Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) Read Free

Carey. “Meantime, where are you staying?”
    The money he’d been given by Bothwell’s man to take him south had run through his fingers with dreadful speed. Hughie had slept under a haystack the night before. He’d had nightmares that the stone mushrooms holding the base of the huge stack of hay off the ground were shortening so he’d be crushed and he kept waking, covered in sweat to find rats using him as a convenient ladder to get up into the hay. He’d scrambled out into the grey dawn feeling horrible.
    “Ehm…”
    “No matter. There’ll be a truckle bed or a pallet for you somewhere. Can you ride?”
    “Ay, sir, well enough.” He’d ridden before he could walk of course, but he’d also been in Edinburgh learning to sew at the time when most lads got their mastery on horseback.
    “You’ve used a pike, I expect. Sword and buckler work?”
    “Ay, sir, a little. Wi’ the Edinburgh trained band.”
    He’d loved the trained band as a lad, rushing off to the musters like an arrow from the bow to work off his pent-up energy, while his uncle complained at the loss of time. His uncle had been a hard man.…Too bad he’d—well, no reason to think about that. It hadn’t been his fault.
    “Of course. We’ll play a veney or two when we get to Rycote,” said Carey. “Come along. You can have my spare horse and we’ll be going. They should have recovered enough from getting here and we’ll take an easy pace now.”
    They had been heading all the while to the stables of the inn where two smart-looking horses stood ready, saddled and bridled, and the pack pony dozed stoically with one broad hoof tipped, the packs very badly stowed.
    Carey saw this, narrowed his eyes, and checked them. “Nothing stolen,” he said, opening a very fine leather pistol case. Hughie glimpsed two matched dags inside and his mouth almost watered at them. Were they snaphaunce locks? Wheel-locks? Would Carey let him fire one?
    Hughie and Carey between them took all the packs off and re-stowed them with a better balance. Naturally, Hughie got the smaller mount, but he was used to his legs dangling a bit. Carey was a tall man, too; Hughie wasn’t used to looking straight at anyone.
    Carey mounted in a way Hughie hadn’t seen since his childhood—hands on the saddlebow and leaping straight up, not touching the stirrups until he was seated. He looked pleased with himself at the trick. “Hmf,” he said, as he found the stirrups. “Come on Hughie, up you get.”
    Hughie tightened the girth a little to allow for his weight and climbed into the saddle the less showy way. Lack of practice made heavy weather of getting his leg over the beast’s back. He’d learnt the other way, but hadn’t done it for a long time and wasn’t about to risk landing on his back in the straw and dung of the inn stable.
    Carey nodded and clicked to his horse, took the pack pony’s leading rein and led the way forward into the High Street and eastward, over Magdalen Bridge and into the countryside.
    Carey put his heels in. “We’re going to Rycote, which is where the herald I talked to says she is at the moment. It belongs to Lord Norris, poor chap. I want to talk to my own lord, the Earl of Essex, very urgently so if you see anyone in tangerine-and-white livery, shout out to me. Same if you see anyone in black and yellow.”
    They went up to a canter as soon as they were clear of the large herd of pigs being brought into the city as components of porkpies, sausages, and spit roasts for the arrival of the Court. The smell was acrid, catching at the back of Hughie’s throat, and several of the pigs seemed up for a fight.
    Past them they were still heading upstream into a steady current of farm carts laden with fodder and wheat and apples and late raspberries and chickens in cages and, on one occasion, a cart laden with barrels of water that smelled horrible, probably containing crayfish for the Queen’s table. It was a flood tide of food, drawn in by