P. Chisholm: A Murder of Crows

“Jesu,” said Dodd, horrified. Nobody else took any notice. The girls fanned out and went and knocked on the doors of the nearby houses whilst Dodd and Pickering took a couple of the grenadoes that Trevasker had brought, lit them from a slow match that Trevasker had kept in a pot, and went round the back of the house.

Dodd hefted the heavy pottery ball filled with serpentine gunpowder and sawdust with the fuse coming out of the top. He hated grenadoes, always felt sick when he lit one because you never knew how long you had to throw it…Or whether someone brave might throw it back. But for setting fire to a roof, they couldn’t be bettered.

Dodd threw the grenado overarm onto the thatch of Heneage’s house where there was a dip between eaves. It landed, rolled, it was going to roll off the roof…And then it exploded-not as loudly nor as destructively as a petard which was the same thing made of iron rather than pottery-but well enough. A hole was blown in the thatch and the drier thatch inside caught alight immediately. Pickering’s lob went neatly onto the roof, but then fell off and landed and exploded in the courtyard where arose an immediate squealing of pigs and a dog started barking manically.

Dodd went to the gate at the front of the house. Somebody fired at him with a pistol which missed, of course, and an arrow clattered against the shutter next to him. Another arrow followed it. He left a grenado there and took cover until that exploded too. Then he ran up to it and kicked it in as fast as he could while arrows and bullets clattered into the ground a yard behind him. They were shite, really. Quite clearly they knew nothing about defending a place, their angles of fire were all wrong.

Behind him he felt Briscoe, who was completely silent with a veney stick in one hand and a poinard in the other, behind Briscoe the other upright men, and then Pickering and Gabriel. He charged his shoulder into the remnants of the door, found himself facing a boy with his mouth open and an empty crossbow in his hands, and knocked him down with his stave. There was a mill in the part of the courtyard penned off for pigs and the two dogs on chains were barking themselves hoarse at it. An older man came at Dodd, who dodged and knocked him sideways. Briscoe took a man with a bow who was aiming at Dodd. Pickering and Gabriel were already across the yard and at the front door of the house itself. Gabriel knelt down at it as if he was praying while Pickering stood in front of him with a throwing dagger in each hand and an intent expression on his face.

Dodd’s mouth turned down mournfully as he swapped blows with a swordsman, knocked the weapon aside, and sliced down through his shoulder. No jack. Was the man mad? On the other hand, Dodd had no jack on either and didn’t think a fancy doublet could do much to protect him from a better-wielded sword. Somebody else came running at him and without thinking he kicked the men’s legs from under him and knocked him out. Jesu, he’d never fought so gently in his life.

Gabriel was kneeling beside the lock with a hooked piece of wire in his fist and a grin on his face. Pickering opened the door, Dodd shouldered past him and spitted the man waiting with a raised sword.

Outside the harlots were helping to ring the firebell and shout fire. The next-door-neighbours were already forming a bucket chain from the Thames. Nobody had time to worry about the pitched battle around the house as the Cornish broke through the barred gate and into the garden.

Dodd knew he was in a dangerous state. The smell of the fire seemed to unroll the black rage in his belly and turn it into something like pleasure. He walked swiftly into the hall of the house which was already starting to fill with smoke, saw somebody start up from their sleep next to the fire, and hit him with his veney stick. It seemed a waste not to kill him, but Dodd was trying to do things the way Lady Hunsdon wanted them. There was somebody on the stairs so Dodd held his breath, burrowed through the smoke, grabbed him by the doublet front and threw him downstairs where Gabriel or Pickering coshed him.

There was a knot of them at the top of the stairs, two or three men, getting in each others’ way as Briscoe fought his way up. Dodd pulled a painted cloth off the wall, threw it over their heads, and then beat everything round he could see with his cosh before throwing them down the stairs one after another. Gabriel laughed behind him as he stepped over one of the bodies.

Breathing as little as he could in the acrid smoke, Dodd slammed through several doors. Somebody shot a pistol at him again and by sheer luck the ball went into the wall not a foot from his face. Dodd’s mouth drew down as he kicked through the door where the man with the pistol lodged, dodged the downswing of the ball of iron on the pistol’s stock, knocked the arm aside, grabbed the front of the man’s doublet, and headbutted him right on the nose. The man dropped his pistol and fell back clutching his flattened nose and mewing so Dodd kicked his legs out from under him and stamped on his hand. Behind him was Portia Morgan with her hands tied to a bedpost, her doublet off and her trunk hose half pulled down. What he could see of her arse was as marred with pockmarks as the rest of her, though nicely shaped.

Dodd looked at her face with the bloody nose and the black eye and the split lip and something told him what to say as he sawed through the rope around her hands.

“Ay, Mr. Enys, can ye fight?”

She paused, gulped, nodded. “Where’s my sword?” She was making her voice deliberately deep. She was hitching her braces back over her shoulders, rebuckling her belt, coughing hard in the smoke. With shaking hands she caught up her doublet from the floor and slung it on, doing up the buttons quickly. Now he knew what to look for of course it was obvious; her hands may have been pock-marked but they were smaller than a man’s and very deft.

“Take this,” said Dodd, giving her his veney stick. “Where’s Mrs. Briscoe?”

“She’s in the cellar. Can’t you hear her?”

Another earsplitting scream sliced through the building. Enys bent down to the man Dodd had flattened, who was trying to get up again. She pulled his eating knife from his belt and went to stab him in the chest with it.

“Better slit his throat,” Dodd said, “It’s easier.”

Enys snarled, caught the man’s hair in her fist and pulled his head back.

“Mind the blood,” Dodd said to her, deliberately turning away. He felt she had the right. He still heard the soft sound of blade on flesh and the suck of air into a slit windpipe. Then he heard her being sick. The smell of the fire was gaining on him, the rage in him and the smell of blood: he wasn’t angry exactly for there was none of the red mist of it, but he was far out the other side of the particular black rage that took him in situations like this and made him cold and ruthless and evil. He knew he was evil, but it couldn’t be helped.

“Sar’nt,” growled Briscoe from the door, “they’re hooking the thatch off.”

Outside the street was full of purposeful activity as men with long hooks pulled down the burning thatch and poured Thames water over it. In the courtyard at the front the pig was squalling so loudly and the dog was barking himself hoarse, you couldn’t hear what was going on in the cellar-except there was something loud still happening there too.

“Mr. Pickering wants you downstairs, Sar’nt,” said Gabriel.

Dodd was panting for air as not enough of it came through the holes in the roof, and he hadn’t the breath to argue, so he turned, clattered down the stairs, followed by a still retching and swallowing Portia Morgan, through the hall and another door. Somebody erupted from a closet door behind him and found Enys in the way. She managed somehow to back-hand the man in the face with her stick. There was an audible crack as his jaw broke. He fell back as she kicked him hard in the knee and when he went down she grabbed his dagger from his belt and went to cut his throat as well. Dodd grabbed her arm and stopped her with regret.