Read Online Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) by P. F. Chisholm - Free Book Online

excellent chapel master, perhaps even as good as his predecessor Mr. Tallis. True, he was a Catholic, but he had miraculously survived a brush with Walsingham’s pursuivants in the early eighties and had amply repaid the Queen for her backing of him.
    Carey hummed through the whole thing again while he went to try on his dancing clothes. It turned out that the trunkhose and cannions of the suit were also a little tight but would do for now. Hughie had done wonders with his hard-used boots—stuffed rosemary and rue into them, polished them with beeswax and tallow, made them verging on respectable.
    He had a little time before he needed to be in the transformed orchard. The inquest report and coroner’s report were, of course, written in Latin which had been a subject that had never once won a battle with football. He knew French very well, which gave him the Norman French you needed for legal documents, but he could only struggle and guess with Latin.
    So he walked over to the small stone village church where the Queen’s secretaries would set up their office. He spoke to the Queen’s chief clerk, Mr. Hughes, asking for someone who knew Latin but wasn’t too busy. Hughes gestured at the row of men standing at high folding desks, busy writing. Carey walked past them intending to ask one of the greybeards who were experienced and fast, but then he spotted the second-to-last man, a gawky spotty young creature whose worn grey wool doublet was older than he was from its fashion. The boy looked up and blinked at him short-sightedly. On impulse, he stopped.
    “What’s your name?”
    “John Tovey, sir.” He had a strong Oxford town accent.
    “Can you translate this for me?”
    The boy took the paper and blinked at it. “This is quite simple. Are you sure you need it translated, sir?”
    Carey smiled. “You don’t normally work for the Queen’s clerks, do you?”
    The boy blushed. “I’m…I’m the priest’s son here,” he stuttered, “I…I came to help to…to…”
    The boy’s fingers were inky and had a scholar’s callus on the right index finger, so he probably was a genuine clerk.
    Carey fished out another groat, a little less than a screever in London would have charged. “Go on,” he said, “English it as quick as you can. I’m due at the dancing.”
    John Tovey nodded, gulped his large Adam’s apple against his falling band, took the documents from Carey and spread them out on his desk in the pool of light made by his couple of candles. The light in the church was poor. What followed was remarkable enough that Carey blinked his eyes at it. The boy simply laid down a fresh piece of paper, picked up and dipped his pen and started scribbling, with his finger tracing along the lines of Latin. No muttering aloud, no scratching out, he just wrote down the English for the fiendish Latin.
    Carey looked around at the whitewashed walls and carvings. It had been badly damaged at some time in the past, no doubt at the time of the stripping of the altars. There were headless statues and the windows were boarded up.
    “Carey!” boomed a voice behind him and Carey spun to see a large boyish man with a curly red-blond beard and wearing an eye-watering combination of tawny slashed with white. His doublet was crusted with amber and topaz, the white damask sprinkled with diamond sparks.
    Carey’s left knee hit the tiles as he genuflected. “My lord Earl of Essex,” he said formally, genuinely pleased to see his lord.
    Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, favourite of the Queen, bustled across the aisle to Carey, gesturing for him to stand and slung an arm across his shoulders. Essex was a couple of inches taller and at least a hand’s breadth wider than Carey, who was neither short nor narrow. Essex was a man designed by God for the tourney and he loomed and laughed loudly.
    “Sir Robert, how splendid! I thought you were still in Berwick chasing cattle raiders…”
    “My noble father ordered me south, my lord,”