Dodd breathed hard through his nose: a few months ago he might have been offended enough to call Carey out on it, but now he was prepared to give the Courtier benefit of doubt although it came hard to him. After all, Heneage’s nosebleed had been very messy.
“Ay sir,” he said. “Ay, Ah ken what he is.” For a moment, Dodd considered explaining to Carey some of the things he’d done in the course of his family’s bloodfeud with the Elliots, then thought better of it. Wouldn’t do to shock the Courtier, now would it? The corners of Dodd’s mouth twitched briefly at the thought.
“But?” asked Carey, waving for more beer.
“Ah dinna think Heneage kens what I am.”
There was a pause.
“You won’t take his offer?”
It had been paltry, offered the previous Wednesday by a defensively written letter carried by a servant. A mere apology and ten pounds. Where was the satisfaction in that? Dodd hadn’t bothered to answer it.
“Nay sir. I’ve talked tae yer dad about it and he says he’ll gie me whatever lawyers I want, all the paper in London for ma powder and shot…”
“Yes, father’s very irritated at what happened to Edmund,” said Carey with his usual breezy understatement.
“Ay sir,” said Dodd, “And I’m verra irritated at what happened tae me.” Dodd was trying to match Carey with understatement. “Irritated” didn’t really describe the dull thunderous rage settled permanently in Dodd’s bowels.
Carey nodded, looked away, opened his mouth, shut it, rubbed his fingers again, coughed, took a gulp of his new cup of brandy, coughed again.
“I feel I owe you an apology over that, Sergeant,” said the Courtier, finally getting to the point of what had been making him so annoying for the last couple of days. He wasn’t looking at Dodd now, he was staring at the sawdust scattered floorboards of the boozing ken.
“Ah dinna recall ye ever striking me,” Dodd said slowly.
“You know what I mean. I used you as a decoy which is why you ended up in the Fleet instead of me and why Heneage got his paws on you in the first place.”
Dodd nodded. “Ay, Ah ken that. So?”
“So it’s my fault you got involved…”
While a penitent Carey was both an amusing and a rare sight, Dodd thought he was talking nonsense. Besides which it was done now and Dodd had a feud with one of the most powerful men in the kingdom. It wasn’t a bloodfeud yet but it probably would be by the end. Which reminded him, he needed some information about the size of Heneage’s surname. But first he had to clear away Carey’s daft scruples.
“So it would ha’ bin better if thon teuchter had taken ye instead? Got what he wanted right off, eh?”
Carey frowned. “Well, no…”
“Listen, Sir Robert,” said Dodd, leaning forward and setting his tankard down very firmly, “I’ve done ma time as surety in Jedburgh jail for nae better reason than I wis Janet’s husband and the Armstrong headman could spare me for it.” And Janet had been very angry with him at the time, of course, a detail he left out. “It wisnae exactly fun but it was fair enough. Same here. Ye used what ye had and what ye had wis me-there’s nae offence in that, ye follow? Ah might take offence if ye go on greetin’ about what a fearful fellow Heneage is and all, but at the moment Ah’m lettin ye off since ye dinna really ken me either or ma kin.”
Carey frowned. “You’re not accepting my apology?”
Dodd reached for patience. “Nay sir, I’ll accept it. It’s just I dinna see a reason for it in the first place.”
Carey smiled sunnily at him and stripped off the glove on his right hand. Dodd had to squash his automatic wince at the thought of touching the nasty-looking nailbeds so he could shake hands with good grace.
“Now, sir,” he added, “since ye’ve not had the advantage of partakin’ in a feud before, will ye be guided by me?”
Dodd was trying hard to talk like a Courtier, his best ever impersonation of Carey’s drawl, and Carey sniggered at the mangled vowels.
“Good God, Ah niver sound like that, do I?” he asked in his Berwick voice, which almost had Dodd smiling back since it sounded so utterly out of place coming from the creature in the elaborately slashed cramoisie velvet doublet and black damask trunk hose.
“Ay, ye do, sir. But nae matter. It’s nae yer fault, is it?”
Carey made the harumph noise he had got from his father, thumped his tankard down and stood up.
***
Lawyers being the scum they were, most of them tended to clog together in the shambolic clusters of houses and crumbling monastery buildings around the old Templar Church. Nearby were the Inns of Court, new a-building out of the ruins of the Whitefriars abbey. In the long time the Dominicans had been gone, bribed, evicted, or burned at the stake in the Forties, the reign of the much-married Henry VIII, something like what happens to a treetrunk had happened to the old abbey. Small creatures taking up residence, large ones raising broods there, huts and houses like fungus erupting in elaborate ramparts that ate the old walls to build themselves. There was a long area of weedy waste ground stretching down to the river and inevitably filling with the huts, vegetable gardens, chickens, pigs, goats and dirty children of the endless thousands of peasants flooding into London to make their fortune. They were not impressed by the lawyers’ writs of eviction. However the writing they didn’t know how to read was very clearly on the wall for them in the shape of scaffolding, sawdust, wagons full of blocks of stone, and builders finishing the two magnificent halls for the rich lawyers to take their Commons.
Dodd had almost enjoyed the short walk of a couple of miles along the Oxford Road from Tyburn to the Whitefriars liberties where Carey was more comfortable even though his father had (yet again) paid his creditors. Most of them. The ones he could remember or who had served him with writs at any rate.
He had to admit, it was interesting to see the different styles of working in London and the numberless throngs in the streets and the settled solidity of the overhanging houses. He also had to admit that despite the pathetic lack of decent walls or fortifications, London was impressive. Dodd was still tinkering with his plans for the greatest raid of all time, even though he knew it was hopeless. Where would you sell that much gold and insight? How would you even carry it all back to the Debateable Land?
Very near the round Temple church with its wonderful coloured glass, Carey swung off down an alleyway and up some stairs into a luxurious set of chambers, lined with leatherbound books and with painted cloths of Nimrod the Hunter on the walls. Two haughty-looking clerks surrounded by piles of paper and books looked up briefly as they came in, announced by a spotty page boy with a headcold.
There was a pause. The clerks continued to write away. Carey looked mildly surprised and then leaned on the mantel over the luxury of a small fireplace and hummed a tune. Dodd put his hands behind his back and waited stolidly.
Nothing happened. Surprisingly, Carey cracked first. “Is Mr. Fleetwood available?” he asked coldly, and the haughtiest clerk ignored the magnificence of his embroidered trunk-hose and raised a withering eyebrow.
“Do you have an appointment, Mr…er…” intoned the clerk down his nose. The pageboy had announced them correctly and clearly.
Carey’s eyebrow headed for his hairline as well. Dodd leaned back slightly and prepared to watch the fun: would the two pairs of eyebrows fight a little duel, perhaps?