‘No more do I, Seeker, but the Lord Protector does, which is why we must keep him close. But you haven’t come to me now to talk of George Downing, I think.’
Seeker opened the catch on his leather bag. ‘No. I have come to give you this.’ He held out towards the Secretary Elias Ellingworth’s journal.
Thurloe took it, opened it, and spent some minutes scanning its pages. He looked up at Seeker. ‘You have read this?’
Seeker was unmoving. ‘I have.’
Thurloe nodded. ‘Aye, and still you give it to me.’ He closed the journal and returned it to Seeker. ‘Keep it in your own chamber, lest we have further need of it. But know this, Damian,’ he said, leaning towards Seeker, ‘no one will ever know its contents from me.’
Seeker nodded his gratitude and returned the journal to his bag.
Thurloe continued. ‘The girl is not under arrest, but still at Dove Court, they tell me.’
So the Chief Secretary knew all anyway. Seeker swallowed. ‘Yes.’
‘And have you seen her since her brother’s arrest?’
Seeker shook his head.
Thurloe looked satisfied. ‘Good. Keep it that way. No one will see what I have just read.’ He looked up at Seeker. ‘There had been rumours, reports already.’ Thurloe paused. ‘Did anything come of it? Did she show willing to report on her brother?’
‘I – no, sir, she didn’t.’
‘No, I did not think it. But I have put out that should there be any talk of you and the girl Ellingworth, it should be made known that you were operating under my instruction.’
Seeker felt his stomach clench. He did not want this. As if he saw it, Thurloe continued, ‘Take care not to risk compromising yourself in this way in future, Damian. You are of too great a value to the Protectorate cause. There are women enough in London, without you associate yourself with such as the girl at Dove Court.’
Seeker said nothing.
‘Good,’ said Thurloe. ‘The episode is past. Let us move on to our proper business.’
Seeker hardly heard anything the Secretary said for the next few moments, for anger at what would be said, in the guardrooms and corridors of Whitehall, the taverns and coffee houses of Westminster and the city, of what had passed between him and Maria, and why. Only on hearing the name of Carter Blyth did he force himself back to what must now occupy his thoughts.
‘Harrison or Crowe have nothing to say of him, they tell me.’
‘Nothing not already known to us, and I believe they speak the truth – they took him for one of their own and thought little more about him after he had left.’
‘Hmm. And Crowe’s wife?’
‘The woman’s like a nettle. I’m letting her stew another night in the Bridewell, see if it will soften her sting a little. But their daughter has gone missing now too.’
‘Then find her, Seeker. And find who is behind the disappearances of these children and the death of Carter Blyth – we have enough to contend with without murder and abduction on the streets.’
‘I am pushing at a wall,’ said Seeker, ‘and I think it must soon give.’
‘Push hard, Seeker. It says little for our state if even our best officers cannot protect the weakest in it.’
*
He hadn’t been back to Gethsemane since the previous day’s raid, but first Seeker had business to attend to at Kent’s, business he had not been looking forward to.
There was more than the usual lull when he entered the coffee house. There was wariness in Gabriel’s eyes as he held open the door. Instead of smiling, as he had begun to do of late, he looked to the floor and mumbled that the Seeker should come in. Seeker understood instantly what the matter was. ‘Come with me over to the counter, and I will explain it to all three of you.’
Grace had, as ever when he appeared at their door at this hour, begun to prepare the warm aromatick she knew he liked. They had come a slow road together, he and Grace, in the last few months since the time of her illness and Elias’s false imprisonment, and she had begun, at last, to relax a little in his presence. But not this evening; this evening her movements were stilted, her eyes downcast, although her cheeks were flushed and Seeker could see that civility was an effort for her. Only Samuel, who understood more of the world they lived in than most of the men Seeker ever had dealings with, greeted him in the usual manner, and then waited.
Seeker did not sit, but asked Grace to, and addressed her directly. ‘Elias Ellingworth has associated himself with men known to have conspired and fomented dissent against the Protector, to the peril of the state. I know that he has taken care not to meet here with John Wildman or others whose associations might endanger any of you in this coffee house, and I commend him for it. I do not believe he has involved himself in outright treason, and when the rebel Wildman is brought in, if he clears Elias’s name of wrongdoing, then he will be returned to his liberty. But you should know that the position Elias is presently in he has put himself into of his own accord.’
Grace nodded. Seeker knew she was not a fool, had seen the pain and worry in her face on occasions when Ellingworth had gone too far. Grace understood.
He continued. ‘We had to bring him in, for his own sake as much as anything else. With Wildman on the run, there was a danger that Elias might be tempted to do something unpardonable. I don’t mean unforgivable, I mean unpardonable. I have no greater wish than you do to see him swing from a scaffold on Tower Hill, but I can only protect him so far.’ There was nothing more to say to them. It was the first time Seeker could remember ever having taken the trouble to explain to a man’s friends why he had arrested him, and he didn’t know whether he felt diminished or strengthened by it.
Samuel put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You sit yourself down there, Captain. Gabriel will bring you your drink.’
Samuel usually left Seeker to himself unless asked otherwise, but this evening, as he warmed his hands on his tankard, it was plain to Seeker that Samuel wanted something of him.
When the old fellow swept the same stretch of floor in front of him a third time, Seeker said, ‘What’s up, Samuel?’
Samuel leaned on the broom. ‘I heard there was a bit of trouble up at Gethsemane yesterday.’
‘Aye,’ said Seeker, taking a draught of his drink. ‘A bit.’
‘Just Major-General Harrison and that Goodwill Crowe and his lot taken, was it?’
‘Mostly. Left the boy, Nathaniel – he has no part in their schemes, and an old bedridden witch, calls herself a prophetess and a girl to look after her and the young children. I left a guard on the gate, and there’s a hound – no harm will come to them.’
‘Maria’s hound is it, Captain?’ said Samuel, a little too casually.
Seeker put down his tankard. ‘That’s your interest, the dog?’
‘No.’ Samuel set aside the broom and settled himself awkwardly on a stool opposite Seeker. ‘An old friend of mine was here a day or two ago, asking about that boy Nathaniel, the one you had in here with you. I think she had a mind to go up there and look at him. She’s no Fifth Monarchist, Captain, just minds her business, gets on with her life, same as me. She wouldn’t be caught up with that sort.’
A chill had crept over Seeker when Samuel had mentioned someone looking for Nathaniel. ‘Who is this “friend”?’
‘Keeps the Black Fox up Broad Street.’
‘Dorcas Wells,’ said Seeker slowly.
‘She said you’d had dealings with her, Captain.’
‘And am like to have more. And what did she want with Nathaniel?’
‘Something to do with the fellow he used to go about with, name of Gideon Fell – he’d promised to help her in some way, but she said you’d told her he was dead, and so she went looking for the boy.’
‘She told me she knew no Gideon Fell.’
Samuel started to heave himself up from the table. ‘Aye, well, Captain, I know nothing of her reasons for that. But Dorcas is not a bad woman, and if she went looking for that lad, she had
good cause.’
Seeker needed to get to Gethsemane and, pushing his tankard away, took up his gauntlets and helmet. Gabriel was over beside him before ever he had the helmet on.
‘Well, boy?’
The boy swallowed, took a breath. ‘Lady Anne’s house, Captain Seeker.’
Seeker stopped what he was doing and gave the boy his full attention. ‘What about it?’
‘I was there, yesterday. She had guests and wished to give them coffee.’
‘You were there?’
‘I served them.’
Marvell had failed to mention this; Seeker had assumed they had been served by the Rat. ‘Who were her guests, boy?’
‘That Mr Marvell that’s been in here once or twice – talks a lot about poetry and the like, and Mr Lawes, who had his lute with him, and Lady Anne let me stay to hear him play upon it. Mr Lawes is a gentleman. More than that Sir William Davenant.’ Gabriel lowered his voice. ‘Samuel says he’s a terrible Royalist, and not moral, Captain, and Samuel doesn’t often talk of morals.’
‘No, but with Sir William the subject presents itself. So? What did you hear?’
‘Didn’t hear much, Captain, but I had a good look about me, like you said I should, and I saw plenty.’ And he told Seeker of the stiletto, the paper he’d found hidden in the Rat’s coat collar, and the Rat’s sudden departure from the house.
Seeker called to Grace for paper and pen and handed them to Gabriel. ‘Draw me what you saw.’
With great concentration, and with more accuracy than he could have imagined of himself, Gabriel reproduced the simple design of the town, the waving road, and the coastline like a fist with its thumb sticking out.
Seeker frowned. It was nowhere he recognised, but someone at Whitehall would know it, that was for sure. ‘And you were sure there was no writing on it?’
‘No, none. But the paper was good and had a strange pattern pressed into it.’
‘What kind of pattern?’
‘Like that trench Lady Anne is having dug into her garden, for a hedge of roses, she says.’
Thoughts of Nathaniel and Gethsemane were pushed to the back of Seeker’s mind. Acheron was back in his stable in Horse Guard Yard, the streets still clogged up with carts and cabs, the tide uncertain. ‘How fast can you run, boy?’
A glimmer of excitement came into Gabriel’s eye. ‘Faster’n any boy in the city.’
‘Good. Two miles even?’
‘Further, Captain.’
Seeker handed the boy the paper he had just drawn upon. ‘Take this and go as fast as you can to Whitehall Palace. Tell the guards I have sent you and you have an urgent message for Secretary Meadowe. Show it only to him and tell him that is where Lady Anne Winter’s Rat has gone to. And tell him about the knot.’
‘The knot, Captain?’
‘The mark embossed on the paper, as Lady Anne would plant her roses, the Sealed Knot.’
Twenty
A Pattern of Roses
Lady Anne Winter was looking out of the casement window on the half-landing of her house, as the falling darkness enveloped the back garden that stretched as far as the wall of St Katharine Coleman’s. She hadn’t chosen the house especially for the garden, but already she was coming to love it, the herb garden and vegetable plot, the run for the hens; she was coming too to love the images she saw rising in her mind, the paths she would make, the hedges she would plant around them, the rose arbour. She would have a stonemason make a sundial such as the one they had had at Baxton Hall, that had so fascinated her as a child. Places to play, places to hide – that was what a garden should be. Trees to climb and share secrets in. But there were no children to play in this garden, or to share their secrets. Lady Anne turned from the window and continued down the stairs.
Already, it was a house of absences. Charity’s absence, Richard’s. Charity’s absence was like a whisper, a sudden light breeze on her neck, whereas Richard’s filled the house with a tension, an expectation. She had no expectation that Charity would return, but Richard would, he must. They called him her Rat, she knew that, but he liked the name, took a pride in it, for the cunning, the stealth, the quickness of the rat, and so she didn’t mind it for him.
But now there was a hammering on the street door, of a sort that had become familiar to her. At the bottom of the stairs she crossed her tiled floor and opened the door herself.
‘Captain Seeker.’
There was no preamble. ‘When did he leave?’
‘I am sorry, who?’
‘Your Rat, the man Richard who paraded himself as your steward, when did he leave?’
She adopted the vague and distracted demeanour that she knew infuriated him. ‘This afternoon, I think. I cannot say when, exactly. I was occupied in entertaining my guests – as I am sure you must know. Mr Marvell makes for better company than his face suggests, but then I should have known that already, from the quality of his verse. Do you read much verse, Seeker? Or are you going to tell me that the only verses that interest you are to be found in the Bible? That would be a pity.’
Seeker’s face was growing more thunderous with every irrelevant word she uttered, and she could see it was costing him some effort not to be baited. She wondered if he knew they had tried to turn Marvell, planted the idea of turning in his mind, but to ask him now would push him further than she dared.
‘When did your Rat leave?’ he repeated.
‘I told you, I don’t know. I was occupied with my guests. Surely,’ she said slowly, ‘one of your watchers outside was able to tell you when Richard left?’ But she knew already that her gamble had paid off, for Richard had checked when he’d opened the door to her guests: as soon as Marvell had entered the house, the poor fellow, the pretended seller of gingerbreads who’d been watching it since dawn, had given up his post and left. None of Thurloe’s men had watched her house for the rest of the afternoon, so confident had they been in having one of their own, Marvell, inside it.
She could see the realisation dawn on Seeker too, and his face harden even further. ‘Will I ask you a third time, here or in the Tower?’
She knew that he wasn’t bluffing. ‘Ask Andrew Marvell. He was still sitting here when Sir William went down to give Richard instructions about some matters he had in hand for him, and Sir William, Mr Lawes and Mr Marvell left together very shortly afterwards.’
‘Davenant’s trip downstairs was but a charade to fool Marvell. Your Rat was long gone by the time he made it.’
Lady Anne only just managed to prevent herself asking Seeker how he could know that. Her mind worked quickly, and alighted almost immediately on Gabriel. Oh, foolish, foolish, to have thought that the boy’s evident affection for herself might override his loyalty to Samuel Kent’s old, tattered Republican cause. Her thoughts began to travel around the house, the times Gabriel had been here, and she wondered where he might have been and what else he might have seen that he should not have done.
Seeker interrupted her thoughts. ‘The paper Davenant brought to your Rat . . .’
She shook her head. ‘I saw no such paper.’
This was not enough for Seeker. ‘You knew about it though. That was the whole point of your entertainment yesterday – the opportunity for Sir William Davenant to pass information on to this Richard you have harboured in your household on behalf of the Sealed Knot.’
The name on Seeker’s lips almost stopped her breath. They had been sure, so sure, so careful and measured in their communications and their planning. How was it Thurloe’s men already had the name? Unthinkingly, she reached out a hand to steady herself on the banister of the stair. This time she could not stop the words. ‘But how can you know?’
‘Your vanity makes you fools. The sign of the Sealed Knot on the paper on which these instructions were drawn? Anyone would think this some play or masque you dabbled in, not matters that have cost good men their lives.’
She repeated, almost for herself, ‘I never saw the paper.’ Anne Winter could hardly believe th
e folly of it herself. Seeker was right: a vanity, an unpardonable vanity and it might cost them all very dear. It would have been a sign, of course, to whoever Richard was to present himself to, that he was to be trusted, for she had observed herself that never had any man, save Cromwell himself, had so much the look of a Republican to him. ‘I never saw it,’ she said again. Fear crept over her whole body, to realise they had employed as their code a symbol Thurloe’s men could evidently draw in their sleep.
Seeker’s face was as grim as ever she had seen it. She had begun to think that there might be a kind of familiarity grown up between them, but she quickly disabused herself of that idea now.
‘Will you give me time to get my cloak, Captain Seeker?’ she said.
‘Your cloak? What for, woman?’
‘You would take me through the streets to the Tower in nothing but this thin gown?’ she said, looking down on the lilac satin gown, low cut and with half-length sleeves, she had chosen for entertaining her guests earlier.
He shook his head, almost smiling. ‘Oh no. I’m not taking you to the Tower. I’m not taking you anywhere at all. You have something on hand in this house, and until we have your Rat in a trap and squealing – and he will squeal, do not doubt it – you will stay here, and whatever you expect to come to pass in this house will come to pass under full sight of the men who will be stationed here day and night. If your Rat should return, he will find a warmer welcome than he might have looked for, even from you. And don’t even consider attempting to get a message to him or anyone else – neither of your remaining servants will be leaving here either.’
Anne Winter sat down on the step she had been standing on, feeling a coldness that had little to do with the thinness of her dress. So much planning had gone into Richard’s mission, so much had been prepared to ensure its success, and now everything was imperilled by the observations of a coffee house boy. Only last night, at the risk of great danger of discovery, with so many troops parading through the city, clearing out those suspect of Fifth Monarchism and Leveller sympathies, had the last of the necessary alterations been completed, and now it seemed that all had been in vain. She thought of the excitement there had been in the house when first the architect had arrived to begin his work, how the servants had been caught up in it, knowing something of great import was on hand, but knowing also that they must not ask. Charity had been there then, and so much had she been trusted that Richard had permitted her into the areas of the house that the others were not allowed to see. Anne had searched them a hundred times since, Richard too, but of Charity there was no sign, as confirmed by the architect who had been troubled by the interruptions and eager to get on with his work.
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