A Murder of Crows: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (27 page)

Enys smiled and flushed. “I never thought I could be able to fight.”

“But did ye no’ fight any battles wi’ yer friends when ye were breeched and got yer ain dagger?” Dodd asked with curiosity. He remembered with clarity the great day when he had been given his first pair of breeches made for him by his mother and his dad strapped his very own dagger round his waist. He must have been about six or seven and very relieved to get away from baby’s petticoats and being bullied into playing house all the time with his sisters’ friends. After that he spent most of his time play-fighting with his brothers, cousins, and friends when he wasn’t having to go to the Reverend for schooling. Within months he had lost a front tooth in a fistfight over football and got a birching from Reverend Gilpin and several thick ears from other outraged adults for damaging things by carving them with his dagger. He still liked to whittle when he could.

Enys looked down modestly. “I was a sickly child,” he said. “I don’t think I did.”

The ale tasted wonderful when you were so dry, Dodd finished his quart in one and called for more. He shook his head. “Well, if ye keep on wi’ it and hire yerself a good swordmaster, there’s nae reason ye couldna fight yer corner if need be.”

“It’s interesting,” said Enys after he’d found a bone in a large lump of herring from the pie. “The manner of thinking for a fight that you explained to me is very similar to that needed for a courtroom—being angry without losing your temper, so you can think. Only in the case of a courtroom, of course, the weapons are words.”

“Ay?” Dodd thought Carey had said something similar about legal battles. “Surely ye need to be verra patient as well.”

“That too,” Enys agreed, “and also well-organised and thorough. But there is very little to equal the joy of disputing with a fellow lawyer and beating him to win the point. I used to greatly enjoy mooting at Gray’s Inn.”

“Ah.” The second quart was going down a treat and all Dodd’s worries about what would happen that evening started to fade away. Not his fury with Carey, though. That still nested in his gut. He could find out what mooting was later. “A man I met the day said I should give ye his compliments—he had very much the look of ye and I thocht he was ye at first, but his voice is deeper, and he’s taller and broader as well.” Enys had stopped chewing and was staring at Dodd. “Could it be yer brother that ye thought Heneage had taken?”

Enys swallowed the piece of pie whole and nodded vigorously. “Yes sir, it could indeed. May I ask where you met him?”

“He denied his name was Enys, said it was Vent, James Vent.”

Enys smiled at that. “Even so. Where was he?”

“He were at Pickering’s game, playing cards and losing.”

Enys banged his tankard down. “Almost certainly it was my brother,” he said. “I never met a man who was worse at cards nor more addicted to playing.”

Dodd nodded. “Would ye like to meet him? Ah ken where Pickering’s game is at the moment and Vent said he’d welcome a meeting wi’ the man that wis insulting him by impersonating him to be a lawyer.”

To Dodd’s surprise Enys laughed. “That’s my brother. Yes, I would. Thank God he’s not dead. I had given him up and thought he was surely at the bottom of the Thames like poor Jackson whose corpse you showed me.”

“Ay.”

“How much had he lost and was he playing for notes of debt?”

“Nay, Pickering willnae allow it, he was playing for good coin and a lot of it.”

“Oh,” Enys frowned. “How unusual for my brother.”

He looked thoughtful and pushed away the remains of his pie so Dodd polished it off and washed it down with the rest of his ale. He checked the sky for the time.

“It’s too early for Pickering’s game to start. I wantae go back to Somerset House now to…ah…do something. I can meet ye at sunset by Temple steps and we’ll take a boat?”

Enys put down the money for his part of the bill and Dodd put down his. They went companionably enough out of the alehouse and headed across London. Enys went down one of the little alleys off Fleet Street to his chambers whilst Dodd ambled along Fleet Street to the Strand, thinking hard about the damnable book code that Carey must have broken the night before. It was the only thing that explained his actions today. And Dodd didn’t have much time to solve the thing either. He had to be out of Somerset House before the trouble started.

What had Marlowe said? A commonly printed book but not predictable, therefore not the Bible. Obviously to make a code from it, you had to have it to hand…Now what was the book that Richard Tregian had had on the shelf where Dodd found the paper? Something quite common, as Dodd recalled, but a little surprising. What the hell had it been? He couldn’t quite remember it.

Not realising he was scowling so fiercely that people were taking a wide path around him as he walked down through the crowds on Fleet Street, Dodd stopped and stared unseeingly at an inn sign for the Fox & Hounds, a few doors up from the Cock Tavern where he and Carey usually went out of habit. He’d looked at the book, recognised it, and dismissed it as uninteresting. Damn it to hell. It had been…

The inn sign was particularly badly painted, mainly out of over-ambition on the part of the sign painter, with the fox running as it were towards the sign and the hounds in the distance behind him, so it looked as if his head made the shape of a capital letter A upside down…

The backs of Dodd’s legs actually went cold as he realised what the answer was. He blinked up at the inn sign which may have inspired the original code and almost certainly had inspired Carey to guess what it was. He cursed under his breath. Next thing he had loped along Fleet Street, past Temple Bar, knocking the beggars flying, along the Strand, and in at the gate of Somerset House which was quiet that afternoon. He went up the stairs two at a time to Carey’s chambers and sat himself down sweating and puffing slightly at Carey’s desk where he pulled Foxe’s Book of Martyrs towards himself and set to the first coded letter.

It took him a long time and at the end of the hard labour he realised he actually had one and a half letters: one was from Fr. Jackson to somebody he addressed as “your honour” explaining that the trap was ready to be sprung as most of the lands were now held by the one called Icarus. The other was from Richard Tregian and also addressed to somebody he called “your honour” explaining that he had found out why certain lands were being sold for inflated prices as full of gold ore and good sites for gold mines. He was horrified and alarmed at it and was about to…The letter was unfinished.

Dodd leaned back and stretched his aching ink-splattered fingers. He stared into space for five minutes and then gathered up his translations and the original letters, folded them all and put them in his belt-pouch along with Carey’s infuriating message. Hearing the cacophony of hounds and horses returning to the courtyard by the main gate, he stood up quickly and ran down the passageway to his own chamber where he collected his cloak and his new beaver hat that Carey had bought him a week before as a celebration of Carey’s deliverance from his creditors.

He clattered down the back stairs and into the kitchen where he quietly grabbed half a loaf of bread and a large lump of cheese, then put them back because he had nowhere to stowe them since he wasn’t on a horse and wasn’t wearing a loose comfy doublet..

In the rear courtyard that led to the kitchen garden, the cobbles were covered in hunting dogs, very happy to be home and already gathering around their dog boy, tails wagging, tongues hanging, waiting to be fed.

“Sergeant Dodd, have you heard…” sang out the dog boy excitedly, but Dodd just waved a hand at him, slipped through the gate into the main garden, and headed down for the orchard and the boatlanding.

All the way there he was quietly praying there would be a boat waiting for him. There wasn’t, of course. Still, Temple steps wasn’t very far away, so Dodd climbed from the boat landing to the narrow strip of land between the orchard wall and the Strand itself, then eased himself along until he came to a fence which he climbed over, followed along until he came to the other fence, climbed over that, and continued through a narrow alley that led to a secret set of steps hidden by a curve in the river. That wasn’t the one so he struggled along the top of a sea wall and then to another alley that passed through a shanty town full of hungry looking children in nothing but their shirts and dogs scuffing hopefully through the mud.

Finally he was at Temple steps, his ears itching in anticipation of the hue and cry that would be made for him once Lord and Lady Hunsdon realised who was missing. Enys was standing there, wrapped in cloak and hat, his expression a strange combination of hope and fear.

“Ay,” said Dodd, not explaining why he was arriving by climbing out of a tiny handkerchief of herb garden, guarded by a ginger tomcat.

Enys raised his arm and yelled “Oars!” A Thames boat arrived quickly, the boatman looking very hopeful—ah yes, of course, the taste of students at the Inns for the fleshpots and dissipations of the South bank.

“Three Cranes in the Vintry,” Dodd ordered, practically vaulting aboard. As usual Enys dithered over stepping in and nearly fell in the Thames again before he sat down.

“Are you sure, sir?” said the boatman. “I heard there’s a good game at Paris Garden tonight…”

“Ye heard what Ah said,” snarled Dodd. The boatman shrugged and started rowing the hard way.

They came up against the wharf which was quiet and Dodd paid the man and jumped out. Jesu he was getting as high-handed with his cash as Carey was—mind, it wasn’t his cash, it was Carey’s. That gave him a warm cosy feeling in the place where the rage was still packed tight.

As before there were a few well-dressed exquisites and one or two prosperous merchants hanging around not doing very much, including the boy in the tangerine paned hose and cramoisie doublet, a walking headache everywhere he went.

Mr. Briscoe was on the door as before, looking haggard with bags under his eyes. He touched his hat sadly to Dodd before stepping forward to stop Enys.

“Do I know you, sir?” he asked very politely.

“Ah, Sir Robert asked me tae bring him to meet Mr. Pickering.” Dodd tried. Briscoe hesitated “It’s Mr. Enys, my lord Baron Hunsdon’s lawyer. He wis at the inquest, ye recall?”

Briscoe allowed them past and they climbed the steps to the gambling chamber with its banks of candles and white mats. Enys seemed quite open-mouthed at the women standing about there, with their strangely cut stays that cupped their white breasts but left them bare so the nipples were visible peeking over the lacy edge of their shifts like naughty eyes, prinking and pinking in the draught from the door.

Dodd dragged his eyes away and swallowed hard. It seemed his kidneys were recovering. Then he stopped one of the comely boys running past with trays of booze, and asked if Mr. Vent was there.

“No sir,” said the boy. “Shall I tell Mr. Pickering you’re here? He has some information for you.”

“Ay.”

Dodd took two cups from the tray as the boy turned to go and gave one to Enys who was bright red again. Dodd knew how he felt. All those round plump tits just begging to be cupped and fondled and licked…

He took a large gulp of brandywine and tried to look at something less entrancing. But the walls were hung with the cloths painted with completely naked people doing lewd things with swans and bulls and such. It was impossible to concentrate, which no doubt was half the intention.

“Mr. Pickering will see you gents now,” said the boy at his elbow, so he tapped Enys on the shoulder and followed the boy into the back room where Pickering sat by the fire with a large plump man in a dark brocade doublet and snowy white starched falling band.

Pickering smiled as they came in and Dodd made his bow to include both of them, reckoning that a bit of respect to a headman on his own ground never did any harm and might do some good. Enys sensibly bowed too, rather more gracefully.

“Welcome back, Sergeant Dodd,” said Pickering. “Sir Horatio was ‘oping to meet Sir Robert. Is ‘e here?”

“Ah. No,” said Dodd, hoping he wouldn’t have to explain further.

“Is ‘e on ‘is way?”

“Ah. No,” said Dodd.

Pickering frowned and so did Sir Horatio. “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope I haven’t offended him in…”

“Nay sir, nothing like that. He…ah…he found he had urgent business at court.”

The plump man stood up and turned out to be as tall as Carey. He held out a hand to Dodd who shook it.

“Sergeant,” he said in a smooth, deep, slightly foreign sounding voice, “I was hoping to discuss the question of the Cornish lands with your Captain, Sir Robert. I am Sir Horatio Palavicino, Her most gracious Majesty’s advisor on matters financial and fiduciary.”

Dodd wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

“’e’s the Queen’s banker, Sergeant,” said Pickering, spotting Dodd’s confusion. “He sorts out the Queen’s money.”

Dodd’s mouth went dry. “Ah,” he said. Oh God, had the Queen bought some of the worthless Cornish lands? Was it too late to steal a horse and head north?

Yes it was. Much too late.

“Sit down, Sergeant, and you, Mr. Enys.”

They sat on stools noticeably lower than the chairs seating Pickering and Sir Horatio. Sir Horatio smiled genially.

“I assume that Sir Robert has gone to Court to apprise the Queen of what he knows?”Dodd was relieved to be asked something he could answer with confidence.