P. Chisholm - A Plague of Angels

‘Julie Granville, sir.’

‘Is your husband not about?’

She looked down. ‘He was a sharer and officer in a ship bound for Muscovy, sir, and when the ship didn’t return, and we had heard nothing of it for a year, our creditors arrested me for his debts.’

‘But that’s terrible, mistress. What about yer family?’

‘I haven’t any, sir. And my husband’s family are…Well, his father was opposed to the voyage in the first place.’

Dodd shook his head. Impulsively he put his hand on her arm. ‘I’m not Sir Robert, see ye, but I am his man, and I’m a man o’ parts myself in ma ain country. Now dinna ye fret, Mistress Granville, I’ll see it sorted.’

She obviously didn’t understand much of what he had said, but she understood his tone of voice and she smiled. She took a cloth out of the bucket she had been carrying and began wiping Edmund Carey’s face and hands. He woke a little more and began muttering. She shushed him and began feeding him spoonfuls of some kind of porridge she had brought in a wooden bowl.

Dodd stood, turned on his heel and strode to the door, banged on it and was let out of the hell of Bolton’s Ward, up the stairs and into the courtyard. He was scowling with thought; God might move in mysterious ways, but this was a little too pat for his tastes. What a strange coincidence that he should be arrested in mistake for Carey, when Carey had been blazing about the streets with courtier branded on every inch of him, and brought to the one prison in London that also contained Carey’s missing brother, for whom Greene had been searching before his death, and Carey as well. It didn’t make sense, or rather it did and he didn’t like the sense it made.

He was not at all surprised to find a familiar face in the courtyard when he came blinking out into the sunshine, Mistress Bassano’s erstwhile servant, the balding poet.

Dodd strode over to the man, took his elbow between thumb and forefinger in a way which forbade argument, and propelled him into the shade of a corner between two buildings.

‘Sergeant Dodd,’ said Shakespeare, his voice shaking a little. ‘I’m…er…I’m very glad I’ve found you.’

‘Not half sae glad as I am to find you,’ said Dodd, deliberately crowding him against the wall. ‘Now, I ken ye work for Mr Vice Chamberlain and I dinna give a pig’s turd why. But I’m sick and tired of being used as a fucking chesspiece in some fancy game o’ yer master’s, so now ye’re gonnae tell me what the hell’s going on here, or I willnae be responsible for what I do to ye. D’ye understand me or will I say it again more southern?’

Shakespeare was white-faced and trembling. ‘I…er…I understand,’ he panted.

‘So.’ Dodd leaned one arm against the wall in front of Shakespeare, blocking him with his body. ‘I’m waiting.’

‘Er…I really don’t know…very much.’

‘Och,’ said Dodd with false sympathy. ‘That’s a terrible pity. I’ll have to kill ye on general principles then.’

Dodd hadn’t even bothered to draw his blade nor lay hands on Shakespeare, but for some reason the little poet believed him.

‘I…I don’t know where to start.’

‘Ye’re the man that told Heneage that Sir Robert was on his way south, ay?’

Shakespeare nodded. ‘I told Marlowe, though.’

‘When did he warn ye to do that?’

‘About August, I think.’

‘How did ye tell him? In person?’

‘No, in writing, in code. I leave messages with a…a trustworthy person who passes them on.’

‘Who is the person?’

Shakespeare shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you.’

Dodd considered beating the name out of him, but decided not to since he didn’t want to draw attention to himself.

‘What’s Heneage’s game? What’s he trying to do?’

Shakespeare looked at the ground. ‘I don’t know. Why would he tell me?’

‘All right. What’s he told ye to find out?’

‘He…er…I think he wants to know anything about my lord Baron Hunsdon that will discredit him with the Queen. He also wants to know where Edmund Carey is. That’s quite urgent. He’s been quartering London for the man.’

Dodd blinked and looked hard at Shakespeare, who was swallowing and trembling in front of him. He was not a fighting man and although he was a poet and must be good at lying, he didn’t look as if he was lying now. In which case, what the hell was going on? Dodd had been convinced that Heneage had put Edmund Carey in the Fleet, possibly into Bolton’s Ward as well. But if Heneage didn’t know where he was…And wanted to find him…?

Dodd changed plan. ‘What are ye here for?’

‘To talk to you, find out if you needed anything.’

Dodd scowled deeper which made Shakespeare shrink back against the wall.

‘Who sent ye?’

‘I can’t…er…tell you.’

‘And why not?’

‘B…because I…I’m more frightened of them than I am of you, sir,’ said Shakespeare with a desperate glint of humour.

Against his will Dodd let out a short bark of laughter. ‘Ay. Well, that’s because ye dinna know me sae well.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Bide there while I think what to do.’

Dodd looked around him for inspiration and scowled. The complexity of the situation was making his head hurt. His immediate impulse had been to send Shakespeare hotfoot to Somerset House to roust out Lord Hunsdon and bring him to the gaol to fetch his son. But the messenger was tainted. The likelihood was that a verbal message would go straight to Heneage or the mysterious person that scared the poet so much, and a written message the same. For a moment Dodd thought about codes but he didn’t know any and besides, it stood to reason that experienced intriguers like Heneage or even Shakespeare would know more about secret writing than he did. He couldn’t even tell Shakespeare simply to fetch Lord Hunsdon for the same reasons. He couldn’t send the man to fetch Barnabus or Simon Barnet because they had the plague and were probably dead by now.

‘I’ve got naething for ye to do, because I canna trust ye,’ he said to Shakespeare, leaning towards him. The poet was trying to burrow backwards into the wall. ‘If ye had a particle of decency in ye, ye’d go tell my Lord Hunsdon where I am and why, but as ye dinna, I willnae waste my breath asking ye to.’

‘I…I’m sorry.’

Dodd drew back disgustedly. ‘Och,’ he said. ‘Piss off. Ye’re dirtying my nice clean gaol.’

Shakespeare sidled past him and into the courtyard, then scurried across it looking pinched about the mouth. Dodd spat in his wake.

For a moment Dodd thought of paying the money that would get Edmund Carey moved out of the stinking disgrace of the beggars’ ward but then it occurred to him that any action like that would probably be reported to Heneage within the hour and Heneage would want to know why he was so solicitous of a stranger, might well make the connection.

It occurred to him that there was one thing he could do without giving away any secrets, since it would be expected of him. He went back into the courtyard and over to the table covered with a higgledy piggledy array of things, including a lump of rock covered in dust that the dog-eared notice by it claimed to be gold ore. There, after considerable haggling, he bought himself paper, pen and ink and sat down cross-legged with his back to a corner and a stone in front of him for a writing table. He hated paperwork. He knew his ability to write, which was rare among the Borderers, had helped him get his place in the Carlisle garrison as Sergeant, but he still hated it. The effort of making up words and then forming the letters for them always made his head hurt and his hand sweat. He avoided the labour as much as he could but this time there was no help for it.