P. Chisholm - A Plague of Angels

Hunsdon’s study was a room lined with books and cluttered with papers and official dispatch bags hanging on hooks. Dodd knocked on the door, entered at the single bark of ‘Come’, and stood straight with his cap off in front of the desk. Hunsdon had been leafing dispiritedly through a pile of letters and looked up at him.

‘Sergeant Dodd. Good of you to come so promptly. What do you think of the mews?’

‘I’m no’ a falconer, my lord, and I canna say I’ve ever hunted with a bird, though I’ve watched when I was beating. Yer man at the mews says they might fly next week, being cautious, but we’ll be back on the road tae Carlisle by then.’ Hunsdon wasn’t really listening.

‘Hm. Dodd,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘There was a Dodd under my command when we took Dacre’s hide-any relation?’

‘Ay, sir. Me father, sir.’

Hunsdon beamed. ‘That’s right, of course he is. You’ve exactly the look of him. Damned fine soldier, if a bit serious. Scouted for me, as I recall, with his Upper Tynedalers.’

‘Ay, sir.’

‘Spotted Dacre’s cavalry, I think.’

‘Did he, sir?’ Dodd could feel his ears going pink. He preferred not to think of his father. It brought back the horrible hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach that he’d had all through his teens.

‘How is he?’

‘Ma father, sir? He’s died.’

Hunsdon sighed. ‘I’m sorry to hear it, Sergeant.’

Strangely enough he did genuinely seem sorry though he could hardly have given a thought to Dodd’s father between the Revolt of the Northern Earls and this day.

‘Ay, sir. Er…thank ye, sir.’

‘And what’s this I hear about my son’s behaviour at the Scottish court?’

The ambush was the more deadly for coming from behind a cover of sympathy.

‘My lord?’ Dodd kept his face carefully blank. Hunsdon made a ‘hrmhrm’ noise that was obviously where the Courtier had got his throat clearing and leaned back in his carved chair, causing it to creak at the joints.

‘Sergeant,’ he said gently, ‘I like discretion in a man under my command and I’ve no doubt my son does too, but I must have the full tale.’

‘The one Mr Heneage heard?’

Hunsdon chuckled without the least trace of humour. ‘Certainly not. The one in which my son becomes somehow sufficiently deranged to deal in armaments with a couple of Italians who had Papist Spy all but branded on their foreheads, as he saw fit to boast in his letter? The one which explains the rumours about him being arrested for high treason, which he did not mention? The one which accounts for the damage to his hands which makes him embarrassed to take his blasted gloves off in my presence? That tale?’

‘Och,’ said Dodd firmly, resisting any impulse to smile at the exasperation in Hunsdon’s voice. ‘That one?’

‘Yes,’ said Hunsdon patiently. ‘That one.’

Dodd told him, or at least all of it that he knew. At the end of his story, Hunsdon passed his palm across his eyes.

‘Good God,’ he said. ‘And his hands?’

‘What he said to me was they got caught in a door.’

‘Oh really?’

‘But considering two fingers was broken-which are fine now, my lord, his grip’s good enough to fire a dag-and he’s lost four fingernails which arenae grown back yet, my guess is someone had at him wi’ the pinniwinks.’ Hunsdon raised his eyebrows. ‘Ah, thumbscrews, sir.’

Carey’s dad had the same capacity as his son for instantly radiating compressed fury. His grey eyes had gone cold as ice.

‘King James?’

‘I doubt it, seeing how much he likes the Cour…Sir Robert, and seeing he give us the guns back.’

‘Then Lord Spynie.’

‘Ay, my lord. And Sir Henry Widdrington.’

There was a short heavy silence. It was noticeable that Carey’s father did not ask why Widdrington should want to mistreat his son. Hunsdon was staring into space. Dodd kept his mouth shut because he recognised that look, and if Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon was meditating on ways and means for a startling piece of vengeance, it wasn’t Dodd’s place to interrupt him. Eventually Hunsdon looked shrewdly at Dodd.

‘My youngest son’s capacity for getting himself into trouble and then out again has never ceased to astound me,’ he said. ‘Is that it, the full tale?’

‘All I know, my lord.’

‘Barnabus claims to be even more ignorant. Is it true Robin left him in Carlisle when he went into Scotland?’

‘Ay, my lord. He was…ah…he was indisposed.’

Hunsdon grinned. ‘So I gathered, poor fellow. Clap’s the very devil, isn’t it?’

Dodd wasn’t at all sure how to answer this as he had no personal experience of clap at all, but was saved by the slam of a window being opened and an indistinct shrieking of a woman’s voice on the side of the house overlooking the Strand. Hunsdon opened the window of his office himself, and leaned out to look. Dodd peered over his shoulder.

Mistress Bassano was leaning out of an upstairs window, her magnificent hair flying in the breeze, her magnificent breasts bulging over the top of her pale green bodice and two high spots of colour pointing up the hectic flash of her eyes.

‘You pathetic bookworm, you pillock of a man, how dare you send this trash to me, how dare you!’

She was waving a couple of pieces of writing which had the painful regularity of something much laboured over.

‘You look at me with your stupid dog’s eyes and you whine of love, but do you see me ? No. Look at this piece of drivel, you pox-blinded bald nincompoop!’

Mistress Bassano was screaming at Will Shakespeare, who stood in the street unaware of the way the passing throngs were pausing to turn and stare, his face full of misery.

With passionate ceremony Mistress Bassano tore up the papers, dug obscenely under her petticoats with them and then dropped them in a jordan held by her giggling maid. Hunsdon was leaning against the window-frame enjoying himself. Shakespeare stood with his mouth open and his hands out in desperation at this sacrilege. Mistress Bassano nodded to her maid who threw the contents of the jordan with deadly aim at his head. The other walkers in the street had scattered away from him as soon as they saw the jordan, but Shakespeare just stood there, with soiled sheets of paper fluttering around him and something horrible stuck to his doublet.

Lord Hunsdon cheered and applauded, his good-humour slightly edged with malice. Mistress Bassano dusted off her fingers fastidiously, turned a satin shoulder and disappeared from the window. The maid impudently added a finger at Will before the shutters banged closed again.

Suddenly Dodd felt very sorry for the little man. Hunsdon was coming away from the window still chuckling.

In case Carey’s father thought to ask how Mistress Bassano had come by Shakespeare’s letter, Dodd asked hurriedly, ‘My lord, when are we heading back to Carlisle?’

Hunsdon was sitting down, picking up a pen, shaking his head and laughing. ‘Splendid girl, Mistress Bassano, full of fun,’ he was saying contentedly. ‘You still there, Sergeant? No, you’re not going back yet. Robin’s got a job to do for me first.’

‘Och,’ said Dodd hollowly, suddenly realising how much he hated London town. ‘What’s that?’

The door opened and Mistress Bassano appeared alone in a rustle of pale green silk. Hunsdon smiled.

‘Stupid bastard,’ she was muttering. ‘My lord, you should have him arrested.’ She curtseyed and then glared at Dodd before emphatically ignoring him. Her back view was almost as delectable as the front, the way the gown was cut tight at the waist to flow over her bumroll, and of course that was how you could do it with a pregnant woman, like a horse, which was a wonderful thought and brought a whole new perspective to Dodd’s distracted mind.