A Clash of Spheres

by P. F. Chisholm

  Suddenly Crichton had to get out of there. He had the awful feeling he was going to weep because something he had set up with loving care was suddenly twisting out of his hands. Did the King of Spain know about this plot, whatever it was? Had he given it his fiat as well? Couldn’t he see that for all his faults, King James was more useful alive than dead?

  He stood up, bowed to the company who ignored him, went out of the hall and found the narrow staircase that led up to the battlements. Up he went and up, getting breathless and finding his fear and horror burning out of him, until he could look out into the long cold night and the stars above him. It was freezing and he had brought no cloak, but he stood there and stared up at Orion marching across the starfield with his little dog behind him.

  He wanted to pray and so he prayed for King James’ continued health and he also prayed for the souls of the lords who were trying to bring in Spanish troops. If King James had been excommunicated like his appalling and scandalous cousin of England, of course, he would have had no qualms. Well, not very many. But James had not been excommunicated, he had been very careful about that—and had he not said in so many words that he wanted to be baptised a Catholic? Hadn’t he? Directly to Crichton himself? That would make it doubly a sin to kill him since he would have had no chance to purge his sins and would thus go to Hell for being a Protestant.

  And there was the paper he had written in the 1580s before the Armada sailed the first time, looking at the pros and cons of the Spanish invasion from the south. How that paper had got into the King of Spain’s hands, Crichton didn’t know, but it had. Was it all just coneycatching? Had King James himself arranged for the paper to end up in Spain, to keep the Spanish off his back while they got on and conquered England?

  Crichton sighed. He had to find out more about this plot, if it existed. Maybe King James is a Protestant through and through and would never turn to Rome, but he’s a man and it’s a sin to kill anyone, even in Scotland where life is so cheap.

  He said the Pater Noster, three Aves and a Gloria, and went down the stairs to see if there was anything left for his supper.

  Edinburgh December 1592

  Their little procession was now within five miles of Edinburgh, coming up the last bit of the Great North Road, which wasn’t in as scandalous a condition as the parts further south, with the big green and brown mound of King Arthur’s Seat on their right. Carey had sent Little Archie ahead to warn the King’s majordomo of their arrival. He and Anricks were wearing their best available clothes, him in the black velvet doublet and hose, Anricks in his new suit and a gown borrowed from Scrope without asking, looking very self-conscious. The cut was good and Carey was particularly pleased with the way the doublet pulled Anricks’ shoulders back since he had a tendency, like many clerkly men, to round shoulders.

  He looked critically at everyone else, riding politely in twos, all reasonably smart and wearing newly cleaned jacks and polished helmets.

  Now that was interesting. Dodd had a brand new helmet, a nice plain morion with the curves and peaks that kept the rain out and made it hard to knock off. Carey had seen it but had not noticed it, which was embarrassing.

  Carey had himself and Anricks riding after Bangtail and Red Sandy, then behind him Tovey and Tynedale, then Dodd and Leamus who ignored each other, and then the final lad, Big Archie, the small man with a shock of black hair, leading all five of the packponies and the remounts. Now that was also odd. Big Archie looked different.

  Other than that, they were looking good. Carey let his favourite hobby, Sorrel, drop back until he was next to Dodd and smiled across at him.

  “I like your new helmet, Sergeant, where did you get it?”

  Oddly Dodd’s neck flushed red at that and he said in a strangled voice, “Aglionby in English street.”

  “Oh, is that the mayor’s brother?”

  “Ay.”

  “Well it’s a good one then.” Carey wasn’t wearing his helmet, it was packed with his jack on the last pony, ready for the journey back. He didn’t need it this close to Edinburgh, even in barbaric Scotland. Instead he had a high crowned hat that he hadn’t been able to resist in Oxford and Mr Anricks had his old hat since Anrick’s usual hat was an ancient soft bonnet, twenty years out of fashion, that a London beggar would have disdained to wear, a little too horrible even for a tooth-drawer, let alone a philosopher.

  Dodd was staring woodenly to the front now and so Carey contented himself with dropping back once more to take a look at Big Archie, the groom who was leading the packponies. The ponies all looked fine, being unshod. None had gone lame, for a wonder, their packs were carefully stowed and nothing was on the point of falling off. Even the groom was wearing a respectable black doublet and a bonnet pulled down on his head and…

  Carey slowly took another look at the groom. He would have sworn that the sprig of the Carletons now known as Big Archie was smaller and didn’t have the length of jaw or those piercing blue eyes though his hair was in tufts and sooty black…

  “Goddamn it,” he said wearily, “it’s bloody Young Hutchin Graham again.”

  “Nay sir, I’ve the look of him, sir, but I’m a Carleton…”

  Carey swiped the bonnet off the lad’s head and found that the sooty black hair was in fact plastered with some combination of soot and grease, underneath which was Hutchin’s golden hair, unmistakeably.

  He swiped sideways with the revolting bonnet, back and forth, whacking Young Hutchin with it so the young devil had to lean over to the other side of his pony and cling like a monkey, all the while protesting that he was a Carleton, sir. The others were staring and trying to hide their grins, except Dodd, still looking grimly ahead.

  “Do I have to strip you and put you under the pump to get that disgusting stuff out of your hair…?” bellowed Carey, and Young Hutchin finally put his hands up and shouted, “A’right, sir, a’right, I came with ye to make sure ye was all right…”

  This so astonished Carey that he stopped hitting the boy with the bonnet and said, “What?”

  “To mek sure ye was a’right…”

  “Ballocks, Young Hutchin, you came with us either to sell your arse in the best market…”

  “Nay sir,” said Young Hutchin indignantly, “I’m no’ that way…”

  “Or to get your revenge for last time.”

  There was a pause. “Ay sir,” said Young Hutchin, with a crooked grin, “Ye’ve the right of it.”

  “Dear God! This is Edinburgh, you blithering nitwit, King James is King here, do you understand and…”

  “Ay sir, but I’m not here to dae it, see ye, I’m spying oot the lay of the land and seeing what’s here and what the strengths are. Do ye like mah hair? Ah did it masen…”

  “Your hair is simply disgusting, Young Hutchin, but it might put Lord Spynie off for long enough so you can run crying to your mother….

  “Nay sir, I canna do that, she died birthing me,” said Young Hutchin with some dignity. “And I’ve growed a lot since last summer, see ye, all me breeks is too short and I’ve gone through two pair o’ clogs…”

  It was true that puberty had clearly hit the beautiful boy that Young Hutchin had been with unusual force. His legs and arms were four inches longer than they had been, while his feet were in a man’s pair of boots, very old ones, and his hands were rawboned and large. On the logic of dogs with big paws, he had a considerable amount of growing to do yet.

  “And you’ve come to scout out the King’s Court, no more?”

  “Nae more, sir,” said Young Hutchin glibly.

  “What about that ambush you were in with your wretched uncle a few days ago?”

  “Och that was in the way of business, sir—poor Uncle Wattie, he’s fit to be tied again and ye got maist of the kine he reived in the autumn and Archie Fire the Braes is gaunae be expensive.”

  Carey nearly cracked a smile at that.
“When did you make the swap with Archie Carleton?”

  “Ay, I sold me funeral suit cos it’s too small for me and I got the new doublet and breeks cheap…”

  “You mean you stole them?”

  “Nay sir, and then I had enough money to bribe Big Archie, and I shadowed ye all across the moors and we swapped last night while ye were in the inn at Berwick. That bit wis fun.”

  Grudgingly Carey nodded. “Well, that was very good work shadowing us,” he admitted. “I had no idea.”

  “Thankye sir. So I can come wi’ ye sir.”

  Carey sighed heavily. “I could send you back…”

  “Ay, and ye ken very well, I willna go…”

  “…in irons with an escort…”

  “Och sir!”

  “But very well, Young Hutchin, you may accompany us. Maybe my Lord Spynie won’t remember you.”

  “Nay, he willna wi’ me hair like this.”

  “God Almighty.”

  Carey returned to the front of their little column where Anricks was waiting expectantly. Carey explained some of what had happened in Dumfries in July and Anricks nodded.

  “So that was what was at the root of your trouble with Lord Spynie, I did wonder. And he’s an ill man to cross.”

  “Mr Anricks,” said Carey heavily, “in all my life, I have never crossed a man that wasn’t an ill man to cross.”

  For some reason Anricks started to laugh at that, a creaking kind of laugh and eventually Carey started to laugh as well.

  Soon the walls of Edinburgh were frowning on them from their left, but they didn’t need to enter the towngates at all since Holyrood House was a converted abbey a little way outside the Netherbow Port. They met the Vice Chamberlain at the end of the Cowgate and were directed through the old Gothic gatehouse into the abbey grounds.

  Of course the King’s palace in Edinburgh wasn’t anything like as enormous as Whitehall nor as much of a labyrinth. Carey had spent nearly a year there in his late teens in the train of Sir Francis Walsingham’s embassy. They found themselves lodged in the oldest part of the palace, on the back wall, in the monks’ old storehouses and infirmary. Sir John Maitland of Thirlstane, the Lord Chancellor, had come away from his beloved Thirlstane for Christmas and the New Year and he bore Carey and Anricks off to feed them venison pasties for supper.

  They ate privately in a parlour and since Maitland was rich, the food was very elaborate and often unidentifiable, so Anricks simply said a prayer and tucked in. Carey was being updated on some very complicated politics to do with the northern earls, Huntly, Erroll and Angus, and Anricks found himself sitting beside a large fleshy man with a big nose, a few years older than him.

  “Ah, yes,” said Maitland, waving a hand at the two of them, “Mr Simon Anricks, Mr John Napier, pray be introduced to each other since ye are both by way of being philosophers and ye baith have opinions on Thomas Digges.”

  Almost unable to believe his luck, Anricks turned with interest to Mr Napier and within five minutes was deep in conversation with him about an astonishing addition to the Ars Mathematica which he had invented. They switched to Latin and went at it hammer and tongs, with bits of paper being produced and scrawled on and Anricks looking more and more delighted and impressed. It took quite a lot of work to separate him from Napier when the supper and the music finished.

  ***

  Alexander Lyndsay, Lord Spynie, was sitting at a late supper in his own private parlour at Holyrood House. There were four young men with him and two boys, all dressed in elegant livery with a nice variation in the styles, the same damask handled differently for each boy by Spynie’s own tailor.

  Spynie was drinking excellent French wine and eating some delicious goose liver sausage with toasted manchet bread. But mostly he was just enjoying watching his youngsters argue and brag and wrestle with each other, vying for the honour of being his bedmate that night. Occasionally Spynie thought sentimentally about young Christie Hume who had died in the summer, drowned while drunk in a river. He also thought wistfully about the beautiful young Lord Hume. He always wanted the next thing, the new thing, someone fresh.

  It was clear to him that she had thwarted him again, that bloody woman the old man was married to, Lady Elizabeth Widdrington. She had thwarted him in the summer when he had wanted revenge on the new English Deputy Warden who had dared to come after him with a sword when all he was doing was offering that remarkably handsome Graham boy the chance of bettering himself. She had now thwarted him again at the top of Jedburgh tower and that was not to be borne. That needed action. He didn’t know or care whether the bitch had let Carey into her hellmouth, though he assumed that she had, but he did know that they were sweet on each other which made them both nicely vulnerable.

  He was trying to bring the threads of his plots together and his high forehead wrinkled as he looked into the fireplace. Like many blond men with fine clear skin, he was ageing rapidly, not helped by the white lead he used to hide his occasional pimples.

  The oldest young man, a doddering greybeard of nineteen, noticed and glanced across at the two fifteen-year-olds, matched twins, bought from the slums of Edinburgh. They moved into the corner, picked up two lutes and started to play softly.

  Spynie liked music and he liked being catered to, but what he was about was taking some serious thinking.

  First, of course, there was Hughie Elliot, or Tyndale as he called himself. So far he was the best of the lot. That eminently useful and helpful man called Jonathan Hepburn had found him and used him for a couple of little jobs and found he was good at both his trades, the tailoring and the killing. Hepburn got him to London where Carey had been embroiled in some family problem, but had failed to insert him into Carey’s service. However when he sent Hughie to Oxford, Carey had snapped up a tailor who could also fight like a trout a fly.

  The brow wrinkled again. According to Hughie, somebody had nearly succeeded in killing Carey at Oxford, which Hughie had regarded as a personal insult. Spynie wondered about that: he didn’t mind who killed the man or how, he wasn’t fussy that way, he just wanted him dead. Now Hughie had gone a bit quiet despite being quite close in Carlisle and in Carey’s sevice, which gave him multiple opportunities. Perhaps a visit was due? Or no need, because Carey was bringing his servants to Edinburgh with him, according to rumour. That was for the very fine opportunity of the Disputation. The King had thought that up for himself, but when Spynie learned that Carey had invited himself along, he was overjoyed.

  So he could be sure to twist the knife in Lady Widdrington, he had enthusiastically backed the King’s desire to invite Sir Henry and his wife to Edinburgh as well as the enormous spotty lump of Sir Henry’s eldest son. And now Hepburn had reported by letter that he had just suborned Sergeant Dodd, Carey’s best henchman, so it was looking even better for Spynie.

  There was a loud knock on the door and Sir Henry came in when one of the younger boys opened it for him.

  Sir Henry was becoming a bore in Spynie’s opinion, though he still found it tickled him to get such doggy looks from the old man. He came into the parlour wearing his Court suit of black brocade with a ruff, his corrugated ears and bulbous nose making him look troll-like.

  “My Lord Spynie!” said Sir Henry delightedly, as if there could be any surprise at finding him taking his ease in his own parlour. “D’ye want to go hunting with the King tomorrow?”

  Spynie brightened up. The weather had been terrible, so bad you couldn’t even play golf.

  “Yes,” he said, “is he asking for me?”

  “No,” said Sir Henry, “he just said anyone who fancied some sport could come with him.”

  Spynie did his best not to look disappointed. Gone were the days when His Highness would tickle his ear and invite him by name and then they would sneak off from the usual disorderly throng and go and disport themselves in the coverts.

  “Ah,
well,” he said, trying to be philosophical.

  Sir Henry came and sat down near Spynie and took the cup of wine from the littlest boy, drained it, held out the silver cup for more.

  “I’ll go,” he said. “He’s hunting par force de chiens and I love that, though it plays merry hell with my gout.”

  Spynie really didn’t care about Sir Henry’s gout but smiled at him anyway. “It’s certain Carey is on his way with this tooth-drawing philosopher His Highness is so excited about?”

  “Ay, he’s just arrived. Reason for the hunt, in fact.”

  Suppressing his annoyance at not being told this first, Spynie said “Good. Then I’ll come.”

  Sir Henry grinned wolfishly. “When are you going to kill him?”

  “I’m not sure yet, I want to make sure of him,” lied Spynie because he never told anyone that kind of thing.

  “Poison?”

  “Possibly. I haven’t decided yet.”

  “I want my bitch of a wife to be watching.”

  “Sir Henry,” said Spynie, quite annoyed, “do ye want the man dead or do you not? So long as he dies, I dinna care how it happens and if he falls off his horse and breaks his neck tomorrow I will be just as happy as if I had put white arsenic in his wine myself. Happier because no one will think to blame me.”

  Though now he came to think of it, that might make a good end for Carey, even better than having Hughie do it. He tapped his teeth and stared vaguely into space while he thought how you might achieve a tragic fall while riding to hounds for one particular man and no one else. There were ways and means. Which would be best?

  Sir Henry’s fond smile at him annoyed him though he didn’t show it. “Ay, ye’re right,” said Sir Henry with a sigh. “It’s a good thing ye’ve got the brains.”

  “Yes,” said Spynie, slightly mollified. “Where is she, your wife I mean?”