4 A Plague of Angels: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (36 page)

She looked at him, hoping it was Dodd. It wasn’t. This was somebody taller, dressed country-style in a completely fashionless suit that didn’t fit him properly and a leather jerkin, somebody with wavy dark red hair. She blinked and squinted, catching her breath: he looked so like Edmund when he first came to the gaol, only younger and less stocky, so much the same swagger in his walk, the same humorous smile, the same…She knew she had gone pale and then flushed. Of course she had been lonely in the summer and she knew how wrong was the heady rush of feelings that had struck her like a summer storm when she talked to Edmund that first time, after her son had accidentally hit him with a flung stone meant for a rat…But he had been rueful and sympathetic, allowing her to bandage his ear where the stone had clipped it, even interceding to save the little boy from her anger. When he looked at her she felt he looked at her as if she were another man, not just a woman to be seduced or ignored. No, that was wrong: not another man, but as if she were his equal, as if he thought of her as a person and was prepared to like her. He had been gentlemanly, he had made none of the usual suggestions that the men in the gaol routinely tried on all the women not over the age of sixty nor deformed, he had been respectable and friendly. It had been the most seductive experience of her life. In her heart she had fallen into sin at once, without any coaxing from Edmund.

Now here it was again, unmistakeable: the same energy, the same flamboyance, though subtly different. After Edmund took sick with the gaol-fever and she had nursed him, he had raved in delirium about himself, his brothers, his father, his mother, as men do when they don’t know what they’re saying. That was when she had learned his true name and begged him to write to his father to bail him out and he had adamantly refused. He had spoken of his younger brother with a wistful, envious admiration and then as the fever disordered his brain more and more, with a touching concern, begging her not to let Robin or Philly see him in such a state…

Julie Granville put down her sewing carefully on the piece of canvas she used to wrap it in when she wasn’t working. Then she stood up, dusted off her skirt, adjusted her cap and ruff and walked across the courtyard to where Edmund’s brother was squatting, talking gently to some of the children playing knuckle bones in the dust.

‘…a man in a blackberry-coloured suit, a bit shorter than me and stronger-built with a very glum face and funny way o’ talking like this? Have you seen anyone like that? I might pay as much as a shilling to someone who could tell me about him…’

‘Yes, I seen ’im, sir,’ said one of the urchins. ‘’E was the one wot Mr Gaoler Newton’s men was going to give a leatherin’ to, they took ’im out of the courtyard an hour ago.’

‘Where did they take him?’

‘Mr Newton’s lodgings, and there was strangers here, a fat man in brocade and velvet wiv lots of servants…’

Ceremoniously Edmund’s brother handed over a sixpence. ‘I’ll give you the other half of the shilling if it turns out you’re telling the truth. Now have any of you seen another man, a gentleman who looks like me…’

She shouldn’t address him as Sir Robert. He was wearing a country farmer’s clothing and his face and hands were dirty, he must be in disguise, though his boots fitted him far too well to belong to a farmer. She coughed and held her hands tightly together over her apron. He looked up at her cautiously, smiled, stood, took off his hat and just stopped himself at the beginning of what would surely have been a very magnificent court bow.

‘Are you…are you called Robin?’ she asked.

The intensity of his blue gaze shook her. ‘What of it, mistress?’ he asked with a strong northern sound in his voice.

She must be careful. What if he was one of Edmund’s enemies, one of the men he was hiding from. Just because he looked so like Edmund didn’t necessarily mean they were brothers, and perhaps there was some other urgent reason why Edmund didn’t want his family told. Family members could hate each other more bitterly than mere enemies, as she knew to her cost.

How could she check? Inspiration came from one of the many nights she had spent sitting next to Edmund as he fought and raved, trying to cool him down with Thames water, fanning him with her apron.

‘Goodman, can you tell me who taught you to ride?’ she asked.

Blue eyes narrowed, the man frowned. ‘It was my brother, mistress, why?’

‘What was his name?’

‘Edmund.’

‘Can you tell me what…how you treated him at the first lesson?’

The frown got heavier. Oh God, what if she was wrong? What if this was Heneage’s man…

‘Why?’

‘Please, bear with me.’

‘Well…’ he grinned infectiously. ‘I’m afraid I bit him. I’d fallen off and he was making me get back on again, so I bit his ear. Drew blood too.’

‘What happened?’

‘No, you tell
me
what happened.’

She smiled, pleased that he had good sense. ‘He shouted, the pony bolted and you both got into trouble because it broke into a garden and ate the peas.’

He had caught her arms, was leaning down to stare into her eyes and she caught a faint spicy lavender smell from him, under the normal musk that no man produced naturally, which confirmed her opinion that he was not wearing his own clothes.

‘Where is he, mistress? Yes, my name’s Robin, I’m his brother. Can you take me to him? Did he send you?’

It was the shadow of desire to feel Edmund’s brother’s hands on her and she flushed, stepped back. He let go at once.

‘Please, mistress, I’ve been combing London for him…Is he all right? Is he still alive?’

For answer she turned, led him across the courtyard to the steps down, paid an ill-afforded penny to the gaol servant who was dozing there on a stool to let them in. Robin looked up and around at the darkness and stink of Bolton’s Ward, his nostrils flaring. She went across towards where Edmund lay, and saw him move feebly, trying to turn away, hide his face. Robin spotted him too, lengthened his stride and was there first, kneeling on the slimy stones, bending, catching his brother’s shoulders, lifting him, embracing him. She smiled to see it, then turned away so they could have some privacy.

When she approached Robin had sat back on his haunches.

‘What the hell were you playing at?’ he was demanding in a furious whisper. ‘Father’s been searching for you for weeks, why the devil didn’t you send a message? Why in hell did you stay in this shit hole, you could have died…You can’t mess around with gaol-fever, it nearly killed me and I had the two best nurses in the world looking after me, for Christ’s sake…’

His rage convinced her more than his affection had, but it was distressing Edmund who was lying back on his grubby pillow, panting.

She touched Robin’s shoulder and he whipped round, glaring at her. ‘Mistress, why didn’t you…’

‘He begged me not to, sir,’ she said firmly. ‘I tried my best to get him to write to your father, but he wouldn’t, even when he was lucid. And most of this time he has been too ill to do anything.’

‘You might have done it on your own, got him out of this filthy place.’

His anger shook her, though she knew it was really a diffuse fury that wasn’t aimed at her.

‘S…sir, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t dare reveal who he was or contact your father because he was so desperate that I shouldn’t. How could I go against what he said? He pleaded with me not to betray him, said if I sent any message to my lord, the spy in his household would make sure Heneage found him first…And he was so afraid of Heneage. And in any case, I think he was ashamed. He said many times he wanted to die.’

‘Oh Christ.’

‘He very nearly did, sir, and is still not recovered. This is the most dangerous time with gaol-fever; if he strains himself too much now, it will come back and probably kill him. Please be gentle with him.’

It was touching and made Julie want to smile at them. Although Robin was still fuming, Edmund’s frail hand had crept out from under the blankets and into his brother’s. They were holding hands like children and neither of them had noticed.

‘Yes, you’re right,’ Robin said eventually. ‘I’m sorry, Ned, I should have thought. I suppose it probably was right to lie low, but…for God’s sake, why in this place? Why not the Eightpenny Ward?’

‘Most of his money was counterfeit and somebody stole the rest,’ Julie explained.

‘Bastards.’

Edmund said something with a faint smile.

‘No, you’re damned right nobody would have thought to look for you in here. I didn’t. How could you possibly bear it? It’s worse than below decks in a ship. It’s like…it’s like a circle of hell.’

Again Edmund whispered something to his brother with a look at her that Julie knew meant she was the subject. She could feel herself flushing.

Robin listened for a moment. ‘One question,’ he said. ‘When did you understand Heneage’s game?’

‘When I…paid my tailor with the gold we made…I thought we’d made…and he weighed it and threw it back in my face for a forgery…I suddenly saw it…’ came Edmund’s creaking breathless voice,’…saw how it used me against Father. All I could think of was to hide and the only place I thought they might not look at first was in gaol, especially…in a different name. I made a deal with the man to arrest me for the debt in mother’s name, as Edward Morgan.’

Robin nodded. Edmund lay back and panted, white with exhaustion. Very gently, Robin released his brother’s hand, put it under the blankets, tucked him up like a child and then stood, dusting his fingers and his legs.

‘Mistress Granville,’ he said quietly to her. ‘I don’t think we have much time. I want you to go to the courtyard and find a man there, by the name of Kit Marlowe. He’s almost as tall as I am, velvet peascod doublet slashed with peach taffeta, but he looks like a cocky smug bastard and that’s exactly what he is. When you find him, tell him…tell him to go to my father and fetch reinforcements.’

Edmund was plucking at the blanket, the cords of his neck straining to lift his head. Robin saw and patted him. ‘I know, I know, Marlowe’s Heneage’s man. He says he wants my help to get him in with Essex and just for the moment, I believe him. All right?’

Edmund let his head fall back and closed his eyes. They looked sunken and his colour was bad. Robin looked down at him with a worried frown and then at her.

‘Please, mistress, hurry,’ he said. ‘I’m staying with Ned. If a plump-looking man in a fine marten-trimmed gown asks you where he is, even if he says he’s Mr Thomas Heneage, the Queen’s Vice Chancellor, lie.’

She nodded, frightened at the large stakes these men were playing for…Defying the Queen’s official? Well, she could do it for Edmund.

***

In the end, it was lucky that Heneage had brought no thumbscrews with him, because he had expected to be able to capture Sir Robert Carey and put the next part of his plan into operation. It meant he had to send one of his men to fetch some to use on his prisoner. While he waited, he decided to see if painting word pictures of some of the effects and refinements of thumbscrews would have any effect on the yokel. He had been talking for ten minutes when he realised that the blasted man had somehow managed to doze off again, lying sideways on the carriage bench.

His first impulse was to use his dagger on the man’s eyeballs, see if that would keep him awake, but he controlled himself.

He was absolutely certain the northerner knew where Edmund Carey was hiding. The spittle he had carefully scrubbed off his face before snatching his henchman’s cosh and using it for five satisfying minutes on the bastard northerner’s kidneys, that infuriating childish gesture confirmed his instinct that he was dealing with defiance and not ignorance.

He was planning how to use the thumbscrews to break Carey’s man quickly, considering other places you could use them than merely fingers, when it occurred to him to wonder how it was a northerner could know where Edmund Carey was when nobody else did.

The answer came to him from God, as simply as the sun rising. He actually laughed, because it was so obvious.

He leaned out of the carriage and called his second in command over to him, told his driver to whip up the horses again. He called to where his henchmen were standing in a group, sharing a leather bottle of beer and practising knife throwing at the swollen corpse of a rat lying in a gutter. Then he kicked the northerner’s shins to wake him up.

‘Edmund Carey’s in the Fleet, isn’t he?’ he said, and saw the telltale change in the man’s eyes. ‘You really should have told me before, it would have saved you some pain. And you would have told me in the end, you know; people always do. Probably after we’d crushed one or both of your balls.’

‘Ay,’ croaked the man. ‘Ay, he’s in the Fleet. Deid and buried, wi’ gaol fever.’

Heneage laughed at this nonsense. ‘Oh, really,’ he remonstrated. ‘If that was true, you’d have told me at once, you’re not mad.’

‘Mr Heneage,’ said the man, breathing carefully. ‘I wouldnae willingly tell ye where yer ain arsehole was, not if yer catamite begged me to.’

Heneage blinked at him. ‘When I’ve finished with Edmund Carey and his interfering brother, I will take you apart, piece by piece.’

The carriage jolted into motion, causing the northerner to whine through his teeth very satisfactorily as he fell helplessly off the bench and in a huddle onto the narrow floor. Heneage left him there, so he could get the benefit of the bone-jolting movement of the coach. Generally anybody but an invalid or a woman would prefer to ride but for some purposes, such as privately transporting prisoners, a carriage was unimproveable.