A Murder of Crows: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery

by P. F. Chisholm

  He walked back a little quicker and went down an alleyway into the dens of lawyers that clustered around the Inns of Court, found Enys’s chamber, and knocked on the door.

  Enys put his head out immediately. “One minute,” he said. Dodd heard his voice murmuring and then another higher pitched voice—it seemed he was urging his sister to greet Sergeant Dodd but she adamantly refused.

  Then Enys was on the landing, hat on his head and his too-heavy sword at his side.

  “Where will we get a new sword?” Enys asked as he locked the door.

  “We’ll go to an armourer’s I saw near Cheapside,” said Dodd. “Sir Robert said they made good weapons there.”

  In fact Carey had been trying to persuade Dodd to buy a gimcrack unchancy foreign-style rapier with a curly handguard and a velvet scabbard to replace his friendly, balanced, and extremely sharp broadsword that had been made for him by the Dodd surname’s own blacksmith and fitted his body like a glove. Dodd had sniffed at all Carey’s reasons why rapiers were the coming thing and then smashed the entire argument to bits by enquiring why, if rapiers were so wonderful, Carey was now bearing a broadsword himself.

  “You know my rapier broke last summer when I hit that Elliot who was wearing a jack…” Carey had said incautiously.

  “Ay,” said Dodd, feeling his point had been made for him. Carey grinned and started campaigning for Dodd to buy a twenty-inch duelling poinard instead until Dodd had lost his temper and asked if Carey was working on commission for the armourer.

  Enys nodded and trotted down the stairs and out into the sunlight. The year was tilting into winter right enough, with the orchards full of fruit and nuts and the hedges and gardens full of birds stealing the fruit, and angry wasps.

  They walked up Ludgate, past St Paul’s, and Dodd found the armourer’s shop he wanted. It was not at all showy and didn’t have parts of tournament armour and wonderfully elaborate foreign pig-stickers hanging outside in advertisement of the weaponsmith’s abilities. On the other hand, his barred windows were of glass and the swords hanging there seemed nicely balanced.

  They went in, Enys hesitating on the threshold and looking around in wonder.

  “Ay,” said Dodd, “it’s odd not to have yer sword made for ye, but…” He shrugged.

  The armourer remembered Dodd as having come with Carey since he was wearing the same unnaturally smart woollen doublet. Soon there were several swords laid out on the counter with the armourer excitedly pointing out the beauty of the prettier sword. Dodd picked up one of the others, with a plain hilt, a grip of sharkskin and curled quillions. He felt the weight, drew it, sighted along the blade, flexed the blade, sniffed it, balanced it on his finger, then handed it to Enys who nearly dropped it.

  Enys swung it a few times experimentally while Dodd and the armourer retreated behind a display post with breastplates mounted on it. Enys smiled.

  “That’s much better, much easier.”

  “Ay,” sniffed Dodd, “I thocht so, Mr. Enys. The one ye’ve got is a couple of pounds heavier.”

  He turned to the armourer and asked if he would do a part-exchange while Enys eagerly fumbled his sword belt off and handed it over for inspection. The armourer frowned when he saw it, looked hard at Enys, then shook his head.

  “You’re right, sir,” he said, “this is the wrong sword for you. May I ask where you got it?”

  “It’s mine. My brother gave it to me.”

  “Ah. I see, sir. And I expect your brother is a couple of inches taller and wider-shouldered? Well, I can certainly make a part-exchange. Shall we allow an angel for the old sword and thus I will require fifteen shillings.”

  Dodd thought that was very reasonable for a ready-made sword and so Enys handed over the greater part of what Hunsdon had paid him for his court work to date, buckled on the new weapon, and went to admire his fractured reflection in the window glass.

  “Sir, I should tell you that I’ve seen this sword before,” said the armourer quietly to Dodd. “Seeing as you’re Sir Robert’s man.”

  “Ay?” said Dodd.

  “I sold it to a man who called himself James Enys but who was not that man.”

  Dodd found his eyebrows lifting. “Ay?” he said, rubbing his lower lip.

  “Taller, broader-shouldered, something similar in the face and just as badly marked with smallpox.”

  “Hm.”

  “Also, he was wearing the exact same suit. But it wasn’t him, sir, I’d stake my life on it.”

  Dodd quietly handed over sixpence, ignoring the small voice at the back of his head that protested at this outrage. “Thank ye, Mr. Armourer,” he said, quite lordly-fashion, “That’s verra interesting.”

  He went out into the sunny street where Enys was waiting for him and gave the lawyer a considering stare.

  “Now where shall we practise?” asked Enys. “Will you teach me to disarm people?”

  “Ah’m no’ gonnae teach ye nothing special,” said Dodd with a shudder. “Just the basics.”

  On a thought he went back into the shop and came back out with two veney sticks the armourer had sold for a shilling—he liked them because they had hilts and grips like swords but were still sticks. They made adequate clubs, but were best for sword practise with someone who was unchancy and ignorant.

  As they made their way to Smithfield, Dodd was thinking hard. There had always been something not quite right about Enys and it seemed Shakespeare had found it out. Perhaps Enys had killed his brother and taken his place and then pretended to look for him afterwards? Perhaps Enys’s brother was still in the Thames as the priest had been?

  Or perhaps he was playing cards at Pickering’s? The man Dodd had thought was Enys—what was his name, Vent?—fitted the armourer’s description exactly. And what about the sister? Where was she? He’d heard her voice but…Why had Enys locked the door of his chambers when his sister was within? Was she his prisoner?

  Eyes narrowing, Dodd led the way to a corner of the Smithfield market that was not already occupied by large men loudly practising their sword skills, generally sword-and-buckler work which was the most popular fighting-style. Some of them watched him cautiously out of the corners of their eyes. In another corner were better-dressed men doing what looked like an elaborate dance composed of circles and triangles and waving long thin rapiers. Foreigners, no doubt, doing mad foreign things.

  Dodd gave Enys one of the veney sticks and decided to see if the man was faking his cack-handedness. He took him through the en garde position for a sword with no shield or buckler, with his right leg and right arm forward as defence, and showed him the various positions. They went through a slow and careful veney using the main attacks and defences that Dodd’s father had first taught him when he was eight. Dodd’s face drew down longer and sour at that thought.

  Once Enys had corrected his feeble grip and got out of the habit of putting his left hand on the hilt for the cross-stroke, as if he were wielding an old-fashioned bastard sword, Dodd bowed to him, saluted, and attacked.

  Enys struggled to do what he’d been shown but that was not in fact the problem. He defended slightly better now, but even when Dodd spread his hands, lowered his veney stick and stood there completely unguarded, Enys still did not attack. Dodd scowled at him ferociously.

  “Och?” he said, “whit’s wrong wi’ ye, ye puir wee catamite of a mannikin? Want yer mother? She’s no’here, she’s down the road lookin’ for trade.”

  Enys stopped and blinked at him with his veney stick trailing in the mud. Dodd, who had never seen anything so ridiculous in his life, lifted his own veney stick and hit Enys hard across the chest with it. Enys yelped, staggered back clutching the place, and nearly dropped his stick.

  “It’s ay hopeless,” said Dodd disgustedly. “If ye willnae attack me when I’m open nor when I strike ye…”

  For a moment he thought there were tears in Enys’s eyes, but then at last the man made a kind of low moaning growl and came into the attack properly. Dodd
actually had to parry a couple of times and even dodge sideways away from a very good strike to his head. There was a flurry when Enys came charging in close trying for a knee in Dodd’s groin and Dodd trapped his arm, shifted his weight, and dropped the man on his back on the hard-trampled ground in a Cumbrian wrestling throw he hadn’t used for ten years because everyone in Carlisle knew it too well. Enys was still struggling, mouth clamped, face white, so Dodd twisted his arm until he yelped again.

  “Will ye bide still so I dinna have to hurt ye?” shouted Dodd in his ear, and Enys gradually stopped. He was heaving for breath and even Dodd was a little breathless, which annoyed him. “Now then. That was a lot better. Ye had some nice blows in there and ye came at me wi’ yer knee when ye couldnae touch me wi’ yer weapon, that’s a good thing to see. Ah like a man that isnae hampered by foolish notions.”

  “What?” Enys was still gasping.

  “Ye’ll need tae watch yer temper,” added Dodd, helping the man up and dusting him down. “Ye cannae lose it just because ye got thumped on the chest.”

  “You deliberately made me lose my temper?”

  “Ay. Ah cannae teach nothing to a man that willnae attack and if ye’ve the bollocks to attack when Ah touch ye up, then there’s something to work wi’? Ye follow?”

  Dodd was aware that Enys’s eyes were squinting slightly as he tried to follow this and so Dodd said it again, less Cumbrian. He was getting better at that, he thought. Enys laughed shortly.

  “So should I get angry or not?” he asked, still rubbing the bruise on his chest. “Lose my temper or not?”

  Dodd shrugged and took the en garde position again. “It depends. If ye cannae kill wi’out losing yer temper, then lose it. But if ye can get angry and stay cold enough to think—that’s the best for a fighting man. Not that ye’re a fighting man, ye’re a lawyer, but still…There’s nae harm in being able to kill if ye need to.”

  Enys nodded, and guarded himself. Dodd attacked again. He was still as careful as he could be and pulled most of his blows, but Enys was at least taking a shot at him every so often, even if he generally missed or was stopped. He lost his stick half a dozen times before he learnt not to get into a lock against the hilt since he wasn’t strong enough for it. And on one glorious occasion, he caught Dodd on the hip with a nice combination of feint and thrust. Dodd put his hand up at the hit and grinned.

  “Ay,” he said, “that’s it. Well done.”

  Dodd decided to stop when he saw that Enys was alarmingly red in the face and puffing for breath again, even though they had only been practising for an hour or two. Dodd had taken his doublet off and was in his shirtsleeves, but Enys seemed too shy to do it.

  He seemed relieved when Dodd lifted his stick in salute. “Ah’m for a quart of ale,” he said. “Will ye bear me company, Mr. Enys?”

  “God, yes.”

  Over two quarts of ale at the Cock Inn, hard by the Smithfield stock market so rank with the smell of livestock, and a very fine fish pie and pickles, Dodd lifted his tankard to Enys with an approving nod.

  “Ye’re a lot better than ye were,” he said, “though I’d not fight any duels yet.”

  Enys smiled and flushed. “I never thought I could be able to fight.”

  “But did ye no’ fight any battles wi’ yer friends when ye were breeched and got yer ain dagger?” Dodd asked with curiosity. He remembered with clarity the great day when he had been given his first pair of breeches made for him by his mother and his dad strapped his very own dagger round his waist. He must have been about six or seven and very relieved to get away from baby’s petticoats and being bullied into playing house all the time with his sisters’ friends. After that he spent most of his time play-fighting with his brothers, cousins, and friends when he wasn’t having to go to the Reverend for schooling. Within months he had lost a front tooth in a fistfight over football and got a birching from Reverend Gilpin and several thick ears from other outraged adults for damaging things by carving them with his dagger. He still liked to whittle when he could.

  Enys looked down modestly. “I was a sickly child,” he said. “I don’t think I did.”

  The ale tasted wonderful when you were so dry, Dodd finished his quart in one and called for more. He shook his head. “Well, if ye keep on wi’ it and hire yerself a good swordmaster, there’s nae reason ye couldna fight yer corner if need be.”

  “It’s interesting,” said Enys after he’d found a bone in a large lump of herring from the pie. “The manner of thinking for a fight that you explained to me is very similar to that needed for a courtroom—being angry without losing your temper, so you can think. Only in the case of a courtroom, of course, the weapons are words.”

  “Ay?” Dodd thought Carey had said something similar about legal battles. “Surely ye need to be verra patient as well.”

  “That too,” Enys agreed, “and also well-organised and thorough. But there is very little to equal the joy of disputing with a fellow lawyer and beating him to win the point. I used to greatly enjoy mooting at Gray’s Inn.”

  “Ah.” The second quart was going down a treat and all Dodd’s worries about what would happen that evening started to fade away. Not his fury with Carey, though. That still nested in his gut. He could find out what mooting was later. “A man I met the day said I should give ye his compliments—he had very much the look of ye and I thocht he was ye at first, but his voice is deeper, and he’s taller and broader as well.” Enys had stopped chewing and was staring at Dodd. “Could it be yer brother that ye thought Heneage had taken?”

  Enys swallowed the piece of pie whole and nodded vigorously. “Yes sir, it could indeed. May I ask where you met him?”

  “He denied his name was Enys, said it was Vent, James Vent.”

  Enys smiled at that. “Even so. Where was he?”

  “He were at Pickering’s game, playing cards and losing.”

  Enys banged his tankard down. “Almost certainly it was my brother,” he said. “I never met a man who was worse at cards nor more addicted to playing.”

  Dodd nodded. “Would ye like to meet him? Ah ken where Pickering’s game is at the moment and Vent said he’d welcome a meeting wi’ the man that wis insulting him by impersonating him to be a lawyer.”

  To Dodd’s surprise Enys laughed. “That’s my brother. Yes, I would. Thank God he’s not dead. I had given him up and thought he was surely at the bottom of the Thames like poor Jackson whose corpse you showed me.”

  “Ay.”

  “How much had he lost and was he playing for notes of debt?”

  “Nay, Pickering willnae allow it, he was playing for good coin and a lot of it.”

  “Oh,” Enys frowned. “How unusual for my brother.”

  He looked thoughtful and pushed away the remains of his pie so Dodd polished it off and washed it down with the rest of his ale. He checked the sky for the time.

  “It’s too early for Pickering’s game to start. I wantae go back to Somerset House now to…ah…do something. I can meet ye at sunset by Temple steps and we’ll take a boat?”

  Enys put down the money for his part of the bill and Dodd put down his. They went companionably enough out of the alehouse and headed across London. Enys went down one of the little alleys off Fleet Street to his chambers whilst Dodd ambled along Fleet Street to the Strand, thinking hard about the damnable book code that Carey must have broken the night before. It was the only thing that explained his actions today. And Dodd didn’t have much time to solve the thing either. He had to be out of Somerset House before the trouble started.

  What had Marlowe said? A commonly printed book but not predictable, therefore not the Bible. Obviously to make a code from it, you had to have it to hand…Now what was the book that Richard Tregian had had on the shelf where Dodd found the paper? Something quite common, as Dodd recalled, but a little surprising. What the hell had it been? He couldn’t quite remember it.

  Not realising he was scowling so fiercely that people were taking a w
ide path around him as he walked down through the crowds on Fleet Street, Dodd stopped and stared unseeingly at an inn sign for the Fox & Hounds, a few doors up from the Cock Tavern where he and Carey usually went out of habit. He’d looked at the book, recognised it, and dismissed it as uninteresting. Damn it to hell. It had been…

  The inn sign was particularly badly painted, mainly out of over-ambition on the part of the sign painter, with the fox running as it were towards the sign and the hounds in the distance behind him, so it looked as if his head made the shape of a capital letter A upside down…

  The backs of Dodd’s legs actually went cold as he realised what the answer was. He blinked up at the inn sign which may have inspired the original code and almost certainly had inspired Carey to guess what it was. He cursed under his breath. Next thing he had loped along Fleet Street, past Temple Bar, knocking the beggars flying, along the Strand, and in at the gate of Somerset House which was quiet that afternoon. He went up the stairs two at a time to Carey’s chambers and sat himself down sweating and puffing slightly at Carey’s desk where he pulled Foxe’s Book of Martyrs towards himself and set to the first coded letter.

  It took him a long time and at the end of the hard labour he realised he actually had one and a half letters: one was from Fr. Jackson to somebody he addressed as “your honour” explaining that the trap was ready to be sprung as most of the lands were now held by the one called Icarus. The other was from Richard Tregian and also addressed to somebody he called “your honour” explaining that he had found out why certain lands were being sold for inflated prices as full of gold ore and good sites for gold mines. He was horrified and alarmed at it and was about to…The letter was unfinished.

  Dodd leaned back and stretched his aching ink-splattered fingers. He stared into space for five minutes and then gathered up his translations and the original letters, folded them all and put them in his belt-pouch along with Carey’s infuriating message. Hearing the cacophony of hounds and horses returning to the courtyard by the main gate, he stood up quickly and ran down the passageway to his own chamber where he collected his cloak and his new beaver hat that Carey had bought him a week before as a celebration of Carey’s deliverance from his creditors.