Dodd bowed to milady and then went to the back of the huge house, where the second floor guest chambers overlooked the courtyard. Sitting by the door to one of the lesser rooms was one of Hunsdon’s servingmen who gave Dodd a cautious look and forebore to stand up.
“I’ve come tae speak tae Marlowe,” Dodd explained.
The servingman waved at the door. “He’s got it locked from the inside,” he said. “My lord says he can go out any time he likes but I have to go with him. So far he hasn’t.”
Dodd went to the door and knocked on it.
“Go away,” came a slurred voice.
He knocked again. Not loudly, he just kept knocking. There was an explosion of swearing and the sound of a chair being pushed back, then a bolt being shot. Marlowe’s unshaven face looked round the door, eyes frighteningly bloodshot and a reek of tobacco and booze blending into a fog around him.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said ungraciously. “What do you want?”
“I want tae speak to ye, Mr. Marlowe,” said Dodd as politely as he could. “Can we share a pipe o’ tobacco?”
“No we can’t because I’ve bloody run out and that boy hasn’t come back yet.”
“Ah could go and buy ye some?”
Marlowe grunted.
“Or ye could come wi’ me and…”
“Look,” said Marlowe through his stained teeth, “I’m busy, understand? I’m writing a play that will never be performed and it’s the best play I’ve ever written. I don’t care what you want to talk to me about and I don’t care what Sir Robert wants but if you’ll fetch me a pouch of Nunez’s New Spanish mix, I’ll be grateful.”
Dodd shook his head regretfully at the insanity of writers, along with the servingman, and trotted off down the stairs. The gateman opened for him with a smile and he headed for Fleet Street where the tobacconist was in his shiny new shop with printed papers and ballads of the wildmen of New Spain. That was where you went if you wanted gold or silver, over the sea to the New World, everyone knew that. Not marshy Cornwall.
On impulse, once he had the tobacco he went into the pawnbroker’s at the end of Fleet Bridge where an old skinny man in a skullcap and long foreign-looking robe sat reading a book back to front.
“Ah,” said Dodd, not sure how to start, “are ye the master here?”
The foreigner unfolded himself and came to the counter where he smiled. “Senhor Gomes,” he said with a bow and a strong sound of foreign in his voice. “At your service, senhor.”
“Ay,” said Dodd, pulling out the cancelled ticket. “D’ye ken…Ah, do you recall if Sir Robert Carey redeemed anything here today?”
Senhor Gomes took the ticket. He smiled at once. “Ah, milord Robert, of course, senhor. He said you might enquire. He has repaid his loan on his court suit, the doublet with lilies and pearls upon velvet, and a cloak he had pawned before.”
“When did he do this?”
“Yesterday, very late. He woke me up to do it, he said it was very urgent.”
“Ay?” Dodd was puzzled. Why would Carey need his court clothes urgently to go hawking. In any case, he had left for Finsbury Fields wearing his hunting gear, the forest green and nut-brown doublet and hose that was now a little ill-fitting, or so he complained proudly. “Did he pawn anything else?”
“No, Senhor. Forgive me, but can you tell me your wife’s full name?”
“What?”
“Your wife? Her full name?”
Dodd’s eyes narrowed and his neck prickled. Once again he caught the scent of deception and intrigue where nobody can be trusted simply by their face. And why on earth would Carey want his Court clothes. “Janet Armstrong,” he said with a gulp.
Senhor Gomes reached under the counter and brought out a letter addressed to Sergeant Dodd and sealed with Carey’s carved emerald ring-the Swan Rampant again. Dodd broke the seal, opened the letter and read a short note: “Sergeant, I have decided to go to Court to discuss recent events with my liege Her Majesty the Queen. Please reassure my parents if necessary. Use my funds as you see fit to solve the problem. I will look forward to seeing you in Oxford or at Court if the Queen decides to move.” The letter was signed with Carey’s full signature.
Pure rage practically lifted Dodd from the ground. He could feel his neck going purple and his teeth grinding. The bastard. The ill-begotten limp-cocked, selfish popinjay of a…
Senhor Gomes was backing away from the counter and quietly reaching down for a veney stick behind him. Dodd folded the paper, his fingers clumsy with the urge to throttle the man for betraying him and leaving him in the complicated, confusing pit of iniquity that was London. Unfortunately, Carey was not immediately available so he stuffed the letter in his belt-pouch. Then he stood for a full minute, fists quivering, breathing hard through his teeth until he had calmed down enough to talk and act like a normal man.
“Ay,” he said. “Is that all?”
“Yes, senhor.”
Dodd walked out of the shop and stared up at the awning unseeingly. God damn it. God damn it to hell. On a thought he turned back. “Er…Thank you, Senhor Gomes,” he said. The old foreigner was again reading his book back to front and raised his hand slightly in acknowledgement. Poor old man, not knowing which way round you read a book. Even Dodd knew that.
He hurried up the street, keeping a weather-eye out for attacks as always, and came to Somerset House without a single person claiming him as their cousin. It must have been true what Pickering had said, that he had ordered his people not to try anything with Dodd.
Marlowe opened his door a crack and reached for the pouch, but Dodd held it out of reach and scowled at him meaningfully. Marlowe scowled back, his hand dropping to where his sword would have been if he had been wearing it. Dodd dropped his hand to where his own sword actually was and showed his teeth in as pleasant a smile as he could muster. In the temper he was in, he was half-hoping that Marlowe would try something on with him so he could have the satisfaction of beating somebody up.
Marlowe cursed and opened the door so Dodd could come in. He almost fell over a tangled heap of shirts by the door and then had to wade through screwed up papers, bits of pen, drifts of hazelnut shells and mounds of apple cores, and several books lying on the rush mats face down. The bed looked as if a pack of bears had played there and the desk was piled high with paper and more pens. The place reeked of aqua vitae, beer, wine, and pipe smoke, and someone who has been cooped up indoors for too long. At least there were no old turds in the fireplace, although the jordan under the bed badly needed emptying.
Marlowe was standing by the flickering fire with his arms folded across his embroidered waistcoat. He had his doublet off, presumably lost somewhere in the junk on the floor-no, for a wonder it was hanging on a peg-and his shirtsleeves rolled up and stained with ink. There were bags under his red eyes big enough to hide a pig in and his voice was hoarse with smoking.
“Well?” he demanded. “What’s so important that you’re bothering me with it?”
“Have ye been in here all this time?” asked Dodd, tucking the tobacco into his sleeve again.
From the contempt on Marlowe’s face it was obvious he thought this was a very stupid question. “Yes, of course I have. Where else would I be? I’m writing a play.”
“What’s it about?”
“Edward II, a King of England who loved boys and was not ashamed to show it,” snapped Marlowe.
“Like the Scottish king?”
Something in Marlowe’s face softened slightly. “Perhaps.”
“Ay,” said Dodd. “And what happened to him?”
“First his favourite and minion Piers Gaveston was murdered by his lords as happened in Scotland with the Duke of Albany. Then the King was murdered at the orders of the Earl of Mortimer. It is said, by a red-hot poker up the arse.”