The virger swiped the palms of both hands down the sides of his cassock, as if reluctant to touch the dusty, threadbare old cloth before them. He was a skinny man well into his thirties, with straight, straw-colored hair and a long, bony face dominated by a protuberant mouth full of large, crooked teeth. Unlike the Dean, who was the seventh son of an earl and probably destined for a bishopric, the virger was a layman of far more ordinary origins. Moving slowly, he carefully folded back the pall to reveal Charles I’s lead coffin, white and chalky with age.
On his last visit to the vault, Jarvis had left strict instructions that the coffin was not to be touched; its lid was to remain soldered tight and the leaden scroll that encircled it kept in place to await the Prince’s formal examination. Now the scroll gaped open, its cut edges showing clearly where the section bearing the inscription KING CHARLES, 1648 had been removed. But rather than tackle the solder, the thieves had simply cut a large, square opening in the upper part of the lid—easy enough to do since the outer lead coffin was only a thin sheet and its wooden lining much decayed.
“Give me the lantern,” said Jarvis.
The Dean stood frozen, eyes wide, jaw slack with horror.
“Hand it to me, damn you.”
The Dean gave a start and held it out to him.
Jarvis raised the lantern high, so that the golden light played over the coffin’s interior. An unctuous, foul-smelling matter glistened from the cerecloth where it had been pulled back to reveal a large, bowl-like depression, of the size and shape of a head. But only a few darkened wisps of hair now clung to the stained, waxy shroud. The torso ended abruptly at the neck.
“Merciful heavens,” said the Dean, one hand cupped over his nose and mouth. “Someone’s stolen the King’s head.”
Chapter 14
Tuesday, 23 March
H ero cradled her infant son in her arms and watched in the glow from the fire as his tiny fist opened and closed against her bare skin.
She’d discovered a rare peace in the quiet hours before dawn, when the world still sleeps and the only sounds are the whispered fall of ash on the hearth and the soft suckling of a babe at his mother’s breast. Smiling, she breathed in the child’s sweet scent and let the quiet joy of the moment flow through her. She was still awed by the ability of her body to supply him with nourishment and had become fiercely protective of this time they shared. Her determination to nurse her own child was not the sacrifice Jarvis envisioned—not a selfless act at all, but something selfish. Something that brought her pleasure and a trembling awareness of the powerful depths of her love for both her son and the man who had given him to her.
Through all her growing-up years, she’d been determined never to marry, determined never to subject herself to the state of subordination to which England’s laws reduced any woman unwise enough to become a wife. Yet even then, she had wanted this, wanted to have a child of her own.
The babe looked up, his gaze locking with hers. She smiled at him, and he gave her in return a big, toothless grin that sent a trickle of milk running down his chin. And she felt a swift, unexpected sting of tears in her eyes, for life’s greatest joys contain within them a yawning sadness. A bittersweet awareness that even as we savor a cherished instant it is passing and will all too soon be but a memory.
A hushed murmur drew her gaze to where Devlin slept, his dark head moving restlessly against the pillow. She thought of the bullet that had come so close to taking him from her last night, and her arms tightened around the child’s small, warm body. She was not a woman who was accustomed to fear; she’d always despised those who obsessed anxiously about the future. Yet with great love comes great fear—the fear of loss. And in that moment, she knew its cold grip.
She pushed it away, both ashamed of her weakness and appalled by it.
“It’s your fault,” she whispered to the now contented babe. “You’ve done this to me.”
He smiled again, his suckling ceased, his eyes drifting closed.
She felt his small body relax against hers, heard his breathing ease into sleep. And still she sat beside the fire, hugging him close and savoring the moment.
She left Brook Street an hour later, the clatter of her horses’ hooves echoing through the still, empty streets of Mayfair as her coachman turned the team toward the City. She’d been told that to truly understand the costermongers of London, she needed to attend one of the great central markets where they purchased their stock. And so she had chosen to visit the grandest market of them all: Covent Garden.
The rising sun was just beginning to send streaks of gold and fiery orange across a pale sky when she reached the site of the city’s largest produce and flower market. Yet already the vast square before the old, temple-like church of St. Paul’s was thronged with a shouting, shoving, laughing crowd that surged around stalls piled high with everything from mud-encrusted onions and potatoes to bundles of white leaks and dark purple pickling cabbages.