“Not far, about four miles from here.”
They went through the College gate, walked along the wide road where they must have markets, down a narrow road past another of the odd-looking monkish fortresses, curved along the line of a high wall, over a bridge and then they went to a canter in a body, Don Jeronimo constantly surrounded by Hunsdon’s liverymen. Dodd recognised several typical Border faces among them, though their speech was from the East March.
They had to slow down soon. The road into Oxford was choked with people and packtrains coming the other way, so they used the verge, where it wasn’t too muddy, and pounded along. It was mostly a broad road, well-built perhaps by the same giants that had built the Faery’s Wall that once was the Border line. Dodd recognised the look of the stones and some of the waymarkers carved with square letters in foreign.
They turned aside only a little south of Oxford so it was hardly any time at all before they were clattering into the courtyard of a mansion that had clearly been closed up and not much inhabited for a long time, from the grass growing between the stones and in the gutters. As usual there was no proper tower and it was not defensible but there were four horses tethered in the corner, two beautiful hunters, a palfrey and a little pony.
“Where’s this, Sir Robert?” he asked.
“Cumnor Place,” Carey told him, “about a mile and a half north of where you were being held. This is where Amy Dudley nee Robsart was killed.”
Dodd had never heard of the woman so he concluded that it was some dirty business Carey had got himself tangled in. And the south must be getting to him: he hadn’t even thought how to steal those very pretty and unattended four horses in the corner.
Jeronimo had slumped in the saddle but when Hunsdon’s liveryman untied his foot and reached over to tie his wrist to his belt instead of the saddle, he looked around himself as if recognising the place. Then he swung his leg over the horse’s neck and jumped down forwards, only staggering a little as he landed. Dodd dismounted the same way and managed not to yell when his boots hit the ground.
And then they were going into the hall which seemed to have been hastily swept, though the tables were still piled on one another and the benches stacked by the wall.
On the dais sat Carey’s father with two, no, three women beside him. One looked like a child but had a face that was somehow not childish. She was sitting cross-legged in tawny velvet at the feet of a black-haired elderly woman in a green woollen kirtle and a gown of velvet, who was sitting a little behind Hunsdon. In front of her and on a better chair was another older woman in richer clothes, with red hair.
Carey made an odd little half-bob, then bowed to his father. Dodd copied him, less elegantly. Jeronimo paced in, surrounded by Hunsdon’s men, his face haughtier than ever. His dark eyes travelled along the people in front of him and he let out a half-smile. Then he stepped forward and went gracefully to both his knees and stayed there, ramrod straight.
“I have been asked by the Queen to question you, Senor Jeronimo de la Quadra de Jimena,” gravelled Lord Hunsdon, chin on his ruff. “Her ladies-in-waiting here will carry the account back to her.”
Jeronimo tilted his head slightly but said nothing.
“Please tell me why you have asked for audience with the Queen and where you got the…item you gave to my son, Sir Robert Carey.”
“Milord,” said Jeronimo, “the last time we meet here you chased my friend a mile down the road. It is thirty-two years since. Now I am old and dying. I have a canker growing in me and I bleed. I have come to make right what I did that day.”
“Go on.”
“I am the bastard son of Don Alvaro de la Quadra who was the Spanish ambassador at Her Majesty’s Court then. I was a young fool of eighteen, good with the lute, good with the harp, very very good with the crossbow. All stringed instruments were friends then.” He smiled as if remembering a long-lost lover. “My father bought for me a place among the Queen’s musicians from Mr. Tallis so I could spy on the Queen. I was proud for the work.”
Jeronimo smiled. “At that time I truly believe that the Holy Catholic Church was the only refuge of mankind, the only dwelling of God, and that all heretics must die.” He shook his head in wonder. “Since then I learn better. But I was a young idiot.”
“Indeed.”
“Entonces, milord, while playing my lute I hear Her Majesty who was then so beautiful and scandalous and in love with her horsemaster, speak with her lover about how to deal with his wife. Perhaps she thought I would not understand Italian. She wanted the woman to divorce him but it must be done with much care in case Sir William Cecil hear of it and make a stop. But the wife was being difficult, stupid.
“Milord Leicester sent me with a letter to his wife ordering her to divorce him and stop delaying. She read it while I waited for an answer and then she began to cry. What could I do? I was a young idiot and not ugly-she was pretty and distressed. I put my arms around her and held her. And so I was lost.
“No, alas, milords, I never took her to my bed but I certainly sinned with her in my mind. She was a virtuous woman. We talked much and she told me she wanted to kill her rival. And…”
There was a concerted gasp from everyone.
“She wanted to kill the Queen? And you told her how it could be done?” Hunsdon barked, leaning forward.
Jeronimo bowed a little and coughed. “Of course.” Everyone in the hall shifted position in some way. The black-haired woman with the tiny woman beside her crossed her arms. “I told her to bring the Queen with as few attendants as possible to the manor where she lived very sad and lonely for her husband and that if she can do this, my friend and I will do the rest. And for the first time she smiled at me and said, yes, she could do it. And we kissed.” He smiled, his eyes crinkling.
“Did your father know?”
“Of course. I spoke with him immediately. He was still trying to bring about the marriage between the young Queen and his master, King Philip II. He knew that the horsemaster was a fierce heretic and a fighter, desiring war. He believed it is a disaster for Spain if they marry.
“And when I put it to him, he could see how it solved all. I kill the scandalous Queen, the last Tudor. There will be two contenders with a good claim, the Queen of Scotland, a Guise, or His Most Catholic Majesty himself through his marriage to the Queen’s ugly older sister. If there is war, it is in England, not in the Hapsburg lands, but there was no reason to think the Queen of Scots will fight for her English throne as she then was still the Queen of France, married to the young King who was unwarlike.” Jeronimo shrugged. “I knew it might mean my death but I was young, I no believed I could die. I was in love with the poor Lady Dudley and I thought that when the Queen was dead, I would challenge Leicester to a duel and kill him and so take her for my own. It was very romantical.
“So my friend warned me when the Queen took a good galloper and a remount for a hunt in Windsor Great Park and when you, milord Hunsdon, did the same to go with her. We slipped away from the Court and rode to Cumnor Place. My Amy had arranged it all. We were there first, I wait in the darkness of the musicians’ passage with my friend keeping watch. I never see the Queen arrive with you, milord, I was in the dark behind the door. They went into the Long Gallery to meet Amy and discussed the divorce. She agreed, they signed paper, there was gold. It took a long long time. And then, as we had agreed, the second door opened to the back stairs where I was waiting. I had my crossbow wound and ready.
“I hear them come through the door, my eyes accustomed to darkness, I step out and I am dazzled by the light through the window. I see the woman in front with her red hair and the gold on her collar and I shoot at her. Somehow, I miss. She tries to run down the stairs to me, screaming in English but I do not understand so well. I step back, I take my crossbow by the stock and I strike her down the side of her head and she falls like a sack down the stairs and that is when I know who she is.” He paused, breathed carefully, his voice husky. “I still can see my beautiful Amy crumpled at the turn of the stair, her neck bent on the wall. You, milord, had put behind you the other woman, the one I had only seen as having black hair, you had drawn your sword and so I turn and stumble back through the gallery where my friend is waiting. But I cannot move for shock, he is a faster runner than I and I climb up into the rafters as milord Hunsdon thunders past me, chasing him.”