The Black Friar Read online

  Crowe pushed out his chin, thought. ‘Little. And less as time went on. He started as a fervent hearer when Elizabeth preached, attended every meeting, prayed, read the Scriptures with us. Didn’t put himself forward often though. Kept to the back at meetings, didn’t raise his voice much. As time went on, he started to miss meetings. Elizabeth spoke to him of it.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He gave different reasons – that he’d met by chance an old comrade, gone to hear another preacher, been asked to do a job for someone in the city.’

  ‘And did you believe him?’

  Crowe pursed his lips. ‘No. But I’ve seen it before. They come out of the army and have no place. Fix on us, tell themselves they believe as we do. But some are weak, their faith too weak – like grain that falls upon stony ground springs up and is burnt in the sun. Gideon Fell’s faith fell short, Captain; his name wasn’t written in the Book of Life and he knew that. That’s why he went.’

  Seeker didn’t disabuse Crowe of this view of the man who had posed as an acolyte for a month. ‘And how did he come to find himself bricked up, alive, in a wall at Blackfriars wearing the robes of a hundred years’ dead monk?’

  ‘I have no notions what perversions may have led him to that pass. No interest either. But if you have made it your business to know, then this may tell you something.’ Crowe reached inside his jerkin and pulled out a canvas scroll, which he handed to Seeker. ‘It was all I found when I searched his chamber, other than a few items of clothing. It was hidden below his mattress. Nathaniel tells me he never saw it before.’

  ‘And do you believe him?’ asked Seeker, looking up from his scrutiny of the image on the canvas.

  ‘The boy may be simple, but he doesn’t lie.’

  ‘This is a painting of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane.’

  ‘An affront to God.’

  Seeker had no view on that, but he did know one thing: this was not the first time he’d seen this picture. He didn’t have to go down many pathways in his memory until he located where he had seen it before: in Lincoln’s Inn, in a sitting room that Thurloe had once met him in. It had hung opposite the door. When Seeker had passed that open door earlier in the day, there had been a blank space where the picture had once hung.

  ‘Do you think Fell meant this as a gift for you?’

  Goodwill Crowe stared at him. ‘I have heard it said of you, Seeker, that you scarcely pay lip service to the Word of God, but surely even you know, and Gideon Fell certainly did, that any such gift, such graven image, idolatrous, would have been a profanity to me. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in Heaven above.” This was meant as no gift.’

  Seeker nodded and put the rolled-up canvas inside his own jerkin. He drank down the last of his ale and stood up. ‘Take me to where you found this, and bring your boy to me there.’

  *

  Nathaniel was already in his own chamber when his father appeared with Damian Seeker. He’d tidied the room so that no sign of the earlier disturbance remained, put fresh rushes on the floor, and taken blankets from the laundry press for Gideon’s bed, in case Gideon should come home tonight. His mother would be angry when she counted the blankets, but then, Nathaniel thought, she would be angry anyway.

  He’d heard of the Seeker before. Sometimes, the boys out in the lane would play at soldiers. No one ever wanted to be the Royalists, but the biggest boy would always be the Seeker, and the others always ran the fastest from him. They’d been coming home one night, him and Gideon, and the boys had been pretending to be plotters, running from the Seeker, but Gideon had laughed and said, ‘If it had been the real Seeker, he’d have been waiting in their hiding place for them before they ever got there.’ Patience had been trying to scare him all day with tales about the Seeker coming for him, but Gideon had told him Patience was a liar, and cruel. No one had ever said that before, the men and women at the meetings were always praising Patience, although he’d sometimes wondered if his father liked Patience very much. Gideon didn’t like Patience, and she hated him, Nathaniel knew that for sure.

  The man who came through the door behind his father was much bigger than Goodwill or Gideon. He was bigger than Nathaniel himself even. He had his helmet under his arm but he still had to stoop to get through the doorway. He had a long black cloak on too, and his boots were just like Gideon’s. Nathaniel was always noticing things like that, but he didn’t tell people any more, because his mother always said such things were vanities. Everything made by man was a vanity. So he hadn’t said anything about Gideon’s boots, but he’d liked them.

  The man fixed him with his look, and Nathaniel tried not to look away, answered as clear as he could when the man asked him if he was Nathaniel.

  ‘And this is the chamber you shared with Gideon Fell?’

  Again he gave as clear a ‘Yes’ as he could manage.

  ‘Good,’ said the man, then turned to his father. ‘Leave us now.’

  Goodwill looked surprised, but made no protest, unlike Elizabeth Crowe and her daughter, who had followed them across the yard. Seeker made a point of barring the door shut on them.

  Nathaniel didn’t like being shut in, and there was so little light in the room. But the man lit a second candle from the first by the window ledge, took off his cloak, and sat down on Gideon’s bed, motioning for Nathaniel to do likewise on the one opposite.

  When he had done so, the man looked at him as if to search his face. ‘My name is Damian Seeker,’ he said.

  ‘I kn-know,’ replied Nathaniel.

  ‘Whatever you have heard of me, you should know there is no need to be afraid of me, if you tell me the truth. Your father tells me you don’t lie, is that right?’

  Nathaniel nodded. ‘Lying is a sin.’

  ‘That’s right. But if you lie to me, that will be a crime. And that is worse.’

  Nathaniel had never heard anyone speak in this way, and was glad his mother hadn’t been allowed to come in. She would have given many texts on the matter, and annoyed the Seeker, he was certain.

  The Seeker didn’t appear to notice the strangeness of what he had said and carried on. ‘Gideon Fell was your friend, was he not?’

  Nathaniel bristled. Gideon was not like everyone else. ‘Gideon is my friend. He will be coming back. He would have told me if he wasn’t coming back.’

  He shouldn’t have argued with the Seeker, he shouldn’t have spoken back, but sometimes he couldn’t help it, and now he’d be in trouble. Already the difficult smile had gone from the man’s face, and his expression was changing. But the look that was in the Seeker’s eyes now was like when Gideon had to tell him that he couldn’t take him with him somewhere he was going, or that he would be back too late to help him learn his letters that night. The Seeker was sorry about something. Nathaniel felt his stomach go cold.

  ‘I’m sorry, Nathaniel. But you need to understand. Gideon cannot come back.’

  Nathaniel could feel his cheeks begin to burn, and in his ears it was very noisy. He put his hands over his ears to muffle Seeker’s voice, but strong hands lifted them away. The Seeker was leaning towards him, looking right into his face. ‘You must listen, Nathaniel, you must understand. Gideon is dead. Someone killed Gideon.’

  ‘No, no . . .’ Shaking his head, his hands over his ears, the strong hands lifting them off again. Seeker’s face looking right into his.

  ‘You must understand, and you must help me, Nathaniel. There is no one else. You must help me to find who killed him.’

  Six

  Shadrach Jones

  It was fully dark by the time Seeker left Gethsemane. It had taken some time to explain to the boy what he would need of him – places he had gone with Gideon, what he’d seen, things Gideon had said to him – especially as, when Nathaniel had first begun to understand, Seeker had hardly been able to stop the flow of words, the information tumbling from him, and while it evidently made sense in Nathaniel’s mind, it made
little, yet, to Seeker. Two things he had made sure the boy grasped before he left that bolted chamber: that he would be back, and that Nathaniel was not to tell his parents, nor his sister, the things he was telling Seeker. The boy took the trust as a solemn vow, and Seeker left knowing he had won him.

  For the last few minutes of his interview with Nathaniel, Seeker had been aware of voices and increased footfall in the courtyard outside. Torches had been lit around the perimeter, and after he left the boy he took a moment to watch as people emerged from the other almshouse buildings: an old woman Seeker remembered touting herself as a prophetess – she’d had a spell in the Bridewell for her deranged ravings about the Protector, and would do so again, no doubt. Three men of different ages, clothed as labourers but walking like soldiers. An itinerant preacher whom Carter Blyth’s report had already informed him was in London. From out on the street, through the entranceway, more people came: a printer Seeker knew of from Blackfriars, whose premises he had not long raided; Christopher Feake, a fanatic who had been in gaol more often of late than he had been out of it; the woman Atwood, who so often disturbed the peace with her preaching up by Coleman Street. All of them had been listed in Blyth’s reports, and none was a surprise, but they would all need to be questioned about their dealings with Gideon Fell. Seeker would have to take Daniel Proctor with him when he returned.

  It was growing cold, frost beginning to form on the cobbles of the ground and on the branches of an apple tree trained against the wall beside him. Seeker thought he had seen all he was going to see, but then the bell of St Olave’s church tolled six, and Elizabeth Crowe, followed by her husband and daughter, emerged from the building the others had just gone into – the one in which he had talked with Goodwill Crowe – and positioned themselves opposite the entrance. Less than a minute later, a man came through it who didn’t seem to fit, but Seeker knew that he did fit, all too well. The firelight from the torches only served to make his appearance here all the more remarkable. Any who did not already know him, if there were such in London, might have thought the man a Cavalier of the most exorbitant sort: russet satin breeches and doublet, a green velvet cape held with a jewelled silver clasp, and descending from beneath the wide-brimmed, feathered green hat, locks any courtier of Charles Stuart would be proud of.

  But this was no Cavalier, no courtier of Charles Stuart. This was a butcher’s boy. Or a butcher, some said. Major-General Thomas Harrison had never been a man to compromise. He it was who had named Charles I ‘that man of blood’, when others had thought the King might still be treated with, he who had signed the King’s death warrant without flinching, and when Cromwell had tired of courting the Parliament that had killed that King, had called in his soldiers to shut it down, and himself pulled the Speaker from his chair. But when Cromwell had been made Lord Protector, and made peace with the Dutch, and forgot that his destiny was to march on Rome, Oliver’s greatest friend had become his most dangerous enemy. And he was here, tonight, the highest-ranking Fifth Monarchist in the land, at Gethsemane.

  Seeker had made no attempt to conceal himself, or that he watched. When Harrison had been greeted by his wife and daughter, Goodwill Crowe leaned towards him, spoke something to him and then pointed towards the doorway in which Seeker stood. Harrison turned and looked right at him. There was a depth of hatred in that look that Seeker had rarely seen. ‘That is no godly man,’ Harrison said at last, ‘and his day will come.’

  Back out on Woodruffe Lane, where the rising sound of the psalms seemed to follow him, Seeker felt for the painting inside his jerkin. He would have liked to take it to Thurloe tonight, but he had disturbed the Secretary from his sickbed once already today: it could wait. Seeker considered heading up to the right. Two minutes would take him to Anne Winter’s house, near the far end of Crutched Friars. His earlier promise to look into the disappearance of her young servant came back to him, and he was curious to know what kind of household the widow had made for herself after leaving the palace of Whitehall. More, he wanted to know how much the reality of what went on behind that new-painted green door accorded with the reports of those sent to watch her, but he was not in the humour to deal with the woman again tonight – her troubles would keep until the morning.

  He turned, instead, westwards, up by Blanch Appleton and then along by Fenchurch Street to Lombard Street. Two drunkards, sent scuffling out of the George, almost collided with him, and on seeing who he was, remembered they were friends after all, and not so drunk as they might have thought. The watch was lax, but a clampdown was coming, Seeker knew. The tavern-keepers would not like it, the people even less. So be it: day by day they showed that they could not be trusted to govern themselves. Past St Edmund’s, he paused a moment at the bottom of Birchin Lane, and there, through the other odours of the night-town, he caught the aromas of coffee grounds and pipe smoke floating down from Kent’s coffee house, and from the Turk Pasqua Rosee’s, nearby. Sometimes at the end of a long day, just as the place was shutting up for the night, he had found himself crossing Kent’s threshold, having a word and a draught with the old soldier who ran it. The coffee man knew that Seeker had somehow been behind the recovery of his niece Grace, a few months back, from an illness that had dragged her into the deep sleep of another world, when Elias Ellingworth had falsely been accused of murder, but Samuel had understood enough never to ask Seeker about it. Sometimes, on his late-night visits, Seeker had nothing to say at all, and Samuel would leave him be, and quietly shuffle around the coffee room, making ready for the next day, murmuring instructions to the coffee boy who knew enough not to trouble the captain. Seeker was weary, and would have liked to pass a quarter-hour with Samuel now, but it was too early: the place would still be filled with lawyers and merchants and newsmen, and nothing would empty it for Samuel faster than the Seeker coming through his door. Besides, he didn’t like their noise, their endless babble, their mania always to know how the world moved on, when sometimes all he looked for was that it would stand still.

  He continued on his way. Light glowed from the windows of the post house at the bottom of Threadneedle Street. They would be sorting over the last arrivals of the day, brought from drops at coffee houses, inns and taverns, looking out for anything that should be sent to Isaac Dorislaus. Seeker wondered if those who filled the taverns and coffee houses had any notion how much of the business of the Protectorate was conducted by others, through the night, as they took their leisure and their sleep.

  He turned off Poultry and up into the Old Jewry. The woman at the cook shop opposite the Angel nodded in recognition. She knew, but knew also that it was better it was none of her business. At the entrance to Dove Court he paused. They hadn’t arranged this; Maria’s brother might well have come home, instead of taking himself as usual from his chambers at Clifford’s or the courts to the coffee house. It had happened once: Elias Ellingworth had returned home for a brief he had forgotten and found Seeker ahead of him on the stairs. The lawyer had assumed he was about to be arrested, and hadn’t argued, but simply enquired, ‘For what this time?’ They had never quite resolved between them Seeker’s role in saving Maria’s brother from wrongful hanging for murder, only two months before. Elias had tried once, but Seeker had cut him off. It might have made a bridge between them, but for Seeker, it made a further barrier.

  Still less had they spoken of Maria. She had assured Seeker that her brother did not know. But what then, if Elias didn’t know? How were they ever to proceed, any of them, if Elias didn’t know? How were they to proceed anyway? End it, he told himself every day. Just end it. But not tonight.

  *

  Maria heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. It wasn’t Elias. She knew the footsteps. The listening for them accompanied her every waking hour, so that she didn’t know she listened for them any more. He was her constant thought, whenever she was in the garret alone, even when she knew he would not be coming, even when she knew that it was not possible that he should come. But not tonight; it wasn’t a g
ood thing that he should come tonight.

  She went to the door, opened it before he could reach it.

  ‘Captain Seeker!’ she said to forestall him, and saw the question form in his eyes before he reasserted himself.

  He looked at her curiously. ‘Mistress Ellingworth. Is your brother at home?’

  ‘Elias hasn’t returned from Clifford’s Inn yet.’

  ‘Then . . .?’ She saw the confusion on his face, saw him look past her, through the door, which she had thought too late to pull to behind her.

  She watched his expression gradually change, lose its mobility, harden. She became aware that his breathing had quickened, become more shallow, as if he was struggling to stop his wonted composure abandoning him. He moved past her into the room, and spoke to her without taking his eyes off the object of his question. ‘Who is this?’

  The young man who had his back to them, with whom Maria had spent the last hour talking, as she’d wondered where on earth Elias could have got to, turned slowly round, his clear green eyes bypassing Maria entirely to focus purely on Seeker.

  ‘Captain Seeker!’ Maria said again. ‘You cannot simply barge into a person’s home, be they ever so lowly.’ She knew though, that he could, and often did.

  ‘Evidently,’ he said, never taking his eyes from the other man.

  ‘Damian,’ she muttered through gritted teeth, positioning herself with her back to the other man and hoping he would not hear. She was relieved to see a little of the rage pass from Seeker’s eyes. He took a breath and turned to her.

  ‘As you are fully aware, mistress, your brother’s activities have brought him to the attention of the authorities on many occasions, to the extent that all his contacts are suspect. Yourself included.’

  Maria opened her mouth in protest, but thought better of it. Yet she resolved to remember that last part. He would not have that for free.