4 A Plague of Angels: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (14 page)

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‘Where now?’ asked Dodd as they stood in Blackfriars’ courtyard.

‘We’re finding Robert Greene,’ said Carey as he struck off eastwards along St Peter and Thames Street. Carey tried Greene’s lodgings first, over a cobbler’s shop, but found a locked door at the top of the narrow ill-smelling stairs and nothing else. Barnabus and Simon were waiting dutifully outside as they’d been ordered to earlier that morning.

Carey went out into the smoke-dimmed sunlight and rubbed his gloved hands. Over the next two hours they quartered London for Robert Greene and it turned out that knowing the places where the poet liked to drink didn’t narrow the field very much since there were so many of them.

After a while Barnabus got restless and asked if he could go off to St Paul’s with Simon to see if he could find a new master. Carey told him sharply he could wait until they’d found Greene, and Barnabus lapsed into a sulk.

‘If he could just wait a month or two, I could guarantee him a place with George Clifford, who’d employ him like a shot,’ Carey said to Dodd.

‘Don’t want to risk no more northern wastelands,’ muttered Barnabus.

‘Clifford?’ asked Dodd, not surprised that Barnabus had no appreciation for decent places. ‘Is that any relation of the Earl of Cumberland, sir?’

‘No, it
is
the Earl of Cumberland.’

Every so often Carey would do or say something that completely took the wind out of Dodd’s chest. ‘The Earl, sir?’

‘Yes. Old friend of mine, we ran off from Court in 1588 to serve against the Armada, which we did on the old
Elizabeth Bonaventure
. He saved my life when I managed to catch gaol-fever that nearly did for me.’

‘Sir?’

‘Very embarrassing, you know. I’d risked the Queen’s dis-pleasure in the hopes of killing me a few Spaniards and getting enough loot to pay off the moneylenders. We certainly fought the Spaniards but it was all done with cannonfire and scurrying the ships around the big galleons and of course the fireships at Calais, so I never saw a penny of any treasure. Somewhere around Flamborough Head I lost ten shillings playing dice with the Ship’s Master and the Surgeon, got a blinding headache and then went completely off my head with the fever. Apparently I spotted some likely looking cattle and a chest of gold in the crow’s nest—you know, the look-out place on the top of the mast—climbed up the rigging in a storm and had a damned good battle with some sails. George was the one who led the sailors up to get me and knocked me out cold so they could bring me down. The Spanish ships had turned tail by then and were well on their way to Scotland, so as soon as the ship docked at Tilbury, he strapped me to a litter and sent me back to Philadelphia and Lady Widdrington in Westminster. Nice chap. Very good friend.’

‘Ay, sir.’ Dodd was unwillingly fascinated.

‘He was the one said I should take up Scrope’s offer, said I’d enjoy myself in Carlisle and he was absolutely right.’

Unwillingly, Dodd warmed to the Earl. He wasn’t quite sure how much back rent he owed the Cumberland estate for some of the land he ran cattle on, but he was certain he couldn’t pay it. He supposed it wasn’t the Earl of Cumberland’s fault. Maybe if Carey was his friend, he could put a good word in some time.

He looked around. The aggravating man had disappeared again. Dodd blinked at a tiny hovel with brightly painted red lattices and followed Carey inside.

There was no doubt that London was a drinking man’s heaven. From the big coaching inns, with their great yards where the carriers’ wagons were hitched ready for their long journeys to strange places like Bristol or Exeter, to tiny sheds where widows sold the ale and mead they brewed themselves, it was clear a man need never be thirsty in London. Provided he had money. Even river water cost a penny a quart if you bought it off a water-seller and was as brown as the beer and much less pleasant tasting.

Dodd stuck with beer. Carey’s guts at last seemed to have settled down and his were fine, but he didn’t want to spend another week sitting on the jakes with his bowels exploding and everyone knew it was diluting your humours with too much water that gave it to you.

At last, as the morning drew on, Carey went into yet another tiny boozing ken, peered around in the choking fumes of tobacco smoke, and cried, ‘Ahah!’ He shoved his way over to the corner where a man built like a beer barrel was propped up on a bench, mouth open and snoring, his hat drawn down over his eyes and a beard exactly the colour of carrots rising and falling with his snores.

Carey sat down next to him and grinned happily, just like a sleuthdog next to his quarry. Dodd put his hands on his hips.

‘That’s him,’ he said.

‘It certainly is,’ said Carey. ‘Nobody else in London has a beard exactly that shade.’

‘I should ’ope not,’ said Barnabus, bustling back from the woman next to the barrels with a large jug of ale and some greasy horn cups. ‘Let’s celebrate. Oh, she says his slate’s up to ten shillings and if we want ’im, we’ve got to pay it.’

Carey shook his head in admiration. ‘How the devil did you manage to drink five pounds in two weeks and have a slate?’ he asked the snoring poet, who didn’t answer and probably couldn’t have explained anyway. Dodd thought he looked exactly the way anyone would after drinking five pounds in two weeks, which was to say, unhealthy, red-nosed, stertorous but happy.

‘Could we not wake him up, sir?’ Dodd asked as he sipped cautiously at the brown liquid in his cup. Carey had finished his.

‘We could,’ he said. ‘Possibly.’

Dodd thought that would probably be a good idea, seeing as the man looked as if he weighed at least sixteen stone.

In the end they lurched out of the ken with one of the poet’s arms over Carey’s shoulder and one over Dodd’s and his legs making occasional stabs at finding the floor.

‘Why in God’s name did yer dad use a drunk to find your brother?’

‘You set a drunk to find a drunk,’ said Carey with some edge in his voice. ‘I expect that’s what he was thinking. Also he doesn’t know Greene as well as I do.’

‘How d’ye know a poet, sir?’

‘I know a lot of poets. Good company.’

‘Yarrargh warra gerk…’ said the poet, and puked over Dodd’s boots.

They dropped him while he got it over with and Dodd found some grass growing out of a yard wall and used it to wipe the worst off. Barnabus cleaned up Greene’s jerkin as best he could, they slung his arms over their shoulders again and set off once more.

‘Where are we going with him sir?’ Dodd puffed, trying to breathe sideways so as not to catch anything from Greene’s breath.

‘Down to the river.’

‘Mrrrghh…’

‘Och, Christ.’

It took two further sessions of unspeakable noises and effort from Greene before they emerged onto one of the little boatlandings that studded Thames bank. Carey set Greene down on the planks with his back against the riverwall, took his hat off and mopped his face. He looked critically at his black velvet suit but had miraculously managed to avoid any spattering. Not for the first time, Dodd wondered how he did it and borrowed Barnabus’s handkerchief to have a scrub at his best clothes.

‘Robert Greene,’ roared Carey in the man’s ear. ‘If you don’t wake up, I’m going to dunk you in the river.’

‘Horrrargh…grr,’ said Greene, sliding down comfortably and starting to snore. Carey shook his shoulder and one large paw swiped his hand away. ‘Fuck off,’ said Greene quite distinctly, before settling back into snores.

Carey’s lips tightened at this defiance. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘You can’t say I didn’t warn you.’

One fist in the scruff of Greene’s doublet, he hauled the drunk over to the edge of the boatlanding, where the Thames water at high tide flowed as dark as beer. Dodd helped him and then Carey judiciously ducked the poet’s head into the water.

‘I suppose if it don’t kill him, it might wake him,’ Barnabus commented thoughtfully.

Dodd watched Greene flailing in Carey’s grip. ‘Ye could let him breathe, sir,’ he said after a moment.

Carey lifted Greene’s head, listened to his whooping and gasping, then dunked him again.

There was nothing wrong with Carey’s hands now, Dodd thought, as he watched the poet start to fight. Carey let him up again.

‘…I’ll kill you, I’ll rip your head off and shit…blrggggle ggrrrg…’

Carey lifted the head out of the water again. ‘You awake yet, Greene?’ he asked conversationally.

‘Herrrck, herccck…’ said Greene, eyes popping and water streaming down his beard which still managed to glow like a beacon. He sat on the edge of the planks and whooped and spat for several minutes and then grabbed for his sword hilt.

Carey dunked him once more. ‘Get his sword, Dodd,’ he said.

Dodd got his sword, which was another of those nasty foreign rapiers the Londoners seemed to like so well, though the blade was dull and didn’t look like it had been sharpened or oiled for a long time. He tutted at such carelessness, collected the man’s poignard dagger as well and waited for Carey to let Greene breathe again.

‘Huyuhhhh…herrrr…huyhhhh…’

‘Are you awake?’ bellowed Carey right in Greene’s horribly stinking face. ‘Do you know me?’

‘Huuuuyuuh…I’ll…herrrgh.…I’ll kill you. Where’s my sword…hugggh…’

‘I’ll fight you any time, Greene, but first I want to talk to you. Do you understand me?’

Greene pushed him away and lurched to his feet, wiping his eyes and coughing fit to crack his chest. ‘You shit…’ he gasped. ‘You fucking bastard…’

Carey was standing too, with Dodd at his back. ‘My father gave you five pounds for information about my brother Edmund. Now I want to know what you’ve discovered…’

Greene flailed a fist at Carey, which he ducked, shouldered Dodd into the riverwall and stumbled up the alleyway. They went after him and caught up quickly because he was rolling from side to side so much.

‘Tell me what you’ve learned,’ demanded Carey.

‘Go to hell, you bastard.’

‘No,’ said Carey with a dangerous glint in his eye. ‘My father’s the bastard, I’m the bastard’s get.’

Greene blinked at him cross-eyed for a second. ‘Oh yes,’ he slurred. ‘So you are. Well, you can go to hell, you cocksucking bastard’s get and your whore of a mother with…’

Carey punched Greene in the face. He stood swaying like a maypole for fully thirty seconds, then said something that sounded like ‘Whuffle’ and collapsed.

‘Och, sir,’ said Dodd wearily. ‘Now we’ll have tae carry him.’

‘Sir, sir,’ Barnabus was calling from the boatlanding behind them. Dodd looked over his shoulder and saw that Barnabus had had the sense to call a boat. The boatman was backing his oars against the tide’s ebb and Barnabus had the painter in his hand, was wrapping it round one of the posts.

‘Our friend’s been taken sick,’ said Barnabus and the boatman nodded understandingly.

Carey shook his hand from the wrist and flexed his fingers, rubbing at his knuckles in their elegant kid gloves. He had the grace to look embarrassed, though not very.

Between them they hauled Greene back down the alley and got him into the boat, where the boatman solicitously arranged his head so it flopped over the gunwale. He was at least still breathing. At a nod from Barnabus, Simon jumped out and collected Greene’s ironmongery.

‘Mermaid Steps,’ said Carey.

‘That’ll be a shilling then, sirs, to include the baggage.’

Dodd opened his mouth to protest at this wicked overcharging but Carey just nodded. Well, it was his money but you could see how he got through so much of it.

Mermaid Steps were slippery and dangerous. It took all four of them including Simon to haul Greene up, and when they stood at the top, Carey growled, ‘Bugger this for a game of soldiers, we’ll take him in there.’

It looked like a reasonably respectable place, despite having a scandalous bare-breasted mermaid in pink and green on its sign, so Dodd bent his back to the burden again and they managed to get Greene through the door and lay him down on one of the benches just inside.

The innkeeper came bustling over. ‘I’m sorry, sir, he can’t come in. He’s banned.’

‘What?’ said Carey, who was looking frazzled by now and had a small smear of blood and snot from Greene on his shoulder.

‘On account of the damage what he hasn’t paid for.’

‘He’s a poet. You let poets drink in here, don’t you?’

‘I do, sir,’ allowed the innkeeper. ‘When they behave in a respectable fashion. Which he don’t. So he’s banned.’

‘Well, he’s not going to do any damage now, he’s been cold-cocked.’

‘That’s as may be, sir. But he’s banned.’

‘How much was the damage?’

‘Two pounds, one shilling and eightpence. Sir.’

Carey handed it over, while Dodd shook his head and Barnabus sighed.

‘I’ll get us all a drink and a bite to eat, shall I, sir?’ he said after a suitable pause.

Carey nodded and sat down next to Greene who had rolled on his side and started to snore.

‘I suppose we’ll just have to wait for him to recover again,’ he said. ‘Damn it, Greene, you’re a bloody nuisance.’