The Winter List, page 27
part #6 of Damian Seeker Series
Next, he came upon the letters from Samuel Pepys that Buckingham had brought up with him and that he’d begun to read the other night. He passed over the first two, that he’d already read, and unfolded the most recent of the three, that he had not yet begun. ‘Ah, Sam, Sam,’ he said, grinning to himself, ‘come, tell me of your nights and your music and your lovely wife.’ And as the fire in the hearth flared and crackled, and the wine in his glass went down, his friend did not disappoint him. The plays he had seen, the tribulations of life with so pretty yet unreasonable a wife, the mutual friends he had recently met with.
The glass was almost empty as Thomas came to the last page of Pepys’s most recent letter.
I have been delighted to see Ingolby a time or two whilst he has been down here on your business, and am much pleased to hear from him that he has your case proceeding tolerably well, and is in hopes of seeing you settled at Langton come Easter. Then only this morning, I encountered another of our mutual acquaintance, William Briar, also down from the north, on the business of the surveyor’s office in York. I stood him his dinner at the Dog on King Street that I might hear more of his news and yours . . . I forbore to ask after any of your entanglements of a – ahem – more delicate nature, as I did not wish to introduce a froideur, it being clear to me he was still much grieved by his own jilting by some pretty wench. The awkward subject largely avoided, we were merry enough, and just on the point of parting in good spirits when there occurred the most curious incident.
We were near to Scotland Yard and I on my way for a meeting with my Lord when William observed a person coming out of the little house that Roger L’Estrange has somehow got his hands on. You will recall L’Estrange no doubt – a vicious, cheerless type, who is death on any associated with the late Protectorate. I am half-persuaded he would hang even me if he could, and I take great pains to avoid him. At any rate, William was certain he recognised the fellow coming out of L’Estrange’s house and raised an arm to hail him, calling him by name. The fellow faltered in his pace and glanced round, for the merest moment, but I’d lay a pound to the penny that he had heard William call him, and that he knew William as well as William did him. William called his name once more but the man increased his pace and did not turn again.
Thomas could feel his heart thumping and the paper begin to quiver in his hand so that he almost dropped the sheet.
William was in a state of the greatest perplexity, not to say offended, and would have gone after the other man, I think, had not one of my acquaintance from the navy office who had been coming along a little behind us intervened.
‘I am sorry, sir,’ he said, ‘but I think you must be mistaken, for that man’s name is certainly Godric Purvis.’
William was adamant that he knew the fellow and that that was not his name – he was determined that the fellow went by the name he had called out, and he would not have it that he might be mistaken. He seemed greatly troubled by the incident, and for myself, I cannot blame him, for I should be greatly troubled to think that any acquaintance of mine should associate with Roger L’Estrange. I trust he got to the bottom of the matter once he had returned to York and quizzed this . . .
As Thomas read the name of the man known about Whitehall as Godric Purvis, he was almost sick. ‘Oh God. Oh no.’
He leapt from his chair, knocking into the tub and splashing his satchel and its remaining contents with tepid, dirty water. He stripped off his dressing gown and began to throw on his clothes, never heeding if it was today’s fresh laid-out shirt or the morning’s discarded, filthy item that he pulled on over the King’s silk vest. Not pausing to put on a collar, he roared for Will to fetch his boots, then cursed himself as he remembered he’d sent the boy away for an early dinner.
By the time the water in his bath was fully cold, he was running through the snow falling on the streets of York, his hair crisping in the cold, his lungs burning as if they might take fire.
Lawrence burst through the door, the maid who had run to fetch him from the Merchant Adventurers’ trailing behind him, Lizzie bundled in her arms. ‘Where are they?’ he shouted to her.
‘In your study. Mistress Penmore . . .’
But Lawrence didn’t pause to hear the rest. He wrenched open his office door and went into the room to be confronted by the sight of Manon sitting at his desk, in his chair, Madge Penmore in position behind her, her hand in her apron pocket, and seated opposite them, a man whose back was to him but who had turned around at his entrance. Lawrence looked from Manon to Madge and back again.
‘What’s going on?’
‘This is Major Ogilvie, Lawrence. He claims to be a friend of Sir Thomas’s. He is looking for Grizel Duncan. I have not been able to help him, and he insists on speaking to you.’
The man stood up and Lawrence Ingolby found himself appraised by a pair of hard grey eyes.
‘I’d thank you to sit back down, Major,’ said Lawrence, and Ogilvie did. Lawrence then walked slowly around his desk and placed a hand on the back of his wife’s chair. ‘You get on back through to the kitchen, love. Lizzie’ll be wanting you. You too, Madge. See that new lass isn’t burning my dinner.’
Madge nodded towards the new arrival, whose insolence had clearly aggrieved her. ‘I told him you’d see no one till after your dinner.’
‘You did right, Madge. You go and see to the dinner, though.’
As the old woman followed Manon out of his office, Lawrence went to close the door behind them, and stopped Madge. A finger to his lips, he pointed to her apron. Understanding, she slipped her hand inside and handed him the pistol, which he thrust into the belt beneath his jacket. ‘Scotch collops today, is it, Madge?’
‘Aye, Master.’
‘I look forward to them,’ he said, closing the door behind her. Then he went across the room and took up his accustomed seat behind his desk.
‘Right, Major Ogilvie. State your business.’
As their belongings were loaded onto a cart to be carried to King’s Staith, Anne Winter and Grizel walked down through the town. Having left their horses at King’s Manor to avoid the difficulties of travelling over the snowy moors, they would return to Northumberland by water. First, though, they must perform their last duty in York, and then their obligations to L’Estrange would be over. They walked towards Colliergate. Grizel would deposit Anne’s letter to L’Estrange, exonerating Thomas Faithly of all suspicion, at the safe postal drop in the church of All Saints Pavement.
The snow continued to fall. Anne watched from across the street as Grizel rapped on the door of the church. As she’d passed down this same street yesterday, something had taken her attention that she had meant to tell Grizel because she was sure that it would have amused her. She couldn’t now for the life of her recall what it had been, but it would come to her.
The verger had taken his own good time in coming to answer to Grizel’s peremptory knocking, and Anne smiled as she heard the maid’s chastisement of his tardiness.
‘What you want?’ he asked when he at last appeared, the very picture of disgruntlement.
Anne mouthed the words as Grizel spoke them. She had heard them so often, in so many places as they’d travelled around on L’Estrange’s business, that she fancied she could render Grizel’s very voice. ‘I have a blackbird I would have you take care of.’ A blackbird that would sing its song from Anne’s pen to L’Estrange’s ears. Nothing of the verger’s disgruntlement went, but he did at least open the door and step aside to accord Grizel admittance. Grizel was not long in the church, but Anne found herself grow colder and colder as she waited. The tips of her fingers were always the worst. She was sorry she had sent down her hand muffler with the blankets and other things for use on the barge from King’s Staith. That was it! She remembered, smiling as Grizel finally emerged from the church and crossed the road towards her.
‘Did all go well?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ said Grizel. ‘You surely do not need to ask.’ She started to walk on. ‘Anyway, what is amusing you?’
‘Oh, I just remembered something I saw here yesterday that I had meant to tell you of and had forgotten in all the business of packing to leave, but it did bother me and I could not get to the nub of it.’
‘What was it?’
‘There was a young man coming out of All Saints there as I passed yesterday, with the bad-tempered verger closing the door on him just as he just did with you. There was something familiar about him, but I could not quite get it because I was so distracted by the ridiculous muffler he wore – the most violent-coloured thing. Oh, Griz, I know you would have to have seen it for yourself to appreciate just how— Grizel, what is the matter?’ The housemaid’s face had turned as grey as a headstone.
‘When was this, Anne?’
‘Yesterday. Late morning, I think. While you were still with the Ingolbys.’
‘Tell me about the muffler.’
Anne was confused. ‘The muffler? It was the man I couldn’t place.’ But the look on Grizel’s face admitted of no mistake. ‘All right then. Well, it was knitted as if of yarn leftover from a jester’s outfit that had been thrown out by a band of travelling players. And the work of it appeared very lumpy and ill-done.’
Grizel swallowed, her face even paler. ‘And the young man, what did he look like?’
Anne tried to summon a clearer memory of the man, of his face and his shape, and as she did so she felt herself grow colder. ‘He was . . . a little above medium height. Broad shoulders. Fair, straight hair coming to just below his ears. A farmer’s face. And . . . the peach.’
‘What?’ said Grizel, her face screwed up in incomprehension. ‘I don’t know where you think he would have found a peach, at this time of year, but the man you describe is Madge Penmore’s grandson, Jedediah, and he should have been off on a barge to Hull by that time.’
Anne felt a jolt of shock. Suddenly, she knew where she had seen the man before, and it had not been in York. ‘A peach,’ she repeated, her words coming slowly. ‘Over two years ago. In London, I sold him a peach and I watched him bite into it.’ Even as she said it, she knew that she was right and that Grizel was also right. ‘Lawrence Ingolby’s clerk.’ She looked back at the church that had been their postal safehouse for mail to and from Roger L’Estrange. ‘Lawrence Ingolby’s clerk that has been living with them for . . . what?’
‘Two years,’ said Grizel, her voice almost a whisper.
‘He was at All Saints yesterday. Sending a blackbird to Roger L’Estrange.’
Mindless of the people around them and almost heedless of the state of the streets, Anne Winter and Grizel Duncan began to run, slipping past carters and hawkers and merchants going home to their dinner, forcing startled townsfolk to step quickly aside, out of their way. As they turned the corner onto Fossgate, Grizel slipped and would have fallen under the hooves of the shire horse pulling a fast-approaching brewer’s cart had not Anne caught hold of her arm and pulled her clear. They stopped, shaken, and began again, taking more care with their steps. They were hardly past the second door on the street when they realised Thomas Faithly was there ahead of them, banging on the door and shouting Ingolby’s name.
‘All right, all right.’ Lawrence Ingolby pulled open the door with one hand and readied his pistol with the other. ‘What in God’s name, Thomas?’ He lowered his pistol and pulled his friend inside, about to shut the door again when he saw Grizel Duncan and Anne Winter a few yards behind him. He waited till the women were also into the house before closing the door.
‘What . . .’ he began.
‘Where’s your housekeeper, Ingolby?’
‘My housekeeper? Thomas, are you—’
But Grizel Duncan had come past him and was heading for the kitchen. Ingolby stopped her. ‘No, Mistress Duncan. You must go to my study. There is someone there you must see.’
The woman’s face went the colour of curdled milk and he thought she might attempt to run, but instead she said, ‘I will, but first we must find your housekeeper.’
‘Madge? What on earth do you want Madge for?’ But Thomas Faithly, ignoring him, was already in the kitchen with Anne Winter having run in after him.
Madge was standing at the door to the back yard, her hands balled into fists where they gripped her apron, a look of terror on her face. Manon was on her feet and about to go to the old woman.
‘Stay where you are, Manon,’ said Thomas Faithly, holding up a hand to stop her.
‘But . . . Lawrence?’
Her husband could only shake his head, no more idea what was going on than had his wife. Anne Winter was now standing in front of the housekeeper.
‘Where is your grandson, Mistress Penmore?’
‘What do you mean, where’s her grandson? Jed’s gone to Hull,’ said Lawrence, becoming irritated.
‘I don’t think he has, Lawrence,’ said Thomas softly.
Tears had formed in Madge Penmore’s eyes and were beginning to roll down her reddened cheeks. She slumped down the door and came to rest on the floor, her chest heaving with sobs.
‘Madge!’ cried Manon, trying again to go to her, but again Thomas stayed her.
‘Where is he, Mistress Penmore?’
‘I tried to stop him,’ she protested. ‘He’s a good boy. He was always a good boy, he just got in with the wrong sort.’ She stopped for a huge blow of her nose. ‘It was his mother’s fault, taking him away to London when my Henry died. That’s where all the trouble began.’
Lawrence felt a terrible dread take hold of him. ‘What are you saying, Madge?’
She looked up at him, her small, red-rimmed eyes pleading. ‘That’s why I come here, to keep an eye on him, and to look after you all, make sure no harm come to you. Soon as I knew he’d come back to York, I knew it couldn’t be for anything good. But he’s been such a good lad ever since I been here, I thought he’d put all that other stuff behind him.’
‘What other stuff?’ said Lawrence.
Madge shook her head, her plump cheeks sodden. ‘He got in with the wrong sort. Bad lads, thieving, gambling, catching folk out at night. Got caught with the rest of them and put in Newgate – my Jedediah in Newgate! All because that wicked daughter-in-law of mine took him away from me, to London.’ She sniffed as if to recover some of her old dignity.
‘And what happened in Newgate?’
‘Well,’ said Madge, getting into her tale, ‘there was a man came round, a gentleman, looking, he said, for likely lads to save from their certain doom. Saw straight away that our Jedediah was a cut above the others, a bright lad, just like our vicar had always said when he was a boy. He took Jedediah out of there and set him to work for him, and very well Jedediah did for him too, before he came to York.’
‘What was this man’s business?’ asked Sir Thomas.
Madge shook her head again. ‘I don’t know. Jedediah never told me, only that he was a very important man that knew the King and all sorts, and that his work was not to be spoken about. When I saw him back in York, he wouldn’t speak about his old master and said I was never to mention his name again, so I was sure the fellow had thrown him off and feared Jed might go back to his old ways.’ She looked from Lawrence to Manon. ‘That’s why I come here, to make sure he didn’t fall in with thieves and gamblers again. And he’s been a good lad, has he not, Master? Never a minute’s trouble since and there’s him away to Hull for Sir Thomas’s papers and he’ll be back and all will be . . .’
As Madge dissolved again into tears, Anne Winter asked. ‘This man’s name, that was his master in London, it was Roger L’Estrange, was it not?’
Lizzie Ingolby, watching all with her kitten gripped close to her chest, turned her head and stared at Thomas Faithly as at someone hard of understanding. She spoke one word, very deliberately, to him. ‘Shed,’ he thought she said, at first, just as he’d thought weeks ago when he’d asked her who had enticed her away after the kitten. Then she said it again, ‘Jed.’
Manon Ingolby dropped the cup she’d been holding and Thomas stared, appalled, from Lizzie to Lawrence. In that moment, Lawrence saw it all – William Briar’s shouting at Jed when he’d come to this house on the morning of his death, Jed’s supposed failure to find him that day, the clerk coming home late to dinner, his clothes apparently ruined with dirt stains that must have been blood. Then there had been the attempt to cast suspicion on the stonemason Ralph Plowman – who else would have thought of that but the person who’d helped Lawrence draw up William Briar’s case against Juliet Venn? And there had been the ploy to mislead them over the causes of the break-in, by taking only Sir Thomas’s papers . . . it went on and on. Lawrence found himself gripped by an impotent fury, so that he hardly heard when Anne Winter put the question to the distraught old woman. ‘Your grandson’s name isn’t Jedediah Penmore at all, is it?’
While the questioning of Madge Penmore had gone on in the kitchen, Grizel had slowly stepped away, back from the huddle around the housekeeper. Her first thought on hearing what Ingolby said when she arrived had been to get out by the back and into the maze of vennels that spidered through York. But Madge Penmore herself was blocking the back exit from the kitchen, so Grizel decided there was nothing for it but to quietly go out by the front.
She had backed into the hall without anyone in the kitchen having noticed, and now turned around, ready to make for the front door. She froze.
David Ogilvie stood there, watching her. ‘No, Griselda,’ he said, ‘I think you have run far enough, do you not?’
Grizel turned back to look at the group in the kitchen, wondering if she might somehow force her way through them, to freedom, but Ogilvie had his hand on her arm. She moved her other hand to the knife she kept in a pocket beneath her cloak but before she could reach it, he had hold of her wrist.
‘No,’ she said, glaring now at Ogilvie. ‘I will not burn for him.’
Ogilvie heaved a great sigh. ‘Mistress Duncan, you are the most unconscionably stubborn woman I have ever encountered. You will give me a quarter-hour of your time and then may the Devil take me if you ever hear from me again.’
