A Murder at Rosamund's Gate

22

Dawn had not yet broken when Lucy slipped out of the household. She knew it was folly, but she had to go back to St. Peter’s. On her way out, she had whispered to Cook where she was going, lest the household be unduly alarmed by her disappearance.

“I do not like it, Lucy,” Cook said, trying to focus on Lucy’s face. “What can you possibly learn by sneaking around in the church? At least wait till light, and tell Lucas. Have him look out for you. What if the reverend catches you, poking about his things?”

“He shan’t catch me,” Lucy said. “I must find out what else may be there. Please, I have to go!”

She walked briskly, hoping she would not encounter anyone she knew. The branches above were still thick and green. Although it was early September, the leaves had not yet taken on the hues of fall. Once she thought she heard someone behind her, but when she spun around, no one was there.

She almost felt relieved when she saw St. Peter’s looming before her. Without dousing her light, she slipped in through the rear church chamber and into the vestry, where she knew Reverend Marcus, and sometimes Lucas, resided. There was a closed door to the west of the rectory, where she imagined they slept.

Looking about, Lucy tried to imagine how the deeply recessed main room might have looked. She knew that during the plague, thirty or forty people might have set up pallets in here, tending their sick and dying family members. She thought about how a ten-year-old might have scampered about, before he got too sick to move, perhaps hiding in an untended corner, trying to flee the sickness.

There—in a shadowy corner, she spied a few trunks, which she immediately hastened toward. Kneeling down to unlatch them, she had to wipe away heavy cobwebs and layers of thick dust. None of them had been opened for months, and the smell of camphor and cedar wafted toward her nostrils. The first contained bedding, and the second a number of old, fairly filthy clothes.

In the third, she spied a bit of bright cloth hidden under some moldy blankets. Bessie’s reticule! What could it mean? She opened the small bag with shaking fingers.

There, on the top, were Bessie’s fan and her pocket and a small lace kerchief that she had painstakingly embroidered when she was but fourteen. Underneath, something glinted in the lantern’s soft glow. Lucy pushed back the cloth. The Hargraves’ missing silver!

She stepped back, frowning. She thought about what she knew of the reverend. Could he have—

She heard steps echo in the passageway. A voice came from behind her. “I’m sorry you found that, Lucy.” Lucas moved toward her from the shadows. “I saw your lantern and I wondered who was here.”

“Lucas?” Lucy asked, her voice faltering. “Did you know Bessie’s things were here?”

He slapped the wall. “I would have made a life with you, Lucy! I would have lifted you from being a servant. Something our Adam would not do.”

As he spoke, he edged nearer to her. His hand shot out and pulled her cap off. The face she had so long trusted seemed suddenly to slip away, as though a vizard had fallen to the floor. His features looked cold and hard and something less definable. Lucy stood completely still, frozen to the ground.

Lucas began to loosen her long hair, entangling his fingers in her tresses. “Oh, Lucy, I knew Adam wanted you. Sometimes I thought it was endearing, the way he resisted his feelings for a servant. So honorable, our Adam. Any other man would have just taken you, as I’m sure you know. But don’t fool yourself, my dear. Our Adam knows the lay of the land; he’ll marry his precious heiress and have everything he ever wanted. He’d keep you on the side, too, if he weren’t so conflicted about your honor!”

Lucy stepped back into the shadows, feeling the wall behind her, trying to move away.

“You should have seen him that day in the pub! When that lout Richard talked about you! Adam, our errant knight, leaped to defend your honor. I don’t know who was more surprised, though, us or him.” Lucas chuckled at the memory. “Oh, ‘How can I have feelings for a serving girl?’ he would say to me. ‘She’s so sweet and good,’ he would say. ‘Do you know, Lucas,’ he said once, ‘she taught herself to read? Do you know what kind of mind she must have? A man could go a long way ere he met a woman like her! But a servant, no less!’”

Lucy listened, dumbfounded, barely noticing that his hand had caught hold of her sleeve. “Then, you see, when that oaf Richard spoke of your attributes, thinking that Adam, as the master’s son, had already tasted your wares, they all laughed at Adam championing your virtue as if you were a fine lady. Only I knew William to be your brother, so I kept my thoughts silent!” He licked his lips, his gaze darting about. “There’s something I must show you, Lucy. I need you to understand.”

“Understand what, Lucas?” she asked, her voice faltering.

“Understand why he was driven to kill those hoydens, I suppose?” asked a voice from behind them.

They spun around. Reverend Marcus!

The reverend continued. “I’d long wondered, Lucas, since I had of course seen you with a few of those girls before their … unfortunate demises.”

Lucy’s mouth gaped open, her fingers still holding Bessie’s pocket. She heard a lot of noise in the church, muffled shouts and then the church bells tolling. In the far reaches of her mind, she dully wondered what was going on, given the earliness of the hour.

Lucas laughed scornfully. “Those whores, you mean. A few of them with child, all of them with no morals, spreading their pernicious lies, polluting our congregation. I did it for you, sir—”

“Liar!” the reverend shouted, his face dark with fire. “Whores of Babylon they may have been, but I did not ask you to take the hand of God as your own!”

“Yet it was you who gave me the authority of the Church,” Lucas said, picking up a long pole, used to light tapers, that had been resting against the stone wall. He glanced at Lucy, still cowering by the trunks in the corner. “Well, I can thank the magistrate for this position as well. I did not want the Church, and yet I came to realize that this was the hand of divine providence at work. This I learned from you! God has sanctioned my actions. He has seen fit to give me power to act in his name.”

No, Lucas, no! Lucy thought, but she could not speak, terror having frozen her body and tongue.

“You have taken lives, Lucas, which did not belong to you but to God.” The reverend wagged his finger. “He will not thank you for the evil you have unleashed into this God-fearing community.”

“And how will this God-fearing community respond, when they learn that a bloody papist has been devoutly leading them in prayer every week?” Lucas narrowed his eyes. “Oh, yes, I’ve kept your secret, Reverend Marcus, but before I go, I will leave out your monkish trappings—the hair shirts, the rosaries—for all to see.”

For a moment the reverend was struck dumb. Anger, guilt, and shame warred on his features. Then he regained his voice. “You will suffer!” he shouted. “Indeed, you will suffer the most horrific torments, on earth and in hell!”

“I think not!” Lucas laughed, brandishing the pole. “For it is you who will suffer, for seeking to stop the hand of God! Just as Evangeline, the filthy wench, dared turn against me! I did know then, as I know now, that I had been given this power from God. Still, I taught her then, as I shall teach you now!”

Lucy screamed as Lucas lunged forward, striking at the reverend in a frenzy. Unable to protect himself from the sudden onslaught, the reverend quickly fell to the ground with a sickening thud, blood seeping onto the cold stone floor.

Barely pausing, Lucas pulled a small knife from his belt and with one smooth practiced motion swung the blade into the reverend’s chest. His body contorted grotesquely for a moment and then, one last groan escaping him, lay still.

A sudden silence filled the chamber. Nauseous, Lucy could not move, could no longer scream. Even Lucas seemed struck by what he had done, sweat beading on his forehead. He worked his mouth, as if trying to find words to explain what had just unfolded.

Then the sound of steps racing down the hallway galvanized him. He clamped one arm tightly around her chest, and held the knife against her throat with the other hand. Adam appeared in the doorway, panting heavily. “Lucy!” he cried. “I heard you screaming!” Stopping short, he looked around the room. Instantly, he took in the scene, from the blood pooling through the reverend’s robes to Lucy shaking under the blade of Lucas’s knife. He paled but stepped forward. “Let her go, Lucas.”

Lucas snarled. “Come to rescue your lady love, I see. How charming! Then come get her, why don’t you!”

He slammed Lucy down the steps into the catacombs. Desperately, she tried to catch herself, but she only succeeded in halting her descent slightly. In tremendous pain, she saw Lucas trip Adam as he lunged down the steps after her. Adam shouting her name was the last thing she heard. She struggled to get up, but the ache caused her to slump heavily to the floor.

* * *

When she regained consciousness, Adam was lying near her, a length away. Lucy could see that both his feet and hands were tied. She began to scream for help, but only a rusty, dry wheezing sound came out.

Lucas smirked. “Don’t bother, Lucy,” he said, idly scratching the dirt floor with his knife. “No one will hear you. Not with all the excitement up there, anyway.”

Lucy could hear the sound of bells and men shouting. The noise sounded very far away, but the church was so solid that everything was muffled and eerie. “What is happening?” she asked, scrambling to keep calm. “Outside, I mean.”

“Well,” Lucas said, still scrabbling in the dirt, “it seems that London is in flames.”

He offered this startling pronouncement as blandly as if he were purchasing a loaf of bread. She heard Adam exhale sharply.

“What?” Lucy gasped. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, yes, it’s been going on some hours now. Started on Pudding Lane, I’ve heard tell. Just a mile off. They’ve come here, asking for buckets, ladders, squirts, and such supplies we clergymen are supposed to keep, but there is little enough man can do against almighty providence, of this I have no doubt.”

Lucas drew himself up, as if he were standing at his pulpit. “Ring the bells, go on, I told them, if only to warn the people of London that their time is nigh, and that judgment day is upon them!”

Hairs raised on Lucy’s neck, and she glanced nervously at Adam.

“I see you staring at me,” Lucas continued. “I can see in your eyes that you think I am a madman. Perhaps I am, I do not know.”

He got up and started pacing the floor, the stone columns of the catacombs causing his steps to echo menacingly, as if the ghosts of a thousand lost souls had come to sit in on his hapless victims’ plight. He threw up his hands. “I couldn’t tell you when it all started.”

“You said ‘Evangeline,’” Lucy whispered, her throat scratchy and hoarse. She was trying not to look at the reverend’s body, lying on the hard stone floor. Lucas must have pushed the body down the steps after she fell.

“Evangeline?” Adam asked slowly. A look of dawning comprehension crossed his face. “Good God! Evangeline!”

“Adam, why you don’t tell our dear Lucy about Evangeline,” Lucas said. “She looks confused. You seem to know all about her.” Sniffing, he added, “I barely remember that little tart.”

Lucy looked at Adam, who still seemed dumbstruck. “My God. I could never put it together. It just seemed too fantastic, too improbable … but Jane Hardewick, Effie … it all makes sense now.” A growing sense of horror showed on Adam’s face. “I remember Evangeline. That is, I remember you speaking of her.”

“Indeed?” Lucas asked. “I hardly recall.”

“It was just once. The summer that Father and I had visited, four years now, just before I went to Cambridge. Father had wanted to speak to your mother, since he knew she wanted you to become his ward. You had spoken of a girl, a young miss, the daughter of the tavern keeper. She worked in the local inn,” Adam said, a distant look on his face as he remembered the scene. “You had convinced me to stop in for a pint. I remember you pointed her out to me. You said her name was Evangeline, a heavenly name, you said. I thought her a comely lass, but one rather free with her smiles. I recall you said she had promised to go walking with you. Did that ever happen, I wonder?” He stared at Lucas, who shrugged. “For it was not too long later that we received a letter from your mother, who mentioned that a local lass had been found killed in the field. A young man hanged for it, I believe.”

“Yes, George Pickering. I did not know him well.” Lucas smirked, chilling Lucy. “Although, you know, I recall seeing them together once.”

He paused, rubbing a spot of blood into the dusty ground with his boot. “We had gone walking. Me and Evangeline. We held hands, and when we got into the trees, she let me kiss her. But then she asked me for a bit of coin, which I didn’t understand. She said she liked me well enough, but she was trying to get a dowry together, because her father, the tavern keeper, kept drinking away her chances.” He looked at Lucy. “There was a lad she had her eye on. George. His family had some money and would not like him marrying the likes of her. So she wanted money from me. I was bemused, bewildered. How could such words come out of her mouth? I stumbled away, gagging. And she laughed as my world tumbled all around me.”

Lucas came closer to Lucy. “Later, I could hardly think. I would flush, then freeze, then flush again, just thinking of it. I barely slept that night. To think of her selling herself so she could lie in his arms. I who loved her! The whore! My fury grew. The next evening I resolved to follow her. I knew she would slip away, after the evening meal had been served at the inn, to meet that scurrilous George. And she did!” He took a deep breath. “She darted out of the tavern, the vixen that she was. I watched her through the trees, watched them. He took her willingly enough, but then afterward, I heard her say something about him wedding her. Then he laughed, the cad, saying she had confused ‘bedding’ with ‘wedding.’ I could almost take solace in the despair upon her face. Then he punched her, leaving her weeping. When I was sure he was gone, I raced to her, wanting to comfort her. Still wanting her, despite the vile disgusting thing she had just done. She was glad to see me.”

Lucy watched him helplessly, unable to speak, tears slipping down her cheeks.

Lucas paused again, caught up now in recalling his deeply hidden pain. In the candlelight, his face glistened with sweat. “She was glad to see me, that is, until I told her I would still marry her, though I was but fifteen. She called me an ‘untried calf, baaing for my mother.’ Though my fury rose with her words, I hid the hate that started to swell inside me. She begged me to go and talk to George. She held out this necklace to me, wrapped in a handkerchief that she had embroidered for him, and begged me to take it to George, so that he would think fondly of her. At that, my forbearance snapped.”

“And you killed her,” Adam said.

Lucas shrugged. “I did not want to, but something rose up within me. I wanted to smash her lovely lips and make her wish she had not scorned me. My hands around her neck, I looked deep into her eyes. She could not talk and could only make strange rasping sounds. I relished her fear.” He smiled. “Then her eyes closed, and she was gone. I shook her, but her eyes did not open. ’Twas at that moment the enormity of what I had done came to me, and I did not feel fear but power! I looked at the small package that was still in her fist, and I pried it loose. The necklace I kept as a tiny remembrance of her, but the handkerchief I stuffed back in.”

Lucas laughed then. The sound was was so pleasant, so ordinary, it turned Lucy’s stomach. They could have been chatting in Cook’s kitchen over a piece of pie. “’Twas only later I learned that the handkerchief had George Pickering’s embroidered initials on it. G. P.”

“I left her there, lying in her bed of sin and greed. George, as it turned out, had already told his mates about bedding her, and even that he had struck her before he left. When she did not return, the constable was not too long in finding her, and he put everything together. ’Twas not so surprising that George was tried and hanged for the harlot’s death.”

Adam spoke softly, still groggy from the blow he had received. “My father had known of the case, but we never pieced it together. Then you came to London.” He waited.

“Ah, London.” Lucas sighed. “This amoral, sinful city. So many Evangelines.”

“Effie? And Jane Hardewick? And”—Lucy swallowed—“Bessie?”

Lucas smiled. “They were all the same. Effie was next.”

Lucy could hear a great clanging in the distance, bells tolling far away, carriages rushing all about, people shouting. Hurriedly, she spoke again, hoping to keep Lucas talking. “I don’t understand.”

From his corner, Adam said, “They’re all the same, because for Lucas, it was the same story over and over again. Wasn’t it, Lucas?”

Ignoring Adam, Lucas spoke, his eyes shining a bit with the memory. “Effie I came to know later. I came across her in a park in another part of London, on her day off. Like Evangeline, she was beautiful, and she let me buy her supper in a nearby tavern. Over our ales, she told me how she despaired of her master’s advances. I thought to save her, but then she told me about some lad she hoped would marry her. And he a Quaker at that!” Lucas made a rude sign. “I thought I could turn Effie from her path to iniquity before it was too late, but she was dead set on this Quacker. She even showed me a portrait of her eye that Del Gado had made for her, which she intended to give to him. I pressed her on the terms of her payment to the painter, and as I suspected, she had given herself to him. This I could not abide.”

Lucas paused, looking at the bloodstain on his fingers. His gaze was distant, unfocused. “I could not get Effie out of my mind. A few days later, I sent her a letter from her professed lover, the Quacker, hoping to talk some sense into her. As luck would have it, the poor uneducated girl had to go to a local merchant to have it read. It was I that met her in her lover’s stead, and when she refused me, I killed her.”

“Monster!” Lucy whispered.

“You have to understand,” Lucas pleaded. “I was trying to help her. At the time I did not understand what I came to understand later. I was acting as the hand of the Lord.”

“And you took the eye portrait?” Adam asked, as if probing a witness in court.

Lucas willingly responded. “Yes. You know, I was so taken with that eye that I kept it in my pocket. I’m not sure why. I liked remembering Effie before her eyes closed.” He shrugged again. “Jane was much the same, in love with some Robert fellow, except that I prepared more for her. It was easy to see that she would not give herself over to me, and by now I had begun to truly understand my role.”

“Your role?” Lucy whispered.

“As God’s instrument. I told you that! Don’t you remember? I found my calling. For I even hastened the inevitable by sending Jane to the painter, convincing her that Robert would want her likeness, knowing full well the painter would finish her debauchery. That’s why it didn’t bother me that Robert was hanged. He had spoiled her. I kept that eye portrait, too.” Lucas paused. “Where those miniatures are now, I do not know. A pity.”

Lucy glanced at Adam, who shook his head slightly. Lucas, however, intercepted the look. “Ah, you’ve seen them. Take them from me, did you? No matter.”

“Effie’s I found by chance, practically at our front gate,” Adam admitted. “You must have dropped it. I always wondered about it, thinking at the time it was just a pretty piece. The other, that of Jane Hardewick, I found where you killed her. It was not till later that I learned Del Gado had painted them both, so at the time I saw no connection between them.”

“I see.” Lucas digested this information and then continued. “Now I’ve grown tired of recounting all the acts I did as the Lord’s soldier. I’m afraid, Adam, Lucy, it’s time to give you over to His great embrace.” He pulled out his knife.

Desperately, Lucy seized on a way to stall him. “But Bessie? Why Bessie? You cared about her! We were all friends! You did not know those other girls so well, but Bessie, you knew her!”

Lucas bared his teeth in the semblance of a smile. “’Twas the monster inside me. You said it yourself. The rest, Will, the painter, was easy enough to set in motion.”

He bent close down by Lucy’s ear and whispered, “This time I controlled it all, and this time I was more powerful, more purposeful. I could hardly sleep some nights for how much I enjoyed the prospect of what I was going to do.”

“Bessie! Tell me about Bessie!” Lucy cried.

Lucas carefully traced the line of Lucy’s jaw. She had to will herself not to shudder. “It was the painter’s fault, you know. He dirtied so many girls, but, of course, they were all so willing to be sullied. No virtue, no honor.” Straightening up, Lucas ran his fingers along the stone wall and gazed for a moment at the likeness of St. Peter etched into the stone. “Bessie, like so many of them, fell under his spell. I told her not to pose for him! I warned her. What happened was her own fault.”

“No!” Lucy began indignantly, but a movement from Adam stopped her.

Lucas continued. “Yes, it was. The family was taking supper that night, you know, the night we got into the fight at the pub, and I was resting. She came to my room and actually asked me my advice about her baby.”

“She did?” Lucy asked, shocked.

“Oh, yes, she did. She was eager for my forgiveness and my help. It was all so easy. I told her that I would set everything right with Will. I told her that I had planned to meet him that evening for a drink, and that I would persuade Will to go to the park to meet with her. She was so desperate, you see, wanting to believe that her precious Will still loved her, despite what she had done with the painter!”

Snorting, Lucas continued. “’Twas not so hard later to find her and let her know that Will wanted to see her. ‘Tonight,’ I told her, ‘Will wants to take you to Knightsbridge.’ She seemed surprised, so I said, ‘Yes, Bessie, he wants to marry you. There is one there who will sell you a license.’ For indeed, there are those who presume to marry sinners without posting banns. Not condoned by the Church, of course, but when she asked, I convinced her it was all right, God would understand and forgive. Imagine!”

His hand clenched. “As if the good Lord would forgive such fornication in his name!” For a moment his eyes glazed over. “No matter. I told Bessie to pack nearly everything she had, but to leave some things out, lest Lucy suspect too soon and raise a hue and cry. I had the foresight to write a note, in case she needed to be convinced. ‘My dear Will has written me a letter!’ she said!” Lucas grinned. “Can you believe it?” He could have been commenting on the antics of a fishwife henpecking her husband at the tavern. “Why do these girls always have to bring the letter along? I have to admit, I wondered if she would. That’s why I didn’t sign Will’s name.”

Ignoring Lucy’s stare, he continued. “She worried, you see, about stealing the silver at first, but I assured her that Will would be making money soon enough. Then she thought the whole thing a lark, I can tell you that. She had some thought she would pay the magistrate back once her Will set up his own shop.” He scowled, momentarily diverted. “I thought she’d be branded a thief! Instead, they threw the harlot a fine funeral, far better than she deserved.”

Lucy felt a deep wave of sadness flood over her. Poor, sweet-hearted Bessie! “And then?” she croaked, a tear slipping down her cheek.

“The rest was easy enough,” Lucas boasted. He reminded Lucy of one of her mother’s old cocks, strutting about the stone catacombs as if he were king of the hens. His leer disgusted her, yet she could not tear herself away.

“She was quite easy to dispatch. They always are, you see. They expect to see their lovers, of course, but I am their trusted confidante. They allow me to comfort them. They allow me to come”—he licked his lips—“close. You can imagine how angry I was when I realized she had not actually packed everything as I told her to do. And she wore that silly dress! I had to sneak into the room you two shared and pack her satchel, hoping my memory would serve me right. I hid it out back, and then ’twas easy enough to take it to St. Peter’s later.”

“That’s why my petticoat and stockings were missing,” Lucy said slowly. “I could never understand why she took them.”

“Yes, well, she didn’t,” Lucas replied. “My only regret, of course, is that her death hurt you. I did not want to hurt you, Lucy, you must believe that! Since Will was your brother, too, I felt slight remorse over what I had to do. Then I remembered their Philistine ways and I knew I was the trumpet and instrument of the Lord, completing what needed to be done. I was ever so surprised and, to be truthful, somewhat glad, when Adam came under suspicion first. Adam!”

Lucas laughed, the sound echoing oddly throughout the lifeless catacombs. “Even better! Your precious Will would not be injured, and Adam could be punished for the impure thoughts he harbored toward you! For sure, I thought the blood from the ring would prove him guilty, but, of course, that was not to occur. So I renewed my efforts against Will, knowing that it was God’s command that he be smited by the mighty hand of earthly justice.”

“You’re mad!” Lucy cried. “A lunatic!” She spat on the ground. “Monster!”

Lucas turned back. She could see no trace of her old friend on his harsh countenance. “Such ugly words from such pretty lips. Not to despair, my dear, your body will soon match the ugliness of those words you just hurled upon me, when I am through with you.”

He advanced toward her, and she flinched. Behind him, Adam was trying to tell her something. He wanted her to keep Lucas talking, until they could figure a way out. She tried a different tack, trying to sound admiring. “What about Richard? Did you pay him to say those lies?”

The crazed look that so chilled her vanished for a moment. Lucas laughed as if she were a favorite pupil who had pleased him. He reached a hand down to smooth her hair. She accepted the caress, trying not to flinch.

“Richard, that idiot,” he said pleasantly. “A weak mind, to be sure. I only had to buy him a few pints and I, shall we say, persuaded him to remember the story a slightly different way. Then those wretched Quakers got to him.” He sniffed. “Convinced him to see the light or some such nonsense. Worked over his conscience, I’ve heard. What a crock! When he recanted his story, I was quite annoyed, I must say.” He shrugged. “I had taken other precautions, but, it seems, not enough to convince the jury.”

Seeing the strange light return to Lucas’s face, Lucy sought desperately to keep him talking. “Other precautions?” she asked.

“The orange seller, of course.”

Lucy thought back. “Maggie didn’t show up to testify at Will’s trial. She had said she would, that she could prove Will had been with her. I didn’t believe her, though—but I told you I might pay for her testimony.” She stared at him in horror.

“Exactly. When you told me that, I knew I had to make quick riddance of her as well.”

Lucy stared at him. “You killed her, too?”

Lucas laughed fondly. “Well, yes. What had been done to her was never discovered, as far as I know. I strangled her quickly that night, near her home, and dumped her body. St. Giles, you know. So much deadly sickness there, I don’t think the carters thought too much about another body lying in a ditch. She looked, no doubt, to be just another unfortunate soul caught up in the early days of the great sickness. An early victim of the plague, as it turned out.”

The faint din from above was growing louder, and now they could hear a weak battering sound. Lucas sighed. “It sounds like the church has some visitors. Sinners, no doubt, in need of comforting for their wicked ways. I’ll tend to them, and then to you, never fear.”