4 A Plague of Angels

by P. F. Chisholm

  Dodd shrugged again and said it could be Good King Henry’s tomb for all he cared, to be told sharply that that one was in Westminster, didn’t he know nuffing?

  Tomb after tomb was knowledgeably pointed out, one with a lot of reverence as Sir Philip Sidney’s, and they made the circuit of the nave where pie-sellers, stationers and the apple-women cried their wares. It all seemed crowded and noisy enough for Dodd.

  At least the Londoners seemed to be friendly folk. Overfriendly, perhaps. Twice Dodd was hailed as an old friend by men he had never met before, one of them a southerner from Yorkshire by his speech.

  The third time a complete stranger clasped his arm and demanded to know what he was doing in London, bless him, Dodd decided to play along with the game.

  ‘Och, good day,’ he said with as big a smile as he could muster. ‘If it’s no’ Wee Colin Elliot himself,’ he added, naming his family’s bitterest enemy. ‘What are ye doing here?’

  The man, who was as tall as Dodd and by his speech had never been north of Durham in his life, laughed and bowed.

  ‘I could ask the same of you, friend.’

  ‘It’s too long a tale to tell,’ said Dodd who couldn’t be bothered to make one up. ‘How’s yer wife and the bairns?’

  ‘Well enough,’ said the man. ‘Well enough indeed. I thought it was you; I was just saying to my friend here, that’s him to the life and it was.’

  ‘Ay,’ said Dodd, still smiling unnaturally until his face ached with the exercise. The friend was shorter and darker and both were well-dressed in wool suits trimmed with velvet.

  ‘It does ma heart good to find a fellow Berwick man here in this nest of Southerners,’ said the shorter of the two in a passable imitation of the Berwick way of talking. ‘Mr Dodd, you must have a cup of wine with us. Will ye do that? Us northerners should stick together, after all.’

  ‘Oh ay, we should. O’ course,’ said Dodd, glancing across at Barnabus who was deep in obsequious conversation with an elaborately taffeta’d young man. Dodd shrugged. If he wasn’t feared of the Bewcastle Waste or the Tarras Moss, why should he be feared of London, strange place though it was?

  He went along with his two new friends, smiling and laughing like the Courtier, and making out that he was there to deal wool. Oh and that was lucky, because they happened to dabble in the wool trade themselves, and the one that was calling himself Wee Colin Elliot had a number of sacks in a warehouse near Queen’s Hythe just begging for a buyer since they’d missed the fair…

  Dodd’s heart began to beat hard as they went out of a side door he hadn’t noticed, through the churchyard. It seemed they were heading for a narrow alleyway. A little bit late it occurred to him that actually, when he was on his own with neither his kin nor the men of the Carlisle guard to back him, he was feared of both the Waste and the Moss because they were normally full of robbers.

  ‘They serve the finest wine in the world just around this corner…’ said the smaller man, hurrying him into the alley.

  Suddenly Dodd decided he’d had enough of the game. He balked just inside the alley, felt a hand clutching at his elbow, ducked instinctively, swung about and caught the arm of the bigger man who was bringing a small cudgel down on where Dodd’s head would have been. Dodd snarled. This was something he understood. He headbutted the man so his nose flowered red, bashed the hand holding the cudgel up against the wall until the weapon dropped. There was a metallic flash in the corner of his eye, so he kneed the man to put him down, whirled around sweeping his broadsword from its sheath and caught a rapier on the forte of his sword. The rapier flickered past his ear a couple of times and terrified him by nearly taking out his eye. Dodd knew that a rapier which could thrust had all the advantage over a broadsword, especially when he wasn’t wearing a jack, so he pulled out his dagger and went properly into the attack, crowding the smaller man up against the opposite wall and raining blows down on him so he had no chance to pull any fancy moves.

  Something grabbed his leg and bit his calf and Dodd glared down to see that the larger man had crawled over, still sobbing, and had caught him. He stamped down with his other boot to get the teeth off and went after the one with the rapier again. Unfortunately the bastard southerner was running away, so Dodd shook his foot free again and gave chase.

  Barnabus appeared in the mouth of the alley and thoughtfully tripped the man up. Dodd was onto him, kicked the dropped rapier away, hauled him up by a fistful of doublet and slammed him against the wall.

  ‘Careful, mate,’ said Barnabus confidentially over his shoulder from where he was robbing the man on the ground. ‘Don’t kill ’im; Sir Robert’s right about juries round here.’

  Dodd was snarling at his prize. ‘If ye ken who I am, ye’d ken that Wee Colin Elliot’s dad killed mine, ye soft wet southern fart. Wis it robbery ye were after, eh? Eh?!’

  The man’s eyes were swivelling in his head and he was gobbling. Dodd slammed him again. ‘By Christ, did ye think I wear ma sword for a fucking decoration, ye long slimy toad’s pizzle, who the hell d’ye think…’

  ‘Well, ’e wasn’t to know, was he?’ said Barnabus reasonably. ‘He just thought you was some farmer up for the law-term, what with yer homespun suit and funny talk. Poor bugger, look at ’im, he’s gone to pieces.’

  Dodd realised to his disgust that the man was actually crying now, and dropped him in a convenient pile of dung. Barnabus rolled him expertly, tutted and led the way out of the alley back to Ave Maria Lane, with a quick glance either side at the turning for further ambushes. Dodd, whose blood was up, rather hoped there would be someone, but put his sword away again when Barnabus hissed at him.

  Feeling witty, Dodd paused, went back, found the rapier and broke it in two with his boot. Barnabus shook his head at the waste.

  ‘Nasty foreign weapon,’ Dodd explained. ‘When d’ye think they’ll come after us wi’ their kin?’

  Barnabus laughed. ‘Never,’ he said. ‘Not the way you think. Though I’d keep a weather eye out for coney-catchers—they’ll want your purse one way or the other, believe me.’

  ‘What’s a coney-catcher, for God’s sake?’

  Barnabus rolled his eyes at this display of ignorance. ‘Someone what wants to help you rob yourself, someone what fools you and draws you in with your own greed and fear. It’s philosophical, really. They say nobody can coney-catch an honest man. Mind you, I shouldn’t think there’s ever been one come to London before.’

  Dodd grunted, suspicious of compliments, however back-handed. Not that it mattered. With luck, once the Lord Chamberlain and Vice had satisfied themselves that Carey wasn’t working for Spanish spies nor likely to become King James’s new catamite, the lot of them could go north again.

  A scurrying down by the entrance to the crypt caught his eye. There were black rats on the steps, crawling over and under each other brazenly in daylight. Two rat corpses lay close by, swollen out of shape by death.

  ‘Good God, look at that,’ he said in horror. ‘Look at the size o’ them.’

  Barnabus glanced over and shrugged. ‘Oh yes,’ he said off-handedly. ‘They say the biggest rats in the world prance up and down Paul’s aisle.’

  ‘Ah hadnae thought they meant real rats.’

  ‘Well both, it’s one of them witty comments, innit. You coming in again?’

  Suddenly he felt choked by all the buildings rising up around him, hemmed in and trapped. Your eyes were always coming up short against a wall, and he was trammelled and crowded with people, the stink would fell an ox. And he had always hated rats.

  He stopped at the side door of the church, unable to bear the thought of entering the high solemnity of the place with its faded paintings too high up to be whitewashed and the human trash prancing to and fro nibbling meatpies beneath the hard-faced old-fashioned angels. And God knew what horrors were underneath, in the crypt where no-one went.

  ‘I’ll take a turn round about the churchyard,’ he said, hoping Barnabus wouldn’t notice how pale he fel
t. ‘Take the air.’

  Barnabus nodded. ‘You’ll be safe enough, I should think. It’ll take them a day to work out what to do about you. You could buy yourself a book.’

  ‘Good God, what would I want to do that for?’ said Dodd. Barnabus grinned and winked at him, before disappearing into the gloom.

  Dodd glowered around but found no more would-be friends. He ambled past the stalls of the churchyard, looking with growing astonishment at all the different books, just casually lying there, higgledy-piggledy in piles with the first pages pinned up on the support posts of the awnings and the brightly coloured signs over the stalls—there was a cock, a pig, a blackamoor, a mermaid, all different like inns.

  He stopped under one awning, picked up a small volume and opened it, squinted to spell out the words under his breath. It was poetry—some tale about foreigners, he thought, from the funny names. Dodd couldn’t be doing with such nonsense.

  Suddenly he caught sight of a familiar face, Mistress Bassano’s servant, the balding young man called Will. He was not in livery but wearing a dark green woollen suit trimmed with brocade and a funny-looking collar that wasn’t a ruff, but looked like a falling band starched so it stood up by itself. He was standing with his hat off in front of another of the men with inky aprons, though skinny this time, under the sign of a black swan. Will was proffering a sheaf of closely-written paper. The printer shook his head, arms folded, legs astride.

  ‘Nobody’s interested in rehashes of Ovid,’ grumbled the printer. ‘I’ve told you before, there’s no demand for that kind of thing.’

  Will’s response was too soft for Dodd to hear it, though he caught a whining note. The printer rolled his eyes patiently.

  ‘I know the market, see,’ he said. ‘It’s my business. Your stuff wouldn’t sell, believe me. I’m always looking for new talent, of course I am, but I’ve never known trade so slow and I have to be careful what I take on. Now if you could do me a nice chivalrous romance, or a coney-catching pamphlet or two, like Mr Greene’s work—there’s something that sells like hot cakes.’

  Will’s answer to that was sharp.

  ‘Oh, did I?’ sniffed the printer. ‘Well, listen, mate, not everybody can write like Greene or Nashe or Marlowe. Maybe you should just stick to playing, hmm?’

  Will turned away, looking dejected, with his papers under his arm. Not wanting to be caught eavesdropping, Dodd slung the book he was holding back amid all the piles of them, and went reluctantly back into St Paul’s to find Barnabus. There was no sign of him. Dodd made two circuits of the Cathedral, trying to spot him amongst the throng, then decided he was no wean to be feared of getting lost; he’d go back to Somerset House on his own.

  Dodd had never got lost since he was a lad. He always knew instinctively where he was and where his goal was in relation to him. He knew where Somerset House was now, could have pointed to it, but the trouble was, you couldn’t just head straight across country to it; you had to walk along the streets, and the streets were uncooperative. They kept starting in roughly the right direction and then twisted round bewilderingly to spit you out heading away from your goal again. The people and the noise from the shopkeepers roaring out their wares and the children and the dogs and the pigs and goats made him feel breathless and confused. In his own country he was a man to respect, people made way for him even in Carlisle. Here they jostled past him and not one face was familiar, face after face, all strange, more people than he had ever met in his life before and he didn’t know one of them. Rudely, not one of them so much as acknowledged he was there. They were so finely dressed, even the streetsellers wore ancient wool trimmed with motheaten fur, not homespun russet. Once or twice Dodd thought he heard people snickering at him for his countryfied clothes. His neck stiffened and his face got longer and sourer by the minute as street after street seemed to conspire to bewilder him and drive him further from Somerset House.

  At last he stopped and decided to take the Courtier’s advice and head for the river. Once there he could follow the bank westwards, he thought, or even take a boat. That would be the sensible thing to do.

  Half an hour later he was wondering in despair where in God’s name the Londoners could hide a river. He had just passed the same overdecorated water conduit for the fourth time. Dodd used the little cup chained to it to take a drink, and leaned on the side to think for a bit.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said a nasal drone beside him. ‘You serve my Lord Hunsdon’s son, don’t you?’

  ‘Who wants tae know?’ growled Dodd, glaring suspiciously at the man. By God, it was the bald-headed manservant that had been trying to sell papers to the printer in Paul’s Churchyard.

  ‘Och,’ he snarled. ‘Were ye following me? Whit the hell d’ye want?’

  ‘N…nothing. Nothing, sir. Only…er…I’ve seen you pass by here three times now and it occurred…er…it seemed to me you might…er…’

  ‘Spit it out, man.’

  ‘…be lost?’

  Dodd decided to let the little man live, since what he said was true. ‘What of it?’

  ‘I…I could lead you back to Somerset House.’

  Dodd wasn’t going to fall for any more scurvy southern tricks. ‘Ay, to be sure. If ye dinna take me down some foul wynd and slip a blade in me.’

  The man looked shocked and offended. ‘Why would I do that? I’m no footpad.’

  ‘Ay, I mind ye. Ye’re Mistress Bassano’s singing servant, Will.’

  He coughed and made a reasonably graceful bow. ‘Will Shakespeare, sir, at your service.’

  Dodd thought it was a remarkably stupid name for a man with arms no thicker than twigs and sorrowful brown eyes like a spaniel, so he grunted.

  ‘Ay. I’m Sergeant Dodd. What’s the way back tae Somerset House, then?’

  They walked in silence through dizzying alleys and passageways under houses that actually met over the pavements, until at last they came in sight of the great galleon of St Paul’s moored amongst its attendant houses.

  ‘What was it ye were trying to sell tae the bookseller?’ Dodd asked. Will flushed and looked even more miserable than usual.

  ‘Only some verses.’

  ‘Poetry, eh? Ballads?’

  ‘Er…no. A classical theme, the sorrowful tale of Pyramus and Thisbe.’

  ‘Och,’ said Dodd, who had never heard of the story but wasn’t inclined to admit it. ‘And did the man no’ like it?’

  ‘Seemingly not.’

  ‘But ye found someone else to buy it, did ye no’?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, where are the papers then?’

  ‘I threw them in the Thames.’

  ‘What? That’s a powerful waste o’ paper.’

  Will shrugged. ‘I was angry.’

  ‘What did he mean about ye should stick to playing?’

  ‘I am—or I was until I lost my job when the theatre was closed—a player.’

  ‘I thocht ye were Mistress Bassano’s servingman.’

  Brown spaniel eyes stared into the distance and seemed to well with tears. ‘At the moment, sir, I am, yes. My Lord Hunsdon was kind enough to take me in when I…when everything went wrong.’

  ‘How did ye come to know the Lord Chamberlain?’

  Something subtly out of place crossed the would-be poet’s expression. ‘He had seen me acting with my Lord Strange’s troop and he’s a good friend to poetry; he said he thought my version of Henry VI showed great promise and he would be happy to tide me over until…until, well, my problems were solved.’

  The ugly flattened vowels had turned down at the end of the sentence, closing the door to more questions. Dodd thought it all sounded odd, a respectable lord like Hunsdon giving house space to a mere player, but then none of the Careys seemed to worry about things like scandal.

  They had come down Ludgate Hill and over Fleet Bridge and Dodd was starting to recognise familiar buildings. He could even see the Thames, glinting tantalisingly between the houses.

  ‘I thin
k I can find ma own way now,’ he said.

  Will nodded, still lost in thought. As Dodd turned to take his leave, Will seemed to come to a decision. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘Sergeant Dodd.’

  ‘Ay.’

  ‘Would you…would you do me a favour?’

  Dodd’s eyes narrowed. ‘Depends.’

  Will smiled faintly. ‘I was only wondering if you would pass a letter to Mistress Bassano?’

  ‘Why can ye no’ do it yerself?’

  Pink embarrassment was edging the player’s jaw. ‘It’s my day off, and, well…I think it would be better this way.’

  ‘What is it? The letter. And who’s it from?’

  ‘It’s…from me, but…er…well, really it’s only a few lines I’ve written in her honour.’

  ‘It’s nothing scandalous, is it? It willnae make the lady greet and get me intae trouble?’

  Will shook his head. ‘I’m sure the poems will please her—she likes poetry. And I think these are…er…quite good. You’d only have to give them to her and…er…say they’re from an admirer too humble to offer them personally.’

  Dodd frowned. ‘It all sounds verra strange.’

  ‘Oh, believe me, sir, ladies like that kind of thing. They like mystery.’

  For a moment it was on the tip of Dodd’s tongue to ask if Will had any claim to the babe Mistress Bassano was carrying, but then he stopped himself. Really it was none of his business, fascinating though the doings in the Hunsdon household were.

  Will was holding out his precious letter which he had taken out of the front of his doublet, good creamy paper, carefully folded and sealed. Dodd shrugged, took it and put it in the front of his leather jerkin.

  At the gate of Somerset House Dodd was carefully inspected and then admitted without argument. Behind him on the Strand, the heavyset men in their buff coats leaned in doorways or stood in alleyways, waiting patiently for their quarry to reappear.