P. Chisholm - An Air of Treason

“Excellent. You can certainly ride with me to Her Majesty tomorrow, Robin, if your eyes are recovered completely.”

“They’re much better, thank you father, though to be honest I was never blind, only dazzled. I could actually see better in the dark. That’s how I found the murder weapon at Cumnor.”

“You found the crossbow? Where was it?”

“High up in the space between the passage ceiling and the roof of the hall. The man came through the little door to the minstrel’s gallery.”

“I know that, damnit, I chased him. How the devil did he have time to hide the crossbow there, I thought he threw it away. We spent a day looking for it with blood hounds a couple of days later.”

They stared at each other and came to the answer at the same moment.

Hunsdon felt the blood leave his face. “Oh my God, there were two of them.” He actually staggered at the enormity of what he had done all those years ago. Robin was at his shoulder at once, supporting him to the bench again, holding his arm. Hunsdon’s legs had suddenly gone to water.

“I left her alone,” he croaked, “I chased after the man I saw and I left her alone with a killer…”

“Father,” came Robin’s distant voice in the roaring, sounding worried, “He didn’t kill her, didn’t do anything…”

Hunsdon shook his head slowly. Suddenly there was a band around his chest and his left arm was aching. I need to be bled, he thought distantly, I’ll see Dr. Lopez when I can.

Robin was anxiously patting his hand and looking around for a servant.

“I have…some physic in my sleeve pocket,” Hunsdon wheezed.

Carey felt for it, pulled out the little flask, poured some of it into the cap.

“That’s enough,” Hunsdon said, took it, pinched his nose and drank it down. While Robin fumbled his flask back, Hunsdon waited for the pounding to subside and the roaring to quiet.

“Father,” said Robin tactfully, “You mustn’t blame yourself. In the event, she wasn’t killed!”

“You’re right,” Hunsdon said with an effort, “But I was an impulsive fool and I chased the man that had shot at Amy and then clubbed her down with his crossbow while Eliza tried to help Amy. I didn’t catch the bastard, even then I wasn’t fast enough and all the time the man had a confederate. Well, if I didn’t know it before I know it now: Almighty God wanted her for Queen.”

“What did the Queen do while she was alone?”

“I’m not sure. She must have been crazy with the shock for she took off your Aunt’s headdress that she was wearing and put it on Amy’s head-I suppose to make her respectable because Amy’s was dented beyond wearing. She supported Amy on her skirt I think, from the way it was dirtied and used it to wipe off the blood that came out of Amy’s ears and eyes. I forced her to leave the woman though she was crying with frustration and we rode away. Stupidly, I made her throw away the bundle she had made, into a bush by the old monastery, and that was one of the few times she obeyed me. I wish she hadn’t.”

“I expect that bundle was what Topcliffe found in 1566.”

Hunsdon shook his head. “Perhaps. I went back with bloodhounds, I told you, Robin. We didn’t find the crossbow and nor did we find that bundle. They must have tidied them up and taken them away.”

The pain was subsiding from his arm and the invisible iron band was loosening. Hunsdon suddenly felt exhausted.

“So why on earth did she suddenly bring it all up again?”

Hunsdon shook his head again, trying to clear it, his brain was no longer working. “I’m sorry, Robin, I have to get to my bed. Would you…er…accompany me?”

“With good heart, Father,” Robin said, considerably more filial than normal, must still need money. He gathered up Hunsdon’s stick and supported him on his arm back across the garden and with some trouble up the stairs to the Master’s lodgings. Hunsdon’s manservant came to help him undress and bring him watered brandy. Hunsdon could hear them muttering to each other, that he had had a couple of these attacks before, that Dr. Lopez thought it was a syncope of the heart and had prescribed an empiric dose of foxglove extract to reduce Hunsdon’s choleric humours. Of course my choleric humour is unbalanced, he thought, there’s my devil of a sister to deal with.

“Don’t go to the Queen tomorrow, sir,” Robin urged. “You need to rest first. Please?”

“Nothing wrong with me,” growled Hunsdon, leaning against his high-piled pillows. “Just need bleeding. I’ll see a barber surgeon tomorrow and go in the afternoon.”

“But…”

“Damn it, I can still play a veney, I shall be perfectly well tomorrow. I’m just overwrought at the moment, what with the progress, Her Majesty’s tantrums, your bloody inconsiderate and careless drinking of poisoned wine and now this…”

Robin grinned exactly like the boy Hunsdon had so often had to shout at for running away to play football with the stable hands and dogboys and occasionally beat for more serious crimes. “There may well have been two of them but God looked after Her Majesty as He always seems to look after me.”

“Can’t think why, it must be a time-consuming business keeping a bloody fool like you safe…”

Quite surprisingly Robin put his arms around his father’s shoulders and hugged him tight. Hunsdon gripped back which eased his heart a little more.

They had left well before dawn from the old monastery, with two of the three remaining horses drawing two of the three carts still left from the Lord Chamberlain’s provision train. A couple of the men had run in the night after refusing to dig graves for the three men of the troop Dodd had killed there. He had sixteen men following him and they walked reasonably well for the ragged starveling creatures that they were. No doubt they had done a lot of walking.

Nobody except Kat had got any sleep-she was curled up in a blanket on one of the carts. The rest of them had spent some time making themselves as tidy as they could and their weapons as clean and sharp as they could under Dodd’s tongue-lashing. What had come over him, he wondered? It was only a few months since he had furiously resented Carey’s ridiculous whims in the matter of cleanliness and tidiness, but here he was forcing his new followers to clean and sharpen their swords, knives or pikes and their faces as well. He himself spent an hour cleaning and straightening his new poinard and his familiar friendly sword, sharpening them and oiling them.

All three of the carts had a mark he recognised instantly, the mad duck of the Careys, or, as Carey called it, the Swan Rampant. The two remaining carthorses were in bad condition, mainly from neglect and bad feed, so Dodd set two stronger men to each cart to help it along on the rutted track north from the monastery, and four of the ones he thought might make trouble to pull the third cart and really give them something to moan about.

They had reached Oxford city gate after it opened and joined the queue of farmer’s wives laden with produce to sell, some nasty covert looks from them as well. Dodd was comfortable on the bare back of the mare he had part-ridden from London, bandages round his feet, Harry Hunks’ large buffcoat making him a bit more respectable and his recovered hat on his head. And he had his sword at his side and his own boots in the cart next to Kat.

He didn’t dismount to talk to the sheriff’s man at the gate, noticing a couple of the Queen’s Gentlemen Pensioners of the Guard behind him. He did strain his Adam’s apple to talk Southern.

“Ay’ve the baggage train sent up from London by may lord Baron Hunsdon that wis waylaid by sturdy beggars. These men helped me get it back.”