“Why? Do you know him too?”
“No Senor, I know of hees family. From when I play lute for the Queen.”
A likely story. Leigh had instantly dismissed Jeronimo’s colourful past as the usual nonsense old soldiers spouted. He thought about the problem. Whom should he send to Oxford with the all-important letter? He could go himself and also try and buy the ribbons they needed, but that meant leaving the men without a leader and that always meant trouble. He could send John Arden but with Arden there was a good chance that he might pop into an alehouse for half a quart and not come out again until all their money was spent. On the other hand, Arden was probably the best second-in-command he had, though he was standing there with his hip cocked, one hand on his sword and a bleary expression on his puffy once-handsome face. He was certainly better than Leigh at planning a fight, should probably have been the captain, but didn’t want the office. He preferred to get drunk every afternoon rather than worry about supplies and getting the men paid. Although it beat Leigh completely where he was getting his drink from.
Leigh sighed again. He couldn’t rely on any of the others and besides it would be better for Carey to be contacted by someone he knew, so it had to be him. He would leave Arden in charge along with Jeronimo and hope for the best.
“Nick,” he said, “I’m afraid we’ll have to swap clothes so I look more respectable and nobody realises what we are. You can have the suit again when I come back. And in the meantime I want you, Tarrant, and Clockface to go and find the Northerner’s remount, a good gelding with a white sock. As it came from the South it’s probably heading back in that direction, trying to find its home and we don’t want that, do we?”
Gorman nodded philosophically and then remembered and tipped his hat. “Yes, sir.”
Meantime Leigh had to make sure the Northerner didn’t take it into his head to make for Oxford on his own, barefoot as he was. He would have to be locked in at night, possibly chained, only they didn’t have any such things, of course. He’d just have to send Harry Hunks down to the carlin again and tell her to keep the man in the pit at night.
Monday 18th September 1592
Kat was munching stolidly through one of the crusts from the bread she brought back from the soldiers while Dodd did the same more cautiously because some of his teeth still felt loose. She had just finished counting up on her fingers.
“There’s twenty-one of ’em,” she said, scowling with the effort. “Then there’s Captain Leigh and John Arden and Jeronimo and Harry Hunks.”
Even Dodd had heard of Harry Hunks. “A bear?” he asked.
“What?”
He explained about the famous London fighting bear of the Eighties that could still be found engraved on horn cups and plates and in stories told on ballad sheets, though he’d died nearly ten years ago. Barnabus had told him all about the star of the bearbaiting.
Kat scowled even more. “I hate him,” she said. “He’s like a bear but he’s bad. He’s horrible. John Arden is nice and gives Granny nice things he finds in the monastery and she gives him her apple aquavitae. Captain Leigh is stupid and stingy and mean and I hate him too.”
“Jeronimo?”
“He’s a furriner,” Kat said dismissively, “a Spaniard who’s dark and skinny and hisses through his teeth sometimes.”
“Ay,” said Dodd.
“So there’s too many of ’em. What can you do?”
Dodd contemplated telling her, but decided not to in case she changed her mind again and went back to the soldiers.
Kat had come to him as he awkwardly dug a trench from a sitting position, using a small wooden trowel, for the old grandam to plant more winter cabbages in. Kat was still carrying her bag with the bread in it and her cheeks were flushed with fury and her eyes steely slits.
“If I tell you about the men at the old monastery, will you promise to kill them?” she had demanded. “Especially Captain Leigh?”
Well that was easy enough. “Ah cannae promise I’ll do it,” Dodd told her, “but I promise I’ll try.”
She paused, thinking about it.
“Yes well,” she said after a moment, “you don’t have to do all of them, just Captain Leigh.”
“Ay.”
“He promised me a shilling for what I could find out and didn’t pay me last time and he didn’t pay me this time so he owes me two shillings for my dowry and I hate him.”
You’ve a cousin in Carlisle, Dodd thought, highly amused and wishing the Courtier was there to manage the conversation with an angry little maid. She cocked her head on one side.
“So I’ll tell you everything the captain told me not to tell anyone and then you can decide how to kill him.”
Dodd had listened carefully while the child spilled out her fierce heart to him. It seemed the tale of the broken men was a disgraceful one of noble promises unkept, but common enough. You hardly ever got paid for soldiering, bar what you could steal or kill for, everyone knew that. It seemed that the unfortunate Captain Leigh still hadn’t worked it out.
“What happened to the last messenger they caught?”
“Oh, he was all right. They just knocked him out and took his stuff and then when he was a bit better, Captain Leigh came along and said they’d got his duds and message back from the robbers and off he went again, on foot of course, as they had his horse. They got some wagons a while ago too and they were pleased with that and the men guarding it didn’t fancy a fight and ran off back to London.”
“So Leigh will use me to get hisself an audience with the Earl of Essex?”
“I suppose so. He thinks he can talk his lord into paying him.”
Dodd laughed once at this and then clamped down again. It was a serious matter. The men of Leigh’s troop had put a brave on him but they hadn’t killed him when it would have been easy to do it. At first he had taken this as an insult like Heneage’s, that they thought him some nithing that need not be feared for vengeance. But perhaps it hadn’t occurred to them that he might be a man of parts, even if he was in a foreign county. On the other hand, he intended to get his gear back, particularly his sword, his knife, and his boots. His hip felt very strange without the weight of a weapon on it and his feet were already cold and sore.
Who would go to put the bite on Carey? He hadn’t seen the Spaniard, but had seen the drunken walk of John Arden and the large shaggy man with a slight limp that had looked coldly at him. Probably Leigh would go himself as he already knew Carey from France. Hmm. That would be good.
“Whit happened to the monks in the monastery when the King’s men came?” Dodd asked.
Kat shrugged. “My grandam said they were just a few stupid old men and boys by then and they tried to fight so they all got killed and they burnt some of the monastery. So it’s haunted, of course.”
“Ay, do the soldiers ken that?”
“Grandam told Captain Leigh when he came but he laughed at her and said he didn’t think so. But it is haunted.”
“Ay.” Dodd rubbed his bottom lip with his thumb. The glimmerings of an idea was coming to him. For complexity and madness it was one nearly worthy of Carey himself, perhaps being near the Courtier was causing him to catch courtierlike ways of thinking. Still.
“Grandam told the boy Nick Gorman when he came to get cheese from us, she warned him about the ghosts of the burnt monks and he didn’t laugh. Captain Leigh came and told her off, he said no good Protestant believed in superstition like that and Papists couldn’t hurt Godly men like them anyway.”
Dodd tutted. He’d never heard of a ghost that cared about such things.
“Kat,” he said, “I want ye to go back to Captain Leigh and act verra nice tae him. Can ye do that?” She frowned, opened her mouth to say something. “Not to be friends again but to find things out from him. I want ye to find oot who he’s sending tae my master and what he’s doing next. And get me some paper.”