A Murder at Rosamund's Gate

3

The next day, being Palm Sunday, the whole household rose early, good members of the king’s Church that they were. They walked together to St. Peter’s, Master Hargrave carefully guiding the mistress over mislaid stones and puddles in the street. A light mist drifted about them, softly billowing against the line of trees and the houses they passed. Adam and his parents were speaking in hushed tones. Lucy caught the word “plague.” She shuddered, focusing instead on the sweet smell of lavender coming from her hair and skin. She had been the last to use the bathwater the night before, and Bessie had added a few drops of her special perfume to freshen the cold tub.

Lucas and Sarah walked nimbly along, chattering about a gypsy who’d been fortune-telling at Covent Garden and was known to have set up camp in nearby Linley Park.

“Did she tell you about the man you were going to marry?” Lucas asked, guiding Sarah around a heap of still-steaming manure.

“Oh, yes,” Sarah said, giggling. “She said he would not be so handsome.” Then she remembered something else. “Oh, and Father! The fortune-teller told me that I am to travel a great deal, across many rivers, she said, but that you would not like it. I wonder why? I should always come back to visit.”

“I should hope so,” the magistrate said drily, turning to look at his daughter. “However, I do not think the goodly Reverend Marcus would like us talking about fortune-telling on the Sabbath. Especially now that Lucas has begun his studies with him.”

Lucas looked abashed. “Oh, yes, sir. You’re right, sir.”

Once inside St. Peter’s, a gray stone church built in the fourteenth century, the family took their seats in their accustomed row, with the Hargraves toward the front and the servants standing next to the pew, alongside the wall. When Lucy had first starting attending the parish church with the Hargraves, she had been glad to be able to hear the minister so clearly. Now she wished she could sit in the back of the church with the common folk, since the new minister had a way of staring at a body with a scorching gaze, verily reading one’s soul. His stories of hell and damnation made her heart beat painfully.

Lucy leaned against the oak wall, the stone floor hard on her feet. She shifted her weight carefully, so as not to attract anyone’s attention. Stifling a sigh, Lucy tried to focus on the minister’s words. Master Hargrave would question them on the walk home. He saw it as his godly duty, as head of the household, to make sure they were properly instructed in the faith.

Today, the reverend was speaking on the weakness of woman, one of his favorite topics. In his great voice, he pronounced, “Woman is a weak creature, not endued with the like strength and constancy of mind as men. They are prone to all manner of weak affections and dispositions of mind, that—”

Lucy had heard this opinion before. She thought of Avery, and other men harmed by war and illness who, if they were lucky, were housed by family or a kind neighbor. Who were the truly afflicted among them?

Her woolgathering was interrupted when the door at the back of St. Peter’s banged open, letting in a refreshing stream of chill air. Heads swung around, and murmurs arose from the pews.

Bessie nudged her, and Lucy’s mouth fell open. A woman, naked but for a bit of sackcloth covering her female parts, was striding down the center aisle. Her skin was rubbed dark with ashes, and her eyes were intent on the reverend at the pulpit.

Lucas looked stunned and angry. “How dare she?” Lucy heard him say to Sarah.

The congregation grew silent, watchful. Old men, slumping in their pews, sat up. Mothers covered their children’s eyes. A man’s low whistle carried in the silence, only to be hushed, probably by his missus. The reverend scowled.

Standing before the pulpit, the woman raised her hands heavenward. She laughed, but Lucy shivered at the sound. “Who amongst thee is not a sinner?” the woman hissed.

Lucy was struck by the woman’s unfamiliar form of address. Thee. The sackcloth and ashes. A Quakeress! One of that wretched sort who were always getting themselves dragged off by the magistrate’s men and hauled away in carts. Pitiful creatures really, some not so much older than herself. The strangeness of their faith made them outsiders, outcasts from the community that had raised them.

“I am the trumpet of the Lord! I am his handmaiden!” The Quakeress cried, her sackcloth slipping precariously down one shoulder. “Heed my words! His judgment is coming upon thee, all thee who are sinners, thee who are false pretenders! A great plague upon thee all!”

Aghast and captivated by the spectacle, no one moved. The reverend, whose face had been growing a more mottled purple with each passing moment, finally regained his senses. “Harlot!” he shouted, shaking his finger at her. “How dare you interrupt this holy service of the Church of England!”

The crowd began to mutter in the pews. “Abomination!” Lucy heard someone hiss.

“Quackers!” someone else called.

The minister jerked his head at two men seated nearby. Jumping up, they each grabbed the woman under an arm and hauled her from the church, her feet dragging against the stone floor. Lucy blushed to see the woman’s sackcloth ride farther up her legs. The woman’s screams were cut off as the great oak door slammed shut.

The buzz that filled the pews died down with a single glare from the minister. Lucy wondered what would happen to the woman. Hauled off to jail, she supposed, probably to Newgate.

Finally, the minister offered the closing prayer, and the congregation began to move out of the dim church. The mist had cleared, and the day was bright but chilly. Blinking, Lucy was pulled up short by the sounds of a woman wailing and bursts of raucous laughter. She turned to see several boys casting rotten tomatoes at a hunched gray figure.

Shocked, Lucy saw that the Quakeress had been tied to makeshift stocks, even in this freezing cold. As Lucy watched, a rotten egg hit the woman square on her forehead, so that egg and shell dripped into her mouth. Her face was flushed and bleeding. Wrinkling their noses from the stench, some of the crowd began to move away from the spectacle.

“What in the name of heaven?” Adam had pushed his way through the crowd. His face creased. “Who strung this woman up?”

Some of the boys shifted their feet. A tall, skinny man dressed in tattered clothes stepped forward. He looked wiry and mean, like someone accustomed to a fight. “What’s it to you?” he sneered, kicking a small rock toward where Adam stood. The crowd that had begun to disperse began to sidle back, hoping for a bit of fisticuffs, some unexpected revelry on the Lord’s Day.

Adam drew up his frame, squaring his shoulders. “You have no right to treat this woman in such a fashion. It is a matter for the courts, and the law of this realm, to determine justice for this woman.”

The man scowled. “This here bunter has made a mockery of God’s law, or have you forgotten that? Perhaps you have some sympathies for her? We could make room for you here in the stocks!”

As the crowd snickered, the man smirked, pulling the scarf from the woman’s head. Her dark hair, thick and matted, fell loose. Lucy could see that the woman’s lower lip was trembling fiercely. Drops of blood trickled from her nose. Lucy willed her not to weep, fearing that her ridicule would be worsened. As if she heard Lucy’s pleas, she steadied her chin and spoke. “Thee hast thyself made sport with God’s law, and thee shalt suffer in the bowels for tormenting one of his own handmaidens, picked to deliver his truth!”

“Who dares make such sport on the Lord’s own day?” The reverend’s voice boomed from the steps of St. Peter’s. For a moment he stood still, the stone magnificence of the church adding to his stature. Lucas stood behind him, taking in the scene uncertainly, looking more serious and pale than Lucy had ever seen him.

A great rumble of hooves and a cloud of dust moved before the church. Alerted to the disturbance, two king’s men appeared on horses.

The magistrate, who had just emerged from the church, hailed the king’s guardsmen. “You there! Bring a cart around! And you! Cut this woman loose!”

At the presence of the magistrate, the jeering men and women began to slink away. Master Hargrave turned back to the woman, who still crouched, trembling, in the mud. One of her eyelids was matted shut, and her nose was swelling purple. She began to mumble feverishly.

“Miss? Could you tell me your name?”

The woman stopped mumbling and looked directly at the magistrate with her one good eye. Without a curtsy or even a nod to his authority, she answered him. “Dorcas White.”

The magistrate looked at her sternly. “I do not condone the violence that has been taken against you today, Mistress White. Only the courts should punish such wrongdoing. I am sorry that you have been treated so injuriously, on the Lord’s Day at that. You say that your conscience guides your actions—”

Mistress White interrupted, protesting. “It is God’s will! I am his voice and mouthpiece. He has told me to speak out against the wickedness of—”

Master Hargrave held up his hand. “Enough!”

The woman fell silent. The magistrate continued. “I do not wish to debate the merits of your beliefs, as misguided as they are. It is not for me to challenge the heresies that you speak. It is for the reverend here”—he nodded to the minister, who gravely nodded back—“to counter such lunacy.

“I am concerned only with keeping the peace,” Master Hargrave continued, “and with punishing those who transgress it. As I am sure you are well aware, you are accused of violating the Peace Act, by disrupting this church service and propagating your heretical beliefs among the godly. For this transgression, you will be imprisoned and stand trial.”

A few people nodded, approving. Lucy looked down for a moment so no one could see her face. She had never seen the magistrate issue a charge, and she felt confused. No doubt the woman had disrupted the king’s own service—appearing in such shocking dress!—and yet, had she not been punished enough? Who knew how long she had been tormented, how long she had been mistreated by those bullying men, before the service had ended. Now she was to be carted off to jail?

“So be it,” the Quakeress said, biting her lip. “Thee cannot take a righteous woman from her path to God, even if thee do throw me in chains!”

“Get her to Newgate,” the magistrate told the soldiers. “I’ll tend to her on the morrow.”