The Black Friar

by S. G. MacLean

  ‘You questioned him yesterday.’

  ‘And will do so again today.’

  ‘I need him here, at his work,’ said Crowe.

  ‘You’ll do without him a while,’ replied Seeker, turning to leave and knowing that Nathaniel would follow him without being told twice. He paused to address Goodwill again. ‘The sergeant will be starting with you.’

  ‘M-my father looked very angry,’ said Nathaniel, keeping up with Seeker as they crossed the yard.

  ‘Is he not always so?’

  The boy considered. ‘He is never joyful.’

  Seeker looked around Gethsemane. There were apple and plum trees in the yard, that must have given an abundance of fruit in the autumn. The masonry was in good order and most of the old thatch on the roofs replaced by pantiles. An old rose had clambered around the archway, a solitary stubborn yellow bloom, tight as a ball, hanging on in defiance of the January frost. The yard was well kept and cleaner than most in London, poultry pecking amongst the cobbles and the two pigs securely tethered by their sty. The water from the pump in the centre, coming down from the conduit at Aldgate, would be cleaner than that in parts of the city relying on the Walbrook or the Fleet. It should have been a pleasant place, this Gethsemane, a place of industry and quiet companionship, and might have been, had the crew who currently occupied it been swept out, and others, for whom it had been first intended, brought in.

  ‘Come on,’ he said to the boy, ‘I have something to show you.’

  They walked out onto Crutched Friars, past old tennis courts and a bowling green that were now a joinery yard, past Anne Winter’s house, which Seeker saw Nathaniel glance quickly at, up as far as the corner of Poor Jewry and Northumberland Lane. Seeker removed his right gauntlet and clicked his fingers. From beside the chestnut-seller’s stall, a large shape bestirred itself, a hound getting to its feet. He clicked his fingers one more time, and the dog came bounding towards them. Seeker kept close to Nathaniel, lest he should be frightened of the animal, but a broad smile had spread over the boy’s face, and he got down on his knees to greet the large beast as it reached them.

  ‘This is what you wanted to show me?’

  Seeker nodded.

  ‘What is his name?’

  ‘Name?’ Seeker frowned. ‘Dog, I suppose.’

  ‘Is he yours?’

  ‘He is his own; he lives with a carpenter I know, but I can make use of him, from time to time.’

  ‘Like Sergeant Proctor?’

  Seeker stifled a smile. ‘Not exactly. Will you let him keep you company a few days?’

  The look of disbelief which spread over Nathaniel’s face was short-lived, displaced by a sudden, leaden certainty. ‘My mother will not let me keep a dog. She says they are filthy animals, carriers of disease, untrustworthy.’

  Seeker grunted. He wondered if there was any race of beings Elizabeth Crowe did not so denigrate. ‘Your mother is wrong. I’ll tell her he’ll be staying with you for now. And there will be no argument.’

  Nathaniel Crowe looked at Seeker in wonder. Even Gideon had never seemed so bent on provoking a fight with Elizabeth. There were many tales told about the Seeker, some bold, some terrifying, but he doubted if any of the boys on the lane would believe this one.

  And yet it was so. When they got back to Gethsemane, Seeker called Elizabeth out of the dairy and told her the dog would be lodging with Nathaniel for the time being.

  She turned sour eyes on the animal, who responded with a growl. She stepped back and told Seeker under no circumstances would so foul a thing be permitted to remain there. Seeker told the boy to take the dog out beyond Aldgate a while, run him on the old earthworks left after the war, by the Houndsditch, and by the time he returned to Gethsemane, no one would raise a question, still less a boot, to the dog. Sergeant Proctor would be there a good two hours yet, and he himself would return when his business allowed him. Nathaniel did as he was bid without question, losing no time in distancing himself from his mother’s wrath.

  Once the pair were safely gone, Seeker rounded slowly on Elizabeth Crowe.

  ‘Do you like the look of Bridewell?’ he said.

  ‘A house of whores,’ she replied, her lips scarcely moving.

  ‘And preachers of sedition. Ask your friend the prophetess there,’ he said, indicating the old woman regarding him sourly through the open door of the dairy.

  ‘I preach no sedition,’ she said.

  ‘No? How long do you think it would take me to find two people to say otherwise? The boy will keep the dog. Nathaniel is known to have been a close companion of a man who lived here and who is now murdered.’ He looked around the half-opened doors and window shutters of Gethsemane. Everyone was watching, listening. ‘If he were to find himself in any danger, there is not a soul here, not one single soul, that I would trust to lift a finger to help him.’

  The prophetess hobbled out of the dairy to lean on her stick at Elizabeth Crowe’s elbow. ‘ “He that spareth his rod hateth his son; but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.” ’

  Seeker turned his eyes on her. ‘Raise a hand to him and I’ll rip it from your arm.’ He called over to Daniel Proctor, who had just finished questioning a discharged soldier who lodged at Gethsemane. ‘I have business with Mr Thurloe. See to the hag next. If she says one word out of line, throw her in the Wood Street Compter.’

  Eight

  Rose-Sick

  Seeker entered Lincoln’s Inn by the main door, and ignoring the curious looks of the lawyers who milled in the corridors, discussing the news of the day, or making their way to some comfortable room to smoke their pipes or take an early dinner in the great hall, he went in search of a Lincoln’s servant. He was not long in finding one, or then another, more senior, until the one he most wished to speak to was found and brought to him. The man was stooped, and elderly, and it was joked about the halls of Lincoln’s that the place had been thrown up around him. Seeker had seen it often enough; it was everywhere, this assumption of privilege. The students and lawyers, the well-connected young men like the clerk Bridlington whom Anne Winters had accosted during her argument with Downing, who laughed and called the old steward a good fellow, had no idea, no idea at all if truth be known, that such good old fellows knew everything about them, everything they did and said, and thought, and everything that they might be. He told the steward he was here to see Mr Thurloe, but had a matter to discuss with him first. He asked that they might go to the small dining room that the Chief Secretary occasionally used for meetings.

  The steward nodded and Seeker followed him. Within a few minutes they had come to the place – a small, comfortable room whose walls were panelled in oak, and lined around with iron sconces. On one side of the large stone fireplace hung a portrait of some ancient judge, on the other, nothing. Seeker cleared a wooden bowl of hazelnuts from the centre of the table, put his hand in his jerkin and pulled out the painted canvas Goodwill Crowe had given to him the previous day and unrolled it, weighing it down with two silver candlesticks from the sideboard. The old man watched what he did and then took in a breath of surprise and Seeker knew he had been right: he recognised it.

  ‘Christ Jesus in the Garden,’ he said. ‘Never thought to see that again.’

  ‘You know it, then?’

  ‘Oh, I know it all right. Hung here for years, more years than I remember. How it got past the Puritans – begging your pardon, Captain – I don’t know. But then, about three weeks ago, it was gone.’

  ‘Where did it hang?’

  The steward pointed to the lighter patch of wood across the fireplace from where the picture of the old judge hung. ‘There,’ he said. ‘That’s where it was.’

  Seeker held the unrolled canvas to the wall. ‘The frame?’

  The steward shook his head. ‘Took that too.’

  ‘Do you know who took it?’

  The steward frowned. ‘Not much been said, apart from a cock and bull story about a scarred man who came in asking for Mr Thurloe
one day. But Mr Thurloe wasn’t here and the fellow had gone by the time one of the message boys came down to tell him. Stuff and nonsense.’

  Seeker considered a moment. ‘What did Mr Thurloe have to say of this?’

  The man looked down at his feet and then back up at Seeker. ‘I doubt anyone ever told him. He hardly has the leisure to come here – even when he’s in full health – and when he has, I’ll not let him be bothered by tales of low fellows with scars that won’t give their names.’

  There was nothing else to be learned from the steward. Seeker dismissed him, telling him he would find his own way to the Secretary’s chamber. The man turned away in the direction of the servants’ stair, muttering to himself about Thurloe never getting peace. ‘Making him ill. Where would Old Nol be without him, eh? Does he ever think of that?’

  Arrived on the attic floor, Seeker found the Secretary’s manservant to be of the same view, and he was not certain he hadn’t heard the man curse under his breath before he opened the door to him. He forestalled the fellow’s complaints with a curt, ‘Business of state,’ and walked into the small sitting room next to Thurloe’s sickroom. The heat, which had been uncomfortable on his previous visit, was now overwhelming, the air clammy and the closed shutters only serving to intensify the odour of illness.

  ‘Would a draught of cool air in here not do better for Mr Thurloe’s health?’ he said, indicating the unnecessary shutters.

  The man drew himself up in so far as he could, and made reference to the instructions of the Lord Protector’s own physician, who had also counselled that Mr Thurloe should not be disturbed by anybody.

  Seeker was spared the necessity of making a response by the sound of the connecting door between bed- and sitting room opening, and the appearance of a bent and shivering Thurloe dressed in a long nightshirt, cap and his favoured heavy loose woollen gown. ‘Captain Seeker is not anybody,’ he said, his voice a rasp as he shuffled to his chair. ‘You may leave us, Thomas. We have business to discuss.’

  Thurloe was shrunken, and looked in worse health even than he had done the day before. Seeker had never seen him look so ill. ‘Perhaps your man is right, Mr Secretary, you should be abed. This business will keep.’

  ‘This business will not keep!’ replied Thurloe with some vehemence. ‘You will leave us, Thomas.’

  As the man closed the door behind him, Thurloe was taken by a fit of coughing. He motioned to a side table where the servant had placed a goblet of some steaming liquid. Seeker fetched it for him, the aroma of the hot treacle wafting through the stultifying air as he did so. Thurloe gulped some down and sank back, the effort having temporarily exhausted him. The steward’s words came back to Seeker and for the first time he wondered who might replace Thurloe, should he die. Meadowe, perhaps, or even Morland. Not George Downing. However clever Downing might think himself, Seeker was certain Cromwell would not be so far taken in by one so evidently driven by self-interest as the New Englander as to make him his Chief Secretary.

  Thurloe wiped his mouth and took a moment to recover himself. ‘This business will not keep,’ he repeated. ‘It is bad enough that I am away from Westminster. Oliver’s patience with Parliament is running out.’

  Seeker felt a kind of dread begin to creep through him. ‘You think he will dismiss it?’

  The Secretary nodded. ‘Any day now. He doesn’t need to wait the full five months laid out in the Instrument. Five lunar months will do. They’ve had it coming.’ He fixed Seeker with an uncompromising look that might almost have had a challenge in it. ‘The army must be unwavering in his support: we need to know of any plots long before they see the light of day.’

  Seeker told him of Major-General Thomas Harrison’s appearance amongst the Fifth Monarchists at Gethsemane, as had been indicated by Carter Blyth’s reports. ‘They’re brazen. Any loyalty they ever had to Oliver is long gone, and they’re just biding their time.’

  ‘And as to any direct threat to the Protector?’

  Seeker shook his head. ‘Their language is full of bile towards him, but I have uncovered nothing so far relating to any planned personal assault.’

  Thurloe considered this a moment. ‘So it’s as Blyth said, but what was he not saying? Have you discovered anything of that?’

  Seeker unbuttoned his jacket, glad in the stultifying heat to have the excuse to do so, and took out the canvas of Gethsemane. ‘All I have so far is this. It was found under Carter Blyth’s mattress at Gethsemane. It had been taken from the wall of a room within this building, by a man matching Carter Blyth’s description, about a week before he disappeared. He had come asking for you, and both he and the painting were gone by the time a servant came to tell him you could not be found.’

  Trembling and flushed with the heat, Thurloe leaned towards the picture. ‘Yes, Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. A dark thing – I never liked it. I met Carter Blyth in the room where it hung when first he returned from Antwerp and I gave him his orders.’

  ‘Over a month before it disappeared,’ said Seeker. ‘Did you ever meet him there again?’

  Thurloe shook his head. ‘No, absolutely not. He would have been quite clear that there would be no further meeting between us until his mission had been completed. He was only to communicate with me by the agreed codes and methods.’

  ‘So why did he not do that? Why did he try to find you in person?’

  The answer to his own question came to Seeker just as Thurloe gave it.

  ‘Because he did not trust our process, something, someone in our own network. Whatever Carter Blyth found himself caught up in, he believed someone in my service to be involved. And he took that painting as a code, to let me know where he was.’

  There was silence between them a moment, save for the persistent crackling of the logs piled high on the fire. The reality of the thing took form and presented itself to their minds: there was someone in the chain of links connecting Thurloe in Whitehall at one end and himself in the field at the other whom Carter Blyth had such cause to distrust that he had left off his vigilance over Harrison’s Fifth Monarchists in order to pursue, and in that pursuit he had met his death. Seeker voiced his thoughts and Thurloe murmured his agreement, before being taken by another wracking fit of coughing. The Chief Secretary leaned forward and gripped the sleeve of Seeker’s shirt. ‘Find this person, Seeker. Find him, and tell no one what it is you do.’ Nodding his understanding, Seeker called for the servant to assist Mr Secretary back to his bedchamber, and there being nothing more to be said, and neither man being adept in the matters of illness or companionable conversation, took his leave.

  He still felt the cloying miasma of the sickroom hanging around his clothing, his flesh, as he stepped out of Lincoln’s. He wanted a moment to disperse it before immersing himself once more in the air of the waiting city. Instead of going directly back out onto Chancery Lane, Seeker walked up between the lawns of Lincoln’s gardens, able to admire now the simple geometry, the precision of them. He had of late been taken by the occasional desire to be away and back to the untamed north. To be out with his brothers tracking deer, trapping hares, to hear his mother singing as she worked, to tease and terrify his sister’s suitors. But that was all in the past now, so far in the past. His sister was long married, his brothers dispersed and divided by the war, his mother probably dead. He had struggled hard to put away his memories of those times, to obscure them and with them the images of his wife, his child, which still took him from time to time, when he let down his guard. He pushed those thoughts away and made himself think only of the here and now. He focused his mind on the gardens of Lincoln’s until he could appreciate the order, the careful structure of the place. He liked the walls that said they were not quite of the city, nor yet of Westminster, either. Outside these two overpowering jurisdictions, the Inns of Court and Old Bailey were of England itself and spoke to Seeker of the incorruptible edifice that was the Law.

  There was hardly a soul out in the gardens on this cold January day
. A few sparrows and a robin flitted hopefully from bare branch to bleak bush, in search of the few remaining winter berries, having given up hope of the iron ground. But at the south-facing wall, not far from the gate out onto the top of Chancery Lane, a gardener was struggling with the roots of an old and gnarled damask rose that had been trained against the brick. A pick that had evidently been used to break up the ground lay against the wall, and the old man was doing his best with a spade.

  Seeker observed him at his work. ‘Digging it out?’

  ‘Aye,’ said the man, about as gnarled and aged-looking as the wood he was at war with. ‘A pity, for she was a beauty once. And the smell of a summer’s night! But the ground’s rose-sick, won’t take no more, grow no more. Needs to be rested.’

  The man must have been at least seventy. Seeker took off his cloak and jacket. ‘Hand me the spade,’ he said, rolling up the billowing white linen sleeves of his shirt. The gardener hesitated, as if he was not sure he could have understood, but did not argue and passed Seeker the spade.

  ‘Have you no one to help you?’ said Seeker, as he finally got purchase beneath the root ball and began to heave.

  ‘Did have. A good lad Jed was too. Strong. But he left a few weeks since. Off to sea, I reckon. Always speaking about it. Down to Deptford he was, every chance he got. Down to look at Old Nol’s new ship. Reckon he got took on. Pity, he was shaping well to be a good gardener. Ah well, not much adventure here for a young lad, I suppose. I told the masters, but they haven’t got me anyone else yet.’

  ‘There must be plenty looking for work,’ said Seeker.

  ‘Oh, that there is,’ replied the man, ‘but I don’t have the authority to take them on. Need the masters’ say-so for that. Course, maybe Jed’ll get fed up of the sea, come back again. You know what boys are.’

  ‘How old is he?’ asked Seeker.

  The man stuck out a lip and pondered. ‘Thirteen? Fourteen maybe? Big strong lad. Bright, learned quick. Did me well.’