4 A Plague of Angels

by P. F. Chisholm

  ‘Are you…are you called Robin?’ she asked.

  The intensity of his blue gaze shook her. ‘What of it, mistress?’ he asked with a strong northern sound in his voice.

  She must be careful. What if he was one of Edmund’s enemies, one of the men he was hiding from. Just because he looked so like Edmund didn’t necessarily mean they were brothers, and perhaps there was some other urgent reason why Edmund didn’t want his family told. Family members could hate each other more bitterly than mere enemies, as she knew to her cost.

  How could she check? Inspiration came from one of the many nights she had spent sitting next to Edmund as he fought and raved, trying to cool him down with Thames water, fanning him with her apron.

  ‘Goodman, can you tell me who taught you to ride?’ she asked.

  Blue eyes narrowed, the man frowned. ‘It was my brother, mistress, why?’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Edmund.’

  ‘Can you tell me what…how you treated him at the first lesson?’

  The frown got heavier. Oh God, what if she was wrong? What if this was Heneage’s man…

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Please, bear with me.’

  ‘Well…’ he grinned infectiously. ‘I’m afraid I bit him. I’d fallen off and he was making me get back on again, so I bit his ear. Drew blood too.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘No, you tell me what happened.’

  She smiled, pleased that he had good sense. ‘He shouted, the pony bolted and you both got into trouble because it broke into a garden and ate the peas.’

  He had caught her arms, was leaning down to stare into her eyes and she caught a faint spicy lavender smell from him, under the normal musk that no man produced naturally, which confirmed her opinion that he was not wearing his own clothes.

  ‘Where is he, mistress? Yes, my name’s Robin, I’m his brother. Can you take me to him? Did he send you?’

  It was the shadow of desire to feel Edmund’s brother’s hands on her and she flushed, stepped back. He let go at once.

  ‘Please, mistress, I’ve been combing London for him…Is he all right? Is he still alive?’

  For answer she turned, led him across the courtyard to the steps down, paid an ill-afforded penny to the gaol servant who was dozing there on a stool to let them in. Robin looked up and around at the darkness and stink of Bolton’s Ward, his nostrils flaring. She went across towards where Edmund lay, and saw him move feebly, trying to turn away, hide his face. Robin spotted him too, lengthened his stride and was there first, kneeling on the slimy stones, bending, catching his brother’s shoulders, lifting him, embracing him. She smiled to see it, then turned away so they could have some privacy.

  When she approached Robin had sat back on his haunches.

  ‘What the hell were you playing at?’ he was demanding in a furious whisper. ‘Father’s been searching for you for weeks, why the devil didn’t you send a message? Why in hell did you stay in this shit hole, you could have died…You can’t mess around with gaol-fever, it nearly killed me and I had the two best nurses in the world looking after me, for Christ’s sake…’

  His rage convinced her more than his affection had, but it was distressing Edmund who was lying back on his grubby pillow, panting.

  She touched Robin’s shoulder and he whipped round, glaring at her. ‘Mistress, why didn’t you…’

  ‘He begged me not to, sir,’ she said firmly. ‘I tried my best to get him to write to your father, but he wouldn’t, even when he was lucid. And most of this time he has been too ill to do anything.’

  ‘You might have done it on your own, got him out of this filthy place.’

  His anger shook her, though she knew it was really a diffuse fury that wasn’t aimed at her.

  ‘S…sir, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t dare reveal who he was or contact your father because he was so desperate that I shouldn’t. How could I go against what he said? He pleaded with me not to betray him, said if I sent any message to my lord, the spy in his household would make sure Heneage found him first…And he was so afraid of Heneage. And in any case, I think he was ashamed. He said many times he wanted to die.’

  ‘Oh Christ.’

  ‘He very nearly did, sir, and is still not recovered. This is the most dangerous time with gaol-fever; if he strains himself too much now, it will come back and probably kill him. Please be gentle with him.’

  It was touching and made Julie want to smile at them. Although Robin was still fuming, Edmund’s frail hand had crept out from under the blankets and into his brother’s. They were holding hands like children and neither of them had noticed.

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ Robin said eventually. ‘I’m sorry, Ned, I should have thought. I suppose it probably was right to lie low, but…for God’s sake, why in this place? Why not the Eightpenny Ward?’

  ‘Most of his money was counterfeit and somebody stole the rest,’ Julie explained.

  ‘Bastards.’

  Edmund said something with a faint smile.

  ‘No, you’re damned right nobody would have thought to look for you in here. I didn’t. How could you possibly bear it? It’s worse than below decks in a ship. It’s like…it’s like a circle of hell.’

  Again Edmund whispered something to his brother with a look at her that Julie knew meant she was the subject. She could feel herself flushing.

  Robin listened for a moment. ‘One question,’ he said. ‘When did you understand Heneage’s game?’

  ‘When I…paid my tailor with the gold we made…I thought we’d made…and he weighed it and threw it back in my face for a forgery…I suddenly saw it…’ came Edmund’s creaking breathless voice,’…saw how it used me against Father. All I could think of was to hide and the only place I thought they might not look at first was in gaol, especially…in a different name. I made a deal with the man to arrest me for the debt in mother’s name, as Edward Morgan.’

  Robin nodded. Edmund lay back and panted, white with exhaustion. Very gently, Robin released his brother’s hand, put it under the blankets, tucked him up like a child and then stood, dusting his fingers and his legs.

  ‘Mistress Granville,’ he said quietly to her. ‘I don’t think we have much time. I want you to go to the courtyard and find a man there, by the name of Kit Marlowe. He’s almost as tall as I am, velvet peascod doublet slashed with peach taffeta, but he looks like a cocky smug bastard and that’s exactly what he is. When you find him, tell him…tell him to go to my father and fetch reinforcements.’

  Edmund was plucking at the blanket, the cords of his neck straining to lift his head. Robin saw and patted him. ‘I know, I know, Marlowe’s Heneage’s man. He says he wants my help to get him in with Essex and just for the moment, I believe him. All right?’

  Edmund let his head fall back and closed his eyes. They looked sunken and his colour was bad. Robin looked down at him with a worried frown and then at her.

  ‘Please, mistress, hurry,’ he said. ‘I’m staying with Ned. If a plump-looking man in a fine marten-trimmed gown asks you where he is, even if he says he’s Mr Thomas Heneage, the Queen’s Vice Chancellor, lie.’

  She nodded, frightened at the large stakes these men were playing for…Defying the Queen’s official? Well, she could do it for Edmund.

  ***

  In the end, it was lucky that Heneage had brought no thumbscrews with him, because he had expected to be able to capture Sir Robert Carey and put the next part of his plan into operation. It meant he had to send one of his men to fetch some to use on his prisoner. While he waited, he decided to see if painting word pictures of some of the effects and refinements of thumbscrews would have any effect on the yokel. He had been talking for ten minutes when he realised that the blasted man had somehow managed to doze off again, lying sideways on the carriage bench.

  His first impulse was to use his dagger on the man’s eyeballs, see if that would keep him awake, but he controlled himself.

  He wa
s absolutely certain the northerner knew where Edmund Carey was hiding. The spittle he had carefully scrubbed off his face before snatching his henchman’s cosh and using it for five satisfying minutes on the bastard northerner’s kidneys, that infuriating childish gesture confirmed his instinct that he was dealing with defiance and not ignorance.

  He was planning how to use the thumbscrews to break Carey’s man quickly, considering other places you could use them than merely fingers, when it occurred to him to wonder how it was a northerner could know where Edmund Carey was when nobody else did.

  The answer came to him from God, as simply as the sun rising. He actually laughed, because it was so obvious.

  He leaned out of the carriage and called his second in command over to him, told his driver to whip up the horses again. He called to where his henchmen were standing in a group, sharing a leather bottle of beer and practising knife throwing at the swollen corpse of a rat lying in a gutter. Then he kicked the northerner’s shins to wake him up.

  ‘Edmund Carey’s in the Fleet, isn’t he?’ he said, and saw the telltale change in the man’s eyes. ‘You really should have told me before, it would have saved you some pain. And you would have told me in the end, you know; people always do. Probably after we’d crushed one or both of your balls.’

  ‘Ay,’ croaked the man. ‘Ay, he’s in the Fleet. Deid and buried, wi’ gaol fever.’

  Heneage laughed at this nonsense. ‘Oh, really,’ he remonstrated. ‘If that was true, you’d have told me at once, you’re not mad.’

  ‘Mr Heneage,’ said the man, breathing carefully. ‘I wouldnae willingly tell ye where yer ain arsehole was, not if yer catamite begged me to.’

  Heneage blinked at him. ‘When I’ve finished with Edmund Carey and his interfering brother, I will take you apart, piece by piece.’

  The carriage jolted into motion, causing the northerner to whine through his teeth very satisfactorily as he fell helplessly off the bench and in a huddle onto the narrow floor. Heneage left him there, so he could get the benefit of the bone-jolting movement of the coach. Generally anybody but an invalid or a woman would prefer to ride but for some purposes, such as privately transporting prisoners, a carriage was unimproveable.

  ***

  Julie Granville heard the hammering on the prison gate and went to look, along with a crowd of children. When Newton opened the postern a plump man was standing there, four square in fur-trimmed velvet and at his back at least eight hard-faced men at arms.

  He stood with his arms folded while Newton bowed and scraped and tried to argue in a wheedling tone of voice about his authority and his position and his properly paid-for office.

  One of the men at arms stepped forward and cuffed Newton. ‘Don’t delay Mr Vice Chancellor,’ he said. ‘This is in the name of the Queen.’

  Newton cringed and stepped back. The men at arms filed through with the Vice Chancellor in the middle.

  Julie picked up her skirts and ran across the courtyard, down the steps to Bolton’s Ward. The gaol servant now sitting there was an odious man she had had dealings with before who leered at her bodice and told her he didn’t want a penny for garnish, but a nice loving kiss. For a moment she couldn’t think what to do, whether she should let him or not, but her guts revolted at the thought. She could hear the sounds of the upper parts of the gaol being searched while the prisoners were harried into groups according to ward in the courtyard. Her children would be frightened without her, but one of her gossips would look after them, she knew. Meanwhile she didn’t have time to argue with a lecherous gaoler.

  She went up close to him, putting up her mouth as if yielding, and when he reached for her she kneed him as hard as she could in the balls. He made a pleasing oof noise and reeled against the wall, and she took the keys off his belt, opened the heavy door with it.

  Her eyes took a few minutes to adjust to the dimness, but she could see Robin Carey over near his brother, sitting cross-legged, talking quietly to him. He looked up as the door opened, saw her and came instantly to his feet.

  ‘What is it, mistress?’

  ‘The Vice Chancellor…Mr Heneage…he’s searching the gaol.’

  For a moment Robin looked astonished.

  ‘But he’s only had Dodd for a couple of hours…’ he said to himself in a voice of bewilderment. Then he stood absolutely still and she had no idea what he was thinking because his face had gone stiff like a mask.

  He looked at her considering. ‘Mistress,’ he said, quite conversationally. ‘Will you help me?’

  She hesitated. What would happen to her, to her children? Could she, dare she trust him? His family were important and rich, perhaps they might help her? Or perhaps they would simply use her and forget her. She didn’t know.

  She saw Edmund was raising his head again, looking at her. His eyes were less vividly blue than his brother’s, more of a sea-grey colour, but the memory of the kindness and laughter in them steadied her.

  Her heart was thumping hard. She came in, shut the door behind her and locked it with the key, then came across to him.

  ‘That won’t hold them very long, I’m afraid. Newton has the master keys,’ she said.

  ‘Do you have the key for his ankle chain?’

  ‘Probably.’

  They tried a couple, found the right one and unlocked it, revealing a wide bracelet of ulcers on the bony ankle. Robin bit his lip when he saw it, then raised his head and looked around. Some of the other beggars and sick men in the ward were looking up, a couple of them were moving anxiously as far away from the brothers as they could, being tethered.

  ‘Over there,’ Robin said, pointing at an alcove under one of the high semi-circular barred windows that were at ground level of the courtyard. ‘I’ll carry Edmund, you bring his bedding.’

  Edmund was trying to struggle upright, but his brother simply picked him up in his arms and straightened his knees.

  ‘Oh, shut up, Ned,’ Robin told him. ‘You don’t weigh anything like as much as several of the women I’ve carried into my bed.’

  Julie scooped up the straw pallet that had cost her sixpence, trying not to think about its likely population of lice and fleas, took the pillow and the blanket and followed as Robin carried his brother briskly over to the alcove, apologising politely as he stepped over prone bodies and cursing once when he nearly slipped on a turd. Julie put down the pallet and Robin laid Edmund gently down on it, arranged the blanket and pillow and then stood and leaned his arm on the pillar of the arch. There was a querulous tone in Edmund’s voice, though Julie couldn’t quite make out the words.

  ‘Ned, you’re a prize idiot. Heneage isn’t going to get you and nor are you going to hang for coining. I’m going to hang you myself for causing me so much trouble. Mistress Granville,’ Robin added gently to her. ‘I really think you ought to leave.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ she blurted out, cut to the quick that he would dismiss her like that.

  ‘Mistress, life might get a little tense in here for a while. Those other poor sods can’t escape but you can.’

  She sniffed at him, turned her shoulder and went resolutely, holding her breath when necessary, to unlock all the other ankle chains in the room. Some of the beggars were too far gone to move, but those that could instantly crawled or staggered out of the way to the stone benches at the side of room. Robin watched her without further comment. She came back and sat down on the stone floor next to Edmund, spread out her skirts and put her knife in her lap. Then she took Edmund’s hand in her own and stroked it.

  ‘You know he’s married, mistress,’ she heard Robin’s voice above her. He was looking down, not unkindly.

  ‘So am I, sir,’ she said.

  Whether Edmund’s brother would have been tactless enough to ask the question he must have been wondering about, she never found out. Somebody tried the door, found it locked, hammered a couple of times and then there was a sequence of shouts as others were sent scuttling off to find the gaoler and Mr Vice Chan
cellor.

  ‘Oh, bollocks,’ Robin said, mainly to himself, drawing his sword and stepping out a little to block the alcove’s opening with his body. She heard him muttering to himself and thought he might be praying, hoped fervently that the Lord God of Hosts would hear and perhaps send a few angels to help, then smiled at herself for being childish. It was odd she could do it. Her heart was thumping so hard and her hands had gone cold.

  The gaoler’s keys scraped and clattered in the lock, it was flung open and two men at arms came in, clubs in their hands. They stopped when they saw Robin standing there, waiting for them, sword bare.

  ‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’ he said, and Julie could hear that he was smiling.

  The Vice Chancellor pushed past and stood between his two henchmen, his little mouth pursed and pouched with anger.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, Carey?’ he demanded. ‘Your brother is guilty of forgery, which is a hanging offence, witchcraft which is a burning offence, and treason which is a…’

  ‘Hanging, drawing and quartering offence,’ drawled Robin. ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Are you going to hand him over to me in a sensible fashion or are you going to be stupid?’ demanded Heneage.

  ‘Oh, normally I’d instantly decide to be stupid,’ said Robin. ‘But first I want to know who you’re after.’

  ‘Your brother, Edmund Carey. He stole property which is mine and he…’

  ‘Edmund Carey? That’s not him. That’s Edward Morgan. Didn’t you check the book?’

  ‘I know your mother’s maiden name as well as you do, Carey, if that’s what she was and…’

  ‘You know, if you insult my mother I’ll simply have to kill you, which I could do, right now, if I wanted to. And then it would all be very inconvenient, I’d hang for it if I lived, which might upset my father, but you would be dead and facing God Almighty and all the poor souls you’ve destroyed with torture and ill-treatment. And then you would go to hell for the rest of eternity. So don’t you think you ought to try to be polite, hm?’