The Bear Pit

by S. G. MacLean

  ‘What other fellow?’ asked Clémence, putting her hands back into their coney muffler.

  ‘The old chap, hook nose. Marbury? Mulberry? I don’t properly recall his name, but I never saw him before.’

  ‘You were out of England a long time, Thomas. It’s hardly likely you should know everyone in London.’

  Clearly, she was going to say nothing more on the matter. Thomas drew back from pressing her any further. He wasn’t entirely sure that Clémence was not a little suspicious of him – not everyone at Charles Stuart’s exiled court had been convinced that his mysterious departure from it over a year ago, and his equally mysterious reappearance several weeks later in Yorkshire, had indeed been part of a plot to restore the King. The story he had allowed to circulate in Royalist circles – that he had left Cologne on a desperate, last-throw-of-the dice escapade, and been captured by the Puritans in the form of Damian Seeker before he had been able to rally anyone else to his cause, was more heroic than it was truthful. Thomas was sorry for that, for he had never been a coward: he had simply had enough of wandering the courts of Europe like a beggar, and he had missed home. And so he had come home. But he still lived the life of a beggar, a genteel one at any rate, and London was scarcely more home to him than Paris or Cologne had been.

  Thomas was near enough frozen by the time they reached Lambeth. He wasn’t sure why Clémence had chosen him to be her escort. Perhaps his proximity reminded her of Rupert, of the times she had watched them play tennis or joined them out hawking or sketching. When they reminisced about their times at court, something of the near-constant watchfulness lifted from her, and she was almost carefree. But then the reality of their world – that they were here in England, the King counting out his days in Brussels, Rupert wandering from relative to relative around the empire – would weigh down on her again. Clémence’s life, like Thomas’s and everyone else who had thrown in their lot with the Stuart cause, was one of endless, rootless waiting in a world that no longer had any place for them. Perhaps, not knowing he had turned his coat and was now in Cromwell’s pay, she simply thought they might as well wait together.

  There was still a way to walk after they had landed by Lambeth Palace. Whatever it might have meant to others over the centuries, that seat and symbol of power struggles between kings and over-ambitious churchmen, it stood there now as a rebuke to Thomas’s own conscience. It hadn’t been enough for the Puritans that the last archbishop to occupy it had been dragged from it and taken to the Tower, and thence to eternity, but they must needs defile the place, mock their enemies. It had been turned into a prison for Royalists, and many had died there. Thomas thought of comrades taken prisoner at Naseby and Bristol and Philiphaugh, who had ended their days in the stinking squalor of that palace. ‘Died he not revengeless,’ he murmured to himself.

  ‘What?’ Clémence asked him.

  ‘A line of a poem I once heard.’ He looked towards the palace and reeled off the names. He didn’t need to explain anything else to her.

  Eventually, they crossed a wooden bridge and passed beneath a whalebone arch to arrive at last at Tradescant’s garden. Clémence turned off the path to the house and took instead one leading to an orchard. It was a thing of a different order entirely from the sturdy old apple orchard Thomas had known at Faithly. Nearly all the trees were bare now, but Clémence pointed out to him pears, plums and cherries set amongst what, if she were to be believed, was a bewildering variety of apple trees. She showed him where peaches, apricots and nectarines grew in the protection of a south-facing wall, with hardier plums and quinces against the others.

  ‘It must be a veritable garden of Eden in spring and autumn,’ Thomas observed.

  ‘Then we should take care that we do not step upon a serpent.’

  Thomas would have laughed, but there was no humour in Clémence’s voice as she said it.

  ‘And do you think we might?’ he asked.

  She looked away from him. ‘Serpents are everywhere, Thomas. I would have thought all those years in the King’s court would have taught you that.’

  Thomas was saved from having to make a response by their coming upon a well-made, respectably attired man in his late forties, with unruly brown hair and beard, who was directing two under-gardeners as to the cutting back of some quinces against an east-facing wall. He smiled broadly on catching sight of Clémence, and throwing one last instruction to his workers, he came to meet them.

  ‘Mademoiselle Barguil,’ he said, ‘I had been afraid you would not come. It would be devilish cold coming up from Sayes Court.’

  ‘Not at all, John. We were well supplied with rugs and extremely comfortable.’ She turned her head slightly towards Thomas. ‘I have brought with me an old, old, friend: Sir Thomas Faithly, who is not long released from the Tower.’

  Tradescant inclined his head in a wary bow. ‘An old friend from . . .’

  ‘My days at the King’s court. Sir Thomas was until only last year abroad, in attendance upon His Majesty.’

  At the mention of the King, Tradescant’s demeanour towards Thomas changed markedly.

  ‘Sir Thomas. It is a very great honour. I pray daily for His Majesty’s restoration to his rights.’

  ‘As do we all,’ replied Thomas, somewhat surprised to be addressed so openly on the topic. Something of his surprise must have shown in his face.

  Tradescant glanced over to where his men were in debate over the length of a cut. ‘We’ll not be overheard out here. I’ve to be more circumspect in the house, to which the generality of the people has access. I must deal with all-comers, in these dark days, if I am to survive.’

  ‘There is no shame in that, John,’ said Clémence. ‘The King would be sorry to return, and find his gardener gone.’

  Tradescant’s face was grim. ‘He’d weep, mademoiselle, to see what the philistines have done. His father’s palace and gardens at Oatlands – pulled down and destroyed. The orange trees all sold. Her Majesty his mother’s palace at Wimbledon in the hands of Cromwell’s crony, Lambert.’

  ‘May they enjoy their spoils while they can,’ said Clémence. ‘Pray God, retribution will not be long in coming.’

  ‘Indeed. But come,’ said Tradescant, beating his heavily gloved hands together for warmth, ‘there is a good stove in my work hut, and we may begin upon Mr Evelyn’s requirements in more comfort there.’

  Tradescant’s work hut was larger and better ordered than Thomas had thought to find it. Over a long workbench were letters sorted into piles, some with rough sketches, presumably of the plants requested by customers who lived away from London. Clémence had clearly been here before and went directly to a lectern by the table, where a loosely bound book was lying. ‘Come and see this, Thomas,’ she said, beginning to leaf through, a look of delight on her face. Thomas joined her, leaning over her shoulder a little to see. ‘The Turke Plum,’ he read out, as her finger paused over a watercolour showing five luscious black plums hanging from a branch, a butterfly flitting amongst its leaves and two snails feasting on a sixth. Each turn of the page revealed a new marvel.

  ‘Is this Hollar’s work?’ he asked.

  ‘Ah, no, more’s the pity,’ said Tradescant. ‘These were made some time ago, by a friend of my father’s, as an early guide to his orchard fruits. The ripening times are not quite right, as you will see – my father noted the times they ripened in the places he found them. In our English climes it is generally later. I have just had a new plant list made up, to go along with the catalogue of curiosities. But let us see what Mr Evelyn is thinking of.’

  Thomas had no interest in the planting schemes or the bewildering variety of plants under discussion, and continued to entertain himself by leafing through the charming book of watercolours, smiling at the little grubs and insects that had found their way amongst the fruits. The discussion of Evelyn’s requirements took a good long time, with several debates over which
particular plant might be meant by a particular name, and then where Tradescant might source it, if he did not have sufficient stock to hand. Some of the sourcing required to be far-flung indeed, and Thomas was surprised to learn that the homely gardener had in fact journeyed as far as Virginia in search of his specimens. Thomas was brought out of his reveries about the New World by Tradescant’s saying, ‘And the other orders, mademoiselle?’

  There had been something in the tone of the word ‘other’ that particularly caught Thomas’s attention. He looked up, just in time to see Clémence glance his way. ‘That may take a little time, John,’ she said, ‘and I fear Sir Thomas has but a short tolerance of discussions horticultural. Perhaps he would enjoy to see the curiosities instead?’ Before Thomas fully understood what was happening, Tradescant had called down one of his under-gardeners and instructed him to take Sir Thomas to the house, where he might view the curiosities. One short protest that he was perfectly content in the gardener’s hut was over-ruled, and he soon found himself being walked back through the orchard towards the house.

  ‘Your master appears to have a very far-flung trade,’ he opened, for the sake of conversation.

  ‘We have orders come in from gentlemen all over England for stocking their gardens, and what we do not have, Mr Tradescant will have brought in from the Low Countries. Ships leaving Flushing most months will have something loaded and packed for Tradescant’s, and then we have them taken up from Gravesend.’ The under-gardener lowered his voice. ‘Not just the Low Countries, either. Master John does business in Spain, the Canary Islands. Has done these ten years, although at times the trade’s more difficult than others.’

  ‘I daresay the war at sea with Spain doesn’t help.’

  ‘No,’ the man shook his head in hearty agreement, ‘it most certainly does not.’

  They’d reached a portico at the front of the house by this time and he tipped the brim of his hat. ‘Well, I’d best not go any further. Mistress is a devil for muddy boots, but you just go on in there, sir, and someone’ll come to you.’

  Thomas thanked him and went in. A wide stairway rose up from the middle of the hall to perhaps three floors above. From a portrait on the first landing, an elderly man, white-bearded and in out-moded dress, gazed somewhat suspiciously at him through what appeared to be a garland of fruit, flowers, seashells and vegetables. Thomas tried to evade the gaze as he paid his sixpence and was shown upstairs by a housemaid. He was relieved to hear that the lady of the household was otherwise engaged, and that she would not be able to show him around the ‘cabinet’. ‘But I am sure Mr Hartlib will tell you anything you require to know,’ the maid added, as she preceded him up the stairs.

  ‘Hartlib?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Hartlib. He has come to look at the new catalogue. Mr Hartlib knows everything, sir. About everything,’

  Thomas sighed. It boded fair to be a lengthy visit, and he was more curious to know what Clémence and Tradescant were discussing in the gardener’s hut. It was not that cabinets of curiosity didn’t interest him – he had often found such things fascinating. It had been much in fashion, in some of the towns of Europe where the King’s court had for a time settled, for gentlemen to keep their private collections of rarities – coins, shells, the feathers of exotic birds and all manner of other unusual things – in ingeniously constructed and sometimes beautifully engraved wooden cabinets. But gazing upon such things would hardly further the progress of his work for Thurloe, and nothing else would gain him the credit required to be permitted, eventually, to return home. But on entering the room, Thomas could not help but utter an exclamation of surprise. Tradescant’s ‘cabinet’ – the Tradeskin’s Ark of which he had heard men speak – was of a different order entirely to those private gentlemen’s collections he had seen elsewhere. Tradescant’s ‘cabinet’, it transpired, was a large room taking up almost the whole of the top floor of this fine South Lambeth house. Rows and rows of mounted cabinets and shelves full of objects appeared to run around every wall of the room. Any space between them was taken up with the shells of large sea-creatures or amphibians, if not the skulls, tusks and horns of land-bound mammals. At the far end of the room were displayed incredible brightly decorated robes, some made from the skins of animals Thomas had only read of in books, oddly turned boots and slippers, outlandish headgear and weaponry such as he had never seen on an English battlefield. A long, glass-covered cabinet, full of peculiar artefacts, ran up the centre of the room, and suspended above him hung myriads of stuffed birds and other creatures – a huge fish, even – most of which he had never seen in his life before. Thomas didn’t wonder that the cataloguing of such a collection had taken years. He wondered that it had ever been catalogued at all.

  Thomas didn’t know where to turn or to begin. His eye was taken by a display of items labelled as being African. He had heard stories of quite terrible creatures from sailors who had gone ashore on the Guinea coast, and here indeed were some fantastical and terrifying sights, not least of which was the blackened head of a crocodile, whose vicious jaws looked as if they might open and clamp down upon an unwary passer-by at any moment. Beyond the crocodile head was a collection of small, light arrows with exotically feathered flights. Thomas was reaching out to pick up one of the arrows when a voice called out in alarm, ‘Stop, sir!’

  Thomas looked around. He hadn’t noticed, at the far end of the room, a thin young woman with long dark hair and eyes that were almost black. Had it not been for her pallor, and the fact that he had heard her speak first, he would have thought her a Spaniard. His hand was still suspended two inches above the arrow. ‘I was not going to steal it, only to look.’ Clearly, Tradescant’s wife had stationed another housemaid here to watch for fear of theft.

  The girl raised her eyebrows as if he had said something almost impertinent. ‘I was not suggesting you were trying to steal it, sir, only that you might do well to read the label beneath before considering touching the item.’ Without giving him a chance to respond, she rounded the end of a set of shelves and disappeared from his view.

  Thomas felt that a jolt had gone through him, as if someone had prodded him with the end of a hot iron bar. Not since he had first left Faithly had a woman, not Clémence, not the Queen Mother, even, spoken to him in such a way. And he knew for certain that he had never seen such eyes. He was about to go after her when he thought he would do better first to look at the label beneath the arrow, as instructed. When he did, he involuntarily jerked his hand back again. Arrows used by executioners of the West Indies. Deadly Poisonous.

  Shaken, he turned around to where she had been but there was no sign of her there now. Thomas looked again at the arrow and decided she had been taking him for a fool: an item capable of killing a man on touch would hardly be laid out on public display for any passing Londoner to maim themselves upon. But as he left the arrows and moved on, he made sure he didn’t go so close as to touch them.

  At the end of the shelf around which the girl had disappeared, he spied her again, now examining some items laid out on a bench. Beside her was indeed Samuel Hartlib, another of Evelyn’s guests of the night before. Hartlib smiled broadly on seeing Thomas. ‘Sir Thomas! So you are the gentleman so near to putting himself in peril. I am afraid you gave poor Mistress Ellingworth here quite a fright.’

  Thomas employed his most winning smile. ‘I am very sorry for it.’

  Again, the young woman – it would appear, from Hartlib’s demeanour, she was not in fact one of the Tradescants’ housemaids – treated him to a look approaching indignation. ‘Do not trouble yourself, sir. My concern was for Mr Tradescant’s reputation. It would not bode well should so . . .’ she assessed him quite openly, ‘finely dressed a gentleman come to grief whilst viewing the curiosities. Through his own carelessness.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Thomas, accepting his chastisement with a good grace. ‘But I am truly grateful for your kindness all the same.’

 
Some of the antagonism went from the girl’s countenance, and Thomas thought he also caught the trace of a blush. Perhaps all was not lost.

  Hartlib was oblivious to any awkwardness in the exchange. ‘But, Sir Thomas, I had not realised you were to visit the rarities today. We might have come together.’

  ‘I had not realised it myself,’ he replied, explaining where he had left Clémence.

  ‘Ah, of course. In fact I must have a word with Tradescant myself. I have just been explaining to Mistress Ellingworth here that the item he has designated a unicorn’s horn is in fact no such thing.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Thomas, only mildly interested.

  ‘No.’ Hartlib became conspiratorial. ‘It is the tusk of a sea creature, found off the coast of Greenland. But Mistress Ellingworth does not think her brother’s readers will wish to know that.’

  Thomas turned towards the young woman. ‘Your brother?’

  ‘My brother is the editor of a weekly news-sheet, The London Lark. I assist him in its preparation. We thought it would be of interest to our readers to hear of Mr Tradescant’s rarities. We have agreed with Mr Tradescant that I should come, once a week, to sketch and study an item to be featured in the next news-sheet.’

  Thomas glanced down at the paper she had laid on the table, and, noticing, she placed a hand over it, but not before he had glimpsed the sketch.

  ‘My drawing is not very good, I’m afraid,’ she said.

  He reached out a hand to the paper and briefly touched hers as he did so. ‘May I?’ he said.

  With a brief hesitation, she moved her hand away and he picked up the paper to examine the sketch more closely. ‘It’s not so bad, you know – a reasonable likeness, and good enough I’m sure for your brother’s newsletter. It is just,’ he hesitated, ‘untutored. Would I be correct?’

  She nodded, all indignation gone now, and he was somehow sorry for it. ‘I have never had lessons. We could not . . .’