4 A Plague of Angels

by P. F. Chisholm

  Two of them grabbed him and twisted his arms behind him.

  ‘What the hell is it now?’ he growled. ‘Why can ye no’ leave me alone?’

  ‘Sorry, Sir Robert,’ said the third, sounding pleased. ‘Orders.’

  They started hustling him across the courtyard, causing the other prisoners to stare, into the gatehouse office, through another door and into what were obviously Newton’s living quarters. There were four other men standing waiting for him. The one in the middle, dressed in dark brocade and a fur-trimmed velvet gown, looked familiar with his smug moon-face and small pink lips. His expression wasn’t smug, however. It had started that way but as soon as it caught sight of Dodd, it changed, ran through puzzlement, incredulity, horror and ended in rage. Then it went blank.

  ‘I told you to fetch Sir Robert Carey,’ he snapped.

  ‘Yessir,’ said the gaol servant who had spoken before. ‘This is him, sir.’

  Under the plumpness, jaw-muscles clenched. ‘No, it isn’t, you fool. It’s his henchman, Cod or Pod, or whatever his name is.’

  ‘Dodd, sir. Sergeant Henry Dodd, o’ Gilsland. Mr Heneage, is it no’?’

  ‘Where’s your master?’

  ‘Och,’ said Dodd sadly, his heart thumping hard. ‘I wish I knew that maself, sir. Only I don’t. I wis arrested in mistake for him and that’s the last I saw of him.’

  ‘You? In mistake for him?’ Heneage’s face was incredulous again.

  ‘Ay, sir,’ said Dodd. ‘It’s a puzzle to me too, sir. I dinna look anything like him, but there it is.’

  ‘Where’s Carey gone then?’

  ‘I told ye, sir, I dinna ken.’

  ‘Don’t try that half-witted northerner game with me, Dodd, I know you know.’

  ‘I dinna, sir. Sorry.’

  The blow when it came was open-handed to the side of Dodd’s head, and hard enough to make his teeth rattle. It hurt, but Dodd had been hit much worse than that in his life, many times, and that wasn’t what he found frightening: it was the considering expression on Heneage’s face, the sort of expression boys wear when they take the wings off flies to see what they do. Heneage hadn’t been angry, hadn’t lashed out in a rage like most men. He had taken a cold considered decision to strike Dodd, to see how he would react.

  If he could, Dodd would have hit him back, beaten him to pulp, Queen’s Vice Chamberlain or not, but he was being held too tightly by men who knew how to do it.

  ‘We’ll take him anyway,’ said Heneage to someone who was standing behind Dodd.

  ‘Would you sign the book, please, sir?’ said Newton, his face twisted with deference. ‘Only the trustees get…’

  ‘This man isn’t the one I wanted.’

  ‘Yes, well, would you sign it anyway, sir? Seeing as it’s not my fault?’

  Heneage tutted and clicked his fingers. Newton brought the logbook over, held the inkpot while Heneage wrote swiftly in the space next to Dodd’s name.

  ‘Are you bailing him, sir?’

  ‘No, I’m transferring him.’

  ‘The warrant…’

  ‘This is the Queen’s business, Newton, don’t interfere.’

  Dodd knew that phrase, Carey had told it to him. ‘I’m no’ a Papist,’ he said. ‘And I’m no’ a traitor, neither.’

  Heneage looked at him fishily. ‘I think you’re lying,’ he said conversationally. ‘We’ll go to Chelsea where we can talk, as I suggested a few days ago, remember?’

  And Carey had told him what that meant. Dodd felt cold.

  ‘What d’ye want from me?’ he asked.

  ‘I want the whereabouts of your master or his brother. It’s quite simple. When you’ve told me, I’ll have no further interest in you.’

  Dodd drew a long shaky breath and thought quite seriously for several seconds about simply telling him that Edmund Carey was sick near to death a few yards away in Bolton’s Ward, in the name of Edward Morgan. He thought about it, part of him wanted desperately to do it, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t give a sick man to Heneage to save his skin, even if it hadn’t been Carey’s own brother. Not that he particularly liked the blasted Courtier or his family, it had very little to do with them, only something inside Dodd set hard into an obstinate rock and wouldn’t allow it.

  Heneage was watching him very shrewdly. ‘Yes,’ he said, mainly to himself. ‘You do know something. Well, that’s good.’ He smiled. ‘Come along, now, we haven’t got all day.’

  Dodd was not at all surprised to find his arms being manacled behind him by one of Heneage’s men who then prodded him in the back. Heneage swept out of the Fleet prison with Dodd in the middle of his entourage and out into Fleet Lane where a carriage stood, drawn by four horses. Somebody opened the door, somebody else shoved Dodd up the steps and into the dimness, forced him to sit on a leather-covered bench. The carriage creaked sideways on its leather straps as Heneage and another man got in and sat down on the bench facing him.

  ‘Lie down,’ said Heneage.

  ‘What?’

  The other man’s gauntleted hand cracked across Dodd’s face.

  ‘Do as you’re told.’

  Slowly, staring at Heneage all the time, Dodd laid himself awkwardly down, sideways on the padded leather, sniffling at the annoying blood trickling out of his nose. Heneage’s subordinate put a blanket over his head, something that must have been used for horses in the past because the smell of them was pungent. Dodd found it comforting, it reminded him of home. What would Janet do when she heard she was a widow? Marry again, certainly, being the heiress she was, probably she would forget him since she hadn’t even a bairn to remember him by. The men of his troop might drink to his memory a couple of times, Red Sandy would remember him, but in a few years he would fade as others had. Even Long George had left more of a mark than he would.

  Would he go to heaven? Privately he doubted it, especially after his sin of venery with the whore, so that was no comfort either. When he was dead, he would face an angry God who would know exactly how many of his bills were foul.

  The carriage jerked and bounced along the streets, its iron-shod wheels clattering and scraping where the way was paved and then rumbling and squeaking and bouncing even worse where the road was dusty and rock hard from the sun. Dodd didn’t know which way it was going since he didn’t know where Chelsea was and the movement and the stifling darkness of the blanket were making him feel sick.

  Should he tell Heneage about Edmund Carey? Would it help? No, he decided it wouldn’t, because if Heneage was like Richie Graham of Brackenhill, admitting that much would only convince him Dodd must know more and that would make everything worse, not better.

  There wasn’t anything he could do except hope that the Courtier, who had run like a rabbit from the bailiffs that morning, would find a way of helping him. Would he? The Carey that Dodd knew in Carlisle would, he thought, certainly. The Carey Dodd had seen in London—he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know the man so well. Liked him even less.

  The coldness Dodd felt inside wasn’t helping him against the heat of the day and the blanket, and the wool suit didn’t help either. Drops of sweat were trickling down his back and chest under his shirt and his left arm was going to sleep because he was lying on it. He tried to move into a more comfortable position and was kicked in the shins. He sighed. There wasn’t any point in frightening himself even more by imagining all the things that might happen to him and at the moment there wasn’t anything else he could think of. All he could do was wait. Luckily, he was good at that.

  Dodd relaxed and did what he always did when he was lying in ambush. He thought back to when he was a boy in Upper Tynedale, an unimportant middle son in a string of them that made his father proud, a cheeky bright lad that his mother insisted on sending to school to the Reverend Gilpin when he was in the area. When he wasn’t learning his letters and listening to the Reverend tell him of the hellfire that waited for reivers, he was running about the hills, herding cattle or sheep, potting the occasional rabbit wi
th his sling, fishing in the Tyne, fighting his brothers, playing football. His mother as he remembered her then was plump and almost always either suckling a babe or round-bellied with another one, plodding in stately fashion after the particular hen she had decided to kill for the pot. She would corner it against the wooden wall of their pele and then squat down and wait patiently for the stupid creature to stop fluttering, calm down and start scratching, at which point she would grab, pull and twist and the hen would be dead. Dodd smiled fondly under his blanket; she had told him once when he had asked her in childish awe if she had a special charm for chickens, that people always wasted a lot of effort chasing after something that would come to them if they waited.

  The rocking and jolting stopped and Heneage pulled the blanket off his captive, only to find him fast asleep and smiling. It faded the smug expression on his face more effectively than any defiance and he punched and slapped Dodd awake like a schoolboy.

  Dodd who always hated being woken, reared up and tried to headbutt him, only to be stopped by his henchman after a confused scuffle.

  ‘Och, whit the hell d’ye want?’ he demanded.

  ‘Edmund Carey’s whereabouts,’ said Heneage, straightening his gown and dusting himself off fastidiously. ‘Or his brother’s.’

  ‘Piss off. Ah dinna ken where they are.’

  Heneage sighed and shook his head with theatrical regret and waved at the henchman. ‘Keep clear of his face,’ he said. ‘And don’t kill him.’ He went down the carriage steps, making it lean and creak again, and at his nod, another heavyset man went up them, holding a short cosh in his hand, shut the carriage door behind him.

  There was a short silence and then Heneage heard the northerner’s voice, sullen and contemptuous. ‘Och, get on wi’ it then.’

  That was followed by a crash and a series of thumps and grunts that made the carriage rock. Heneage looked about him. They were parked in a corner of Salisbury Court, where the noise of the carpenter’s yard next door in Hanging Sword Court would disguise most of the noise. The people passing through the court were mainly Frenchmen, servants of the French ambassador and the rest were men who worked for Heneage, watching the Papists’ coming and going. He had decided against going to Chelsea immediately simply because it was a long way and took several hours in a coach and he wanted to be able to get back to Whitefriars before the London gates shut officially. He had driven around the lanes and streets for a while to see if the motion of the coach would upset the northerner’s stomach, but that had been a failure. The blasted yokel had gone to sleep.

  It was always a difficult balance to strike. Given enough time, Heneage could guarantee to crack any man, usually without even having to damage him too much, so he could be executed without the fickle London mob feeling too sorry for him. He had found that lack of sleep, hunger and thirst would do the job more effectively than Topcliffe and all his ingenuity. But Heneage had a strong feeling that he didn’t have very much time. He was walking on a thin crust over a quicksand and there were too many things he didn’t know: Marlowe was supposed to arrest Sir Robert Carey, Marlowe knew him well, and Marlowe had managed to arrest this useless northern bumpkin instead. How was it possible? Marlowe was usually far more reliable than that. Had he betrayed Heneage? Surely not, surely he wouldn’t dare.

  As a result, Carey was still loose in London and had been for several hours when Heneage had thought he was safely caught. What had he been doing? Had he managed to reach his father, despite the cordon of watchers around Somerset House? Surely he hadn’t worked out what was going on? Had he found his brother? Had Edmund Carey come out of hiding and met him? There were so many perplexities, the whole thing depended now on Heneage finding Edmund Carey first, damn the man for an unreliable drunk and a thief.

  The rocking carriage had settled down to a steady rhythm. Heneage watched, thinking of ways and means. After a while, he banged the flat of his hand on the carriage door.

  ‘That’s enough, open up,’ he ordered. After his henchman had swung down from the carriage, he climbed the steps and looked at the northerner who was on his knees on the narrow floor, hunched in a ball and making the soft pants and moans men make when they think they’re being stoically silent.

  ‘Get him on the bench, I want to talk to him again.’

  Heneage’s man kicked the northerner. ‘Get up.’

  The northerner stayed where he was, probably hadn’t heard. ‘You’ll have to help him.’

  In the end it took both of them to heave the northerner back onto the bench, where he sat still hunched and wheezing.

  ‘You’re being very foolish, you know,’ Heneage said sadly. ‘I’d always thought Borderers were sensible folk who know when something is quite hopeless.’

  The man lifted his head and made a coughing noise which Heneage realised was actually a breathless chuckle. He said something indistinct. Heneage reached across, took a handful of hair and lifted his head a bit more.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Ah said…ye dinna ken any of us then.’

  ‘Edmund Carey,’ said Heneage. ‘Where is he? I know you know where he is. Tell me and this will stop.’

  The Borderer showed his teeth in a grin and spat as copiously as he could in Heneage’s face.

  ***

  Mistress Julie Granville had been sewing ruffs for a long time and quite enjoyed the work. Sitting in the shade of an awning with the other respectable women in the gaol, her fingers flew as she hemmed the narrow twelve yards of linen that would eventually decorate somebody’s neck. She didn’t even need to look at what she was doing any more, her fingers worked automatically making a very soft rhythmic sound, of the prick as the needle went in and out, the tap of her thimble pushing it, the drawing sound as the thread passed through. She was sitting where she could watch the gatehouse to see the return of the man who had promised to help her unfortunate gentleman in Bolton’s Ward. She was worried about him. The gaol servants had grabbed him in the way they used when they were about to give someone a beating. For all she knew he might be in the Hole already though generally Newton made a big production of it when he was ill-treating some poor creature, he would make sure everyone knew so they would fear him more.

  Some people were at the gate, haggling with the guard there over the garnish he wanted to let them in to visit their friends, as they said. It was only about an hour after the northerner had been taken away, but her ears caught the different sound and rhythm from one of the servingmen, the same sound Henry Dodd’s voice had had.

  She looked at him, hoping it was Dodd. It wasn’t. This was somebody taller, dressed country-style in a completely fashionless suit that didn’t fit him properly and a leather jerkin, somebody with wavy dark red hair. She blinked and squinted, catching her breath: he looked so like Edmund when he first came to the gaol, only younger and less stocky, so much the same swagger in his walk, the same humorous smile, the same…She knew she had gone pale and then flushed. Of course she had been lonely in the summer and she knew how wrong was the heady rush of feelings that had struck her like a summer storm when she talked to Edmund that first time, after her son had accidentally hit him with a flung stone meant for a rat…But he had been rueful and sympathetic, allowing her to bandage his ear where the stone had clipped it, even interceding to save the little boy from her anger. When he looked at her she felt he looked at her as if she were another man, not just a woman to be seduced or ignored. No, that was wrong: not another man, but as if she were his equal, as if he thought of her as a person and was prepared to like her. He had been gentlemanly, he had made none of the usual suggestions that the men in the gaol routinely tried on all the women not over the age of sixty nor deformed, he had been respectable and friendly. It had been the most seductive experience of her life. In her heart she had fallen into sin at once, without any coaxing from Edmund.

  Now here it was again, unmistakeable: the same energy, the same flamboyance, though subtly different. After Edmund took sick with the
gaol-fever and she had nursed him, he had raved in delirium about himself, his brothers, his father, his mother, as men do when they don’t know what they’re saying. That was when she had learned his true name and begged him to write to his father to bail him out and he had adamantly refused. He had spoken of his younger brother with a wistful, envious admiration and then as the fever disordered his brain more and more, with a touching concern, begging her not to let Robin or Philly see him in such a state…

  Julie Granville put down her sewing carefully on the piece of canvas she used to wrap it in when she wasn’t working. Then she stood up, dusted off her skirt, adjusted her cap and ruff and walked across the courtyard to where Edmund’s brother was squatting, talking gently to some of the children playing knuckle bones in the dust.

  ‘…a man in a blackberry-coloured suit, a bit shorter than me and stronger-built with a very glum face and funny way o’ talking like this? Have you seen anyone like that? I might pay as much as a shilling to someone who could tell me about him…’

  ‘Yes, I seen ’im, sir,’ said one of the urchins. ‘’E was the one wot Mr Gaoler Newton’s men was going to give a leatherin’ to, they took ’im out of the courtyard an hour ago.’

  ‘Where did they take him?’

  ‘Mr Newton’s lodgings, and there was strangers here, a fat man in brocade and velvet wiv lots of servants…’

  Ceremoniously Edmund’s brother handed over a sixpence. ‘I’ll give you the other half of the shilling if it turns out you’re telling the truth. Now have any of you seen another man, a gentleman who looks like me…’

  She shouldn’t address him as Sir Robert. He was wearing a country farmer’s clothing and his face and hands were dirty, he must be in disguise, though his boots fitted him far too well to belong to a farmer. She coughed and held her hands tightly together over her apron. He looked up at her cautiously, smiled, stood, took off his hat and just stopped himself at the beginning of what would surely have been a very magnificent court bow.