4 A Plague of Angels: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (32 page)

‘Will you come?’

‘Ay, I will, mistress.’

Newton had taken his sword when he was signed in, of course, but Dodd still had his dagger. He loosened it in its sheath and then followed the woman across the courtyard, past the sewing circle where the woman’s children were sitting under the gimlet eye of an older woman, past a cobbler’s stall and a general stall covered over with a dizzying array of objects for sale, and into the doorway of one of the oldest parts of the place, stone built and with a swaybacked roof.

They went down worn spiral steps. One of the gaol servants was standing there and after the woman had paid him a penny, he unlocked the heavy door. They went through into a dark stinking cellar, with a broad ribbed roof and small high windows that were barred and had no glass. The stone flags of the floor were slippery and there were puddles in the dips, the place stank of piss and mould and sickness to take your head off. There were still shapes lying huddled in the shadows, some of them in no more than their shirts, and there was no sound of talk, only harsh breathing, echoing coughs and the occasional moan.

‘Och, God,’ said Dodd, shaken. ‘What’s this place?’

‘Bolton’s Ward, sir, where Newton puts those who have no money left, the beggars’ ward.’

‘Why do they not leave?’

‘They are chained, sir.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

In his time Dodd had heard some fairly frightening sermons on the subject of Hell, but this was worse than any of them. Jedburgh itself hadn’t been half so bad.

The woman went over to one of the huddled shapes in the corner. Dodd followed her, feeling sick with pity.

She bent down to the man who lay there, felt his forehead, and he moved his head restlessly at her touch. For a moment, in the dimness, Dodd’s belly clenched with superstitious fright because although the man was far skinnier than Carey, it could have been him, with the beaky nose and the high cheekbones. But the man’s greasy hair was receding off his forehead into a widow’s peak and there was a difference about the chin and mouth, and also he had a straggling beard. He was lying on a straw pallet with a bag of clothes for a pillow, wearing nothing but his shirt which was fine linen but ragged. The blanket hunched up over his shoulders was a stinking disgrace Dodd wouldn’t have put on a horse.

‘Do you know him, sir?’ asked the woman.

‘Is that Edmund Carey?’ Dodd asked.

Her face relaxed a little. For the first time she smiled at him. ‘Yes, it is.’

‘But why did his father not find him?’

‘He’s in the book under another name, under Edward Morgan. He was kind to my children when he was first brought to the Fleet, in the beginning of August. Then he took a gaol-fever a week later. Newton was enraged with him for he said that all the garnish he had paid was forged and Newton himself was nearly arrested for it. He had no other money by then, and so Newton put him down here.’ She looked down at her neatly clasped hands. ‘I…um…I have been trying to nurse him. He told me his real name when he was delirious but then when he was in his right mind he begged me not to tell his family and…some other things…and so I did not, but I have been in a quandary to know what to do, sir, because I think the poor gentleman is not far off dying and he should be taken out of this place and looked after properly. I’m not even sure if I have done right bringing you here, sir,’ added the woman, her voice dropping, ‘because he was particularly anxious that his brother not be told; he kept begging me not to let little Robin see him in case he was frightened.’

Dodd kept his face solemn though in fact there was something funny as well as pathetic and idiotic at the idea of Sir Robert being ‘little Robin’ and at risk of fright at the sight of his brother brought so low. But then, he supposed, if he was in a like case and not quite in his right mind from fever, he might want to stop Red Sandy from seeing him. Old habits die hard and you could never stop being a big brother once you were one.

He squatted down and took the bony wrist which felt hot and dry. ‘Och, puir man,’ he said. ‘How much would it take to move him somewhere better?’

‘At least ten shillings, since he’s in debt to Newton for the Knight’s Ward charges as well. And another couple of shillings’ garnish to unchain him.’

Dodd’s lips tightened. He was beginning to take a considerable dislike to Newton.

‘What’s your name, mistress?’

‘Julie Granville, sir.’

‘Is your husband not about?’

She looked down. ‘He was a sharer and officer in a ship bound for Muscovy, sir, and when the ship didn’t return, and we had heard nothing of it for a year, our creditors arrested me for his debts.’

‘But that’s terrible, mistress. What about yer family?’

‘I haven’t any, sir. And my husband’s family are…Well, his father was opposed to the voyage in the first place.’

Dodd shook his head. Impulsively he put his hand on her arm. ‘I’m not Sir Robert, see ye, but I am his man, and I’m a man o’ parts myself in ma ain country. Now dinna ye fret, Mistress Granville, I’ll see it sorted.’

She obviously didn’t understand much of what he had said, but she understood his tone of voice and she smiled. She took a cloth out of the bucket she had been carrying and began wiping Edmund Carey’s face and hands. He woke a little more and began muttering. She shushed him and began feeding him spoonfuls of some kind of porridge she had brought in a wooden bowl.

Dodd stood, turned on his heel and strode to the door, banged on it and was let out of the hell of Bolton’s Ward, up the stairs and into the courtyard. He was scowling with thought; God might move in mysterious ways, but this was a little too pat for his tastes. What a strange coincidence that he should be arrested in mistake for Carey, when Carey had been blazing about the streets with courtier branded on every inch of him, and brought to the one prison in London that also contained Carey’s missing brother, for whom Greene had been searching before his death, and Carey as well. It didn’t make sense, or rather it did and he didn’t like the sense it made.

He was not at all surprised to find a familiar face in the courtyard when he came blinking out into the sunshine, Mistress Bassano’s erstwhile servant, the balding poet.

Dodd strode over to the man, took his elbow between thumb and forefinger in a way which forbade argument, and propelled him into the shade of a corner between two buildings.

‘Sergeant Dodd,’ said Shakespeare, his voice shaking a little. ‘I’m…er…I’m very glad I’ve found you.’

‘Not half sae glad as I am to find you,’ said Dodd, deliberately crowding him against the wall. ‘Now, I ken ye work for Mr Vice Chamberlain and I dinna give a pig’s turd why. But I’m sick and tired of being used as a fucking chesspiece in some fancy game o’ yer master’s, so now ye’re gonnae tell me what the hell’s going on here, or I willnae be responsible for what I do to ye. D’ye understand me or will I say it again more southern?’

Shakespeare was white-faced and trembling. ‘I…er…I understand,’ he panted.

‘So.’ Dodd leaned one arm against the wall in front of Shakespeare, blocking him with his body. ‘I’m waiting.’

‘Er…I really don’t know…very much.’

‘Och,’ said Dodd with false sympathy. ‘That’s a terrible pity. I’ll have to kill ye on general principles then.’

Dodd hadn’t even bothered to draw his blade nor lay hands on Shakespeare, but for some reason the little poet believed him.

‘I…I don’t know where to start.’

‘Ye’re the man that told Heneage that Sir Robert was on his way south, ay?’

Shakespeare nodded. ‘I told Marlowe, though.’

‘When did he warn ye to do that?’

‘About August, I think.’

‘How did ye tell him? In person?’

‘No, in writing, in code. I leave messages with a…a trustworthy person who passes them on.’

‘Who is the person?’

Shakespeare shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you.’

Dodd considered beating the name out of him, but decided not to since he didn’t want to draw attention to himself.

‘What’s Heneage’s game? What’s he trying to do?’

Shakespeare looked at the ground. ‘I don’t know. Why would he tell me?’

‘All right. What’s he told ye to find out?’

‘He…er…I think he wants to know anything about my lord Baron Hunsdon that will discredit him with the Queen. He also wants to know where Edmund Carey is. That’s quite urgent. He’s been quartering London for the man.’

Dodd blinked and looked hard at Shakespeare, who was swallowing and trembling in front of him. He was not a fighting man and although he was a poet and must be good at lying, he didn’t look as if he was lying now. In which case, what the hell was going on? Dodd had been convinced that Heneage had put Edmund Carey in the Fleet, possibly into Bolton’s Ward as well. But if Heneage didn’t know where he was…And wanted to find him…?

Dodd changed plan. ‘What are ye here for?’

‘To talk to you, find out if you needed anything.’

Dodd scowled deeper which made Shakespeare shrink back against the wall.

‘Who sent ye?’

‘I can’t…er…tell you.’

‘And why not?’

‘B…because I…I’m more frightened of them than I am of you, sir,’ said Shakespeare with a desperate glint of humour.

Against his will Dodd let out a short bark of laughter. ‘Ay. Well, that’s because ye dinna know me sae well.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Bide there while I think what to do.’

Dodd looked around him for inspiration and scowled. The complexity of the situation was making his head hurt. His immediate impulse had been to send Shakespeare hotfoot to Somerset House to roust out Lord Hunsdon and bring him to the gaol to fetch his son. But the messenger was tainted. The likelihood was that a verbal message would go straight to Heneage or the mysterious person that scared the poet so much, and a written message the same. For a moment Dodd thought about codes but he didn’t know any and besides, it stood to reason that experienced intriguers like Heneage or even Shakespeare would know more about secret writing than he did. He couldn’t even tell Shakespeare simply to fetch Lord Hunsdon for the same reasons. He couldn’t send the man to fetch Barnabus or Simon Barnet because they had the plague and were probably dead by now.

‘I’ve got naething for ye to do, because I canna trust ye,’ he said to Shakespeare, leaning towards him. The poet was trying to burrow backwards into the wall. ‘If ye had a particle of decency in ye, ye’d go tell my Lord Hunsdon where I am and why, but as ye dinna, I willnae waste my breath asking ye to.’

‘I…I’m sorry.’

Dodd drew back disgustedly. ‘Och,’ he said. ‘Piss off. Ye’re dirtying my nice clean gaol.’

Shakespeare sidled past him and into the courtyard, then scurried across it looking pinched about the mouth. Dodd spat in his wake.

For a moment Dodd thought of paying the money that would get Edmund Carey moved out of the stinking disgrace of the beggars’ ward but then it occurred to him that any action like that would probably be reported to Heneage within the hour and Heneage would want to know why he was so solicitous of a stranger, might well make the connection.

It occurred to him that there was one thing he could do without giving away any secrets, since it would be expected of him. He went back into the courtyard and over to the table covered with a higgledy piggledy array of things, including a lump of rock covered in dust that the dog-eared notice by it claimed to be gold ore. There, after considerable haggling, he bought himself paper, pen and ink and sat down cross-legged with his back to a corner and a stone in front of him for a writing table. He hated paperwork. He knew his ability to write, which was rare among the Borderers, had helped him get his place in the Carlisle garrison as Sergeant, but he still hated it. The effort of making up words and then forming the letters for them always made his head hurt and his hand sweat. He avoided the labour as much as he could but this time there was no help for it.

***

Peter Cheke had gone to bed after another night of desperate labour against the plague, also ending in failure. He had slept the dreamless headlong sleep of exhaustion and woken very late in full daylight, feeling thirsty and still exhausted. He had even slept through the bells calling him to church. As he went to the window to look out into the street, he saw a tall man in ill-fitting homespun russet jogtrotting purposefully through the crowds, straight to his locked shop door.

The hammering resounded up the stairs and Cheke stood staring down at the statute cap of the man, overwhelmed with helpless misery. Yet another desperate father, begging for something, anything to save his babies, his wife, offering every penny he had for healing Cheke knew he could not give, as if salvation could be bought.

Eventually he put on his gown and hat, went down to open the door and tell the poor fool to begone.

At first he didn’t recognise the man because of the conflicting signals of clothes and bearing and the fact that his hair and face were dirty. By the time he had worked it out, Carey had pushed his way into the shop and shut the door behind him.

‘What…er…what can I do for you, sir?’ he asked nervously.

‘Mr Cheke,’ said Carey. ‘I’ve come to you because I have nowhere else to start. I must know where Dr Jenkins performed his alchemy.’