4 A Plague of Angels: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery by P. F. Chisholm

Author:P. F. Chisholm [Chisholm, P. F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, General, Historical, MARKED
ISBN: 9781615954070
Google: DEsXPwY6aVkC
Amazon: 1890208434
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 2000-10-02T04:00:00+00:00

Barnabus snorted. ‘Sir Edward Fitzjohn, my arse. That was Nick the Gent.’

‘Dodd, could I have a look at that false coin you had?’

‘Ay.’ Dodd fished it out and handed it over and Carey stopped to hold it up to the light and squint at the bite marks. ‘It’s very good, you know. It’s an excellent forgery. I think it’s pewter inside with a thin layer of gold, but the minting’s perfect. And you got it where?’

‘I think it was in Heneage’s bribe. That he give me at yer dad’s party.’

‘Oh, that’s when he did it, is it? Who was the…agent?’

‘I dinna ken. The man give it me in the garden, all muffled with a cloak.’

‘Hmm. Interesting.’

‘Ay, well, he could have got me hanged for spending it.’

‘So he could. Hmm. Can I keep it?’

‘Ay. It’s nae worth nothing now.’

‘Hmm. You never know,’ was all the Courtier would say while Dodd decided that the whyfores of forgery were more than he could handle with his present headache.

Oh God. Maybe it wasn’t a hangover. Maybe it was plague. Was that a lump he felt in his armpit? Did he have a fever? He deserved God’s wrath after such a sin of adultery and fornication, no matter how desperate the temptation. The Courtier might not be shocked but Dodd was, shocked at himself. Dear God, why had he done it? what if Janet found out? what if he’d taken the pox…?

In the common room they passed Shakespeare lying curled up on the bench with a cloak over his narrow shoulders. The only comfort was that Dodd felt quite certain Shakespeare would feel even worse when he woke up than Dodd did. Which served him right.

Carey strolled over to the innkeeper who was just opening and talking to him quietly—got nowhere, to judge by the sorrowful headshakings. And now the bastard Courtier was humming to himself as they walked along yet another stinking street, some tweedly-deedly court tune all prettified with fa-la-las. God, thought Dodd, I hate London and Carey both.

Very slowly, the exercise of walking through the noise and bustle of the London streets in the bright warm sunshine moved from being a torture to a pain to a mere misery. Very slowly the awful pounding in Dodd’s head faded down to a mere hammerbeat. Maddened with thirst, he drank a quart of mild ale at a boozing ken’s window and felt much better, though still more delicate than one of those fancy glass goblets from Italy the gentry set such store by. If you blew hard on him, he would break.

Greene’s lodgings were over a cobbler’s shop. Carey asked at the counter which produced hurried whisperings and a small skinny faded-looking woman hurried in from the back of the shop to be introduced as Joan Ball, Mr Greene’s…ahem…common-law wife.

‘He’s not well, sir,’ she explained. ‘He’s been ill all morning. Very, very ill.’

Carey made a dismissive tch noise. ‘I know what he’s suffering from. I’ll see him anyway.’

‘Well, I don’t know, sir, he’s very…It’s not his usual illness, you know, sir.

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