The Black Friar

by S. G. MacLean

  ‘Not yet,’ said Seeker. ‘We will tell her soon.’

  This seemed to satisfy her and she continued. ‘Well, I noticed a man looking at me. Not in a bad way, I know that way and it wasn’t that kind of look. It was as if he knew me. I hurried on, because Lady Anne had told me I must be careful on the streets.’

  ‘Did you tell her about him?’

  She nodded. ‘Lady Anne got me to describe him, and it wasn’t long before she noticed him too. She said that he was watching the house and that I should be careful of him.’

  ‘But?’

  Again she chewed her lip. ‘There were some boys one day, calling after me, saying things they should not have done. They started to run after me, and I started to run too, but then the man – Gideon – came and scared them away. He told me not to be frightened, and asked me for my name. When I told him it was Charity, he asked if I was certain, because he had thought it might be something else. So I told him about the foundling home, and that I didn’t know where I had come there from. Then he told me to go home, but not to tell anyone we had spoken.’

  ‘And did you?’

  She shook her head. ‘He seemed to think there was danger in it, for both of us, and I didn’t think it would matter anyway, as I wasn’t the person he’d thought. But then a few days later I saw him again, and he asked me about Lady Anne’s house. I was careful not to tell him, because I knew many spies watched the house, and by this time Lady Anne was certain he was one of them.’ She paused and her brow furrowed.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Well, he told me that he was. Is that not strange? Should not a spy pretend to be otherwise?’

  Seeker nodded. ‘He should. I think perhaps it mattered to Gideon very much that you should trust him.’

  ‘So that he could get into Lady Anne’s house?’

  ‘So that he could help you.’

  ‘He said that, that he wanted to help me, that Lady Anne’s house was a dangerous place for me to be, but it wasn’t, Mr Seeker – it was the safest, kindest place I can ever remember.’

  ‘I think there was another that you don’t remember, that Gideon knew about.’

  Her voice was almost inaudible. ‘He said that too. He said he thought he might have found my mother. He wanted me to leave Lady Anne’s house and go with him to her. I asked him to tell Lady Anne, but he said she had guessed who he was and would never believe him.’

  ‘But you didn’t go with him?’

  Tears were threatening to brim over the child’s lashes. ‘I was frightened. I told him if ever I was in danger, I knew a way I could get out of Lady Anne’s house, a safe way that the soldiers wouldn’t know about.’

  ‘Through the special basement chamber and out by the hidden door to the coal store?’

  Wide-eyed with astonishment that he should know, she nodded.

  ‘And did you tell Gideon about this?’ he asked gently.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I did.’

  He leaned towards her. ‘There is one last thing I must ask about Gideon, Charity. Did you ever see him again?’

  She shook her head and now the tears came. ‘I think he was in the house. I think he came that night. There was a great commotion in the downstairs chamber, and a thief disturbed who got out by the secret way, and the next morning we saw that a box of costumes had been disturbed, and a friar’s robes missing.’

  ‘Was there anything else?’

  ‘Yes, Lady Anne’s salt was gone from her dining parlour – the special salt, with her family crest upon it. But why would Gideon have taken that, when there is so much else of value in the house?’

  Seeker sighed. ‘I think he took it as a message to your mother, should he not be able to get to her himself, a sign telling her where she should find you.’

  At that moment, Maria returned with the warmed caudles, and asked him to give the girls a few moments to take them in peace.

  ‘All right,’ he said, standing up from the small stool, all at once conscious now of his ungainly size in this small, spare, herb-scented room. ‘I would have a word with you first, though, Mistress Ellingworth.’

  ‘I am busy.’

  ‘It will not take a moment.’

  She let out an exasperated sigh. ‘Once I have helped feed the girls then,’ she said.

  Only the dog was to be found in the courtyard of Gethsemane, and it came over to Seeker as he slumped down by the girls’ almshouse cottage, to sit on the ground, with his back against the wall. The dog seemed to realise that all was not well with its master, and sat quietly by him, allowing his head to be stroked, earnestly looking as if he knew and understood all. ‘How do I come back from this, eh, boy? How do I make her see that Thurloe’s tale’s not true? How do I do it?’

  It must have been a quarter-hour before Maria appeared in the doorway. The dog looked up at her with sad eyes, and she allowed herself to stroke it.

  ‘You wanted me?’

  Wanted her. The choice of words could hardly have been worse. Every part of him wanted her.

  He stood up, brushed some of the dirt from his clothes. ‘I need to see you, Maria, to explain.’

  ‘No, you do not. It has been made perfectly clear. I can show you the explanations in print, if you wish, for why you ever dallied with me.’

  ‘Maria, you of all people – you, and your brother, you know how this works. You cannot believe there is any truth in the lies Nedham peddled about us in his rag?’

  ‘I know it is what everyone now thinks, now says: you courted me solely in the hopes of gaining intelligence on my brother and his associates. Finding the information through other means, you had no further use for me.’

  ‘But you know, you know, that is not true. As God is my witness, I love you and I have loved you every moment since I saw you and you know it.’

  ‘I know what is in Nedham’s rag and others and it would not be in there if it were not approved by your masters.’

  ‘But not by me.’

  ‘What does it matter, Damian, if it is not approved by you, if still they are your masters?’

  He could find no answer for her, and watched, rendered motionless almost, as she turned her back on him and walked away.

  The dog, seeming to have comprehended a little more of the situation, slunk down on the dirty cobbles, his head on his paws, his eyes firmly fixed on the ground in front of him.

  *

  It was almost an hour later that Seeker finally left Gethsemane. The story of Charity’s abduction by Patience Crowe had been simple enough: an errand to Petticoat Lane to find a particular silk thread for a special outfit Lady Anne was at work on in the basement workshop; a haberdasher who had no such thread in stock; a kind, plain, Puritan girl, the daughter of a weaver who lived so very close to Charity’s own home on Crutched Friars, who was certain her mother had a skein of just such a thread, and would be happy to give it for her ladyship’s use. A pleasant walk back into town and to Gethsemane, not five minutes from home, so nearly home, and then the old crone behind the door, the darkened cottage, her hands suddenly bound, the hole in the floor, the fear of falling, the darkness. And then there was the hurting, Patience and the hurting. The mockery, the shearing of her hair. And Marcus Bridlington? She never met him. Edward had spoken of him, asked Patience about him, but Patience had said he wouldn’t be seeing Marcus any more.

  Charity didn’t know how many days it had been; none of them knew. Then Patience had stopped coming, no one had come, and their food had run out, and the water in the barrel been almost finished.

  She’d asked Seeker again about Lady Anne, and this time he’d told her. But he’d told her too about another who was being sent for, and that she would know this woman in her heart the moment she saw her.

  Just as he had been about to leave, a question came to him that he had not thought to ask before. ‘How did you know it was him?’

  Charity was quite exhausted now. ‘Who?’

  ‘When Lady Anne’s house was broken into, and th
e salt and robe taken, how did you know it was Gideon Fell?’

  She looked at him as if it were a thing so simple. ‘Because Richard saw him.’

  *

  ‘Took you long enough.’ The Rat’s laugh was valiant, but forced. The transfer to the Tower, through busy streets in a wheeled cage, had done little to soothe the broken bones or cuts his captors and interrogators had inflicted on him. No bunches of herbs here either: the place stank.

  As Seeker steeled himself to the air of the small and filthy cell, he wondered how it was that the woman who had harboured and protected this man could be accommodated little more than fifty yards away, but in a place of markedly greater comfort. Birth? Or affection for her husband’s name? He wondered too if either could save her this time.

  ‘You murdered Carter Blyth.’

  The man made an attempt at a shrug. ‘I was going to tell you, but you were more interested in General Goffe’s little nephew and his blood-curdling amour.’ Again the valiant laugh, ending in a croak this time.

  ‘You would never have told me.’

  ‘Well,’ conceded the Rat, wrinkling his nose, ‘perhaps not, but I would have told you something, to trade.’

  ‘There’s no trade for what you’ve been caught in.’

  ‘Not for me, I’m not that stupid. But the lady. I thought you might go easy on the lady.’

  ‘That’s not up to me,’ said Seeker. ‘What had you planned to trade?’

  The Rat considered, shrugged again, the game up. ‘Might do you some good. Bridlington and that girl. They followed your man all the way from Gethsemane to Lincoln’s Inn. He saw them, mind, but didn’t seem to care, too busy looking for me.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Seeker. ‘Did he find you?’

  ‘Hah!’ Again his throat caught in a croak. ‘Nah, but I found him. Should have followed your boy, Bridlington – he got the note, I take it? But I made a mistake. Followed Blyth instead, and so did the girl.’

  ‘Patience Crowe?’

  ‘That’s right. When he came back out of Lincoln’s gardens, she went right up to him, grabbed him by the arm. He tried to throw her off, but she was telling him something that made him stop and listen. I got in a bit closer, so to hear.’

  ‘And?’ The Rat was enjoying his moment and Seeker was running out of patience.

  ‘She was telling him she’d found the children, whoever the children were, I don’t know. She was asking him to come, saying her mother was behind it all, and she was fearful for them. Don’t think he trusted her, but he’d a nice big knife on him, and he went along anyway. I followed them. Down to Blackfriars.’

  Blackfriars. ‘And what happened there?’

  They started to go in amongst the buildings, me following, the girl Patience always saying it was just a little further. Just as Blyth was becoming angry at her, she stood back from a doorway and said, “In here.” In he went, and quick as anything, behind him, I saw her hand come up with a brick in it, and the brick smash into the back of his head. Down he went like a sack of coal, and in she went after him, with that brick in her hand. Up it came again, down again and he stopped moving. I was about three feet behind her by this time, pressed in a recess behind a doorway.’

  ‘And you did nothing to stop her?’ said Seeker.

  ‘What?’ The Rat had screwed up his face in an approximation of contempt. ‘When she’d done my job for me, on one of your agents? Why in God’s name would I have stopped her? Anyway, she crouched down, checked his breathing, and nodded to herself, quite satisfied it seemed with her work. Then she just stood up, dropped the brick and said, “Give my regards to St Peter.” Away she scurried, leaving him there for dead.’

  ‘But he wasn’t dead.’

  ‘No,’ said the Rat, shaking his head. ‘He was not. I slipped in and checked his neck, felt the blood still pulsing. Near enough dead, but not quite, and I wasn’t about to leave one of Thurloe’s agents, one that had been watching Lady Anne’s house, lying there to be found murdered. Your crew would have been at Lady Anne’s front door quick as you could saddle that big horse of yours. So I got his own nice big knife and loosened some of those bricks at that old oven. He’d got one of our costumes in a bundle – God knows why – a friar’s robe of all things, so I put him in it, for an extra touch, put him in the wall, put back the bricks. Sack of mortar in the yard outside, quick mix with filthy water from the Fleet, fixed them in quick enough. I thought it would be a long day before they ever found him, and then he’d just be taken for one of those old dead friars.’ He shook his head again, breathing a humourless laugh. ‘I swear to you, though, if I’d known he would wake, I’d just have stuck his knife into him instead. I wouldn’t give any man a death like that.’

  ‘And yet you did.’

  ‘I did, and I’ll swing for that and all the rest. But you do one thing for me, Seeker, eh?’

  It was Seeker’s turn to laugh. ‘Let’s hear it.’

  ‘You catch that wicked bitch. You make her pay.’

  ‘Oh, we have her,’ Seeker assured him, ‘and she will pay.’

  Epilogue

  London, early March, 1655

  The wind was bitter and it would herald more things than the men and women of London knew. Seeker’s interview with Thurloe had been a long one, and it would be the last they would have for a good long time too, if Thurloe was to be believed.

  ‘It’s coming. Lambert has convinced Cromwell and the rest of the Council will follow. We need to come down hard. The country must be brought under tighter control, the people brought under tighter control. For their own good.’

  It was the argument being put again and again around Whitehall, in the Cockpit, in the corridors and arboured walks of Hampton Court, and who could argue against what the generals had decided was for the people’s own good, what Thurloe, Cromwell had decided? Only one who thought to spread sedition would even try.

  ‘All the intelligence from abroad tells us the Royalists have another rising planned, and soon. We have some of the names already – it will come to nothing, and the new musters will keep control of the city, but there are plans afoot to put much tighter controls on our Royalist friends – even the ones who’ve been behaving themselves.’

  Seeker knew that. No more Royalists to live quiet in the city, there was talk in the corridors of Whitehall of forcing them to register their movements and seek permission for every journey they made. Anne Winter had been let out of the Tower only long enough to be put into a caged cart and trailed up to Northumbria, where it was thought possible she might do less harm. Cromwell had taken the trouble, though, to ensure that the first part of her journey should be in the company of her steward, the man Richard, that the pair would be paraded out of the city and along Holborn, past St Giles’s, to the triple tree at Tyburn, where Lady Anne might ‘benefit from the observation of justice served’. There, at Tyburn, a slow and painful death had been meted out to her Rat, and Seeker, also watching, had had to concede that the man had borne it well.

  Patience Crowe had also been sent to meet her maker, she at the end of a noose six days before. His days in Newgate, and the revelation of his daughter’s wickedness, had done much to make Goodwill Crowe question his own path to salvation, and being forced to watch her daughter hang had finally silenced Elizabeth where all else had failed. Council and Protector, weary of the sects that threatened stability and abandoning something of their zeal for tolerance, had spoken out once and for all against the practices of the Fifth Monarchists and their like. None would be permitted to return to Gethsemane.

  Nathaniel wouldn’t be returning to Gethsemane either. The health of the boy Jed improved day by day, but it would be a good while until he was strong enough to return to his duties in the gardens of Lincoln’s Inn. The masters had hastily agreed to Seeker’s forceful suggestion that their old gardener needed at least two young men to help him in his onerous work, and it was there that Seeker had gone to bid Nathaniel and the dog farewell until his return.

&n
bsp; Seeker hadn’t said goodbye to Maria though. He’d said nothing to her, cut off, shut out from her life since that last day at Gethsemane. Elias had made it clear enough when, all else having failed, Seeker had gone to Dove Court and asked for her openly. Her brother had shaken his head: she would not see him. It was over. She had done with him.

  Since that day he’d seen Shadrach Jones not once, but twice, turning off Old Jewry for Dove Court. The second time Seeker had punched the nearest wall so hard he had almost broken his own knuckles. He trained relentlessly in the drill yard, fenced with such venom that it got to the stage no one who could avoid it would practise with him. It didn’t help. He hadn’t argued long with Thurloe on the matter of Shadrach Jones though, for Thurloe hadn’t been disposed to listen. Shadrach Jones had been turned; Shadrach Jones had been freed, his skills too valuable to be lost to the Protectorate, which he was as happy to serve as he had the cause of Charles Stuart. ‘It’s the puzzle, the test that’s the thing for him, you see, Seeker,’ Thurloe had said, not seeing there were other things that Shadrach Jones might also care for. ‘Forget about him,’ Thurloe had said at last. ‘I doubt you’ll be seeing him in the north.’

  The north. In nearly ten years, he had not been back. The army had saved him, liberated him, given him his life anew, and now the army was sending him back. ‘The localities, they’re the key,’ Thurloe had explained. ‘The godly are few and of little influence and must be strengthened. The first thing that must be done is for new militias to be raised around the country, and only the best and most trustworthy to command them.’

  ‘Then find another,’ Seeker had said.

  Thurloe had shaken his head. ‘General Lambert wants you there, and Cromwell approves it. Your commission is to York, the orders already sent ahead of you. A new dawn is coming, Seeker.’

  It was not dawn, but almost dusk when Seeker stooped his head and crossed the threshold of the Black Fox. The greying chill of the street outside dwindled and died as the pot boy closed the door behind him. The place was full, as ever, but the warmth in it came from more than the fire in the hearth, the many candles burning in their sconces on the wall, the heat from a kitchen that seemed to feed half the footfall of London. The warmth came from the woman who sailed between the tables, laughing, chiding, singing to herself, turning every moment to glance at the young girl who sat behind the counter, happily stitching samplers for the wall, or to place a hand, gift a smile on the serving girl, black hair showing in tufts now beneath her cap and blue eyes shining again.