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

Henri of Navarre, he had found out many things about himself. One of them was that he was actually good at war. He had found that he was a good commander and could keep his men both alive and at his side. His desertion rate was half anybody else’s. He had hit it off well with Navarre, who was a very canny fighter indeed and had offered him a permanent place at his side.
    Robert Devereux looked every inch the perfect leader—large, loud, magnificent, very good at hand-to-hand combat, chivalrous, honourable…
    He was useless. He was sloppy. He didn’t send out scouts. He didn’t understand anything about artillery. He didn’t pay attention to the lie of the land. He didn’t see the lie of the man either—how the King of Navarre never really committed himself to the alliance. Sure enough, in the end, Navarre left Essex and the English to hold Sluys and then went off and raided fat countryside while they guarded his back.
    Carey didn’t blame the man; he was doing what princes do, but why hadn’t Essex seen what was going to happen when Carey could so easily? They had all missed out on good plunder and got bogged down in the damp flux-ridden misery of a siege.
    He shook his head and glanced back past the pack pony to young Hughie. The man must have been gangling a few years ago but had now filled out and probably didn’t realise how dangerous he looked with his broad shoulders, big limbs, and saturnine face. Like most Scots he always looked as if he was nursing a grievance until you spoke to him and then his face opened out with a smile and was almost pleasant. It remained to be seen if he knew one end of a needle from the other and Carey would wait a while before he trusted his face to the man’s razor.
    Hughie was looking up the road past Carey. “Whit’s that?” He pointed, then blushed and added, “sir?”
    It was a mummer’s cart, brightly decorated and full of costumes and scenery with a tent on top. At first Carey thought it was stuck, but then he caught sight of a very small personage in bright gold-and-black brocade with farthingale sleeves, sitting on a white pony looking very annoyed. Her tiny size and childish face made her anger funny. However, Carey knew that it would be most unwise to laugh at the Queen’s Senior Fool and muliercula, Thomasina de Paris. She had two women with her and two men in the livery of the Master of the Revels. They were all some way back from the cart.
    There was a boy driving the cart, looking very hangdog.
    “If you don’t know who I am,” shouted the tiny creature, “then I’ve got no further use for you. And in any case I heard you left one of your company behind in London, sick with plague.”
    Carey reined in at once. An old man was climbing up clumsily from the depths of the cart, sweating heavily in the sudden sunlight, his face pale. He had a rash on the middle of his forehead, spreading down his nose.
    Thomasina instantly backed her pony away from the cart. “Stay there!” she shouted. “No nearer.”
    Carey opened his pistol case.
    The old man got down unsteadily from the cart and stood there, holding onto it with one hand. He coughed.
    “How long since you left London?”
    “A few days…” started the hangdog boy.
    “Last spring,” shouted the man hoarsely. “We’ve not been in London since…April.”
    “And where’s your Fool?”
    The boy started to cry. “Left us!” shouted the man. “Went his own way.”
    “How dare you!” shrieked Thomasina. “How dare you bring plague near the Queen’s Court? Get away! Go back to London at once and stay there until you’ve got better or died.” The high voice was tinged with the London stews and the mummer stepped back at her fury.
    The old mummer swayed by his cart, his mouth opening and shutting, bright blood on his lips.
    Carey began loading his pistol. Sometimes men went crazy in the first onset of plague, as their fever rose and they became delirious. That’s why they had to be shut up in