Why was he so hot and thirsty after drinking so much ale earlier and then a whole flagon of watered wine? And another peculiar thing was that he didn’t need a piss at all. His insides seemed to have turned suddenly into a strange desert.
And now something really odd was happening. The whitewashed stone of the church was seeming to billow around him slowly, as if it were only painted curtains at a play. The whitewashed walls thinned and thinned and swayed in and out and back and forth like the dancers, to the rhythm of the snore-music around him.
He couldn’t stand the heat anymore and his head was hurting, his mouth glued with drought. He had to cool down. He fumbled for the buttons of his doublet, undid them with hands full of thumbs, then had to feel around the back where his poinard hung for the points and then he thought of taking his belts off, which he did, and then he broke a couple of laces and the doublet came away at last. He took the thing off his shoulders, wondering why it had got so much lighter and hung it on a headless woman saint holding a wheel.
He was still too hot and his eyes weren’t working right. Everything was blurring and billowing in front of him, and the moon must be shining through a window somewhere because he could see well in the darkness, make out the outlines of snoring clerks and Court servants on the floor. The vest that held up his paned trunk hose and canions was making him hot now so he set about undoing the buttons and laces for that. It was a nightmare of inextricable buttons and laces so he broke the damned things and wobbled as he pulled those off as well and hung them on a saint holding a castle next to the pearl-covered doublet and stood there in his shirt with his hose dropping down and his boots still on. He burped.
Blinking, rubbing his eyes which were getting worse and worse, licking lips like leather with a tongue of horsehide and panting with heat, a small part of him finally thought to wonder, “Am I ill?”
The last time he had felt so bad was on the Elizabeth Bonaventure, Cumberland’s ship, chasing the Armada north through the storms of the North Sea. He had been hot, dry, dizzy, blinding headache…
Well, said the sensible part of him, it couldn’t be a jail fever because that was what nearly killed me in 1588 and you never get it twice.
Was it plague? Christ Jesus, had he caught plague in London and brought it to the Queen?
His distant hands trembled as Carey felt himself for buboes, as his head started to swell to twice its size and then four times. No lumps, nothing. He wasn’t bleeding anywhere either, but the furnace of his heart was pounding louder and louder like the drum for the acrobats and the church itself was dissolving around him into gauzy billowing curtains.
He had to get out. But he couldn’t. He was standing still, his legs too far away to command. He was panting like a hound. He needed help. Was there anyone? The clerk? What was his name?
“Mr. Tovey,” he croaked, “Mr. Tovey…”
He tried again, he couldn’t shout, the voice that had flowed so well earlier was now a cracked whisper. He had to lie down or fall down. So he carefully put his goblet on the bench again and sat cross-legged on the flagstones as if he was in camp in France. His whole body had turned into an oven and at least the stones were cool. In fact they looked very inviting and as the stone church had somehow turned to a tapestried tent and billowing fine linen, so the broken stones of the Lady chapel were becoming pillows and bolsters specially for him.
He lay down full length on them, liking the cool and softness on his burning face.
There was quiet movement behind him. Somebody was lighting a candle end at the watchlight by the altar.
He moaned in protest, the light was far too bright as it came too close, it hurt his eyes. He tried to push it away, punch whoever was trying to hurt him with a spear made of light. Through tears he saw Tovey’s bony anxious face, shape-shifting to a skull amongst the soft billowing stones and the saints singing headless.
“Sir Robert!” Tovey’s voice cracked through his headache. “Are you sick, sir?”
“Ah’m not drunk,” Carey told him. “Don’t think s’plague…”
Tovey flinched back for a moment but to his credit, didn’t run. Carey felt a bony hand on his forehead, saw the frown, the candle brought close to his face, Tovey feeling his armpits and groin, oh God, do I have the tokens on my face? Carey wondered, because he felt as if there was a bonfire on each cheek.
Tovey frowned suddenly, one of his fingers brushed Carey’s leather lips, then the damned candle came near again.
“Sir, please look at the candle flame,” Tovey said. The boy suddenly had some authority in his voice. Carey frowned at the yellow-white blaze in his eyes but did his best to look straight at it. Splots of light danced in his vision, strangely coloured, and the stone saints sang the Spanish air from earlier, rather well in chorus in a different setting.
Maybe it was plague after all? “Don’t…come…near…” he whispered. “Get everyone out…Might be plague…”
The boy felt his forehead again as if he was a mother. He shook his head.
“Sir Robert, what have you drunk?”
“’M not drunk…” He knew that. It took more than a couple of quarts of mild ale and a goblet of not very good spiced wine to make him drunk.
“I know.” The boy looked about, spotted the goblet, took it from the bench, sniffed the remnants in it, stuck a finger in them and licked it. There was recognition on his face, “Mother of God,” he said, papistically. Then something in his expression hardened. “Sir Robert, you’ve been poisoned.”
Had he? Good Lord, why? Or was it an accident when the poisoner was after bigger game? Fear swooped through him and the saints started singing a nasty discord. He reached up and grabbed the boy’s woollen doublet front. “Tell the Earl…of…” Damnit, who? Wossname? “Essex, tell Essex. Don’t le’ the Queen…”
“I have to make you purge, Sir Robert,” he said. “Get the poison out of your stomach…”
Rage gave him more strength than he realised, and he swiped the boy away, got to his feet. “Tell…Essex first!” he shouted. “Queen! Lord Norris! Don’ le’ ’er drink spiced wine.…”
Burning with rage at whoever had done this, he started for the door, heard shouts, found more people around him, holding him back. Lots of them. He knocked a couple of them down, found his arms held, damn it, somebody swept his legs from under him and he landed on the stones, half a dozen people were sitting on him. He was fighting and roaring incoherently at them to stop the Queen drinking spiced wine and then Tovey’s face with a fat lip and a bruised chin was close to him again and the mouth moving and making words and he finally heard the boy.
“Coleman and Hughes have already run to the manor house, s…sir,” said Tovey. “We’ve warned her. If she hasn’t already drunk it, she won’t.”
It penetrated. Tovey was shakily holding a wooden cup and the other clerks were cautiously letting him sit up enough to drink. He was even more thirsty than before, dry as dust, dry as death. Interesting, who could have done it? Emilia? Hughie? One of the musicians or chapel men? Somebody else? Please God, the Queen was all right. She had survived so many attempts, many not recorded, let God keep her safe still…
Somebody else had arrived, was panting breathlessly, saying something to Tovey. “Sir, the Queen’s people have been warned,” he said slowly and clearly, “P…please drink this, sir, we must purge you.”
He drank whatever it was and found to his annoyance it was salted water, spat it out. The young clerks still sitting on him and holding his shoulders were turning themselves into the singing saints and the whole church was billowing. He gulped more seawater, damn it, the storm was terrible, he was sinking through the floor and…ach…Jesu…