P. Chisholm: A Plague of Angels

‘Ye killed one, then, sir?’ Dodd said as he followed Carey down the slightly better path that led back to the road on the southern side of the Cut.

‘Shot one, slashed another.’

‘Nae trouble wi’ yer hands now?’

Carey grinned with satisfaction and flexed the fingers of his left hand in the embroidered kid gloves he was wearing. ‘No, my grip’s as good as it ever was,’ he said. ‘The kick didn’t even hurt.’

Dodd nodded once, unwilling to be as delighted with Carey as Carey was with himself.

‘I swapped a couple of blows with somebody who had a polearm, might have got him with a slash, and then you killed the big one and the lot of them ran like rabbits.’

‘Nay sir, that werenae me, it were Barnabus,’ Dodd said dolefully, annoyed with himself for not doing better. ‘Got him in the back with a throwing knife. I killed anither man with a crossbow.’

Carey laughed again and sheathed his sword. ‘I’ve never regretted the day I hired Barnabus,’ he said untruthfully. ‘Even though I was drunk at the time. Come on, let’s make sure he doesn’t strip all the corpses.’

Dodd glowered at the thought of being bilked out of his rightful spoils and ran back through the Cut to find Barnabus bending over the man Carey had evidently shot, since his chest was a mashed mess of bone and blood. He was still flopping feebly and Barnabus appeared to be trying to act as a surgeon on him.

‘Barnabus, really,’ admonished Carey from his horse, which was spinning and sidling again. ‘Wait until the poor bugger’s dead.’

Barnabus looked furtive. ‘Well, sir, I was…ah…going to put him out of his misery, so to speak.’

‘Ay,’ said Dodd, coming close and looking down. ‘Were ye now? What are they, then?’ He pointed at the round bright gold coins scattered about the dying man, some of them embedded in the ruined flesh of his chest. ‘Buttercups?’

Barnabus had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Just wondering,’ he muttered.

Even the sniff of gold had the Courtier off his horse, tying it to a bush and coming over to look.

‘Hm,’ he said. ‘That’s peculiar.’

Dodd was gathering up the coins on the ground, though he couldn’t quite bring himself to start plucking coins out of the man’s body. Barnabus wasn’t so fussy.

‘What’s a scrawny Hampstead footpad doing with a purseful of gold?’ Carey asked. ‘And why did they try it on with us if they already had money?’

Dodd shrugged and went to look at the big bruiser that Barnabus had killed. Somebody else had got there first though, and he scowled at Barnabus who coughed and brought out the purse he had taken.

Simon came trotting down from the bank looking disappointed. ‘Nothing up there, Uncle Barney,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

Pointedly, Carey held out his hand for the spoils which Barnabus handed over. Dodd was very reluctant to give up a purse full of money, even if it had blood and chips of bone mixed in, but wasn’t quite annoyed enough with the Courtier to hold onto it.

Carey hefted the purses and frowned. ‘What wealthy little footpads,’ he said, and bent over the man he had shot, who was finally still. Staring eyes told him he’d get no information.

‘Hm,’ said Carey again, putting the purses into one of his saddle bags. ‘Come on, let’s get the horses watered and try and make it into London before nightfall.’

***

As expected, Dodd’s nag was at the horsepond slurping up greenish water and swishing at flies with her tail. She made a great drama about shying when she saw him and trotting further round the pool. Dodd pretended he wasn’t interested in her, wandered up to the trampled banks of the pond, looked everywhere but at the horse and then when she put her wary head down again, nipped her bridle.

‘Got ye,’ he whispered to her and she snorted resignedly.

Carey’s mount was still pulling on the reins and sidling stupidly until he caught the smell of water and then he lunged for it. Carey tied him to one of the posts and disappeared into a bramble bush a little way off. Simon came up from the Cut with Barnabus, leading the other two horses. They had no packponies and were riding strange southern horses because Carey had been in a hurry and they had been riding post. They were due to change mounts again at the Holly Tree in Hampstead, and Dodd, for one, couldn’t wait to be rid of the latest batch of useless knacker’s rejects. Also, he was thirsty, but he would have to be a great deal worse off to consider the stuff in the horsepond. What he wanted was a quart of ale, Bessie’s for preference, bread, cheese, a meat pie, pickled onions…Dodd sighed. Maybe the Holly Tree would have some food. Maybe Carey would let them stop for half an hour to drink.

Maybe he wouldn’t. Dodd wasn’t very hopeful. Out of sheer habit, he stared out across the horsepond at the countryside around them and at the thatched roofs of the village which began a little way down the other side of the hill. His horse had finished and was looking at him expectantly, but he didn’t have a feedbag hidden anywhere on him, so he tied her to the hitching post near the pond. Then he wandered to the other side of the hilltop, to see if he could spy London town yet, even though the milestone had said they were five miles away still.

His mouth fell open. It was a fine lookout spot, that hill, good siting for a pele tower, not that the soft southrons had thought of building one. They had a pathetic beacon on a raised bracket, that must have been put up in the Armada year from the rust on it, but there was no wood around to light it with. You could see for miles when it was clear, which it was, a pale golden evening with not a hint of autumn.

And if you looked southwards, there it lay, a baleful brackish sea of houses, the foremost city in England. The craggy flotsam of church steeples poked up among the cluttered roofs, with smoke dirtying the sky above even on a warm day. Dodd had never seen such a thing. The day before he had been impressed with York, but this…A city that had burst its walls in all directions with so many people that came and stayed, as if the city ate them and got fatter each time. Dodd narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. London might impress him, but eat him it would not.

‘Makes yer heart sing, don’t it?’ said a guttural voice beside him. Barnabus Cooke was standing there, squinting in the south-westering light of the sun. Either the light was stronger than Dodd thought, or the ferret-faced little man had tears in his eyes. ‘Seems a hundred years gone since I left,’ he sighed.

‘Hmphm,’ said Dodd noncommitally.

Barnabus heard his lack of enthusiasm and waved an expressive arm. ‘That, Sergeant Dodd, is the greatest city in Christendom. Everything any sane man could ever want you can get right there, no trouble, money to be made, never any reason to be bored.’

‘Ay, and the streets are all paved wi’ gold,’ said Dodd straight-faced, ‘so I’ve heard tell.’

‘No, they ain’t,’ piped up Simon. ‘Don’t you listen to ’em, Sergeant. Me and my friend Tom, we dug down for two days solid, looking for gold paving stones and we never found nuffing except more paving stones.’

Dodd nodded at Simon. At some time on the long weary journey, a mystery had happened to the lad’s speech again. From sounding quite Christian really, at least as comprehensible as the Carlisle stable lads, Simon had turned back into the guttural creature with hiccups for ‘t’s that he had been when he first came north. God save me, Dodd thought, feeling for the little lump of his wife’s amulet under his shirt, alien men with alien notions and words like cobblestones.

‘Nay lad,’ he said gravely to Simon. ‘I never thought it were, or why are the Grahams no’ laying siege to it.’