‘What have you done?’
‘Nothing, but when I called there yesterday they wouldn’t let me in.’
Seeker refrained from telling him he already knew that. ‘Why not?’ he said.
‘Glenroe’s decision. Thomas Faithly was very apologetic. They’re expecting a new arrival there and they’re all on edge. No recent or new acquaintances allowed.’
‘Who are they expecting?’
Beaumont shook his head. ‘I contrived an encounter with the scullery maid at the Vismarkt this morning. She wasn’t very forthcoming. The cook muttered something about Mr Longfellow or something like it. Whoever it is, they don’t want any strangers around, especially not English strangers. It’s been made plain to me that I am not to show my face there again.’
‘Have they ever spoken of this “Longfellow” before?’
‘No. Not in my hearing.’
‘And do you plan to leave Bruges now?’
Beaumont shook his head. ‘Not until I’ve got what I came for.’
‘All right. Well, I still haven’t tracked down this “Piet” who brags of having shot your mother, but I will. What of the money she took with her out of England – are you any closer to discovering what they have done with it?’
‘I’m certain it’s somewhere in the house. Every time any of the four of them come back from somewhere, the first thing they do is go scuttling up the stairs to check upon something. They’ve never left me alone in the house long enough that I can do the same.’
‘All right. Leave that to me,’ said Seeker. ‘I have another job for you.’
Beaumont’s face became stony. ‘I’m not one of your agents, Seeker.’
‘This is to do with finding your mother’s killer. If you have some other reason for being in Bruges that you’ve neglected to apprise me of, you’d best tell me now. You’ve deliberately come into hostile territory and have sought me out. Every encounter, every conversation I have with you risks exposing us both. Now, you can walk out of here and go your own way, you see to your business and I to mine, and we need never acknowledge each other in the street nor anywhere else again. Or you can help me, and I you.’
Beaumont said nothing but took a draught of his beer, as if deliberately to calm himself. He nodded his acquiescence.
‘Good,’ said Seeker. ‘Now, the point of you being in the Bouchoute House was to get close to the Cavaliers. It’s not something I can do myself – there is too great a likelihood that Thomas Faithly would recognise me. As to the house itself, though, I can get access to it as long as they’re not in it. I’ll get myself in there and find out where they have stashed your mother’s money. I’ll get it out of there if I can.’
‘And what do you wish me to do?’
‘The English convent. The older of the two nuns that you met with Glenroe in the street . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘She has her eye on me too. And as to what it is has Glenroe’s back up, I don’t know, but she’s sheltering the woman the Royalists have sent over to sniff out Mr Thurloe’s spy, and I’d wager she’s doing it knowingly.’ As Seeker told George Beaumont about Anne Winter and her being incognito at the English Convent, he could see Beaumont’s interest growing.
‘The one accompanying this Sister Janet when she and Glenroe had their exchange in the street – she was my mother’s maid?’
‘That’s what she was passing herself off as when she first came to Bruges at any rate.’
George shook his head as if in admiration. ‘Well, that I would never have guessed. I remember thinking it was a pity she was a nun.’
‘What?’ said Seeker, not liking the way this remark was tending.
‘Well,’ said George, smiling in an almost devil-may-care way that Seeker would not have thought him capable of, ‘she’s too fine-looking a woman to be wasting away in a nunnery, do you not think?’
‘No,’ said Seeker, ‘I do not! She is a spider, a viper, a vixen more cunning than any you have ever run to ground. Don’t forget it, not for a moment. She has but one aim in sight, one purpose: the restoration of Charles Stuart to the throne of England. Nothing else. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Very much so,’ said George, his face becoming more serious. ‘Not a woman to keep her place.’
Tell me a woman of worth who does, Seeker wanted to say. Never in his life had he encountered a woman who meant anything to him who would have done something simply because he told her to. But it wasn’t George Beaumont’s business to know his life. ‘No,’ he said instead, ‘she is not.’
George Beaumont contemplated his beer for a moment. ‘And do you think she is in some way connected with the death of the young Englishman who went to the convent, searching for his sister?’
‘That I don’t know. It’s one of the reasons I need you to find a way into that convent, but not the main one. I need you to find out how much Anne Winter knows about Marchmont Ellis.’
‘About Ellis?’ queried Beaumont. But then his face cleared. ‘Marchmont Ellis is your source in the Bouchoute House.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Why have you chosen to tell me of this now?’
‘Because he’s gone rogue. This “Mr Longfellow” that’s coming to the Bouchoute House – I should have heard it from Ellis, not you. That means he’s planning some way out, probably involving your mother’s money. He hasn’t kept up his side of our bargain, and that releases me from mine. He has no right, any more, to my protection. But I need to know what he’s up to, and I need to know how much Anne Winter has discovered about him, and me. Sister Janet is already becoming suspicious of my visits and my questions, and Anne Winter knows me far too well. I can’t show my face around the Engels Klooster as long as she’s there.’
‘But I can,’ said Beaumont, understanding.
Seeker nodded. ‘Let them get used to seeing you. See what you can learn, and I’ll attend to the business of your mother’s money.’
Agreeing when they would next meet, they parted company, Seeker to his lodgings in Sint-Gillis, Beaumont to his over at ’t Zand.
Back in his stable loft, Seeker was troubled. Whatever Sister Janet was concealing at the Engels Klooster would come to light in the end, and he had a feeling that whatever it was might prove to be just as bad news for his enemies in Bruges as it would be for him. What troubled him more though was the imminent visitation to the Bouchoute House that had put its inhabitants so much on the alert. Mr Longfellow. Seeker had guessed as much even before Beaumont had mentioned the name he’d got out of the scullery maid. Intelligence sent to Whitehall, and arrived some days ago back out in Flanders, had spoken of a ‘Mr Longfellow’ as a Royalist of the highest standing. It was suspected that Mr Longfellow was one of three people: the indefatigable Irish intriguer the Duke of Ormonde, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, or perhaps even James, Duke of York. The Bouchoute House was getting ready for the arrival of someone of the utmost importance to Charles Stuart’s cause, coming back to Bruges to fetch for themselves the money brought there by Lady Hildred Beaumont. It was not so much, in itself, the imminent return to the city of such a person that bothered Seeker, as the fact that Marchmont Ellis had very signally failed to inform him of it.
Even so, Seeker might have closed his eyes and slept, in the knowledge that the best manner of his proceeding would be clearer to him when he woke, had it not been for the letter in his possession that had been passed to him tonight by his landlady on his return from De Garre. It was in Lawrence Ingolby’s hand.
With a degree of foreboding, Seeker broke the seal and opened it.
August, 1658, Clifford’s Inn
I waste no time with niceties, that I might catch the next posts.
You should know that Maria has at last been dissuaded from attempting to make her way to you in Bruges, not, you will understand, from any common sense that has been spoken to her by
myself or Elias – the woman is beyond the reach of such argument, and how you think you will manage her is beyond me. Between us we had laid before her, in no uncertain terms, and with a degree of embellishment on Elias’s part, the dangers to anyone attempting to journey in Flanders whilst Cromwell’s forces still fight it out with the Spaniards and the Duke of York, to say nothing of the added complexities of the French.
Seeker had smiled at that. Lawrence was far down the road to becoming a lawyer if he could speak of the carnage involving Turenne’s troops as ‘complexities’. He’d read on.
It was Dorcas, of all people, who brought her to a better understanding of the likely consequences of the course she was set upon. She it was who made Maria see what might befall her should she be taken by some foreign force in her attempts to get to Bruges, and then she laid before her quite plainly the fate of women decreed to be camp followers. She asked if Maria would have you have that on your conscience. As if your welfare was of the chief importance! And, fearing that might not be enough, Dorcas added in for good measure that Maria’s arrival in Bruges might alert ‘nefarious individuals’ to the fact that you were firstly, not dead, and secondly, in that city.
As to Elias, since the birth of his child – a girl named Hope, and healthy, thank God – he is more set than ever on Massachusetts. He has secured passage for himself, Grace and the baby, Samuel and Maria (whether she wishes it or not) on George Tavener’s ship, The Blade, on its last sailing of the year for Boston. He can stomach no longer the England that he sees – the shutting down of Parliament, the disregarding of Justice and proper Law, the patent greed and power-mongering of those who claim to speak in the name of the people. He’s off to make a new world. Good luck to him, but I’m staying put, for whatever’s coming.
And there is something coming. Marvell has told me. Cromwell’s shut himself up in Hampton Court – Thurloe’s put it about that it’s for grief of his daughter, but Marvell tells me the grief has just about finished him and now he’s truly ill. The Committee of State hovers around him and urges him to name a successor. A successor! God knows what will happen if he dies but have no fears for Manon and Dorcas – I’m going nowhere.
Seeker read over the letter twice. Only the last sentence gave him any hope. For all Lawrence Ingolby looked like a reed that might be blown over by the wind, that was deceptive. An early childhood with a feckless mother had taught him to handle himself like a street rat. But also, Lawrence was clever and Lawrence was loyal. There was no one he would sooner trust with the safety of his daughter. Even so, should Cromwell die now, the struggle for control between army and Parliament would make of England a new bloodbath. Seeker needed to get home. And he needed to get home soon. It was already late August, and he knew George Tavener’s last ship of the year would leave on its voyage across the Atlantic before the end of the month. He crushed the letter in his hands. He needed this business of Bruges to be finished with and he needed to get home.
Fifteen
Hiding Places
Thomas Faithly had breakfasted early and left the Bouchoute House before any of his companions were awake. He had never slept well in the heat and was glad at last to be out in the light rather than tossing and turning through the darkness of the night. The impending arrival of the expected visitor to the Bouchoute House was also preying on his mind. At least out of doors the breeze could be felt, and the sun was just starting to creep up over the horizon. He wanted time to think and space to do it in. He headed outwards from the Markt towards the walls and water that ringed the city.
A good bit before its outer edges, Bruges became a garden city, and the bustle of town life gave way to the sounds of countryside. The rhythm of myriad mill blades as they creaked in the wind above the canal relaxed him and helped the clarity of his thinking as he walked. Rumours had reached Bruges that Cromwell was ill. And then what? Perhaps God was finally taking issue with things in England, perhaps the tide was indeed about to turn. He had no doubt that that would be Mr Longfellow’s message when he came. Perhaps Thomas would at last be able to go home.
He’d been following the outer ring of walls and windmills of the city for some time and was almost at the Smedenpoort in the south-west when, to his surprise, he saw George Barton emerge from a street off to his left. He lifted an arm and called out, ‘Barton.’
Barton appeared not to have heard him and so Thomas called again. This time, after the briefest of hesitations, his fellow Englishman did seem to realise that it was he who was being hailed and looked his way, smiling and lifting his arm in response a moment later.
‘What brings you to this part of town at so early an hour?’
‘I might ask you the same question,’ George answered.
Thomas told him briefly of his restlessness, and his desire to be away from the hubbub of town.
‘Then we are afflicted by the same ailment,’ George said.
They walked on together in companionable silence for a few minutes and then Thomas said, ‘Do you miss home, Barton?’
George stopped for a moment, as if to consider. ‘Not unduly,’ he said at last. ‘My father is long dead, and I never really got on with my mother.’
‘You have no wife or sweetheart waiting for your return?’
‘No,’ said George, and walked on, as if he had nothing more to say on the matter. But then he stopped again. ‘I did love a girl once, a long, long time ago. Before the war, even, if you can imagine that. Her father had the living of the church in our local village. My father had the patronage of the church and so my mother regarded the vicar and his family as little more than menials. When she learned of my affection for Elizabeth, she made sure her father would never allow my suit. He even refused me permission to see her. But even that was not enough for my mother. I came back from Cambridge the following summer to find a new vicar in the pulpit and Elizabeth and her father gone.’
Thomas, who knew from his own family how manipulative some could be in matters of the heart that didn’t suit them, murmured some words of sympathy.
‘Thank you, my friend,’ said George, ‘but I got over it long ago. No doubt I’ll find myself a suitable wife. If such a thing exists, when the present struggle is over.’
‘Possibly even here in Bruges?’ suggested Thomas.
‘I doubt such a woman is to be found in Bruges,’ replied George.
Something in his tone was shaded by that rigidity, that hint of Puritanism, that Thomas had seen in George Barton before. And, perhaps, in fact, he was right, given the only women other than their own servants, with whom they had contact in Bruges were inhabitants either of the convent or the brothel. And George, he recalled, had politely declined any invitations they had made that he might accompany them to the House of Lamentations.
After they had breakfasted at a tavern by the Minnewater they continued their walk around the outer walls until they had passed the Kruispoort and found themselves at the top of Carmersstraat. ‘This is where I must leave you, Barton,’ Thomas said. ‘Unless you will join me for a while at the Schuttersgilde? Ellis, Daunt and Glenroe are to meet me there, but I don’t expect them for an hour yet.’
Thomas felt awkward at the manner of his invitation, but the truth was that Glenroe had taken against George and refused to trust him in their company. George Barton saved him further embarrassment by declining his invitation. ‘I hoped to gain admittance to the Engels Klooster there,’ he said, pointing down the street. ‘I believe His Majesty was in the habit of worshipping there when he was in town, and I hoped I might similarly make my devotions.’
‘Mind out for Sister Janet, then. Her tongue is as sharp as a butcher’s cleaver. But I am sorry you will not come in with me. Glenroe says you have the keenest eye with a bow that he has seen in a long time.’
Barton laughed. ‘If you should have learned one thing in this city, Faithly, surely it would be never to believe a word that Irishman says.’ Still
laughing, he continued down the street in the direction of the Engels Klooster, as Thomas turned to knock at the door of the Schuttersgilde.
*
Seeker had watched Ellis, Daunt and Glenroe leave their house together and cross the Markt a good while after Thomas Faithly had done the same thing, although Faithly had gone off in a different direction. Marchmont Ellis had a haunted, slightly distracted look to him, and trailed somewhat behind the others. Seeker had been of a mind to summon him last night, and ask why he had not informed him of the imminent visit to Bruges of a senior Royalist, but to have called him out so late would have risked exposure that might have been too damaging in its scope. As the three passed, Seeker moved slightly out of the doorway of the baker’s shop where he had positioned himself. He made sure Ellis saw him as they passed, and the man seemed then to shrink in upon himself before hurrying on. Seeker had seen it before, an agent taking fright; much worse in a double agent, a man who had been turned and persuaded to betray his first cause. Such men – and women – risked the vengeance of both sides, should they be found out. He wondered how long it was before Marchmont Ellis broke completely and attempted to run.
Whatever the Cavaliers were about so early, it was the ideal opportunity for Seeker to make another visit to the Bouchoute House. He lost no time in presenting himself at the kitchen door of the house and being admitted. His carpenter’s bag and a reminder that he was here to fix the broken lock on the cabinet in the library were all that were required to get past what passed for security in this shambolic household.
The library was much as he had left it – apart from one thing. On his previous visit there had been a gap where Walton’s Compleat Angler had sat, but the book now appeared to have been returned to its place. Seeker picked up the volume and flicked through it. It was the same edition of the book he had handed to Ellis for use as a cypher, and in fact the same copy. He wondered to what extent this fool had exposed himself in order to retrieve it.
[Damian Seeker 05] - The House of Lamentations Page 17