[Damian Seeker 05] - The House of Lamentations

by S. G. MacLean

  ‘And then?’ asked Beaumont.

  Seeker considered. ‘You came to the continent. Followed Montrose.’

  ‘Well, that’s true enough,’ said Beaumont, his face grim. ‘I followed Montrose all the way to the scaffold in Edinburgh. Seven years up there under Monck I had, with the wind nearly chilling the flesh from my bones, before I went south to join the expedition that brought me here.’

  Beaumont’s tale was likely enough. His name, moreover, wasn’t one that had ever come to Seeker’s attention as one of suspect loyalty to the Protector. Nevertheless, Seeker wasn’t ready to trust him with everything he knew of the inhabitants of the Bouchoute House. There were things, though, that Beaumont would need to be clear on. What Seeker had heard of George Beaumont, aside from that he was remorseless in battle, was that he was a firm and uncompromising Puritan. ‘You should know, Major, that their moral code is not as yours or even mine. They breathe in the Papist incense here like it’s fresh air, and don’t think twice about bending the knee before their altars. When Charles Stuart was here he worshipped at the English convent, Engels Klooster. There’s a Jesuit priest always slithering around up there that I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw him. The Cavaliers left in the town haven’t two pennies to rub together, but are seldom sober two nights in a row, and they wouldn’t know an honest woman if they fell over one. The Bouchoute House is a cesspit, Major Beaumont. You’ll have to mask your distaste when you fall in with them, or your cover’ll be blown by dinnertime and you’ll be dead by nightfall.’

  George Beaumont’s genuine disgust was written on his face. ‘I daresay I can school myself to stomach it until I have found what I’ve come for.’

  ‘See that you do nothing to give yourself away,’ said Seeker. ‘I’ve no desire to be the one explaining to Secretary Thurloe what your guts were doing smeared all over the streets of Bruges. And one more thing . . .’

  ‘More than my guts smeared on the streets?’ enquired Beaumont.

  ‘You’ll need a safe house. You’ll need somewhere to bolt to, should things go wrong. And you can’t come here again.’

  Beaumont looked around Seeker’s stable loft, not quite managing to mask a degree of dismissiveness as he did so. ‘I’ve already taken lodgings in town – a one-room house in some backstreet, over by the Smedenpoort.’

  ‘Good.’

  Seeker stretched out his arms. He’d told George Beaumont as much about the Bouchoute House as he intended to. He didn’t waste much time wondering whether to alert Thurloe’s double agent in the house as to the identity of George Beaumont, or George Barton, as he would present himself as, because he didn’t fully trust their agent. And he wouldn’t be telling George Beaumont about that source either, because he most certainly wasn’t ready to trust George Beaumont yet. The only person who needed to know the truth about either of them was himself.

  Beaumont had got up to leave and was standing by the hatch at the top of the stepladder when he turned back to Seeker. ‘My mother wasn’t in Bruges very long, I understand, before she left for Hoogstraten. I take it these men – Faithly, Daunt, Ellis and Glenroe – were the only people she knew in the city?’

  Seeker shook his head. ‘No, they weren’t. She put up at the Engels Klooster while she was here. But you be very careful if you go anywhere near there. There’s something going on in that convent – I don’t know what yet – that may or may not have something to do with your mother. I’m certain there’s an old English nun at the back of it, but she wasn’t born yesterday, and I’d warrant she’d give you a tougher grilling than any of that lot in the Bouchoute House if you turned up there asking questions. You just concentrate on Faithly and Glenroe and their cronies, and I’ll deal with the Engels Klooster and whatever’s going on up there.’

  *

  Anne Winter examined her reflection in the dark glass of her cell window. She would have been interested to see in a looking glass, to know what picture she now presented to the world, but she had not been entirely surprised to find that such an item was not permitted to the sisters of the Engels Klooster. Sister Janet had tutted as she’d helped her fix on her wimple. ‘One of those faces.’

  ‘Which faces?’ asked Anne, trying to hide her amusement at the other woman’s irritation.

  ‘Noticeable. The kind of face that ends up a chatelaine or a mother superior. Not the sort of face to blend in amongst thirty others. Sister Agnes, now. Exemplary face.’

  ‘Sister Agnes, I don’t think I . . .’

  ‘No, and why would you? Here ten years before I could even remember her name. Face like a lump of fresh-kneaded dough. Exemplary.’

  Sister Janet had taken some persuading, that night, when Anne Winter had staggered, exhausted and soaked through, to her window. It had been a gamble, but Lady Anne’s choices had been limited, and none of them attractive.

  She’d been certain, almost as soon as she’d registered the crack of the assassin’s musket, that the shots from the windmill on the road to Damme had been intended not for Lady Hildred but for her. The terrible confusion when the older woman was hit had made Anne forget for a moment about the anonymous young woman secreted in the clothing chest at the back of their carriage. Her first concern had been to improvise bandages to staunch the old woman’s bleeding, but even as she’d turned the key in the lock of the chest, air holes drilled discreetly into each side of the lid, the fact of the young woman being there had come back to her, and the plan had begun to form in her mind.

  The girl had been terrified as she’d scrambled from the chest and Anne spoke quickly as she ransacked the linen for suitable dressings. ‘Switch places with me.’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘Whoever you are, you clearly need to get away from Bruges, and I need to get back there.’

  She’d then bent down to whisper in Lady Hildred’s ear as she had applied a pad to try to staunch the blood. ‘Lady Hildred, I am on His Majesty’s secret business. Will you take this girl with you and pass her off to the people in Damme as me?’ The old woman had nodded, a little spark in her eye, despite her weakness, to be at the heart of an intrigue.

  Anne had turned back to the frightened stowaway. ‘I don’t know who you’re fleeing from, but what better way to hide than to disappear altogether, to become someone else?’

  The girl’s decision had been made on the instant, and soon they were exchanging their outer clothing as quickly as it might be achieved, fingers fumbling and cloth tearing, as Lady Hildred rallied to field the intrusive enquiries for her welfare from Glenroe and the coachman.

  ‘One more thing,’ said Anne, as she hastily thrust her arms into the girl’s worn green jacket before preparing to leave the carriage to disappear into the still, dark waters of the canal. ‘Is Sister Janet to be trusted?’

  The girl had nodded and spoken the only other words Anne would hear from her. ‘More than anyone I know.’

  And so, over a period of several hours, Anne had found her way back to Bruges. She had remained in the dank canal waters, shielded from view by a small tethered boat, a hundred yards or so down from where the ambush had occurred, until Lady Hildred’s party had set off again. Not trusting to the open road, she had followed the banks of the canal back towards the city, sheltering in thickets of wood or gardeners’ huts whenever she felt the need, before finally accepting a lift from the kindly wife of a carter, whom by a mixture of Flemish and French, and a series of signs, she was able to make understand she did not wish to be seen entering the city. Only once they were safely through the Speye Poort had she emerged from the cover of blankets and pressed a few stuivers into the woman’s hand, before disappearing into the quiet backstreets of Sint-Anna. Near a corner within sight of the Engels Klooster was a house fallen into disrepair that Anne had noticed two days previously. She had hidden herself in a derelict outbuilding of the abandoned property until well after nightfall and then, when she had been as
sure as she could be that she would not be seen, she had made her way back into the grounds of the convent, and to Sister Janet’s window.

  There had been a moment, as they’d looked at each other, she and the old nun, through that opened window, when Lady Anne’s entire scheme had hung in the balance. Sister Janet might have called out to the other sisters, to Mother Superior, or the stable hands or for the watch, but Sister Janet hadn’t done.

  The old woman had let her in, warmed water for her to wash with and found her a change of clothing before setting some bread and cheese in front of her. Only once she had forced her to swallow down some vile decoction fetched from the convent’s apothecary did she allow Anne to speak.

  ‘Well,’ she said, gathering up for laundry the faded green jacket and brown woollen dress that she had last seen that morning being worn by Ruth Jones, ‘I daresay you’ve a story to tell me.’

  So, over the course of the next hour, Anne had told her. She told her about the ambush, the injury to Lady Hildred, the swap with the stowaway Sister Janet had only that morning blackmailed her into taking out of Bruges, and her own escape and journey back to the city.

  Janet had been delighted with Anne’s quick thinking over the swap. ‘Well done, well done! I would not have thought of that myself. And Ruth was unharmed?’

  ‘Ruth? Yes . . . but the scars . . .’

  Janet ran on though. ‘And Glenroe, the Irishman? He is not badly injured?’

  Anne had been somewhat surprised that Sister Janet enquired after the condition of Evan Glenroe before that of Hildred Beaumont and then she had understood, before Janet told her, that it meant news had already reached the convent that Hildred was dead. She had forced herself not to think of it, that she had left the old woman whose companion she had been on their long and perilous journey from England, to die attended only by strangers. It was as if her thoughts registered in her face, for Janet leaned close and made her look at her. ‘Hildred knew the risks she was taking. It was her time. We will all have our time, one day. Today was hers and there was nothing you could do about it.’

  To Anne’s repeated enquiry as to the full identity of the young woman who had taken her place as Lady Hildred’s maid, she was told to mind her own business. To her enquiry as to why the girl was running, Sister Janet had looked surprised. ‘Why do you think? There’s a man looking for her that she doesn’t want to be found by. You did a good thing, in helping her get away.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Anne.

  Sister Janet’s mouth pursed slightly – the giving of the compliment had clearly pained her. And then her eyes narrowed, as if she were preparing to thread a particularly awkward needle and Anne knew the questioning was about to turn upon herself.

  She was right. ‘But now for you,’ said Sister Janet, ‘I would be very interested to know what you are doing back here. And don’t for the merest minute consider lying to me – a woman who turns up at a near-stranger’s window in the middle of the night with canal weed in her hair and wearing someone else’s clothes has already run out of options.’

  ‘Where would you like me to begin?’ asked Anne.

  ‘Your real name,’ said Sister Janet.

  ‘I am Lady Anne Winter. My family held Baxton Hall near Oxford. My father and brother served the late King and died for it. For my own protection, I was married to an officer in Parliament’s army who is over four years dead. Since his death, I have worked for the restoration of His Majesty to his father’s throne, in whatever manner has been required of me.’

  ‘And what is required of you now is that you be in Bruges?’

  Anne nodded. ‘Even here, in this convent, you must have heard of the atrocities meted out to those in England who have been working to remove the usurper Cromwell and bring back to England her rightful king.’

  Sister Janet’s response was delivered in a monotone that chilled Anne to her heart. ‘Fifty years ago, my father was hanged from a gibbet, his body cut down before he was dead, his entrails drawn and his corpse quartered, all at the behest of Charles Stuart’s grandfather. But do continue, Lady Anne.’

  Anne looked over to the door. It was locked, and the key was on Janet’s chain. The window had now also been locked.

  Sister Janet smiled. ‘Even wet and exhausted and no doubt brewing a fever, you could overwhelm a woman of near seventy if you wanted to. You are quite safe, Lady Anne, but it is very late, and I was asleep before your arrival. If you could get to the point of why I saw you climbing from a window at the back of the Bouchoute House in the early hours of yesterday morning, I would be most obliged. Oh, and I know about the cypher key, too. I took the trouble of copying it the other day, whilst you and Hildred were out and about in town. I imagine you thought it safer to leave it here than carry it about town on your person, but really, I would advise you to greater caution in future.’

  Unthinkingly, Anne’s hand went to the leather satchel she had kept close to her all day.

  ‘Oh, yes, I put it back amongst your belongings, my dear. I may be incorrigibly curious, but I am not a thief.’

  Now that she had a better idea of what she was dealing with, Anne felt less constrained by politeness. ‘An old woman who listens at keyholes or inspects her neighbour’s linen basket might be incorrigibly curious. A supposed nun who searches her guests’ belongings and transcribes documents she finds amongst them is something else.’

  ‘Oh? And what might that something else be?’ asked the nun.

  Lady Anne spoke very clearly. ‘A spy.’

  Sister Janet tilted her head. ‘I’d be interested to know who you think I might be a spy for.’

  Anne said nothing and the old nun continued. ‘I do, however, like to know who is – a spy, that is – especially if she is sleeping under my roof pretending to be a lady’s maid. I don’t think I have met a she-intelligencer before, Lady Anne. How very interesting.’

  Anne decided there was nothing to be gained by denying it.

  ‘And would you care to tell me who it is that you are spying on?’

  ‘I would,’ said Anne, ‘but I don’t know yet.’

  At Sister Janet’s impatient sigh, she continued, ‘The executions in London are the direct result of the betrayal to Cromwell’s intelligence agents of the plans of the Sealed Knot and the Great Trust. That betrayal has its source here in Bruges, amongst the inhabitants of the Bouchoute House.’

  ‘I see. And what did you find on your midnight expedition to that house?’

  ‘Little of interest,’ said Anne. She was not going to tell Sister Janet any more than she absolutely had to. But then the nun reminded her that it was she who held all the best cards.

  ‘Other than the book, I suppose.’

  ‘The b—’

  ‘Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler, I think, was it not? Of course, I’m not sure why you should have gone to the trouble of stealing it, when you already had a copy of your own amongst your belongings when you came to Bruges. And then to leave both here in Bruges when you left for Hoogstraten.’

  In response to Anne’s look of amazement, Janet flicked her hand. ‘It was nothing. I had another look through the items you left here in storage. Imagine my surprise to find you now had two copies of the same book – one I assume to be the one you arrived here with, the other I expect is the book I saw you tuck away in your clothing after you climbed out of the Bouchoute House window the other night. Are you very keen on fishing?’

  Anne remained silent.

  ‘Or perhaps,’ continued Sister Janet, ‘you are less talented in the use of cyphers than those who sent you here hoped?’

  Lady Anne could almost hear her own heart thumping in her breast as Sister Janet unlocked a small cabinet by her bed and produced the copy of the Izaak Walton book that she had indeed stolen, only two nights ago, from the library of the Bouchoute House, and with it a copy of the one she had arrived in Bruges wit
h. From a small drawer in the same cabinet Sister Janet produced a sheet of paper almost completely filled with columns of paired symbols. Anne recognised it straight away as a copy of the cypher entrusted to her in London by her friend Elizabeth Carey whose husband, John Mordaunt, had so recently escaped the fate of the other conspirators of the Great Trust. Without the book, Anne would have no means of entrapping the traitor in the heart of the Bouchoute House, and no means of proving to the rest that she had done so. ‘You must give that back to me, Sister Janet,’ she said.

  It was as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘It’s an ideal text, of course, as the basis for secret communications. What better than something as innocuous as a book on fishing, which might be owned and enjoyed by anyone, be they ever so humble, so long as they be literate? What more suitable for the repetition of code words which might otherwise attract attention? Each person of significance given the name of a fish – though I do not entirely think the Halibut would be happy with her code name, do you?’

  In spite of the uncertainty of her situation, Anne laughed. The exiled Queen Mother, Henrietta-Maria, would doubtless not have been flattered by the accolade.

  ‘And as for His Majesty,’ continued Sister Janet, affecting shock, ‘to be designated the Sargus, or, now, how does Walton put it?’ She made a show of leafing through until she found the correct page. ‘Ah, here it is:

  “The adult’rous Sargus . . .

  As if the honey of sea-love delight,

  Could not suffice his ranging appetite,

  Goes courting she-goats on the grassy shore,

  Horning their husbands that had horns before.”

  ‘Dear me! Think if Sister Blanche or Sister Cecily had come across this book. There would have been mass swoonings in the refectory and hysteria before compline.’ She was clearly enjoying herself as she returned the book to Anne. ‘I really must counsel you to be more careful where you keep it in future.’