The Winter List, page 28
part #6 of Damian Seeker Series
With no option, Grizel allowed herself to be led into Lawrence Ingolby’s study. As she took a seat by the unlit fire, she heard the click of the lock turning in the door. The man came and stood across the hearth from her, his elbow resting on the mantelshelf, on which he had placed the knife he’d removed from her pocket, along with the key he had taken from the door.
‘My name is David Ogilvie,’ he began.
‘I know who you are,’ she said. ‘You are kin to the Ogilvies of Boyne.’
‘That’s right, on whose lands your husband, William Ogilvie, grew up. I was also his commanding officer in the late wars.’
‘I will not burn for him,’ she repeated. ‘I will kill myself first, but I will not burn for that man.’
‘You will do neither,’ he said, exasperated. ‘That is what I have been trailing round York these last few days trying to tell you, since first I caught sight of you here.’
Grizel felt a frown forming, almost indignant at the unexpected turn in the conversation. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said.
‘As has been evident, so now you will hear me out. I was your husband’s commanding officer. He was a ruthless soldier who kept good discipline in the camp and in the field, but it was also evident to me and others that he took too great a pleasure in . . .’ He paused, searching for the right phrase.
‘The brutality?’ she offered.
He looked at her a moment and then looked away. ‘Yes. In the brutality, the inflicting of pain, in the killing and in the aftermath.’
Grizel made to get up. ‘You have wasted your time, Major, if you have sought me out expecting this to be news to me.’
He took a step forward to stay her. ‘I know full well that it isn’t news to you. I also know that seven years ago, in a house near the cliffs at Findlater, you killed him.’
Grizel sat down again. It had always been going to come to this, eventually. She could see it all as if it were being played out in front of her. She could smell the sea, hear it over the sounds of the sheep outside, the shrieks and cries of the seabirds. She could smell her husband too, sweat, tobacco and ale, and she could see his arm raised, fist clenched and the familiar smile on his face. She had kept a knife with her then too, beneath the straw of the mattress, and as he had raised his fist to the full extent of his arm, opening up his chest, she had taken that knife from beneath her and plunged it, up to the hilt, into his heart. Then she had taken every penny she could find and fled, dousing herself in water from burns to wash the blood from her, until she had found a boat to take her far, far from Scotland, where the law decreed that a woman deemed guilty of murdering her husband should burn at the stake. She closed her eyes and said nothing.
‘A neighbour saw you fleeing,’ continued David Ogilvie. ‘A woman who knew what manner of man your husband was. She fetched her husband and he fetched me, and together we took William Ogilvie and we threw him off those cliffs.’
Grizel opened her eyes, but Ogilvie carried on speaking.
‘And then we got hold of an old ewe and threw her in after him. By the time they washed up at Burghead a few weeks later, you would have been hard put to tell the one from the other. Other than yourself, me, that neighbour and her husband, no one on earth knows anything other than that William Ogilvie went over the cliffs at Findlater, trying to save one of his sheep. The neighbour swore to anyone who asked that you had left him weeks before, to return to your own people in Buchan. There is not a soul who mourns him.’
Grizel was staring at David Ogilvie, her hands over her mouth, fearful that she would say something to break the spell, that this man would disappear and this encounter never have happened. He took another step towards her and crouched down in front of her. ‘I don’t know how it is that you have survived these last few years, Mistress Duncan, I don’t know how you came to fetch up in the company of Anne Winter, and I have no wish to know what you have done since then, but I am here to tell you that wherever you have been, however far you have run, you need not run, nor hide, any longer.’
Epilogue
Massachusetts, New England
February 1663
The deciphering of the letters he had managed to find, at last, at the Ingolbys had taken little time, once he had managed to get back down to London, having got a place on a boat down from Hull. L’Estrange had been pleased, for once, his brief visit to York having been filled with threats as to what would happen if Godric did not fulfil that part of his mission soon. With the money in his pocket, a full half now of what he had been promised for the completion of his task, Godric had considered melting away, beginning a new life of his own. He had, after all, lived with a second name for long enough, why not a third? Purvis to his mother’s people in London, Penmore to his father’s in York. Madge had never liked his given name of Godric, and had been overjoyed when he’d said he’d rather be called for her father, Jed. What name might he go by now, that he could make himself anew without any of them?
He’d been excited, for a while at least, at the prospect of his voyage to this new country, and the possibilities it might offer him, but what excitement had survived the rigours of the voyage and the sermonising of his fellow-travellers had died away to nothing after a day or two ashore. There was a deal too much emphasis on work and on God in Boston, and Godric was not sure it would be the place for a young man like himself to make his money and his mark. There would be opportunities elsewhere, further south.
It would not be so cold further south either, thank God. He was sick of the cold. Winter had yet to take itself off from New England, although everyone assured him the snows and frosts had not been near so bad this year as they often were. Some claimed even that there had lately been tremors in the earth, and looked to God’s displeasure for the cause. This further determined Godric on getting his business here done and being off as soon as possible – he had heard more than enough of God’s displeasure from his grandmother. He was done with God’s displeasure.
Nonetheless, it was necessary here that Godric should make some attempt to blend in. He had heard, in secret corners aboard ship and more openly in the taverns and ordinaries of Boston, murmurings about the trackers sent from across the ocean, assassins come to hunt down those who had stood high in Oliver’s service or to bring them to public trial and execution at home. It was clear from the tenor of these conversations that such trackers would not be made welcome in Massachusetts. Godric must certainly blend in. And so he had put on a mien of piety, and spent a little more of L’Estrange’s money than he might have wished, to bolster his claim to be a young man of means, thinking to marry and bring his bride to the godly city state, but first he would find a business to invest in, and had a mind to do so in logging.
Logging! Tobacco, more like, and Virginia, that’s where he would go when this business was done. A man might rise in the world there as he might never do at home, forever kept in his place by the matter of his birth. Godric had always thought he might have done well in Cromwell’s time, but he had been just too young, just coming into manhood as the Protector had breathed his last. ‘Bide your time,’ his mother had told him. ‘See which way the wind blows.’ And so Godric had, and before too long, the wind had blown him in the direction of Roger L’Estrange.
Godric had liked the work from the start – listening in taverns, cookshops and alehouses for mutterings of sedition, mixing with the apprentices of printers, booksellers and any other L’Estrange held suspect, reporting back what he found. Break-ins and raids upon printers’ shops had been his favourite pastime, as other young men wasted theirs hanging around the Spital Fields or the Spring Garden, or the theatres that his foolish grandmother had been so enamoured of. ‘I have other fish to fry,’ he’d told her.
There had been difficulties, along the way, and he had had to spend much longer in York than either he or L’Estrange had expected. To make matters worse, he had scarcely got his feet under the clerk’s desk in Ingolby’s office than his grandmother had appeared at the door, like a horsefly that would not be shifted. Or perhaps a hawk, for she had watched him like a hawk, but eventually he had managed to convince her that he was reformed in his ways, had thrown off his old associates and employment, and aspired to a settled life. There had been times in these near-two years in York that he had almost come to believe it himself, and to be frank, life in the house on Fossgate had really not been so bad.
And then Ingolby had taken it into his head that he, or ‘Jed’, should be sent back down to London to be trained for a time at an Inn of Chancery, and the worlds of Godric Purvis and Jedediah Penmore had collided. L’Estrange had demanded to see him and told him in no uncertain terms that he must redouble his efforts to find out the connection between the Ingolbys and Damian Seeker, and then find out Seeker’s whereabouts. To make matters worse, William Briar, one of Ingolby’s own clients, had recognised him as he’d been leaving L’Estrange’s house. Shaking off Briar in London had been one thing, but shaking him off back in York had been quite another. Briar’s arrival at Ingolby’s door early on the morning of his return from the capital had put paid to any hopes Godric had had that the surveyor might have persuaded himself he’d been mistaken. So William Briar had died that day, and alongside him had died the fantasy, so cherished by Godric’s grandmother, that his life as a clerk to the humourless lawyer might soon be replaced by that of steward to a tattered Cavalier, whose glory days were disappearing into the mists behind him.
And now, three months later, Godric was in Boston, a news-sheet with the title New England Clarion in his hand. The news-sheet bore the unmistakable marks of Elias Ellingworth’s pen. Ellingworth, as L’Estrange had lately informed him, was the brother of the woman believed to be Damian Seeker’s wife. Some discreet enquiries into the newspaper man had soon elicited references to his sister, married to a carpenter, in a settlement some miles from town. When Godric relayed his story of being a man with a view to investing in logging, and declared that the carpenter might be the very man for him to approach for advice, he found little encouragement, but was told that if he was intent upon travelling further up the Jones river, he should not think of doing so without the aid of a guide.
The finding and selection of the guide had been another matter. Godric had been directed to the docks, where a succession of desperate men who would have robbed him and cut his throat the moment his back was turned claimed that they, and none other, were capable of seeing him safely to his destination. Godric knew their type – each and every one of them reminded him in some way of his father, a worthless drunk and useless thief. To go instead by established carriers as he was urged to do would have been to announce himself from miles and hours in advance, and too many mistakes of that sort had been made by the regicide-hunters in Europe for Godric to fall into the same error here. He said he had not the time to wait, for he had much to do before he left Boston on the next stage of his travels in New England. He had been on the point of engaging the least dissolute-looking of the proffered guides when a local pork merchant had intervened. ‘That man is not to be trusted, sir. If you are intent on going alone into the interior, you must take with you a native guide.’
‘A native?’ Godric’s alarm must have shown on his face.
‘They know the forests and the beasts within them. They know the pathways that are safe, and the territories best avoided. If you are indeed in the hurry you claim to be, you must have a native guide. Go to the chandlery and tell them I sent you. They will find you one who is to be trusted.’
Godric had no option but to go along with what he was told, although at first he suspected he had been sent to the chandler only that he might be persuaded to buy items for his journey – shearling gauntlets, hide leggings, a beaver hat. It was as he was haggling over the price of the hat that a shadow fell across the floor in front of him, cast by someone who had stopped in the chandler’s doorway. Godric felt eyes upon himself, and the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. The man he saw standing there when he turned might have been made of burnished wood. Long, black hair was pulled back tight above the shaved sides of his head and held by a broad headband of black and white shells. His cheekbones were high and his lips long, thin and unsmiling beneath a strong nose. He was dressed in what appeared to be hose and tunic of some animal hide, and had a cloak of pelts about his shoulders. From his belt hung a knife and an axe, and in his hand was a long spear, tipped with a sheer metal head. He regarded Godric without moving, and with an air of mild displeasure.
‘Ninigret,’ said the chandler. ‘This man is looking for a guide.’
The native sniffed and lifted his chin slightly as if asking a question.
‘Not long arrived from England. Wants to go to John Carpenter’s. You take him?’
The man called Ninigret looked at Godric with even greater displeasure then gave a short nod.
‘You best pay him now,’ said the chandler.
‘With what?’ asked Godric. ‘Beads or such?’
‘Shillings,’ replied the chandler. ‘You pay him in shillings.’
Godric opened his pouch and began to lay out Massachusetts shillings until such time as the chandler said, ‘Aye, that’ll do him,’ and took one for himself before handing the others to the native guide.
Godric drew closer to the shopkeeper. ‘He speaks English?’
‘If he feels like it,’ said the chandler. ‘Sometimes a bit of French too. Narragansett, mainly.’ Then the shopkeeper raised his eyebrows and nodded towards the door. ‘You’d best be off. He keeps a good pace.’
Godric was forced to break into a short jog to catch up with the guide who merely glanced at him and continued on his way. Soon, by means of small ferries and paths around the feet of the hills that seemed to constitute the town, they had left Boston behind them, and were headed south-westwards. They traced the banks of a river and as they went, they passed the occasional English settlement, with signs of agriculture and animal husbandry. On the opposite bank, Godric now and again glimpsed what he guessed must be native settlements. Only a few yards back from the river, on either side, were woods of oak and chestnut and hickory. From time to time the guide’s head would move to the right or the left and he would remain utterly still. Godric quickly understood that he must also remain still, and silent.
By the time they had been going half a day, Godric, whose great love was a city, had come to the conclusion that the wilds of Massachusetts were even worse than the North York Moors, to which his grandmother had thought to banish him. At least on the moors, you knew what you might encounter. Here, Godric’s imagination ran amok with tales he’d heard of wild beasts – bears that were not the poor, drunk, lumbering things that he had seen as a child at the Bear Garden, cats ten times the size of the worst, most feral creature that might screech the night away amongst London’s alleyways. And as to the people – he looked ahead at his guide, the glints of metal from the blade of his axe, the point of his spear, and he thought of massacres that Madge had read of in the news-sheets and relished telling him of.
The trees seemed to become closer and the woods darker the further from the town Godric got, the ice floes in the river to rush by with more determination. He recalled now foolish childhood tales his father had told him, of dark powers and green men who resided deep in the forest, awaiting the wicked or unwary. He chided himself, who could traverse the darkest snickets of York or dankest London alleys without fear, that he should grow nervous here. He imagined the place might be pleasant enough in spring or summer, if not bedevilled by mosquitoes and the like. But while fish and forest fruits would no doubt be plentiful in their season, for now it was cold as a Puritan’s heart and almost as bleak. They did not stop for food or drink and suddenly, when Godric’s stomach had been growling a good while, the native spoke his first word in his hearing. ‘Here,’ he said, pointing to a path into the woods which he swiftly turned onto. They walked through the thicket, the guide’s steps so silent that all Godric could hear were his own footsteps and the occasional creak or squawk from creatures in the thicket. They cannot have been going through the wood for more than half a mile when Ninigret stopped again. Ahead of him, the path opened into a clearing. ‘Carpenter’s,’ he said, before turning and beginning to lope through the wood, back the way they had come.
Godric wasn’t worried. He would need no hired guide to see him back safe to Boston. He was good at remembering his way, and his business being done as he intended it should be, the authorities could hardly detain him, an agent of the crown.
Just after his guide had disappeared, a bird darting suddenly from a bush sent Godric’s hand to the hilt of his pistol he had tucked under his jacket, and he cursed the creature thoroughly. But then, amongst the scents of earth and pine and unseen animals, Godric detected a whiff of woodsmoke, and his irrational fears began to calm. He paused a moment and took some long, deep breaths until he felt his heartbeat slow. Any nerves he had would be required for the work of the next hour, the culmination of two and a half years of his life and labours on behalf of Roger L’Estrange.
The smell of smoke became stronger and the forest track started to dapple with light as he approached the clearing. He stepped off the path and went a few feet to the left instead, in order to survey the homestead from the cover of the forest.
The house was sturdy, built of wood and roofed with turf, larger and better-made than many he had seen. The smoke he could smell was curling from a central stone chimney into the clear-blue February sky. Some of the windows looked to be glazed, some covered in beaten horn or stretched hide. A porch ran along the front of the house, steps leading down into a well-kept yard, where hens pecked and a turkey strutted. Stretching behind the house was what looked to be a garden.
To the river side of the house was a barn, in which Godric could see a fat and contented cow munching on hay. A small horse and a child’s pony were also in evidence, but no animal comparable to what he would expect a man of Seeker’s reputed dimensions to ride. To the left of the house was what must be the carpenter’s workshop, but there were no signs of life or sounds of occupation. It had not occurred to Godric that his quarry might be away from home. No matter – the business might take longer, but the results would be all the surer.
