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

the whirlpool of the Queen’s promised arrival.
    Saturday 16th September 1592, noon
    As he crested the brow of the hill, Sergeant Henry Dodd of Gilsland and Carlisle Castle, blinked and yawned. He had been up and very busy all the night before, getting even with Sir Thomas Heneage, and now he had been in the saddle since dawn. He thought he’d made good progress though the Oxford Road was terrible in some parts, great potholes where the winter rains had tunnelled between the rough stones laid by monks, laying bare the orderly even-sized cobbles that were the hallmark of the ancient giants that built the border wall as well. Or were they faeries? There were different tales that gave both possibilities and it stood to reason it couldn’t be both of them.
    The Courtier had insisted it was all done by ordinary men called Romans who spoke Latin like the Papists, and had come over with Brutus thousands of years ago. That made some sense of the slabs of stone you sometimes found with well-carved letters in foreign, though Dodd doubted that grinding them up and drinking them in wine would cure you of gout.
    He knew he had to stop because he urgently needed to find a bush. Unfortunately the road was very straight and the brush had been recently cleared back from the verges. He also had to water his horses at some stage. Straight roads were giants’ work as well, or Romans’. He wondered how they had done it so far across country.
    Bushes had been rare among the great broad fields northwest of London, though he was coming into enclosed land now. At last he’d spotted a handy-looking small copse well back from the road a little way ahead.
    Dodd shifted in the saddle and hoped he hadn’t caught a flux in London. He was riding the soft-mouthed mare and leading the horse he had decided to name Whitesock, on the grounds that he had the one white sock on him. The mare had a nice gentle pace to her but something made him prefer Whitesock for his sturdy determined canter and lack of nonsense. You didn’t often meet a sensible horse, especially here in the South where so many of them had been ruined by overbreeding. Dodd clicked his tongue and moved the horses closer to the bushes. The mare pulled a little and her trot got choppy while Whitesock blew out his nostrils.
    Hmm. Dodd peered between the leaves to see if anyone was waiting there, sniffed hard, couldn’t smell anything except previous travellers’ leavings. And he couldn’t wait much longer, damn it.
    So he loosened his sword, pushed into the bushes, which were luckily not entirely composed of thorns, saw nothing too worrying, and hitched the horses to the sturdiest branch. Then he found a bare patch, dug a hole with his boot heel, and started undoing the stupid multiple points of his stupid gentleman’s doublet so he could get his stupid gentleman’s fine woollen breeks down to do his business.
    Just as he was about to drop them, he heard a stealthy movement behind him and turned around with his hand on his sword.
    A bony creature was standing there in rags, holding out a rusty knife.
    “Giss yer money!” hissed the creature that didn’t seem to have many teeth.
    Dodd blinked at him in puzzlement for a moment.
    “Whit?” he asked.
    “Giss yer money.”
    “Whit?” Dodd genuinely couldn’t work out what the creature was saying because the idea that something so pathetic might want to rob him was simply too unbelievable.
    The creature came closer with his dull knife high. “Money!”
    “Och,” said Dodd, pulling the breeks down, hoicking his shirt up and squatting anyway because he couldn’t wait any longer. “Whit d’ye want tae do that for?”
    “I don’t want yer ’osses, just yer money.”
    Dodd looked down and shook his head.
    “Yer interfering with me opening ma bowels,” he growled. “Could ye no’ ha’ the decency tae wait?”
    “What?” asked the creature, frowning with puzzlement and lowering the knife.
    “Wait!” snarled Dodd as the