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 and 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.”