The Black Friar

by S. G. MacLean

  He’d been working by the street window, for the light, but was seldom distracted by the sights and sounds of the street in front of him. There had been soldiers everywhere, but he knew what they were for – it was spoken of in every tavern and coffee house, shouted by every bookseller waving pamphlets as he passed: the Fifth Monarchists had been taken, Major-General Harrison was under lock and key and the latest Leveller rising put down before it could begin. Yet something in the sound of a horseman approaching from the direction of St Giles’s made him put down his pencil and crane his neck the better to see up the street. The horse was black and powerful, and somehow Shadrach knew before he could fully see him who its rider would be.

  Shadrach quickly picked up the drawing he had made; there was no time to put it into the usual hiding place, but his eyes fell on de Caus’s Raison des Forces Mouvantes, the largest book in his possession, and he hastily placed the drawing between its pages, before returning the heavy tome to the shelf by his bed. Cursing the lack of fire in his own hearth, he snatched up the practice pages he had used and crumpled them in his hand, before hurrying through to Rhys Evans’s chamber, where a fire was always kept for the old man, and throwing them in there. He was still working with a poker at the ashes when the light in the room dimmed and he turned to see the huge form of Damian Seeker fill the doorway.

  ‘You are busy, I see,’ said Seeker, advancing into the room.

  ‘I was about to take the boys out for some air and exercise, and I thought I should build up Mr Evans’s fire before we left.’

  ‘Most considerate,’ said Seeker, moving Jones aside and stooping to lift the corner of a paper which had not quite caught. ‘But you would surely have done better to have used those coals.’ Without taking his eyes from the paper, he indicated the full basket by the hearth and Shadrach felt his stomach lurch.

  Seeker took the poker from him and sifted through the remaining ashes before examining the charred triangle of paper in his hand. ‘A locking device of some sort. For a door, I presume?’

  ‘Just some rough sketches,’ said Shadrach, his throat dry.

  ‘For what?’

  Shadrach scrambled for an answer. ‘The door to a pump house.’

  Seeker’s half smile was almost as terrifying as his frown. ‘I hardly think so. There appears to be some sort of pulley mechanism attached to this.’

  Shadrach was at a loss for coherent explanation. ‘A fancy, out of boredom.’

  ‘Boredom? With a dozen boys to teach and a senile old man to care for? All these lectures at Gresham, your wanderings around the city, visits to taverns and coffee houses, paying court to young women alone in their homes? And still you are bored? Truly,’ growled Seeker, ‘Massachusetts harbours wonders we have yet to hear of if all the entertainments of London can leave you bored.’

  Shadrach was spared the necessity of finding any coherent reply by the intervention of Rhys Evans, who, confined to a high-backed chair in the corner now, had been becoming increasingly agitated since Seeker’s arrival. He was muttering to himself, and at first Shadrach couldn’t hear what he said, but even when Evans’s agitation grew louder, and Shadrach could hear distinct words, he still couldn’t understand them. At last, with staring eyes and a voice that was quite terrible, Evans half rose from his chair and stretched a bony hand towards Seeker, pointing a wavering finger and said, ‘Morfan!’

  He repeated the word twice and then, the effort obviously having exhausted him, sank back into his chair and murmured softly to himself.

  For a moment, all else was silence in the room, and then, to Shadrach’s astonishment, Seeker let out a hearty laugh and crouched down before the old man, taking the trembling hand and looking into his face. ‘Not Morfan, Grandfather, but close enough.’

  ‘I – I don’t understand,’ managed Shadrach at last.

  Relinquishing the old man’s hand and standing up again, Seeker said, ‘Morfan was the son of a Welsh goddess. He was a fierce warrior, and ugly as sin.’

  ‘You know Welsh?’ said Shadrach.

  ‘Some. My mother was Welsh.’

  Shadrach was just considering the information that Seeker had had a mother when Seeker snapped out of his brush with humanity and reverted to the purpose of his visit. He put the salvaged scrap of charred paper into his bag, and told Jones to take him to his own chamber.

  Shadrach didn’t consider arguing, and they left a still murmuring Rhys Evans in peace, although only after Seeker had made a point of adding coals to the dying fire. Evans was still repeating the name ‘Morfan’, but it seemed to afford him some comfort now. And then, looking at the two men he said, ‘Morfan and Shadrach,’ and started to laugh softly to himself. ‘Morfan and Shadrach. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Poor Abednego.’ He shook his head sadly, and repeated, suddenly melancholy, ‘Poor Abednego.’ They could hear him carry on doing so even after they had left him and closed the door behind themselves.

  Shadrach looked at the door and then glanced apologetically at Seeker. ‘He’s like that all the time now, only speaks English when he’s quoting from the Bible, the rest of the time it’s Welsh.’

  ‘He wasn’t quoting there,’ said Seeker.

  ‘Well,’ said Shadrach, puffing out his lips, more confident now, ‘perhaps not, but it was certainly a reference to the Book of Daniel, the three children who . . .’

  ‘I know what it was,’ said Seeker, and Shadrach instantly regretted his folly in correcting a soldier of the New Model Army on a matter of scripture.

  ‘I should see to the boys,’ he mumbled, feeling his face redden.

  ‘The boys will see to themselves,’ replied Seeker. ‘I’ve told them to go out and exercise in the yard after they’ve cleared up their dinner things. I set the boy William Godmanson to oversee them – they have no need for you at present, and no one will trouble them – I left my horse tied up at the end of the entranceway.’

  Shadrach understood – even the few people in London who did not know that was Damian Seeker’s horse would know it was the horse of an army officer, and one to be reckoned with. Nobody would risk drawing the ire, or even the attention of its owner.

  It felt to Shadrach that Seeker almost filled the small amount of space in his chamber next to Rhys Evans’s. Everything in it – bed, desk, chair, bookshelf, even the trunk he had carried with him from Boston – seemed vulnerable somehow. Shadrach backed up to the window and watched as Seeker put his finger to the wick of the candle on the desk. The wax, still warm and soft, gave under the light pressure. ‘Mmm,’ said Seeker. He opened the lid of the desk, raised an eyebrow at the very fine pencil box inside, took some time examining ruler, set square, compasses, tested the pencil holder in surprisingly dextrous hands. Then he pushed the pencil box aside, and lifted out Shadrach’s most valuable possession. ‘An astrolabe, in gilt brass no less? This must have cost you a pretty penny.’

  ‘My wants are few, and my board here moderate.’

  ‘They must be, though what need a schoolmaster has of an instrument like this, I would be interested to learn.’

  ‘There is no mystery,’ said Shadrach, his pride spiked now. ‘I told you, I have an interest in mechanics, the possibilities of engineering. I find it useful for measuring, conducting surveys.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Seeker appeared to lose interest in the contents of Shadrach’s desk.

  ‘So,’ he said, turning abruptly, ‘George Downing. Enlighten me.’

  ‘What?’ said Shadrach.

  ‘Harvard. You and Downing. What happened between you?’

  So the other side of the ocean had not been quite far enough. Of all the risks Shadrach had taken, was taking, this was the one to which he’d given least consideration, that somehow his world and that of George Downing would once more collide.

  No longer on his guard, no longer alert to Seeker’s movements around his room, Shadrach sat down on the narrow bed, his head in his hands.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Seeker.

  His mouth almost unbearably
dry, Shadrach ran the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip. Eventually, he found his voice. ‘Whatever he has told you is a lie. With Downing, it is always a lie.’

  Seeker’s voice was lower, quieter than he had expected. ‘Convince me.’

  ‘I was fifteen when I went to Harvard, eleven years ago. The people of our church had raised a scholarship to enable me to go. I still had to take on usher’s duties in the college – serving at table, emptying chamber pots, waking the senior students and masters. I didn’t mind, so eager was I to learn of mathematics – Copernicus, Brahe, to go beyond the old scholastic certainties of Ptolemy and Aristotle. Perhaps I hoped for too much. In any case, all went well for a time; George Downing was a reader in philosophy to the first-year class with which I had matriculated. He wasn’t well liked by any of the boys – always at great pains to remind us of his superior connections, parading his piety, spending more effort looking for opportunities to censure than to teach. He was not greatly popular with his peers either. There were stories that he wasn’t to be trusted, that he would sell his friends cheap for any benefit to himself.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Just before the beginning of my second year, a vacancy arose for a lucrative teaching position in the college. It was known that Downing and another of the junior masters wanted it, but generally noised that despite Downing’s superior connections, the other candidate, Walter Coutts, was the preferred choice of the examiners, being better qualified and of a more pleasant disposition. Three days before the trial for the awarding of the place, a young woman presented herself to the College authorities, claiming to have been ravished by this other candidate. The man was brought before them, denying everything, but the woman held to her story, claimed she had proofs – she was able to describe the tutor’s chamber in the college and she produced something she claimed to have taken from his room as evidence – a page torn from a prayer book, inscribed by his mother.’ Shadrach could feel himself grow increasingly angry as he recalled those events of ten years ago.

  ‘Go on,’ said Seeker. ‘What happened?’

  The tutor was found guilty of assault and lewd conduct, fined and sentenced to lose his place in the college, after having appeared three weeks in sackcloth and ashes in the college chapel.’

  ‘And what has this to do with you and Downing?’

  Shadrach looked up. ‘As I told you, I cleaned the chambers of the senior scholars and junior masters. I knew Downing had torn that page from Coutts’s prayer book, for I’d seen it in his room the day before the girl made her accusations. I went to George Downing, seeking his help for Coutts. He claimed he knew nothing of the prayer book, and I’d do better not to involve myself in such matters. The next day, a young woman who worked in the College kitchens began to shadow me, make knowing suggestions. That was all, but the message was clear enough: what had happened to Walter Coutts might just as easily happen to me. I packed up my belongings and left Boston that day.’ The shame of it still filled him. ‘I haven’t been home since. I wandered Maryland, Virginia. Learned what I could there. But before I left Harvard, I made sure to leave a letter for the Provost, detailing my suspicions that Downing had fabricated the case against Walter Coutts. It was a good few months later that I heard he had left Harvard soon after I had, without public scandal but very suddenly, to join a ship bound for the Caribbean. I hoped never to see his face again.’

  ‘And yet you came to London, where you must have known he was.’

  Shadrach shook his head. ‘George Downing was not such a figure, not known, in Maryland as he was in Massachusetts. It didn’t enter my head that he would have come to England. Even when I arrived here, and began to hear the name, I thought at first it must be some other. I couldn’t believe that even one as ambitious as he could have risen so far in life.’ His voice became bitter. ‘In time, of course, I realised that it was the same man, but it was too late: I was here. I hoped that London was a place big and busy enough that we might never come upon each other, he in his exalted place and I in my low one, but I see that I was wrong.’

  There was silence in the room for what seemed to Shadrach to be several moments, save for the low murmur just audible from Rhys Evans’s chamber next door, the old man still intoning his mantra of ‘Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego,’ punctuated by the occasional lament of ‘Poor Abednego’. Shadrach expected some kind of comment, or response, from Seeker to his account of his dealings with George Downing, but none came. Instead, having returned to the perusal of Shadrach’s bookshelf, his finger rested on the spine of de Caus’s book, the book in which Shadrach had hidden his last drawing. ‘Forces Mouvantes,’ mused Seeker, in a passable French. ‘Hydraulics. Interesting.’

  Shadrach’s terror was momentarily replaced by a curiosity as to how Seeker came by this knowledge when the man suddenly turned and said, ‘So, tell me about Isabella.’

  Shadrach was taken completely by surprise. He stuttered in his attempt at response. ‘I kn-know no Isabella.’

  ‘Oh, but you do,’ said Seeker, moving away from the shelf. ‘You were quite taken with her, it seems, up at the Black Fox. Very pretty, by all accounts. Keen on talk of the new science – there can’t have been so many serving girls of that description in there that you don’t remember that one.’

  Shadrach stared at Seeker a moment, still trying to work out where this latest turn in the interrogation had come from, before at last replying, ‘Yes, yes, I do remember now. Straight black hair worn loose, very blue eyes. Quick-witted, as you say.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Seeker leafed through a slim book of designs for water closets that Jones had left open on his desk. ‘And did you meet with her often?’

  ‘Meet with?’ Shadrach swallowed. ‘I don’t understand. I didn’t. She – she is little more than a child. I just spoke to her that one time. Does she say otherwise?’

  ‘She might well do,’ said Seeker, ‘if she were found.’

  Shadrach felt a dread creep through him. He swallowed. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You don’t understand much,’ said Seeker, snapping the book shut. ‘But what I understand is that at least two children with a known connection to you have gone missing. London is too big a place for that to be a coincidence.’

  Shadrach began to tremble, felt sweat break out on his brow. ‘I swear, Seeker, I didn’t . . .’

  Seeker turned back from the window, from which he had been watching the boys play at football and leapfrog. He treated Shadrach to a look that chilled the schoolmaster through. ‘No doubt. But if you did, it will become known; I will know it, and I will have no mercy.’

  Twenty-Two

  Patience

  Elizabeth Crowe had been separated from the other women prisoners – wives and daughters of agitators – who’d been brought to the Bridewell. They’d be let go in a day or two, once the planned uprising had been completely neutralised, its organisers isolated and secured. But Elizabeth Crowe was different, no appendage to her husband, to cook his meals and stitch his clothes, feed his children and do his bidding. She was more than Goodwill Crowe’s wife, and where Goodwill and others like him could put arms in the hands of other men, direct their actions, lead them, Elizabeth was the one who would put into their hearts the burning desire for the fight.

  The Bridewell warden’s room was miserable enough, the poor light serving for little but to cast an occasional glimmer on the old, damp stone of the walls. Little effort had been made, either, to counteract the rank human smell that carried on the air through the endlessly meandering passageways of cells and cellars and yards in which the women were kept, to imbue everything it touched with the same noxious odour. Seeker knew enough of gaols to know that after a while it would be all that the inhabitants, prisoners or guards, knew, and that those who survived to see release would carry the stench with them many weeks, and some, it was said, a lifetime.

  The arrival of Elizabeth Crowe, her hands manacled in front of her, did nothing to cheer the room or add to it any suspicion of huma
n warmth. Seeker ordered the manacles removed. The preacher-woman sat down across the small table from him and refused his offer of a beaker of ale from the jug the warden’s wife had brought in.

  As soon as the door was closed again, Elizabeth Crowe spoke. ‘Where is my daughter?’

  ‘That is not the issue of this interview.’

  Her eyes, the pupils small and grey, did not seem to move. She hardly blinked. ‘I’ll discuss nothing else with you.’

  ‘Then your feet will not touch the streets of Aldgate a long time,’ said Seeker wearily, writing her name at the top of the sheet of paper in front of him.

  ‘I want to know where my daughter is,’ repeated Elizabeth. ‘Where are you holding her?’

  Seeker looked up from the paper. ‘We are not holding her. She was not at Gethsemane when we rounded up you and the others of your sect. You already know that.’

  She shook her head, her thin lips pursed more firmly than ever. ‘You took her before then.’

  Seeker laid the quill pen down on the table. ‘Who told you this?’

  ‘I did not need to be told. She left Gethsemane four days ago, after supper. She never returned. One of your people must have taken her under arrest, be holding her in some other prison.’

  It was Seeker’s turn to be unblinking. ‘You can rest assured that that didn’t happen. If your daughter’s whereabouts are truly unknown to you, she either went of her own accord, or has been taken.’ He paused a moment, trying to gauge her reaction – a slight flicker in the otherwise unmoving eyes was all.

  ‘Your daughter is almost a young woman, but you know that children have been going missing of late?’

  ‘Children go missing in the city all the time.’