[Damian Seeker 05] - The House of Lamentations

by S. G. MacLean

  ‘Because of men like Father Felipe?’

  Beatte nodded. ‘Sister Janet knew – what he liked. If a woman or girl turned up seeking refuge at the convent, and she thought Father Felipe or others like him might prey upon her, or give her up to the men they were running from, she would bring her here, and Madame Hélène would allow her to work in the kitchens or the laundry until some other escape could be found for her.’

  ‘She brought them in by the tunnel,’ said Seeker, a hint of admiration creeping into his voice.

  ‘Yes. And they left that way too when the time came.’

  ‘And Ruth Jones was one such girl.’

  Beatte swallowed and she looked frightened again. ‘I cannot tell you anything about Ruth Jones.’

  Seeker took a step towards her, but she shrank back further against the door. He held up his hands. ‘All right, all right. I mean you no harm, believe it. But I must know more about Ruth Jones. Her brother came looking for her and the next day was dead – his body fished out of the canal beneath your window. Sister Janet, who, if what you say is true, is likely to have tried to help her, is also dead, murdered. Ruth herself and any other who tried to help her may be in grave danger. I cannot help her if you will not tell me what you know.’

  Tears had formed in the girl’s eyes and were now spilling onto her cheeks.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Has any man, any but me, come to the House of Lamentations here asking about Ruth Jones?’

  At last she nodded.

  ‘When?’ he said, almost scared to breathe lest he put her off.

  ‘The night . . . her brother had been found dead in the morning, and the man came that night.’

  ‘Who saw him?’

  ‘Anna. Only Anna,’ she said, the words from her trembling lips almost inaudible. ‘She usually worked in the kitchens but the upper-house girls were all – busy – that night. He came in well after dark, she said.’

  ‘Did she know him?’

  Beatte shook her head and sniffed. ‘But Anna wouldn’t know the patrons anyway. He scared her terribly. As soon as she said “no” to his enquiry as to whether Ruth was there, he accused her of lying. Began to threaten her. Eventually she told him that Ruth had been there, but had left that day, after her brother’s body had been found, but she didn’t know where she’d gone. The man threatened her again – threatened to do worse to her than he’d done to Ruth’ – Beatte looked up at him – ‘have you seen her face?’

  ‘I’ve heard,’ said Seeker.

  ‘Anna took fright, that he would come back when he found she’d lied to him.’

  ‘Had she lied to him?’

  Beatte nodded. ‘Ruth was still here, in the cellar – she didn’t get away to the Engels Klooster until the early hours of the next morning. Anna had used up all her courage in the lie for Ruth’s sake. She was too terrified to stay and face the Englishman should he return. She left us the next day and wouldn’t tell us where she was going for fear Ruth’s husband would make us tell him.’

  ‘Ruth’s husband?’ said Seeker.

  ‘You didn’t know it was her husband she was running from?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Tell me everything you can.’

  Beatte took a breath, a little calmer now. ‘This man had been quartered on her father’s house in their English town. He was a gentleman, an officer, and he took an increasing interest in Ruth. Ruth’s parents were greatly flattered, and so, for a time, was she. When his regiment moved on from the town, he persuaded Ruth’s parents to send her after him. The war had removed almost all the suitable young men of the town, and they were only too glad when they thought she had got a husband. Her brother was away from home, so had no say in the matter.’

  ‘What happened then?’ asked Seeker.

  ‘She travelled from her home and family to join this man. The further they journeyed from her home, the crueller he became. She got away from him once, but she had no money and no connections and he soon found her. He beat her so badly she . . .’ she looked up at him, biting her lower lip, ‘she could never have worked above stairs here, as I do.’

  ‘She’s very badly disfigured?’

  She nodded. ‘When he crossed the sea, he took her with him. She got away at last, with the help of an officer’s wife, and found her way to Bruges, where she sought refuge at the Engels Klooster. But Father Felipe didn’t like seeing her around there – he said it offended him.’ Beatte invested the word with almost more disgust than she had used in speaking of Ruth’s husband. ‘Sister Janet brought her here. When her brother was killed, Sister Janet helped her flee again. I don’t know where to.’

  ‘What was his name?’ asked Seeker.

  ‘His name? Bartlett, I think.’

  ‘Not her brother,’ said Seeker, trying to be patient, ‘the man she was running from.’

  Beatte shook her head. ‘I don’t know. She would never say. She said he would make us believe it was she who was lying and he telling the truth. She said he’d managed to do that almost everywhere they went. Do you know who he is?’

  ‘No,’ said Seeker. ‘I don’t, but I promise you, Beatte, I will find him, and I will see to it that he can never harm her again.’

  *

  After extracting all she knew from Beatte, Seeker had made haste on leaving the House of Lamentations, and by the time he reached the Dijver he could see the Cavaliers ahead of him, making for Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk. Faithly and Ellis went in at the main door of the church, whilst Daunt and Glenroe took up their positions outside. As he drew closer, Seeker saw that others – Spaniards among them – were already standing guard there and at the side doors. There was no possibility of him getting into the church undetected. He had half-suspected that that would be the case, and so turned to his remaining option: the Gruuthuse.

  Lodewijk van Gruuthuse’s palace had seen more than one incarnation since his descendants had sold it to the King of Spain. For now, it was all but abandoned, save for the wing housing the pawnbroker’s store, the mons pietatis. The town kept a guard on the place all the same, for fear of idlers and vagrants.

  The gatekeeper at the main door was sleeping when Seeker arrived, but a couple of knocks roused him.

  ‘We’re closed,’ the man grumbled. ‘Come back tomorrow.’

  ‘Can’t. I have to make my report at the Stadhuis tomorrow – there’s been talk of rotting floorboards upstairs. The Burgemeester insists that it’s looked at tonight.’

  The man looked at Seeker, craned his neck. ‘You’ve no tools tonight, John Carpenter.’

  ‘Just a report and a price – that’s all they need from me. I don’t need any tools for that.’

  The man was unimpressed. ‘What need call a carpenter to say if a floorboard is rotten or not? This town goes to the dogs.’ He let Seeker in nevertheless and passed him a lit lamp. ‘You know where you’re going?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Seeker. ‘I know where I’m going.’

  He passed quickly through a series of empty rooms and was soon going through a side door into what had been the grand entrance of the Gruuthuse palace. He’d been here once before, as part of a squad of workers doing essential repairs to the house. He’d taken time then, to admire the quality of the carving of the staircase and balustrades, the ceiling pendants and corbels, all shut off now, wasted. Tonight there was no time for any such admiration. He made his way as quickly as possible to van Gruuthuse’s oratory. The Lord of Gruuthuse had, almost two hundred years before, built a private chapel in his house and secured the permission of the church authorities to have the windows of this private chapel cut into the very walls of the neighbouring Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk. Lodewijk and his family would not mix with the lower sorts, the other wealthy merchants and burghers even, at their worship. Rather, they would sit in the grandeur of their own home and hear the mass through the windows of their oratory, which opened direct
ly above the choir of the church. ‘Good man, Lodewijk,’ Seeker murmured to himself as he passed beneath the ribbed vault of the oratory to take up his position at the window. ‘Good man.’

  He’d left his own candle in the anteroom of the private chapel for fear of attracting the notice of anyone in the church below. Beneath him, the church, a confusion of ideas laid one upon the other over the centuries, was lit as if for a feast day. In the chancel below, Charles the Bold and his daughter, Mary of Burgundy, lay, as they had done for over a hundred years, beneath their golden sepulchres, glinting in the flickering light. Above the stalls of the choir were the arms of the Knights of the Golden Fleece, who had met here once, he’d been told. It wasn’t the Knights of the Golden Fleece who met here tonight, though, and the man in whose name they met could only dream of wielding a tenth of the power that had been Charles the Bold’s.

  Faithly and Ellis were standing just beneath the altar, looking down the aisle. Armed men stood at doorways or archways leading off the side aisles to chapels or corridors of the huge church. There was no other sound or movement from anywhere in the church until suddenly the great bells in the tower began to toll the hour, and Seeker heard the oak doors at the other end of the aisle open, and a trio of brisk footsteps begin to make their way down the aisle. Edward Daunt appeared first, but Seeker couldn’t crane his neck enough to see who came behind him. He looked instead again at Thomas Faithly and Marchmont Ellis, just as each sank on one knee. And then Seeker knew. This was no Prince Rupert or Duke of Ormonde, no Duke of York either. Not Charles the Bold but that other Charles, that impoverished, rootless, vagabond Charles, that King that had never had a kingdom.

  A half-head taller than any other man in the place apart from Seeker himself, hair black as the ace of spades and the skin of a Spaniard, Charles could have been no one other than who he was, and yet Seeker knew him to have travelled half of England and many miles of the Low Countries too, in disguise. The pauper, beggar king, the man of fable. Charles leaned forward and touched Thomas Faithly on the shoulder and Thomas stood up, to be embraced. Ellis received a gracious nod and was permitted to kiss the King’s hand, no more, as if Charles already knew who was his Judas. Daunt and then Glenroe drew alongside them, and Charles addressed all of them.

  Charles was in buoyant mood, his words carrying to Seeker as the acoustics of the church did their work. ‘Our hour is almost come, friends, and the good Lord has seen to do it in the most unexpected of ways. It behoves us to give thanks, which is why I have called you to this place. We will see to the business I have come upon, but first let us give thanks.’

  It was clear to Seeker that the Cavaliers, no more than he himself, knew what they were to give thanks for. Nevertheless, the next moment they were on their knees in emulation of the man they would have as their king. Charles was praying, a litany of texts from the prayer book that had brought his father’s throne to destruction. Seeker settled to observing the men below him. It was impossible to hear now what was said, although he thought he recognised snatches of the Prayer Book that had heralded the Stuart dynasty’s downfall. Charles then rose from his knees and drew the Cavaliers closer to him. Even less of what he now told them was audible to Seeker, but it was plain to him from the expressions that appeared on their faces that they very much liked what they heard.

  The conference was short, though, and soon Charles was back on his feet and clapping his hands. ‘Now, our devotions done, a toast I think, my friends. The tide turns at last and by God! It will carry us home!’

  If any of the Cavaliers were shocked by their King’s blasphemy in such a place, they masked it well. Daunt smiled broadly and slapped Marchmont Ellis on the back. ‘You see, Ellis, did I not tell you, a little faith was all that was wanted.’ From his vantage point, Seeker could see that while Ellis’s jollity was half-hearted, Thomas Faithly looked unconvinced.

  ‘We have known false dawns before now, sir. I would urge you to caution.’

  Daunt stepped in before the King could speak. ‘Caution, Thomas? Caution be damned! God smiles on us tonight!’

  Charles reached out a hand and clapped his exuberant countryman on the shoulder. ‘I begin to believe it, my faithful Dunt. I begin at last to believe it. But let us go and celebrate this news in a more suitable place.’ And then they were all making their way back down the aisle of Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk. Seeker was instantly on his feet and sprinting back down the great stairs and through the suite of empty rooms, waking the watchman once again as he passed.

  ‘What the devil?!’ shouted the man, but Seeker didn’t stop to answer him.

  He was through the courtyard and out onto the street in time to see that Charles, surrounded still by the four Cavaliers, was headed off in the direction of the centre of town. He leaned back against a wall to catch his breath a moment, then, taking care to keep to the shadows, followed.

  At the Grote Markt Ellis suddenly quickened his pace to stand in front of the others. He said something, gestured in a direction different to where they were headed, and on Charles making some response, made a deep bow and stepped back to allow the others to continue on their way. Seeker watched as Ellis observed the others disappear towards the burg and then himself make off in the other direction, towards Vlamingstraat. Which way should he go? Seeker decided to follow Marchmont Ellis.

  Twenty-Three

  Beneath the House of Lamentations

  Anne Winter shivered. It had been cold coming through the Augustinians’ tunnel and it was little better in the cellars of the House of Lamentations. She had not thought it wise to continue to wear her nun’s cloak in town, and Ruth Jones’s old green jacket might once have been of good quality but now it was worn and thin. Anne thought of the blue velvet jacket with marten trim that she had had made in London last year, and wished she had it with her, but lady’s maids did not wear blue velvet jackets with marten trim.

  Her whole body was tense with waiting. Every unexpected sound had her on the alert. The gusts of laughter and music, or the outburst of the cook at some imaginary catastrophe in the kitchen above her were a comfort, a reminder of normal life going on close by. But down here in the cellars, with their dark recesses, their creaks and their echoes, their proximity to the depths of the canal, it was different, and Anne couldn’t help feeling apprehensive. It might well be that her ruse had not worked, and that Marchmont Ellis would either not come alone, or not come at all.

  At least someone – George Barton – would know where she was. He’d gone to arrange for the horses and the drawing up of papers that would be necessary for their departure from Bruges. He’d been certain he would have all ready, and be waiting above, in the kitchens of the House of Lamentations, to come to her aid should she need it. After her appointment with Marchmont Ellis, he’d assured her, there would be nothing more to detain either of them in this city.

  The bells of Bruges began to ring: it was eleven. Anne watched the door at the far end of the cellar. She’d learned of the tunnel and the sanctuary it led to in a letter from Ruth Jones that she’d found amongst Sister Janet’s papers. She’d told Marchmont Ellis to come this way. She’d placed a candle in the sconce by the tunnel door, so that she might know for certain who came through it. As the muffled sound of the last peal of bells died away into the night, the handle started to turn.

  The door opened and she saw him. ‘Marchmont Ellis,’ she said, stepping into the light.

  Ellis’s eyes met hers in shock. ‘You!’

  Anne felt a little rush of power at the look on the turncoat’s face. ‘Who had you been expecting?’

  ‘Someone – else.’ He looked about him, as if that someone else might materialise from the darkness. ‘The letter – the code.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The code by which you have been communicating your information back to London, to Secretary Thurloe.’

  ‘Through John Carpenter,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t he forewarn me of th
is?’

  She looked at him quizzically. Something Sister Janet had said hovered in the shadows of her mind. ‘And who is John Carpenter?’

  ‘Surely you know, if you have come from Mr Thurloe?’

  Anne smiled. ‘But I have not. I have been sent here by the Great Trust to uncover the traitor who has been delivering our every plan to Cromwell’s agents. If this John Carpenter is someone you are working with then I think I must deliver to him the same message I have for you. Your time is up.’

  Marchmont Ellis looked genuinely amazed. ‘Astonishing. Absolutely astonishing, Mistress whatever-your-name-is. This is really quite amusing. But I have been getting bored of Bruges. I had decided to leave anyway. Your happy revelation has given me a much better idea. A transaction, if you like.’

  He moved towards her and Anne tried to step back another pace but found her way blocked by the stack of barrels. ‘There will be no transactions between us,’ she said. ‘You will sign the paper I have prepared and your family will be permitted to live with honour. If you do not sign it, your treachery will be published across England.’

  Ellis now let out a small explosion of laughter. ‘My treachery published? By whom?’

  She wanted to knife him that very minute but controlled the impulse. ‘By those you have wronged, or those who are left, at least. By the men and women of the Sealed Knot and the Great Trust, whose brothers-in-arms your betrayal sent to Cromwell’s dungeons and then his scaffold.’

  He looked a little chastened, but soon recovered himself. ‘That’s a pretty speech, but we have hardly the time for pretty speeches. If we go now, I can lay my hands on more money than you have ever seen. We can be gone from Bruges, you and I, go our separate ways into Europe and no one ever find either of us.’

  ‘You are mad, I think,’ was all she said in reply.