“I’d like to talk to my man,” Carey said to the Jailer.
“You can’t bail him,” he said at once, “Mr. Heneage’s man was very particular about it.”
“No, that’s all right, I’ll have a word with his honour later. I just want to talk to him.”
Another shilling got him back inside the cell with a quart of beer to share. Leigh seemed grateful for it and very willing to talk especially once he focussed and recognised Carey from France.
Half an hour later, he had the full sorry tale and Leigh’s desperate petition that he ask the Earl of Essex for their pay. He insisted that the man he knew as Elliot was being held in a pit-not chained, of course, not at all and the pit was not at all uncomfortable, quite dry in fact-but had a bad leg. Some mysterious trouble with the horses had broken out in the night and Leigh had been delayed in setting out with only the stolen horse to mount…His lieutenant would be fully capable of keeping the prisoner safe and all Sir Robert needed to do to free him was promise to get their pay. They were owed a lot of it, a full year’s service in France and not a penny from the King of Navarre either.
Carey had been financially crippled himself by soldiering for the Earl of Essex but had at least gotten a knighthood out of it and was in any case used to debt. He nodded sympathetically, promised to try and sort out the mistaken identity with the Vice Chamberlain but had not given his word on the matter of pay. He couldn’t. He knew perfectly well that the Earl of Essex wasn’t going to pay anyone.
Meantime it sounded as if Dodd was healthy enough and would stay put for a while. It was a relief that he wasn’t a corpse with a broken neck in a ditch somewhere. Carey thought about enlightening Heneage and then decided not to-why make trouble? Presumably once Heneage bothered to go and visit the man he would know Dodd had given him the slip again and Leigh would have to be released as the bill was spoiled. Carey smiled as he set off for Trinity College and then frowned because he had decided it was time to talk frankly with his father.
He was distracted by the sound of singing from the church halfway up Cornmarket and went in to hear it. These weren’t the chapelmen, but a choir of boys, anxiously practising a very complicated piece in Latin with five parts. They were good but they hadn’t quite got it yet. He stood at the back of the church, holding his hat, far away from the candles so as not to be troubled by them, thinking.
The signs all pointed in one direction. Well perhaps two. Carey realised that was why he had a headache. He would rather think that Burghley had done the deed, fearing Amy Robsart’s divorce from Dudley and Dudley as king-quite rightly. But there was a much better suspect if Amy had balked. Possibly two of them.
He had lost track of the music with his anxious thinking, found that his fingers were holding his hat tightly enough to bend the brim. He wanted to broach the matter privately with the Queen but knew that was both unwise and impossible. He would have to talk to his father; there was no help for it, but he didn’t want to because he was actually afraid of what might happen when he did. Was this where his dreams of being in the Tower on a charge of treason had come from? Were they just devilish phantasms or true warnings? How could you tell? Was that why his doublet in the dream had been so worn and faded? Would the Queen execute him for high treason just for asking?
Surely not. But he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t even sure if he could ask his father. He didn’t mind if his father lost his temper and hit him, though he really didn’t want to get in a brawl with the old man. And he certainly didn’t want to be locked up by him. There was a polite cough beside him and he realised that someone had come in and was standing next to him, a round man in the Queen’s livery gown.
“The tenor’s good,” said Mr. Byrd, “Perhaps I’ll poach him for the chapel men. Not as good as you, sir, he don’t have your round tone.”
Carey tilted his head at the compliment though as always when being told he had a good voice, he didn’t feel he could take the credit.
“It’s a pity you weren’t born of lesser stock, sir,” Byrd went on, “we could have made something of you.”
“Hmm. I’d have enjoyed that trade, Mr. Byrd, though my instrument playing is atrocious.”
“Lack of practice, no doubt.”
“I truly did try with the lute…I don’t know. Singing seems so natural and playing the lute so complicated. I can tune it and make a perfectly reasonable sound but it’s wooden, lumpish. I can hear the fault but I can’t mend it.” That was true, he had been very disappointed not to be able to master the lute as he wished.
“Hmm. Fighting practice won’t improve your playing, veneys coarsen your hands.”
“Perhaps.”
Byrd smiled. “I remembered something that might help you, sir, so I’m pleased to have found you. You know the musician who ran away on Saturday night?”
“The viol player you hired from the waits?”
“Yes. I finally remembered when I’d seen him before. It was when I was a singer for Mr. Tallis at the Chapel Royal, he used to play for the Queen then. It was in the early part of her reign, but he and his Spanish friend that played the harp and the lute, they ran away from Court, didn’t even collect their arrears of pay and we never saw them again.”
Carey frowned. “When did they do that?”
Byrd shook his head. “I’m not sure, sir, I think it was very early, perhaps the summer of 1560.”
Carey blinked. “His friend was Spanish?” It was common enough then to have Spaniards still at Court, since there had been so many of them during the Queen’s sister Mary’s reign. “Do you know the names?”
Byrd shook his head. “I can’t remember, I’m afraid. I remember his Spanish friend better, a very handsome proud man, like a hawk. He could play any stringed instrument like an angel but his voice was worse than a crow’s. He was base-born, his father was a Spanish grandee.”
“What was the viol player’s name when you hired him?”
“Sam Pauncefoot. That’s what he told me last week-he may have changed it.”
“To Pauncefoot? Thank you very much, Mr. Byrd. I’m not sure what I can do with this, but it might fit in somewhere.”
There was no point waiting any longer, Carey had to go and see his father. He wanted to know what had happened to Emilia’s necklace which he needed to sell for ready funds and he urgently wanted to borrow some men to go looking for Dodd, and most importantly, he needed his father to tell him the truth for the first time in thirty-two years.
Outside an immense arch was being covered with canvas and painted. He stood squinting at it sightlessly, his hat pulled down against the watery daylight. Where did a Spanish musician fit in?
He had to talk to his father. He set off, walking fast, trying to make out the pattern forming in his head somewhere just out of reach. And what was the worst that could happen? Well his father might well lose his temper at what Carey was going to put to him. Probably would, in fact. If what he suspected was true, then he wasn’t at all sure what he himself would do.
Once on Broad Street he went in at the gate of Trinity College where the usual porter and one of his father’s under-stewards were sitting glowering at each other.
For a moment, he hesitated. He had a bit of money. He could hire a horse from Hobson’s stables in St Giles, ride to Bristol in probably no more than a day, take ship for the Netherlands and sell his sword there or to the King of Navarre…
He’d wondered about it before; he always did. It was a dream of freedom he had acted on the summer before last, going to France with the Earl of Essex in the tidal wave of enthusiasm that the Earl had somehow generated. He had done well there, learnt that the Court was stifling an important part of him.