The Bear Pit

by S. G. MacLean

  Seeker nodded towards the woman. ‘Your daughter?’

  Tradescant raised his eyebrows and shook his head. ‘Frances is married these ten years, in the city, and has her own household to run. That’s Mademoiselle Barguil, a Frenchwoman here to advise Mr Evelyn on the design of his gardens at Deptford.’

  Seeker looked over again. There was something not quite right though, in her intense concentration on her work, in the fact that she had almost made a point of not looking up when they’d entered: he felt she was more aware of their presence than she would have them believe. He lowered his voice. ‘John Evelyn has her keep long hours, it seems. It’s a fair way up river from Sayes Court, for a young woman to be here so early, and on her own.’

  ‘She’s usually escorted here – an acquaintance of Mr Evelyn’s, Sir Thomas Faithly, but she came especially early today to arrange for some packages to be sent away with the carrier.’

  Seeker frowned. ‘To Sayes Court?’

  ‘Sayes Court? Oh, no. Orders for Sayes Court can be sent down to Deptford at almost any time. These are orders – bulbs, rose roots, seeds and the like – for gentlemen in the north and the Midlands.’

  ‘Bit late for bulbs, isn’t it? Roses should be planted by now too.’

  Tradescant nodded his agreement. ‘It’s out of my hands, though, Captain. I’ve come to observe that there are some gentlemen who prefer to take their own advice, and not that of a humble labourer.’

  ‘A fool and his money are soon parted,’ said Seeker. He’d seen it himself, often enough, in his carpentering days. ‘Can they not get what they need closer to hand?

  Tradescant laughed. ‘Perhaps what they need, but not what they want. Tulips and roses put in too late are the least of it: your northern gentleman would grow orange trees, have his own lemons and pomegranates. Let his neighbour have the Rose of York; he will have the Rose of Muscovy. My father scoured Europe, to Russia itself, in search of species and varieties. I myself have been to the Caribbean and the new world.’ He waved a hand around the utilitarian shed. ‘From here, I’ve done business with nurserymen in the royal gardens of Paris and Brussels, with traders in the Canaries. We have connections that were begun when my father worked for Lord Cecil and King James was still on the throne. Mademoiselle Barguil undertakes to fill commissions for many of her friends and for Mr Evelyn’s acquaintances who live far from London but who would have the best all the same. I think they like to pretend nothing has changed.’ His expression said what they both knew – everything had changed. ‘We’ve a carrier going to Hull from Gravesend tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘Is that right?’ said Seeker. Faithly had put it somewhere in his report that Clémence Barguil was sourcing plants at Tradescant’s for friends and acquaintances of John Evelyn, but Seeker hadn’t considered that she might be involved in the sending as well as the finding of these items. He’d need to have enquiries made at Gravesend about what exactly was in those shipments going north. Oranges, pomegranates, or something else?

  But he hadn’t come here to talk about fruit. ‘There was a soldier here yesterday, a member of the Lord Protector’s Life Guard of Foot, according to your boys down there. Seems he was talking to a man who appeared to have come here with two others – one with a green felt hat and another, a north country gentleman who gave himself out as their employer. What were they doing here?’

  Tradescant went to his order book. ‘I was working out in the orchard most of the day, and had no dealings with customers. I’ll see if there’s anything in the order book.’ He opened the book and made a face of displeasure. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said, before pushing the book across to Seeker.

  Seeker scanned the entry Tradescant had had his finger on, once and then once again, before slamming shut the covers. ‘“Alterus MacDuff. Thane of Fife.” What idiot wrote this?’

  ‘It would have been Edward, the lad I left in charge in here yesterday. He’s working in the hothouse this morning.’ He took the ledger back from Seeker. ‘You can hardly blame a gardener’s boy, Captain, in these your Puritan days, for that he doesn’t know the works of William Shakespeare. Enough for me that he can read and write. I daresay he thought “Thane of Fife” was a place.’

  Tradescant was right. How should a gardener’s boy, with dirt still under his nails and hardly a trace of a beard on his chin, not be taken in by one so cleverly, openly almost, proclaiming himself the avenger of a murdered king? Whoever was behind this conspiracy was no ordinary adversary and he was laughing at anyone who might come looking for him. Seeker felt a tension creeping across his head, like a metal band that was starting to tighten. He had come here to ask about bear’s teeth or claws and found instead the unmistakable traces of Cecil, Fish and Boyes. He needed to get back to Whitehall.

  ‘One more thing,’ he said as he gathered up his gloves. ‘Over in the house there you keep a cabinet of curiosities.’

  Tradescant nodded.

  ‘And I daresay you get folk now and again offering you stuff for it, at a price.’

  Another nod. ‘Now and again.’

  ‘Anyone offered you a bear’s tooth, claw, anything like that, of late?’

  As Tradescant shook his head, Seeker noticed that the pen in the hand of Clémence Barguil paused in its motion across the page, just for a short moment, before it recommenced its journey. He’d need to ask Sir Thomas Faithly a few more questions about that young woman.

  Despite the winter chill in the air, and the first flakes of a light snow, Tradescant’s gardens were far from bare. As he made his way back down to Tradescant’s stable, where he’d left Acheron, Seeker stopped a moment to examine a small yellow flower growing on straggly, leafless stems up the side of the stone wall by the path. It looked so delicate a thing, to withstand the north winds from which it had no shelter, yet it seemed to thrive. There was something defiant in it. He stooped to touch the dainty yellow head of one of the flowers, fearful it might break off under the pressure, but it was resilient. He took out his knife and carefully cut a thin green stem, thinking to go back and ask John Tradescant what it was. He’d like to plant it somewhere for his daughter.

  As he nicked the stem, a voice behind him said, ‘A gift, Captain?’ He stood, motionless, almost afraid to turn around.

  ‘Maria?’

  Then he did turn, feeling such a rush of warmth to see her there he was hard put not to reach out and take hold of her. ‘Maria,’ he repeated. ‘I didn’t think to see you here today.’

  ‘I hardly think you would. You have more to take up your time than considering my movements.’ She looked at the stem in his hand. ‘I hope Mistress Wells will like the token.’

  He too looked down at it. ‘It . . . it isn’t for Dorcas.’

  There. He’d said the name, an acknowledgement, and the very articulation seemed a barb to her. Her face fell, the defiance left her eyes and she looked away. ‘Well, I must not keep you, at any rate. Excuse me, Captain . . .’

  She turned and began to walk away, and he felt panic rising in him. ‘Maria!’ he called, loud enough that the two apprentices stopped in their digging again. Then more quietly as she stopped. ‘Maria, please.’

  He saw her shoulders set, and she turned around. ‘What, Damian? What is it you want of me?’

  ‘I . . .’ What could he tell her – that he wanted to be another man and this to be another time? That he wanted to wipe out every mistake he had made, every wrong thing he had said, and just hold her, one more time? He hadn’t the words for any of it, and stood helplessly with his hands by his side.

  ‘Whatever you wanted of me, Damian,’ she said, tears brimming in her eyes through her anger, ‘you might have had, but you walked away because you did not want it.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t see me, Maria, before I went to Yorkshire. You must know that I tried.’

  ‘And when you came back? How hard did you try when you came back? I
looked for you, ran through the streets like a harlot trying to find you when word came that you were back in London. And I didn’t find you because you had gone to Dorcas Wells!’

  Seeker felt the stem drop from his fingers, felt nausea in his stomach. ‘I didn’t know,’ he said, his voice hollow.

  As she looked back at him some of the anger seemed to leave her face. ‘And would it have mattered if you had?’ she said at last, almost inaudible.

  ‘Mattered? Oh, yes, Maria, it would have mattered.’

  They stood looking at each other for a moment, one as hopeless as the other. Then Seeker knew that regardless of the consequences, he had to take this one chance. She was looking up at him and heedless of the gardener’s boys or whoever else might observe them, he took a step towards her, reaching out his hand.

  ‘Maria, you must know I could never—’

  ‘Maria?’

  Maria froze and Seeker let his hand drop. Thomas Faithly.

  ‘Ah, Maria, there you are.’ He came and stood very close to her, something proprietorial in his proximity.

  Seeker looked at Maria and saw in her eyes all that he needed to know. He had left it too late. He took a step back. ‘Faithly.’

  ‘Captain.’ Thomas Faithly’s face took on a stony look. ‘I trust you are not subjecting Mistress Ellingworth to harassment over her brother’s publication. It can hardly trouble your great Cromwell that a young woman should sketch an item or two for the interest of her fellow city-dwellers.’

  ‘No,’ said Seeker, stepped back a pace now, ‘I doubt that it would. Mistress Ellingworth is free to make her own choices. I’ll bid you both good day.’ Nodding briskly to Maria, he stepped past Thomas Faithly and walked away, and did not see her bend down to pick up the fallen stem of winter jasmine.

  *

  By the time Seeker was back in his office in Whitehall, he was still scarcely capable of putting together one coherent thought. If anyone had asked him, he would have had no recollection of riding away from Tradescant’s, taking the ferry back across the river or leaving his horse at the stables, and it was only when he became conscious that his clerk was standing in front of him, a concerned look on his face and evidently repeating something he had already said, that he recalled himself properly to his surroundings.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  His clerk, looking relieved, handed him the paper he was holding and explained again. ‘It came an hour ago, from John Drake, the apothecary.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ said Seeker, forcing himself to focus on the business of the day. Before opening the note he said, ‘Have a man on a fast horse sent down to Gravesend, with orders to open and inspect any packages sent this morning from Tradescant’s garden in Lambeth for shipping north.’ Then he sat behind his desk and opened the note.

  Drake’s script was so near-illegible that it might as well have been in code, but Seeker’s eye was well-accustomed to it, and it didn’t take him long to decipher the salient phrase. Discreet enquiries amongst some alchemical friends suggest that the man calling himself ‘Mr Mulberry’ is, in fact, the mining engineer, Thomas Bushell. In a moment Seeker was on his feet again, calling for Thomas Bushell’s file to be brought to him.

  Bushell was well over sixty years old. As a boy, he’d been page to Francis Bacon, and was reputed to have learned many scientific secrets from the Lord Chancellor. On the wrong side in the late wars, he’d had charge of the royal mines in Wales, and of the mint at Oxford under the King. He’d held Lundy Island against Parliament until 1647 and then been forced into hiding abroad over some treacherous publications for which he should have hanged. But the Protectorate needed Bushell: it needed his knowledge of mines, and his expertise. Four years ago, he’d given security for his good behaviour and made his peace with Parliament. And now he again held the lease of the Crown mines, this time from Oliver himself.

  So why should Bushell, thus rehabilitated, hide his visits to John Evelyn’s laboratory, and masquerade by another name? And what had he been doing at a disreputable dog-breeder’s compound in the middle of Lambeth Marsh, in the middle of the night? Seeker was uneasy. Secretive behaviour by a known Royalist with a good knowledge of explosives could only suggest he was engaged upon something that, if discovered, might lose him his licences, his liberty, or possibly, his life. And then Seeker came to the last page of the intelligence record, which reported a rumour that had been circulating for a good long while: Thomas Bushell had never left England for the continent when he’d gone into hiding. He had lived, secretly and for years, in his own house, on Lambeth Marsh.

  Nineteen

  A Supper at the Black Fox

  Andrew Marvell was not quite sure how he had found himself in this situation, nor, indeed, what its precise nature was. He considered the matter as Thomas Faithly chattered all through the city on their way up to the Black Fox, throwing in the occasional response of affirmation or sympathy as Faithly’s tone dipped or rose.

  As Sir Thomas spoke, Marvell arranged the problem in his mind. He was on his way to take supper at the Black Fox, on Broad Street, at the invitation of Sir Thomas Faithly. This much was plain, and might appear to the casual observer to be simple enough. But whilst Marvell was often an observer, his interest was rarely casual, and he knew his situation was not simple in the least. Sir Thomas Faithly was in the pay of Thurloe’s intelligence service, and under the control of Damian Seeker. Sir Thomas did not know that Marvell also acted, from time to time, in Thurloe’s service and at the direction of Seeker. Neither did Sir Thomas know that Marvell had made his acquaintance at Lady Ranelagh’s house on Seeker’s express instructions. And now Sir Thomas had, of his own volition, invited Marvell to accompany him to supper. Did Seeker know? Had he authorised it? If so, why had he not told Marvell of it himself? Those were the questions, and none of them were questions Marvell could ask Thomas Faithly.

  Still, it was an opportunity, and not one that he should miss. ‘I was very pleased to receive your note today, Sir Thomas. After your sudden departure from Lady Ranelagh’s I feared I had said something to offend you.’

  Faithly looked a little uneasy, just for a moment, but then put an arm around Marvell’s shoulders. ‘Oh, you know how it is, Marvell: one moment you are happily carousing with a friend, not a care in the world, and the next your stomach threatens revolution upon you, and you must dash for safety.’ He raised his eyebrows and gritted his teeth in a grim smile. ‘I’m afraid by the time my revolution was over, my suit was sadly besmirched, and I not fit for decent company.’

  Marvell had seen men aplenty taken by the sudden need to vomit, and the look on Thomas Faithly’s face had not been as theirs usually were. No, Faithly had seen something, across the crowded reception hall of Lady Ranelagh’s house, that had drained the blood from his face and made him forget everything else around him. All Marvell could see in that direction was an old clockmaker, attending to the large bell-tower clock in the hall, which Marvell hadn’t even noticed had stopped. When Faithly had got up suddenly and left Marvell, to cut through the swathes of people in that hall, he’d looked neither left nor right, but kept his gaze fixed on whatever it was that he’d seen. He hadn’t staggered or stumbled, and he most certainly hadn’t looked backwards, for if he had done, he would have seen Andrew Marvell following him. And Andrew Marvell had been gaining on him, and would have caught up with him, had it not been for the importunity of the Frenchwoman, Clémence Barguil, who’d insisted on having his opinion of some plant she intended for John Evelyn’s garden, and a flustered Marvell had lost sight of Thomas Faithly.

  But tonight, as they made their way to the Black Fox, Thomas Faithly was talking about something else, and Marvell resolved to be on his guard to notice things. To that end, he decided he should pay attention to what Sir Thomas was actually saying.

  ‘. . . to dispel any doubts her brother might yet entertain.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Sir Thoma
s. The racket of those butchers’ boys has near enough rendered me deaf, and I have hardly caught a word.’ They were almost at the end of Pentecost Lane, and the rowdiness of the apprentices of St Nicholas Shambles as they hurled abuse at each other whilst scrubbing down and closing up their masters’ booths and shop-fronts was considerable.

  ‘It’s her brother,’ Thomas Faithly repeated, more loudly this time. ‘To accept me as a client is one thing, but to trust me with his sister quite another. I fear he still harbours some doubts about my loyalties and leanings. There are those amongst the Republicans who believe once for the King, always for the King.’

  Marvell began to understand now that his own presence tonight had been secured in the hope of bolstering Sir Thomas’s new-found Republican credentials.

  ‘It is known that you are an associate of Mr Milton, and you have been tutor to Cromwell’s own ward. I’m certain that to be able to present you as my friend will do a great deal to raise my credibility in the eyes of her brother.’ Sir Thomas lowered his voice. ‘Between you and me, Marvell, my Republican friends are few and far between, and it seems her brother was until lately of the more radical Republican persuasion, almost a Levelling tendency.’

  Marvell’s mouth pursed in distaste. ‘You don’t want to get caught up with the Levellers, Faithly. You’d have no hope of getting your family lands back with them.’

  ‘No, no. But as I say, he has distanced himself from them of late, and taken a line more in accordance with the views of the government. You’ll know his news-sheet, The London Lark, I’m sure.’

  Marvell did not know it. New publications, weekly and twice-weekly news-sheets, were like weeds in the cracks of an old well – they appeared, flourished for a day or two, and then died and were seen no more, their seeds blown on the wind to land and spring up elsewhere. ‘I’ve been out of the country a long time. I haven’t yet had the chance to become familiar with all the new newsbooks.’