The Bear Pit

by S. G. MacLean

  ‘Course he does,’ said Lawrence, who was now being offered the dog’s belly to rub. ‘How’s he at hawking?’

  ‘Doesn’t get much chance, but he’ll bring down anything on four legs, or two for that matter, if you need him to.’

  ‘I bet he would,’ said Lawrence, examining one large paw and then another, before moving on to look at the dog’s teeth and gums, and nodding. ‘I’ll have to borrow him off you some time. Take him out on the fields.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Seeker. ‘You will.’

  Ingolby lifted his eyes away from the dog and fixed a suspicious look on Seeker. ‘I’ve heard that tone before. What is it?’

  ‘You might prove to be useful.’

  ‘Ah, no.’ Now Lawrence abandoned the dog and stood up, brushing debris from his hose. ‘No. I had enough of being useful in York – folk shooting at you, trying to throw you off walls. I’ve come here to learn to use this better,’ he tapped a finger to his forehead, ‘and I’d like to keep it attached to my neck, thank you very much.’

  Seeker brought his face closer to Lawrence’s. ‘What you’d like, Ingolby, is not top of my list of concerns. Nevertheless, it’s not me you’ll be keeping company.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Lawrence, betraying his interest. ‘Who then?’

  ‘Sir Thomas Faithly.’

  Lawrence took a further step back and raised a hand. ‘No. Absolutely not. You are not throwing me in the Tower just so I can keep an eye on Thomas Faithly for you.’

  ‘Faithly’s not in the Tower. He’s been out a few weeks. Not entirely been behaving himself, but nothing that’ll get him thrown back in there, yet. I want you at the Turk’s Head coffee house in New Palace Yard, seven o’clock tomorrow night. Elias Ellingworth’ll fetch you down. Thomas Faithly’ll be there an’ all, and I’ll tell you both then what I want you to do.’

  Ten

  A Meeting at the Turk’s Head

  The smoke, seeping out into the street every time the door was opened, was in Seeker’s eyes almost before it had reached his throat. He wondered that they didn’t have enough of the fog and belching chimneys outside, without they must create their own inside, too, but it was that time of day when the merchants and printers and booksellers, and many of those who worked the corridors of Whitehall, had finished their labours and after a hasty supper at some tavern or cook shop, made for the coffee houses.

  He pushed open the door to the Turk’s Head to find the noise was worse than the smoke. It did not dip as much here when he entered as it did in other places – the City, Holborn, Southwark – because they were more used to have the soldiery for clientele in Westminster, and for all he was hardly welcome in their midst, they did not always assume the worst when he appeared.

  A group of soldiers, members of the Protector’s Foot Guard, had commandeered the benches by the fire. It was almost time for the night duty. Seeker came to a halt a yard in from the door and stared at them until they began to make hurried signs of finishing up and returning to their barrack.

  ‘What can I do for you, Captain?’ asked Miles, the coffee man, with the look of one who has decided that there is nothing to be done but make the best of it.

  ‘Nothing. It’s this lot I’m interested in.’ He indicated the main table, a long oval, running almost the length of the serving room. About a dozen animated men were gathered around it, smoking and drinking coffee, and making such a hubbub with their arguments and declamations that they might have numbered twenty at least. Seeker scanned the faces until he found the one he was looking for. Elias Ellingworth seldom ventured this far west, but he’d come at Seeker’s bidding this evening. The lawyer stood up when he caught sight of Seeker.

  ‘Did you bring him?’

  Ellingworth nodded. ‘Over there.’ He indicated a small bench near the passage that led out to the back yard of the Turk’s Head. Seated at the bench, reading, was Lawrence Ingolby.

  ‘Right. You can wait here till I’ve finished with him, and then you can fetch him back up to Clifford’s with you. Like of him venturing alone into Whitefriars, he’d never be seen again.’

  ‘Lawrence would fend for himself well enough, even in Whitefriars. I think you underestimate your county-man, Seeker,’ said Elias.

  ‘Not an inch do I underestimate him. Just if he got in there, he might see things he thought were a better use of his abilities than the study of the law. I like Whitefriars just the way it is – manageable. The last thing I need is Lawrence Ingolby going in there and organising them.’

  Lawrence looked up at Seeker’s approach, then set his book aside. ‘Right,’ said Seeker, sliding on to the bench opposite him. ‘Thomas Faithly—’

  Lawrence interrupted him. ‘I hardly know him. I was just a lad when he left Faithly to fight for the King, and he was long gone before I ever went to work up at the manor.’

  ‘Aye, but you know where he comes from, you know the Faithlys, you know his sort, is what I’m saying. And you know dogs.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with—’ Lawrence began to protest, but he was interrupted by the arrival in the Turk’s Head of Thomas Faithly himself.

  ‘Right,’ said Seeker. ‘Get up, go over to him, and greet him like an old friend you haven’t seen for years, then take him over here and make a show of introducing him to me.’

  Lawrence stared at him. ‘But you’ve already . . .’

  ‘Just do it,’ said Seeker.

  Lawrence shrugged, pulled a face as he gulped down the dregs of the spiced caudle he’d ordered, and went to do as Seeker had bid him.

  He swaggered over to Thomas Faithly with all the ease of a man with London at his fingertips. ‘Sir Thomas! I never thought to see a friendly Yorkshire face so far from home!’

  Thomas Faithly looked somewhat startled. ‘Ah, Mr . . .? I do not think . . .’

  ‘Lawrence Ingolby, Sir Thomas,’ said Lawrence, making a profound bow that Seeker knew would have cost him some pride. ‘Your father was very good to me as a boy in the North Riding, and I served latterly as your brother’s steward at Faithly Manor.’

  Thomas now looked carefully at Lawrence. ‘Indeed. I think the name is somewhat familiar to me . . .’ Then he broke into a broad smile. ‘The foundling of the cave that was taken in by Old Digby Pullan! You’ve grown a bit in thirteen years, since I first left Faithly. You’re attached to Matthew Pullan’s household now, are you not?’

  ‘I am, Sir Thomas,’ said Lawrence, warming to his performance, which had now attracted some notice, ‘and it is Matthew who has sent me down here to learn the law. But come, let’s get some warmth and a good drink in you, for your father’s kindness, and old times’ sake.’ Lawrence put an arm around Sir Thomas’s shoulder and began to lead him to the table he’d been seated at. ‘And let me introduce you to our fellow Yorkshireman, Captain Seeker.’

  Before Thomas could say anything, Seeker had stood up. ‘Sir Thomas and I are well enough acquainted. And if you’ll take my advice, Ingolby, you’ll choose your friends better when you’re in town. I’ll bid you both good day.’

  Sir Thomas stood aside with a brisk nod of his head as Seeker went past him, leaving Lawrence looking after him, astonished.

  *

  Once Seeker was gone and the noise in the serving room returned to its former level, Lawrence leaned closer to Thomas Faithly and said, ‘What was that all about? It was him that called me here to meet you.’

  ‘I know,’ said Sir Thomas, also keeping his voice low. ‘But it’s important, particularly for me, that people think there is no more connection between the Captain and me than former gaoler and prisoner. It is necessary that our public relations be hostile.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Lawrence, although he was not altogether certain that he did. ‘Well, that should be easy enough, given the way he goes about things. So why are we here then?’

  Thomas glanced around once to see tha
t they were not overheard. ‘It’s clear that Seeker trusts you, so I must also. As you have surely learned, while he knows his way through every murky alleyway his master Secretary Thurloe directs him to, it is not always a simple matter for him to involve himself in the business he finds there.’

  Ingolby looked at him a moment, screwing up one eye. ‘What you’re saying is that whilst he knows where Thurloe’s spies need to be, he’s a bit on the recognisable side to go there himself.’

  ‘That is, more or less, the situation.’

  ‘And you’re employed in his service in some way?’

  Faithly lowered his voice even further. ‘Nothing that you need to know about, aside from this one thing he would have you assist me with.’

  ‘All right,’ said Lawrence, deciding that on balance it was better for him to know as little of Seeker’s business as possible.

  Just then the server arrived and filled two finians with steaming black liquid from his pot. Lawrence looked in his cup and scowled. Once the man had left he leaned a little closer to Sir Thomas. ‘Go on.’

  Thomas tested the temperature of his cup and put it back down. ‘You looked after my brother’s hounds at Faithly, didn’t you?’

  Lawrence nodded. ‘A good pack of dogs. I miss them.’

  ‘You know a good hunting dog then?’

  ‘Course. Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I do. But the kind of dog Seeker thinks you and I should go looking for isn’t the kind you’d send haring off over the moors, if you know what I mean.’

  Lawrence felt his lips tighten. ‘I don’t,’ he said, very deliberately, although he suspected he did, but he was going to make Thomas Faithly say it.

  Faithly appeared to be paying very close attention to the packing of his pipe. ‘I’m talking about fighting dogs.’

  Lawrence stood up, picking up his hat. ‘Not interested. And if Damian Seeker thinks—’

  ‘Sit down,’ hissed Thomas, ‘and listen. I have no interest in fighting dogs either – no more does Seeker, or he wouldn’t need us to do this work for him. He needs to know about animal fights, who the keepers and the breeders are, which animals are involved.’

  Lawrence frowned. ‘Surely he knows. Ban’s not been in force that long. He must know who kept the cocks and dogs and bulls for the fights and baiting.’

  ‘When they were still legal, yes. But now they’re not, and he needs to know who’s still putting them on – the worst ones, the most vicious.’

  ‘They’re all vicious,’ said Lawrence.

  ‘Yes, but they don’t all involve bears.’

  ‘Bears?’ Lawrence almost splurted out the coffee he’d just tried a sip of.

  Thomas Faithly gave him a moment to compose himself. ‘A few nights ago, Damian Seeker and I came upon the body of an old man – an old soldier, whose name we later learned was Joseph Grindle. He had been mauled to death. What remained of him was chained to the wall of an outbuilding in Bankside. Seeker is convinced he was killed by a bear that was deliberately set on him.’

  Lawrence had put down his cup, very slowly, while Sir Thomas had been speaking. His mouth formed the words ‘a bear’ once more. Then he shook his head. ‘I know nothing about bears, other than that the Bear Garden was closed down long before I got here.’

  Thomas drew on his pipe and nodded. ‘It was. But at least one of the bears is still, if not on the loose, being kept somewhere. What the Captain wants is for you and me to find our way into the darkest byways of dog-fighting until we’re standing in front of someone who can tell us where that bear is. We are to feign an interest in the baiting, in finding ourselves a good fighting dog. Then we have to make it known that we have a very high purse to back this hound against a very particular type of animal.’

  ‘I don’t much like the sound of the sort he’d have us consorting with.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Faithly, ‘that’s why he needs you to be involved.’

  Lawrence put down his coffee and shook his head. ‘Ah, no. No. Whatever he’s told you, I am not a fighting man of that sort. I’ll skewer anyone you like with my pen, I can even look after myself in a rumble in an alleyway, but as for dealing with those types . . .’

  Thomas smiled. ‘Fortunate then, that while you have been learning to keep accounts and order wedders for my brother’s flocks and defend yourself in alleyways, I have gained long experience in the use of pistol and knife, and other useful items besides, against properly trained fighting men. However, I am, or so my enemies would tell you, a gentleman, and the search for a fighting dog of this nature is not something a gentleman does on his own account.’

  A look of mild displeasure crossed Lawrence’s face. ‘I’m to play your servant.’

  ‘Not in the way of some lackey. But you will be my man, someone I have engaged to assess the quality of what I’m offered, to negotiate terms on my behalf. People around the cockpits and the dog-rings will talk more openly to you than they will to me. The captain says you can pass yourself off in any company, and that no one will get the better of you.’

  Lawrence was mollified. ‘He said that?’

  ‘Yes, he did, and it’s a lot better than anything he’s ever said about me.’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ agreed Lawrence quite heartily, ‘a whole lot better.’

  Within a half-hour they had made their plans to meet the next evening at the Bear on Bankside, and there begin their enquiries whilst discreetly making known their business. That done, there was no more to be said. Thomas rose to leave, but as he did so, Elias Ellingworth, who was at that point reading a section of James Harrington’s new book aloud to the company, took his eye. He turned back to Lawrence. ‘Do you know that man?’

  ‘Which?’ asked Lawrence, who had been looking elsewhere.

  ‘There, at the end of the table, the one declaiming.’

  ‘Oh, Elias? Yes, Elias Ellingworth, a lawyer of Clifford’s Inn. He’s another one that’s got some sort of history with Seeker.’

  ‘Of what nature?’ asked Thomas.

  Lawrence shrugged. ‘Not likely to be good, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Thomas agreed, ‘I suppose not.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘Do you happen to know if he has a sister?’

  ‘A sister?’ Lawrence thought a moment. ‘Yes, he does. I heard him telling Seeker he lived with her. Don’t know where.’

  ‘And,’ continued Thomas, ‘I don’t suppose you would know her name?’

  Lawrence shook his head. ‘Sorry. I’ll ask him if you like.’

  ‘Ah, no. Not here at any rate, it might provoke too much interest.’

  ‘It might that. Why are you so interested in whether or not he has a sister?’

  ‘Ah well, you see,’ said Thomas, becoming quite animated, ‘I met a woman two days ago, at Tradescant’s Ark – you know it?’

  Lawrence shook his head.

  ‘No matter. The thing is, something in the lawyer’s face put me in mind of her, something in the look of him, his expression – I cannot pinpoint it. Perhaps I’m imagining it, for since I first set eyes on her I have not been able to get her out of my mind.’

  Ingolby smiled; he felt a lessening of the tension that had been radiating through him since Seeker had left. ‘Well, I’ll find out from him on the way home whether he has a sister, what her name is, if she was at this Ark place, and if she’s spoken for. And I’ll tell you all about it next time we meet. Take our mind off this business of blood-fights and murders.’

  ‘Truly, I will be much obliged,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘And Damian Seeker can hardly complain about me paying court to the sister of a respectable lawyer, can he?’

  Eleven

  Maria

  ‘Be careful, Maria.’

  Samuel Kent and Gabriel were already at work, roasting and grinding the beans for the first pots of the day at Kent’s Coffee house. They would open their doors
within the half-hour and already an assortment of lawyers, merchants and visitors would be making their way along Cornhill or up from Blackfriars, eager to fall upon their pipes and news-sheets and to begin the daily process of ordering the affairs of the world. Grace was busy measuring sugar and setting aside the herbs and spices that would be needed for the other beverages – the caudles, possets and infusions – she would be asked for in the course of the day. Maria, as was her habit, had called in to help her for half an hour.

  They had spent some time talking of Joseph Grindle, and of what Seeker had told Grace of the circumstances of his death. Grace was not happy about Maria’s intention to travel south of the river again, on her own. Maria brushed aside her concerns.

  ‘You need have no fears for me, Grace. I know you love my brother dearly, but you must know I am left to my own devices from morning to night most days. If Elias is not dealing with his legal clients, he is at work on the news-sheet: he hasn’t time to shadow me around London.’

  Grace cut another wedge from the sugar loaf and carefully weighed it on her scales. ‘But it isn’t London, Maria, it’s Lambeth. One thing to go to Tradescant’s on my birthday visit, or with John Drake when he was selecting his apothecary samples, but I do not think you should go on your own.’

  Maria hopped down from the stool she had been perched upon and dipped the tip of her finger into a small spray of spilled sugar. ‘John Drake is busy today, up at Cree Church Lane.’ A house someway up the lane behind St Katharine Cree had been granted by the city to the Jews of London, who were now at last allowed to live openly, nearly four hundred years after their expulsion from England. Elias had said if Cromwell never did another good thing, he had at least done this. ‘Besides, Elias knows I’m going on my own today, and he does not mind.’

  Grace continued to set her scales carefully. ‘And does Elias know about this Thomas Faithly?’ she asked, never taking her eyes from her measure.