A Chorus of Innocents (8 page)

Bessie's Andrew was the one who told Dodd about the mysterious package that had arrived by way of the carter from York a few days before. They went in a body to Dodd's cubbyhole next to the door of the barracks and found it sitting on the bed—which someone, probably Janet, had seen to having the sheets changed. There it sat with the label on it in Dodd's handwriting which only Sim's Will had been able to read. Red Sandy had been too young to go to the Reverend Gilpin and then there had been the feud with the Elliots so he never got the chance to learn to read.

Dodd looked at the package and remembered sending it and felt utterly estranged from the man who had done that, and he almost couldn't think what was in it—his homespun doublet and breeches, to be sure, dyed dark red with madder by Janet, the breeches made of wool from a black sheep so they didn't need dying and wouldn't run in the wet either. And the hat.

He batted the men back from the package and started undoing the painstaking hessian wrappings and lifted the wicker lid to find his doublet there. He unpacked his clothes from round the hat and then unwrapped the linen folds from around it and held it up.

“This is for Janet,” he said, thinking how Barnabus had told him she'd forgive him anything when she had a hat like that and wondering if it was true. Not that he planned to tell her some of the things that had happened in London, but still.

There was a silence from the men. They may never have been south of Carlisle in their lives but you could see the London fashion almost glowing in that hat: dark green, high crowned, and with a long pheasant's feather in it. It looked as out of place there as Carey; more so because at his roots, Carey was in fact a Berwick man. That hat was all London.

“Och,” said Bangtail, “what did ye pay for it?”

“Ye ken the infield at Gilsland?”

“Ay.”

“More than ye'd pay for that.”

“Twenty shillings?”

“Twenty-five shillings.”

More silence. Come to think of it, he wasn't quite sure why he had done it now, especially as he had lost the rest of the bribe shortly after. But the Queen had made that up to him and more. He wasn't going to mention that, though, until he had talked to Janet about it.

“Er…where did ye rob sae much cash from?” Red Sandy asked tactfully.

“I didna,” said Dodd. “It was a bribe, fair and square.”

The men looked at each other. “A bribe?” squeaked Bessie's Andrew. “Who did ye have to kill for it?”

“I didna. It was what they call a sweetener. There's sae much money in London, it just flows around. The serving maids have velvet ribbons to their sleeves and golden pins to their hair. The serving men wear brocade some of them, secondhand, but rich as Thomas the Merchant's. Ye have no idea…There's a street called Cheapside where they have shops with great plates and goblets and bowls of gold and siller in the windows and nought but a couple of bullyboys and some bars to keep them.”

The men were exchanging looks again.

“The Bridge…the Bridge has got shops full of silks and velvets.…The armourers, oh, the armourers…” Dodd felt overwhelmed at the task of telling them what he had seen in the South. “They have armourers that sell nought but swords and some that sell guns and ay, they cost a lot but…”

“Where's London exactly?” asked Bangtail, with the slitty-eyed look of a Graham with a plan.

“Hundreds of miles south. Three hundred at least.” Dodd smiled at him. “D'ye think I didna think what you're thinking now, how could I raid it?”

Bangtail nodded and so did Red Sandy. “It's a long way,” said Bessie's Andrew, “and wi' the cattle to drive…”

“Cattle, sheep, all out in the fields with naebody bar a boy to keep them,” Dodd amplified. “Ah've thought and thought and I canna think how to bring the loot back. Go there, ay, get it—ay, though they've Trained Bands in London. But bring it back—that's yer problem.”

More silence as seven highly honed reivers' brains considered the problem of bringing your loot all the way from London with the hot trod after you.

“Anyway, I bought it and I'm fer Gilsland tomorrow to give it to Janet…”

“Nae need, brother, she's in town.”

***

Dodd had waited right there by the hat while someone went to fetch Janet, his heart suddenly beating hard and fast. He heard her voice in the doorway.

“What are ye doing, Bangtail? I've no need to check the bed, I changed it last week and I'll thank ye…”

Red Sandy ceremonially opened the little door and Dodd stood up and there she was, in her second-best homespun kirtle, coloured dark green with moss and nothing like the London fashions, and her shift open at the top and her cap and old hat over her blazing red Armstrong hair. She paused as if she didn't know him.

“Henry Dodd, is that you?” she asked, looking him up and down as if they were at a harvest dinner and he was asking would she like to dance.

“Ay, wife, it's me.”

“Well, look at ye,” she said with a slow smile. “Look at ye,” and she gave him a nice curtsey. Not to be outdone he did a bow which was getting better, he knew, and then he stepped one step across the narrow floor and grabbed her and held her.

“Och Janet,” he heard himself say. “Ah missed ye,” which was true, he had, worse than he would ever have believed he could miss his woman. She had been there in his imagination but now that he was holding her tight, he knew the difference.

“Well, Henry…” she started and he stopped her mouth with his and Bangtail ceremoniously shut the door on them and Red Sandy sat down next to it to make sure nobody barged in on them.

They were lying in a breathless heap on the bed when Janet said, “What's that?” and pointed at the linen-wrapped item they had somehow moved to the floor and then somebody had put a pair of breeches over the top of. Dodd retrieved his breeches and put them on again, while Janet had less to do, she only needed to do her stays up at the top again and rearrange her petticoats.

Suddenly Dodd felt worried and embarrassed at his extravagance. Surely she would prefer the money to the hat, to buy a field with, but then he remembered he had got most of his bribe back, less the forged coins, and it was still a substantial sum as you reckoned things in the North. But still. Would she like it? Maybe he could sell it to Lady Scrope if she didn't, though the colour was wrong for my lady.

Janet was up off the bed and picking it up. She looked narrow-eyed at Dodd and when he nodded gravely, she started unwinding the linen. Before she'd finished unwrapping it he had decided she wouldn't like it and would call him a fool and his mouth turned down.

The glory of London fashion glowed in the tiny room, smaller in fact than the inside of the four-poster bed Dodd had slept in down in London. In silence Janet put it carefully on the bed and folded up the linen wrapping, then she lifted it up and held it out at arm's length.

“For me?” she asked, in a thunderstruck voice. “From…you, Henry?”

“Ay, Ah'm sorry, it cost a lot but I looked at it down in London and I thought, that'll look fine on Janet to go to church, that green on your red hair, that'll look finer than all the fine ladies down in London and their powders and paints and their gowns, and so I bought it.” That wasn't exactly what had happened, but it was indeed how he had thought. “Barnabus helped,” he added, lamely, though the man was dead and couldn't call him out, “I didn't want to at first because of the cost of it and then…”

He couldn't speak anymore and he saw something glittering in her eyes before they reeled backwards onto the bed again and the hat was nearly crushed.

Outside Red Sandy tipped his head at the closed door. “Is Sergeant Dodd no' finished yet?” Bessie's Andrew was saying. “Ah wanted tae ask him about Blackie…”

“Ye've no style at all,” said Red Sandy, “Get oot of it, the man's back fra London and discussing matters wi' his wife and ye want tae bother him about a hobby?”

Bessie's Andrew looked bewildered for a moment and then looked sly. “Och,” he said, “Is he no' finished yet?”

Both of them listened. “No,” said Red Sandy, raising his voice slightly. “Ah think he's still busy.”

Bessie's Andrew was standing there like a lummock with his mouth slightly open.

“Oot!” said Red Sandy and he went, while Red Sandy went back to his whittling on a bit of firewood.

After the hat had been rescued and dusted off, Dodd watched while Janet tried it on in front of the piece of mirror she had found. She wasn't a woman who liked fripperies and yet there she was, tilting it one way and then the other to see which looked better.

“Ye like it?” Dodd was surprised. What Barnabus had said looked like it was true. “Even though it cost twenty-five shillings?”

She shook her head and grinned. “Well,” she said, “I'd like it more if ye'd reived it o' course, but I like it fine as it is. What else did ye get down South? A pot o' gold?”

Was now the time to tell her or should he keep it quiet still? It was a serious business and changed everything and nothing.

“Ay, I did. In a way.”

She sat down next to him on the bed. “Och, what?”

He thought he should tell her the story of how he came by it and then he thought it would be simpler to tell her after, and so he reached in his smart wool doublet front and pulled out a leather packet, opened it, and took out the legal document. Gilsland had come to him from her after Will the Tod, her father, had acquired the leasehold in a mysterious way from the Carletons. Come to him—but he was a tenant-at-will, who owed rent. Or he had been.

“What's this?” Janet asked. “I can read the letters but not the words.”

She was an amazing woman, he thought, learning to read and all. “Nay, nor can I. It's in Latin. See that word there, it's “dedo” which means “I give.”

“And who gives what?” she was frowning now.

“Gilsland. That paper there is the deed to Gilsland. I…we own it now, freehold. There's ma name in Latin, see, Henricius Doddus.”

It suddenly struck him that he could even vote in an election for parliament now, or better still sell his vote to the highest bidder. Janet was staring at him, open-mouthed.

“We already own Gilsland…”

“Ay, but no' legally. We're tenants, we should pay rent.” She paused and then nodded slowly. “Tae the Earl of Cumberland, ay?”

“Ay. I think ma dad paid him something in the seventies.”

“Now we don't owe rent. We own it. We could sell it, we could…mortgage it, we can pass it to our children. The Courtier tellt me it doesnae matter so much now but when the old Queen dies and James of Scotland comes in, it could matter a lot that we own it.”

She looked down at it and spotted the signatures. The Earl of Cumberland's scrawl was there and next to it the graceful sweeping tropes of the Queen's signature.

“The Queen gave you this, Henry?”

“Ay,” he said, thinking of the Queen's red hair and snapping black eyes and how he hadn't known who she was. “I met her twice and the second time she give me that.”

“But why, Henry? Why would she do that? You haven't got the money…”

“Och no, I saved her life…” he explained. “It's a wee bit complicated but there was a petard under her coach and I pit the fuse out.”

She took a sudden breath. “You put the fuse out?”

“Ay, it was lit and a' and I cut the coal off the match with ma iron cap and emptied the chamber o' powder and so it was all right.”

Suddenly her arms were round him so tight he could hardly breathe. “Jesu, Henry!”

“Ay, what of it, Janet?”

“You could have been blown to pieces.”

“Ay, but I wasn't. And she gi' me that.”

He didn't understand why she had tears in her eyes for something in the past that hadn't happened anyway, but he liked it when she held him too tight so he let her.

“Och dinna fret Janet, it coulda happened any time, oot on the Border or in a tower or something, and me nae better for it after than a bit of a Warden's fee.”

She laughed then and folded the paper up again and put it in the leather pouch and gave it back to him with her colour high in her cheeks.

“We'll keep that safe and tell nae one.”

“Ay, I think so too. Though the Courtier says it has to be entered in the rolls and he'll see tae it.”

They looked at each other for a while. “Ye went down South my ain Henry Dodd, Land Sergeant of Gilsland, but what have ye come back as,” said Janet slowly, “Is it a lord, mebbe, wi' all the fancy foreign people ye know.”

“Sir Henry Dodd,” said Dodd and laughed at the sound of it. Janet didn't laugh, though.

“Could be ye'll end as that, ay.”

“Och come on, Janet, the sea will a' run dry and the land turn tae haggis before that'll come aboot.”

She was doing something to him that he liked while she was busy with her other hand, unlacing her bodice. Now her kirtle came off with a heave and she had to leave off while she undid the strings of her petticoats and then again with her stays and her shift under that and there she was in all her pale, freckled glory with her cap off and the London hat perched sideways again on her red curls. Dodd took in a deep breath at the sight. He'd imagined it often enough down in London but this was much better because he could smell that smell of warm woman and he could cup her breasts and take a taste and listen to the fast beating of her heart and start counting her freckles again. He never counted more than twenty of them because he always got distracted. Dodd was tired but not too tired and for a miracle the hat survived the next ten minutes as well, making it a three-times lucky hat, only slightly dented from the pillow.

Outside Red Sandy shook his head and grinned and wished he'd had a bet about it with Bangtail. That was a wonder and all, the way miserable Henry was still as smitten with Janet as he had been as a young man and she was working for her dowry in the castle. It was hard to know why there wasn't a whole string of sons and daughters considering they'd been married nearly ten years.