A Murder at Rosamund's Gate (19 page)

“However, this was not true. He has since told me that he was, indeed, still furious with Bessie. He felt he was cuckolded by her, and he was truly enraged that she had let her virtue be compromised in such a way. He was looking to finish the fight with Richard, blaming me for having ended the fight too soon.”

“No!” Lucy said.

“I’m afraid so,” he said grimly. “As it turns out, they did exchange a few more wallops at the pub. Not right away, though. Later. For Richard had come after me, having known my intention to interrupt the cock and dog baiting in Southwark.”

“That was after supper, then, that you went down to the ring,” Lucy recalled. “So Richard left the pub and sought you out? What, to continue the fight with you?”

“Something like that,” Adam said. “Someone at the Muddy Duck must have overheard the conversation I had with my acquaintance, so Richard knew where to find me. I admit that I was quite surprised when he appeared in the baiting ring just as I was trying to stop that sorry spectacle.”

He grinned without mirth. “I stood with several Quakers, but I quickly found myself sadly outmatched. He and his men focused their attack on me, which is how I got those stripes from Richard. He was glad to strike me down, I can tell you that. Thankfully, other Friends came about. They disavowed my fists, for they are a peaceful folk who refuse to raise a hand against their fellow man. One, Jacob, plied me with spirits to soften the pain and sheltered me in his own abode. In the morning, he helped me home, bringing me in his cart, as I could scarcely stand. The rest you know.” He paused. “I shan’t be in a hurry to enter a ring like that again, I tell you. Now you know the extent of my wretched heroism.”

Lucy shivered. She remembered seeing Adam’s bloody torso after he had stumbled out of that cart. Privately, she thought he was rather brave to have tried to stop the despicable cruelty. She squirmed now to think of the low opinion she’d been holding of him recently. How wrong she’d been! For a moment, she wanted to cry.

Unaware of her internal turmoil, Adam went on. “Will says now he went back to the Muddy Duck and got bloody hammered on ale while waiting for Richard to return. The problem is, he cannot remember most of the details because of the drink. He remembers exchanging a few wallops with Richard, and then he went off, finally sleeping off his drinks in a ditch.”

“Well, then!” Lucy pronounced in triumph. “There’s surely folks at the pub who can say they saw Will then? The tavern keeper? Barmaids would no doubt remember him; he’s a fine fellow. What? Why are you shaking your head? Where are you going?”

Adam had stood up and was walking along the path again. “No, Lucy. I’m afraid there are no witnesses who can help. There are plenty, to be sure, who saw him take drinks and brawl with Richard, but the field where Bessie was killed was close, not one mile off. Richard claims—with great malicious speech—that William rushed off ‘with a murderous look in his eye,’” Adam spat. “The lying blackheart even says that William swore to have Bessie’s blood ere the night was over! Later, his mob of curs alleged they saw him running away from Rosamund’s Gate with blood all over his hands.”

“No!” Lucy stopped, feeling faint. She peered up at Adam. “That’s not possible!”

“Yes,” Adam replied grimly, “which is why it will be so hard for William to refute these claims. If I had my way, such words of hearsay would not be permitted as evidence, but indeed they may damn his portrait of innocence.”

“That’s a monstrous lie!” Lucy cried. “Bloody bastard! I would wring Richard’s disgusting neck, but that would mean I’d have to be near him! Can you not talk to your father and ask him to speak to the justice who will preside over Will’s—”

“No! Lucy! He cannot! We cannot subvert the justice system—”

“You said it yourself!” Lucy said, sobbing. “It’s all hearsay and lies! How can you let this happen? What goes on in all those books of law anyway, that there are no means to help my brother in this most dreadful hour?”

His face was anguished. “Lucy, I—”

She turned away. “I’ve got to find a way to help my brother. Since you cannot, I will find someone else who can.”

14

“Lucas?” Lucy called, knocking softly on the vestry door. Still unsettled by her conversation with Adam the day before, she thought to seek out Lucas. Walking in, she felt the air change, growing cooler. The slight chill of the church always surprised her, so pleasant in the summer, so frigid in the winter. She stepped quietly through the nave, where several candles were already lit. Finding a penny in her pocket, Lucy put it in the offering box, lighting a candle for Bessie and for her own father, dead near five years now.

Lucy remembered when she first starting attending St. Peter’s with the Hargraves. The small stained glass window above the altar—hidden for the years Cromwell had controlled England—had just been replaced. The smooth wooden pews and the choir loft had retained their peaceful quality, a striking vestige of the church’s Catholic past. The rood screen served as a dim reminder of long-ago religious controversies.

Not seeing Lucas, she sat down in a pew, looking reverently at the newly restored images of Jesus. If she looked hard enough, she could still make out an image of the Virgin Mary smiling over a nursing baby. Unlike the other images on the altar, it was not surrounded by lit candles. Pictures of Mary and St. Peter recalled the beliefs of the bloody papists, and most people knew not to speak of them much. It was rather remarkable that such an image had survived, and yet Lucy was rather glad that it had.

Lucy didn’t know how long she’d been praying when she noticed an odd thumping sound from beyond the central part of the church, toward one of the apses at the south side. Wondering if it might be Lucas, Lucy moved toward the sound, noticing in passing that someone had just lit a small taper by the portrait she had been admiring earlier. An object on the floor, near the bench, caught her attention. She picked it up. It looked like a necklace made of smooth wooden beads on a sturdy cord. It was then that the thumping sound started again, and what sounded like someone groaning.

From the other direction, where she stood with the odd necklace, she heard footsteps. Lucy stepped back into the shadows. Lucas appeared and stopped abruptly when he saw the candle. Frowning, he snuffed it out with a quick pinch of his fingers and then passed into a curtain on the other side of the apse. There was a muffled shout—was it Lucas?—and she heard someone respond in low angry tones. The odd thumping stopped. She began to creep away.

“Lucy?” Lucas called, suddenly back in view. “What are you doing here?”

Lucy held out the necklace. “I found this.” She jerked her head. “Over yonder. I thought someone must have lost it. Um, is everything all right? I thought I heard a noise.”

He gave her a sharp look but took the cord of beads from her. “Do you know what this is?”

Lucy shook her head. “No, but it looks so worn and smooth, I would suppose that its owner must be missing it. She will want it back. It’s pretty.”

Lucas laughed. “If that be true, I can assure you
I
will not be approached by its owner.”

At Lucy’s puzzled look, he laughed again, adding, “It’s a rosary. Used by the Catholics to pray.”

Lucy stared at him. “That would mean that a Catholic was here, praying in this Anglican church?”

Lucas took her arm and began to steer her back toward the vestry. He had pocketed the rosary. “There are papists everywhere, I’m afraid. They come here, I think, because we are an old church. You probably don’t know this, but the catacombs below are full of marble saints, albeit without their heads. Knocked off last century when Henry the Eighth stopped being Defender of the Faith.” Lucas chuckled. “But I do not think you came here to talk about the bloody Catholics, or our ongoing war against them.”

“No,” she said. “Not right now.”

“This way,” he said, leading her through a small door at the north end of St. Peter’s. Lucy had never ventured through this part before, the offices and living quarters of the men who ran the church. As soon as she was sure no one was about, she turned to him, finding his eyes fixed eagerly on her.

“Please, Lucas!” Lucy said. “I need you to help William.”

“Help him?” Lucas asked, turning slightly away. “How?”

“I thought perhaps we could go talk to the constable! Adam said there was no use trying to talk to the presiding justice. I thought, though, if we could talk to Constable Duncan and—why are you shaking your head? You know Will did not murder Bessie.”

“Alas, I do not know that, dear Lucy.”

The starkness of his words made Lucy’s mouth fall open. “But you, you could not think that?”

“Heartsick I am to say it,” Lucas said, taking Lucy’s hand. “Sad as I’ve been over Bessie’s death, it pains me deeply that your brother has been accused of this terrible crime.”

“But—” Lucy interrupted, tears threatening to spill.

“By God’s grace, Lucy! I do not know that he did not do it, and I could not swear to it in court as a man who will be taking the cloth soon! At best, I could say that I believe his heart is not that of a murderer, yet I know that he was very angry at her that day.”

Seeing her stricken face, Lucas tried to explain. “Well, you see, dear Lucy, when Adam and I saw him, he was quite bothered by Bessie.”

“Surely not angry enough to
kill
her!”

“I should think not! As God is my witness, he was angry with her. She had all but cuckolded William, he who wanted to marry her!”

“Marry? Truly, he said that?” Will had been genuinely distraught by Bessie’s death, but with all his lady loves, it was hard to believe that he would have actually wed her.

“Yes, indeed. He told me so. In a few years’ time, of course. He wanted to be his own man, with his own trade. Indeed, Richard, that boorish cur from the Embrys’, was egging us on, saying that he had seen—” He stopped short, deferring to her sensibilities.

“Del Gado’s sketches of Bessie,” she supplied. “Yes, I know.”

“Well, nothing inflames a man so much as to know that his lady love is stepping out on him.”

“That was before she knew William! I know it to be true!”

“That may be so. I just know that he was angry. That, and the babe, of course.” He tapped his pen on the paper, as if willing a sermon to appear on the blank white pages. “I believe poor Will felt trapped. He may have wanted to marry her, but not just yet. And who’s to say the babe was his? I can tell you, Lucy, with my hand on this Bible, that he was enraged enough to murder her.”

Lucas’s words were not making sense. “Babe? Trapped?” Lucy asked, confused. “What babe?”

Lucas looked sorrowfully at Lucy. “I just assumed you knew. I won’t drag this out, then. Bessie was with child when she died. The child, of course, being Will’s. Or so Bessie told him. As I said, he wasn’t sure.”

Lucy stumbled out of the room, tears blurring her vision, dimly hearing Lucas calling her name. With child? Oh, no! Poor Bessie! She clutched grimly at the stone walls. Waves of nausea threatened to overcome her as she trembled weakly. She remembered Bessie’s illness, her tiredness, her bouts of moodiness. She remembered seeing Bessie letting out the seams of her work dresses. Too many sweet cakes, Bessie had laughed it away, and Lucy had believed her.

“Oh, Bessie.” She sighed. “Why couldn’t you have told me? I, who loved you like a sister!” Shaking, she began to weep.

A hand on her shoulder made her look up, expecting to see Lucas. Instead, Reverend Marcus was staring down at her. Lucas hovered in the doorway, his anguished face reflecting the torture and pain she felt.

“Grieving young Bessie, are you?” the reverend asked her.

For a moment, Lucy was surprised that the reverend knew who she was, but she realized, of course, that he’d seen her all these many Sundays past, standing by the Hargraves in their pew. She nodded, a little afraid. Even though he did not sound as fierce as he did when he took the pulpit, Lucy still felt afraid of him. Those eyes! They were too probing, too knowing. Lucas seemed to stiffen, and to Lucy, he looked afraid of what the reverend was going to say.

“I came back here to check on Lucas’s sermon. He is to take the pulpit in my stead this Sunday morning, and I am afraid he is ill prepared, having not committed his sermon to paper and to practice.”

Lucas, looking like a chastened schoolboy, shuffled his feet.

The reverend continued, his tone mocking. “Something about subduing the lust of the flesh, I should think. Avoiding the temptations of young she-devils. Young Bessie’s tale will serve as a suitable parable, I should think.”

A red-hot anger coursed through Lucy at the reverend’s words. Seeing Lucas’s misery was the only thing that kept her from screaming at the man. She wanted to rip and shred and tear at the reverend—just as his words had shredded her—no matter that he was a man of the cloth. Using Bessie as a parable, indeed! She clenched her fists tightly, her fingernails cutting into her skin.

“You’d best be getting back to your chores now,” the reverend said, his eyes boring deep into her. It was clear he wanted her to leave. “Idle hands are the devil’s tools.”

Lucy began to feel her way blindly out of the church. Just as she reached the door, the reverend called to her. “Lucy!”

Reluctantly, she turned around. The reverend stood at the altar, much as she had seen him every Sunday, dark, captivating, and forbidding, the weight of the Almighty behind him. Even without his clerical garb, he was frightening in his godly authority. “I shall ask Lucas to add one more thing to his sermon. It comes from the Book of Exodus.”

“Yes?” Lucy asked, desperate to leave the church.

“’He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall surely be put to death!’” He began to laugh.

With that, Lucy fled St. Peter’s, feeling his eyes boring into her every step of the way.

*   *   *

At dawn, Lucy awoke, a fantastic thought bouncing about in her head. Perhaps if she could find out more about the other girls, Effie and Jane, she could discover something new about Bessie’s death. Although she could almost hear Adam questioning her logic, Lucy believed in her heart that they were connected.