“Immediately after?”
Toop frowned as he carefully fitted the key into the lock. “Well, we had to have the gate made, of course. So it was a day or two before it was actually in place. That must’ve been when the thieves struck.”
“Thieves? What makes you think there were more than one?”
“Just assumed it, I suppose.”
“Did anyone check Charles’s coffin at the time of the gate’s installation?”
“Well, no. Why would we? I mean, Lord Jarvis left strict instructions that nothing was to be disturbed again until the Prince Regent’s formal examination of the remains. And since we’d replaced the black velvet pall, it would have been impossible to see that the coffin had been tampered with even if we had chanced to look into the vault again—which I don’t believe anyone actually did. His lordship is not one you care to cross.”
The padlock clicked open, the clanking of the chain sounding unnaturally loud in the stillness of the deserted quire as Toop unwound it from around the bars and swung the gate wide. “If you’ll allow me to go first, my lord,” he said, reaching for the lantern, “I’ll be able to light the way for you. It’s rather dark down there.”
“Who do you think stole the King’s head?” Sebastian asked as he followed the virger down a narrow, sloping passageway, the light from the horn lantern bouncing and swaying over the rough walls.
“Me?” Toop twisted around to stare back at Sebastian with wide, bloodshot eyes. “Good heavens; I can’t imagine. We must always be careful with new burials on account of the resurrection men. But no surgeon is going to want a head that’s more than a hundred and fifty years old, now, is he? I mean, what could he do with it? I can’t imagine who’d want such a thing.”
“A collector?” suggested Sebastian.
Toop’s large mouth twisted into an exaggerated grimace. “He’d need to be powerfully queer, if you ask me.”
“There are those for whom royalty exudes an extraordinary fascination. And there’s something about the Stuarts that many find particularly compelling.”
The virger sniffed. “I’ve dealt with the dead for more than twenty years now, from the freshest corpses to musty, thousand-year-old bones. But I certainly wouldn’t want some rotting head sitting around my house, king or no king. It’s not healthy. It’s not right. It’s not . . . normal.”
They drew up before a rough, man-sized opening in the passage’s wall. “Ah, here it is,” he said, stepping back as he held the lantern high. “After you, my lord.”
Stooping low, Sebastian entered a barrel-roofed vault lined with unfaced bricks and scarcely wide enough to hold the three caskets that rested on its damp, bare floor. A dusty black velvet pall shrouded the coffin to his left, although the other two were uncovered. The smallest coffin, against the far wall, looked intact. But the largest of the three—well over six feet in length and obviously made broad enough to accommodate a man of enormous proportions—was so shattered that fragments of bone and shreds of discolored, decaying shroud showed clearly through the broken sides and top.
“Any indication that the other two coffins were also disturbed?” asked Sebastian.
Rowan Toop ducked in behind him, the soft glow from his lantern sending their shadows ranging long and distorted across the ceiling and far wall. “Oh, no, my lord. Jane Seymour is still sealed up as tight as you could wish, while old Henry here looked like this when we found him. It was the gasses from his bloated, putrefying body started it, you know—burst the coffin open even before he was laid to rest. His corpse lay for the night in the chapel of Syon Abbey while on its way here for burial, and when they went to collect him in the morning, they discovered the coffin had exploded. Dogs were feasting on the royal remains.”
“Divine retribution for the dissolution of the abbeys?”
Rowan Toop gave another of his odd, almost comical grimaces. “Well, that’s what they said at the time. Course, I suspect it was only made worse when they stuck Charles in here.” Toop lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “Dropped the one king on the other, if you ask me.”
“What about the other royal vaults? Have they also been targeted by thieves?”
“Oh, no, my lord. We’ve checked, and all are secure.”