A Murder of Crows: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (5 page)

“Of course I did, husband, that’s why I went. I knew the Court would have eaten and drunk the place bare. Triple prices for the whisky from my Lord Maxwell, no less.”

She was advancing on Carey now who backed before her with his shoulders up like a boy expecting to have his ears boxed for scrumping apples. Dodd held his breath in mingled hope and fascination.

“Now one of the things I heard was not at all to my liking,” she said, prodding Carey in his well-velveted chest which was as high as she could reach. He flinched. “Not at all. What’s this about Lord Spynie and Sir Henry Widdrington, eh?”

Carey smiled placatingly and spread his hands. “I couldn’t possibly say, ma’am, are they in bed together?”

“All but.” Pouncing like a cat, Lady Hunsdon grabbed her son’s left hand and pulled off his embroidered glove. After a moment when it seemed Carey would snatch his hand away and possibly run for it, he stood and let her look, towering over her and yet somehow gangling like the lad he must have been fifteen years before.

In silence Lady Hunsdon reached for his other hand. Carey sighed and pulled the glove off for her. More thunderous silence. Dodd saw tears rising to Lady Hunsdon’s eyes and suddenly she pulled Carey to her and hugged him.

“Mother!” protested the muffled voice of Carey. She let go at once and turned to her husband.

“We shall set a price of five thousand crowns on Spynie’s head and the same on Widdrington’s,” she said coldly.

“Er…no, my lady,” said Hunsdon, “I think not. Spynie’s still the King’s Minion, though there are hopes of Robert Kerr, and John needs the Widdrington surname to help him rule the East March.”

Their eyes locked and Dodd could see the tussle and then the agreement between them flying clear as a bird. “At least, not yet,” amended his lordship.

“Of course, my lord,” said Lady Hunsdon with the dangerous meekness Dodd had learned to fear in Janet.

Carey was pulling his gloves back on with fingers that trembled slightly.

“Have you seen Edmund?” Hunsdon asked to break the silence. “Doctor Nunez is very pleased with him.”

Lady Hunsdon sat herself down in a carved chair as Hunsdon sat as well. “I talked to him while I was waiting for you, my lord.”

At Hunsdon’s gesture, Carey and Dodd sat on a bench. Hunsdon’s majordomo was bringing in a light supper and spiced wine for them. Carey spoke quietly to him and Dodd saw a small cup of brandy brought and added to his wine. He looked like he needed it and drank gratefully while Dodd helped himself to a mutton pasty.

“Did you plan to put a price on Heneage’s head as well, wife?” asked Hunsdon teasingly as he carved a plump breast of duck with a sauce of raspberries and laid it on her plate. Lady Hunsdon sniffed and pulled the dish of sallet herbs towards her.

“Your sister wouldn’t like it.”

“She wouldn’t,” agreed Hunsdon.

“He mistreated you too, Sergeant Dodd?” Lady Hunsdon said suddenly to Dodd, who had to swallow quickly.

“Ay, my lady.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“Ay well, milady, if I was at home the bell’d be ringing and the Dodds and Armstrongs would be riding and the man would ha’ lost a few flocks of sheep and herds of cattle and some horses if we could find them and likely a tower or two burned.”

Lady Hunsdon nodded. “Of course. Powerful long way for your surname to come though, isn’t it?”

“Ay, it is. Your good lord has offered to back a court case for me but…ah…”

“The lawyers won’t take the brief, ma’am,” explained Carey. “None of them will.”

Lady Hunsdon nodded at this.

“Except that pocky young man we met the day,” put in Dodd. “He said he’d dae it since Heneage disnae like him in any case.”

“What’s his name?” asked Hunsdon.

“James…Enys?”

“Enys?” said Lady Hunsdon, “That’s a Cornish name. Where’s he from?”

“No idea. We were worried he might be Heneage’s man so we asked him to come here tomorrow so you could look at him, my lord.” Lord and Lady Hunsdon both nodded.

“Heneage isn’t going to give up just because his last attempt blew up in his face,” said Hunsdon, “and Edmund…”

“…has horse-clabber for brains,” snapped Lady Hunsdon. “At least you did well there, Robin, from what he said.”

Carey inclined his head politely while still studying the floor.

Dodd watched as Lady Hunsdon polished off her wine and nodded at the Steward to replenish it. “So what I’m hearing from you, my lord, is that there’s not a thing we can do to pay back Spynie and Widdrington, and Heneage is more than likely going to have another try at pulling you down just as soon as he can think of something twisted enough.”

Hunsdon inclined his head in a gesture just like his son’s.

“God damn the lot of them,” swore Lady Hunsdon, tapping her fragile Venetian wine glass decisively. “Do you need money, Robin?”

Carey coloured. “Ah…well…”

“Of course you do, look at your fancy duds. Cost a couple of farms just for your hose, I shouldn’t wonder. Well, I had a lucky voyage coming up the Channel, so here you are…”

She threw a bulging leather purse at Carey who caught it and whistled soundlessly when he looked inside.

“Pieces of eight?”

Lady Hunsdon smiled and wiggled her fingers. “We caught a Flemish trader off the Carrick Roads as we came out of Penryn. And you’re not to spend it on clothes,” she added, setting off another near-hernia in Dodd’s abused diaphragm. “Sergeant, don’t you let him go near that devil Bullard and his doublets.”

“No, milady,” Dodd managed somehow.

“Invest it, Robin,” said Lady Hunsdon. “As I’ve told you before, George Cumberland has the right idea…”

Hunsdon was standing again, leaning over to his wife and proffering his arm.

“My lady wife,” he said softly. Lady Hunsdon swallowed the last of her spiced wine, put her hand on her husband’s arm, and allowed him to help her up. Then she stood on tiptoe and kissed Lord Hunsdon’s ear as they turned towards the door to the stairs.

Carey put his fists on his knees, stood up and hurried after his parents, caught up with his mother at the foot of the stairs and started whispering to her urgently. Dodd followed them. He didn’t need to hear Carey’s question as he knew exactly what it would be about—the woman Carey was disastrously in love with. She was still married to Sir Henry Widdrington, a jealous husband who had clearly seized the chance to mistreat Carey in Dumfries.

“Mother, how is Elizabeth Widdrington?” asked Carey, “I’m anxious for her. Sir Henry might…”

“I think she’s well enough, all things considered,” said Lady Hunsdon with a worried frown. “She’s very strong. Sybilla’s still furious with me for the ill match I made for her daughter.”

Carey’s inaudible next murmur sounded angry and Lady Hunsdon put up her hand to his shoulder and gripped. “Robin,” she said, “I know, I know. You must be patient.” Carey’s response was a characteristic growl. Lady Hunsdon smiled fondly at him, pulled his chestnut head down to hers and kissed his cheek. This time Carey didn’t bridle like a youth but kissed her back and put his arm around her shoulders.

They parted as Hunsdon led his lady up the stairs. Carey avoided Dodd’s eye as they made for their respective bedchambers.

“Now you see why my Lady Mother doesn’t often come to Court,” he said. “She prefers to stay in Cornwall with her sister Sybilla Trevannion and her friends the Killigrews.”

“Ay,” said Dodd.

“It wasn’t my mother’s fault that I first met my cousin Elizabeth when I went to Scotland with the message for King James from the Queen about his mother’s execution,” added Carey. “Which was after she had been married off to Sir Henry.”

“Ay,” said Dodd, not much interested in the complicated tale of Carey’s love-life. If the woman was willing and her husband odious, why did Carey not simply gather a nice raiding party, hit the man’s tower by surprise, kill him and take the woman? Dodd would be perfectly happy to be best man at that rough wedding and it would at least end Carey’s perpetual mooning over her, alternating with an occasional seduction of some even more dangerous female. “Ah…Does yer mam hold a letter of marque from the Queen?”

Carey’s gaze was cold. “Of course she does, she’s not a pirate. Father got it for her after she happened to help sink a Flemish pirate off the Lizard.” Dodd was proud of himself for not letting a flicker across his countenance.

“Ay?”

“What the Devil do you expect her to do all day, sit at home and embroider?” Carey slammed into his chamber, shouting for the ever absent Simon Barnet to see to his points.

Dodd went to his own chamber and could laugh at last. The wild cherubs over the mantelpiece seemed to laugh back as he carefully worked through all his buttons and laces and folded his suit before climbing into bed in his shirt. As he went to sleep, he thought happily that he now had all the explanation he needed for Carey’s wild streak. By God, the Careys were an entertaining bunch. For a while, Dodd felt pierced with loneliness that he didn’t have Janet in bed beside him to talk about it. He rather thought Janet and Lady Hunsdon would get on very well.

Tuesday 12th September 1592, early morning

Just after daybreak Dodd was enjoying bread and beer in his chamber at his good vantage point at the window where he could watch the doings in the street. What a pleasure it was to be able to look through a window quilted with diamonds like the jack of an Englishman, so the glass kept the wind out but let the light in. Nobody ever bothered with glass in the Borders because it broke too easily, although Dodd thought he had heard that Richie Graham had a couple of windows of the stuff for his wife’s chamber which were removeable in the case of a siege. Here in wealthy London, every window glittered like water with it.

The knock on his door was nothing like Carey’s hammering. When he opened it he found a square young man with red hair and freckles clad in the Hunsdon livery of black and yellow stripes. The youngster opened his mouth and spoke words that might as well have been French for the sense Dodd could make of them, although he knew the sound from the sailors that came into Dumfries and took copper out of Whitehaven.

“What?” Dodd asked irritably. Why could nobody in the south speak proper English like him? It was worse than Scotch because he could speak that if he had to.

The man tried again, frowning with the effort. “M’loidy wants ee.”

“Ma lady Hunsdon? Wants me?”

More brow-wrinkling. “Ay, she do.”

Dodd picked up his new hat and washed down the last of his manchet bread. It was a little tasteless for all its fine crumb, he thought to himself, he really preferred normal bread with the nutty taste from the unsieved flour and the ale in it and the little gritty bits from milling. There was something very weak and namby pamby about all this luxury.

He clattered down the stairs after the red-haired lad, trailing his fingers along the wonderful carved balustrade as he went. In the hall were two other wide, pig-tailed Cornish sailors, Will Shakespeare looking neat but a little less doleful than he had the week before, and the fresh-faced, cream-skinned girl in neat dark blue wool.

“What’s up, Will?” Dodd asked the ex-player and would-be poet. “Ah thocht ye were well in with the Earl of Southampton?”

Shakespeare shrugged. “These things can take a little time. My lord had to post to Oxford to meet her Majesty. He…er…he took Mistress Emilia with him.”

Dodd nodded tactfully. “Ay? And what are we doing now?”

“My lady Hunsdon has a fancy to go into town to do some shopping,” Shakespeare explained.

Dodd’s brow wrinkled this time. “Why?”

“My lady is a woman and women go shopping,” Shakespeare explained patiently, “especially when they are in London in Michaelmas term with the Queen’s New Year’s present to consider.”

“Ay, Ah ken that, but why wi’ me?”

“For conversation?” offered Shakespeare with just enough of a twitch in his eyebrows for Dodd to get the message.

The horses were outside in the courtyard, nice-looking animals and one stout gelding with a pillion seat trimmed in velvet.

“Ah, Sergeant Dodd,” came the ringing voice tinged with the West Country from the other doorway, “I have a fancy to spend some of my gains in Cheapside and require a man to manage my horse as I shall ride pillion.”

Dodd knew perfectly well that there were grooms aplenty in Hunsdon’s stables who could have done the job. He sighed. Then he bowed to Lady Hunsdon who was standing on the steps with a wicked grin on her face, wearing a very fine kirtle of dark red velvet with a forepart of brocade. She had a smart matching feathered hat on her head over her white cap. It looked similar to the green one Dodd had bought at outrageous expense for Janet and which was now sitting packed with hay in its wicker box in his chamber.

“Ah, I havenae done the office before, m’lady,” he said nervously. “Ah dinna…”

“Good Lord, how does Mrs. Dodd travel then?”

Dodd couldn’t help grimacing a little at Janet’s likely reaction to the suggestion that she should ride pillion. “On her ain mare, m’lady,” he replied, and said nothing about the mare’s origins.