Destroying Angel

Book 3: The Seeker

by S.G. MacLean

Genres: Historical Mysteries; Historical Thrillers

Synopsis

WINNER OF THE 2019 CWA HISTORICAL DAGGER 'A gripping tale of crime and sedition' Sunday Times on The Black Friar 'The best historical crime novel of the year' Sunday Express on The Seeker Captain Damian Seeker has gone north. Charged with preparing the way for the rule of the major-generals, he is now under the command of Colonel Robert Lilburne at York. But when Lilburne orders him to a small village on the North York moors with details of the stringent new anti-Royalist laws, Seeker finds that what should be a routine visit will reveal a plot to rival anything in scheming London An invitation to dinner at the house of local businessman Matthew Pullan lifts the lid on the bubbling cauldron of grudges and resentment that is Faithly village. The local constable, drunk on the tiny bit of power he holds, using it to avenge old resentments. The hated lord of the manor, the last of a staunchly Royalist family who has managed to avoid suspicion of treachery - for now. The vicar on trial for his job and his home, accused of ungodly acts. And the Pullans themselves, proudly Puritan but disillusioned with Cromwell's government, respected and despised in Faithly in equal measure. The man for whom this unlikely gathering was organised - The Trier, the enforcer of Puritan morality for the local villages - hasn't shown up. And by the end of the night, on of those gathered around Matthew Pullan's table will be fatally poisoned. Seeker must find out the motive behind the death - mushroom misidentification, petty revenge, or part of a larger plot against Cromwell's government in the north? But who in Faithly, if anyone, can he trust? And when the most painful part of his past reappears after eleven years, will the Seeker meet his match?

Release date: July 12, 2018

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 416

Sample

Prologue

September 1655

Yorkshire, somewhere between York and Halifax

Thomas Faithly laughed; he had heard the joke before, of course: it was filthy, rendered all the more so by the thick guttural tones of the Fleming who told it. The Spaniard to the right of him glanced quickly his way, as if uncertain as to how a countryman and loyal subject might take the slight aimed at Charles Stuart, but Thomas assured him that none had laughed more heartily than the King himself when first he had heard it, and that several around the table on that occasion had eagerly attested to the proficiency of the lady in question.

As well that those who rode alongside their party couldn’t decipher the Flemish tongue, thought Thomas. Unless things had very much altered in the four years since he had last touched Yorkshire soil, they were unlikely to appreciate the humour. He’d heard enough to know that they certainly did not appreciate having to act as night escort for the party on its journey from York to Halifax, but Major-General Lilburne had been adamant, and none of his men would have dared gainsay him.

It was not yet the end of September, but the night was clear and moonlit, and the temperature dropping. However cold it might be for their escort outside, inside their covered wagon, Faithly and his companions were warm enough, and the time was passed in stories and the occasional ballad, sung low so as not to offend their Puritan hosts. The roads so often marched and ridden by one side and the other might have been better kept, but they had not yet had their churning by the coming winter. Faithly had known worse journeys, certainly, and as the fellow opposite him began to intone some ballad of lost love in time to the comfortable rhythm of the wheels rumbling beneath them, he felt his eyelids close and was powerless to prevent himself from drifting off into a deep and comforting sleep.

It could not have been much later, and certainly they were hardly three hours out of York, when Faithly was awakened by a sudden jolt and the sound of rearing horses. The animals’ terrified whinnying almost drowned out the shouts of the two mounted guards thundering up from the rear to see what had caused the commotion. When Faithly looked out, just managing to crane his neck far enough to see a little up ahead, all he could make out were the rearing horses, a thrown rider and a huge ball of flame which appeared to be hanging in the sky just above them. There were shouts from the soldiers as they tried to calm the beasts and attend to their downed comrade. It was then that Thomas’s travelling companions began to cross themselves, mindless of the scruples of their escort, and to offer urgent prayers to the Virgin in their own tongues. Thomas might have prayed too, but the thing, swinging, ablaze, from the branches of the huge elm up ahead of them, was beyond help and he, unlike the others, had heard another sound, more hooves, approaching at great speed and from the north. Thomas felt a small glow of triumph and no little relief begin to creep through him. His fears that the one person he could trust might not be capable of carrying this thing off looked to be without substance: his coded letter had got past Cromwell’s intelligencers, the instructions had been understood and he was going home. He turned in time to hear a splintering of wood and the rending in two of the thick canvas at the back of the wagon. A shaft of moonlight and the glow from the flames up ahead played on the face that loomed towards them, illuminating the shining eyes of the man on horseback. Prayers in Spanish and Flemish turned to terrified curses and calls for help as the men around Thomas shrank back as far as they could. Thomas, however, shouldered his way past them to lean out through the back flap of the wagon, holding his manacled hands out in front of him, the chain pulled taut, as if in supplication. The face of the man on horseback broke into a strange grin, and he laughed as he swung his two-headed axe up into the darkness above, before bringing its blade crashing down with a sickening crack on the chain.

It was less than a minute later that, breathless, Thomas managed to clamber up onto the back of the fine beast that must surely have come from his father’s old stables, and wrap his still manacled arms, their chain newly broken, around the waist of his liberator. ‘Took your time, didn’t you?’ he said, as the other man dug his spurs into the animal’s flank and they galloped off north-eastwards, towards the Ouse and the back ways that would take them at last to the North Riding, and Faithly Moor.

Yorkshire, the North Riding

The bright light of the full moon shone on the clearing, and there they were, white, beautiful against the sparkling frost of the grass: destroying angels. How could something so lovely be so deadly? Satan’s bolete, stinkhorn, fly agaric, hoof fungus, false morel: all so foul, so hideous to the eye that no one in their right mind would go near any of those, but the destroying angel? Pure, white, delicate temptations almost, from another world, the world of the Green Man, of Arthur, or further back to the stories and beings that none would speak of now for fear of the witch-finder’s flames.

The moonlight was growing dimmer, a pinkish shade starting to creep over the horizon. The arm that stretched out over the wet grass cast little shadow, a gauntleted hand picked one, two, three, half a dozen of the milky-white, flowing caps with their stalks. One alone would have been enough, but caution was always to be preferred to trust, and there might be unforeseen accidents in the coming hours. To return here again, if seen, would raise questions, and anyhow, the thing must be done tonight if ever it were to be done. And if it were not done, then worse, much worse, would surely follow. No basket to draw attention, but a simple muslin packet, soon slipped beneath a cloak, and footprints in the grass that would fade in the warming day to be seen by no one, as they made their way back across Faithly Moor, ahead of the rising sun.

One

York Castle

To the south, Seeker could see the mist rising above Knaves­mire. To the north it had already cleared, and the minster stood massive and white against a clear blue sky, dominating the city, the tangle of streets, houses and parish churches bounded by rivers, castle and walls, within which men and women lived their lives and carried on their business in the hope that they might not draw too much attention to themselves. Seeker had become familiar, once more, with those streets these last six months, since Thurloe had sent him north to mop up the dregs of the latest Royalist rag-tag rebellion, and to prepare the way for the rule of the major-generals.

Only the slightest of breezes met at the juncture of the Ouse and the Foss this morning, doing little to disturb the waters of the castle moat, and yet still Seeker thought he could smell the rotted heads of some of those March rebels. They had thought the people of York would open their gates to them: they’d soon learned that the people of York had better sense, and now a good few of them looked out over Knavesmire from spikes at the top of Micklegate Bar, through eyes that the ravens had picked clean months since.

He could hear the clatter of boots running up the spiral stone stairs towards him. When the man finally emerged onto the walk at the top of Clifford’s Tower, he was trying not to sound out of breath. ‘Major-General Lilburne wants to see you, Captain. Straight away.’ Seeker glanced one more time to the south and then turned his thoughts from past troubles to consider what new ones might be waiting for him.

*

Robert Lilburne was leaning over his desk, hands planted on either side of the letter laid out in front of him. He was still wearing the travelling clothes Seeker had seen him in not half an hour ago, alighting from a barge at King’s Staithe.

‘How was London, sir?’ asked Seeker.

Lilburne didn’t look up. ‘Stinking hot and full of vice, as ever. And York?’

‘Bit colder.’

Lilburne smiled. He was as firm a Puritan as any in the army, but he wasn’t without humour. He had a hard soldier’s face and the certainty of his cause, but more of a grasp on the possible than his radical and oft-imprisoned Leveller brother, John.

‘No trouble, though?’

Seeker shook his head dismissively. ‘Nothing worth speaking of.’

‘Good,’ said Lilburne, ‘for I think there may be some brewing in the North Riding.’ He lifted the letter, which Seeker saw had no seal attached, and held it out. ‘This was handed to me just before I stepped onto my barge at Whitehall stairs. You’ll know the hand.’

The moment Seeker looked at it, he knew why the letter bore no seal, for he did indeed recognise the hand. He looked up. ‘Secretary Thurloe.’

Lilburne nodded. ‘The same.’

‘Am I called back to London, sir?’ Seeker had been waiting a long time for such a summons.

‘London?’ Lilburne almost snorted. ‘No, this is nothing to do with London, not yet, anyway. You’d best read it.’

So Seeker did, and with a sinking heart knew he would not be returning south for a while yet.

‘Sir Thomas Faithly?’

‘Aye. Do you know of him?’

Seeker shook his head. ‘Only know that Faithly is up on the moors, a good bit past Pickering. I know nothing of the family.’

‘Sir Thomas is the older son of Sir Anthony Faithly. Old North Riding family. He and his father came out for the King in ’42, as soon as Charles raised his standard at Nottingham. Father was killed at Marston Moor. Son, Thomas, fled abroad on the same ship as the Earl of Newcastle and a good few of the other leading officers of the King’s army in the north. Next heard of in ’47, fetching up in Paris, at the Prince of Wales’s court at St Germains. Joined the young Charles Stuart in his invasion from Scotland in the summer of ’51, and managed to get away again after the battle of Worcester, back to the continent.’

‘Charles’s court again?’ asked Seeker. ‘I never came across his name.’

‘That’s because Thurloe only involves you when there’s trouble, and Thomas Faithly hasn’t given cause for concern in four years. Dances, drinks, wenches, plays the fool. A perfect playmate for the young King.’

‘And now he’s disappeared,’ said Seeker, looking down again at what Thurloe had written.

‘Off the face of the earth,’ said Lilburne. ‘And not one of Thurloe’s informants at Charles’s court can discover a thing about where he’s gone.’

‘Does Thurloe think he’s come back here?’

Lilburne indicated the letter once more. ‘That’s what he wants you to get up there and find out.’

Seeker folded the letter, resigned. ‘I’ll set out within the hour.’

‘Good. And when you do you can take these with you.’ He handed Seeker another set of papers, a good deal thicker this time, and bearing the seal of the Council of State. In response to Seeker’s unspoken question he said, ‘They’re the new instructions for the commissioners for securing the peace in the community, to be put in place under the new arrangements.’ The new arrangements: the rule of the major-generals. ‘There’ll be plenty won’t like it, but the country’s forced this upon itself: the Protectorate must be secured from the Royalist threat and the people from their own vice. Only the godly and the army working together in the localities will achieve that, for nothing else has. Copies are being sent out to every commissioner in the country.’

‘Giving the local commissioners greater powers?’

Lilburne nodded. ‘They grant them greater powers of oversight and enforcement of the laws of the Protect­orate, and give them the power to dismiss those who don’t fully cooperate. If they don’t do this, they risk dismissal themselves, and replacement by men better affected to the regime. Power has already shifted at the top: this could have it shifting at the middle and bottom as well.’

Seeker nodded. That was the part that wouldn’t go down well in some quarters. ‘And who’s the commissioner at Faithly?’

‘Matthew Pullan, wool merchant.’ Matthew Pullan. The name was known to Seeker, from his earliest days in intelligencing work in London, before even Thurloe’s time. Matthew Pullan had been a soldier and a Leveller who’d been persuaded to turn informant on his own comrades. He was a fellow Yorkshireman, and Seeker suspected this Matthew Pullan would prove to be the same man. What Lilburne said next made it certain.

‘Pullan’s loyalties are beyond question. He is known to me personally, and I would trust him with my life.’ The major-general lowered his voice. ‘Matthew Pullan was a friend to my brother, and sought to counsel him against some of his wilder schemes.’

Robert Lilburne rarely spoke to subordinate officers about his brother. Freeborn John, Honest John who had fought bravely for Parliament, who might have risen as high as his brother in the Commonwealth’s cause, but who was in prison more often than he was out of it, and who had, somehow, avoided the executioner’s axe for the treason he had spoken and written against Cromwell. Some had it that it was the sheer love of the people for the inveterate Leveller that had saved him; some said it was Cromwell himself that remembered a brother officer’s valour too well, but Seeker knew what neither Robert Lilburne nor his troublesome brother could: that it was in exchange for the information traded by Matthew Pullan that John Lilburne had been granted his life.

Lilburne continued. ‘Matthew Pullan joined Parliament’s militia at the first ordnance in 1642. By ’47, he had taken up Levelling principles and was much in my brother’s company, and was at Putney as an agitator. There, thank God, General Fairfax brought him back round. Wish that the same might have been done with my brother, but it was not, as you well know. Nevertheless, Matthew Pullan and John remained friends, though Pullan drew back from the wilder schemes and petitions of the Levellers. It was when Fairfax laid down his commission that Pullan finally left the army and returned to Yorkshire, and his home in Faithly.’

‘Where he is the authority.’

‘Where he is the commissioner,’ Lilburne corrected.

‘And the justice of the peace?’

Lilburne raised an eyebrow. ‘Sir Edward Faithly, the fugitive Sir Thomas’s younger brother.’

Seeker took a moment to process this. ‘So he didn’t go out with his father and older brother for the King. Too young? Or the family hedging its bets?’ It was a common enough thing.

Lilburne shook his head. ‘Edward Faithly was old enough, and his father would have seen his estate burned to the ground before he’d hold it for Parliament. Edward Faithly, it seems, had a riding accident a week before his father and brother left to join the King. He’s hardly fit to get on a horse even now, they tell me.’ He paused a moment. ‘Unfortunate.’

‘Or politic,’ said Seeker.

Lilburne looked up from the papers he’d begun to arrange, and grimaced. ‘Nothing gets past you, does it, Captain? Well, I’ve no doubt you’ll find out, one way or the other. Make sure you make plain to him our view of Royalist sympathisers, and make sure he knows what’ll happen if he gives any sanctuary to his brother.’ Lilburne had made his points and returned to his papers. ‘Send Parker in to me on your way out. He’ll be delivering to the other commissioners in the North Riding, though how he’ll get on up on the moors, God alone knows. He trusts everyone he meets, and gets a nosebleed any time he ventures north of Monkgate.’

Whereas Seeker, it was understood, trusted no one, and knew the moors like the back of his hand.

Less than an hour later Seeker and his men were waiting at the drawbridge to cross out of the castle and into the town, on their way north. Seeker held back as a horseman came clattering down towards them. The man slid from his mount in near exhaustion when he came in through the gate. Breathless and dishevelled, he shouted something about an ambush on the road to Halifax, a burning effigy hanging from a tree and a foreigner escaped. Seeker had seen him only the previous day, at the head of a prisoner transport, Dunkirkers being moved on Lilburne’s orders from York’s overcrowded dungeon to the gaol in Halifax.

‘Any of our men harmed?’ asked Seeker.

‘One with a broken leg and another with burns to his arm. Two horses lost.’

Seeker heard his sergeant behind him mutter something under his breath.

‘Take it to the major-general, then,’ said Seeker. A fugitive Dunkirker shambling around the West Riding: not his problem. Moving his mount, Acheron, forward onto the drawbridge, he signalled to his men to follow, and they set out through the castle gates for Faithly Moor.

Two

The Village

Bess Pullan rested her arms on the bottom half of the kitchen door and looked out to the yard. The door to the milking parlour was open and she could hear the girl Orpah singing to their cow, in the belief that her milk came easier that way. Bess permitted herself a smile at the foolishness, but at least the cheese was all made now and stacked for the winter, the butter long-churned and set in the cold store. Soon there would be the last of the milk until the spring. Let the girl sing if she wished.

Smoke was curling from the chimney of Gwendolen’s workshop. Shadows of cloud were scudding across the moor: time was getting on. She’d have to call her in soon, the venison pie was still to be filled and the batter not yet made for the fritters. Bess stepped into the yard, shooing the pig out of her way. ‘Nothing but your belly with you, is it, Peg?’ All her pigs had been called Peg, after a long-dead schoolfellow whom she had never liked. The pig took its telling and ambled, disgruntled, back to the orchard. Bess felt a twinge in her back as she bent to pick more parsley for the pottage; the aches came earlier every year now, and Gwendolen’s poultices became less effective with each month that passed.

Another twinge when she stood up. She rested her hand a moment on the drystone wall and looked out at the village. Tansy Whyte was waiting, as usual, by the bridge over the beck, watching for the cart to appear trundling back over the track from the fair at Helmsley, hoping it would bring back her husband Seth, and that he had not stayed too long in the taverns. She’d been waiting there every day for fourteen years. Bess shook her head and cast her eyes towards the churchyard. The Reverend Jenkin was shutting the door to the small schoolroom, his scholars scampering home on the street or up over the moor. As he picked his way past ancient grave slabs to the door of his church, she wondered if he would ever again stand at his desk in that schoolroom, or in the pulpit of that church, after tomorrow. Probably not, if even half of what she’d heard of the trier was true. It didn’t matter much to Bess: he’d brought it all on his own head.

They were busy already down at the Black Bull, making ready for tomorrow. Benches that Bess was certain had seen neither soap nor water since her father’s time had been scrubbed, floors swept and new rushes put down, fires lit in rooms long disused. All day, farmers and housewives had been coming and going – legs of mutton, sides of bacon, what eggs were still to be had, cheeses – though none of Bess’s; they’d have nothing from her larder. The ovens of the Black Bull had scarcely cooled these last two days, Orpah had told her, for the mountains of bread – manchet loaves, cheat bread, oat jannocks – pouring from them, to say nothing of the extra ale laid down and the barrel of wine ordered up from York. Bess knew all about the wine, Matthew himself had arranged its transport – Jack Thatcher at the Bull couldn’t find his way to York if he was tied to the back of a packman’s horse. ‘Fine Puritans, no doubt, this committee,’ Bess had commented to the wide-eyed Orpah.

Beyond the Bull, past the bridge where Tansy was now hopping from foot to foot, Bess could see a party of riders coming over the top of the ridge. As they drew closer Bess knew these weren’t the ejectors, for the ejectors were local men, and none had horses like these three rode. Nor yet was it the trier, for he was already here, arrived this dinnertime with his wife, Orpah had said. A chill came over her, though the yard was still bathed in a late-afternoon sun: soldiers.

Others had noticed them too, and by the time the party had reached Tansy, several people stood in their doorways, or watched cautiously through windows. In front of the inn, all work was suspended. Bess saw the tallest of the three horsemen bend down towards Tansy and ask her something, and just as surely saw Tansy turn and lift her hand, pointing to Bess’s own house. The soldier was about to move on, but Tansy put a hand on his beast’s bridle, appeared to ask him something. The man shook his head and Tansy dropped the bridle and resumed her vigil.

Bess went back into the house, through the kitchen to the narrow entranceway, and went out to stand her ground at her front door. The village watched as the horsemen made their way up the street. Maud Sharrock, outside the blacksmith’s, gawped like a fish. Close your mouth, Maud, thought Bess, you’ll catch something. As they came nearer, the leading horseman pulled away from his companions and drew up in front of her.

‘Mistress Pullan?’ he enquired.

‘Who’s asking?’

She thought he bridled a bit at that, though there might just have been a hint of a smile. She couldn’t see much for his helmet, although what she could see put her in mind of the Wainstones past Urra Moor.

‘Captain Seeker, of the county militia. I have papers to deliver to Commissioner Pullan, from Major-General Lilburne at York.’

Yorkshire, by his speech. That was something. ‘You’d best come in then,’ said Bess, turning back into the house and leaving the door open for him to follow her.

*

Accustomed, once again, to army billets and the stone corridors of York Castle, Seeker had grown unused to private dwellings, and he was conscious of his size as he entered the house and followed the woman through to the kitchen at the back. She threw a hand out behind her to indicate a room off to his right. ‘I’d take you into the parlour, but I’m busy, so here’ll have to do,’ she said, throwing some flour onto the board in front of her and beginning to roll out some pastry she’d had sitting there.

‘Where’s your son, Mistress Pullan?’

‘Rode over to Lockton, early. Business,’ she said, thumpi­ng the mix down again and turning it. ‘Won’t be back till near suppertime.’ She glanced over her shoulder at the papers Seeker had rolled up in his hand. ‘You can leave those here, I’ll see he gets them.’

‘I’ve to deliver them personally, see he reads them. I’ll come back later.’

‘As you please,’ said Bess, taking the pastry and beginning to line the sides of a deep earthenware dish with it.

Seeker had put the letter back into his satchel and was making to leave when Bess straightened herself and turned wearily to him. ‘Wait, lad, you’ve had a long ride and you’re all no doubt thirsty. Will you take a cordial before you go?’

They hadn’t stopped since Malton and he suspected both the men had drained their water bottles hours since. ‘I wouldn’t say no,’ he said.

‘You sit you down then,’ she said, indicating a long, high-backed seat by the wall, ‘and I’ll fetch you something.’ She went to the back door and called out into the yard, ‘Gwendolen, bring a jug of that elderflower cordial up from the cold cellar, and then come in and help me – we’ll never be ready at this rate.’

Seeker surveyed the kitchen. The seat, the oak armchair by the hearth, the woman at work at the table across from him, the fine flagstone floor, took him back to something else: it was what he had promised Felicity, what he had believed in, before the war, before everything. He shook himself out of it and looked properly. It was well past the dinner hour and this was no ordinary supper in preparation. ‘You’ve some household to feed, mistress,’ he said, inclining his head towards the laden table and the pot of pottage already simmering over the fire.

‘Tonight, I have,’ answered Bess, leaning back a little and pressing her hands to her weary back. ‘Since my husband died it’s just been me, Matthew and Gwendolen, my ward. Orpah helps me in the house and tends to the beasts, though she goes home to her own mother come sundown, thank the Lord.’

‘What’s on tonight?’ Seeker knew that subtlety of approach, going around the houses, only wasted time with these people. His father had told him once, ‘If you can’t say straight what you mean, don’t say it.’

‘I’ve to give a supper. Ten folk. As if I haven’t enough work.’

‘Ten’s a lot,’ said Seeker carefully, but Bess saw his meaning anyway.

‘There’s a few of them I wouldn’t choose to have sat at my table, I won’t lie, but if you’re looking for secret gatherings of Royalists you won’t find one here. There aren’t enough of them in these parts to break the law even should they bump into each other in the street, never mind to set up a cockfight.’

‘Not even Sir Edward Faithly?’ pushed Seeker.

‘Faithly?’ Bess snorted. ‘Knows which side his bread’s buttered, that one. Always has done.’

‘Oh?’

She paused and turned to him with an arched eyebrow. ‘Oh, you don’t get me like that, Captain. You can make your own mind up about Edward Faithly.’

Seeker grunted. So much for Edward Faithly, for now. ‘What about the rest of them?’

Bess scrutinised him. ‘You don’t hang about.’

‘Saves everybody’s time. I’d get there in the end, regardless.’

Bess sniffed. ‘Aye, I imagine you would.’ She took a moment. ‘I’m making no accusations, mind.’

Seeker nodded. ‘So?’

‘I know all the folk who’ll be round my table tonight save two: Caleb Turner and his wife.’

Caleb Turner. The trier. Lilburne hadn’t told him this – maybe he hadn’t known. Turner was notorious throughout Yorkshire and right across the Pennines to Carlisle. There was hardly a preacher or teacher from one coast to the other who hadn’t come under the scrutiny of his examin­ation, and none but the godliest of the godly, the purest of the pure, by Turner’s exacting lights, emerged unscathed. ‘What’s Caleb Turner doing here?’

‘What do you think? He’s coming to try our vicar, Septimus Jenkin, that has the church and school up at the end of the village there. Turner and a whole committee of ejectors, and if Jenkin be found wanting, God help him.’

‘And will he be found wanting?’ asked Seeker.

‘Not for me to say.’ She nodded towards the satchel Seeker had set at his feet. ‘Like as not the verdict’s in those letters there.’

Seeker shook his head. ‘I’m not here for the trier’s court. As I said, my business is with your son.’ All the same, he doubted what was in the letters would help the cause of Septimus Jenkin, however worthy and blameless the vicar of Faithly might be.

A shadow fell across the doorway and Seeker saw a young woman – little more than a girl, really – standing there. Pale and thin, but with intensely grey eyes, she wore a simple blue woollen gown over her smock and in her hands was carrying a large delftware jug with a pewter lid. ‘Where shall I put it, Aunt Bess?’ she said, not seeming to notice Seeker.

‘Down on the dresser, and fill three tumblers for the captain there an. . .