“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 them 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.