4 A Plague of Angels: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery by P. F. Chisholm Read Free Book Online Page A

accommodations at Oxford? Colleges being co-operative?’
    Heneage sniffed. ‘Helpful enough, though not perhaps as willing as one would like, Sir Robert.’
    ‘You’ll be doubling up the Gentlemen, no doubt. I remember one Progress when I had to share a bed with Sir Walter Raleigh. Though he was still a plain mister then—it was a few years ago now. And the only reason we didn’t have a third man in bed with us was because we bribed him to sleep on the floor.’
    Dodd found to his astonishment that his hands were shaking. Never had he felt such pure rage and been forced to do nothing about it. His arm felt unclean where Heneage had dared to pinch it. And what the hell was he hinting about his residence in Chelsea? Dodd would personally eat his helmet if the Queen’s Vice Chamberlain was planning to invite him to a dinner party, no matter how eager he was to pick Dodd’s brains on the subject of Carey’s doings in Scotland.
    They were moving back towards the house, Carey prattling about Raleigh’s sleeping habits. Raleigh, it seemed, had been unreasonably insulting to Carey, claiming he snored like a wild sow in farrow, which was manifestly unfair. Was it true that Raleigh was in the Tower now, over one of the Queen’s maids of honour? Heneage allowed that it was and Carey displayed an almost infantile pleasure at the juicy nugget of gossip—Bess Throgmorton, well, he was damned, would never have thought she’d have it in her, though he knew Raleigh did, and now it seemed she had more in her than she rightfully should…Carey put his head back and laughed. Serve Raleigh right, the man’s arrogance was insufferable.
    Mistress Bassano came out, gliding over the grass, very lithe and graceful for a woman in her condition, with two of her women, one on either side of her and her bald manservant trotting at her heels like a bloodhound. A small hairy dog followed close behind him completing the symmetry.
    Hunsdon joined them from the apple tree, and Mistress Bassano smiled like a cat as he caught her hand and put a large arm proprietorially around her shoulders. She kissed Hunsdon as lingeringly on the lips as she had earlier kissed Carey. Dodd could almost feel his eyes bulging from their sockets. Was Carey really ploughing his father’s field? Was that why he had come to be Deputy Warden in Carlisle? By God, it made sense of why a popinjay Courtier would want to move north in a hurry.
    Carey was showing not a single sign of guilt. He was laughing and chatting to Heneage in the most natural and carefree way, taking the trouble to flatter the Vice Chamberlain as he had buttered up Lord Maxwell in Scotland.
    A liveryman came out and announced that supper was served, and as he followed Hunsdon and his mistress, Carey, Heneage and flocks of attendants, Dodd’s head was reeling.
    ***
    Supper involved eight different kinds of meat in sixteen different sauces, salads decorated with orange nasturtium flowers, a piece of a pie which must originally have been the size and weight of a millstone, and yet more of the wine. Dodd had always thought he didn’t like wine but now realised that what he didn’t like was cheap wine. If this was the way the better stuff tasted, he felt he could well get used to it.
    The pity of it was having to sit down with Carey, his dad, his dad’s mistress, and Heneage in another room hung with tapestries. Servants filed in with the food under silver covers on silver dishes as ceremoniously as if this were some fine feast, which only meant further delay before Dodd could fill his belly. Lord Hunsdon said grace. After all that, Dodd had almost lost his appetite again. Heneage tucked in enthusiastically, though.
    Dodd concentrated on eating as neatly as he could, despite the way the Vice Chamberlain had soured his stomach. He watched out of the corner of his eye to see how Carey handled his eating knife and silver spoon and tried hard to copy him. The funny foreign sauces on the meats didn’t help