A Murder of Crows: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (13 page)

“Talk?” said the large man in a jack who seemed to be the leader. “Wo’ abaht?” His voice was as full of glottal stops as Barnabus’ had been, very hard to understand.

“Oh nothing much,” said Carey, doing a couple of showy juggling tricks with his dagger and sword, swapping them over and then back again. “Just talk. What a pleasant night it’s been. How you gentlemen must be tired of waiting for us. Who’s paying you. That sort of thing.”

“Nuffink to talk about.”

Dodd saw what Carey was doing. He was deliberately drawing attention to himself, aiming to draw the attackers out so they’d show themselves. Presumably it would then be up to Dodd to kill them…Except what was that the Courtier had said about avoiding a trial for murder in London?

There was a scrape behind Dodd, he spun, saw a large moon-face looming near him with a veney stick raised over his head, and slashed sideways with his sword. He heard a yelp and smelled blood as the man reeled backwards, clutching a spurting arm. Dodd heard a cry behind him and saw Enys clumsily trying to block with his sword against a man battering down on him with a club.

Another club? No blades? Ay, the Courtier’s right, Dodd thought in a sudden slow moment of icy clarity, this is to get us all arrested for murder.

Furious at the man who had hired roaring boys and set them deliberately against fighters who could kill them, Dodd ran up behind the man who was so intent on Enys, his prey, that he had no defence against Dodd’s powerful boot in the arse which sent him sprawling.

Enys had dropped his sword and had his hands over his face as he crouched in a corner, moaning. Jesus, thought Dodd as he went past the ninny, what a pathetic sight. What’s wrong with him?

Dodd grabbed the club-wielder who was just trying to climb to his feet, picked him up bodily and crashed him backwards over a stone conduit filled with slimy horse-slobbered water. Dodd shoved the man’s head deep into the water and held him there while he clawed at Dodd’s arm. Meantime Dodd looked around cannily for more attackers. Something complicated was going on down Fleet Street, involving Carey and the big man-at-arms, but the other two men, if they existed, were still waiting their moment, or possibly had run.

Dodd let the man with the club crow in some air, and then had him blowing bubbles again.

“Wh…what are you doing?” came a slurred voice behind him. Dodd glanced over his shoulder and saw the soft southerner staggering over, trailing his sword in his left hand and twisting his right as if it pained him. Perhaps he’d sprained it somehow. He was panting and wild-eyed.

“Ah’m drowning this pig’s turd,” Dodd explained casually, letting the man up for a second so he could hear.

Enys watched the renewed bubbles and then jumped at a further clang and ting down Fleet Street followed by Carey’s customary bellow of “T’il y est haut!”

“What about Sir Robert? Won’t you help him?” trembled the soft lawyer.

Dodd leaned an ear expertly in the direction of the clanging.

“Neither o’ them are trying to kill each other,” he said. “And yon Courtier nearly held Andy Nixon to a draw for three minutes in the summer, he’ll be well enough while I make sure of this loon. Will ye fetch his dagger?”

The loon’s hands were flailing more feebly now, so Dodd let the man up to breathe while Enys gingerly fished the dagger from its sheath. What was it doing still there, Dodd wanted to know.

“Now then,” Dodd said to the man, who was coughing and spluttering fit to bust his lungs, “who was it set ye on tae
me
wi’ nobbut a stick and a knife, eh?”

“Heeh…heh…”

Dodd said it again patiently, only more southern. He hoped.

“Hur…ha…he said you was only a farmer, and not a gentleman.”

“Ay,” said Dodd, “I am certainly no’ a gentleman and I am a farmer, did he tell ye where I farm?”

The man shook his head, spattering slime everywhere. Dodd told him.

“I have boys that scare crows for me that are better fighters than ye, ye soft southern git, so who was it that tried to get ye killed? Eh?”

The man gasped for breath then said the name. Dodd sighed and dunked him again until the flailing had stopped, then hefted him out and laid him on his side on the filthy cobbles to puke and cough his way back to consciousness. On a thought, he picked up a nice piece of brick from a nearby pile of rubble. He realised with irritation that his sleeves were wet to the elbow and hoped they wouldn’t shrink too much.

Then he sauntered over to where Carey was seemingly playing a veney with the large man who had been first to show himself. The man was now backing up carefully, probably trying for one of the many alleys off Fleet Street that led into the liberties without actually turning his back on Carey. The Courtier was quite breathless by now but clearly enjoying himself, fencing like a sword instructor and never trying to come to close quarters with the lethal twenty inch long poinard in his left hand.

“If ye can leave off playin’ yer veney wi’ yon catamite,” called Dodd as southern as he could, “we might catch Marlowe afore he runs for it.”

Carey missed a beat and nearly lost the tip of his nose before coming back to the attack with more purpose. “Oh for God’s sake,” he groaned in disgust.

“Ay,” said Dodd, narrowed his eyes and threw the brick hard at the man-at-arms’ chest. It caught him in the rib cage, giving Carey the chance to beat past the man’s blade and smash him in the face left-handed with the pommel of his poinard. The man went down like a sack of flour.

Carey pounced on him at once, bashed him a couple more times with the dagger hilt, then straightened and caught his breath for a moment. He started dragging the large man over to his mate who was still heaving and coughing by the conduit. Dodd glanced at Enys who was staring at the swordsman as the blood came gouting out of his nose and down his face from the nasty cut on his forehead caused by one of the jewels in Carey’s poinard hilt. So that’s what they were for, eh? That made sense of why anyone would want a pretty dagger hilt.

Dodd sheathed his sword which was still clean and gave the puffing Carey a hand to carry the man to his mate and lay him down in a suggestive position behind Dodd’s victim. Carey grinned and pulled off both men’s belts, then tied them tightly together with the swordsman’s wrists in front of Dodd’s man and that man’s hands belted behind him as far around the bulk of the swordsman as his arms would go. The swordsman started to struggle and mutter so Carey bashed him a couple more times, while Dodd tied their feet in a tangle.

It was a cosy sight and would give the Fleet Street wives a good laugh when they came to fetch water at the conduit in the morning.

“Ay,” said Dodd, deeply satisfied at justice done. He unbuttoned his sleeve cuffs because they felt tight.

Enys still seemed upset for some reason and was saying nothing. Dodd took his sword from his unresisting left hand and put it back in his scabbard, then examined the man’s wrist which was unusually thin and seemed mildly sprained.

“Caught a blow awkwardly, did ye?” he asked with not much sympathy. Enys nodded. It was hard to tell colour in the flickering light from the Gatehouse Inn torch and the one on the linen shop, but it looked as if Enys had gone beetroot-cheeked and so he should.

“Sergeant, I apologise, I’m…well…I’m no good as a swordsman. I only wear one because the Inn regulations say I have to.”

“Ay.” Dodd nodded with dignity at this apology, “When yer wrist is well, would ye like me to teach ye a few moves?”

Enys blinked rapidly. “Ah…yes…if you don’t mind.”

“Ah dinna care one way or the other, I just dinnae want the trouble of finding a new lawyer to take my case. Why did ye no’ kick him in the cods, he was open for it?

Enys smiled shakily. “I didn’t think of it.”

Dodd sucked his teeth. “Ye’ve never fought before?”

“My brother.”

Dodd nodded sourly. “Ay but he wasnae trying to kill ye. Generally.”

“Come on, gentlemen!” called Carey from up the street where he was heading briskly towards the Blackfriars again. “He’s an arrogant bugger is Marlowe, there’s a chance he might still be there.”

Dodd speeded to a sprint to catch up with Carey, followed slowly by Enys who seemed to run in a lumbering fashion that boded ill for his sword-fighting. He seemed remarkably tired by the short sprint of a few hundred yards as well. He walked behind them, hunched, breathing hard, and pressing at his ribcage.

“You should consider going to your home, Mr. Enys?” Carey said to him, “This might get nasty.”

Enys shook his head. “I’m afraid I shall be…no use to you gentlemen…at all,” he panted, “but I would prefer to stay with you, if I may.”

Carey raised his brows at Dodd for his opinion and Dodd shrugged.

“If it a’ goes wrong, we wilnae protect ye,” he warned Enys. Looking at Carey he thought it was quite likely to go wrong. Carey’s lips were compressed in a thin line and the light of battle gleamed in his eye.

“D’ye think he’ll be there?” Dodd asked.

“Oh yes. He’ll want to know what happened. His calculation will be either…”

“We got a beating and think better of it, or we kill someone and wind up in gaol wi’ yer friend Hughes measuring a rope for us,” said Dodd.

“Or, in my case, sharpening an axe, of course,” pointed out Carey the aristocrat. “I am more sick than I can say of Marlowe’s stupid plotting…bloody idiot. What does he think he’s playing at?”

“Trying hard to get back in Heneage’s good opinion.”

“A week ago he convinced me that he wanted to switch to my lord of Essex’s affinity.”

“Ay, but that was a week ago. He’s changed his mind, nae doubt.”

“Though I did have his head buried in a pile of the Queen’s old bumrolls at the time so he may not have been telling me the whole truth.”

Dodd hid a smile at the picture this presented. “Did ye now?” he said still glum, “Why did ye not slit his throat then and save us all trouble?”

“Didn’t want to get her Majesty’s linen all dirty,” said Carey very prim. “Also, despite his faults, Marlowe’s a remarkably fine poet and it would be a pity…”

Dodd shook his head at such an irrelevance.

Wednesday 13th September 1592, night

Carey paused as he turned towards the Mermaid Inn, checking round the corner. “God, I wish Barnabus was here,” he said, “this is the perfect job for him.”

Dodd said nothing, never having much liked Carey’s thieving manservant. Before they came to the Mermaid, Carey ducked into an alley that wound its way between the old walls of the monastery and the new shacks of incomers, to the sturdy wall at the back of the inn’s yard. An unmistakeable reek of malt came from it. Carey looked thoughtful then climbed up on a shed roof and thence to a wall. Dodd boosted Enys onto the shed, then climbed up himself. Carey was peering down into the courtyard which was empty apart from a couple of goats tethered near a wall.

“Stay here,” he whispered, and climbed quietly down from the wall, using a hen house as a step.

There were sounds of activity in the common room and the noise of somebody playing a lute much less expertly than he thought he could.

“Mr. Enys,” breathed Dodd in his ear, “can ye understand me?” Enys nodded. “If it a’ goes wrong I want ye to leg it for Somerset House fast as ye can. Dinna fight, dinna stop to wait for us, get to Somerset House and roust out my lord Hunsdon’s kin. D’ye follow?”

Enys took a breath, possibly to argue, then nodded firmly. “How will I know?” he whispered. Dodd thought.

“Ye’ll know if ye hear fighting or me yowling like a cat as a signal.”

In Tynedale they gave a yell but Dodd didn’t want to give too much away. Meanwhile Carey had crossed the yard without waking the chickens or the goats and got to the horn-paned window of the scullery. He knocked on it. Out came the sleepy-eyed potboy with wet hands red raw from lye. After quiet conversation and the transfer of a coin in the normal direction—away from Carey—the boy ducked back inside and a few minutes later, the innkeeper came out. He was carrying an empty barrel. Another quiet conversation and another transfer of coin.

Meanwhile Dodd had been thinking and none of what he thought pleased him at all. Even he was wishing for Barnabus now who would have been the ideal man for what he needed done.

The innkeeper went back inside, Carey crossed the yard again and used the henhouse to climb back up onto the wall. This time the hens inside clucked anxiously.

“The innkeeper tells me Marlowe is on his own and I’ve bribed him to get Marlowe out into the yard and…”

“Nay sir,” said Dodd, coming to a decision. “I dinna think so.”

“I beg your pardon, Sergeant?” Carey’s voice was cold. He always hated being contradicted. No help for it, Dodd was not about to stand by and watch Carey run headfirst into an ambush again.

“Sir, did ye never run a raid on someone wi’ but a few men and have the rest lying out in a valley to ambush them when they rode in on the hot trod?” It was so obvious, it was painful.

“This isn’t the Borders, Sergeant,” sniffed Carey, “and I’ve seen that…”

“Sir, ye’ve seen nothing, ye’ve been told.” With decision, Dodd moved to the end of the wall and climbed quietly down into the alley again, helping Enys down as he went. “It’s a’ too bloody convenient,” he muttered to himself.