The man at the workbench was elderly – almost seventy years of age, Seeker would have said – but his hunched shoulders must once have been broad, and he had a keen eye. At the sound of the bell above the door, he had put down his eyeglass. His hands were long and bony; they shook very slightly as he laid the instrument down beside the mechanism he had been examining. Spread out upon the bench beside it was an array of cogs, weights and lengths of rope which Seeker found bewildering.
‘Captain,’ the man said, inclining his head very slightly. ‘How may I help you?’ Seeker couldn’t quite place the voice – not English, that was for certain. Dutch, perhaps. Or German.
Seeker held out the torn ticket and placed it on the workbench. ‘You can tell me about the man you gave this to.’
The clockmaker lifted his eyeglass again and picked up the ticket. He grimaced at the blood, and looked up to Seeker with a question in his eyes. Seeker simply nodded and the clockmaker held the bloodied remnant closer. He gave it the attention he might give a component he was thinking of inserting in to some complex machine.
‘Two days ago,’ he said, ‘in the afternoon. He left a clock here to be repaired. A very fine pendulum clock of German manufacture. Aside from some minor repairs to its chime mechanism, it was in excellent condition – well looked after.’ He handed the ticket back to Seeker. ‘A moment, Captain.’
He got up from his stool and drew back the curtain behind him a few inches, revealing a glimpse into the main workshop, which gave out onto a yard at the back. A young man was working a bellows over the fire, where various lengths of metal waited to be heated and beaten into shape. At a workbench next to a large anvil was seated another man, not quite so elderly in appearance as the clockmaker, but whose evident height caused him to hunch even further over his work, who was intent upon what looked to Seeker to be a complex mechanism surrounded by loose cogs, springs and wires. The shopkeeper addressed this man in German, his tone suggesting a question. Without looking up, the other indicated something out of Seeker’s line of sight. Seeker suppressed his frustration: he had no interest in the clock, only the man who had brought it, but sure enough the shopkeeper emerged back through the curtain a minute later carrying what did indeed look to be a very fine piece of work, which he set down on his counter for Seeker’s inspection.
Glancing back towards the workshop he said, ‘My brother is a quick worker, Captain, and he was very taken with the craftsmanship of this piece.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Seeker, not being able to keep from reaching a hand out to the clock, tracing its lines. The case was in the form of a house of gilded metal, the face intricately engraved with lines of classical proportions, as if the whole should bring to mind a temple. The cupola that made its roof was in fact a large bell, and the chains bearing its weights were almost a foot in length. The clockmaker, who informed Seeker his name was Dietmar Kästner, set the whole very carefully on the counter. ‘Brandenburg, 1603. A fine piece of German craftsmanship.’
‘I won’t argue with you,’ said Seeker. ‘But it’s the man who brought it that interests me. Did he give you his name?’
The old man pushed out his lower lip. ‘I’m afraid not, Captain. I remember my customers by their clocks – I don’t ask their names. The ticket, alongside his face, of course, would have been enough.’
‘What do you mean his face? Was there something strange about it?’
‘Oh, no, Captain. You misunderstand. I see the face, I remember the clock. The ticket is for their own benefit. Many of my customers entrust me with very valuable belongings, and some prefer to have proof that they have done so. I take no offence.’
‘I see. And the man who brought this clock? Had you ever seen him before?’
‘Never, Captain.’
‘What about your brother?’
The clockmaker pulled back the curtain and addressed the man at the workbench again. ‘Josef?’
‘Bitte?’
And then followed another brief exchange in a tongue Seeker did not properly understand.
‘My brother didn’t see the man at all, Captain. Only the clock.’
‘All right. But you saw him. Tell me about him – his face, hair, build and the like.’
And so the clockmaker described the man, just as Seeker had imagined he must have presented himself to the world before a half-starved bear had torn his body to pieces. They had kept them half-starved, the bears of Bankside, that they might better entertain the citizens who paid good money to see them fight to the death dogs or bulls or some other helpless creature, and Seeker could not believe that an animal that had not been starving had done what he’d seen to the man who had brought that clock to Clerkenwell.
‘Where had he come from? Did he say?’
The clockmaker cast his mind back. ‘Out of town, the coast somewhere. Sussex? Kent? He was putting up in Southwark for a couple of days.’
‘Whereabouts in Southwark?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And what had he come to town for?’
The clockmaker held out his hands as if it were obvious. ‘To have his clock mended.’
Seeker frowned. ‘What – all the way from the coast? That can’t have been all.’
The clockmaker looked mildly offended. ‘It is a very fine piece, Captain. I had not seen one like it in thirty years. A very fine piece, and not to be subjected to the unskilled hands of some village blacksmith. There is a particular delicacy, an intricacy of design to German clocks that English clockmakers are not comfortable with. This man knew what he had and has looked after it well. He knew only a good German clockmaker could be trusted to handle such a piece.’
‘Aye well, Clerkenwell’s the place to come, I suppose. But the man I’m talking about wasn’t a rich man, not by his dress. Respectable, I’d say, but not rich. How would he have come by a piece like this?’
The clockmaker’s voice lowered. ‘The clock came from Brandenburg, Captain, and the man did not, but he spoke my language well enough. I don’t ask English soldiers how they came by German clocks.’
‘So,’ said Seeker after a pause, ‘he was a soldier of fortune.’
‘That would be my surmise,’ said the clockmaker. ‘For whom, I do not know and I did not ask. The Emperor or the Winter Queen. It makes no difference to the clock.’
No, nor to those whose lives were destroyed over the course of those brutal German wars. Years of devastation, set off by a row over the crown of Bohemia. Thousands had gone from these islands to fight in the cause of Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Winter Queen, daughter of James I, sister of Charles I, and wilful champion of the Protestant faith.
She was a silly woman, like all the Stuart women, and she had married a foolish man. Her husband, the Elector Frederick, had lost the Palatinate over his acceptance of the crown of Bohemia in the teeth of imperial opposition. In doing so he has consigned his family to a lifetime’s wandering, and hundreds of thousands of men, women and children to their deaths in a war that had lasted thirty years. The Stuarts. Everything they touched corrupted in their hands.
Seeker looked at the clockmaker. Seventy now, short-sighted, stooped, and a hand that trembled. But he hadn’t always been an old man.
‘How long have you been here?’
‘In Clerkenwell?’
‘In England.’
‘Over thirty years. I fled Heidelberg when Tilly’s forces marched in to destroy the place in ’22 and I haven’t seen my home since.’
‘You didn’t fight?’
‘What? When they killed my daughter? Raped my wife? Burned my father’s house?’ He rolled up his sleeve to show Seeker the twisted, waxen burns that disappeared up his arm, then lifted his hair to show the scar from what must have been a savage blow, across the back of his neck. ‘Yes, I fought, and when they had finished doing all that they did, and I found to my despair that I was n
ot dead, I came here, where there was no war.’
‘And in the late troubles?’
The old man smiled. ‘I sat on this bench and I fixed my clocks and I paid my dues.’
Seeker nodded. ‘Fair enough.’
The clockmaker indicated the clock sitting between them on the worktop. ‘Will he be coming back, the man who brought this?’
‘No,’ said Seeker, picking the thing up. ‘He won’t.’
Five
Sayes Court
Thomas Faithly felt his heart sink as the masts of Deptford Docks loomed closer into view. The constant building works and expansion of the docks were an unrelenting reminder of the world he had never seen. For all the tales Prince Rupert had brought back to the King’s court of the horrors of the Caribbean, Thomas was not sure he wouldn’t rather strike out there anyway. But the thought left as quickly as it had come: he wouldn’t get away. Seeker would find him, bring him back. And then it would be the Tower again, at best. By the time the boatman drew in to the landing place a little west of where the new dock works began in earnest, Thomas’s ill-humour was only surpassed by his discomfort. His bones still ached from a night on the floor of the Clink, his companions having commandeered what passed for bedding. The stink of the sodden, filthy rushes he had lain on was still in his nostrils and his eyes stung through lack of sleep. Although he had returned to Charing Cross to his lodgings at the Three Tobacco Pipes and changed out of his soiled clothing, he had utterly refused his landlady’s inducement to take a good dinner ‘to set him right and mend his pallor’. He had seen carnage in battle, but he was not sure, after what he and Seeker had come upon in that outbuilding last night, that he would ever eat meat again.
The other passengers having disembarked, the boatman turned a jagged yellow-toothed scowl on Thomas. ‘Sayes Court, wasn’t it? Shift yourself, then, m’lord, for I’ve a living to earn.’
Reluctantly, Thomas heaved himself up from the bench and clambered onto the landing stairs. He took one more look at the dockyard and the alternatives it offered, before setting his gaze straight ahead of him again, to the object of his dread: Sayes Court, home of John Evelyn, for whom Sir Thomas had long nursed a mild contempt. Since his return to England, and, more particularly, his release from the Tower, an increased acquaintance had nursed that contempt into something akin to disgust. But Sir Thomas would put up with his lot for now, if that was what it took. He had returned to England last year, having tired of life on the run with the royal court, and sworn to himself he would do whatever was asked of him to be allowed to stay, and perhaps, one day, to return home to Yorkshire and live like an honest Englishman. What was asked of him had soon been made plain to him by Cromwell’s Chief Secretary and spymaster, John Thurloe, and then Damian Seeker had made it even plainer: he was to insert himself into the upper echelons of Royalist society – befriend those Royalists who had stayed at home, those who had returned, and those who claimed they were not Royalists at all. In such circles, Thurloe was convinced, lay the greatest threat of clandestine activity and of danger to the security of the Protector. Thomas was to insinuate himself amongst these people, and he was to learn their secrets.
Such things were not beyond Thomas: long years living on his wits and little else in the train of the Stuarts had taught him to keep his own thoughts to himself whilst gaining the confidences of others. He had not, then, been a man to use the secrets of others against them and had never wished to play the politics of the exiled court. This was something different: he had thrown in his lot with Cromwell’s regime as his last hope of coming home, and now his task was to discover secrets as well as to keep them. A little thought, a little patience, and he might have made his entry into more profitable, or at least congenial, circles than those surrounding Evelyn at Sayes Court. And he would probably have done so, had it not been for Clémence.
Thomas had hardly been a week out of the Tower when he had glimpsed Clémence as she flitted from a glover’s to a hatter’s in the New Exchange. The sight of her had stopped him in his tracks. Clémence Barguil – here, in London. He hadn’t seen her in over a year – when the court had been at Aachen – but he needed hardly as much as a glimpse to know for certain that it was her. Once encountered, she was a woman not easily forgotten. A beautiful woman who appeared to have encased her heart in marble, or granite. She walked with a forbidding, untouchable grace, like a statue come to life. Thomas had seen men all but freeze under her stony gaze, but he had also seen those grey eyes sparkle, like granite, in the sun. One man alone brought that sparkle to her eyes, just one man had ever breached the wall she had built around herself: Prince Rupert had been her sun. Not Thomas – she would shake her head and laugh at the thought of Thomas – but she would tolerate him because he had been Rupert’s friend. Thomas had known that day at the Exchange that he shouldn’t go after her, no good could come of it, but he had not been able to help himself. He had followed her, and this was where Clémence had led him to: Sayes Court.
As ever, building work, Evelyn’s alterations to what had been his father-in-law’s home, was in progress. Thomas did not mind that – a fine building he could appreciate, and even he would admit that Evelyn had good taste and a true draughtsman’s eye, but the gardens were another matter. Thomas liked a well-stocked orchard and a good vegetable plot as much as any man, but Evelyn’s endless disquisitions on plants and the proper design of a garden bored him half to death. Faithly Manor, in the North Riding, had had no pleasure garden – the moor had been Thomas’s pleasure garden and the kitchen garden the cook’s domain. Why walk through avenues of sculpted hedges to discourse upon the world when you might ride out into it? The time for talk was at the end of the day, by a hearty fire with a good dinner in the belly, a jug of claret to hand and a hound at your feet. But it could not be helped. Thomas had followed Clémence, and this was where she had brought him.
A footman at the door informed him that Evelyn and his guests were in the elaboratory, housed near the western end of the garden. Pausing once at the portico, Thomas closed his eyes and tried to summon his resilience before slipping quietly through the door.
A long bench to Thomas’s right was laden with distilling equipment, glass vessels, long-handled metallic instruments, still-pans and mortars and pestles of various sizes. On the shelves above were stored a myriad of jars and bottles, containing an endless variety of dried substances and liquids whose use was beyond Thomas’s knowledge or interest. The furnaces, which at times rendered the heat of the place unbearable, were unlit, and all the light in the room was at the far end, where John Evelyn and four other men were gathered around a small stove.
Evelyn and three of the men had their backs to Thomas, and the fourth, who Thomas could see from here was that German pedagogue Samuel Hartlib, was too intent on his demonstration to notice the arrival of the newcomer. From the moment he’d stepped in, Thomas had been aware of a pungent aroma in the air, scents of chypre and thyme, that instantly took him back to another, more congenial place. He could have closed his eyes and imagined himself again slipping in to the parlour of an old acquaintance in Dusseldorf, where many a merry evening had been spent in the King’s retinue. But rather than several voices laughing and talking at once, as had invariably been the case on those nights, here there was only Hartlib’s voice, as he explained the features of the stove, and its uses in the dissemination of pleasant smells. One of the onlookers – a man whose voice Thomas didn’t recognise – asked whether it might not also be used for the dissemination of noxious vapours. Hartlib had looked a little alarmed, and said that yes, he supposed it might, but why should anyone with an interest in advancing the condition of mankind have any notion of such a thing?
‘For no good reason, I am sure,’ said the man, stepping back a little from his examination of the German stove. Thomas sensed a breaking off in the mood of the gathering and chose this moment to make himself known, coughing slightly. Evelyn turned around and pe
ered up the room towards him.
‘Sir Thomas. We had not expected you to join us this evening.’
Thomas doffed his hat and began to walk towards them. ‘I found myself at a loss for good conversation, and so turned my feet where I might find it. I hope you will pardon my intrusion.’
Evelyn gave a thin, well-bred smile. ‘Of course, Sir Thomas.’
Amongst Evelyn’s guests, Thomas had already recognised the scientist and aristocrat Robert Boyle, brother to Cromwell’s favourite hostess, Lady Ranelagh, and peering at the machine with the help of a magnifying glass was the Bohemian, Wenceslaus Hollar. The sight of Hollar lifted Thomas’s heart. He had not seen the King’s old drawing master in over ten years.
Hollar was equally delighted. ‘Sir Thomas! When Evelyn told me you were returned, I thought it hardly possible. But tell me, how does His Ma—’
But then Hollar stopped, at a warning look from Evelyn. For all Samuel Hartlib was their friend and great companion in science, he had been Parliament’s man, and some said he, with his contacts throughout Europe, was Thurloe’s man. Enquiries after the health of the King in exile would not be entirely wise. Hollar looked down, reconsidered, and then said more softly, ‘It is good to see you safe returned, Sir Thomas.’
Evelyn interjected. ‘Indeed, but we were about to join my wife and Mademoiselle Barguil for some refreshment, Sir Thomas. Perhaps you will renew your acquaintance with Hollar more comfortably when we are back in the house.’
The Bear Pit Page 5