The Black Friar

by S. G. MacLean

  Seeker stopped what he was doing and turned to face her. ‘How do you mean, “gone”?’

  Dorcas Wells shrugged her shoulders. ‘I wish I knew. It must be ten days ago or so. I sent her down to the herb market at Leadenhall, to see what was to be had. When she didn’t come back I went myself to look for her. No one had seen her. No one’s seen hide nor hair of her since.’

  Seeker felt some chill begin to creep over him. ‘How old was she?’

  Dorcas spoke very quietly. ‘Fourteen. She’d been with me since she was eight.’ Her fingers worried at the edge of her apron. ‘She had no call to run away. I’m not a bad mistress, and she was safe here.’

  Seeker doubted whether any in the parlour of the tavern, or indeed out around the streets of Bishopsgate and Broad Street had seen the woman before him weep.

  ‘You think some evil has befallen her?’

  ‘What else can it be?’ she said, desperate. ‘What good can befall a girl – such a lovely girl – alone in the city?’

  Very little, thought Seeker. He thought of Nathaniel, coming here with Carter Blyth, of the hidden objects Blyth had stashed away in their chamber – the painting of Gethsemane, the register of the Three Nails. ‘Has anything gone missing from here?’

  ‘She was not a thief!’

  ‘I didn’t ask that. Has anything gone missing from this tavern since she went?’

  ‘Nothing but the usual – the occasional tankard, dish. But . . .’

  He sensed something in their conversation had changed, that now they were talking of something else.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Something appeared here, something strange, but it was a good two weeks before Isabella went.’ She assessed him, took a linen handkerchief from the pocket hanging at her side and gave the tears that had started to brim onto her cheeks one harsh wipe. She went to the door. ‘Wait here.’

  Less than two minutes later, Seeker was looking at the small, ornate silver salt, topped with the model of a hound, that he had previously seen only in Anne Winter’s family portrait.

  ‘How did you know?’ Dorcas Wells asked.

  Seeker didn’t take his eyes from the salt that he was examining. ‘It doesn’t matter. You found this two weeks before your girl disappeared?’

  She pursed her lips in thought. ‘Two weeks at least. But what could that have to do with it? How can there be any connection between the two?’

  ‘How long after Gideon Fell was here did this—’

  She interrupted him. ‘There was no Gideon Fell.’

  He looked at her in such a way that she should not doubt he thought her a liar. ‘Have it your own way.’ He put the salt into his leather bag. ‘Tell no one of this.’

  ‘I don’t understand, Seeker. What’s happening?’

  ‘I think it would bring more danger to your house to make any of this known. Keep your boy close by you.’

  ‘What?’ On Dorcas Wells’s face there was now a look of panic.

  ‘If your girl comes back, or anything else unusual occurs here, or if anyone else should ask you about Gideon Fell, you get a message to me, you understand?’

  She nodded, following him out into the parlour. The eyes of all her drinkers turned upon them. Dorcas didn’t care.

  ‘Seeker? You will come back?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be back,’ he said, surveying those who watched him. ‘You may be certain, I will be back.’

  Twelve

  The Sketches

  Seeker was at his desk in Whitehall early the next morning. In Thurloe’s absence, he wasn’t sure he trusted many more here than he did in Anne Winter’s house. George Downing had almost given up the pretence of interest in his duties at the Exchequer, so often was he to be found haunting the corridors of the intelligence offices. Philip Meadowe was an able deputy to the Secretary, but Seeker was not certain that he was of sufficient mettle to see off that stalking horse alone.

  Despite the early hour, there was an air of even greater business, greater hurriedness, than usual on the stairways and corridors around the Cockpit. The closing down of Parliament had everyone on the alert, but Seeker suspected much of the tension was born of an underlying panic at the absence of the usually omnipresent Thurloe. This was confirmed when he ran into a bleary-eyed Meadowe, whose first words were a heartfelt wish for the Secretary’s swift recovery and return.

  Seeker was sceptical. ‘I think his recovery will be slow, and slowed the more should he return here too soon. But you manage, do you not, Mr Meadowe? Secretary Thurloe has great confidence in you.’

  Meadowe breathed deep. ‘I think we manage, but how can I be certain? The more complacent we are, the more likely we will miss something, and dear Lord, so much is flying this way from the Continent that if we don’t miss something, it will be a miracle.’

  ‘The Stuarts are up to something?’

  ‘When are they not? But this time, I think it is something big. The intelligence coming our way, both from agents and by intercept, suggests better organisation than they have ever mustered before. This Sealed Knot of theirs has been wound round several parts of the country, and with the army so unsettled . . .’

  ‘Don’t concern yourself over the army. The Protector’s name is carved on our hearts. Those who collude against him will be brought down before they even begin to rise themselves up. Their conspiracies have as much force as a twist of damp gunpowder.’

  ‘You believe it?’

  Seeker had no doubts. ‘Men who believe they are something soon find they are nothing, should they think to stand against Oliver.’

  As the two clerks Andrew Marvell and Marcus Bridlington passed, affecting not to be listening to the conversation of their superiors, Meadowe lowered his voice and moved closer to Seeker. ‘The Secretary has told you of the attempt made on the Protector a couple of months back by the Fifth Monarchists?’

  Seeker nodded. ‘Belshazzar’s Feast.’

  ‘Well that’s where we believe it’s most likely the trouble in the army – should there be any – will come from, and Major-General Harrison at the head of it.’

  ‘Only give the word, and Harrison will be crushed,’ said Seeker.

  *

  Once seated behind his own desk, Seeker opened his leather bag and took out the packet his landlady on Knight Ryder Street had handed to him as he’d left that morning. He hadn’t been back there since the shutting down of Parliament.

  ‘Fellow like a rodent brought it, four days since,’ she’d said, shivering at the memory.

  Seeker looked at Anne Winter’s seal, wondered what truths or lies might be contained beneath it, and tore the package open. Four sheets of good-quality paper, carefully folded. Seeker raised his eyebrows in unwilling admiration – Anne Winter had not sent him written descriptions of those who watched her house, but hand-drawn likenesses. Unfolding the first, he found himself looking at the living face of a man he’d last seen dead, one week ago now. Carter Blyth had been a good agent, practised in discretion and, when required, disguise, but Anne Winter had captured him, in blacklead and charcoal, exactly. It was the face, the scarred, burn-marked face that had indeed survived the munitions explosion at Delft. It was also the face of a man trying to look as if he was on his way to something, some place, of greater import to him than that which he was actually looking at. What was in the eyes? What did Carter Blyth see, and what was he looking for in Anne Winter’s home?

  Seeker set the sheet aside and considered the next sketch. In this he recognised one of the watchers Thurloe sometimes used, a stocky, ordinary fellow with drooping eyes and a careworn face. As far from what many imagined the agents of the Protectorate to be like as could be achieved, and yet Anne Winter had seen and known him for what he was. Seeker wrote down his name and moved on to the next sheet. A young, almost arrogant face, clean-shaven, slightly handsome, but Anne Winter had drawn more than the face, she had sketched in the body, too, capturing the fine lines of the expensive clothing, the sheen of the silver buckles on the sho
es, the soft fall of a black velvet cloak over the good coat. Beneath the sketch, she had written, One of General Goffe’s, as I recall? It was indeed Goffe’s nephew, the young Marcus Bridlington, whom she had accosted on her visit here only a week ago, and who had so carelessly told her who he was. ‘Hmm.’ Seeker doubted that one so naive and so careful of his appearance would have a long career in the intelligence services. It angered Seeker that the lives of other, better men could at times be held in the balance by well-connected, lesser men who were not properly fit for the tasks allotted them, but then one as well connected as Bridlington would not require a long career in the intelligence services. Some useful alliance, a wealthy widow or promising young heiress of influential family, was probably already being made for him, in some other part of Whitehall, or general’s home on the Strand, or Pall Mall, or Wimbledon.

  And so to the last piece of paper, the last sketch of those in the state’s pay whom Anne Winter had observed watching her house. Seeker smiled and shook his head. ‘Oh, Andrew, my lad, she has you to the very scowl.’ Anne Winter had not moved below the shoulders in this case, the plain white split-linen collar coming right up under the first suspicion of a double chin. The sullen, pursed mouth, the heavy dark shadow around jaw and above the lip that was almost like a muzzle, the offended eyes, brewing on the injustices of life. Marvell – it could be no other. And beneath the likeness, Anne Winter had written, in her neat, trained hand:

  Much rather thou, I know, expect’st to tell

  How heavy Cromwell gnasht the earth and fell.

  Or how slow Death farre from the sight of day

  The long-deceived Fairfax bore away.

  Seeker read the lines through twice, and cursed Anne Winter for her mind games. He could make little sense of what the woman was trying to say. If her words were to be taken literally, she seemed to be accusing Andrew Marvell of treachery against the Protectorate, which hardly made sense. But if they were some kind of coded threat, experience told him to get to the bottom of it sooner rather than later. He copied the lines down on a piece of paper, sealed it, and called for a runner to take it to Dr Wallis in the Cypher Office. Then he sent for the three watchers whom Anne Winter had identified, and called up the file of surveillance on her house. Bridlington and Marvell, neither yet set out on their day’s task, were standing before him within five minutes; word had been sent that the third agent was working in the field, presumably already in position, Seeker thought, at Crutched Friars. He would have to have that changed – the man was already discovered, compromised.

  A low winter sun had begun to edge its way above the city, and send some shafts of light across the dull greens and browns of the park beyond his windows. He set aside the third agent’s report to read by himself, but pulled the other two from the file, where they had been meticulously titled and numbered by one of Thurloe’s clerks.

  Seeker’s eyes were stinging from lack of sleep. He selected first the slim folder containing Bridlington’s report, and handed it to the young man. ‘Read it aloud, please.’

  In a clear voice that had been trained to public speaking, Bridlington read. His observations were languid and, Seeker suspected, cursory. He appeared to recognise few of the callers to the front door of the house, other than the playwright William Davenant, whose arrival greatly animated him, and the known but tolerated Royalist John Evelyn, whose very young wife drew an admiring report. The dress of all three were described in unnecessary detail. Neither the servants of the house nor the tradesmen who called at it had stimulated any great degree of interest in Bridlington, although he did go as far as to categorise the Rat as ‘unpleasant’. His attention to detail on Anne Winter’s clothing on a day-to-day basis, and the architectural improvements she was undertaking to the outside of her home would have been impressive, had those been the objects of Thurloe’s interest, but they were not. Bridlington concluded his report by commenting that the Royalists known to pay call to her were tolerated and indeed approved by the regime, and by offering the assessment that nothing untoward was being undertaken by Lieutenant Winter’s widow.

  As the young man’s report drew to a close, Seeker found himself wishing that it was in his power to dismiss one so useless from Thurloe’s service, and indeed in many circumstances it would have been, but not when the vessel of uselessness was one who could call on patronage so close to the Protector.

  Bridlington was no doubt aware of this, but what he had clearly not been aware of was that Seeker did not feel himself constrained to pretend to be impressed by a shoddy piece of work, regardless of how well connected its author. When Seeker pushed back his chair, stood up and very volubly began to make his views known, Bridlington’s look of self-assurance gradually turned to one of mortified disbelief.

  ‘Pointless. An utterly pointless piece of work. A waste of Secretary Thurloe’s time, and mine. You think that Charles Stuart sends his agents by the front door, bearing the Garter and his letters of commendation on a velvet cushion? You think every servant or tradesman to be a harmless halfwit? Every Royalist to be dressed like the Duke of Buckingham, or to blow a trumpet before him announcing himself as Rupert of the Rhine?’

  Bridlington, visibly shaken, attempted a reply, but Seeker, risen from his seat and pacing towards a window, waved him away. ‘Return your report to the file, and then report to the messengers’ room. You can make yourself of use there until Secretary Thurloe returns and considers how better to employ you.’

  Bridlington glanced at Marvell, whose eyes were now orbs of astonishment, and who, all unseen by Seeker, gestured vigorously towards the door. Bridlington needed no further telling, and was through it and gone by the time Seeker turned around again.

  ‘So, Andrew,’ said Seeker wearily, ‘what can you tell me that your so-well-turned-out colleague cannot?’

  Casting a defensive eye over his own perfectly serviceable clothing, Marvell licked his lips and began. The voice was halting, the flat Yorkshire tones did not roll as comfortably as Seeker’s own; for all that his own gifts and his father’s determination had seen Andrew Marvell as well educated as had been Marcus Bridlington, the churchman’s son from Hull lacked the polish that wealth could buy, and for all his well-stocked mind and Cambridge training, he was no orator. The words came haltingly and in a monotone, but that was all right: Seeker didn’t look to be entertained, he looked to be informed. And informed he was, for Marvell had noticed things, several things, that had escaped his more eloquent younger colleague’s interest.

  The Rat he too had noticed. He gave no personal opinion on the fellow, but that he suspected he carried a stiletto in his boot, and – Marvell hesitated, cleared his throat – his waistcoat was of Spanish leather, and he was fairly certain, Spanish-made.

  Marvell need not have worried – this was a different thing entirely from Marcus Bridlington’s admiration of the quality of John Evelyn’s lace cuffs. Seeker knew Marvell to have travelled in Europe for many of the war years, and that he had ventured as far as Madrid, where, it was claimed, he had been taught to fence by a Spanish master.

  ‘So, he has plied his trade as a mercenary then?’

  ‘I think it likely,’ answered Marvell. ‘Lady Anne has taken steps to protect herself and her household.’

  And yet they had not been enough to protect a girl not twelve years old.

  Reassured that he was not to be subjected to the searing contempt poured on Bridlington, Marvell proceeded. He had noticed that the Rat, mercenary or no, seemed to have an especial oversight of the craftsmen who called at the house. And of craftsmen, he reported, there were several, but while Anne Winter had employed known local men to see to the new pantiles on the roof of her house, the painting of her front door, the weatherproofing and refining of the outer masonry, those who carried out the work inside came from outside London, and were unknown to the local men whom Marvell had asked about it.

  What puzzled Marvell most, though, was that he had noticed Anne Winter’s house was being watched by
another, and not someone he recognised as being in the Protectorate’s employ. When Seeker asked him to describe this other, it soon became clear that Marvell, just like Anne Winter, had noticed Carter Blyth watching her house. It made very little sense to Seeker that an agent as experienced as Blyth had neglected his own orders to study the comings and goings at the house of a Royalist widow whose home he must have seen was already being watched. The clear explanation was that he had not been watching it on Thurloe’s behalf, but for some other reason. Seeker recalled his feeling, on reading Carter Blyth’s reports to Thurloe, that some unmentioned train of enquiry had taken the agent’s real interest. He was beginning to think he knew what that might have been. He became even more certain of it when Marvell made his final observation.

  ‘This person, who comported himself as a clothworker out of some old almshouses by the top of Woodruffe Street, seemed less interested in the lady of the house or the visitors to it, than in some young servant girl who had a place there for a time. I have not observed the servant girl of late. The clothworker also appears to have left the area, and at around the same time.’

  Relieved, it seemed, to be finished speaking, Marvell looked up, a little flushed. ‘That’s it.’

  Seeker’s jaw was tense, he was calculating something, tracking a thought to its source. ‘The girl,’ he said, ‘tell me about the girl.’

  ‘The girl?’ repeated Marvell, perplexed.

  ‘The servant girl in whom this scarred clothworker took such an interest.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Marvell consulted his report once again. ‘About eleven or twelve years old. Pale red hair worn loose under her cap. Large eyes. Quiet, wary.’

  ‘Of what?’

  Marvell stuck out his lower lip and shrugged. ‘Everything.’

  ‘The clothworker?’

  ‘Initially, but afterwards, not so much.’

  ‘Who else did you see her with?’

  ‘No one. She just hurried about her business in the streets and always looked glad to be back at Anne Winter’s gate.’