P. Chisholm - A Murder of Crows

Marlowe went there with ill-grace.

“Ay, now lie on the floor wi’ yer legs in the air against the wall where I can see them.”

“What?”

“Ye heard me, Mr. Marlowe.” Dodd screwed up some pages at random from the pile and put them in the flames where they flared and the iron salts in the ink thickly covering the paper turned the flames red. As always there was a feeling of relief to see something burn when he was angry. Marlowe made a choking sound in his throat. He lay down slowly, and put his legs up against the wall. Dodd thought of pinning him down with the clothes chest but then decided it was too much trouble.

He put the wad of paper under his arm, grabbed a handful of tobacco out of the packet he had brought and tucked it in his own pouch, then went very quietly to the door, opened it and slid into the passage. There he left Marlowe’s precious play about boy-lovers, as he’d promised, although the play had made a good hostage and he didn’t think he’d ever get any co-operation again from Marlowe. And it wasn’t as if anybody would ever actually want to watch the thing in a playhouse. Not even London could be that full of buggers.

Dodd walked back to Carey’s chambers-Carey had a bedroom and a parlour as well, which was twice the size of the little hut where Dodd had come to manhood after the Elliots burnt them out. Ridiculous-what would anyone want with all that echoing space? He tried to go in, but then stopped. Damn it. Lady Hunsdon had locked the door.

A low groan came from his lips. But Carey had clearly wanted him to solve the conundrum of the man who wasn’t a priest being executed, and the man who was, dying in the Thames. Therefore…Dodd felt along the top of the doorframe and along the edge of the panelling by the tiled floor. There was a chest with a silver candlestick on it which caught Dodd’s eye, so he went and picked it up and found a key tucked up in the base. He snorted, took the key, put the candlestick down, opened Carey’s chamber door, went in and locked the door behind him.

He sat down and stared at the papers with the upside down As at the top, looked at the books. None of them began with the letter A, nor were they about anyone whose name began with A, nor were they by men whose names began with A. Yet Carey had worked the thing out and as Marlowe had said, he wasn’t that clever, bloody sprig of a courtier that he was. Nor did he have magical powers, God damn him, unless you counted overweaning self-confidence and the luck of the devil.

Dodd wandered around the room again, looked in the chest, and nodded. Carey had taken his dags with him, somehow, and his sword. He must have sent someone to meet him in Finsbury Fields with a remount and packpony.

A thought occurred to Dodd. He carefully locked up behind him, went back to his own chamber, found the wickerwork box stuffed with hay in which was Janet Armstrong’s highly valuable new green velvet hat, and picked it up. Another thought occurred as he saw his old homespun doublet and hose hanging on a hook at the back of the door. Time to do something about them, so he took out some of the hay and stuffed the clothes and his old hemp shirt and a few other things into the box. Then he wandered down to the kitchens off the back courtyard where he had a quiet word with the undercook and appropriated a bag of sacking that had contained pot-herbs. This he shook out carefully and wrapped around the package with string, wrote a label addressing it to Mr. Alexander Dodd, the Guardroom, Carlisle Castle in his best handwriting. He thought a moment and added a note to say that he, Sergeant Dodd, would pay back the man that paid the carriage on it.

Then with a bellyful of good brown bread, cheese, and pickled cabbage, and a quart of remarkably good ale that he had cadged as well, Dodd went out the gate of Somerset House and carried the whole surprisingly heavy thing all the way to the Belle Sauvage Inn on Ludgate. It took him half an hour to find a carter who was heading for York and knew another one that made the round as far north as Carlisle, carrying supplies for the Castle. He payed an eyewatering amount for a deposit to the carter, plus more for the man who would take it on from York, and hoped that his brother Sandy would be kind enough to stump up the money if it got to Carlisle. He could imagine the stir when the thing arrived, especially if his men were nosy enough to open it, and was quite cheered up by the thought of their mystification.

He walked back a little quicker and went down an alleyway into the dens of lawyers that clustered around the Inns of Court, found Enys’s chamber, and knocked on the door.

Enys put his head out immediately. “One minute,” he said. Dodd heard his voice murmuring and then another higher pitched voice-it seemed he was urging his sister to greet Sergeant Dodd but she adamantly refused.

Then Enys was on the landing, hat on his head and his too-heavy sword at his side.

“Where will we get a new sword?” Enys asked as he locked the door.

“We’ll go to an armourer’s I saw near Cheapside,” said Dodd. “Sir Robert said they made good weapons there.”

In fact Carey had been trying to persuade Dodd to buy a gimcrack unchancy foreign-style rapier with a curly handguard and a velvet scabbard to replace his friendly, balanced, and extremely sharp broadsword that had been made for him by the Dodd surname’s own blacksmith and fitted his body like a glove. Dodd had sniffed at all Carey’s reasons why rapiers were the coming thing and then smashed the entire argument to bits by enquiring why, if rapiers were so wonderful, Carey was now bearing a broadsword himself.

“You know my rapier broke last summer when I hit that Elliot who was wearing a jack…” Carey had said incautiously.

“Ay,” said Dodd, feeling his point had been made for him. Carey grinned and started campaigning for Dodd to buy a twenty-inch duelling poinard instead until Dodd had lost his temper and asked if Carey was working on commission for the armourer.

Enys nodded and trotted down the stairs and out into the sunlight. The year was tilting into winter right enough, with the orchards full of fruit and nuts and the hedges and gardens full of birds stealing the fruit, and angry wasps.

They walked up Ludgate, past St Paul’s, and Dodd found the armourer’s shop he wanted. It was not at all showy and didn’t have parts of tournament armour and wonderfully elaborate foreign pig-stickers hanging outside in advertisement of the weaponsmith’s abilities. On the other hand, his barred windows were of glass and the swords hanging there seemed nicely balanced.

They went in, Enys hesitating on the threshold and looking around in wonder.

“Ay,” said Dodd, “it’s odd not to have yer sword made for ye, but…” He shrugged.

The armourer remembered Dodd as having come with Carey since he was wearing the same unnaturally smart woollen doublet. Soon there were several swords laid out on the counter with the armourer excitedly pointing out the beauty of the prettier sword. Dodd picked up one of the others, with a plain hilt, a grip of sharkskin and curled quillions. He felt the weight, drew it, sighted along the blade, flexed the blade, sniffed it, balanced it on his finger, then handed it to Enys who nearly dropped it.

Enys swung it a few times experimentally while Dodd and the armourer retreated behind a display post with breastplates mounted on it. Enys smiled.

“That’s much better, much easier.”

“Ay,” sniffed Dodd, “I thocht so, Mr. Enys. The one ye’ve got is a couple of pounds heavier.”

He turned to the armourer and asked if he would do a part-exchange while Enys eagerly fumbled his sword belt off and handed it over for inspection. The armourer frowned when he saw it, looked hard at Enys, then shook his head.