Another appalling thought hit him. Perhaps Hutchin had not been coney-catched by Roger Widdrington. Perhaps Lady Widdrington had indeed been the one paying him for information; perhaps Carey’s chasing after the pretty little Signora had turned Elizabeth utterly against him. Perhaps she had bought back her husband’s favour by giving her would-be lover up to the wolves. No. Surely not. She would never... She might. Who could tell how any woman’s mind worked? Even though it had been nothing but a light-hearted dalliance he could hardly be expected to turn down, she might be unreasonably jealous, she might be angry enough. In which case his sending Hutchin to her was worse than useless...
He was standing like that, quite close to mindless panic, vaguely wondering how it was possible for him to be sweating while he was also shivering, when the door rattled and creaked open. He had to blink and squint from the light of lanterns. The German didn’t because his eyes were too swollen. In fact his whole face was a horrible foreboding, like an obscene cushion, pounded until it was barely human. No wonder the poor bastard had had difficulty speaking. His arms had been chained to a bolt above his head, his fingers were also grotesquely swollen and black, as was his right foot and ankle. Carey looked away from him.
Sir Henry again, three henchmen at his back, Lord Spynie at his side. Lord Spynie was at the head of a different group of three men, luridly brocaded and padded as were all King James’s courtiers. Had none of them heard of good taste?
Spynie looked extremely pleased with himself, but also a little furtive. Carey wondered again if he had really been arrested by the King’s warrant, or did Spynie have access to some legally trained clerks and the Privy Seal of the Kingdom? Given James’s sloppiness with his favourites, surely it was possible? Lord Spynie came up close to him, sneered something he couldn’t quite catch in Scots and spat messily in his face. Rage boiled in Carey, it was all he could do to keep from childishly spitting back.
Two Widdringtons gripped him under the arms while one of Spynie’s men dragged a little stool into the middle of the wine cellar floor, next to a barrel on its end. On the barrel top, as on a table, another courtier with a puffy eye ceremoniously placed a bunch of small things made of metal.
Carey recognised the courtiers. Two of them still bore the marks of his fist, and one had Hutchin’s toothprints in his arm. They all crowded the little space of the wine cellar and fogged it with their breath and heat, and the smoke from their torches and lanterns.
‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ said Carey, his mouth completely dry and his stomach gone into a hard knot of recognition. Those were thumbscrews lying on the barrel top.
‘Why are his legs free?’ demanded Lord Spynie.
‘We havenae brought leg-irons,’ said a courtier. ‘Shall I fetch some?’
‘No,’ said Spynie. ‘Use his.’ He pointed at the German still slumped against the wall. A key was produced, and the chains holding him to the ring in the wall were unlocked, allowing him to crumble down into a lying position at last. He lay still as a corpse, hardly breathing.
One of the Widdringtons who had brought him here took the irons and knelt to lock them round Carey’s ankles.
‘Sit down, traitor,’ said Lord Spynie.
Carey looked at him, knowing dozens like him at the Queen’s court. Alexander Lindsay, Lord Spynie was a young man, around twenty years old, and already beginning to lose the freshness of his beauty. He had a young man’s cockiness and sensitivity to slights, and he had acquired a taste for power as the King’s minion. Now he knew he was losing it, although he was not intelligent enough to know why. But he was hiding his uncertainty. Carey could read it there, in the way he stood, the way his hand gripped his swordhilt, just as if Spynie was bidding up his cards in a primero game. Instinctively Carey felt it was true: this was unofficial, a favourite taking revenge, not King’s men about the King’s business.
‘I appeal to Caesar,’ Carey said softly, pointedly not sitting.
‘What?’
‘I want to see the King.’
Sir Henry backhanded him across the mouth, having to reach up to do it.
‘I’ll want satisfaction for that, Widdrington,’ Carey said to him, anger at last beginning to fill up the cold terrified spaces inside.
Sir Henry sneered at him. ‘Satisfaction? You’re getting above yourself, boy. Tell us what we want to know and we might recommend a merciful beheading to the King.’
‘If your warrant came from my cousin the King, then he is the one I will talk to,’ Carey said coldly and distinctly, hoping they could not hear how his tongue had turned to wool. ‘If it did not, then you have no right to hold me and I demand to be released.’
Spynie stepped up close. ‘Do you know who I am?’ he demanded rhetorically.
Carey smiled. ‘Your fame is legendary even at the Queen’s Court,’ he said, sucking blood from the split in his lip. ‘You are the King’s catamite.’
Spynie drew his dagger and brought it up slowly under Carey’s chin, pricking him slightly.
‘Sit down,’ whispered Spynie.
‘I can’t,’ Carey said reasonably. ‘Your dagger’s in the way.’
Spynie took the dagger away, pointed it at Carey’s eye.
‘Sit down.’
‘Why? You can talk to me just as well if I’m standing. Take me to the King.’
‘Where’s the Spaniard gone?’ demanded Sir Henry suddenly.
Carey shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘And as my lord Spynie knows perfectly well, he’s an Italian.’
‘You admit talking to him then?’
‘Of course. One of my functions as Deputy Warden is to discover what foreign plots are being made against Her Majesty the Queen.’
‘How much did ye sell him the guns for?’
‘What guns?’
Spynie lost patience and grabbed the front of his shirt. ‘Where’s the gold?’
‘What gold?’
‘The gold Bonnetti gave you for the guns?’
‘It surprises me,’ Carey said looking down at Spynie’s grip, ‘that you think he had any money left at all, after being at the Scottish court for as long as he had. The bribes to all of you gentlemen must have been costing him a fortune. Take me to the King.’
‘What were you doing in the forest this afternoon?’ gravelled Sir Henry.
‘Hunting. Take me to the King.’
