He walked back a little quicker and went down an alleyway into the dens of lawyers that clustered around the Inns of Court, found Enys’s chamber, and knocked on the door.
Enys put his head out immediately. “One minute,” he said. Dodd heard his voice murmuring and then another higher pitched voice-it seemed he was urging his sister to greet Sergeant Dodd but she adamantly refused.
Then Enys was on the landing, hat on his head and his too-heavy sword at his side.
“Where will we get a new sword?” Enys asked as he locked the door.
“We’ll go to an armourer’s I saw near Cheapside,” said Dodd. “Sir Robert said they made good weapons there.”
In fact Carey had been trying to persuade Dodd to buy a gimcrack unchancy foreign-style rapier with a curly handguard and a velvet scabbard to replace his friendly, balanced, and extremely sharp broadsword that had been made for him by the Dodd surname’s own blacksmith and fitted his body like a glove. Dodd had sniffed at all Carey’s reasons why rapiers were the coming thing and then smashed the entire argument to bits by enquiring why, if rapiers were so wonderful, Carey was now bearing a broadsword himself.
“You know my rapier broke last summer when I hit that Elliot who was wearing a jack…” Carey had said incautiously.
“Ay,” said Dodd, feeling his point had been made for him. Carey grinned and started campaigning for Dodd to buy a twenty-inch duelling poinard instead until Dodd had lost his temper and asked if Carey was working on commission for the armourer.
Enys nodded and trotted down the stairs and out into the sunlight. The year was tilting into winter right enough, with the orchards full of fruit and nuts and the hedges and gardens full of birds stealing the fruit, and angry wasps.
They walked up Ludgate, past St Paul’s, and Dodd found the armourer’s shop he wanted. It was not at all showy and didn’t have parts of tournament armour and wonderfully elaborate foreign pig-stickers hanging outside in advertisement of the weaponsmith’s abilities. On the other hand, his barred windows were of glass and the swords hanging there seemed nicely balanced.
They went in, Enys hesitating on the threshold and looking around in wonder.
“Ay,” said Dodd, “it’s odd not to have yer sword made for ye, but…” He shrugged.
The armourer remembered Dodd as having come with Carey since he was wearing the same unnaturally smart woollen doublet. Soon there were several swords laid out on the counter with the armourer excitedly pointing out the beauty of the prettier sword. Dodd picked up one of the others, with a plain hilt, a grip of sharkskin and curled quillions. He felt the weight, drew it, sighted along the blade, flexed the blade, sniffed it, balanced it on his finger, then handed it to Enys who nearly dropped it.
Enys swung it a few times experimentally while Dodd and the armourer retreated behind a display post with breastplates mounted on it. Enys smiled.
“That’s much better, much easier.”
“Ay,” sniffed Dodd, “I thocht so, Mr. Enys. The one ye’ve got is a couple of pounds heavier.”
He turned to the armourer and asked if he would do a part-exchange while Enys eagerly fumbled his sword belt off and handed it over for inspection. The armourer frowned when he saw it, looked hard at Enys, then shook his head.
“You’re right, sir,” he said, “this is the wrong sword for you. May I ask where you got it?”
“It’s mine. My brother gave it to me.”
“Ah. I see, sir. And I expect your brother is a couple of inches taller and wider-shouldered? Well, I can certainly make a part-exchange. Shall we allow an angel for the old sword and thus I will require fifteen shillings.”
Dodd thought that was very reasonable for a ready-made sword and so Enys handed over the greater part of what Hunsdon had paid him for his court work to date, buckled on the new weapon, and went to admire his fractured reflection in the window glass.
“Sir, I should tell you that I’ve seen this sword before,” said the armourer quietly to Dodd. “Seeing as you’re Sir Robert’s man.”
“Ay?” said Dodd.
“I sold it to a man who called himself James Enys but who was not that man.”
Dodd found his eyebrows lifting. “Ay?” he said, rubbing his lower lip.
“Taller, broader-shouldered, something similar in the face and just as badly marked with smallpox.”
“Hm.”
“Also, he was wearing the exact same suit. But it wasn’t him, sir, I’d stake my life on it.”
Dodd quietly handed over sixpence, ignoring the small voice at the back of his head that protested at this outrage. “Thank ye, Mr. Armourer,” he said, quite lordly-fashion, “That’s verra interesting.”
He went out into the sunny street where Enys was waiting for him and gave the lawyer a considering stare.
“Now where shall we practise?” asked Enys. “Will you teach me to disarm people?”
“Ah’m no’ gonnae teach ye nothing special,” said Dodd with a shudder. “Just the basics.”
On a thought he went back into the shop and came back out with two veney sticks the armourer had sold for a shilling-he liked them because they had hilts and grips like swords but were still sticks. They made adequate clubs, but were best for sword practise with someone who was unchancy and ignorant.
As they made their way to Smithfield, Dodd was thinking hard. There had always been something not quite right about Enys and it seemed Shakespeare had found it out. Perhaps Enys had killed his brother and taken his place and then pretended to look for him afterwards? Perhaps Enys’s brother was still in the Thames as the priest had been?
Or perhaps he was playing cards at Pickering’s? The man Dodd had thought was Enys-what was his name, Vent? — fitted the armourer’s description exactly. And what about the sister? Where was she? He’d heard her voice but…Why had Enys locked the door of his chambers when his sister was within? Was she his prisoner?
Eyes narrowing, Dodd led the way to a corner of the Smithfield market that was not already occupied by large men loudly practising their sword skills, generally sword-and-buckler work which was the most popular fighting-style. Some of them watched him cautiously out of the corners of their eyes. In another corner were better-dressed men doing what looked like an elaborate dance composed of circles and triangles and waving long thin rapiers. Foreigners, no doubt, doing mad foreign things.
Dodd gave Enys one of the veney sticks and decided to see if the man was faking his cack-handedness. He took him through the en garde position for a sword with no shield or buckler, with his right leg and right arm forward as defence, and showed him the various positions. They went through a slow and careful veney using the main attacks and defences that Dodd’s father had first taught him when he was eight. Dodd’s face drew down longer and sour at that thought.
Once Enys had corrected his feeble grip and got out of the habit of putting his left hand on the hilt for the cross-stroke, as if he were wielding an old-fashioned bastard sword, Dodd bowed to him, saluted, and attacked.
Enys struggled to do what he’d been shown but that was not in fact the problem. He defended slightly better now, but even when Dodd spread his hands, lowered his veney stick and stood there completely unguarded, Enys still did not attack. Dodd scowled at him ferociously.
“Och?” he said, “whit’s wrong wi’ ye, ye puir wee catamite of a mannikin? Want yer mother? She’s no’here, she’s down the road lookin’ for trade.”
Enys stopped and blinked at him with his veney stick trailing in the mud. Dodd, who had never seen anything so ridiculous in his life, lifted his own veney stick and hit Enys hard across the chest with it. Enys yelped, staggered back clutching the place, and nearly dropped his stick.