Yet when Lady Hunsdon had taken that colossal risk to pay back Heneage for covertly attacking her husband through her son, she had deliberately involved Cecil in the business. And Mr. Secretary Cecil had cooperated.
Cecil would want to protect his father, might even be acting on his father’s orders. And what if Essex found out? Nonetheless, some gut instinct was telling him to talk to Cecil.
“She wasn’t shot?” Cecil wasn’t really asking a question.
“Of course not. She was struck hard on the head with the end of the crossbow and broke her neck as she fell down the stairs.”
Cecil nodded. “The Earl of Leicester?”
Carey shook his head. “I really doubt it, sir. Why would he set on a man to shoot his wife with a crossbow-so clumsy, so risky-when a little belladonna could have sufficed as it nearly did for me?”
“No, I’ve never thought it was him either. So. Interesting. I will leave it in your capable hands, Sir Robert. Do not hesitate to call on me if you need any…er…advice or assistance.”
“Thank you, Mr. Secretary,” Carey said with a polite tilt of his head. “I will.”
Cecil smiled, a sweet and charming smile that lit up his saturnine face. “Have you ever considered a place on the Privy Council?”
Carey shuddered. “Good God, no, sir! I had rather go back to France and fight for the King of Navarre.”
“Why not?”
“Too many meetings, too much paperwork. And I hate paperwork.”
Cecil laughed. “It is an acquired taste, I admit. I only acquired it perforce but now I find it quite entrancing.”
“It would be good to have such an influential position,” Carey admitted. “And I’m honoured you think I might be suitable, Mr. Secretary, but I’m afraid that the Queen knows me far too well and would never appoint me.”
Cecil tilted his head and raised his cup in toast. “To your continued freedom from paperwork then, Sir Robert.”
Carey touched cups with him. “And to your expert navigation of it, Mr. Secretary.”
Monday 18th September 1592, night
Hughie and the old musician walked down the lane at the rear of the White Horse, the musician going ahead to lead the way to his lodgings where he had brandy and a variety of instruments for Hughie to try.
Hughie was in a quandary. His first impulse was simply to get out his stolen harpstring and throttle the man in vengeance for daring to try and poison Hughie’s prey without Hughie’s permission-and nearly poisoning Hughie into the bargain. Why, why had he done it? The itch to know was as urgent as the itch to kill. The jeering voice inside was with him on this one-shouting at him to hurt the old man, make him suffer, find out if anyone else had been set on to kill Carey.
Despite Carey’s gift for making enemies on the Border and at the Scottish Court, Hughie didn’t think there was any real competition for the?30 in gold he expected to reap once Carey was dead and buried.
Perhaps he’d even have a lesson with the old fool. His interest in learning to sing and play an instrument was genuine. When you saw the mewling idiots who could impress the girls with their warbling and strumming, music couldn’t be so very hard to learn. It was just noise that went up and down to a beat, wasn’t it?
Now the musician had turned down a very narrow wynd, Hughie paused at the corner, loosened his knife. It occurred to him the musician must have marked him to give him the poisoned flagon in the first place and so…
He swayed back as the cosh came at him from a shadowed doorway on the other side of the wynd where the musician had been waiting.
Hughie laughed for sheer delight-knocked the cosh away with a sweep of his arm, then dived straight forward with his large left hand splayed, caught the man’s throat and shoved him back against the wall. A knee in the man’s groin finished the matter.
“Ay,” Hughie said, “we do have business, but ye canna beat me in a fight.”
The musician was hunched over creaking for breath. A light punch in the kidneys put him on his face and Hughie knelt on his back, forced his left arm out on the ground and pinned the wrist, then started sawing at the man’s thumb with his knife blade, which was shocking blunt, he’d have to sharpen it.
“No! No!” screamed the man, “Please!”
Hughie stopped sawing. There was only a cut. “Why did ye try tae poison me?”
“Not you,” gasped the man, “your master, Hunsdon’s boy.”
“Ay?”
“He knew Heron Nimmo’s song, I thought…But he’s a spy, he’ll ruin it all.”
“Ay?” said Hughie, “All what?”
There was a pause. Hughie shrugged and started sawing at the man’s thumb again.
The jabbering took a while to get through because Hughie was intent on the pretty way the dark blood came out, but at last he stopped and listened. And then he let the weeping old man sit up and even wrap a handkerchief round his thumb and spoil the nice look of it.
“Och, shut yer greeting,” Hughie said, tossing his knife up and catching it. He found a likely looking cobble stone and started sharpening the blade-how had he let it get so bad? “Start at the beginning. Say it slow.”
The musician took a long shuddering breath and did as he was told. Hughie listened carefully. It was an astonishing tale, stretching back into the past well before Hughie’s own birth during the troubles that ended the mermaid Queen of Scots’ wicked Papistical reign.
At the end of it, Hughie laughed. “Och so all ye want is tae kill the English Queen? Is that all?”
The musician goggled at him. Hughie shrugged. “I’m a Scot,” he said, “what do I care fer yer witch Queen, eh?”
The musician stammered something about treason. “’Tis nae such thing for me,” Hughie explained, “if she goes, in comes the King o’ Scots and that’ll be a fine thing for me.” Especially if he could take the credit for it. Though King James, who was notoriously against bloodshed, might take a poor view of the man who did the deed, however much it might profit him.
“A’right, a’right,” he said to calm the old man’s begging. Seemingly it all had to do with a great friend he hadn’t seen for years, who made the song, or some such. Hughie couldn’t be bothered to work it all out. “Ah’m no worried about yer killing the Queen, but ye willna take another shot at Sir Robert Carey, d’ye follow me? Eh?”
The musician nodded, eyes like a hanged man’s, beard full of turnip peelings, doublet smeared with shit, his hand cradled.
“I swear it,” he said. “Nothing more against Carey.”
For a moment Hughie was tempted to tell the old fool what he himself was about, but why? Knowledge was gold. There was no need to give it away free.
They shook on it. “Off ye go then,” Hughie said, dismissing him with a gesture. “Dinna cross me again.”
Once the musician had stumbled off down the alley, Hughie brushed himself down and set off in the opposite direction, back to Broad Street.
He found the White Horse inn again, but no sign of Carey who must have gone back to his bed. It was a very tempting thought, he was unusually tired.
The candles and the fire in the grate bothered Hughie’s sore eyes and he wasn’t feeling very well, so he was turning to leave when a shadowy twisted figure in one of the booths beckoned him over.
The gentleman Carey had spoken to respectfully wasn’t ill-looking under his tall hat and his doublet was a smart black brocade, well cut and padded to hide his hunchback, clearly London tailoring and very skillful. The cloak was tidily folded beside him.
“Are you Hughie Tyndale?” asked the man.
“Ay, sir,” he said, a little nervous.
“Your master Sir Robert Carey has gone back to the Earl of Cumberland’s camp. How did it go with your music lesson?”
“Och,” said Hughie with a genial smile. “It wisnae very good and then I want tae another ale house and tripped on the way out, muddied maself something terrible.”