The Black Friar

by S. G. MacLean

  She looked at him with unconcealed loathing. ‘Back again, Seeker. What is it this time?’

  ‘Your daughter.’

  There was a brief movement. Elizabeth Crowe’s mouth twitched. ‘You’ve found her.’

  ‘No. But I know what she has done.’

  The woman didn’t even blink. ‘What has she done?’ Her voice was like one stone grinding against another.

  ‘I believe she has been complicit in the abduction, and perhaps the killing, of four children and in the murder of an agent of the Protectorate.’

  Elizabeth smiled her unpleasant smile, a slight relaxation seeming to work its way through her. ‘So, Gideon Fell was your spy. Patience tried to tell her father that, but the fool wouldn’t believe her. Gideon was a comrade-in-arms, Gideon was one of the chosen. My husband can be blind, and over-soft at times, but I am not, Mr Seeker. Your spy deserved to die: “Then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother: so shalt thou put the evil away from among you.” He deserved to die, but my daughter did not kill him. A slip of a girl against a man like that?’

  It was interesting, thought Seeker, that she had not argued her daughter was too good, too kind a creature for murder, only that she was too slight a thing to do it. ‘Who did, then?’ he asked, feeling his temper rise in the face of this woman’s casual indifference.

  She shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. ‘How should I know? Tell me where Patience is.’

  Seeker got up, unable to trust himself not to strike the complacency from her dead-eyed face. ‘How should I know?’ he returned. ‘With whoever it was helped her take those children, always assuming it wasn’t you. Is it a man, Elizabeth? A man that you let her wander the streets like a wanton to see? A man that Gideon Fell saw her with? Is he a good man, do you think? Or do you think perhaps you’ll never see your daughter again?’

  He had touched a nerve now, he had reached something; behind the death mask of Elizabeth Crowe’s face he could see her thoughts racing, but then she rallied herself, her lips clamped shut, and a long, bitter silence filled the room. Seeker had had enough. He called for the guard to come and take her back to her cell. The man appeared and Seeker rose to leave, not even glancing at Elizabeth Crowe, for fear that one more sight of her would cause him to lose his composure. As he reached the door, the same harsh voice like grinding stone stopped him.

  ‘Ashpenaz,’ she said. ‘That’s all I know. She called him Ashpenaz.’

  Twenty-Three

  Marvell’s Lists

  William Godmanson heard the footsteps cross the schoolroom floor beneath and the door creak open before being softly closed again. He lay motionless, frightened to move lest he waken any of the other boys. When he heard the outer door close at last, he crept quietly over to the small window of the boys’ dormitory, and looked out onto the street. It was still dark, and an icy fog had come up from the river to snake around the houses and streets of Holborn. Yet William could see enough to know the shape of the man who had just left, to recognise the walk. It was not the first time he had been woken by the sound of Shadrach Jones leaving the Three Nails in the night. By the time dawn came, William still had not slept.

  *

  The junior clerk from the Censor Office tried to hurry past Seeker, but was jerked to a halt as Seeker placed a heavy hand on his chest. ‘Is Mr Marvell in there just now?’ he said, indicating the ante-room the clerk had just left.

  ‘Yes, Captain. He’s been there all morning.’

  ‘And how is his humour?’

  The young man hesitated.

  ‘He’s writing a lot, Captain, and muttering. No one wants to stay in there with him.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Seeker, ‘well, I shall go in full armed, now I know what to expect.’

  Marvell was sitting in the corner of the room, by the fire, and was indeed scribbling by the light of three candles, all of which he had placed by himself, regardless of the needs of others in the room.

  ‘Another commission from the Lord Protector?’ asked Seeker. ‘Do we take aim again at Holland today, or France?’

  ‘Neither. It is a list of my laundry and other linens. Then I begin on one of my books.’

  Seeker sat down comfortably in the chair opposite, stretched out his feet before the fire, and wondered how to avoid further antagonising this surly, witty, learned man, whose company gave him so much unexpected pleasure. ‘Should we know the reason you find yourself impelled to such urgent tasks?’

  ‘Hmph. I would be astonished if there was anything you didn’t know. After all, I am a Royalist, not to be trusted, holed up in here, reading ridiculous pamphlets while insidious milksops like Marcus Bridlington are set loose on the streets of London to protect us all. I am preparing my will, for I expect at any time to be hanged as a Royalist spy, or to be despatched by the Sealed Knot when they override the city – as they surely will, given the quality of some of our agents in the field.’

  ‘No one thinks you’re a Royalist spy,’ said Seeker, and then corrected himself in response to Marvell’s raised eyebrows and pursed lips. ‘Well, yes, there are those that do suspect you, but I know that you are not, and I have had you confined here for your own protection, until this present crisis is over, and this latest venture of their Sealed Knot untangled.’

  ‘But why?’ pleaded Marvell. ‘Why me? How many others started out in the one camp – and I was hardly that – and have ended in the other? Have I not proven myself? The Lord Protector himself trusts me – he asked me to write epigrams for his portrait for the Queen of Sweden, you know!’

  ‘And very fine she thought them, they tell me.’

  ‘Indeed. And the poem he is so delighted with, celebrating the first year of his Protectorate . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Seeker, ‘I had heard that that was you, too. And I hear that it is also very fine.’

  Marvell’s indignation was further inflamed. ‘You mean you have not seen it?’

  Seeker laughed. ‘Andrew, I am a captain of the guard of the Council of State. Last week I heard one of the Lord Protector’s advisors comment that I still carry about me the air of a Yorkshire bog, another wager that I wrestle bullocks as a pastime.’

  Marvell’s eyebrows disappeared further into his hair. ‘And what did Cromwell say to that?’

  ‘That he had thrown a bullock or two himself in his time, and that there are worse smells than a Yorkshire bog.’

  Marvell laughed. ‘That will have silenced them.’

  ‘For a time. But my point is, they think me more ignorant than the hogs Dorcas Wells roasts up at the Black Fox. They don’t show me your poems.’

  Marvell sighed. ‘No. I suppose not. But surely they cannot question my loyalty now? And yet Meadowe confines me to this office like a naughty schoolboy.’

  ‘It was me who advised him to do that, for your own protection. After your visit to Lady Anne’s house—’

  ‘It was you who sent me there!’ blustered Marvell.

  ‘I know. But I didn’t expect her and Davenant to try to turn you, and I didn’t know her Rat was going to set out on some mission for the Sealed Knot under your very nose.’

  Marvell coloured. ‘I know. I’m sorry, I should have paid closer attention – they distracted me with flattery.’

  ‘Yes, they did. They think themselves clever – and we do well not to underestimate that woman. Whatever we discover when we finally get this Rat by the tail, I don’t want her to be able to seek any kind of leverage by claiming that you were in some way involved.’

  ‘I am not!’

  ‘No. And the closer we keep you to us, the less likely it is that anyone can claim you are. But think, is there anything you might not have told me, might not have put in your report of that gathering that strikes you now as strange or important? Anything spoken of that strikes you as suggestive of some sort of subterfuge, deception, something they might have disguised as—’

  Marvell leaned forward, his face aglow. ‘Disguise! That’s it. That
’s what she wanted them for, disguises!’

  Seeker put up a hand. ‘Hold up, Andrew. What disguises? What are you talking about?’

  Now it was a different Marvell before him, one in his element, animated rather than sullen, aglow rather than lugubrious, one whose mouth could hardly keep pace with the thoughts chasing each other to his lips.

  ‘It was after I’d recited my poem about Flecknoe . . .’

  Seeker went through Marvell’s report in his mind, and recalled something about an English priest Marvell had met over ten years ago in Rome. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, they were greatly entertained, and I, too, found myself quite merry. They asked me for particulars of just how dirty Flecknoe’s shirt was.’ Marvell laughed, and Seeker, bemused, waited. ‘Anyhow, that set the company to talk of dress, and then of costume, and Henry Lawes and Sir William began to reminisce on the wonderful costumes worn by the King’s Men and players at the Swan and the Fortune and the like, and Lawes mused sadly on whatever might have become of them after the theatres had been shut down, and Lady Anne leaned forward and said, “Why, Henry, some of them are here!” But then Sir William coughed loudly, and she suddenly said, “That is to say, I think I have some sketches in a book somewhere.” But that is not what she meant, Seeker, I am certain of it. She has costumes in that house, and unless she means to put on a play – which there was no word of – they must be for something else.’

  Seeker followed Marvell’s line of thought entirely. Disguises. The Stuarts could not get over their love of masques, of theatre, of playing the other, and in their exile from England it had served them very well. Charles Stuart’s own cousin, Rupert of the Rhine, one of his father’s best and most ruthless commanders, and one of the best-known faces in Europe, had slipped into the country and away on more than one occasion, unnoticed by the authorities of the Republic, so adept was he at assuming a disguise. Charles himself had only escaped after Worcester by virtue of his disguise as a manservant to a young gentlewoman.

  Marvell continued in full flow. ‘The plays, Seeker, do you remember, the costumes they had?’

  Seeker laughed. ‘The players who found their way to the villages and clearings of Yorkshire and Cumbria travelled light. We were to use our imaginations.’

  ‘Indeed, indeed. But did you never go into town, did you never see them in London?’

  ‘I never came near London until General Fairfax had to threaten Parliament in ’47, and by then, Andrew, plays were not quite the thing.’

  Again Marvell coloured. ‘No, I suppose they weren’t. But I tell you, Seeker, they had costumes for every part imaginable. Fashions may have changed, but it wouldn’t challenge a good seamstress greatly to alter a gown from the 1620s so that it served for now, or a priest’s cassock to be an old cloak and breeches for some fellow down on his luck.’

  ‘A good seamstress’: the words echoed in Seeker’s head, but it was Anne Winter’s voice he heard, not Marvell, and it was when she’d spoken of Charity Penn, ‘She was making fair to be a gifted seamstress.’ And Anne Winter’s own fingers had been pricked by needle points. ‘They’re sewing disguises in there,’ Seeker said at last.

  Marvell nodded eagerly. ‘A man might walk into Anne Winter’s house a prince and walk out of it a washerwoman.’

  ‘Or the other way round,’ said Seeker. He stood up. ‘Come, Marvell, leave your laundry list; you won’t be needing it today.’

  Twenty-Four

  A Mathematical Problem

  Marvell rode alongside Seeker, on a mount of his own choosing from the Whitehall stable. They took four guards with them. As they trotted briskly past Scotland Yard, Seeker noticed George Downing, his clerk Pepys a step behind him, and Bridlington, whom Downing now seemed to have adopted into his own service, emerge onto the street from a coffee house up ahead at Charing Cross. It was Pepys who, deftly retreating to the doorway, called the attention of the other two to the imminent approach of the riding party, and it gave Seeker no little pleasure to see the surprise on Downing and Bridlington’s faces as they recognised Marvell as the horseman whose mount they had to jump back to avoid.

  The journey eastwards, into and through the city, was achieved at a good pace and without incident. Seeker was not yet ready to mention to Marvell the name of Ashpenaz. Instead, as the demands of cutting through street traffic – human, animal and wheeled – permitted, Marvell and Seeker talked of places, people they had in common in the north. Marvell’s childhood had been compassed by light, water, marshland, the great port of Hull, the sea with all the promises it whispered of a world unknown. Seeker’s was one that had taken him to high, harsh places, craggy passes and blasted moors, or deep forests, smelling of moss, bark, peat, further into a place peopled by the past and its stories. They were bound, nonetheless, by an understanding that the north was different, that they could understand in each other things those from the south, from the city, could not. And they were bound by Fairfax, whom one had served in war and the other in peace, and towards whom both felt complete loyalty.

  ‘Do you think he would have dealt differently with Parliament?’ Marvell asked.

  Yes, Seeker thought, but didn’t say. Instead, he said, ‘It doesn’t matter what he or anyone else might have done. Fairfax laid down his commission. Cromwell never has, and he is Lord Protector. We are servants of the Protectorate, you and I, Andrew. We don’t deal in might-have-beens.’

  The rest of the journey was made in a pensive silence, until they turned off Mark Lane onto Hart Street for Crutched Friars. There was a visible stiffening in Seeker’s pose, a hardening of his face. ‘When we get there, don’t be baited – for she will try. I will do the talking.’

  Looking at the set of Seeker’s face, reflected in that of the four guards riding behind them, Marvell was not disposed to argue.

  *

  The guard had been placed inside Anne Winter’s house, behind the entrance door, not in front of it facing out onto the street as was more usual. It had been agreed with Meadowe: no one was to know of their pursuit of the Rat, or that her house was suspect. The more confidence in their success they had, the more likely Charles Stuart’s plotters were to make a mistake.

  The man stood aside as Seeker and Marvell entered the hallway. The four armed guards had been sent in by the back. A startled housemaid dropped the tray she had just carried through from the kitchens. The clatter of pewter on tile would have been enough to summon the inhabitants of the neighbouring house, never mind this one. Anne Winter was at the head of the stair in no time, and descending it in a fury. Her hair was not yet done up, and her dress a simple one. The red shawl around her shoulders somehow seemed to heighten the impression of outrage, but behind the anger, Seeker could see fear.

  ‘What now, Seeker?’ she said, throwing her arm out to encompass the party emerging from the back stairway. ‘A raid? Or am I to be thrown from my own home, see it turned over to one of Cromwell’s favourites? Yourself, perhaps? Do you like my house, Captain Seeker?’ She took a moment to steady her breath, until her eye at last lighted on Marvell. ‘And Marvell here too? In your so well-turned coat.’

  Marvell readied himself to reply, but a well-aimed look from Seeker made him think the better of it.

  ‘Coats, Lady Anne, that’s what we would have of you, and gowns and shifts and cloaks and breeches,’ said Seeker evenly. ‘Where would we find them?’

  Anne Winter’s brow furrowed and she looked at him as if he had lost his senses. ‘Cloaks? Breeches? What in God’s name are you talking about man?’

  ‘Not in God’s name,’ said Seeker, ‘but the Protector’s. Where are the costumes, Lady Anne?’

  The woman could not help but cast a hasty glance at Andrew Marvell. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘No?’ said Seeker. ‘You knew well enough the other day, when Sir William Davenant and Henry Lawes were here to take coffee and be entertained by Marvell here. I think you have mistaken him.’

  ‘It appears I did,’ she
replied. ‘I don’t imagine I have been the first, nor will be the last to do so.’ She looked directly at Marvell now. ‘I thought him a gentleman.’

  Seeker could see Marvell’s mouth twitch and his face begin to colour, but to the man’s credit, he kept his response to himself. Seeker decided she’d had her say.

  ‘That arrogance will see you to the block one day, Lady Anne. Where are the costumes of which you spoke to Davenant and Lawes?’

  ‘I spoke of no costumes.’

  This time Marvell was not to be silenced. ‘Oh, but you did, my lady. You spoke of the wardrobe of the King’s Men, and bragged that you had it here, but Davenant made you shut up.’

  ‘I deny it,’ she said coldly.

  ‘Deny it all you like, Lady Anne,’ said Seeker. ‘Davenant will no doubt join you in your lie, but Henry Lawes will not.’ He could see her calculating, she was too confident, too certain. ‘I’ll ask you again, Lady Anne, where are these costumes?’

  ‘Wherever they are, you won’t find them here.’

  ‘Will I not?’ he said. The woman seemed to feed off challenging him. He turned to his men. ‘Start at the top floor. Take the house apart if you have to.’

  She stood there, unmoving, her eyes never leaving his as the four soldiers passed her on the stairs. Seeker wondered if she practised that commanding pose in her looking glass at night, or if the firmness of her hold on the banister was to keep her upright and hide her fear. Once his men had reached the top floor, Seeker said, ‘Come, Marvell; we will search the lady’s apartments. She has the look of one of these women of the old court, with so many gowns she can hardly know what she has and what she has not.’

  ‘You might have done better to bring Bridlington with you,’ responded Marvell. ‘If I recall, his reports were full of the cut of so-and-so’s jacket and the quality of so-and-so’s lace. He would have known what was of today’s fashion and manufacture, and what from an earlier time.’