A Clash of Spheres

by P. F. Chisholm

  He was sitting in a boozing ken by then, its red lattices quite newly painted and he asked for double ale because he was feeling rich. Not as rich as he would feel after he got the thirty pounds but quite enough to afford double. Like most lords, Carey paid well in theory but barely at all in practice.

  He hadn’t noticed the little man when he came in, but he noticed when the man came up to his table, bold as brass and asked if he was Sir Robert Carey’s valet. “Ay, I am,” he answered breezily. “Would ye like to buy me a drink? Ah’m fearful thirsty.” It was a bit cheeky, but nobody asked something like that right out if they weren’t after something.

  The balding man smiled and went sliding his way to the bar and back again with a quart jack for Hughie and a pint for himself, being so short and weedy.

  “Cheers tae ye!” said Hughie and then grinned. “Whit can Sir Robert Carey’s man do for ye?”

  “Nothing hard,” said the man who had a fearful Southern accent, “I just want you to stay here for an hour or so.”

  “Stay in this boozing ken for an hour?” said Hughie. “Nay, I cannae do that, I’m due to go and help him with his…”

  Sixpence appeared in the man’s scarred palm and twinkled there.

  Hughie beamed at it. “Now ye wouldna be after thinking of killing the man, eh? For if ye do, I’d need tae hunt ye down and kill ye yerself for spoiling everything, see ye? And that’d be annoying for baith of us.”

  “It would,” agreed the man. “How would it be if I swear not to kill the man nor rob him?”

  Hughie looked at the man with his weak squinting eyes and round clerk’s shoulders and laughed. Some chance there. “Ay, that’s fine,” he pronounced indulgently, picking up the sixpence. “Now awa’ wi’ ye, ye’re interfering wi’ my drinking.”

  And just like that the man was gone and Hughie supped his second quart and leaned back and looked about. With sixpence extra on top of the shilling he felt rich enough to go to Mme Hetherington’s and wap one of her whores. That was a luxury he hadn’t been able to afford since he had done the job for Hepburn in the spring, certainly not while he was chasing Carey in London and while in Oxford he hadn’t felt well enough anyway. He sighed happily. Life was good.

  Carlisle December 1592

  Carey slept for two hours and then came to feeling much better and also uneasily aware that there was an unknown man in the room. He slipped his hand stealthily under the pillow, waited a couple of seconds, grunted, turned over on his belly and then erupted out of the bed with the knife in his hand and his teeth bared.

  Simon Anricks blinked at him with interest from where he was sitting on one of the three clothes chests cluttering up the room.

  “Yes,” he said, “the situation with the Grahams is worrying, isn’t it?”

  Carey’s heart was galloping and he went to pour some wine for himself and his guest.

  “How may I help you, Mr Anricks?”

  Anricks was staring at the wall with the expression of someone who was thinking of how to explain something to a half-witted nobleman. Carey had seen Anricks’ warrant but still didn’t like it that the man had come into his bedchamber while he was sleeping. Where the devil were Tovey and Tyndale? He wondered where the key to the bedchamber was, since he should probably start locking it.

  “Of course, if I had had a pistol or a crossbow—a crossbow, for preference—then I could have just shot you where you lay and you none the wiser until Judgement Day,” said Anricks coldly, “which would ill repay your parents’ care of you, nor Mr Secretary Cecil’s concern, nor indeed the Queen’s manifest affection for her cousin and nephew.”

  Carey stared at him. “There is,” continued Anricks quietly, “a certain dash and fire about you that makes you so careless of your safety—and indeed a very gentlemanlike courage—yet, I put it to you, Sir Robert, that sooner or later the dice will come down snake eyes and you will die.”

  For a moment Carey was too astonished at being told off by a mere toothdrawer to do more than stare open-mouthed at the man. Then he got angry.

  “Well sir, I do not know why it concerns you, nor why you believe you can rate me for going to sleep…”

  Anricks stood up. His voice became metallic. “I do not rate you for going to sleep, sir. I rate you for going to sleep in an unlocked room.”

  “My servants should be…”

  “They should but they are not. It took me two minutes and sixpence to persuade your valet to delay coming to your chamber for an hour—although he did at least have me swear I would not kill nor rob you since he had never seen me before in his life—and Tovey went down ten minutes ago to get bread and cheese and beer at the buttery, since he can no longer see to write, which anyone could guess. I watched you snore for those ten minutes and no one has come in nor asked why I am here. It will not do, Sir Robert.”

  Anricks crossed his arms and stared at Carey. He had cold pale brown eyes which seemed to amount to more than he was, because in appearance he was unimpressive in his worn brown wool suit, the fashion ten years past, and a stuff gown with velvet trim and his bald head shining under his ancient cap.

  “In fact I came to discuss the Queen’s letter and proposal with you, but I am now wondering if you have even read it yet?”

  Carey scowled and took out the packet. “If you mean this, I most certainly have read it and am very happy that she thinks so well of me as to send me my warrant…”

  “Then you have not in fact read the secret section.” Anricks looked as if not rolling his eyes was costing him considerable effort.

  Carey blinked at the packet, pulled out the Queen’s letter and sniffed it. His eyebrows went up and he sniffed again, went to the watch candle, lit two further candles in the stand on his table and held the letter carefully close to the flames until the paper warmed up and the brown letters showed on the blank back of the letter.

  Anricks twitched slightly at the shout of laughter that came from Carey.

  “Good Lord, Mr Anricks,” he said affably, “you must think me a fearful dullard as well as foolhardy. Now does this stay or will it fade?”

  “It will fade.”

  “Then excuse me while I note down Her Majesty’s words to me.” He dipped a pen and scribbled on the back of a bill for horsefeed. Anricks managed not to sigh at this further carelessness and sat back down on the clothes chest. He ached all over from the ride to Carlisle.

  “Well,” said Carey as he finished and the lemon juice words faded. “Her blessed Majesty is full of surprises.”

  “Yes,” said Anricks. “May I read it?”

  Carey hesitated only a second before handing over the horsefeed bill and starting to pull on his stockings and canions again.

  Anricks scanned Carey’s scrawl, then handed it back. “It is important you find an excuse to go to Scotland and talk to the King about the lords Huntly, Errol, and Angus who, it appears, are plotting treason.”

  “Again?” shrugged Carey. “They’re always doing it. They’re Catholics. Luckily they are also rotten at it.”

  “The Queen and Mr Secretary Cecil are concerned that this time it’s serious. There have been various oddities going on in Spain this year, activity in the Irish sea. They have been concerned for some time, in fact, which is why I am here.”

  “You in particular?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. The Queen has an exaggerated idea of my abilities due to some adventures I had in 1588…”

  “1588? During the Armada? Anriques?”

  “Er…yes, sir…”

  “Mr Anricks, I believe I may once have met your…your extraordinarily courageous and beautiful lady wife, Mrs Anriques. It was while I was serving under my Lord Howard of Effingham and Sir Francis Drake. In fact I may even have been a small part of bringing her to an interview with My Lord Howard in which she explained the Armada’s true purpose and which inspired Sir Franci
s Drake to the stratagem of the fireships.”

  Anricks came to his feet. “You! You were the Court sprig who got her to the Admiral?”

  Carey bowed. “I was, sir, and I heard more about it later from Sir Francis Walsingham.”

  “If you had not got my wife to the Admiral, sir, I believe we would now be fighting the Spaniards in England, or dead.”

  “Dead certainly, or I would be. Well…I believe this calls for something better to drink than the usual Carlisle rotgut.” With a courtierly flourish he unlocked a small cupboard and brought out an unassuming bottle and two small Venetian glasses, poured, and gave Anricks one. “Sir, if you will permit, a toast to your brave lady wife and to yourself, sir, since Walsingham told me that without what you did, we would have lost the Battle of the Calais Roads.”

  Anricks flushed, tapped glasses and drank, paused, looked quizzically at the booze and then drank some more. “Did he tell you any of the details?”

  “Not many. I would delight in hearing the tale from your own lips, if it please you to speak about it. Sir Francis was eloquent in his praise of you and your family and he was not a man who praised easily or at all. I think I myself earned two or three grudging words in several years’ service to him.”

  “Sir Robert, is this…is this drink made of bacon?”

  Carey chuckled. “No, it comes from the Highlands of Scotland and they call it in their barbaric tongue ‘whishke bee,’ which means exactly the same as aqua vitae. It is smoked in some way, but it’s made from barley and distilled like a brandy.”

  “It’s good,” said Anricks, smelling the liquor and sipping again. “Very good.” He shut his eyes and rolled it round his mouth and seemed to put his whole being into tasting the stuff, as if it was holy.

  Carey watched with interest and when Anricks had swallowed, he opened his eyes and smiled a little. “On the occasion we were speaking about, for various reasons, I was captured by the Spanish and sentenced to the galleys, in fact to a galleas in the Armada itself. Up until then, I often didn’t pay attention to my food, but just before my arrest, I had eaten some particularly fine membrillo paste—quince cheese, you call it here—with goat’s cheese which was so good I had noticed. The remembered taste of the cheese and the membrillo somehow sustained me while I was a slave. So when I was free again, I swore that I would always notice the food I ate, for not to notice is in fact ingratitude and insult to the Almighty, maker of the Universe, who gives us all that we eat and drink.”

  Carey bowed a little. “Amen, sir,” he said.

  They drank more whisky.

  “So,” said Carey, “Walsingham said that you had retired to be a merchant in Bristol. If they have winkled you out of retirement, what’s the reason?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Yet another Armada?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Aimed at Scotland?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “There was a rumour of one last summer but it was scattered by storms.”

  “As I remarked earlier, sooner or later the dice will come down against us and I am concerned lest 1593 be the year when that happens.”

  “Surely even the King of Spain can’t afford another Armada so soon after…”

  “That Armada wasn’t destroyed. They lost some ships, sure, and others were damaged but more put into La Corunna—the Groyne—and are being refitted as we speak.”

  “So why Scotland?”

  “Well, Sir Robert, the west coast of Scotland is wild and empty and the people there are Catholics insofar as they are anything. In fact the same is true all the way down through Cheshire and the marches of Wales, Gloucester, even Bristol…Well, Bristol is Protestant like most ports, but still there are a lot of Catholics. The Jesuits have been running missions into the West Country for ten years and it’s starting to show.”

  “My mother says most of Cornwall is still heathen with a lacquering of Rome. I was born in the Marches of Wales and I don’t recall much religion there at all. Most of them only went to church at Christmas and Easter, if they went at all.”

  “And sir, how many of your neighbours were enthusiastic Protestants? Any? Most of the nobility in the area is Catholic from sheer inertia, with the exception of my Lord Earl of Essex and he is a courtier.”

  “Would they truly fight for the King of Spain against the Queen?”

  “Perhaps not. Perhaps they would revert to the noble English instinct to hate the foreigner. But who knows? Put an army of thirty-thousand in the field, led by the terceiros, the best troops in Christendom, offer the young men the choice of being killed or marching with them…”

  Carey nodded slowly.

  “Nobody understands how close a call it was in 1588,” said Anricks. “We were so lucky. If Medina Sidonia had been less seasick, if Drake had hesitated to use the fireships when he did, if…Well. I think it true that the Almighty, for reasons best known to Himself, thwarted the Spanish, for I can scarcely think of any other reason for our luck. But how long will He favour the English? The Scots of the West Coast and the Highlands are fine soldiers, if undisciplined, and the kerns and gallowglasses are from Ireland of course, and they can run for days barefoot through the forests and bogs…”

  “Carlisle?”

  “I could take Carlisle in three days.”

  “Treachery?”

  “Of course.” Anricks gulped the rest of his Scottish drink. “Then you have the castle cannon to knock at the doors of Chester, Gloucester, Bristol, and then you take Oxford, and the Thames valley lies before you. London would fall a week later.”

  “It couldn’t be that simple,” protested Carey. “How do you feed your men?”

  “Personally I would put a force into Bristol early on a surprise and send supplies up the Avon.”

  “Thank God you aren’t King Philip’s admiral.”

  “He has cleverer men than me to do his bidding, believe me. But thank the Almighty by all means, Sir Robert. In England we think ourselves very fine soldiers but we are woefully untrained, underequipped, and inexperienced. Our sailors are the best in the world but our soldiers…” Anricks shook his head.

  Carey, who had seen some shocking things while fighting in France with Henry of Navarre, made no answer to this.

  “In a way of course,” muttered Anricks, “the Spanish have been battering at the locked front door of the Cinque Ports, when all the while the yard gate has been banging in the wind and the kitchen door kept by a little girl.”

  “But King James would never allow…”

  Anricks had taken his old-fashioned velvet cap off and was kneading it between his hands. His bald head had a little island tuft of hair in the middle.

  “If he was offered a lot of money, gold, to look the other way whilst Caerlaverock and Lochmaben and Dumfries filled up with Spanish soldiers?”

  Carey scowled as he considered the point. “Well, His Highness of Scotland is of course as easy to buy as any man, possibly easier, but…no. I think not. His Highness has spent most of his life dreaming of how easy that life will be when he succeeds, as he surely will if he is spared, to the throne of England. Would he take the risk of allowing thousands of foreign soldiers to build up in the West, waiting to march south? No.”

  “What if he didn’t know?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s fifty miles east to west and the comings and goings from so many men, the supplies, the food…no. Maybe you could keep the secret for a week or two but sooner or later His Highness would know.”

  Anricks nodded unhappily. “Or they go east first, take Holyrood House and kill the King, then go south down through the rich plunder of the Merse. Once they have a good handgrip on any part of this island, they can go anywhere they want.”

  Carey said nothing, his strategic imagination working. That was the key, of course. Once the…the virginity of the blessed la
nd of England was breached, troops such as the terceiros would be unbeatable at first, simply because none of the trained bands from the cities and the counties would have the faintest idea of what to do. By the time they had learned, it would probably be too late. It was true what Anricks said, unpleasant but true. The Borderers would be better at the fighting as light mounted troops, but even they were used to the dance of reivers, not a disciplined killing machine like the Spanish King’s 3rd legion.

  As it had in 1588, the thought made Carey feel cold and hot at the same time, hot with rage, cold with fear. The fear was colder now because he had served in France and seen war at close quarters.

  “Mr Anricks,” he said, “I agree with every word you say, sir. But what do you want me to do? I know the Maxwell unfortunately. Huntly, Erroll, and Angus, I have only met briefly, years ago, at Court. I would love to give the Maxwell a set-down, I admit.”

  “Mr Secretary Cecil feels that to begin with, if we know which way King James is likely to jump, we will be in very much better case. If he is for the King of Spain, we will need one kind of action.”

  “What?”

  “A Warden Raid from the English West March into Dumfriesshire early next year to find out if any Spanish troops are there or preparations being made for them.”

  Carey nodded. “And if His Highness is against the King of Spain?”

  “Well then, King James can run his own Justice Raid into the area, find the troops if they are there and deal with them himself.”

  “He will need help,” said Carey. “He’s a very peaceable prince is His Highness.”

  “I don’t suppose anyone has the least idea what the King thinks?” Carey laughed and Anricks smiled. “No, he is verbose and liable to go into print at any moment, but somehow it all adds up to rather less than nothing.”

  “What about the Earl of Bothwell?”

  “Has anybody seen him recently? I know he is at the horn but where is he?”