Air of Treason, An: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (Sir Robert Carey Mysteries) (30 page)

“He had a warrant,” said Frole. “Do you?”

Carey took it out of his doublet pocket, his heartbeat quickening.

“Did Topcliffe offer money which he didn’t pay or did he grab people and beat them up until they told him what he wanted to hear?”

“Both,” said Frole, thin-lipped, and held out his hand. Carey handed over the warrant which Frole read quickly and gave back.

“We told him all we knew which was that Lady Dudley was in a hurry to have a new gown although she already had plenty of the best quality. She had ordered a new one from London but it hadn’t come. This was the first week of Spetember and she sent her best bodice, kirtle, and gown into Oxford by her woman Mrs. Odingsells to have the collar changed to stand up and have gold lace put on it, very costly. We did the work while she waited, for Lady Dudley intended to wear it in a few days.”

“Who did the work?” Carey asked, “you?”

Frole shook his head. “One of the journeymen, she was too important a customer to risk an apprentice’s work. He died of plague in ’66. Mrs. Odingsells paid for it in gold at once. Just as well, really.”

“How about her headdress? Did that need altering?”

Frole shook his head. “Her headtires all came from London as she didn’t like the shop here. I believe they were very old-fashioned, from the boy-King’s reign. I never met Lady Dudley, you know, she was always at Cumnor Place, waiting for her husband.”

“Did Topcliffe let slip anything interesting?”

Frole gave a cautious look. “He was an evil man, broke my best friend’s fingers so he couldn’t continue in the trade. He went off to Cumnor Place after he spoke to us and I heard him boasting in an alehouse that night that he had found something that would make him a great man at Court—he was the Earl of Shrewsbury’s man then—and comfortable for the rest of his life. He said other things that I can’t repeat about the Queen, terrible obscene things. But at least he had lost interest in us prentices and took himself off back to London the next day, following the Court.”

Carey nodded. Terrible obscene things—Topcliffe was notorious for the way he spoke of the Queen and yet nothing was ever done about him. Generally the Queen rightly had a short way with anyone who was offensive about her in way that often made them shorter by a head or another important limb. So what gave Topcliffe his extraordinary immunity? Blackmail, surely. But with what?

“Mr. Frole,” he said to the unhappy looking tailor, “I am very grateful to you. If you have any further memories or ideas, please tell me—you can find me with the Earl of Cumberland while the Queen is here or by means of the Lord Chamberlain if I am gone north again. He will make it worth your while.”

Frole bowed Carey out of the shop who stood in the street and havered between heading off down the London road to look for Dodd and continuing his sweep of Oxford. He even had five pounds from the Earl of Cumberland won on a bet as he left. George Clifford had been loudly offering to take Carey on as a permanent general purpose gleeman and fool if he got tired of soldiering in the starveling and dangerous Debateable land. George had explained how Carey would only have to wear a cap and bells on Saturdays and would have his very own kennel with the dogs…Carey had thrown a pennyloaf at the Earl on this point and challenged him to a veney which he had narrowly won.

Did he want to spend it on overpriced ale and beer? Well, yes, he did and he could kill two birds with one stone if he went round the multitude of Oxford taverns. So that was settled. He would do that and then he’d take a horse and ride down the road, see if he could spot where Dodd had gone. Or find his body, which was starting to look more and more likely.

Tuesday 19th September 1592

It took a lot of work to wait in that pit without doing anything. Dodd drank the rest of the drugged ale and dozed, filling his head with lurid pictures of the welcome his wife would give him when he got back to Gilsland and what he would do and…Well, it passed the time, didn’t it? He had heard little Kat coming in, her clogs slow and tired and her stout lie that she had climbed a tree to avoid a pig in the forest when she was looking for more cobnuts and then got stuck in the tree. Her Grandam shouted at her and sent her to card wool in the cottage with no dinner, which made Dodd feel sorry for the little maid. His guts were churning with nerves about what he would do that night. After all, a mere night raid, a bit of fun running about shrieking and spooking horses, that was easy. His plan for this night was a lot more ticklish.

Still. He couldn’t go back to Carey without at least his sword and his boots. So there was no help for it and if everything went well he’d be bringing a lot more than just his sword and his boots. He might be able to make something of a show. He dozed off again, smiling to himself.

There was a clatter at the lip of the pit and Dodd jumped to his feet. Jeronimo was there, letting down the ladder, smiling enigmatically in the dusk. “Captain Leigh and his bullyboy have not come back from Oxford as they said they would, John Arden is drunk, and the men are afraid they have been tricked again. I spoke with your
pequenita
when I carry her the last mile, she was much tired, she said she had been questioned but then went away. She says it is sure Captain Leigh was taken because she heard him shouting.”

Dodd allowed himself a grim smile as he stepped onto the cobbles of the yard. For all the odds against it, that part had worked, at least.

“Where’s the old woman?”

“I said her stay in her cottage with the child. She has the dog beside her and barred the door.”

“Ay.” She’d come to no harm from him, but who knew what might happen? “She fears Harry Hunks might try again to seduce her granddaughter.”

“Good God,” said Dodd, disgusted, “She’s nobbut a child.”

Jeronimo shrugged. “They have no man for protect them.”

Dodd had the stolen knife in a belt he had woven himself from the bracken fibres. He bent and scraped up mud, swiped it over himself. “Who’s got ma sword?”

“Garron has it, he won it at dice.”

“Tch,” said Dodd. “Big, small?”

“Young,” said Jeronimo with a wolfish smile, “and frightened.”

***

With Jeronimo and his loaded crossbow at his back, Dodd quietly climbed the tumbledown monastery wall and padded forward to where the lad who had his sword was supposed to be on guard. He was leaning against a tree, dozing.

Jeronimo said something that sounded rude in foreign. Dodd paced quietly to the tree, put his arm softly round the lad’s neck from behind and squeezed. There was only a brief struggle before he went heavy against Dodd’s arm.

Dodd let him down gently, turned him, put his knee into the back and used the lad’s scarf to tie his hands and feet together like a deer carcass. Then he unstrapped his sword belt from the lad, put it back on at a notch tighter than normal and drew his weapon. That was when he found that the stupid child hadn’t cleaned it or oiled it or even sharpened it since he got it. So he used the boy’s lank greasy hair to oil the blade again which woke him up with a squawk and a smooth cobble to sharpen it as best he could. Dodd had already taken the boy’s boots off and chucked them into the undergrowth since they were far too small for him, and so he stuffed the boy’s mouth with one of his own tattered socks.

“Ah’ve let ye live since ye’re nobbut a lad,” Dodd told him conversationally. “Ithers may no’ be sae lucky, dinna push it.”

From the wild eyes the boy hadn’t understood a word of this but Dodd didn’t have time to strain his larynx talking Southron. The lad should be able to work his way free by which time it would all be over, please God.

Dodd straightened, with his sword warm and comfortable in its rightful place on his hip, and headed for the monastery parlour where there was a fire in the hearth and a powerful smell of booze.

There was the second in command, John Arden, slumped in a chair with an empty horn beaker in his hand and a barrel of brandy before him.

It went against Dodd’s grain to slit a man’s throat sleeping, which forebye would be messy. Instead he removed the man’s sword and poinard, put the long narrow poinard blade to the thick neck and grabbed a sticky doublet-front to shake him awake. He was reminded of Robert Greene a few weeks ago, for it took some doing.

“Arah, wuffle,” said the man at last, focussing blearily on the long shine of his own dagger at his throat.

“Ay,” said Dodd sympathetically, “Ye’ve a choice. Ye could allus surrender and gi’me yer word. Or not.”

There was a pause while the man’s drink-sozzled brain fought to understand. Then his body gave slightly.

“Quarter,” said the man. “I surrender. My name’s John Arden.”

“Good man,” said Dodd with the friendliest face he could manage. “Pit yer hands behind ye.”

They tied Arden to his seat and Dodd took the sword and knife. He liked the poinard which was clearly of good Italian make, so he slid it on the back of his own belt, where Carey wore his. He would have nothing to do with a nasty long pig-sticker of a rapier so Jeronimo took the sword.

They walked into the monastery’s cloister with its central yard and Dodd went up the stairs to the dorter. These lads weren’t used to setting any kind of proper guard. They were drinking and dicing. Those that were still asleep, he tied up. Those that were awake he asked politely if they would prefer to surrender or die on his sword. Most of them were sensible. One arrogant young man thought he ought to fight for honour’s sake and died honourably with Dodd’s sword down through the centre of his skull while he was still struggling to pull his unoiled blade out of its scabbard.

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.”