The Black Friar

by S. G. MacLean

  There had been wood, in a store by the kitchen, and by the fourth day she had got so cold that she had lit the oven. She had spent nearly the whole day down here today. She didn’t miss them at Gethsemane, not one of them, but all the same, Patience began to feel resentment creeping over her at how little effort they must have made to find her. She wondered if that was where he was now, at Gethsemane, with those others, those pretty children, when he had promised her so faithfully he would come back here for her. She allowed herself a smile: they weren’t so pretty now. Well, that would serve him right.

  The night noises were starting again. They were different, so very different from the night noises of Aldgate. They were not human noises, the familiar wicked noises of drunks and bawds rolling through the streets and lanes after curfew, cursing one another, running from the watch; they were not the noises, the slopping and swishing of the night cleansers, the fighting of cats, family arguments or scandalous forbidden songs swaying their way through the air from houses and streets nearby to her opened window at Gethsemane; no, here were the sounds of birds and animals of the night, of the wind through trees, of creaking bushes and snapping twigs, of unknown things whose sounds were only meant for her.

  Patience checked again the bolt and bar at the back of the scullery door, another at the top of the kitchen steps where they led to a back stairs and then the great hall of the hunting lodge. The house did not seem still in the night. She knew it for empty and yet it did not feel empty. As darkness fell, she did not dare light a candle even in the kitchen, and the only light was the meagre glow from the oven. There were sounds of doors and shutters rattling softly in draughts, of beams, floorboards creaking above her. She pictured the great hall, hung with deer antlers and a boar’s head, and axes and swords long out of use. She wished she had thought to bring one of those axes down with her.

  Eventually, she slept. She was not given to dreaming. Not like the prophetess, who spoke through dreams she had pretended to have. She’d been awake though, Mother Wilkins, and keen enough to listen as Patience had played with those children. Keen enough to listen, and enjoyed it. Old fraud. Old bitch. There came a smile to Patience’s lips as she repeated the words, ‘Old bitch,’ said them out loud, soothed herself to sleep with them.

  But then, deep in the night, as she slept her blank sleep, something began to seep into Patience’s mind. A sound, a noise, regular, closer, louder. A horse. She sat bolt upright. His horse. She lit a lamp with a spill from the stove and hastily ran up the kitchen steps, unlocking the door. The combs and pretty jewels she had left on the dressing table upstairs – there would be no time to don again the lace and silk, not tonight, but the combs and jewels she could manage.

  Patience had almost reached the foot of the stair in the great hall when the hammering started at the door. She smoothed a hand over her hair – it was not even pinned, but perhaps he would like it better that way. The shadows cast by the antlers and the boar’s head across the bare stone floor didn’t scare her now. She reached up to light a candle in the sconce near to the door and, smoothing down her hair one last time, she took the large iron key from its hook and carefully turned it in the lock. The hammering stopped, the door knob turned and the door swung open before her into the night. There, standing against the blackness, her lamp revealing a look of supreme satisfaction upon his face, was Andrew Marvell.

  Twenty-Eight

  The Entrapment of Marcus Bridlington

  Thurloe thought the windows might rattle from their frames. Rarely had he seen Seeker so angered.

  ‘In God’s name, why would he do such a thing?’

  ‘To prove that he could, I suspect,’ said Thurloe, settling comfortably back into his favourite chair, smoothing his hand over the surface of his Whitehall desk, familiarising himself once more with the symbols of his control. Certainly Marvell’s actions had proven him right in deciding to set aside Milton’s preference for the young Yorkshireman in favour of Philip Meadowe, however fine Milton, or indeed the Protector himself, might think his verse. What Marvell would have done if left in charge during his own recent illness and recuperation at Lincoln’s Inn, the Chief Secretary did not like to contemplate.

  ‘And what has Bridlington to say?’

  ‘A great deal, apparently,’ said Thurloe. ‘The gist of much of it being that he didn’t kill anyone, knows nothing of the death of Carter Blyth, and that none of the rest of it is his fault.’

  ‘Oh, is it not,’ said Seeker grimly. ‘That will remain to be seen.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ replied Thurloe. ‘His main concern, though, is that he should not have the company of Patience Crowe enforced upon him.’

  ‘He might have considered that before he joined her in her enterprise,’ responded Seeker. ‘The nature of her charms can hardly have come as a surprise to him.’

  ‘No,’ conceded Thurloe, ‘but perhaps you should hear his tale for yourself, the better to understand his part in the thing.’

  As he watched Seeker turn on his heel, his face brewing a perfect storm, and stride out into the corridor to seek out the manacled Bridlington, Thurloe reflected that the young clerk might have done better to take his chances with Patience Crowe.

  *

  Bridlington was chained by the ankle to a bench in the ante-room of an unused office. A pitcher of water and a beaker had been placed on the table in front of him. The look he cast at Seeker as Seeker entered the room was one of outrage and affronted dignity. Recalling the haunted animal looks of the children he had found in a cellar at Gethsemane only the night before, Seeker was not disposed to sympathy. He dismissed the guard, slammed the door behind him, and kicked back the bench opposite Bridlington, slouching down onto it against a wall, his booted feet stretched out before him, in a manner that could leave the clerk in no doubt that there would be no standing on ceremony, no respecting of persons here.

  ‘The truth, or all the uncles in England won’t save you.’

  Bridlington looked for a moment as if he might be disposed to argue but then persuaded himself otherwise. He poured himself a beaker of the water, his hand shaking a little, and took a moment to summon his courage.

  ‘I knew nothing of Patience Crowe when this all began. I knew nothing of the children, any of them, apart from Edward.’

  ‘Edward Yuill? The boy from Rhys Evans’s school?’

  Bridlington nodded. ‘Since I came to Mr Thurloe’s employ, I have often been used as a courier with messages from various personages here to officers quartered around St Giles’s and Drury Lane. I had been there one day in late October, delivering instructions to officers at the Red Lion. It was a fine day, mild, still late autumn and little hint yet of winter, and I knew my duties for the day were finished. I had no desire to return here – my fellow clerks have made it plain that they do not seek my society, and I have found nothing of interest in theirs. I was glad to be away from the place. I took a stroll along Holborn, looking into shops and the like, and then decided to walk out to Conduit Fields. As I say, it was a fine day, and there were many others, finished their labours for the day, who had gone out to take the fresh air and to exercise themselves. I saw in the distance a group of boys at sport – from a school nearby, I soon learned. I went a little closer to watch them.’ Bridlington allowed himself a smile, and the first honest look Seeker had ever seen him give. ‘I never went to school, you see, never had that companionship. I would have given much to join them.’

  ‘But you didn’t?’ said Seeker.

  ‘I didn’t know how, so I just watched.’ He played with the beaker in his hands. ‘In time, they began to drift away from their game of football to other things, and the oldest eventually called them all and told them they must return to their school for supper. As he picked up their ball, he turned to face me, and he smiled, such a smile as no one has ever given me. I . . . I was . . . transfixed. I had never seen anyone so beautiful.’

  Seeker thought of Edward Yuill as he had last seen him, the night before at Geths
emane – bathed at last but his skin grey, his cheeks gaunt, scabs forming on his skin – and yet beneath it all there had been an undeniable beauty and a grace that must have marked the boy out from most of his fellows.

  Bridlington continued. ‘I started to go up to Holborn whenever I could. I found the location of the school, waited sometimes for the boys to come out again, to go to the fields. The third time I saw them, and Edward saw me, he sent the younger boys to races, and came to ask me if I would like to join them. I pretended at first that I didn’t know him, but he was kind, and persisted, and soon we became friends, just we two. Soon, we began to arrange to meet just ourselves. I taught him how to use a bow, he me to climb a tree. It was a time of great happiness for me, for him too, I think.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  Bridlington’s hands tightened on the beaker in front of him. ‘Patience Crowe. I had been detailed with some others to keep an eye on any suspect gatherings at St Giles’s, and one day we had information that there was to be some Fifth Monarchist woman preaching there.’

  ‘Elizabeth Crowe,’ said Seeker.

  Bridlington nodded. ‘The woman was dreadful, but a crowd had gathered around her and was growing. She had them almost in a frenzy, but then an old Welsh fellow started to shout at her, too learned for her and in ways she couldn’t answer. I recognised him as the master of the Three Nails. I knew from Edward that he had started to wander in his mind. I went over to him, intent on escorting him back to the school, lest there be any trouble, and I thought it would give me the chance to see Edward too, but just as I reached him, Edward himself appeared. We both laughed, which must have seemed strange to the others who had been sent to St Giles’s with me, but I don’t think any of them noticed. As we both reached out to take hold of the old schoolmaster our hands touched, that is all. A touch, a gentle squeeze, a moment’s lingering. And Patience Crowe saw it. She was standing only a yard away, and I saw it in her face, the knowledge and the triumph. She stepped in and said she would help Edward escort the old man home, that there was no need for me to do it. I’d never seen her in my life before, but I knew from that minute, from the look on her face, what she had planned for me, and I let go my hold on Dr Evans, and tried to melt away.’

  ‘And what did she have planned for you?’ asked Seeker, although he was fairly sure he knew.

  ‘Blackmail. She helped Edward home with Dr Evans – I later learned she had had her eye on Edward, anyway. I’d hoped to disappear into the crowd, to be gone before she ever came back, never to see her again, but she found me. She said she knew who I was – had seen me at Aldgate, at Crutched Friars, had asked around, knew who my uncle was, in whose employ I was. She threatened to expose me as a sodomite.’ Here, he looked up at Seeker, and he was plainly terrified. ‘It was only a touch, I swear to it—’

  Seeker cut him short. ‘Not my concern. Tell me of Patience Crowe.’

  Bridlington gathered himself and returned to the bare facts of his narrative. ‘She threatened to expose me, unless I did as she bid me. She said it wouldn’t matter if what she told people was true or not, that enough had seen me with Edward.’

  ‘What did she demand you do?’

  Bridlington’s lip curled in derision. ‘Her mother had some scheme, out of the Book of Daniel, to find four children to be trained up as servants of Christ in the Second Coming. The woman must be even madder than her daughter.’

  ‘And you were to help Patience abduct these children for her mother?’

  Bridlington shook his head. ‘Her mother wanted to seek out the children in hospitals, poorhouses, select those she thought most suitable, but Patience said she had a better scheme.’ His voice became bitter. ‘Patience had a very particular type of child in mind, and I don’t think training them for Christ played any part in her plans.’

  Seeker thought of everything he had heard of the children from those who knew them. ‘She wanted beautiful children.’

  ‘Beautiful, gifted, everything she was not. I had to help her entice them away from their homes, and to the place called Gethsemane.’

  Seeker spoke the names. ‘Charity Penn, Edward Yuill, Isabella Dray and Jed Cutler.’

  ‘All but the first. I told her, Lady Anne’s maid would know me for a watcher of Mr Thurloe’s, would never come with me.’

  ‘But the rest?’

  Bridlington swallowed. ‘With Edward, it was simple: I just asked him to come for a walk with me through the city one night, said it was to meet friends, that I would take him to a coffee house, but that he should tell no one for the fear of the trouble he would be in.’ He shut his eyes against the memory. ‘He thought it a great game.’

  ‘And the register? How did you effect the switch?’

  A half-laugh, with no humour in it. ‘Part of the game. I’d got him to tell me the other boys’ names, copied them out in a new book, but without his own on it, and told him to swap them, see how long it took the trick to be discovered. It was so simple, so easy to deceive him, because he is good, and I, as you will be aware, am not. But . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The strange thing is, I think the old man, Dr Evans, suspected something, and yet he had wandered so far from his wits we knew no one would listen to him.’

  Seeker remembered, the repeated refrain of ‘Poor Abednego’; Abednego, one of the fair, gifted children chosen along with the Prophet Daniel to be brought up to serve the king. Yes, Rhys Evans had seen what was happening, but no one had listened to him.

  ‘And Edward trusted me.’

  Seeker wasn’t about to offer the wretched Bridlington any comfort. ‘It was written in your hand? The new register was in your hand?’

  ‘Oh, yes. That day you called for our reports on Anne Winter’s house,’ the clerk shook his head, ‘I thought you were sure to see it, but you asked us to read the reports out ourselves, if you remember . . .’

  Seeker cursed himself for carelessness, as Bridlington went on, ‘I was sure someone must have the register, spot it soon. I thought once in the night that I had been caught, when Downing had his clerk Pepys wake me and demanded the reports on Lady Anne’s house.’

  ‘What?’ said Seeker, losing track.

  ‘I thought he had discovered this business, and would recognise my hand, I deliberately took him the wrong file.’ He laughed at the memory. ‘I thought he would explode when Pepys discovered it.’

  Seeker was struggling to follow this line. ‘Downing? In the middle of the night? Which file did you take to him?’

  Bridlington shrugged. ‘One of little consequence. I think it concerned that lawyer who lives at Dove Court.’

  It was said with such indifference. They had done this to him, to him and to Maria: Patience Crowe, George Downing, Marcus Bridlington had done this to them. None of them fit to walk the same streets as her, and yet, step by step, they had colluded in her public humiliation. And he was the cause, and he had let them do it. Seeker wanted to smash Marcus Bridlington into the wall. He took a moment to gain control and forced himself to return to the matter in hand.

  ‘So much for Edward Yuill. The others? The girl from the Black Fox and the gardener’s boy from Lincoln’s Inn?’

  ‘It was the girl next, Isabella. I knew her from my visits to the tavern coming and going from the lectures at Gresham. She was very pretty, of course, and much importuned by other young men who came into the tavern, although Dorcas would chase them off quick enough. But Isabella didn’t mind me – I think she had realised that pretty girls were not of especial interest to me.’

  Seeker nodded. ‘Go on.’

  ‘She had a very sharp wit and fine mind, and a great interest in science, and in what was to be learned from those who had gone to the lectures, so we would often talk of them. Patience, who very soon took to following me, discovered our friendship. Once her eye landed on Isabella, she was consumed with venom.’

  ‘She was jealous?’ said Seeker.

  ‘Can you imagine? Even if my inclinations had ru
n in that direction. Patience Crowe? Dear God, have you seen her, Seeker?’ Distaste was written over his face. ‘Anyhow, she declared that Isabella must also be brought to Gethsemane. Edward was in her power by this point, and she hinted at cruelties to be inflicted upon him if I did not bring Isabella to her. So I did. I told Isabella I had a friend from Oxford, who knew Mr Boyle himself, who would show her his experiments. We met near the market at Leadenhall one day, and I took her to Gethsemane. There was some sort of meeting going on in one of the almshouses there, and no one about but Patience and that dreadful old crone who’s always pronouncing Cromwell’s doom. They took Isabella into the old woman’s dwelling and told me to leave.’

  ‘You didn’t go inside?’

  Bridlington shook his head. ‘I don’t know what they did with Edward or Isabella once they had them there. I thought that was it, that Patience was finished with me.’

  ‘But she wasn’t?’

  ‘No. I was still wondering how I might extricate Edward, and the girl.’ He looked up at Seeker. ‘Whatever you may think of me, I would not have left them at her mercy. But Patience found me a third time. She said we were in trouble.’ He laughed. ‘We! As if we had conceived all together, as if she and I were somehow friends.’

  Seeker was becoming impatient. ‘What trouble?’

  ‘What?’ said Bridlington.

  ‘You and Patience Crowe. What trouble were you in?’

  ‘She said a man named Gideon Fell had joined their community, but she had begun to think he was not as he presented himself, rather that he watched her, watched Anne Winter’s house, watched me. She said she thought he might be one of Mr Thurloe’s agents, but I told her there were none there, at Gethsemane, as far as I knew, and she was allowing her imagination to carry her away. But she would not let it go, and then one day told me she was certain he had been watching us, that he had taken the register of the Three Nails from her chamber, and would show it to Mr Thurloe. So we resolved to follow him. He had arrived at Gethsemane in darkness that night, in a great state of agitation, and gone directly to the chamber he shared with Patience’s brother.’ He paused to look at Seeker. ‘He’s a simple boy who has no part in her schemes. Anyway, after about a quarter-hour, this Gideon Fell had left again, in great haste, and a bundle under his arm. We followed him, and although he looked behind him again and again, and must have seen us, I don’t think it was us that he feared.’