He saw his seventh son before Robin saw him, as his bench was in a shadow between yew trees. The boy…no, even a fond father had to admit that the youngest of his sons was long past full grown, in fact, in his prime, tall, well-built with a breezy swagger that he supposed his sons had picked up from him since they all had it. In fact, of all of them, Robin reminded him of nothing so much as himself when he was a young man, although with the useful addition of his wife’s ingenuity. He knew he didn’t have that wild streak. He was profoundly grateful that Mary Boleyn had been so much less determined than her sister, that she had been married off to the complaisant William Carey while pregnant with him, the King’s bastard. If she had hung onto her virtue the way her younger sister Ann had done, well, he might have been King Henry the IX and had a much worse life, his sons would have been Princes of the Blood Royal and even more trouble than they were anyway. Or more probably they wouldn’t even exist because he would have been married off as a child to some thin-blooded crazy barren Hapsburg or Valois Princess, or God-forbid, Mary Queen of Scots herself and then…He shuddered. No Annie Morgan to marry in a whirlwind. Being a King.
Thank God for bastardy, that was all he could say. His half-sister and cousin, Ann Boleyn’s volcanic daughter, wove and politicked her way to the throne and was the finest Queen any nation had ever had since…Well, no nation had ever had such a Queen. Some fools might have been resentful at being barred the throne, he was not, he loved his firecracker of a half-sister and would do anything for her. Which was why he was Lord Chamberlain, of course, in charge of her palaces and her security, in charge of protecting her sacred person. It was the uttermost trust she could place in anyone. People called him nothing but a knight of the carpet, but when it mattered he had taken Lord Dacre’s hide in the revolt of the Northern Earls. What did he care if men thought him a fool? It made them less careful of him when they plotted.
And here he was, looking at his youngest son who was now a danger to the Queen. He was digging up the early days of her Court when she had been, frankly, a menace, a cocotte, and a flirt who scandalised the Court and the nation and the foreigners in Europe as well. And Robin was doing his considerable best to stir that dirty puddle on the Queen’s own orders.
Insanity. He had urged her to leave it, not to repeat the deadly mistake of 1566, her previous visit to Oxford. So she had used his youngest son as her tool because he had a fine mind and Walsingham had taught him a few things during those months he had spent at the Scottish Court with Walsingham’s embassy and then nineteen months in France for polish, also with Walsingham’s household. Three months he had taken to learn fluent French, a very diligent student for the first time in his life, and then sixteen months to cut a scandalous swath through the French ladies of the Court that even the French had found noteworthy. Perhaps he too had left a scatter of unknown bastard Hunsdon grandchildren among the French aristocracy, adding English yeast and Tudor blood to Parisian style.
Hunsdon smiled. He hoped so. And the boy had spent an astonishing amount of money as the French grandes dames taught vanity, luxury, and extravagance to an apt pupil. His time in a Parisian debtor’s prison had taught him very little about economy, something about power.
And here he came, a little off balance because he wasn’t wearing his sword.
Hunsdon frowned. Why? Why had his son disarmed? Had he worked it all out or made a terrible mistake?
He was on his feet, thumbs in his swordbelt, unaware how much his broad frame made him look like his royal sire—although he had never suffered the gluttony born of misery that had swelled King Henry and given him leg-ulcers and turned him into a monster.
Robin came right up to him and genuflected very properly and respectfully on one knee to his father. Hunsdon had to resist the impulse to raise and hug his son who had been so near death from poison only a couple of days before. He was wary. Generally, his son was only that respectful when there was trouble brewing. Or he wanted money.
Robin stood in front of him and hesitated. Their eyes were on a level. It was always a surprise when the baby of the family did that to you.
“Well?” said Hunsdon, guessing one reason why his son might have left his sword behind.
“Was it you, my lord?” Robin’s voice was strained and soft in the quiet garden, his face unreadable. “Was it you killed Amy Dudley for the Queen?”
For a moment it was hard for Hunsdon to speak.
“If it was you, father,” Robin went on gently, “If it was you…I’ll take my leave and say no more about it.”
This was tricky. The Queen had used a good young hound to find an old trail and he had done very well, far better than she could have expected. But he had to be careful. The Queen had given her orders. On the other hand…
“Do you really think I could have done a such a dishonourable thing?”
“For your sister the Queen? Yes. I would do it for Philadelphia if she needed me to.”
Hunsdon couldn’t help smiling although it might be misinterpreted. Robin and Philly as the two youngest had always been close and had constantly got into terrible scrapes together. Only the absolute cold truth would do here, that was obvious, although it had to be edited.
“Well, Robin, it’s true I would have done it if she asked me, despite the wickedness and dishonour, but the fact of the matter is that she didn’t ask me to and I didn’t kill Amy Dudley. On my word of honour.”
Robin looked no happier, standing tense with his fist where his swordhilt would have been.
“I had hoped you would say you had done the killing, father,” came Robin’s voice, softened to a breath of sound that the wind in the red and yellow leaves could cover, so he had to strain to hear it.
“Oh? Why?”
“Because otherwise all I can think is that the Queen did it herself.”
Hunsdon nearly gasped. It was clear Robin had worked out a great deal of what had happened at Cumnor place in the year of his birth. But he didn’t have all of it.
“No,” Hunsdon said positively, “I’m not saying she wasn’t capable, but no. She didn’t.”
“Nor ordered another man to do it?”
“No. My word on it, Robin, she didn’t.”
“But you and she were both at Cumnor Place when Amy Dudley née Robsart died.”
It was a statement not a question. Hunsdon’s eyes widened as he saw how he had been trapped and he couldn’t help a shout of laughter. Damn it, the boy was bright. Carey didn’t join with the laugh.
“You were there to discuss the divorce, the Queen’s Great Matter,” Robin went on remorselessly, using the term Cromwell had used for Henry VIII’s long-ago divorce from Katherine of Aragon. “Amy Dudley would petition Parliament and convocation for an annullment of her marriage to the Earl of Leicester, on grounds of non-consummation. Amy was being difficult about it so the Queen decided to convince her in person. And so she dressed up in Aunt Katherine’s riding habit, put on a black wig and a married woman’s headtire, and rode out from Windsor to Cumnor Place thirty miles away, under cover of hunting. You went with her because really you were the only person who could. A man to protect her, but her half-brother so there could be no suggestion of impropriety. You would agree the deal for freeing Dudley and perhaps make a downpayment in gold. It was a deadly secret for if Burghley had realised what was afoot, he would have put a stop to it immediately by blocking the annullment in Parliament and Convocation, much as the Pope did thirty odd years before. It was ironic, really. Nobody would have given Dudley the divorce, but they might have done it for Amy given enough oil and pressure, because there was no breath of scandal whatever against Amy and she had borne no children in ten years of marriage.”
He was good, damn, he was good. Hunsdon watched Carey’s face and his heart swelled with pride. Carey had started to pace, squinting a little when the sun poked through the clouds.
“Amy lived so quiet a life, so carefully, she couldn’t be treated the way Ann Boleyn was and have charges trumped
up against her. She had to sue for her divorce. And the Queen decided to visit her personally to get the agreement.”
“Not quite,” Hunsdon said softly.
“Amy was in a panic that week, trying to get clothes fine enough to feel confident in. She had one gown ordered from London that didn’t come in time, altered another to put gold lace on the collar. That’s what told me it was the Queen for sure, that she had to dress fine. You might say it was for her husband, true, but gold lace wouldn’t have impressed Leicester. A beautiful French lady once told me that women dress for other women, not men.”
Hunsdon said nothing. He was back in the past, when he was young and the finest tournament jouster at the Queen’s Court, when the Queen was young. How often had he actually noticed what any woman was wearing?
“So you and the Queen rode to meet her at Cumnor Place, since Amy couldn’t or wouldn’t ride herself. You took remounts, rode thirty miles across country at top speed. Meanwhile Lady Dudley had bidden all her servants out of the house for the meeting, sent them off to the Abingdon fair though some of them didn’t want to go. She was alone apart from a couple of her women playing cards in the parlour.”
It had been a wild ride, the Queen egging him on, challenging him, risking her neck for joy, taking hedges and ditches on her fine hunter, named Jupiter, a fire sprite, light in her sidesaddle, laughing as their horses ate the miles with their legs.
“And then…”
Hunsdon put up his palm to stop him. “Robin, you’re very nearly right. But…I must ask Her Majesty before I break the matter fully with you? Do you understand? I simply can’t…”
Robin had taken out his warrant. “So why did she tell me to dig? Come on, father, this authorises you to break silence.”
“This is dangerous ground,” Hunsdon rumbled, “Trust me, Robin. It was neither me nor Her Majesty…”
“Then who was it?”
“We don’t know.”
“You must know. You were there!”
“We tried. I tried when it happened, but I lost him, had to get back to the Queen. Unfortunately, the Queen hired Richard Topcliffe from the Earl of Shrewsbury in ‘66 when she came to Oxford. He must have found something and I know he turned against her and…”
“He’s been a licensed monster ever since.”
“He has. He was very clever. Whatever it was he found, he took it to one of the Hamburg merchants at the Steelyard and sent it overseas. If he ever dies unexpectedly or is arrested or word gets out, the box will be sent unopened to the Jesuits at Rheims who will know how to embarrass the Queen with it.”
“Burghley? Surely if he’d known a divorce was in the wind, he might have organised the murder to stop…”
Hunsdon shook his head. “I don’t think so. It would have been safer to block it in Convocation and Parliament. Cecil was never a gambler, he has only ever bet on a sure thing. If he was going to murder anyone, it would have been Dudley, I think. And not a bad idea at that, if he didn’t mind being hanged, drawn, and quartered for it.”
“But it only had to be made obvious that Dudley had killed her. Burghley could have seen to a verdict of unlawful killing from the inquest and put Dudley in the Tower no matter what the Queen thought. She wasn’t so secure on her throne then; she would have taken notice of her entire Privy Council and her magnates calling out their tenants.”
“Would she? I doubt it, Robin. You didn’t know her then. She learnt a lot from the troubles of her cousin Mary Queen of Scots.”
“The only thing I don’t understand is why the Queen took the risk of meeting with her at all.”
“Amy Dudley was an appallingly obstinate woman, no doubt how she trapped a Dudley in the first place. She was a God-fearing dull woman who loved her husband deeply and could never understand how Eliza could fascinate men, the magic she had—still has, for God’s sake. Amy struggled terribly with her conscience, I think because she would have to testify on oath that the marriage had not been consummated when of course it had been. She was just barren.” Hunsdon sighed. He could no longer see the matter as he had as a young man. “She kept changing her mind and asking for more money, more guarantees and she insisted she had to meet the Queen and see her sign the agreement. Nobody would do as a go-between, it had to be the Queen herself. Eliza was furious about it.”
“I’m sure.”
“They looked extraordinarily alike, you know, red hair, white skin. Amy was like the Queen diluted with milk. I’ll ride over and see Her Majesty tomorrow, to talk about the arrangements for Friday and I can ask her…”
“Can I ride with you?”
Hunsdon was surprised. “Robin, won’t you be bailing Sergeant Dodd and negotiating with Heneage…” Robin’s grin of triumph did his heart good to see as he hadn’t been looking forward to dealing with Heneage for the man’s release. He bellowed with laughter when he heard what had happened.
“Colin Elliot? He’s called himself…?” Hunsdon knew more than he really wanted to about the Border surnames and he knew that there was a vicious bloodfeud between the Dodds and the Elliots which had burst out with spectacular nastiness in the 1570s after the Revolt of the Northern Earls. Wee Colin Elliot was a very dangerous raider and headman about the same age as Robin.
“Yes,” said Robin, “Dodd always uses that name as an alias, it means anyone who knows him gives himself away with shock and any crimes he might commit are blamed on Wee Colin by the ignorant.”
“Excellent. You can certainly ride with me to Her Majesty tomorrow, Robin, if your eyes are recovered completely.”
“They’re much better, thank you father, though to be honest I was never blind, only dazzled. I could actually see better in the dark. That’s how I found the murder weapon at Cumnor.”
“You found the crossbow? Where was it?”
“High up in the space between the passage ceiling and the roof of the hall. The man came through the little door to the minstrel’s gallery.”
“I know that, damnit, I chased him. How the devil did he have time to hide the crossbow there, I thought he threw it away. We spent a day looking for it with blood hounds a couple of days later.”
They stared at each other and came to the answer at the same moment.
Hunsdon felt the blood leave his face. “Oh my God, there were two of them.” He actually staggered at the enormity of what he had done all those years ago. Robin was at his shoulder at once, supporting him to the bench again, holding his arm. Hunsdon’s legs had suddenly gone to water.
“I left her alone,” he croaked, “I chased after the man I saw and I left her alone with a killer…”
“Father,” came Robin’s distant voice in the roaring, sounding worried, “He didn’t kill her, didn’t do anything…”
Hunsdon shook his head slowly. Suddenly there was a band around his chest and his left arm was aching. I need to be bled, he thought distantly, I’ll see Dr. Lopez when I can.
Robin was anxiously patting his hand and looking around for a servant.
“I have…some physic in my sleeve pocket,” Hunsdon wheezed.
Carey felt for it, pulled out the little flask, poured some of it into the cap.
“That’s enough,” Hunsdon said, took it, pinched his nose and drank it down. While Robin fumbled his flask back, Hunsdon waited for the pounding to subside and the roaring to quiet.
“Father,” said Robin tactfully, “You mustn’t blame yourself. In the event, she wasn’t killed!”
“You’re right,” Hunsdon said with an effort, “But I was an impulsive fool and I chased the man that had shot at Amy and then clubbed her down with his crossbow while Eliza tried to help Amy. I didn’t catch the bastard, even then I wasn’t fast enough and all the time the man had a confederate. Well, if I didn’t know it before I know it now: Almighty God wanted her for Queen.”
“What did the Queen do while she was alone?”
“I’m not sure. She must have been crazy with the shock for she took off your Aunt’s headdress tha
t she was wearing and put it on Amy’s head—I suppose to make her respectable because Amy’s was dented beyond wearing. She supported Amy on her skirt I think, from the way it was dirtied and used it to wipe off the blood that came out of Amy’s ears and eyes. I forced her to leave the woman though she was crying with frustration and we rode away. Stupidly, I made her throw away the bundle she had made, into a bush by the old monastery, and that was one of the few times she obeyed me. I wish she hadn’t.”
“I expect that bundle was what Topcliffe found in 1566.”
Hunsdon shook his head. “Perhaps. I went back with bloodhounds, I told you, Robin. We didn’t find the crossbow and nor did we find that bundle. They must have tidied them up and taken them away.”
The pain was subsiding from his arm and the invisible iron band was loosening. Hunsdon suddenly felt exhausted.
“So why on earth did she suddenly bring it all up again?”
Hunsdon shook his head again, trying to clear it, his brain was no longer working. “I’m sorry, Robin, I have to get to my bed. Would you…er…accompany me?”
“With good heart, Father,” Robin said, considerably more filial than normal, must still need money. He gathered up Hunsdon’s stick and supported him on his arm back across the garden and with some trouble up the stairs to the Master’s lodgings. Hunsdon’s manservant came to help him undress and bring him watered brandy. Hunsdon could hear them muttering to each other, that he had had a couple of these attacks before, that Dr. Lopez thought it was a syncope of the heart and had prescribed an empiric dose of foxglove extract to reduce Hunsdon’s choleric humours. Of course my choleric humour is unbalanced, he thought, there’s my devil of a sister to deal with.
“Don’t go to the Queen tomorrow, sir,” Robin urged. “You need to rest first. Please?”
“Nothing wrong with me,” growled Hunsdon, leaning against his high-piled pillows. “Just need bleeding. I’ll see a barber surgeon tomorrow and go in the afternoon.”
Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) Page 28