P. Chisholm - A Plague of Angels

Heneage was watching him very shrewdly. ‘Yes,’ he said, mainly to himself. ‘You do know something. Well, that’s good.’ He smiled. ‘Come along, now, we haven’t got all day.’

Dodd was not at all surprised to find his arms being manacled behind him by one of Heneage’s men who then prodded him in the back. Heneage swept out of the Fleet prison with Dodd in the middle of his entourage and out into Fleet Lane where a carriage stood, drawn by four horses. Somebody opened the door, somebody else shoved Dodd up the steps and into the dimness, forced him to sit on a leather-covered bench. The carriage creaked sideways on its leather straps as Heneage and another man got in and sat down on the bench facing him.

‘Lie down,’ said Heneage.

‘What?’

The other man’s gauntleted hand cracked across Dodd’s face.

‘Do as you’re told.’

Slowly, staring at Heneage all the time, Dodd laid himself awkwardly down, sideways on the padded leather, sniffling at the annoying blood trickling out of his nose. Heneage’s subordinate put a blanket over his head, something that must have been used for horses in the past because the smell of them was pungent. Dodd found it comforting, it reminded him of home. What would Janet do when she heard she was a widow? Marry again, certainly, being the heiress she was, probably she would forget him since she hadn’t even a bairn to remember him by. The men of his troop might drink to his memory a couple of times, Red Sandy would remember him, but in a few years he would fade as others had. Even Long George had left more of a mark than he would.

Would he go to heaven? Privately he doubted it, especially after his sin of venery with the whore, so that was no comfort either. When he was dead, he would face an angry God who would know exactly how many of his bills were foul.

The carriage jerked and bounced along the streets, its iron-shod wheels clattering and scraping where the way was paved and then rumbling and squeaking and bouncing even worse where the road was dusty and rock hard from the sun. Dodd didn’t know which way it was going since he didn’t know where Chelsea was and the movement and the stifling darkness of the blanket were making him feel sick.

Should he tell Heneage about Edmund Carey? Would it help? No, he decided it wouldn’t, because if Heneage was like Richie Graham of Brackenhill, admitting that much would only convince him Dodd must know more and that would make everything worse, not better.

There wasn’t anything he could do except hope that the Courtier, who had run like a rabbit from the bailiffs that morning, would find a way of helping him. Would he? The Carey that Dodd knew in Carlisle would, he thought, certainly. The Carey Dodd had seen in London-he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know the man so well. Liked him even less.

The coldness Dodd felt inside wasn’t helping him against the heat of the day and the blanket, and the wool suit didn’t help either. Drops of sweat were trickling down his back and chest under his shirt and his left arm was going to sleep because he was lying on it. He tried to move into a more comfortable position and was kicked in the shins. He sighed. There wasn’t any point in frightening himself even more by imagining all the things that might happen to him and at the moment there wasn’t anything else he could think of. All he could do was wait. Luckily, he was good at that.

Dodd relaxed and did what he always did when he was lying in ambush. He thought back to when he was a boy in Upper Tynedale, an unimportant middle son in a string of them that made his father proud, a cheeky bright lad that his mother insisted on sending to school to the Reverend Gilpin when he was in the area. When he wasn’t learning his letters and listening to the Reverend tell him of the hellfire that waited for reivers, he was running about the hills, herding cattle or sheep, potting the occasional rabbit with his sling, fishing in the Tyne, fighting his brothers, playing football. His mother as he remembered her then was plump and almost always either suckling a babe or round-bellied with another one, plodding in stately fashion after the particular hen she had decided to kill for the pot. She would corner it against the wooden wall of their pele and then squat down and wait patiently for the stupid creature to stop fluttering, calm down and start scratching, at which point she would grab, pull and twist and the hen would be dead. Dodd smiled fondly under his blanket; she had told him once when he had asked her in childish awe if she had a special charm for chickens, that people always wasted a lot of effort chasing after something that would come to them if they waited.

The rocking and jolting stopped and Heneage pulled the blanket off his captive, only to find him fast asleep and smiling. It faded the smug expression on his face more effectively than any defiance and he punched and slapped Dodd awake like a schoolboy.

Dodd who always hated being woken, reared up and tried to headbutt him, only to be stopped by his henchman after a confused scuffle.

‘Och, whit the hell d’ye want?’ he demanded.

‘Edmund Carey’s whereabouts,’ said Heneage, straightening his gown and dusting himself off fastidiously. ‘Or his brother’s.’

‘Piss off. Ah dinna ken where they are.’

Heneage sighed and shook his head with theatrical regret and waved at the henchman. ‘Keep clear of his face,’ he said. ‘And don’t kill him.’ He went down the carriage steps, making it lean and creak again, and at his nod, another heavyset man went up them, holding a short cosh in his hand, shut the carriage door behind him.

There was a short silence and then Heneage heard the northerner’s voice, sullen and contemptuous. ‘Och, get on wi’ it then.’

That was followed by a crash and a series of thumps and grunts that made the carriage rock. Heneage looked about him. They were parked in a corner of Salisbury Court, where the noise of the carpenter’s yard next door in Hanging Sword Court would disguise most of the noise. The people passing through the court were mainly Frenchmen, servants of the French ambassador and the rest were men who worked for Heneage, watching the Papists’ coming and going. He had decided against going to Chelsea immediately simply because it was a long way and took several hours in a coach and he wanted to be able to get back to Whitefriars before the London gates shut officially. He had driven around the lanes and streets for a while to see if the motion of the coach would upset the northerner’s stomach, but that had been a failure. The blasted yokel had gone to sleep.

It was always a difficult balance to strike. Given enough time, Heneage could guarantee to crack any man, usually without even having to damage him too much, so he could be executed without the fickle London mob feeling too sorry for him. He had found that lack of sleep, hunger and thirst would do the job more effectively than Topcliffe and all his ingenuity. But Heneage had a strong feeling that he didn’t have very much time. He was walking on a thin crust over a quicksand and there were too many things he didn’t know: Marlowe was supposed to arrest Sir Robert Carey, Marlowe knew him well, and Marlowe had managed to arrest this useless northern bumpkin instead. How was it possible? Marlowe was usually far more reliable than that. Had he betrayed Heneage? Surely not, surely he wouldn’t dare.

As a result, Carey was still loose in London and had been for several hours when Heneage had thought he was safely caught. What had he been doing? Had he managed to reach his father, despite the cordon of watchers around Somerset House? Surely he hadn’t worked out what was going on? Had he found his brother? Had Edmund Carey come out of hiding and met him? There were so many perplexities, the whole thing depended now on Heneage finding Edmund Carey first, damn the man for an unreliable drunk and a thief.