P. Chisholm - A Murder of Crows

Dodd shrugged. It was the way most people did things and it generally seemed to work for Lowther.

“And it doesn’t work,” Carey insisted, “if you’re beating someone up for information, either he’ll spit in your eye and say nothing as you did to Heneage, or he’ll tell you whatever he thinks you want to hear, whether it’s true or not. It’s a complete waste of time.”

Dodd shrugged again. “Worth trying on Enys though.”

“Well, do you want him to work for you as your lawyer?”

Dodd sighed through his teeth. On the whole he did, so grabbing him and beating him was not the way to go. On the other hand…

“Why can we not go home now, sir? The criminal case is lost and the civil will take far longer than I wantae stay in this place.”

Carey scowled. “My parents want me to find out what happened to Richard Tregian, particularly my mother. Until I’ve done that, we’re stuck here, so you might as well help me.”

“Ay, but why do they care? Somebody stabs a priest in the back and dumps him in the Thames. Ye might think Heneage would be pleased about it. Heneage then hangs, draws, and quarters Richard Tregian in his place. It’s all done wi’ and the men’ll not be back again. What’s the point of your parents sending ye hither and yon in London to find out about it?”

Carey started to answer and then stopped. He leaned back with his eyes half-hooded and a lazy smile on his face. “As ever, Sergeant, you ask the right question. Why indeed? Hmm.”

“D’ye think your…eh…lady mother might have bought some of the lands in Cornwall? She said the prices were high.”

“She might have. She has to do something with what she gets from her privateering.”

“And she came up to London to talk wi’ Tregian as well, she said so when we went to find him at his inn and he wasnae there, on account of being on a pike on London Bridge instead,” said Dodd thoughtfully. “She was no’ best pleased when Letty said he wasnae there and she had me go and search his bedchamber.”

“That was where you found the paper with the cipher on it?”

“Ay, tucked in behind a shelf.”

“Did you show it to her?”

Dodd opened his mouth to speak, then paused. “Ah, no, it slipped me mind, what with the heid on a pike and Letty screaming, ye ken.”

Carey was looking thoughtful. “Well, we’ve read the invisible ink now and it shows, but we haven’t cracked the cipher so we’ve no way of telling who it was addressed to. I wonder if…”

“Ay,” said Dodd who was well ahead of him. “We should try giving it to her. Only I might get in trouble for not giving it to her before.”

“She won’t be very pleased, but at least she won’t box your ears and call you clabber-brained,” said Carey with some edge.

Dodd hid a smile. Carey stood and went out the back to the jakes. He came back with a small purse of gold that he must have been keeping in his codpiece, gave it quietly to Dodd.

“I’ve taken half out of it and I want you to look after it for me and not give me any of it, understand?” said Carey very seriously. “If we’re going to play in the King of London’s game, I want still to be solvent afterwards.”

“We’re gonnae go there, are we?”

Carey blinked at him. “Of course. I’ve been before but we were very clearly invited tonight and I’m going. Only…” He spread his hands and shrugged.

“Will they be cheating?”

“Oddly enough, they won’t. Laurence Pickering, the King of London, guarantees his game against all pricksters, card-sharps, and highmen and lowmen, and kicks out anyone who breaks that rule. Which makes it more difficult for me because if I’m playing against crooked players, I can usually guarantee to win whereas if I’m merely playing against good players, I can’t be so certain.”

According to Carey, Pickering’s game moved around a lot so you could only find it if you were invited. When the sun started to go down they walked into the city and along the busy wharves until they came to Three Cranes in the Vintry. There the men inside the great treadmills that worked the three enormous cranes were just finishing and jumping down to drink their beer and be paid for a day’s work. The last of the barrels of Rhenish and Gascon wine were being hurried on handcarts into warehouses to be locked up, watched by the Tunnage and Poundage men who put the Queen’s seal on the locks.

Other brightly dressed young men were standing around in casual ways, so Carey and Dodd took their ease on a bench by the water and Dodd kept his hands away from his tobacco pouch. They saw the lad in cramoisie and tangerine, large ruff, haughty nose, highly coloured, acned and with a target all but pinned to his back.

Once the Tunnage and Poundage men had gone off in their boat, things changed. At the back of one of the securely sealed warehouses, a part of the wall slid aside and two imposing men in buff coats came to stand stolidly by the opening. Dodd recognised one of them but Carey held Dodd back from going in at once.

“Let’s see who’s there,” he said, and watched the other well-dressed courtiers and merchants who went in by the entrance after a muttered conversation with one of the men in buff coats.

At last Carey stood and followed them, trailed by Dodd. At the door he nodded at one of the men. “How’s your wife, Mr. Briscoe?”

Briscoe smiled and nodded back. “Near her time, Sir Robert,” he said. “It’s a worry. She says she’ll stop wearing herself out about her brother now she knows it was a man called Jackson and it wasn’t him. Which is a relief, you know.”

Carey smiled. “By the way, did you happen to hear about the veney I played the other night with some Smithfield brawlers working for Topcliffe?”

Briscoe’s broad face broke into a grin. “Nearly split my sides, sir. And what came after. I heard it was that mad poet Marlowe wot hired ‘em and he’d better be careful if he goes near Smiffield again, cos none of ‘em are ‘appy about it.”

Carey laughed.“Well if you should happen to hear anything else about it, I’d be grateful if you’d pass it on.”

“I will, sir.”

“Anything else going on?”

Briscoe’s brow creased. “Well, Mr. Pickering’s very worried by the plague in the city, though none of the City Aldermen is bovvered. It’s in the Bridewell now, you know?”

Carey grimaced. “Thanks for the warning.”

“And I heard tell one of the bearwardens was sick of it yesterday and died and one of his bears run wild for sorrow.”

“Not Harry Hunks?”

“No sir, he’s retired now. Gone back to the Kent herds to sire more bears. That was Big John and they ‘ad to shoot him in the end.”

Carey shook his head as he handed over the price of entry in gold. “The city fathers think all they have to do is shut the theatres and the plague will disappear, even though it never does.”

Dodd was thinking of what that poor apothecary had said a couple of weeks before-that the plague always started in St Paul’s, not the playhouses. He resolved not to go near the place again, never mind the rats in the crypt gnawing on only God knew what remains from two hundred years before.

Briscoe tipped his hat and they climbed the wooden stairs to an upper room lit with ranks of candles and glass windows, with fair rush mats on the floors and painted cloths on the walls. It all seemed very wealthy and respectable until you looked more carefully at the cloths which were covered with pictures of shockingly naked people wearing leafy hats and playing cards and dice and drinking. Some of them seemed to be doing…what they shouldn’t have been. Dodd’s eyes stretched as he took in the details. Somewhere at the back of his mind he wondered if he and Janet..? He gulped and turned away, hoping his face hadn’t gone guiltily red.