[Damian Seeker 05] - The House of Lamentations

by S. G. MacLean

  Only once, during her time in Bruges, had Sister Janet pressed her for the name of the man from whom she had fled, but Ruth wouldn’t tell her. She knew George. She knew how he charmed people without seeming to be charming, won them over, made them believe him over anything anyone else might say. And she was George Beaumont’s wife. As far as she or anyone else knew or understood, she was his wife. Would even a Papist nun deny his rights over his own wife? So Ruth told no one the name of her tormentor, and waited for the day she could disappear even deeper into Spanish territories and even further away from him.

  Sometimes, when she was not busy at her work in the convent garden, or later in the kitchen or laundry of the House of Lamentations, Ruth had let herself imagine that perhaps the one person who she knew would take her part against George Beaumont would receive the letter she had smuggled out to him from Dunkirk just before she’d left, that he’d make his way, somehow, to Bruges, and find her. Last thing before she settled to sleep each night, whether in her little cell high up in the convent or her basement hiding place in the House of Lamentations, she would look out of her window, telling herself that soon she would see Bartlett, walking down the street to find her. Even so, she had hardly been able to believe it when, one night, she had received a note from Sister Janet telling her that a man calling himself Bartlett Jones and claiming to be her brother had called that day at the Engels Klooster. Ruth had read over the note again and again, looking for some invisible sign in it that what it said was true, and not some cruel hoax of George’s devising. She had scarcely been able to breathe for the next long hours as she had watched the streets leading to the house, such was her fear, such was her hope. She had determined to watch all night, if need be. But somehow, sleep had taken her, and the sight that had greeted her when next she’d looked out through the bars of the basement window had almost finished her. Bartlett, lying dead on the Spaanse Loskaai, canal water in his hair and a bloody gash at his throat. She’d known then no one would believe her, she was certain, but Ruth knew. George – who else could it be? George was in Bruges and he was coming to find her.

  But now, through the miraculous intervention of Sister Janet, and the help of the maidservant who had been so eager to exchange places with her, she was here, in the house of the Spanish military governor, in Damme. There had been an irony, she realised, in her having sat at George’s mother’s side, like the most loving and dutiful of daughters-in-law, tending to the old woman’s comfort as she’d died. She had not told Lady Hildred of the irony, for fear it might somehow add to her pain. But now Lady Hildred was dead, and terrible news had come to Damme from Bruges only that evening that Sister Janet was also dead. Ruth had taken herself away and prayed that God would be merciful to Janet, as Janet had been tender and merciful to her. She’d traced her hands over the scars that Janet had taken such care to tend to. In her mind, she saw again the tenderness in the old nun’s eyes as she’d carefully applied salves and ointments and heard her curse the evil that men do. Even as she’d heard the news of Janet’s death, Ruth could feel George’s presence. She could feel him coming closer. Her skin prickled at the thought of it; she was almost certain she could smell him.

  But one hope remained to her. The news of Sister Janet’s murder had been carried to Damme only incidentally, the main reason for the Spanish messenger’s despatch being the rumour, reported in several quarters of the town, that Charles Stuart, King of Scotland, had come to Bruges for Lady Hildred’s money, and would be passing through Damme next day as he journeyed once more northwards. Ruth would throw herself on the King’s mercy and beg to be allowed to travel in his train. She cared nothing any more for her name, and her honour had been torn from her. She cared nothing more for hunger, or cold, or fatigue, or work with little dignity and no wage. All Ruth cared was that George Beaumont would never touch her again.

  The house of De Grote Sterre was empty, save for herself. The handful of men the military governor had thought prudent to leave in the town were billeted elsewhere and the house largely shut up until the governor’s return. The cook and her boy lived above the warm bakehouse across the back courtyard, and the gardener in his little house at the end of the kitchen garden. Two stable hands shared a loft above the now near-empty stalls. Ruth had been permitted to sleep in Lady Hildred’s chamber, even after the old woman’s death, until such time as the governor and his officers had moved out. Since then, on perceiving her reluctance to return to Bruges, the housekeeper had deemed it reasonable to allow Ruth space in the kitchens, until she might join the next party of English passing through Damme. So, each night for the past few nights, before she retired to bed, Ruth had got into the habit of going through the house, floor by floor, checking each room. The chambers of De Grote Sterre had echoed their emptiness as she’d climbed the stairs and passed through rooms so recently taken up by the governor’s retinue but now sounding only to her own footsteps. When at last she had reached and surveyed the little attic room five storeys up, at the very top of the house, above which was only to be found a pair of nesting storks, Ruth would begin to make her way back down, checking windows and shutters and doors, and closing them all fast behind her as she did so.

  Tonight she took more time in looking out over the little town. There was the Stadhuis. What would the aldermen of her own town have given to have such a place to meet, so imposing and so grand? Women as well as men, sculpted in stone, looked down on the town from their niches in the Stadhuis walls. Even Ruth had been shocked at first to see it. They’d have been smashed in England, she thought; smashed, and all made ugly. An elderly Spanish soldier had told her that Charles the Bold had married his English wife there, Margaret of York, a long, long time ago. The soldier had meant it for a kindness, perhaps thinking it would make Ruth feel less far from home, but all it had done was make her wonder what Margaret had felt as she’d walked up those steps to a destiny she surely had little choice in.

  The town around the square was sleeping. Ruth pulled fast the shutters then the windows, then crossed to look out over the gardens, and the rooftops of the little houses as they extended back from the street, all the way to the church of Our Lady. They were a picture of contentment. They reminded her of the rooftops of her own town. Ruth wondered what happiness they might contain or what horrors they might hide. She closed the shutters and went down to the next floor. Her favourites were here – a man and a woman, husband and wife, five feet apart, carved into the chimney cheeks of the huge fireplace. They did not interfere with each other and had each minded their own business a good three hundred years. The hearth had not yet been properly cleaned out and a pile of logs that had tumbled down in the packing of the governor’s belongings had not been put straight. Ruth knew the stern stone housewife would not rest easy over such disarray and glancing upwards she promised the matron that she would see to it tomorrow.

  Ruth was just reaching out to close the shutters of the windows facing onto the square when she froze. A horseman, a lone horseman, had been permitted through the town gates and was crossing the canal. He might have been anyone, but he was not anyone. He was not wearing his cavalry officer’s garb tonight, but Ruth knew instantly who he was. She stood there, her hand on the window catch, rendered motionless by terror.

  As he rode off the bridge and into the square, George Beaumont looked up. He looked up at the windows of the De Grote Sterre and he looked directly at her. Still Ruth could not move. She could not move her hand, she could not make her lips move, she could not take her eyes from the horseman in the square and she could not blow out the candle she had set down on a table behind her and that was now illuminating her, like a gift, in the window. She was making of herself a gift to George Beaumont, just as much as her mother and father had done.

  George continued across the square and disappeared from her view. Ruth ran to the back of the house in time to see his horse pass complacently and unchallenged beneath the archway and into the courtyard of De Grote Sterre
.

  Ruth’s instinct was to run, but she needed to know where next to run to, and so she forced herself to keep watching. The courtyard had been in semi-darkness, but now the moon emerged from behind a cloud and bathed everything in a startling blue light. George remained on his horse and surveyed the courtyard before looking up towards the window behind which she now stood. She had blown out the candle now though, and she could tell from his expression that he wasn’t certain whether he could actually see her or not. A sudden half-smile, that she remembered very well, appeared on his face and he swung himself down off the horse and began to walk towards the back entrance of the house. Ruth thought she might be sick. She turned, looking desperately into the darkness of the room, trying to think of somewhere that she might hide. Behind settles, beneath tables – no, no, he would find her in those places. She imagined she still felt the bruising on her arm where he had grabbed it and dragged her out from under the bed she’d been forced to share with him in that Portsmouth lodging.

  Now came a knocking. Two, then three raps. Louder, harder. Ruth tried to think: upstairs? No, she would be trapped. Down then. But what if he should force his way in? How would she pass him? Desperate ideas flashed through her head, one after the other, and in her mounting panic she could grasp hold of none of them. And then came the sound that made her actually cry out – the sound of George Beaumont breaking through the back door and entering De Grote Sterre.

  Ruth crept to the top of the stairway. He was two floors beneath her; she could hear him moving around, checking doors, pushing things out of the way. She did not move. And then, his voice.

  ‘Ruth,’ he called. ‘Come downstairs, Ruth. I have found you now. Come downstairs and be a good wife.’

  She heard his foot on the stair, and she ran across the landing, ran back to the room where the well-matched fifteenth-century merchant couple kept eternal watch from either side of the huge fireplace. Ruth hurriedly picked up as many as she could of the tumbled logs and laid them across the hearth and the front of the uncleaned firedogs to make of them a low screen, before slipping in behind it and lying as flat as she could amongst the ashes of the fireplace. Before she laid herself down she cast a desperate glance at the stone effigy of the merchant’s wife, gazing implacably upon the scene unfolding beneath her. ‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’

  George was moving slowly. She could hear him now in the room below, methodically working through it, pushing back furniture, opening the lids of chests. All the time, he kept up his refrain, so measured, so reasonable, of, ‘Come now, Ruth, let us be friends. We have much to talk of. What would your poor parents think, if they knew what a bad wife you were to me? Come now, Ruth, it is your husband come to fetch you.’

  It carried on, the reasonable tone, the methodical searching, until she heard him sigh and then begin to climb the flight of stairs leading to the room she was in. Ruth pressed herself as flat as she could to the floor and began to pray. When George got to the top of the stairs, he halted, and he stopped talking too. There was utter silence in the room and Ruth was terrified to breathe. The ashes were finding their way into her nostrils, her throat. She could feel her eyes begin to water, her cheeks begin to burn with the effort not to cough. Just when she thought she could stand it no more and that her lungs must burst, George at last began to move again and this time, rather than talking, he did something she had never heard him do before. He began to whistle.

  Ruth heard him come closer. There was less in the way of furnishing in this room, fewer items which he might pause to lift, or push aside to check behind in his search for her. He was very close to the fireplace now. She dared to open her eyes and past the firedogs and the stacked-up logs, she could see his boots. Even through the dust and the ashes, she could smell him.

  ‘Oh where are you hiding, my pretty little wife?’ he said. He reached out a hand to lean on the mantelpiece whilst he surveyed the room. ‘Where are you?’ he repeated. And then he looked down, at the stone effigy of the merchant’s wife. He laughed. ‘Well, Mother dear, have they turned you to stone so soon? I would rather they had burned you, you evil old baggage. But where is she, baggage? Where is my wife?’

  He cursed, and kicked at a log, sending it rolling across the wooden boards, threatening to expose her. Ruth’s fingernails were digging into her own palms. Every limb was in agony from the effort not to move. Just as she thought she could not hold her position any longer, the whistling resumed and George began to move away, in the direction of the next flight of stairs. ‘Up and up we go, my dear, but soon my little bird will have nowhere left to fly.’

  As the sound of the whistling became more distant, Ruth allowed herself to breathe properly at last, and to move. She lay there a moment, enjoying the blessed relief, but she had a decision to make and she would have to move soon. She listened as George spoke while he shifted pieces of furniture in the room above. She heard him proclaim that he was beginning to tire of her game, and really, she should come to him now or he would be forced to chastise her. Ruth waited until she heard the whistling start up again, and when at last it seemed to emanate from halfway up the stepladder between the upper floor and the attics, she pulled off her slippers to creep quickly and quietly out from her hiding place and begin to run for the stairs. She did not notice, in the darkness of the room she had shuttered earlier, the log that had rolled out into the middle of the floor when George had kicked it. All her attention was on trying to discern the upper banister of the stair leading down to the floor below. She was almost there when her toe caught the log with such force that she cried out in shock and pain before she properly realised what she was doing.

  She stifled the cry almost instantly, but it was too late. The sounds of movement two floors above her stopped suddenly and then were just as suddenly replaced by the clattering of George’s boots coming back down the stepladder. Ruth cried out again and hurled herself downwards, not caring for the splinters on the steps or that she slipped and missed the last two and banged the base of her spine on the edge of the step. She scrambled up and ran to the top of the next flight down. All the while she could hear George coming down from above.

  She carried on, in desperation and panic, down the last flight of stairs to the ground floor. At last, here, she didn’t know where to go. A few yards away, on the other side of the main door, were the steps giving on to the square, and surely to help and freedom. But the door was heavy and locked and she did not have the key. To her right was the door George had left open on his way up from the kitchen. Ruth ran through that, but instead of going to the kitchen as George would surely assume she had, she made for the vaults that gave out on to the back courtyard.

  As Ruth entered the vaults and closed the door softly behind her, she heard the sound of George jump down the last few steps from the ground floor. She hurried towards the next door and the final chamber of the vault, but as soon as she put her hand on it to open it, she heard the door behind her swing open and she heard George’s grunt of satisfaction. ‘Caught. Like a doe in a trap.’

  ‘No!’ she screamed and wrenched open the final door. She was almost at the hatch. She had her hand stretched out for the handle, when she heard his laughter reverberating around the cavern of the vault and felt his hand lunge at her waist. ‘No!’ she screamed even louder, propelling herself forwards, but it was too late. He had her.

  Twenty-Six

  Portrait

  The King sank down on the stool from which Daunt had hastily removed a dust sheet. It had taken some effort even to find candle and flint, so shut up and abandoned was the house on Hoogstraat where the King had latterly held court whilst resident in the town. For a moment Charles said nothing and Daunt wondered whether he fully understood what had happened. In all justice, Daunt himself did not entirely understand what had happened, but he knew it wasn’t anything good. He was still pondering the turn of events that had unleashed itself upon Glenroe’s and Thomas Faithly’s
return to De Garre tavern, when the King suddenly cursed and shot out a foot to kick over the coal scuttle beside him. Daunt was momentarily dumbstruck and unsure as to whether etiquette demanded that he pick up the coals or leave them where they were. The King seemingly oblivious to the mess now spilled over the hearth onto the floor, Daunt elected to leave them as they were.

  ‘Damn him to Hell!’ Charles repeated. ‘Damn them all to Hell!’

  ‘Indeed, sir,’ agreed Daunt, now on surer ground. ‘Best place for ’em.’

  ‘But how in God’s name could this happen? Was there no guard put on the place?’

  Daunt attempted to clear his throat, the appropriate response as ever eluding him. The truth was that they had not even considered that anyone would find the hiding place behind the wall in the small upper chamber of the Bouchoute House. When Faithly and Glenroe had returned to the Bouchoute House in search of Ellis, it had been to find no sign of Ellis, and Lady Hildred’s money gone. Worse, the servants of the house, who had not even known of the fortune secreted away within its walls, had told them that Ellis had never returned after leaving with the rest of them earlier in the evening. He must have stolen the money at some earlier stage, and then had the gall to actually look the very sovereign he was betraying in the face and kneel before him. Such behaviour was beyond Daunt’s comprehension. He could have believed it of the Roundheads, of course, but never of one of his own side. And then, as he observed his dejected and so-often betrayed monarch, Daunt reflected that Ellis had not, after all, been one of their own.