The Northerner watched them from under his brows, his plain long face sullen. He was sizing them up, Leigh felt, including Harry Hunks, no doubt noting their Essex livery of tangerine and white despite its raggedness.
“Colin Elliot?” Leigh said as firmly as he could.
“Ay,” he said. “May I help ye, sirs?”
That was civil enough for a Northerner, perhaps someone had been teaching him manners. Leigh had fought with a few Northerners.
“Good day, Goodman,” said Leigh, doing his best to charm. “I hear from little Kat Layman that some wicked robbers attacked you at the ford. I came to see if there was anything we could do?”
Just for a second the man’s eyes flickered and then his face became even more mournful.
“Ay,” he said. “And they took ma maister’s suit that he lent me, these duds arenae mine, sir, ma wife’s capable o’ much better. And ma boots forbye.”
He looked disgustedly at his bare toes. His feet certainly were wide. Harry Hunks had been delighted with his share of the pickings and was wearing the boots now. A little too late, Leigh wondered if Elliot had noticed this.
“So who’s your master?”
“Sir Robert Carey, sir.”
Leigh nodded. It was wonderful news if true, but was it true?
“Yes,” he said, “I think I met your master in France when he was a captain. One of the Earl of Essex’s men? A very able captain, I think.”
The Northerner finished the end of the withy, put down the coop and sat back. “Ay,” he said, “I heard he wis knighted when he was in France wi’ the Earl.”
Lucky bastard, Leigh thought, who had once hoped to be knighted as well. “King of Navarre took quite a shine to him too, offered him a place, I believe.”
The Northerner shrugged. Fair enough, it was unlikely Carey would share anything of that sort with his henchmen.
“Tell me, my memory’s not too good I’m afraid, your master’s a dark man, isn’t he? Black hair?”
Contempt crossed the Northerner’s face briefly. “Nay, sir, he’s got dark red hair which he calls chestnut and blue eyes. And he’s allus dressed verra fine though he canna pay his tailor.”
Leigh had to smile. That was Carey all right. “He had one entire packpony for just his shirts, I remember, until the Earl of Cumberland got them off him for a night attack.”
The Northerner’s mouth turned down at the ends. “Ay, sir. It’s shocking.”
“So clearly I must help you get a message to Captain…er…Sir Robert Carey. Where do you think he’ll be?”
“At Court wi’ the Queen, wherever she is. Oxford, I heard.”
“And the message you were carrying?”
“Dinna ken, sir, it was a letter. The robbers got it nae doot along o’ ma purse and ma silver and ma sword,” said the Northerner bitterly.
Thank God nobody was actually wearing the man’s sword, Leigh thought, though it was a good solid weapon, clean, oiled, and would have been sharp if it hadn’t been using for something like gathering firewood. He wondered what had happened to that letter.
“Do you know what was in the letter?” he asked and the Northerner shrugged, looking highly offended.
“Cannae read, sir. Ah can make me mark and puzzle oot ma name but nae more, sir. I can fight, though. Ay, I could fight.” He looked gloomy and rubbed his broken leg.
Leigh clapped the dejected man on the back.
“Mr. Elliot,” he said encouragingly, “I’m sure your leg will get better soon enough. And I’m sure that as soon as we find Sir Robert and explain things to him he’ll…er…he’ll see you properly equipped again.”
“Ay, he might beat me though.”
“Oh I don’t think so, goodman, not his style at all.” Leigh had never seen Carey flog a man for anything less than unauthorised looting or rape. Generally the sheer volume of noise he could produce when he was angry did the job just as well. “I’ll send someone to Oxford to find Sir Robert,” he went on, “We’ll soon sort you out.”
“Ah doot he’ll mind ye,” he moaned. “He’s a courtier.”
“Well true,” said Leigh. “but my experience of Carey as a captain is that he did his best to keep his men alive and paid, even if he occasionally came up with mad plans to achieve that.”
At which point the Northerner gave a brief bark of laughter before turning sullen again, which was what convinced Leigh that he had actually struck gold at last.
“Is there anything else?”
“Ay, sir, I had a good post horse under me and a remount when the…eh…the broken men took me, and the nags might be runnin’ loose. I wouldnae want the broken men tae have the benefit of them. There’s a gelding with a white sock and a chestnut mare.”
That was interesting: they’d found the mare not far from the ford, but the other horse must have bolted further, perhaps heading for home. He’d send a couple of the boys out to track and find the animal; they needed horses desperately.
As he walked back to the monastery, he thought hard. Why the devil hadn’t his men found that letter? Admittedly, it had been a scramble at the ford and at one point the blasted man had almost got away-he fought better half-stunned than most men fully fit. However once they’d got him down they had stripped and searched him thoroughly, finding no papers, which was a surprise. Jeronimo had said he was connected with Essex which was why they had switched the waymarker stones so they could ambush him.
He called the men together. There were twenty-five of them left from the fifty men he had taken with him to France. It had been a long hard road back from France after the Earl betrayed them. The ruined monastery had been by far the best billet they’d had since Arles. They were in some of the Earl of Oxford’s neglected hunting forest and in the autumn there was a good amount of forage, including hazelnuts, mushrooms and berries, plus the game of course. But they only had two horses left of the twenty fine beasts that had gone to France.
Leigh sighed as he looked at his troop, all of them bony and bearded, grubby and ragged, very different from the strong brave young men who had followed him from their villages. Four of them, including Jeronimo, were strangers he’d picked up in France. A couple of them had persistent coughs that wouldn’t go away, several of the boniest also had squits that wouldn’t stop. All of them had a harder look in their eye than he liked to see. He sighed again. He had changed too. An older man looked back at him when he trimmed his beard and he knew he was going bald on top. War hadn’t been anything like that glorious adventure the Earl of Essex had so eloquently convinced him to expect.
“Gentlemen,” he said quietly, “is any of you hiding a letter that the Northerner was carrying? A letter to Captain Carey? Some of you may remember him from France?”
Nobody said anything.
“You know I need to see anything of the kind.” Silence. Nobody was blushing, some of them were looking suspiciously at each other.
Leigh felt the stirring of the angry unhappiness that had settled around his gut sometime during the first months in France, felt it twist around his entrails. Just in time, Nick Gorman who had got the Northerner’s suit to replace his remnants of Essex’s livery, he stepped forward.
“There was this in the doublet pocket, sir,” he said, holding out a stained bit of paper. “I didn’t know it was important.”
Leigh took the paper, glanced at it but it was all numbers. A cipher of some kind.
“Jeronimo, can you break codes?”
The Spaniard shrugged, stepped out of his place ahead of the line and took the paper. “I don’t know, Senor,” he said, squinting at it, “Perhaps in Espanish, but…I can try.”
“Thank you.” For a moment Leigh stared worried at Jeronimo. “It turns out you were right about the Northerner. Do you know anything about Captain Carey yourself?”
“The son of Henry Carey, milord Hunsdon?”
“Yes.” The Spaniard smiled radiantly at him, quite shocking in his normally tense face and said something that sounded like Gracias a Dios.