P. Chisholm - A Murder of Crows

For some reason this kindly explanation caused Letty to sob even harder. Dodd considered chancing the theory on a Carlisle damsel one day when she was in a mood and decided that he simply didn’t have the bollocks-and even if he did, he wouldn’t keep them. He was reaching for his pipe again when he stopped and scowled. He had better get used to doing without the London vice as he was certainly not planning to stay there, nor ever come there again.

“Now then, Letty,” said Carey to the girl as she blew her nose. “How did you know the Mass was happening?”

“I got a message to say they were saying a mass for my f..f…father’s soul and where it was and if I liked I could come if I brought the message to show. So I did. I didn’t know it was a requiem. Who was it in the coffin? I thought he was…he was…”

“Show me the message.”

She handed over a scrap of paper which was neatly written in the Secretary script used by half the clerks in London. It gave clear instructions to reach the place.

“Who brought you this?”

“Just Will, you know, Bald Will who everyone says is a poet. He said it had been left with the gatekeeper.”

“And it was addressed to you?”

“Yes, to Lettice Tregian, which is what everyone calls me in Cornwall though your mother calls me Letitia which I think is French.”

“Latin.”

“Oh. And I just thought it was nice of them to invite me so I went.”

“But you’re alone. What would my mother…”

“She said I could. I asked if I could go to church and she said I could.”

“You didn’t tell her what kind of church? Or why?”

Letty shook her head. Her eyes filled up with tears again. “Oh what will she say to me?”

“She’ll say you have horse-clabber for brains, probably,” said Carey, “because you clearly do. Don’t you know how dangerous it is to go to a Papist mass? Never mind the danger to your soul, it’s the danger to you of getting into Topcliffe’s hands and what my mother would have to do to get you out again.”

Dodd felt this was a bit rich coming from the man who blithely stuck his head in any noose that happened to be handy, but said nothing.

“But we g…g…go in Cornwall and nothing happens,” sniffled the girl.

“This isn’t Cornwall,” said Carey, scratching his patch of beard. “Listen, Letty, you must promise me faithfully not to do it again.”

She nodded vigorously. “I was so frightened.”

“Rightly so. God’s teeth, I was frightened when Dodd roared out like that.”

“I saw you half-draw your long thin dagger,” said Letty.

Carey nodded seriously. “That’s what I do when I’m frightened. It’s lucky I was there at all and I certainly didn’t expect to see you there.”

“I had to go,” explained Letty, finally making a start on her pork pie with her very pretty little pearl-handled eating knife. “That’s why I came up to London with my Lady Hunsdon, you see. I had to bring Fr. Jackson’s survey with me. My father had a copy and he was going to meet Fr. Jackson and talk about it with him and then talk to…to the lawyers and other people for he said there was some great land piracy afoot in Cornwall and he wouldn’t have it because of what it was doing to the common folk and the tinners.”

“And what was this land piracy?” asked Carey with a tone of indulgent disbelief. “I’m sure there was nothing wrong going on.”

“That’s what I said, but he said something about gold and how the Cornish wouldn’t be able to live on their own lands and half of them weren’t even recusants, just foolish. And then off he went, only he sent a message to my Lady Hunsdon saying he was going and she was in such a taking about it when she came back from visiting Mrs. O’Malley in Ireland and sailing the whisky up to Dumfries that we went straight to the Judith and sailed out of Penryn and up the coast. That’s where we caught the Spaniard, you know.”

“So my mother said,” Carey answered drily. “So Mr. Tregian was part of whatever this was.”

“And it wasn’t treason, I know it wasn’t. It was just boring old buying and selling of land.”

“Yes,” said Carey, staring into space. “And what’s in this survey?”

“I don’t know,” said Letty, rolling big tragic eyes at them, “I haven’t got it. That’s what I went to tell them. I don’t know where it went. I had it when we went to meet my father and then when I…when I…” She clutched the hankerchief and gulped hard. Dodd had to admit that seeing her father’s head on London Bridge must have been a shock to her just as seeing his father dead with an Elliot lance through his chest had been a shock to him. “When I saw my father was dead I…well, I don’t know what happened to it.”

Dodd had the satisfaction of seeing Carey momentarily lost for words. His mouth opened and then he shut it again.

“You lost it?”

“I think so. I can’t find it anywhere. It was in my purse, you see, and something funny happened to my purse because the cord was cut and it was proper safe under my kirtle you know and I didn’t notice nothing and then when I got home I realised it was gone.”

Dodd and Carey exchanged looks. “Your purse was cut and this survey was in it, yes?”

Letty nodded brightly. “Yes. I even said to my lady, oh I don’t know where my purse is to, lucky I didn’t have any money in it, and we both laughed, sort of in the middle of crying about my father, you see.”

Carey sighed again. “What was in the survey?”

Letty shook her brown curls at him. “Oh sir, you are funny. I can’t read. My dad wouldn’t have my brains roiled up with it, he said it was bad enough he’d had to learn and him not even a priest.”

Dodd nodded at this wisdom. You couldn’t argue with that, reading was nothing to do with women.

“That’s a pity,” said Carey, very strangely, “because if you could read there are all sorts of good books I could recommend you to read to help you get away from your Papish superstition…”

Letty’s brow wrinkled. “I heard the heretics are always abusing their brains with reading, even the Queen herself, poor soul, but luckily I don’t need to for Fr. Jackson tells me everything I need to know.”

Carey shook his head. “Was…er…is he in London too?”

“Oh yes, my father came up to town to talk to him. Fr. Jackson went a month or two ago. He was very cross about it, said he hated London and was only going because he had to prevent a crime and a scandal and if he didn’t come back I was always to be a good girl and do what my father told me and pray to Our Lady and obey my husband.” Letty beamed at them. “Which I will,” she added in tones of great piety, sounding just like a very self-righteous little girl.

Neither Carey nor Dodd had the courage to tell Letty what they thought might have happened to Fr. Jackson in case of reopening the floodgates. Dodd was frowning and blinking at the sunlight trying to remember what had happened when they made Lady Hunsdon’s abortive shopping expedition and when exactly Letty’s purse might have been cut. Just after she saw her father’s head and screamed and the horses bolted? Perhaps? Did the cutpurse know what he had or had he perhaps dumped the survey somewhere?

“Ah,” said Carey gravely, “excellent. Though of course you should pray to God, not Our Lady.”

Letty shook her curls again with great good humour. “Oh no, I’m only a silly maid so He wouldn’t be interested. Our Lady is much kinder.”

Carey blinked and then seemed to give up his attempt at theology. “And what can you tell me about Fr. Jackson?”

That opened another kind of floodgate entirely. Fr. Jackson was, apparently, the most perfect specimen of manhood alive on this sorry world of sinners. He was not only handsome and well-built, he was very very clever and could tell gold-bearing rock from the other kind with his strange waters and his touchstone, and he knew how to build things as well which he had learned in Germany. And then he became a priest for he heard God calling him, which was something that happened to men who were going to be priests, and all he wanted was to be a good priest to the people in Cornwall.