P. Chisholm - An Air of Treason

“Senor, let us tell a little tale. Shall we say that some…yes, some diablito creeps into the burned monastery and cause chaos, what is his purpose?” Dodd shrugged. “You could have slit some throats, taken back your sword. But no. So what was your purpose?”

“I didna do it,” Dodd told him. “I was asleep.”

Jeronimo sighed. “Senor,” he said, “I know you are a man of virtue, I know you are more than you say. Perhaps I talk to Captain Leigh of what I see and you not play your game again. Perhaps I hamstring you.”

Dodd had to hide a flinch. Cut the cords at the backs of his legs so he couldn’t walk? Christ, please, no. But Jeronimo could do it, if he had enough men on his side. Dodd had no doubt that he would be willing to do it.

“Or you cure my childish curiosity,” said the Spaniard with another hiss of pain, adding more of Dodd’s tobacco to his pipe and puffing. No more of the smoke was coming into the pit, it was all going upwards, damn it.

The maddest part of his plan came back to him. Maybe? Dodd stood up. “Whit d’ye think to the Captain, Don Jeronimo?” he asked.

The Spaniard shrugged. “He is adequate though not very bright. He is flojo . Lazy. I come to England with him for protection, company. There must be a captain and I do not want it. I was many things, Senor, a musician, an assassin, a soldier, a Courtier, a captain, a hero, a cripple, many many things. I have no desire for being a captain again. I have other business here. And I will die soon.”

“How d’ye know?”

Jeronimo sighed, put down his pipe on a stone and pulled up one of his canion breeches to show his thigh. His leg was covered with ugly black spots and sores. Dodd felt sick. Was it plague? No. Couldn’t be. He’d be lying down, not walking around waving a crossbow.

“It is a canker. I asked a physician in France, a good one, though a Jew. He had seen such things. It was first one mole, it bled, it itched. Then it grew, it had children. Some become sores. Now I have pain and stones in my estomago , now I have a thing like a rock in my liver and I bleed sometime like a woman.”

“Och,” said Dodd, because he couldn’t help it. His legs felt wobbly. He hated sickness, hated it. Men with swords you could fight. What could you do against black spots or a rock in your belly? Bleed like a woman? From his arse? Och God.

Jeronimo smiled slightly. “So, all men die and I will die soon. I hoped once it would be bravely, in battle. It makes no matter. But I have a business in England now. When I was young and clever and very stupid, I try to please my natural father with a great deed-but it went badly. Later I lose my arm and my music, I think this pays for it, but when I make confession to a priest last Easter, he say no. I must make it right.”

Jeronimo shrugged and grimaced. “I should go to a more easy priest. But he was right so I set off to do it, and here I am.”

“Ay,” said Dodd, cautiously, wondering what was coming next.

“Don Roberto is son of el conde Hunsdon, no?”

“Ay.”

“Hunsdon is a bastard and so I am too. He is bastard of the King, me…Less important. I must see his sister, the Queen,” said the Spaniard, “That is all.”

Dodd’s jaw dropped. “See the Queen?” he repeated.

“Si, Senor, Her Majesty the Queen Isabella of England.”

“Why?”

“My business, Senor. Can your master manage such a thing?”

“Ay, he could,” Dodd said instantly, seeing no call to disappoint the old madman. “But why should he? Men pay hundreds of pounds for a chance just tae talk to the Queen.” Jeronimo nodded.

“It is sure,” he said. “She will wish to see me. All I need is the man to…ah…to connect.”

“But…” Madman, assassin? Why else would a foreigner want to speak directly to the Queen? Dodd set his jaw. “Why?”

Jeronimo tutted. “Only give me your word of honour you will speak to your lord, Senor Elliot.”

Dodd folded his arms and looked up narrow-eyed at the man. “And?”

“I will let you go, free you.”

“No,” he said.

“Why no?”

“Ah dinna ken who ye are nor why ye might wantae see the Queen, but I can guess since you’re Spanish. So ye can go to hell.”

“I will not harm her, not a hair of her head.”

“No.”

“I swear it on my soul.”

“No.”

“Why so much trouble, so much chaos and no killings, Senor Elliot? How can we agree?”

Don’t threaten my hamstrings, Dodd thought, don’t put me at risk of hanging, drawing and quartering. Instead he showed his teeth. “Let’s call vada and I’ll see your prime,” he said, a phrase he had picked up from Carey. “Help me and I’ll think about it.”

“I will bring the ladder.”

“Och,” Dodd shook his head at the man’s ignorance. Still he was nobbut a foreigner, he couldn’t help it. “Nay, I’ll want more than that.”

“Indeed? What, Senor?”

Dodd told him, leaving out some important details in case this was all some elaborate ploy of Leigh’s to interrogate him. Jeronimo started to laugh which got a sour look from the old woman as she came past with her small flock of goats. Then the Spaniard took his hat off to Dodd and walked away, leaving Dodd with nothing to do but worry that he’d been coney-catched himself and that Leigh would come back from Oxford and slice his hamstrings so his legs would be like a broken puppet’s, unable to stand. And Christ, bleeding like a woman from a rock in your belly. It made his skin shiver just thinking about things like that.

Somebody was shaking Carey awake. It was Ross. Carey sat up, feeling groggy which was a very strange experience because normally he was awake before dawn and out of bed immediately. Was this how Dodd felt every morning? Poor man. The night had been full of complicated incomprehensible dreams about Elizabeth Widdrington.

“You’ve a lady visitor, Sir Robert,” said Ross, looking amused. “Best get up and look tidy.”

Carey rubbed his face, wondered who it was. Couldn’t be the Queen, she was at Woodstock palace by now, resting, and she’d roust him out to visit her, not the other way round. Couldn’t be his mother, please God, she should be on the high seas on her way back to Cornwall. Couldn’t be Emilia as she had been such a hit with the Earl of Essex. God, he was stupid this morning. If only there was some potion you could drink which would wake you up.

“Who is it?”

“M’Lady Blount, sir.”

“Who?”

“The ex-Dowager Lady Leicester.”

Jesus Christ, Lettice Knollys as was, his cousin. The woman who had snaffled the Earl of Leicester from the Queen. It came back to him slowly that Thomas Blount, one of her son’s hangers-on, had scandalously become her third husband.

“What? What’s she doing here? She’s not supposed to come to Court, the Queen can’t stand her.”

Ross managed not to smile. “Well sir, the Court’s not arrived yet officially and nor has the Queen so she’s here to see her son, I expect.”

“Oorgh. What time is it?”

“Half past eight o’the clock, sir. My lord Earl of Cumberland said not to wake you.”

“That late?”

Carey swung his legs to the floor as the camp bed creaked its straps under him. How on earth had he slept so long? Normally he was awake the minute dawn came, no matter what time he went to bed. Was he hungover?

Hmm. Perhaps still a bit poisoned. But at least his eyes weren’t as bad as they had been. The light coming through the tent walls wasn’t actually hurting him. He rubbed his face again, felt bristles around his goatee.

“Do you know how to shave a man, Mr. Ross?”