[Damian Seeker 05] - The House of Lamentations

by S. G. MacLean

  The Jeruzalemkapel was a testament to death. Bruges was clogged with churches wallowing in death, as if the afterlife was a whole new order to be negotiated, and the skill to do so had to be learned now, by the living. Seeker had often thought it a wonder the Papists didn’t wear themselves out, living for two lives at once. The Calvinists had it right: once you were dead, there was nothing you or anyone else could do about it, or where you were going. The Jeruzalemkapel was different somehow from the other churches of Bruges; it didn’t mince its words, didn’t tinker with possibilities. The Jeruzalemkapel spoke to Seeker of a death that was uncompromising and eternal. The altarpiece was no paeon to weeping saints but a white sandstone Golgotha, and above it not one but three plain, empty crosses for the God who’d suffered with fallen man. Seeker liked the darkness here, the lack of choice on offer. He liked the honesty of it. He reached up a hand to touch the pliers, sculpted into the stone alongside depictions of the instruments that had been used to inflict Christ’s suffering. Men did this, mortal men. They tortured Christ and killed him. Ordinary, mortal men. If they could do that to the Son of God, what more might they do to their brothers? Plenty, thought Seeker.

  Just as he was considering leaving, Seeker heard footsteps behind him. It was George Beaumont.

  ‘I was beginning to think the good sisters of the Engels Klooster had done for you.’

  Beaumont gave an appraising smile. ‘Oh, I daresay some of them would be capable of it, if they had a mind to. But no, I spent some time at the Schuttersgilde after I left the convent. The more accustomed our fellow Englishmen are to seeing me about, the more likely they are to be less cautious in what they say when I happen to be in earshot.’

  ‘And did they say anything?’

  ‘Plenty, but nothing of any value. The most firmly held opinion is that it was the Spanish that murdered my mother. After the debacle at the Dunes, most of them are ready to blame the Spanish for anything.’

  ‘Forget about the Spaniards. The governor’s got enough on his mind trying to work out where in Flanders the French are going to march next, without worrying about an old Englishwoman. I’m going to spend tomorrow looking for the fellow we heard about at the Oude Steen, the one who had so much to say for himself “shooting the Queen of England”. He’s our route to your mother’s killer, I’m certain of it.’

  ‘If you say so,’ said Beaumont. ‘And what should I do?’

  ‘You keep an eye on the Bouchoute House. Oh, I have your money, by the way.’

  Beaumont’s eyes widened. ‘Already?’

  Seeker gave a low laugh. ‘They might as well have left it out in the back yard with a sign nailed to the box inviting passers-by to help themselves. I’ve got it stashed away safe – you can take it with you when you leave. Anyway, you keep an eye on the inhabitants. Follow them if you can – don’t bother about Ellis though. Look out for anything that might give us a hint as to when Mr Longfellow is expected to show up in Bruges, and what he plans to do when he gets here. As to the other thing . . .’

  Beaumont had been making to leave. ‘Other thing?’

  ‘The woman – Anne Winter. Did you get anywhere near her at the convent?’

  ‘I did,’ said Beaumont. ‘She struck me as a person of some courage.’

  ‘Oh, she has courage all right. But just remember what I said – she’s also the most devious woman I’ve met in over forty years on this earth. I wouldn’t trust Anne Winter as far as I could throw my horse. You be careful, Beaumont. If she’s gazing at you with those big dark eyes it’s to distract you from something else she doesn’t want you to see. I’d rather be a fly caught in a spider’s web than the man Anne Winter gets into her clutches.’

  Beaumont gave a smile of surprise. ‘I had not thought you a man to deliberate much over the enticements of women, Captain.’

  ‘I don’t. But Anne Winter’s a woman the way your sword’s a butter knife. And that’s where you’ll make your mistake. You’ll treat her like you’d treat a woman, and you’ll be done for. Don’t let down your guard with her for a minute.’

  ‘I’ll endeavour to remember that, Captain Seeker. But you may rest easy. Long experience has inured me to the charms of even the most cunning of the more delicate sex. A failed venture into the matters of the heart when I was scarcely more than a boy cured me of such sensitivities. I haven’t come to Bruges to contract new romantic entanglements.’

  George Beaumont didn’t strike Seeker like the sort of man prone to romantic entanglements – too measured, pragmatic. Too much sense.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘But you watch yourself all the same. What did you learn from her?’

  Beaumont raised his eyebrows. ‘She has discovered Ellis to be your source in the Bouchoute House but is in difficulty as to how to inform those who sent her. Her connection to my mother was to have been her principle means of communication, and now that is gone. This should at least buy Ellis some time. Will you warn him?’

  Seeker shook his head. ‘Not yet. I’d like to keep him dangling a while yet. Let’s see what the lady does for now, who she speaks to, for you can be sure she’ll try to draw someone else into her scheme.’ Seeker leaned against one of the flights of stairs leading to the gallery above the altar and took a minute to consider what George Beaumont had told him. ‘So, if her lines of communication broke with your mother’s death, that means Sister Janet’s not involved.’

  ‘No,’ said Beaumont.

  ‘Well, she’s up to something, that’s for certain.’

  It almost bothered Seeker that George Beaumont had been so successful in his first interview with Anne Winter. It was impressive that one not used to such subterfuge had carried the thing off so well. Clearly, his old adversary was greatly out of options when she was willing to trust a stranger as readily as she’d trusted George Beaumont.

  ‘And what else did you discover? What about the girl, Ruth Jones? Did Anne Winter say anything to you of her?’

  Beaumont looked uncertain but Seeker pressed on. ‘The girl whose brother was murdered after going to the Engels Klooster to look for her,’ explained Seeker.

  He could see George Beaumont thinking. ‘She said something to the effect that she was safe somewhere.’

  ‘Did she say where?’

  Beaumont took a minute again and then shook his head. ‘No, she didn’t. What do you know of this girl?’

  ‘Very little. Anyhow, that’ll have to do us for now. I’m off for my bed.’

  Beaumont looked surprised. ‘A little early, is it not?’

  Seeker laughed. ‘Nothing much changes really, does it? In England, before the war, I was a carpenter and you a gentleman. Here in Bruges I am again a carpenter and you again a gentleman. It was the war that made us something else.’

  ‘And when we go back to England?’

  Seeker looked at him a moment. ‘When we go back to England we will know if what we have made there was worth it. But for now, Major Beaumont, I’ll leave you to whatever it is a gentleman does in these hours, and I’ll bid you goodnight.’

  Nineteen

  Escape

  Thomas Faithly and Evan Glenroe had just left a tavern on the Spiegelrei when they spotted George Barton walking down the opposite canal bank, oblivious to their presence. Thomas began to lift his hand to hail him when Glenroe pressed it back down.

  ‘Don’t do it, Thomas! That fellow gives me the shivers. A colder fish than you’ll get in the German sea.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you be, Evan, if you found yourself friendless and in a foreign town? Your insistence that he should be denied admittance to the Bouchoute House . . .’

  ‘Just till Mr Longfellow has been and got clear, Thomas. We know very little about this Barton fellow. He could be anyone. One of Thurloe’s spies even.’

  ‘I’m glad you are not so untrusting of me, Evan.’

  ‘You, I have seen fight for the
king. That fellow, I’ve only heard claim to do it. Besides, have you ever seen a face that looks a more proper Puritan?’

  ‘You cannot condemn a man for his face, Evan.’

  ‘Can I not? We’ll see.’ Thomas saw a familiar, dangerous light appear in the Irishman’s eye, and before he could prevent him, Glenroe himself had hallooed over to George Barton.

  ‘Barton!’ Glenroe said as the three came together by the Poortersloge. ‘What a devil of a day it’s been. Would this heat not just about finish you?’

  ‘It is certainly very close,’ replied George.

  ‘Close!’ exclaimed Glenroe. ‘It’s like a woman I knew in Toledo. Practically had to peel her off my skin.’ He let out a long breath and gave Thomas Faithly a conspiratorial look before returning his attention to George. ‘Did you ever know a Spanish woman, Barton?’

  ‘Not in that way,’ said George. ‘Englishwomen are more to my taste.’

  ‘Well, a peachy blush on a creamy cheek and all that has its place, I’ll grant you, but how would you know, until you tried?’ pressed Glenroe.

  ‘I know,’ said George, with a finality as though he hoped to cut short the topic.

  Glenroe looked at him a little longer. ‘You English. Faithly here’s almost as bad. It’s a wonder you don’t die out. But tonight, George my friend, we’ll show you something new. See then what you think to your Englishwoman.’

  Barton looked uncomfortable and Thomas himself was curious as to what the Irishman had in mind. ‘What do you mean?’

  Glenroe looked about as if they might be overheard. ‘Tonight, we are going to the House of Lamentations.’

  ‘The brothel?’ said George.

  ‘Not a word I would use, Barton. Thomas will tell you, I’m sure, that Madame Hélène is a most accommodating woman, and it wouldn’t do to insult her hospitality by using such a term.’

  ‘Do you say it is not a brothel, this House of Lamentations?’

  Glenroe looked at him in astonishment. ‘Not a brothel? Good God, Barton, it’s a house full of whores! What do you think it is but a brothel?’ He shook his head and then leaned in closer, holding up his fingers as if offering up a jewel. ‘But you treat these women like ladies, and they will treat you like no lady on earth would even begin to. I guarantee you, one night at the House of Lamentations and you’ll never look at an Englishwoman again.’

  ‘Thank you, Sir Evan, but I have not the funds.’

  ‘Funds be damned. I’m in a generous mood tonight.’

  ‘Do I not recall you telling Ellis the other day you hadn’t a penny to your name?’

  Glenroe was dismissive. ‘Not for his damn fool schemes I haven’t. Ellis thinks he might give up the struggle, light out for Maryland, start again. He’d not get as far as Mardijk, never mind Maryland. And for what? Better die in a cause than live without one. But before I die, my friends, I intend to live a while.’

  The walls of the House of Lamentations came into view. Thomas himself had little inclination for its entertainments tonight, but George came to an abrupt halt.’ You two go on,’ he said to Glenroe and Faithly. ‘I’ve no interest in whores, and when I finally have my English wife, I don’t intend to gift her a dose of the French pox.’

  Glenroe also stopped. ‘Ah, come now, Barton. Just supper and a song, then. Tell him, Thomas – isn’t there a girl there has the sweetest voice you ever heard? Like your nurse singing to you when you were a baby. I thought I was back in Sligo listening to my own mother. It’ll make you weep.’

  Barton was unmoved. ‘Some other night, Evan.’

  Glenroe looked at him. Night had fallen above the still water of the canals and there was no one but themselves out on the street. ‘You’re a strange one, Barton, aren’t you? I’m beginning to wonder if you might not be of the other persuasion.’

  George’s voice was stony. ‘I have no interest in boys, Glenroe.’

  ‘Boys? Oh, if it was boys, I could get you boys, no problem. No, George, what I’m starting to wonder is whether you might not be a Puritan.’

  Thomas tensed, ready for the friction already in the air to break out into open aggression, but George stood his ground with notable calm. ‘And can a Puritan not also honour his King, can a Puritan not also fight in his King’s cause? Must a man be debauched in order to be loyal?’

  ‘No, George, not at all,’ said the Irishman. ‘It’s just, in these days, in Bruges, while we wait about for better news, it helps pass the time.’ Glenroe swept off his battered feathered hat in an elaborate bow and carried on down Spanjaardstraat towards the House of Lamentations, whistling.

  ‘You need not go with one of the women,’ said Thomas, ‘but will you not at least join us for supper?’

  ‘No,’ said Barton, ‘I will not.’ And without further conversation he turned and walked back up the street, in the direction of town.

  As the bats emerging from the gables of Bruges swirled in the night sky, Thomas watched George Barton’s form dissolve into the darkness, and began to wonder if Glenroe might be right about their recently arrived acquaintance.

  *

  Silence permeated the Engels Klooster in the same way that darkness engulfed it. At first it appeared impenetrable, complete, but then, just as Lady Anne’s eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and started to notice things emerge from it, so too did she become aware of sounds that in the daytime she would never have noticed: the slight rattle of a window frame, buffeted by a sudden breeze, the creak somewhere above her of a floorboard, or of a bed in a cell as she passed it, the steady breathing of a sister deep in sleep.

  There had been no possibility of sleep for Anne. After compline she had imitated all the other women in going quietly to her cell. There, she had removed only her headdress, and lain down beneath the rough woollen blanket. As the sounds of the sisters making their usual bedtime preparations had abated to be replaced by the occasional creak or snore, Anne had risen again, and moving as quietly as she could, gathered up the sack she had kept under her bed. Ruth Jones’s old brown woollen dress and green jacket were in it, laundered and dry, along with a small bag of money and the scrip of paper she had begged from Sister Olivia in the scriptorium. Her own copy of Walton’s Compleat Angler was there too, and in the cloth pocket she wore around her neck, hidden beneath her habit, were the cypher key she had carried with her from England, and the letter, addressed to Marchmont Ellis, that she had written that afternoon. She glanced down at the sandals she had been given to wear with her habit and wished she had managed to keep her shoes in the flight from the ambush by the Damme canal. There was nothing she could do about it now. Slipping the sandals into the sack with everything else, Anne lifted her candle and crept out into the corridor, closing the door of her cell behind her with as little sound as possible.

  After the heat of the day, the flagstone floor was pleasantly cool beneath her bare feet. She had six hours, she calculated, before the sisters started to rouse themselves for lauds. All day, it had felt as if the air had been building for thunder, and Anne prayed the clouds would stay, obscuring the moon, but that the thunder and lightning would leave off long enough for her to get her business done and then be gone from the convent.

  As quickly as she could, Anne moved along empty corridors to arrive, without incident, at Janet’s secret room. She managed to turn the key as easily this time as she had done the last.

  The ledgers were where she had found them before, and where she had left them. The light from her candle was not great, but it was enough for her to see and do what she needed to. She found first of all the list of Jesuit priests who had been sent to England, and the names of those families they had been forced upon. Her plan had been to copy it, but now she realised it would be quicker simply to tear the pages from the book. This she did, wincing at the sound with each rip. Next, starting with the most recent ledgers, in which were kept the accounts by the women of the Ho
use of Lamentations of the behaviour and injudicious utterances of their clients, she began to put as many of them as would fit into her sack, going back ten years. That would have to be enough. She would have liked to set light to the rest, but feared they would take too well, and burn down the convent. Instead, she poured as much as was left of her own ink, and what she could find of Sister Janet’s, over the remaining ledgers, and left it to do its worst.

  Anne put her skeleton key back in the lock, ready to turn it again, when the first rumble of thunder followed, at no great distance, the first flash of lightning. Lady Anne’s hand stopped at the lock as a shriek rang out along the corridor. Poor Sister Assumpta, whose small village on the Maas had been blasted out of existence by the endless contentions of foreign armies: the horrors of her childhood had left her fit for little but the folding of laundry. Now Assumpta screamed fit to wake half the convents in Bruges.

  Anne froze. From all directions came the sounds of those going to comfort Sister Assumpta, and of others waking, troubled by the storm. Doors were opening, more light was seeping in under the bottom of the door from the corridor. There was little hope that all the sisters would be safely back in their cells and slumbering before lauds, and none whatsoever that Lady Anne could simply walk out of the Engels Klooster in the dead of night, escaping Father Felipe and taking with her evidence of Sister Janet’s blackmailing activities, as she had planned to.