[Damian Seeker 05] - The House of Lamentations

by S. G. MacLean

  Also by S. G. MacLean

  the alexander seaton series

  The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

  A Game of Sorrows

  Crucible of Secrets

  The Devil’s Recruit

  the captain damian seeker series

  The Seeker

  The Black Friar

  Destroying Angel

  The Bear Pit

  This ebook edition first published in 2020 by

  Quercus Editions Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © 2020 S. G. MacLean

  The moral right of S. G. MacLean to be

  identified as the author of this work has been

  asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication

  may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

  or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any

  information storage and retrieval system,

  without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library

  EBOOK ISBN 978 1 78747 364 5

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,

  businesses, organizations, places and events are

  either the product of the author’s imagination

  or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

  actual persons, living or dead, events or

  locales is entirely coincidental.

  Ebook by CC Book Production

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  To Lachlan

  Contents

  The House of Lamentations

  Also By

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue: London

  1. Bruges

  2. The Engels Klooster

  3. Bartlett Jones

  4. The House of Lamentations

  5. The Bouchoute House

  6. The Road to Damme

  7. Sanctuaries

  8. News from Damme

  9, Mons Pietatis

  10. George Beaumont

  11. New Friends, Old Enemies

  12. Encounter

  13. Oude Steen

  14. The Book-Buyer of Sint-Donatian’s

  15. Hiding Places

  16. Sister Janet Watched

  17. Jesuitical

  18. A Lover’s Tale

  19. Escape

  20. St John’s Hospital

  21. News of Mr Longfellow

  22. View from a Window

  23. Beneath the House of Lamentations

  24. De Garre

  25. De Grote Sterre

  26. Portrait

  27. Reckoning

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  London

  July 1658

  Hate upon hate. Fear upon fear. Where was God in this? On men’s lips, but nowhere else. Lawrence Ingolby and Elias Ellingworth forced themselves to watch as men whom they had never encountered but whose politics happened to be different from their own, were untied from the sledges on which they’d been dragged through the streets from their prison. The thin shifts which were the only clothing the prisoners wore, were stained from their captivity and from the missiles thrown at them by the populace as they’d passed. Lawrence and Elias looked on as these men, Royalists of no loud repute in the world until now, taken in taverns and coffee houses while musing on half-formed plots against Cromwell, were pushed towards the scaffold on which they would die.

  The two men were brought forward, the executioner begging forgiveness of each and of God before he did his work. With differing success, each victim sought to hide his terror. Lawrence remembered hearing that the late King, before his execution, had worn two shirts, lest the cold of January should cause him to tremble and the people think it fear. It wasn’t January now though, but the blistering heat of summer, and the stench of London was high enough. Their valedictory speeches, whether repentant or defiant, Lawrence didn’t hear, so full were his ears of the growing rumblings and mumblings of the people around him.

  The executioner knew his business well: he knew to tie his rope short, enough to hang a man, to choke the breath almost out of him, but not to snap his neck. This expertise was clear from the first victim’s performance. Just as the legs were tiring in their thrashing, the one-time Royalist colonel was cut down. A foolish hope appeared in the eyes of his companion, already on the scaffold and awaiting his own turn. Elias saw it too. ‘Dear God, Lawrence – does he think it’s a reprieve? Can it be that he doesn’t know what’s coming next?’

  If the second condemned man had truly not known, he was a short time in finding out. The executioner was at work again, tearing off the first victim’s shift, exposing his emaciated body and his privy parts for all to see. Lawrence looked away and heard Elias wince as the half-hanged man was castrated, his manhood then burned before his eyes. A boy near Lawrence fainted; a hearty drayman a few feet from him vomited, but the butchery went on. The hangman, much bloodied now, took a heated poker and seared a line down the dying man’s abdomen, along which he next plunged his knife. To the sound of bestial agonies from his victim, the executioner played his weapon in the man’s very bowels and drew them out before his eyes to throw them, also, in the flames. Only when he held aloft the vanquished Royalist’s heart was it clear that the ravaged carcass’s agonies were at last over.

  ‘I cannot watch another,’ said Lawrence, as the second man, shaking uncontrollably and now almost beyond the capability of standing, was dragged beneath his own noose that the ritual might be repeated.

  ‘Aye, but you must,’ said Elias as the crowd around them, at last disgusted and murmuring that this was surely not God’s plan, began to thin. ‘We both must. How else shall we bear witness? How else shall we say in truth that we know what England now is?’

  When at last it was over, the gaping, bloodied heads of the traitors set on poles and their severed limbs thrown in a basket like so much offal, Lawrence turned away from the spectacle he had forced himself to watch. He had seen less butchery at Smithfield, and better done. The beheadings of June had been bad enough, but those, at least, had been swift. These latest though, would the stench of the barbarity ever clear?

  Elias waited longer, looking on the scene as if to carve every detail into his mind. Lawrence walked as far as Seething Lane and then waited for him. Crowds filed past, returning from what they had thought might be an entertainment but now understood to have been a descent into something else.

  London was subdued, disgusted. Royalists scarcely heard of, caught in some conspiracy against Cromwell that had never seen the light of day, were condemned to brutal ends by a court the Protector had had invented for that express purpose. The deaths were to serve as a lesson to any who might have been tempted to similar thoughts of treason. The look on the faces of those who passed him, the muted expressions of dismay, suggested to Lawrence it might have been a lesson too far.

  He and Elias walked on in silence a good while until at last Elias turned in at the Rainbow. ‘I have hardly the stomach for the law, Lawrence,’ he said as he led Elias into the tavern rather t
han continuing to Clifford’s Inn.

  ‘I think the law must be engaged elsewhere today, in any case,’ said Lawrence, following him into the tavern.

  The Rainbow was busy, many others perhaps wanting to shake off what they had just seen rather than carry it back with them to the business of their everyday lives. Lawrence sought a place where they might not be overheard. He knew from the look on Elias’s face what the tenor of their conversation would be.

  Once they were seated and served, Lawrence said, ‘How long do you think this can go on?’

  ‘What, the persecution of the Royalists? Their purging from London? The suspending of Parliament in the name of the rights of the people?’

  ‘All of it, I suppose,’ said Lawrence.

  Elias shook his head. ‘I don’t see an end. Even those who were his closest friends, his greatest supports, are cast out or worse, for that they dare question him or advise the reining in of his power, while we must call Cromwell’s children “Highness” and watch as he marries them into titles and lands and Royalists of the highest ranks who so lately supped with Charles Stuart.’

  Lawrence looked around him. ‘Hush, Elias, or you’ll be up on that scaffold next.’

  Elias took a long draught of his ale before speaking again. ‘No, Lawrence. I’m done with it.’

  Lawrence chanced a smile. ‘You, Elias, done with sedition? Never.’

  ‘With sedition? Who knows? I hope so. I hope to be somewhere where sedition is not a thing that is necessary.’

  Lawrence put down his own tankard and looked closely at his lawyer friend. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘England, Lawrence. I’m done with England.’

  Lawrence contemplated the words a few moments, but they still didn’t make any sense to him. ‘You mean, you’ve no hopes it’ll get better?’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose that means the same thing in the end, doesn’t it? I had hopes for Cromwell, for the Commonwealth, so, so long ago. But where is our freedom now, where our humanity?’ He laughed. ‘Where our parliament even? Protector or King, what does it matter to you and I, Lawrence? Those men we just saw butchered, in a different time, would you not have sat a while with them, smoked a pipe, learned something of their families, their hopes, their cares and then moved on without caring to know of their politics? My England never was, Lawrence, and I am done with this one.’

  There was silence between them as the sounds of the tavern travelled all around them. And then at last, in low and very measured tones, Lawrence said, ‘What are you telling me, Elias?’

  Elias looked him directly in the eye. ‘I am bound for Boston, Lawrence.’

  Lawrence screwed up his face. ‘Lancashire?’ But even as he said it, he knew he was wrong. ‘Tell me you’re not talking about Massachusetts.’

  Elias gave one, slow nod.

  Lawrence sat back and attempted a laugh. ‘No, Elias, you can’t. I mean Grace . . .’

  ‘Grace is less than a month from her time, and she no more than I wants our child to grow up in the world we have made here. Whispers, lies, fear, always looking over our shoulders for who might be listening and not liking the gist of what we say. Hypocrisy everywhere.’

  ‘But what of her uncle, what of Samuel?’

  ‘He’s coming with us. Samuel can make his home anywhere, with anyone, so long as Grace is there.’

  Lawrence felt like a child watching his favourite dog be sold away. The dog beside him, Damian Seeker’s dog, stirred and placed a heavy paw on his foot, as if guessing his thoughts.

  ‘But what about Kent’s?’ tried Lawrence, his voice trailing off hopelessly. A man who could speak with such certainty about taking his wife and yet-to-be-born child, along with her lamed and elderly uncle across the world to begin again, would hardly be put off by concern for the fate of a coffee house.

  ‘Samuel is giving it to Gabriel. The boy’s seventeen or eighteen now, as far as he can tell, and as able as any merchant in the city. He’ll buy and sell them all by Candlemas.’

  ‘You’ve decided this, haven’t you? You’ve got it planned already.’

  Elias let out a long breath. ‘It was when Cromwell dissolved the Commons, in February. After two weeks of sitting. Two weeks, Lawrence. I’d had enough. And nothing that’s happened since then has made me anything but more certain. It’s taken this long to put arrangements in place – somewhere that I might practise, a suitable house, possibly the acquisition of a printing press . . .’

  Lawrence felt the indignation growing in him. Not even as a child, with his slattern of a mother, had he felt hurt like this. ‘And you didn’t even tell me . . .’

  Elias lowered his voice and leaned further across the table towards Lawrence. ‘I couldn’t. It’s Maria, you see . . .’

  ‘Maria?’ And then Lawrence did see. ‘Oh, don’t tell me,’ he said, an incredulous half-smile on his face. ‘You haven’t told her, have you? You haven’t told your sister.’

  Elias flushed and looked about him. ‘We cannot talk about it here.’

  *

  It was several hours later, in his own chamber on the upper floor of the Black Fox on Broad Street, that Lawrence finally took up his pen. The tavern was shut up for the night, the doors locked and his landlady, Dorcas, and the girls all sleeping. Nevertheless, the sounds of the argument he’d witnessed earlier in the evening in the garret of Dove Court were ringing so loud in his ears that he wondered they did not carry all the way to Flanders.

  Maria had been towering in her anger. ‘Massachusetts? I will not come!’

  Elias had been equally vocal. ‘You will, Maria, for you cannot stay in London on your own!’

  That was when she had gripped the edge of the small table in the attic apartment that they had shared but was now, since his marriage to Grace and to the scandal of the neighbourhood, occupied by Maria alone. She had leaned forward and eyed her brother with such contempt that Lawrence had been afraid to breathe.

  ‘I have no intention of staying in London.’ She enunciated every word as if releasing a predator into the room.

  ‘Then what?’ Elias was perplexed, though only for a moment. ‘Oh no! Absolutely not. I forbid it!’

  This was when Maria actually laughed in his face. ‘Forbid it, brother? Oh, no. I don’t think so. I don’t think so at all.’

  So now, in his chamber in the Black Fox, with the rest of the house and most of London sleeping, Lawrence took up his pen. In response to the pleas of Elias Ellingworth, who by rights should not have known it was possible for Lawrence or anyone else to write a letter to such a person, he began an urgent missive to Damian Seeker.

  One

  Bruges

  The parlour of De Vlissinghe was beginning to empty, most of the inn’s patrons having at last decided to return to their own homes. Those who remained were either travellers passing the night on their way elsewhere or those with no real homes to go to. De Vlissinghe and the other inns and taverns of Bruges had seen more than their fair share of those in late days. In the far corner, their demeanour discouraging others from occupying the tables and benches close by, four Englishmen, Cavaliers of sorts, looked at a news-sheet, a week old. Not long brought from an English ship come in at Ostend, the booklet had lain on the table between them all evening. Usually, they would have fallen upon it, eager for news of home, but tonight it was as if it was a thing infected.

  ‘It’s true then,’ said one, at last, an Irishman. He might once have cut a figure of some style, when his russet velvet coat had not been patched and faded, the ostrich feather in his hat not grey with failure, the heels of his fine Spanish boots not ground away to nothing. Somewhere in the faces of his companions too were the traces of better days, the memory of a long-gone lustre.

  Seated opposite him, Sir Thomas Faithly finally picked up the news-sheet and began to read aloud the names he found there. The sleeves of his
blue velvet suit were worn and dull, lace cuffs that might once have been white now a hopeless grey.

  ‘Stop, I beg you,’ said a third Cavalier, thin-faced and hollow-eyed. ‘I cannot listen to another word of it.’

  ‘Aye, but we must, Ellis,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘They suffered and we must know it and acknowledge it.’

  ‘Acknowledge it?’ asked the Irishman, his voice rising in disgust. ‘We must avenge it. They were hanged, drawn and quartered, made a spectacle for the masses, all at the behest of Cromwell’s new High Commission of Justice. They were our friends, and they were betrayed and butchered for their service to the King.’

  The fourth Cavalier, Sir Edward Daunt, was a fleshy, slow-looking fellow, called ‘Dunt’ by his companions, in an affectionate bow to his universally acknowledged dim-wittedness. Having until this point appeared to be in contemplation of nothing more than the stein in front of him, Daunt now looked up. ‘But how? How can it be that their plans were discovered? The Sealed Knot . . .’

  ‘The Sealed Knot is finished, Dunt,’ said the Irishman. ‘Thurloe has unravelled it and it is done, and the Great Trust broken.’

  ‘But how? How could he discover plans first laid here, amongst the King’s own friends?’

  His companions made no response, other than to look at their friend as a fond mother might regard a simpleton child.

  It was perhaps an hour later that they finally left the inn, taking the reek of their tobacco smoke into the warm night air, to mingle with all the other aromas rising over the scarcely moving waters of the canal. Their boots sounded loud on the cobbles, and their voices had a dismal echo in the near-empty streets. Bruges had become a place of echoes and absences. It was hardly three weeks since they, fighting alongside Spain in the name of Charles Stuart, had been defeated at the Battle of the Dunes by an unholy alliance of Cromwell’s forces and the French. The fugitive King himself had removed his rag-tag court for the summer from Bruges to Hoogstraten, while the rest of his supporters were dispersed throughout Europe, genteel beggars living on long-exhausted credit.