P. Chisholm - An Air of Treason

“Oh, ’e got plague then?” asked Thomasina.

“Not as far as I know, mistress. There hasn’t been plague at Court, surely?”

She shook her head. “We’ve been on progress since before it started to spread in London. If I had my way, I’d let nobody come near the Queen what hadn’t been in quarantine at least forty days and scrubbed with vinegar as well.”

“Surely with the Court around her…”

“It’s the idiot players and musicians all coming up from London to make their fortunes. As if there weren’t enough of them in Oxford already.” Her voice was changing back to the way courtiers spoke but she turned and fixed him with gimlet eyes. “So what are you doing here?”

Carey almost coughed but stopped himself. “Really I’m on my way north for the raiding season after my father very inconveniently ordered me south,” he said. “I want to speak to my lord Earl of Essex urgently. After that I’ll be on my…”

Thomasina snorted. “So you won’t want to talk to the Queen?”

“Of course,” Carey continued smoothly, “I would be utterly delighted if you could arrange an audience for me, Mistress Thomasina, but I know what it’s like on progress and…”

Thomasina’s brown eyes were narrowed. “Hmm. Well, there might be something you could do for me. I can’t promise, but…”

Heart hammering again with the hope that he might actually be able to talk to the Queen directly and even (please God!) get his wardenry fee and warrant, Carey took off his hat, held it against his heart and bowed low in the saddle.

“Mistress, if you can bring me to the Queen, I will forever be in your debt…”

“Yes, yes, Sir Robert, I know all about you and your debts, no need to add to them. You can do me a small service first and then we’ll see, eh?”

“Whatever you want, mistress.”

He couldn’t leave his dag shotted and wound when he put it back in the case and he didn’t like the thought of trying to unload it while riding-always a ticklish business which could take your hand off if the powder exploded at the wrong moment. He aimed at a crow sitting on a branch ahead and pulled the trigger.

He missed. The crow flew off the branch in a puff of feathers and the other crows rose up into the sky cawing and diving. Thomasina’s pony skittered, the pack pony came to a dead stop, and Hughie’s horse pirouetted for a moment before he got it under control again. Carey’s own horse was a hunter and not at all concerned. Thomasina’s two women were walking and one of them jumped and clutched the other, while the Master of the Revels man looked near fainting. He smiled at the thought of what Dodd would likely think of such jumpiness at gunfire.

“Where are you planning to stay?” Thomasina wanted to know. “With your elder brother? Your father’s already in Oxford, I think.”

“Er…no.”

“Suing him, are you?”

“No, that’s my brother Henry who stole my legacy. But George thinks he can still order me around.”

“You won’t find space with his grace the Earl of Essex. He’s just sent most of his men ahead to find a good place for his pavilions at Oxford, so he’s in the manor house with the Queen and Lord Norris.”

“I would very much like to see him…”

“Don’t push it, Sir Robert. I have no pull at all with Essex.” Her face was wry with distaste. “How’s your reverend father?”

“Very well, mistress, thank you…in good health.”

She smiled then. “Now he’s a good lord, keeps the old-fashioned ways.” Once upon a time, Thomasina had been one of his creatures on display at Paris Garden stews, bought from Gypsies. She had learned her tumbling there and Lord Hunsdon had been the person who showed her to the Queen at a masque.

“In trouble with him again, are you?” she asked, seeing through him as usual.

“Er…possibly.”

“Well, try the Master of the Revels then.” She tapped the white palfrey onward with a whip decorated with crystal beads that flashed in the sun. “You could make yourself useful there.”

“How? My tumbling is middling to poor and my acting…”

She sniffed at his sarcasm. “You can sing, Sir Robert, and he now has a desperate need for good tenors ’cos one of ’em’s dead of plague and the other’s dying on that cart. I’ll find you later.”

She gestured for Carey to go past her and so he went to a canter up the path.

They had to rein in well before they got to the church, the place was such a bedlam of tents, carts, fashionable carriages bogged in the mud, servingmen, people generally. You could hardly move at all. No women under the age of thirty were visible, but boys were running about everywhere because this was the Queen’s Court, not the King of Scotland’s, and propriety was usually observed.

All the main barns were guarded by the Queen’s Gentlemen Pensioners in the red-and-black livery from her father’s Court that they wore on ordinary days, no doubt because the harbingers and heralds would have stockpiled food in them for the progress, bought on treasury tickets in advance. They were oases of order.

The rest of the village was essentially a fair. At the back of the church some large makeshift clay ovens stood surrounded by faggots of wood with more being brought in on the backs of trudging peasants.

Carey took one look at the only alehouse in the place, where a skinny middle-aged woman with a hectic look in her eyes was raking in cash. He didn’t fancy his chances with the queue.

Still the smell of pies was making his mouth water. He’d eaten the pie he was buying when he heard Hughie’s Scotch accent; he’d had bread and ale as usual when he got up but that was all. Now he was starving. So he did what he often did on progress, and come to think of it, at war. He turned his horse to the left and rode slowly around the mass of humanity.

At last he saw what he was looking for-the Earl of Cumberland’s blue-and-yellow-chequered flags around a small cottage surround by a mushroom ring of tents.

Carey immediately rode toward the cluster, followed by Hughie, who was looking nervous, and by the pony which was busily taking mouthfuls of everything green and poisonous it could find in its path.

A large henchman in a Clifford jack barred his way.

“What’s yer name and what’s yer business?” he demanded, his voice from the Clifford lands in Chester.

“Sir Robert Carey, come to see my lord, one follower, two horses, and a pack pony,” said Carey, looking around for the Earl. There was a table set up in a muddy orchard behind the cottage and sitting there was definitely none other than Sir George Clifford, third Earl of Cumberland, known as the Pirate Earl. Only now he was standing up and playing a veney with his opponent, a man in the buff coat of a master at arms.

A yell announced a hit by the earl on his opponent. They saluted each other, then dropped their veney sticks and sat down at the table again. Carey wasn’t sure what was on the table, but it didn’t look like playing cards.

The henchman had sent a lad to talk to the earl. Carey watched with a smile.

Next moment, Cumberland had bounced to his feet and was striding across what remained of the vegetable garden to where Carey was waiting. He slid down from the saddle, prodded Hughie to do the same, and bowed as Cumberland came up to them, wreathed in smiles.

“My Lord Earl,” Carey said formally.

“By God, Sir Robert,” laughed Cumberland, “where the devil have you been? How’s Carell Castle treating you? What’s this I hear about the Grahams and the King of Scotland and…?”

Cumberland pumped his hand and clapped him round the shoulders.