A Murder of Crows: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (20 page)

Letty shook her curls again with great good humour. “Oh no, I’m only a silly maid so He wouldn’t be interested. Our Lady is much kinder.”

Carey blinked and then seemed to give up his attempt at theology. “And what can you tell me about Fr. Jackson?”

That opened another kind of floodgate entirely. Fr. Jackson was, apparently, the most perfect specimen of manhood alive on this sorry world of sinners. He was not only handsome and well-built, he was very very clever and could tell gold-bearing rock from the other kind with his strange waters and his touchstone, and he knew how to build things as well which he had learned in Germany. And then he became a priest for he heard God calling him, which was something that happened to men who were going to be priests, and all he wanted was to be a good priest to the people in Cornwall.

Carey sighed again which Letty didn’t notice. Fr. Jackson came to Cornwall as a priest from the Jesuit seminary in Rheims, but he wasn’t evil or a traitor. He travelled around helping people and advising them how to pay their recusancy fines and which bits of land to sell because of course nobody wants to sell land and usually the land he sold for them was poor or fit only for pasture and…

“Fr. Jackson would sell land for people?”

“Not exactly,” said Letty, “It was only because he was clever and knew some people in London. My father did as well, I think. So when somebody had a terrible lot of fines to pay—because they changed the magistrates a year ago and now they’re much more strict—he would write to his friends and sometimes someone would buy the land in exchange for the fines so there wouldn’t be any more fines or bailiffs or court cases but the person in London owned the land, you see?”

“Hm. Yes, I do. What else did Fr. Jackson do?”

“He said Mass of course, like priests do, you know and he would hear your confession…” Letty went very pink at that and Dodd wondered why. “…and he was very kind though I once had to say a whole rosary a day for a week which was a bit much…. And he would catechise and baptise and marry and all that. He was very busy.”

Carey nodded. Letty smiled. “I know he’s a priest and everything and I know a priest is dedicated to God and can never marry like the heretic priests do…Sorry, the Church of England priests do, so…well…I…but I was thinking I might go beyond the seas to be a nun which would be…um…almost as good.”

Carey raised his brows. “Oh, I wouldn’t advise that,” he said. “Did you know nuns have to cut all their hair off and never talk to anybody again except other nuns?”

Letty stared. “Cut all their hair off?”

“Yes. Very short. I used to see nuns when I was in France and they had everything except their faces covered up but a…a friend of mine told me they have to keep their hair very short or even shave it all off.”

There was a silence. “Oh. But I’m sure they’re quite beautiful.”

“I didn’t see a beautiful nun all the time I was there. They all looked cross and disagreeable,” said Carey blandly.

Another silence. “Well,” said Letty.

“I’m sure my mother will help you find a good husband when you’re old enough,” said Carey kindly, “if you ask her.”

Letty brightened at that, then her face fell again. “I suppose…” she said sadly…“I was hoping to see Fr. Jackson again. They did say the priest might hear confessions after Mass and I was going to tell him what happened to my father—in private when I made my confession, you know—and ask his advice. But the priest wasn’t him at all and then Sergeant Dodd shouted and…Do you think we’ll see Fr. Jackson?”

“Oh I doubt it,” said Carey easily. “I don’t think he’s even in London any more. Not if he has any sense.”

The blue glare warned Dodd but Dodd was in no hurry to cause another waterfall. In fact he was spending a good half of his attention on not taking another pipe of tobacco. What was wrong with him now? It wasn’t as if he was hungry, he had had a pork pie with a few winter sallet roots and some pickled onions and bread and was quite full. Yet, there it was. He wanted a pipe.

He growled and pulled it out, cleaned the bowl, filled it and lit it and sighed with satisfaction. He would have to try and buy some before they left, that was all there was to it. He wondered if it was possible to grow the herb in Gilsland and if he would be able to persuade Janet to do it if he could get the seeds.

“What now?” he asked as Carey stared into the distance while Letty engulfed her pie. “Are we going to take Letty back to Somerset House?”

“Letty, didn’t my mother send someone with you?” Carey asked after a moment.

Letty went pink. “Yes, she did, it was Will but I…er…I lost him.”

Carey’s eyebrows went up.

Letty’s shoulders hunched and dropped. “I didn’t want him following me around with his calf eyes trying to be witty and everything and besides…er…I wanted to go to my father’s Mass by myself and he would have told my lady and…umm…” Her face squinched in the middle. “Oh, Sir Robert, do you think your lady mother will beat me?”

Carey spread his hands. “Ahhh…possibly, she’s never hesitated to box my ears any time she thought I needed it. But she soon forgets all about it. So where did you dump poor old Shakespeare?”

“I left him in Paul’s Churchyard and just speeded up when he started reading something off a stall because once he does that he has no idea what’s going on around him and he once had his purse taken out of his cod-piece without even noticing.”

“Perfect,” said Carey, smiling at the picture this made. He piled money on the table in an amount Dodd was beginning to get used to. “Come on, if we get back there quickly enough he may not notice you ever left.”

Letty immediately brightened and she swallowed the rest of her meal in two large gulps, brushed crumbs off her chin and small ruff.

“That’s a wonderful idea, sir…”

“I’ll still have to tell my mother, mind you, but at least you won’t be embarassed in front of Bald Will.”

They hurried through the crowds with Carey offering Letty his arm so she wouldn’t fall off her pattens on the muddiest parts—though London was less muddy than Dodd expected, considering the horses clattering through and the pigs, goats, and chickens wandering around the place. However, crowds of urchins fought each other to shovel up the dungpiles on street corners and several little stalls offered it for sale to those who had gardens. The king’s share was picked up early in the morning by the nightsoil men and taken out to Essex. Dodd had learned to sleep through their shouts, their clattering and banging every morning. In London everything had a price. Water was more expensive than beer, for instance, if you had it from one of the men with barrels on their backs, and it tasted far worse.

Paul’s Walk was thronged as usual and the churchyard filled with people reading books in a hurry next to the various stationers’ stalls. Shakespeare was deep in discussion with the printer who had served Lady Hunsdon when they found him and blinked at Letty in bemusement. He had clearly forgotten all about her.

Carey dusted off his hands as she departed, chatting happily about watching the young courtiers in St Paul’s and how there was one in tawny velvet and lime green satin who seemed to be having a contest with another one in cramoisie and tangerine as to who could cause the worst headache. Carey had pointed them out as they passed through the huge old cathedral.

“Now where?” moaned Dodd, as Carey immediately headed purposefully for Ludgate.

“I want to know precisely what lands in Cornwall were sold and who bought ’em. Particularly who bought them. I’m beginning to wonder if it matters which lands.”

“Eh?” said Dodd.

Carey shook his head. “Lands in exchange for recusancy fines. That’s quite an old system for getting rich. Anthony Munday’s been at it as hard as he can for years. But what was it about them that brought those two up to London and then both of them wind up dead—one as a substitute for the other as well.”

“What system? I dinna ken nowt about land buying and selling.”

Carey had the grace to look a little ashamed. “Well…if a Catholic landowner continues to be foolish and obstinate and go to Mass, he gets fined for it. After a while, if he doesn’t pay the fines, he could be arrested on a warrant for debt. Now if someone…er…with influence could buy the warrant, he could then exchange it…ahem…for the deeds to some of the man’s land and it would…er…be perfectly legal.”

From the way Carey was avoiding Dodd’s eye, he assumed Carey had either dabbled in this system or his father had. More likely his father; Dodd didn’t see Carey having the sense or the ready funds.

“Ay,” he said, “it’s like when the Grahams first came south to the Border Country.”

“Is it?”

“Ay, in King Henry’s time. The brothers—that’d be Richie of Brackenhill’s grandad, Richie and his great-uncles, Jock and Hutchin Graham. They decided they liked the look o’ the place and they had some men with them. So they took the land for theirselves and kicked the Storeys off it and naebody did nothing about it for the King of Scotland had just hanged Johnny Johnstone.”

“It’s not like that at all.”

“Ay, it is, but wi’ warrants not torches and fists and swords,” said Dodd firmly.

“You’re not seriously suggesting that Papists should be allowed to simply…be Papists.”

Dodd shrugged. “I dinna care one way or the other,” he said, “so they dinna bring in the King o’ Spain—now that’s not right. Nor try to harm the Queen. That’s terrible treason, and who wants to end up like the Scots, forever killing their kings?”

“Quite.”

“Still, when ye take a man’s land wi’oot paying him fairly for it, I dinna see the difference whether ye come in wi’ your kith and kin and boot him off to lie in a ditch and greet, or do it all nice and tidy wi’ bits o’ paper.”

Unusually, Carey said nothing.

They came to the Temple and climbed up the stairs to the top of the rickety building where James Enys had his chambers.

Carey knocked on the new door. “Hello? Anyone there?” he called.

There was a pause and Mrs. Morgan’s face looked out. Just for a moment in the semi-darkness at the top of the staircase, Dodd thought it was Enys himself, so close was the resemblance, but the polite matron’s white linen cap and small ruff disabused him.

Her brother was not there and had gone out. No, she did not know where. No, she didn’t know why. She had spent all day clearing the mess left by the pursuivants and had had to buy a new door which she could ill-afford, even if her brother was about to be paid by Lord Hunsdon.

“It’s your other brother’s papers I came for?” said Carey. “The one who disappeared?”

There was a long pause. Then, “Yes?”

“The lands he was selling in Cornwall. Does Mr. Enys still have any papers connected to that?”

“I don’t know, sir, you must ask him when he returns.”

She shut the door on them. Carey stood there a while with his head cocked as if listening and Dodd thought he could hear a stealthy sniffle.

Finally Carey banged his hand on the wall with frustration and led the way back down the stairs and into the courtyard where two lawyers in their black robes stood conferring together. Carey went straight up to them with a shallow bow. “Your pardon, sirs, do you know a man called James Enys?”

One looked at the other and smiled. “Oh yes,” he said, “a fine lawyer when he pleases, but I think Mr. Heneage doesn’t like him.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

The other shrugged. “In his chambers…There he is coming out of the door.”

Carey spun on his heel to see Enys coming towards them looking tired and anxious.

“Can I help you sirs?” he asked, nodding to his brother lawyers who tactfully moved away, one of them suppressing a laugh.

“I need to see the documents about the land sales in Cornwall, Mr. Enys,” said Carey, his eyes narrowed. “I think they were not taken by the pursuivants though I’m sure that’s what they were after. I think you have them somewhere safe.”

Enys swallowed convulsively and seemed to be thinking. “Very well, Sir Robert,” he said. “I have them in a safe place and I can fetch them for you, but you cannot go into it. Can you not ask me what you want to know about them?”

Carey hooked his thumbs in his swordbelt. “I want to know who bought them, Mr. Enys.”

Enys paused. “Ah,” he said. “Worshipful gentlemen at the Queen’s Court…”

“No sir, I want the names.”

“Of the sellers?”

“No, of the buyers. Was my father among them?”

Enys looked at the ground. “Er…no.”

“The sales were secret, yes? But at high prices?”

“Yes.”

“Who bought them?”

“I…I cannot say, sir.”

“Cannot? Will not?”

“Dare not, sir. They were mainly proxies for a very…noble gentleman who would be…offended if his name were linked with the matter.”

“Hm. Burghley?”

“I really cannot say, sir.”

Carey showed his teeth in a grimace of frustration. “If you should change your mind, Mr. Enys,” he said evenly, “please let me know.”

They both turned to go but Enys called after them, “Sergeant Dodd.”

Dodd turned. “Ay?”

“Would you like me to continue the civil suit?”