Marlowe was squinting slightly and Dodd realised he was talking too northern again. But before Dodd could try and repeat it more southern, Marlowe began to speak.
“Heneage was furious when you raided his house. He got the word from the clerk of the lists when he went to see how another case of his was progressing and instead of going to his house in Chelsea, he called upon me instead. He blamed me for…for arresting you instead of Sir Robert and for destroying his fine plan against my lord Hunsdon. He reckoned the whole mess was my fault and threatened me with a treason trial and Topcliffe, everything.”
“Speakin’ of which, why did ye arrange for me to be arrested?”
Marlowe shrugged. “It’s not important, I made a mistake. I thought Carey and you would have changed clothes when I sent the men in to take you.”
“Did ye tell Heneage this?”
“I did. He didn’t believe me. He said I was working with Carey and accused me of betraying him.”
“Ay?”
“He offered me the chance to redeem myself if both of you ended up either in the Fleet or dead. I warned him that if he killed Sir Robert, Lord Hunsdon would cease to be a Knight of the Carpet and become again what he was when he defeated Dacre in the Rebellion of the Northern Earls. And that his lady would be even more dangerous. We had an argument about it. At last he said I had to work with Topcliffe, who was with him, as it happened.”
“Ay?”
“So Topcliffe and I laid a plan. I hired some roaring boys in Smithfield that I had used before, to lie in wait for you in Fleet Street that night in case you didn’t come to the Mermaid. I told them you were not to be killed and if they were asked who had paid them, to make a show of resisting and then give my name. I thought that might bring Sir Robert into the Mermaid where Topcliffe could take him.”
Dodd grunted. So he hadn’t needed to get his sleeves wet half-drowning the man, he could have just asked him. That was annoying.
“Meanwhile Topcliffe went to gather his men and waited with them at another boozing ken near the Mermaid. I sent for him as soon as you arrived but he wasn’t there-he had been called to the Tower on another matter. You had left by the time he came back and he was threatening me with the rack though it was all his fault. So when the boy told me there was a gentleman in the back yard asking questions, I near as damn it praised the Lord for it. Topcliffe sent for all his men and we took Carey easily enough, playing drunk, but you weren’t with him and that worried us. We were right. Once Topcliffe had gone chasing after you into the night, Carey said something to me which…well, which made me reconsider. I wanted sanctuary, that was all. So…I helped him by knocking out one of the guards Topcliffe left behind and Carey dealt with the other one. Then you turned up and you know the rest.”
Dodd nodded. Most of this fitted quite well. He would have to think it through very carefully before he trusted it, but just for the moment he would accept it.
Marlowe had crossed his arms again. “So, Sergeant? Are you satisfied?”
“Mebbe,” Dodd allowed. “It isnae an obvious lie.”
Marlowe gritted his teeth, obviously working hard to be civil. “Will you give me my play back now?”
Dodd put his head on one side, assessing Marlowe’s temper. He remembered that the man had actually been arraigned for murder once, but got away with it on grounds of self-defence and probably Walsingham’s pull and good lordship on behalf of his pursuivant.
“Nay sir, Ah’ve too much respect for ye. I’ll take it wi’ me, and leave it by the door when I’m done.”
“But…”
Another page edged closer to the flames and Marlowe withdrew again, took his hand off his dagger hilt. Dodd tilted his head at the part of the room on the other side of the bed. “Ah want ye to stand ower behind the bed where I can see ye.”
Marlowe went there with ill-grace.
“Ay, now lie on the floor wi’ yer legs in the air against the wall where I can see them.”
“What?”
“Ye heard me, Mr. Marlowe.” Dodd screwed up some pages at random from the pile and put them in the flames where they flared and the iron salts in the ink thickly covering the paper turned the flames red. As always there was a feeling of relief to see something burn when he was angry. Marlowe made a choking sound in his throat. He lay down slowly, and put his legs up against the wall. Dodd thought of pinning him down with the clothes chest but then decided it was too much trouble.
He put the wad of paper under his arm, grabbed a handful of tobacco out of the packet he had brought and tucked it in his own pouch, then went very quietly to the door, opened it and slid into the passage. There he left Marlowe’s precious play about boy-lovers, as he’d promised, although the play had made a good hostage and he didn’t think he’d ever get any co-operation again from Marlowe. And it wasn’t as if anybody would ever actually want to watch the thing in a playhouse. Not even London could be that full of buggers.
Dodd walked back to Carey’s chambers-Carey had a bedroom and a parlour as well, which was twice the size of the little hut where Dodd had come to manhood after the Elliots burnt them out. Ridiculous-what would anyone want with all that echoing space? He tried to go in, but then stopped. Damn it. Lady Hunsdon had locked the door.
A low groan came from his lips. But Carey had clearly wanted him to solve the conundrum of the man who wasn’t a priest being executed, and the man who was, dying in the Thames. Therefore…Dodd felt along the top of the doorframe and along the edge of the panelling by the tiled floor. There was a chest with a silver candlestick on it which caught Dodd’s eye, so he went and picked it up and found a key tucked up in the base. He snorted, took the key, put the candlestick down, opened Carey’s chamber door, went in and locked the door behind him.
He sat down and stared at the papers with the upside down As at the top, looked at the books. None of them began with the letter A, nor were they about anyone whose name began with A, nor were they by men whose names began with A. Yet Carey had worked the thing out and as Marlowe had said, he wasn’t that clever, bloody sprig of a courtier that he was. Nor did he have magical powers, God damn him, unless you counted overweaning self-confidence and the luck of the devil.
Dodd wandered around the room again, looked in the chest, and nodded. Carey had taken his dags with him, somehow, and his sword. He must have sent someone to meet him in Finsbury Fields with a remount and packpony.
A thought occurred to Dodd. He carefully locked up behind him, went back to his own chamber, found the wickerwork box stuffed with hay in which was Janet Armstrong’s highly valuable new green velvet hat, and picked it up. Another thought occurred as he saw his old homespun doublet and hose hanging on a hook at the back of the door. Time to do something about them, so he took out some of the hay and stuffed the clothes and his old hemp shirt and a few other things into the box. Then he wandered down to the kitchens off the back courtyard where he had a quiet word with the undercook and appropriated a bag of sacking that had contained pot-herbs. This he shook out carefully and wrapped around the package with string, wrote a label addressing it to Mr. Alexander Dodd, the Guardroom, Carlisle Castle in his best handwriting. He thought a moment and added a note to say that he, Sergeant Dodd, would pay back the man that paid the carriage on it.
Then with a bellyful of good brown bread, cheese, and pickled cabbage, and a quart of remarkably good ale that he had cadged as well, Dodd went out the gate of Somerset House and carried the whole surprisingly heavy thing all the way to the Belle Sauvage Inn on Ludgate. It took him half an hour to find a carter who was heading for York and knew another one that made the round as far north as Carlisle, carrying supplies for the Castle. He payed an eyewatering amount for a deposit to the carter, plus more for the man who would take it on from York, and hoped that his brother Sandy would be kind enough to stump up the money if it got to Carlisle. He could imagine the stir when the thing arrived, especially if his men were nosy enough to open it, and was quite cheered up by the thought of their mystification.