P. Chisholm - A Plague of Angels

Carey was lounging on a chair sharing the long clay pipe with Dodd. He had changed out of Dodd’s homespun clothes into an old doublet and hose he used for fowling, and which he had been pleased to find was now a bit loose in the waist and tight on the shoulders.

He blew smoke expertly out of his nose and frowned. ‘Smells a bit funny, not like the usual tobacco.’

‘Ay,’ said Dodd, taking the pipe and sucking smoke cautiously into his lungs. If he did it too fast it made him cough which hurt. ‘The doctor mixed some Moroccan herbs and incense with it, said it added the element of earth to the smoke, or some such.’

‘Is it helping?’

‘Ay,’ Dodd admitted reluctantly. ‘It is. Ay.’

‘Hm. I think my shoulder’s feeling better too.’ They both watched blue smoke curl up in ribbons through the last rays of the sun, an elegant and calming sight. Dodd leaned back on a pile of pillows and sighed. Being bled had left him feeling as weak as a kitten, never mind the aftermath of Heneage’s persuasions, and the pipesmoke was making his head feel quite light, as if he was mildly drunk.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Did yer dad hear any more about yer man Michael?’

Carey gave an eloquent lift of his shoulder. ‘Apparently somebody turned up yesterday to claim his money and blame it all on the footpads we killed. It might well have been them, after all.’

‘Ay.’

‘Interestingly, the man insisted on being paid in silver, not gold.’

‘Hm.’ Dodd chuckled a little at that, and wondered at himself. Really, this tobacco-smoke drinking wasn’t so bad; if only it weren’t so expensive he might take more of the medicine. ‘How did ye ken it was the little bald poet that playacted Dr Jenkins?’

‘Well, he is a player, after all. But there was another thing. Do you remember Cheke explaining how dewdrops of Mercury transfer themselves into your clothes during the reaction?’

‘Ay.’

‘That’s how there were beads of the stuff in Edmund’s clothes chest, of course. But there was also Mercury in the inside pocket of your leather jerkin.’

‘Eh?’

‘Of course, I knew you couldn’t have been there for the coining. But you carried Mr Shakespeare’s billet doux to Mistress Bassano and there might have been Mercury on that from Shakespeare’s best suit. It was the only connection I could think of.’

Dodd tilted his head in acknowledgement that this made sense.

‘And was it him that killed Robert Greene, then?’ he asked.

Carey smiled lazily. ‘How do you make that out?’

‘It’s nobbut a guess. The apothecary said he died o’ poison and d’ye mind ye left Shakespeare guarding him the day we found him drunk. Maybe he put poison in his meat or beer then.’

‘What makes you think he’d want to?’

‘Och God, he was telling and telling me all about how Robert Greene was stopping him at his poetry-writing and how he hated his guts. I think I may even have advised him to…er…kill the man.’

Carey reached into the breast pocket of his doublet and pulled out a chased silver flask. ‘Remember this?’ he said. ‘Robert Greene’s flask. He had it on him when we found him and he was drinking from it most of the night. He got it refilled by the tapster with aqua vitae and no doubt drank some more on his way home and for a nightcap before he went to bed. The next morning he sickened and died.’

‘Ay but it could ha’ been the eels,’ Dodd pointed out from sheer perversity while Carey smoked.

‘Could have been,’ said Carey and sighed. ‘Only it wasn’t. Barnabus and Simon didn’t have plague. Heneage sent men to capture me and found only Simon, with Barnabus already dead the same way as Greene.’

‘How d’ye ken that?’

‘I broke into my lodgings.’

Dodd winced at this plain admission of madness. ‘But are ye sure it wisnae plague?’ he asked on a rising note of panic.

‘Certain. We found Simon trussed up like a chicken with Tamburlain roosting on the bed and Barnabus…Well, it was easily recognisable, what he’d died of. And under Barnabus’s pillow, I found this flask.’

Dodd narrowed his eyes. It took him a while, thanks to his wooziness, but he worked it out. ‘Och, Barnabus and his light fingers.’

‘Precisely,’ said Carey giving him back the pipe. ‘I’ve told him thousands of times that his habit of thieving whatever didn’t belong to me and wasn’t nailed down would kill him in the end, and it did. But it’s certain there was poison in the flask, for there was nothing wrong with Barnabus before and he didn’t have plague.’

‘So yon Shakespeare killed both Robert Greene and Barnabus?’

‘I think so.’

‘Can ye prove it?’

Carey shook his head. ‘I’ve nothing but suspicion. Shakespeare had the chance to put poison in Greene’s flask-that doesn’t prove he did it. And he can’t have known in advance what Barnabus would do, so he’s hardly to blame there.’

‘Will ye ask him?’

‘I got hold of him while the doctor and the surgeon were seeing to you and Edmund. I think hearing he’d killed Barnabus by accident shook him a bit, but then he denied everything, the whole boiling lot and challenged me to arrest him for it.’

‘Ay, well, he would.’

‘Of course he would.’

‘Och.’ Dodd was shaking his head, more in amusement than disapproval, ‘I’ve allus said ye cannae trust poets.’