4 A Plague of Angels

by P. F. Chisholm

  He asked in the yard where Sir Robert was and then headed where the manservant pointed, towards the stables that looked over the garden. Mistress Bassano was sitting under a cherry tree heavy with fruit, her two maidservants sitting prettily disposed around her, all three of them stitching busily at some large embroidery. Best get it over with, thought Dodd, and marched over to her, made the best bow of his life and stood before her with his cap off, trying to get his thoughts in order. The way she was sitting on cushions with her pale green silk skirts spread out around her, you only had to tilt your head to get a full view of those magnificently rich breasts, riding high over the fertile swell of her belly. Dodd had never bedded a pregnant woman, since Janet was yet to fall for a babe, alas. How did you do it? Could you do it? What would it be…

  ‘Why, Sergeant Dodd,’ said Mistress Bassano. ‘Can I help you?’

  Dodd cleared his throat. ‘Ay. Ah…I was given a letter for ye by…eh…by an admirer.’

  Full pink lips curled up in a slow smile, the ends tucking themselves into a pair of dimples, and the heavily-lashed lids came down a little. Dodd knew he was staring at the woman’s chest but couldn’t stop himself; he felt like a tranced chicken.

  ‘How romantic. And who is he?’

  ‘Ah…he asked me not to say on account of it…er…being better left a mystery.’

  ‘Oh.’ The maid on Mistress Bassano’s left giggled and Mistress Bassano pouted her maddening lips at the girl. ‘Now, be sensible. These are important matters.’

  ‘Ay,’ croaked Dodd, wanting a quart of beer and wishing the sun wasn’t so hot. ‘Ah…here it is.’

  He clutched the letter from the inside pocket of his leather jerkin, and held it out to Mistress Bassano who reached up a hand to take it. Her fingers brushed the back of Dodd’s hand and made it tingle and prickle.

  ‘How charming to receive a billet doux from such an unexpected messenger,’ she said. And oh, the curve of her neck as she looked up at him, he could kiss his way all down the side of it, and…

  Dodd found his breath was coming short. What did the woman do to radiate desire like that? Was she a witch? Had she laid some kind of spell on him? Ay, maybe that was it. God’s truth, he was beginning to hate the Courtier and his father both.

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant Dodd,’ said Mistress Bassano as she lifted the edge of her kirtle and tucked Shakespeare’s letter away in the pocket of her petticoat. Surely it was no accident that she let Dodd have a flash of her ankle and bare foot…Scandalous, no stockings, no shoes, a clear line all the way up her bare leg to her…

  Dodd clutched his cap, jerked a bow and stepped back, nearly tripping on a miniature box hedge surrounding a bed of herbs.

  ‘D’ye ken…have ye seen Sir Robert?’ he asked, having to whisper because his mouth was so dry.

  A tiny frown crossed the creamy brow under its wings of black hair dressed with pale green stones. ‘Oh, I think I heard him shouting in the stables,’ she said.

  ‘Ay. Thank ye kindly, Mistress.’

  Dodd very nearly turned tail and ran across the smooth green lawn to the complex of buildings around the stable yard. Before he got there he heard the unmistakeable sound of Careys having an argument, as Mistress Bassano had said.

  ‘I came here because you ordered me to,’ Carey was saying, obviously trying not to shout though his voice was probably audible in Westminster. ‘Your letter, sir, ordered me away from my responsibilities in Carlisle where I am still very far from secure, and where the reivers will no doubt be playing merry hell in my absence. You, sir, ordered me to London where I have absolutely no wish to be. Sir. If you didn’t want me to come to Somerset House, you shouldn’t have written your bloody letter. SIR!’

  Carey was nose to nose with his father, whose face above its ruff was going purple. Behind them in the kennels, hunting dogs barked and whined in alarm.

  ‘Damn your impudence, boy,’ roared Hunsdon. ‘Why the hell didn’t you go to the Liberties like I told you to? What the devil did you think you were at, prancing into this house when I specifically told you the bailiffs were out in force, you stupid boy?’

  ‘Don’t call me boy,’ Carey ground out through his teeth, his fists bunched. ‘And your letter said not a damned thing about bailiffs, as you well know, unless you’ve bloody forgotten it, you senile old goat.’

  Hunsdon roared inarticulately and threw a punch at his son, who ducked, backed and put his hand to his sword. Entertaining though the scene certainly was, Dodd decided he had to intervene. Hunsdon had his own sword half-drawn.

  ‘Sir, my lord.’ He had stepped between the Careys, his hands up to fend them off.

  ‘Out of my way, Sergeant,’ bellowed Hunsdon.

  ‘Dodd, this is none of your business,’ growled Carey.

  ‘Ay, it is. If ye kill each other who’s gonnae guide me back home? And forebye, I dinnae understand what yer quarrel is.’

  ‘It’s simple enough, Sergeant. When I order my son to make sure he doesn’t come into Somerset House but should go to one of my properties in the Liberties of Whitefriars, where he can at least move without being hunted by bailiffs, I expect to be obeyed.’

  ‘How the hell can I obey an order I never received?’ bellowed Carey. ‘You said nothing about Whitefriars in your letter.’

  ‘Of course I didn’t, you overdressed halfwit; I sent a verbal message by Michael.’

  ‘What bloody message? I never got it.’

  ‘Nay, sir, he didnae. Who’s Michael?’

  ‘Used to be my valet de chambre,’ Carey said. ‘Father, I never saw Michael.’

  ‘What do you mean, you never saw him?’ Hunsdon’s voice was now modulating down to a shout. ‘I sent him out to meet you at Hampstead horsepond.’

  Carey’s bewilderment was so clear on his face, even his father began calming down. ‘He wasn’t there. We were jumped by footpads, but…’

  The thought struck both Carey and Dodd at the same time. Carey paled and sat down on the edge of the horsetrough. ‘What was he wearing when you sent him? Livery?’

  ‘No, of course not. I didn’t want to advertise who he worked for. He was wearing a brown wool suit. Why?’

  ‘Ay,’ said Dodd mournfully. ‘That was him, all right. Brown doublet and hose, wi’ some fancy work in black velvet ribbons.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Hunsdon growled.

  ‘Oh,’ said Carey, putting his hand over his mouth. ‘Poor bastard.’

  Hunsdon’s bushy eyebrows were meeting over his nose. ‘I thought you said you didn’t see him.’

  Carey seemed too upset to answer so Dodd cleared his throat and did the job.

  ‘Ay, we saw him, but he couldnae tell us yer message, my lord, on account of he wis hanging from the Hampstead Hanging Elm at the time, and nae face on him neither.’

  ‘What? He was dead?’

  ‘Ay. And not long dead, now I come to think of it. The body wasnae rotted.’

  ‘I should have spotted it,’ Carey said to himself. ‘What was a fresh body doing on the Elm when the Assizes couldn’t have sat for a month?’

  Lord Hunsdon sat down on the horsetrough edge next to his son.

  ‘Well,’ he said as if the breath had been taken out of him too. ‘Who could have thought it? Poor Michael. You’re sure?’

  Carey nodded once then shook his head. ‘It’s the only explanation. You sent him with a message about the bailiffs and somebody…stopped him delivering it.’

  ‘Ay,’ added Dodd dolefully, though in fact he didn’t know Michael from Adam and didn’t much care that he was dead. ‘And they hid his body where naebody would notice it.’

  ‘Very imaginative of them,’ said Hunsdon.

  There was a short silence. ‘Will you tell his wife, or should I do it?’ Carey asked.

  Hunsdon sighed. ‘I’ll send some men up to Hampstead first to fetch the body, make absolutely sure. Then I’ll tell her myself. Good God. What a bloody mess.’

  Carey turned his head and looked consider
ingly at his father. ‘Father, what’s going on here?’

  ‘Damned if I know, Robin. It’s all a mystery to me. Why the devil did they have to kill him? All they had to do was knock him on the head.’

  ‘That can kill a man by itself,’ said Carey. ‘Maybe they did it accidentally. Or maybe somebody wanted to make a point, as it were.’

  ‘His father served me, you know, cared for my guns and armour in ’72, when we did for Dacre.’

  ‘Yes, I remember.’

  ‘Good man. Died of flux, I seem to recall, a couple of years after. I remember Michael as a page, eager little lad, always willing. Poor Frances.’

  ‘Is she here?’

  ‘No, I’ve set them up in a house in Holywell Street, near the Cockpit. Two whippersnappers and another on the way. He was acting under-steward here. Only sent him because you’d be sure to know him. Thought he’d gone home to his wife when you arrived last night.’

  ‘And you could hardly ask with Heneage hanging about.’

  ‘No.’ Hunsdon’s face hardened. ‘God rot his bowels.’

  ‘You think it’s…er…’

  Hunsdon looked up, though he didn’t seem to see the gargoyle waterspout on the stable guttering that he was glaring at.

  ‘Don’t know who else it could be. Damn him.’

  ‘Perhaps it might be worth going to Oxford?’ Carey asked.

  Hunsdon shook his head, then clapped his hand on Carey’s shoulder and stood up. ‘I’d best organise a party to go up to Hampstead, fetch the body and give him a decent burial. I’ll draft a letter to Mr Recorder Fleetwood, as there’ll have to be an inquest, and I want it conducted properly.’

  ‘If the corpse is still there,’ Carey said.

  ‘Hmf. Well, what can you do? You have to try.’

  ‘Perhaps it would be better if we didn’t make it too public that we know what’s happened.’ Carey was speaking very quietly and thoughtfully. ‘After all, Heneage will have at least one paid man here.’

  ‘Of course he does. What do you…ah. I see. Well, I don’t like it. Goes against the grain to leave a man of mine hanging on a gibbet. What if Frances went past and saw him?’

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Dodd. ‘I verra much doubt he’ll still be on the Elm. But could ye no’ make a song and dance about they footpads we saw off at the Hampstead Cut and, while ye were at it, maybe find out about your man?’ Dodd found himself caught in a crossfire of stares and wished he’d kept his mouth shut. ‘Only, there’d be nae secret about that, my lord, since we left three kills of our own there.’

  ‘You omitted the detail of the footpads, Robin,’ Hunsdon said drily to his son.

  Carey waved airy fingers. ‘Fairly cack-handed attempt at an ambush in the Cut as we came through, which was foiled by Sergeant Dodd who spotted what was going on well before I did. Nothing much to say, really, since there was no harm done. To us, anyway.’

  ‘Hm. That was why your gun was loaded.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘When you discharged it in the Strand I felt certain you were only defying me and had come prepared to bully your way in,’ Hunsdon explained, standing up and brushing down his elaborately paned trunk-hose. ‘Excellent suggestion of yours, Sergeant; I’ll write to Mr Recorder this afternoon about the attempted robbery. With luck we’ll be able to find and hang the men who murdered my servant.’

  ‘If not the man who paid them to do it,’ murmured Carey, also standing up.

  Hunsdon tilted his head cynically. ‘It’s the way of the world, Robin, you know that. Now would the pair of you care to view the finest pack of hounds this side of Westminster?’

  ***

  The hounds were very elegant beasts, and included a yellow lymer with a heavy head and a serious expression. One of the dog-pages explained at length about the thorn in his paw, which the dog held up to show the neat bandage. Both Careys examined it carefully, Lord Hunsdon squatting down with his arm across the dog’s back. Dodd examined it himself.

  ‘What do you think, Dodd?’ Carey asked. ‘It looks clean enough to me.’

  Dodd felt around the dog’s leg, in case there were any lumps in the animal’s groin. You could sometimes get early warning of trouble with a wound if you found lumps, but there were none and the dog panted at him in puzzlement.

  ‘Ay,’ said Dodd thoughtfully. ‘But I wouldnae hunt with him till it’s all healed up, of course.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Lord Hunsdon. ‘You’re on sick leave, aren’t you, Bellman, old fellow?’ The dog panted and licked Hunsdon’s face and the old lord pummelled his ears.

  ‘Is he any relation of my lord Scrope’s lymer bitch that pupped on yer bed?’ Dodd asked, thinking he saw a family resemblance.

  ‘Yes,’ smiled Carey, who was rubbing the dog’s high chest as the animal groaned with pleasure and plopped himself over on his side. ‘He’s her brother. Father gave Scrope the bitch as a present a couple of years ago.’

  ‘Pupped on your bed?’ Hunsdon laughed. ‘What did Philadelphia say about it?’

  ‘She wasn’t very pleased. I had a great long lecture about the impossibility of cleaning counterpanes properly, as if I’d told the silly animal to do it. But it was a good thing she did, because she had trouble with the last pup of the litter.’

  Hunsdon listened to the tale and agreed that a ruined counterpane was a small price to pay for saving a fine gentle bitch like Buttercup. Robin should take care with the pup though, because this particular line of lymers seemed to be even more greedy than the general run of hunting dogs and they got fat very easily. In fact Bellman himself was a bit tubby, and Jimmy the dog-page must remember not to feed him too much while he couldn’t run.

  As if to confirm this wisdom, Bellman farted extravagantly and all three of them retired coughing to look at the horses. Dodd was greatly impressed with Hunsdon’s stable which held bigger and glossier beasts than any he had seen outside the contraband animals that the Grahams had harvested from the Scottish king’s stables. The pathetic nags that they had ridden in from the Holly Tree the day before looked as if they knew how useless they were in comparison.

  A bell rang, calling the household to dinner, and Dodd found himself borne along to the parlour where the Careys generally ate their meals, seven covers of meat this time and still nothing Dodd rightfully recognised as food. Afterwards Sir Robert, who had drunk far more than he ate and was evidently going mad with boredom at being cooped up in his father’s house, announced he would go and talk to the falconer and see if the birds had finished their moult. Hunsdon grunted and told Dodd he wanted his opinion on some arrangements for the Berwick garrison—would he come along to the old lord’s study in an hour? He wished to see Robin privately first; he could come to Hunsdon’s study in half an hour.

  An hour later one of the grooms led Dodd along the corridors. It was astonishing how many rooms there were in the place—you couldn’t count them all—and how peculiar to have one for each thing you might do in a day, such as a parlour for eating and a study for reading and writing, and every single one of them painted and decorated with hanging cloths and furnished with carved oak. Surely to God, Hunsdon could afford to pay Sir Robert’s debts, even enormous ones?

  Hunsdon’s study was a room lined with books and cluttered with papers and official dispatch bags hanging on hooks. Dodd knocked on the door, entered at the single bark of ‘Come’, and stood straight with his cap off in front of the desk. Hunsdon had been leafing dispiritedly through a pile of letters and looked up at him.

  ‘Sergeant Dodd. Good of you to come so promptly. What do you think of the mews?’

  ‘I’m no’ a falconer, my lord, and I canna say I’ve ever hunted with a bird, though I’ve watched when I was beating. Yer man at the mews says they might fly next week, being cautious, but we’ll be back on the road tae Carlisle by then.’ Hunsdon wasn’t really listening.

  ‘Hm. Dodd,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘There was a Dodd under my command when we took Dacre’s hide—any
relation?’

  ‘Ay, sir. Me father, sir.’

  Hunsdon beamed. ‘That’s right, of course he is. You’ve exactly the look of him. Damned fine soldier, if a bit serious. Scouted for me, as I recall, with his Upper Tynedalers.’

  ‘Ay, sir.’

  ‘Spotted Dacre’s cavalry, I think.’

  ‘Did he, sir?’ Dodd could feel his ears going pink. He preferred not to think of his father. It brought back the horrible hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach that he’d had all through his teens.

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Ma father, sir? He’s died.’

  Hunsdon sighed. ‘I’m sorry to hear it, Sergeant.’

  Strangely enough he did genuinely seem sorry though he could hardly have given a thought to Dodd’s father between the Revolt of the Northern Earls and this day.

  ‘Ay, sir. Er…thank ye, sir.’

  ‘And what’s this I hear about my son’s behaviour at the Scottish court?’

  The ambush was the more deadly for coming from behind a cover of sympathy.

  ‘My lord?’ Dodd kept his face carefully blank. Hunsdon made a ‘hrmhrm’ noise that was obviously where the Courtier had got his throat clearing and leaned back in his carved chair, causing it to creak at the joints.

  ‘Sergeant,’ he said gently, ‘I like discretion in a man under my command and I’ve no doubt my son does too, but I must have the full tale.’

  ‘The one Mr Heneage heard?’

  Hunsdon chuckled without the least trace of humour. ‘Certainly not. The one in which my son becomes somehow sufficiently deranged to deal in armaments with a couple of Italians who had Papist Spy all but branded on their foreheads, as he saw fit to boast in his letter? The one which explains the rumours about him being arrested for high treason, which he did not mention? The one which accounts for the damage to his hands which makes him embarrassed to take his blasted gloves off in my presence? That tale?’

  ‘Och,’ said Dodd firmly, resisting any impulse to smile at the exasperation in Hunsdon’s voice. ‘That one?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hunsdon patiently. ‘That one.’