‘Oh, you of all people must know – the sorts of things you poets are always going on about. Wine. Gardens. Music. Love.’ He leaned in closer, though without lowering his voice sufficiently for Marvell’s liking. ‘I mean, surely Seeker has a woman?’
Marvell coughed on his punch and set down the exquisite Austrian crystal cup he had been drinking from. ‘It is – ahm – not something I have considered.’ His own voice fell to a near-whisper. ‘It is probably better not to ask about such things.’
Faithly leaned back, disappointed. ‘Ah well. But it is not good for a man not to be in love, don’t you think?’
‘You are in love? With Mademoiselle Barguil?’ enquired Marvell, hoping he was steering the conversation onto safer ground.
‘I believe I am,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘But not with Clémence. I have met the most astonishing woman, Marvell. She haunts my dreams. I have travelled Europe and . . .’
Marvell was not entirely listening. Too often, he found himself the object of such confidences, and he had long lost any real interest in them. But suddenly, he became aware that his companion had stopped talking.
‘Are you ill, Sir Thomas?’ he asked, looking round for the biddable footman or a suitably empty receptacle.
‘What?’ asked Faithly, distracted. ‘No, no. I am perfectly well.’ But without any further address to Andrew Marvell he stood up and walked away through the crowd, ignoring any greetings that came his way, out of the reception room and eventually disappeared into the entrance hall of Lady Ranelagh’s fine house. Andrew Marvell did not see him again that night.
Sixteen
Clifford’s Inn
Lawrence lay with his hands behind his head, looking up at the stains and cracks in the plasterwork above him, and at the spiders at work in the cobwebs spanning the cross beams of the ceiling. The branches of the great elm outside his window cast eerie shadows in the light through the casement. It was gone midnight; the bells of Clifford’s and all the other chapels of the Inns of Court and Chancery round about had told him that, quite insistently, some time ago.
‘You’ll get used to them, eventually – the bells,’ Elias Ellingworth had assured him as Lawrence had yawned his way through their first learned discussion together. It wasn’t the sound of the bells that was keeping Lawrence awake tonight though. It wasn’t even Seeker’s warning about the men from Hammersmith – though that had been plain enough to make him take the precaution of bolting his door, locking his window and making sure he had his knife beneath his bolster. A simple Scottish dudgeon dagger, serviceable and easily hidden, that Matthew had given him before he’d left for London.
Lawrence shouldn’t have come to London. Matthew wouldn’t have insisted upon it. He would have let him go to Leiden, or Utrecht or wherever he’d wanted. But when Matthew had suggested London, and the Inns of Chancery, Lawrence, like a fool, had said yes. Maybe before Manon he wouldn’t have done.
He wasn’t certain how it had happened, or even exactly when it had happened. It hadn’t been that first time they’d met, that was for sure: she’d been a terrified child, hiding in an upper room in an inn high on the moors, and he the bemused companion of Damian Seeker, sent into the inn to find her. Perhaps it had been later that day, as the sun was going down over Blakey Ridge, setting earth and sky aglow, when he’d glanced out from an upper window of the Lion Inn and seen that same girl sat on a bench beside Damian Seeker and somehow rendering Seeker a mortal man, like any other. The girl had smiled and said something, and the mortal man had laughed, and a crack had appeared in the carapace where Lawrence had carefully stashed his heart. Just a crack.
The next day, he’d glanced over at her once or twice as they’d ridden away from the Lion Inn and down off Blakey Ridge, and he’d seen in the way she possessed herself as she sat her horse, in her strong, clear face, that she wasn’t quite a child. But Seeker had kept her almost out of view as they rode, and shielded her from any conversation but his own. And then it hadn’t been long after they’d arrived back at Faithly Manor that Seeker had taken her away, down to the village, and the next day to York, and at last to London. Lawrence had watched her ride away from Faithly Manor and patched over the crack in the carapace. He’d told himself to forget he’d ever known a girl called Manon.
But then the letters had started to come. Letters from Manon, in London, to Orpah, Matthew Pullan’s soft-hearted, simple-minded housekeeper. Poor Orpah, who could speak to the animals and claimed to understand every sound or movement they made in response, could not read a word that was written, and had taken her letters to Lawrence, with a plea that he would read them to her and write down her replies. How long had it been, Lawrence wondered, before he’d started adding in little things from himself, things that he thought Manon might like to know of, that Orpah would never consider? How long before the letters coming back from London were as much for himself as they were for Orpah? He had them all, here, in a packet locked away in the drawer of his writing desk. The black shadow of a branch moved gently to and fro across the panels of his ceiling, driven by the light, invisible wind: Lawrence could no more have said ‘no’ to coming to London than that branch could say no to the wind.
And then there was Damian Seeker. Seeker had been gruff at any enquiry about the girl. He’d been protective of her, but in the same way as he was protective of his horse, or, in London, his dog. Lawrence had wondered who Manon might be to Seeker, but Seeker had made it plain he would give him no answer. And so he had come to London, and he’d sought out the Black Fox as soon afterwards as he was able to, and found her there. Knowing she was going by his own name, Ingolby, he’d blurted out that he was her brother. Could he not have said cousin, second cousin, at least? But too late, and he had called himself her brother. And then Damian Seeker had come in and made plain he was not happy even with that. Seeker’s warnings about Manon were the warnings only one type of man would give about a girl. And at last, today, she had confirmed it, saying it without thinking, and not even noticing she had done so.
He saw again her face, the mild amusement in her eyes. ‘You’re just like my father.’ And he’d known it then, said it: ‘Seeker.’ She hadn’t contradicted him, hadn’t even realised she shouldn’t have said it.
Lawrence scrunched up his eyes and let out a long groan. Of all the bad hands fate had dealt him, and there had been a few, this was surely the worst: how could it be that he had fallen in love with Damian Seeker’s daughter?
He must have slept, for it was to a new, deeper darkness that he awoke, and a deeper silence. The evening and late-night sounds of Clifford’s – murmurs of voices, snatches of songs, servants bustling back and forth along the corridors, old lawyers grumbling – had given way to the special silence of the night. Beyond that silence, out in the courtyard and gardens of Clifford’s, he could hear the flying and creeping things that shunned the day, and he could have imagined himself back in his chamber at Faithly Manor, listening to the creatures of the woods and the moor assert their nocturnal dominion. But here, in this room, if he listened harder, further along through the archways, down the alleyways and out at the gate he could hear the occasional footfall of those whose business was conducted by night. He was no longer at Faithly Manor.
Outside his door, the old wood of the corridors and doorways creaked a little, as if Clifford’s itself was having trouble settling to its own sleep. There was a heaviness to the silence beyond the creaks, like a presence. As Lawrence listened, that heaviness grew, and he knew for a certainty that he was not alone.
Slowly, and as silently as he could manage, Lawrence slid his right hand underneath his pillow, and brought out his dagger, which he just as silently unsheathed. He felt the chill air of the chamber touch his skin as he drew back the bed-covers and quietly swung his legs over and out of the bed. For a moment, he sat there, his feet firm on the bare wooden floor, staring at the door, whose contours came more clearly into his view as he did
so. Lawrence stared at the handle, waiting for it to turn, convinced there was a presence on the other side of that door. He could feel the presence. Seeker’s warning came back to him. His mind darted around a moment, and then he settled on what seemed the only possible plan. He would stand against the wall, so that he was behind the door as it opened, and thus take his assailant by surprise as he entered. The knife would do the rest. Two men he had seen in the breakfast parlour of that Hammersmith inn, and yet he felt the presence of only one, and against that one, he did not mind his chances. Lawrence gripped the fluted oak hilt of his knife all the tighter, and began to raise himself up from the bed. And then his room exploded.
Before he could turn around towards the glass shattering behind him, Lawrence felt a hard loop of rope come down over his head to his neck. He tried to call out, but was silenced by the crashing of a fist to the side of his face. Another explosion, this time of the wood in the door to his chamber and he felt a jolt at his neck, and the rope around it begin to hoist him into the air. Lawrence struggled, dropping his knife and putting his hands to the noose in a desperate attempt to free himself. The breath was being choked out of him as the rope burned his skin. The higher it pulled him towards the beam over which it had been slung, the more Lawrence kicked. And the worse the choking got. Lawrence could feel his eyes bulge; he was scarcely conscious of the huge mass stumbling towards him through the shattered door. There was a moment’s confusion and hesitation before two strong arms reached out from the sides of the mass and gripped him under the arms, holding him up as a familiar voice bellowed for help. A scrambling noise and a sudden sharper tug at the rope and Lawrence saw only vibrant colour, felt death rush away with him, and then looseness, before a fall, and finally, subsidence. The two strong arms were beneath him now, the rope slack, and Damian Seeker, looming over him, was laying him carefully down on his bed.
*
‘Don’t try to speak,’ Seeker said for the second time in as many minutes.
The physician, who had been greatly disgruntled at being roused from his bed at such an hour, finished applying the poultice that had been made up in the inn’s kitchens.
‘The captain is right,’ he said. ‘Your throat will feel raw for a good while.’ He handed Seeker the script he had quickly scrawled. ‘You should have these powders fetched from the apothecary in the morning, and see that he swallows them down, in accordance with my instructions. The poultice should be changed daily for a week, and the salve applied. You will have my bill by dinnertime.’
And then the physician was gone, and the porter with him. The porter had been in something of a quandary as to what to do about the door to Lawrence’s chamber after he had stepped through the smashed centre of it and back out into the hall. He stretched a hand towards the handle, which was hanging loose on its barrel, as if he might attempt to close the broken skeleton of the door behind himself.
‘Leave it,’ Seeker said with impatience, and the man did.
Now there remained three of them in the devastated room: Seeker, Lawrence, and Elias Ellingworth.
‘Well, Captain,’ began Elias, who had been first to the door at Seeker’s calls for help, ‘should I ask what any of this means? For I am sure it must mean something, I am just at a loss to know what.’
‘You should start by telling me what you’re doing here.’
‘Doing? Well, when I heard the smashing of the door and the rumpus coming from this room, I thought I should hasten to see if someone was being murdered. Which it appears they were.’
Lawrence opened his mouth as if to say something, but at a glance from Seeker, shut it again.
‘I meant,’ said Seeker, channelling more patience than he felt, ‘what are you doing here, at Clifford’s? I thought you stopped the night with your sister, at Dove Court.’
Still surveying the shattered room Elias said, ‘Usually, I do. But sometimes there is a late supper, or debate that goes on to an hour that would have me in trouble with the men of the watch should I try to make my way back in at the city gates afterwards, so I stay here.’
‘And what of your sister?’
‘My sister, as I’m sure you will recall from the many occasions you had me incarcerated in one of London’s more secure establishments, is well used to seeing to herself, and not in need of anybody’s protection.’
Seeker was working himself up to a suitable response when a pained clearing of Lawrence Ingolby’s throat recalled them both to the present.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Well, you’ll remember I told you Ingolby here had told me something it wouldn’t do well for people to know he’d told me?’
Elias gave a drawn-out, ‘Yes.’
‘Seems someone did find out that he’d been talking to me and took it into their heads to make sure he couldn’t tell me any more, or at least identify them if ever I should lay my hands on them.’
‘And you just happened to be here to see them off? Have you been waiting outside his door every night?’
Lawrence swept an astonished look from Elias over to Seeker, and raised his own eyebrows as if to ask the same question.
‘No I have not,’ replied Seeker. ‘Better things to do with my time than act nursemaid to this one on the off-chance he’s set off an assassin. I just received some intelligence earlier this evening that suggested the attempt would be made tonight.’
Lawrence’s eyes widened to their greatest extent and some sort of indignant squawk issued from his throat. ‘I did warn you,’ Seeker said. ‘But too late. You’d already walked right into a trap, carrying your own flag, just in case they didn’t spot you.’
Elias righted the only chair in Lawrence’s room and sat down. ‘How did you come by this intelligence?’
Seeker stared at him. How had it come to this, that Elias Ellingworth expected he would discuss such a thing with him? ‘I may have gone soft, Ellingworth,’ he said, ‘but I haven’t actually lost my mind. What in the name of all that’s holy makes you think I’d start telling you where I get my information?’
Ellingworth’s face fell a little. ‘I just . . .’
‘What?’ said Seeker, ‘thought I might like to give you a few titbits for your news-sheet?’ He shook his head. ‘Oh, no. We’re not there yet, not by a long shot, nor ever will be. Now take a tip from Ingolby there and keep quiet a minute. I need to think.’
Seeker looked around the room. The shattered door, half off its hinges, its wood splintered into a mess of lethal shards, he could ignore. He had only meant to force the lock, but he seemed to have demolished the entire door and damaged its frame too in the process. Well, it could be mended. It was the window, though, that most interested him. Holding up the lamp Ellingworth had brought, he stepped across the room, glass crunching under his boots. The window had been forced open from the outside. Ingolby’s chamber was three floors up from the ground. How his assailant had reached to such a height was no mystery: the rope that had first been attached to the lower branches of the great elm in the courtyard, and then slung over a beam for a noose to the law student’s neck, before finally being employed in the would-be murderer’s escape, still dangled down the outer side of the wall. It was anchored by the bedpost around which Seeker had flung it when he had got it off Ingolby’s neck. Seeker had rarely come across such ingenuity. He looked more closely at the shattered casement and felt a shiver of cold night air as he plucked the grey goose feather that had caught there. If it hadn’t been for Manon, Lawrence Ingolby would be dead now.
*
He should have gone up to the Black Fox sooner, but every time this week that he’d set out, he’d turned back again, telling himself that he hadn’t the time. These last few months he’d let himself almost believe in the possibilities of that world he found when he went beyond the private parlour door of the tavern. They’d spent hours there, just him and Manon, talking and not talking, making up the losses of the years. He’d tel
l her of his own family – mother, father, sister, brother – dead now or scattered he knew not where. They’d even talk, sometimes, of how, an itinerant carpenter, he’d met her mother, and he would tell her of the house he’d built for the winter times, and of their summer travelling, and the cradle he had carved for her with his own hands. Then he and Manon would stop, not long after the cradle, before the shadow of Caleb Turner fell on their clearing, and they’d go on to talk of the doings of the Black Fox, or what Manon had learned of London. Sometimes she would tell him of things she had taught Dorcas – uses of herbs, ways of dressing game – that Dorcas had not known before, and that Manon had learned of necessity in her long years on the road with her mother and Turner. Of the rags of their separate pasts, they’d woven together something new in which to clothe themselves.
Seeker would often whittle at pieces of wood as they talked, and Manon would watch him, entranced by the dexterity of those enormous hands. It would often be a figure of a person, or an animal, once or twice something from the very rare occasions he risked going out with her in London, he in his carpenter’s garb. Once, he’d taken her to the garden of a crumbling Royalist mansion on the Strand. Amongst the overgrown lawns and roses run wild, they had found marbles, statues from so far away and long ago they could neither of them properly comprehend it. One in particular had entranced Manon, a figure of a girl who was out hunting, with a quiver of bows across her back, and a small greyhound dog at her feet. ‘What do you think the dog’s name is?’ she’d asked him. It wasn’t the kind of thing he’d normally consider, but eventually, casting around him for inspiration in that neglected, overgrown Royalist garden, he’d settled on ‘Nettles’. The name had delighted Manon and she’d chattered about Nettles all the way back to the Black Fox. That night, he’d carved her a dog, a greyhound, the best he’d ever done.
Seeker always set what he had been working on down on the floor by his chair at the end of the night, and never looked at it again. He’d learned from Dorcas that Manon would gather up the pieces next morning, and put them in a small basket she kept under her bed. When Dorcas had asked her about it she’d said, ‘My father is making a family, but I don’t think he knows it.’
The Bear Pit Page 18
