The Bear Pit

by S. G. MacLean

  Seeker stopped him. ‘I’m not interested in your hurt pride. Had they anything to say about this?’ He thrust a hand towards the body on the floor.

  Faithly still refused to look again. ‘Nothing. Nor anything near it.’

  ‘Right. There’ll be a justice of the peace to see to you by dinnertime. I’ve already paid the warder for your keep. You’ll meet me the day after tomorrow, early, the usual place and I’ll give you further instructions.’

  The luckless gamblers having been returned to the Clink until such time as the local justice had the leisure to attend to them, Seeker called at last for the cart to carry the bloodied remains of the dead man to the Westminster coroner, under whose jurisdiction they lay. Left alone in the now empty outbuilding, he thought again of the horrific scene that must have unfolded here only the day before. It made little enough sense, that a man could have been lured to such a place, unseen. It made even less that a wild beast of the size of one of the Bankside bears could have been brought here without being seen or heard. And yet it had happened, all of it. He determined on finding out who that man had been, and what it was in his life that had brought him to such a terrible end. The earth beneath where the body had lain was dark and sticky, and the bloody iron smell of it reminded Seeker too much of things he had encountered after battle and would rather forget. He would be glad to leave this place. He opened the door, and as he turned to take one last look around him, something light and insubstantial shifted slightly in the draught of air from outside. Seeker walked over to the edge of the stain on the ground beneath where the man had lain, and crouched down. The light and insubstantial thing was a small piece of paper, like a ticket or receipt. Off-white, it was stained a dull brown at the edge, where blood had soaked in before drying. He reached out a hand and gently lifted it from the earth, giving a slight tug where the bloodied part had stuck. Going over to the door, he held the paper up to the light. On it there was a rough stamp in the form of a clock face, and beneath it the letters ‘D.K.’ and the previous day’s date.

  ‘I think you have left me a message, my friend,’ said Seeker, putting the scrap in his pocket and walking back out into the yard.

  Three

  The Yorkshireman

  Boyes checked that the door behind him was firmly bolted. ‘You are sure the information is good?’ he asked.

  Fish nodded. ‘Certain. I paid good money for it on the promise of more to come. All that is required of us is vigilance, and a little patience.’

  Boyes, who had had many occasions in his life to learn both, said nothing, but crossed to the window to look out over the Hammersmith street. Fish and Cecil had been lodged in the upper room of this coach house for over a week now, that they might further their enterprise. The street below was narrow, and entered on a bend just as it passed beneath their window. Fish appeared to know London’s every nook and cranny, and again, as had been the case on their previous attempt on the usurper’s life, he had chosen their vantage point well. Oliver was known to travel this way on occasion, on his journeys between Whitehall and Hampton Court. It would be a fine thing, thought Boyes, a fitting thing that Cromwell, who had mastered armies of thousands, only to descend to a life of luxury and idleness he had not been born to, should at last be brought low here, on this drab thoroughfare, as he trundled his way from one palace that was not rightfully his to another. Boyes pictured him in the carriage, imagined him looking out onto the street, where mortal men and women walked. Would he wave, Boyes wondered, Cromwell, as the carriage slowed to negotiate the narrow bend beneath them? Boyes would like to be there, on the street, watching the man in the carriage as Cecil released the catch on his contraption and opened fire. He would like to see the look on Oliver Cromwell’s face when he saw that it was him standing there.

  One, two, three . . . seven blasts of shot from the seven guns mounted and rigged together on that frame to fire simultaneously. Cecil had been dubious at first and Fish intrigued, as Boyes had explained his idea to them. It was his own refinement of machines he had seen put to use elsewhere, adapted to this place and to their special purpose. There would be collateral damage, innocent victims, but that could not be helped: theirs was a higher, a sacred purpose.

  The coach house was next to an inn of no account, and the innkeeper more than happy to accept a generous fee for the sole use of this spacious upper room. Not too much, not so much as would cause suspicion, but enough to secure it without interference or question. Fish had made plain to the innkeeper that the services of the chambermaid would not be required.

  Eight days they had been here, waiting for intelligence from Fish’s source, John Toope, member of Cromwell’s Life Guard. Today, at last, it had come. Whilst Boyes, in the various disguises to which his life had accustomed him, saw to his business around London, making other things ready, one or other of Fish and Cecil had remained in this room at all times, the door well bolted. Early this morning, Boyes had received the coded message that told him he should come today.

  Now he turned away from his surveillance of the street. ‘Two days from now?’

  Fish nodded. ‘In the afternoon.’

  ‘Who’ll be travelling with him?’

  Fish shrugged. ‘His wife. A daughter, probably. Does it matter?’

  Boyes shook his head. ‘Not greatly. The son would have been good.’

  ‘The son’s not our concern,’ said Fish, the Leveller. ‘They’ll never make a dynasty of Dick Cromwell.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Boyes. It did not seem worth his while saying to this man that dynasties had been built on worse. He didn’t expect to have any more dealings with Mr Fish once they had achieved this present enterprise, and he was confident he could deal with the matter of Richard Cromwell himself, should that become necessary.

  There was nothing to do here now but wait. For Boyes, there was business still to attend to elsewhere, but he was not inclined to set out on an empty stomach. He and Fish went down to the parlour of the inn, and whilst he ordered a morning draught and a dish of kippers, Fish made a show of returning to the upper room of the coach house with a pot of beer and some watery porridge for Cecil, whom they had given out to be unwell, and not to be disturbed. As Fish was going back out on to the street, the innkeeper’s wife called after him, ‘Mr Fish?’

  He turned around. ‘Yes, Mistress Swann?’

  ‘Should I call at the apothecary, for a cordial for Mr Cecil? Some concoction that might ease his belly? It would be no trouble.’

  Fish shook his head. ‘No, thank you, mistress. A little of your good porridge and peace and quiet will soon put him to rights. If you would see to it that he is not disturbed.’

  ‘Some chance of that in this place,’ muttered a man Boyes had noticed when first they’d come into the parlour. He made it his business to notice anyone who might notice him. The grumbler was a young man, aged around twenty-five, perhaps, with a pale face and straggly brown hair that gave the appearance of having been chopped, rather than properly cut, and certainly no effort had been made to dress it. The man’s clothes were well made though, if drab, and despite the studied disgruntlement, there was something in his expression that suggested humour.

  ‘You are not pleased with your lodging, friend?’ said Boyes, offering the young man a broad smile.

  The man amended his disgruntled look slightly. ‘Nothing wrong with the lodging, cleaner than some and the ale’s all right. But the noise! It never stops – carts, carriages, sheep, cows, chickens, pedlars, washerwomen and I don’t know what else. Have they nothing to do but travel back and forth? Can they not just stay in one place and be?’

  ‘You’ve never visited London before, have you, friend?’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ replied the younger man with emphasis, as if defending himself from an accusation.

  ‘I fear you will find the city, where all these travellers are bound, a good deal worse than Hammersmith. You
are also bound for the city, I’d wager?’

  The young man nodded somewhat glumly. ‘Inns of Chancery. My master has sent me down to learn all the things he’s no time for. I should have been there last night, but I took a wrong turn and ended up here.’

  Boyes looked at him carefully. It was such a foolish story for the fellow’s presence here that it was probably true. ‘And where has your good master sent you down to the Inns of Chancery from?’ he asked.

  The young man straightened himself, looked Boyes levelly in the eye and said, almost as if offering him a challenge, ‘Yorkshire.’

  Four

  The Clerkenwell Clockmaker

  Seeker found Thomas Pride in his offices at St James’s Palace. Pride, High Sheriff of Surrey and Commissioner of the Peace for London, was a haberdasher by trade. There were rumours that he slept in the bed in St James’s Palace that had once been the King’s. Seeker’s response to any who whispered it within his hearing was to tell them that Colonel Pride merited a good night’s sleep in that bed, for his service to the state, as its previous occupant had not. And yet it was an unspoken disappointment to Seeker that Pride, alongside whom he had once fought, should so have lowered himself as to take up the trappings of those whose regime they had fought to end. It was a cause of unease between them, where in years gone by there had been none.

  ‘Seeker!’ said Pride as soon as he spied him through the door to the anteroom of his chamber. ‘Come in, Captain, come in. You’ll be here on Mr Thurloe’s business, I suppose?’

  ‘No, Colonel. It’s something outside of Mr Thurloe’s purview.’

  Pride raised an eyebrow. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I came across it by chance in a raid last night, on a gaming house on Bankside.’

  ‘With Sergeant Proctor?’

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  Pride nodded. ‘I ordered the raid. I’ll have the pestilence of gambling in this Commonwealth stamped out, come what may. I’ll cleanse Bankside of its loose living or I’ll have the whole place thrown into the Thames.’ The prospect appeared to give him a great deal of satisfaction. ‘So you went out on it too?’

  ‘Old times’ sake, sir.’ Seeker nodded towards the door through which Pride’s secretary could be seen. ‘I’ve spent that long with a pen in my hand and a pile of papers in front of me this last while, I thought I was maybe getting rusty.’

  Pride laughed out loud. ‘We’ll all go to the bottom of the Thames before you get rusty, Seeker. And you remembered what to do?’

  ‘Oh, aye, sir. But – it was afterwards. Once we’d sent the culprits off to the Clink.’ And he told Pride about the outbuilding, and what he had found there.

  Pride’s face hardened as he listened.

  ‘It’s not possible. I had them all shot.’

  ‘I know. But I’m certain, sir, it was a bear did that, no other beast.’

  Pride didn’t waste any more time suggesting to Seeker that he might be mistaken. Instead, he went to the door of his chamber and roared at the top of his voice, ‘Mowbray! I want Sergeant Mowbray in here right now!’

  It was not until several minutes later that a man whose uniform had evidently been thrown on in haste appeared at the colonel’s door and stood to attention. ‘You sent for me, Colonel?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Mowbray. I sent for you. Now you will explain to the captain here, and to me, how it is that he could have come across the half-eaten body of a man in a hovel on Bankside.’

  Every last suggestion of colour drained from the man’s pockmarked face. He opened his mouth, but ventured no words.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Pride.

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘Do you not? Then tell the captain what you do know. Tell him what happened that day in February that we took six men and muskets to the Bear Garden at the Hope.’

  Mowbray’s eyes moved furiously from side to side, and then he appeared to be trying to study his own forehead. He ran a tongue across his bottom lip. ‘Well, Colonel, as you know, we got the bears by the nose, joined them through the rings like you ordered and chained them together.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then we lined them up and shot them, sir, at your command. Six or seven of them.’

  ‘Apart from the cub.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The man nodded eagerly. ‘Apart from the cub. You said yourself, sir, as it was as yet innocent of bestial depravity.’ He attempted sympathy. ‘To think it has eaten a man. The savagery of beasts, sir. Thanks to God are we raised above them.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll be raised very high indeed, Sergeant, if I don’t have the truth from you.’ Now Pride turned to Seeker. ‘What you found, Captain, might that have been done by a cub?’

  ‘Only if that cub was a good two foot bigger than me,’ said Seeker.

  Pride thumped his hand down on his desk, disturbing the papers there and almost knocking over the inkpot. ‘That cub was sold to a travelling showman, and was dancing its way round Ireland last anyone heard of it. It would hardly be big enough yet to take off a man’s hand, never mind half his head, even if it has got any teeth left. The truth, Mowbray. I’ll have it this very minute.’

  Mowbray was terrified. It took several attempts before he succeeded in mastering his tongue. ‘It was a fellow supposed to be a philosopher, or a follower of the new science or some such thing. He wanted to keep one of them back, the bears, as a curiosity, and for study.’

  Pride’s face was almost purple. ‘As a curiosity? Do you remember what happened at the Hope last year, Mowbray? Do you remember why we had to shoot those bears?’

  Mowbray lowered his eyes.

  A second thump. ‘You will answer me.’

  Mowbray’s voice was scarcely audible. ‘Because of the child, sir.’

  ‘That’s right. Because a young child fell into the bear pit from the viewing scaffold and was killed. And how much more than the price of the life of a child, did this philosopher pay you?’

  Mowbray looked as if he might attempt to deny having profited from the exchange, but then saw the folly of such a course. He looked at his feet and mumbled something.

  ‘Speak up, man,’ ordered Pride.

  ‘Twenty shillings.’

  ‘Twenty shillings. You value the life of a child at twenty shillings.’

  ‘Child, no, Colonel. Surely, you said it was a man’s body the captain there found—’

  Pride stopped him. ‘You’re a disgrace to the army.’ Then he addressed Seeker. ‘Take this man away, Captain. I’m going to have him court-martialled.’

  ‘Colonel . . .’

  ‘Enough, Mowbray. You’ll tell the captain everything you know about this philosopher you sold that beast to, and if you’re lucky, you might end your few remaining days guarding an Irish peat bog instead of up against a wall, in front of a squad of my musketeers. Do I make myself clear?’

  A torrent of obsequy signalled Mowbray’s understanding.

  Half an hour later, Seeker was walking out of St James’s Palace, having consigned Mowbray to solitary confinement until such time as he would face his court martial. The shiftless sergeant had told him little of any use. He had never met the alleged man of science, ‘the philosopher’ to whom the bear had been sold, all contact having been carried out through intermediaries, faceless, nameless characters of the sort that were ten a penny in the liberties and suburbs. A covered wagon had come for the beast, which had already been sufficiently sedated by a preparation provided in advance by the philosopher. They’d hauled the animal onto the wagon, under cover of sacking, and had moved off along Bankside, heading towards London Bridge. Not down behind the arena, no; towards the city. The men driving the cart had paid him what had been agreed and he’d watched them till they were out of sight, fearing they’d cross the colonel’s path on the way. He knew nothing more about them and he’d never seen nor heard of men no
r animal since.

  ‘“Man of science.”’ Pride had scoffed at the idea. ‘The fellow’s running an illicit bear-baiting ring somewhere.’ But Seeker hadn’t been so sure. If the authorities could sniff out a game of cards in an unremarkable house in Bankside such as Thomas Faithly had been caught in, they would surely have heard of illicit bear-baiting. And the animal had been taken away from Southwark. Where to? Where was this philosopher, and why had he brought the animal back to Bankside? There was no more to be got from Mowbray. The answers would have to be found elsewhere, Seeker thought, in the story of the dead man, and in what he had left behind.

  *

  Seeker seldom went to Clerkenwell by choice. The very air of the place seemed to retain an echo of the cowled figures who’d given the place its name. St James’s, St John’s, St Bartholomew’s, the Charterhouse. The place had swarmed with monks until such time as Thomas Cromwell had told them to walk elsewhere, and to take their mumbled prayers and chantings with them. The monks might be long gone, but the poor and the sick still came, and the alleyways and courtyards between the houses of the wealthy were filled with the shabby, makeshift dwellings of those the city had no room for.

  St Sepulchre’s, creeping northwards up Saffron Hill, was the worst. But Seeker wasn’t going to St Sepulchre’s today. Instead, he tied up his horse, Acheron, in Turk’s Head Yard and continued on foot towards St John’s. Ahead of him, the streets thinned out, there were more gardens to be seen, and beyond them glimpses of the countryside as it was pushed back towards the sanctuary of Islington. Near the top of St John’s Lane he could see the signs of three clockmakers, but a close scrutiny soon revealed that only the second matched the rough stamp on the ticket he had retrieved from the bloodied clothes of the Bankside victim.

  He went to the door under the sign of a clock with the letters ‘D’ and ‘K’ marked into the bottom corners. Inside, the front shop was small, maybe seven feet deep in all and just as narrow, with a workbench at which the clockmaker sat. Upon the wall ticked a variety of clocks, most weighted, a few in the old style with only the one hand telling the hour across its face, but others with two. The jarring of their mechanisms was out of time, a background cacophony that Seeker wondered did not drive the clockmaker mad. In his boyhood, in the woods and on the moors of the north, Seeker had learned to tell the hour by the quality of light, the length of shadows or position of the stars, the behaviour of animal and birds. Now, in the city, with its endless church bells, it hardly seemed to him worth the trouble of keeping a timepiece, but many clearly did.