Who Buries the Dead (5 page)

O
nce, years before, when Sebastian was a small boy in short coats, he befriended a tall, strapping young footman named Luge. Sebastian was the son of an earl, while Luge was in service to Sebastian’s grandmother, the Dowager Countess of Hendon. But for a brief, shining moment out of time, man and boy had connected in a way that transcended such ordinary impediments as station, age, and race.

Afterward, Sebastian would wonder at the good-natured patience of the handsome, ebony-skinned footman who had indulged the boundless curiosity of a small boy who could listen for hours to Luge’s tales of the sun-drenched sands and crystal-clear seas of Barbados, the island of his birth. Luge had been only eight years old when the Dowager Countess purchased him at a slave market in Bridgetown and brought the child back to England as her page. Once, he even showed Sebastian the brand on his shoulder and grinned as the boy reached out to trace the initials of the master who had marked Luge as his property the way Sebastian’s father marked his own horses and cattle.

“Did it hurt?” Sebastian asked in awe.

“I reckon,” said Luge. “But I don’t remember. I was still little.”

Sebastian had seen brands on ragged men and women in the streets—usually a “T” for “thief” or an “M” for “manslaughter.” But the thought of anyone doing that to a small child horrified him so much that he stayed away from Luge for a few days. And the next time Sebastian visited his grandmother, he was told that Luge had taken off his powdered wig, set it atop his folded velvet livery, and simply walked off into the gathering dusk.

The Dowager advertised for his return, although no one paid much attention anymore to advertisements for runaway slaves. A succession of court cases had reinforced the popular belief that the air of England was “too pure for a slave to breathe.”

But what was true of the air of England was not true of the air in England’s colonies. Even those who supported the freeing of England’s ten to fifteen thousand slaves often grew fainthearted at the thought of the financial havoc that would result from the emancipation of those who toiled to produce the sugar, tobacco, cotton, indigo, and rice that made England wealthy and powerful.

Some twenty years after Luge walked away to freedom, Sebastian had landed with his regiment in Barbados to find the island little changed from the colony Luge had described. A dazzling sun still soaked golden sands lapped by achingly blue waters, and vast weathered docks swarmed with ebony-skinned men in canvas trousers, their sweat-sheened backs crisscrossed with the scars of past floggings.

Such sights did not shock Sebastian, for the lash was applied with brutal frequency to the men who enlisted or were impressed into His Majesty’s Army or Navy; even Englishwomen were still sometimes stripped naked to the waist and whipped at the cart’s tail. But as he climbed through Bridgetown’s dusty streets, past low buildings with long windows shaded by deep verandas and shuttered against the oppressive heat, he came upon an open square crowded with African men, women, and children of all ages. Some sat blankly staring into space, while others huddled together, mothers hugging infants to their breasts as solemn, wide-eyed toddlers clutched their skirts. A few planters, sun-reddened faces shadowed by broad-brimmed hats, circulated amongst them. The air was thick with the smell of cigar smoke and human sweat and wretched despair, and Sebastian drew up abruptly as the realization of what he was witnessing slammed into him.

A young woman and a good-looking boy of perhaps eight or ten were pushed up onto the block. Transfixed by fascination and horror, Sebastian could only watch as the auctioneer expressed a wish to sell mother and child together. But the woman had a withered right arm that discouraged buyers, whereas interest in her handsome son was strong. The auctioneer finally agreed to sell the two separately, and silent, helpless tears rolled down the woman’s cheeks as a spirited bidding began for the child.

Then the hammer fell, and the successful bidder—a fat man with bad teeth and an egg-stained waistcoat—pushed forward to collect his new property.

“No,”
the mother screamed, lunging forward as the boy was led away. “No! You can’t take him. Oh, please don’t take him.
Please.
”

Hands caught her, dragged her back. She fought wildly, uselessly, her face contorted with hopeless anguish. For one suspended moment, her frantic gaze met Sebastian’s over the heads of the onlookers, and he felt a wash of helpless shame—for his nation, his race, his time, and his own inaction—that he’d known even then would never leave him.

Now, as Sebastian drew his curricle up before the impressive home of Stanley Preston, he found himself remembering both Luge and that nameless, frantic mother. This graceful half-timbered Elizabethan manor might be half a world away from the cane fields and slave markets of the West Indies, but those cruelties had helped pay for it.

Most of Hans Town’s prosperous, up-and-coming residents were happy to occupy one of the newly constructed, identical brick terraces that lined Sloane Street and the new squares. But not Stanley Preston. He had chosen as his residence a grand relic of a bygone age. Known as Alford House, it stood in the well-tended remnants of what must originally have been a much larger garden, its brick walkways now gently sunken and mossy, its climbing roses twisted and knotty with the passage of the years. There were other such once grand houses in the area, but most had been turned into schools or hospitals, their noble owners having long ago fled to the likes of Berkeley Square or Mount Street.

Sebastian half expected to find the murdered man’s daughter, Anne, too prostrate with grief and shock to receive him. But she appeared after only a few moments, a slim figure in a simple black mourning gown, looking pale and shaken but admirably self-possessed.

She accepted his condolences and his apologies for disturbing her with a graciousness he couldn’t help but admire, and showed him into an elegant sixteenth-century drawing room with an elaborately molded plaster ceiling and dark paneled walls hung with a collection of old-fashioned dueling pistols and swords.

“Father loved this house,” she said, sinking onto a tapestry-covered settee near the room’s massive stone fireplace. “It’s old and drafty and frightfully unfashionable, but he didn’t care. It’s rumored Charles II actually hid here once during the Civil War, you know. There’s even supposed to be a secret passage somewhere, although Father never could find it.”

“Your father was interested in the Stuarts?” asked Sebastian, adjusting the tails of his morning coat as he settled in a nearby chair.

“He was interested in anyone famous—or infamous. In fact, the more infamous or tragic, the more interested Father was.”

She was more attractive than his aunt’s words had led him to expect, although undoubtedly shy, even nervous, in his presence. Her hair was the color of sun-warmed oak, cut short so that it curled softly around her face, her eyes wide set and deep and swollen from her tears. She said, “I keep thinking, if only Father had come with us last night to Lady Farningham’s musical evening, he’d still be alive.”

“Do you know why he chose not to attend?”

An unexpected smile lit up the depths of her mossy green eyes. “Father loathed musical evenings. He used to say that if he ended up in hell, the devil would torment him by forcing him to spend the rest of eternity listening to young ladies play harps.” Her smile faded, became something painful. “I had the impression he was planning a quiet evening at home. I can’t imagine what would have taken him to Bloody Bridge.”

“So it really is called that?”

“It is, yes. I’ve heard it’s a corruption of ‘Blandel Bridge,’ but its history is certainly bloody enough. Several people were killed there by footpads at the end of the last century, and it was the scene of repeated skirmishes during the Civil War. Father was always poking around there, finding rusty old spurs and bridle bits he said must have been lost in the fighting. But obviously he wouldn’t have been doing that at night.”

“I understand he was something of a collector.”

Again, that soft glow of remembered affection warmed her features. “I sometimes think Father would have been happiest as a wizened old eccentric charging the public a shilling to gawk at his cabinet of curiosities. He loved nothing more than showing off his collection. Mama always insisted he keep all but the most decorative items out of her drawing room, and he’s honored her memory by continuing to respect her wishes in that. But I’m afraid the rest of the house is overflowing with his various collections.”

“You say he was interested in relics of the Stuarts?”

“The Stuarts and the Tudors. They were his particular obsession. In fact, he has an entire gallery devoted to them.”

“May I see it?”

If she was surprised by the request, she was too well-bred to show it. “Yes, of course.”

She led the way to a long paneled room lined with glass cases filled with everything from daggers and maces to snuffboxes and opera glasses. Peering into the nearest case, he could see a dagger said to have belonged to James I, a carved and gilded angel from the reredos of a vanished monastery, and a faded silk pincushion with a neatly printed label that read
GIVEN BY MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, TO H
ER LADY-IN-WAITING T
HE MORNING OF HER EX
ECUTION
.

She said, “When Father was a boy, an aged cousin gave him a stirrup said to have been used by Richard III at Bosworth Field. He was so taken with the idea of possessing something that had once belonged to such an illustrious historical figure that it became his lifelong passion.”

Sebastian let his gaze drift along rows of cases, to where a blue velvet curtain hung at the far end of the room. He didn’t see any heads.

He said, “I’m told your father had certain relics of Oliver Cromwell.”

“Only this.” She moved to the end of the gallery to draw back the long fall of velvet. “He had the curtain installed after a dinner guest wandered in here by mistake, saw them, and fainted.”

The curtain opened to reveal three small glass and mahogany display cases mounted on pedestals. Each contained a severed human head resting in artfully arranged folds of the same blue velvet.

“That’s Cromwell,” she said, indicating the case on the right.

The head was unexpectedly small, as if it had shrunk as it dried, the flesh so darkened as to look almost black, the cheeks sunken, the eyes reduced to mere slits. Yet there was something about the slope of the forehead, the curve of the skull, that eerily echoed the paintings Sebastian had seen of the Lord Protector.

She said, “Most of the traitors’ heads that were displayed on pikes eventually rotted. But Cromwell died a natural death and was embalmed—it wasn’t until after the Restoration that his body was dragged from Westminster Abbey and hung in chains at Tyburn. Then the head was impaled along with those of two other regicides on spikes and mounted above Westminster.”

“Not London Bridge?”

“No. I suppose Westminster was chosen since it was the scene of their crime. The three heads were up there for decades, as a warning to anyone who might be tempted to imitate their deeds.”

Sebastian shifted his gaze to the young woman beside him. She was utterly unperturbed by a ghoulish sight the likes of which would cause many gentlewomen to fall into strong hysterics. But then, he realized, she had grown up surrounded by her father’s bizarre collection. It was a side of Miss Anne Preston that was both unexpected and more than a little thought provoking.

He brought his attention back to the remnants of the man who had once butchered men, women, and children the length of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Traces of hair and the mustache remained, but the ears and part of the nose were gone. He said, “All those years on a spike above Westminster Hall appear to have taken quite a toll.”

“Actually, much of the damage is fairly recent. The head was owned for a time by the actor Samuel Russell, and he was said to be in the habit of getting foxed and passing it around at his dinner parties. I gather he and his guests dropped it a few times.”

“So how did the Lord Protector go from being on a spike above Westminster to being an object of conversation at an actor’s drunken dinner parties?”

“Sometime during the reign of James II, there was a violent storm. The high winds broke the spike, and the head fell down.”

“I’m surprised it didn’t smash.”

“I suspect it would have, had it hit the pavement. But it was caught by a guard who happened to be patrolling below. Evidently his sympathies still lay with the Puritans, because he took the head home and hid it. There was quite a hue and cry when its loss was discovered in the morning—they even offered a reward for the head’s return.”

“Why? I mean, why would they care at that point?”

“I can’t imagine. Perhaps they feared it might become a relic. But the reward wasn’t enough to tempt the guard, and he kept it hidden. Father could have told you how it got from the guard to Russell, but I’ve forgotten.”

Sebastian shifted to the next pedestal. This head was more gruesome than the last, being light brown in color rather than black and less shrunken, with its nearly toothless mouth gaping open in a frightful grin. The neatly engraved brass plaque on the front of the case said simply,
HENRI IV
.

Sebastian stared at it. “That’s Henri IV? The French king?”

“Yes.”

“How did your father get him? I thought he was buried along with the rest of France’s royals at the basilica of Saint-Denis in Paris.”

“He was. But when the revolutionaries broke open all the royal tombs and tossed the contents into a common grave, someone with a fondness for ‘Good King Henri’ saved his head and smuggled it out of the country.”

“Why?”

Her face lit up with silent laughter. “You obviously don’t understand the mentality of collectors.”

“Do you?”

“Not entirely. But after years of observing Father, I’d say much of the fascination comes from the way old items can make us feel closer to the past.”