Carey nodded, bowed shallowly. “Thank you, Mr. Byrd. If you find out anything else, please will you tell me?”
Byrd bowed back. “Of course, sir.” He turned to the tent opening.
Carey had circled round and re-entered when the musicians struck up a bouncy martial tune with drums for the tumblers. The grave Moor with his walking stick was standing at the back, watching narrow-eyed as the boys and men danced and somer-saulted and swallowed swords and threw themselves at each other across the dance floor, and the boys climbed the trees and jumped off onto pyramids of men. Then Thomasina bounced from her place by the Queen’s skirts to shouts and cheers from the courtiers and threw herself into the air, bouncing, turning, and then at last leaping high onto the top of the pyramid of men and boys where she stood on the shoulders of the topmost boy and breathlessly sang a lewd song of triumph.
He looked around at the bright crowd. Hughie was by the banquet with the other men-at-arms and servingmen like Mr. Simmonds, staring at the tumblers’ show, the flagon still dangling empty in his left hand. He had clearly forgotten all about fetching spiced wine. Emilia was across the other side of the room, amongst Essex’s followers, talking to a Welshman, Essex’s current favourite. Thomasina was mimicking a different great man of the Court in each verse of her song and was doing a particularly good imitation of the haughty Sir Walter Raleigh who wasn’t there on account of still languishing in the Tower for sowing his seed in a maid of honour. Idiot. Serve him right. The soft Devon accent and haughty head were unmistakeable, even when a midget only three and a half foot high did them. Carey had thoroughly disliked the man, had got into a fistfight with him over a tennis court back in the eighties, which had been smoothed over by his father. The progress following that had been remarkable in that Carey was consistently billeted with Raleigh, who was not yet at all important, and had had to share a bed with him a couple of times. They had come to an understanding eventually over card games, but still…What an arrogant fool.
The rest of his mind was turning over the Amy Robsart problem, the one the inquest report pointed to with such shocking honesty. Surely the Queen hadn’t actually read that report? She was sitting under her cloth of estate now, laughing at Thomasina who was currently guying the hunchbacked Sir Robert Cecil. Mind you, there was no way of telling what the Queen was thinking; she had been at Court all her life and knew a thing or two about keeping her counsel.
Why the devil did she want the thing brought up again? Why now? Did it have something to do with the scrap of parchment written with music? Why?
The Queen was standing and holding out her arms to her people. All the Court went to their knees again, Carey included, just missing a lurking patch of mud with one of his knees and nearly staining his last remaining good pair of hose. He really hoped Hughie knew how to darn. Maybe when he met his father at Oxford, he could snaffle a few new pairs?
Her Majesty said a loving goodnight to her people and then paced out to the sound of trumpets, leaning on the arm of the Earl of Essex, who was looking pleased with himself. The Gentlemen of the Queen’s Guard went ahead and behind, making red and gold borders around the maids of honour and the ladies-in-waiting, who were following the Queen, the younger ones rolling their eyes sulkily at having to leave the dancing so early.
Carey could see Emilia amongst the Earl’s followers at the end of the procession, the tilt of her feathered hat unmistakeable. Ah well. Perhaps another time. (A lucky escape, you idiot, said the puritanical part of him.)
Carey caught Hughie’s eye and beckoned him to bring over the flagon and pour for him. The lad started and looked guilty, dived into the scrum of servingmen by the large silver spiced wine bowl and disappeared. Finally he emerged, wading upstream against the flood of other servingmen, dodged a couple of whirling dancers, and came over. Carey lifted his silver cup and Hughie served him quite well, pouring carefully and using a linen napkin on his arm to wipe any drips.
When Carey sipped the wine, he nearly gagged-it was a spiced wine water, very sweet, mixed with brandy and spices and a hint of bitterness from the cloves. The attempt to hide its dreadful quality hadn’t worked. Still it was wine, so he drank it.
As soon as the Queen had gone, the musicians had struck up an alemain and the roar of voices went up another notch. He watched the peasant dance for a while, wondering if he wanted to dance anymore.
God, it was hot. Carey changed his mind about dancing, moved out again into the darkness, feeling for rain first because he did not want to damage his (still only half paid-for) Court doublet and hose. There were torches on some of the trees so you could see something in the flickering shadows.
Carey was still thirsty, so he followed the sound of water back to the stream, tipped out half of the syrupy wine in his goblet and refilled it with water caught carefully from a small rapid over a mossy stone. You never knew with water, but he’d found in France that wine generally cleaned it well.
Sipping cautiously, Carey decided it was much better and even the bitterness of cloves in it was refreshing, like well-hopped beer. Away from the torches and candle-lit tent, the evening was still and some stars were coming out, powdering the velvet cloak of the sky with diamond dust. The evening must be much warmer than you’d expect at this time of year, despite the clearing sky. Carey was burning up in his Court suit.
He spotted the dim outline of the church spire and went toward it. The clerks would no doubt be bundled up asleep inside, along with other courtiers’ servants, since there, at least, they wouldn’t be rained on despite the hardness of the floor.
Once in the churchyard he wondered what he was there for, since he wasn’t about to go and roust out John Tovey from his sleep just for the sake of it, after all. Still the church pulled him as he gulped the watered wine. Perhaps it would be cooler in there. He opened the door carefully, shut it behind him carefully and paced with great caution down the aisle. On either side were dozens of bundled figures, quite tightly packed, wrapped in their cloaks. Some had managed to beg, borrow, or steal straw pallets to ease the stone flags under them.
It wasn’t cooler in here, damn it. He went up toward the altar, still too hot and still dry-mouthed with thirst. All the Papistic nonsense had been cleared away years ago, the altar had been moved so that it was a proper communion table, the saints of the altar screen had lost their heads and been whitewashed, the Lady chapel had no figure of the Madonna on the plinth at all, though there was a puzzling carved frieze of deer around the walls. They looked oddly alive, even seemed to move.
The soft snoring from behind him was forming itself into a strange rhythmic music. He looked up at the boarded windows, one or two left intact with the old style full of scriptural pictures for the illiterate. Those were their only way of learning the gospels as they were denied hearing the Word of the Lord by the Vulgate Latin of the old Mass. That you couldn’t see the sky though the silvery light told him that the moon had risen. What were the reiving surnames up to on the Border? It was a church. Perhaps he should pray?
He drank again, took his hat off belatedly and thought about Amy Dudley nee Robsart, poor lady. She had died on the 8th September 1560, the year of his own birth, perhaps not very long after he was born, a summer baby. He smiled, thinking vaguely of his wet nurse and how he had loved her when he was tiny, when his mother sometimes frightened him on her visits back from Court with his quite terrifying father. They had become better friends when once he was breeched and he had realised how kind they were, compared to the parents of most of his friends.
He knocked back most of the rest of his wine, wondering why nothing seemed to ease his dry mouth, and sat on one of the benches against the wall. Nobody was sleeping there, perhaps because the stones were broken. There was more old destruction in the Lady chapel than the rest of the church. The plinth the statue had stood on still had a crescent moon, stars, and a snake carved on it.