[Damian Seeker 05] - The House of Lamentations

by S. G. MacLean

  Even by moonlight, Seeker could see horror dawn on the man’s face. ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Seeker, a very bad feeling beginning to take hold of him.

  ‘The maid. I don’t know how it can be, but . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She wasn’t the same one. Not the one that had come to the Bouchoute House with Lady Hildred or left the Engels Klooster with her this morning.’ Seeker listened with a growing sense of certainty as Thurloe’s double agent went on to explain about beautiful faces and harsh scars, about confusion at the site of the ambush, in the carriage itself, the tumble of skirts, the dishevelled clothing chest. About one maidservant leaving Bruges at the side of Lady Hildred Beaumont, and another arriving with her at Damme, solicitously bandaging her wounds and mopping her brow.

  Seeker shook his head. ‘I’ve come across a good few fools in my day, but I’ve never heard the like of this. Not ever.’

  ‘I – I don’t understand,’ the man said helplessly.

  ‘Then let me explain to you,’ said Seeker. ‘She’s been under your very nose, this spy that’s been sent to hunt you down. In the Engels Klooster, and the Bouchoute House, and in a carriage bound for Damme at the side of Lady Hildred Beaumont. She knows, from the ambush, that we’re on to her, and she’s given you the slip.’

  ‘But . . . how? I don’t understand. The maid?’ He screwed up his eyes and held his head in his hands before looking up. ‘But where is she now, Seeker?’

  ‘That’s just what I was wondering.’

  *

  Sister Janet turned over in her cot. Really, after so many years, surely she should be permitted a more comfortable bed? But tonight, her dreams had been sweet. When she had closed her eyes, the rhythm of the wheels of Hildred’s carriage, carrying her far away, had played her to her slumbers. But now, a window shutter was rattling, and Janet had been certain the night was still as a millpond. She turned again and covered her head with her pillow – new-stuffed with goosedown, with which the flocks that lighted on the polder, thank God, kept them well-provided. And still the shutter rattled. God blast the thing! She would have to have John Carpenter see to it.

  Pulling her shawl over her shoulders, she heaved herself up and swung her old feet to the floor. The flagstones grew colder every year, she would swear it. She stepped gingerly over to the window and undid the catch before reaching for that of the shutters. Just as she touched them, they rattled again, suddenly and with great force, nearly bringing her heart out of her mouth.

  ‘In the name of God who’s there?’ she cried, finally forcing open the shutter, before jumping back with a start.

  Before her, hair bedraggled and trailing canal weed, clothing muddied and soaked through and a desperate look in her eye, was the woman she had watched leave the Engels Klooster that very morning, seated in a carriage alongside Hildred Beaumont.

  ‘You!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, Sister,’ said Lady Anne Winter. ‘Now would you be good enough to let me in?’

  Nine

  Mons Pietatis

  Faithly, Ellis and Daunt had all been there at the appointed time. Only Glenroe was late.

  ‘Damn his eyes, I have missed my dinner for this!’

  ‘You’ll get your dinner, Dunt. That belly of yours would keep you going a week.’

  Edward Daunt muttered another oath and took himself off through an archway to the side on the pretext of inspecting the Flemish family portrait at the end of that corridor: a self-satisfied merchant two hundred years dead, and his emaciated wife, no doubt glad of the fact. Edward knew nothing of art, or much else, save how to sit a horse, how to run a man through with his sword, and how to do justice to a well-laden table. For these attributes, he had been called ‘Dunt’ since his schooldays. Edward knew there was affection in it for the most part, but still, he had given much, and lost much, in support of the King, and even a sturdy man of Kent tired, eventually, of being taken for everyone’s fool.

  Almost a quarter hour after the bells of the neighbouring Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk had stopped ringing, Evan Glenroe wandered into the pawnbroker’s salesroom from the main courtyard of the Gruuthuse, bestowing his presence upon his fellow Cavaliers like a man without a care in the world. Daunt abandoned his pretended examination of the well-fed fifteenth-century burgher and strode back up the hall to where Faithly and Ellis had been examining a pair of spurs and a saddle for sale.

  ‘Spanish leather,’ Ellis was saying. ‘That would sit on your horse like a glove.’

  ‘A glove I could not afford for a horse I can barely feed,’ said Faithly, turning away in disappointment from the tack stall. Even at the knock-down prices of this mons pietatis, this vast pawn emporium that was the former Palace of the Lords of Gruuthuse, once home to one of Bruges’ richest merchant families, Sir Thomas knew his pockets would come up short.

  ‘Ach, we should have stolen the old witch’s money ourselves, Thomas,’ said Evan Glenroe who had now come up beside them and was also admiring the Spanish leatherwork.

  ‘Lady Hildred’s money is intended for the King!’ protested Daunt.

  ‘Well, much good may it do him, when his best cavalrymen can hardly afford a decent saddle.’

  ‘Keep your voices down,’ pleaded Ellis. ‘Would you have the whole town know our business?’

  ‘The whole town knows it anyway,’ said Glenroe. ‘I heard of little else on my way down here from the Schuttersgilde.’

  ‘And what are people saying?’ asked Ellis, turning away from the saddlery stall and walking towards a less exposed alcove in which old books had been stacked.

  ‘What are they not saying?’ asked Glenroe in response. ‘The old woman was shot in error, and it was me the assassin was after . . .’

  ‘The idea is not without merit . . .’ observed Daunt, to a friendly dig in the ribs from Glenroe.

  ‘Or, they were after Sir Thomas – an affair of the heart – or it was one of Cromwell’s men, sneaked over to Bruges practically in her baggage and after her money, or, that Lady Hildred was a man in disguise and—’

  ‘Enough,’ said Faithly. ‘Was there no information of use?’

  Glenroe became serious. ‘One thing.’

  ‘Then tell us, for God’s sake!’ said Daunt, who was no admirer of the preamble.

  ‘Not here,’ said Faithly, looking around the hall which was filling up with bargain hunters. ‘Come on.’

  They were soon all seated in a pleasant alcove in the Gruuthuse garden overlooked by a fountain and a range of ancient mossy busts with none but the passing swans to overhear them.

  ‘Well then,’ said Ellis, looking around. ‘We are alone.’

  As Glenroe was gearing himself to speak, Daunt plucked at a cherry from an overhanging branch. ‘I still fail to see why we could not have discussed this in our own lodging, without this fuss.’

  Ellis gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Because secrets have been spilling through the walls of the Bouchoute House . . .’

  ‘Aye, weeks and months ago,’ protested Daunt, ‘when the King was still in residence in the town and plans for the Usurper’s overthrow were still being made. But now His Majesty is elsewhere and we are somewhat out of strategy.’

  ‘Well we’d better get a new one,’ said Glenroe, ‘because what I heard today was that our friends in England – those of the Great Trust who are still at liberty, that is – have sent over a woman to discover who the traitor to His Majesty is, that is passing on information to Thurloe. Now, it strikes me that that woman might well have been Lady Hildred.’

  Daunt was perplexed. ‘But why would they not have told us, or the lady herself done so?’

  Ellis let out a heavy breath. ‘Because they think it’s one of us, Dunt.’

  Daunt’s hand went to the hilt of his sword. ‘I’ll slay the first man to say so!’

  ‘Stop!’ sai
d Faithly. ‘We cannot be at odds with ourselves, but we must accept that we will all fall under suspicion.’

  Daunt grumbled but left his sword where it was.

  ‘How are we to proceed, though?’ asked Ellis.

  ‘Well, there are three things,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘First: Lady Hildred – was she indeed in Bruges to discover the identity of the traitor? Second: who is that traitor? Third: did he or she kill the old woman?’

  ‘That’s two too many questions for Dunt there,’ laughed Glenroe.

  ‘Too many for me also,’ said Ellis. ‘But you say he or she, Faithly?’

  ‘Think about it,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘The Bouchoute House is full of women, even now that the King has gone. Do you know one housemaid or scullery maid from another? Can you tell the bootboy from the stable lad, for that matter? And then there is the brothel – how many men have not lost their wits a while in the House of Lamentations? Who knows what has been said there that shouldn’t have been. And then think, who knew the details of when Lady Hildred was to be on the road to Damme?’

  It was Ellis who got to it first. ‘The Engels Klooster. They knew of her plans up at the Engels Klooster.’

  ‘What? One of the nuns?’ said Daunt in disbelief.

  ‘Or a stable lad or . . .’

  ‘No, wait,’ said Glenroe, leaning forward with the beginnings of a gleam in his eye. ‘The very day her ladyship arrived and took up residence there, I met with a young fellow, said he was just over from England, and looking for his sister. Wanted to know the way to the Engels Klooster.’

  ‘Did you show him?’ asked Faithly.

  ‘Aye, I did. And told him to watch out for that old tartar, Sister Janet, too.’

  ‘I hope you also warned him against that Jesuit, the Spaniard, that’s always gliding about the corridors up there too. Shifty-looking as a Seville cutpurse. Don’t know why he can’t stick to his own billet in the Sint-Walburgakerk.’ Daunt shivered, but then his brow furrowed as a memory stirred itself. ‘Yes, though, the young fellow. I remember. I met him on the way down from my afternoon’s practice at the Schuttersgilde. Sister Janet had turned him away with a flea in his ear. Ruth something, his sister’s name was.’

  ‘I haven’t heard of an English girl called Ruth at the Engels Klooster,’ said Ellis.

  ‘No, nor I,’ said Daunt. ‘But I’m certain there’s one in the House of Lamentations. One of the kitchen maids. Can’t say that I’ve ever seen her, but I’ve overheard Madame Hélène a time or two addressing a servant in English and calling her Ruth.’

  ‘And did you tell him this?’

  Daunt coloured and coughed. ‘Well, no. I mean, I could hardly tell the fellow his sister was in a brothel now, could I? I merely gave him directions back into town and wished him well.’

  ‘You didn’t show him the way?’ asked Ellis.

  ‘No, I did not,’ bridled Daunt. ‘I had not had my dinner, and I can’t be showing every waif and stray that lands from England the delights of Bruges.’

  ‘Perhaps this Ruth is the woman who has been sent to find out the traitor in His Majesty’s court,’ said Thomas Faithly, ‘and this “brother” no brother at all, but one of Cromwell’s henchmen sent after her. She will be in need of our protection.’

  Glenroe agreed. ‘A nice little visit to the House of Lamentations tonight to make our enquiries should be just the thing, don’t you think? And if we can discover from her who the traitor to our friends is . . . well, how much quicker our revenge than we could have hoped.’

  ‘Perhaps so,’ said Daunt, who was not quite as slow as they often decried him to be, ‘but if the she-intelligencer is indeed this Ruth, why is it Lady Hildred who is dead?’

  *

  Seeker had watched Faithly, Ellis and Daunt go through the main gate into the courtyard of the Gruuthuse in the late afternoon and seen Glenroe follow them in a short while later. He’d waited a moment then crossed the street to go in after them, in time to see Glenroe disappear through the door of the mons pietatis. What they were up to in there, he didn’t know, for they had little enough money to spend, even at those reduced prices. They might be equipping themselves for some new endeavour, or just simply idling away more of their pointless days. They should have been gone from Bruges by now, the whole lot of them, either to the forces gathering around the Duke of York at Nieuwpoort or somewhere deeper into the continent where they could forget their hopeless cause and be forgotten by it. It would be too risky to follow them into the narrow confines of the pawnbroker’s hall, but the fact that they were all in there gave him an opportunity, however brief.

  Seeker was soon letting himself in by the back gate to the yard of the Bouchoute House. The elderly cook, bent over her leeks in the kitchen garden, made a great deal of her shock at seeing him standing there all of a sudden.

  ‘John Carpenter! You English will finish me off, always creeping about!’

  ‘Not before you’ve got that lot in the stockpot, I hope,’ he said.

  ‘Well, there’ll be none of it for you.’

  ‘Still got a houseful then?’

  ‘Down to the last four, and them nearly down to their last penny. We thought we might have a bit of luck when a rich Englishwoman turned up at the door a few days ago, but she took herself off to the Engels Klooster instead.’

  ‘An old woman, was it?’

  ‘Older than me, and on the move with all her worldly goods, they say. England must be a terrible place under this Cromwell, that so many of you leave it.’

  Seeker let that pass. ‘I was hoping she might have been younger – with all respect to yourself,’ he added hastily.

  She straightened up as far as she could and fixed him with a look of interest. ‘You looking for a wife then, John Carpenter? My Minne’s last husband has been dead near a year, and she’s as good a breeder as you’ll get this side of the Maas.’

  Seeker laughed. ‘I’ve seen your Minne, and her brood. They’d be too much for an old bachelor like me. No, it was the sister of a friend I was wondering about.’

  ‘Pah, man like you doesn’t have friends. You’d better come in and tell me what you’re really wanting. And you can sort out my kitchen steps while you’re at it.’

  Seeker followed her up the path and into the huge kitchen of the Bouchoute House. Despite the heat of the day, steam was rising to the high ceiling from a fish kettle over the fire, and the smell of loaves fresh taken from the oven filled the air. Game hung from a pulley suspended from the rafters and a scullery maid was busied in sorting through a mound of soft fruits. A lazy cat observed Seeker warily from the corner of the hearth. Seeker gave it a wide berth – it was his considered view that most cats were, inherently, royalist.

  The cook watched Seeker with amusement. ‘Man your size, scared of cats?’

  ‘Wary,’ he said, giving the beast a last, distrustful glance. He looked over to where a set of steps was propped against a bare portion of wall. ‘These them?’ he asked.

  The cook nodded. ‘Either they’re squint, or I am.’

  Seeker suppressed a grin as the scullery maid, cheeks bursting with mirth, let out a snort.

  As Seeker examined the steps and got out his plane, the older woman set a bunch of leeks in front of the girl and herself settled to plucking a duck that was lying on the table. ‘So,’ she said, ‘you’re looking for a young woman.’

  Now the scullery maid’s eyes widened and she bent lower over her berries.

  ‘Just wondering,’ said Seeker. ‘A young fellow I met the other day, not long arrived in town. Looking for his sister – young woman by the name of Ruth Jones. More like to be a servant than a lady though. She hasn’t been here at all, I suppose?’

  The cook considered. ‘No young Englishwoman in this house since before the Dunes. And the ones that were here before – well, they called themselves ladies . . .’

&nbs
p; Seeker knew enough of the nature of Charles Stuart’s pastimes in Bruges not to need further details. ‘But the old woman – Lady Hildred. She didn’t have a maidservant with her at all?’

  The cook nodded. ‘Oh, she had a maidservant all right. Not Ruth though – what was her name now?’

  ‘Nan,’ offered the girl.

  ‘That’s right, Nan. But she wasn’t that young – thirty at least. Older than my Minne,’ and here a meaningful lean in towards Seeker, ‘and a good deal skinnier. Not much of a breeder I’d say.’

  ‘Not much of a servant, either,’ mumbled the girl.

  Seeker turned his attention towards her. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Well, I was supposed to be telling her which were the best markets to buy at, what prices were fair and who would cheat her mistress, but she had no interest in that sort of thing. Wanted to know about nothing but the gentlemen that were here with the King, what hours they kept, what their pastimes were, where they went, who they saw. And her hands – not used to hard work and skin as white as my cap, hardly done a day’s work in her life, I should say, and not much intention to. All shiny hair and dark eyes and asking about the bedchambers! After a fine husband if you ask me. The old lady would have lived to regret taking that one over from England as her lady’s maid.’ She lowered her voice and started with some vigour on one of the leeks. ‘If she hadn’t been dead, that is.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Seeker. ‘She’d have been nosing about the house too, I’ll bet.’

  The girl nodded. ‘I caught her looking up the back stairs – told her she’d no good reason to be up there. Then off out the back she went, wandering around the garden, poking about here and there, looking up at the bedroom windows. When I asked what she was up to, she said she was admiring the shutters!’

  ‘You’re right then, Dora,’ said the cook, ‘for I never heard of a servant yet that had time for wandering about and admiring shutters.’ She turned to Seeker. ‘We had enough of that sort of thing when the King and all his court were still in Bruges – these pretty women with their white skin and their dark eyes are nothing but trouble.’