Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries)

by P. F. Chisholm

  The others stared wide-eyed as Dodd wrenched his sword out of the bone and grease with his foot and cleaned it again. Jeronimo crossed himself awkwardly and muttered something Latin over the young man as his heels drummed., Of course, all Spaniards were Papists, they couldn’t help it, but he didn’t see the point in praying for someone you’d just sent to Hell. It felt as it always did when he killed someone: hard labour and a sense of satisfaction that it was the other man and not Dodd that was dead.

  “Ay,” he said, “anybody else?”

  They all shook their heads. “Come down to the yard and I’ll talk to ye,” he said, turned on his heel and walked back down the worn stairs with the painted pictures on the walls. His back prickled. He was showing he had no fear of them, though of course he did. That was the moment when they might have rushed him if they’d been Borderers. Which they clearly weren’t, but still, you never knew. That was the thing about fighting. You never knew.

  He methodically went from the lookout place to the rickety watch tower, taking more surrenders. Finally he stood in the yard with his sword still in his hand. He faced eighteen frightened young men with only Jeronimo to back him, smoking his goddamned tobacco again, face shadowed and intent and the crossbow dead steady in his good hand. Only two of them had their buff coats on and had lit torches.

  “Yer previous captain is in jail in Oxford,” Dodd told them. “His lieutenant is tied up and has surrendered. Now then, I have a proposition…”

  “What about that God-rotted Spanish traitor?” demanded a hollow-eyed man with a cough and flushed cheeks.

  “He’s my ally,” said Dodd coldly, “and the ainly decent soldier among the pack of ye dozy idle catamites. Ye can be polite tae him or fight me.”

  “Or fight me,” said Jeronimo, with a lazy smile. “Pendejos. Assholes.”

  “I have a business proposition for ye,” Dodd continued. “Here I am, I’ve taken the lot of ye and it would ha’ bin easier to cut all yer throats and save myself a lot of bother. It’s only thanks to my kindness ye’ve still got gullets to gobble wi’. So. Now. I’m making myself yer captain. Is there anybody here wants tae tell me no? And make it stick?”

  Behind him, Jeronimo made a noise between a snort and a laugh.

  “I mean it. I’ll fight any man of ye that wants the captainship instead o’ me. Come on.” There was a moment of balance while Dodd waited, consciously breathing out and relaxing. He didn’t think a man of them had the ballocks to try it, but you never knew.

  At the corner of his eye, he saw movement, saw something before he knew what it was, something raised to strike from the other side and so he slipped out of the way, ducked, brought his sword round almost gently and cut the man’s head part off. There was no thought in the movement at all.

  The others sighed as John Arden collapsed to his knees, dropping the veney stick in his fist, blood pumping in a fountain from his neck and a look of surprise on his face. Dodd watched him as he crumpled over into the black pool of his life. That was a nice stroke, probably one of his best. You rarely got the neck so neatly that you cut through because it was a small target and there was so much meat and bone in the way, you usually got the shoulder or the jaw by mistake.

  “Ay,” he said, “anybody else?”

  They huddled together like the scared boys most of them were.

  “What about our pay from the Earl of Essex?” shouted one of the youngest. “That’s why Captain Leigh went to Oxford.”

  “Och God, is that what it was?” Dodd said, scratching his ear which was sticky. “Was that why Leigh was sae hot for the Deputy Warden?”

  “He was going to get us into the Queen’s procession and then petition the Earl in front of all the people and Her Majesty herself!”

  For a moment Dodd was honestly flummoxed. “Did ye truly think it would work? That ye could just walk into a procession like that?”

  “He was going to buy us white-and-orange ribbons so we could fit in,” said another lad.

  “And then we got you and he was going to talk to Captain Carey about us.”

  Dodd shook his head sadly. “Ye never had any chance of getting any of your pay nae matter what,” he said explained, “for the reason Essex has nae ready cash to pay ye and even if he did, he’s got no reason to do it.”

  “But he promised us,” wailed the youngest boy.

  “Listen,” said Dodd, patiently, “the Earl of Essex is a lord and he disnae give a rat’s shit for any of ye. Ask him if ye like. Jesus, as yer new Captain, I’ll ask him, but trust me, ye willna get what’s owing. You went to fight and if ye didna keep any plunder, then ye’ll take home nae more than stories.”

  He looked about at the young dismayed faces and felt pity for them. “But,” he shouted, “if ye follow me as yer Captain, I can get ye home if ye’re so minded or it might be if ye dinna care to go home wi’ nothing, I could find ye places as fighters at Carlisle, where I’m from. I willna promise it, but if ye can back a horse and heft a pike, there might be a place for ye in Carlisle. I willna promise it, but if ye come, ye’ll get a share of the Deputy Warden’s fees and ye’ll have a place in the mostly dry and food ye can mostly eat. What d’ye say?”

  Another babel of voices broke out while Dodd waited for them to settle it amongst themselves, ready to fight if they decided to rush him together. If they did that, he could only give himself a medium chance so he stayed ready with his sword still out. He cleaned it again before John Arden’s blood dried.

  What was Carey’s main problem? Not money as he thought, because money could always be stolen. No. It was that he did not have enough men that would fight only for him. And here Dodd had a solution if Carey was clever enough to take it. And if not, well, he might take the men over to Gilsland anyway and put his wife in charge of them. They had been easy meat for a night raid but they must be good for something or at least might shape up with some shouting and kicking.

  And the raiding season was fast coming, already here. God only knew what outrages had happened in the Debateable Land or what the Grahams or the Scottish Armstrongs had been up to, or, God sakes, the Maxwells and the Johnstones, no doubt at each others’ throats again and lesser surnames taking the scraps.

  This was something Dodd had been thinking hard about. He had seen what it was like in the South, where there were no pele towers but there were orchards and fat cows and sheep and sure, there were broken men and troubles, but still mainly people who could live their lives without being raided. It made them soft, true. But a sudden decision had come upon him that afternoon while he thought of Janet and the child he fully intended to plant in her the minute he got her on her own in their tower. He wanted his sons and daughters to grow up where the cows were fat and there were orchards, not raiding and killing the way he’d had to all his life.

  And how could you do that? Well, among other things, clearly you needed soldiers, men who were not related to anybody they were fighting. Men who would do what they were told and not hold back in a fight because they were swapping blows with their brother-in-law. Men who had no feuds. That was hard to achieve on the Borders from the way all the surnames went at the marrying and breeding and killing there. But here, right here, he had the start of a solution. So.

  Dodd had already taken the swords he could find. The lad Nick Smithson was leaving the huddle of young men, coming toward him with an eating knife laid across his two palms. Dodd waited, said nothing but shook his head when Smithson made to bend the knee to him. The lad genuflected anyway and Dodd let him.

  “Sir,” said Smithson, “Mr. Elliot, we would like to ask you to be our Captain.”

  He offered Dodd the knife and Dodd put his sword in his left hand and took the knife with his right as dignified as he could.

  “Ay,” he said. “Now. My right name’s not Colin Elliott, that’s the name of my blood enemy in Tynedale. My true name is Sergeant Henry Dodd, headman of Gilsland and I’ll be your Captain under my own lord, Sir Robert Carey. Understand?”

/>   He had all of them line up and swear allegiance to him, the old way, kneeling, their hands in his while he looked at their faces. Some looked a little shifty but most seemed relieved. It was hard to decide things for yourself, but harder still to know in your heart that the man who was leading you couldn’t or wouldn’t do the job properly. He knew what that felt like. So they had been easy meat for him and had now got themselves a captain who could do the job.

  “Get yerselves ready to move out,” Dodd said. “We’ll leave tomorrow morning at dawn. We’ll take everything with us. I want all of ye to take turns on watch.”

  The only thing that still annoyed him was that he hadn’t found his boots yet. Ah yes, Harry Hunks had been wearing them, of course, and he must have gone to Oxford with Leigh so his boots were probably being damaged kicking against the door of the Oxford lock-up.

  ***

  Leaving Jeronimo in charge to set watches and start the business of packing up, Dodd sheathed his sword and limped down the path back to the old woman’s bothy in the hope he could lay hands on some scraps of cloth or leather to wrap round his feet which were feeling even more sore and cold now the excitement was over.

  He felt much better. Certainly when he first woke up in the forest, he’d been determined to kill all of them but it was better that he’d only had to kill three of them and now had eighteen men sworn to follow him. He had his sword on his hip again, the comforting weight of it across his shoulder and he had a nice new poinard as long as the courtier’s blade, which he’d envied. Carey would teach him how to use it properly, that useful-looking two-handed sword and dagger work. He’d wake up the old woman and tell her and Kat to be ready to move as well.

  He paused. There was a commotion coming from the goats’ shed and something was wrong with the entrance to the cottage, there was…

  He smelled the fresh blood before he saw it and felt rather than saw the battle axe coming down on him.

  His body flung itself sideways and rolled, followed hard by a huge bear-like shape and another chop from the axe. Christ, that was Harry Hunks, taller even than Carey or his dad, broad and big as Richie Graham of Brackenhill and twenty years younger. Dodd rolled again and struggled up in a nest of nettles, panting.

  Harry Hunks was named after a bear and was as big as a bear, but he fought like a serious man. No roaring, he was quiet as he came after Dodd again, battle axe in one hand, short sword in the other, teeth gleaming in a fighting grin, eyes catching little flashes of light in the dark of his eye sockets.

  Dodd’s sword was in his right hand, the poinard in his left, he backed up, not at all liking what he saw. The big man wasn’t moving heavily, he was light on his feet, almost bouncing like a child’s pig bladder. And that axe…most Borderers only used an axe if they couldn’t afford a proper sword or billhook, it was a much harder weapon to get the mastery of and you needed to be big and strong.

  Harry Hunks came after him again, Dodd dodged as the axe came whistling down past his chest, just missing his shoulder, you couldn’t block that with a sword. He turned, sliced sideways but Harry Hunks wasn’t there any more.

  The goats were creating a bedlam of noise, there was a bit of starlight, occasional moonlight. Dodd’s mouth drew down angrily. It was his own fault. The night had been too easy, he should have realised that and no doubt Leigh had somehow got out and was even now re-establishing who was in charge of his troop of men, knocking heads together. So Dodd didn’t have long to kill this bear of a man and get away. And it had to be done because it looked like the bastard had killed someone whether the carlin or the child he wasn’t sure but he could smell the fresh blood on the man’s axehead…

  Again, it was his body saved him, not quite ready for Hell yet. He dropped to his knees as the axe came whistling from nowhere exactly for his neck. He rolled again as one of his own boots tried to kick him in the face.

  Goddamn it, Harry Hunks had his boots.

  Dodd’s eyes narrowed and he finally stopped thinking. He came in and out a couple of times, feinting to see where Harry Hunks’ weaknesses were but he didn’t have any. Each time Dodd’s sword bit nothing but air as Harry Hunks moved just enough out of the way and while Dodd was off balance with the missed blow, he nearly lost an arm and then his nose. You didn’t get wounded by a battle axe, you got dead, there were no first bloods, no second chances.

  Harry Hunks came after him again and he tripped, stubbed his foot on a stone and nearly had his crotch split while he went over his shoulder and up again behind a tree.

  The tree took the full force of the battle axe again, the axe stuck for a second but when he tried to slice the man’s arm as he tried to free the axe, Dodd nearly ended spitted on a short sword.

  Jesu, said the little cold voice at the back of his head, this one’s bigger and faster and stronger than you and he’s better. He’s going to kill you.

  He dodged again behind another tree and ran, turned tail and ran like hell for the clearing by the old stone shed and the ruins of the monastery gatehouse.

  Tuesday 19th September 1592, noon

  Carey was just deciding that it had been a mistake to try quartering the alehouses of Oxford for any clues to Topcliffe or Dodd, mainly because there were so many of them and he couldn’t find the musician again. His head was pounding from the grey daylight in his eyes and his stomach turned at even the smell of wine. Nonetheless it was past time to get a horse and remount and go down the London road in search of his man.

  As he turned his back on the High Street with its forests of scaffolding and hurrying men with ladders and hammering and sawing, a page in Cumberland’s livery came running after him. “Message, sir!” shouted the boy. “Message for Sir Robert Carey!”

  The lad gave him a folded letter with the Vice Chamberlain’s seal. Carey opened it, skimmed the Italic.

  “Sir Robert, I have just arrested your man Dodd on a charge of horsetheft and forgery. Please reply by this messenger, with your terms.” It was signed by Heneage.

  For a second, fury scorched through him as he stood with his hand on his swordhilt. The boy read his face and stepped back nervously.

  “Is there a reply, sir?” asked the lad. Carey stared at him for a moment. Heneage must have just caught Dodd and come straight over to Cumberland’s camp to gloat because otherwise, why would he send one of Cumberland’s pages?

  “Yes, please tell him I will meet him at Carfax to discuss terms with him when I have consulted my father. An hour from now.”

  The boy bowed and ran off, heading up the Cornmarket. Carey took a circuitous route but headed out of town for the Oxford lock-up, jingling what was left of Cumberland’s five pounds in his purse.

  A little to his surprise, it wasn’t a trap. The guard was as bribable as usual and unlocked the little cell with great ceremony. Carey’s eyes still weren’t working properly and sunlight was coming in at the barred window so at first he only thought that the suit he’d lent Dodd had taken some damage and there must have been a fight, which made sense.

  “Come on,” shouted the guard, “Get up to your master, Dodd, don’t sit about.”

  The man didn’t turn his bare head, which was balding. “My name,” he said with dignity, “is Captain Leigh, I am a gentleman and I’ve never heard of anybody called Dodd. I demand that you set me free immediately.”

  Carey nearly exploded with laughter. By God it was hard to keep a straight face. Then he thought to lean in and ask,

  “Then how did you come by that suit?”

  Leigh lifted a shoulder. “I won it from a man called Colin Elliot.”

  Carey grinned and nodded to the man to lock up again. Then he went to visit the Jailer and made him richer by five shillings.

  “No, sir,” he said, “By information laid. A small girl brought this letter from a Mr. Colin Elliot, informing the Sheriff’s man that this is Dodd, a notable horsethief and forger, wanted by Vice Chamberlain Heneage. We checked his horse and found it had the Queen’s brand though a bit coloure
d over to hide it and there was no proper warrant. His purse had several forged angels in it so the information was correct. Unfortunately his henchman got away, but we have informed Mr. Vice.”

  Carey took the smeared bit of parchment decorated with blue flowers. The charcoal scrawl was Dodd’s horrible penmanship and Colin Elliot was his usual nom de guerre. Reading the script, Carey almost cheered at the elegance of its contents.

  “Where’s the little girl?”

  “She got away, ran south. Said she lived to the south of Cumnor Place.”

  So at least until yesterday, Dodd had been alive and scheming to get someone else arrested for horsetheft in place of him. They must have been within a couple of miles of each other when he and Cumberland were poking about at Cumnor. Meanwhile he could rejoice at the splendid way Dodd had dealt with the problem of the horse he had stolen from Heneage’s stable.

  “I’d like to talk to my man,” Carey said to the Jailer.

  “You can’t bail him,” he said at once, “Mr. Heneage’s man was very particular about it.”

  “No, that’s all right, I’ll have a word with his honour later. I just want to talk to him.”

  Another shilling got him back inside the cell with a quart of beer to share. Leigh seemed grateful for it and very willing to talk especially once he focussed and recognised Carey from France.

  Half an hour later, he had the full sorry tale and Leigh’s desperate petition that he ask the Earl of Essex for their pay. He insisted that the man he knew as Elliot was being held in a pit—not chained, of course, not at all and the pit was not at all uncomfortable, quite dry in fact—but had a bad leg. Some mysterious trouble with the horses had broken out in the night and Leigh had been delayed in setting out with only the stolen horse to mount…His lieutenant would be fully capable of keeping the prisoner safe and all Sir Robert needed to do to free him was promise to get their pay. They were owed a lot of it, a full year’s service in France and not a penny from the King of Navarre either.