From the Charred Remains (Lucy Campion Mysteries)

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From the Charred Remains (Lucy Campion Mysteries) Page 29

by Susanna Calkins


  Out of the corner of her eye Lucy noticed Constable Duncan moving toward them. He had received the note she had left with the bellman. Giving him a slight warning flick of her hand, she raised her voice a bit. “You were the other man who didn’t play the game of cards at the Cheshire Cheese that night! Tilly told us there was another man who watched the game intently.” She stared at Miss Water’s father. “You brought Tahmin! You knew he had the gambling sickness.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Master Water said, ignoring his daughter’s gasp. “What was I supposed to think? Tahmin had informed me he was coming to London. Told me he wanted to see me. Having seen my daughter embrace a man in the shadows of the Shah’s garden, I could only assume one thing. He’d made this trek to see her. Maybe even try to run off with her. This I could not allow.”

  Beside her, Darius put his hand to his face, a deep pain crossing his features. “Tahmin had come on my bequest. Indeed, to see your daughter, but also to convey my best wishes to you.” Darius sighed. “Tahmin was a deeply honorable man.”

  Master Water continued, his words tumbling out more quickly now, as if he couldn’t keep them in even if he had wished. Lucy was glad to see that Constable Duncan was taking in every word. “Tahmin wanted to play a game of cards,” Master Water said. “I knew I could not let him see you, my dear.” He gazed at his daughter, who was staring at him wordlessly. “I certainly couldn’t take him to one of my regular establishments, couldn’t run the risk of meeting any of my acquaintances.” He gazed at a bonfire for a moment. “I’d heard tell of the Cheshire Cheese.

  “My worries were confirmed when that poem was read out loud. I knew it was intended for you, my daughter. Rhonda—Rose. I could not let him court you.”

  “Why ever not?” Miss Water exclaimed. “You told me that you admired them.”

  “Let you marry one of them? Live among them forever?” Lucy winced at the disdain in his voice, his upper-class breeding showing. “I jolly well don’t think so.”

  Miss Water looked like she’d been slapped, and she clutched Darius again. For a long moment her father and Darius stared balefully at one another.

  “What happened at the Cheshire Cheese?” Lucy asked, still trying to learn what had happened to Tahmin.

  Master Water sighed. “I heard him called a blackmailer, and I egged on his beating. When those louts left him outside the tavern, I nearly left him. But then I thought of him, in the shadows, in the garden, embracing you. Taking your honor. That’s when I drove my knife in.”

  Miss Water’s face crumpled. “You did kill him?”

  Master Water regarded his daughter with a mixture of sadness, exasperation, and even a bit of defiance. “I just could not think. I stuffed him in the barrel. When the Fire happened, I thought my crime would never come to light. I’m not proud of what I did.”

  Darius drew her toward him then, so that she turned her stunned face to his. “Please let me bring you back to my land. At the court, you will be revered, not disrespected for taking up with, how do you English say it, ‘a foreign gent’?”

  Constable Duncan stepped up, placing his hand around the scholar’s arm. “Master Water, you are under arrest for the murder of Tahmin—” He looked at Darius. “What is his surname?”

  “Abbas,” Darius said, wiping a tear from his eye. “His name was Tahmin Abbas.” He put his arm around Miss Water then, for she had begun to tremble. The full weight of her father’s crime was starting to sink in.

  “Father?” she asked, her voice wavering. “What will happen to us?”

  Master Water looked at her with profound sadness. “I have made an egregious error, one I can never rectify. I can only hope in time for your forgiveness.” He embraced her swiftly, then released her, and she nearly collapsed. “Get me out of here, Constable.”

  Duncan gestured to his bellman, who stepped forward to lead Master Water away. Miss Water sobbed softly against Darius’s shoulder.

  “Please show me where my friend died,” Darius said quietly, after pulling slightly away from Miss Water’s tight grasp. “Please, Miss Campion?”

  Duncan frowned slightly. “It’s dark. Can you not go in the morning?”

  “I should like to go now,” Darius said. He inclined his head. “But if you feel I will be endangering Miss Campion, then by all means we can wait.”

  “I think we will be all right,” Lucy said to Duncan. “Truly.”

  “I know you’ll be fine.” He flicked a bit of ash from her shoulder. “You always come out on top.”

  The intensity of his gaze made her remember what Adam had said about the constable. Feeling slightly flustered, Lucy bid him farewell. Picking up two torches, she turned to Darius and Miss Water. Handing one to Darius, she said, “This way.”

  * * *

  Together, the trio walked along Fleet Street, toward the site of the Cheshire Cheese. “You’re more than a scribe, aren’t you?” Miss Water asked, with slightly misty eyes. Her eyes widened when he leaned down to whisper something in her ear. The rubble there had been cleared for the most part. Lucy pointed to the location where the barrels had been, near the old stone wall. “Just there.”

  Darius broke his silence. “‘The Truth stands before me,’” he said softly. “‘On my left is a blazing fire, and on my right, a cool flowing stream.’” He looked down at Rhonda. “I think Rumi would tell us to find the flowing stream. Come.” Holding hands, they walked over to the remnants of the wall and knelt down. From the distance, Miss Water appeared to be saying a prayer.

  Lucy turned away. A cart stopped beside her on the street. “Lucy?” someone called.

  Surprised, she turned around. The magistrate and Adam were sitting in the cart. Lucy stepped quickly over, her mind racing. Master Hargrave was smiling kindly down at her. “We deciphered the last bit,” he said. “I see you did too. We stopped by Master Aubrey to tell you, and we found this.” He held up the crumpled piece of paper where she’d scrawled the complete message. “We then went to see Constable Duncan, and found him locking up Master Water. He told us what had happened. He also told us you had found Darius, and that the three of you were coming here. I think he was feeling a bit anxious for your safety, but I can see you are all right.”

  “Three different stories,” Lucy said, her eyes a bit misty. “Poor Tahmin! The Earl thought he had found his blackmailer, and set Burly and Jonesie on him. Master Water thought he was protecting his daughter. Truly, he was simply Darius’s messenger, charged to bring a lighthearted puzzle to Miss Water.” She smiled wryly. “Who could have imagined that printing a simple poem would have brought all this to light?”

  “Indeed.” Master Hargrave looked at Darius and Miss Water. “That’s Darius, is it?” he asked. “Over there, with Miss Water? He’s a regal sort.”

  “Yes,” Lucy hesitated. His secrets were not hers to share. “I don’t think he’s the court translator.”

  Master Hargrave raised his eyebrows. “No, I shouldn’t think so. A translator is hardly likely to have the wherewithal to send a message by hand to a young woman in a far-off land. Even a dear friend might think twice about such a mission, but Tahmin appears to have been quite devoted.”

  Lucy smiled. Trust Master Hargrave to boil a mystery down in such a fashion. “Just so,” she agreed.

  They all watched Darius whisper something in Miss Water’s ear, and they could see the responding pleasure in her face in the flickering light of the lantern.

  Lucy looked at Adam who was smiling at her in approval. “Well done, Lucy. Well done! You’ve helped right a terrible wrong. Perhaps they would never have found each other, had it not been for your perseverance.”

  She smiled back, unconsciously stroking her silver bracelet. She did not expect him to repeat what he had said in the intimacy of his bedchamber. In that moment, she knew all would be right between them, even if it took them a while to find the way forward.

  Lucy turned back then, to where Miss Water and Darius still knelt. As she watched, Dariu
s took out a small silver dagger, which he raised high in the air, clearly paying tribute to Tahmin. He then dropped the dagger into a hole he had dug in the ground. Seeing the blade, Lucy had a sudden memory of the two little boys playing with the armor they’d found. Sir Dungheap and Lord Lughead. Their play had started this tale, but there had been far more twists than anyone might have imagined.

  Together, Miss Water and Darius pushed the dirt over the dagger and stood up. The Persian man kept his arm around her protectively.

  “They have found each other, I see,” the magistrate said. “The trials they have suffered do not seem to have driven them apart.” He sighed. “Although they will have much to bear when her father’s crime comes to light.”

  Adam glanced at Lucy. “Indeed.” Grimacing, he touched the side of his head. “Father—I—”

  “You must rest,” Lucy said quickly. There would be other times to talk. “Please, sir, take Adam home.”

  The magistrate smiled down at her kindly. “Take care, Lucy. We’ll see you soon,” he said, with a firm set to his jaw. “And Lucy?”

  “Yes?”

  “No more dead bodies for a while.” Master Hargrave clucked at the horses and shook the reins. As they drove away, he called back, “Find some time for the living, Lucy! London is rising from the ashes, and so must we!”

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  In writing this novel, I had to occasionally reimagine historical details in order to tell the most compelling story I could.

  Sometimes this reimagining allowed me to question established historical narrative. For example, beyond the puzzle of the murdered man, there is a larger and far more real mystery that forms the backdrop of my story: the so-called “miracle” of the Great Fire of 1666. Despite the fact that thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed in the three-day blaze, contemporaries such as Samuel Pepys and other chroniclers from this time period only noted a handful of deaths overall. More significantly, the Bills of Mortality, which had carefully documented all deaths from the plague and other misfortunes in the 1660s, did not describe any great numbers after the Fire. This lack of evidence has led historians to long believe that the death toll was quite low; hence, the so-called miracle.

  How could this be? Just imagine, as I’ve tried to do, the mayhem, the panic, the crush of humanity. Could the elderly, the infirm, the drunk have fled so easily? And what about the inmates of Newgate prison? It’s unlikely the wardens of that dreadful place would have thought through a systematic evacuation plan. The scholar Neil Hanson has made a compelling argument that thousands may have perished in this blaze—in direct opposition to the commonly accepted view. This is why I had Lucy pose the question that has perpetually bothered me: what happened to all the people?

  On other occasions, I took creative license on certain historic points to keep the story moving easily. For example, I simplified the language to make the prose more accessible to the modern reader. (L’Estrange’s Anagram on the Citie London suggests something of the speech of this era.) Similarly, since there was no established police force at this time, I gave Constable Duncan a bit more scope and authority than he would have truly had at this time. I also consolidated much of the bookselling trade; in reality, authors, booksellers, printers, paper makers, bookbinders, etc., might have all worked separately, but it worked better for the story if Master Aubrey and his apprentices could handle all of these processes themselves. For the sake of the story, too, even though there were strict injunctions against burning effigies in November 1666 for Guy Fawkes Day (because of fear of fire), I figured that some people would surely disobey the authorities.

  In contrast, some details were true but might not be believed to be so. For example, there was a tavern called Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese that burned down in the Great Fire, but I changed the name because the original one sounded contrived. The Fariners who owned the bakery where the Great Fire started really were paid members of the jury who convicted poor Robert Hubert. There was an Earl of Cumberland, but his line died out in the 1640s. As far as I know, however, no one has tried to illegally gain the title.

  Lastly, I released Lucy from some of the constraints that would likely have bound her, given her class, gender, and station. But I thought about this very carefully as I developed her character. While it’s true that most servants or apprentices might not have had her freedom, and indeed, might have lived with masters who beat them or took advantage of them, there is much evidence to suggest that many employers believed that sparing the rod was better for cultivating loyalty and good service in their employees. So it’s not farfetched to me that both Master Hargrave and Master Aubrey might have treated Lucy well, particularly at a time when Enlightenment ideas were starting to bubble up in England. Moreover, in smaller households, too, it was quite common for servants to seem like members of the family; the distance between “upstairs” and “downstairs” was not nearly so pronounced as it may have become in later centuries.

  It’s clear, too, that in the mid-1660s, after the plague and Great Fire, there was unprecedented social mobility, when servants could become masters with no one around to gainsay their claims. Indeed, many women became apprentices, helped their husbands with their trades, or even owned businesses in their own right. So it seemed reasonable to me that, in this brief moment, Lucy might feel that she had more options than women in previous decades might have had. Moreover, only noblewomen married young; for the most part, female servants didn’t marry until about age twenty-five, after they had put together a dowry and felt they could afford to marry. And that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!

  ALSO BY SUSANNA CALKINS

  A Murder at Rosamund’s Gate

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SUSANNA CALKINS became fascinated with seventeenth-century England while pursuing her doctorate in British history and uses her fiction to explore this chaotic period. Originally from Philadelphia, Calkins now lives outside of Chicago with her husband and two sons. This is her second novel.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  FROM THE CHARRED REMAINS. Copyright © 2014 by Susanna Calkins. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein

  Cover photograph by JeffCottenArchive.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Calkins, Susanna.

  From the charred remains / Susanna Calkins.

  p. cm.—(Lucy Campion mysteries; 2)

  ISBN 978-1-250-00788-9 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-250-00789-6 (e-book)

  1. Great Fire, London, England, 1666—Fiction. 2. Women—England—History—17th century—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 4. Great Britain—History—Restoration, 1660–1688—Fiction. 5. London (England)—History—17th century—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3603.A4394F76 2014

  813'.6—dc23

  2013047140

  e-ISBN 9781250007896

  First Edition: April 2014

 

 

 


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