A Murder at Rosamund's Gate (30 page)

When had Cook done this? she wondered. Or had Adam? She dismissed the thought as soon as it came to her.
Don’t be daft,
she scolded herself. The magistrate’s son was not likely to be making the beds of his servants. More likely, he had hired a local lass to take care of it. Still, it was kind, she thought as she gratefully snuggled in the clean sheets, exhausted after the long journey. No chance of weevils or bedbugs biting her legs, which she had feared. In her last waking thought, she blessed the small kindness.

*   *   *

Over the long summer of 1666, Lucy saw little of Adam or the magistrate, as they were both involved with restoring the Inns of Court to some semblance of order. On the few occasions she did see Adam, he seemed intent on ignoring her. The one or two times she directly addressed him, he answered her curtly, so, out of embarrassment and anger, she soon stopped trying. Only once did she see an expression of regret on his face, which further fueled her sense of shame.

Cook mentioned once that Master Adam spent a great deal of time at Lord Embry’s when he was not in session. “Everyone expects him and Lady Judith to be betrothed within a fortnight or two. Most likely before Master Adam sets out on the circuit.”

Lucy just nodded, trying to ignore Cook’s knowing and sympathetic gaze.

*   *   *

Gingerly stepping through the streets, Lucy skirted the piles of debris that still littered the walkways. Haggard men with yellow eyes, faces drawn from the miseries they had suffered, drove carts led by bony horses. As the August sun beat down, she hoped the city government would start sending the raker around again. The new mayor’s efforts to clean up the city were slow, but at least the streets were less foul than when she had first braved them upon their return.

At the market, Lucy walked listlessly among the stalls. At the butcher’s stand, she inspected the sad, stringy meat arrayed before her on a bed of straw. Everyone, whether peddling or buying, looked gaunt and beaten by the tragedy of the previous year.

The normal happy din of the marketplace had been replaced by a sense of feverish desperation that made Lucy’s stomach churn.
You must buy my wares,
Lucy seemed to hear.
My kids are sick, and my husband, he died. The rent is due, and the master won’t keep me long if I can’t empty out my basket.
And from those without coin, eying the straggly baskets of others,
Feed me! Clothe me! Why should you have what I need? Give me! Give me!

Looking away from the misery surrounding her, Lucy noticed a flash of blue. A woman, her back to Lucy, was wearing a blue cloak that looked exactly the same as one Bessie had once loved. As the butcher handed Lucy a cut of meat tied in string, she idly watched the girl walk through the stalls. Her hood slipped, revealing an abundance of tousled blond curls.

Lucy stopped short, her mouth open. “Bessie!” she whispered.

Knowing she was being foolish, Lucy began to move after the girl, who weaved easily through the market stalls. Intent on her, Lucy did not see a man pushing a cart of half-rotting vegetables. She tripped, falling against a few women gossiping together. They glared at her. Lucy stumbled about, picking up the packages she had knocked over.

“Watch where you’re going, then!” one of the women called, only slightly mollified.

Lucy peered through the crowd. She did not see the woman. She shook her head, wondering what had possessed her. “I must be mad.”

*   *   *

That night, Lucy dreamed of Bessie again. As before, Bessie was disfigured and still, lying on the cold ground. Her golden curls were a dirty mop around her head. She was wearing her green dress. In the dream, Lucy felt herself move closer and closer to the body that looked frozen to the earth. Lucy sniffed. The cloying scent of lavender assaulted her nose.

Against her will, she moved closer and closer to Bessie’s still form. She gawked at Bessie’s face, pale and lovely, her rosebud lips tinged in blue. She looked like one of the tiny alabaster statues that the mistress had once kept on her dresser.

Then her eyes opened and stared straight into Lucy’s own.

She stretched a gaunt arm toward Lucy, the tattered remains of her precious green dress fluttering. Her mouth began to move as Lucy watched, horrified.

What do you want?
Lucy asked in her dream.
Bessie! Tell me!

Bessie lifted her face imploringly to the heavens. A single tear rolled down her face. Then she was gone.

Lucy woke up then, confused and weeping. “Oh, dear Bessie! I haven’t forgotten you!”

The image of a woodcut she’d once seen came into her mind. The ghost of a midwife, who had been murdered by her husband, haunted her old servant to tell her how her husband had murdered several villagers besides herself and buried them under the tiles of the house. Was it true, then? The souls of the wronged did not remain still.

Lucy buried her head in the blanket, but it was a long while before she fell back asleep.

*   *   *

Still troubled the next morning, Lucy moved slowly about her morning chores, stopping to refill mugs of hot cider for Master Hargrave and Adam. Looking keenly into her face, the master asked if she were well.

“Yes.” Lucy hesitated.

The magistrate lifted his eyebrows. Adam set his cup down on the table, waiting. Keeping her head down, Lucy murmured, “It’s just that I dreamed of Bessie last night.”

“Ahh,” the magistrate said, taking another sip. “There are many ghosts here now, I fear.”

He sounded sad. Lucy wondered how well he had been sleeping these many nights since they had returned home.

Lucy took a deep breath. “It’s more than that, sir. In my dream, I felt her soul is still lost. I’m troubled, I am.”

The magistrate nodded understandingly. “Because we never brought her justice, you mean.”

She nodded again, not trusting herself to speak.

“Well, my dear Lucy,” the magistrate said, his voice gentle, “no one has come forward with news. Indeed, it is as like as not that her murderer is long gone or dead from the plague. It may be that our Bessie will not get justice in our temporal courts on earth, but indeed, she shall find justice in the next.”

His words offered some comfort, but Bessie’s forlorn face still weighed heavily in Lucy’s thoughts.

*   *   *

The first day of September, the household set off to St. Peter’s to hear Lucas—newly returned from Oxford—deliver his first sermon.

The magistrate had mentioned that Lucas would be sharing the Reverend Marcus’s pulpit duties, a necessity with so many people seeking solace from the madness around them.

Thankfully, the church still possessed its sense of timeless strength and grace, a virtue so necessary in this tumultuous time. Every week, Lucy recognized more faces as the parishioners slowly returned to London, although there were many people she did not know. Nearly all looked haggard and grim, as if they had been at war. The practice of families staying in carefully kept rows had been abandoned. Lucy remembered how when they first had returned, they had discovered another family sitting in the magistrate’s family pew.

Without a word, Master Hargrave had simply moved to another pew and, after letting Adam slide in, had sat down. The magistrate had then patted the seat beside him. “Here, Lucy,” he had said. “With us.”

Although surprised, Lucy had slid in beside the master, and next to her came Annie, Cook, and John. Cook had shrugged, and John had grinned a bit, but both took the change in stride. No more standing for hours at the end of the pew.

Today, Lucy waved to Avery, who gave her a slow answering grin in return. She had been so glad to find that Avery had survived the plague. He had found new clothes and no longer looked the dull-witted ex-soldier as when she had first met him. Indeed, as she had since learned, the church had hired him to maintain the graveyard in exchange for his keep in a little lean-to out back.

With a pang, Lucy could not help noticing that Judith Embry, still resplendent in her finery, was also there. Her face was drawn as she sat stiffly beside her parents, her eyes flitting to Adam. She could not see if Adam was also watching Judith.

Cook clutched Lucy’s arm. “Look there!” she whispered. She pointed at a woman with great blond curls across the aisle, several pews up. “She looks like our Bessie, don’t you think?”

“Yes. I saw her once at the market. I wonder who she is.”

To her greater surprise, Lucy saw Del Gado enter the church and sit down beside the woman, saying something in her ear. Marie, his old companion, was nowhere to be seen, but certainly she might have been among the thousands who had not survived the plague.

The reverend stepped out to signify the beginning of the service. Beside her, Annie gave an excited squeal. “Look, Lucy,” she whispered. “It’s Lucas.”

Watching Lucas, she thought he seemed different. He had not the reverend’s fire, but his words were earnest, sincere—compelling. He looked to have taken to his new calling. Perhaps, like herself, he had lost a bit of the tenderness of youth, having witnessed so much death and misery over the past year.

*   *   *

After the service was over, the family waited outside to congratulate Lucas on his sermon. As she waited, Lucy noticed Constable Duncan and a soldier approach Del Gado, the woman who so resembled Bessie still clinging to his arm. Lucy could see that the constable, while still handsome, looked far older than his years. The last year had not been easy on him; that was plain enough.

Lucy nudged Cook, who got the hint. They sidled closer, trying to hear the constable’s conversation with the painter. Lucy noticed that Adam also seemed to have moved closer as he conversed lightly with an old acquaintance.

“No, I hadn’t seen Marie since before the babe was born,” Lucy heard Del Gado telling Constable Duncan. “She most certainly had left before then. No doubt to be with the baby’s father, as the babe most assuredly was not mine.”

Constable Duncan coughed politely. “Miss, if you would excuse us? I’d like a private word with Master Del Gado.”

Nodding, the woman stepped away, nervously rubbing her hands on her skirts. The three men moved down the path, out of earshot.

Lucy and Cook looked at each other. Cook nodded toward the woman, a question in her eyes. Adam, having sauntered over, caught their wordless exchange. “What?” he demanded. “Tell me.”

“It’s her cloak,” Lucy whispered behind her sleeve. “Bessie’s.”

He glanced at the woman’s cloak. “How can you possibly know that?” Adam asked. “There must be a hundred cloaks like that—”

Cook added, “Look at the burned patch. There, above the hem.”

As Adam peered closer, Lucy recalled that day with a start. Bessie had come in from the cold, her eyes intensified by the blue of her cloak, her cheeks rosy. It was not long after Bessie had met Will, Lucy remembered. Even when they realized her cloak had caught a spark, Bessie had just laughed when John stamped it out.

“How did she get it? The cloak, I mean?” Cook wondered out loud. “It disappeared from the house along with her other clothes.”

The suspicion that had been gnawing at Lucy would be held in no longer. “Del Gado?” she murmured, thinking about her suspicions from so long ago.

They all watched as Del Gado took his leave of the constables, without a backward glimpse at the woman he had accompanied to St. Peter’s.

“I wonder what brought him to this parish,” Lucy murmured, watching the woman disappear back into the church. “Perhaps he’s moved out of Putney-on-the-Green.”

Adam nodded. “We must find out.”

“I’ll go and see him,” Lucy said.

Adam turned on her fiercely. “You’ll do no such thing!”

Cook cocked her head, her expression inscrutable. “I must head back, lest dinner not be ready for the magistrate. Lucy, don’t do anything foolish.”

Lucy shrugged. “Fine. You talk to Del Gado, then,” she said to Adam. “I’ll talk to her. Find out about that cloak.”

21

Lucy moved back into the empty church. The woman was sitting alone in a pew, her head bent in prayer. Casually, Lucy sank into a pew a few rows back, thinking about how she could best approach her. Only a few people remained in the church, and she did not want to draw attention to their conversation.

“Lucy?” Lucas asked, standing beside her. “Are you all right? I saw you come in here.”

She smiled and patted the place beside her. “Oh, I’m fine, Lucas.”

“I was so glad to know that you had survived the Black Death,” Lucas continued, sliding into the pew. “You’re looking well. Tired, though.” He also inquired after her brother, adding, “’Twas a miracle that he was acquitted of the crime.”

Lucy smiled, feeling comforted by Lucas’s presence. “Yes, ’twas helpful that Richard discovered his conscience, and in such a timely way!”

“Yes, indeed,” Lucas said. “I have not seen you since I stopped by that fateful day. I’ve long thought about you, though, hoping you were well. I was quite distressed when I learned that Mistress Hargrave had succumbed to the dreadful illness. I also heard that you did not spare yourself in taking care of the family. How do you fare now, Lucy?”

“I am well.” She glanced over at the woman, who was still praying, her mouth moving. “Your sermon was wonderful.”

“Do you really think so, Lucy?” Lucas asked, seizing her hand in both of his. “I’ve missed our little chats. You’re so different from other girls. Not like a—” He stopped.

“A servant.” She could not keep the bitterness from her tone.

“Lucy, what’s wrong? You know I never treated you like that, right? That may be how Adam and the magistrate view you, but I never did, did I? When I lived at the house? We were friends then, weren’t we? I sometimes wished—” His hands tightened.

The young woman got up, bowing respectfully before the altar. Lucy started to stand up, but Lucas pulled her back down. “I’ve thought about you a lot, you know, Lucy,” he said.

Lucy watched the woman pause to light a candle on her way out, missing whatever Lucas said next.

“Lucy?”

“Oh, sorry, I was just woolgathering.” She paused. “Lucas, do you know that woman there?”