[Damian Seeker 05] - The House of Lamentations

by S. G. MacLean

  ‘Not so,’ he said. ‘Your old mistress’s money lies in a strongbox in a safe space in the Bouchoute House. An hour from now, my good friends Edward Daunt, Thomas Faithly and Evan Glenroe will be removing it from its place of safety and carrying it to De Garre, where they are currently carousing with His Majesty the King. We can get to it first but we must go now.’

  Anne was bewildered. ‘You think I would risk everything I have risked for mere money?’

  ‘Why else would a maidservant take the risks you have taken? Why should you care more for one cause than the other? It is surely all the same for the likes of you.’ He turned as if to go back to the tunnel.

  Anne unsheathed her knife and held it up. ‘Sign the paper, Ellis.’

  He spun round to grip the wrist of the hand that held the knife. For a man who looked slight of build, he had immense strength. He lifted her arm so that the tip of the blade came within an inch of his own throat, before twisting her arm behind her back so quickly she thought it might break. The knife clattered to the floor. ‘Sign it yourself, my pretty,’ he spat, before forcing her down onto the ground.

  As she hit the floor, Anne managed to roll away and started to get to her feet. Ellis lunged at her but she kicked out and caught him on the side of the knee. He stumbled and swore and came after her again. She could see the light beneath the door at the top of the stone stairs leading to the kitchens and bolted for them, knocking over a pile of empty barrels as she passed. The sound reverberating around the vaults was like a battery of gunfire. George Barton would surely hear it. She heard Ellis curse again as he pushed the rolling barrels aside. She reached the stair and managed to catch hold of the guide rope secured to the wall. She was up three steps, and then four, when she felt the pull at the back of her skirts. She strained to keep going but he was pulling her back. She cursed the material that would not rip. She tried to kick out behind, but only succeeded in losing her footing and falling. Still the door to the kitchens remained closed. And now Marchmont Ellis was on her. He turned her over, had her pinned by the shoulders. Without thinking, she twisted her head and sank her teeth as hard as she could into the exposed flesh of his arm. He called out in pain and let go her shoulders to grasp his injured arm. Anne rolled again and fell the few feet off the side of the stairway to the floor. That was when she saw he had dropped the knife.

  Anne lunged across the floor for the knife but before she could reach it she felt the thud of his boot below her ribs and into her stomach. She doubled up and wheezed before reaching again for the knife. A swing of the other boot caught her in the side of the jaw and she felt her upper teeth sink into her lower lip. The blood was streaming down her chin as she staggered once more to her feet, just in time to see Marchmont Ellis lift his bleeding arm, the knife in his hand, while grabbing her with his other arm. She tried to turn away but his grip was too strong for her and she felt her knees go from under her, her body give up the fight. He pulled her up by the hair, which he twisted around his fist to bring her very close to his face. ‘You’ve had your chance, and now it’s over.’ He lifted his arm and she saw the point of her own knife aimed at her neck.

  As the knife started to move towards her, there was an almighty crash, not from the kitchens above but from the direction of the tunnel, and Ellis’s arm was momentarily frozen in mid-air before being twisted up behind him. Ellis let out a yell, dropping the knife at the same moment as he loosed his grip on her hair. Suddenly, not only his arm, but his whole body seemed to twist round before being lifted into the air and flung against the wall of the cellar. Anne watched in disbelief as Ellis slid to the floor before trying to get up again, one hand flailing for the dagger she now saw sheathed beneath his torn doublet. He never reached it, a heavy boot forcing him back to the ground before powerful arms reached out and snapped his neck. Ellis’s body slumped again to the floor but this time did not move. Shaking almost uncontrollably, Lady Anne looked into the face of her deliverer and realised, at last, that she too must be dead.

  *

  Seeker flexed his fingers. It was a long time since he’d snapped a man’s neck, and he hoped never to have to do it again. He turned Ellis’s body over with his foot and crouched down beside the trembling form of the woman.

  ‘You just can’t stay out of trouble, can you?’ he said.

  Even in the slight golden light of the candles, Anne Winter’s face was deathly white. She was staring at him. She moved herself back against the wall, pushed the hair away from her eyes. ‘You’re supposed to be dead,’ she said at last.

  ‘And you’re supposed to be behaving yourself,’ he answered.

  ‘But the bear, people saw your body . . .’

  ‘People will see what they want to see,’ he said. ‘Enough people that wanted me dead thought they saw me dead. It seemed a shame to disappoint them.’

  ‘But Manon, Maria . . .’ she said.

  ‘Are my business. And I know what yours is. Or was,’ he corrected, nodding over to the dead form of Marchmont Ellis.

  He saw the understanding dawn. ‘You’re John Carpenter,’ she said. ‘You were his handler.’

  ‘More or less,’ he said, ‘in as far as he was worth.’

  ‘He betrayed countless good men,’ she said.

  ‘They’d set themselves up for it, traitors to the Lord Protector.’

  ‘The Lord . . .’

  He’d lifted a finger to stop her. ‘Another time, I think, Lady Anne. There are other things requiring my attention for now.’ He leaned towards her. ‘May I . . .’ He lifted away the hair that had fallen down about her face before gently examining the damage to her jaw. ‘It’s not broken, but you’ll be black and blue for a while. What about your teeth?’

  He saw her probe her mouth. ‘Still there,’ she said.

  ‘Good. Right, I’ll help you up those stairs to the kitchens – they’ll look after you – and then I’ve to be elsewhere.’

  She pressed her hands on the floor and began to push herself up. ‘I’ll manage myself,’ she said. ‘Just one thing?’

  ‘What?’ he said, starting to haul Marchmont Ellis’s body towards a darkened recess of the vault.

  ‘Was it only Ellis, or was one of the others involved too?’

  He pondered a moment. He didn’t need to answer her anything at all, but she deserved something for her courage. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It was just him.’ He didn’t tell her that everywhere Charles Stuart went, wherever his threadbare court settled, Secretary Thurloe had eyes and ears at the very centre of things. Ellis’s job had been to report on any conspiracies fomenting in Bruges. Europe was full of desperate Englishmen like Marchmont Ellis. If the Stuarts didn’t know that, they were even greater fools than they had already shown themselves to be.

  She nodded, then began to make her slow way towards the bottom of the stairs. Seeker watched her a moment but knew he really had no time to wait any longer. He had an appointment with Mr Longfellow.

  Twenty-Four

  De Garre

  Thomas Faithly laughed, but his laughter came a beat after that of the others. Daunt gave him a concerned look. ‘What’s up, old fellow?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said as quietly as he could.

  The King turned his attention away from the fiddler in the corner. ‘“If it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles.”’ Thomas had noticed before that he missed very little. ‘Lear,’ Charles added, in response to a bemused look from Daunt. ‘I always preferred a comedy. But tell me, Thomas. What do you think Will Shakespeare would have made of our present predicaments?’

  Thomas measured his words as best he could. ‘Perhaps he would have found the matter for his greatest hero, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Or perhaps not?’

  Thomas thought for a moment he had gone too far, but eventually the King’s features relaxed and he lifted his own glass. ‘A history, I would have, but no more of tragedies.’


  ‘Then we should proceed with caution, sir,’ said Faithly. ‘Too many of our friends and your loyal servants have lost their lives for the lack of it.’

  ‘And how are we to guard against the treachery of those we think our friends?’ asked Charles. ‘Shouldn’t Ellis be back by now? What manner of errand can be keeping him this time?’

  ‘Nothing good, I’ll wager,’ said Glenroe, who had been growing increasingly restless.

  Daunt and Faithly glanced at one another. ‘Ellis has gone to the Bouchoute House, to make ready Lady Hildred’s . . . consignment . . . for transport with Your Majesty. He said he would send word when it was ready.’

  ‘He appears to be taking an uncommon length of time over the matter.’

  Glenroe clenched his fist. Daunt glanced at Thomas and cleared his throat. ‘Ellis has disappeared a little too often of late – always something to see to, something he has forgotten, something he has promised to do. Always vague, never any details.’

  ‘What are you saying, Dunt?’ asked Thomas.

  ‘What we’re all thinking, Thomas,’ said Glenroe before turning to the king. ‘By your leave, Your Majesty, but I think one of us must go and see what’s keeping him.’

  ‘All of you go,’ said Charles. ‘Safer that way, and I daresay it will take at least two of you to transport the money. I can come to little harm in this tavern.’

  Thomas gave a careful smile. ‘Changed days, sir, if you can find no trouble in a tavern.’

  Charles laughed but Thomas broke into the laughter. ‘You have always been too careless of your safety, sir. Glenroe and I will go back to the Bouchoute House. Dunt will stay with you.’

  ‘Then all will be well,’ said Charles. ‘Now go, both of you. Go and see to my money.’

  Daunt sat more upright, the look of befuddlement gone. ‘Go on,’ he said to his friends, ‘and keep your wits about you.’

  ‘We’ll be back as soon as possible.’ Thomas nodded to the King and followed Glenroe down the stairs to the ground floor. Glenroe impatiently brushed aside a couple of porters and a carpenter attempting to come up the steps from the narrow alley. By the time they reached the Markt, his sense of foreboding was almost overwhelming.

  *

  After scanning the ground-floor taproom and finding no sign of who he was looking for, Seeker climbed the wooden steps to the upper gallery of the tavern. All might have been up a moment before, had Faithly and Glenroe not been so obviously bent on getting somewhere else in a hurry. Not once in the months since Faithly had appeared in Bruges had Seeker come anything like as close to him, and now, at a crucial moment, they had almost come face to face. The means of escape from this tavern were not the best. Till now, it was he who hid himself, found exit routes, always considering his means of escape. A turning of his head, a drawing in of his shoulders and the affecting of a stoop as Faithly had hurried past had allowed him to escape the other Yorkshireman’s notice. He was not sure that this tactic would work here.

  As soon as he was at the head of the stairs he saw them: Charles and Edward Daunt. Seeker could have laughed. Not another soul in the crowded tavern seemed to be paying the slightest attention to the fact that the man who called himself King of England was sitting, laughing and drinking in their midst. Here, Charles was not a fugitive, but neither could he move quite freely. The Spaniards gave him sanctuary whilst refusing openly to acknowledge him. The Dutch, over the northern border, would not allow his sister, the Princess of Orange, to have him in her house in the Hague. His mother was a princess of the blood in France, his cousin the King, but the French would not have him either. So Charles Stuart, who called himself King of England, spent his days like the third son of an impoverished English gentleman for whom a role in life was yet to be found. When he was not pleading with his Spanish hosts that they might allow him to visit them in their palaces, or rouse themselves to join him in attempting to regain his own, he went fowling, he practised at the butts, he drank with reckless Irishmen and slow-witted men of Kent in crowded, lowly taverns.

  But Glenroe was not here, only Daunt. Seeker had not yet reached the empty bench he had spotted in the far corner of the upper parlour when the Englishman announced of a sudden that he must get to the jakes and the King laughingly dismissed him. Hardly three minutes after Faithly and Glenroe had left De Garre Tavern, Charles Stuart was sitting utterly unprotected and alone.

  Seeker continued along to the empty table, sat down and brought a deck of cards from his pocket. He began to lay them out in a cross for Florentine. The tavern-keeper’s daughter soon appeared beside him with a mug and a jug of ale, and Seeker began to play.

  He was laying a seven of hearts on a six when he became aware of a figure making its way through the crowded tables towards him. He kept playing, steadily, and didn’t look up as he waited. And then the tall man’s shadow fell across the table and he did look up. Charles Stuart said something in heavily accented Flemish.

  Seeker took a gamble. ‘I’m sorry, sir, my Flemish is not so good. Do you speak English by any chance?’

  The dark man’s smile broadened and he swept off his hat. ‘With all my heart, friend. Charles Longfellow, as far from home as you are, I daresay. Would you give a fellow Englishman a hand of cards? I have withal to make it interesting.’

  ‘I’m just a carpenter, sir,’ said Seeker. ‘I doubt I can match what you stake.’

  Charles Stuart sighed heavily. ‘Few men could match what I have staked and lost, friend, but I’d play you for a handful of buttons for a half-hour’s companionship and talk of England.’ He hesitated. ‘But I would not have you end your game too soon.’

  ‘Oh, my game’s nearly done,’ Seeker replied, ‘and I tire of it anyway.’ He gathered up the cards and looked at the King. ‘Piquet?’

  ‘Learned at my mother’s knee,’ said Charles.

  Seeker began to sort through the pack, taking out the unwanted cards. ‘Are you out of England long, sir?’

  ‘Too long,’ said Charles.

  ‘Aye,’ said Seeker. ‘Me too.’

  ‘What took you here?’

  ‘Following the King,’ said Seeker.

  Charles’s smile broadened and he called for wine. Seeker offered Charles the remaining pack and soon they had cut for dealer and were beginning to play.

  ‘You are from Yorkshire?’

  Seeker acknowledged that he was.

  ‘I never fared well in Yorkshire,’ said Charles.

  ‘Nor I,’ said Seeker. ‘But I miss it, all the same.’

  ‘You may see it again, sooner than you think.’

  Seeker was wary. ‘Oh? How so?’

  Charles leaned in closer across the table. Seeker was suddenly aware that he was close enough to plunge a dagger in the man’s throat. ‘I have been assured this very day that England will soon be back to its senses. I have brought this news to my friends, and it is what we – when they return, of course – came here to celebrate tonight. The tyrant will soon be dead.’

  Seeker felt a chill creep through him. If there was a plot against the Protector, he should have known of it before now. He played his cards out carefully. ‘The King’s supporters are to adventure something new . . .’

  ‘Adventure?’ Charles’s brow wrinkled in amusement and he shook his head. ‘The time for adventuring is done, my friend, and not another drop of loyal blood to be spilled. Almighty God has at last stirred himself in the matter of England and likes not what he sees – and now by the Divine Providence of which he is wont to speak, the tyrant lies close to death at Hampton Court, in the very bed of the man he murdered.’

  It was as if the sounds and life around him had suddenly stopped. It could not be true; Thurloe would have told him. ‘Cromwell is dying?’ said Seeker.

  The King nodded, smiling to turn over an unexpected ace before declaring his hand. ‘Of grief and a fever. The plagues
of a new Egypt have been visited upon Oliver Cromwell. Sons-in-law, daughters, grandchildren go to their graves, beating a path for him to follow.’

  Seeker suddenly realised he was gripping his cards in his hands so tightly he had begun to crush them. Ingolby had written to him of it, having had it from Andrew Marvell, how the loss of his adored youngest daughter after that of her baby son had all but broken Cromwell’s heart. But he had not been ready to believe that the Protector himself could be truly ill.

  Charles was so intent upon his cards that he hadn’t noticed the damage Seeker had done to his. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the tyrant is not long for this world and soon his followers will be clambering over one another to leave the sinking ship.’

  Seeker was just considering how to respond when there came sounds of some sort of commotion downstairs. Before he could tell what they signalled, the sight of Thomas Faithly emerging at the top of the stair suddenly caught his eye. In the instant it took for Faithly’s look of blank astonishment to be replaced by the drawing of his sword and a roar of, ‘Glenroe!’, Seeker had tipped the table and everything on it over onto Charles Stuart and begun his run across the upper parlour. Faithly was knocking people out of the way as he attempted to reach him, but as the tip of his sword came within inches of Seeker’s chest, Seeker barged his arm with all his force to get past him before swinging himself over the balcony rail and dropping the ten feet or more to the floor below. The whole place was now in uproar, Glenroe bounding up the stairs to collide with Thomas Faithly coming down as an astonished Daunt emerged from his visit to the jakes. Seeker barrelled past Daunt and down the steps back into the narrow alley. He chose to turn right, towards the side streets rather than risk going back out towards the wide-open Markt. He had just reached the far end of the alley when he heard the shouts of the Cavaliers emerging at the bottom of the steps and demanding of a terrified clerk to know which way he had gone.

  The sound of his boots on the cobbles seemed to reverberate through the darkness of the near-empty streets, but it was not long before the shouts of Daunt and Glenroe had faded to nothing and it was clear that the Cavaliers had separated in their search for him. They had gone towards other parts of the town: only Thomas Faithly had picked the right direction – south-westwards. Before he left the city, Seeker knew he must tell George Beaumont he was going. What Beaumont himself then chose to do was up to him. When Seeker reached the precincts of Sint-Salvatorskerk, he came to a halt for a moment and reached into his pouch. He held up a coin to the vagabond taking shelter for the night beneath the porch. ‘The man coming after me,’ he said, ‘tell him I went towards Sint-Jans. There’ll be more tomorrow if he doesn’t find me.’