P. Chisholm - A Murder of Crows

“Oh, somewhere around here.” She turned her head, looked straight at Dodd and winked. Dodd almost snorted with amusement.

Then she rapped with the cane on the deck. “Come along, come along, James,” she said. “Just spill it all out, you’ll feel so much better. When did your sister-Portia isn’t it? I remember that. Her mother named her after a little fishing village in Cornwall for some reason. When did Portia start playing at being a man?” No answer. “Do you want me to ask Dodd to encourage you a little? Just to salve your pride with a black eye, or something?”

Not for the first time, Dodd’s ribs were hurting with the effort of not laughing James’s face reappeared from behind his hands and scowled at Lady Hunsdon.

“Ah’ll dae it and glad to,” said Dodd, wishing he had leather gloves on to protect his scabbed knuckles. “It might be safer for him if ye have a man holding him though.”

“That’s not necessary,” growled the real James Enys.

“Och,” said Dodd, quite relieved, but did his best to look disappointed.

“It started after we both came up to London from Cornwall, after it seemed everybody we had in the world had died of smallpox. I went back to Gray’s Inn to continue my legal studies which I had broken to try my fortune in the Netherlands. I had no enthusiasm for it any more, after…after the smallpox. Portia came with me to keep house for me and because she had nowhere else and we always agreed very well so it seemed the best idea. I found that…I was falling behind and so she would help with my studies and write briefs for my moots. The first time she wore my clothes and pretended to be me was a day when I had a terrible megrim and fever…”

“I expect you were hungover, weren’t you? Distempered of drink?” came Lady Hunsdon’s scalpel-like voice.

James looked at the deck. “Yes, my lady, I was. She went and mooted for me and did immensely well, carrying her point and utterly destroying my opponent that I had been afraid of. She came back in the best spirits I had seen her in since the death of her children and husband and the next time I had to moot, she went on my behalf again as I never liked doing it.”

“Ehm…milady, what’s a moot?”

“As it were a practice court case for the law students at the Inns of Court, like a veney with words,” said Lady Hunsdon. “Often on very foolish subjects.”

“Whiteacre and Greenacre arguing over a square yard of land upon which is an easement and a flying freehold, generally,” said James incomprehensibly. “Utterly tedious. But Portia enjoyed it and was much better at talking Norman French, so I…well, it seemed kinder to…”

“You were very relieved at not having to do the work yourself and let her do it.”

“Yes. She studied and began taking some clerk work to support us and even began being approached for some court paperwork. When it came time for me to be called to the Bar…She was in the hall, not I, and it was she that was properly called. It seemed only just.”

Lady Hunsdon nodded. “Had she no wish to marry again?”

“My sister is convinced that no man will look twice at her since her complexion is now so hideous.”

Lady Hunsdon nodded sympathetically.

“And she has no inheritance for all her husband’s land went to his brother with the death of his issue and very little jointure, nor no dowry from me neither. A man would have to take her in her smock or not at all.”

Lady Hunsdon nodded again.

“In the meantime, as she says, she must eat and as it seems she has an ability and an understanding for the law-which to be sure, I have not-then she will carry on being a man to do it for as long as she can.”

Enys sighed, spread his hands on his knees. “I have been a very ill brother to her. I did find some clerkwork for Heneage but that went wrong too. For him I drafted many of the deeds for the Cornish lands that were supposed to have gold. They were all being sold by a Mr. Jackson-a man I only knew as a correspondent in Cornwall. I didn’t realise he was a Papist priest. I even found him new buyers. It became quite the fashion at Court and many of the lands have been conveyed at higher prices-so much that I began to wonder at it. I was sure most of the lands I was dealing with bore no gold. To be sure there was gold in Cornwall-there are a couple of places near Camborne where there were gold mines in the olden days, but they are all worked out now.”

“Then suddenly Jackson came up to London and…I had never met him face to face and he was being elusive. So I spoke to a lady who had lent him a chamber in her house. It turned out he was a Jesuit.”

“You are not a Catholic, Mr. Enys, are you?”

Enys coloured and stared hard at the deck. “Not really, my lady, not a proper Catholic. My parents were and tried their best with me but…I attend church service when I should and…” He shrugged. “It seems very unimportant to me what exact flavour of religion we should follow, when it’s most likely that we are simply howling into the void and mistaking the echoes for divinity.”

There was silence at this shocking statement and Trevasker crossed himself and fingered an amulet. Dodd felt for his own; just because it was probably true didn’t mean you should go shouting about it like Marlowe and offending…Something.

“It was the children,” said Lady Hunsdon gently although she had frowned at first. “Seeing the children die of so evil a pestilence as smallpox?”

Enys nodded, gulped again, and continued in a rush. “Suddenly, somehow, everything went wrong and Heneage arrested Jackson.”

“How did you find out?”

“I…heard about it. Then I was in terror it would be me next for being with him-after all, once they put him to the question mine would be a name he would give. I was hiding at the Belle Sauvage under another name. Then I recognised Richard Tregian when he came to town-God, I was pleased to see him. I asked his advice and he warned me off the Cornish goldmines himself. He said he had been sent up to London by you to warn the authorities and that you would bring his daughter with a true survey of the lands in question to prove they had no gold-bearing ore in them.”

“So who was it ordered you to help Fr. Jackson escape from Heneage?”

“From Topcliffe in fact, Jackson was being held at one of his private properties upriver in Chelsea so Heneage could deny knowing about…what was happening.”

Lady Hunsdon leaned forwards and spoke very clearly. “Who ordered you to break him out?”

Enys licked his lips. “Sir Robert Cecil.”

Lady Hunsdon sat back with a triumphant smile on her face. “I thought so,” she said smugly, “No wonder Robin bolted for the Court.”

“I had gone to him to ask for an audience for Richard Tregian and when I explained why, he just smiled. Then he asked me if I would do a dangerous job for him for fifty pounds and I said yes. I was desperate for money to go abroad in any case, it seemed to me that the Netherlands was the only hope I had of ever being able to find my sister a husband.

“Cecil gave me a map to show where he thought Fr. Jackson would be kept and a password and key for the dungeon. I went there at a time when Heneage was overpressed with business to do with another matter, and I managed to fetch Fr. Jackson out of Topcliffe’s hands before he had been badly hurt.

“I had him in the boat with me, in his shirt, crowing with triumph, boasting of how he had destroyed the Queen’s best men through their own greed. And I had trusted him and recommended him and found buyers for his lands and…”

“And had bought some yourself, I’m sure.”

“Yes, my lady, I had. And he told me that none of it was true, it was all a lay to coney-catch the great men at Court, there was no gold or hardly any, but that he had turned many worthless Cornish wheals into money and freedom for Catholic families.”