P. Chisholm - A Murder of Crows

Dodd leaned back on the seat and sighed, wishing for his pipe. “They’re in his room,” he said, deciding to save time. “I dinna think he had decoded them yet, but…”

“He might not tell you if he had.” She nodded.

The boat was heading back to Somerset House steps where they climbed out-Lady Hunsdon was lifted bodily up to the boatlanding by Captain Trevasker without noticeable strain, something that impressed Dodd.

He went with her back to the house and followed her up the stairs and along the main corridor into the chambers that Carey had been given, along with Hunsdon’s second valet to help with the perenniel labour of his clothes. Dodd felt awkward, snooping about in another man’s property, but Lady Hunsdon marched in and looked about her.

“At least he has grown out of dropping his clothes in heaps on the floor,” she said, “now he’s learned the cost of them.”

Dodd considered that it was hardly thrift that had cured Carey of dropping his clothes, much more likely it was vanity and the training that serving the Queen at court had given him.

She went over to the desk Carey had been using and looked at the pile of papers there. Her eyebrows went up. “Well well, are these the ones?”

Dodd recognised the copy of the paper he had found in Tregian’s rooms and the paper itself, still smelling faintly of oranges. Lady Hunsdon was frowning down at it.

“Ay,” said Dodd, wondering why Carey hadn’t hidden them. Presumably he hadn’t bothered to lock his door because he knew his mother would have the key but…He stole a look at Lady Hunsdon.

“Hm.” She went to the fireplace, picked up the poker, and stirred the ashes. There was a mixture of charred wood, the remains of one of the withered oranges that cost outrageous prices in the street until the new crop arrived from Spain nearer Christmas. Also there was a lot of feathery bits of burnt paper. She bent and picked up a charred fragment and peered at it closely.

“Sergeant, my eyes are not what they were. Can you make this out?”

Dodd came over and looked at the burnt paper-there were letters on it in Carey’s handwriting but that was all he could see.

“Ah canna read it, but it’s Sir Robert’s hand right enough.”

“I thought so.” Lady Hunsdon glared at the fragment, then went to the chest in the corner where Carey kept some of his books and started sorting through them.

Dodd checked the desk and found a pile of books, including two bibles, poetry, a romance, and a prayerbook. He also found a cancelled pawn ticket which he quietly picked up and put in his beltpouch.

Lady Hunsdon sighed, closed the chest, and sat on it.

“I think Robin has managed to decode the two letters,” she said. “But I don’t understand why he burnt his translations yet kept the coded copies. Damn it. I shall have to ask him when he comes back from hawking this evening, although no doubt he will be very full of himself. Walsingham trained him well when he was in Scotland.”

Dodd was thinking about going out into the courtyard and filling his pipe since he hadn’t had one today yet when he realised Lady Hunsdon was looking at him beadily again.

“I wonder what that big-headed sodomite has been up to all this time,” she said. “Shakespeare says he’s quite happy, writing a play and drinking our cellars dry. Would you go and see him, Sergeant?”

At least with Marlowe he could get a pipe of tobacco. Dodd stood up in something of an unseemly hurry and Lady Hunsdon followed him out of the room, bending to lock it with one of the keys she was wearing on her belt. When in her husband’s house, it seemed, she was the lady of the house and no other. Emilia Bassano seemed to have moved permanently to the household of the Earl of Southampton which was tactful of her. Although it left unsettled a number of problems, including the question of who was the father of her unborn babe.

Dodd bowed to milady and then went to the back of the huge house, where the second floor guest chambers overlooked the courtyard. Sitting by the door to one of the lesser rooms was one of Hunsdon’s servingmen who gave Dodd a cautious look and forebore to stand up.

“I’ve come tae speak tae Marlowe,” Dodd explained.

The servingman waved at the door. “He’s got it locked from the inside,” he said. “My lord says he can go out any time he likes but I have to go with him. So far he hasn’t.”

Dodd went to the door and knocked on it.

“Go away,” came a slurred voice.

He knocked again. Not loudly, he just kept knocking. There was an explosion of swearing and the sound of a chair being pushed back, then a bolt being shot. Marlowe’s unshaven face looked round the door, eyes frighteningly bloodshot and a reek of tobacco and booze blending into a fog around him.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said ungraciously. “What do you want?”

“I want tae speak to ye, Mr. Marlowe,” said Dodd as politely as he could. “Can we share a pipe o’ tobacco?”

“No we can’t because I’ve bloody run out and that boy hasn’t come back yet.”

“Ah could go and buy ye some?”

Marlowe grunted.

“Or ye could come wi’ me and…”

“Look,” said Marlowe through his stained teeth, “I’m busy, understand? I’m writing a play that will never be performed and it’s the best play I’ve ever written. I don’t care what you want to talk to me about and I don’t care what Sir Robert wants but if you’ll fetch me a pouch of Nunez’s New Spanish mix, I’ll be grateful.”

Dodd shook his head regretfully at the insanity of writers, along with the servingman, and trotted off down the stairs. The gateman opened for him with a smile and he headed for Fleet Street where the tobacconist was in his shiny new shop with printed papers and ballads of the wildmen of New Spain. That was where you went if you wanted gold or silver, over the sea to the New World, everyone knew that. Not marshy Cornwall.

On impulse, once he had the tobacco he went into the pawnbroker’s at the end of Fleet Bridge where an old skinny man in a skullcap and long foreign-looking robe sat reading a book back to front.

“Ah,” said Dodd, not sure how to start, “are ye the master here?”

The foreigner unfolded himself and came to the counter where he smiled. “Senhor Gomes,” he said with a bow and a strong sound of foreign in his voice. “At your service, senhor.”

“Ay,” said Dodd, pulling out the cancelled ticket. “D’ye ken…Ah, do you recall if Sir Robert Carey redeemed anything here today?”

Senhor Gomes took the ticket. He smiled at once. “Ah, milord Robert, of course, senhor. He said you might enquire. He has repaid his loan on his court suit, the doublet with lilies and pearls upon velvet, and a cloak he had pawned before.”

“When did he do this?”

“Yesterday, very late. He woke me up to do it, he said it was very urgent.”

“Ay?” Dodd was puzzled. Why would Carey need his court clothes urgently to go hawking. In any case, he had left for Finsbury Fields wearing his hunting gear, the forest green and nut-brown doublet and hose that was now a little ill-fitting, or so he complained proudly. “Did he pawn anything else?”

“No, Senhor. Forgive me, but can you tell me your wife’s full name?”

“What?”

“Your wife? Her full name?”

Dodd’s eyes narrowed and his neck prickled. Once again he caught the scent of deception and intrigue where nobody can be trusted simply by their face. And why on earth would Carey want his Court clothes. “Janet Armstrong,” he said with a gulp.

Senhor Gomes reached under the counter and brought out a letter addressed to Sergeant Dodd and sealed with Carey’s carved emerald ring-the Swan Rampant again. Dodd broke the seal, opened the letter and read a short note: “Sergeant, I have decided to go to Court to discuss recent events with my liege Her Majesty the Queen. Please reassure my parents if necessary. Use my funds as you see fit to solve the problem. I will look forward to seeing you in Oxford or at Court if the Queen decides to move.” The letter was signed with Carey’s full signature.