A Murder at Rosamund’s Gate, page 20
“I did not see this,” came Richard’s low reply.
“What, pray heaven,” Adam said, rising to his feet, “was William doing in your stable?”
The magistrate ignored Adam’s breach and looked expectantly at the man squirming in the witness chair.
Richard hesitated. “He was tied up.”
The crowd gasped. Adam continued. “And how did he come to be tied up in your stable?”
“I wanted to teach him a lesson. My men,” Richard said, looking somewhat sheepish, “tied him up. He came to me, drunk and swinging, ranting about that wench Bessie. I knocked him out and tied him up and then left.” He smirked then at Adam. “I had other things to attend to. A few hours after sunrise, we untied him and threw him in a ditch.”
The crowd began to buzz, and the judge held up his hand. He looked at Richard sternly. “Are you saying that the defendant was tied up from the time he came to you until the next morning? When he was found, with bloody hands, in a ditch?”
“I guess he didn’t recollect what happened after I knocked him out,” Richard muttered, both defiant and a little ashamed. “I was just funning with him. I untied his hands before we left him. Didn’t want him to rot there. I sure as hell didn’t expect him to swing for the girl’s murder. I’ve no wish to have a dead man swinging in my thoughts all the time. Burt and Joe, they’ll tell you it’s true.”
The constable, seeing the case slip away from him, spoke directly to the judge. “The defendant could still have killed her and crawled back—”
“Kill her in broad morning light? Then go back to that very same ditch, to be found by that tinker on his way to the market?” Adam asked, the disbelief clear in his tone.
The magistrate cocked his head. “Indeed, sounds far-fetched, but I must consider it—. What was that?” He turned to Richard, who was now looking more shamefaced.
“Saw that tinker,” Richard muttered.
“How’s that?” Adam and the magistrate asked simultaneously.
“After me and my mates unbound him, we saw that tinker on the road. I’ve done business with him before. I’m in livery for the Embrys. Sometimes they need something hammered out for the carriages and whatnot. So not more than ten minutes could have passed since we left him, when the tinker found him.”
The magistrate sighed. Lucy and John, and the rest of the courtroom, leaned forward.
The magistrate fingered his mallet. “As much as I hate to see the murder of a young lass go unresolved, I should hate far more to see an innocent man be wrongly accused and hanged.”
Lucy held her breath. The magistrate then said the words she could scarcely have dreamed he would utter. “The court thereby declares the defendant, William Campion, acquitted of all charges and set free.”
The crowd roared in approval. Londoners were a good-natured group; they were equally glad to see a man justly acquitted as to be sent to the gallows. The magistrate banged on his desk.
“Master Campion, it is in your right to have the court charge Richard Cuthbert with giving false testimony and assaulting you. If you choose to press charges, Richard will pass not less than three nights in jail, spending two hours each day in the stocks.”
Richard grimaced. William hesitated, then swiveled to look at Lucy. She shook her head. No need to renew Richard’s rancor against them.
William seemed to understand. Reaching for Lucy’s hand, he said firmly, “No, Your Honor. I should just like to put all this behind me.”
* * *
On the way out, Lucy held Will’s arm tight, sobbing with relief, the crowd around them still cheering.
A young lad darted up and pumped Will’s arm. “I never thought you did it!”
Will managed a weak smile. Adam and John flanked them both, pushing their way through the crowd. Within moments, the crowd that had gathered outside the Newgate prison door had sought other grisly entertainment.
As they passed, Lucy heard a bookseller selling chapbooks reading off another man’s last dying speech. A hanged man would have his “true confession” read before he was hanged; whether it was true or not mattered little. “He was very willing to die!” the bookseller cried out, trying to be heard over the growing crowd. He was a small man, with greasy hair and ill-fitting clothes. He looked tired but was working hard to earn a few pennies. “He did not live well, but his soul shall find redemption in death.”
“Aw, give us the good stuff!” one man called. The crowd murmured in agreement. Penitence was fine and good, and showed that justice prevailed, but everyone wanted to hear the more sensational details. They wanted to know they were right when watching the man die.
Adam had his hand on her back then and almost seemed to be pushing her. The ground outside the prison was rocky and rough, and she almost tripped. She looked up at him indignantly, about to say something, when she realized what he was trying to keep her from seeing.
A gallows had been erected at Tyburn, and there a man was swinging, still alive. His body was rigid, his face was blackened, and his head hung at a queer angle. He bobbed about. “Cut him down!” the crowd began to cheer, while others called with equal fervor, “Rack him back up!”
The executioner obliged both calls, cutting the condemned man down and putting another noose around his neck.
Lucy didn’t even know she was fainting until the ground rushed up to her. She felt strong arms swoop her up and carry her. When she opened her eyes, great tree branches waved gently above, and long grasses tickled her cheek. She could hear little of the hubbub and fuss of the town, and the executioner’s scaffold was nowhere in sight. Adam and William were talking in low tones. John was chewing on a stalk of grass, listening.
Seeing that she had woken up, William mustered a grin, a semblance of his cocky self. Yet he still looked wan and pale. “All right now, sister? John and Adam carried you near a quarter of a mile to get you away from that ungodly scene.”
“That man!” She gulped as the horrible image of the man’s bulging eyes and blackened tongue came to her. “It could have been—”
“Aye, lass.” John cut her off. “But your brother, he’s fine. Thanks to Master Adam here.”
Adam shrugged but still looked ashen from the trial. It seemed to have taken a lot out of him. “Let us say no more of it,” he said, stretching out his long legs. “Let us just breathe in this good clean air.”
And not think of the rotting stench of Newgate or the stifling tension of the courtroom. Lucy still could not fathom what had nearly happened. “Richard? What about him?” she asked. “What could have possessed him to recant? He actually seemed … penitent?”
Adam looked at the palms of his hands. “I think he may have had, how shall I say this, a little Friendly persuasion?”
“Whatever do you mean?” Lucy asked.
“A week ago, I heard tell that Richard had been thrown in jail for a bout of public drunkenness. It was not too hard to grease a few hands to get the jailers to put him in a cell with three Friends.”
John guffawed. “The Quakers worked him over!”
Adam sighed. “Something like that. Except, of course, with words, not fists. I’ve no doubt that enough talk about conscience and hell will make even a hardened criminal confront his ways. Richard, for all his faults”—here he looked significantly at Lucy—“is not an evil man. Let us just thank God that he found his conscience before it was too late for Will.”
No one needed to say anything, but the enormity of what had almost happened was still overwhelming. In the distance, she heard the church bells toll two o’clock. For a moment, Lucy watched a bird making languid circles above them. Was it a hawk? No matter; at this distance, it was beautiful and free and as far removed from earthly desires and hatreds as Lucy could ever wish to be. She did not realize that tears were slipping down her cheeks until she felt a handkerchief pressed into her hand. Gratefully, she looked at Adam, but he was frowning, watching a distant figure stumble toward them.
“What’s this?” John asked.
Lucy squinted. It was a woman, running, clutching her skirts. Something was clearly amiss. The woman puffed heavily toward them where they stood on the hill, her gray hair falling messily from her cap. Judging from her dress, she was probably a merchant’s wife. The hill proved overmuch for her, and with a hand to her chest, she staggered a bit before falling to her knees.
Instantly, their small group was on their feet, racing toward her.
Adam, a half step behind, called to the woman, his voice imperious. “Woman! What is wrong?”
“Can we help?” Lucy asked at the same time.
The woman tried to catch her breath. “It’s happened,” she said, panting heavily. The others waited impatiently. She seemed unable to speak, her eyes deeply distressed.
“What? What’s happened?” Will asked, shifting his feet.
The woman threw up her hands. Her next words chilled Lucy to her very bones. “The plague,” she said helplessly. “It’s reached the west side.”
18
Lucy’s brief moment of happiness was cut short, a terrible sense of dread muddling her senses. Everyone knew that the last time the plague hit the city, thousands had died. There had also been Flanders and Paris.
“John,” Adam said, “you must escort Lucy home. I must go to the courts to see Father home safely. Will, you can come—”
“Will,” Lucy interrupted, “must go home, to mother and Dorrie.” She turned to her brother. “Promise me. I’ve got the protection of the magistrate and John, but they need you.”
“Mother, who did not even come to the trial,” Will said, kicking a clump of dirt.
Lucy embraced him, pecking his cheek. “Please,” she whispered, helping him swing his pack over his narrow shoulders. “You must give her the chance to make amends for the wrong she has done you.”
She watched her brother for a moment as he briskly walked off. No one would ever have known that he had been almost condemned to hang a few hours before or, seeing his jaunty step, that the world might be coming to an end. Will I ever see him again? She said a little prayer for him.
Turning back to Adam and John, she found Adam’s gaze on her. He looked away. “Well, I’ll be off,” he said. “I’ll see you back at the house. Take care.”
* * *
Indeed, their hurried journey home, no more than two miles, was strange. Just as the magistrate had foretold, all of London began to panic as the threat of plague, long hanging over their heads, finally became reality. Everywhere, people were running, crying, despairing—everyone trying to figure out what to do, where to go. Doomsayers and prophets wandered the streets, predicting God’s wrath.
“London, you are Nineveh before the great flood!” one man shouted, his hair matted with sweat. “Sinners all! Heed me as you would Jonah, lest the Almighty smite you down!”
Catching Lucy’s eye as they stumbled by, another woman tugged at her sleeve. “You’re going to hell, you know,” she said, almost pleasantly. “Unless you turn your ways.”
Church bells began to toll, some deep, others bright, but all strangely mournful, their cacophony heightening everyone’s unease. The fog seemed uncertain, too, at times cloaking the city’s misery, at other times lifting like a curtain to reveal life in all its sordid frenzy.
Finally, John and Lucy reached the Hargraves’ house, where a flustered Cook greeted them at the door. A short while later, Adam returned from the Inns of Court with the magistrate.
Within moments of their arrival, Master Hargrave convened the household in the drawing room. His grave voice bespoke the seriousness of the situation. “We will pack what we can into the carriage, mostly provisions and clothing. Adam and John, you must get another horse and a cart. In the morning, we will journey together to our family estate in Warwickshire.” To his wife he added, “Thankfully, Sarah is still with her aunt in Shropshire.”
Cook and Lucy started to prepare for the long journey with heavy hearts, cooking, packing clothing and victuals, and tying dried herbs into bundles. The mistress disappeared to her room to put a few things together. Master Hargrave set aside his copy of Gadbury’s Alogical Predictions and his almanacs and began to shutter the house so that it would not be broken into while the family was away.
All of them were grim in their tasks, trying not to think of the despair and terror that lay beyond the safety of their home. Lucy hoped they were safe, anyway. She had heard that in Amsterdam, looters began to break into homes as the plague spread. She hoped Will was with her mother and Dorrie. Perhaps they would be safe out on the farm. At least he would not die with a noose around his neck.
Lucy also tried not to think of the other things she had heard; people murdering one another in the streets for a bit of moldy bread or rotting horseflesh, as their limbs dropped off. The dancing was the worst; the rhythmic contortions that she had heard tell would happen to a body when the grim reaper came to call. Lucy shuddered as she tied the dried meat into a sack.
Against her will, Lucy could not resist peering out the drawing room window at the fantastic sights. People were screaming at one another, loading up carts, trying desperately to decide what they needed to do to survive. Everyone was boarding up windows, nailing doors shut, hoping that looters would not break in.
Wagons and carts kept passing by, women, children, and servants clinging crazily to the sides, as the menfolk sought to rush their families out of the city. Some people cried; others held on tightly with pinched pale faces. One child pulled a wet thumb from her mouth and gave Lucy a little wave, even as bread and blankets fell out the back of her family’s cart.
At one point, Lucy even saw Janey sneak out a side window of her master’s house, with two other servants close behind, their arms laden with packages and clothing. Lucy narrowed her eyes, thinking they probably had the candlesticks hidden under their cloaks.
Their neighbor, Mistress White, stopped by for a moment. Her family had opted to stay. “’Tis all in God’s hands anyway,” she said.
Lucy felt a great lump in her throat. “That’s probably true,” she muttered to Cook. “Still, I’m glad we’re leaving.”
By early evening, they had seen most of their neighbors shut up their homes and flee, some heading to the docks, hoping to find passage on a boat or barge. For the umpteenth time, Lucy checked her pocket for her certificate of health, which the master, with great foresight, had sought to procure several weeks ago. The certificates would allow them to pass safely through the streets and get sufficient lodging and victuals as they passed through the towns to the magistrate’s country estate. “I have it on good authority that the Crown will bar all passage from London without these passes,” he had told them all. “You must keep them on your person at all times.”
* * *
Lucas stopped by once, too, to check in on them. “I do not think you should wait long,” he said. “I am greatly worried. Can you not go now? I’m afraid death will be upon you and it will be too late.”
“Adam and John have gone for a second cart and horse,” Lucy explained. “The master thinks the morning will be soon enough, and if we have sufficient provisions, we shall not have to stop often along our journey.” She changed the subject. “Will you be coming with us, Lucas? To the family’s seat in Warwickshire?”
Lucas shook his head. “Reverend Marcus is convinced this scourge is a test of our mettle. It is God’s will that we remain and tender solace to the afflicted. We shall be keeping the church open, as a refuge for those in need. I daresay, too, there shall be many sinners seeking absolution.” His eyes gleamed. “Lucy, I believe I shall be needed here, to help those who’ve been touched by the wages of sin. It is my duty—my calling!—to stay and minister to them.”
“Oh.” There seemed little else to say. After bidding her to keep safe, Lucas took his leave of her, and she could not help but feel alone.
* * *
“Miss? Lucy?” A small voice came from behind her. Lucy turned around. Annie was standing there, her face puckered in a frown. “The mistress is in a state,” she said. “Lucy, she needs you.”
“I’ll go and see to her.”
She found her mistress tearing through her skirts and petticoats, throwing them into a heap upon her bed. “Oh, Lucy, you’re here. I need you to press these dresses before you pack them for the journey.”
Lucy suppressed a groan. Such pressing would take hours, precious time that could be better spent on more important tasks. Truly, what was the woman thinking? Smiling through gritted teeth, Lucy began to lay the dresses out for pressing.
“Lucy,” the mistress called. “I think you forgot to pack my new hat.”
“Ah, mistress,” Lucy said carefully. “I fear there will be no room for your hat.”
“Nonsense,” the mistress replied. “Isn’t the master going to get us a second cart and horse? That should be able to hold all three of my trunks, I think—quite nicely, I might add.”
It wasn’t for her to tell the mistress what she could and could not bring, and she imagined that the magistrate would talk some sense into her.
As she packed the trunk, the mistress prattled on, her speech increasingly rushed. “My, it’s hot. Lucy, don’t you find it very hot in here?” The mistress fanned herself. “I haven’t even begun to dress for the ball.”
“The ball, missus?” Lucy asked, confused.
“Yes, of course. Please send for Bessie. Where is that silly girl? I’ve not seen her all day! Where could she be?”
A growing fear spread over Lucy. Something was very wrong. She forced herself to remain calm. “Oh, Bessie, missus, it’s her day off today.”
“Bah!” the mistress said, sitting down at her dressing table. “Come do my hair, Lucy. I want it pinned up.”
As Mistress Hargave pulled up her hair, Lucy noticed a large black welt on her long slender neck. Her mouth gaped. The black mark!
