He hid a yawn. He could have spent the time gazing at the naked women all over the painted cloths, but didn’t want to risk being tempted by one of the girls with her tits peeping over the lace edging of her stays. Although there were musicians in the corner, they were playing quiet complicated music on lutes with no drums at all which was boring to listen to. He had thought that rich folks in London somehow had more fun but as far as he could make out, they did the same things as poor folks only their boredom was more expensive and complicated and took a lot longer. In fact it was worse because with horse-racing you had the excitement of reiving the nags first.
He could see there were special arrangements to make sure none of the games were crooked. For a start the floormats were clean and white and obviously changed often, while the light from the banks of candles made the room quite bright if very warm. There were no handy shadows where you could hide things or drop inconvenient cards. Young men in tight jerkins with tight sleeves moved about, picking up packs of cards and dice between games and inspecting them. One player had his cards taken and then he was grabbed by three of the burly men standing near the door. Two of them upended him while the other searched him and pulled out several high-ranking cards. He was removed, squawking, down the stairs and some of the gamers peered out the window to wait for the splash as he was thrown in the Thames. There were cheers and catcalls and Pickering leaned out of a window.
“Don’t come back. If you do, I’ll give you to my brother-in-law.”
Much obsequious clapping from the young men in jerkins and the women in very low-cut bodices. That was when Dodd spotted him. He frowned. What was Enys doing here-he didn’t gamble? Or he said he didn’t. As casually as he could, Dodd got up and sauntered over to the table where he had seen the heavily pock-marked lawyer.
They were playing primero, the play tense and close and the pot large. Dodd couldn’t quite make out Enys’s face because he was sitting well back in a corner so he waited until the man had lost and got up to get a drink.
“Mr. Enys,” said Dodd as breezy as he could, “fancy meeting you here…”
The man seemed to jump, but then bowed shallowly. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, “I fear you mistake me, my name is Vent, not Enys.” Dodd blinked at him, puzzled. Certainly the voice was different, but the face…The face was definitely familiar though not really Enys’s.
“Ay?” said Dodd, “ye’re nocht ma lawyer?”
“Er…no,” said the man, Vent, “though I have heard I have a double practising law in the Temple at the moment.” He coughed or perhaps hid a laugh. “Possibly I should sue him for defamation of character.”
“Good Lord, Ah’m sorry, sir, I was sure it was ye.”
“No matter,” said Vent, “Perhaps you would give your lawyer my compliments, and tell him I would be delighted to meet him over a hand of cards.”
“I will,” Dodd answered, now feeling awkward. After all, he never liked it when people thought he was the legal type of Serjeant as opposed to a Land-Sergeant. They bowed to each other and Dodd turned back to watch Carey at his game. Several others were watching the game, including Pickering and three of his bully-boys.
Carey nodded and laid his cards down. “Prime,” he said. The boy in cramoisie and tangerine stared fixedly and then laid his own cards facedown without another word. Carey smiled sweetly at the lad and pulled the pot towards him. As he pocketed his haul, two of Pickering’s men came and stood behind him, one murmured in his ear. Carey looked surprised and then stood up, headed for the door at the back of the room.
After a moment of concern, Dodd quietly followed them and into a small parlour with a bright fireplace where Laurence Pickering was standing blinking at the flames.
“Well, Sir Robert?”
Carey smiled. “Well, Mr. Pickering?”
“How’s ‘e doing it? Young Mr. Newton?”
“He’s not cheating in any way I can see,” said Carey thoughtfully, “although he’s not as good a player as he thinks he is.”
“So why does he win?”
“I’m not sure,” said Carey spreading his hands. “He might simply be lucky.”
“Or ‘e’s got a magic ring.”
Carey’s eyebrows went up. “Hm. I’ve heard of them and a number of astrologers and magicians and whatnot have tried to sell them to me but I’ve never heard of one that actually worked. It’s like alchemy. It’s always going to work, or it would have worked if you hadn’t scratched your nose at that particular moment, or tomorrow when the stars are conjunct with Jupiter it will work, but today, right now, when you want them to, in my experience, they never work.”
Pickering had his head on one side, exactly like a blackbird eyeing up a worm. He looked sceptical. Carey smiled his sunny, lazy smile. “Besides, if you had a ring like that which actually did work, would you sell it?”
Pickering hesitated and then burst into laughter, slapping his knee. He poured Carey brandywine and offered some to Dodd who shook his head. He wanted to keep a clear head for whatever was going on here. That was why he hadn’t had another pipe since the first one he had shared with Pickering.
“So that’s a relief,” said Pickering. “None of my boys could understand it. We actually let him win a night wiv Desiree de Paris so we could check his clothes properly, but nothing. ‘E’s just lucky and one day ‘is luck will run out.”
“I expect so,” said Carey easily. “Comes to us all, I’m afraid.”
“’Course the only ovver one I’ve known win so often wivvout cheating, is you, Sir Robert.”
Carey bowed a little. “Since my love-life is a catastrophe, this is only to be expected.”
Pickering smiled shortly. “All right, then, you’ve done what I asked. Now. How can I help you, Sir Robert? Or your worshipful father, of course?”
“Both really. Firstly information about Heneage.”
“Hmf.” Pickering was rubbing his lower lip. “What do you want to know?”
“Anything you feel may be of interest, Mr. Pickering.”
“He’s short of money,”
Carey’s eyes went up. “You’d think with all his loot from catching Catholics and so on that he’d be rich.”
“Well, he’s short enough that he’s wanting me to pay him rental for him leaving me and my people alone.”
“Oh really?”
Dodd was surprised. Heneage claiming blackmail money from someone like Pickering? Was the man mad?
Pickering’s lips thinned. “Yes, really.”
“You had an arrangement with Mr. Secretary Walsingham…”
“Yes I did, Sir Robert. He left me in peace. I made sure that there was reasonable peace in London and if he needed to know anything, he knew it, no questions asked.”
“And Heneage…?”
“Wants paying.”
Carey tutted quietly.
“And sends Topcliffe to collect.” Pickering spat deliberately into the fire.
“Dear oh dear. He certainly seems in a hurry at the moment, Mr. Pickering. Are you aware of the problems my father and brother had with him a week or two ago.”
“I’d ‘eard somefing,” said Pickering cautiously. “You was in a good stand-off in the Fleet’s Beggar’s Ward, I ‘eard all about that.”
“Mm. And you’ll be aware that Sergeant Dodd here has been trying to bring Heneage to court over his maltreatment.”
Pickering snorted quietly at this, an opinion Dodd shared.
“Now there’s something afoot over Cornish land,” Carey said. “I asked your brother-in-law about the hanging, drawing, and quartering of a purported priest named Fr. Jackson.” Pickering’s small bright eyes narrowed and sharpened at that. “The man whose head ended up on London Bridge was in fact a Mr. Richard Tregian, a respected Cornish gentleman and a…an acquaintance of my mother’s.”