The Black Friar

by S. G. MacLean

  Dorislaus was laughing good-naturedly at an anecdote of something that had clearly outraged his companion. Neither man was in the army, nor ever had been, but both jumped to attention when Seeker’s shadow crossed the doorway. He motioned to them to sit back down. ‘Where is Secretary Meadowe?’ he asked.

  ‘Transcribing for Mr Milton. Do you wish me to interrupt him?’

  Seeker shook his head. ‘No. But when he’s free, ask him to find me anything he has relating to a man by the name of Goodwill Crowe.’

  Marvell was again rising from his seat. ‘The Fifth Monarchist?’

  ‘Yes, you know of him?’

  ‘We’ve taken some pamphlets in of late. The usual stuff. Printed by Giles Calvert and the like.’

  ‘Have them sent to my chambers, and any information you have on him or his associations.’

  Marvell nodded, pleased, and hurried off back to the Censor Office, to do Seeker’s bidding.

  ‘I doubt anything will have come your way . . .’ Seeker began to Dorislaus, but that young man was also on his feet.

  ‘Goodwill Crowe? Aldgate?’

  ‘That’s right. He has received post?’

  ‘Something,’ said Dorislaus, his forehead shaping to a frown as he tried to recall. ‘A pamphlet. Nothing much – as Andrew said, the usual stuff. I passed it on to Meadowe’s office.’

  ‘The address?’ said Seeker.

  ‘Something biblical. Golgotha? No.’ The frown deepened. ‘Gethsemane. They were directed to him at Gethsemane. It’s amongst some old drapers’ almshouses at the end of Woodruffe Lane, towards Tower Hill.’

  Seeker knew it: a likely enough place for Fifth Monarchists to gather – many of them had been clothworkers before the war, and those not still in the army had returned to their old trade. The clothworkers had their hall nearby on Mincing Lane, and Carter Blyth in his guise of Gideon Fell would no doubt have found work there amongst them without too much trouble.

  Seeker was about to leave, and then paused. ‘Has George Downing been asking questions around the postal office, of you, or Morland?’

  Dorislaus looked uncomfortable. ‘I think he has been trying to find out who Mr Thurloe is in contact with, in Charles Stuart’s court.’

  ‘And what have you told him?’

  Dorislaus shrugged. ‘The truth. It was not difficult. Only the Secretary knows the code names anyhow. Morland did say that we suspected the people we were in contact with of being avowed Royalists, but I don’t think Mr Downing found that amusing.’

  Seeker laughed.

  Dorislaus, emboldened, continued. ‘And I think he has been getting one of his clerks from the Exchequer to insinuate himself amongst us.’

  Seeker waited, interested.

  ‘But it will do him no good.’

  ‘You are on your guard against young clerks from the Exchequer?’

  ‘No, not that. Sam Pepys is very personable, though prone to too much drink and some lewdness. But the thing is, he likes Downing less than we do.’

  ‘Be careful what you say in front of him all the same, though,’ said Seeker. He resolved to have the Exchequer clerk looked into.

  As he turned to leave, Dorislaus asked, ‘Should we concern ourselves more closely with the Fifth Monarchy men, then?’

  ‘Concern yourselves with exactly what Secretary Meadowe tells you to concern yourself with. Besides, I think the Stuarts and their friends will be keeping you busy enough.’

  A happy smile illuminated Dorislaus’ delicate face. ‘If they but knew, Captain, if they but knew!’

  Five

  Gethsemane

  Seeker took a wherry from Whitehall Stairs down the river as far as Custom House Key. He considered Blackfriars as he passed. It told him nothing. That had been Carter Blyth’s ending – macabre and grotesque, a tableau in some grim, preposterous masque to entertain and divert those who might come upon it. And it would entertain and divert the people a while, as they swallowed down whatever outrage the vermin scribblers of a hundred news-sheets rushed to feed them – but it would not divert Seeker. The rotting Dominican robes would have been stripped away by now, and burned. Seeker had already stripped them from his mind, determined not to see Carter Blyth in death, but to look at him as he was in the last few weeks of life, as he took the steps that led him to that end in Blackfriars.

  Alighting at the quay, he told the boatman not to wait for him, and went by Tower Hill to Woodruffe Lane. The day was already darkening and candles were sending glints of golden light from windows in the Tower. A couple of naval officials making way to their offices on Seething Lane paused in their discussion of the new ship, the Naseby, to be named in honour of Cromwell’s greatest triumph, and nodded a greeting to him. Seeker could not help but wonder what the army might have done with the vast sums this vessel, aimed at conquering England’s rivals at sea, was rumoured to be costing. There were threats enough at home to contend with.

  The markets by the river were closing down for the day, and the feel of the streets changing. Business was ending, the hawkers finished touting their wares and the taverns becoming fuller. The cleansers were coming out from wherever they passed their daylight hours, to clear the debris of the day. All underfoot would be filthy again by dawn when the night-soil men would resume their thankless task. For now though, no one got in Seeker’s way.

  The almshouses were near the top of Woodruffe Lane, where Hart Street ran into Crutched Friars. To one side were the walls, in good solid stone, of what had once been the Friars’ Church, now a tenement for drapers and other clothworkers. The almshouses themselves were done in brick and timber. Over the arched entranceway to the courtyard, below the window of the master’s dwelling, where the chiselled arms of the founder had begun to wear away, hung a simple wooden sign bearing the legend Gethsemane.

  Seeker was aware of a movement of the shutter above him as he passed beneath the gatehouse into the courtyard. The sights and sounds of industry came from all sides of the square of fourteen identical cottages serving as dwellings and workshops. A pig was tethered in a pen, chickens pecked around its edges, and a cat observed him from the window ledge of one of the cottages. A boy was employed in chopping wood in a corner, a smaller child in stacking it into piles. Seeker walked towards a door from which he could hear the low and regular murmur of female voices. The two faces that turned to him when he pushed open the door were separated by a generation but little else. Mother and daughter were carding wool, a seam of joylessness in flesh and spirit running from one to the other and offering outsiders no welcome. He addressed himself to the older of the two. ‘Where will I find Goodwill Crowe?’

  Apprehension darted briefly across the younger woman’s eyes, and she glanced quickly at her mother before hurriedly turning her attention back to her carding. The older woman stood up and smoothed her apron. ‘What do you want with my husband?’

  ‘That’ll be for me to tell him. Where is he?’

  The woman addressed her daughter without taking her eyes from Seeker. ‘Patience, fetch your father.’

  The girl went to do as she was bid. She looked to be about sixteen or seventeen, but everything in her was a younger version of her mother. Not just in the sombre clothing, but in the plain, narrow features, pinched nose and chin, small eyes, like a bird’s. He could not tell the colour of their hair, covered by caps so tight against their skulls that not a wisp escaped. Thin lips, the mother’s colourless; what passed for bloom, which would soon be gone, Seeker thought, giving a little more warmth to the daughter’s features. The older woman was taller, and the hardness of her eyes allowed for no misconception: she didn’t fear him; she didn’t fear anyone.

  ‘This way.’ The mother went out into the courtyard and led the way across to another of the almshouse buildings. Smoke rose from the chimney of this one, but on entering, Seeker saw it was no cookhouse or family dwelling, but a meeting room with rushes on the floor, and plain benches set in a horseshoe around the fireplace. On either side of the firepla
ce was a simple wooden chair. Ten years of his life flooded from him, and he felt something in his stomach shift. Mistress Crowe pointed to the chairs. ‘Take one. My husband will be here presently.’

  ‘What manner of gathering is held here?’ asked Seeker, pushing back all thoughts but of the present.

  She considered him. ‘You said your business was with him,’ and walked out without saying anything else. Seeker stood before the fire and thought over the bones of the report on Elizabeth Crowe that Carter Blyth had made and sent to Thurloe with those on the other Fifth Monarchists he had encountered at St Pancras church. Woman preacher. Second wife to Crowe. No pamphleteering known, but preaching of the most virulent kind, and its direction against the Protector but thinly veiled. Uncompromising. Considered unturnable. That was always a key thing for Thurloe: could they be turned? So many of the agents in the Protectorate’s pay had begun believing in, serving, the other side. But a few days in the Tower, and a visit from Thurloe, who could often achieve with his soft voice and reasonable offers what the turn of the thumbscrew or the threat of the rack could not, had turned many of them. But no, even a moment’s acquaintance had told Seeker Blyth had been right about Elizabeth Crowe – she would not be turned. He thought the report might also have said cold, humourless, unpleasant to be in the vicinity of. How any man could marry himself such a wife was beyond Seeker’s comprehension.

  It was only a few minutes before Goodwill Crowe appeared. Seeker was not conscious of ever having seen him before, but he was the kind of man he always thought he knew: an army man, of average height, strong build, battle-worn face. Crowe looked to be a year or two older than Seeker, and a few younger than his wife. Coarse, greying brown hair roughly chopped to his shoulders. A beaten leather hat and jerkin, sturdy boots. Strong hands. He was the kind of man who had won the war for Parliament, for Cromwell. ‘Captain,’ he said.

  Seeker nodded.

  ‘You’re here about Gideon Fell.’

  Seeker was not surprised – he’d expected that the preacher from Soper Lane would have forewarned them. ‘Aye.’

  Crowe turned to his wife, who had followed him into the room. ‘Have the girl bring us some bread and ale.’

  ‘It’s for the meeting,’ she said.

  ‘Just bring it, woman.’

  Once she’d gone, Crowe sat and Seeker did likewise.

  ‘Tell me about Gideon Fell,’ said Seeker.

  Crowe took a moment, careful. ‘I haven’t seen Gideon Fell for over two weeks. He was here about a month, from about the start of December. He’d turned up one night at a meeting at St Pancras. Said he was a soldier. Discharged. He was of our belief, and we didn’t ask too many questions. He could work a shuttle well enough, and I had work to give him.’

  Seeker looked towards the window onto the courtyard. ‘You get many of his sort here?’

  ‘A few find their way to us,’ said Crowe. ‘It’s not so easy, when you leave the army, to go back to the life you had before.’ Seeker said nothing and Crowe continued. ‘They turn up looking for a bed and a day’s work, stay a few weeks most of them, then move on when they find something else or manage to get themselves into a regiment again.’

  ‘Do you hear from them again after that?’

  Crowe pursed his lips in thought. ‘Most of them go on to some other congregation of our sort, carry on the work of the Lord, making ready, and we hear of them now and again, see them if they’re back in London. One or two, we don’t hear of again.’

  Seeker didn’t need to ask about that ‘making ready’. He knew from Carter Blyth’s reports. The Fifth Monarchy men gathered regularly at the Artillery Yard by Spittal Fields and kept themselves in training, exercised their bodies and maintained their weapons and their skills, waiting for the word. The word that would tell them the time to rise up had come, the time to fight had come. He knew that at a word from Cromwell they would march on Paris, march on Rome, tear the great anti-Christ, that Whore of Babylon, from St Peter’s throne, as the Saints were bound to do. But Cromwell was not disposed as yet to give such a word, and many of the men Carter Blyth had been watching, inflamed as they were by the preaching of the likes of Elizabeth Crowe, were not disposed to wait much longer.

  ‘And what of Gideon Fell? Did you hear anything from him after he left here?’

  ‘Not a word.’

  ‘Had he told you he was going?’

  Another ‘no’, then a pause. ‘Though, I’ll tell you, I thought it strange he’d said nothing to Nathaniel.’

  ‘Your son?’

  ‘Aye. The boy’s simple. A judgement of the Lord on me, on his mother.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I have searched His judgements, but what can mortal man tell of the purposes of God? His mother was taken at his birth, and perhaps the sin was hers. Perhaps it was a chastisement to me, for that I had too great an affection for her – who can tell? He’s there, before my eyes, every day, and I strive to atone.’

  ‘Your wife is not this boy’s mother?’

  Crowe weighed his words. ‘She has been in the place of a mother to him. She has done her duty, as my wife. He has never hungered, nor gone without shelter and the word of God. And he has honoured her as his mother, as is right.’

  The boy might have fared worse, Seeker thought. He might also have fared better. ‘Why should Gideon Fell have told this child of his plans?’

  Crowe fixed him with a direct look, layers of practised godliness stripped away a moment, to reveal the man beneath. ‘Nathaniel isn’t a child. He’s twenty-two years old.’ Then he said in a lower voice, ‘Willing enough worker. God-fearing. Does no harm.’

  ‘And Gideon Fell?’

  Crowe shrugged. ‘Took a liking to the boy, so’s that Nathaniel trailed around everywhere after him. Fell even tried to teach him to read.’ Crowe shook his head at the uselessness of it.

  ‘And Fell didn’t tell him of any plans to leave?’

  ‘Not that I know. Mind you, I’m not certain that he did plan to leave. He hadn’t much to his name when he came to us, and most of that he’s left.’ He considered this and then said, ‘What’s your interest, Captain?’

  At that point, the door opened again and Patience Crowe came in bearing a tray with two mugs of ale and a trencher of bread. As she served Seeker she studiously avoided his eye. Seeker knew that look – one not of modesty, but fear. He waited until she was leaving before he answered Goodwill’s question.

  ‘Gideon Fell is dead. His body was found today.’

  Crowe’s face showed little reaction. ‘Where?’

  ‘Blackfriars.’

  Crowe sat back in his chair, took a sip of his ale, then rested the mug on his lap. ‘There was an old monk found today, I hear, at Blackfriars. Bricked into a wall.’

  Seeker said nothing, and Crowe nodded. ‘So there was more to Gideon than he chose to tell us, then.’

  ‘What did he tell you?’ asked Seeker.

  Crowe tore a piece of bread and passed it to Seeker. ‘That he’d been born in Norfolk, worked in the wool trade until the war. Fought for Parliament. Tried his luck overseas when the war ended. Came back when he saw how things here were shaping, after Cromwell shut down Barebones, came to stake the claim of the godly.’

  ‘You think yourselves more godly than the Lord Protector?’

  ‘There was a time there was none more godly, but he has forgotten, abandoned what was fought for, and he must heed his warning: “I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly.” ’

  The weaver’s face had taken on a completely different look; there was a clarity in his eyes that pierced Seeker.

  ‘Our claim is to this kingdom, that we might make it fit for the reign of Christ. We wait on Christ, we watch and we do not sleep. We looked for the government of the godly to prepare the way, but Cromwell has failed us. We have made this a new Gethsemane, where
we will wait on the Lord, watch with the Lord, and we will not fail him, we will not sleep.’

  Seeker thought of the drills at Spittal Fields Blyth had written of. He thought also of the attempt made on Oliver’s life in the wake of ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’. ‘You must know if you take up arms against the Protector, you will perish, every one.’

  Goodwill Crowe fixed Seeker with a look that was utterly uncompromising. ‘We have more in our armoury than guns and bullets. We pray. We preach. We educate the people in their rights, in the means by which their rights are denied by lawyers, judges, church priests, tithes. We challenge those who would set themselves up to rule where only God has right, who have overturned the assemblies of the Godly. Nol Cromwell has forgotten who gave him his victories and why they were given. We press for the armies of England to carry the Revolution overseas, to take it to the very steps of St Peter’s and there at last to destroy the Anti-Christ.’

  Seeker glanced around him: from the gates of Gethsemane to the gates of Rome. He could have reeled it off himself; it had hardly been worth the asking. ‘You spread sedition, then.’

  ‘How can it be sedition to assert the claim of God, of his people? What did you fight for? To set up a new tyrant in the place of the old, to bind the people in new chains?’

  ‘England’s New Chains’ again. The lawyer Wildman’s pamphlet had reached even here. The Censor Office wasn’t working fast enough. Seeker ignored Crowe’s question and returned to the matter in hand. ‘And what did Gideon Fell do in your cause when he was here?’