[Damian Seeker 05] - The House of Lamentations

by S. G. MacLean

  All around him, when the inevitable low groan of surprise that always greeted these things had subsided, voices, mainly Flemish, began to chatter. Who was it? No one knew. A foreigner. Spanish? No. Too pale. A soldier? Peasant, more like. Fallen drunk into the canal? A fight perhaps.

  ‘Got thrown out of there, like as not,’ said one grey head, indicating the House of Lamentations nearby.

  ‘No.’ Another shook his head. ‘Not finely dressed enough for there.’

  ‘Stealing perhaps?’

  ‘Likely. Stealing, or a woman. Usually is.’

  The crowd began to drift away, even before the town’s officers arrived from the Burg. They’d seen it all before, and they had other things to be getting on with. It had been a diversion, but one that would be forgotten by most of them before dinnertime. Soon, only the porters, and one or two aged burghers for whom this was an entertainment at least worthy of a morning’s interest, remained.

  Seeker drew closer to the corpse on the ground, on the pretext of saving the porters the trouble of getting off their barge to unhook it. As he did so, his heart sank. Seeker knew, before he even turned the body over, what he was looking at. The black hair not sticking out in all directions now, but plastered to the pallid cheeks, the stocky, belligerent form of Bartlett Jones. But Bartlett Jones wasn’t belligerent now – Seeker could see that he had been scarcely more than a boy. The anger, the hostility, the bravado: it had all been to mask the fear of a boy far from home and with no one to trust.

  Feeling his years, Seeker sat back a moment on his haunches, his stomach hollow. ‘Why didn’t you trust me, Bartlett?’ he murmured. The boy’s face was curiously unmarked. Carefully, Seeker moved the head slightly, and was not altogether surprised to see a deep and expert gash across Bartlett’s throat. An assassin’s cut, sudden and from behind. ‘Why did you really come here?’

  The process of straightening the boy’s limbs, removing tendrils of plants and other canal debris from the body allowed Seeker to make a search of Bartlett Jones’s clothing. In an inside pocket of the leather jerkin was a sodden Bible and the remains of what looked to have been a pass. Hooked onto the breeches was Bartlett’s money pouch, which felt no lighter than it had looked the previous afternoon. Seeker removed both and secreted them in the front pocket of his carpenter’s apron. He was just examining Bartlett’s hands, which showed little sign of having put up a fight, when a now familiar respectful murmuring behind him alerted him to the fact that a priest had arrived. He wanted to say, ‘He’s not a papist.’ He wanted to hurl the priest’s beads and the man after them into the canal. Instead, he stepped back to let the priest, and the town’s officer with him, take charge of the earthly remains of the scared young Englishman who’d come to Bruges and died there.

  The officer asked the usual questions of the onlookers – who had found him? Bert, the bargeman. When had he been found? A little after ten. His body had been caught by a pier of the bridge. Had anyone heard an altercation the previous night? No. Did anyone know him? Had anyone seen him about the town before? No. No. ‘And you,’ said the officer, to Seeker, who had remained silent throughout the questioning. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘No,’ said Seeker, at last beginning to walk away. ‘I don’t.’

  *

  Through the small window that looked out from the back stair of the House of Lamentations to the Spaanse Loskaai and over the canal, Ruth Jones watched the big Englishman walk away from the huddle around her brother’s body and thought she might collapse.

  Six

  The Road to Damme

  Sister Janet attempted to stifle a yawn but then gave up. It was natural enough, surely, that a woman of her years should show signs of tiredness now and again. The life of a bride of Christ, even in the congenial surroundings of this town, was not an easy one, and the unlooked-for arrival of Hildred Beaumont had caused her no little inconvenience. Nobody would question the yawn.

  Yesterday had been a long day, and fraught with difficulties. Hildred had always had remarkable stamina – Janet should have remembered that. Barely a day’s rest had been sufficient for her to recover from the rigours of her journey from England and the late-night arrival in Bruges. Even then, she had already been up and about by the time Janet had emerged from seeing her confessor, Father Felipe. Hildred had even had the gall to question her on the priest afterwards.

  ‘That man is a Jesuit?’ Hildred had enquired with a degree of impertinence.

  ‘Father Felipe is our confessor. You should remember, Hildred, that you are no longer in England. A father of the Society of Jesus may move freely here without fear of persecution. It is you who are the heretic here.’

  Hildred had only been temporarily put in her place by the rebuke and looked as if she would say more, but the arrival of two sisters in dispute over laundry duties called Janet’s attention elsewhere.

  Then, when Hildred had gone to make herself known to those shiftless fellows at the Bouchoute House, Sister Janet had taken the opportunity to search through Hildred’s personal effects and those of her maid. There, amongst them, was a locket which opened to reveal a miniature of Guy as a young man. The years had fallen away from Janet, and she’d stood a good long time gazing at that portrait. When a concerned novice had asked a little later about her red-rimmed eyes, Janet had blamed the poor standard of dusting in the chapel and ordered the girl to see to it. The locket also held the image of another young man, facing Guy. Janet didn’t know him and supposed he must be their son. She had taken note of the case in which Hildred kept the locket, and left it there, for the time being. It was amongst Hildred’s maid’s belongings, however, that Janet had made the most interesting discovery. It was a copy of a book which she had heard of from English visitors from time to time, The Compleat Angler, by one Izaak Walton. That a lady’s maid should possess such an item was an object of only mild curiosity to Janet, and she would have paid it little more attention, had it not been that in returning it to its place a thin sheet of paper had fallen out from between its leaves. Janet could make very little of the marks and assortment of words and names on the paper, and that she found very interesting indeed. So interesting did Janet find this that she made a short visit to her own cell to copy down what was written on the sheet before returning it to where she’d found it.

  Janet had then devoted a considerable length of time to compiling a list of likely properties which Hildred might consider renting in the town. There should be little difficulty in finding something suitable. Since the King’s departure for Hoogstraten with most of what remained of his court, properties that had once been rented by the English were now empty. The Spanish, too, were going or gone, in the hope of reaching Brussels before the advancing French did. The town was returning to the jaded obscurity that Janet so much preferred to its many other incarnations. There would be plenty of vacant lodgings and available houses soon in Bruges, and the further away from Sister Janet’s little world of the Engels Klooster the better.

  Janet had been thus pleasantly occupied when a novice had tentatively knocked at the door of her small parlour.

  ‘Forgive me, Sister,’ said the novice, never raising her eyes from the floor, ‘but there is a . . .’ she paused, ‘person asking for you.’

  ‘“Person”?’ she had queried.

  The novice’s cheeks had started to deepen in colour. ‘It’s the English carpenter, Sister. He will talk only to you.’

  This explained the novice’s blushes. Janet might have guessed. She could not have said when, exactly, she had become aware of a slight change in the air within the walls of the convent whenever John Carpenter was at work somewhere there – a stall in the choir needing repair, a cupboard door requiring replacement, a rotted window-frame to be removed and a new one put in – somehow, over the past months, it had been John Carpenter they had turned to. And when he came to do the work, Sister Janet would always find two or three novices and
nuns – some whose youth was almost as distant a memory as her own – who had apparently found it necessary to carry out their own duties somewhere from where they might catch a glimpse of him, or even hear the sounds of him at work. He was hardly a young man, goodness knows – well over forty, if Sister Janet was any judge. But he was tall, and strong, spoke little, and had gentle eyes – a deep brown, framed by dark lashes. Almost black brows matched the remaining black in his hair, whilst the rest was a steel grey. Janet had long ago relinquished any interest in dark lashes: what she knew of John Carpenter’s eyes was that they took in everything they lighted upon. She had enquired and found that he had come to Bruges alone, and was unmarried. She knew his voice to be Yorkshire, but a man’s voice might be set before he was twenty. His history, or some of it, could be read in the scars on his face and his hands. She had commented on them once, and he had given a low laugh and said the other fellow had come off worse. Janet had seen plenty of scarred men in her time – fifty years in the Low Countries had taught her enough to know Carpenter’s wounds had been garnered over a long period. ‘More than one fellow, I’d wager,’ she’d said, and left it at that. One day Sister Janet would take the time to find out what lay behind his watchful eyes and easy humour, but not today. What Sister Janet would require of John Carpenter on this occasion would be to know why he had come to the Engels Klooster three times within the last two days.

  ‘You’d best send him along then,’ said Sister Janet. ‘And if you happen to see Sister Marjory lurking in his vicinity, you can tell her that I recall the vows she made even if she doesn’t.’

  The novice lowered her head even further, but not so far that Janet couldn’t see her wide-eyed shock. ‘Yes, Sister,’ the girl mumbled before hurriedly leaving the room.

  A few minutes later, John Carpenter stood in the doorway. Sister Janet made a shooing gesture to the novice who had brought him.

  ‘Well, then. Don’t just loom there like a drawbridge about to crash down.’

  He nodded, and came in, closing the door carefully behind him.

  ‘So?’ she asked, feigning lack of real interest. ‘You wished to see me. Best get on then, for I’m a busy woman.’

  ‘That’s not in dispute, Sister.’

  ‘Oh?’ Something in his tone had suggested that something else was. It was not what she expected from a tradesman.

  ‘The man Bartlett Jones that came here looking for his sister.’

  ‘You’re disturbing me for this again? I’ll tell you again what I told him. She isn’t here. Never was. Now what’s it to you?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sister. Not yet, anyway. But not half an hour after he left here, you sent a note to someone in the House of Lamentations.’

  Sister Janet put down her quill pen and stood up, investing her five feet and two inches of height with all the menace she could summon. ‘You are spying on me, John Carpenter?’

  ‘Not spying, Sister. Just something I happened to hear of.’

  ‘When you were sniffing around in the stables, I’ll warrant.’

  He didn’t deny it. ‘Repairs to be made to a gate on one of the stalls. Took some time.’

  She sat back down and considered him. ‘Who are you?’

  He looked around the small, spartan parlour, his gaze coming to rest on the portrait of St Livinius behind her. ‘Just an Englishman,’ he said, ‘trying to make his way. Trying to look out for others who might have lost theirs.’

  ‘Like?’ she said.

  ‘Like Bartlett Jones.’

  ‘I haven’t seen Bartlett Jones since I sent him away.’

  ‘But I have.’

  Sister Janet felt a strange sense of dread begin to take hold. ‘Where?’ she demanded, a little too quickly.

  He looked at her very closely, as Guy’s older brother had looked at her, that day all those years ago when the news had come that her father had been taken. He spoke slowly, and very clearly. ‘An hour ago, at the Augustinians’ Bridge, within spitting distance of the House of Lamentations, being fished out of the canal.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘As my great-grandfather.’

  Janet was conscious of her hand gripping her pen as if it was the only thing keeping her upright. She forced herself to loosen her fingers around it. She wanted to close her eyes, shut out the reality of the man standing in front of her, saying these things. But she didn’t. She kept herself sitting straight up and she kept her eyes open, looking at him.

  ‘Who are you?’ she said again, finally.

  John Carpenter looked at her a good long while before replying: ‘No, the question is, Sister Janet, who are you?’

  *

  But that had been yesterday, and the long day had been followed by a long night. It was almost morning now, though, with that grey, pre-dawn light that she so liked – the air was cool and the sun yet to burn the low mist from the canals. She might have been home in England, but she knew she would never see England again.

  Out in the courtyard Hildred was already up and breakfasted, and anxious to be on the road. The maidservant looked exhausted, and Janet knew why. It was seldom that the right circumstances presented themselves to Janet as fortuitously as they did now, and she had expected to encounter a great deal more difficulty in putting her plan in place, but after what she had observed only two hours ago, in the darkness of the city, she felt a good deal more confident of success. On the pretext of needing help with a hamper of provisions she had prepared for the journey to Hoogstraten, Sister Janet told Lady Hildred’s maidservant to come with her to the kitchens. Halfway there, she stopped and looked out the length of the cloister walk. No one was watching them. Quickly, she lifted a key from the chain at her belt and turned it in the lock of the door they had stopped next to. ‘In here.’

  The maid was startled but had the sense not to say anything. Without protest, but with a look that said she was very much on her guard, she did as she was bid. Sister Janet quickly pulled the door to behind them and turned the key once more in the lock. She had many years ago selected this room – a store for old habits, reeking of damp and dead moth – as somewhere suited to her private purposes, and had consequently made sure that all keys to it but hers had gone missing. Only a little light came through the storeroom’s small, round window, but that was quite enough. She turned now to look at her companion. Hildred’s maid was an attractive woman if no longer young – somewhere over thirty: dark hair, good cheekbones, fine skin. A woman like this must surely have been married once. Janet wondered what could have happened to the husband, that his wife should find herself here.

  ‘Nan they call you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Or Nancy, according to preference.’

  ‘Not your preference, I’d wager. You’re no Nancy, nor Nan either. But that’s your business.’

  The woman opposite her didn’t even blink.

  ‘What do you want, Sister?’

  Janet felt herself smile. She always did prefer people to be direct. The novices were too terrified to open their mouths to her, and Mother Superior had long since learned to know her place, so people were seldom direct with Janet.

  ‘I want you to take something to Hoogstraten with you.’

  ‘Then surely it’s her ladyship you should be asking—’

  Janet interrupted her. ‘Hildred’s head is full of her own concerns, and she has no interest in anyone else’s. Besides, I trust her ladyship about as much as I’d trust a Toledo cutpurse.’

  ‘And you have better cause to trust me?’

  Janet smiled. This young woman had some mettle, which no doubt stood her in good stead for dealing with Hildred. ‘Much better cause.’

  The woman looked even more puzzled, and Sister Janet might have strung her along a good while longer, but time was pressing.

  ‘I saw you, you see, my dear. I saw you earlier this morning – two hours ago. I saw
where you were and I saw what you did.’

  Even in the poor light of the storeroom, Janet could see the other woman’s face pale. She had her.

  ‘Now, I won’t be telling anyone about you clambering out of a ground-floor window of the Bouchoute House in the middle of the night, or that you appeared to be secreting some item – the size of, shall we say, a book? – in amongst the folds of your habit once you had done so. No, there’s no need whatsoever for me to mention that to anyone. If you do me a small favour in return.’

  The woman had quickly regained her composure, and her gaze didn’t waver. ‘What favour?’

  Sister Janet turned away and a little breathlessly pushed aside a laundry hamper near the wall, indicating what was behind. ‘I want you to take this person to Hoogstraten.’

  The surprise on the woman’s face was as she had expected. ‘I . . . But how?’

  ‘The clothing chest.’

  The maid went through several objections – all of which Sister Janet had anticipated and taken steps to eliminate – before eventually admitting defeat.

  ‘And when we get there?’

  ‘When you get there – having of course checked at regular intervals on the journey that all inside is as it should be – you will remove Lady Hildred’s clothing and deliver the chest with its contents to the Begijnhof there and that will be the end of your involvement in the matter. I daresay my memory of what I witnessed out in the town in the early hours of this morning will desert me, when I receive confirmation that you have completed your commission.’

  Janet knew there was nothing the other woman could do but agree. She unlocked the door and sent the maid down to Lady Hildred’s cell as quickly and quietly as possible, to wait by the open chest.

  *

  It was less than half an hour later, and now truly dawn, when Thomas Faithly appeared in the courtyard of the Engels Klooster, ready to act as escort to Hildred and her valuable baggage. Janet liked Sir Thomas and did not envy his escort duty. She raised an eyebrow in enquiry when she saw he had arrived alone.