A Murder of Crows: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery

by P. F. Chisholm

  Dodd gulped. Six shillings and eightpence wasn’t much of a bet in Carey’s scheme of things. Plus he hadn’t said “myself and Dodd.”

  “Your father’s backing this, isn’t he?” asked Poley suddenly as he added some coins to the primero pot and took another card.

  Carey had his eyes shut and had not been dealt into the game. “Obviously.”

  “Why? I mean why is he backing it?”

  “Oh, high spirits and a love of justice, I expect.”

  Poley had a pale oblong face with eyes that seemed not to blink very much. Dodd considered that he would certainly not buy a horse from the man. “Surely he’s taking revenge for what happened to your brother?”

  “Of course not,” said Carey, still smiling with his eyes shut.

  “Must be,” said Poley, relentlessly. “He wouldn’t want to leave it lie.”

  “Whatever you wish, Mr. Poley,” said Carey, which made Dodd blink at his unaccustomed soft-spokenness.

  “They’ve never got on, have they, the Lord Chamberlain and Vice Chamberlain?” Poley continued to poke, “And your father wouldn’t like…”

  “Mr. Poley, I can’t imagine why you think I’m going to discuss my father’s plans with the likes of you,” said Carey. “If I wanted to tell it all to Heneage I’d write a letter and get Marlowe to deliver it which would probably be quicker.” Marlowe had been over by the barman, talking quietly to him.

  Poley coloured slightly. “I don’t…”

  “Oh tut tut,” said Marlowe silkily, coming back, picking up and laying down his new cards, “Chorus. Mine I think. If you want my lord Baron Hunsdon to employ you when Heneage goes you’ll have to do better than that, my dear…”

  Poley gave Marlowe an ugly look. “I…”

  “Crows white, noonday night, hills flying, pigs roosting in the trees,” murmured Carey seemingly apropos of nothing.

  “Eh?” Poley paused in a blindingly deft shuffle of the cards.

  “He means,” Marlowe told him patronisingly, “that these things will happen before Hunsdon employs you. Very poetic I’m sure, Sir Robert, since you’ve nipped it straight out of a Border ballad.”

  “I don’t know why I’m being insulted,” sniffed Poley as Marlowe took the cards from him to shuffle again.

  “Tell me about the body in the Thames,” said Carey.

  “Which one?”

  Carey’s eyebrows went up. “A gentleman or seeming like one, dark hair, sallow complexion, marks of burns and stains on his hands, top joint of his left forefinger missing.”

  It was the merest flicker, but Poley looked uncertainly at Marlowe and then quickly back at his cards. Meanwhile Marlowe had paused infinitesimally as he dealt Carey in. Dodd shook his head and stayed out of it. So did Enys who was sitting quietly on his stool, sipping his small beer and watching everything. From the corner of his eye Dodd saw the potboy trot through the commonroom and out the door into the street where he speeded to a run.

  “No idea,” said Marlowe glibly, “Where was he found?”

  “Washed up against the Queen’s Privy Steps.”

  Marlowe raised his eyebrows, very Carey-like. “So?”

  “In the jurisdiction of the Board of Greencloth. My father wants me to investigate. He also wants me to look into rumours of crooked land dealings in Cornwall.”

  Marlowe shrugged. “It’s all the rage at court, I believe. Bald Will was talking about how the Earl of Southampton is buying himself a sheaf of godforsaken Cornish hills.”

  Carey nodded, picked up his cards, glanced at them, put them down, leaned forwards and put his chin on his clasped hands. “And?”

  Marlowe shrugged again. “I don’t know. I’m certainly not about to buy some dubious marshy fields somewhere I am never likely to go. No matter what they might have under them. And even if I had the money.”

  Carey murmured something to Enys who had been blinking at Marlowe as if tranced like a chicken. Enys started, coloured, and fished in his satchel of papers and brought out a stiff piece of paper, written and sealed. Carey took it and handed it to Marlowe who took it absent-mindedly while adding his bet to the pot, glanced at it, and then scowled.

  “Damn it, Sir Robert.”

  “You’ve been served, Christopher Marlowe. I’m calling you as a witness to Heneage’s dealings with my brother and the incident with Sergeant Dodd here.”

  Dodd’s spirits lifted slightly. That had been nicely done. Marlowe’s face was a picture and no mistake.

  Marlowe screwed up the paper furiously. “You tricked me!”

  Carey shrugged. “I can’t appear in open court against Heneage.”

  “Yes you can,” said Carey. “Until it’s time to testify you can stay at Somerset House and we’ll organise you a boat to take to to Westminster.”

  “I can’t appear,” said Marlowe through his teeth. “I was not a witness. I wasn’t there. I was in Southwark.”

  “Were you now?” said Carey easily, not seeming ruffled by this abject lie. Poley’s eyes darted from Marlowe to Carey and back. “Any corroboration, any witnesses to that?”

  “Oh yes. Mr. Poley here for one.”

  Poley didn’t look happy at this. “That’s right,” he said, “I was with Mr. Marlowe on…ah…the day in question and he was in Southwark.”

  “Was he?” Carey’s eyes were half-hooded. “You sure about that, Kit?”

  “Yes,” Marlowe was giving Carey back stare for stare.

  “Despite all the witnesses I have to you sitting in the Mermaid waiting for me on the day in question?” Carey was smiling. “Come on, I know Heneage is powerful and wealthy but so is my father and he likes poets for some reason. He’ll protect you.”

  Marlowe finished his brandywine, checked his cards again, and folded. “Does your father employ Richard Topcliffe?” Now where had Dodd heard that name before?

  “No. Who’s that?” From the look in Carey’s eyes, Dodd suspected he did know but wasn’t admitting it.

  “You’ve never met him?”

  Carey shrugged.“No.”

  “Consider yourself lucky,” said Marlowe. “Topcliffe is…well he’s ingenious and he’s very good at his job which he likes very much.”

  “Really?”

  “He’s a freelance inquisitor. He often works for Heneage. He has the breaking of most of the Papist priests we…the pursuivants catch. He’s at the Tower working on one called Robert Southwell at the moment. That’s why you haven’t seen him and why he wasn’t at Chelsea.”

  “And?”

  “And? I don’t want him after me. Because he’s completely insane and kills for fun and Heneage protects him, gives him completely free rein.”

  Dodd nodded, struck by a memory. “Ay, Shakespeare was saying there was someone he was more affeared of than me…Which was a surprise to me, ye follow.”

  Marlowe blinked at Dodd as if he’d forgotten his existence and then nodded. “That will be Topcliffe.”

  “Come on, Marlowe,” said Carey comfortably, “this isn’t like you. Where’s the student of the lofty spheres…”

  “The student of the lofty spheres prefers to keep his own fleshly spheres away from Topcliffe who likes playing games with men’s stones. I mean it, Carey, I’m not testifying against Heneage.”

  “I heard Topcliffe buys the bawdy-house boys that get poxed and nobody ever sees them again,” put in Poley.

  “How does he get away with it?”

  “The Queen protects him because she’s been told he’s useful. He’s mad, of course. Bedlam mad. He’ll tell anyone who listens the dreams he has of the Queen where he…Well, you’d expect her to hang him if she’d heard what he says, so I assume she hasn’t. And he has other friends at court, powerful friends. And although he’s old now, he’s a very good pursuivant.” Marlowe lifted his hands palms up. “I’m not doing it.”

  “Isn’t anyone going to play primero?” said Poley. Enys shook his head and pushed the cards he’d been dealt back towards Marlowe, who picked t
hem up with his eyebrows raised. “Mr. Enys, I’m surprised, I thought all Gray’s Inn men were shocking gamblers.”

  Enys smiled faintly. “Not me, sir. Or rather I am a shocking gambler as I generally lose. I lost so much last Christmas that I have sworn to my sister that I will have no more to do with play.”

  Marlowe nodded but said nothing more. “Sir Robert?”

  “Oh eighty-five points,” said Carey languidly, dropping a sixpenny stake into the pot. Dodd shook his head as well, filled a pipe, and lit it. Once again the aromatic herb and incense mixture made him feel as if some tight knot in his stomach was being slowly unwound. He passed the pipe to Enys who took some and hardly coughed at all this time. As the pipe went round, Dodd considered that there were London vices he would be sorry to leave behind him and he’d have to buy in a good stock of the doctor’s medicine before he went north.

  Although Dodd hadn’t drunk very much by the end of the long evening he was feeling peaceful and light in the head as he left the Mermaid and all three of them headed up past the Blackfriars monastery wall. They were heading for Ludgate and Fleet Street to pass onto the Strand and Hunsdon’s palace of a place. Only a madman tried to cut through the Whitefriars liberties at night after curfew and they were no longer using the little tenement Hunsdon had given them earlier in the month. He and Carey had felt that if they were taking on Vice Chamberlain Heneage in the courts they were better off somewhere with walls and a large number of serving men. Dodd was thoroughly enjoying the luxury of Somerset House, now he had got over his shock at having an entire chamber to himself. He was even starting to get used to the ridiculous hot tight clothes Carey insisted he wear.

  There was a movement of something too large to be a cat in a shadowed alley. The hair on Dodd’s neck stood up straight. Automatically he loosened his sword and took a quick glance behind him under cover of a coughing fit. A large shape moved into shadow in the corner of his eye. Heart thundering and his head still swimming with the tobacco, Dodd paused and then turned left into the nearest alleyway, feeling for his codpiece laces. He needed a piss anyway.

  “Och, Sir Robert,” he called, “Will ye look at this?” and pretended to be squinting into the alley.

  Carey had been trying to persuade Enys to sing “A Shepherd to His Love” in harmony with him, to Enys’s giggly but steadfast insistence he had no voice. Now Carey swung back and Enys trailed after them, still sniggering.

  Dodd shook his head violently, trying to clear it. “S’ a place here looks a lot like Tarras Moss,” he slurred. “Would ye credit it?”

  Carey sauntered over, whistling happily. For a moment Dodd thought he hadn’t got the reference until he saw Carey’s hand go stealthily to the poinard dagger hanging at the small of his back.

  Dodd looked down, annoyed. Sheer tension meant he could not actually piss.

  “Och damn it,” he moaned, wishing he hadn’t had the beer. Carey was leaning one arm against the wall, singing softly and pretending to fumble at his own lacings.

  “How many?” he muttered very quietly.

  “Ah’ve seen two,” Dodd muttered back, quickly tying again, “so I’d bet on five or more.”

  “Me too. Break for the Temple, not Somerset House.”

  “Ay sir,” said Dodd. “Will we charge ‘em now?”

  “Not exactly,” said Carey with a smile, “Let’s see if we can avoid a trial for murder, shall we?”

  He drew sword and dagger and crossed them. Dodd drew his sword and faced the other way. Enys was leaning against a wall, still giggling.

  Carey stepped out a little so that a public-spirited torch in a sconce on one of the linen shops, showed him up in the blackness.

  “Gentlemen, I know you’re there. Shall we talk?”

  There was a pause and then a heavyset man moved from the shadows of an alley and another came out of the bulk of Temple Bar itself where he must have been pretending to be a carved saint. Dodd strained his eyes to penetrate the other shadows and thought he caught a glimpse of metal as someone drew a dagger. Three visible, so a possible six in total.

  Seeing Enys still leaning against the wall giggling from the tobacco fumes, he kicked the man on the ankle. “Ow,” said Enys aggrievedly, “Why…?”

  “Will ye draw, ye fool?” Dodd hissed furiously.

  “Wha’?” Enys tried to stand upright and blinked about himself. Yes, definitely a fourth man visible next to the huge permanent dungheap a little way from Temple Bar. Probably that was where the ambush had been planned for. Dodd squinted hard looking for the fifth and sixth whilst Enys hiccupped and fumbled at his sword hilt. No help there then, damn it, typical soft southerner.

  “Talk?” said the large man in a jack who seemed to be the leader. “Wo’ abaht?” His voice was as full of glottal stops as Barnabus’ had been, very hard to understand.

  “Oh nothing much,” said Carey, doing a couple of showy juggling tricks with his dagger and sword, swapping them over and then back again. “Just talk. What a pleasant night it’s been. How you gentlemen must be tired of waiting for us. Who’s paying you. That sort of thing.”

  “Nuffink to talk about.”

  Dodd saw what Carey was doing. He was deliberately drawing attention to himself, aiming to draw the attackers out so they’d show themselves. Presumably it would then be up to Dodd to kill them…Except what was that the Courtier had said about avoiding a trial for murder in London?

  There was a scrape behind Dodd, he spun, saw a large moon-face looming near him with a veney stick raised over his head, and slashed sideways with his sword. He heard a yelp and smelled blood as the man reeled backwards, clutching a spurting arm. Dodd heard a cry behind him and saw Enys clumsily trying to block with his sword against a man battering down on him with a club.

  Another club? No blades? Ay, the Courtier’s right, Dodd thought in a sudden slow moment of icy clarity, this is to get us all arrested for murder.

  Furious at the man who had hired roaring boys and set them deliberately against fighters who could kill them, Dodd ran up behind the man who was so intent on Enys, his prey, that he had no defence against Dodd’s powerful boot in the arse which sent him sprawling.

  Enys had dropped his sword and had his hands over his face as he crouched in a corner, moaning. Jesus, thought Dodd as he went past the ninny, what a pathetic sight. What’s wrong with him?

  Dodd grabbed the club-wielder who was just trying to climb to his feet, picked him up bodily and crashed him backwards over a stone conduit filled with slimy horse-slobbered water. Dodd shoved the man’s head deep into the water and held him there while he clawed at Dodd’s arm. Meantime Dodd looked around cannily for more attackers. Something complicated was going on down Fleet Street, involving Carey and the big man-at-arms, but the other two men, if they existed, were still waiting their moment, or possibly had run.

  Dodd let the man with the club crow in some air, and then had him blowing bubbles again.

  “Wh…what are you doing?” came a slurred voice behind him. Dodd glanced over his shoulder and saw the soft southerner staggering over, trailing his sword in his left hand and twisting his right as if it pained him. Perhaps he’d sprained it somehow. He was panting and wild-eyed.

  “Ah’m drowning this pig’s turd,” Dodd explained casually, letting the man up for a second so he could hear.

  Enys watched the renewed bubbles and then jumped at a further clang and ting down Fleet Street followed by Carey’s customary bellow of “T’il y est haut!”

  “What about Sir Robert? Won’t you help him?” trembled the soft lawyer.

  Dodd leaned an ear expertly in the direction of the clanging.

  “Neither o’ them are trying to kill each other,” he said. “And yon Courtier nearly held Andy Nixon to a draw for three minutes in the summer, he’ll be well enough while I make sure of this loon. Will ye fetch his dagger?”

  The loon’s hands were flailing more feebly now, so Dodd let the man up to breathe while Enys gingerly fished the da
gger from its sheath. What was it doing still there, Dodd wanted to know.

  “Now then,” Dodd said to the man, who was coughing and spluttering fit to bust his lungs, “who was it set ye on tae me wi’ nobbut a stick and a knife, eh?”

  “Heeh…heh…”

  Dodd said it again patiently, only more southern. He hoped.

  “Hur…ha…he said you was only a farmer, and not a gentleman.”

  “Ay,” said Dodd, “I am certainly no’ a gentleman and I am a farmer, did he tell ye where I farm?”

  The man shook his head, spattering slime everywhere. Dodd told him.

  “I have boys that scare crows for me that are better fighters than ye, ye soft southern git, so who was it that tried to get ye killed? Eh?”

  The man gasped for breath then said the name. Dodd sighed and dunked him again until the flailing had stopped, then hefted him out and laid him on his side on the filthy cobbles to puke and cough his way back to consciousness. On a thought, he picked up a nice piece of brick from a nearby pile of rubble. He realised with irritation that his sleeves were wet to the elbow and hoped they wouldn’t shrink too much.

  Then he sauntered over to where Carey was seemingly playing a veney with the large man who had been first to show himself. The man was now backing up carefully, probably trying for one of the many alleys off Fleet Street that led into the liberties without actually turning his back on Carey. The Courtier was quite breathless by now but clearly enjoying himself, fencing like a sword instructor and never trying to come to close quarters with the lethal twenty inch long poinard in his left hand.

  “If ye can leave off playin’ yer veney wi’ yon catamite,” called Dodd as southern as he could, “we might catch Marlowe afore he runs for it.”

  Carey missed a beat and nearly lost the tip of his nose before coming back to the attack with more purpose. “Oh for God’s sake,” he groaned in disgust.

  “Ay,” said Dodd, narrowed his eyes and threw the brick hard at the man-at-arms’ chest. It caught him in the rib cage, giving Carey the chance to beat past the man’s blade and smash him in the face left-handed with the pommel of his poinard. The man went down like a sack of flour.