[Damian Seeker 05] - The House of Lamentations

by S. G. MacLean

  The vagabond nodded and eagerly took the coin, and Seeker began to run again, away from Sint-Jans and down across the canal towards the Beeste Markt and then ’t Zand. Long before the spire of the Blindekenskapel came into view, the sound of Thomas Faithly coming after him had dissolved on the air. At the church, Seeker stopped at last and leaned against the door a moment to catch his breath. Then he looked across at the little house that was George Beaumont’s refuge in Bruges.

  Seeker was troubled by George Beaumont. It wasn’t just the inconsistency in the timing of what Beaumont claimed to have learned from Anne Winter about the Jesuits, nor Seeker’s suspicion that it was because Beaumont actually knew where she was. It was more that there had been something not right in Beaumont’s reaction to learning the identity of his mother’s killer. The man had claimed that finding his mother’s killer had been his prime motivation for coming to Bruges and yet he had displayed very little emotion at hearing Seeker’s revelation, or curiosity as to the whereabouts of his family’s money. He was beginning to wonder if there was some other reason George Beaumont had come to Bruges. That he had seen no sign of the officer anywhere since their conversation much earlier in the evening, despite the many dramas of the night, had done nothing to reassure him. George Beaumont should have been anywhere tonight but at home, but as he looked across the street, Seeker could discern a glimmer of light where the old red shutters of Beaumont’s cottage’s window did not quite meet.

  Seeker crossed the street and approached the house with care. He looked at the door which did not appear to have been interfered with. He put his ear to it but heard nothing. The gap between the shutters afforded him very little information to begin with, but then, just as he was about to pull away, a movement past the window temporarily obscured the light.

  Seeker went back to the door and rapped softly. He caught the sound of a slight movement and then utter stillness. He rapped again: nothing at all this time. He recognised this silence: it was the silence of someone trying very hard to make no noise at all. This was a time when his carpenter’s tool-belt would have been extremely useful, but as it was, in his dressing for his assignation at the House of Lamentations, he had come out without having brought his special keys or even a chisel with which to gain entrance to the place. There was nothing for it, and it would no doubt attract attention in this quiet street at this hour of the night, but he had no option. He stepped back and kicked hard. The door flew open with a minimum of resistance.

  The room was empty, the candle flickering alone in the middle of a table on which sat the residue of a simple meal. Seeker crossed quickly to the back door, but it was bolted from the inside. Whoever had been moving about in here a few minutes ago must still be in the house. Seeker lifted the candle and stooped to check beneath the bed: nothing but a chamber pot and a pair of brown shoes. There was only one other place in the cottage anyone could be. Seeker raised his eyes towards the hatch in the ceiling. At the top of the ladder, evidently having had no time to go any further, were the soles of a pair of feet, almost obscured at the back by folds of brown woollen cloth hanging down around them.

  ‘Come down, whoever you are.’

  The feet disappeared up the ladder. Swearing, Seeker bounded up after them. He swore again as he reached the top and made the error of standing up, banging his head on the central beam of the roof before he was more than halfway straightened. He lifted the candle to see that a few yards away, watching him with a modicum of fear overlaid by a much greater degree of defiance, was Lady Anne Winter.

  He groaned. ‘You! Again? I left you at the House of Lamentations. What, in the name of all that’s holy, are you doing here?’

  She lifted her chin and Seeker saw that her face was still streaked with blood and dirt from the attack by Marchmont Ellis. The bruises were already deepening too. ‘I would ask you the same question.’

  ‘Aye, I’ve no doubt you would. But where’s George Beaumont? What have you done with him?’

  ‘Beaumont . . . no. This is George Bart—’ but even as she said the name, he could see realisation dawn on her. ‘No. It can’t be.’

  Seeker let her disbelief fill the air a moment. Then, he said, ‘Oh, but I’m afraid it is, Lady Anne. Now where is he?’

  That she was genuinely shocked to learn the true identity of the man was clear.

  ‘Come on, Lady Anne, you know how it works. I mean, it’s not as if you were here under your own name either, is it? Lady Hildred’s maid? And then a nun? They’ll laugh at that one a good long time in Whitehall. I almost smiled myself. I’ll ask again – where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, her look distracted as she tried to untangle what he was saying to her.

  ‘Come on. I haven’t the time for this.’

  She spoke slowly, as if the ideas were only coming to her through a fog. ‘He’s gone to get us horses – and papers.’

  ‘He told you you’d be leaving together?’

  She nodded.

  ‘How long ago did you last see him?’

  ‘Hours,’ she said. ‘He was supposed to be there – in the kitchens of the House of Lamentations – when I met with Ellis below. But he wasn’t there. I thought he might have come back here.’

  Seeker didn’t like this news one little bit. Earlier in the evening he’d told Beaumont to look for Anne Winter, but it was plain now that Beaumont had already known where she was. Nevertheless, he hadn’t been, as he’d promised her, at the House of Lamentations, and he hadn’t been with the Cavaliers either, so where was he?

  ‘And he is really Lady Hildred’s son?’

  ‘Aye, he is. And he risked a great deal to come to Bruges to find her killer. Or at least that’s why he said he’d come.’

  ‘And he has been working with you?’

  ‘Lucky for you, or I might never have followed Marchmont Ellis to the House of Lamentations tonight.’

  ‘But Marchmont Ellis was also working for you – you are John Carpenter.’ She looked away and then back at him in disgust. ‘Are you real, Damian Seeker? Is there to be no escape from you? Was even Hell not enough to hold you? You were supposed to be dead! I was even sorry for it.’

  ‘I’m very touched. But as you can see, I’m not dead, Marchmont Ellis is, and neither of us know for sure about George Beaumont. You’d better tell me everything you know. Where did he say he going to get the horses?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And the papers he spoke of? Who was he to get those from?’

  Again, ‘I don’t know.’

  Seeker was exhausted. He let out a long breath of frustration and squatted down on his haunches opposite her, setting the candle down beside him. His head touched the sloping roof. He leaned his elbows on his knees and screwed up his eyes a moment, trying to clear his thoughts. It was when he opened them again that he saw it.

  ‘Dear God,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Lady Anne was looking at him, but he was looking past her to the end of the attic. He raised the candle the better to see.

  ‘Dear God,’ he said again. And then, slowly, he turned to Anne Winter. ‘What did you tell George Beaumont, Lady Anne, of how you effected your escape from the ambush in which his mother was killed?’

  She screwed up her face. ‘What has that to do with anything? I told him I had exchanged places with a girl Sister Janet was helping to flee the town.’

  ‘Ruth Jones,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Ruth Jones.’

  Seeker took a deep breath. ‘And did you tell him where Ruth Jones is now?’

  Anne Winter nodded. ‘Yes, that as far as I knew, she was still at the house of the Grote Sterre, in Damme.’ She turned to look in the direction in which he was staring: the far corner of the small attic. What Seeker was illuminating by the light of his candle was a wooden stand and hanging from the stand were a large black felt hat and a g
ood grey woollen suit. They were the clothes he’d been searching for, the clothes worn by the man with whom Bartlett Jones had last been seen alive.

  Twenty-Five

  De Grote Sterre

  The house was very quiet now that that the Spanish governor and most of his soldiers had left. Ruth wondered how close they were now to Brussels and hoped that the French would not have got there before them. She liked the Spaniards. She liked the formality of the officers and the friendliness of the men; she liked the way their religion allowed beauty and beautiful things. The intonations of their priests, so little of which she could understand, sounded like poetry to her, and devoid of the endless haranguing of the Puritan preachers who had so enraptured George.

  How was it she had not realised, at the very beginning, that it was not possible that someone like George Beaumont could truly have loved her? He had been like no man she had ever met, certainly not like her brother’s friends. Bartlett’s friends had been so coarse – farm boys and merchant’s apprentices. Her mother’s prohibition on Ruth having anything to do with them had been unnecessary – she’d had no inclination whatsoever to make their acquaintance. And then the army had come into their town and her father and the other aldermen had gone out to meet them and to assure the commanders of the town’s good morals and affection to the Protector.

  George had been billeted on their house and had charmed them all. It might have been different had Bartlett not been from home at the time. Bartlett might have noticed as she had not, at first, that George accommodated himself too easily to the stated interests of others, paid too much court to their mother’s empty prattle. For herself, at first, George had kept a polite distance, but before long he was exhibiting a strong interest in her welfare and her comfort. She’d been flattered, for a time. An older man, handsome and an officer – no one like that had ever paid attention to Ruth before. But then, after a while, George had spoken to her mother, advising against permitting Ruth the freedom to walk around the town in the company of her friends as she was used to do, for fear of the rowdier elements in the army. When Ruth had protested that the New Model had no rowdy elements, her mother had scolded her, told her the captain knew better.

  George was often with them when he was not required on army business, or to be going back and forth to London. He spoke of the immorality of London women and the immodesty with which they conducted themselves. He spoke of his admiration for the simpler, plainer dress of the Puritan woman, whose inner beauty shone through all the more clearly for that it was not obscured by vanities of ribbon and fripperies of lace. Privately, Ruth’s father chided her mother, and told her to look better to her daughter’s wardrobe. Ruth’s pretty silk gowns – her favourite blue, and the yellow embroidered with scrolls of flowers – were removed to be replaced by deep black stuff, her pretty lace falling-bands displaced by plain linen partlets and collars.

  George had been taken aback at her level of learning. Never had he come across a young woman of such intellect and promise. He had surveyed her little library and found it charming but wanting. It would be no trouble, he told her mother, for him to bring more suitable reading material for Ruth, when next he journeyed back from London. He hinted that there were certain qualities he looked for in a wife, and that Ruth certainly came closest of all the young women he had encountered, to what would be required from the future mistress of Beaumont Manor. Her parents had lost no time in enquiring what other qualities George looked for, and how Ruth’s deficiencies might be suitably made up. George had been magnanimous. He felt sure Ruth was such a God-fearing and biddable young woman, that he could address any small difficulties himself.

  No one consulted Bartlett about his sister’s welfare, and no one consulted Ruth. She, at first carried away that such a man should have such an interest in her, had in time begun to question whether she was up to the task of being Lady of Beaumont Manor. A question had also whispered itself in her mind as to whether she truly wished to be the submissive, obedient, good Puritan wife of George Beaumont. Her mother hushed her doubts and Ruth allowed herself to be carried along with the excitement of the planned wedding. It would not be an ostentatious affair, of course, but there was still much to be done.

  And then had come the news that George’s company was to be called away, to ready for war in the Low Countries, against the Spaniards and the treacherous supporters of Charles Stuart. George was to travel instantly – there was no time for even the simplest wedding, but he assured Ruth’s parents that if they would but send her after him to the coast, they would certainly be married there. Ruth had been despatched, two days after the departure of the troops, for Portsmouth.

  And there in Portsmouth George had married her – or so he claimed, although it did not seem like any wedding or marriage ceremony that Ruth had ever known. The wedding breakfast had been without friends or family or any adornment, the deflowering without tenderness or preamble, a vicious awakening to the realities of her new situation. Ruth’s attempt to flee their lodging had been thwarted by the landlady, who had been well paid in advance against such an eventuality. A package and letter sent by her mother had been returned with a note that the regiment and all in its train had already left the town. Day by day, things had grown worse, until eventually, belittled and brutalised, she had been told to tidy herself up and make herself respectable, and fit to go out in the world like other officers’ wives. The walk from their lodging to the harbour had been a short one, and Ruth had boarded the ship like a woman already dead.

  There had been brief moments of hope. The Spaniards might sink their ship, the French might forget that they were now friends of Cromwell’s English rather than their foes; she could break free from the other women long enough to throw herself over the side and into the foam below. Brief moments of hope, and all futile, but no disappointment had been so great as when George had returned, all but unscathed, from the Battle of the Dunes. Ruth had prayed, every hour he had been gone, for his death, but God clearly had had other business on hand that day.

  Dunkirk, though, had been the saving of her. George had been too busy with his new duties, in establishing English control of the town, to pay her as much attention as he would have liked, and Ruth had used her time wisely. She had made friends, used the limited French she had to learn something of where she was, of how far away the ‘enemy’ Spanish-held territory lay, of where their seat of power was. Little by little, Ruth had managed to transmit an idea of her plight to those inhabitants of the town who were no friends to their new masters, and in not much more than a week, she had learned of a place of sanctuary where Cromwell’s officers would never be allowed to set foot: an English convent, in Bruges.

  All that remained was for her to find the courage to leave. And then George had given her the courage. He had come home one night and found his supper not to his liking. As Ruth had cowered in the corner, he had slowly removed his belt. She had scrabbled like a rat for some means of escape but had found none. She had been glad that night of the thick black puritan dress and its staunch linen collar, but there had been no protection for Ruth’s face, and George had seen to it that he fashioned her a face that, he told her, would cure her of her weakness for the looking glass.

  ‘You will tell people you tripped in the stables and caught your face on the side of a shovel,’ he’d said, as he’d tied on his belt once more and straightened his jacket to his satisfaction. Through torn, bleeding lips, Ruth had promised him that he would never again find fault with the supper she made for him.

  She had been so cautious in her leaving the next day, and yet he had almost caught her. He had returned earlier than planned from a meeting of the governing military council, to find her gone from their lodging at a time when he had not authorised her to be so. It had taken very little effort on his part to beat the truth out of their terrified housekeeper, and George had very soon been on her trail. But somehow, by some providence of the God that she had almost stopped b
elieving in, he came within sight of her just after she had crossed into Spanish territory. He had fired off a shot after her, but she was just out of his range and he’d missed. And the last thing she had heard as she’d run for her life, was the sound of his promise that he would come after her, and he would find her.

  She had found her way, in time and through the kindness of strangers, to Bruges. The gatekeepers at the city walls had been dubious at first, about this foreign woman who looked at best to be a camp-follower, until she had said the name she had been given by her well-wishers in Dunkirk. The name had opened the gates to her, and several doors thereafter: Sister Janet. A kindly carter had taken her then – she had not even had to walk – through this strange new town of canals and spires, through streets and over bridges right to the front of the Engels Klooster. A novice at the gate had taken her through the small courtyard and into an anteroom, where she’d left Ruth waiting on a bench. When the short, portly old nun had come to the iron gate saying, ‘Well, my dear, I have not the whole night to wait upon visitors, so I suppose you had better come in,’ Ruth had collapsed at her feet.

  And that had been Ruth’s sanctuary until the day the Spanish priest, Father Felipe, had caught sight of her. Her ruined face had displeased him, had ‘offended’ his eyes. ’Surely,’ he’d said to Sister Janet in her hearing, ‘such a face could only be a mark of God’s displeasure?’ That night, Sister Janet had led Ruth away to the House of Lamentations where she would be safe, until a way out of the town and a new and better sanctuary could be arranged.