The Black Friar

by S. G. MacLean

  Charity Penn: that was who Blyth had been watching in Anne Winter’s house, the house the girl had then gone missing from, just as children had gone missing from the gardener’s service at Lincoln’s Inn, the Black Fox Tavern, and the school at the Three Nails on Holborn, all places he knew Blyth to have gone with Nathaniel.

  Marvell cleared his throat. ‘Uhm, will that be all?’

  ‘What? Oh, yes,’ said Seeker, but when Marvell made to leave, an idea occurred to Seeker and he stopped him. ‘You know the playwright Davenant?’

  Marvell’s face began to engineer something of a sneer. ‘A little. He is a buffoon.’

  ‘And yet well favoured by the Protector and Lady Anne alike. I will procure you an invitation to attend him the next time he goes to visit the lady in her home. You can tell me what they speak of.’

  ‘But if she has already noticed me . . .’

  ‘It will be useful to see which topics they dance around to avoid whilst you are there, and you can get a better look at the people in her house. The servants too.’

  Marvell’s face was a picture of fleshy sullenness. ‘I have seen as much as I wish to of her Rat, of Davenant too. I made sport of him once, and of his work, in a piece he is bound to have seen. I doubt he will take me with him willingly.’

  ‘Hmmph,’ replied Seeker. ‘If there’s one thing Sir William has learned since his release from the Tower, it’s to do what he’s told. Now get back to whatever you are supposed to be doing.’

  Relieved, Marvell passed through the doorway, awkwardly dipping his head to the arriving Philip Meadowe as he did so.

  Seeker waited as Meadowe closed the door carefully behind him.

  ‘He resents me,’ he said.

  Seeker grinned. ‘Andrew? He resents everybody. He could never have done the job for Secretary Thurloe that you have done, no matter how earnestly Secretary Milton might have recommended him for it. He has his uses all the same.’

  ‘Aye.’ Meadowe settled himself somewhat uncomfortably into the chair across from Seeker’s.

  ‘But?’

  ‘It’s Andrew I have come to talk to you about. You must believe me that I mean him no ill-will in what I am about to say.’

  Seeker nodded.

  ‘The note you sent to Wallis earlier, those four lines . . .’

  ‘Anne Winter had written them beneath a sketch she had done of Marvell. I could make head nor tail of them. I thought Wallis might make something of them. Has he?’

  ‘He didn’t need to,’ said Meadowe. ‘They are no code, but lines from a poem Andrew himself penned seven years ago, a eulogy for a dead Royalist, Francis Villiers.’

  ‘Seven years ago?’

  Meadowe nodded. ‘He was in circles that he would have done better to avoid, befriended those who were no friends to the cause of Parliament.’

  Seeker shrugged. ‘Like many others who have been brought into the fold. He never fought in the wars and he is firmly in Cromwell’s cause now; albeit that he took his own good time deciding which way to jump.’

  ‘Aye, a good long time, he took,’ said Meadowe. ‘And there are times I am not certain . . .’

  ‘If he was still in the Royalist camp, Anne Winter would hardly have taken the trouble to point it out to us.’

  ‘Would she not?’ said Meadowe. ‘I wonder. Sometimes I think the woman laughs at us, for the sake of showing she can. On the other hand, the Protector trusts him, likes his turn of phrase, and Fairfax had him as tutor to his daughter.’ He sat back, revived it seemed by the couple of minutes’ conversation. ‘We should probably keep an eye on him nonetheless.’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Seeker, ‘we probably should.’ But he wasn’t thinking about Andrew Marvell penning verses for a dead Royalist boy; he was thinking about what Meadowe had just said – that Marvell had indeed been in the pay of Lord Fairfax, the one man whom the army loved more than Cromwell. More than that, Seeker was thinking about what Meadowe might not know – that Marvell had from their youth in Hull been a friend of two officers – Alured and Overton – lately turned first Fifth Monarchist and then against the Protector altogether. For all he liked his fellow Yorkshireman, Seeker resolved to keep Andrew Marvell close.

  As Meadowe rose to leave, Seeker said, ‘I’m on my way out; I’ll walk with you.’

  As they descended the stairway from Seeker’s rooms, Meadowe said wistfully, ‘Out? What is “out” like these days, Damian? I don’t think I’ve been as far as Scotland Yard since Mr Thurloe was laid low.’

  ‘ “Out” is a maze of wickedness and deceptions.’

  Meadowe smiled. ‘Like here then,’ he said almost under his breath.

  Seeker stopped at the bottom and turned to face him. ‘Remember, sir, my men and I are yours to command in Secretary Thurloe’s absence. Regardless of who might assert otherwise.’ He nodded towards the far end of the corridor, into which George Downing had just turned, followed by a coterie of under-secretaries and clerks who were struggling to keep pace with him, while hanging on his every word. Seeker stepped aside to let Meadowe pass him, and then stood behind the Under-Secretary, who straightened his shoulders and took up his position in the middle of the corridor, forcing the New Englander to a halt.

  ‘Mr Downing. Is there some business in particular that brings you from the Exchequer today?’

  Downing eyed Seeker over Meadowe’s shoulder, then addressed himself solely to the Under-Secretary. ‘In Mr Thurloe’s continued absence, and at this critical time, I thought some greater authority might be required—’

  ‘I have all Mr Thurloe’s authority, in his absence, as you may confirm with his Highness the Lord Protector, and I will not have my staff distracted from their duties by those to whom they do not answer.’ Meadowe then turned his eyes on the group of young men in Downing’s train, all but one of whom, Downing’s own clerk, an eager-looking fellow with a lively mouth and intelligent eyes, melted away. Seeker would have sworn that that clerk took pleasure at his master’s humbling.

  Downing’s mouth was a firm line, but his face was crimson. ‘Come, Pepys,’ he muttered as he turned on his heel. ‘We have much business at the Exchequer.’

  Seeker and Meadowe watched the pair leave, and Seeker saw the Under-Secretary’s shoulders slump as the sound of their footsteps on the stone stairs gradually faded.

  As Meadowe groaned and rubbed a hand over screwed-up eyes, Seeker placed a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. ‘You saw him off, sir.’

  The Under-Secretary turned to Seeker, and smiled wearily. ‘No. You saw him off. I am not so misguided as to think otherwise. But the main thing is that he is gone. For now.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Seeker, ‘for now.’

  Thirteen

  Suffer the Children

  As he went through the Holbein Gate, the watery early morning sun had given up its struggle and ceded the skies to darkening grey clouds. Seeker traced their path: they seemed to be gathering over Westminster Hall. Providence. God angered at what had happened there, or forewarning of worse to come. Not Seeker’s concern, until the security of the State made it his concern.

  He was soon at Lincoln’s Inn: there were questions about Carter Blyth that he could ask no one but Thurloe. Propped up with many cushions, seated by a raging fire in his attic sitting room, the Secretary wrapped his hands around a steaming posset cup, still far from health but determined on business. He listened carefully to what Seeker had to say. At the end, he shook his head.

  ‘No, Damian. Whoever took those children, it wasn’t Carter Blyth. He was a truly godly man, not one subject to unnatural perversions – he would not have had to dissemble over much in the prayer meetings and all the rest at Gethsemane.’

  Seeker had known many godly men in the wars who had not scrupled to do things no Christian should do, but he kept his views to himself: Thurloe was a sound judge of his fellow men and had known Blyth much better than he. ‘The other explanation, then,’ he said, ‘is that this business of missing children is what Blyth ha
d begun to investigate, the thing that distracted him from his true purpose of investigating the activities of the Fifth Monarchists and their army connections. He was tracking down whoever took those children. He must have come close, and that’s why he’s dead.’

  Thurloe, forcing himself to swallow down some of the hot, thick drink, considered the point. ‘I follow you so far, Seeker, but Carter Blyth had never wandered from the orders of his mission before, and I’ll speak plain: why should he care about these children, servants and schoolboys whose families are of no account? And why did he not inform me of it as he would of anything else of import?’

  To Seeker, there were only two answers to the Secretary’s questions, and neither of them would he like. But then Seeker’s value to Thurloe was not founded on him giving him only answers he would like. ‘Either he did attempt to inform you, and his message never reached you, or the person he suspected was not someone he felt he could name until he was certain.’

  He didn’t need to spell it out: Thurloe had already grasped the thing. ‘Those are not two answers, but two sides of the one: the person Blyth had tracked down is one of our own – someone who has access to our networks, or who is virtually untouchable.’ Thurloe ran a hand over his forehead and screwed his eyes tight shut. ‘The news-sheet writers, Nedham and the like, must be kept well clear of this. And God knows, we have not the time for it, just now.’ He looked at Seeker. ‘You have not the time for this. Philip Meadowe has need of you at Whitehall, where the vultures are circling; we are on the point of moving against the Fifth Monarchists, and our sources suggest the Stuarts have something brewing. There is more than enough to get on with, without your time should be spent amongst the weavers of Aldgate or the schoolboys of Holborn. Carter Blyth allowed himself to get distracted – killed – over a matter of so little account. The question is, will his killer lie low now, or be emboldened by his crimes?’

  Seeker thought of his own daughter, as he had last seen her nearly ten years ago, huge blue eyes blinking at him uncomprehendingly over her mother’s shoulder as he had walked away. He thought of Isabella, the girl who had disappeared from the Black Fox Tavern, after Carter Blyth was already dead. ‘They are emboldened,’ he said. ‘It will create a great deal of fear and unsettle the city if these disappearances continue.’ Seeker was resolved: whatever Thurloe might counsel, he was not inclined to leave the children of the city to fend for themselves.

  *

  Shadrach Jones should not really have left the boys, but after Seeker’s visit of the previous day he had spent an anxious day and restless night and decided he had no option: he must go out into the city again, for there was someone he must see. The morning’s classes had passed in a blur, and he could not have told afterwards whether he had taught the boys Euclid or Euripides. After a hasty dinner, he had set them translation exercises according to their abilities, and warned William Godmanson to bolt the door behind him after he left, and allow no one in or out until his return.

  A careful route, by backstreets and small alleyways, had eventually brought him to his object, and after the encounter had taken place, he had chosen different routes, unlikely routes for the schoolmaster from Holborn to be seen wandering alone. It was just as he’d passed the Fishmongers’ Hall, not far from London Bridge, that he realised someone was calling his name from across the street. Shadrach affected not to have heard and carried on, but it came again. He stopped. It was Elias.

  The encounter was not to be avoided. Shadrach smiled and waved and stepped into the street, almost coming to grief between a carter heading westwards and some soldiers riding east. He lunged across the gutter as Elias, laughing, pulled him to safety.

  ‘You are not in the woods of New England, now, Shadrach!’

  ‘And thank God for it – there are things in the New England woods that would put even a Billingsgate carter to flight.’

  ‘There speaks a man with a limited experience of Billingsgate carters,’ muttered Elias. ‘But come, Shadrach, what brings you to this part of town at this time of day?’

  Shadrach had his story ready. He patted his bag. ‘I was down by the river, at the Three Cranes, making sketches of the lifting apparatus to study with the boys. I plan to make a model with them.’

  ‘More useful than the endless repetitions of Euclid I was subjected to in my schooldays, I am sure. But come, Shadrach, we will go to the coffee house. I missed my morning draught there and am desperate for a dish of Samuel’s finest. You can tell me all your news – Maria was asking after you only last night.’

  There evidently being nothing for it, Shadrach relented. Half an hour more at this time could hardly do the boys much harm. Besides, he liked Elias’s company a great deal better than that of the man he had just been with.

  ‘And will Mistress Maria be joining us?’ he asked a little hesitantly as they turned up St Michael’s Lane.

  ‘Joining us?’ Elias was bemused. ‘It isn’t proper, Shadrach, for a young woman to sit in a coffee house. She might work there, but to sit and take her dish and talk with the men? It would be a scandal. Would the Puritans of Boston not think it a scandal?’

  ‘We have no coffee houses in Boston, Elias, but yes, I am certain that should there be the opportunity of thinking something a scandal, they would indeed grasp it.’

  They walked on, each considering. ‘And yet,’ ventured Shadrach again, ‘your sister is as intelligent a woman, and as well versed in the news as any I have met. Anywhere.’

  Elias nodded. ‘Of course. If she were a man, well, she would . . .’ Then he laughed. ‘She would probably be as poor a lawyer as myself.’

  ‘And she has no suitors?’

  Elias looked at Shadrach as if the question had not previously occurred to him. ‘She scares them off, and anyway, I don’t think, well, no . . .’ But he stopped, a thought evidently occurring to him. ‘No,’ he said quietly, as if to himself, then a more definitive shake of the head and again, ‘No. But you, Shadrach. You should talk to her. Talk to her of the Americas. Take her walking even, in the Spring Garden. No, wait, Cromwell has closed it. The Mulberry Garden? Yes. That would be better. Much better.’

  Shadrach was not certain whether it was the particular pleasure garden or something else that Elias regarded as better, or indeed, better than what, but Elias seemed curiously distracted and so he left it. By the time they reached Kent’s, all Elias’s talk was of Oliver’s closing of Parliament, and what further repressions of liberty might follow, to the extent that Shadrach was relieved to find there some faces familiar from his previous visit.

  Tavener’s eyes lit up to see them.

  ‘Move up, move up!’ he exhorted, digging an elbow into the somewhat morose figure beside him whose ink-stained fingers suggested a life spent at the printing press. ‘Here is our young friend to regale us with tales of life in New England!’ It was not long before conversation was of bears, wild cats, alligators and the many fevers to be obtained in the swamps with which the New World teemed. Relieved not to be pressed further this time on any connection with George Downing, Shadrach began to relax a little, and persevering with the coffee, found he began to like it. He was in the middle of telling a tale of one of his many encounters with the natives of Massachusetts to a wide-eyed scrivener when the voices around them suddenly dropped, and the faces around the table became intent upon the dishes of coffee and chocolate in front of them. Shadrach glanced towards the door to see what might have caused this alteration in the humour of the room, and his own heart sank – standing at the top of the steps leading from the street corner door down to the floor of the coffee room, was Damian Seeker.

  Seeker scanned the room slowly and his gaze, hardening, soon fell upon Shadrach. He did not mince his words. ‘What are you doing here? Who have you left in charge of those boys? The old man?’

  Shadrach’s face was a sheet. ‘No. I left one of the older boys—’

  ‘After what has already happened?’ Seeker barked something towards the door and two of h
is men entered. ‘Escort this – schoolmaster – back to the Three Nails on Holborn. Be sure to ascertain that all of the boys are accounted for before you leave.’

  Shadrach made no protest, and picking up his hat and shabby coat followed the soldiers out onto the street without a word. As he passed him, Seeker hissed into his ear, ‘You had better hope to God all is well with those boys you have left.’ Then Seeker looked around the room, looked at Samuel, at Gabriel, the bright boy Samuel had found on the streets, given work, food, a cot by the fire. ‘Children have been going missing, taken – a boy from the school at the Three Nails in Holborn, a lady’s maid from Anne Winter’s house in Aldgate, a lad who worked in the gardens at Lincoln’s Inn, a serving girl from the Black Fox in Bishopsgate. All children without family by them. All you merchants and tradesmen – have an eye on your apprentices and errand boys, tell your wives to look well to their maids. Know who they speak to.’ He looked firmly at Samuel, and at his niece Grace, behind the counter. ‘Don’t let them out to wander the streets alone.’

  A grocer from Cheapside stood up. ‘But this is impossible – how is our business to be done?’

  Grace had moved unknowingly to where Gabriel was setting a ginger jar back on its shelf, and laid a protecting hand on his shoulder. The boy wriggled. ‘I’m near enough thirteen, Mistress Grace, you need have no fears for me.’

  Samuel raised his stick and pointed it at him. ‘You’ve no idea how old you are! How old you are is none of your concern – you’ll do as you’re told and stay by us until the captain says different, isn’t that right, Captain?’

  Seeker nodded slowly.

  Elias Ellingworth shifted his gaze from Grace and Gabriel back to Seeker. ‘Is this the truth, Seeker, or is it just another government lie put about to take people’s attention from what’s going on in Parliament and the army? Your Protectorate’s on the verge of destroying itself and you think the people will be too busy with your peddled fears and rumours to notice? Buried monks bricked up alive? Stolen children?’ Ellingworth shook his head, disgusted at the truth he believed he had glimpsed. He picked up the latest edition of Nedham’s Mercurius Politicus, complete with its lurid account of the macabre finding at Blackfriars. ‘Is this what you think we are?’