Thomas closed his eyes and opened them again, gradually acclimatising them to the light. Each day, he searched the square for familiar figures, figures that might be looking for him, for Thomas knew he was a hunted man. This morning, he saw at first nothing to alarm him, but then something across and over to his left caught his eye. Two women were emerging from the end of Vlamingstraat. There was nothing unusual in seeing a wealthy woman and her servant coming into the Markt, but there was something different about these two. They weren’t Flemish – that much was evident from their clothing – nor Spanish either. These were Englishwomen, and after watching them a moment longer, Thomas realised that they were headed his way.
‘Up, Glenroe, quick! There are women coming.’
‘Women?’ groaned Glenroe. ‘Speak no more of women. I am done with women. The House of Lamentations has finished me.’
‘Not whores, you fool! English women. A lady, if I’m not mistaken, and her maidservant, and they are coming this way.’ The stream of English Royalists finding its way to their door had become a trickle of late weeks, but those still determined to make their way from England to join the King in Flanders knew to come here first, to the Bouchoute House in Bruges, to make their arrival known.
Glenroe sat up at last, but then veered over and made use of the pewter bowl. Thomas, tucking his shirt into his breeches, thrust the water ewer at him, but he shook his head. ‘I can’t, Faithly. I’m not fit for ladies or their maidservants. Rouse one of the others to go down with you.’
Thomas couldn’t even remember if the other pair from their quartet had come home with them at all, but a cursory glance into the tumult of the neighbouring bedchamber – boots tossed into corners, hats hanging where they could only have been flung, and the aromas of the morning after with which he was all too familiar – reassured him. Marchmont Ellis was beyond rousing, but Daunt at least was awake, if deathly looking.
Thomas lifted a pair of breeches from the floor and dropped them on to Daunt’s bed. ‘I need you to come down with me, Dunt. There appears to be an English gentlewoman headed this way. Whatever her business, I cannot see her alone.’ It had become an unspoken rule amongst those who clustered around the King that any visitors to the Bouchoute House should be received by at least two people. The Stuart court had always been a cauldron of rivalries and cabals, but the betrayal of their comrades in England had set them all looking over their shoulders at one another, wondering about every conversation they had, every letter they wrote. As Daunt heaved himself reluctantly to his feet, Thomas realised that this bold new brotherhood of theirs might be built on sands just as shifting as all the others.
*
Even in these benighted times, Lady Hildred was not used to being kept waiting. It was a quarter hour at least since she had given her name and demanded an interview with whoever was most senior amongst His Majesty’s courtiers remaining here. The footman had given her a very peculiar look, before ushering her maid to the kitchens, where Nan was to enquire of the housekeeper where the most reliable servants were to be got, where the best tradesmen, and other matters that were the business of servants. Lady Hildred herself would take charge of the selection of a suitable lodging, but first she must see to the business she had come here for. She considered her surroundings as she waited. The ceilings were of an appropriate height, and if nothing else the windows allowed for a good deal of light and permitted a more than adequate view of comings and goings in the heart of the town. It was, in all, a townhouse, in a marketplace, in a fading Flemish town. She might well have been in Norwich or some such place, and whilst the house might serve for a merchant of an unremarkable town, she could hardly believe it had ever been deemed a fit residence for the King of England.
At last a low rumble of male voices echoed across the tiled entrance hall and soon was followed by the entrance into the reception room of two characters she would think twice about entrusting with the sweeping of a barn, never mind what she had been considering. The arrival of the men was accompanied by a reek of stale tobacco smoke, sour wine and unwashed linen, and Lady Hildred made no effort to mask her distaste.
The one in the faded blue velvet suit spoke first. ‘Lady Hildred, I must apologise that there was no one here to receive you. My companions and I were—’
‘Drunk,’ she interrupted. ‘It is as well His Majesty is not in residence, the disgraceful standards that you keep!’ The second man, who had not yet made any effort to speak, looked determinedly at the floor in a passing imitation of a schoolboy who had not done his lesson. He had married a grey velvet coat and half-done-up brown doublet with green hose that looked a good deal too small for him. It appeared to Lady Hildred that he swayed on his feet rather than stood, fixing his eye to a point on the floor as if it might be the only thing keeping him upright. Both men made an effort at a bow, but green hose winced noticeably as he shakily straightened himself.
‘You will do me the honour of introducing yourselves, sirs.’
‘Of course,’ said the one in the blue suit, who looked to have a better grip on himself than his companion. ‘My name is Sir Thomas Faithly, and this is Sir Edward Daunt.’
Lady Hildred was unmoved by this information, other than to inform them that she knew of the Faithlys of the North Riding, but the provenance of the Daunts was a mystery to her. After indicating that they might sit, she lost no time in coming to the point. ‘I am informed His Majesty has gone to Antwerp for the summer.’
Thomas Faithly nodded. ‘Hoogstraten, your ladyship. To the north. The wildfowl are particularly good there, and it was thought, given the naval situation in the Channel—’
‘That His Majesty should be got further away from the coast,’ she finished for him.
Faithly began to nod again but appeared to realise that it was not required of him to say anything else, simply to listen.
‘I have come here expressly to wait upon His Majesty and to deliver to him funds for his own use. On learning he is removed from the town for the summer, I had thought to engage some gentlemen of his court to take those funds to him on my behalf.’
Daunt, in the green hose, made a perceptible effort at sitting straighter. ‘Your ladyship, it would be an honour . . .’
‘I’ve no doubt it would be, but after the disgraceful spectacle of your appearance, half-dressed and unable to stand, and your companion there scarcely in better order, I have no intention of trusting my money to your care. I did not attain my current number of years by being an imbecile.’
‘N-no, your ladyship,’ stammered Daunt.
Thomas Faithly broke in. ‘Of course. But we cannot be certain when His Majesty will return, and if it were to become widely known that you were keeping a large sum of money here . . .’
Lady Hildred bridled and leaned a little forward in her seat. ‘I will not be keeping a large sum of money here. Whilst I had intended taking up residence in Bruges and engaging some reliable gentlemen to take the funds to the King, I see now that I will have to take them to Hoogstraten myself.’
This seemed to startle both men into a greater degree of sobriety. ‘Yourself!’ exclaimed the fat one, Daunt. ‘Madam, the roads are not safe. There are disbanded mercenaries and Spanish soldiers everywhere, to say nothing of Cromwell’s spies. We could not in all honour permit you to go.’
Hildred moved quickly to disabuse the man, cutting him short. ‘I have been fourteen years a widow and asked no man his permission for many years before that. I will take the money to Hoogstraten myself, and two of your number, sufficiently sobered and appropriately dressed, will escort me. We set out from the Engels Klooster shortly after dawn tomorrow. See that you are not late. Now,’ she picked up a pair of long kidskin gauntlets she had laid down on a side table, ‘I’ll thank you to have my maid sent for. It is time for us to leave.’
The maid was sent for as Lady Hildred made ready to depart. She had warned Nan of the reputation of the c
ircle around the King. She was glad to see that despite Daunt’s scarcely concealed interest, Nan kept her head down when she emerged from below. The creature could be excused the brief glance she had given Faithly, for even Hildred would acknowledge that he was an attractive man.
‘They are a disgrace,’ she said after they had been shown out of the Bouchoute House and begun to make their way back across the Markt.
‘Utterly,’ agreed Nan.
‘But they will have to do.’
‘Do, your Ladyship?’
‘We are going to have to go to the King at Hoogstraten ourselves. I have informed them that we require two from amongst their number to escort us.’
The look on Nan’s face was not one that Hildred had ever expected to see on one of her servants. It was the look of a person who has an opinion.
Hildred stopped. ‘This is of some inconvenience to you? You can scarcely have been in any doubt that engaging yourself in my service would bring many discomforts. Loyalty to His Majesty in these times of ours exacts a great price. I am honoured to pay it, and I expect my servants to be so also. Besides, the journey to Hoogstraten will hardly be more perilous than what we have already endured to get here, and poor specimens though they are, those two are at least English gentlemen, and trusted by the King. We will go to Hoogstraten, and they will escort us there.’
Nan lowered her eyes. ‘Of course, your ladyship.’
Lady Hildred looked back once more at the Bouchoute House. As she did so, she noticed that a man whose face she couldn’t properly see was watching them from a window in the uppermost storey of the house. Realising he had been seen, the man hastily pulled close the window shutter. Lady Hildred was not a nervous woman, and only appropriately suspicious, but there had been something malignant in the look she had felt from the unseen man. She quickened her pace and was glad to see her maid do likewise.
*
Seeker had risen early in his stable loft, but some work in the carpenter’s yard that required his attention had prevented him from going over into Sint-Anna and the Engels Klooster as early as he had planned to, and he learned from the Mother Superior’s stable lad that he was too late to catch sight of Lady Hildred Beaumont. The boy was happy to inform him that after a day’s resting yesterday the rude old English lady had been up and out this morning, before breakfast in the refectory was even cleared, and that whatever her business was, her arrival had put Sister Janet into a mood like thunder. The boy was also able to tell him that Lady Hildred had been on her way to the Bouchoute House – he himself had given her maid directions.
And the maid was English too? Seeker had asked. Certainly. But the boy didn’t think Sister Janet much liked her either.
Why was that?
In a hushed tone, as if the wrath of the redoubtable old nun might be about to descend on him, the boy confided that he had had it from one of the novices that Sister Janet had made a search of the maid’s belongings as soon as she and Lady Hildred had safely disappeared down the Carmersstraat. ‘Christiana said she was pretty sure Sister Janet would have done it the day before, when the maid had gone down into town by herself, but she’d not been able to get in because Lady Hildred was in there resting.’
‘Oh? And did she find anything this morning?’
The boy had shrugged. ‘Christiana doesn’t know. She just said Sister Janet came out looking very pleased with herself, then hurried away to her cell to write a note.’
‘A note?’ It was too much to hope that the boy might know its contents, but Seeker was a veteran of many years of extracting information from people who hardly knew they were giving it, and he was certain the stable boy had a little more to give. ‘Something for Lady Hildred’s maid, I suppose.’
The boy shook his head and looked about him to check that they were not overheard. ‘Not for Lady Hildred’s maid. She had me call Jakob van Hjul. I heard her tell him to take it to the House of Lamentations. Jakob grumbled that he’d had to take one there for her yesterday, too.’
Back in the centre of town, Seeker had taken up position at the top of Vlamingstraat from where he had a good view of the Bouchoute House. The Markt was busy, as ever, but the House seemed to have shrunk in on itself somewhat. There was a good deal less coming and going now than there had been over the previous few months, when Charles Stuart had been in residence in Bruges, and whatever lustre his tattered name might have brought with it was now gone. An aura of gloom seemed to pervade the air around the place. Repeated failure and bloody retribution had at last put an end to the plots emanating from that house. Sealed Knot, Action Party, Great Trust: it didn’t matter what the Royalist conspirators called themselves any more. They were finished.
And yet. The arrival from England of a legendary royalist matron at the very time Thurloe had warned him of a woman coming to Bruges to hunt down their source suggested that there were some in Charles Stuart’s service who had not yet accepted they were finished. That Hildred Beaumont, whose contempt for the Protector was infamous, had gone directly to the Bouchoute House within two days of arriving in Bruges suggested the place still needed watching.
Seeker ran his eye over the front of the house. Presumably Faithly was downstairs now, dealing with Lady Hildred. This at least gave Seeker some pleasure. If even half of what he had heard of the woman were true, it would be an uncomfortable encounter.
That night eighteen months ago in the underground cavern, the bear pit, Seeker had sworn he would find Thomas Faithly and he would kill him for the danger in which he’d placed Maria. Faithly had claimed to love Maria, he’d tried to persuade her to leave London, to leave England with him. Even now, in his nightmares, Seeker saw Thomas Faithly looking on as the Frenchwoman Clémence Barguil held a knife to Maria’s throat; Thomas Faithly’s uselessness as Clémence pushed Maria from a ledge fifteen feet above the pit in which Seeker was trapped; Thomas Faithly’s inertia as the Frenchwoman released a half-starved bear into that cavern. And Seeker had meant the threat, every word. But over the weeks of recuperation and the months of absence that had followed, he had realised it had not been Maria’s connection to Thomas Faithly, but to himself, that had endangered her life. The most searing memory from that night was of Maria’s response when Faithly had asked her to go away with him, and she had refused because, she said, she was in love with Damian Seeker. She had said that at the edge of a pit, with a knife at her throat, and he had gone away and left her again. But Seeker was determined this would be the last task he would complete for Thurloe, and then he would disappear, become someone else as he had before, start a new life as he had before. With Maria.
Even so, the first time he’d spied Thomas Faithly here, in Bruges, he’d been so overwhelmed with rage that he’d almost done it, almost taken the chisel from his carpenter’s bag and driven it into the passing Cavalier’s neck. It had been a dog, a daft big beast he’d never seen in his life before, that had stopped him, bounding out from behind a cart to jump up and lick him just as he was drawing the chisel from his bag. For a ridiculous moment he’d thought it was his own dog that he’d had to leave behind in London. It was as if Maria had sent the thing. And then the dog and the moment were both gone, and with them the killing rage. It chilled Seeker sometimes, to know how closely Thomas Faithly had been to death and not known a thing about it. Even so, from the shadows, in his altered persona, Seeker had observed that Faithly often looked over his shoulder, as if fearing a sinister presence somewhere, just out of sight.
Across the Markt, the door to the Bouchoute House opened, and a woman who could only be Lady Hildred Beaumont appeared. Even at this distance, her entire demeanour exuded displeasure. Seeker smiled. ‘I’ll bet you’ve given Sir Thomas a hard time,’ he murmured to himself. Lady Hildred was richly dressed in a style that hadn’t been seen much in England since Henrietta Maria was in her pomp in Greenwich – no demure Puritan bib and tucker for her. A sudden breeze from the polder caused her ski
rts to balloon and her cloak to fly up almost in the face of her maid who was partially obscured by her mistress as she followed her out into the marketplace. Lady Hildred was tall and bore herself with a lifetime’s experience of telling others what to do. The maid was more drawn in on herself, as though bowed by the burden of a life spent doing the bidding of others. Her ladyship was clearly admonishing the younger woman about something when she suddenly looked up towards a window on the second topmost floor of the house. Seeker followed her line of sight, just in time to see a figure hastily pull the shutter closed. Lady Hildred saw it too and he could see she was troubled by it.
Seeker was considering which route he might best take to follow the women unseen when a young man, not looking where he was going, ran into him.
‘Hoi!’ said Seeker. ‘What’s the hurry?’
The man didn’t stop, but side-swerved Seeker to continue on his way. ‘I need to get to the Burg. Body in the canal. Augustinians’ Bridge.’
Seeker felt an unaccountable chill at the young man’s words. He glanced back over towards where the women had been, but they’d moved out of his sightline now. There’d be time enough later to track them down again. He turned instead in the direction of the Augustinians’ Bridge.
Still some distance away, he could see a small crowd gathered on the quay, just across from the House of Lamentations. Men on a barge working long-handled hooks beneath the bridge were hauling something out of the water. Seeker slowed his pace. By the time he had reached the back of the small crowd of curious onlookers, the dock hands had swung the object up out of the water and it was being lowered on to the Spaanse Loskaai.
[Damian Seeker 05] - The House of Lamentations Page 5