Elias nodded. ‘Got in there just in time. Half a minute more and Ingolby would have been dead.’
‘But Damian was not hurt?’
Elias gave her a rueful smile. ‘I have just told you my pupil was less than a moment from death, and all your concern is for Seeker? Rest assured, sister, that hulk of Yorkshire granite demolished all around him without a scratch to his own person. Two hundred years old at least, that door was, and now it’s hardly fit for kindling.’
Maria looked down, bemused by the broken pieces of earthenware at her feet. ‘And the assailant?’
‘Escaped, out the window. Seeker couldn’t go after him until he had Lawrence safely down without snapping his neck or choking the last of the life out of him. He seems to have a better idea of who he’s looking for now, though.’ He shook his head, smiling. ‘I can’t believe you think that anything could touch Seeker.’
Could it not? thought Maria. She remembered almost a year ago, when he had finally returned from his exile in Yorkshire. She had heard the rumour first from Kent’s: Seeker was back from the north, badly hurt, new scars from knife and musket ball, bones broken, flesh torn, dragging his right leg like a man just home from war. She’d run through the streets when they’d told her, tried to find him. Gone to Knight Ryder Street, to Drake’s. Sent the boy Gabriel from Kent’s to Whitehall looking for him, gone at last to the gardener’s hut at Lincoln’s Inn, where the young man who kept Seeker’s dog was to be found. And it was Nathaniel who had told her: Seeker was at the Black Fox, on Broad Street, being tended to by Dorcas Wells.
Maria bent to start picking up the broken shards of the pot. She looked at her own fingers, wondering if they might be cut by the sharp edges, as she sought to avoid their jagged points. Nothing could touch Seeker.
Elias appeared not have noticed her distraction, or the broken pot. He pushed aside the trencher she had set out for him, with its remnants of the bread and cold beef, to make room for his papers, then got up to rummage on the shelf above his bed for one of the new quills she had made up for him earlier.
‘I have a new client coming this evening,’ he announced.
If she had not already dropped the pot, Maria would probably have done so again. Elias’s clients were few and far between, and only those actually in hiding from the law came to their small dwelling at the top of the old house in Dove Court.
‘I thought you had decided to keep to the right side of the authorities from now on? Did you not say you would spread your views through subtlety, in papers that are permitted, rather than loudly in news-sheets which are not? What manner of client is this?’
‘Oh,’ said Elias, ‘one with no more intention of coming to the attention of Mr Thurloe than I have. He, like your chastened brother, has learned his lesson, and is anxious not to return to his former quarters on Tower Hill.’
‘Tower Hill? Who on earth are you bringing here, Elias? You cannot risk being sent there again yourself!’
Elias smiled. ‘A gentleman. Maria. My new client is a repentant Royalist who is desirous of changing his ways. He wishes to do nothing more than return to his home to lead a quiet English life. He has engaged me to assist him in trying to recover some of his family’s lands, in Yorkshire, that were lost to him through his poor choices during the war.’
Maria pulled out the stool across the table from him and sat down. ‘A Royalist? Elias, not three weeks ago, in this very room, with half a dozen of your oldest friends, you said there was no such thing as a repentant Royalist, and the only ones who slunk back to England claiming to be so were out only for themselves.’
He waved his quill at her. ‘Ah, but this one is different, Maria. He is genuinely chastened. And he lost much of his patrimony due to the duplicity of his brother – for it seems that it is not only good Republican women who have troublesome brothers.’
Maria felt herself warming. Elias always had a way of getting around her more cautious instincts.
‘And you know, he is a friend of Ingolby’s too – another Yorkshireman.’
‘Another . . .?’ Maria didn’t finish her sentence. She knew now who this new client of Elias’s was. She had thought Thomas Faithly had just been speaking nonsense, saying he would present himself to her brother as a client as a means of gaining Elias’s trust for – what? What did Thomas Faithly really want of her? What foolishness had she allowed herself to indulge in, to be charmed by the flattery and fine manners of a Cavalier? Maria stood up abruptly and put on her cloak.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Elias in surprise. ‘Don’t you wish to meet my new client?’
‘No, I, that is, I do not have the time, at the moment. I promised I would call on Grace.’
‘But I am just back from Kent’s,’ he said, ‘and Grace certainly made no mention of expecting you.’
Maria was fumbling at the ribbons of her hood. ‘She must have forg—’
But it was too late. The sound of footsteps coming up the stairs was followed by a firm knock on the door. As Elias went to answer it, Maria sank back down on her stool, her ribbons still undone.
*
‘A small estate,’ Faithly was saying, ‘left to me by my grandmother – my mother’s mother. I remember her as an ancient lady when I was still a boy, but I suppose she would have been fifty or so then. You see, I had already returned, and surrendered myself to the Protectorate, before she died. Do you think I have a chance?’
Elias nodded. ‘Assuredly. It may take some time, for the wheels of justice move slow at Chancery, but if you had already made your peace with the regime before you were even bequeathed the estate, and your grandmother gave the authorities no cause for concern?’
‘None,’ said Faithly. ‘She was the most dread Puritan I ever saw, and would never have left me the place had I remained with the King.’
‘Good, good,’ said Elias, ‘then you most certainly have a very strong case. But as to your patrimony . . .’
‘Oh, there is no hope of Faithly Manor. Had it not been for my brother’s duplicity and bad management . . . But, well, that is done now, and cannot be undone. The place is in the hands of another and I make no claim on it.’
Maria had retreated to the window overlooking the small back yard of Dove Court. After Sir Thomas had come in, and Elias begun to make the introductions, Sir Thomas had stopped him and told him they had already met. He had gone on to tell Elias a version of their acquaintance that, whilst it might not say everything, at least told no lies.
Thomas had not put on his fine velvet suit today, but a more sober, though still well made, affair of russet wool. Even so, in their small, bare apartment, his long, fair, Cavalier hair and his lively eye made a centre of warmth, and colour. The scars on his hands and the slight lines around his mouth and eyes alluded to stories yet to be told, that she could not help but feel intrigued by. He spoke with ease and humour of foreign towns, different peoples, their customs, their clothing, their incomprehension of English ways. He made them laugh. He made her laugh.
Elias had brought home a jug of good burgundy from the Mermaid, but an hour had not long passed before it was empty. So at ease was he with his new client, who was already halfway to becoming a friend, that Elias declared he would go back down to Bread Street for another. He didn’t seem to notice the look in his sister’s eyes that implored him not to go, and didn’t even let her finish her offer that she would go instead.
‘And what would Drake say, and others – and you will know of whom I speak – that lecture me night and day that I have no regard for your safety, if I were to send you out, alone, to a tavern at this time of night? No, you stay here with Sir Thomas, and I will brave the unruly streets alone.’
The door shut behind him, and she and Thomas watched each other as the sound of Elias’s steps faded down the stairs and disappeared onto the street. When at last it was certain her brother was gone, Sir Thomas took a step
towards her. Involuntarily, Maria shrank a little further back, but the window being just behind her, there was really no further she could go. Thomas stopped where he was. ‘Maria, do not fear me. Please, do not fear me. And I implore you, do not judge me by the reputation of those with whom I have associated.’
‘I don’t mean to,’ she said, her voice very quiet.
‘I told you I was determined to do things properly, so that your brother might not object to my presence around you, and I will not deceive him. I ask only that you believe what I feel now, here, for you, is utterly sincere.’ He took another step towards her. In the small attic room, he was now quite close, a foot away at most. She was aware of him looking down at her, but was scared to look up. He reached out his right hand and took hold of her left, holding it very lightly. ‘Tell me you believe me, Maria.’
She felt a wave of something – panic, excitement, fear – she didn’t know, that rendered her immobile. Thomas took one step more forward and passed his left arm around her waist, pulling her gently towards him. A slight movement of his foot crushed beneath it the one remaining piece of the broken salt pot she had missed, and rendered it dust.
Eighteen
Flowers Out of Season
Dawn was just creeping through the window of his room high above the Cockpit when Seeker put down the last of the reports from the Netherlands that he’d had lifted from the records room. This thing had been brewing for months – easy enough to see that now, when the plans were being put in to action, more difficult when their beginnings were just being mentioned amongst a hundred other things. And Thurloe had known it too. Seeker looked again at the copy of the letter, written six months ago by Thurloe to Henry Cromwell in Ireland:
The Spaniards, Cavaliers, Papists and Levellers are all come into a confederacy. What monstrous birth this womb will bring forth I cannot tell.
That was what had almost overwhelmed Thurloe: the enemy was everyone. Floods of intelligence had come from all corners of Europe, reports on every possible suspicious movement, so that those charged with bringing forth this ‘monstrous birth’, this murder of Oliver Cromwell, had managed to slip in under cover of the deluge. Thurloe could talk of confederacies, use terms – ‘Spaniards, Cavaliers, Papists, Levellers’ – investing those who went by them with a dignity and a cause that made them somehow stronger and more noble than they were. But Seeker knew these men for what they were: fallible individuals, ineffective killers who had huddled in the upper room of a coaching house in Hammersmith, for days on end; he sought, at the end of a frayed rope, the failed assassin of an insignificant Yorkshire law student. Seeker hunted not causes but men, flesh and bone, who had shown themselves capable of failure and prone to making mistakes. He sought Boyes, a man whose face, according to Ingolby, was younger than his demeanour would have onlookers believe him to be; he sought Fish, a man who’d rented modest tailor’s rooms on King Street and bought pies from a woman in Westminster; he sought Cecil, a man whose grand cause might yet be reduced to ashes by the wearing of a green felt hat that had lost its grey goose feather. These men would not be found in reports of clandestine meetings in Paris, Brussels, Madrid; they would be found amongst the heaving inns and cold corners of London’s lanes and alleys, and that was where his men were hunting them.
For himself, he was set for south of the river. His first port of call would be the George, in Southwark. The attempts on Cromwell had left him no time, up until now, to go south of the river to conduct his own enquiries into the death of Joseph Grindle, and the enquiries being made by Ingolby and Thomas Faithly were not progressing fast enough for his liking. Besides, he was becoming increasingly uncertain that he fully trusted Thomas Faithly, and what Drake had told him about seeing Faithly with Maria at Tradescant’s had done nothing to assuage his distrust.
*
The George was seething already, with travellers anxious to get on to their business in the city, taking their breakfast or their morning draught. The landlord himself was attending to the better-off patrons in the small parlour, and not best pleased to see a soldier evidently set on business at so early an hour. His face clouded over all the more when Seeker told him why he was there.
‘I told the folk that came looking for him – Joseph Grindle left and never paid his bill, so I’m in my rights to keep his belongings.’
‘Sold them already then, have you?’
‘Nothing worth selling, was there? Only thing he had worth selling was that old clock he took with him, saying he was going to have it mended. All he left here was a leather bag that had seen better days and a change of shift and hose.’
‘He’d been expecting to stay then?’
‘Another two days or so, as long as the clock took to be fixed. Didn’t speak about any other plans, apart from going into the city to look for a coffee house I’d mentioned – seemed to think he might know the fellow that ran it. Must have been that old game-legged fellow that came here with his family next day, looking for him and making such a fuss, but I told him: Joseph Grindle never came back here after that first morning.’
‘Had he spoken of going over to Bankside, asked about gaming houses, shown any interest in anything of that sort?’
The man shook his head. ‘Didn’t look the type at all. Sober, respectable sort. Canny with his money. Stayed in quiet the night he arrived, took an early supper, only drank moderate and didn’t converse with anyone out of the ordinary. Said he hadn’t been to London in many a long year. It was only when I was telling him about the coffee houses, and mentioned Kent’s on Birchin Lane, that he showed any interest in the sights of the town. Next morning he was up with the larks to go looking for his old friend. Left with that clock under his arm and that was the last I saw of him.’
Having viewed the room Grindle had slept in, established that the other two beds in it had been empty the night of Grindle’s stay, and got even less helpful answers from the chambermaid than he had done from the landlord, Seeker left the George and set off back for Whitehall. Taking the road that skirted the marsh, he resisted the temptation to cut across and see for himself the dog-breeder’s compound visited by Faithly and Ingolby. The sight of him taking too close an interest in the place might raise suspicions and put the pair in unnecessary danger. He thought back to the day after Grindle’s murder near the Bear Garden, when he had met Samuel Kent’s party making its way along this very road, to view the curiosities at Tradescant’s. He thought of Maria, and Thomas Faithly. Things that should be separate were getting mixed up in his head. Instead of carrying on to the horse ferry, Seeker turned Acheron towards South Lambeth.
By the time he was passing beneath the whalebone arch of Tradescant’s, Seeker was regretting having come here, but it was too late to turn back. He would ask Tradescant whether he had ever been offered bear’s teeth, claws or suchlike for his collection of curiosities, and then he would leave. Whether Maria was here, or Thomas Faithly either, could be no concern of his. At Tradescant’s stable he dismounted and left Acheron in the care of the lad there. A little way into the gardens he came upon two boys busied in digging out a drainage trench that had threatened to become clogged with fallen leaves and other debris. ‘Where’s your master, lads?’
The older of the two took the chance of respite from his digging to lean on the end of his shovel. He nodded towards a long hedge separating lawn from path, leading to an ornate iron gate. ‘Up there, working on the hawthorn, near the rose garden.’ His face took on a look of excitement. ‘Is there trouble?’
Seeker frowned. ‘Should there be?’
‘Two soldiers in two days. Sounds like trouble to me.’
‘Oh? What soldier was here yesterday then?’
The younger boy, who had now also stopped work, chimed in. ‘One of the Foot Guard – the Lord Protector’s. Came here yesterday and spoke to a man.’
But the older one shook his head and addressed his companion with scorn. ‘W
asn’t the Foot Guard, fool, it was the Horse Guard. I told you.’
But the younger one was determined on his point. ‘No, I tell you it was the Foot Guard. Grey coat, that’s the Foot Guard. Velvet collar and black lace. And he didn’t have a horse, either.’
‘You’re right,’ said Seeker, going a little closer to the younger boy. ‘The Foot Guard is grey. So what did he want here yesterday, this soldier?’
The boy shook his head. ‘Don’t know. He was just talking to a man, then went away.’
‘What kind of man?’ asked Seeker.
The boy thought a minute. ‘Ordinary. About your age, but smaller. Brown, grey hair. Gurn on his face.’
‘Wasn’t wearing a green felt hat, by any chance?’
The young boy shook his head, and turned back to his digging. ‘No. That was one of the fellows that was with him.’
*
Tradescant put down his cutters and removed his heavy leather gloves at Seeker’s approach.
‘Captain.’
He looked wary. Seeker knew him for a Royalist who had quietly worked at his trade through the wars and the beginnings of the Commonwealth without giving any concern to the authorities. John Tradescant and his father were men who’d raised themselves in the world through the work of their own hands, and when that world had turned upside-down, they’d just kept on working.
‘You’ll not be here to talk about roses,’ said Tradescant as Seeker drew up to him. He pushed up the sleeves of his coat and rolled back the plain cuffs of his shirt to reveal browned workman’s wrists and hands marked by the scars of their labour. Seeker felt this was a man with whom he could do business. ‘Warmer in there,’ Tradescant said, and Seeker followed him to a gardener’s hut nearby.
The hut was a long, thatched wooden structure with row upon row of shelves bearing hessian sacks in which Seeker assumed bulbs and roots were kept. Apart from at the far end of the structure, where a young woman appeared to be working on some ledgers, the place was very poorly lit.
The Bear Pit Page 20
