P. Chisholm - A Murder of Crows

“Well, Mr. Heneage, ain’t you going to arrest me too?” asked Pickering conversationally.

A muscle twitched in Heneage’s cheek. “Later,” he said. Pickering chuckled quietly.

“Queen’s Warrant still in force then?” he said. Heneage said nothing.

That was interesting but Dodd heard another loud banging and crashing above. They had better get on. He hurried along the passage and then paused at a side turning.

“Whit is this place?”

“Smuggler’s passage,” said Briscoe, “to get the wine in and out of the bonded warehouse.”

“Ay then, there’ll be a door ontae the river to get to the Pool.”

Dodd scratched with his dagger on the corner and then went down it. The passage tilted downwards and came to a grill that seemed to be locked. There had to be a mechanism or a lever or…

Briscoe had leaned down and pulled and the grill came up. They ducked under it and he let it go down again. A wooden door that was part rotten from the damp was a little further on. When they peered around the door, they found watersteps washed by the river.

As always the Thames was busy in the twilight. Dodd put his fingers between his teeth and whistled sharply. A boatman paused, changed direction, and came up to the steps. “Where to, masters?”

“Pool o’ London, the Judith of Penryn .”

“No chance, mate, I’m not shooting the bridge now. I’ll take you to the bridge and you can walk.”

Dodd shrugged and stepped into the boat, followed by Briscoe, who sat down in the back.. no, the stern…his face working.

“Never seen no one take a boat at them steps before,” said the boatman. “What are they from?”

“Ah, a private house. Of a merchant,” lied Dodd, even though Pickering would probably never use the place again and the Tunnage and Poundage men would have lost a useful source of income.

“Hm. Shows you never can tell. I thought I knew every set of watersteps on the river. I was telling my lord of Southampton just the other night that…”

Dodd was thinking as hard as he could. If Heneage truly did have a warrant against him for treason, then the only possible sensible place to hide was the Judith . And he hoped that the man who called himself Vent would be there as well. But now he had the time to think, he realised that there was someone else he urgently needed to talk to first. He tapped the boatman on the shoulder as he prosed on and on about the Earl of Essex who seemed to be a very fine fellow and said, “Ah’ve changed ma mind, I wantae go to the Blackfriars.”

The boatman tutted and rolled his eyes. “Well that’s double, with the tide as it is. Are you sure?”

“Ay,” said Dodd. He was too. He glanced at Briscoe in the back…stern of the boat but the man was too hangdog and miserable to say anything about the change of plan. He had better not try any signalling. Still Dodd was annoyed with himself about that: he had noticed the man was hollow-eyed but he had done nothing about it.

On impulse he leaned over and touched the man’s shoulder. “Mr. Briscoe,” he said, “Ah need tae find a man by the name o’ Will Shakespeare and Ah cannae spare much time for it. He could be at Somerset House, he could be at the Earl o’ Southampton’s place, or he could be…”

He didn’t want to risk Somerset House just yet, if ever, and the Earl of Southampton had gone to the court according to Carey. That left two places.

Ordering the boatman to wait, Dodd ran up the steps and down an alley. The Mermaid Inn was half-empty, the landlord looking as if he was staring ruin in the face now Marlowe was drinking somewhere else. A greasy damp smell of fire came from the half-burned kitchen at the back. Only Anthony Munday sat alone by the bar, scribbling into a notebook and looking very dapper in a pale grey woollen doublet and hose.

“Nobody’s here,” said Munday dolefully. “Have you seen Marlowe? He owes me ten shillings.”

“Ay?” said Dodd, “I dinna ken where he is the day. Have ye seen Shakespeare?”

“No,” said Munday viciously. “With a bit of luck he’s got plague and died of it.”

“Ay,” said Dodd, having almost forgotten about the plague that was running round the city still.

One place left to try, but Dodd decided to swing through the Temple and quietly check on one of his ideas for solving the mess in front of him. He found Essex’s court and climbed the stairs to Enys’s chamber where he had locked the door as he left. Dodd hammered on the door.

“Mrs. Morgan,” he roared, “are ye there?” Silence. No sound of fire, no sound of breathing, nothing.

Dodd pulled out his dagger, levered the hinges of the new door with it, and then used one of the bits of the old door to prise into the crack and break the door open. He’d pay for it after, if it came to that, but above all he needed information. The room was dim in the dusk now, so he used the tongs to pick a coal out of the fireplace and lit a tallow dip with it. The smoke was choking, but it gave just enough light.

The place was completely empty. Dodd went through into the second room where there was a bed and a trundle under it, which bore no signs of having been slept in for some time. Somebody had put back the remains of the mattress and there was the clear print of one body in it. The jordan was emptied, most of the mess of the pursuivants search had been swept away. In no place was there any sign of Mrs. Morgan, Enys’ unfortunately pock-marked sister.

“Ay,” said Dodd, putting the tallow dip in its sconce on the mantleshelf. He was fully satisfied he had it right. There were not three siblings, there were two. And if one brother was now calling himself Vent and hiding out on the Judith of Penryn in the Pool of London then that left…

“What are you doing here?” It was Shakespeare’s voice, nasal flattened vowels and doleful tone again.

Dodd drew his dagger, strode across the floor, grabbed Shakespeare by the front of his doublet and slammed him against the cracked wood panelling with the dagger threatening to split his nose. Shakespeare looked down at it cross-eyed.

“Ah’m lookin’ for Mrs. Morgan or Mr. Enys, depending,” Dodd growled., “Ah’m also searching for the land-survey that Lady Hunsdon’s maidservant brought up from London and which ye stole, ye bastard.”

Shakespeare’s eyelids fluttered. “I…I…”

“Who’d ye give it tae?” Dodd bounced Shakespeare against the wall, “Eh? Mr. Heneage?” Bounce. “Mr. Topcliffe?” Harder bounce.

Shakespeare was breathless with fright and what he said came out as a hiss. Dodd nearly slit his nose for him before he realised what Shakespeare was trying to tell him.

“The Cecils?”

“Sir Robert Cecil, my lord Burghley’s second son, the hunchback.”

Dodd stopped banging the man against the wall and stared into his bland face. “That who ye serve and spy on the Hunsdons for?”

Shakespeare flushed and nodded. “I cut young Letty’s purse while you were busy calming the horse,” he explained. “And then I took the survey to Cecil myself because…well, I thought it might interest him even though it said there was no gold. And he said that he needed to keep it secret before the matter could be revealed.”

“Was he surprised or shocked at it?”

Shakespeare’s very large brow wrinkled slightly. “No, he wasn’t. In fact he seemed amused to hear that my lady Hunsdon had come up to London specially to put a stop to the dealings in lands she knew to be worthless.”

“Whit did he say?”

Shakespeare shrugged. “Only that the horse had bolted and there was nothing she could do.”

Dodd let go of the man’s doublet front and smoothed it out for him. “Ah’m glad I saw ye,” he said. “Why did ye come here?”