The Bear Pit

by S. G. MacLean

  Thomas took a deep breath. ‘No, no, I don’t.’ He turned his attention back to what he’d been looking at before. ‘That’s a fine horse Oliver rides, though.’

  Seeker followed Faithly’s gaze and saw what he had been watching. Cromwell was out with his Life Guard of Horse, cantering through the park on a very fine bay. Seeker could see that both man and horse longed for the gallops.

  ‘You’re right. It is a very fine horse, and it’s the finest horseman in England that rides it. Oliver Cromwell is Lord Protector of England. He doesn’t need to look like anything else. But I haven’t come here at this hour of the day to discuss horses or politics. Sayes Court – you were there last night?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Did you hear anything tending to the bears of Bankside, the old arena, the killing?’

  Thomas shook his head. ‘Nothing. Evelyn and his circle don’t partake in gambling, or speak of the entertainments of the masses.’

  ‘What do they speak of?’

  And so Thomas told him of fumigating stoves and planting schemes, and principles of garden design and mining and drains until Seeker held up a hand. ‘All right, all right. Nothing worth reporting then.’

  ‘No. Well, apart from Mulberry.’ And Thomas told him of the man who had left Evelyn’s laboratory in a clandestine manner not long after his arrival.

  ‘Mulberry?’ repeated Seeker. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘That’s what Evelyn said, but I never knew any man by the name of Mulberry.’

  ‘No,’ said Seeker. ‘Neither did I.’ He took a moment to recall where else he had heard recently of a shadowy ‘man of science’. It had been from Colonel Pride’s sergeant, who had admitted to leaving one of the Bankside bears alive. ‘What did he look like, this fellow?’

  Thomas cast his mind back. The elaboratory had been well lit, but the man Mulberry had stood away from the light, and had been heavily swaddled in hat and cloak when he left. ‘Ruddy, a little fleshy of face, which did not sit well with his hook nose, and the look of a man in good health. Sixty perhaps. I had the distinct impression that he didn’t want to be seen.’

  ‘All right,’ said Seeker. Another name for him to track down. ‘You can find out more about him the next time.’

  Thomas shook his head. ‘There won’t be a next time.’ He told Seeker about his exchange with Evelyn over their respective experiences of 1645, and of the manner of his departure. ‘I can’t go back there, I’ve all but broken with him, and it must have been evident to everyone present that I cannot stand the man.’ He ground a stick into the earth at his feet. ‘It galls me.’

  Seeker didn’t need to ask why, he already knew. Thomas Faithly had risked all and lost all in the Stuart cause, and now he must wait attendance on a man who had not once lifted an arm in the defence of Charles Stuart or his son. Whilst Thomas had stayed in England to fight one bloody battle of attrition after another, John Evelyn, a man of the same age, had taken himself on a tour of Europe, admiring its gardens, its art and its architecture. While Thomas had endured penury and exile with the man he still believed to be his King, Evelyn had returned home with the paintings and books and artefacts on which he had lavished so much wealth, and busied himself with building projects and the visiting of antiquities and curiosities. Evelyn had lost nothing in the war; Thomas, who by anyone’s lights had acted the more honourably, almost everything. The injustice of it angered Seeker too.

  ‘What’s done is done, Thomas. You shouldn’t have burned your boats there. Evelyn’s friend Boyle could have got you in with his sister, Lady Ranelagh, and that would have given you access to everyone.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Thomas, ‘I haven’t burned my boats, not entirely. There’s still Clémence.’

  ‘The Frenchwoman?’

  ‘From Brittany. You might say it is to Paris what Yorkshire is to London.’

  ‘Apart from that you told me she was brought up at the French court.’

  ‘That was how Clémence came to Charles Stuart’s notice.’

  ‘Pretty, is she?’ asked Seeker.

  ‘Pretty is too base or flimsy a term. Clémence is not pretty, and there are many who would say she is not beautiful.’

  ‘But not you?’ said Seeker, regarding Faithly with interest.

  Sir Thomas smiled. ‘No, not me. Clémence is beautiful like the moor in winter, like a stormy sea. There’s something powerful, seething in her, that most men find terrifying. And she has a seam of virtue going through her like silver through rock.’

  ‘In the minority at Charles’s court then,’ said Seeker.

  Thomas laughed. ‘She’d have none of the King, for all his inducements. But the Prince, he could have had her for the taking.’

  ‘Who? Rupert?’

  Thomas nodded. ‘I was there when she first saw him. I was talking to her when I suddenly realised she wasn’t listening, or even looking at me any more. Rupert had just walked into the room and the look that crossed her face – it was like she’d seen her own soul walk in the door.’

  ‘And him? Did he notice her?’

  ‘Oh, he noticed her all right. Came straight over to her as if she was pulling him across the room. He was mesmerised, fascinated, but not as a lover. It was as if he had at last found someone who knew and understood him. He told her all his cares and his troubles, but it was plain to see he did not desire Clémence. I think it nearly broke her heart.’

  ‘Nothing came of it?’

  Thomas shook his head. ‘Only that the most impressive woman at Charles’s court followed Rupert around like a puppy. She would have done better to be a puppy – he would have lavished more affection on her.’

  ‘So Mademoiselle Barguil wasn’t unsuitable enough for Rupert of the Rhine?’

  Thomas was surprised. ‘You know his troubled history in that regard?’

  Seeker did: his gaoler’s daughter, his best friend’s wife, his brother’s mistress. The romantic misadventures of Rupert of the Rhine were the talk of Europe.

  ‘And so what’s this French Royalist doing in England?’

  ‘She’s good friends with Evelyn’s wife, who spent her childhood in France. But Clémence also has a great knowledge of plants. She learned from Marin, in the royal gardens in Paris, and she’s assisting Evelyn with his garden schemes for Sayes Court. I concede I have burned my boats with Evelyn, but not with Clémence. I am to be her escort on her plant-buying trips around the city and the liberties. My days in fine London society aren’t quite over.’

  ‘You see that they’re not,’ said Seeker. ‘You’re no use to us if they are. And next time you see this woman, you ask her about Mulberry too. I’d like to know what he’s about.’

  ‘If he’s one of Evelyn’s friends, I very much doubt he’ll be of any interest to you or Mr Thurloe.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that, Sir Thomas,’ said Seeker, making ready to go his own way. ‘You may not know it, but when John Evelyn was passing back and forth between England and France courting that young wife of his, he was carrying cyphers between Henrietta-Maria’s court and Stuart supporters here. There might well be a bit more going on amongst his friends than you think.’

  *

  When Seeker returned to his offices by the Cockpit, a pile of reports requiring his attention had been set on his desk. He took a minute to read through each paper and noted what action would be required. Near the bottom of the pile was a paper which he saw straight away didn’t come from within the corridors of Whitehall, and neither did it bear the stamp of the official posts. He opened it and read it then got to his feet to call through to his clerk.

  ‘When did this arrive?’ he asked, holding up the paper.

  ‘About an hour ago. Young lad brought it. Full of his own importance. Claimed he knew you.’

  Gabriel, the boy from Kent’s coffee house. Seeker read through the lines one more time.
They were from Grace, Samuel Kent’s niece, asking that he would come as soon as he was able to see her uncle, who was in a great state of agitation and in need of help. Grace, who was still so wary of him, and Samuel, who had sat long into the dark hours of the night with Seeker sometimes, just letting him talk, and who asked help of no one.

  ‘An hour?’ Seeker turned on the unfortunate clerk. ‘You should have sent to find me. Send for my horse.’

  *

  Acheron was well used to negotiating the busy streets and narrow lanes of the city, and it was not long before Seeker pulled up at the end of Birchin Lane and threw a penny to a ragged boy with instructions to watch the horse.

  Even had he not had Grace’s note, he would have known, as he approached Kent’s, that something was not right. The familiar smells of the coffee house that habitually snaked from the chimney and doorway of Kent’s to mingle with the other odours of the city were missing, the outer door to the coffee house closed. Seeker banged hard on it, and was let in almost instantly by an anxious-looking Gabriel.

  ‘I knew you would come, Captain. I told Grace to write to you and you would come.’

  ‘Where’s Samuel?’ asked Seeker.

  ‘In the booth. Grace is trying to get him to take a little nourishment, to calm him.’

  Seeker went to the one private booth of the serving room. Grace looked up at his approach, relief sweeping over her troubled face.

  ‘Captain, thank goodness.’

  Seeker looked from her to her uncle. ‘What’s up, Samuel?’

  The old man clenched his fist and banged it on the table. ‘Wickedness, black wickedness. Thieves and murderers, and they think I don’t know!’

  Seeker took off his hat and slid onto the bench opposite the coffee man and his niece.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  Samuel started again about wickedness, and Grace put her hand over his and pressed softly, then she looked at Seeker. ‘It is Uncle’s friend, that we were to have our dinner with that day we saw you.’

  ‘Your birthday?’ said Seeker.

  ‘Yes. We were to meet him that afternoon, at the George in Southwark, after we had been to Tradeskin’s Ark.’

  ‘And?’

  She held up her hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘He wasn’t there.’

  Seeker looked across the table at Samuel. The old man never complained about his lot, listened to the woes and the glories of the world as they came in off the street to his coffee house. Sometimes, he told stories about his days fighting on the continent, his glory days, although as he had told Seeker privately, they had not all been glorious. The younger ones, customers and friends listened, sometimes agog, and sometimes they laughed, but they only saw the lame old soldier in front of them, not the young man he had been. He told fewer tales of England’s own civil wars – no one was ready to thrill to stories of that yet. But there had been a light in Samuel’s eye the other day when he had spoken to Seeker of going to meet his old comrade, his brother in arms. Seeker knew that a man held such brothers close in his heart, though others might never hear him say their name.

  ‘I’m sorry, Samuel.’

  ‘Sorry?’ There was a fierce look in the coffee-man’s eye that Seeker had never seen there before.

  ‘Perhaps he forgot, or was called back home sooner than he’d planned, or ran out of money. It’s an expensive business, coming up to London.’ Seeker could not see that this was a matter to have called him from his duties at Whitehall.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Samuel. ‘Joseph Grindle never forgot anything in his life. Sharper than you or me he was. Sharper even than young Gabriel there. And he never ran out of money, not in all the years I knew him. Run out of money? I should hope he’d know he’d only to come to Samuel Kent if ever he should find himself in need.’ Samuel’s breathing was coming thick and fast and his hands were shaking. Again, Grace tried to calm him.

  ‘You see, Captain,’ she said looking once more at Seeker, ‘Joseph was staying in Southwark, at the George, while he came up to do his business in town. But they said he hadn’t come back the night before. When we turned up there that day to take our dinner with him, they wanted to charge us for his keep – said he’d left without paying what he owed. But then the chambermaid told me he’d left his bundle in the room he’d been in, as if he’d been planning on coming back. She said the landlord was going to sell it if Joseph didn’t appear and pay his dues.’

  This was something different, although Seeker had come across it often enough before. He would not tell Samuel there was no cause for concern. When a visitor to London failed to return to his lodgings, leaving his belongings behind, none of the handful of likely explanations were good. And in Southwark, with its proximity to the river and the marsh, its doxies and footpads, con-men and cut-purses, the unwary traveller might fall victim to many misfortunes.

  ‘Was he in good health, your friend?’

  ‘The best,’ said Samuel. ‘Joseph was as robust as I am, without this pestilential leg.’

  Seeker saw the look of pain flit across Grace’s face. The passing years had taken their toll on Samuel, and few would have thought of calling him robust. And however able a fighter his old soldier comrade had been, an old man of near seventy would not be a match for the worst that London had to offer. ‘You think he has fallen victim to foul play?’ he said at last.

  ‘I know it,’ Samuel said, again bringing a fist down on the table. ‘He was in here, Grace tells me, the day before, very agitated, wanting to see me. But I wasn’t here, and so he left in a hurry, and I never saw him again.’

  Seeker turned to Grace. ‘Tell me about it, Grace.’

  ‘Well, Uncle had told me often about his friend Joseph, what times they had had, but he hadn’t seen him since he’d come home from the German wars. And then, the morning before my birthday, in walks this fellow, well dressed and respectable, though wearing the most peculiar hat I ever saw, a grin from ear to ear as he called Uncle’s name. Well, poor Uncle there near fell into the fire. Took me and Gabriel a good three minutes to get him steady on his legs again. Oh, and what a hugging and a roaring and a story-telling there was then. Uncle even got up his quarter cask of Canary out of the cellar, that never sees the light of day from one year’s end to the next. I think the two of them would have sat there till Doomsday, laughing and newsing and sighing at one another, if Joseph hadn’t had business in the city to be getting on with. He left here about two of the afternoon, but not before he’d insisted he would stand us all a good dinner in the George the next day, when we were finished our excursion.’

  ‘And that was the last I saw of him,’ Samuel said, his eyes desolate.

  ‘But you saw him again, Grace,’ prompted Seeker.

  She nodded. ‘An hour or so after Joseph left, Uncle went out too, with Gabriel, to buy me a present.’ Her hand went unconsciously to the small amber pendant about her neck and Seeker could guess what that present had been. ‘They were out a good long time, what with Uncle’s leg and making up their minds. But then, just as I was starting to worry for them, Joseph Grindle came rushing back in, looking for Uncle. Very agitated to see him, he was. Made me promise I’d make sure Uncle went to the George the next day, as they’d agreed, and then he left, in more of a hurry even than he’d come. And that was the last any of us saw him.’

  Seeker liked this less and less. ‘All right, Samuel,’ he said. ‘You’ll need to tell me everything you can about Joseph Grindle.’

  And so Samuel told him, about how they’d first met in the Danish service of Christian IV, two young men seeking their fortunes and some adventure in the world, half in love with the idea of fighting in the cause of their princess, Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen. And then they’d joined the ranks of the Swedes, under Gustav Adolph. For years, they’d marched and fought together over half of Europe, seen sights that two young boys from Devon and Sussex might neve
r have dreamt of seeing. They’d been at sieges, battles, great and small. They’d seen the aftermath of Magdeburg, such horrors as neither hoped ever to witness again; they’d been at Lützen when the Swedish king had fallen, and with him the hopes of the Protestant world; they’d been at Breisach, a siege they thought would never end, and at Vlotho, under Lord Craven, fighting the Catholic Habsburgs. ‘That’s where young Rupert of the Rhine was taken, Captain. Oh, you should have seen him then: nineteen years old, fighting on in his lovely mother’s cause when almost everyone else was killed or fled. I’ll never forget it. Me and Joseph were that close to him it’s a wonder we never got taken prisoner with him. But they wouldn’t have had much use for the likes of us anyway. Never saw such valour as young Rupert showed on that day. Broke my heart when he came over here and took up arms for his uncle against Parliament. Joseph said it near broke his too when he heard of it.’ And so it had gone on, story after story, until Seeker almost wished he’d been with these two comrades himself. But time was getting on and the concerns of the present day were pressing.

  ‘When did Joseph return from the continent?’

  ‘Sixteen forty-eight. He’d thought to settle in Germany, but when it came down to it, with all the fighting done, he found he missed home.’ Samuel laughed. ‘After thirty years away. But it takes you like that sometimes, doesn’t it? And he liked the sound of the England we were making too. Said he regretted not coming back sooner, to join in the fight. But I showed him my leg and told him at our age, we were better off out of it.’

  ‘And you hadn’t seen him since he’d been back, not until Monday?’

  Samuel shrugged. ‘Thousands went out. A few of us came back. Then there was the confusion of our own wars here. People just lost touch, didn’t know who was alive and who dead. And then, once I settled, well – I never did have much time for the coast, and Joseph never had much time for the city, so I was never likely to chance upon him nor he on me.’

  ‘But he came here on Monday?’