A Murder of Crows: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (34 page)

Gabriel was kneeling beside the lock with a hooked piece of wire in his fist and a grin on his face. Pickering opened the door, Dodd shouldered past him and spitted the man waiting with a raised sword.

Outside the harlots were helping to ring the firebell and shout fire. The next-door-neighbours were already forming a bucket chain from the Thames. Nobody had time to worry about the pitched battle around the house as the Cornish broke through the barred gate and into the garden.

Dodd knew he was in a dangerous state. The smell of the fire seemed to unroll the black rage in his belly and turn it into something like pleasure. He walked swiftly into the hall of the house which was already starting to fill with smoke, saw somebody start up from their sleep next to the fire, and hit him with his veney stick. It seemed a waste not to kill him, but Dodd was trying to do things the way Lady Hunsdon wanted them. There was somebody on the stairs so Dodd held his breath, burrowed through the smoke, grabbed him by the doublet front and threw him downstairs where Gabriel or Pickering coshed him.

There was a knot of them at the top of the stairs, two or three men, getting in each others’ way as Briscoe fought his way up. Dodd pulled a painted cloth off the wall, threw it over their heads, and then beat everything round he could see with his cosh before throwing them down the stairs one after another. Gabriel laughed behind him as he stepped over one of the bodies.

Breathing as little as he could in the acrid smoke, Dodd slammed through several doors. Somebody shot a pistol at him again and by sheer luck the ball went into the wall not a foot from his face. Dodd’s mouth drew down as he kicked through the door where the man with the pistol lodged, dodged the downswing of the ball of iron on the pistol’s stock, knocked the arm aside, grabbed the front of the man’s doublet, and headbutted him right on the nose. The man dropped his pistol and fell back clutching his flattened nose and mewing so Dodd kicked his legs out from under him and stamped on his hand. Behind him was Portia Morgan with her hands tied to a bedpost, her doublet off and her trunk hose half pulled down. What he could see of her arse was as marred with pockmarks as the rest of her, though nicely shaped.

Dodd looked at her face with the bloody nose and the black eye and the split lip and something told him what to say as he sawed through the rope around her hands.

“Ay, Mr. Enys, can ye fight?”

She paused, gulped, nodded. “Where’s my sword?” She was making her voice deliberately deep. She was hitching her braces back over her shoulders, rebuckling her belt, coughing hard in the smoke. With shaking hands she caught up her doublet from the floor and slung it on, doing up the buttons quickly. Now he knew what to look for of course it was obvious; her hands may have been pock-marked but they were smaller than a man’s and very deft.

“Take this,” said Dodd, giving her his veney stick. “Where’s Mrs. Briscoe?”

“She’s in the cellar. Can’t you hear her?”

Another earsplitting scream sliced through the building. Enys bent down to the man Dodd had flattened, who was trying to get up again. She pulled his eating knife from his belt and went to stab him in the chest with it.

“Better slit his throat,” Dodd said, “It’s easier.”

Enys snarled, caught the man’s hair in her fist and pulled his head back.

“Mind the blood,” Dodd said to her, deliberately turning away. He felt she had the right. He still heard the soft sound of blade on flesh and the suck of air into a slit windpipe. Then he heard her being sick. The smell of the fire was gaining on him, the rage in him and the smell of blood: he wasn’t angry exactly for there was none of the red mist of it, but he was far out the other side of the particular black rage that took him in situations like this and made him cold and ruthless and evil. He knew he was evil, but it couldn’t be helped.

“Sar’nt,” growled Briscoe from the door, “they’re hooking the thatch off.”

Outside the street was full of purposeful activity as men with long hooks pulled down the burning thatch and poured Thames water over it. In the courtyard at the front the pig was squalling so loudly and the dog was barking himself hoarse, you couldn’t hear what was going on in the cellar—except there was something loud still happening there too.

“Mr. Pickering wants you downstairs, Sar’nt,” said Gabriel.

Dodd was panting for air as not enough of it came through the holes in the roof, and he hadn’t the breath to argue, so he turned, clattered down the stairs, followed by a still retching and swallowing Portia Morgan, through the hall and another door. Somebody erupted from a closet door behind him and found Enys in the way. She managed somehow to back-hand the man in the face with her stick. There was an audible crack as his jaw broke. He fell back as she kicked him hard in the knee and when he went down she grabbed his dagger from his belt and went to cut his throat as well. Dodd grabbed her arm and stopped her with regret.

“Mr. Enys,” he shouted, “Milady wants us no’ to kill tae many o’ them.”

She blinked, shook her head and—typical woman—said, “Why?”

Dodd didn’t have breath nor time to tell her. He just shrugged, broke the man’s knee properly with the hilt of his sword so he couldn’t make trouble after, and carried on down into the cellars which stank badly of blood and shit. Pickering was standing in the middle of the place looking horrified, the heavy iron bound door had been smashed in and when Dodd braced himself to look through into the straw-scattered little cell, he understood why.

A sigh puffed out of him. There was young Mrs. Briscoe on her hands and knees in the straw squawking and howling. Portia Morgan blinked, took a long shaky breath, blinked again. Then she dropped her veney stick, went over, bent and stroked the girl’s shoulder. “It’s all right, it’s coming.”

Another horrendous shriek came from the girl as her belly moved. Enys saw Dodd standing staring, stood up, and came to him.

“Sergeant, can you get me two stools or blocks of wood this high, a big bowl of hot water or some aqua vitae, linen strips and a clean knife.” The girl was howling again, calling for her mum.

“Now hush,” said Portia Morgan. “You’re not going to die, it’s only a baby. Sergeant!”

She was lifting the girl’s petticoats to look and Dodd turned quickly and ran up the stairs. Pickering came with him.

“God’s truth,” he said as Dodd stripped off one of the stunned men’s doublet and hauled his shirt off over his head, then moved to the corner where there was a wood-basket and a promising looking small barrel. Dodd tapped some into a mug, tried it. The aqua vitae was cheap but drinkable, so he drank that to steady him, poured another one and gave it to Pickering to sustain him, and then put the barrel under one arm, picked up the woodbasket after slinging the man’s eating knife into it along with his shirt, and carried the lot down the cellar steps to where Portia Morgan had her hand under the girl’s petticoats and a look of concentration on her face.

“If you could find a real midwife, Sergeant,” she said, “that would help, I’m having to try and remember what the woman did for…er…my sister.”

“Ah’ve helped ewes at lambing and dogs wi’ whelping,” Dodd offered. “It’s no’ sae different.”

At that point the girl squealed angrily again and started to cry. Portia Morgan turned again and looked under the blood-splattered petticoats. “It’s coming, I can see it,” she cried, and dug into the wood basket to pull out two large blocks of wood which she set on the floor. “Come on, Ellie, sit on these.”

Dodd lent a hand to heave the girl off her hands and knees and sit her down with her legs spread, a buttock to each block, while Portia shoved the petticoats back and the girl grabbed her head and howled. Something black and bloody was showing between her legs. Suddenly he decided this was a lot more frightening than a lambing and ran up the stairs.

“It’s coming,” he said in explanation to Pickering who was sitting on the master’s seat in the kitchen with his feet on the table, drinking from another barrel he seemed to have found. Dodd helped himself. “We canna move her until her wean’s born now.”

“I could see that, Sar’nt,” said Pickering. There was a thundering about upstairs and the firebell had stopped ringing. “Fire’s out, fank goodness. I’ve got Briscoe to check for any remaining cinders, keep his mind off things. I’ll blame the fire on on you.”

Dodd shrugged. What did he care what a lot of Londoners thought of him? His cold black rage had gone now, he felt as happy and relaxed as if he had…well, as if he had just had a pipe of Moroccan incense and tobacco.

At that moment there was a distant boom and all the shutters rattled. Dodd cocked an ear to it. The shriek from the cellars had almost drowned the noise.

“So it
was
mined,” he said.

“Yer,” said Pickering. “I wonder if that bloke Vent survived.”

“Best not talk about it,” Dodd said, “Whit do the neighbours say?”

“Oh they’re all right. They know I’ll pay ‘em for their trouble. And the roof is off and the fire’s out and Gabriel’s tying up the men here in one of the bedrooms. There was only twenty of them and only a couple of dead.”

“So the maist o’ them will be at Chelsea or the marshes.”

“Yer,” said Pickering, “waiting for us with not the faintest idea.” He laughed. “Until now, mind.”

He laughed again and lifted his cup of wine in a toast to them.

***

Perhaps an hour later there was a clattering of a boat at the watersteps, a challenge from the Cornishmen. And then there were mutterings and Mr. Trevasker saying “milady” and “your honour.” Pickering took his feet off the table and sat up warily.

Into the looted kitchen walked the small sprightly figure of Lady Hunsdon, pink-cheeked and happy. Beside her, dark and lean and bowed over sideways and forwards by the curve of his back, was a man in sober black damask and a white falling band, a fashionable black beaver hat shading a long face. And behind him trotted Shakespeare.

Dodd came to his feet and so did Pickering.

“Sergeant, my compliments on a very neat piece of work,” said Lady Hunsdon, with her wonderful roguish smile that had caught Lord Hunsdon, the King’s bastard, in a permanent web. “Sir Robert Cecil, Privy Councillor, asked to meet you at once.”

Dodd bowed to her and inclined his head to the second son of the most powerful man in the Kingdom. From things Carey had told him, he thought that Burghley, Cecil’s father, and Carey’s lord, the Earl of Essex were at some kind of courtly feud. So why was Cecil so friendly with Carey’s mam, eh?

“Ay,” said Dodd, “Ehm…” How did you do it properly? “Ah, milady, may I present Mr. Pickering, the…eh…”

Pickering stepped forward quickly, bowed to Lady Hunsdon and Cecil and took his hat off. “Laurence Pickering, milady, your honour,” he said. “Merchant of London.”

From the half-closed eyelids and the faint smile, Dodd felt that Cecil knew perfectly well who this was. From the expression on Lady Hunsdon’s face it seemed that she wasn’t entirely sure.

“Ah…Mr. Pickering helped wi’ the raid,” Dodd finished slightly lamely, hoping he hadn’t offended or insulted anyone. “He’s…ah…a friend of Sir Robert’s.”

“An honour to be of service to you, milady, yer honour,” said Pickering, staring hard at Cecil.

“Mr. Pickering,” said the hunchback, inclining his body slightly, “I’ve heard a great deal about you from my mentor and friend, Sir Francis Walsingham, God rest his soul. I believe there was an…understanding between you?”

“Yes there was, yer honour,” said Pickering, “I ‘ad the…ah.. the honour of ‘elping Sir Francis on several occasions. Though never as…ah.. dramatic as this time.”

“Quite so.” Sir Robert Cecil smiled and his dark face instantly transformed into a handsome and charming man. “I understand you run the only game that’s worth visiting in London and that Heneage had the impudence to raid it?”

“Yerss, yer honour, that’s right.”

“Outrageous. I hope you will be continuing with it…”

“Of course, yer honour. When I get it set up again, shall I send your honour word of its whereabouts?”

“How kind, Mr. Pickering,” said Cecil. “I would be delighted to learn to play properly.”

Pickering bowed. Dodd could almost see the implied handshake between them. “Wiv yer honour’s permission, I think I’ll take my…friends…away now.”

“Do so, with my thanks,” said Cecil.

“And mine, of course, Mr. Pickering,” said Lady Hunsdon. “How wonderful to meet another of my son’s more interesting friends.”

“Yersss, milady,” said Pickering, rocking gently on the balls of his feet with his thumbs in his belt.“Your son has some very good friends.” He turned to Dodd, winked, and left the kitchen, whistling through his teeth.

Cecil came forwards into the kitchen while Lady Hunsdon went and sat down in the chair with arms. She still had her silver and ebony cane which she leaned on. Cecil sat beside her on a bench, leaned his elbows on his bowed legs, and winced slightly. Shakespeare took up his unobtrusive position with his back to the wall near the door, his hands behind his back, the perfect servingman, listening for all he was worth.

“Well, Sergeant Dodd,” Cecil said, “why not tell me the story.”

Dodd told him. He told it as short as he could, not including the tangle over the Enys twins. There was no more shrieking from the cellar but nothing much seemed to be happening there. Dodd really hoped that nobody had died. Somewhere a cat was miaowing.