4 A Plague of Angels: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (24 page)

‘What was the gentleman wearing?’

‘He was very well-dressed, sir, black Lucca velvet embroidered with pearls and slashed with oyster satin.’

‘And he looked like me?’

‘A little, sir. Redder in the face as well as wider in the body.’

Carey nodded. ‘Mr Cheke, you have been very kind and very helpful. Are you sure I cannot…er…pay you for your treatment?’

‘With the Philosopher’s Stone available, why would I need any gold in the world?’ asked Cheke rhetorically and smiled like a child. Carey smiled back, rose and went into the shop. Barnabus hesitated and then spoke to the apothecary quietly and urgently.

Dodd came back to fetch him.

‘I make no guarantees,’ Cheke was saying. ‘If I knew of anything that was sovereign against the plague, I would publish a book about it.’

Barnabus actually had hold of the man’s sleeve. ‘My sister’s family got it and half of them are dead,’ he hissed. ‘Can’t you give me anything? You could let my blood, couldn’t you?’

‘But I don’t think it works.’

‘Doctors do it against the plague.’

‘If the doctors knew of a remedy, why would any of them catch it?’

Dodd thought the man had a good point there, but Barnabus wasn’t paying attention.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I’ll pay you. But you’ve got to give me something, or do something.’

Cheke sighed. ‘Sit down,’ he said, digging in his bag again. ‘I’ll let your blood against infection and give you the best charms I can.’

Dodd waited patiently while Barnabus sat on a stool and proffered his left arm for Cheke to open a vein. The dark blood oozed out into the basin and Dodd wondered about it: men’s bodies were filled with blood. When you let some of it out, how did you know which would be the bad stuff and which would be the good? It took only a short time, for Cheke refused to let more than three ounces and he bandaged Barnabus’s arm up again and carefully wiped off his knife with a cloth. ‘Do you want to be treated too?’ he asked Dodd while Barnabus put a silver shilling down on the table which the apothecary ignored.

‘Nay,’ said Dodd, thinking about it. ‘Ah spend too much time trying to avoid losing blood.’

Cheke smiled. ‘Both of you should take posies to counteract the miasmas.’ He handed them more bunches of wormwood and rue and told them to put them inside their clothes.

‘We’d best be getting along,’ said Barnabus, rubbing his arm and looking pleased. ‘My master was talking about going up to the Theatre or the Curtain to see a play this afternoon.’

‘The playhouses should all be closed down until the plague has abated,’ said the apothecary, putting his instruments back in his bag.

‘What’s the point of that?’ demanded Barnabus. ‘You’ll be saying the cockpits and bull-baiting should be shut too, like the Corporation.’

‘They should. Wherever men gather closely together the plague miasma forms and strikes.’

It was a horrible picture: Dodd could see it as a demon, now forever in his mind with a long brass beak, hovering over a crowd of men looking for places to strike. The thought made his bowels loosen just by itself.

‘Bah,’ sniffed Barnabus. ‘Never heard such nonsense in my life. If that’s true, why don’t people get plague from going to church, eh? Or walking up and down St Paul’s, eh? Come on, Sergeant, let’s go or we’ll be late.’

Perhaps only Dodd heard the alchemist answer Barnabus softly. ‘But they do. St Paul’s is where the plague always starts.’

Saturday, 2nd September 1592, midday

Dodd’s head was buzzing as Carey strode through the crowds, heading for the Mermaid tavern again. Carey talked at length with the innkeeper who had no idea how Sir Edward Fitzjohn, alias Nick the Gent, and his wife, alias Molly Stone, had managed to get into their chamber, and further could not tell where Kit Marlowe might be nor any of his cronies. Nobody knew anything, so far as Dodd could see, not even when Carey offered to pay them.

Shakespeare was still there, sitting in one of the booths, white and trembling and sipping mild ale very cautiously.

‘Shouldn’t you be getting back to Somerset House?’ Carey asked him and he shook his head, then clutched it and muttered that my lord had told him to serve Sir Robert.

‘Excellent. I want to find Mr Marlowe and ask him some questions. Do you know where he is, Will?’

‘No, sir. Sorry, sir.’ Shakespeare was staring into his beer, gloom lapping him round like a cloak. Carey sat himself down opposite.

‘Did you know Robert Greene is dead, Will?’ he asked cheerily.

Shakespeare shut his eyes for a moment. ‘Oh,’ he said, not seeming very happy at the news.

‘That means I’ve got to start all over again, looking for my brother. Do you know anything about him?’

‘No.’ With a great effort Shakespeare looked up at Carey. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he croaked.

‘Did you ever hear of an alchemist called Jenkins?’

‘N…no, sir.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Shakespeare was staring at his beer again. Carey watched him speculatively for a moment.

‘I think you’re lying to me, Will,’ he said without heat. ‘I’m not sure why. If you’re afraid of anyone, it would be better to tell me so I can protect you.’

A tiny sliver of a smile passed over Shakespeare’s face. ‘I’m afraid of many things, sir,’ he said, adenoidally honest. ‘I doubt there’s much you can do about any of them.’

Carey paused a moment longer, then clapped his hand on the table.

‘Well, how do you feel? Ready for a bit of exercise?’

Shakespeare sighed deeply and sipped some more ale. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said dolefully.

‘All right. You go back to Somerset House, you find my father’s
valet de chambre
and ask him to find my second best suit, the one with lilies on the hose, and also the suit Sergeant Dodd here wore the other night for my father’s supper party. Then you bring them both back here and we’ll all go to see who we can find in Paul’s Walk this afternoon.’

Shakespeare nodded, repeated his orders, swallowed his ale and hurried off. Carey watched him go, blue eyes narrow and considering. Barnabus coughed deprecatingly.

‘Sir, I was wondering if I could go back to our lodgings, see how Tamburlain is getting on.’

‘Who?’

‘The cock, sir. My sister’s fighting cock.’

‘Oh. Yes. Well, it’s a confounded nuisance. I want you to come with me to St Paul’s.’

‘Yes, sir. I could meet you there, sir.’

‘Oh, very well. Hurry up.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Barnabus disappeared out the door, blinking and rubbing his forehead while Dodd watched him go doubtfully. Did he have plague? Maybe Dodd had plague too. As well as pox.

Carey was tapping his fingers on the blackened table top and frowning.

‘Sir, why do you want to find Marlowe?’ Dodd asked, feeling that the over-clever pervert was best left alone.

‘Hm? Oh, he’s in the middle of this tangle, somewhere. I know he is.’

‘Well, but, what’s he got to do with yer brother?’

‘Look, Dodd, there’s some kind of complicated plot going on here, something that Edmund’s only incidental to.’

‘Papist, d’ye mean, sir?’

‘That’s only one kind. My inclination is that Heneage is up to something.’

‘Ay,’ said Dodd, thinking back to the supper party. ‘I didnae take to him, meself.’

‘Father hates his guts. What the devil was he doing, inviting the bastard to supper?’

‘Mebbe yer brother’s at Chelsea, wi’ Heneage?’ suggested Dodd as he tucked into the bacon and pease pottage the boy put in front of him. Carey was staring at him, making him feel uncomfortable. ‘Well, but ye said he could do the like to me, sir, could he not to yer brother?’ Carey said nothing. Dodd chewed and swallowed, washing down the salty meat with more beer. ‘That’s how Richie Graham of Brackenhill runs it if ye’re too strong to take on directly. Captures one o’yer relatives, puts him in ward somewhere he controls and threatens tae starve him to death if ye dinna pay up.’

‘If Heneage tried something like that with my brother, my father would go directly to the Queen. Heneage knows that. The Queen doesn’t think much of Edmund either, but she won’t have her cousins mistreated.’

‘Ay,’ said Dodd, following a train of thought that twisted and turned like a hunted stag. ‘But what if yer brother was up tae no good? Or what if Heneage knew he was dead or in gaol but wasnae sure where so he just let on to yer father he might have him but kept yer father in doot. Richie Graham does that too.’

Carey was scooping up pease pottage with a piece of bread. ‘It’s possible. If it’s true, then Marlowe is the one who’ll know what’s really going on; he’s one of Heneage’s men.’

‘He is? I wouldnae have placed him as a serving man.’

Carey laughed. ‘No, he’s a pursuivant. Been at it for years. Started working for Walsingham years ago, back before the Armada, and then when Walsingham died and Heneage took over, Marlowe went to work for him too.’

‘What’s a pursuivant?’

‘A kind of spy. An intelligencer against the Catholics. An informer, a troublemaker.’

‘I thought he was a poet.’

‘Well, he’s that as well but nobody can really make a living as a poet alone, unless he’s got a rich patron, and not even Sir Walter Raleigh will take Marlowe on, he’s too dangerous. You never know who he’s working for, if he knows himself.’

‘Och.’ Dodd considered this while he sawed away at a tough bit of meat. ‘I wouldnae have thought poets would make good spies.’

‘On the contrary, my father says they’re excellent. Literate, intelligent, good memory, practised liars.’

Dodd snorted, speared a chunk and started nibbling it off the end of his knife.

‘And what’s all this with alchemy?’

‘Yes.’ Carey was staring into space while he chewed at a bit of gristle. ‘Just the sort of thing Edmund would get into, the idiot.’

‘Ye dinna think it was really working?’

‘I’d stake my fortune that it wasn’t, if I had one.’

‘Why?’

‘One of the best pieces of advice I ever had was this: if something looks too good to be true, it probably isn’t true. Alchemy as the road to enlightenment, possibly. Alchemy as the road to riches—no.’

‘But Cheke said he’d seen it work.’

‘I think he was mistaken, and so was my brother if he was the gentleman investing in it. I think he was involved in something a lot simpler and more dangerous.’

‘What?’

Carey took the forged angel out of his sleeve pocket and spun it on the table where it glittered to a halt and fell over.

‘Forgery. He was coining. That’s where his purse of money came from that he showed Susannah.’

‘Why would he need alchemy to do that? It’s not so hard. The Graham’s got his ain mint going at Brackenhill, making silver Scots shillings. Only, they’re not silver, ye follow?’

‘Has he? That’s interesting. I was wondering why the Scots money was worth so little. Well, it’s harder to forge gold coins. They’re more carefully minted, you can’t get the colour right with anything except gold…Hm. There’s one way to find out and that’s why I want us to look decent.’

‘Mebbe Heneage was at the coining with this alchemy and yer brother caught him at it.’

‘That’s possible. If you look at it from Heneage’s point of view, you could even see why he might think there was nothing wrong in it. The Queen never gives him enough money to do what he wants. She never gave Walsingham enough either, but he was willing to spend his own fortune on his intelligencing and Heneage doesn’t fancy dying in debt like him. So along comes an alchemist who claims he’s found the Philosopher’s Stone and Heneage either believes it, or sees that it might work well enough to solve his money problems.’

Dodd shook his head sadly. ‘Everyone needs more money,’ he muttered. ‘Where does it a’ go?’

Carey looked irritated. ‘We spend it, Dodd, where do you think? Besides, the Queen never likes her servants to be too rich, she thinks it might make us arrogant. That’s why Father has to be so mean: if she heard how rich he really is, she’d send him to France as an ambassador or put him in command of the troops in Ireland or something ghastly like that.’

‘Why would she hear of it?’

‘The Queen is uncanny the way she finds things out. I’ve never known anybody successfully get something past her, except Walsingham’s protégé Davison over the Queen of Scots. Anyway, Edmund’s just the sort of man an ambitious alchemist would take his process to and if Heneage got to hear of it, which he would, then Heneage would want in on the deal. I think Edmund’s precious alchemist transformed pewter blanks to gold which they then used to strike coins. Or at least that’s what Edmund thought.’

Carey was turning the false angel in his long gloved fingers.

‘And ye reckon it was all a load of rubbish?’

‘Of course it was. Poor old Edmund. Always full of ways to make money, and each one is always the one that will finally make him richer than Father. He’s the easiest mark for a coney-catcher I’ve ever met. Ingram Frizer took him for a hundred and seventy pounds on the old brocade-reselling trick.’