P. Chisholm - A Plague of Angels

‘Go to bed,’ he growled unsympathetically.

The magnificent four-poster creaked as Carey collapsed into it, with typical selfishness leaving the candelabrum in the corner still blazing with light. Sighing heavily, Dodd got up once more, snuffed the candles and left the watchlight in case Carey needed to find the pot again.

‘Balls’re bloody killing me,’ moaned Carey as Dodd passed the fourposter. Firmly resisting the impulse to tell the Courtier what he thought of him, Dodd went back to bed.

It gave Dodd inordinate pleasure, just for once, to be up before the Courtier, fully dressed even if it was in that nuisance of a suit, and having eaten his bread and cheese and drunk his morning small beer. He made no attempt to be quiet when he opened up the window and the shutters to let in the pale dawn and birdsong and nor did he keep his voice down when he told the manservant who brought in their breakfast to do something about the brimming pot by the fireplace.

Getting bored with listening to Carey’s sawpit grunting, Dodd went out into the silent morning house, lost himself and ended up in the kitchen where the cook found him a sleepy pageboy to show him around. They inspected the stables and the mews and Dodd took a turn in the dew-soaked garden, marvelling at the trees and bushes there that had never ever been cut for firewood nor trampled over by raiders.

At last he wandered back to his and Carey’s chamber where he found the Courtier sitting in his shirt on the bed, shakily drinking mild beer.

‘Ah. Good morning, sir,’ he said as loudly and cheerfully as he could. ‘And how are ye feeling this fine morning?’

‘Don’t,’ said Carey carefully. ‘Don’t bloody push it, Dodd.’

‘Och,’ said Dodd, enjoying himself. ‘Is the light too bright for ye, sir. Will I shut the shutters for ye?’ Perhaps he did bang them a bit hard but it was such fun to watch Carey wince. That’ll learn ye to be happy in the morning, Dodd thought savagely.

Carey shut his eyes and sighed. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’m not expecting sympathy.’

‘That’s lucky, sir. Ye never give me any. Now. What are we gonnae do about yer brother? Eh?’

‘What do you care about Edmund?’

‘Not a damned thing. Only I wantae go home and I can see we willnae leave this bastard city until we find yer brother, so let’s get on wi’ it.’

He picked up the outrageously pretty suit that Carey had left draped over the clothes chest and tossed it onto the bed beside him.

‘Will I help ye dress, sir, or would ye like me to go fetch a manservant that kens how to dae it?’

Carey circled his long fingers in his temples, squeezed his eyes tight shut and opened them again. ‘Let’s not make a fuss. You help.’

‘Ay, sir.’

They went through the stupidly complicated business in silence, except for curt instructions from Carey. At last he put on his hat and they went out into the passageway and down the stairs.

‘Where’s Shakespeare?’ Carey wanted to know.

‘I dinna ken. D’ye want him, though? Yon pretty woman said he was spying on yer father.’

Carey’s bloodshot eyes opened wide at that. ‘Did she say that? Mistress Bassano?’

‘Ay, sir, last night in the garden.’

Carey blinked contemplatively at a heraldic blaze of stained glass making pools of coloured light on the floorboards. ‘It could be true. Marlowe’s not the only poet who doubles as a spy.’

‘Ay, sir.’

‘On the other hand, she could be spying on my father herself and trying to put suspicion on Will to get back at him.’

‘Ay.’ The whole thing was too complicated for Dodd. He focused on the important thing. ‘But it disnae matter in any case, since we have tae find yer brother. Or his corpse.’

Carey winced again. As they came into the wide marble entrance hall, he paused. ‘We’ll go and fetch Barnabus from the lodgings. Then we’re going after this alchemist, Jenkins.’

That seemed reasonable enough. Carey took leave of Southampton’s majordomo with some elaborately grateful phrases that sounded as if he picked them ready-made from the back of his mind, and only shuddered a little as they went out into the full sunlight. Dodd remembered to look round for bailiffs as they went out across the little bridge over the moat and round by country lanes full of dust heading eastwards, parallel to Holborn. There were a few men practising at the butts with their longbows in a field, puny little light bows and they weren’t very good either, Dodd noted. Carey turned right down a broad lane that narrowed until it passed between high garden walls. A heavy sweet scent wafted across from the lefthand garden. Carey gestured.

‘Ely Place Garden. Hatton makes a fortune from it.’

‘Ay?’ said Dodd, hefting himself up and peering over the wall at a sea of pink and red. ‘Fancy? Fra flowers?’

‘Rosewater,’ explained Carey. ‘Supplies the court.’

‘Ay?’

Carey ducked down a little lane that passed by what looked like another monastery courtyard, and then into a wide crossroads by a square-towered church. He paused there and blinked cautiously around. He looked as if the effort of walking in his fancy doublet and padded waistcoat was making him sweat, and he didn’t look very well. Could he have plague, perhaps? No, thought Dodd, all that ails him is drink and serve him right.

‘That’s Shoe Lane,’ Carey croaked, swallowing a couple of times. ‘You go down first and if you see anything you don’t like, come back and tell me. It’ll come out by the Fleet Street conduit. If you see a lot of well-dressed women there, not doing very much, come back and tell me. Off you go.’

He leaned elegantly in the shadow of the church porch, took off his hat and mopped his brow, while Dodd wandered down the lane between houses and garden walls, humming a ballad to himself. The conduit was running bright with water, but there were only a couple of maidservants with yokes on their shoulders busily chatting as they slowly filled their buckets. Dodd went back and waved a thumbs-up to Carey, who came upright with noticeable effort and followed.

They crossed Fleet Street at the wide point by the conduit, the girls staring to see a courtier up so early, and Carey nipped into an alley that gave onto a courtyard in front of a large handsome house where the servants were just opening the shutters. Dodd tensed when he saw a couple of men standing negligently in the doorway of one of the other houses. He nudged Carey, who glanced at them and shook his head.

‘Heneage’s men keeping an eye on the French ambassador.’

‘Eh?’

Carey gestured at the big house. ‘Salisbury House, French ambassador’s lodgings.’

That was interesting, thought Dodd, squinting up at the bright diamond windows. Were there Frenchmen actually inside? What did they look like? He now knew they didn’t actually have tails, but it stood to reason they must be different from Englishmen.

Carey was slipping into a narrow little wynd between houses and a garden wall, passed under a roof made of touching upper storeys and emerged onto one of the salty muddy lanes that gave onto the Thames. The tide was in-you could see water gleaming at the end to their left.

Looking at the river, Dodd lost track of Carey for a moment, but saw the small alley he must have gone into, like a rabbit into his hole. London was a warren and no mistake. How did anybody ever keep track of where he was?

Hurrying to the end of it, Dodd came out into a cloister courtyard he recognised, saw Carey’s suit slipping into an alleyway at the other side of it, into the stair entrance under the figure of the woman tumbler standing on a rope with her head knocked off, and up the stairs all the way to the top.