He was feeling tired again, surprisingly so. Sitting in shadows with only one candle lit for Tovey and his eyes shut was making him sleepy. He realised he had been silent a long while.
“Is that all, sir?” Tovey asked hopefully.
“Yes, thank you. I think I’ll go back to sleep now though it’s far too early. It’s infernally boring not being able to see but that might help my bloody eyes recover.”
“It might, sir. M…may I advise you to cover them when daylight comes? Your eyes pain you because they have no defence against the sunlight and too much light might actually damage them and blind you permanently.”
“Jesu.” That put fear in the pit of his stomach. “Is Mr. Henshawe on guard at the door?”
Tovey checked. “Yes, sir. And I’ve brought my pallet and I’ll sleep here tonight.”
“Good. Has Sergeant Dodd arrived?”
“No, sir, when I fetched the food, your father’s under-steward said my lord was sending riders out along the London road to see if he’d fallen off his horse, as he must have left London early on Saturday. “
Carey frowned. That didn’t sound at all plausible; Dodd had practically been born on a horse. But perhaps he was in some kind of trouble. You never knew: after all, who would have thought Carey might end up being poisoned in the Queen’s Court? Dodd’s absence was worrying-surely he wouldn’t have decided to simply head north and bypass Oxford altogether? Even if he’d walked from London to Oxford, he should have been here by now.
***
Somebody knocked on the door. Carey was instantly awake, feeling for a dagger under his pillow where there wasn’t one, blinking in the darkness of the brocade bed curtains with a pattern of fleur de lis. He heard Tovey’s voice murmuring.
“Mrs. de Paris to see Sir Robert,” said one of Thomasina’s women.
“Let her in, Mr. Tovey,” called Carey with resignation, groping at the end of the bed for his dressing gown and finding none. What was the time? He wasn’t sure because when he peered through the curtains the room seemed brighter than it should have been with just one blurry watch-candle in it. He heard people talking. “Damnit, Mistress Thomasina, wait a minute, I’m only in my shirt…”
Tovey handed him a fur dressing gown of his father’s, marten and velvet, which Carey pulled around his shoulders, opened one of the bed curtains and sat with his legs crossed.
The door was opened a little by Mr. Henshawe, and Carey could make out the small colourful blur of Thomasina still in her tumbling clothes.
“Sir, would you like me to make notes?”
“No,” said Thomasina’s high-pitched childlike voice. “Please leave us.”
Tovey stood where he was. Carey heard him swallow. “Er…?” he said. Carey was liking the scrawny clerk more and more. “It’s all right, Mr. Tovey,” he said. “Mrs. de Paris is an old friend.”
Tovey bowed awkwardly and went out into the passage to stand with Thomasina’s women.
Carey felt Thomasina jump up on the bed like a man mounting a horse and then she sat with her legs folded under her, looking like a small lump of forest of tawny and green brocade in the general blur. He smiled in her direction.
“Next time your spiced wine tastes bitter, Sir Robert, may I suggest you throw it away?”
Her voice was withering.
“At the time,” he admitted, “it never occurred to me that anyone would try and poison me, but from now on I’ll bear it in mind.”
“Good.”
“Why are you here, Mistress? It’s late. And I think you weren’t even born when Amy Robsart died…”
“No, I remember the accession bonfires and getting drunk on spiced ale with my older brother,” she said. “Perhaps I was about two or three at the time as it’s one of my first memories.”
Good Lord, she was older than he was. Astonishing.
“Of course, I wasn’t then in Her Majesty’s service nor even imagining such a thing. I’m here, Sir Robert, to find out if the Queen can help you in your quest.”
“She can come and break the matter fully with me, tell me about the message that upset her, so I know where I am.”
Silence. “She won’t. Not yet.”
Damn it, he hated it when people wouldn’t tell you what you needed to know. But there it was, neither his father nor Thomasina would disobey the Queen just to make his life easier. So he shrugged.
“Is there anything else I can do?”
“While I’m stuck in this room and not able to see, I might as well keep busy. I want to interview all of Her Majesty’s Privy Councillors that served her then and are alive now.”
“Oh?” Carey couldn’t make out her face but he didn’t need to. He could imagine the expression on the midget’s face. “Who do you want to start with?”
In for a penny, in for a pound, Carey thought. Let’s see if my loving aunt, against all her normal habits, actually means what she says.
“My Lord Treasurer Burghley,” he said simply.
Well at least Thomasina didn’t laugh at the idea of the Queen’s penniless and frankly quite lowly cousin and nephew interviewing the person who in fact administered the realm for her and also ran the Queen’s finances, who was the chief man in the realm whatever the Earl of Essex thought, and had been since the Queen’s accession.
“When?”
“If he’s here at Rycote, now. Tonight. If not, as soon as he can come.”
Instead of a grim laugh, a flat refusal, or a placatory platitude, Thomasina said simply, “Very well, Sir Robert, I shall arrange it. He’s here, so don’t go back to sleep.”
Well, he hadn’t expected that. She hopped off the bed like a sizeable cat and trotted to the door.
Jesu, thought Carey, what have I asked for? I didn’t expect to be given it!
Burghley arrived only twenty minutes later. Carey had wrapped himself in his father’s dressing gown, feeling every limb as heavy as if he had just chased a raiding party across the Bewcastle Waste for two days. He was still sitting on the bed because the bed curtains gave him some protection from the light. He had also fastened a silk scarf across his eyes. Partly it was to protect them from the extra candles Tovey had lit so he could take notes, partly for dramatic purposes. He was nervous. Carey knew the Lord Treasurer, of course, had oftentimes seen his aunt lose her temper with her faithful servant and throw things at him. Walsingham had told him a few interesting tidbits but had respected the man greatly, despite his pragmatism and their many disagreements over how best to deal with Papists.
Burghley limped in, wincing from his gout and the man with him had an odd, quick uneven gait. Ah yes, Burghley must have brought his second son whose body was clenched and hunched from the rickets he had suffered in his youth, despite the careful supervision of three or four doctors.
“My Lord Treasurer, S…Sir Robert Cecil,” announced Tovey in awed tones. Carey stood for them, bowed, then felt behind him for the bed and sat again quickly, drawing his legs up. He had actually nearly overbalanced, his brain felt battered and bruised, and his mouth was dry again.
“My Lord Treasurer, Sir Robert, I am very grateful to you and honoured at your coming here. I apologise, my lord, that my temporary disability has prevented me from coming to you as would be more appropriate,” he said formally.
“Yes, yes, Sir Robert. Her Majesty asked me to speak to you about these matters but alas, I doubt very much that I can help you,” said Burghley’s voice. It was a deep voice and paradoxically able to make very dull subjects verge on interesting. Even Scottish politics became comprehensible when Burghley explained them, a remarkable and essential talent. Carey remembered the Lord Treasurer once explaining to him many years ago why it was that his debts kept mounting up. Probably his father had asked him to. Carey vaguely remembered that the lecture was about what four shillings in the pound interest could do given time. Burghley seemed to think that because he was interested in the clever Greek ways of planning cannon fire and siege towers and had read that manuscript Italian book about card play, he could understand accounting. He probably could, he just…wasn’t interested. Burghley had given up eventually.