The Masque of a Murderer

by Susanna Calkins

  Esther Whitby inclined her head graciously, accepting the magistrate’s condolences. “I did not know him then, as I was still in service to my tailor until recently. Thou wilt be glad to know that he did repent of his scandalous ways when his Inner Light began to nourish him and called him to the Lord.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” the magistrate said. “You were once a needlewoman, then?”

  “Yes, with a Dutch family. Beetners. All died in the plague, they did. I was the only one to survive. ’Twas not very long afterward when I met my good husband.”

  “I see. Again, let me express my condolences for your loss.”

  “I thank thee for that.” She hesitated. “We will take good care of thy daughter. She is our sister now. We will not let her come to any harm.”

  “Sarah,” he said, turning to his daughter. Instinctively, the other women stepped in closer to her, as if protecting her. “Will you come speak with me? Privately?”

  Biting her lip, Sarah shook her head. “No, Father. I love thee dearly; however, I must follow my own path. That path leads me to stay here, not in thy home.”

  “Sarah,” her father said, great anguish in his voice.

  “I’m sorry, Father, I am. I just cannot allow thee to run the risk of harboring a Quaker in thy own home.” She gulped. “Father, indeed, I cannot bear thinking that thou wouldst be imprisoned or lose thy property for my convictions.”

  “That would not happen! They would not dare seize my assets or throw me into prison,” her father declared, although Lucy could hear an unusual note of uncertainty in his voice.

  “They might! What would happen to John and Cook and Annie if you could no longer support them?” She had dropped the Quaker speech, Lucy noticed. “If you do not care about your own career, what about Adam’s prospects? Such a thing could ruin him! No,” she cried, “I will not be responsible for destroying our family.”

  He winced as if he’d been struck. “Sarah, I would protect you.”

  She stepped in closer to the women. “They will protect me. Please, Father. Please go. You should not be seen here.”

  As they walked out of the home, the magistrate slipped on a patch of ice. His face was gray, and he was breathing heavily. Were his humors out of balance again? Lucy could not refrain from worrying, having seen the magistrate nearly lose his life during the plague. “Are you all right, sir?” she asked, taking his arm as if he were her own father. “Let me help you.”

  He allowed her to take his arm, and they walked unsteadily down the street. The light snow seemed to refresh him, and she was grateful when he soon seemed to resume his normal color.

  “Lucy,” he said, “I know not what to do. For the first time, I am deeply afraid for my daughter.”

  Tears rose to her eyes, although she refused to let them fall. “I understand, sir. I’m afraid for her, too.” She wanted to say more, except that she didn’t know how to put into the words the source of her fears.

  “Thank you, Lucy. That may be so. However, the pain of a father who has failed in his duty to his daughter is a difficult burden to bear.” He seemed to be considering his next words carefully. “What do you know of Mrs. Jacob Whitby, Lucy?”

  Slowly, Lucy recounted everything that she had learned about the life of Jacob’s widow when she was writing his last dying testimony. He clicked his teeth as he listened.

  Then he turned to her and looked at her intently, his gray eyes dark and piecing. Unexpectedly, he asked, “Why do you fear for Sarah, Lucy? What is it about her companions? I sense there is something that you haven’t told me.” When she bit her lip, he added, “Did she tell you not to tell me something?”

  Her eyes flew to his, shocked that he had read her thoughts so easily. Why was she so surprised? After all, it was his considerable skill in reading people that had made him so formidable on the bench.

  When he raised his eyebrow—waiting—reluctantly she told him everything. What Jacob had whispered to her as he lay dying. About Julia’s unseemly death. About what she had found hidden in Julia’s room. She blushed quite a bit when she told him about her theft, but he just waved her on. Finally she told him about the sketch she had purchased from the searcher.

  At the end of her flustered, faltering tale, he put his hand to his forehead. “This is all so fantastic and strange, Lucy.” Still shaking his head, he added, “I truly wish you had told me all of this before. Sarah, Adam … do they know?” He was still.

  Lucy nodded. His disappointment was hard to bear. “I know, sir. I am hoping, though, that if Miss Sarah and Mrs. Whitby can look after each other, perhaps they will be able to protect one another.”

  “That is just it, Lucy,” the magistrate said, starting to walk again, his gait now strong and purposeful. She did not take his arm as she had before. “I’ve met Esther Whitby before. And not under pleasant circumstances, either.”

  “What?” Lucy asked, scrambling a half step behind. “How did you meet her?” Hearing her question spoken aloud, she clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh! Begging your pardon, sir,” she said. “I should not have asked you about a private matter.”

  “Nonsense, Lucy,” he said. There was nothing left of the beaten man he had just seemed. “I know that you are concerned about my daughter’s well-being. We must return home at once. I am certain that Esther Whitby came before my bench once. I recognized her. What’s more—I think she recognized me, too, though she hid it well.”

  Lucy frowned as she carefully skirted a dead bird on the street. “Well, that’s easily explained, isn’t it? She came before you as a Quaker. Under the Conventicle Act.”

  The magistrate shook his head. “No, that’s not it. I certainly would have remembered if a member of the Whitby family had been tried in my court. She would have had to say that she was wed to Jacob Whitby. I would have known her then.”

  “So she was tried before she married Jacob Whitby,” Lucy said, rubbing her nose. “Yet she couldn’t have been accused of breaking the Conventicle Act, since she had only become a Quaker after she met Jacob. She must have come to you when she still bore her maiden name. Esther Grace.”

  The magistrate rolled the name on his tongue and shook his head. “Not familiar. I need to remember for what crime she was accused.”

  “Just because she was accused does not mean she was guilty,” Lucy exclaimed without thinking. Unbidden, the image of her brother, wrongfully accused of murder, had risen with nauseating clarity in her mind. Belatedly, she realized what she had uttered. “I beg your pardon, sir. I spoke in haste.”

  Once again, the magistrate seemed to have followed her thoughts. Dismissing her apology, he said, “The law tells us to assume guilt. However, I have found from experience that many men who came before my bench, having been accused of a crime, were innocent.” He coughed. “Of course, more often than not, those who are accused are indeed guilty.”

  As they arrived at his house, the magistrate turned to Lucy. “I should like to examine my notes from the sessions I presided over. This puzzle is deeply maddening to me, and I should like to glean what I may about Esther Grace Whitby’s background.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lucy replied. Hesitating, she added, “I should very much like to learn what you discover.”

  “Perhaps you could help me, if your master could spare you a little longer,” he said. “I can’t imagine that even old Horace would expect his apprentices to labor on the Lord’s Day.”

  “No, sir,” Lucy said, smiling. “I think he would not.”

  “It’s decided. Stay an hour or so more. I’ll send John around with a note.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said.

  After John had been dispatched to Master Aubrey’s, Lucy followed the magistrate to his study. “How may I help you, sir?” she asked.

  Going to the corner of the room, he knelt by a large wooden chest, covered by a white linen cloth that had been painstakingly embroidered with bright colors by his late wife. With one finger, he traced the Latin words that she ha
d stitched into the cloth, nestled on a bough of apple blossoms, between two chirping birds.

  “Ius est ars boni et aequi,” he said softly. “‘Law is the art of the good and the just.’ It is a phrase I try to remember every day. It is so easy for men to turn the law as they would please, to become tyrants, whether as a king of the realm or a judge in his courtroom. We must stand against such temptations and remember our reason for law and order.”

  Lucy nodded, watching as he carefully folded the long piece of linen and set it carefully on a nearby bench. After opening the lid, he pulled out several leather pouches, each one with a date inked on the outside. As he examined each bag, he muttered to himself. “Sixteen sixty-six, no, that would be too recent. Sixteen sixty-five—those proceedings were interrupted by the plague. We did not hold sessions then.” He looked up at Lucy. “When did you say the Whitbys were wed?”

  “Just after the plague, I believe. Before the Great Fire, though.”

  “Just so,” he said, beginning to untie one of the pouches. “Then let us begin with the late sessions in 1664 and move our way forward.” From the pouch, he withdrew a pack of papers that had been folded in three, all tied with a bit of string. Smoothing the first sheet on the surface of the table, he began to study it.

  From her angle, Lucy could see the dense rows of handwritten script, though she was too far away to read any of the words. Venturing a bit closer, she could see that the script had been written in different hands. One she recognized as the magistrate’s meticulous script. The other, equally fair, was larger and more ornate and took up much of the top of the page. She tapped on the paper. “Did the clerk write the first part?” she asked.

  “What? Oh, yes.” He peered more closely. “Yes, this was recorded by young Daniel Malloy, if I’m not mistaken. A promising lad, to be sure.” He sighed, and a shadow crossed his face. “Unfortunately, he did not survive the plague.” He cleared his throat, returning to the matter at hand. “You can see where he recorded the name of the defendants, along with the charges, as each came before the court.”

  “Ellsbeth Bourne, for the charge of—?” The clerk’s words were difficult to read.

  “Illegal craft work,” Master Hargrave said. “Ah yes, I remember this case. She had illegally assumed her father’s trade as a glassmaker. The Worshipful Company of Glaziers came down on her rather heavily, as I recall. They wanted to make an example of her. Poor woman. She’d likely been helping her father along for years while he hid the black tumors that had been growing inside him.”

  “How terrible!” Lucy exclaimed, looking at the woman’s name again. She wondered what the woman had looked like, who she had been, what happened to her. “Her father must have trained her, even knowing that she would not be accepted by the guild.” Rather like her own circumstances, she thought. She’d never be a true apprentice, let alone a master in her own right. Once again, she pushed away the little shiver of misgiving she felt every time she wondered what would happen if Master Aubrey chose not to keep her on.

  The magistrate sighed. “The guild may well have known of the Bournes’ destitute circumstances, only they chose to step in when her father died. When it was obvious that someone other than a licensed master was making glass, they had to intervene. They had to protect their standards, you see.”

  “Do you know what happened to her?”

  “No,” he said, glancing through the rest of his notes. “She was sent to the debtors’ prison in Cheapside. Hopefully she had paid her debt to the guild before the Great Fire broke out.”

  Lucy shuddered. No one spoke much about what had happened to all the prisoners in the jails that burnt down. There were some who said they had been freed before the Fire reached their gates. But she feared most had been left to die.

  Master Hargrave pointed at another sheet of paper. “Several trials may be listed at once, as they are on this next page. If you look through these”—he handed her a few folded pages, leaving another stack in front of him—“and I’ll look through these, we can see if anyone named Esther appeared at my bench.”

  Lucy looked through the names of the accused. Mary Dinkle, fortune-teller, accused of theft. Nathanial Clarke, dish-turner, accused of poisoning. Gray Fitch, shoemaker, accused of drunken battery. The names and offenses went on. They looked through the session notes from 1663 and 1662 as well.

  Finally the magistrate frowned at the darkening room. “I have kept you for too long, I am afraid, Lucy. You should be off. I can only try old Horace Aubrey’s patience for so long, keeping his apprentice away.” He began to carefully refold and stack the last set of papers they had just reviewed. “I just can’t understand it. I know I couldn’t have seen her between 1660 and 1663, because I was serving as a judge on the circuit courts for many sessions.” He tapped his head. “Yet I can remember her before me at the Old Bailey. I remember her violet eyes, so cold and defiant.” He shook his head. “It will come to me, I know it.”

  17

  As Master Aubrey and Lach scrubbed the ink off their hands, using the harsh lye soap they kept by the basin, Lucy ladled a bit of leftover rabbit stew into three wooden bowls. The conversation she’d had with Master Hargrave the day before was still weighing heavily on her mind. Sarah was convinced that Esther Whitby was in danger. What if she had it backward? What if Esther Whitby was the one causing the danger?

  Lucy pulled out Jacob Whitby’s Last Dying Breath, reading through the now-familiar bits. I met Jacob Whitby when I was living with the Beetners, Esther Whitby had told them. Before the good tailor and his wife succumbed to God’s Will and the plague.

  “Master Aubrey,” she said when the printer had taken his seat, “do you think it’s unusual for a tradesman to leave his trade and all his movables to a servant? One who had only been with them a short while?”

  He gave her a suspicious look. “Let me say the prayer, lass,” he said. Obediently she set aside the tract and, like Lach, bent her head while the printer said the prayer. Never one to let food grow cold, Master Aubrey said the benediction and slid his spoon into the stew.

  After swallowing with an appreciative murmur, Master Aubrey raised an eyebrow. “Planning to do away with me, are you?” he asked.

  Lucy smiled. “No. I am not the servant in question. However, I should be interested in your thoughts, sir. What would you think if one of your friends did such a thing? Would you think that servant must have been particularly good and loyal?”

  “Perhaps,” he said, taking another bite. “Likely not.”

  “Why do you say that?” she asked.

  “A man just does not do such a peculiar thing,” he said with finality, as if that explained everything.

  “I see,” she said. Refolding the tract, Lucy resolved then to learn more about the Beetners and Esther Grace’s former life. “Master Aubrey,” she said, handing around slices of thick bread, “I was thinking I could sell out by Smithfield. We’ve not sold there for a while.”

  “Good Lord, this bread is hard,” the printer said, banging a chunk on the table. It sounded like a rock. “Didn’t you just get it from old Liddell this morning?”

  “Yes, at quarter cost. Day old, Liddell told me. Try it with the stew,” Lucy said, making a dunking motion. “It will soften in no time.”

  “Hmmph. Made Saturday, I’d wager. I’m all for your penny-pinching, but I like my bread fresh, miss.” Nevertheless, he did as Lucy had suggested, sopping a bit of the hard bread in his stew. “Smithfield? In this cold?”

  Lucy shrugged. “I don’t mind.” She ignored Lach’s suspicious look. “There’s a printer out there, isn’t there? Master Blackwell? I saw his name on a tract.”

  Master Aubrey wiped his mouth. “Blackwell? Yes, I know him. Good sort. Why?”

  “I was just thinking that he might like to trade a few pieces with us, too. Like we did with the Quaker printer.”

  Master Aubrey continued to chew thoughtfully. “See what he is peddling, hey?”

  Lach snorted into his han
d. “Wasn’t Lucy supposed to help with The Three Witches of Dorchester today? And we still have not finished the The Scold’s Last Scold.”

  “I can sell along the way,” Lucy said hastily. “And I can finish off what you started this morning. I’ll be back in three hours, and I can work later, too, after supper.”

  She held her breath, watching Master Aubrey cock his head back and forth as he contemplated her request. He had a keen business mind, Lucy was coming to realize. Unlike other masters, who might be loath to give their apprentices much liberty, he did not govern them with an overly firm hand. Indeed, so long as they managed to bring in an extra shilling or two, let alone a crown or a sovereign, he was sure to be pleased.

  Unexpectedly, though, he leaned over and lightly boxed Lach on his right ear.

  “Hey!” Lach yelped, jumping away. “What was that for?”

  The printer wagged his finger at him. “About time you start coming up with some good ideas, too. Right now, we need to reset that last tract, as the frontispiece was smudged. I think the typeset must be off.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better if I accompanied Lucy?” Lach asked, a shade too innocently. She could read his thoughts. Even accompanying her was better than the tedious task that Master Aubrey had laid out before him. “Help her carry the packs.”

  “Oh, would you?” Lucy asked, with a similarly feigned sweetness. “You are such a dear.”

  Master Aubrey looked at him. If Lach had stopped there, the printer might have let him go. Instead Lach had to add, “I should very much like to keep Lucy safe.”

  Since he had been unable to keep the sarcasm from his voice, sure enough, the master printer scowled. “Bah! None of your larking about,” he told Lach. “Lucy can manage fine on her own. Just don’t load the pack too heavy,” he warned, turning back to Lucy. “I don’t want you dragging the sack like I’ve seen this imp do. And I expect you back in three hours’ time, so you had best not gad about either.”

  * * *

  Within the hour, Lucy was now closing in on Hosier Lane, where the Beetners had lived, a heavy bag hoisted over her shoulder. As she walked north, she could still smell the residual smoke that arose whenever debris was moved about. Nothing was actively smoldering, of course, though the smoke still lingered in the fog and remained trapped below the remaining rubble. Finally, as she neared Smithfield and St. Bartholomew’s, she passed by Pye Corner, where the flames of the Great Fire had stopped and turned back upon themselves on that fateful third day.