The Winter List, page 6
part #6 of Damian Seeker Series
She inclined her head towards the man and he made a brisk and somewhat reluctant-seeming bow.
‘You travel a long distance at an ill season, I think,’ she said.
Ogilvie said nothing but Thomas Faithly was ready to fill the silence. ‘And your ladyship,’ he replied, ‘have you travelled far? I have not seen you for so long – Damme, I believe it was?’
‘It was,’ she agreed. They might have been talking of a day at the races, not a night of darkness and desperation in a small Flemish town. ‘But I have not come here from as far away as that, only from Northumbria, where I have made my home. The people of the coast told me we are to expect a harsh winter, and I thought York would be a more convivial place to spend it.’
Faithly looked delighted. ‘We will endeavour to make it so!’ She couldn’t help but glance again at his companion. ‘Oh,’ said Thomas, following the direction of her glance. ‘Pay no mind to Ogilvie, one learns to live with his misery. But are you to lodge here or at the Treasurer’s House?’
‘Neither.’ Had her friend Lady Fairfax been in residence, she would indeed have had to stay as her guest in the Treasurer’s House, the large mansion in the eastern shadow of the minster, but the Fairfaxes’ absence gave her much greater freedom of movement. ‘Lady Fairfax and his lordship are gone to Nun Appleton for the winter, and I do not wish to get in the way of His Grace the lord lieutenant’s business here at King’s Manor, so the dean has been kind enough to grant me use of a small house on the corner of Chapter House Street and Ogleforth.’
‘Indeed?’ Thomas raised his eyebrows. ‘Such benevolence is not like him.’
She smiled and patted the pocket in which Lady Fairfax’s letter nestled. ‘Her ladyship’s recommendation casts a spell wherever I produce it. But I am afraid most of the grooms have gone to Nun Appleton with the Fairfaxes, and I am anxious about the care of my horse while I’m here.’
Thomas Faithly couldn’t hide the delight in his eyes. He always had had an excellent eye for a horse, as she had remembered. ‘But nothing is simpler, your ladyship. If you would consent to stable this beautiful animal here at King’s Manor, my own groom will look after him and I will see that he has the best of attention. I’m on my way to the stables at this very minute.’
Anne could see from the look on his companion’s face that Thomas Faithly had not been in the act of going anywhere near the stables, but if the Scotsman did not like this new development, that was his lookout. And if, as was also clear from his face, he did not like Thomas Faithly’s offer to hand her down from the horse, or her acceptance of it, that too was not her concern. The bridle once in his hand, Faithly looked into the horse’s eyes as deeply as he had into her own.
‘Might I leave you to arrange for his stabling, Sir Thomas, and return later to look in on him?’
‘Nothing simpler,’ repeated Faithly, smoothing a hand down the horse’s neck.
‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘Then I am of a mind to go and have a look at the minster before I return to Ogleforth to see how my maid has been getting on this morning.’
Thomas Faithly turned towards her now. ‘If you care to wait a short while, I can accompany you.’ Closer up now, she saw that his eyes sparkled still, bluer now, it seemed, than in those hard days of exile. There was hardly any silver to be seen in his long blond locks, and his jaw was still firm. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her.
‘That’s kind of you, Sir Thomas, but I only wanted a glance for now. I will leave you to your friend.’ She extended a hand and he kissed it, then she inclined her head towards the other man. Faithly’s companion made a very slight bow in return There was grey to be seen in his hair, shafts of granite through the black. He might have been around the same age as Sir Thomas, but the lines around his mouth and the furrow between his dark brows was deeper. Whereas Faithly’s features might have been painted, this man’s had the look of being hewn. His eyes did not sparkle as Thomas’s did, but glistened like mica behind long, black lashes.
It was now that the man spoke. ‘If your ladyship has no objection, I will escort you there myself. I have a mind to see something of this wonder that Thomas tells me so outdoes our simple kirks.’
Anne had no choice but to accept.
Lawrence’s mind was whirling. His conversation with Thomas had done nothing to assuage the concerns brought from Holland last night by Andrew Marvell. Someone had been sent to York to dig deeper into the connections between his family and Damian Seeker, deep enough to enable them to track down the captain to where he was now. Lawrence wasn’t indifferent to his father-in-law’s fate, but as Seeker would have been the first to say, he could take care of himself. Lawrence’s concerns were for his wife, for the child she was carrying and the child they already had, the life they had. The butchery that had driven them from London to York that stinking, blood-soaked London autumn of 1660 was not over and done with, but waited, ready to be unleashed again at the behest of some malign will. Even on his latest trip to London there had been talk of more trials and executions. Worse, whenever he had gone to the courts at Westminster Hall, Lawrence had been forced to pass beneath the impaled head of the regicide lawyer John Cooke, its eyes long picked away by rooks. Cooke had been a lawyer’s lawyer, and Lawrence felt those eyes on him even now. By the time he reached York’s grand Guildhall, where he had business to conduct, Lawrence was clear that he must get Manon and Lizzie away to a place of safety.
It was almost dinnertime by the time he arrived back at his house on Fossgate. Enticing smells of a rich stew greeted him as he stepped over the threshold out of the sleet, one compensation for having to put up with Madge Penmore. He could hear Lizzie’s laughter from the kitchen, and Manon’s soft tones. Hastily removing his wet cloak, he took a quick look into his office, but no one being there, he went down to the kitchen to join his family.
Lizzie came toddling to him and he tossed her up in the air, catching her as she squealed for him to do it again. As ever, Madge’s terrier was barking in protest at his arrival. Lawrence, who had seldom in his life encountered a dog he could not control, bared his teeth and growled at it so that it took refuge under its mistress’s skirts.
‘Lawrence!’ chided Manon, as Madge prepared her accustomed outrage.
‘“Lawrence,” nothing,’ he said. ‘If that glorified ferret wasn’t such a good ratter, he’d be out on his tail. And her with him,’ he added under his breath.
Manon shook her head and took Lizzie from him to set in her high chair. The aromas coming from the pot hanging over the hearth were mesmerising. ‘What is it?’ asked Lawrence, leaning in that direction.
Madge rapped him on the hand with her wooden spoon. ‘Venison stew. Best meat.’
‘Oh aye?’ said Lawrence, ‘I suppose that means I paid over the odds for it then.’
Madge now pointed her spoon at him. ‘No butcher has ever got the better of Madge Penmore, no, not for a groat.’
‘Hmm,’ said Lawrence, taking his seat at the end of the table. ‘So where’s Jed then? He’s not in the office.’
Manon had opened her mouth to speak, but Madge got there before her. ‘Off out into town, in search of you. And in such weather!’
Lawrence looked from one woman to the other. ‘What was he looking for me for?’
Manon leaned forwards. ‘William Briar,’ she began.
‘Him that was jilted,’ added Madge, to a swift glare from Lawrence.
‘So, William is back from London then?’
‘First thing this morning, it seems. He arrived at the door not long after you’d left. He was very anxious to see you.’
Lawrence frowned. Whatever had brought William, only just arrived from London, straight to their door was unlikely to be anything good. ‘What did he want to see me about?’
Manon shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I was occupied with Lizzie, and by the time I came down the stairs to see what the commotion was, he was gone.’
‘Aye,’ interjected Madge, dropping a good ladleful of stew from the pot into Lawrence’s bowl. ‘Such a racket that if the bairn hadn’t already been awake, it would have wakened her. If Jedediah hadn’t been here to send him on his way, I daresay the watch would have to have been called.’
Lawrence now gave his full attention to his housekeeper. ‘What exactly did he want?’
‘Oh,’ the old woman turned away to give the pot another stir, ‘something to do with the jilting, no doubt.’
‘The jilting? Don’t be daft, woman. That was all past seven months since, and Juliet Venn married these five.’ He’d have to wait till Jed got back to hear anything sensible about the visit of William Briar.
Lawrence was on his second bowl of stew when they heard Jed come in by the back way and curse as he stepped on his grandmother’s dog. There was a great deal of squealing from the animal and muttering from Jed before the clerk eventually appeared, the tails of his shirt dirty and sodden and his feet bare.
‘Jedediah Penmore!’ exclaimed his grandmother. ‘Where in the world are your stockings?’
Jed turned a dripping head in the direction of the back yard. ‘Hung up out in the laundry shed, soaked through with everything else. Got splattered by a dung cart, heading up from the Shambles. Have you dry stockings for me?’
A few minutes of bustling and fussing later, and Jed was seated close to the stove, dry stockings on his feet and a dish of stew on his lap. He had hardly got a second spoonful of food to his mouth when his grandmother pounced again. ‘Jedediah! Your good cuff, trailing in the gravy!’ And she was busied again with an old damp cloth, that only seemed to make matters worse.
‘Leave the lad be,’ said Lawrence. He got up and went to crouch in front of his clerk, who looked truly miserable. ‘Right, Jed. So what’s all this about William Briar this morning then?’
Jed wiped his stained cuff across his mouth, heedless of his grandmother’s complaints. ‘Couldn’t make head nor tale of him, but,’ and here he lowered his voice, glancing towards Manon, ‘after what you said this morning about being careful who I let in the house . . .’
Lawrence nodded.
‘Well, I thought it was best to get him out quick smart. He left to look for you, he were in a state, and I thought I’d be best to come and warn you.’
‘Raving at our Jed, he was,’ interjected Madge.
Lawrence shushed her and focused on his clerk. ‘Well, you didn’t – warn me, did you?’
Jed coloured. ‘I went up to King’s Manor, as you’d said you’d be going to see Sir Thomas, but they hadn’t seen you, so I thought you must have been at the castle, and by the time I got down there they said you were gone. Then I tried a few other places . . .’
‘But I told you I was going to the Guildhall after I’d seen Sir Thomas.’
Jed put his head in his hands. ‘I know. I’m sorry – I drank a bit much up at the Three Tuns last night. By this morning I felt as if I’d been at sea a week.’ His cheeks were crimson. ‘I wasn’t listening properly to what you said.’
Lawrence felt irritation rising in him, then felt Manon’s hand on his arm. ‘Jed isn’t used to strong drink,’ she said.
‘Like his father and grandfather before him,’ chimed in Madge; Jed, his father and his grandfather being the three great saints of her Trinity.
Lawrence let out a sigh. It was his own fault. It wasn’t like Jed not to listen properly, but he’d given his clerk too much money to go to the tavern the night before to keep him out of the way, and this was the result.
Madge wasn’t finished. ‘And just look at the lad! Half dead of the cold after trailing all over York looking for you. And I don’t suppose that Briar fellow found you either, did he?’
‘No,’ said Lawrence, in a clipped voice.
‘Well, then,’ said Madge, her arms folded across her apron, and the argument won.
Lawrence focused his attention on Jed. ‘I take it you didn’t come upon William again either?’ he said.
Jed shook his head.
‘Right,’ said Lawrence, standing up. ‘Well, you get yourself tidied up once you’ve finished that and get on with filing them papers we brought back up from London. Whatever it is he wanted, I daresay he’ll be back.’
After David Ogilvie had left her, Anne sat in the darkened chapel, a small sanctuary amidst the busyness and noise of the minster. Choristers were at practice in the quire, their voices rising like larks, only to be cut down before they could reach their height by the lacerating tongue of their master. She had walked up the north aisle behind some canons passing to the Chapter House, snatches of intrigue or petty concerns coming her way, complaints about the cold, the damp, the fatter prebend handed to a rival. The cathedral was its own city, a city of men.
But this small chapel was a place of silence. The colours of the window glass were muted by the grey of the sky outside, shadows of flakes darkening them further as they passed downwards. The candle Anne had lit gave a memory of warmth and a promise of life amongst the dead grey stones, and a reminder that there were women here too. Everywhere in the minster, in fact, there were women: the Madonna with child, the Assumption, shining from golden bosses in the ceiling, the Queen of Heaven gazing beatifically from leaded windows. The Mother of Christ wept at the foot of the cross, as virgins and martyred saints saw out the centuries in coloured glass. The minster was filled with the voices of men, but sit still long enough, and the sound of them was drowned out by the silences of women.
Anne listened carefully to the silence, and put the other noises of the minster to the edges of her mind. The light outside grew greyer. She became aware, at some point, that the choristers were gone from the quire. In this space she had created for herself, she considered the words of David Ogilvie as they had walked through the snow from King’s Manor to the minster. He had wasted little time in pleasantries.
‘You last encountered Sir Thomas in Flanders – Damme, in fact?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Do you know it?’
He shook his head. ‘I have never been there, but I have heard of the place, and what happened there. A traitor to the King was exposed, a man killed, Thomas had to fight for his life and somehow, in the midst of it all, there was you, and there was Damian Seeker, who made his escape.’
She felt her body tense at the words and hoped he would not have felt it too through the hold he had on her arm as they walked. ‘If you know of Damian Seeker, there can be little else in that tale that surprises you,’ she said.
‘Little enough. Other than what you might have been doing there.’
‘That’s hardly a mystery. Under the Protectorate, my choice was exile overseas or incarceration here at Cromwell’s pleasure. Unlike yourself, I had no home to return to, and chose Flanders, as did many others loyal to His Majesty.’
‘That hardly explains what you were doing in Damme, on that night.’
Some excuse would have provided itself easily enough, but Anne was not disposed to humour this man’s questions. ‘I am astonished you think it your business to know that, Major Ogilvie,’ she said.
He had been silent then for a few minutes as they’d passed through Bootham Bar and gone along High Petergate. As they cleared the bustle of the street and came within the precincts of the west door of the cathedral he began to speak again. ‘I heard word of you lately having been in Edinburgh, Lady Anne, and before that, from time to time in other places. It seems you don’t settle anywhere for long.’
‘The years of my exile gave me a taste for the peripatetic life that I have found difficult to shed. But I am curious as to your interest in my movements, Major.’
They had now passed through the great west door to be confronted by the immensity and cold beauty of the nave. Anne could see her breath in front of her. Ogilvie had seemed momentarily transfixed by what they saw but then his hand had dropped from beneath her arm and he’d turned his back on the vista, to face her instead. ‘Only that you are a woman who trails mystery behind her, and Thomas Faithly trusts too much. He is my friend, and a man to whose courage in battle I owe my life. If you seek to meddle with him in some way, I would counsel you to think again.’
Then he had given a curt bow before striding up the south aisle, away from her and, eventually, out of her vision.
Five
William Briar
The two stonemasons’ labourers were well accustomed to the cold, but neither had ever felt quite the chill they did on entering the east crypt of York Minster that day. The older of the two shivered as they descended the steps.
‘Don’t know what he thinks we’ll find down here – nothing but old rubble.’
‘Dean wants it checked. Says someone thought they heard noises earlier.’
‘Noises?’ The older of the pair scoffed. ‘When are there not noises in the minster? Rats, or stray cats, like as not. No one’s been down here in a hundred years. Nothing but a fool’s errand. Now you hold up that lantern before I break my neck on these old steps!’
The young man did as he was told, but then almost dropped his light. To his left, a hideous scene of death and depravity had emerged from the darkness. Ghoulish, empty-eyed faces leered out at him from a large stone slab as men, women and beasts tumbled into Hell around them. His companion followed his gaze and let out a low exclamation. ‘The Doomstone.’ He shuddered. ‘My grandfather spoke of it and he was told of it by his. Who would come down here with that thing guarding the entrance? Some places are best let be.’
They moved closer together and continued nonetheless down into the crypt. As they lifted their lanterns, the younger man drew in his breath. Massive carved pillars held up the vaulted stone roof, and above that, which was insanity even to think of, was the whole edifice of the minster. ‘Sweet Jesus,’ he said in a low voice.
‘Hmmph. I doubt Jesus takes much to do with this place,’ said the older man. ‘And I’m damned if I’m staying here waiting for the whole lot to fall on my head. You swing your lantern over that way, and I’ll swing mine over this, and then we’ll be off back out of here, our duty done, before we’re bones and dust, too.
