4 A Plague of Angels

by P. F. Chisholm

  He woke already on his feet and his dagger in his hand because somebody was moving around in the room.

  ‘It’s only me, Henry,’ came Carey’s voice. ‘Don’t kill me.’

  ‘Och,’ moaned Dodd. ‘What the hell are ye doing?’ He scrubbed the heel of his palm in his eyes as Carey, with infinite care, transferred the watchcandle to a nest of candles in a corner next to a mirror and lit the room.

  ‘I was…er…trying to find the pot,’ said Carey in the slow painstaking way of the magnificently drunk. ‘But it eluded me.’

  Dodd blinked his eyes hard. ‘It’s in the fireplace. Dinna drop it,’ he growled, not trying to hide the fact that he was staring at Carey’s face where the clear print of a woman’s hand was glowing red like the brand of Cain.

  Carey swayed over to the fireplace and obeyed what was evidently a very peremptory call of nature, judging by the time it took him. Dodd sat down on the truckle bed again and rubbed his face with his hands, lay down to try and get some more sleep.

  No, the bloody Courtier could not let him rest. Carey was next to the bed, reeking of aqua vitae and tobacco smoke.

  ‘Very sorry, Henry,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I’m…er…stuck.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can’t get out of this suit without help. Irritating, but there you are. Fashion.’

  ‘Och, Christ.’

  ‘No Barnabus. No helpful woman. You…you’re…you’re it.’

  Murder in his heart, but not sufficiently annoyed with Carey to make him sleep in his uncomfortable fancy clothes, Dodd got up again and followed his instructions as to which laces to untie. All the back ones were inextricably knotted.

  ‘What happened tae the woman?’ Dodd asked as he picked away at them, the curiously neutral intimacy of helping another man undress giving him unwonted freedom to ask.

  ‘Gone back to Father. In a litter. Very cross.’

  ‘Is that so? What happened to your face?’

  Carey took off his elegant kid gloves and fingered the weal with a nailless finger. ‘All my fault,’ he said. ‘Tactless. Very.’

  ‘Och, ay?’

  ‘Advice for you, Henry. When you’re…er…when you’re making love to a woman, try and…er…remember who she is.’

  With magnificent self-control, Dodd did not laugh. ‘Och?’

  ‘Yes. At a…sensitive moment. Called her Elizabeth.’

  Dodd sucked air through his teeth, contemplating Janet’s likely reaction to such a mistake.

  ‘Pity really. Wonderful body.’

  ‘Ay.’

  ‘My…er…my child, I think. Not sure. Could be Father’s.’

  ‘Could be Will Shakespeare’s?’ Dodd asked, some small devil in him wanting to make trouble for Mistress Bassano.

  Carey contemplated this in silence as the last laces finally gave way, releasing the back of his gorgeous doublet from the waistband of his lily-encrusted trunk-hose. He had been fumbling with buttons while Dodd worked on the laces and the doublet finally came off, revealing the padded waistcoat that held up his hose. He moved away, shaking his head.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Manage now.’

  Dodd lay down again, properly awake by now but determined to go back to sleep, turned his shoulder on Carey’s continued troubles with his clothes. Serve him right for wearing such daft duds.

  ‘Int’resting, what you say.’ Carey was still talking, though by the smell he should have sloshed with every step. God, did the man never stop? ‘The poet, eh? Thought so, wasn’t sure. Said so. She denied it. Couldn’t deny calling her Elizabeth. Rude of me. But…er…she’d no call to sneer at her for being provincial. Isn’t. Anyway, what’s wrong with provincial?’

  ‘If ye’re askin’ me,’ said Dodd wearily, ‘Lady Widdrington is worth a thousand of Mistress Bassano, for all her pretty paps and all her conniving ways.’

  ‘Father likes her. So does Will, it seems.’

  ‘Then they can have her.’

  ‘Yes, but…Elizabeth won’t let me have her,’ said Carey sadly. ‘Won’t. Tried everything. Won’t let me bed her. ’S terrible. Never happened before. Can’t think. Can’t sleep. Can’t bloody fuck another woman without…mistaking her. Terrible.’

  Och God, thought Dodd in despair, any minute now the bastard’ll be weeping on my shoulder. I want to go to sleep. I’m tired. I don’t like London. I don’t like all these fine houses and fine beds and fine courtiers. I want to go home.

  ‘Go to bed,’ he growled unsympathetically.

  The magnificent four-poster creaked as Carey collapsed into it, with typical selfishness leaving the candelabrum in the corner still blazing with light. Sighing heavily, Dodd got up once more, snuffed the candles and left the watchlight in case Carey needed to find the pot again.

  ‘Balls’re bloody killing me,’ moaned Carey as Dodd passed the fourposter. Firmly resisting the impulse to tell the Courtier what he thought of him, Dodd went back to bed.

  Sunday 3rd September 1592, early morning

  It gave Dodd inordinate pleasure, just for once, to be up before the Courtier, fully dressed even if it was in that nuisance of a suit, and having eaten his bread and cheese and drunk his morning small beer. He made no attempt to be quiet when he opened up the window and the shutters to let in the pale dawn and birdsong and nor did he keep his voice down when he told the manservant who brought in their breakfast to do something about the brimming pot by the fireplace.

  Getting bored with listening to Carey’s sawpit grunting, Dodd went out into the silent morning house, lost himself and ended up in the kitchen where the cook found him a sleepy pageboy to show him around. They inspected the stables and the mews and Dodd took a turn in the dew-soaked garden, marvelling at the trees and bushes there that had never ever been cut for firewood nor trampled over by raiders.

  At last he wandered back to his and Carey’s chamber where he found the Courtier sitting in his shirt on the bed, shakily drinking mild beer.

  ‘Ah. Good morning, sir,’ he said as loudly and cheerfully as he could. ‘And how are ye feeling this fine morning?’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Carey carefully. ‘Don’t bloody push it, Dodd.’

  ‘Och,’ said Dodd, enjoying himself. ‘Is the light too bright for ye, sir. Will I shut the shutters for ye?’ Perhaps he did bang them a bit hard but it was such fun to watch Carey wince. That’ll learn ye to be happy in the morning, Dodd thought savagely.

  Carey shut his eyes and sighed. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’m not expecting sympathy.’

  ‘That’s lucky, sir. Ye never give me any. Now. What are we gonnae do about yer brother? Eh?’

  ‘What do you care about Edmund?’

  ‘Not a damned thing. Only I wantae go home and I can see we willnae leave this bastard city until we find yer brother, so let’s get on wi’ it.’

  He picked up the outrageously pretty suit that Carey had left draped over the clothes chest and tossed it onto the bed beside him.

  ‘Will I help ye dress, sir, or would ye like me to go fetch a manservant that kens how to dae it?’

  Carey circled his long fingers in his temples, squeezed his eyes tight shut and opened them again. ‘Let’s not make a fuss. You help.’

  ‘Ay, sir.’

  They went through the stupidly complicated business in silence, except for curt instructions from Carey. At last he put on his hat and they went out into the passageway and down the stairs.

  ‘Where’s Shakespeare?’ Carey wanted to know.

  ‘I dinna ken. D’ye want him, though? Yon pretty woman said he was spying on yer father.’

  Carey’s bloodshot eyes opened wide at that. ‘Did she say that? Mistress Bassano?’

  ‘Ay, sir, last night in the garden.’

  Carey blinked contemplatively at a heraldic blaze of stained glass making pools of coloured light on the floorboards. ‘It could be true. Marlowe’s not the only poet who doubles as a spy.’

  ‘Ay, sir.’

  ‘On the other hand,
she could be spying on my father herself and trying to put suspicion on Will to get back at him.’

  ‘Ay.’ The whole thing was too complicated for Dodd. He focused on the important thing. ‘But it disnae matter in any case, since we have tae find yer brother. Or his corpse.’

  Carey winced again. As they came into the wide marble entrance hall, he paused. ‘We’ll go and fetch Barnabus from the lodgings. Then we’re going after this alchemist, Jenkins.’

  That seemed reasonable enough. Carey took leave of Southampton’s majordomo with some elaborately grateful phrases that sounded as if he picked them ready-made from the back of his mind, and only shuddered a little as they went out into the full sunlight. Dodd remembered to look round for bailiffs as they went out across the little bridge over the moat and round by country lanes full of dust heading eastwards, parallel to Holborn. There were a few men practising at the butts with their longbows in a field, puny little light bows and they weren’t very good either, Dodd noted. Carey turned right down a broad lane that narrowed until it passed between high garden walls. A heavy sweet scent wafted across from the lefthand garden. Carey gestured.

  ‘Ely Place Garden. Hatton makes a fortune from it.’

  ‘Ay?’ said Dodd, hefting himself up and peering over the wall at a sea of pink and red. ‘Fancy? Fra flowers?’

  ‘Rosewater,’ explained Carey. ‘Supplies the court.’

  ‘Ay?’

  Carey ducked down a little lane that passed by what looked like another monastery courtyard, and then into a wide crossroads by a square-towered church. He paused there and blinked cautiously around. He looked as if the effort of walking in his fancy doublet and padded waistcoat was making him sweat, and he didn’t look very well. Could he have plague, perhaps? No, thought Dodd, all that ails him is drink and serve him right.

  ‘That’s Shoe Lane,’ Carey croaked, swallowing a couple of times. ‘You go down first and if you see anything you don’t like, come back and tell me. It’ll come out by the Fleet Street conduit. If you see a lot of well-dressed women there, not doing very much, come back and tell me. Off you go.’

  He leaned elegantly in the shadow of the church porch, took off his hat and mopped his brow, while Dodd wandered down the lane between houses and garden walls, humming a ballad to himself. The conduit was running bright with water, but there were only a couple of maidservants with yokes on their shoulders busily chatting as they slowly filled their buckets. Dodd went back and waved a thumbs-up to Carey, who came upright with noticeable effort and followed.

  They crossed Fleet Street at the wide point by the conduit, the girls staring to see a courtier up so early, and Carey nipped into an alley that gave onto a courtyard in front of a large handsome house where the servants were just opening the shutters. Dodd tensed when he saw a couple of men standing negligently in the doorway of one of the other houses. He nudged Carey, who glanced at them and shook his head.

  ‘Heneage’s men keeping an eye on the French ambassador.’

  ‘Eh?’

  Carey gestured at the big house. ‘Salisbury House, French ambassador’s lodgings.’

  That was interesting, thought Dodd, squinting up at the bright diamond windows. Were there Frenchmen actually inside? What did they look like? He now knew they didn’t actually have tails, but it stood to reason they must be different from Englishmen.

  Carey was slipping into a narrow little wynd between houses and a garden wall, passed under a roof made of touching upper storeys and emerged onto one of the salty muddy lanes that gave onto the Thames. The tide was in—you could see water gleaming at the end to their left.

  Looking at the river, Dodd lost track of Carey for a moment, but saw the small alley he must have gone into, like a rabbit into his hole. London was a warren and no mistake. How did anybody ever keep track of where he was?

  Hurrying to the end of it, Dodd came out into a cloister courtyard he recognised, saw Carey’s suit slipping into an alleyway at the other side of it, into the stair entrance under the figure of the woman tumbler standing on a rope with her head knocked off, and up the stairs all the way to the top.

  On the last flight of stairs Dodd saw a sight that froze him in his tracks. It was a dead rat, black as sin, and swollen, lying out there in the open. Nameless dread filled Dodd and if Carey hadn’t been ahead of him, he would have turned tail and run. But he wasn’t a wean or a woman to be afeared of rats, though he was afraid of them, and he forced himself to go past, only to bump into Carey, standing stock still on the tiny landing.

  Carey was staring, lips slightly parted, face ashen, at the door of their lodgings. There was a red cross branded there, the paint still wet, the latch sealed and a piece of paper nailed beside it. The plague-finders could only have left a few minutes before.

  Dodd’s legs felt weak and shaky. Simon Barnet and Barnabus Cooke were on the other side of that door, along with Tamburlain the Great, Barnabus’s fighting cock. And Simon Barnet’s family had been visited by God’s wrath, and he must have gone in to say goodbye to his mam, must have done. You couldn’t blame the lad, but that’s how he had taken it and Barnabus must have taken it from him. Plague wasn’t like a knife that you could see, it was mysterious, it struck where it wanted to.

  As if there were no danger there, Carey went and hammered on the door. ‘Barnabus! Simon!’ he roared. For answer the cock crowed, and they could hear it flapping heavily about beyond the door. Nothing else. No sound of humanity at all.

  Carey lifted his hand to break the seal on the latch, and that galvanised Dodd into action. He grabbed the Courtier’s arm and pulled him back.

  ‘Nay, sir. Ye willnae go in,’ he growled.

  ‘But…’ There were tears standing in Carey’s eyes. ‘I can’t leave them there.’

  ‘Ye must. There’s naething ye can do, save take the plague yersen.’

  For a moment Carey resisted and something cold and calm inside Dodd got ready to hit him. ‘I’ve seen plague, sir, back when I were a wean, when it hit us in Upper Tynedale. There’s nothing ye can do, nothing. It gets in the air and if ye breathe near a man with the plague, ye get it yerself. Ye cannae go in.’

  For a moment Carey stayed rigid by the door, Dodd still holding his arm, and then he relaxed, turned away and headed blindly down the stairs again.

  We might have it already, Dodd thought as he followed, both of us might be just a day away from horrible pain and fever and death, you can never tell and Barnabus was with us yesterday when it might have been on him already, you can’t tell with plague, there’s no way of knowing until you get a headache or start sneezing and the black marks start rising on your neck and armpits and groin…

  Carey was walking out of the cloister, across a little walled lane, to an elaborate gate. He tested it and found it opened, went through into a large walled garden full of big trees, so it was almost like a forest. Dodd could not get used to the way London ambushed you: five steps away from closepacked tumbled houses squatting in the ruins of a monastery and you came out in a cool green place, with grass and flowers as if you had escaped into the countryside by magic.

  Carey didn’t sit down under a tree, but leaned against the smooth trunk of an elm and blinked up at the blue sky between the leaves. Dodd hitched up the back of his hose and sat down on one of the roots. Neither of them said anything for a while, but they listened to the birds singing in the trees for all the world as if there were no such things as sickness and death.

  ‘I didn’t realise the plague was so bad in London,’ Carey said, voice remote. ‘Was that Barnabus’s little secret?’

  Dodd sighed, loath to explain what he knew. Best get on with it, he thought, and weather the storm.

  He told Carey what had happened to Simon Barnet’s family and Carey simply took in the information.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Henry?’

  Dodd felt guilty. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I should have. But Barnabus begged me and so I didnae.’

  ‘I see now why yo
u’re so anxious to leave London.’

  ‘Ay, sir. Will we go and find your brother now?’

  ‘It has got a bit more urgent, hasn’t it?’ drawled Carey. ‘I mean, either one of us or both of us could be dead of plague tomorrow, couldn’t we?’

  ‘Ay, sir.’

  ‘I wish you’d told me earlier.’

  ‘Ay, sir. So do I.’

  Carey shrugged. ‘We’ll try Peter Cheke again,’ he said, and strode between trees to a small passageway running round the back of a magnificent hall facing a courtyard with a handsome round church in it. He went up the side of the church, past the railings, past some chickens and a small midden heap and came to another gate that gave onto Fleet Street. There he waited for Dodd to catch up, peered out onto Fleet Street and Dodd scouted ahead. The street was filling with people, handcarts, beggars, pigs going to market driven by children, and the shops opening up on either side. As far as you could tell with so many strangers, it seemed safe enough.

  They had passed the conduit at the end of Shoe Lane, heading for Fleet Bridge, when it happened. Dodd was a little ahead of Carey, keeping his eyes peeled for men in buff coats, but unable to stop his mind wandering back to speculating on what was happening in their lodgings.

  A man in a wool suit tapped his shoulder. ‘Sir Robert Carey?’

  ‘Nay,’ said Dodd as loudly as he could. ‘I’m not him.’

  The man smiled cynically, and held Dodd’s left arm above the elbow in a very painful grip. ‘No, sir, of course you’re not.’

  ‘Will ye let me go?’ Dodd demanded belligerently. Two other men smartly dressed in grey wool and lace trimmed falling-bands were suddenly on the other side of him. One of them had a cosh in his hand, the other had his sword drawn.