The winter list, p.1
The Winter List, page 1
part #6 of Damian Seeker Series
Also by S. G. MacLean
the alexander seaton series
The Redemption of Alexander Seaton
A Game of Sorrows
Crucible of Secrets
The Devil’s Recruit
the captain damian seeker series
The Seeker
The Black Friar
Destroying Angel
The Bear Pit
The House of Lamentations
standalone
The Bookseller of Inverness
This ebook published in 2023 by
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Copyright © 2023 S. G. MacLean
Map © 2023 Nicola Howell Hawley
The moral right of S. G. MacLean to be
identified as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
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either the product of the author’s imagination
or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
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To Eveline
Contents
The Winter List
Also By
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Prologue
London
August 1660
The pages yellowed then browned, smoke creeping along their undersides until the corners began to curl in on themselves. Letter by letter, words – that no one was in any case close enough to read – were consumed. Lawrence, though, like so many others in the crowd, did not need to see the print to know what they said – words written over eleven years since, to justify the killing of a king:
. . . for their sakes who through custom, simplicitie or want of better teaching, have not more seriously considerd Kings, then in the gaudy name of Majesty, and admire them and thir doings as if they breath’d not the same breath with other mortal men . . .
At last the pages took light and John Milton’s words flamed high into the summer’s afternoon.
As the books burned, the city’s executioner read out Parliament’s proclamation against the blind poet and his work, allowing for little doubt that should the authorities have been able to find the author of such sedition, they would happily have set him atop the pyre with his books.
‘Where is he?’ asked Lawrence Ingolby, under his breath.
‘Safe,’ said the man beside him, ‘for now.’ Andrew Marvell kept his voice low. ‘But the Council of State is at this very minute busied with drawing up a list of those to be exempted from His Majesty’s mercy.’ The Act of Free and General Pardon, Indemnity and Oblivion that had been put before Parliament within days of Charles Stuart’s agreement to return to England as King, enshrined within it his promise of clemency to his and his late father’s enemies. Or at least it enshrined a promise of clemency to some of them, for the young King had astutely, almost casually, allowed that some of those enemies should be excepted from his mercy, although ‘only such persons as shall hereafter be excepted by Parliament’. Major General Thomas Harrison had been the first to be excepted from that mercy, to be followed the next day by six of his former comrades, the most notorious of the regicides who had had the King’s father’s sacred head severed from its neck. More than forty names had been added the day after that.
The numbers grew and the parameters shifted beyond those individuals known to have tried and ordered the execution of the King. Next was ordered the search for the executioners. John Thurloe, who had held all in his hands under Cromwell, was arrested, and put in the Tower, his blood called for. It seemed, though, that somehow he would avoid the rope, the disembowelling hook, the flames and the axe. Perhaps John Thurloe knew too much about the innocence or otherwise of those now in power. At first, some men believing the King’s promise of clemency had handed themselves in, only to be swiftly disabused of that notion. Others, seeing their fate or having guessed it in advance, fled to the continent or even the Americas. Almost daily, it seemed, the definition of guilt shifted, the list of those to be excepted from the royal mercy grew.
‘John Milton’s name’s never on it?’ In his surprise, Lawrence had forgotten that it was not entirely advisable for he and Marvell to be seen talking together.
Marvell grimaced. ‘I have worked night and day to persuade them to take it off. I think His Majesty, thank God, is of a mind to be gracious to those that did not have an actual hand in his father’s murder.’
Ingolby raised his eyebrows. The apparent ease with which Marvell had managed to pirouette from staunch Cromwellian and firm upholder of the Commonwealth to ardent Royalist still rendered him almost speechless. It had been the work of days, hours perhaps, or even a moment for his friend to amend his language and keep his job, and perhaps, for all either of them knew, his head. The clamour for revenge from the Royalists returned to Parliament grew louder by the day and neither Lawrence nor any of his acquaintance knew where it might stop.
Marvell flushed and raised his chin, avoiding Lawrence’s eye. ‘We all have a living to earn.’
‘True enough,’ said Lawrence, turning away from the spectacle and readying himself to go back to his own employment, which lay waiting for him in half-written depositions, indentures, articles of agreement and much else that was piled upon the desk and floor of his small chambers in Clifford’s Inn. ‘We can hope it’s only the ones that put the old King on trial that have to worry . . .’
Marvell said nothing, merely shook his head.
The fire crackled and spat and all around them was laughter and jeering as the pyre of forbidden books went up in flames, but something in Marvell’s look chilled Lawrence’s very stomach.
Marvell affected to inspect a piece of ash that had landed on his collar as a woman selling peaches amongst the crowd passed close by them. He leaned a little closer to Lawrence and murmured, ‘You should leave London, now.’
‘Me?’ Lawrence spluttered. ‘What have I done? I wasn’t twenty years old, still at home in Yorkshire, when the King was put on trial.’
‘I know that,’ said Marvel, still inspecting his collar. ‘But there’s another list.’
Lawrence looked at his friend as if he were mad. ‘The Council of State’s never going to bother themselves about me, Andrew.’
‘You’re not listening,’ Marvell muttered, looking around him a moment before leaning in closer. ‘There’s another list, that the King and the Council of State know nothing about.’
‘What?’ Lawrence’s mockery gave way to apprehension. ‘What kind of list?’
‘One drawn up by an individual impatient that King and Parliament will not dig deep enough, and hell-bent upon his own revenge.’
Lawrence’s eyes were wide. ‘Who?’
Marvell shook his head again.
‘But you’re saying my name’s on it?’
Marvell lowered his voice even further. ‘No. But Damian Seeker’s is. You must go back to Yorkshire, and you must take the captain’s daughter with you.’
The peach seller watched Andrew Marvell go off in one direction while Lawrence Ingolby went in the other. Ingolby would be returning, no doubt, to his chambers at Clifford’s Inn. It was too early in the day for the lawyer to repair to the Black Fox on Broad Street, where he had lodged for the last four years and where his young wife had been in the employ and protection of the landlady since first she had arrived in London. Marvell looked constantly to his left and right. Well, many nowadays had especial cause to look about them, lest they come under the scrutiny of those not quite convinced by their protestations of loyalty to the restored King. Marvell did right to take care.
Without shifting her gaze, the peach seller suddenly grabbed at the wrist of a young thief whose hand had darted into her basket. She turned it firmly before placing two plump fruits into the upturned palm and telling the child to be gone. As the boy ran off with his booty, she left Lawrence Ingolby to
Marvell was almost at Pye Corner when she saw him suddenly pull up short, hesitate and then turn back down towards Holborn. Beyond him, coming down the street towards her, were two officers of the King’s Regiment of Guards. She arranged her hood better around her face as she approached them with her basket. The nearer of the two – she recalled him from Brussels – waved her away, and she continued up the street. She glanced down in time to see Marvell disappear around the corner of St Sepulchre’s, whose bell was ringing the half hour, reminding her she had an appointment of her own and must leave the poet to his wanderings.
Roger L’Estrange sat in his cabinet in the little house that backed onto Palace Yard. It wasn’t much, but it would suit his purposes, for now. There was such a clamour for places at Whitehall that he had been lucky to make good a claim to anything at all. The little house was convenient, after all, for the chamber of the Commons, and the MPs over whom his pamphlets and arguments were increasingly bringing him influence. He was not yet quite as successful as he would like to be in persuading others to his views, but then, as his grandmother had been wont to say, there was more than one way to skin a cat. Here, L’Estrange was close enough to the royal presence to make himself familiar, whilst being far enough away from the noise of court life to get on with his business unimpeded. The King’s heart was too soft for his own good, and too inclined to forgiveness. Parliament, which had no heart at all, was too taken up with its own interests. Many who had profited from and enabled Cromwell’s regime would be let off the hook, for no better reason than that they had the right friends. And some, that ought even now to be languishing in the Tower of London awaiting trial for their treason, had fled altogether. This didn’t trouble L’Estrange as much as it might have done – they would be apprehended and dealt with by the proper authorities, in time. His own interest, though, was another thing altogether. His interest went beyond that of the established authorities. His interest went beyond dealing with those who had sat in judgement on the King and signed their names to his death warrant. His interest was in the others, in those who had not been amongst the men of power, and so believed their deeds to have been unremarked or forgotten. Roger L’Estrange was determined to find them and to lay bare their secrets.
He glanced up from his list, his pen paused a little above the paper so that a drip of ink fell upon it without his noticing. He was sure he could detect the slightest hint, just a ribbon, of smoke in the air. Not the smoke of sea coals and a hundred Whitehall fires, but of pages curling and burning, calfskin bindings crackling in the flames. It gave him satisfaction to think of that smoke curling under the doors of those who fancied they might hide themselves from retribution. The moment was broken by the tentative knock of his clerk on the door.
‘A woman wishes to see you, sir.’
‘What kind of woman?’
‘A peach seller.’
In any other gentleman’s house, a woman selling peaches would not have got beyond the kitchen at best, but L’Estrange’s servants knew that this was another sort of house. A moment later the peach seller had been shown into his cabinet and the door closed behind her.
He didn’t invite her to sit. ‘Well?’
She made her report. There had been a significant crowd there at Old Bailey, at the first burning of Milton’s books. One or two printers and booksellers amongst them, in fact, had been keen to show their support for the new regime by handing over any of the condemned works that might be lying about their stores or presses.
‘Hmmph.’ L’Estrange knew that the most obdurate amongst the Republican printers would not have been there. They would be dealt with, come time. Roger’s patron, Henry Bennet, had promised him the post of Surveyor of the Press, perhaps more. In the meantime, there was other business to be attended to. ‘And who amongst his friends was there? Marvell? Davenant?’ The latter had been loud, the former persistent, in their pleas on the blind poet’s behalf. In Cromwell’s time, Milton had used his influence to save Davenant from the executioner, and the playwright, now in his pomp, was determined to repay the debt. As for Marvell, what he did not owe to Milton he owed to Cromwell. L’Estrange was unconvinced by the turn in Marvell’s loyalties.
‘Marvell was there,’ his informant told him.
Roger felt a little jolt of satisfaction.
‘Alone?’
‘No, he was talking to a lawyer friend of his. Lawrence Ingolby.’
‘The name means nothing to me. Should it?’
The woman appeared to be considering. He found her irritating, but most of the female intelligencers he knew had abandoned their trade, now that the King was back, and there was not a large pool to choose from. ‘I don’t believe so. He’s a lawyer at Clifford’s Inn, and was pupil to a man named Ellingworth, who was radical in his views. Ellingworth left for Massachusetts shortly after Cromwell’s death, but Ingolby seems to have shown no inclination to go with him. A coming man, they say.’
‘“A coming man.”’ L’Estrange smiled. ‘The best kind – not inclined to offer trouble to the prevailing authority. And what did they speak of, Marvell and this Ingolby?’
‘Of John Milton,’ she said.
‘And?’
‘Marvell knows where he is but didn’t tell Ingolby. Just that he was safe, and that he was fighting to get him off the list of names excepted from the King’s mercy.’
‘Did they speak of anything else?’
There was the slightest pause before she said, ‘No.’
He regarded her closely. ‘You’re certain?’
‘Nothing within my hearing.’ He would have pressed her more closely on that but now she was telling him how she had followed Marvell and where he had gone.
‘Smithfield?’
She nodded. ‘He turned back quite suddenly when he saw two of the King’s Guard approaching. I’m all but certain he was on his way to see Milton.’
‘Hmm,’ L’Estrange mused. ‘I’ll have a search party sent to Smithfield.’
She picked up her basket and made to leave, but he held up a hand. ‘Not quite yet, if you please.’
She stopped. ‘I have nothing more to tell you.’
‘But I have something to tell you, or to give you. Sit down, please.’
The woman’s expression was wary, but she sat.
‘I believe you were still on the Continent when Richard Cromwell was brought down by the grandees of his own army?’
‘I was,’ she said. ‘But the news was not long in reaching me.’
‘Nor me,’ he said. The news of the collapse of the Protectorate had been a golden moment in L’Estrange’s life.
‘And were you aware that John Thurloe was removed from his post as director of the usurping regime’s espionage at the same time?’
‘To be replaced by the regicide Thomas Scott, I understand.’
She was well informed. Good – it would save time.
‘Thurloe,’ he continued, ‘remains in the Tower. I and others have made efforts to have him excluded from the King’s mercy, but our pleas appear to have fallen upon deaf ears, and he is unlike to be tried for his life.’
