P. Chisholm - An Air of Treason

Unlike her cousin who was up before dawn, though at least not too happy, it seemed the Queen did not like mornings. She got up at about seven o’clock and spent the next hour and a half dressing, heard Divine service, and then, on the Lord Chamberlain’s insistence, delayed all morning dealing with papers and business with Lord Burghley and his son while Oxford and its environs was searched again.

No sign of Don Jeronimo nor his friend Sam Pauncefoot. After a quick dinner around noon, Carey and Dodd left Tovey and Tyndale with Hunsdon’s liverymen and rode north to Woodstock. There they found the Queen, magnificent in a black velvet bodice and black velvet kirtle trimmed with pearls, ribbons, diamonds, rubies, and peacock feathers, a high cambric ruff standing behind her head and her small gold crown pinned to her bright red wig in a cobweb of diamonds, in a very bad mood. There was something familiar about the beaky nose and the shrewd eyes but Dodd couldn’t place it, put it down to Carey being related to her.

They were given royal tabards to wear and ordered to ride alongside her coach. Dodd wished for a jack or breastplate, he was only wearing a wool doublet and not even the buffcoat he had taken from Harry Hunks on the specious grounds that it smelled too bad. The bloody tabard was nothing but embroidered silk, of all useless things. At least Carey had managed to find a couple of secrets to put under their hats, iron caps that fitted over your skull and were devilishly uncomfortable but at least gave you a chance if somebody hit you on the head.

The Queen was helped into her coach by Lord Hunsdon who was looking tired himself. She sat there, glowering. The large green and white coach flying the Royal standard like a castle, jerked off along the rutted road, creaking and groaning like any cart though there were leather straps that supposedly made it more comfortable. There were eight stolid carthorses in silk trappings drawing it, with plumes on their heads. Nice beasts too, much the biggest Dodd had seen since Carey’s tournament charger was sold to the King of Scots, heavy-boned, powerful and big-footed. They had hairy feet, perhaps there was Flemish blood in them? There were two black geldings, a half-gelding and three mares, originally piebald but dyed black, sixteen to seventeen hands high, their tails docked and plaited up and their coats shining with…

“You’re supposed to be looking out for Jeronimo. Pay attention to the crowd and the Queen, not the bloody horses,” growled Carey out of the side of his mouth and Dodd coughed and dragged his eyes away from the alluring horseflesh.

His heart was beating hard and slow and his back itched and so did his head under the iron cap. He didn’t like any of this though the first mile or so was easy enough, along a road that had been tidied up, the undergrowth cut back from the road properly and some holes filled, lined with peasants from the villages, all cheering for all they were worth and waving tree branches and the occasional banner. About halfway down the louring grey clouds clenched and dumped their rain so the courtiers in the train all covered themselves with cloaks. Neither Carey nor Dodd had brought one so they got wet.

Then they came to a bridge where a large group of men were waiting on foot, some wearing bright red gowns trimmed with marten and behind them more men in black and grey gowns and some in buff coats which Dodd looked at enviously. Their ruffs were sadly bedraggled.

“Vice chancellor of the university, the doctors of the colleges.” Carey muttered to him.

The Queen ordered her coach stopped and said she would hear speeches so long as they were short. She stood on the step of it with two of her grooms holding her cloth of estate over her head to keep off the rain. The vice chancellor knelt to her on the stones of the bridge and made a speech in foreign that seemed long to Dodd. He then gave her a bundle of white sticks with more speechifying and the Queen speechified right back in more foreign and gave the sticks back too. Then one of the others knelt to her and spoke even more in foreign and then, thank God, the lot of them arranged themselves ahead of the coach, the rain dripping from their nice gowns going pink from the red dye running, and walked ahead into Oxford.

There was rain dripping off Dodd’s nose too and he carefully tipped his hat so the rain collecting in the brim wouldn’t spill down his back. At least the weather made a gun unlikely, who could keep a match alight in this? Though if Jeronimo or his friend had a wheel-lock dag…No. Carey’s only fired properly one time in four, you wouldn’t risk it. Even a crossbow would be chancy if you let the wet get at the string.

Another half mile down the road, you could see a very wide street where another road joined from the north, with another of those odd monkish fortresses of learning, flying a lamb and flag on its banners. More men, this time the mayor with his chain and the aldermen, even Dodd could spot that. They made speeches too, but this time in English and a bit shorter, thank God. They too went into the procession with the mayor and the vice chancellor exactly level at the front and a little bit of shoving behind them between the aldermen and the red-gowned doctors of the colleges.

Now the procession went down past a church and into the lead-roofed street called Cornmarket. The streets were lined with young men in their gowns and odd-looking square caps from the days of the Queen’s father. They shouted “Hurrah!” for the Queen and threw the caps up as the Queen went past, which frightened the life out of Dodd for a second who thought they might be throwing stones.

The street’s cobbles clattered and groaned under the iron-shod wheels of the royal coach, and Dodd caught a glimpse of the Queen looking very tense under all her red and white paint. She beckoned Carey over. He actually dared to argue and was clearly told to shut his mouth. Carey moved his horse around the coach so he could speak to Dodd, his mouth in a grim line.

“She says she’s feeling sick, so she’s going to stop the coach at Carfax. And she knows the risk….”

“Ay,” he said, “there’s a tower there.”

“She won’t get out of the coach but she’ll stop there as long as she can. She thinks it will be quite a while because one of Essex’s pets, Henry Cuffe, is the Greek Reader and will be making a speech in Greek to her.”

What was it with lords? Why did they like speaking foreign so much?

“Can she no’ ride on and have Cuffe come tae her later?”

“She could but she won’t. She ordered me to flush the Spaniard out at Carfax for she won’t have this nuisance all through her visit to Oxford.”

“Och.” Dodd saw the young Scot’s face behind and below Carey looking as if he was actually enjoying himself. Carey must have told the lad to stick around on foot as backup which Dodd doubted was a good idea.

At that point the rain stopped, blast it, and the sun came out. Typical southron weather, you couldn’t even rely on it to rain when you wanted.

Carey was thinking the same. “Now she’ll insist on getting out,” he said gloomily. “She says she’s near to puking with the motion of the coach already.”

“Och,” You had to say this for the King of Scots, coward as he was. He wouldn’t do any such thing. And the result? Nobody had succeeded in killing him yet, despite plenty of good tries and a couple of kidnap attempts.

The crowds were closer now, held back by the Gentlemen of the Guard, the Beadles of the university in their buffcoats who had joined them from the university procession and Hunsdon’s liverymen as well. There were townsfolk as well as black-robed scholars, shouting and cheering the Queen and waving their hats.