“Well Robin?” said his father as Carey leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs at the ankle, and took a long draught of wine.
“The Devil of it is,” he said, seemingly at random while his mother frowned at him for swearing, “there’s a pattern here and I know there is, but I can’t seem to see it.”
He told the whole tale of their very busy day from start to finish, with no embellishments at all.
“How did you know where the memorial service was to?” asked Lady Hunsdon. “Letty said she couldn’t imagine.”
“Oh that.” Carey smiled faintly. “The Papists themselves told me. It was in the book at the crypt-the woman who claimed the priest’s body gave a false address and called herself Mrs. Sophia Merry.”
“Never heard of her.”
“Of course not, my lord, it’s a false name as well. But it told where the service would be-at the site of the old church of St Mary Wisdom.”
Hunsdon gave a shout of laughter. “Ha! I didn’t realise you’d actually managed to learn some Greek as a boy, between reiving cows and playing football.”
Carey smiled ruefully. “I didn’t, my lord, I’m afraid. But while I was in Paris I…er…knew a lady whose name was Sophia who told me often that her name meant wisdom and very proud of it she was too although she was as feather-brained as a duck.”
Lord Hunsdon seemed to find this very funny whereas Lady Hunsdon only smiled briefly.
He finished with his account of Pickering’s game, then wet his whistle and waited for his parents’ reactions. They were a time coming. Lady Hunsdon in particular seemed very interested in her cards.
After a moment, Carey said gently, “I find it alarming, my lady, that Pickering seems to have bought some of these Cornish lands on the grounds that there’s gold in them.”
Lady Hunsdon said nothing. She was dipping a wafer in the wine.
“I advised him to sell immediately,” Carey added, “on the grounds that even if there was gold, he would get no good of it since it was so far away and well out of his manor.”
There was more thundering silence.
“My lady mother?” said Carey, even more softly. Lady Hunsdon refused to meet his eyes. He sighed. “Well then, my lord, I don’t know what more I can do. Perhaps it would be best if I went north again…”
“Not yet,” said Lady Hunsdon sharply.
“No,” said Lord Hunsdon at exactly the same time. The two of them looked at each other while Carey watched the pair of them with hooded eyes and a cynical expression.
Dodd had woken up to the fact that there was something complicated going on between Carey and his parents and indeed between Lord and Lady Hunsdon, but he wasn’t sure what it might be. His own parents had been very much less complicated and furthermore were both long dead. Inside the silence there seemed to be some kind of three-way battle going on.
In the end Carey broke it by uncrossing his legs and planting his boots firmly on the black and white tiles of the floor.
He stood up and then went formally on one knee to his parents.
“My lord father, my lady mother,” he said quietly, “I am urgently needed in Carlisle before the autumn reiving starts. I will not investigate this matter any further until I have a true accounting of the background to it from both of you.” His eyes were on his mother as he spoke. Then he stood, bowed gracefully to both, backed three steps as if from royalty, turned and left the parlour.
“I told you Robin would…” Hunsdon began but his wife slammed her cards down, stood and marched out of the parlour, her cheeks flaming as if she had painted them. Hunsdon followed her, leaving Dodd sitting at a cardtable all alone except for the servingman standing by the door, seemingly dozing where he stood.
Dodd finished the spiced wine, which was very good, crushed immediately the impulse to steal the silver cups and the candelabra, and headed for his own bed. To his disgust he found Carey sitting by the small fire in the luxurious fireplace, busy mulling the wine which was normally left for him in a flagon on a table by the wall. Dodd’s eyelids felt as if they were lined with lead and sand.
“Och,” he moaned.
“God damn it,” snarled Carey in general, ramming the poker back among the coals as if stabbing someone. “She still thinks I’m a boy that can’t see the nose on his face because his head’s too full of football, she thinks I still can’t add it up. What the hell does she think she’s playing at?”
Bewildered, Dodd sat on the edge of his bed since Carey had his chair.
“Ay?”
“As for my father…Why the devil doesn’t he keep her under control? Privateering at her age. Dodgy land-deals with God knows what bloody Papists. He should bloody well assert his authority and make her behave!”
Dodd was open-mouthed at this notion as he rather thought Hunsdon would be. He decided not to say anything since Carey was evidently spoiling for a fight with someone, and if he didn’t dare fight his parents combined, might well pick on Dodd. Who hadn’t the energy for it.
Carey drank some wine and then seemed to remember his manners, poured another gobletfull and handed it to Dodd, who had really drunk enough but didn’t feel like arguing either. Would he never get to his bed?
“Don’t you understand, Sergeant?” Carey said more quietly. “My mother doesn’t like the Court and doesn’t really know how it works. You know my father is the Queen’s half-brother through Mary Boleyn, Anne Boleyn’s older sister? Who was King Henry’s official mistress before Anne.”
Dodd had heard something about it, but discounted it as the usual overblown nonsense. His eyes stretched but he nodded once.
“Now if King Henry had married Mary instead of Anne, my father would have been king and I would have been a Prince of the Blood Royal.” He shuddered briefly. “And my ghastly elder brother would have been the heir to the throne, Heaven help us. But the bastardy means that can’t ever happen, thank God, which means my father is her Majesty’s closest kin and also her most trusted man at court. As Lord Chamberlain he runs the entire domus providenciae of the Court. The…ah…I suppose you’d translate it ‘the House of Supplies’ which is to say, the servants, supplies, kitchens, laundries, and what-have-you. Courtiers are generally part of the domus magnficenciae, the House of Magnificence, and very much worse treated. My father also guards her Majesty against assassinations. Everyone thinks of him as no more than a knight of the carpet, a courtier and patron, never mind what he did during the Northern Earls rebellion. And never mind that he’s kept the Queen safe all this time. Heneage wants to destroy him and take his job-he thinks he could have enormous influence with the Queen which my father, on the whole, rarely uses.”
Dodd nodded again, still not sure where this was going.
“That means that if my mother has been indulging in some half-baked scheme involving Cornish lands and Papist priests and Heneage gets wind of it and goes to the Queen, my father could be in the Tower on a charge of treason by the end of the year.”
“Ay,” said Dodd, wondering if it was too late to steal a horse from Hunsdon’s stable and head north as fast as he could.
“That’s the thing about the Court. Nothing is steady, nothing is certain. People plot and lie and scheme for power. My father has never been very interested in political power which is one reason why the Queen trusts him. He’s also seen to it that she stays alive, with God’s help. But if Heneage can convince her he’s turning Papist or has been dealing with them in some way, no matter how ridiculous the charge would be, the Queen would turn on my father. And her anger can be as terrible as my grandfather’s.”
“Ay.”
“And as lethal.”
“Ay.”
“Then there’s the fact that the Cecils have intervened on Heneage’s behalf. Generally speaking they’re at loggerheads because Sir Robert Cecil wants to run Walsingham’s legacy instead of Heneage. So why would he organize the adjournment of our case for Heneage? Either it’s some kind of trick to lull him along or Heneage blackmailed him. Or Cecil’s after something else entirely and this is just byplay…” Carey’s voice trailed off leaving Dodd feeling he was a very small pawn on a very large chessboard full of extremely dangerous, heavily armed chessmen. Carey had a wary, calculating look on his face. After a moment he began again.