P. Chisholm - A Murder of Crows

“Ay?”

Carey’s expression was rueful. “Yes. Lost my shirt, actually. Literally.”

Dodd’s mouth turned down. “Ay?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to let that bother me so I was heading for my lodgings as I…ah…was…”

“Wi’out yer shirt?”

“Nothing but my underbreeches, I’m afraid. It gave a couple of punks a terrible turn, I think. Anyway, Mr. Pickering caught up with me and gave me back my cloak which was kind of him. He said he liked the way I’d carried it off and as he had suspicions about the cards, he would take it as a compliment if I would allow him to buy me some temporary duds at a pawnshop he knew on a loan so as not to…er…frighten anybody.”

Dodd was enchanted at this picture. “Ay.”

“Of course, he wasn’t the King then, he was working for the man who was. We got talking over a few quarts of beer and I told him if he wanted to draw in the courtiers with money, he should set up a game which was absolutely clean, no cheating at all, guarantee it and charge for entrance. And make sure it was somewhere comfortable.”

Carey took his hat off to a lady wearing a velvet mask as she went past in another boat. She turned away haughtily.

“And whit was it about that boy in the terrible get up?” Dodd asked.

“Occasionally, if Mr. Pickering has a player in who wins too much but he can’t work out how, he asks me to check up on him,” Carey said casually.

“And was he cheating?”

Carey gave Dodd a warning look. “No, or I would have said so,” he said, “He was simply counting cards and playing by the odds. It isn’t cheating but it does give you an advantage. There’s an Italian book explains how to do it and I expect he’s read it. That’s what I’ve been teaching you to do, by the way.”

Dodd remembered about the Italian book and its notions about numbers. “Why did ye no’ tell Pickering about that?”

Carey looked amused. “What, and have him work out how I do it myself? I don’t think so.”

***

Back at Somerset House Dodd was hoping for his bed. But no, it seemed, despite both of them being weary and the hour a ridiculously late eleven o’clock, Carey had to speak to his parents if they were still up.

They were companionably playing cards together in the little parlour in the corner of the courtyard, with wax candles on the table and a little dish of wafers to dip in their spiced evening wine.

Carey bowed to his parents and his mother immediately stood up and hugged him, and then to Dodd’s horror, gave Dodd a hug as well.

“Letty told me how you helped her when she was such a fool,” said Lady Hunsdon. “What with Sergeant Dodd spotting the trap and giving warning and you helping her leave so quickly…She said you were both wonderful. Lord alone knows what trouble there would have been if she had been taken by that evil bastard Topcliffe. She isn’t really a Papist, she’s just a silly maid that’s been wrongly taught, but in Topcliffe’s hands…”

Hunsdon smiled fondly at his wife. One of the footmen standing by the wall came forward and brought up another small table while more wafers and wine arrived so that Dodd could do something at least about his aching belly. The pork pie he had had in the afternoon was long gone and Carey, being Carey, hadn’t stopped since then.

“Well Robin?” said his father as Carey leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs at the ankle, and took a long draught of wine.

“The Devil of it is,” he said, seemingly at random while his mother frowned at him for swearing, “there’s a pattern here and I know there is, but I can’t seem to see it.”

He told the whole tale of their very busy day from start to finish, with no embellishments at all.

“How did you know where the memorial service was to?” asked Lady Hunsdon. “Letty said she couldn’t imagine.”

“Oh that.” Carey smiled faintly. “The Papists themselves told me. It was in the book at the crypt-the woman who claimed the priest’s body gave a false address and called herself Mrs. Sophia Merry.”

“Never heard of her.”

“Of course not, my lord, it’s a false name as well. But it told where the service would be-at the site of the old church of St Mary Wisdom.”

Hunsdon gave a shout of laughter. “Ha! I didn’t realise you’d actually managed to learn some Greek as a boy, between reiving cows and playing football.”

Carey smiled ruefully. “I didn’t, my lord, I’m afraid. But while I was in Paris I…er…knew a lady whose name was Sophia who told me often that her name meant wisdom and very proud of it she was too although she was as feather-brained as a duck.”

Lord Hunsdon seemed to find this very funny whereas Lady Hunsdon only smiled briefly.

He finished with his account of Pickering’s game, then wet his whistle and waited for his parents’ reactions. They were a time coming. Lady Hunsdon in particular seemed very interested in her cards.

After a moment, Carey said gently, “I find it alarming, my lady, that Pickering seems to have bought some of these Cornish lands on the grounds that there’s gold in them.”

Lady Hunsdon said nothing. She was dipping a wafer in the wine.

“I advised him to sell immediately,” Carey added, “on the grounds that even if there was gold, he would get no good of it since it was so far away and well out of his manor.”

There was more thundering silence.

“My lady mother?” said Carey, even more softly. Lady Hunsdon refused to meet his eyes. He sighed. “Well then, my lord, I don’t know what more I can do. Perhaps it would be best if I went north again…”

“Not yet,” said Lady Hunsdon sharply.

“No,” said Lord Hunsdon at exactly the same time. The two of them looked at each other while Carey watched the pair of them with hooded eyes and a cynical expression.

Dodd had woken up to the fact that there was something complicated going on between Carey and his parents and indeed between Lord and Lady Hunsdon, but he wasn’t sure what it might be. His own parents had been very much less complicated and furthermore were both long dead. Inside the silence there seemed to be some kind of three-way battle going on.

In the end Carey broke it by uncrossing his legs and planting his boots firmly on the black and white tiles of the floor.

He stood up and then went formally on one knee to his parents.

“My lord father, my lady mother,” he said quietly, “I am urgently needed in Carlisle before the autumn reiving starts. I will not investigate this matter any further until I have a true accounting of the background to it from both of you.” His eyes were on his mother as he spoke. Then he stood, bowed gracefully to both, backed three steps as if from royalty, turned and left the parlour.

“I told you Robin would…” Hunsdon began but his wife slammed her cards down, stood and marched out of the parlour, her cheeks flaming as if she had painted them. Hunsdon followed her, leaving Dodd sitting at a cardtable all alone except for the servingman standing by the door, seemingly dozing where he stood.

Dodd finished the spiced wine, which was very good, crushed immediately the impulse to steal the silver cups and the candelabra, and headed for his own bed. To his disgust he found Carey sitting by the small fire in the luxurious fireplace, busy mulling the wine which was normally left for him in a flagon on a table by the wall. Dodd’s eyelids felt as if they were lined with lead and sand.

“Och,” he moaned.

“God damn it,” snarled Carey in general, ramming the poker back among the coals as if stabbing someone. “She still thinks I’m a boy that can’t see the nose on his face because his head’s too full of football, she thinks I still can’t add it up. What the hell does she think she’s playing at?”