P. Chisholm - A Plague of Angels

Mistress Bassano came out, gliding over the grass, very lithe and graceful for a woman in her condition, with two of her women, one on either side of her and her bald manservant trotting at her heels like a bloodhound. A small hairy dog followed close behind him completing the symmetry.

Hunsdon joined them from the apple tree, and Mistress Bassano smiled like a cat as he caught her hand and put a large arm proprietorially around her shoulders. She kissed Hunsdon as lingeringly on the lips as she had earlier kissed Carey. Dodd could almost feel his eyes bulging from their sockets. Was Carey really ploughing his father’s field? Was that why he had come to be Deputy Warden in Carlisle? By God, it made sense of why a popinjay Courtier would want to move north in a hurry.

Carey was showing not a single sign of guilt. He was laughing and chatting to Heneage in the most natural and carefree way, taking the trouble to flatter the Vice Chamberlain as he had buttered up Lord Maxwell in Scotland.

A liveryman came out and announced that supper was served, and as he followed Hunsdon and his mistress, Carey, Heneage and flocks of attendants, Dodd’s head was reeling.

***

Supper involved eight different kinds of meat in sixteen different sauces, salads decorated with orange nasturtium flowers, a piece of a pie which must originally have been the size and weight of a millstone, and yet more of the wine. Dodd had always thought he didn’t like wine but now realised that what he didn’t like was cheap wine. If this was the way the better stuff tasted, he felt he could well get used to it.

The pity of it was having to sit down with Carey, his dad, his dad’s mistress, and Heneage in another room hung with tapestries. Servants filed in with the food under silver covers on silver dishes as ceremoniously as if this were some fine feast, which only meant further delay before Dodd could fill his belly. Lord Hunsdon said grace. After all that, Dodd had almost lost his appetite again. Heneage tucked in enthusiastically, though.

Dodd concentrated on eating as neatly as he could, despite the way the Vice Chamberlain had soured his stomach. He watched out of the corner of his eye to see how Carey handled his eating knife and silver spoon and tried hard to copy him. The funny foreign sauces on the meats didn’t help and he dropped a big piece of pheasant into the rushes. Mistress Bassano’s lapdog was onto the tidbit at once, slurping and growling at it. Trying to pretend he had meant to drop the food, Dodd patted the hairy head and had his fingers nipped at for his pains, which made Mistress Bassano smile at him again.

‘Little Willie is a very naughty dog,’ she told him with a teasing note in her voice. ‘You really must not indulge him, Sergeant, or he’ll get fat.’

Dodd smiled at her apologetically while he mentally took all her clothes off and bulled her up against a wall. As if reading his mind and enjoying it, she bent over and scooped the dog into her arms, while Dodd tried desperately to stop himself wondering if her arse was as smooth and round as her tits. He concentrated on the meat again. Much more of this, he thought, and he wouldn’t be able to rise from the table.

The talk went right over his head too, though it seemed to be swirling repeatedly around the twin whirlpools of Carey’s relations with the Scottish King and the question of the Italian woman. Mistress Bassano must have been foreign herself with that name but spoke like any other southerner. She was sitting next to Lord Hunsdon and leant against him scandalously. Carey’s father seemed not exactly smitten-more pleased and smug like a bull next to his favourite heifer. Carey sat opposite her and next to Heneage. Thank God, the Courtier was studiously avoiding the lady’s eye.

Mistress Bassano talked, laughed, preened and, unless Dodd was much mistaken, the whole pleasing display was aimed straight at Carey and not his dad. That was distinctly tactless and Carey seemed a little worried by it. He struck up another gossipy conversation with Heneage in a bid to avoid the noonday glare of Mistress Bassano’s dangerous flirtation. It didn’t work, for she kept interrupting.

At last the food was finished-or at least they had eaten their fill for there was too much to be got down in one sitting. Dodd wondered what happened to the leftovers-the Hunsdon pigs must live like kings and be fat as butter.

The leavetaking was prolonged and jovial, Carey talking rather at random as Heneage and his followers went down to the river again and took a few of the boats. Dodd was more than ready for his bed. Mistress Bassano went ostentatiously to her chamber, kissing Lord Hunsdon fondly on the lips and giving Carey’s fingers a squeeze when he bent to kiss her hand.

Dodd had half-expected to be put in the servants’ quarters or on a truckle bed in Carey’s room, but it seemed the Hunsdon steward knew more about what a Land Sergeant was than did Heneage. He was stunned at the magnificence of his bedchamber-a fashionably golden oak-panelled cavern and no less than a four-poster bed complete with a tester and pale summer curtains. The servingman who led him there through a bewildering number of corridors and rooms advised him to shut his bed curtains against bad ague airs from the Thames and asked with a careful lack of expression and no hint of a glance at his homespun if the Land Sergeant would require a man to help him undress. Dodd told him no and decided on his usual ale and bread for breakfast at a restful 7 o’clock in the morning, well after sun-up. Now that was something to look forward to-a nice lie-in when he was neither wounded nor sick.

For a while, Dodd wandered around the room admiring the vast quantity of things in it; the painted cloths, the clothes chests, the carved folding chair, the fireplace laid with logs in case he should feel cold and a tinderbox beside it. There were candles everywhere, at least five of them and not a speck of tallow but the finest beeswax. Dodd firmly crushed the urge to slide them into his pocket. The rushes on the floor were new all the way down to the floor and the windows were glass with wooden shutters, so that not only was there no draught but you could even look out of them quite well. In awe Dodd touched the carved babies rioting with grape vines across the mantelpiece: he liked to whittle on wood himself and appreciated fine workmanship.

At last he shucked his clothes down to his shirt, left them folded on the chest, drew the curtains around the bed and climbed gingerly in, sliding between ice-smooth linen sheets that had not only never been slept in by another body but must have been ironed as well. By God, what it was to have hordes of servants, he thought, as he shut his eyes and snuggled into the softness of the pillows.

Half an hour later he turned over for the forty-fourth time and opened his eyes. It was no good. He couldn’t sleep. He was used to sleeping alone-the jealously guarded privilege of his own cubbyhole next to the bunkroom of the barracks at Carlisle was normally his sole domain. But the fact remained that this bed was bigger than that entire tiny room. The vast spaces of the chamber outside the curtains, unpeopled by friendly farting snoring humanity, made him as nervous as a horse in an empty stable.

He got up, wandered around the room again, peered out of the window, swatted an enterprising mosquito and then found the jug of spiced wine. That was a blessing. Sipping lukewarm spiced syrup from the silver goblet provided, he looked again out of the window and saw someone moving on the Strand. Those bailiffs weren’t giving up; two men in buff coats were watching the gatehouse like cats at a mousehole.

Next morning Dodd had a slight headache from the spiced wine but felt happier than he could remember after sleeping so late and waking in solitary state with no one hammering on the door telling him the Grahams were over the Border or Gilsland was under siege. God knew what was going on at home with the whole Border Country as stirred up as it was, but what could he do about it? A man-servant brought in his breakfast on a tray and seemed surprised to find him already up and dressed.