The Bear Pit

by S. G. MacLean

  *

  Seeker splashed cold water over his face from the ewer on the side table. The room was too hot already.

  ‘He must not get a chill or take a fever,’ Drake had said, as he’d finally left half an hour ago, after stitching and dressing Lawrence’s wounds. Lawrence had been too far gone to feel half of it, and what he had felt had been doused by liberal quantities of the best brandy to be got hold of, or what Seeker had been able to make him swallow, at any rate. ‘I must return to Knight Ryder Street to make up more medicines, but I will leave my sister here to nurse them – if you have no objection?’ Seeker had none. ‘My nephew will come back with the medicines, when they are ready, and I myself will return before suppertime.’

  The apothecary’s sister sat on the floor, not by Lawrence, who slept in the truckle bed of Seeker’s Whitehall apartment, but near the hearth, beside the dog’s head. Once she had cleaned Lawrence’s wounds for her brother to stitch, she had turned her attentions to Seeker’s dog.

  ‘Leave him,’ Seeker had said to her, his voice choked. ‘He’ll not mend.’ His pistol and powder were ready. There was a place down by the Garden Stairs that the dog had always liked to swim from. Seeker would carry him down there, once Drake and his sister were gone. But the woman had looked at the pistol, set out already on his desk, and put her hand over it. ‘No,’ she’d said. ‘He mend. I mend him.’

  She’d spent as long on the dog as Drake had spent on Lawrence, the boy going between them in response to murmured words of Hebrew. At times when Seeker was not needed to hold man or dog, he simply looked on, crushed by his own helplessness. Eventually Drake had said to him, ‘See to your business, Seeker. There’s nothing more you can do here, and you make me ill at ease, looming like that. Michal too, I think.’ But Michal, so recently arrived in England now that Cromwell had said the Jews might live here openly, hardly seemed aware of Seeker’s presence, so intent was she upon the animal. Seeker had gone and sat at his desk and begun to write his report of the night’s events. He was pressing down too hard, though, and had split three quills before he had them into Thomas Bushell’s house.

  That had been an hour ago, and now as Drake was leaving, satisfied that he had done all that could be done for Lawrence, Seeker asked him, ‘What are his chances, do you think?’

  Drake had merely furrowed his brow. ‘Who knows? Only God. I have given him a draught to make him sleep and obscure the pain. We will have a better idea when he wakes.’ And then he had left, and Lawrence, sleeping soundly now in clean linen, hadn’t stirred. When the laundry woman had seen Lawrence’s clothes, soaked through with so much of his blood, she’d said there was nothing for it but to burn them.

  Seeker went to stand over the dog for a moment. He wanted to stroke him, but there was hardly a place on the beast that was not shaved and bandaged or would not hurt. There’d been almost as much blood from the dog’s ripped ear as there had been from Lawrence Ingolby’s arm and leg, but Drake had told him that was because Lawrence had come so much nearer to death than had the dog. ‘The blood was hardly moving in him. A few minutes more, and it would have stopped.’

  The report from Proctor’s men contained little good news. The breeder’s compound on the marsh had been deserted, by man and dogs both. There had been no sign, either, of Thomas Faithly. Proctor offered to take a fresh party out on the marsh, now that daylight had broken, but Seeker told him not to bother. They hadn’t the resources, and it would like as not be a waste of time anyway. The fact that Faithly had not been found alongside his badly injured companion suggested two things to Seeker. Firstly, Thomas Faithly was still alive, and secondly, he was no longer on Lambeth Marsh. What exactly the pair had been doing there in the first place, when Lawrence had been supposed to be sleeping soundly in Seeker’s lodging on Knight Ryder Street with Elias Ellingworth keeping watch over him, was another thing altogether.

  ‘One thing at a time,’ Seeker said to himself, ‘one thing at a time.’ The first thing would be to work out what had happened to Thomas Faithly.

  Calling for someone to bring some breakfast, he sat back down at his desk and pulled from the pile to his right all the reports he had from Sir Thomas. As an afterthought, he reached to another pile and picked up that written by Andrew Marvell, detailing the evening at Lady Ranelagh’s house which the poet and Sir Thomas had attended, and which Seeker had not yet had the time to read.

  It was a long report. Marvell had clearly been determined to miss out nothing. All the names Seeker would have expected to attend one of Lady Ranelagh’s gatherings were there, a mix of Republicans and old Royalists, brought together by more interests now than had separated them before. Science, music, philosophy. ‘Hardly one of them that works for a living,’ he murmured to himself, before reading on.

  ‘Sorry?’

  The woman’s voice startled Seeker. He had forgotten Drake’s sister was still there. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just talking to myself.’

  She nodded, while appearing unconvinced, and after laying her hand upon Lawrence’s forehead and wrist, returned her attention to the dog. To his further discomfort, Seeker noticed the crumbs and apple core on the now otherwise empty plate at his elbow. He cleared his throat awkwardly.

  ‘Ahm, are you hungry?’

  She glanced at the empty plate and once again indulged her small, amused smile. ‘No, thank you, Captain. I am not hungry,’

  He returned to Marvell’s report. Marvell had managed to detach himself from his duties to Milton and insinuate himself into Faithly’s company at an early point in the evening. Faithly had drunk copiously and been very much at his ease, but given nothing of interest away, other than a dislike for John Evelyn and a great admiration for the Frenchwoman, Clémence Barguil. Marvell was fairly certain that their relationship went no further than admiration on his side and benign indifference on hers. All had been well until suddenly, something away on the other side of the room, in the entrance hall in fact, had taken Faithly’s attention. He had stood up abruptly, and left, cutting a determined swathe through the groups of people gathered there. Marvell had not been able to see anyone of possible interest in the direction that Faithly had been looking. Nobody but an elderly clockmaker, engaged in working upon Lady Ranelagh’s bell-tower clock, and even he had been gone by the time Marvell reached the hall.

  Seeker stood up. ‘If you need anything – anything at all, you tell him next door, and he’ll sort it for you.’ He jerked a thumb towards the door where his clerk worked.

  Michal looked towards the clerk’s room. ‘I understand.’

  Less than five minutes later, Seeker was crossing Horse Guards Yard. The Protector’s Horse Guard was already assembled.

  ‘His Highness going out riding this morning, is he?’

  The captain nodded. ‘Hyde Park. And if it’s off, you can be the one to inform him this time. He’s talked of little else for days.’

  ‘No, you can go on ahead. Just make sure you stick to the park, and whatever else you do, don’t think of going anywhere near Lambeth.’

  The man laughed. ‘It’s the other direction, Seeker.’

  ‘I know that. But I’m telling you – no matter what he says in the next few days, steer clear of south of the river, until you have my say-so.’

  ‘Understood. Fancy coming out with us?’

  One or two of the captain’s men looked so uncomfortable at this prospect that Seeker was almost tempted to say ‘yes’. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had Acheron out for a good run in the park, but his horse was exhausted from the night’s adventures, and he’d be taking another from the stables today.

  ‘If I could, but I’ve got other places to be this morning.’

  ‘Ah, come on, Seeker. Where’s better than the park on a morning like this?’

  Seeker sighed. ‘I doubt it’ll be Clerkenwell.’

  *

  On this visit to Trades
cant’s, Maria found herself drawn to the item said to be Anne Boleyn’s night veil. She had looked at it before, and been scared even to touch it. It was so light, like gossamer, and yet so dark, like the Boleyn’s dark heart, or so people had said. Now, she touched her fingers to the edge of the lace, imagined how the dead queen must have touched her fingers to it too. What had she seen, Anne Boleyn, through that gossamer filter? What had she hidden behind that veil? Not enough to save her. Maria had no veil – she had learned, this last year and a half, to make a mask of her own face. And she had no filter through which to look at the world. It had always been her lot to see the stark and solid truth of it. She’d seen the truth last night, in the Black Fox Tavern, and in the look on Dorcas Wells’s face when she’d come in. And she’d seen the truth in the eyes of the girl given out to be Dorcas’s niece. Damian’s eyes. He’d told her he had no past, whenever she’d asked him. ‘All I am is this, what you see, now, in front of you.’ Fool, fool that she had been. Fool to believe him. He could have told her anything, and it wouldn’t have mattered, but he hadn’t told her, because she hadn’t mattered enough.

  Maria let drop the edge of the veil. Elias had said dead queens were not what the people needed to read about just now. She went instead to the little box cabinet in which Mistress Tradescant had shown her the cherry stones, with faces carved upon them. ‘Two faces on each, that you might choose which one you prefer.’ Maria opened a small drawer in the cabinet, took out a stone, and chose her face.

  Sir Thomas was late this morning. He’d left the Black Fox so hurriedly last night, with that Yorkshireman, but the last thing he’d done before he’d left was to seek her assurance she would be here for their drawing lesson at Tradescant’s. Maria went to the window that looked out towards the orchards and rose gardens. Sir Thomas had spoken of the orchards at his home at Faithly. When she’d asked if there was also a rose garden, he’d said no, but he would plant one for her, whenever he should come at last into his inheritance. It was fresh and cold and clear outside, and the murk of London across the river couldn’t be seen from here. Her eyes caught for a moment the stone bench, with the winter jasmine growing against the wall behind it. Maria quickly looked away. She thought she might like to have a rose garden.

  She’d been standing there a while, looking out, when a movement in grey took her eye. Clémence Barguil. The French woman looked up to the window as if she had expected to find Maria there, and waved. Maria waved back. A month ago she had yet to set foot in Tradescant’s, and now a woman who had danced with the King was smiling up at her, and waving. She hardly recognised her own life any more.

  A few minutes later, the door to the curiosities room opened and Clémence came in, a little flushed from the exertion of climbing the stairs so quickly, and from what must have been an early morning ride, for Maria could see that she was still in her riding habit. Clémence’s hair was pulled back as tight as ever in a net beneath her hat, but her eyes were sparkling, even in the paltry glints from the low winter sun. She looked like a woman in love, Maria thought.

  Clémence took a step towards her, hesitated, then spoke. ‘Mistress Ellingworth. I am so pleased to find you here.’

  ‘You’re looking for me?’ Maria asked.

  ‘Just so,’ said Clémence, sitting down on a stool and taking a little moment to catch her breath. ‘Sir Thomas said you would be here.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Maria, ‘you have seen Sir Thomas?’

  ‘Just this morning, yes. He asked that I find you, and bring his apologies. He met with an accident last night, and cannot come here today.’

  ‘An accident? Is he badly hurt?’

  Clémence looked awkward. ‘He says not, but he is barely able to walk. He fell from his horse last night, and I think took a knock to the head. But still it was all I could do to prevent him coming here to see you himself.’

  ‘But that would be foolish,’ said Maria. ‘Has he seen a physician?’

  Clémence reached out and took her hand. The kid of her gloves was the softest Maria had ever felt. ‘He will not, but is very desirous to see you, Mistress Ellingworth, and I think he might listen to your advice, for he will not take mine. Will you come with me?’

  ‘To Deptford?’ Maria said. She knew that that was where Clémence Barguil was staying, at the home of John Evelyn.

  ‘Deptford? Oh no, he is much closer than that.’

  *

  Fish screwed up his eyes and looked into the distance. He had the better eyesight, though Cecil was the better shot. ‘They’re coming,’ he said.

  ‘Definitely them?’ Cecil asked.

  ‘Definitely.’

  Cecil looked harder. Yes, he could see something far in the distance too – the glint of their breastplates as the early sun caught them through the branches of the trees. And he could feel them, feel the increasing tremor through the ground, through his own horse’s legs, into his own. At their head, as always, Colonel Howard. Cecil felt his mouth twist at the sight of him. Howard, that had once been for the King, and now abandoned his loyalty for this usurper. And there he was, right in the middle of them, the usurper himself.

  ‘Ready?’ asked Fish, picking up the reins of his horse.

  Cecil adjusted his hat, his old favoured green hat, that had come off last night, battered now and besmirched by mud, its feather lost. Blood on it too. He would buy himself a new one, when this was over. ‘Ready,’ he said, moving his heels just slightly to set the horse forward at a walking pace. It was a magnificent animal – the best he had ever sat – and how much Boyes had paid for it he didn’t know. All he knew was that should he succeed today, Boyes had told him he might keep it.

  The group of horsemen was getting closer, and Cecil kept his eye on the one in the middle, the one that was Cromwell. But the plan was not that Cecil should approach Cromwell, try to get into that middle – he’d be cut to pieces before he got past the first horse. No, the plan was that Cromwell should come to him. ‘The finest judge of horseflesh in England,’ Boyes had said, for all he loathed the Protector. Hence Cecil was riding out into the park now on this finest of horses. ‘I’d stake my life on it, he’ll come after that horse, for a closer look,’ Boyes had said. And Boyes would have staked his life on it, as well. But Boyes’s life was worth more than Cecil’s, Cecil was almost certain of that now, and so he had insisted that it would be he who would be the bait to draw Oliver Cromwell away from his guards.

  They had their mounts going at a gentle canter, and the Horse Guard came closer. A hundred yards away now. ‘Wait till it’s fifty,’ Boyes had said. ‘Close enough for Cromwell to see the horse, too far for them to be able to catch him.’

  They counted silently, he and Fish, counted down to almost fifty, then Fish said, ‘Now!’ and that was it, heels into his horse’s flank, a bit of the spur and it flew. Cecil had rarely felt such power beneath him. Cromwell’s horse would have to be a Pegasus to catch them. Cecil hardly dared turn to glance behind him. Already Fish was falling back, unable to keep up, but yes! There, amongst the thunder of hooves, steel and leather, a finer horse than even that on which Cecil rode emerged from the crowd, a true Pegasus, and upon him God’s own Englishman. Cecil could let the horse have its head, for Cromwell would catch them, and the Horse Guard be too far behind, until it was too late. He bent further over the animal’s neck and they shot towards the copse as had been planned. Fish would be peeling off now, to ride around and open the further gate, beyond the trees, for Cecil’s escape.

  The closer they got to the trees, the closer Cecil could hear coming the hooves of the Lord Protector’s horse. Another thirty yards, another twenty. And then Cecil started to slow his horse, got it to veer to the right, to turn, and stop. The edge of the wood was behind him now. In front of him, having eased to a slow trot, was Oliver Cromwell.

  Something happened in Cecil’s stomach. Not the nausea from the fatigue of last night, but something deeper,
like when he had been a boy, standing at the edge of a waterfall, and his brother had urged him to jump. He had jumped, and the shock and the cold of the clear, rushing water had been magnificent. Cecil had fought for the King from the start, never a notion in his head for Republic, never an ounce of respect for the title Lord Protector. But here before him was something more; here before him was Oliver Cromwell. Naseby, Marston Moor, Worcester, Dunbar. Here the victor, the Lord General, who had made himself invincible. Here, he had heard him called it, our Chief of Men. The shock was again cold and clear, and overpowering. At Cecil’s right hand, the knife that he was to have plunged into Cromwell’s neck remained sheathed, the pistol that he might, if required, have had recourse to remained in his belt, and Cecil found himself bowing his head before this man of flesh and blood, this specimen, bewarted as he was, of human greatness.

  The Horse Guard was coming closer, and Cecil hardly knew what answers he gave about the horse. Cromwell got down from his own, the better to examine it, and Cecil did likewise, as was right in the presence of Highness. In a moment they were surrounded, and Cromwell calling upon his men to admire the horse’s fine flank, his good teeth, the hold of its head. Colonel Howard had come closest to Cecil, and never looked at the horse once, for that he was keeping his eye so exactly upon Cecil and the weapons that hung from his belt.

  Ten minutes. Ten minutes of England’s time and Cromwell was back on his horse, his Horse Guard around him like a Roman phalanx, and riding away, the colonel’s eye still on Cecil, and Cecil’s feet still planted on the ground, the knife never taken out of its sheath.

  Fish had been waiting in the trees. Cold fury was written on his face. ‘What have you done?’ he said.

  ‘You don’t understand. You didn’t see him.’

  ‘Oh, but I do. I saw him and I saw you. And I understand what must be done now, what Boyes, you and I will have to do. There is no option, now. And then we’ll see Oliver Cromwell, all three of us, in Hell.’