A Murder of Crows: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery

by P. F. Chisholm

  Carey’s gaze was cold. “Of course she does, she’s not a pirate. Father got it for her after she happened to help sink a Flemish pirate off the Lizard.” Dodd was proud of himself for not letting a flicker across his countenance.

  “Ay?”

  “What the Devil do you expect her to do all day, sit at home and embroider?” Carey slammed into his chamber, shouting for the ever absent Simon Barnet to see to his points.

  Dodd went to his own chamber and could laugh at last. The wild cherubs over the mantelpiece seemed to laugh back as he carefully worked through all his buttons and laces and folded his suit before climbing into bed in his shirt. As he went to sleep, he thought happily that he now had all the explanation he needed for Carey’s wild streak. By God, the Careys were an entertaining bunch. For a while, Dodd felt pierced with loneliness that he didn’t have Janet in bed beside him to talk about it. He rather thought Janet and Lady Hunsdon would get on very well.

  Tuesday 12th September 1592, early morning

  Just after daybreak Dodd was enjoying bread and beer in his chamber at his good vantage point at the window where he could watch the doings in the street. What a pleasure it was to be able to look through a window quilted with diamonds like the jack of an Englishman, so the glass kept the wind out but let the light in. Nobody ever bothered with glass in the Borders because it broke too easily, although Dodd thought he had heard that Richie Graham had a couple of windows of the stuff for his wife’s chamber which were removeable in the case of a siege. Here in wealthy London, every window glittered like water with it.

  The knock on his door was nothing like Carey’s hammering. When he opened it he found a square young man with red hair and freckles clad in the Hunsdon livery of black and yellow stripes. The youngster opened his mouth and spoke words that might as well have been French for the sense Dodd could make of them, although he knew the sound from the sailors that came into Dumfries and took copper out of Whitehaven.

  “What?” Dodd asked irritably. Why could nobody in the south speak proper English like him? It was worse than Scotch because he could speak that if he had to.

  The man tried again, frowning with the effort. “M’loidy wants ee.”

  “Ma lady Hunsdon? Wants me?”

  More brow-wrinkling. “Ay, she do.”

  Dodd picked up his new hat and washed down the last of his manchet bread. It was a little tasteless for all its fine crumb, he thought to himself, he really preferred normal bread with the nutty taste from the unsieved flour and the ale in it and the little gritty bits from milling. There was something very weak and namby pamby about all this luxury.

  He clattered down the stairs after the red-haired lad, trailing his fingers along the wonderful carved balustrade as he went. In the hall were two other wide, pig-tailed Cornish sailors, Will Shakespeare looking neat but a little less doleful than he had the week before, and the fresh-faced, cream-skinned girl in neat dark blue wool.

  “What’s up, Will?” Dodd asked the ex-player and would-be poet. “Ah thocht ye were well in with the Earl of Southampton?”

  Shakespeare shrugged. “These things can take a little time. My lord had to post to Oxford to meet her Majesty. He…er…he took Mistress Emilia with him.”

  Dodd nodded tactfully. “Ay? And what are we doing now?”

  “My lady Hunsdon has a fancy to go into town to do some shopping,” Shakespeare explained.

  Dodd’s brow wrinkled this time. “Why?”

  “My lady is a woman and women go shopping,” Shakespeare explained patiently, “especially when they are in London in Michaelmas term with the Queen’s New Year’s present to consider.”

  “Ay, Ah ken that, but why wi’ me?”

  “For conversation?” offered Shakespeare with just enough of a twitch in his eyebrows for Dodd to get the message.

  The horses were outside in the courtyard, nice-looking animals and one stout gelding with a pillion seat trimmed in velvet.

  “Ah, Sergeant Dodd,” came the ringing voice tinged with the West Country from the other doorway, “I have a fancy to spend some of my gains in Cheapside and require a man to manage my horse as I shall ride pillion.”

  Dodd knew perfectly well that there were grooms aplenty in Hunsdon’s stables who could have done the job. He sighed. Then he bowed to Lady Hunsdon who was standing on the steps with a wicked grin on her face, wearing a very fine kirtle of dark red velvet with a forepart of brocade. She had a smart matching feathered hat on her head over her white cap. It looked similar to the green one Dodd had bought at outrageous expense for Janet and which was now sitting packed with hay in its wicker box in his chamber.

  “Ah, I havenae done the office before, m’lady,” he said nervously. “Ah dinna…”

  “Good Lord, how does Mrs. Dodd travel then?”

  Dodd couldn’t help grimacing a little at Janet’s likely reaction to the suggestion that she should ride pillion. “On her ain mare, m’lady,” he replied, and said nothing about the mare’s origins.

  Lady Hunsdon nodded, making the feather bounce. “Ah yes, I used to hunt when I was young, though never as well as Her Majesty. There’s nothing to it. All you have to do is ride, which I am sure you can do very well, and keep me company.”

  Shakespeare glanced meaningfully at Dodd and mounted the other gelding which had a less decorated pillion seat behind the saddle. Lady Hunsdon was busy handing out staves to the two Cornishmen so the pretty round-faced girl hoisted her skirts, climbed the mounting block, put a pretty little boot on the pillion saddle’s footrest and, while Shakespeare held one of her hands, one of the grooms lifted her up and sat her on the seat behind him. The girl whispered something in Shakespeare’s ear and he smiled over his shoulder at her. Dodd narrowed his eyes. All right. He could do that.

  He went up to the gelding and patted his neck, let the long face and inquisitive nose have a delve in his doublet, eased the cheekpiece a little which might chafe. Then he checked the girth, gave the horse a look that warned it not to dare anything, put one hand on the withers and vaulted up to the saddle the way he always did. He shifted the animal over to the block and while he waited for her ladyship, he lengthened the stirrups to his liking.

  She came up to the mounting block, puffing a little, and it took the two sturdy Cornishmen to lift her onto the pillion seat, where she settled down, sitting sideways. The gelding sighed and cocked a hoof.

  “Would ye no’ prefer a litter, m’lady?” asked Dodd.

  There was a loud pshaw noise in his ear. “I hate the things,” snapped Lady Hunsdon, “Disgusting stinking contraptions. Only thing worse is a bloody coach. Now then, off we go.”

  Two of Hunsdon’s men ahead, one Cornishman on each side of the two horses in the middle, a packpony with empty panniers led by a boy, with a footman to follow as well—a fine raiding party for the pillaging of London’s shops. They waited for the gate to be opened for them and clattered out and into the noise and dust of the Strand.

  “It’s my poor knees,” explained Lady Hunsdon, behind him. “And my hip, alas. I much prefer ships. Of course, it’s a nuisance to get aboard in the first place…” Dodd was suddenly transfixed by the idea of Lady Hunsdon shinning up a rope ladder. “…but once you’re there, that’s it. Off you go and you can go anywhere in the world. Wonderful.” Presumably she used a gang-plank or they somehow winched her up?

  “Ay but…” Dodd was struggling with a truly terrible urge to ask what that noted courtier of the Queen, Lord Baron Hunsdon, thought about his wife gallivanting about the oceans. After all, he could guess what the lady’s youngest son thought of it.

  “Out with it, Sergeant.”

  “Ahhh…does me lord no’ mind if ye…”

  Lady Hunsdon’s laugh was a throaty gurgle. “I’m sure he would have played merry hell about it once upon a time. But it was after darling Robin went off to court and Philadelphia’s match with Scrope was made and my lord was busy at Court as usual. I was sitting about with nothing whatever to do a
nd a perfectly good steward to run the estates. Once I was tired of embroidering everything that didn’t move, I went to visit my sister Sybilla at Caerhays in Cornwall. Ever been to Cornwall, Sergeant?”

  They were pushing through the constant jam of people being pestered by stinking sore-ridden beggars at Temple Bar, some of whom had spotted the great lady and her party and were fighting to get through the crowds and do some serious begging.

  Dodd could see the prick of his gelding’s ears and feel the neck begin to arch at the smell and the noise. He patted the neck again, shook his head to answer Lady Hunsdon. He fixed one of the scabby beggars with his eye and moved the toe of his boot suggestively.

  “It’s quite beautiful there. But again, very little to do and so I went visiting the Killigrews at Arwenack by the Fal estuary and Kate was fitting out a privateer to be captained by my cousin Henry Morgan, and so naturally, I took a share and went along with her and we caught a pirate out of Antwerp, in the mist just by St Anthony’s Point and sank her.”

  Dodd’s mind reeled at the idea of these two stout mothers taking a whim to go privateering. It was truly terrifying.

  “Poor Morgan was killed in the melee, so after my lord got me the letter of marque—half in jest, I’m afraid, poor dear—I decided to go into it properly, fitted out my own little ship the Judith with Captain Trevasker, and paid for the whole thing and more with our first Spanish merchant full of sugar and timber that we caught in the Channel.” She laughed throatily again. “You should have seen the faces of the crew when they saw who had caught them. ‘Bruja,’ they called me, which is Spanish for witch, and other less flattering names.”

  “Ay?”

  “Of course it’s all a terrible gamble, but not if you have good intelligence and watchers along the coast and a good haven for the ships and to land the prizes. And Cornishmen to sail your ship, of course. Penryn is at the neck of one of the finest natural harbours in the world, according to dear Sir Francis Drake. Kate agrees with him—her windows in Arwenack House near Pendennis Fort have stunning views across to St Mawes—and she’s used her spoils to buy up most of the land around the bay that the Killigrews don’t already own. It’s expensive, land-prices in Cornwall are ridiculously high, despite being very poor for anything but pasture or tin-mining.”

  There was a scuffle as the beggars tried to dodge past their escort. One of the Cornishmen caught a particularly cheeky beggar right in the forehead with his fist. The other shook his cudgel and growled something incomprehensibly Cornish and most of the beggars fell back.

  Lady Hunsdon was oblivious to the excitement and didn’t seem to need any prompt to carry on talking as Dodd urged the horse on through the crowds.

  “Of course, the real reason I go privateering is that it’s very entertaining—you never know what might happen or where you might find a fat prize. My lord says that if I were younger and a little more spry, he could see me boarding with the sailors and laying about me with a belaying pin—which is a cruel thing to say since I would naturally use a sword or a pistol.”

  Dodd winched his jaw shut and managed a neutral, “Ay?”

  Lady Hunsdon laughed again. “Which of course I wouldn’t either because my hands are too small and my wrists far too weak for a pistol or a sword. And anyway, the last thing the sailors need is another fighter, Sergeant. What they do need is a cool head and an eye for merchandise. That was how we sank the pirate. The sailors were so furious the Flemish had been sinking their fishing boats, they didn’t even notice how they were manoevring us into a very dangerous position. Fortunately I did, and we were able to trap them, board them, free some prisoners, and take the ship into Penryn as a prize. We took some very fine jewels as well. I hadn’t had such fun since I used to hunt with my lord husband and Her Majesty the Queen.”

  She leaned against him and put a hand on his belt while she rearranged her skirts with her other hand. “And since then, of course, I’ve done well enough at the privateering that my lord is quite happy with me. He’s planning to begin rebuilding the Blackfriars with my latest spoils, very pleased he doesn’t need to go to Sir Horatio Palavicino for a loan after all. Ha!”

  Lady Hunsdon subsided into a sudden thoughtful silence. They were ambling up Ludgate hill and into the city, past the the huge Belle Sauvage carter’s inn where the players were parading around with drums to announce a terrible and savage and improving tragedy of Dr. Faustus. As they pressed on past St. Paul’s churchyard, Lady Hunsdon called out in a voice clearly more used to a full gale,

  “Letty, my bird, I need writing paper, ink, pens ready cut, sealing wax, and a new shaker. Off you go now and don’t pay more than a penny a sheet for the paper.”

  Dodd watched carefully how Shakespeare gave Letty his hand again and braced himself to take her weight as she hopped down and headed towards one of the stationer’s stalls in the Churchyard. They waited while she went and spoke earnestly to one of the better-dressed stallmen. He had a brightly-painted and lurid sign over his head of a pen dripping red blood. A pile of the popular though scandalous coneycatching pamphlets decorated his stall as well and a crowd of people were buying them. Despite being busy, he and his wife came over personally with the package to make their bows to Lady Hunsdon. One of the Cornishmen stowed it in the pack pony’s basket and Shakespeare and the other man helped Letty back to her seat.

  They carried on into Cheapside with the pack pony mouthing his bit and looking sulky. Cheapside was jammed with litters and men on horseback and part-blocked by a cart that was unloading. Lady Hunsdon ignored the bedlam, passed by many fine windows, and stopped at the sign of a Golden Cup beside some barred windows that blazed with assorted gold plate—nothing so common as silver to be seen.

  Letty hopped down first and spoke to the scarfaced man in a worn jack standing at the door. Dodd eyed him with automatic interest since he was different from the one who had been there a week or so before. The man’s jack was Scottish with its square quilting and some of the details made him think of the East March surnames. The man nodded and turned to shout inside.

  Moments later the handsome willowy young man came out with a mounting block for Lady Hunsdon to use, followed by Master Van Emden in his fine brown velvet gown, bowing low to Lady Hunsdon.

  Dodd looked over his shoulder at her to see that she had magically transformed into a very haughty court lady. She held out her hand imperiously to him and he took it, braced, and managed not to grunt at the effort of helping her step down to the block where she took the young man’s proffered arm to step to the pavement. A page swept the flagstones before her clean of mud and some hazelnut shells from the people idly snacking as they gawped at the goldsmiths’ windows. Lady Hunsdon was already in full flow, her voice quite without the Cornish rounding it had when she was relaxed.

  “Master Van Emden, I have heard all about your shop from my dear son. You recall that you were kind enough to advise Sir Robert regarding the goldsmith’s art a week or two ago and he was very complimentary about the beauty and fineness of your work. I desire you to make the Queen’s New Year presents both for myself and for my husband, Lord Chamberlain Baron Hunsdon…”

  The play of expressions on Van Emden’s grey-bearded face was very funny. It started with understandable wariness at mention of Carey, then continued with delighted surprise to be finished off by a look of quite frightening greed. He settled into an ecstasy of respect as Lady Hunsdon paraded into the shop, followed by one of her Cornishmen, trailing clouds of wealth.

  Shakespeare settled back in his saddle, took a small notebook from his sleeve and a small stick of graphite from his penner, and started scribbling. Dodd contented himself with looking about for half an hour, enjoying the sightseeing and idly planning his Great Raid. There were three or four of the goldsmiths’ windows which looked worth the trouble of breaking the bars for their contents and they would have to remember to bring a crowbar. Master Van Emden’s windows were perhaps the best, but the bars looked too solid to bother with. Do
dd had decided that all the insight would need to be taken in a single morning before the City fathers could call out their trained bands to stop Dodd and his gang of men…

  A little later when Dodd was starting to think seriously about beer, Lady Hunsdon emerged, followed by Letty holding a velvet bag that clanked, Master Van Emden, his young man and his page, all bowing in unison.

  “By the end of the week, I has sketches for your ladyship,” the Master was saying, mangling his foreign English in his excitement. “Young Piers shall to Somerset House for your inspection the plans bring.”

  “Splendid,” said Lady Hunsdon with great satisfaction, “I will look forward to it.”

  The process of setting the ladies back on their pillion saddles was very hard on your back since you had to help lift with your shoulders twisted round. Dodd darkly reckoned Shakespeare had about half as much work to do with Letty as he had with Lady Hunsdon, who was no taller than her maid.

  They carried on to an inn next to the Royal Exchange. Looking perky and happy as usual, Letty went in followed by a Cornishman. There was a pause and then she came out, frowning.

  “He’s not there, my lady,” she said.

  Lady Hunsdon frowned. “Is he not? Are you sure? Ask the landlord if he’s gone out?”

  Letty went back in and returned a moment later. “Landlord said he’s gone, he’s not here any more.”

  Lady Hunsdon held her hand out to Dodd who swung her down and then, on an impulse, jumped down from the horse himself, gave the reins to one of the henchmen to hold, and followed her into the inn’s commonroom to back her up if she needed it.

  She didn’t really. The landlord was hunched and hand-washing with anxiety but he stuck to his guns.

  “A thousand pardons, your ladyship, but e’s gone. I dunno where, just gone. That’s all I know.”