A Murder at Rosamund's Gate

10

The idea of finding justice for Bessie soon felt like a needle threading in and out of Lucy’s mind, pricking her unexpectedly, painfully reminding her of her desperate promise. “How can I even begin?” she muttered to herself. “I’m just a chambermaid.”

Yet, after Bessie’s funeral, the magistrate informed her that he wished for her to assume Bessie’s former position as his wife’s lady’s maid.

For a moment, Lucy was speechless. I’ve not got Bessie’s skill with a needle, she wanted to cry out. I shall ruin the mistress’s fine silks!

Hearing his next words, however, she was glad she had held her tongue. “The mistress has taken Bessie’s death to heart, Lucy. As we all have. My wife needs a companion more than she needs to have her silks pressed.” He regarded her with his steady reassuring eyes. “Will you do that, Lucy? Be her companion?”

Lucy scarcely knew what she mumbled, yet found herself a short while later sitting silently beside her mistress, their sadness wrapped about them like a winding sheet. Listlessly, she unsnarled knots in several skeins of yarn, while Mistress Hargrave plucked impatiently at the happy cherubs she’d been embroidering for the last few weeks.

“Cherubs, bah! I’m starting a new piece,” the mistress said, casting aside the wooden embroidery frame. “This one will depict the people of Nineveh being stricken down by God.” She shrugged lightly. “Divine providence.”

Divine providence indeed, Lucy thought to herself. Bessie deserves real justice, no matter what it may do to this household.

* * *

Finally, Lucy found her chance to look for what Adam had been hiding. Taking her leave of the mistress the next morning, she paused in the second-floor corridor, holding a candle to light the darkening passage. Darting a quick glance up and down the hallway, she put her ear by Adam’s door. She couldn’t hear anything. He must still be downstairs, she thought, having a drink with his father. Now that she had been promoted to the mistress’s lady’s maid, she had no good reason to enter Adam’s room, as she might have done as a chambermaid. Knowing that what she was about to do was pure folly, she opened the door and slipped inside.

Unsure what she was looking for, she headed to Adam’s desk. It was neat, like the rest of his room. Beside a stack of four or five leather books were his pen and ink, pipe, and small pouch of tobacco. She could see he had been writing something, but she did not dare move the books to read his words.

With shaking hands, Lucy carefully eased open his desk drawer. Inside, there were more papers, a bit of vellum, and some knives for sharpening his pens. Otherwise, the drawer was empty. She looked around the room. She quickly checked the wardrobe and his trunk, but neither yielded much beyond his penchant for finely tailored clothes. Under the bed was his chamber pot, which she did not linger over, and a pitcher and basin were on a small table by the window.

Lucy frowned. She was about to leave when she spied the tobacco pouch, which she had earlier discounted. Crossing the room in three steps, she picked it up. “That’s not tobacco,” she muttered, and with trembling fingers she loosened the cords that kept the pouch closed.

Reaching in, Lucy pulled out two miniature portraits that could fit easily into the palm of her hand. Each frame held the image of a single left eye, with only a hint of a woman’s eyebrow and cheekbones revealed. One eye was a beautiful light ocher, and the other was green, the color of moss after rain. Each eye stared directly at her, in a manner that was both coy and knowing. Studying the portraits, she knew she did not recognize either face. Bessie had blue eyes, and for that matter, so did Judith Embry.

She could tell there was one more small object in the pouch. As she drew it out, Lucy stared at it in horror. It was a beautiful lacquered comb—a comb she had seen before, hidden in a box, tucked under Bessie’s petticoats, a comb she had never seen Bessie wear. This must have been what Adam found, she reasoned, at the site of Bessie’s murder. Why had he been looking for it? He had definitely been searching for something that day. Had he known something about it? Was there any connection to the miniatures?

Thoughtfully, she put everything back where she had found it, lest she’d be caught in his room. Her little quest had left her with far more questions than answers, and her curiosity was far from satisfied.

* * *

“I’d be pleased to go to market today,” Lucy called to Cook as she laid out the breakfast dishes the next morning. Last night, as she lay in her bed, staring at the crack in her shutters, she’d begun to realize that she needed to learn more details about Bessie’s murder. Maybe there’s some truth to be found in the accounts of her death, she had thought. Something someone may have missed.

Lucy murmured a quick prayer that the rain would hold off till she was home. Though it was just noon, the sky was looking to break open with a quick April shower. It would not do to walk through the market with her hair and dress plastered to her body. Although, truth be told, her mind felt as slushy as the outside world, and right now it was an effort to care about her appearance.

Stepping quickly around the peddlers hawking their wares, Lucy hurried past a carpenter pounding nails into a row of coffins. The solemn nature of the simple wood boxes unnerved her and made her think of Bessie. Wincing from the memory, she moved past another shop with a sign that had only a man’s and a woman’s hands intertwined. At that shop, Lucy knew, marriages were performed for those too poor or too desperate to get married properly in a church. At last, she stood in front of the apothecary, watching the sign with a unicorn’s horn swaying with the hustle of the crowds.

At that moment, a young girl caught her attention. Lucy squinted, trying to figure out why the girl looked familiar. Dressed in a dirty frock, the lass was trying to sell ribbons as soiled as her cloak, looking like all the other ragamuffin children tearing about the streets. Yet there was something about her. “Ribbons for sale!” the girl called this way and that. Tired and wan, she had a thin voice that barely carried over the din. No one paid her any heed as she stumbled, falling into a pile of something steamy.

Lucy dashed over, crouching down beside her. “Are you all right?” Seeing the girl’s slight nod, Lucy added, “Do I know you? What is your name?”

Pushing back her dirty cap, the girl looked up. Her eyes were sharp, taking in Lucy’s headwrap and servant’s clothes. Guarded, she shook her head.

Lucy studied her features. She knew she’d seen her before. Something about the set of her lips. Snapping her fingers, she said to the girl, “You’re Cook’s niece, aren’t you?”

The girl shrugged. “How should I know? Who’s Cook?”

“Sorry,” Lucy said. “You have an aunt Mary, right? And, I suppose, a cousin Samuel? He’s now a fishmonger in Leadenhall, but she’s with the magistrate. Our household. You came with your mother to visit us.”

The girl was nodding, looking wistful. “Yes, that’s right. I remember now. What a grand house that was. That was when my pa died.”

“Oh, right.” Lucy recalled. “Where’s your mother now? Have you a stall nearby, then?”

Something did not seem right. Thin and dirty was not unusual for children living in London’s clogged streets among swelling debris and rattling garbage, but the ribbons she was trying to sell looked to be just scraps, a weaver’s cast-offs. The girl also looked like she had not eaten for days. Lucy held out the apple she had saved for the long walk home.

The unexpected gift loosened the girl’s tongue. “I’m Annie. It’s just me and my brother Lawrence now, since my mum died in the last sickness; took a number from the city, it did. Now she’s up in blessed heaven with my dear father.”

Annie must have been talking about the last cholera outbreak, Lucy thought. She had heard that hundreds had died.

“Have you no family, then?” Lucy asked. “Are you alone?

“Shh!” Annie said, looking around fearfully. “I dunna want to be stolen.”

Lucy put a hand to the girl’s cheek. She knew only too well that bad sorts did sometimes prey on luckless children, especially those left abandoned on the streets. She lowered her voice. “Why didn’t you come see Cook? Tell her your mum had passed?” she pressed.

Annie smoothed a ribbon hanging from the basket, but it still wrinkled unbecomingly. “She was not my mum’s sister, you know, but the sister of my poor dad. I’ve been taking care just fine, excepting that Lawrence took sick, and we had to use the last bit of money for his potions. ’Sides, I did not know where she lived.”

The thought of Annie and her brother alone on the streets made Lucy sick, and she said as much. “You must come home with me, to Cook. I’m sure the magistrate will help you. He’s a good man, he is.”

Hope and suspicion battled on Annie’s pale face. “Lawrence, too?” she asked. “He’s got a game leg, he does, but he’s awful strong. He can haul logs and baskets and help with cooking and the marketing. I can’t leave him.”

“Yes,” Lucy said more firmly than she felt. “We wouldn’t leave Lawrence. Listen, now. I’ve an errand to run. Do you think you could get Lawrence, and your things together, before the clock strikes one? I could meet you, just there. Under the rooster.”

Lucy pointed to a set of barrels outside the corner tavern. The Crowing Cock had a picture of a red rooster hanging above its door.

“Yes,” said Annie. “We’ll be there.”

Looking at Annie’s pathetic and eager face, Lucy felt a moment’s misgiving. It will be all right, she thought, squaring her shoulders. The magistrate is a good man. He will know what to do with these youngsters.

Turning down Fleet Street, Lucy stopped in front of Master Aubrey’s shop. Even from there, the noise of the presses and the men’s shouts filled the air. Stepping inside, once again she was assailed by the smells coming from both the machines and the men themselves, sweating at their heavy work. She knew, from her previous visit, that most actual sales were not carried out in the shop; rather, the books went out in the hawkers’ leather bags to be sold at stalls around the city or along the streets. St. Paul’s Churchyard, London Bridge, Oak upon the Hill, Cheapside, and the Cock and Bull were favorite sites.

The half-formed thought Lucy had concocted that morning now seemed more than a bit foolish. It didn’t help when Master Aubrey spotted her and strode over, rubbing his hands on a towel. Red faced and a bit impatient to get back to work, he nevertheless was courteous.

He took in her servant’s garb but did not seem to recognize her from her prior visit. “Yes, lass? Do you have a message for me?”

“Er—” Lucy faltered, inwardly berating herself for not thinking through her plan.

Mustering patience, Master Aubrey tried to help her out. “Did your master send you, perchance?” he asked, clearly used to dim-witted servants doing their masters’ bidding. “Come on, then, girl, let’s have it.”

Did she dare? Bessie’s merry face danced before her eyes. Yes, she would do it. She tried to speak without guile. “I’m from Magistrate Hargrave’s household. I believe you know his son?” She paused, eying the bookmaker from under her lashes, trying to gauge his response.

“Oh, yes, of course. Adam. You’ve a delivery, then?”

“A delivery? Oh, no. No,” Lucy said, momentarily diverted. What was Adam’s business with the printer? Then she returned her focus to the matter at hand.

“Master Adam would like all the true accounts and broad-sides you have about the recent murder of Bessie Campbell.”

Master Aubrey raised his eyebrows slightly but otherwise did not seem too surprised. “Zounds! I thought I already gave Adam those penny pieces. Never thought the young man to be so morbid. Hold on, then.” He started out of the front room of the shop and then turned back. “I suppose he wants the accounts of the others, too?”

“The others?”

“Oh, yes. There were two other girls, taken in like your poor Bessie.” This time, the printer looked right at Lucy, as if seeing her for the first time. A bit of warmth entered his voice. “Your friend, I suppose? Worked together at the house?”

Lucy looked up at the cracked white ceiling, battling with the tears that threatened to destroy her composure. She managed to nod.

“Sorrowful lot that,” Master Aubrey sighed. “Mind you, I don’t have all of the accounts, but I’ve got a few. Some I’ve been saving. I don’t know why; I’m not one to paste murders on my walls like some. I’ve just always thought about these girls. Must be on account of me having a daughter myself.” Pausing to add ink to a press, Master Aubrey added, “It will cost a crown for the lot.”

“A whole crown?” Lucy gasped. “But they’re old!”

“Murder always sells, my dear. Adam would know this. Shall I just send them by your master’s house later, then? He can pay my apprentice.”

“Oh, no! I mean, he sent the money along.” Turning away, Lucy quickly pulled her pocket out of her skirts and looked at her last few coins ruefully. She had intended to buy her mother a present. This is far more important, she told herself, handing over the money.

Coin in hand, the printer disappeared into the back of the shop. As she had done when she first visited the shop two months before, Lucy looked around the drying racks, reading the titles, looking at the woodcuts.

“‘A Recipe for a Good Wife,’” she read out loud. The piece was accompanied by its rejoinder, “‘A Recipe for a Good Husband.’” Looking it over, she blushed at the bawdy advice.

The thought of a husband seemed so distant to her, and yet Lucy knew she would marry in a few years. What her future husband—this nameless, formless figure—would look like was anybody’s guess. She had no expectation of his appearance. He was as likely to be fat and bald as he would be young and handsome. As long as he does not beat me, she supposed, although in her heart, she wished for love.

So long as he is not in one of the animal trades, she thought, her nose wrinkling. Though it might be a blessing to have meat on the table regularly. Yet the thought of a man climbing into her bed every night smelling of blood and gristle turned her stomach.

Beyond that, she barely dared imagine. Her mother, she knew, would not force her to marry, but she would be expecting that banns be read by the time Lucy was twenty-five, an age when servants commonly scraped together enough money to marry, or when men had finished their apprenticeships. Otherwise, she’d surely be seen as a dried-up spinster, and her options would grow scarce. Lucy knew her mother was especially eager to see her settled before she passed.

As she gazed at the silly woodcut images, several faces of men she knew passed through her mind. Richard, leering at her at the Embrys’ Easter masquerade. The painter’s eyes, first warm and caressing, then hard and cruel. She shivered, repulsed again. Lucas, his ready grin and red cheeks. Adam, his amused smile in the drawing room, sharing a joke with his father. His hands cupping her face, so close to his own … but kissing Judith a few hours later …

Lucy came to her senses. Stupid! she scolded herself. She forced herself to think of his bloody hands, the blood on his shirt. Remember why you are doing this!

Master Aubrey was just returning with a tied packet. Opening the door, he said, “I don’t know why Adam wanted these now. We’re planning to meet in a few hours anyway, as we’ve some things to catch up on.”

A freezing cold passed through Lucy. She managed to shrug, trying to look casual. “Oh, those gentry,” she said. “Who can understand their passing fancies?”

“Indeed,” the printer agreed, not paying her any more attention. “Ho there!” she heard him call to his apprentice as she scurried out of the shop. “Mind how you set that type!”

Hurrying down the street, Lucy scolded herself again. “Stupid sow!”

What if Master Aubrey told Adam that she had purchased the woodcuts and folios in his name? She did not know what she could say. Maybe he will not find out, she comforted herself. Indeed, why would he?

So upset was she that she had not thought her ridiculous plan through, she almost forgot about Annie and Lawrence. Luckily, she spotted them, huddled together by the Crowing Cock, clutching a small bag each. Chagrined, she rushed over to them, muttering to herself, “Lucy, you do not have two licks of sense. Two feckless deeds in just one hour!”

Waiting for a cart to pass her in the road, she continued to chastise herself. What will the magistrate say when he sees these two waifs? she wondered, putting her worries about Adam and the woodcuts firmly out of her thoughts.

Mustering a smile, she greeted the two children shivering on the corner. Like Annie, Lawrence looked scrawny and underfed, and he favored his right leg. He barely seemed able to walk but still managed to convey both pride and defiance, which kept her from expressing the concern she felt. Neither looked to be more than ten. “How old are you, anyway?” she asked Annie.

“Almost eleven,” Annie chirped, nudging her brother. He duly answered, “Nine.”

Lucy supposed there would not be much harm bringing them home for a meal and a bit of a wash. She could inquire among the neighbors if they needed extra help, but she did not think the magistrate would turn them out of the house outright. Best get a move on. Lucy smiled, trying to look reassuring. “All right, children, let’s go.” Taking their packs in her own strong arms, Lucy started back to Lincoln Fields. The children followed close behind. Neither looked back.

* * *

Lucy’s fears that the children would not be accepted into the magistrate’s household were unfounded.

Cook took one look at them and, with tears in her eyes, opened her arms into a hearty embrace. “Annie and Lawrence!” she managed to choke out. “Whatever has happened?”

Lucy quickly told her what Annie had related about their mother’s death, while the children gnawed thick crusts of bread and slurped hot soup.

Cook clucked and tutted as she heard the story. Later, when she thought the children were not listening, she whispered to Lucy, “Their mother was too proud. She should have sent word when she took sick.”

“Would not have made a difference,” Annie spoke up, a bit of soup dripping from her lips. “It happened right quick. Neither of us could remember your master’s name, nor where this house was. Me and Lawrence, we could not well knock on all those fine houses, looking as we do.”

Lucy helped them wash for the first time in many months and then made beds for them on pallets of straw in the pantry. It was not long before the children were sleeping peacefully among the onions, near where John and Cook slept. Having heard of their arrival, Master and Mistress Hargrave peered in at them, where they lay close together.

“Poor dears,” said the mistress. “That little Lawrence looks unwell. We shall call for the physician in the morning.”

“Lucy, indeed, it was providence that you found them,” Master Hargrave said. “Mary, the children may stay, provided they help you and Lucy with the scullery tasks. When Lawrence is well in a few months’ time, we shall apprentice him out. Make sure you feed him, Mary; he looks too scrawny for being nine years old.”

After the master escorted his wife from the kitchen in his customary solemn way, Cook and Lucy exchanged glances. They did not need to say anything, knowing they were fortunate to live in such a good household.

* * *

With all the excitement, it was quite late before Lucy finished her chores and retired to her chamber. There, she lit a candle stub and stuck it into a crack in the wall. Finally, she pulled the packet from under her skirts. After undoing the string with her teeth, she spread out the papers, frowning. There seemed to be ten pieces altogether, although four pieces puzzled her on first glance. Another was the ballad “Murder Will Out,” which had been sold at Bessie’s funeral. She wondered why it had been included; the account was of a murder that had occurred some twenty years before. These she set aside.

The other five were penny pieces, typical of what Master Aubrey and other booksellers peddled in the streets. Jane Hardewick and a woman named Effie Caruthers were the focus of two, and there were a pair about Bessie. The authors, identified either by their initials or more simply as “Anonymous,” described the last moments of each wretched girl’s life, with the ballads setting the horrific acts to rhyme. None of the murders looked to have been solved.

“Such a shame,” Lucy murmured. They all had dreams and hopes and families, and now they were gone. She said a small prayer for their souls before reading through the pages in earnest.

She started with the broadside and ballad describing Effie Caruthers’s death. According to both accounts, Effie had been set upon by a passing woodsman on her way to a rendezvous in a secluded field in south London. The ballad gave little detail of Effie’s death, mostly describing the plight of her master, who had lost his favorite servant.

“Good they can banter about her death,” Lucy muttered and picked up the accounts of Jane Hardewick’s murder.

As with Effie, there was a “true account” and a ballad about Jane. The “true account” she had read long before. She closed her eyes, remembering for a moment poring over the account with Bessie and Cook, unaware of the tragedy that lay ahead.

Lucy shook her head. “That won’t do,” she admonished herself, and she reread the passage describing what Jane had been last seen wearing. Gray muslin dress, red embroidered sash. Lucy sat upright. That reminded her of Maraid. Uneasily, she recalled the gypsy’s words. The sash comes from a dark place.

Letting the woodcut drop from her fingers, she picked up the “true account” of Bessie’s murder. “‘A Murder at Rosamund’s Gate,’” she read. “‘Being a true account of a most horrible murder at Rosamund’s Gate, of a serving girl, who did work at the Magistrate’s household in Lincoln Fields. By S.C.’”

Taking a deep breath, Lucy read only the first few lines before swearing. “That rat Janey! This is her swill!”

Nearly every word was a lie, including the same rubbish about Bessie having received a letter from an unidentified lover, who had persuaded the “heartless trollop” to meet him at Rosamund’s Gate with the magistrate’s silver. Much of the piece focused on how Bessie had brought ruin on the magistrate’s household. Even worse, it contained several passages suggesting that her lover had been someone much closer—someone known to, or even part of, the magistrate’s own family.

Chilled, Lucy compared the woodcut account to the ballad, which was much shorter but also mentioned the lover’s note. “All lies,” she repeated to herself.

Tossing the woodcuts aside, Lucy looked back at the discarded pile, the four pieces she could not quite decipher. They had no pictures, and the text was much smaller and harder to read. Although the words were in English, their meaning escaped her, especially in her current tired state. The papers looked like legal documents and could have been in a strange language for all the sense she could make of them.

The last of the pieces looked like a petition to the king, and try as she might, she could make no headway. It seemed unrelated to the deaths of the three girls. Perhaps Master Aubrey had included it by mistake. Lucy was too tired to ponder it anymore. Blowing out the candle, she laid down her head and quickly fell into a dreamless, but troubled, sleep.