Tovey brought up the one chair with arms and a cushion for Lord Burghley. Sir Robert Cecil quietly took a chair without arms that had been foraged specially from one of the manor’s storerooms. The room was too small for any more furniture with the big bed in it, the clothes chest, and Tovey’s pallet folded on top of it. Tovey was using the window sill as a desk.
“I have asked my clerk, Mr. Tovey, to keep a note,” Carey said and heard the creak of the starched linen ruff when Burghley nodded.
“Good. Good practice. My son will do the same for me.”
Carey wondered if the two records would look anything like each other. The chair creaked on its own note as Burghley settled himself in it.
“May I offer you wine, my lord?” Carey asked, then smiled, “though I may say I’ve been a little put off wine myself.”
It was annoying that he couldn’t see Burghley’s expression, that pouchy wary face with the knowing little smile.
“Alas, Sir Robert,” Burghley said, “Dr. Lopez has warned me off wine of any sort and I am sentenced to drink mild ale and nothing else apart from a foul and superstitious potion made of crocus-bulbs as penalty for my gout.”
Carey made a sympathetic noise. “How is your gout, my lord?”
“Bad,” was Burghley’s short answer. “Very painful. Get to the point, sir, Her Majesty will be waiting to cross-examine me after this meeting.”
Carey paused. He wanted straight answers and wasn’t about to start a verbal fencing match with the finest exponent in the kingdom.
“The point, my lord, is cui bono,” he said, plunging straight in. “Who benefits? There are those who would say that you were the one man who benefitted most from Amy Dudley’s murder.”
Both Sir Robert Cecil and Tovey sucked in their breaths with audible gasps. Carey sat with his legs folded, his father’s marten and tawny dressing gown round his shoulders and the scarf over his eyes and felt…good God, he was enjoying himself dicing with death again. His hearing seemed to be getting better as well-the cannonfire and shooting muskets and dags in France and on the Borders had blunted his hearing, taken away his ability to hear bat squeaks and noticeably dulled soft music for him. Perhaps with his eyes not working properly he was paying more attention to what he could hear. He had known the moment Tovey’s pen and Sir Robert Cecil’s pen had stopped their soft movements across paper.
“Explain yourself,” said Burghley with cold fury in his voice.
“My lord, with all due respect…” Carey began, knowing very well what the lawyer’s phrase meant, as did Burghley. “I am sure I am not the first person to point that out. From what I know of the first few years of Her Majesty’s blessed reign, she was very far from being the wise sovereign lady that she now is. She was, God save her, a flibbertigibbet, a flirt, and very disinclined to any business of ruling at all. She ran riot with Robert Dudley and other men of her Court in the first few years. It was a matter of desperate import to you and all her wiser councillors that she marry as quickly as possible so that she would have a man to direct and guide her and calm her unstable woman’s humours.”
A pause. Tovey cleared his throat. “Sir, d…did you want m…me to…”
“Record all of it, Mr. Tovey,” Carey ordered firmly. “I will repeat it to Her Majesty’s face and take the consequences.”
There was more creaking of chin against linen ruff. Someone, probably Burghley, was shaking his head.
“There was no shortage of good mates for her,” Carey went on, quoting his father. “Philip II of Spain offered for her and could not be rejected outright, several German and Swedish princes offered who were unexceptionable except that the Queen didn’t like them. Even a carefully chosen English nobleman might have been a possibility. Unfortunately the Queen had fallen head-over-heels in love with her horsemaster, Robert Dudley, the son and grandson of traitors, much hated by the older noble families and a man of very little common sense. He was the worst possible lover she could have chosen but she would not listen to reason.” The silence in the little chamber was oppressive.
“He was also utterly opposed to you, my lord, and your careful diplomacy, had no understanding of the financial situation which was in a desperate state, and was moreover an intemperate man who loved war, although he himself was disastrously untalented as a general.
“You, my Lord Treasurer, were in terror that the Queen would persuade Dudley to leave his wife and scandalously marry her, making himself king. This you saw as likely to drop the realm straight into civil war as the nobility picked their own candidates for the Queen’s husband and called out their tenants. In point of fact, the Northern Earls did revolt a few years later with the Howards at their head. And the Earl of Leicester hated you, my lord, and so with him once crowned, you would have lost your place and the realm gone to rack and ruin even if civil war was somehow avoided.” Somebody was breathing hard and Carey knew it wasn’t him, though his heart was pounding. God, this was fun-should he be enjoying himself so much?
“So, my lord, logic clearly shows that you were the one man who gained most by Amy Dudley’s death in the manner by which it occurred….”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Sir Robert,” snapped Burghley. “Amy Dudley’s death cleared Leicester’s way to the throne. However she died, the fact that she was dead made him a widower with no impediment to marriage. When I heard what had happened I was in the worst despair I have ever been in my life because I was sure they would marry immediately and that all would fall out exactly as you have suggested. In fact I started selling land and books so I could move to the Netherlands again if necessary. Amy Dudley was my best bulwark against Leicester’s kingship. I had men placed in her household to guard her, one in the kitchen against poison, one as her under-steward, and I was paying a fortune to one of her women, I forget the name, to keep me informed. I had all the letters to and from Cumnor Place opened and read, I took every precaution to keep Leicester’s wife safe and alive, and the bloody man somehow managed to kill her anyway!” Burghley was shouting by the end. Carey thought from the sound that he was leaning forward, quite possibly prodding the air with a finger as he often did.
“So, who did kill her?”
“Her husband, Sir Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, the obvious suspect, the man who wanted to be king.” Burghley was still shouting and Carey wondered if his face was going purple.
“With respect, no, my lord,” said Carey calmly. “It’s my belief that the Queen would not, could not marry a man who had killed his wife, no matter how, no matter why.”
“Of course she would. She was on heat for him, it was a disgraceful sight.”
“So why didn’t she, my lord?”
“What?”
“You say Leicester must have killed his wife so he could marry the Queen. Once he had done it, why didn’t they marry?”
“God knows, perhaps God managed to drive a particle of common sense into the Queen’s head, because God knows none of the rest of her council could.” Carey was momentarily entranced at the implied idea of Almighty God sitting on the Privy Council presided over by Burghley. “Or perhaps she realised that the scandal would destroy her. It was then only seventy-six years since the Queen’s grandfather ended the civil wars between York and Lancaster by taking the throne. There had been a decade of trouble, religious turns and twists, Queen Mary burning hundreds of good Protestant men and women, the Exchequer exhausted, the currency debased, the…”
“So, my lord, you say that you did not kill Amy Dudley in such a manner that the Earl would be blamed and thus the Queen would refuse to marry him?”