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.”