’t see in daylight. Dreadful stuff. It’s lucky I didn’t drink as much of that flagon as you did. You should start being able to see properly again tomorrow.”

“Ay?”

“Oh yes. Now I’m completely certain it wasn’t you who put the belladonna in my booze, but you must have seen who did it because…”

“But I canna remember, sir, I’m so sorry.”

That might be true. Carey couldn’t think how he’d got to the church and couldn’t remember much of what happened there either, apart from the puking which he would have preferred to forget.

“Well we’ll start with your last clear memory and see what more you can remember? Do try, there’s a good fellow, you’re my only chance at tracking down whoever did it.”

“Ay,” Hughie looked very gloomy, his jaw was set. “I wantae ken that masen.”

“All right. Do you recall me sending you off for spiced wine?”

It was like pulling teeth. Hughie remembered the girls dancing the country dance. He remembered seeing Carey speak to the pretty Italian woman and he remembered heading for the spiced wine bowl and pushing through the other servingmen. He couldn’t remember any more.

“Did you see who was serving?”

He shook his head, there were too many people around the table, he couldn’t get through.

“So how did you get your flagon filled?”

He’d passed it forward to the table and got it back filled with spiced wine…

“Ach,” he said, scowling, “that’s when it happened.”

Carey nodded. “They wouldn’t take the risk of poisoning the whole bowl, it had to be very specific. So when whoever it was saw you with the flagon, he knew you were my man, he blocks your path to the spiced wine and he helpfully gets it filled then adds the belladonna. The idea, I think, was that you would be blamed for it.”

“Ay?”

“Well of course. It’s only because you illicitly drank enough to half-kill yourself that my father doesn’t have you banged up in the Oxford jailhouse right now.”

There was a long thoughtful pause while Hughie digested this.

“Ah hadnae thocht o’that, sir.”

“No? Well, think about it now. You bring me wine which is poisoned, ideally I die and it’s only thanks to God that I didn’t, and then as my henchman who brought the wine, you would be the first and probably last suspect.”

“But I didna…”

Carey leaned forward, blinking at the young man’s sullen face and wishing he could see more clearly. “Hughie, I’m sure you didn’t but if I was dead and you unpoisoned, you would be in very big trouble no matter how innocent you were. I can’t guarantee that my father wouldn’t have you put to the question to find out what had happened; he’s a decent man and doesn’t like that kind of foreign rubbish, but he would be very upset if he had my corpse to bury. To put it mildly.”