P. Chisholm - A Murder of Crows

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.

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.

Lady Hunsdon nodded, making the feather bounce. “Ah yes, I used to hunt when I was young, though never as well as Her Majesty. There’s nothing to it. All you have to do is ride, which I am sure you can do very well, and keep me company.”

Shakespeare glanced meaningfully at Dodd and mounted the other gelding which had a less decorated pillion seat behind the saddle. Lady Hunsdon was busy handing out staves to the two Cornishmen so the pretty round-faced girl hoisted her skirts, climbed the mounting block, put a pretty little boot on the pillion saddle’s footrest and, while Shakespeare held one of her hands, one of the grooms lifted her up and sat her on the seat behind him. The girl whispered something in Shakespeare’s ear and he smiled over his shoulder at her. Dodd narrowed his eyes. All right. He could do that.

He went up to the gelding and patted his neck, let the long face and inquisitive nose have a delve in his doublet, eased the cheekpiece a little which might chafe. Then he checked the girth, gave the horse a look that warned it not to dare anything, put one hand on the withers and vaulted up to the saddle the way he always did. He shifted the animal over to the block and while he waited for her ladyship, he lengthened the stirrups to his liking.