[Damian Seeker 05] - The House of Lamentations

by S. G. MacLean

  Sister Janet watched with pursed lips until the men rounded the corner. ‘That fellow is always so impertinent, he puts me quite out of kilter. I feel I need to sit and rest a moment.’

  Anne cast about her for somewhere they might go inside. She suggested they ask admittance for a few minutes to the Poortersloge. She quickly realised she would have been wiser to bring to life the bear whose statue guarded the corner of the building as it faced down the canals.

  ‘Poortersloge? A front for wealthy merchants to drink and play at cards and utter profanities all the live-long day whilst they make their plots to plunder the poor. I’ll not set foot in it. But come, we are no great distance from Sint-Walburgakerk. A moment’s prayer and quiet contemplation will be all the restorative I need.’

  Anne was certain there were half a dozen places they might have stopped and rested a moment before they finally reached the Walburgakerk. Protesting that she was perfectly all right, Janet nevertheless permitted herself to lean on Anne’s arm as they went up the steps, before shaking it off at the top and bustling purposefully inside.

  Following quickly after her, Anne remembered just in time to cross herself with holy water and then to genuflect before the altar before joining Sister Janet who was already on her knees in prayer. It was only the second Romish church Anne had set foot in, and she could not help but look about her in wonder. Whereas the chapel of the Engels Klooster was almost oppressive to her in its closeness and ornament, this was a revelation of space and pure light. At first all she was aware of was that the heat and harsh brightness of the sun were here moderated by swathes of white marble into something cool and clear, giving blessed relief from the heat and dust of the street, but then into her throat crept the first trickle of incense and into her head the murmuring of black-robed priests. Lady Anne caught her breath. She had met Jesuit priests before, in English Catholic houses loyal to the King, but those men had always been moving around the country incognito, constantly in danger of their lives. It was a shock to see them walk openly here. Anne could not quite master a sensation of fear at finding herself in such near proximity to men she had spent her life being taught to see as cunning of intellect and sinister of purpose.

  Sister Janet was on her knees and in prayer before Anne had completed her genuflection. When Janet’s lips had finished moving, and the beads she had been passing through her fingers lay still in her hands, Anne helped her to a sitting position on the wooden seat behind her.

  ‘Ah, these old bones,’ said Janet, letting out a long breath.

  ‘Are you recovered a little, Sister?’

  An irate face whipped round. ‘There is nothing whatsoever wrong with me.’

  ‘The Irishman was very insolent . . .’ began Anne.

  ‘Ho! You will be on your knees a long time if you take to prayer every time you come across an insolent Irishman,’ said Janet. ‘I am just getting a little tired. I’ve been fighting a long time.’

  ‘Fighting for what, Sister?’

  It looked to Anne as if Janet would say more, but suddenly a shadow fell across the floor in front of them. Anne looked up. Emerging from behind a close-by marble column was Father Felipe, Sister Janet’s confessor and the Jesuit whom she and Hildred had encountered on that first morning after their arrival at the Engels Klooster.

  ‘Sister Janet,’ he said, whilst looking at Anne, who lowered her head further over the beads. ‘I see you have a new companion.’

  The young Jesuit wasn’t a particularly tall man, but his soft brown eyes and the gentle contours of his face would have made him very appealing to look at were it not for the predatory expression that came over that face when he spoke. It was an expression that told Anne he had no difficulty in seeing past her nun’s habit in the way other men might not.

  ‘She is not long arrived from England, Father, and I have taken her under my wing. Bruges can be a dangerous city for young women unfamiliar with its ways. I shall be keeping a particularly close eye on her welfare.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Father Felipe, taking a half step back and looking less pleased with Sister Janet’s response than he pretended to be. ‘And you have brought her here to see its most beautiful church?’

  ‘It was the first sanctuary that came to my mind, for a moment’s repose and reflection, after an encounter with the Irishman, Evan Glenroe.’

  ‘Oh?’ Real interest flashed in Felipe’s eye. ‘I hope the reprobate did not upset you unduly, Sister.’

  ‘His attempts to impress his new companion, some fellow also lately arrived from England – Barton, as I recall – veer to the somewhat vulgar. No doubt he will be leading the fellow astray, at the House of Lamentations and other such wicked places.’

  ‘Indeed? Then we must pray that his new companion finds a better path.’ Father Felipe inclined his head to Janet, cast another unsettling look at Anne, and turned away, trailing aromas of sandalwood and lemon behind him. A moment later, Sister Janet was once more genuflecting before the altar, and making her way back out of the church. It felt to Anne that they had taken an unduly long diversion to spend such a short time ‘resting’, and as they made their way back out into the sunlight of the street, Anne could not help feeling that what she had just witnessed was the delivery of a message of some kind. What she was not so certain of was whether the message was about Evan Glenroe or from him.

  By the time they were making their way back along Sint-Annarei, Anne felt emboldened to ask Sister Janet about something else that had been preying on her mind. ‘The girl you had me smuggle to Damme, and with whom I changed places – was she the sister of the young drowned man that Evan Glenroe spoke of?’

  Janet stopped, heaved a great sigh and at last said, ‘Yes, she is.’

  ‘Then why did you send her brother—’

  Janet interrupted her. ‘I could not be certain it was her brother.’

  ‘But could you not have asked her? Where would have been the harm?’

  ‘Ruth Jones was not present at the Engels Klooster when the man claiming to be her brother came asking for her. I sent her a message after I had sent him away.’

  ‘Where to? Where was she?’

  ‘Somewhere safe.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘The man she was running from.’

  ‘This Bartlett Jones?’

  Sister Janet shook her head. ‘No. She wouldn’t tell me the name of the man she so feared. All I know is that he is an Englishman, and that she has been fleeing him for some time. She came to Bruges because she had heard she might find sanctuary here. But of course, Bruges is full of Englishmen and I had to keep her presence at the Engels Klooster and – elsewhere – a secret. She is too terrified to trust anyone completely, even me. She fears there is no one he cannot win to his side, and nowhere he cannot reach. I could only press her so far. And as for this poor boy – Bartlett Jones – it seems he was indeed her brother, God rest his soul, come to Bruges to bring her home safe. He will never do that now. I would never have turned him away if I’d known it was truly him, and what was going to happen to him.’ She swallowed, then looked up at Anne, vulnerable, old, and almost defeated. Almost. ‘Ruth saw him the next morning, on the Spaanse Loskaai, dead. Her own brother.’

  Anne thought of the girl with the badly scarred face with whom she’d frantically exchanged clothes in Lady Hildred’s carriage, tried to imagine the horrors she had seen and was running from. ‘And that’s how you knew about his death before Evan Glenroe told you?’

  But Sister Janet shook her head. ‘I already knew he was dead. John Carpenter told me that morning. He’d met Bartlett Jones when the young fellow had just arrived in Bruges, and the next day he saw him lying dead on the dock.’

  ‘Who is John Carpenter?’ asked Anne.

  Janet’s face lightened at last and she laughed. ‘So much has happened since your arrival in Bruges, I had almost forgotten how little ti
me you have really been here. He is an English carpenter, who seems to come from nowhere and yet be everywhere you least expect him. I think little happens in Bruges that he does not make it his business to know about.’

  ‘An English carpenter?’ said Anne, the hairs on her neck suddenly prickling. Back into her mind had come an image from her first full day at the Engels Klooster, and the glimpse of a man she had seen Sister Janet speak with at the convent garden door.

  ‘Yes, well, if Yorkshire is to be counted as England. Certainly, there are arguments against but . . .’ Sister Janet suddenly stopped and reached a hand over to take hold of one of Anne’s. ‘My dear, is something the matter? You’ve gone very pale.’

  ‘I . . . no . . . it is not possible.’

  ‘Anne? What is wrong? We have walked too long in the heat this morning.’

  Anne shook her head, screwing shut her eyes as if blanking out what they might show. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said at last. ‘Foolishness, nothing more.’

  But even now, hours after they’d arrived back safe within the convent’s walls, Anne couldn’t quite shake off a deep sense of foreboding. Nor could she quite rid her senses of the trailing aromas of sandalwood and lemon that clung to the priest, Father Felipe.

  Thirteen

  Oude Steen

  The stonework of the archway Seeker was leaning against was pleasantly warm in the early evening sun. George Beaumont had been somewhat vague when telling him where he had taken his lodgings in ’t Zand, in the sleepy south-west of the city, so Seeker had made a point of following him that first night. Beaumont’s lodging was in fact a trim little cottage on Kreupelnstraat, very close to the Blindekenskapel. Seeker was impressed – it was a well-chosen spot, with absolutely nothing in the vicinity likely to incite the interest of the Cavaliers. Beaumont would be able to come and go from here relatively unobserved.

  Seeker had not been there long before he saw George Beaumont appear at the end of the street. He stepped out of the shadow of his archway and saw that his sudden appearance had given his fellow Englishman a jolt.

  ‘I . . .’ Beaumont took a moment to recover himself. ‘I hadn’t expected to find you here.’

  ‘Well, as long as you can be found wherever I might expect to find you, you needn’t worry yourself about being able to find me. Come on.’ Seeker had already started up the way George had come.

  George Beaumont hesitated, then followed after him.

  As they passed Sint-Salvatorskerk, Seeker said, ‘You been back at the Bouchoute House since we spoke earlier?’

  Beaumont still seemed unsettled by Seeker’s appearance. ‘No, I’ve . . . just been wandering around town, trying to familiarise myself with it. Where are we going, by the way?’

  ‘Oude Steen,’ said Seeker.

  Something like alarm passed over George Beaumont’s face. ‘The prison? Is this some sort of trap, Seeker?’

  Seeker screwed up his face. ‘A trap? What on earth for? This is about your mother. If it was one of that crew in the Bouchoute House that shot her, they won’t have risked doing it themselves – they’ll have paid someone to do it for them. They’d not have had much trouble around Bruges finding someone desperate for money who can handle a musket. Whoever that was has more than likely gone back to the hole he crawled out of. We start tracking him down by asking the low-life in the prison. We find him, and with a bit of persuasion – be it fiscal or physical – he’ll tell us who it was that paid him to silence Lady Hildred.’

  ‘Silence her?’ George gave an awkward laugh. ‘I’m not denying that my mother could be a harpy, Seeker, but even I wouldn’t have shot her to shut her up.’

  ‘Even if you were a traitor who thought she’d come to Bruges to discover you?’

  They were now making their way up the Oude Burg. George stopped. ‘What are you talking about, Seeker?’

  Seeker had considered very carefully how much to tell Beaumont of his own particular interest in the Cavaliers. ‘Secretary Thurloe has a spy, in the Bouchoute House. He’s provided us with some very useful information over the last year or so. He sends his reports, in cypher, to England, through me. The Royalists have uncovered that much, but they don’t know who he is, or who I am, so they’ve sent someone – a she-intelligencer – over here to find out. I received this information and reported it to my source a few hours before your mother’s arrival in Bruges. Two days later, she was dead.’

  George Beaumont appeared to hear the words Seeker was speaking but didn’t seem entirely able to make himself understand them. ‘My mother? A she-intelligencer?’ He laughed. ‘I have heard of such women, though I can scarcely credit a woman could truly be capable of espionage. It’s hardly what one looks for from them, is it? And even should such women actually exist, I cannot believe even the deluded fools of the Sealed Knot or the Great Trust or whatever name they now manifest themselves under would think Hildred Beaumont up to any enterprise requiring even a modicum of subtlety.’

  ‘Oh, you wouldn’t believe what some women are capable of, but no, on this occasion, you’re right: I don’t think Lady Hildred was the person sent to ferret out our spy.’

  Seeker had started to walk again, but George Beaumont remained where he was. Seeker turned to him, impatient. ‘They don’t let people into the Oude Steen at all hours, you know.’

  But Beaumont was shaking his head, his lip slightly twisted. ‘You know.’

  ‘I know what?’

  ‘Who Thurloe’s agent is. Which of them in the Bouchoute House is the traitor to the rest. Of course you must know who your own spy is. What farce are you having me play?’

  Seeker walked back towards Beaumont and stopped very close to him. ‘I’ll remind you again, Major, that I am the senior officer in our current situation,’ he said, his voice very quiet. ‘I’m not telling you who my source is because firstly, you have turned up in Bruges without me having had any warning of it and without Mr Thurloe’s knowledge – I have not the authority to give you this agent’s name. Moreover, I’m not telling you because it isn’t certain that it was him who shot your mother.’

  Beaumont looked as if he was struggling to keep his temper. ‘Oh, come, Seeker, of course it is. Who else might it be?’

  ‘Any number of people. The man denies it, quite strenuously.’

  Beaumont looked incredulous. ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’

  Seeker shook his head. ‘Not to me. If you think about it, he has no reason in the world to deny to me that he has removed a Royalist agent sent here to uncover our activities. More like to take the credit for getting rid of our common problem.’

  Seeker could see that George Beaumont followed the logic of what he said. ‘What’s more, I’ve learned over the past few years that more than one person may have a motive for killing a particular person. I think you and I have a much better chance of getting at the truth if you can start with the fact of your mother being shot rather than him being someone in whose interest it was to shoot her.’

  George gave a crooked smile. ‘I had not heard you were a philosopher, Captain. Clearly you favour the empirical over the teleological approach.’

  Seeker gave a dismissive grunt. Republican or Royalist, sometimes the gentry just couldn’t help themselves. ‘Call it what you like, Beaumont,’ he said, ‘but we’ll do this my way or you’ll depart Bruges now. You’re fresh eyes, and after a year and a half of keeping track of these vipers, fresh eyes are exactly what I need.’

  The self-satisfied look on George Beaumont’s face was gone and was replaced by a flash of temper. ‘Fresh eyes? The Cavaliers don’t trust me, you don’t trust me. I go not with fresh eyes but half-blind.’

  Seeker had already started walking again. ‘Half-blind is better than nothing at all, which is what you came into Bruges with. That’s your choice, take it or leave it.’

  Beaumont had no other choice and he knew it. He started to walk
after Seeker. ‘And how are we to comport ourselves in this prison?’

  ‘Well, I’m visiting a friend down on his luck. It’s not the first time I’ve been there to see him, and I’ve bailed him out before. No one will think it strange . . .’

  ‘And what role do I play in this?’

  ‘The one you’re already playing. A comrade of the officers at the Bouchoute House, making investigations into the shooting on the road to Damme. You’re not long arrived in the city. I was doing some work at the house and am simply showing you the way. You need to remember: people aren’t wary of me here. Here, I’m just the English carpenter.’

  They turned on to Wollestraat and the prison soon came into sight. They gained admittance from the doorkeeper and began to descend the steps to the dungeon. Once at the bottom, Seeker exchanged a few words in Flemish with the warder and they were each given a candle in return for dropping the requisite number of coins into the warder’s palm. There could be no telling for the inmates incarcerated at this level whether it was day or night. Such things could lead to madness.

  As the clanking sound of the gate shutting behind them reverberated around the walls, Seeker was acutely aware of the smell. It was as bad as a barrack room in high summer. Proximity to the canal meant that the air that did find its way through from the high barred windows of the ground floor of the Steen brought with it fetid humours, rank odours, and flies. At least it was cooler below ground. Cold, in fact, and the rasping coughs and shivers of many of the inmates did not bode well for those forced to have any more than a fleeting acquaintance with the Oude Steen. Interspersed with the coughs were mumbles and sudden shouts, offensive catcalls and pleas for help.