[Damian Seeker 05] - The House of Lamentations

by S. G. MacLean

  A rope was thrown out to the boat that had come alongside them, and a ladder put down for the naval lieutenant about to board. The man was young, must have been little more than twenty, but his bearing very sombre. Seeker looked at the stillness of the town, at the flags flying a flag’s depth lower than they should be, then he looked back at the young lieutenant’s face and he knew before the words were spoken. Cromwell was dead.

  *

  It took him a day and a night to get to London. He went through a country not in uproar, but in shock, and calm. Richard Cromwell had been named successor by his father, on his deathbed, to rule as Protector in his stead. This Seeker had learned in a tavern in Colchester. Dick, the country squire, not his brother Henry, the soldier. There was no consternation amongst the people. There should have been. Dick Cromwell would never control the army or Parliament. Dick would not make the people love him, as his father had. He had not the style nor the guile to stand against Charles Stuart and those who intrigued for him. Dick Cromwell would never bestride the world and make the ambassadors of Europe bend the knee. It was over.

  The country was not in turmoil and yet all was not quite right: the authorities were alert, the foreign posts suspended. Seeker travelled in his carpenter’s guise and with his carpenter’s papers. He arrived at Aldgate a little before dawn. The pull of London had been growing stronger in him, more insistent, with every mile that passed. He smelled the city, its smoke, its humanity, the beast of the river, before his eyes began to discern the first spires rising heavenwards as if nothing had changed. Everything had changed. Everything.

  As he passed through the gates, Seeker kept his head low and avoided catching anyone’s eye. Images from the past flooded his vision, crept up, had their moment, then slipped away again. There, down to his left, beyond Poor Jewry was Crutched Friars, where Anne Winter had thought to make a traitor of Andrew Marvell and had plotted to hide the King. Further down were the almshouses of Gethsemane, where a wicked, deluded preacher woman had believed she was preparing for the coming of Christ. Seeker did not turn down Poor Jewry for Crutched Friars, but kept straight ahead, making for Leadenhall and then Cornhill. London was stirring, and amongst the smoke beginning to rise from its chimneys, Seeker imagined he caught the drift of that from the chimney of Kent’s coffee house. Perhaps Samuel was already starting to warm the embers beneath the stove, as Grace checked her stores and the boy Gabriel scrubbed benches and swept floors. There, ahead, was the Royal Exchange, where no doubt the merchant George Tavener would be, in two or three hours, seeing what profit might be made from the Protector’s death, for there was nothing George Tavener could not make a profit on. At the bottom of Threadneedle Street, Seeker glanced up to his right, towards Broad Street, and felt that familiar ache of the knowledge that his daughter slept there safe, under a roof that was not his. But it was not time, yet, for him to make his way to Broad Street, and the sanctuary of the Black Fox.

  He carried on, his heart beginning to beat faster, along Poultry till it met with the bottom of Old Jewry. Seeker stopped. There, as ever, was the Angel, and there, just opposite, the old, crumbling arch of the passageway into Dove Court. Twenty yards way, three flights of stairs, a door that stuck in the winter with the damp. There, behind the door, was Maria. He remembered again the time as he’d sat at the table in that barren room, with its little jug of winter green and berries, watching as she struggled to put together a meal that a man could eat, when all he’d wanted was to reach out and touch her, pull her to him. Maria. Twenty yards and three flights of stairs away. He straightened his stance, pulled back his shoulders, took his courage in his hands and walked towards Dove Court.

  At first he thought he was hearing wrong, a child’s cry as he rapped gently at that swollen wooden door. A woman’s voice, hushing the child. Grace, perhaps. Grace here with her newborn child. He rapped again, but then came a man’s curse and another as the door was yanked open.

  ‘Who in Hell’s name . . .?’ An angry man in a dirty nightshift, red hair dishevelled, stopped in his speech suddenly, and Seeker saw ire change to recognition, shock. The door was shoved shut and Seeker could hear the sound of furniture being dragged across the floor towards it. He put a shoulder to the door and forced it open.

  Inside the old familiar attic he was confronted with the same few sticks of furniture as he had always known there, but a different smell and different people. The red-haired man was standing by the window, brandishing a Bible in one hand and a broom in the other. A woman Seeker had never seen before cowered against the wall at what had once been Maria’s bed, a squirming bundle of swaddling pressed to her chest.

  ‘Get back, in God’s name, whatever you are, get back!’

  Then Seeker understood, at least some of it. This man that he had no recollection of having set eyes on, had recognised him as Captain Damian Seeker, of Cromwell’s guard, that was supposed to be dead.

  ‘What I am,’ he said, ‘is your worst nightmare, if you don’t tell me where the woman has gone who used to live in this attic.’

  The man began to shake his head, eyes wide. ‘Don’t know anything about any woman. It was a lawyer had this place before us. Ellingworth his name.’ He looked desperately to his wife, who also shook her head before burying it in the bundle of swaddling. ‘Don’t know any woman.’

  Ellingworth. Surely Elias could not have gone already? They were not yet in the second week of September. Surely George Tavener’s last ship of the year was not ready to cross the Atlantic yet?

  Seeker left the attic without saying anything more and stormed down the stairs of Dove Court and back out into the street. Where to go first – Kent’s coffee house or Elias’s chambers at Clifford’s Inn? At the bottom of the street he turned right and began to stride westwards, careless now of who might recognise him, in the direction of the Fleet and Clifford’s Inn. How many times had he gone to this same place, armed and with all the authority of the Protectorate behind him, in search of the recalcitrant lawyer? How many times had it mattered more to him than it did now?

  The porter on the gate at Clifford’s looked almost as shocked as had done the stranger in the attic of Dove Court. Almost, but not quite, and with a twinkle in his eye the man quickly recovered himself. ‘I knew it wasn’t true, Captain. I knew they’d never have got you, bear or no bear.’

  Seeker clapped the man on the shoulder. ‘Thank you, Bennet. I’m back on the trail of that rogue, Ellingworth though. Still in the same rooms, is he?’

  Bennet opened his mouth and Seeker could see he was about to impart some information he’d rather not. But then the porter’s expression lightened with relief and stretched into a smile as he looked out past Seeker’s bandaged shoulder to the approach down Clifford’s Inn passage from Fleet Street. ‘Ah, now, here’s a gentleman’ll be able to tell you better, Captain.’

  ‘Captain?’ The voice behind Seeker was incredulous. Seeker turned and found himself face to face with a disbelieving Lawrence Ingolby.

  ‘Where is she, Lawrence?’ said Seeker.

  Ingolby looked about him. The gardens of Clifford’s were still empty at this hour, but already lawyers and servants were starting to make their way along Chancery Lane. He ushered Seeker towards a bench set in an alcove by some apple trees. ‘Are you mad? Does Thurloe know you’re back?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter any more. Oliver’s dead.’

  Ingolby raised his eyebrows and lowered his voice. ‘Aye, well, I know that, don’t I? But surely Thurloe can’t have called you back for that already. Even you couldn’t have got here from Flanders in that time. I thought there were agreed messages you’d send, according to the protocol, when you were coming back?’

  ‘Thurloe doesn’t know I’m here,’ said Seeker.

  Ingolby’s eyebrows went even higher. ‘Are you mad?’ he repeated. ‘They’re as jumpy as fleas since Cromwell died.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Well, if he doesn’t k
now now that you’re back, he will by dinnertime.’

  ‘Then I’ll have to be gone by dinnertime,’ said Seeker.

  ‘What? They’ve never turned you, have they? The Stuarts?’

  ‘Don’t be daft. But there’s plenty they will manage to turn, now that Oliver’s gone. It’s over, Lawrence. The Stuarts will be back on a sea of blood, and there’s precious few of ours left worth fighting for to stop them. I need to find Maria and then we need to leave.’

  ‘Leave? We? Where? Who?’ Lawrence leaned towards him, his brow furrowed. ‘You’re too late, Damian. She’s gone.’

  *

  Four days ago. The morning after Cromwell’s death it had been. It was Andrew Marvell that had got word to them, before almost anyone else had found out. Dick Cromwell. A recipe for disaster. The army would chew him up and spit him out for the dogs. Freedom, the merest notion of freedom, would become a thing of the past, if it had ever been. And if Charles Stuart’s supporters should rise, as surely they must, what new horrors would visit themselves upon England? Elias would not keep his family here to see it. Almost everything had been readied for their departure anyway. George Tavener, fearing riots on the news of the Protector’s death, had swiftly made arrangements for his ship to sail early, and was night and day planning the security of his other stocks.

  ‘She’s gone, Damian. Four days since. She kicked up quite a stink, I can tell you, but Elias persuaded her finally that she might end her days here, waiting for you, and never see you again, but if you wanted to find her again, you would.’

  Seeker nodded. ‘The first sense the man ever spoke.’ He stood up. ‘Come on then, lad, there’s no time to be wasted.’

  Bur Lawrence remained seated. ‘Time for what?’

  Seeker looked down at him and wondered what it was that Lawrence wasn’t seeing. ‘The England that’s coming isn’t one for me, or you, or Manon or Dorcas either.’

  Lawrence gave a short laugh, more blowing air through his nose in amusement than anything else. ‘Dorcas? Dorcas’ll never leave England, Seeker, come what may. And you don’t really want her anyway, do you?’

  ‘She knows.’ Seeker searched about for the right words. ‘She knows what she is to me.’

  Ingolby’s gaze was steady. ‘Aye, and she knows what she isn’t too. One or the other, Seeker. You can’t have both.’

  ‘I can’t leave her here, in the middle of it all.’

  ‘Well, you’ll never take her with you, I’m telling you that now. Dorcas’ll come through whatever she has to face, and she doesn’t need you or me to do it.’

  Seeker knew this. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘well we’d better get up there anyway.’

  ‘I’ve only just come down,’ protested Ingolby. ‘I’ve clients to see. Cromwell or no, the law’s the law.’

  It was now Seeker’s turn to be disbelieving. ‘Do you understand what I’ve been saying? There’s another war coming.’

  ‘I think you’re wrong,’ said Lawrence. ‘The people know what war means. Besides, I never noticed much difference for myself, between Protector or King.’

  ‘You’d stay in London?’

  Lawrence shook his head. ‘London? No. I’ve had what I need from London. I think I’ll head back north, to York. There’s merchants there with money falling out of their pockets, just waiting for a good lawyer to help them sue each other.’

  ‘You mean it too, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, I mean it, all right. Ten years from now I’ll have my own house on the Castlegate and a brood of children running around their mother’s skirts.’ He gave Seeker a particularly piercing look as he said this.

  ‘“Mother”?’ said Seeker.

  Lawrence seemed to gather his courage and persuade himself that having gone thus far, he should just carry on. ‘That’s what I said. I intend to marry your daughter, Captain. Whether you like it or not. I love Manon, and I’d be prepared to wager everything I have that she loves me. And I reckon, her and me together, well, there’s no one’ll stop us – not Protector, nor King, nor wealthy merchants of York nor anyone else. I intend to make your daughter the finest lady in the north of England, and if the price I have to pay for that is that one of my sons, or God forbid, one of my daughters, looks at me with that look you’re giving me now, well so be it.’ Lawrence then sat up straight, as if somehow stunned himself by what he’d just said.

  ‘No one to stop you, eh?’ said Seeker, not sure if it was rage or pride he felt rising through him.

  ‘No,’ said Lawrence, attempting to be resolute but now avoiding Seeker’s eye. ‘No one. Leastways, no one but you.’ He looked back at Seeker now. ‘If you ask her to, she’ll go with you, wherever it is you’re going. I know her, and I know fine well I can’t compete with you as far as she’s concerned.’ He shrugged with a resigned half-smile. ‘God alone knows why.’

  ‘But if I tell her she can’t come, if I tell her to go with you . . .’

  Lawrence stood up and looked resolutely at Seeker. ‘She will. And I swear on my life and hers and the souls of everyone I ever cared about that no one, no one will ever harm a hair of her head and I’ll make her the happiest woman there’s ever been.’

  Seeker felt his lips move as if a smile threatened to prepare itself. There was moisture prickling somewhere in his eyes. This man, this infuriating, clever, determined length of Yorkshire grit, polished but not impressed by all London had to offer. He’d buy and sell them all in a few years. Seeker knew now, that almost since the day he’d met him, he’d never have considered entrusting his daughter’s future to anyone else. He leaned in closer, and fixed Lawrence Ingolby with a look he’d last used on a Whitehall bootboy who’d burned his best boots by leaving them to dry too close to the fire. ‘You see you do, or I promise you this: every one of those grandchildren of mine will look exactly like me, and they’ll make you wish you’d never been born.’

  *

  The streets of London were growing dark again by the time Seeker walked out of the door of the Black Fox for the last time. Dorcas hadn’t wept. He’d held her a long, long time. He knew Lawrence was right – Dorcas would never leave England. He’d tried, all the same, to persuade her. She’d have none of it, refused even to leave London. With Manon it had been the other way round. She’d wept, and clung onto him, and threatened to come with him wherever he went so that he’d had to tell her she couldn’t. ‘I don’t know what’s ahead of me, Manon,’ he’d said. ‘But I know what’s ahead of him.’ He’d nodded towards Ingolby. ‘Luckiest beggar that ever walked the face of this earth. Always lands on his feet. And he doesn’t look much, I know, but he’ll look after you, give you a life I never could. And if he doesn’t, he knows that not a hundred oceans would be enough to keep me away.’ He’d left Lawrence with most of the money he had on him. ‘Get her up north as soon as you can. The Stuarts’ll be back one day, and they’ll be out for revenge. Never tell anyone she’s mine.’

  He’d left the Black Fox then. There were many people and places he had not the time to bid farewell to, but before he headed out of the city for Liverpool, and the agent he’d been sending a good bit of his wages to for years, in case of just such a time as this, there was one more thing he did have to do, one person he did have to see.

  The lamps were lit in the chambers of Lincoln’s Inn, but not in John Thurloe’s rooms, which were dark. The Chief Secretary would be in Whitehall now, burning other lamps, preparing for Cromwell’s funeral, writing endlessly to every outpost of the Protectorate, shoring up an authority that Richard Cromwell would never otherwise have. He might even by now be reading Seeker’s last report, sent from Ostend as he himself prepared to board ship, detailing the treachery and death of Marchmont Ellis, the madness and death of George Beaumont, the whereabouts of Thomas Faithly and the clandestine presence in England of Jesuits. Lady Anne Winter, he wrote, had eluded his grasp. He’d said nothing of his own impending return to
England. Perhaps Thurloe was reading of that too, now, from some other source, or listening to London’s latest rumour. Seeker had not come to Lincoln’s Inn tonight to see John Thurloe.

  A friendly wisp of smoke still curled from the small chimney of the gardener’s hut, a glow of candlelight from the window near the door. The low growl of a dog inside was soon accompanied by the squealing of a pup. Seeker walked almost the length of the path and then waited, silent, a few feet from the door. And then it began in earnest, the barking, the thump and scrabbling of huge paws against the door, the boy’s voice attempting to calm it before the door opened and the hound flew out and was upon him, almost knocking him over for joy. Seeker laughed and wrestled happily with the dog as he tried to catch his breath, before a squealing and nipping at his boots made him look down, to where three small bundles of fur were clambering over each other to lay hold of his boots. And there, calling to them all, was Nathaniel, the one person Seeker had gone to see before he’d left for Flanders, the one last person he knew he must tell he was returned.

  Nathaniel’s open face was filled with delight. ‘You’ve come back, Captain. You said you would. And I never told a soul.’

  ‘I know you didn’t, Nathaniel. I knew you never would. But I am leaving again.’

  The delight went out of Nathaniel’s face. ‘Are you going after Maria?’

  ‘Well, that brother of hers will never keep her out of trouble, will he?’

  Nathaniel shook his head in agreement. ‘Massachusetts is a long way away.’

  ‘It is, but it’s where I must go.’

  Nathaniel shrugged at the truth of it. ‘You’ll have come for the dog, then?’

  ‘If the old fellow doesn’t mind keeping me company?’

  ‘Oh, he won’t. He’s been watching for you all this time. When he hasn’t been with Lawrence, or up at the Black Fox for titbits from Dorcas, or . . .’ and a shy smile came on Nathaniel’s face as he indicated the puppies.