‘Reptiles?’
‘At Chancery. He’s down here to learn how to tie the world in knots for rich men.’
‘And he means no harm to your girl,’ she said.
She was turning to take the cloth off the tray she’d set down for him when he reached out and turned her back towards him. ‘I couldn’t do without you, Dorcas.’
She smiled, flustered. ‘Oh, you could, Damian. You managed long before me, and you know I’d look after the girl for her own sake anyway.’
He pulled her closer and looked down into her face. ‘Not just for Manon. This is the only safe place I know. You are the only home I have.’
‘And will be here as long as you want me,’ she replied.
As Seeker was finishing off his food, he started to question her about ‘lads’. Dorcas laughed.
‘Do you think they chance their hands here more than once, Damian? If that? If the look on my face isn’t enough to put them off pestering my girls, I’ve only to call Will Tucker through from the kitchen to make things plain. The Black Fox is a respectable place, and I hope everyone knows it.’
‘They do,’ he said. ‘It is just . . . the girls.’
‘You are like any father, and it is right you should worry. But I tell you, Manon is as precious to me as my own daughter, as is Isabella, for all I took her in to work for me off the street. No one will call upon Manon against your will. But the lad was right – she’s not a child any more.’
‘She’s my child,’ he said quietly, before getting up and putting on his hat. ‘Besides, it’s time he was off to his lodgings – he’s been loitering here long enough.’
They were still seated opposite each other, Manon and Lawrence Ingolby, when Seeker went to the top of the steps to the small parlour. But there was something different about them now. Ingolby looked younger somehow, more boyish. He was clearly telling Manon some tale, but he had none of his usual bravado, instead looking up now and again with a tentative smile, as if fearful he might be boring her. But he was not boring her – Seeker could see that. His daughter was watching the young man as if every thing he said was of the deepest profundity, and attempting her own smile in return when she appeared to think it expected of her. Seeker observed them for a moment and then took a breath and went down the three steps into the small parlour. It was a moment before either of them noticed him.
‘Oh,’ said Manon, standing up. ‘Does my aunt need me, Captain?’
‘Not just at the minute, but she will soon, no doubt. It must be near time for your brother to get himself back along to Clifford’s Inn at any rate. I’ll show him down there.’
‘Oh, that’s all right, Captain. I’ve been there two days now. I can find my own—’
‘Nevertheless . . .’ said Seeker, lifting Lawrence’s hat from the table.
‘Oh. Yes.’ Lawrence took the hint and made a show of finishing up his ale.
Manon spoke to Seeker with a little hesitation. ‘Lawrence has been telling me of all the strange things he has seen since he came to London.’
‘I’ve no doubt he has. There are a quite a few to see.’
‘Women with chalk and paint on their faces, men with powder in their hair, such as was never seen in Yorkshire, a man whose name is “Fish” . . .’
Manon might have rattled on, but Seeker stopped her, addressing himself to Ingolby. ‘What?’
‘Fish? Yes, there was a fellow in the inn I put up at two nights ago in Hammersmith. Leastways, he was taking his breakfast there in the morning. Went by the name of Fish. I mean, what kind of name—’
‘Which inn?’
‘Ehm . . .’ Lawrence took a moment to remember and then named it. ‘You see, I should have got to Clifford’s the night before, but I’d taken a wrong turn at—’
‘What did he look like?’
Lawrence frowned. ‘Ordinary. Stocky sort of build. Close-cropped hair. Grey. Brown maybe. They were in an upstairs room, him and his companion, but the other man was sick, keeping to his room. Cecil, I think he was called.’
‘No one else was with them?’
‘Older chap by the name of Boyes, but I don’t know if he was with them or just knew them.’
‘They were still there when you left?’
‘Aye,’ said Lawrence. ‘Like I said, the Fish fellow’s companion was sick, didn’t sound like they were planning on moving on anywhere just yet.’
‘Right,’ said Seeker, pulling on his gauntlets. ‘You’ll have to find your own way down to Clifford’s. See you don’t get lost again on the way. And remember . . .’ Seeker cast a glance at Manon.
‘What?’ Lawrence looked puzzled then a little awkward. ‘Oh. Ah, yes, Captain. I’ll remember.’
*
It was past midday now, but Whitehall was closer than Hammersmith, and Seeker took the gamble that if he made first of all for Whitehall, he might yet be on time.
The coach was ready, the Lady Protectress and one of her younger daughters already inside, and only Oliver himself waited upon when Acheron’s hooves clattered in to the Great Court Yard of Whitehall Palace. The Life Guard of Horse, under the command of Colonel Howard, in which Seeker himself had served before being drawn fully into Thurloe’s service, was mounted and waiting to escort the Protector and his family on their journey to Hampton Court. Seeker went directly to the colonel.
‘Does he go to Hampton Court, sir?’
The man nodded. ‘We should have left by now, but Secretary Thurloe had papers for him to sign that could not wait.’ There was a trace of irritation in the colonel’s voice.
‘You may be thankful for that yet. Do you intend going by Hammersmith?’
Howard nodded. ‘It’s his preferred route.’
‘I’d counsel you to change it today, sir.’
The colonel gave Seeker a long look, then nodded his understanding. He knew enough of the nature of Seeker’s business to know that if he asked him to alter the Protector’s route, there would be no necessity to ask why, still less to argue about it. He cocked his head towards the carriage. ‘And what would you counsel me to say if they should ask?’
‘Tell them the road’s blocked. A hay cart turned over and the bullocks are causing trouble.’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ said the colonel.
‘No. But your men should have a special care to have their wits about them on the road.’
Howard bridled slightly. ‘They always do, Seeker. This isn’t the Foot Guard.’ It was only a matter of months since the Life Guard of Foot, Cromwell’s body guard when he was in one of his residences rather than on the move, had had to be purged for suspected disloyalty.
‘I know that, sir,’ said Seeker. ‘But the intelligence I have has come very fresh and I don’t know how many conspirators are involved yet. They may well be watching more than one route.’
‘They may well be,’ said Howard, ‘but my men will get him safe to Hampton Court, if it takes every last man in the troop to do so.’
Seeker scribbled a coded note and handed it to a page with instructions that it should be taken to Secretary Thurloe immediately. The sounds of the Foot Guard marching down the corridor were at last heard. Seeker saluted the colonel then wheeled around to go past the protectoral cortège and ride out again at the King Street Gate. He was on the road for Hammersmith before Cromwell ever appeared through the palace doors.
*
The broth the landlady from the inn next door had sent up had been left to grow cold. None of them had any appetite now that the time was so close at hand. Boyes looked around the room, a pleasant enough little banqueting room that must have seen many good dinners and a few raucous nights. He wondered if Cromwell had ever been here, enjoying a good roast and a bottle and the company of friends and comrades, in the days before he had had no friends, and few comrades, only subjects, and a growing number of e
nemies amongst them.
Boyes recalled the other times he’d seen Cromwell, across a battlefield, a man transformed into something higher than the ordinary run of men. He would have liked to have encountered him here, sat a while with him, picking over a leg of pork or a rib of beef, downing a tankard or two, seeing the man close up, in all his base humanity. He would have liked to have talked to him, asked what he had truly believed he would achieve by all that he had done, asked him whether he realised he would die, one day, at the hands of a marksman stationed at the window of this very room. Boyes stood up. There would be no time for talk, or beef, or wine. The questions would go unasked. Cromwell would breathe his last on the road outside, without knowing who had done it to him.
None of them had spoken for near a half-hour. A clock on the mantelshelf, an old thing, poorly kept, took Boyes’s attention. The ticking was relentless, but the hand moved round too slow, surely. He wondered, suddenly, whether he should go down on the street. What if Cecil missed? What if Oliver, wounded, were to run, to try to get away? But Cecil would not miss, Cecil had fought for the King, Boyes’s sources had assured him that Fish had chosen well – Cecil had been one of the best marksmen in Charles’s army. And anyway, the contraption they had rigged had seven blunderbusses ready to spray their munition down onto the street: Oliver would not get away. As for Fish, the Leveller, Boyes hoped never to encounter him again once this day was over.
The clock ticked on. ‘They should have been here by now,’ said Fish.
‘Perhaps your source was wrong,’ said Boyes, his voice low and deliberate.
Fish turned on him. ‘My source was not wrong. John Toope is in the Foot Guard. He could hardly be better placed to know Cromwell’s movements, and he’s been well paid. I’ve been putting these arrangements in place for months. Long before you got here.’
‘Yes. Months. Too many months. Too many failures.’
Boyes could see a flush of anger creep up Fish’s cheeks. He thought it was a good thing he and Fish had not been cooped up here together for days as Fish and Cecil had been, for surely one of them would have killed the other.
By the window, the frame of guns primed, Cecil suddenly lifted a hand to silence them.
‘What is it?’ said Boyes. ‘Is it the coach?’
‘Something’s wrong,’ Cecil said. ‘There’s a horseman, coming from Knightsbridge direction, much too fast.’
Boyes pushed past to look down the street in the direction that Cecil had been looking. ‘They know,’ he said, turning on Fish. ‘Damn you and your so-called source.’ He thrust a finger towards the window.
Fish looked in the direction Boyes had pointed. Any protest he might have thought of making died on his lips. His shoulders slumped, and all he said was, ‘Seeker.’
*
Seeker tied up Acheron outside the inn and stormed through the door. A woman carrying a tray of bowls through from the kitchen screamed and dropped them. Seeker ignored her and made for the stairs, taking them three at a time. He barged through one room with six truckle beds set in it, but with no inhabitants, to another, this with only two double beds and overlooking the bend in the street below. There was no one in this room either. Seeker flung open the doors of a wall closet, but found nothing there but linen. Returned to the landing, he climbed a ladder up to the one attic room, which had simple pallets on the floor, and where the only other movement was by mice. He jumped down again and descended the stairs back to the parlour of the inn. ‘Where are they?’ he demanded of the terrified landlady and her husband.
‘Where are who, Captain?’ asked the man, his lips quivering.
‘The men who slept two nights ago in your front bedchamber.’
‘But it was only one man, Captain. A young law student, come down from Yorkshire. He went on his way the next morning.’
Seeker didn’t understand. He thought he knew Ingolby well enough, and could not see why the young Yorkshireman would have lied to him.
‘You had no one here by the name of Fish? Or Boyes? Or Cecil?’
‘Oh, them, yes. Well, Mr Boyes, he has just been visiting on the other two, and poor Mr Cecil has not been well and kept his chamber these last few days. But Mr Fish has been up and down with food for him.’
‘You have other rooms?’
The landlady shook her head, a little less frightened now that she was on surer ground. ‘Oh, no. Mr Fish and Mr Cecil did not stay here – they only got their food here. They have had the upper room of the Earl of Salisbury’s coach house next door. The coachman has us rent it out from time to time, when it is not otherwise needed.’
Seeker cursed Ingolby for his lack of curiosity as he ran out of the inn and up the wooden steps at the side of the earl’s coach house. He pushed through a room that appeared to be filled with stores and tack, to come to a double set of doors, locked. He pulled his horseman’s hammer from his belt and brought it down twice on the lock until it splintered away from the wood and the doors fell open. Two pallets with rumpled-up blankets lay on the floor. The room reeked of chamber pot and some old broth that had been knocked over on the table and pooled onto the floorboards beneath. It was the window though, running the entire frontage of the room, that took his attention – or rather, what was in front of it.
Seeker had never seen anything like it – a wooden frame, a good six feet in length, on which seven blunderbusses had been set and primed, their triggers all connected by a series of links to one master trigger. It was a work of genius that, he thought, must have been designed by one with a knowledge of sieges. This contraption was not in a besieged town or stronghold though, but in a small banqueting room, overlooking a village street, on which it could only release carnage. They hadn’t been taking any chances, Fish and his crew: neither Cromwell nor anyone else within range of this monstrous weapon could have survived its discharge. Seeker examined the structure closely, but knew it would take more skilled hands than his to disable it. The one thing he knew was that he couldn’t leave this for the unwary to come upon, or for Fish and his fellow conspirators to return to. He craned his head out of the window and with relief saw the party of soldiers he’d asked Thurloe to send, heading up from Knightsbridge. Within five minutes, he had a guard set on the contraption, and a master armourer sent for from Westminster to come and make it safe.
Back in the inn, the descriptions he got from the elderly tavern-keeper and his short-sighted wife were a good deal less detailed than he had already had from Ingolby, and of little value. It was with a heavy tread that he went out again into the street to begin for himself the search for the men who so very recently had come close to killing Cromwell.
Eight
Tradeskin’s Ark
Thomas Faithly could smell snow on the air. Not Yorkshire snow that descended as by right over the moors each winter to catch out those who really had no business being there in the first place, but that delinquent London snow, blown somehow off its course, and spying a place where havoc might be wreaked. Would it fall black, Thomas wondered, through the dirt on the air, or would it offer some respite to the beleaguered citizens, some cleansing of their murky streets? Thomas remembered snow in the city before, when it had silenced the noise of London a while and almost rendered all men equal. He was glad of the fresh cold tang in his nostrils.
The cold in his bones was another thing. It seeped through his clothes, through his boots and his stockings to wrap him in its misery as the boatman’s oars powered them up the river towards Lambeth. The cold did not seem to touch Clémence. Her grey silk dress and fur wrappings would have been more expensive than the entire wardrobe he had managed to prise from Thurloe’s coffers, and yet it was as if she was trying to disguise herself, merge herself into nothingness against the river and the city beyond. She wore a Puritan’s white cap beneath a hood of dark grey velvet, and he knew that there would be no lace or fine cut-work on her cuffs or tucker. Everything about her
was calculated to ward off the interest or attentions of the unwary. ‘Your eyes would be enough,’ Thomas wanted to say to her. Those granite eyes, so focused as they were upon something beyond the grasp of common man or woman, would be enough.
‘I’m still at a loss as to why it is necessary for you to do this today,’ he said at last. ‘I am surprised at John Evelyn giving you this commission in such poor weather. He cannot be in such a great hurry for his plants at this time of year.’
Clémence made a small noise of dismissal as she rearranged a rug which had begun to slip. ‘That is because you know nothing of plants or planting schemes, Thomas. Besides, you may see your friend Hollar there. Wenceslaus has engraved the plates for Mr Tradescant’s new catalogue. He is often at Tradescant’s.’
How was it, wondered Thomas, that in a city the size of London, surely the biggest on earth, a man could bump into the same acquaintances wherever he went? Was it coincidence that Hollar had been in attendance on Evelyn only last night, and now might be at John Tradescant’s garden nursery this morning? But then, Hollar had fought in the late King’s cause and taught the present King to draw, and Tradescant had looked after the Queen’s gardens. It was not really such a coincidence that they should associate with one another. There were two worlds in London, co-existing and shadowing one another, from which old Royalists and their former Puritan foes warily watched each other. Thomas felt himself being drawn closer in to both. He should have foreseen it, but only now did it occur to him that while his deepening penetration of Royalist circles might reassure John Thurloe, he himself was not sure how, if ever, he might safely extricate himself from the one, or the other.
The thought of Thurloe recalled to his mind another of last night’s visitors to Sayes Court. As the oarsman cut swiftly through the water, Thomas crossed over to settle himself on some cushions alongside Clémence. ‘I didn’t recognise the other fellow last night.’
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