P. Chisholm - An Air of Treason

“No! No!” screamed the man, “Please!”

Hughie stopped sawing. There was only a cut. “Why did ye try tae poison me?”

“Not you,” gasped the man, “your master, Hunsdon’s boy.”

“Ay?”

“He knew Heron Nimmo’s song, I thought…But he’s a spy, he’ll ruin it all.”

“Ay?” said Hughie, “All what?”

There was a pause. Hughie shrugged and started sawing at the man’s thumb again.

The jabbering took a while to get through because Hughie was intent on the pretty way the dark blood came out, but at last he stopped and listened. And then he let the weeping old man sit up and even wrap a handkerchief round his thumb and spoil the nice look of it.

“Och, shut yer greeting,” Hughie said, tossing his knife up and catching it. He found a likely looking cobble stone and started sharpening the blade-how had he let it get so bad? “Start at the beginning. Say it slow.”

The musician took a long shuddering breath and did as he was told. Hughie listened carefully. It was an astonishing tale, stretching back into the past well before Hughie’s own birth during the troubles that ended the mermaid Queen of Scots’ wicked Papistical reign.

At the end of it, Hughie laughed. “Och so all ye want is tae kill the English Queen? Is that all?”

The musician goggled at him. Hughie shrugged. “I’m a Scot,” he said, “what do I care fer yer witch Queen, eh?”

The musician stammered something about treason. “’Tis nae such thing for me,” Hughie explained, “if she goes, in comes the King o’ Scots and that’ll be a fine thing for me.” Especially if he could take the credit for it. Though King James, who was notoriously against bloodshed, might take a poor view of the man who did the deed, however much it might profit him.

“A’right, a’right,” he said to calm the old man’s begging. Seemingly it all had to do with a great friend he hadn’t seen for years, who made the song, or some such. Hughie couldn’t be bothered to work it all out. “Ah’m no worried about yer killing the Queen, but ye willna take another shot at Sir Robert Carey, d’ye follow me? Eh?”

The musician nodded, eyes like a hanged man’s, beard full of turnip peelings, doublet smeared with shit, his hand cradled.

“I swear it,” he said. “Nothing more against Carey.”

For a moment Hughie was tempted to tell the old fool what he himself was about, but why? Knowledge was gold. There was no need to give it away free.

They shook on it. “Off ye go then,” Hughie said, dismissing him with a gesture. “Dinna cross me again.”

Once the musician had stumbled off down the alley, Hughie brushed himself down and set off in the opposite direction, back to Broad Street.

He found the White Horse inn again, but no sign of Carey who must have gone back to his bed. It was a very tempting thought, he was unusually tired.

The candles and the fire in the grate bothered Hughie’s sore eyes and he wasn’t feeling very well, so he was turning to leave when a shadowy twisted figure in one of the booths beckoned him over.

The gentleman Carey had spoken to respectfully wasn’t ill-looking under his tall hat and his doublet was a smart black brocade, well cut and padded to hide his hunchback, clearly London tailoring and very skillful. The cloak was tidily folded beside him.

“Are you Hughie Tyndale?” asked the man.

“Ay, sir,” he said, a little nervous.

“Your master Sir Robert Carey has gone back to the Earl of Cumberland’s camp. How did it go with your music lesson?”

“Och,” said Hughie with a genial smile. “It wisnae very good and then I want tae another ale house and tripped on the way out, muddied maself something terrible.”

The man’s face was sharp as an Edinburgh merchant. “Set ye doon,” he said in passable Scots, “Ah’ve a mind tae speak wi’ ye. What’s yer right name?”

Hughie said nothing and shrugged though his heart was beating hard. The man smiled shyly.

“I’ve an idea yer right name is Hughie Elliot, youngest brother to Wee Colin. Is that right?”

It was the password he’d been given by the man who said he was working for the Earl of Bothwell.

“Ay sir,” he said. So this was the man who was supposed to be his contact in England. A rich hunchback. Well, so be it.

“What were you to do for me?” asked the man.

“Nobbut send ye tidings of Carey’s doings in the West March,” Hughie told him and the rich hunchback nodded gravely. “And then after a year and a day, when I’ve killt him, let ye know so ye can warn the goldsmith to give me ma gold.”

The shadow of something that might have been amusement crossed the hunchback’s face.

“Indeed? Can you cipher, Hughie?”

“I can read and write, if that’s yer meaning, sir?”

The rich hunchback brought out paper and some pieces of graphite and showed him what ciphering meant. It was a way of putting signs or numbers instead of letters in a system which meant you could still read it. Hughie was impressed at the cleverness of it.

“How do I send ye messages, sir? In the dispatch bag to Berwick?”

“Certainly not,” said the hunchback. “Do you know Carlisle at all? No? Well there’s a man there called Thomas the Merchant Hetherington that will do anything at all for money. Go to him when you get to Carlisle and show him this token.”

It was a blood jasper, carved with the image of a snake. A nice piece.

“That’s the Serpent Wisdom. He’ll know then that he’s to take your letters and send them south with his own letters to London. They’ll reach me.”

“Ay, sir.”

“Oh and Hughie, please hold off on killing Carey, would you? Remember your pension stops when he dies.”

“Ma pension?”

“Certainly. I’ll instruct Thomas the Merchant to pay a shilling to you for every letter I receive.”

“Och.” It would take a great many letters to equal the?30 in gold he was owed for Carey’s head. Six hundred in fact. But still…It was money in the hand not the bush, as it were.

“Ay, sir,” said Hughie, carefully tipping his cap to the hunchback. “Thank ye, sir.”

“I’ll look forward to your reports with interest,” said the hunchback.

“Ehm…Who should they be addressed to?”

“Mr. Philpotts at the Belle Sauvage inn, Ludgate Hill.”

“Ay? What shall I do till I get yer money, sir?”

“See if Carey will pay you,” said Mr. Philpotts lightly. “You’d better go now, he wants you to help him with his doublet.”

As Hughie turned the corner and saw the chequered Cumberland flags he thought to himself, “I’ll kill him when I choose, not when ye say so, Mr. Hunchback Philpotts.” It was exciting to be earning money for letters though. He’d come a long way since the bastard Dodds burnt out his whole family when he was but a wean, a long, long way.

Captain Leigh struggled awake in the black night before dawn, heart thumping, his sword already grabbed from its usual place by the side of his bed. He stood there, listening for a moment.

A horrific shriek rang out that was neither an owl nor any creature being eaten by a fox. Then there was a thunder of running feet and shouting then horses…

He already had his hose on and he pulled his buff jerkin over the top of his shirt, drew the sword and ran outside into the burned monastery’s cloister. A large shape galloped past him and nearly knocked him over. Another shape cannoned into him in the dark and tried to punch him. The smell of booze told him who it was.

“Goddamn it, I’m the captain!” he shouted at John Arden who sheepishly let him up. A man in a shirt ran past screaming blue murder, another couple of men were scrambling up onto a lookout place like milkmaids chased by a mouse.