The Bear Pit

by S. G. MacLean

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  There was little more to be said. Fish knew of a dealer on the Downs from whom a horse fit to take Cromwell’s interest might be had. Boyes undertook to provide him with the necessary funds. They would meet again when the horse was procured. Meanwhile, Cecil, the only one amongst them whom the Yorkshireman had not seen, was to deal with that problem.

  The other two left to go about their separate business, but Boyes found himself reluctant to return so soon to the city. He was hardly a stranger to small rooms and cramped accommodation – confined quarters had long ceased to bother him, although pain from an old head wound at times made him crave fresh air and open spaces; it was his roving, questing mind that lacked sufficient stimulation in his present circumstances. This cabinet of curiosities kept by the Tradescants could do nothing to rival those he had seen or knew of on the continent – the Ambulacrum at Leiden, Morin’s collection in Paris, or the Wunderkammer of Rudolf II in Prague that his mother had told him of when he’d been a child. All the same, it might relieve the tedium of his London existence for an hour or so, give cause for reflection, or further enquiry.

  Boyes surveyed the grounds of Tradescant’s property. The gardener himself, John Tradescant, was a good way away, on hands and knees, planting, with a young apprentice a few yards further up from him apparently engaged on preparing planting holes. They looked like men at the beginning of a task, not nearing its end. It should be safe enough. Boyes adjusted his posture, composed his face, and headed towards the house.

  *

  The clock on the landing was slow. He could never understand why people would not keep up their clocks properly. He was almost tempted to unlock the side panel and adjust the mechanism himself, or to wind it at least. But caution, even as he was reaching for the catch of the panel, got the better of him, and he continued up the stairs towards the top floor, and the Cabinet of Curiosities.

  To begin with, he thought he was alone in the room. He stood a few moments just in the doorway, letting his eyes take in the displays laid out before him the length and breadth of the walls, and on tables down the middle of the room. He passed by the trays of shells – West African, Caribbean – they were no curiosity to him, he had seen them lying on the beaches of Guinea and St Lucia, Cape Verde and Guadeloupe. There was, however, a beautifully carved nautilus shell with birds and flowers engraved on its surface, its edge worked as if trimmed with lace. Then he caught sight of a shell labelled as from St Kitts. The very sight of it recalled to his mouth the bitter taste of the bread they’d had to eat there, the flour pounded from cassava fruit. The men had grumbled at it, until rations of even that, too, had begun to run low, and they’d kept their grumbles to themselves.

  He paused to examine a plum stone on which was carved in intricate detail the passion of Christ. A tiny thing it was, and on it so much suffering, the price of the Saviour’s shared humanity. He set it down again. A stoppered glass jug at his eyeline took his attention, something forever suspended in the liquid inside. A female hand. Boyes felt revulsion at the grotesquery of it, but then, against his will, he read the label, and it became to him a thing of beauty. ‘Hand of a Mermaid’, it said. ‘Where did you swim?’ he wondered. ‘Where did you come ashore?’ Had that hand held the hand of his brother? Had the gentle touch of those fingers comforted him as he’d plunged, helpless, to the depths? Had Maurice not died alone? But then Boyes shook himself. Maurice was not dead; he would find him, one day. And their cause was not lost.

  The sound of female laughter broke into his thoughts. It was coming from around the corner of a shelf that he had not realised led to another small section of the room. Boyes stood still a moment, not certain what to do. Then he moved a few steps closer, and listened. A man’s voice. ‘It’s true, I tell you.’

  The woman’s voice again. ‘It cannot be. Those are the boots of a child.’

  ‘I assure you, they are not. Tradescant has marked it right – they were the boots of Henrietta-Maria’s dwarf. His name was Jeffrey and she was sooner parted from her children than she was from him. The King presented him to her in a cake.’

  The woman’s voice changed now from incredulous humour to scorn. ‘A cake? Dear God, these people were debauched.’

  Boyes remembered it, remembered the Queen’s initial fright when the huge confection had started, of its own volition, to crumble before her, and then her delight when the little man had sprung out from inside. He remembered, too, the look of fear on the man’s face that he was so desperately trying to hide. The anxiety that he would not please, and would instead be condemned to a life of fairs and travelling circuses. But he had pleased, and he’d performed, and been made a pet of, when it had suited her. And yes, the Queen had given old John Tradescant a pair of Jeffrey Hudson’s boots to display amongst his other curiosities.

  Boyes moved quietly to the edge of the shelf. The man’s voice was familiar to him, but he could not be certain that he was right. Carefully, he peered around the corner. The couple were at the far end of the passageway, bent over a table beneath the window. Hudson’s old boots were on the table, and the man was showing the young woman how to draw them. Boyes saw what the young woman did not – that the teacher’s glance lingered longer on the curls at the nape of her neck, where the petrol-black hair had been pulled back, and at the delicate curve of her arm, than it did on what she drew. He smiled, wanted to step forward, reveal himself. ‘Oh, Thomas, will you never change?’ The words were on his lips, and he had to make himself silence them. He retreated quietly back around the corner and then turned and went quickly from the room. Thomas Faithly. Clémence had not told him about this. He would need to consider it, and give thought to what it meant.

  Fourteen

  Rendezvous Are Made

  ‘You’ll be one of her lot, I take it?’

  Andrew Marvell was used to lack of preamble with Seeker, but on this occasion he was at a loss as to what he was being asked about. ‘You’ll have to enlighten me, Captain.’

  ‘Artists and the like. Lady Ranelagh. Over by St James’s. Milton’s forever over there, and all the alchemists and philosophers and new scientists and such that hang around her brother. Don’t tell me you haven’t got your foot in that door as well.’

  Marvell bridled a little. ‘Mr Milton was good enough to introduce me to her ladyship, and she has been kind enough to invite me to some of her gatherings, to converse with other – like-minded – people of her society.’

  Seeker nodded. ‘Like I said. One of her lot. Good.’

  ‘Good?’ said Marvell, surprised. ‘I thought you’d summoned me here to warn me to stay away from such gatherings.’

  ‘Stay away?’ said Seeker. ‘Now why on earth would I do that?’

  And that was when Andrew Marvell felt the first suggestion of a smile start to creep across his lips. ‘Ah. Might I sit, Captain?’ he enquired.

  Seeker looked surprised. ‘What? Aye, of course you can sit. There’s no standing on ceremony here.’

  Marvell reflected that ninety-nine in a hundred of those who’d had the misfortune to find themselves standing here would be surprised to hear that, but he chose not to share the thought. He manoeuvred himself around the huge Irish hound that seemed to have taken up residence in the captain’s quarters, and sat down in the room’s only available chair.

  Seeker was examining a piece of paper on his desk and began to make marks against notes on it. ‘There’s a gathering over at Lady Ranelagh’s house tomorrow evening. Are you going?’

  Marvell puffed up slightly. ‘Yes, Captain, as a matter of fact I am.’

  Seeker nodded. ‘Excellent.’ He continued writing on the paper in front of him.

  Marvell sat forward. ‘You see, the Lord Protector himself suggested Mr Milton and I should accompany him.’ He lowered his voice. ‘He is not always confident in matters of poetry, and he doesn’t like it when those around him break in
to foreign tongues.’

  ‘I should think not,’ said Seeker. ‘Those speaking in foreign tongues are seldom up to any good.’

  Marvell sat back again, wondering whether Seeker included in that number the ambassadors who now came flocking to Whitehall from all corners of Europe. He suspected that he did.

  Seeker finally put down his quill pen and pushed the paper aside. ‘Well, the Lord Protector’s not going to Lady Ranelagh’s tomorrow night any more, not after the planned attempt on his life at Hammersmith.’

  Marvell felt his enthusiasm deflate. ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘But you can still go. There’s a few things I’d like you to keep an eye on for me.’

  ‘Things?’

  Seeker shrugged. ‘Things. People. Anything that strikes you as odd, anything amiss.’

  ‘Like?’ said Marvell carefully.

  ‘Like things out of place, things that don’t look quite right. Like folk speaking to folk they shouldn’t be speaking to.’

  ‘But that is the nature of Lady Ranelagh’s gatherings. She brings together people who interest her, without regard to their politics or past connections. It is their genius, their gifts, what they can contribute to the conversation that she admires.’

  ‘Doubtless,’ said Seeker, a look of mild distaste on his face. ‘And that’s exactly why it’s just the sort of thing that needs keeping an eye on.’ He picked up the sheet in front of him and handed it to Marvell. ‘Guest list.’

  ‘Even Lady Ranelagh refers her arrangements to you?’

  ‘Only when the Protector’s involved. Well?’

  Marvell cast his eye down the list. His own name was there. Of course. Seeker had already known he was going. There was also a handful of names on it that he had never come across, but only one or two surprised him. ‘Sir Thomas Faithly?’

  He felt Seeker’s gaze assess him very carefully.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Well,’ Marvell tried to think how to put it, ‘it seems somewhat odd, that’s all. He’s not long out of the Tower, as I hear.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Seeker.

  ‘And he’s not entirely the sort I would expect at her gatherings. His reputation, even as a young man when I was still in Yorkshire, was of a man of action rather than of thought. He has the name of being a Cavalier, and her ladyship is of a more Puritan cast. Perhaps she has asked him there to add some colour all the same? I’ve heard he’s a very handsome man.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Seeker. ‘But yes, that’s one for you to keep an eye on. Make yourself known to him, fellow-Yorkshireman, that sort of thing.’

  ‘You could as well do that yourself, Captain.’

  Seeker gave one of his low laughs. ‘Oh, yes. I’d be just what Lady Ranelagh was looking for, for the poetry, wouldn’t I? Besides,’ he continued, ‘nobody would do anything if I showed up. The gathering would be over in ten minutes, and nothing learned.’

  It was true. Marvell had seen it himself. People didn’t just carry on regardless when Seeker turned up. There was a tendency to silence, a hiatus in movement, before everyone suddenly found reason to be elsewhere. It was not just amongst the guilty that such was the case. Those of blameless life were equally dumbstruck and guilt-ridden at the captain’s arrival anywhere. Even in the guardrooms of Horse Guards Yard it was the same. Marvell wondered how it made Seeker feel, this power he had to arrest the motion of others, kill dead their conversations. He wondered if the man was ever lonely. At his feet, the dog snored rhythmically in its sleep, and Andrew Marvell thought he began to understand Damian Seeker a little better.

  ‘So,’ the voice recalled him to the matter in hand, ‘you’ll go and keep an eye on Thomas Faithly? And anything about anyone else that strikes you as not quite right?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course, Captain.’ Marvell took a breath as if to say more, but found the words eluded him.

  Seeker had already turned to something else, and nodded towards the door. ‘You can go now. But close the door behind you when you go out, will you? The dog doesn’t like a draught.’

  *

  After Marvell had left, Seeker surveyed again the list of names of those expected to attend Lady Ranelagh’s gathering. Among several groups of the prominent citizens of Westminster and London and those known as great intellects there was indeed Andrew Marvell, alongside Secretary Milton. And from Deptford would travel John Evelyn and his wife, with Mary Evelyn’s French companion, the woman Clémence Barguil. And there, too, was the name of Thomas Faithly himself. His eye was especially drawn to Faithly’s name, and he didn’t know why. Neither could he have said for certain why it was in Faithly he had told Marvell to take an especial interest. John Evelyn, who was known to have smuggled cyphers for the dead King and suspected still of involvement in clandestine correspondence, or the artist Wenceslaus Hollar, who had fought for the Stuart cause at Basing House, would surely have been more profitable subjects of surveillance. So why, Seeker wondered, was it his own man, Thomas Faithly, doubly compromised, that he had set the poet to watch? Why did he trust him enough to use him in his search for the killer of Joseph Grindle, but not to mix with his own kind? He didn’t have a satisfactory answer to that question, save to acknowledge that he had seen a look of late in Thomas Faithly’s eye that suggested the former companion of the exiled King was no longer certain which side he wanted to be on.

  Just at that moment, a falling log disturbed the hound, and it bestirred itself, alert for trouble. Seeker sighed and stood up. ‘Aye, lad. I think you might be right. Come on then.’

  *

  The Black Fox was busy and had the air of often being so. Cecil could see why: the ale was good, the food better, and the place cleaner than most. The landlady, moreover, was an exceptionally comely woman, more than capable of running a well-ordered house. Cecil was feeling well satisfied at this moment. It had been a pleasant surprise, a change from the one misstep and disappointment after another that had dogged his enterprise with Fish and Boyes that here, in this tavern, his prey had more or less fallen into his lap. Cecil himself had been barely seated, just wondering how exactly to begin his discreet enquiries about the young Yorkshireman who had been seen here talking to Damian Seeker only a few days ago, when the young Yorkshireman himself had walked through the door.

  The voice was the first thing, a grudging apology mumbled by the fellow to a man whose foot he had stepped on. Very Yorkshire, defiantly Yorkshire, as if it were the man’s fault for having a foot. The age was about right too – twenty-four or twenty-five years old, perhaps. Skinny but not scrawny, a few pockmarks on the pale skin, hair neither long nor short, and chopped like ruffled sparrows’ feathers. Nose just on the safe side of being a beak. The suit of good woollen cloth was the same colour as the hair, as if there were no other colour but brown, and no shade but dun. The collar and cuffs were the plain white linen of a Puritan, but there was a carelessness to them. This fellow doesn’t care about anyone’s opinion, thought Cecil.

  The next thing was the recognition. Dorcas, the landlady, was the first. She glanced up from a table she was scrubbing to see the young man come down into the parlour. Her nod of greeting was attended by a distinct hint of unease.

  ‘Lawrence,’ she said, ‘we hadn’t thought to have a visit from you today.’ She gave an involuntary glance towards the counter, where two of the young girls who served in the tavern were loading tankards and jugs onto trays.

  ‘I thought I’d just call in, Aunt,’ he said, a little cocky, ‘and see how you and my sister did, and let you know how I’ve been getting on.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Dorcas, still not altogether pleased, it seemed, at her nephew’s arrival.

  As Cecil pretended not to notice much of the exchange, he saw the younger of the two girls at the counter, a healthy, strong-boned and clear-skinned child of about sixteen, with flaxen hair, look up and after a moment cast an uncerta
in smile in the way of the brown woollen knight.

  She was rewarded with a very broad smile in return. ‘Manon.’ He didn’t appear to notice the extremely pretty, slightly older girl beside her.

  ‘Lawrence,’ the younger one said at last. ‘It’s been so long since we’ve seen you.’

  ‘Five days, he hasn’t been here,’ corrected Dorcas. Then her manner seemed to soften. ‘Sit you down, Lawrence. Will you have some rabbit fricassee?’

  The young man affirmed with enthusiasm that he would.

  ‘I’ll have Manon fetch you a dish, then, and you can tell us of all your adventures at Clifford’s Inn.’

  The fellow rewarded her with a grin that Cecil had to admit to himself was not unengaging. ‘Thanks, Aunt Dorcas. I’m half-famished with what passes for food down there. No wonder lawyers are all so miserable.’

  Cecil thought there was no harm in him raising his glass to the young man at this remark. A likeable fellow, with a ready wit, it seemed. It was a pity he’d have to kill him.

  *

  ‘Who’s he?’ asked Lawrence, his head bent forward across the table.

  ‘Who?’ said Manon, looking about her.

  Lawrence lowered his voice. ‘Don’t look just now, but the man over there by the organ.’

  It was with a great deal of effort that Manon kept herself from turning her head and looking in the direction of the organ. She in turn leaned a little towards Lawrence. ‘The man wearing the green felt hat with a goose feather in it?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ he said, scarcely moving his lips.

  ‘I don’t know. He’s not been in long. I’ve not seen him in before. He’s very polite.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Lawrence’s face was writ large with distrust as he raised his tankard to his mouth.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Smiled over here a couple of times, trying to draw me in to his conversation. A bit too friendly.’

  Manon’s eyes sparkled and she tried to stifle a grin.