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

little grove of bushes filled with London’s fumes. The creature stepped back and lowered the knife a little more.
    “Now,” said Dodd, looking about for non-nettle leaves or even a stone so long as it was smooth, “Ah’ll gi’ ye a chance. If ye go now and pit yer silly dull blade awa’ Ah’ll no’ kill ye. Right? D’ye hear me?”
    “Money, I want yer money!” insisted the creature.
    “Och no, awa’ wi’ ye, Ah’ve better uses for it. I’m givin’ ye a chance, see ye?” Dodd was trying to be peaceful and gentlemanly, and it just wasn’t working.
    The creature was clearly deranged because he suddenly lunged closer.
    “I’ll cut yer then!” he shouted, “Giss yer money or…”
    “Och,” sighed Dodd as he shifted his body slightly, straightened his knees, and punched the creature in the face with a nice smooth stone he’d just picked up.
    The poor creature was clearly a Southern weakling, for he folded up at once. Dodd picked up the rusty blade and threw it in the bushes, finished his business, covered up his leavings and went through the stupidly complicated fuss of the retying of points that gentlemen had to suffer every single time.
    Then he left a penny beside the man bleeding gently from the mouth, on the grounds it was gentlemanly and, in any case, Carey’s money not his. He shoved back out of the ill-starred bushes to find the horses watching gravely and chewing on some leaves. He mounted Whitesock for the next stage, took up the mare’s reins and put his heels in.
    Whitesock changed smoothly and started pounding stolidly along, followed in a scramble by the mare. Dodd laughed for a moment, a rare indulgence as no one was looking.
    It seemed all the terrible tales you heard about southern footpads and sturdy beggars were just those—tall tales to frighten southron weans. The rest of the journey would be easy, even though his head had that oddly fixed metallic feeling in it of not having slept.
    He could be in Oxford by the evening if he pushed it, he thought, but what was the point of that? He could use some more of Carey’s money to stay at a proper inn, get some sleep, and then come into Oxford city nice and leisurely on Sunday morning. That would get him out of having to go to church with the Courtier and listening to some boring sermon about turning the other cheek. That thought made him laugh again.
    He slowed down to a walk and looked about him, taking in the sunshine and berries in the hedges and the peaceful fields being cropped by fat cows before the autumn ploughing for winter wheat or barley. There was no hurry. He was enjoying himself.
    Saturday 16th September 1592, noon
    As Carey the Courtier and his new servant Hughie Tryndale trotted along the rutted road that led to Rycote, he was keeping his eyes open for the unmistakeable signs of the Queen’s progress.
    He saw some on the other side of a hill where men were busy mending the disgraceful road, trundling wheelbarrows full of rocks to fill in the potholes and hammering down a corduroy of logs into the slopes to give the Queen’s carts somewhere to grip in the soft earth they would soon turn to slurry.
    He took a turn off the main road that led in that direction and rose in the stirrups to peer over the hedges—not a lot of stock in the fields, where a boy was leading the cows in.
    As they came alongside the road menders, he found the master who was sitting on a rock, criticising.
    “Which way is the Queen’s Court?” He got a laconic thumb pointing further along the road.
    He shifted the pack pony to the middle, so Hughie was behind and he was in front. You could think of the Queen’s Court as a kind of army or a very large and disorderly herd of sheep with some sheepdogs in the centre and a few wolves around the outside. Generally, as with armies, the further out you were, the more disorderly it got.
    There had clearly been some riders crossing hillsides, presumably the Queen’s regular messengers taking shortcuts