“I will not harm her, not a hair of her head.”
“No.”
“I swear it on my soul.”
“No.”
“Why so much trouble, so much chaos and no killings, Senor Elliot? How can we agree?”
Don’t threaten my hamstrings, Dodd thought, don’t put me at risk of hanging, drawing and quartering. Instead he showed his teeth. “Let’s call vada and I’ll see your prime,” he said, a phrase he had picked up from Carey. “Help me and I’ll think about it.”
“I will bring the ladder.”
“Och,” Dodd shook his head at the man’s ignorance. Still he was nobbut a foreigner, he couldn’t help it. “Nay, I’ll want more than that.”
“Indeed? What, Senor?”
Dodd told him, leaving out some important details in case this was all some elaborate ploy of Leigh’s to interrogate him. Jeronimo started to laugh which got a sour look from the old woman as she came past with her small flock of goats. Then the Spaniard took his hat off to Dodd and walked away, leaving Dodd with nothing to do but worry that he’d been coney-catched himself and that Leigh would come back from Oxford and slice his hamstrings so his legs would be like a broken puppet’s, unable to stand. And Christ, bleeding like a woman from a rock in your belly. It made his skin shiver just thinking about things like that.
Tuesday 19th September 1592, morning
Somebody was shaking Carey awake. It was Ross. Carey sat up, feeling groggy which was a very strange experience because normally he was awake before dawn and out of bed immediately. Was this how Dodd felt every morning? Poor man. The night had been full of complicated incomprehensible dreams about Elizabeth Widdrington.
“You’ve a lady visitor, Sir Robert,” said Ross, looking amused. “Best get up and look tidy.”
Carey rubbed his face, wondered who it was. Couldn’t be the Queen, she was at Woodstock palace by now, resting, and she’d roust him out to visit her, not the other way round. Couldn’t be his mother, please God, she should be on the high seas on her way back to Cornwall. Couldn’t be Emilia as she had been such a hit with the Earl of Essex. God, he was stupid this morning. If only there was some potion you could drink which would wake you up.
“Who is it?”
“M’Lady Blount, sir.”
“Who?”
“The ex-Dowager Lady Leicester.”
Jesus Christ, Lettice Knollys as was, his cousin. The woman who had snaffled the Earl of Leicester from the Queen. It came back to him slowly that Thomas Blount, one of her son’s hangers-on, had scandalously become her third husband.
“What? What’s she doing here? She’s not supposed to come to Court, the Queen can’t stand her.”
Ross managed not to smile. “Well sir, the Court’s not arrived yet officially and nor has the Queen so she’s here to see her son, I expect.”
“Oorgh. What time is it?”
“Half past eight o’the clock, sir. My lord Earl of Cumberland said not to wake you.”
“That late?”
Carey swung his legs to the floor as the camp bed creaked its straps under him. How on earth had he slept so long? Normally he was awake the minute dawn came, no matter what time he went to bed. Was he hungover?
Hmm. Perhaps still a bit poisoned. But at least his eyes weren’t as bad as they had been. The light coming through the tent walls wasn’t actually hurting him. He rubbed his face again, felt bristles around his goatee.
“Do you know how to shave a man, Mr. Ross?”
“Not really, sir. I’ll send for some hot water and a razor.”
“Please apologise to Lady Blount and explain that I’m not in a fit state to see her yet but I’ll be as quick as I can. Get her sweet wine and some wafers and sweetmeats if you can find any.”
Twenty minutes later, wearing a fresh shirt belonging to the Earl of Cumberland (who owed him at least five from the abortive camisado attack in France a year before), beard trimmed, cheeks shaved, hair combed, hat pulled down low against the grey daylight, clean falling band and his forest green hunting doublet unbuttoned at the top in the fashionable melancholy style, Carey breezed into the marquee where Lady Blount was sitting, magnificent on a cushioned stool which was entirely drowned by her large wheel farthingale.
“My lady cousin,” he said making a full Court bow with a flourish of his hat, “how delightful to see you here!”
She was the daughter of his aunt, Katherine Knollys, she of the lost riding habit, and the mother of the Earl of Essex by her first husband Walter Devereux. She had earned the Queen’s undying hatred because, after her husband, the first Earl of Essex died conveniently in an Irish bog of a flux, she had firmly set her cap at and succeeded in stealing the Queen’s only real love, to wit, one Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. She had been a beautiful woman in her youth, flame-haired, white skin, blue eyes, but had got quite stout recently. She made no concessions to this and creaked in a low cut pointed bodice plunging into her vast farthingale in eye-watering yellow brocade and emerald-green velvet. Her feathered hat was tilted on her white cap and her famous red curls peeked out under it, quite possibly helped by alchemical magic. Her face was well made-up so she looked like a child’s poppet with her white skin and red cheeks, and her hands were heavy with rings. She no longer looked so similar to the Queen as she had in her youth because the Queen was still slender and she was not.
“Well Robin, what have you been doing to yourself?” she cooed maliciously. “Are you hungover again? You really shouldn’t drink so much.…”
Carey smiled with equal sweetness, “No, Coz, somebody put belladonna in my drink on Saturday night,” he said. “Was it you?”
She ignored this. “What is it my lord son tells me about my gold-bearing Cornish lands?”
Carey sighed. Somebody had to have bought them-clearly he was right and the Earl had been buying them on behalf of his mother.
“If my lord Earl of Essex was repeating what I told him,” he said slowly and clearly so as not to overtax her very womanly brain, “the lands were a lay set by a coney-catching Papist called Father Jackson and are about as worthless as land can be.”
“Of course they’re not, Robin, I have seen the assays. You really mustn’t try and lower the price on them, I expect dear Henry wants to snap some up cheap the way…”
I don’t really have the time or the inclination for this, Carey thought, how can I get rid of the old bag?
“Perhaps you would like to discuss this with my mother,” Carey said, “She’s the one who spotted what was going on. She’s at sea now, I think, but I’m sure my father would…”
Carey knew perfectly well that his mother and Lettice hated each other. Lady Blount tightened her mouth which was wrinkled exactly like an old purse.
“I’m asking you, Robin.”
Don’t call me Robin, Carey thought and smiled again because he’d been on the verge of commiserating with her about the failure of her speculation. His father had suffered a few: You can’t speculate in property without occasionally making a costly mistake.
“Lady Blount, if my mother says the lands are worthless, they’re worthless. And they’re in Cornwall where I doubt you’re willing to go to find out.”
“Why not? Where is Cornwall anyway?”
“About four hundred miles west and south of here.”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Er…yes, cousin.” He decided not to try and explain the details because it would probably melt whatever passed for a brain under her fake red curls. “And I’m very sorry, but I’m not completely recovered from the poisoning and…”
He wasn’t being entirely truthful. He felt tired but now he was more awake and in the dimness of the pavilion, his eyes were behaving themselves at least.
“Well that wasn’t why I came.” Lettice was staring sideways at him now. “I heard from my son that you were looking into the…er…the death of my late second husband’s first wife.”
Carey paused. Surprisingly, the Earl must have kept his promise. “Yes, my lady cousin, I am. Very reluctantly but the Queen ordered it.”