4 A Plague of Angels: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (3 page)

The countryside had changed around them as they went, so you might think they were still and the country moving, changing itself magically from rocky to flat and back to hills, fat and golden with straw after the harvest, the gleaners still combing painstakingly through the fields. They passed orchards—Dodd had not been certain what the little woods full of fruit trees might be, but had found out from Simon; they passed fields full of sheep and kine and only children guarding them, so it made you sad to think how many you could reive if only the distances weren’t so great. Even the size of the fields changed, from small and stone-walled to vast striped prairies and then back to small squares quilted with hedges. The road was generally full of strangers as well, crowded with packponies, carriers’ wagons, even newfangled coaches jolting along with silkclad green-faced women suffering inside them. Once a courier carrying the Queen’s dispatches had galloped down the grassy verge, shouting for them to make room, and leaving the rest of the travellers bathed in dust. Carey had coughed and brightened up a little, and they had talked for an hour about the technicalities of riding post. They had agreed that the key to speed was in making the change of horses every ten miles as fast as possible and paradoxically in taking the first half mile slowly so the animal had a chance to warm up.

Once a trotting train carrying fish from Norwich went past them, little light carts pulled by perkily trotting ponies, trailing a smell of the ocean behind the smart clatter. Once they had passed a band of beggars and Dodd had loosened his sword, but the upright man at the head of them had not liked the look of three men and a boy, well-armed and with the gentleman at the head of them ostentatiously opening his dag case before him. Dodd had thought it was a pity, really, he’d heard tell of southern beggars and a fight would at least have broken the monotony. Dodd was also short of sleep, thanks to Carey’s efforts at economising. At each inn they stayed at, Carey had put them all in the one room so Dodd could get the full benefit of Carey and Barnabus’s outrageous snoring. In desperation he had offered to sleep with the horses in the stables, but Carey had turned the idea down.

The south was a dreamworld where all the familiar normal animals had suddenly turned fat and handsome and he could only understand one word in three that was spoken to him. Dodd felt naked without his jack and morion, and thought wistfully that it would have been nice if his brother could have come too so he could have had someone to talk to. But Carey had refused to pay for any more followers than he had to on the grounds that it was Dodd himself that the Lord Chamberlain, his father, wanted to speak to, not Red Sandy.

‘What do you make of it, Sergeant?’ Carey asked him, nodding at the ambush of houses ahead of them.

‘Ah dinna ken, sir,’ said Dodd at his most stolid. ‘I’ve no’ been there yet.’ Was Carey actually planning to keep all the spoils for himself? Damn him for a selfish grasping miser; he’d only killed one of the footpads and if it hadn’t been for Dodd, they would have been helpless in the Cut when the robbers attacked…

As if reading Dodd’s mind, Carey had squatted down and was emptying out the gold and silver coins onto a flat stone, sorting them briskly into shillings and crowns and angels, and then into three piles which he then doled out. The few pennies left over he gave to Simon.

‘Will we get to see the Queen, sir?’ asked Simon as he stowed his money away.

Carey shrugged. ‘We might, if she’s in London. She’s more likely to be on progress.’

‘Will yer father no’ be with her then, sir?’ Dodd said, having picked up the vague notion that Lord Chamberlains were supposed to look after courtiers and the court and such. ‘How will we tell him our tale if he isnae there?’

‘How the hell should I know?’ snapped Carey. ‘Father’s brains have addled, I expect. Bloody London. What the devil’s the point of making me come back to London now?’

‘Ay, the Grahams will be riding, and the Armstrongs forbye,’ said Dodd dolefully. ‘Once the Assize judge has gone home after Lammas torches, and the horses are strong and the kine are fat, that’s when we run our rodes.’

Carey snorted. Dodd, who was tired of treating Carey with tact, decided to live dangerously. ‘Ah, that’ll be it, sir,’ he said comfortably. ‘Your father will have got wind the Grahams have a price on yer head and he’ll want ye safe in the south again.’

Lord, Carey could glare fit to split a stone when he wanted. ‘I very much doubt it,’ he said frostily, ‘seeing he knows perfectly well I’d rather be in Carlisle and take my chances with the Grahams.’

‘Hm,’ said Barnabus. ‘Not an easy choice, is it, sir? With all the people wanting to see you in London.’

Carey didn’t answer, but went to his horse and started turning up hooves looking for stones. The animal nickered and licked at his neck, searching for salt and knocking his hat off in the process. Uncharacteristically, Carey elbowed the enquiring muzzle away with a growled ‘Get over, you stupid animal.’

‘Mr Skeres will want to talk to you, won’t he, sir?’ Barnabus went on, sucking his teeth and scratching his bum. ‘And Mr Barnet and Mr Palavicino’s agent and Mr Bullard and then there’s Mr Pickering’s men…’

Involuntarily, Carey winced.

‘Got some feuds waiting for ye, have ye, sir?’ asked Dodd with interest. It didn’t surprise him at all, knowing Carey by now, but he wouldn’t have thought southerners would have the spirit.

‘No,’ Carey admitted as he checked the girth and mounted. ‘Not feuds. Much worse.’

‘Och ay?’

‘Much much worse,’ Barnabus explained gloomily, using the mounting stone to clamber into the saddle.

‘What then?’

‘Creditors,’ Carey said hollowly. ‘London’s bloody crawling with my creditors.’

***

The nags supplied by the Holly Tree were, if anything, worse than the ones they had been riding before and true to Dodd’s gloomy expectation, Carey refused even to pause long enough for a quart of beer. Nor would he roust out the village Watch to go and find the footpads, though that was sensible enough since they were more than likely the same people or at least their relatives.

As they clopped briskly down Haverstock Hill, Carey’s face got longer and longer. He looked just like a man whose blackrent to the Grahams was late, waiting for the torch in his thatch.

‘Could ye not pay ’em off with the spoils fra the footpads?’ Dodd asked solicitously.

Carey blinked at him, as if checking to see whether he was making fun, and then laughed hollowly.

‘Christ, Dodd, you’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘I wish I could. The only thing I’ve got going for me is the fact they don’t know I’m coming.’

‘Wouldn’t be too sure of that, sir,’ said Barnabus from behind them.

Carey had been in a tearing hurry all the way south, but now he slowed to a walk.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘What do you think, Barnabus?’ I was hoping to come down Gray’s Inn Road and into Holborn just about the time when the law students come out of dinner and use them as cover, but we’re too late for that.’

‘Mm,’ said Barnabus thoughtfully. ‘I shouldn’t think there’ll be too many duns out on Holborn—why bother? If I was trying to catch you, I’d hang around Somerset House, wiv a boat on the river. After all, they don’t know which way you’re coming.’

‘If they know I’m coming at all.’

‘You’re planning to rely on that, are you, sir?’

Carey shook his head. ‘It’s the Strand that’s the problem then.’ He nibbled the stitching on the thumb of his glove. ‘I simply can’t afford to wind up in the Fleet.’

‘What’s that, sir?’

‘A debtor’s prison,’ said Carey in a voice of doom.

‘Och,’ said Dodd and considered. ‘Have ye kin in London? Yer father’s there, is he no’?’

‘I hope so, since he’s forced me to ride a couple of hundred miles just to talk to him face to face and do business that could be perfectly well done by letter.’

‘Ay. It’s no’ difficult, then. They willnae ken ma face as one o’ yourn, so ye tell me the lie of the land and where your father’s castle is, I ride hell fer leather intae it, he calls out yer kin and comes out to meet ye and none o’ yer enemies can do a thing about it.’

A short silence greeted this excellent plan which Dodd realised was not the silence of admiration. Carey cleared his throat in a way which Dodd knew meant he was trying hard not to laugh and Simon sniggered behind his hand.

‘Well?’ demanded Dodd truculently. ‘What’s wrong with that idea?’ He could feel his neck reddening.

‘Among other things, the fact that Somerset House is only one of the palaces on the Strand and I doubt you could find it,’ said Carey. ‘Not to mention the fact that the Queen is highly averse to pitched battles being fought on the streets of London.’

‘You could let ’em take you, we talk to your dad and he bails you tomorrow,’ suggested Barnabus. ‘You’d only need to spend one night inside…’

‘Absolutely not,’ snapped Carey, and his face was pale.

Dodd thought he was being overdramatic and called his bluff. ‘Ye can allus change clothes wi’ me, sir, if ye’re so feart o’ being seen; none will know you in my clothes,’ he offered. Perhaps it was cruel to tease the Courtier; Dodd knew perfectly well that Carey would probably rather die than enter even London’s suburbs wearing Dodd’s sturdy best suit of homespun russet. Certainly he would hang before going into his father’s house like that.

Carey’s blue glare narrowed again but it seemed he was learning to know when Dodd was pulling his leg. He coughed.

‘Thank you for your offer, Dodd,’ he said, ‘but I doubt your duds would fit me.’

‘Ay, they would,’ said Dodd, who was only a couple of inches shorter than Carey and not far off the same build. Though he thought no one would actually confuse them in a thousand years since Carey had dark chestnut hair, hooded blue eyes, a striking family resemblance to the Queen along his cheekbones and slightly hooked nose, and a breezy swagger that breathed of the court. Dodd knew he was no beauty though he felt it was unfair the way his wife sometimes compared his usual expression to a wet winter’s day. The best you could say about his brown hair was that it was quite clean and he still had all of it.

‘We dinna have to go straight in,’ Dodd pointed out. ‘There’s surely no shortage of fine inns. Ye could stay at one o’ them, Barnabus could scout out yer dad’s castle for ye, see was the approaches laid wi’ ambush, and then we could bring out a covered litter for ye and take ye in that way.’

‘That might work,’ said Barnabus. ‘At least we could bring out some of your father’s liverymen for cover.’ Dodd forebore to point out that this was exactly the plan he had first suggested and they had laughed at.

For once Carey looked as if he was being tempted to act sensibly but as Dodd expected, it didn’t last.

‘No,’ Carey said. ‘News travels fast in London. If anyone spots you, Barnabus, they’ll know I’m back and come looking for me when you return. Dodd wouldn’t know the way and Simon’s too young. Also nobody knows them at Somerset House so they might have trouble getting in. Besides I’m not skulking into my father’s house in a blasted litter like some bloody trollop from the stews. No, if we move fast enough and quietly enough, by the time they realise it’s me, we’ll be in.’

‘And yer father’s henchmen can see ’em off.’

‘No,’ said Carey. ‘My father’s lawyers.’

‘Whit use are lawyers?’ laughed Dodd, who had never heard good of one. ‘It’s fighting men we lack, as usual.’

‘You’d be surprised, Sergeant. Right, so it’s down Gray’s Inn Road to Holborn, turn right on Holborn and past Chancery Lane, cut across Lincoln’s Inn Fields, then down Little Drury Lane at a trot, turn right into the Strand where we’ll walk so as not to be too dramatic and besides the ground’s awful there, then in at my father’s gatehouse. Stick close, Dodd, I don’t want you getting lost.’

What did a London bailiff look like?
wondered Dodd as they cut across the fields to the gate at the top of Gray’s Inn Lane, cattle almost blocking it as they stood waiting to be taken in for milking. They were lovely beasts, fat as butter, huge udders groaning. As they manoevred round the herd, Dodd rode up behind Carey and let out a soft cough.

‘Look at them,’ he said longingly. ‘Could we no’…er…borrow a few, sir? I could drive at least five o’ them maself, and more if ye gave me a hand. We could use ’em to pay off yer creditors.’

Carey stared for a moment and then shouted with humourless laughter. ‘For God’s sake, Dodd, keep your sticky hands off those beasts, they’re the Earl of Essex’s. See the bear and ragged staff brand? Don’t touch ’em.’

‘Och,’ said Dodd sadly, not very surprised. ‘He’s a big lord, is he, sir?’

‘Er…yes,’ said Carey. ‘Also, I’m still his man and you’d get me in a lot of trouble.’

Gray’s Inn Road must have been a horror in winter, what with the depth of dust. It was lined with houses, like streets in Edinburgh, and then they came out on a wide road. Carey was looking about him and had his hat pulled down. They crossed some fields criss-crossed with paths that looked badly overgrazed and came through a gate beside a high garden wall. Across another dusty road was a lane that led due south between tall narrow houses. Simon shut the gate and they unconsciously bunched together as they went into the lane. The sun was a low copper bowl now and the people milling around not paying them any attention. Dodd thought that Londoners were very rude folk, not to wave, even. Carey was biting the corner of his lip and looking nervous, while Barnabus had the narrow-eyed thoughtful expression he wore when he was waiting for trouble. Dodd loosened his sword and wished for a bow.