P. Chisholm - A Plague of Angels

‘What, sir?’

‘A man wi’ a cloak…’

‘Sorry, sir?’

‘A man wi’…Och, never mind.’

Dodd went out into the garden again, stood near one of the windows where the light from all those candles was spilling onto the gravel and emptied the purse. There was gold and silver in it, three pounds three shillings to be exact, and a tightly folded piece of paper.

‘“With good wishes and in hopes of future friendship, Thomas Heneage, Vice Chamberlain.”’

It was, as Carey would say, quite unexceptionable. A gift, a sweetener, you might say, not exactly a bribe. What was he supposed to do in return? No doubt Heneage would let him know.

Dodd scowled and stared into the velvet darkness. He couldn’t give it back and what would be the point of that anyway? But something about this universal assumption that he could be bought grated on him. Still, as Janet would say, what was he complaining about? With the money from the footpads, he had already netted more than a month’s pay from this trip. Dodd took out the footpad’s spoils, counted the whole lot together. Five pounds and some change. Nearly two months’ wages, cash in hand, no stoppages.

He picked out a couple of shillings and put them in the convenient pocket sewn into his puffed-up braid-decorated left sleeve and hid the rest of his money in the hollow of his crotch, where his codpiece would keep it in place. The next day he would buy a proper money-belt.

***

Dodd was happier than he had been for years. He was surrounded by warm silky naked flesh, by quivering crinkle-tipped breasts, by smooth round buttocks. Mistress Bassano had his head in her arms so he could suckle her. Thunder rumbled through the sky and Janet, clad only in her beautiful suit of golden freckles, was doing something sinfully obscene for him that made him feel he might explode and…

A mighty earthquake struck London and hammered through Dodd’s head. He opened one eye to see that God-cursed bastard of a Courtier shaking the bed and grinning at him, with a candle next to him turning his face into a nightmare.

‘What…what…’ Dodd spluttered, reached guiltily to cover up Mistress Bassano and then realised that she had turned into a pillow. His groin throbbed and he turned over, buried his head in the other pillow.

‘Very sorry, Sergeant,’ said Carey in a voice which suggested he might have some notion of exactly how good a dream it was he had spoiled. ‘Er…You have to get up.’

‘Why, for Christ’s sake?’ moaned Dodd.

Carey coughed. ‘We’re doing a moonlight flit.’

‘What?’

‘We’re moving out. I can’t function here, I’m practically a prisoner.’

‘But…’

‘My father’s going to pay off my tailor, Mr Bullard, who’s the most dangerous of my creditors. If I can keep clear of any others, I should be all right. Anyway, I’m moving into the Liberties which still has the right of sanctuary.’

Tantalising woman-shapes were still fading in Dodd’s abused head and he felt very unwell. Had he been visited by succubi, the female demons who sucked out your soul by your privy member at night? Perhaps. London must be full of them.

Groaning he sat up and tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes. ‘So ye’re movin?’ he whined. ‘Why do I have to move too? I like it here.’

Carey looked sympathetic. ‘I’m sorry. I need your help.’

‘Och’ whimpered Dodd, giving his face another rub and wishing very much that the Courtier needed more sleep. Above all things, he hated being wakened in the middle of the night. Or the early morning. Or at all. What he hated was being woken. God, how he hated it.

‘Are you awake now?’ Carey said solicitously. ‘I left you till last. We’re all ready. Can you get up now, get dressed?’

Dodd groaned again. ‘Ay,’ he said at last. ‘Ay. I’ll be with ye in a minute.’

When he came through into the entrance hall, comfortable in his homespun and leather jerkin, the place was lit by wax candles and seemed full of people. As he sorted out who was there, the people turned into Barnabus and Simon, both yawning and looking shattered, carrying bundles. Carey strode through and smiled at them, fresh as a daisy, newly shaved and smartly turned out in black velvet slashed with flame-coloured taffeta and a clean ruff. Dodd burned with hatred for him.

There was a distinct ‘hrmhrm’ from one of the doorways. Lord Hunsdon was standing there, wrapped in a sable-fur dressing gown with his embroidered nightcap making him look older.

‘Father,’ said Carey and bowed. Hunsdon beckoned him over. Dodd was just close enough to hear the tail-end of their muttered conversation. ‘Find him if you can, Robin, but for God’s sake, be careful.’

Carey smiled at his father. ‘You don’t mean that, my lord?’

Hunsdon scowled back. ‘I do, you bloody idiot. Don’t get yourself killed.’

Carey kissed his father’s hand with affectionate ceremony, but Hunsdon pulled him close and embraced him like a bear.

When Carey had gone ahead, with Barnabus and Simon trailing unhappily in his wake, Hunsdon growled at Dodd.

‘Sergeant.’

‘Ay, my lord.’

‘You know that my son can sometimes be a little rash.’

Dodd remained stony-faced despite this outrageous understatement. ‘Ay, my lord.’

‘You seem like a man of good sense and intelligence. Try and restrain him.’

Dodd made an unhappy grimace. ‘Ay, my lord. I’ll try.’

‘Every day I thank God that I have such a fine son. Keep him alive for me, and I’ll not be ungrateful.’

Dodd’s heart sank at the impossibility of the task. ‘Ay, my lord,’ he said hollowly.

Hunsdon grinned piratically at his dismay. ‘Do your best, man. That’s all I ask.’

‘Ay, my lord.’

To Dodd’s private amusement, instead of going through the postern gate like Christian men, Carey led the three of them into the moonlit garden and over a wall into the garden of the next house, which was a grassy mound with some trees down by the river. Then they went over another wall and into a narrow dirty alley that smelled of the salt and dirt in the Thames at the open end of it. They went the other way and came out into the dark early morning Strand just past the conduit. Nobody was there, not even the nightsoil men, because it was so horribly early in the morning, it was still the middle of the night. Dodd yawned again at the thought. They had no torches but didn’t need them thanks to the moonlight, and Dodd thought of the uses of moonlight and the dangers. Cats flashed their eyes and ran for cover and more black ugly things scurried away with their naked tails slithering. Except once, Dodd had never seen so many rats in his life as he’d seen in London.

Carey led them briskly through back streets to Temple Bar where a couple of beggars were huddled up against the inner wall of the arch, with carved headless saints watching over them. They passed a church with a square tower, surrounded by a churchyard, and a vast towering midden that looked ready to topple at any minute; they passed the Cock tavern and at last Carey turned right down another tiny alley, ducked through archways that took the street under part of a house and then turned left into a jumble of small ancient houses and up four flights of stairs under a headless figure of a woman standing precariously on a coiled rope. At the top he used a key to unlock the door and they went into a little attic room with a crazily pitched ceiling that smelled musty and damp with emptiness. The floorboards were bare of rushes except for a few scraps in a corner and there was a bed with a truckle under it and a straw palliasse under that. The fireplace was empty, there was a table under the window with a candlestick on it, three stools and that was all.