It was easy to see which way the robbers had gone-at right angles to the stream, following a faint path but heading uphill, single file. Three, maybe four of them, and one very big and heavy, with big feet so it wasn’t just something he was carrying. And unless Dodd had forgotten all he knew about tracking, that was the one who had reived his boots.
He found the deepest part of the stream, took a deep breath and waded in, stood there shivering with his toes clenching around the weed-covered stones while minnows investigated his heels. Then he carefully washed himself all over in the icy water, swearing and shivering at it until all the dirt and gravel was out of his various grazes and the blood from the blow to his head was out of his hair and beard and his eyes could open properly again, even the swollen one. His nose was still singing to him and his black eye had that stupid puffy stiff feeling. He drank deep of the water despite the way it made his teeth ache.
Just as he finished turning the water rust-coloured he noticed that the water coming toward him was swirling with little white clouds.
“Och,” he said quietly to himself.
He climbed out of the stream, careful of thorns in the leaf litter. Still shivering he squeezed his hair and shook himself all over like a dog, jogged on the spot and waved his arms. Jesu, he was cold, it was a sharp morning and had been a sharper night. He was hungry, too, despite the ball of rage in his stomach. He needed a fire by nightfall and since the bastards had taken his tinderbox along with everything else, that meant he had to find whoever was living upstream.
For a few seconds he stood looking at the blades of sunlight stabbing through the turning leaves and thought wistfully of the faeries magicking his own tower into reach and him going there and Janet putting salve on his grazes and bandaging his head for him and giving him another shirt and wrapping him warm by the fire in blankets of her own weaving. And him then calling out his surname and her surname and anyone else who owed him a favour and taking a fiery bloody revenge on anyone he could find in orange-and-white velvet.
Monday 18th September 1592, before dawn
Carey and Cumberland were old hands at slipping away illicitly from the Queen’s Court. When he arrived at the door of the small bedchamber, Cumberland found Carey was already awake and irritably instructing Tovey on the art of helping him dress. They hadn’t lit any candles although the sky was overcast so the night was very dark. Carey however seemed to be able to see without difficulty.
Cumberland led the way out of the manor house and they picked their way over servants and page boys sleeping in all the corridors while their Courtier masters shared beds and had to dice for pallets in the bedrooms. The courtyard was filled with tents and tethered horses, four of them being led out by Kielder, the most discreet of Cumberland’s grooms. Carey picked the second best mount out of deference to the Earl and unthinkingly jumped to the saddle.
“I thought you said you were blind?” accused Cumberland as Carey adjusted his stirrups.
“Only in daytime, my lord,” Carey said, highly pleased. “I can see like an owl now.”
They walked the horses out through the gate, past the Yeoman of the Guard whom Cumberland had bribed, found the southward road and put their heels in.
After getting lost among the maze of lanes only twice, they found Cumnor Place was tidily kept but quite empty-looking in the grey dawnlight. There were no grooms hurrying about to feed horses, nor kitchen staff nor bakers, nor smoke from the chimneys. Hunsdon’s excellent swordmaster, Nathaniel Ross, knocked on the least ivy-choked door. An elderly man slowly opened another door to one side of the house and came shuffling out to blink at them.
Carey was already squinting and shading his eyes though the sun wasn’t up yet. Cumberland spoke to the man.
“Well,” he answered dubiously, “You don’t look like them sturdy beggars. What do you want?”
“Goodman,” Carey put in, “my name is Sir Robert Carey and the Queen has charged me with investigating a matter that happened here many years ago…” He handed down his warrant upside down and the old man didn’t turn it.
“Ah yes, the death of Lady Dudley. I wasn’t here then, sirs.”
“May we look around the house where it happened?”
“I’ll have to ask my mistress, Mrs. Odingsells.”
“Is that the Mrs. Odingsells who attended Lady Dudley back then?”
“Yes, sir, nearing a hundred years now.”
“Are her wits…Is she able to talk to me?”
“Dunno, sir, I can but ask her. Sir Anthony Forster pays me and my wife to take care of her, sir, she won’t leave. Says she likes it here and…well, I’ll ask her.”
“Thank you, Mr.…?”
“Forster, sir, I’m a cousin of Sir Anthony’s.”
The kitchen door banged open and a clucking mass of chickens and ducks came out and spread themselves to peck at the overgrown cobbles of the yard, followed by a plump woman in an apron and cap.
Cumberland and his groom had already dismounted and Kielder took the horses and tethered them to a ring in the corner. When Carey dismounted as well, Cumberland saw that he was letting his horse lead him and he tripped on a pothole. The old woman following the fowl stopped still and stared with her mouth open, then started curtseying anxiously.
“S’all right, Mrs. Forster,” said the old man, “They’re from the Court, not the monastery. I’ll just go ask the mistress.” He set off to a different door, still holding the warrant. While they waited, Carey cursed under his breath and wrapped a silk scarf around his eyes again.
Forster came back without the warrant. “Mistress says she in’t ready to receive you yet, sirs, but you can look to your heart’s content.” His voice was deeply disapproving. “Here’s the keys cos it’s all locked up.”
Carey clearly couldn’t see where the old man holding out the keys, so Cumberland came forward and scooped them up, offered Carey his arm to be led. Carey swore again and shook his head, but took it.
“Remind me never to go blind again, my lord,” he muttered through his teeth, ramming his hat down on his head to shade his eyes. It was very clear to Cumberland that his friend should have stayed in bed and given himself time to recover.
“I know what you’re doing, Carey,” he said quietly. “But why the hell are you doing it?”
“The Queen told me to, my lord.”
“Ah.” Cumberland started to whistle a very rude ballad about the Mother Superior of Clerkenwell Convent, that famous London bawdy house.
They walked across the courtyard, Carey tripping on a couple of chickens who were fighting each other over a slug, and Cumberland found the door that the old man had pointed to.
“According to all official accounts, this is where Amy Dudley fell down the back stairs from the long gallery, broke her neck and died.” Carey explained.
The door was swollen with damp and needed a firm shove from Cumberland’s shoulder. Inside the stairwell the only light came from a large boarded trefoil window. Once in semi-darkness again, Carey took the scarf off and blinked around, looked up the famous staircase.
The steps went up along the wall from the small square hall, turned sharp left at a small landing, up again and right to a doorway. The stairwell had been built onto the end of the long gallery, probably for convenience so that family members could come straight out into the courtyard. The door they had come through was large and the stairs were in a line with it so they went forward, stepping carefully on the slippery stones spattered with white. There was a clatter of wings. Cumberland looked up and felt a chill down his neck as he saw little leather gloves hanging from the roof beams and a few bony heaps on the floor. The air was chokingly musty.