P. Chisholm - A Murder of Crows

“Oh yes,” said Carey drily, “Only the one. Now.”

At dawn the next day, itching in tight wool and with a new highcrowned beaver hat on his head, Dodd went with Carey to take a boat at Temple steps with Enys for Westminster Hall. Enys was carrying a sheaf of papers in a blue brocade bag and looked tired with bags under his eyes. He pulled his black robe around him and held his hat tight to his head. It was hard to tell the expression on his face, so thick were the scars from the smallpox, but he looked tense.

“Sir Robert, is your father providing bailiffs to back up the court staff?” he asked Carey.

Carey was busy smiling and taking his hat off to a boatload of attractive women heading downstream for London Bridge.

“Hm? Oh yes, the steward’s arranging for it and they’ll meet us at Westminster once you have the warrant.”

“Ay, but we’ll niver arrest him, will we?” Dodd said, thinking of Richie Graham of Brackenhill’s likely reaction to any such attempt, never mind Jock o’the Peartree’s. Jock would still be roaring with laughter at the joke as he slit your throat.

The Hunsdon boat was butting up against the boat landing. Carey and Dodd hopped in, while Enys seemed very nervous of the water and nearly fell as he stepped across. He sat himself down and gripped the seat hard with his hands, swallowing.

“I rather think we will, Sergeant,” said Enys, “although I’m sure not for long. And as there is no doubt at all that as soon as he’s bailed he’ll be trying to intimidate the witnesses, I have drafted a writ against him for maintenance to keep in reserve.”

Carey blinked as if puzzled for a moment and then shouted with laughter. “That old Statute against henchmen?”

“Old and from Her Majesty’s grandfather’s time, but still on the books. It’s not the oldest statute I shall be citing.”

“What is?” asked Dodd fascinated, although he had no idea that henchmen were illegal.

“Edward III 1368,” said Enys. Dodd used his fingers to work it out.

“It’s two hundred and twenty-four years old,” he said. “What good is that?”

“It’s a highly important principle,” said Enys, looking annoyed. “You might say it is the foundation of our English liberty. It says that no man may be put to the question or tortured privily without trial or warrant. In effect, habeas corpus.”

Once again Dodd struggled with foreign language. He supposed they meant something about dead bodies.

“I don’t recall Mr. Secretary Walsingham paying that much attention to the statute when he was questioning some Papist,” Carey pointed out.

Enys looked at him distantly. “Sir Robert, it is a fact that a man who murders another for his money may pay no attention to the statutes against murder. It is in the nature of sinful men that they break the law. It is a very different thing to hold that there is no such law to be broken, which Heneage does by his actions.”

“And if the law be changed in parliament?” asked Carey.

“If it be changed, then we must abide by the new law,” said Enys. “But this law has not been changed nor repealed. It was excluded from matters of treason and the Henry VIII statute of Praemunire made many religious matters into treason. Therefore Mr. Secretary Walsingham could and did rightly ignore the statute since he was seeking out Papist traitors against Her Majesty and the Commonweal of England.”

Carey nodded while Dodd stared in fascination to hear such a young man speak in such long and complicated sentences, using such pompous words. Now the lawyer lifted one finger in a lecturing manner. “However, this is not a matter of treason at all. Sergeant Dodd was neither guilty of nor accused of any crime whatsoever when Mr. Vice falsely imprisoned and assaulted him. There was a fortiori no trial and no warrant. I have seldom heard of such a clear case.”

“Ay,” said Dodd, catching up with most of the last part of the speech, “that’s right.” His head was buzzing with the legal talk.

“Perhaps Mr. Vice will simply claim that he was looking for me and laid hold of my henchman to track me down,” said Carey.

“I’m sure he will,” said Enys. “However the fact remains that you were not accused of treason either, Sir Robert. Even your brother was accused only of coining, which may indeed come under the treason laws as petty treason…”

Dodd stretched his eyes at that. Was coining treason? Did Richie Graham with his busy unofficial mint know about it? Did he care?

“…but it is not a direct attack upon her Majesty nor upon the Commonweal of England. And in point of fact, if what you have told me is correct, I believe that Mr. Heneage may be vulnerable to a charge of coining and uttering false coin himself, with your brother and the apothecary Mr. Cheke as witnesses against him.”

Carey whistled through his teeth. “I thought we couldn’t prove that?”

Enys shrugged. “Heneage will bring oath-swearers to disagree but it will depend on the judge. It’s arguable. At this stage it doesn’t have to be provable.”

They came to Westminster steps and jumped out-Enys seemed clumsy again and hesitant as he stepped onto the boat landing at just the wrong time. He might have wound up in the Thames without a quick shove from Dodd.

“Thank you, sir,” he muttered, looking embarassed. “I am still weakened by my sickness.”

“Ay, but your face is healed?” said Dodd, immediately worried because he had never had smallpox in his life.

“Oh it is, I am no longer sick of it. But the pocks attacked my eyes as well and my sight and balance are not what they were,” said the man, rubbing his hand on his face and jaw. Dodd could see the pits on the backs of his hands going up his wrist. Jesu, that was an ugly disease as well, worse than plague in some ways. Of course you were far more likely to die of the plague, but that was relatively quick and if your buboes burst you’d probably get better with no more than a couple of scars on your neck and groin and never be afraid of getting it again. You weren’t going to be hideous for the rest of your life. As for pocks on your eyes…Jesus God. At least there wasn’t much smallpox on the Borders, though Dodd had had a terrible fright when he was nine when his hands had got blistered from a cow with a blistered udder. Both his parents were alive then; it hadn’t been anything, and the blisters on both him and the cow got better soon enough.

They walked up through the muddy crowded alleys to the great old Hall of Westminster, hard by the Cathedral. The place was teeming with a flock in black robes, some wearing silk with soft flat square hats on their heads and followed by large numbers of young men carrying bags and papers.

“Lord above,” murmured Carey, “It gets worse every year. Michaelmas term hasn’t even started yet and look at them.”

Enys took a deep breath at the doorway into Westminster Hall, gripped his sword hilt lefthanded, and forged ahead into the crowd of lawyers around a desk who were shouting at the listing officers.

He came threading out again, his hat sideways. Just in time he grabbed it and clamped it back on his head.

“Sirs, we shall go before Mr. Justice Whitehead in an hour to swear out the pleadings and have the warrant granted.”

Dodd nodded as if this were all quite normal but he thought that it surely couldn’t be so simple. Normally it took months for a bill to be heard in Carlisle and years if it was a Border matter. Hunsdon had handed Carey a purseful of silver that morning to be sure the matter was well up the list which he had passed to Enys. Perhaps that had worked.

They ventured into Westminster Hall which was split into a dozen smaller sections by wooden partitions while the old fashioned ceiling full of angels and stone icicles echoed with the noise. You couldn’t see the floor at all because it was covered in straw and dung from the streets. Dodd rubbed with his boot and saw some pretty tiles under the muck.