The Black Friar

by S. G. MacLean

  ‘No,’ responded Bridlington, ‘perhaps it will not.’

  Downing did not hear any of the exchange between his own clerk and Goffe’s nephew: he was intent on his object of Secretary Thurloe’s door, the key to which he selected at the third attempt. Again, he cursed silently as he found cabinets and drawers locked.

  ‘I think it possible that he has had the most sensitive documents shifted to his rooms in Lincoln’s Inn,’ ventured Bridlington.

  Pepys took a breath in anticipation of an explosion of anger from his employer, but none came. Downing had seated himself in Thurloe’s chair and was thinking. He stretched his fingers and clenched his fists alternately as he did so. No one spoke, the two clerks waiting, watching him. ‘Other papers,’ he said at last. ‘There must be some way in through other papers. But who?’ He listed and discounted the names of several known and suspected Royalists, and then he smiled. ‘Lady Anne Winter.’ He enunciated the words slowly, with a grim pleasure. ‘She told me herself, her house is watched night and day. Why would Thurloe watch her so closely if he did not have some specific intelligence regarding her? You’ – he snapped a finger in Bridlington’s direction – ‘fetch me her file.’

  ‘I . . . it may take some time to locate.’

  ‘How difficult can it be? They are arranged by name, are they not?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Bridlington quietly. His eyes firmly fixed on the ground before his feet, he trudged off in the direction of the file room. Once he thought the young man likely to be out of earshot, Downing let out a great sigh and said, ‘No wonder the Seeker gave him his marching orders – heaven help the Protectorate from such useless milksops. A man should rise by talent, not connection – is that not right, Pepys?’

  ‘Very right, sir. I don’t think Mr Bridlington’s future lies in Whitehall.’

  ‘Hmmph. It is a wonder the others, that have to prove their worth to get here, tolerate him.’

  Pepys drew up the chair at the other side of Thurloe’s desk and proceeded to make himself comfortable. Downing was too astonished by the audacity to comment. He was surprised the fellow did not bring out a pipe. ‘They tolerate him by more or less ignoring him, and he does nothing to ingratiate himself by making it clear how tedious he finds the work that they value so highly. He prefers to talk of his grand connections, his parents’ country house, whom he met at his uncle’s hunting lodge in Berkshire. He lacks the style of Meadowe or the wit of Marvell, and for all his puff I don’t think he is much practised in social intercourse. Never went to school, apparently – tutored at home. A dull companion.’

  While awaiting Bridlington’s return, Downing passed the time by letting himself into other rooms in the corridor, and was just about to turn the key in the lock of Philip Meadowe’s door when the clerk finally reappeared, bearing a heavy sheaf of papers in a hide cover tied with leather thongs.

  ‘About time,’ said Downing, leaving Meadowe’s door and striding back towards Thurloe’s room, calling for Pepys to take the papers from Bridlington and lay them out for his own examination, setting the most recent reports to the front.

  Pepys began to do as he was bid as Bridlington looked on, but a moment after opening the ties on the file he turned raised eyebrows on the clerk. Another minute and he was clearing his throat, evidently casting about for the best way to begin.

  ‘Well?’ said Downing.

  ‘It, uhm, appears that Mr Bridlington has brought us the wrong file.’

  ‘ “Wrong file”? What do you mean, “wrong file”?’

  ‘What I am looking at is the record of observations on Mr Elias Ellingworth, lawyer, of Clifford’s Inn and Dove Court. It may be that Lady Anne features at some point further back in these reports, but at present I cannot see—’

  ‘What?’ growled Downing. ‘Move aside!’ He pushed Pepys out of the way and began to examine the papers for himself, as Bridlington shifted uncomfortably in the corner.

  ‘It – they must have become mixed up, when Ellingworth was thought to be involved in the death of Lady Anne’s husband, it was in all the news-sheets.’

  ‘That was over two months ago, Marcus,’ said Pepys. ‘These reports are of much more recent provenance. You will have to return them and find—’

  But Downing had held up a hand, something in a report near the top having caught his eye. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Leave them here. Go and find where the reports on Lady Anne have been put, but leave these here. Pepys, you assist him.’

  ‘But, sir, what if—’

  ‘Now!’ said Downing.

  The two young men being gone, Downing lit another candle and brought it over to Thurloe’s desk. He set aside the top three reports, and opened once more that from almost two weeks ago, recording a new visitor to Ellingworth’s home on Dove Court. The visitor had been tracked to his own dwelling and place of employment and his name obtained from the local innkeeper who was an invaluable source of information on the business of those who called to take their ale or have their dinner at the White Hart at the corner of High Holborn and Drury Lane. Subject’s name Shadrach Jones, under-master at the school run by Rhys Evans at the Three Nails. Lately arrived from Massachusetts. No other known associates, questionable or otherwise.

  Downing’s breath became a little shallower. This was not good. He turned over the next few reports and began to read more carefully through them. Nothing more on Jones, though. He began to search through past reports, knowing something of Ellingworth’s past and reputation, trying to make the connection as to why Jones should have lighted on his company. Again, nothing that offered any explanation.

  Downing was replacing the papers in their proper order and preparing to tie them up in their file once more, when he realised something. In his search for more information on Shadrach Jones, his eye had lighted on one name much more often than might have been expected. The name was so unexceptional in the circumstances he had hardly registered it at first – it was like seeing one particular grey stone in a wall of stone – but then he understood that the context, the detail in which it appeared, was wrong. He pulled out some of the papers again and looked at them closely, actually read what was written there. Damian Seeker. Damian Seeker had been observed to go into Dove Court alone, on several occasions, mostly at times when Elias Ellingworth was known to be at Clifford’s Inn or in Kent’s Coffee House. It was noted that Ellingworth’s sister was usually at home at those times. Seeker was rarely there for less than an hour, unless Ellingworth was at home, or observed to return home, and then the duration of the visits was a deal shorter.

  No name was given for the watcher: it didn’t matter. Seeker and Ellingworth’s sister: Downing had Seeker now. Not only would the man not best him again, but he could use him. He separated the relevant papers from the file and rolled them up, tied them with a length of thin ribbon set out for such purposes on Thurloe’s desk, and sat back, almost content, waiting for Pepys and Bridlington to return.

  After a few minutes of silence, he heard footsteps along the corridor, but they weren’t Pepys’s easy tread, and had more purpose than he had yet observed in Bridlington. More footsteps followed, and he heard the door to Meadowe’s office being unlocked, urgent voices calling to one another. More footsteps.

  Downing snuffed out the candles he had set about Thurloe’s room, then tied up again the remaining papers from Elias Ellingworth’s file and set it carefully under his arm, concealed by his cloak. He went through the near-darkness to the door and, listening a moment, opened it carefully before stepping smartly outside and closing it softly behind him. He had not been observed. Meadowe’s door at one end of the corridor was open, and in the flickering yellow light of the candles set there, he could see at least three people in the room, with their backs to him.

  When Pepys and Bridlington appeared at the end of the corridor, he motioned Pepys towards him but, handing Bridlington the clerks’ room keys, shooed him away, telling him in a low voice to return Anne Winter’s file, which he’d only just arrive
d with, to its proper place and then return himself to his own apartments and forget the events of the last hour.

  Then, with Pepys in tow, he casually walked to Meadowe’s door as if he had just arrived in the department. ‘Is something amiss?’ he asked.

  ‘What? Oh.’ Meadowe appeared to be too distracted by what he was reading to notice anything unusual in George Downing’s presence there at such an early hour. Without looking up, he indicated one of his clerks, who held out to Downing a copy of what Meadowe was engaged in reading. ‘It was discovered at a printers off St Paul’s late last night. Some have already gone out.’

  Downing read the title of the pamphlet he had been given. ‘A Declaration of the free and well-affected people of England now in arms against the tyrant Oliver Cromwell,’ by John Wildman.

  ‘So,’ said Downing, ‘he has finally put his head above the parapet again.’

  ‘And will be lucky not to see it blown off,’ added Meadowe. ‘The people “now in arms against the tyrant Oliver Cromwell”. That can only mean there’s an armed uprising planned, and that Wildman expects it to be under way by the time this paper is printed. He will have to be brought in as a matter of urgency, and his co-conspirators found.’

  ‘Do we know where he is, sir?’ It was Andrew Marvell, who had somehow appeared behind Downing’s shoulder without Downing having noticed.

  ‘He’s not in London, that’s for certain. I have sent for Seeker.’

  ‘You plan to send him out of the town to find Wildman?’ asked Downing casually.

  ‘Who else would I send?’ replied Meadowe with a hint of irritation.

  ‘Of course. You’re right.’ Downing appeared to be weighing his words carefully. ‘But it occurs to me that the Seeker might be better employed getting firm intelligence from Wildman’s known associates in the city – on his where abouts, and the identities of his co-conspirators. It’s possible that some trouble might arise in the city from this. There are Levellers and Fifth Monarchists on almost every corner. With Secretary Thurloe still in his sick bed, it might be politic to keep the Seeker close at hand.’

  Without attracting attention, Downing managed to place Elias Ellingworth’s file on Meadowe’s desk, along with the others of Wildman’s associates that had been brought there. He stood back from the activity of the Secretariat, as they drew up lists, issued orders. By the time Seeker arrived, helmet under his arm and Daniel Proctor at his side, everything was ready, and George Downing had not had to make one more intervention. He listened as Meadowe informed Seeker and Proctor of the content of Wildman’s latest writing, the urgency that he and his co-conspirators should be found and placed under guard and interrogation. And then came the moment Downing had been waiting for.

  Meadowe picked up Elias Ellingworth’s file. ‘There are parties out already, raiding suspect printers, but I wish you to accompany me to Clifford’s Inn and then to Elias Ellingworth’s home at Dove Court. We’ll search the place for any hint as to Wildman’s whereabouts. If we meet with any resistance from Ellingworth or his sister, I’ll have you arrest them.’

  Meadowe continued, but Downing didn’t wait around to listen. He’d had what he’d been waiting for. He’d been watching Seeker. No one else would have noticed, no one who hadn’t been looking for it, very carefully. The merest flicker in the eyes, the slight tensing of the fingers, the unmistakable signs that at last someone had found a way to breach the edifice that was Damian Seeker. As he passed out of Meadowe’s room, the Under-Secretary still detailing the soldiers’ orders, he glanced at Seeker, bestowed on him a small, powerful smile, a smile of great satisfaction, that could leave the man in no doubt that it was he, George Downing, who had done this.

  Still trailing a bemused and yawning Pepys at his heels, Downing strode happily away from the centre of Thurloe’s empire. He hadn’t gained access to the Royalist files he’d come for, and it seemed Shadrach Jones had returned to haunt him but, all in all, it had been a good night’s work.

  Fifteen

  Looking for Wildman

  For days now, there had been a great deal of activity in the lanes and alleyways around Drury Lane, so popular with Cromwell’s soldiers and officers, who knew the City of London did not want them quartered within its ancient gates. They emerged from doorways and side alleys, like beetles or armoured beasts of some sort, such as Shadrach knew were found in the South Seas. This morning, fewer were headed to St Giles’s Fields and so to St Martin’s Lane and Westminster than had been on the previous five days. This morning, with grumbled talk of ‘printers’ and ‘pamphlets’, most seemed to be headed for the city. Shadrach turned his feet instead towards Tyburn.

  He hadn’t slept all night. He had risen early, checked that Rhys Evans was securely locked in his chamber, the boys in their dormitory, and gone out to walk the streets, and think. He had questioned William Godmanson into the early hours, pressed him as to what he might know of the man who had befriended and then abducted Edward Yuill and, eventually, just as the boy was weary almost to the point of collapse, he had accepted that William knew no more than he had already told to Seeker, had not seen enough of the man to give any better description than that he had already given.

  But it was what Seeker’s soldiers had told him as they’d marched him from Cornhill to Holborn after he’d been bundled out of Kent’s coffee house yesterday evening that worried him most: they had told him of other children that had gone missing, and where they had gone missing from. Things were being connected that Shadrach would prefer not to have connected, links being made that he would rather were not made. He would have to leave the school again today for a few hours, but he would take better care this time that the Seeker did not discover that fact.

  *

  Seeker looked at Meadowe as they alighted from the barge at Temple Stairs and began the march up to Clifford’s Inn. Thurloe’s deputy was nervous, but was making a good show of commanding an authority Seeker knew he did not properly feel.

  ‘This will be your first raid,’ he observed, as he marched alongside Meadowe at the head of his troop.

  ‘Aye, it is.’ The Under-Secretary nodded, keeping his eyes firmly to the front. ‘It used to be Milton, before his sight grew too poor; he relished it, they tell me, the chance to have his revenge on those who had slighted him. Mr Thurloe has done a good few himself, of course, but I have always managed to remain at my desk. Until now.’ He gave a grim sort of smile that told Seeker his desk was precisely where he would prefer to be at that moment.

  ‘Walk into the place as if it’s yours to dispose of as you will. Have no regard for person. You are the authority of the state, of the Protector, and I am behind you.’

  ‘Then the state will stand, Captain Seeker,’ said Meadowe, brightening a little and quickening his pace.

  The gatekeeper in his box was still drowsy from his night’s sleep, and startled beyond measure to see the sight advancing on him up Temple Lane. It didn’t take a second barked order from Seeker for him to come out of his gatehouse and unbolt the door to Clifford’s Inn.

  Only the servants were out and about at this hour. No grand Lincoln’s Inn this, nor Temple, with their lawns and pleasant bordered walks, but a courtyard of dull honeyed stone going green with damp, crumbling walls held together in places, it seemed, by climbing ivy and ancient rambling roses. And yet there was something in it Seeker liked – half-hidden alcoves set with stone benches, pots of terracotta where in the summer herbs must grow, a well where water had been drawn for hundreds of years, birds flitting from the rooftops and gutters, as if the human inhabitants of this place were but transitory intruders into their kingdom. In a grudging moment he admitted to himself that it must be a place where one of such obstinate views as Elias Ellingworth could make himself at home.

  The porter chattered nervously as he led the party up a spiral brick stairway in the east wing of Clifford’s. ‘Mr Ellingworth doesn’t live here, though. Not any more. He lodges with his sister, I believe, somewhere off Old Jewry
Lane. He has only the one room here now, and not much business. Still . . .’

  The sound of many booted feet climbing in unison up the stairs brought some curious young lawyers, still in nightshirts or with their hair as yet unkempt, to their doors. The older, with more of an idea of what such a chorus of feet might mean, bolted their doors firmly and remained behind them.

  Ellingworth’s room was up a third stairway. ‘You’ll need your torches, there’s not much light gets in these rooms,’ said the porter, offering his candle to the soldier beside Meadowe to light his torch by.

  The door creaked as he pushed it open, and the porter was about to step inside, when Seeker put a restraining hand on his shoulder. ‘You can return to your duties now.’

  The sight that greeted Seeker as he followed Meadowe into the room was much as he would have expected – a few thin files ranged on a dusty shelf, and everywhere, on table, chair, window ledge and floor, pamphlets. Pamphlets by Wildman, pamphlets by Ellingworth himself under his long-exposed alias of ‘the Sparrow’, news-books banned by Milton’s Censor Office, declarations and defamations penned by known Levellers, Diggers, Fifth Monarchists even – although over those last Ellingworth had scrawled his contempt.

  Meadowe scanned the mound of pamphlets and handwritten papers despondently. ‘These will all have to be taken to Whitehall. I will need to question the other lawyers and gentleman of these chambers.’ He glanced at the door where the rest of Seeker’s troop was waiting. ‘Can you give me someone?’

  Seeker nodded. ‘Sergeant Proctor, take two of the men to attend Mr Meadowe. See also that no one tries to leave.’

  As his men began stacking the pamphlets in the crates that had been brought for that purpose, Seeker searched through any handwritten documents he could find, hoping to light on some hint as to where Ellingworth’s friend John Wildman might be holed up. There was a small stack of accounts to clients; Seeker leafed through them, noting their names, wondering at those foolish or desperate enough to seek representation from one such as Elias Ellingworth. Letter boxes, caskets, any locked receptacle that had been found had been broken open and its contents gone through, and yet Seeker was not satisfied; there must be something in this small, desolate lawyer’s chamber that would afford a hint as to the whereabouts of John Wildman, for it was certain Ellingworth knew them.