Knives in the South by P.F. Chisholm

Author:P.F. Chisholm [Chisholm, P.F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786696175
Publisher: Head of Zeus Ltd.

Thursday 14th September 1592, evening

According to Carey, Pickering’s game moved around a lot so you could only find it if you were invited. When the sun started to go down they walked into the city and along the busy wharves until they came to Three Cranes in the Vintry. There the men inside the great treadmills that worked the three enormous cranes were just finishing and jumping down to drink their beer and be paid for a day’s work. The last of the barrels of Rhenish and Gascon wine were being hurried on handcarts into warehouses to be locked up, watched by the Tunnage and Poundage men who put the Queen’s seal on the locks.

Other brightly dressed young men were standing around in casual ways, so Carey and Dodd took their ease on a bench by the water and Dodd kept his hands away from his tobacco pouch. They saw the lad in cramoisie and tangerine, large ruff, haughty nose, highly coloured, acned and with a target all but pinned to his back.

Once the Tunnage and Poundage men had gone off in their boat, things changed. At the back of one of the securely sealed warehouses, a part of the wall slid aside and two imposing men in buff coats came to stand stolidly by the opening. Dodd recognised one of them but Carey held Dodd back from going in at once.

‘Let’s see who’s there,’ he said, and watched the other well-dressed courtiers and merchants who went in by the entrance after a muttered conversation with one of the men in buff coats.

At last Carey stood and followed them, trailed by Dodd. At the door he nodded at one of the men. ‘How’s your wife, Mr. Briscoe?’

Briscoe smiled and nodded back. ‘Near her time, Sir Robert,’ he said. ‘It’s a worry. She says she’ll stop wearing herself out about her brother now she knows it was a man called Jackson and it wasn’t him. Which is a relief, you know.’

Carey smiled. ‘By the way, did you happen to hear about the veney I played the other night with some Smithfield brawlers working for Topcliffe?’

Briscoe’s broad face broke into a grin. ‘Nearly split my sides, sir. And what came after. I heard it was that mad poet Marlowe wot hired ’em and he’d better be careful if he goes near Smiffield again, cos none of ’em are ’appy about it.’

Carey laughed. ‘Well if you should happen to hear anything else about it, I’d be grateful if you’d pass it on.’

‘I will, sir.’

‘Anything else going on?’

Briscoe’s brow creased. ‘Well, Mr. Pickering’s very worried by the plague in the city, though none of the City Aldermen is bovvered. It’s in the Bridewell now, you know?’

Carey grimaced. ‘Thanks for the warning.’

‘And I heard tell one of the bearwardens was sick of it yesterday and died and one of his bears run wild for sorrow.’

‘Not Harry Hunks?’

‘No sir, he’s retired now. Gone back to the Kent herds to sire more bears. That was Big John and they ’ad to shoot him in the end.

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