A Clash of Spheres

by P. F. Chisholm

  “Mm,” said Carey appreciatively, “what is that wonderful drink, Your Highness?”

  “Schnapps,” said the Queen happily, and leaned forward with a black bottle. “You like?”

  “Yes, yes, I do,” said Carey and got another little glassful.

  “Zo. Lady Schevengen is much better at Deutsch than I and she says viss me on the meaning. Zo. If Solomon is my Royal husband, zen he is in danger. How did you catch ze letter?”

  Anricks explained carefully that he had left the original packet in a jakes at a Scottish alehouse, drunk a pint of good beer there and left. The alehouse was dark and crowded and he had watched but no one came to pick it up while he was there.

  “You are a spy. Do you hef a varrant?”

  Anricks handed over the letter from Cecil and again opened his hands to show the scars across his palms.

  “Ah,” said the Queen, “I know vot zet is, you ver in ze galleys.”

  Anricks bowed. “Your Highness is very perceptive.”

  The Queen looked at him beadily. “Ven?”

  “1588.”

  “Ssank you Mr Anricks, I vil not trobble you about it again. Now, Sir Robert, do you haf a plan? Lady Viddrington says you alvays haf a plan.”

  “Not yet, Your Highness.”

  “You vill—zo Lady Viddrington says sometimes you plans go wrong, eh?”

  “That’s certainly true, Your Highness,” said Carey with a scoundrel’s smile, “for instance, last summer a plan of mine to scout out Netherby tower to find out why the Grahams were stealing so many horses went very badly wrong indeed.”

  The Queen put her head on one side and half closed her eyes.

  “Go on!” she said imperiously.

  So Carey told the story of how he had treed himself on the top of Netherby tower with the nefarious reiver Jock o’ the Peartree Graham as his prisoner—and how that meant he found out that Bothwell and the Grahams were planning to raid Falkland palace and kidnap the King and that he had spiked Bothwell’s guns by telling Jock all about the wonderful horses kept around Falkland palace.

  He told it well, with becoming modesty and an eye for the ridiculous, even telling how Jock had tricked him. The Queen first giggled and then shouted with laughter. “I vundered how so few men ve had could beat off so many raiders. How fonny. Zey stole ze horses and not the King.”

  “Yes Your Highness. But my plans don’t usually go quite that wrong.”

  Lady Widdrington stared at him severely when he said that and he reddened again.

  “Not usually!” he protested.

  “It’s a fery fonny story,” said the Queen judiciously as she poured herself more schnapps. “Now vot can ve do about zis maybe plot against my husband?”

  “There are two things we must do,” said Carey with decision. “Firstly, we must make His Highness of Scotland aware…”

  “But he vill be so frightened,” protested the Queen.

  “Er…Your Highness?” said Carey, honestly nonplussed.

  “He gets fery frightened about sings like ziss,” said the Queen, “And he…vell, it iss not gut for him to be so frightened.”

  Carey was staring at her, his brows knitting. Anricks realised that he really could not understand the idea of an adult male and a King being frightened of anything, much less admitting it, so before he said something disastrous, Anricks put in, “Also, we don’t actually know that Solomon means the King. But I feel you should increase the number of guards around him, double up the tasters in the kitchen and so on.”

  The Queen nodded firmly. “Yes, ziss I can do. I vill write to him and say I haf had a bad dream and he must be fery careful.”

  Anricks wondered if she had been listening.

  “Well, perhaps…”

  “Und I vill summon my Lord Maitland of Thirlstane, the Lord Chancellor, and put zis in his hands,” said the Queen. “Ziss too I can do. Perhaps I vill ask my scryer as vell. Whose is the plot?”

  “Oh, I think that’s obvious, Your Highness,” said Carey. “Ultimately.”

  “Yes?”

  “The King of Spain is at his tricks again and this is also a plot against England.”

  “Go on.”

  “Her Majesty of England is now…ahem…over fifty years old…”

  “Fifty-nine, I sink.”

  “Er…yes. She will not have a child of her body. Forgive me for my tactlessness, but the King does not have an heir of his body yet either.”

  The Queen looked down, coloured and nodded sadly. “Iss true,” she whispered.

  “No matter,” said Carey with a shining smile, “By the grace of God I am certain you will soon have a lovely little prince—but there’s the weakness. At the moment nobody in England is too worried about the Queen’s age because they have got used to her childlessness. They know that no matter what she says, His Highness of Scotland will eventually inherit the throne of England.”

  The Queen nodded, her lips firming. “He iss looking forward to it fery much.”

  I’ll bet he is, thought Carey but didn’t say it. “Now imagine what would happen in England if His blessed Highness were to be assassinated?”

  The Queen nodded. “No heir. Only Philip of Spain.”

  “And Arbella, God help us, and a few others. Here in Scotland it would be the most terrible, the most tragic blow, from which God preserve us, but in England…? Civil war. And then Spain comes in, perhaps from the north, and we are too busy fighting each other to fight the Spanish.”

  Suddenly Anricks realised something: the traces Cecil had seen had been a plot, the thing was true; the sea monster was sticking his head out of the water to show he was not a mere phantasy. In fact it was a bigger monster than they had realised, a shrewder and more dangerous secret blow against England and Scotland both. At least he was not wasting his time.

  “Vould the English be so stupid?” the Queen was asking.

  “Yes, Your Highness, we would,” said Carey positively, “so we must assume that the person to be assassinated is His Royal Majesty and find out how the deed is to be done and who the immediate plotters are.”

  “Off course. Do you know how to do zat?”

  “No, Your Highness, I don’t. But I’m sure something will come to me. It usually does.”

  “Mm. Ass long as ve can, ve do not tell the King, understand? You do not know how he is, he gets so frightened and he remembers his fosterfazher assassinated and his beloved D’Aubigny poisoned, and all the people who haf been killed around him and zen he cannot be Kingly. He iss a merciful and gentle prince, but not a fighting man, understand?” Carey bowed to her from his stool. “Understand, Sir Robert?”

  “Your Highness, I…yes.”

  “Ass long ass ve can, ve keep ziss quiet. Also it is better if the assassins do not know that we know.”

  “True. You will consult my Lord Maitland?”

  “Off course. I vill do it now.” She sent one of the younger girls off to fetch a clerk and dictated a letter to Lord Maitland, telling him of the problem.

  “Will the letter be ciphered?” asked Anricks.

  “Off course. Grigory is a good cipher clerk, he takes dictation straight to code.”

  Anricks looked at the finished letter and found a simple substitution code that he thought he could break in under an hour, but said nothing.

  They drank confusion to the Spanish in more schnapps and then the Queen announced that she was tired and so there was a gathering up of embroidery and a piling up of cushions as the procession formed to go back to the Queen’s Privy Chambers.

  Carey escorted them to the double doors, bowed elaborately to all the women, even the fat ones, so he could bow as elaborately to Lady Widdrington. He went on one knee to kiss the Queen’s hand and she blushed and giggled. She was eight years younger than the King and sometimes it showed.

>   At last it was all finished and Carey came over to Anricks and blew his lips out like a horse. Then he grinned like a schoolboy.

  “I’ve just had an idea.”

  Anricks had not yet learned to be cautious when Carey said that and so he smiled back. “What is it?”

  “Come with me, we can soon find out if it will fly.”

  And Carey started striding away on his long legs like a heron so Anricks was forced to trot to keep up.

  “Don’t you think it’s a bit late…?” he puffed.

  “No, this is the perfect time,” said Carey blandly, increasing speed.

  ***

  They came to a new set of apartments, this time made out of the monks’ old dorter, but quite a long way from the magnificently decorated apartments of the King. Carey sauntered up to the handsome lad on guard at the door and said to him breezily, “I want to see my Lord Spynie right now, in a matter of national importance. Go get him, there’s a good fellow.”

  The lad scuttled off, his eyes big and Carey leaned against the wall where there was a tapestry. “He will keep us waiting,” he said. “Do you want to go to your bed, Mr Anricks?”

  Anricks would have slept on the floor to see this. He shook his head. “Do you think this is wise?” he asked and got the same look Lady Widdrington had got when she had asked him if scouting Netherby tower dressed as a peddler was wise.

  “No, I don’t think this is wise,” said Carey, “if by wise you mean never doing anything out of the ordinary. However I don’t want to try and protect the King while also having to look over my shoulder for more fancy attempts on my life. So this is expedient. Who knows what will happen?”

  They waited. Carey started wandering around the antechamber looking at the paintings and sculptures, some of which were scandalous.

  “How long will he keep us waiting?”

  “Could be an hour if he needs to get dressed again.”

  Anricks wondered if he had made the right decision or if he would have to sleep on the floor after all. It was already past ten o’clock.

  “Is his wife or mistress there?” Anricks asked naively and Carey laughed.

  “He’s probably sending the younger boys to bed.”

  “Boys?” asked Anricks and sighed heavily.

  “Ay,” said Carey, making a grimace of distaste.

  They waited a while longer and then Carey found a backgammon set on a windowsill and they sat down to play.

  After five minutes, Carey offered Anricks a penny a point, which Anricks insisted should be notional pennies only, for honour alone. This was just as well because Carey started losing heavily and by the time Spynie’s guard finally came back, he owed Anricks several purely notional pounds.

  The young guard cleared his throat and said that Sir Robert and his man might enter the parlour where Lord Spynie would meet him.

  “One moment,” said Carey and hopped his men along to what he was sure was a devastating triumph, only to find that he had been neatly trapped.

  “Mr Anricks,” he said, “who taught you backgammon?”

  “An African prince named Snake. I taught him chess. He usually beat me at both games.”

  “You play chess? We must play some games.”

  “I prefer the game with no dice and the puissant queen…”

  “So do I, especially as it is in compliment to Her Majesty…”

  “No, it isn’t. It compliments Queen Isabella of Castile on the occasion when she marched her men across country to rescue King Ferdinand of Aragon…”

  Spynie’s man gave an offended cough and Carey looked up. “Oh, yes,” he said, “my lord is ready? How splendid.” He unhurriedly put away the men, closed the box up and put it back on the windowsill. “By the way, Mr Anricks is not my man, he is a philosopher of independent means and he is here to take part in a learned dispute.”

  Spynie was waiting in the parlour, wearing a blindingly flashy suit of red and tawny velvet, slashed with yellow satin and around him were six youths in his livery, in varying attitudes of toughness, one actually paring his nails with a long poinard.

  Carey took the scene in and smiled indulgently, while favouring Spynie with the barest shadow of a bow. “Dear me,” he said softly, “were you worried I was going to come and take revenge for your ridiculously incompetent attempt at killing me during the hunt yesterday? Which did me no harm but killed one of the King’s best horses?”

  Spynie looked uncomfortable. “You aren’t?”

  “No, no, my dear fellow,” said Carey with his eyebrows up, “it’s all part of the game, isn’t it? And you’ve had the man we caught in the forest garrotted, so there are no potential witnesses that can speak against you.” The young tough who was using his poinard to pare his fingernails slipped and blood burst from his thumb. He rushed out of the room, sucking furiously at the wound.

  “Such a palaver over one blond boy. Have you seen him recently? He’s done some growing.”

  Interestingly Spynie flushed.

  “No need for all your roaring boys,” said Carey, waving his fingers negligently in their direction, “this is much more important.”

  “Sir Henry Widdrington…”

  “I know, it’s very sweet how you treat your elderly lover, poor old man. I’ll deal with Sir Henry in my own time and at a place of my choosing. Now would yould like to hear something interesting that may be about your sometime lover, the King?”

  Spynie shrugged.

  “This is from a packet of papers uncovered by a friend of mine after all sorts of adventures,” lied Carey. “We don’t know who it is from or who it is addressed to, but the meat of it is as follows.” He gestured at Anricks who started reading the translated letter. At the mention of killing Solomon, Spynie stopped looking deliberately bored and sat up.

  “Is that about the King?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Carey, with interest. “Is it?”

  “What do you mean…?”

  “Well, it could be your own plot to kill the King, couldn’t it?”

  “Don’t be stupid, of course Ah wouldna kill the King…”

  “You’re no longer his minion, are you? Maybe you are resentful. Maybe the King of Spain has bought you…”

  Spynie drew his poinard and advanced on Carey who drew his sword and stood en garde. “Careful,” he said very quietly, “I’m not manacled in a cellar this time.”

  Spynie stopped, breathing hard. “I would never…” he began, “Never. I love him. Do you understand? I love him. If he doesna love me, that’s hard, but I still love him.”

  “Really?”

  “Ay,” said Lord Spynie bleakly, “really.” He sheathed his poinard and took a cup of wine. “Ah would die for him.” It was not said with any bluster, but quite matter-of-factly.

  Carey paused and then put up his own weapon. “Then help me find the plotters and kill them,” he said.

  Spynie swallowed some wine and nodded once. “Read it again,” he ordered Anricks who did so without complaint.

  “The letter was written in Deutsch and was sent to Edinburgh,” said Carey. “I can’t tell you any more about it because it was collected from a jakes in an alehouse called the Maker’s Mark and I don’t know who collected it.”

  “Have ye told the King?” asked Spynie, biting his thumbnail.

  “The King has been hunting all day. We have told the Queen who has written to Maitland. She asked us not to tell the King yet.”

  Spynie nodded. “Ay,” he said, “that’s better, much better.”

  Carey’s eyebrows were almost at his hairline but he said nothing.

  “Ye’ve nae idea who?”

  “Of course not,” said Carey, “or he would already be dead. Oh, speaking of that, we put the unfortunate servant you ordered to try and kill me, into the Lough. He was already dead from
being garrotted, I assume by somebody you hired.”

  Spynie was abstracted and just nodded absently at this.

  “I assume that’s all right?” said Carey, not looking at any of the henchmen.

  Spynie shrugged. “And it’s not just another kidnapping, he’s tae die. If Solomon is the King.”

  “Who else could he be?”

  “I dinna ken another man named Solomon.”

  “Perhaps you could use your resources to find who is to do the deed?” suggested Carey in a thin voice. “After all, my lord, you know the Scottish Court much better than I do. Perhaps ask around?”

  “Ay,” said Spynie, “Ah can dae that.”

  “And tell me what you find. It’s important to share information in these cases.”

  Spynie shrugged again. He was deep in thought, or what passed for thought in his case. Carey turned his back on the man and went to the door.

  “Sir Robert,” said Spynie in an oddly strangled voice, “Ah…”

  “Yes, my lord?”

  “Ah…thankye for telling me.”

  For answer Carey bowed shallowly to the company and left, followed at a trot by Anricks.

  They hurried back through the sleeping palace to Carey’s rooms. Carey needed help with the points of his doublet, gave up trying to wake Hughie, so Anricks untied them and then undressed himself without help since he had never bothered with a valet in his life, apart from when he was at home and wearing something complicated and civic. Then he spent some time using a toothpick and polishing his teeth with a toothcloth and salt.

  “Is that a good defence against toothworms?” Carey wanted to know.

  “Yes, I believe it is the only defence because it removes their invisible eggs,” said Anricks who had worked up a very satisfactory theory about toothworms and desperately wanted to tell someone. And so Anricks must instruct him in the use of the silver toothpick and rough cloth while explaining his theory and he continued explaining while Carey got into the main bed, complained that his teeth felt peculiar, rolled over and fell asleep.

  ***

  Lord Spynie was lying awake in bed. His tussle with Jeremy had not been a success and the young man had finally given up trying, turned on his side and gone to sleep. Spynie was staring up at the tester while the voices ran round his head. Could it be? It couldn’t be. But the Maker’s Mark? No, surely not. But that was Hepburn’s usual alehouse. Lots of people went there, Spynie did himself, it had good beer, and a very good ordinary, mainly pies with flaky pastry. Hepburn was so helpful, so respectful, so convenient. Look at the way he had dealt with Spynie’s abortive attempt at killing that bloody man, Carey. Just because whoever received the letter must be a regular at the Maker’s Mark, didn’t mean…