P. Chisholm: A Plague of Angels

‘Er…yes,’ said Carey. ‘Also, I’m still his man and you’d get me in a lot of trouble.’

Gray’s Inn Road must have been a horror in winter, what with the depth of dust. It was lined with houses, like streets in Edinburgh, and then they came out on a wide road. Carey was looking about him and had his hat pulled down. They crossed some fields criss-crossed with paths that looked badly overgrazed and came through a gate beside a high garden wall. Across another dusty road was a lane that led due south between tall narrow houses. Simon shut the gate and they unconsciously bunched together as they went into the lane. The sun was a low copper bowl now and the people milling around not paying them any attention. Dodd thought that Londoners were very rude folk, not to wave, even. Carey was biting the corner of his lip and looking nervous, while Barnabus had the narrow-eyed thoughtful expression he wore when he was waiting for trouble. Dodd loosened his sword and wished for a bow.

‘Don’t kill anybody, Sergeant,’ Carey said. ‘Even if there’s a fight.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’ve no idea what a bloody nuisance it is to fix juries in London,’ Carey snapped. ‘So don’t get yourself hanged.’

Their horses’ hooves slipped and scuffed on the dusty clay as they negotiated a whole fine litter of red piglets plugged into their dam across the middle of the lane. There was a stone water conduit at the end of the lane, where city women stood waiting to draw water-fine ladies too, by the looks of their velvet trimmed kirtles and outrageously feathered hats. The Strand was wide and choking with dust, the biggest houses Dodd had ever seen in his life rearing up like cliffs on either side of it.

‘Hell’s teeth,’ said Carey, catching sight of the decorative gathering at the conduit. ‘The wives are out to watch.’

Dodd gestured at an impressive house opposite the conduit. ‘Is that yer father’s house…?’ he asked. Carey shook his head and pointed at the gatehouse of a towering elaboration of a palace that Dodd had taken for the Queen’s court itself.

‘And here they come,’ said Barnabus, as a crowd of large men in buff coats, waving pieces of paper and clubs and coshes, moved suddenly in their direction.

Just for a second, Dodd saw Carey on the verge of running like a rabbit. If he hadn’t known why Carey was so afraid of arrest, he would have thought it funny, but since he did, he decided that he wasn’t going to allow it and the hell with London juries, they had to catch him first.

Dodd drew his sword and drove his horse into the thick of the shouting crowd of men. As he’d thought, they wanted their bounties for arresting Carey, but not at the expense of their heads, and they fell back in front of him. At least Carey, Barnabus and Simon had the sense to stick close behind him. The boom of Carey’s second dag rang out by Dodd’s ear as he discharged it into the air. A couple of bailiffs clutched desperately for Carey’s reins and stirrup leathers. One fell back with a broken nose from a vicious kick from Carey’s boot, and Barnabus’s horse co-operatively trod on another one’s foot, making him howl.

And then they were through, the whole bunch scattering at the edges, the other people in the street staring, a couple of children laughing and pointing and the women round the conduit clapping.

They clattered inside the shelter of the gatehouse, Dodd turning at the opening with his sword ready and his teeth bared. The bailiffs had followed them, though at a safe distance. A hubbub rose from them in which the words ‘writs’, ‘warrants’ and ‘Westminster Hall’ could be heard and more papers were waved.

‘Och,’ said Dodd, spitting deliberately at the feet of the biggest one. ‘If ye think ye can take a Dodd fra Tynedale, come on and try it.’

Carey was shouting at the gatekeeper in his lodge. Surely to God they weren’t at the wrong place? Was Carey’s father not there? What was going on? Dodd had his horse placed sideways on to block any rushes, but he didn’t think the bailiffs had the stomach for a real fight.

‘Ay tell you what,’ he said conversationally, and trying hard to talk as much like Barnabus as he could so they would understand him. ‘Since ye’re all a bunch o’ catamites wi’ nae bollocks at all, I’ll take three o’ ye at once so I dinnae outnumber ye.’

The biggest bailiff stopped and frowned in puzzlement. How much longer would it take Carey to get into his father’s house? If this had been anywhere in Cumberland, they would all have been dead by now. A coach bowled past like the Devil himself.

Surely somebody would have a go soon? Even Londoners couldn’t be that soft. Dodd gripped his sword more tightly and wished again for his nice comfortable jack and helmet, and a lance as well while he was at it. He looked about in case the bailiffs had sent for reinforcements. How far did a messenger have to go to find men? How long would Carey be chatting in the gatehouse…?

The postern gate opened finally and Carey beckoned. Instinctively Dodd sent the boy in first leading the horses, then Barnabus, before backing his own horse through the gate. That was the bailiffs’ last chance to hit him but by that time his already low opinion of southerners was at rock bottom.

‘Off ye go, lads,’ he sneered at the bewildered bunch. ‘Ye’ve lost us. Best get back to yer mams and yer fancy-boys.’ He gave a hard final stare at the biggest bailiff as the postern gate shut and Carey barred it.

He turned to see a small yard beetled over by high stone and brick walls. A groom came to take the horses. Someone else in yellow and black livery, wearing a badge that looked like a duck in the throes of delirium, came hurrying out, bowing to Carey who greeted the plump little man with a familiar clap on the shoulder. The servant led them through a stunning marble entrance hall and into a small parlour lined with painted cloths and dotted with benches and stools padded in primrose yellow. In a corner was a virginals, painted with enamel people, mostly naked and winged, with the cover on. Another man in glaring livery brought wine which Dodd tasted with habitual suspicion before finding it quite smooth and hardly sour at all. Carey knocked his back in one and held out the silver goblet for a refill. Then he threw himself onto a bench, stretched his long legs in front of him, crossed them at the ankles and grinned.

‘Can’t think what I was so worried about,’ he said to Dodd.

Dodd himself was still worried. Magnificent and palatial though Carey’s family house was, it didn’t look very defensible, with no proper pele tower, no battlements, no moat, no mound, no visible ordnance. There didn’t seem many men around either.

‘Ay,’ he said. ‘But how long before we have your…creditors around our ears like flies?’

Carey laughed. ‘Well, they won’t have pikes and muskets like the Grahams’ debt-collectors.’

‘Oh? What then?’ asked Dodd, interested to know what weapons Londoners preferred.

‘Writs,’ said Carey. ‘Blizzards of paper.’

Dodd began wondering irritably what all the fuss had been about. Barnabus took Simon off with him to see to the small amount of luggage they had brought with them in their saddlebags and Carey wandered familiarly round the room with another goblet of wine in his hand.

‘Place seems deserted,’ he commented. ‘Where the devil’s Father gone?’

On that instant there was the sound of a female voice raised in argument outside the door which opened to let the owner of the voice come in. It was a young woman trailed by a maidservant and a young man in Hunsdon’s livery who was still arguing with her back.

‘Mistress, this is unwise, this is very very foolish, my lord Hunsdon will…’ droned the servingman in a voice that sounded as if it had been flattened with a hot iron. The maidservant elbowed him and he finally fell silent, looking crestfallen.