“Especially Signora Bonnetti.” He looked carefully into space. “I am hoping to introduce her to my lord of Essex to help him with his farm of sweet wines. I want to be sure that the Queen has no objection.” Yes, by God. He’d learned a lesson in Dumfries.
Thomasina tilted her head. “I will send you a message if there is a problem, Sir Robert. In the meantime…you’ll do it?”
“I shall think about it,” said Carey, “and then I shall give her an answer.”
This was the Queen’s invariable answer to anyone who wanted her to do anything at all, in particular marry. Thomasina knew that, too, and smiled briefly. He was joking. He had absolutely no choice in the matter.
He stood and bowed to the Queen’s Fool.
When he and the page boy had put back the ladder and climbed carefully down, he was nearly knocked over by two swordsmen hacking at each other with theatrical gusto. He circled the fight, saw it was simply the first veney against the second veney, and slipped out of the tithe barn where he found Hughie waiting for him.
They walked back to Cumberland’s camp. On the way, Carey spotted an elderly laundress with a big basket of shirts and bought a new shirt for Hughie from her on the spot, had him change into it, and gave her the old one to try and clean. It cost the same as fine linen would in London but was clearly some kind of hemp. Hughie seemed pleased. They walked on, Hughie admiring the whiteness of the shirtsleeves.
“Is it true,” he asked, “that the Queen canna stand a man wi’ a dirty shirt in her presence?”
“Very true,” said Carey. “She’s notorious for it.” Hughie was chuckling. “What?”
“Ah wis just wondering if she’d ever met the King of Scotland?” Hughie sniggered and Carey had to laugh as well. In the unlikely event of Her Majesty the Queen ever being in the same room as the young King, who rarely even wiped his face, let alone washed his body or shifted his shirt, a hail of slippers and fans would be the least His Majesty of Scotland could expect. For certain his subsidy from the English Treasury would suddenly dry up.
Hughie carried on, shaking his head, to the tiring room while Carey went in search of somewhere relatively peaceful with good light so he could read the inquest papers.
Saturday 16th September 1592, late afternoon
Carey was impressed when he looked at the work young Hughie had done on his doublet shoulders. The young man had unpicked the lining, taken out just enough of the padding and rearranged the rest to make room for Carey’s extra sword muscles and then sewn it all up again as neat as you like. It seemed to be true he had been prenticed to a tailor.
“Well done, Hughie.” He put the watch candle down and felt for his purse. There was still a bit of money in it so he gave Hughie sixpence for the job. The amount of money he had seemed to be going down with its usual alarming speed. He wasn’t yet ready to encase himself in Court armour of velvet and pearls so he wandered out into the crowded afternoon.
The Earl of Cumberland’s men had finished enclosing the whole orchard in a large marquee, laying boards between the trees. Some of the later-fruiting trees still had apples, pears, and golden quinces hanging on them which scented the whole tent. The ones that had already been picked were being decorated with hanging pomanders and little silk bags of comfits. The banquet tables were against the further wall of the tent and the more open part of the orchard had been completely boarded over, with the raspberry and blackcurrant canes taken out, to make a dance floor. Her Majesty would dance that evening in the light of the banks of candles being carefully set up in readiness, but only a couple of them were lit so far.
Meanwhile in the other corner the musicians were tuning up and arguing over the playlist while the men of the chapel were still practising. Carey stopped and listened-Thomasina was right, there were only two tenors and one of them clearly had a bad sore throat and a head cold.
He was just thinking he should go back to the cottage tiring room and shift his shirt and change to his Court suit, when Thomasina swept in, followed by her two women who towered over her.
She stood on a stool and bade the choirmaster have his men sing an air for her, a piece of music which was ruined by the tenors any time they had a line to sing above doh. Carey was shaking his head at his cousin’s likely reaction to the singing and wondering why the chapel master didn’t simply change the air for something in a lower key, when suddenly Thomasina skewered him with a look.
“Could you sing that line, Sir Robert?” she snapped.
Carey remembered too late that she’d said something about his voice, bowed and smiled. “I’m no great musician, mistress, and I’m sure the chapel master could find a much better…”
“He could if we were in Oxford or London, but not here where nobody can read music even if they can sing and we daren’t let in any of the musicians from London. You can read pricksong, can’t you?”
“Well, yes, but I…”
The brown button eyes glared again and Carey realised that there was probably some purpose to all this. He bowed again.
“I’ll do my poor best, mistress.”
He got some very haughty looks from the chapel men who were understandably nervous at the idea of a courtier singing with them. That nettled him. He knew he could sing and in fact music had been one of only a few childhood lessons that could compete with football.
He stepped up to the candle and took the handwritten sheet of paper, squinted at it. A little tricky, but not impossibly difficult.
Mr. Byrd had him sight-sing the entire piece solo to a lute, then grunted and took him through it with the chapel men several times. The result was much better, he knew. With the spine of the music held for them by his voice, they could manage the complex interweavings required of them.
“Hmm,” said Mr. Byrd, “well done, Sir Robert, very accurate.”
“This is new, isn’t it? I feel sure I’ve never heard it before.”
Mr. Byrd and Thomasina exchanged looks and Byrd bowed. “Thank you, sir, I have only just finished it.”
Could it have anything to do with the death of Amy Robsart, then? Surely not. It was only a piece of music, an air in the Spanish style, magically worked by William Byrd, an excellent chapel master, perhaps even as good as his predecessor Mr. Tallis. True, he was a Catholic, but he had miraculously survived a brush with Walsingham’s pursuivants in the early eighties and had amply repaid the Queen for her backing of him.
Carey hummed through the whole thing again while he went to try on his dancing clothes. It turned out that the trunkhose and cannions of the suit were also a little tight but would do for now. Hughie had done wonders with his hard-used boots-stuffed rosemary and rue into them, polished them with beeswax and tallow, made them verging on respectable.
He had a little time before he needed to be in the transformed orchard. The inquest report and coroner’s report were, of course, written in Latin which had been a subject that had never once won a battle with football. He knew French very well, which gave him the Norman French you needed for legal documents, but he could only struggle and guess with Latin.
So he walked over to the small stone village church where the Queen’s secretaries would set up their office. He spoke to the Queen’s chief clerk, Mr. Hughes, asking for someone who knew Latin but wasn’t too busy. Hughes gestured at the row of men standing at high folding desks, busy writing. Carey walked past them intending to ask one of the greybeards who were experienced and fast, but then he spotted the second-to-last man, a gawky spotty young creature whose worn grey wool doublet was older than he was from its fashion. The boy looked up and blinked at him short-sightedly. On impulse, he stopped.
“What’s your name?”
“John Tovey, sir.” He had a strong Oxford town accent.
“Can you translate this for me?”