P. Chisholm: A Plague of Angels

You could always tell when you were near a town from the bodies hanging on the gibbets by the main road, thought Sergeant Dodd. London was no different from anywhere else they had passed on the interminable way south. As their horses toiled up the long hill from Golders Farm, Dodd could just glimpse a robber’s corpse dangling from a big elm tree, up on the brow. Of course Sir Robert Carey had told him how close they were to London when they turned off the Great North Road and passed through the village of Hendon, but they had been delayed by Carey’s horse throwing a shoe. The afternoon crowds of people were gone now so that the dusty rutted road was quite empty. It could have been anywhere.

A bit of knowledge gleaned from Carey’s manservant floated to the front of his mind.

‘Ay,’ he said with interest, and turned in the saddle to speak to Barnabus himself who trailed lumpenly along behind them on a sulky looking horse. ‘Would that be Tyburn Tree up ahead there?’

Barnabus was frowning with concentration as he tried to get his mount to move faster up the hill.

‘Nah, mate,’ he puffed, kicking viciously at the horse’s flanks. ‘Tyburn’s off to the west, where the Edgeware Road meets the Oxford Road, and it’s a lot fancier than that. That’s only the Hampstead Hanging Elm.’

The road was curving round into a deep cutting with scrubby heathland trees growing on the banks. Ahead, the Courtier’s ugly and obstinate replacement horse was balking at something again, probably the smell of rot from the corpse. Carey had glanced without interest at the Elm with its judicial fruit. The horse neighed, tossed his head and skittered sideways.

‘God damn it,’ Carey snarled to the horse. ‘You flyblown lump of dogsmeat, get over!’ He brought his whip down on the animal’s flank and the horse crow-hopped and tried to turn to run back down the hill to its home in Golders Green.

Dodd wasn’t liking the look of the place either. You couldn’t see past the curve of the road and those high banks on both sides were perfect siting for an ambush.

He tried to urge his own horse up to a canter to bring him level with Carey, but the mare had her head up too, and her nostrils flared. Forelegs straight and the hairs of her mane up, she refused to pick up the pace. Dodd frowned.

‘Whit’s ahead of us, sir?’ he called to Carey whose nag was slowly turning round in circles and shaking his head.

‘The Cut, then Hampstead horse pond,’ said the Courtier and whacked the animal again. ‘Will you get on, blast you…!’ he roared at it.

Drawing his sword, Dodd slid from the saddle, took the mare’s bridle and led her forward at a run, then dodged behind and hit her on the rump with the flat of the sword. The mare reared and bolted past the Courtier and young Simon Barnet on his pony.

As she galloped up the road through the Cut, whinnying and shaking her head, Dodd heard the unmistakeable whip-chunk! of a crossbow being fired.

‘Och,’ he said to himself as he instantly changed direction and sprinted softly up the narrow path he had spotted on the right hand side of the Cut. ‘Ah might have guessed.’

The bank reared higher on the right of the road, soft sandy earth held together by tree roots and bushes. Just below him, overlooking the narrowest part, he saw a man hunched in hiding, a bolt ready in his crossbow as he squinted down the sight ready for them to pass by.

Dodd had been storing up an awful lot of rage on the journey south from Carlisle. He gave an inarticulate roar at the sight, hopped like a goat down the high crumbling earthbank and cut down on the man with his sword.

The footpad had heard something coming, turned just in time to see his death, dropped the crossbow and reflexively put up his hands to defend himself. He took Dodd’s swordblade straight down through his armbone and the middle of his face. Dodd slashed sideways to finish the job, then turned at another man who was lungeing out of a bramble bush waving the biggest sword Dodd had ever seen in his life, a great long monster of a thing that the robber was wielding two-handed, his face purple with effort.

Somewhere behind him, Dodd heard one of Carey’s dags fire and an incoherent screaming follow it. As he dodged the whirling blade in front of him, a particle of thought noted that for the first time in his memory, Carey had finally managed to shoot somebody with his fancy weapon.

Balancing in a crouch, Dodd watched how the robber handled his stupid great sword, ducked again and waited for the instant when the momentum of it was whirling it round the back of the robber’s head. That was when Dodd jumped inside the man’s guard, slashed once with his sword and kicked as hard as he could at the man’s balls.

The soft earth crumbled under him, he missed his target as he toppled and slipped on his bum down the bank. The robber danced after him, hefted up the long blade to bring it down on Dodd’s head; the blade arced through the sky and Dodd rolled and slithered frantically, caught a rowan trunk to stop himself pitching eight feet down, and then saw the man grunt, stand still for a moment with his mouth wide open. The double-handed sword thudded to the ground and its wielder pitched headfirst down the bank and into the road.

Barnabus stood behind him, puffing for breath and dusting off his hands. Dodd nodded his thanks, clambered back up to the tiny narrow path and ran on to find the rest of the bastards, his blood properly up, just itching to find someone else to kill.

He saw the flash of legs and then glimpsed three more men off across the bare hill, running as fast as they could past the Hanging Elm. He sprinted after them, roaring ‘A Tynedale, A Tynedale, Out! Out!’ and the cowardly southron pigs only ran faster, splitting up as they dodged down the other side of the hill through the brambles and bushes.

Years spent on the Border not getting himself killed won through Dodd’s rage and he stopped. They might have kin within hailing range, there might be men and horses lying in wait behind one of the hedges, hiding in a double ambush to catch them when they thought they’d won the fight. No. He was a Dodd from Upper Tynedale and he’d pulled that trick too often himself in the past to be fooled by it.

He caught his breath and wiped his swordblade with some of the tussocky grass next to the Elm, where the sandy soil was more fertile, glanced up at the corpse in its soiled suit of brown wool with black velvet trimmings. A bit prosperous-looking for a thief; must have been a murderer. The smell wasn’t bad at all, though the face was a terrible mess.

Horsehooves beat the earth behind him, and Dodd whisked round into a crouch again, sword at the ready. It was only the Courtier though, laughing fit to burst his ribs, dag in his left hand and his sword in his right.

‘By God, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘That was a bloody good piece of work.’

Dodd tried hard not to look pleased. ‘Ay,’ he said. ‘They’ve run though.’

‘Of course they have. No soft southern footpad is a match for a Tynedaler and never will be.’

As this was undoubtedly true, Dodd nodded his head. ‘How long afore they fetch their kin?’ he asked, squinting around himself. Apart from the Elm, there were no proper trees, though a multiplicity of hedges split the fields below. Not much cover up here, he thought, plenty down there, I don’t like it.

Carey was laughing again, putting his still-wound second dag back into its case on the horse’s withers, and twirling his sword around his gloved fingers in an absurd swordmaster’s flourish.

‘They won’t,’ he said with the unwarranted certainty that always enraged Dodd. ‘This is Hampstead Heath, not the Bewcastle Waste. Every man jack of them will have to change his breeches now they’ve lost three of their friends, including the big ugly bastard that almost fell on Simon, who I think was their leader.’