“He’s not one of your clients, is he?”
“Not exactly. However…”
“Well then, what’s he up to. I know he spies for somebody, probably Heneage.”
Enys blinked and tried unsuccessfully to hide his surprise. Then there was another cynical smile pulling his face. “I cannot say I’m surprised, ma’am, but the matter is still confidential.”
“Indeed?” said Lady Hunsdon, very chilly. “When you change your mind you may speak to me about it. Now then. Mr. Vice Chamberlain Heneage. How far have you got with your case for Sergeant Dodd?”
Enys gave her the situation pretty much as Dodd had described it, only in legal-talk. Dodd might have been offended a month or two earlier, but he knew that this was simply the way Carey proceeded and no doubt he had learned it from someone.
“Attend upon me at Somerset House tomorrow,” milady ordered. “I shall have the steward make you a payment and I may have a little more work for you. My son tells me he was impressed by your abilities in court.”
Enys coloured at that, bowed to her.
“We shall see how you are at drafting. Do you have a clerk?”
“No milady, but I myself can write a fair Secretary or Italic, as needed.”
Lady Hunsdon nodded and wiggled her fingers at him. “Off you go then, Mr. Enys. Oh by the way, are you any kin to the Enys twins from the farm near Penryn?”
Enys paused, breathed carefully. “Cousins, my lady,” he said. “There are only two of them but three in my family.”
“Hm. Interesting. I didn’t know that old Bryn Enys had a brother?”
“Perhaps second cousins?”
“Hm.”
Enys bowed and turned back to his chamber. “Sergeant, may I ask you something.” Dodd went with him up the stairs again. “I was wondering if you meant what you said about teaching me to fight?”
Dodd rubbed his chin. “Ay, I did. I dinna want tae be put to the trouble o’ finding another lawyer. And it’s a pity for a man to wear a sword and not know how to use it.”
Enys nodded and swallowed hard.
“Is it a duel,” Dodd asked nosily, unable to help himself. “Wi’ Shakespeare?”
“Er…no, only…Ah. I think you’re right. I mean about not knowing how to use my sword properly.”
“Ay. Where’s yer sword?” Enys picked it up out of the corner and handed it to Dodd. “And is yer wrist better?”
“A little sore still but…”
“Ay. Draw yer sword then.”
“But…um…surely we cannot practise in such a small space…”
“No, we’re no’ practising. I wantae see something.”
Enys obediently drew his sword from the scabbard with some effort and stood there holding it like the lump of iron it was.
“Ay, I thocht so,” said Dodd, holding Enys’s wrist and lifting his arm up to squint along the blade. “It’s too big for ye and too heavy. When would ye like a lesson? I cannae do it now for I’m attending on her ladyship.”
“Perhaps this afternoon? Should I buy a new sword?”
“Not wi’out me there or they’ll cheat ye again wi’ too much weapon for ye.” Of course, in London you could simply go to an armourer’s and buy a sword instead of having to get it made for you by a blacksmith. He kept forgetting how easy life was here.
Dodd tipped his hat to Enys and trotted down the stairs again to Lady Hunsdon who smiled at him.
“What did he want?” she asked as they set off again.
“Swordschooling fra me.”
“A very good idea. I’m sure you would be an excellent teacher, sergeant, if unorthodox.”
“Ay,” He might as well agree with the hinny, even though he didn’t know for sure what unorthodox meant.
“Try and find out what Shakespeare was about for me, will you?” added Lady Hunsdon. “I’m sure it’s important.”
“Ay milady.”
“Now then. About the documents that Robin has been keeping from me.”
Dodd said nothing. There was that roguish twinkle again. She tapped his knee as well. He suddenly realised where Carey got some of his more annoying habits. “Come along, Sergeant, the pair of you managed to raid Heneage’s house a few days ago and my son could no more keep his hands off any interesting bits of paper he found there than turn down the chance of bedding some willing, married, and halfway attractive Frenchwoman. Also you searched Richard Tregian’s room for me but didn’t tell me what you found there-quite understandable in the circumstances but no longer acceptable.” She smiled at him, dimples in her rosy cheeks.
Dodd leaned back on the seat and sighed, wishing for his pipe. “They’re in his room,” he said, deciding to save time. “I dinna think he had decoded them yet, but…”
“He might not tell you if he had.” She nodded.
The boat was heading back to Somerset House steps where they climbed out-Lady Hunsdon was lifted bodily up to the boatlanding by Captain Trevasker without noticeable strain, something that impressed Dodd.
He went with her back to the house and followed her up the stairs and along the main corridor into the chambers that Carey had been given, along with Hunsdon’s second valet to help with the perenniel labour of his clothes. Dodd felt awkward, snooping about in another man’s property, but Lady Hunsdon marched in and looked about her.
“At least he has grown out of dropping his clothes in heaps on the floor,” she said, “now he’s learned the cost of them.”
Dodd considered that it was hardly thrift that had cured Carey of dropping his clothes, much more likely it was vanity and the training that serving the Queen at court had given him.
She went over to the desk Carey had been using and looked at the pile of papers there. Her eyebrows went up. “Well well, are these the ones?”
Dodd recognised the copy of the paper he had found in Tregian’s rooms and the paper itself, still smelling faintly of oranges. Lady Hunsdon was frowning down at it.
“Ay,” said Dodd, wondering why Carey hadn’t hidden them. Presumably he hadn’t bothered to lock his door because he knew his mother would have the key but…He stole a look at Lady Hunsdon.
“Hm.” She went to the fireplace, picked up the poker, and stirred the ashes. There was a mixture of charred wood, the remains of one of the withered oranges that cost outrageous prices in the street until the new crop arrived from Spain nearer Christmas. Also there was a lot of feathery bits of burnt paper. She bent and picked up a charred fragment and peered at it closely.
“Sergeant, my eyes are not what they were. Can you make this out?”
Dodd came over and looked at the burnt paper-there were letters on it in Carey’s handwriting but that was all he could see.
“Ah canna read it, but it’s Sir Robert’s hand right enough.”
“I thought so.” Lady Hunsdon glared at the fragment, then went to the chest in the corner where Carey kept some of his books and started sorting through them.
Dodd checked the desk and found a pile of books, including two bibles, poetry, a romance, and a prayerbook. He also found a cancelled pawn ticket which he quietly picked up and put in his beltpouch.
Lady Hunsdon sighed, closed the chest, and sat on it.
“I think Robin has managed to decode the two letters,” she said. “But I don’t understand why he burnt his translations yet kept the coded copies. Damn it. I shall have to ask him when he comes back from hawking this evening, although no doubt he will be very full of himself. Walsingham trained him well when he was in Scotland.”
Dodd was thinking about going out into the courtyard and filling his pipe since he hadn’t had one today yet when he realised Lady Hunsdon was looking at him beadily again.
“I wonder what that big-headed sodomite has been up to all this time,” she said. “Shakespeare says he’s quite happy, writing a play and drinking our cellars dry. Would you go and see him, Sergeant?”
At least with Marlowe he could get a pipe of tobacco. Dodd stood up in something of an unseemly hurry and Lady Hunsdon followed him out of the room, bending to lock it with one of the keys she was wearing on her belt. When in her husband’s house, it seemed, she was the lady of the house and no other. Emilia Bassano seemed to have moved permanently to the household of the Earl of Southampton which was tactful of her. Although it left unsettled a number of problems, including the question of who was the father of her unborn babe.