The Black Friar

by S. G. MacLean

  A few hours’ snatched sleep in a corner of the guardroom of Newgate had allowed him no opportunity to examine Elias’s journal, but the matter of the lawyer had lurked even at the back of his dreams. Ellingworth would not learn, would never cease in his collusion with the most outspoken, radical enemies of the Protectorate. And with each further step into the half-light of such murky company, the lawyer dragged his sister with him. It could not be long before Seeker found himself having to arrest Maria too. Seeker wondered what madness might have made him think there could be a place for her in this life he had made for himself, of service to the Republic, the Protectorate. Ten years beforehand, he had walked away from the meeting house, high up on Blackmoor, where, before their whole community, his wife had divorced him in favour of another man. With every step away from that meeting house, with every ounce of resilience in him, he had hardened his heart against all that she had been to him, all that he had believed he was to her. And when that was done, as it was done, he had pledged to himself that no other woman would ever reach him. And now, with Maria, that pale, thin, clever, angry, impoverished, defiant woman, too young for him, surely too young and surely too beautiful, he had broken that pledge in pieces. And this was the result, as anyone with any sense might have told him it would be. He could not turn his back on what he had made himself to remake himself again. He would not do it, for there was nothing else he could be.

  Nothing had been discovered about John Wildman’s whereabouts, and it was becoming more pressing by the minute that one who had so publicly criticised and condemned Cromwell should be brought in and dealt with before he could further stoke the resentments of others. Back in Whitehall, bolting the door of his room, Seeker at last took Elias Ellingworth’s journal from his bag and began to read. The entries were not daily, but sporadic, and quite different in nature to the endless reams of political invective Seeker had seen litter the floors of printers from St Paul’s to Westminster, or piled upon desks for weary eyes to plough their way through in the Censor Office.

  There were many entries about Grace Kent. Ellingworth’s love for the coffee man’s niece was the worst-kept secret in London. What was less known, although what Seeker had already guessed, was that the lawyer’s hesitancy to marry the girl was for fear of dragging her and those she loved into the troubles he knew his writings would bring upon them. He saw, too, the struggle between Ellingworth’s desire to create a new England that he could truly be loyal to and believe in, and an impulse to leave, get away, begin anew.

  Always anew, thought Seeker. England made anew. Men and women made anew. No one, not the refugee Charles Stuart in Cologne, claiming to be king of an England that would not have him, to Oliver Cromwell, to the street urchin taken up and given a better life by an old soldier in a London coffee house, not Seeker himself, was living the life they’d been born to. Nor Elias Ellingworth, whose learning should have made him a wealthy man, but whose principles had consigned him to the verge of poverty. None was on the path on which they had first been set. In the pages of the journal, Seeker saw Elias consider at length the possibilities of taking ship, with his sister and with Grace, to the Americas. But Elias knew, as Seeker might have told him, that Samuel Kent would never go to Massachusetts, nor to Maryland nor New Amsterdam either, and that Grace would not go without him.

  But if Samuel Kent should die? How long then before Elias married Grace and took her to New England, and his sister Maria with him? Better. Better for her, Seeker told himself.

  Maria’s name didn’t occur often in her brother’s journal. She was simply there, in the background, a constant, like the printer’s shop or the coffee house. But then, gradually, over the past few weeks, Ellingworth had begun to mention her on her own accord, to show concern for her. The first such entry had been on his recovery after his release from the Tower the previous November, and in it Ellingworth had mentioned with great disgust the journalist Marchamont Nedham, and his insinuations that Maria received night visitors in Dove Court during her brother’s convalescence at Kent’s.

  And so the entries went on, each worse reading for Seeker than the last, as they traced Ellingworth’s suspicions that his sister was indeed engaged in an illicit affair, and his eventual disbelief and despair on finally realising whom it was that his sister had involved herself with. Seeker read over the damning entry twice.

  I am in despair. I gave my oath to my father that I would protect my sister, and now I have abandoned her to this ruin. I must find a way to detach her from him, or no other will go near her.

  Seeker wanted to hurl the journal into the fire, sink the ashes in the Thames. This was what he was to the world. This was what he had made himself. He swallowed down some of the ale he had brought up in a flask from the Swan and forced himself to read on.

  As December passed to January, the nature of the entries changed, the change occasioned by the arrival of Shadrach Jones. The first such was written after a visit to Gresham College, where Ellingworth had first encountered the man from Massachusetts, with whom he had been greatly taken.

  I made sure to delay him afterwards, and treated him to a jug of good wine that I could not well afford at the Black Fox on Broad Street. I noticed how he paid attention to the young girl serving there, and considered he might be lonely, so far from home, and friendless, being a teacher of boys in a school run by an old Welsh master in his dotage. He had already told me of his desire to hear a talk to be given next week on a new water-pump system, and although I can hardly conceive of a thing more tedious, I suggested that we should go and hear that lecture together, next week, but first that he should take supper with Maria and me in our home. He has accepted my invitation, and I am in hopes that a new and handsome face will shine a light on my sister’s jaded world and show her her present folly.

  The evening on which Seeker had first found Jones at Dove Court, alone with Maria, was described, as were subsequent visits. Jones seemed to have taken a great interest in every aspect of Maria’s life, even her friendship with a Royalist such as Lady Anne Winter. Ellingworth had written,

  I was at a loss to explain it, other than that in this England, and in this city especially, we must live cheek by jowl with those whose ideas are much contrary to our own, and that I can conceive of no other way a man might want to live.

  Seeker smiled at that, in spite of himself, and as he read on, he found himself unaccountably becoming more interested in what Elias Ellingworth had to say about Shadrach Jones than he was in his speculations about Maria. In particular, an entry from just a few days ago took his attention.

  Went with Shadrach to the early evening lecture at Gresham. Heard a very indifferent speaker discourse of some late experiments by Robert Boyle at Oxford. It was with some difficulty that I kept awake throughout, assisted, I think, by the growling of my own stomach. I had hoped to sup at the Black Fox on our way to Gresham, but Shadrach was averse to the idea, strange, I thought, since he had been so much taken by the place on our previous visit. I was sorry for it, for I had noticed go in up ahead of us George Downing with his clerk Pepys, who is always good company, and some other young and well-dressed fellow, all three of them warmly greeted by Dorcas, who knew them all by name. There were several matters I would have liked to confront Downing with, but Shadrach was very much against it, and so what might have been an entertaining and profitable evening was lost. I begin to fear that Shadrach speaks so little of himself because there is so little to say. He has not much conversation, other than in matters of mechanics, and has a holy terror of the interest Seeker takes in him and his school, from which some boy has gone missing. Absconded, like as not. Perhaps I should not encourage him so much in his interest in Maria, for I suspect she would soon find him dull.

  But it was the most recent entry that brought Seeker to his feet.

  Came upon Shadrach unexpectedly today on Thames Street. He claimed to be making his way home from observation of the lifting contraptions at the Three Cranes, and to have lost his way, bu
t I am certain this is not true, for I had observed him from a way off, walking with sureness and speed, and coming from the direction of Aldgate, where he tells me he has never been. I do not think I trust him, and begin to wish I had never introduced him to Wildman. I must get a message to Exton to warn him.

  Seeker read the entry again and slammed shut the book. In less than a minute he was in Philip Meadowe’s room, having scattered three under-secretaries taking instructions from Thurloe’s harassed deputy.

  ‘I know where Wildman is hiding out,’ he said, pushing the open journal across Meadowe’s desk, his finger pointing to the last entry. Meadowe was instantly on his feet, shouting for a messenger. Marcus Bridlington soon appeared, and paled slightly when he saw Seeker, evidently thinking that he was personally the object of Meadowe’s summons.

  Meadowe was already blowing powder over the scribbled note in his hand. ‘Take that to the guardroom at Horse Guard Yard. Give it to Captain Browning.’

  Bridlington nodded his understanding and was quickly out of the room and down the corridor without having looked again at Seeker.

  Meadowe sank back in his chair with relief. He was beginning to look little healthier than the stricken Chief Secretary for whom he was deputising. ‘Exton. We have a garrison near Marlborough – we’ll have Wildman by the morning. Good work, Seeker. Where did you find this?’

  ‘Hidden in Ellingworth’s chamber at Clifford’s Inn.’

  ‘Anything else worthwhile in it?’

  Seeker nodded. ‘Personal thoughts, mainly. But I think this Shadrach Jones may have some bearing on some business I have been looking into for Mr Thurloe.’ He hesitated. ‘Shall I leave it with you?’

  ‘What?’ said Meadowe, rubbing the heel of a hand into his eye. ‘No, Seeker. If you have read over it, I hardly think I will have to. There is nothing you would miss that I would see, I am certain of it.’

  Seeker nodded and left, the journal clasped shut in his hand. Whatever Philip Meadowe might think, he would hand the journal to Thurloe anyway, for Thurloe to read and act upon as he wished. There was enough in the journal, about himself and Maria, that might persuade Cromwell’s Secretary of State that Seeker was no longer a man to be trusted. There was enough in the journal to lose Seeker almost everything he had, but if he had not his honesty, then he had nothing. He would give the book to Thurloe.

  *

  It was well into the afternoon, and the winter sun low and mellow on the red brick of Whitehall Palace, as Seeker walked up King Street to Wilkinson’s cookhouse to take a dish of his favourite fish stew at the small table by the window where he preferred to sit. The gaggle of clerks who had been occupying the table hastily made way for him as he came in. Seeker felt suddenly sick of clerks, of crowded taverns, of duplicity, of men whose eye was ever on their own advancement. He felt sick of London. As he ate, he thought of the fish he had learned to catch as a boy, salmon and trout and eels in the Humber and the Ouse and the Don, of learning to clean them and to cook them over an open fire. He remembered learning to slip into the trees and stay still as a hind when his father told him to, remembered the places his father told him had been common land, watercourses, grazings, woodlands since God had made the earth, remembered running like the wind, faster than the wind, from men on horses who didn’t believe the same thing. And now he was the man on the horse from whom others ran. Seeker set his spoon down in the bowl of half-finished stew and left the cookhouse.

  He started to walk towards Horse Guard Yard, with a mind to take Acheron out on the gallops in St James’s Park, but passing through Holbein Gate he saw Andrew Marvell, evidently got up in his best clothes, coming towards him. His morning’s ire with his fellow Yorkshireman was gone, and he was pleased to find someone whose voice, at least, would liberate him from London a half-hour or so. Marvell was preoccupied, his head down, and it took Seeker a moment to get his attention, much to the amusement of others making their way to and from Westminster.

  ‘Oh!’ said Marvell startled at last. ‘I didn’t notice you there, Captain.’

  ‘A novel experience for me,’ said Seeker with a smile.

  ‘Yes, yes, I suppose it would be,’ responded Marvell, still somewhat preoccupied. Seeker was glad to see that at least he was not in the same truculent frame of mind he had been in when he had been sent out to Aldgate that morning.

  ‘You are just returning from Lady Anne’s?’ asked Seeker.

  Marvell nodded towards the buildings to his right. ‘I was about to go and draw up my report.’

  ‘Good,’ said Seeker, ‘but come and walk with me, you can tell it to me first.’

  They passed out through the Tilt Yard and so out into the Park. Marvell looked about him and sighed, unimpressed. ‘Were you ever at the Alhambra, Seeker, or at the Archduchess’s gardens in Brussels even?’

  Seeker shook his head. ‘I have rarely been out of England, and even then only to Scotland, and Ireland.’

  ‘Dear God,’ said Marvell with some feeling. ‘Still, I suppose it must make what London has to offer easier to tolerate.’

  ‘I have little time to appreciate the beauties of London anyway,’ said Seeker. ‘But tell me of your visit to Crutched Friars. How did her ladyship and that reprobate Davenant receive you?’

  ‘How did they receive me?’ grumbled Marvell. ‘That is what I am still trying to fathom. They baited me a little, flattered me more, and all in all they tested me.’ He looked up at Seeker and screwed up his face as if having suddenly come upon a cherry that was sour. ‘I think they may have hopes of turning me.’

  At this, Seeker laughed aloud, and it felt good to laugh. ‘That woman! Nothing is beyond her, nothing as it might seem. And will she succeed, my friend?’

  ‘I do not think so,’ answered Marvell, with just the hint of a devilish smile.

  They walked on, Marvell occasionally pausing to consider a tree, or study the flight of a particular bird. Seeker questioned him on what he had seen of Lady Anne’s house and learned of her household. Little, it transpired, that he had not previously observed himself.

  ‘And what of the man she calls her steward?’

  ‘The Rat?’ Marvell grimaced. ‘Answered the door to us. Made a show of laughing with Davenant, slapping his back even, as if Sir William was never out of the place. Took up some coals a little later, but I didn’t see him again after that. Sir William went down to talk to him about an hour later, just before we left. Then Lady Anne herself showed us out. It was all, as I had feared it would be, a waste of time.’

  Seeker shook his head. ‘We don’t know yet whether your time has been wasted. I have a suspicion Secretary Thurloe might be happy for you to play along in Lady Anne’s game a while. Keep me abreast of any further attempts she might make to turn you in the meantime. Now, go and write your report.’

  Marvell made to go on and do so, but then stopped. ‘She said something about her girl – that servant girl of hers who’s gone missing. That you were trying to find her.’

  ‘With little success,’ said Seeker.

  Marvell nodded without saying anything else, and went on his way.

  Nineteen

  At Kent’s

  It was late afternoon by the time Seeker went through the gateway of Lincoln’s Inn. The birds were finishing their labours for the day and returning to trees or rooftops, only a part of the movement, the life, he could sense around him. Ground that had been iron hard only days before began to yield to the late winter sunlight and to anticipate the coming spring. Snowdrops had already thrust through and were beginning to open in clumps around the bases of the huge oaks and elms that lined the walkways of the gardens. Winter was coming to an end and a sense of new beginnings had quietly come into being.

  And yet the winter was not over. The city and its liberties might feel cleaner after the raids on Gethsemane, and the Soper Lane church and other likely places, having flushed out so many of the Fifth Monarchist and Leveller conspirators, but he didn’t believe Carter Blyth’s mission
had been completed. Any direct threat to the Protector from Harrison and his followers was probably over, for now, but Seeker was no nearer to knowing why Carter Blyth had met the end that he had, or what had happened to the missing children that Blyth, in his guise as Gideon Fell, had begun trying to track down. Besides, in the bag at his side was Elias Ellingworth’s journal, and he could not settle until he had the thing off his hands and into Thurloe’s, whatever that might mean for him once the Chief Secretary had read it.

  Once arrived in the Chief Secretary’s small sitting room at Lincoln’s, Seeker was relieved to see the man somewhat further from death than he had seemed when he had last seen him. Thurloe was in good spirits. ‘I could hardly be other after yesterday’s events, so many of those inimical to Oliver’s rule rounded up. I must confess to have taken pleasure in hearing accounts of your dealing with Harrison – the young men of Lincoln’s can talk of little else but the fantastical distances your hammer is said to have flown. I see also that if I don’t return to Whitehall soon, young Meadowe will be running the country, and I consigned to take notes for Mr Milton!’ There was no rancour in Thurloe’s words. ‘He has done well, has he not, Seeker?’

  Seeker nodded in agreement. ‘Philip is a good man. He has quietly gone about the business of state and shown himself worthy of your trust in him.’

  ‘Indeed.’ And then a rare, momentary sparkle appeared in Thurloe’s eyes. ‘But he tells me it is you I have to thank for keeping George Downing out of my chair.’

  ‘Which he covets, sir. He is far too often about the corridors of your department. I think he seeks his own advancement by whatever means he can find, and I don’t trust him.’