Sebastian let his gaze wander around the crude, low-ceilinged crypt. “Seems an uncharacteristically humble place for a king like Henry VIII to have chosen to rest for eternity.”
“Yes, but he didn’t choose it, you see. He’d planned a magnificent tomb with white marble pillars and gilded angels and a life-sized equestrian statue of himself beneath a triumphal arch. Except that he didn’t like to think about his own death, so only parts of it were finished by the time he went. Both he and Jane were supposed to be in here only temporarily, while the grand tomb was built. But none of his three children ever got around to completing it, and in the end, even those bits that were finished were scattered. They say the bronze effigies of Henry and Jane were melted down during the Civil War. His grand black sarcophagus is now in the crypt of St. Paul’s cathedral, with Horatio Nelson inside it.”
“At least it was finally put to use.”
“True, true.”
Sebastian brought his gaze back to the timeworn black pall that draped the simple coffin of the murdered King.
Toop cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Would you like to actually see him, my lord? Whoever stole the King’s head cut a hole in the top of the coffin. Although I must warn you, it’s not a pretty sight.”
Sebastian had no desire to view any more decapitated bodies. But he acknowledged the need to verify what he had been told. “Yes,” he said reluctantly.
The virger swallowed hard and moved to draw back the old cloth. “He’s extraordinarily well preserved. They often are, in crypts.”
A heavy stench of decay wafted through the stale air. Sebastian took one look at the moldering King’s truncated neck and the discolored depression left by his purloined head, and nodded. “That’s good. Thank you.”
He ducked back through the opening into the dark passage while the virger replaced the pall and carefully smoothed its aged folds. “How many people knew of the burial chamber’s discovery?”
Toop followed him with the lantern. “Truthfully? I’d say just about everyone in Windsor who isn’t deaf or dead. There’s no way to keep workmen from talking, I’m afraid. They go home and tell their wives, or their mothers and sisters. And then they go down to the pub and brag about it to their friends, and before you know what’s what, the whole town is talking about it.”
“Yet it’s one thing to know about the vault, and something else again to gain access to it.”
“Well . . .” Toop lowered his voice as they retraced their steps toward the surface. “I wouldn’t say this in front of the Dean, but the truth is, just about anybody could’ve got in here before the gate was up, if they’d a mind to do it. The castle might be a royal residence, but St. George’s Chapel has always been open to the public.”
“Have you had trouble with things being taken before?”
“Now and then, yes,” said Toop as they emerged from the dank passage into the incense-scented air of the quire. “Needless to say, the Dean is beside himself over this. He’s always nourished ambitions of becoming a bishop, you see. But once the Regent learns of this—as he surely will unless the head is somehow recovered . . .” He gave another of his rubbery-mouthed grimaces.
“How long have you been virger here?” asked Sebastian.
“Me? More than fifteen years now, my lord.”
“Since before Dean Legge, then.”
“Oh, yes, my lord; long before.” His mouth stretched into a wide, toothy grin. “And I’ll still be here long after he’s moved on to other things—God willing.”
Sebastian thanked him and left the virger there, still grinning aimlessly as he rewound the chain around the gated crypt entrance.
He sent a message to the stables for Tom, then walked out the gate to the sunlit terrace overlooking the village and the old royal deer park with its distant, elm-lined Long Walk stretching for miles across the undulating countryside. His visit to Windsor Castle had proved to be frustratingly unenlightening. If Toop were to be believed, virtually anyone could have made away with King Charles I’s head and coffin strap. How—or even if—that theft had played a part in Preston’s death was still murky.
Sebastian braced his outthrust hands against the stone parapet edging the terrace, his gaze on the wind-tossed shadows of clouds chasing one another across the landscape below. The sense that he was missing something—something vitally important—continued to haunt him.
A flock of pigeons rose in a sudden burst into the sky, wings whirling in alarm and drawing Sebastian’s attention to a disheveled, slope-shouldered man standing with his back to the stone wall edging the steep approach to the gate. He caught Sebastian’s gaze and nodded, his eyes alight with amusement.
“Why the devil are you still following me?” Sebastian demanded, walking up to him.
Diggory Flynn’s full, crooked lips quirked up in a grin. “What makes you think I’m here ’cause of you?”