Who Buries the Dead: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

by C. S. Harris

  “They should have thought to build a larger chamber,” grumbled the Prince. Then excitement overcame the minor bout of petulance, and he brought up his clasped hands to tuck them beneath his chin. “Oh, I do hope the body is complete.”

  “I fear the chances of that are unfortunately slim, Your Highness,” said Jarvis. “You must prepare yourself for the possibility that Charles’s head was in all likelihood not buried with his body.”

  He nodded to Sir Henry Halford, the president of the Royal College of Physicians and a fawning sycophant who knew precisely where the real power in the realm lay.

  The laborer—well paid to keep the truth of that day’s events to himself—stood back.

  “I do believe . . . Yes, I do believe . . . ,” said Halford, prolonging the suspense as he carefully separated the sticky folds of the coffin’s cerecloth.

  “Yes?” Eager to see, the Prince thrust his head through the vault’s entrance, his bloated body effectively blocking everyone else’s view of the proceedings. “Is it there? Is the head there?”

  “It’s here, Your Highness. Just look!” said the physician, smiling in stunned triumph as he held aloft the unexpectedly wet, dripping head of the long-dead King.

  They buried Jamie Knox on a misty evening in the elm-shaded, medieval churchyard of St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, in the shadow of the moss-covered wall that backed onto the yard of the Black Devil.

  Afterward, Sebastian stood alone with Hero beside the stark, turned earth of the new grave, his hat in his hand and his head bowed, although he did not pray. He could hear the raucous call of a blackbird somewhere nearby, smell the pungent odor of damp loam and old stone.

  He said, “I’ve been thinking of making a trip up to Shropshire, to take the mechanical nightingale to Knox’s grandmother.” There was no need to state the other reason—perhaps the main reason—for his desire to visit the place of Knox’s birth.

  Hero looked over at him, her eyes solemn and knowing. But all she said was, “I’m sure she would like that.”

  He reached out to take her hand. “Will you come with me?”

  “If you want me to.”

  “I want you,” he said, his throat tight with emotion as a gust of wind shuddered the trees overhead and sent a scattering of leaves spinning down to lie pale and shriveled against the cold, dark earth.

  Author’s Note

  T he discovery in early 1813 of the “lost” burial vault containing the coffins of Henry VIII, Jane Seymour, and Charles I was real and excited considerable popular attention. At the time, Byron wrote of the discovery, “Famed for contemptuous breach of sacred ties, / By headless Charles see heartless Henry lies,” while Cruikshank produced a satire of the event called Meditations amongst the Tombs. The caricature portrays the effeminate, unhappily married Prince Regent as envious of Henry VIII’s success in ridding himself of so many wives, while Charles sits up in his coffin holding his own detached head in silent warning.

  Cruikshank’s cartoon considerably exaggerates both the size and the grandeur of the crude vault, which was indeed less than five feet high and ten feet wide. My description of the burial vault and the formal opening of Charles I’s coffin comes largely from the account written by Sir Henry Halford, one of the Regent’s personal physicians who was present for the opening and was responsible for the removal of several items, including a piece of the severed vertebrae and a tooth. When these items were returned to the vault in 1888, a still extant watercolor sketch was made that shows the interior of the tomb and the disposition of the coffins. That watercolor can now be found online.

  There is some dispute as to the wording of the inscription on Charles’s coffin strap. Sir Henry Halford reports that the lead strap was inscribed with the words, “King Charles, 1648.” Later writers, including Guizot, who wrote a History of the English Revolution in 1838, claim the strap read “Charles, Rex, 1648.” Another nineteenth-century writer named Sanderson claims it read, “Charles King of England.” Clarendon Fuller says it was a plate of silver, not a lead strap, and was inscribed “King Charles I,” while John Ashton goes with Halford’s version, “King Charles, 1648.” Since Halford was there and wrote his account shortly after viewing the coffin, I have used him as my authority.

  For the execution and burial of Charles I, see Memoirs of the Last Two Years of the Reign of King Charles I, written by Sir Thomas Herbert, who was present at the hurried burial of the executed King. Although his account plus a letter written by Herbert to Sir William Dugdale in 1681, which also detailed the burial of the King, were in existence in 1813, both were forgotten and the location of Charles I’s body was considered a mystery. Although I have omitted it to avoid confusion, there was actually a fourth burial found in the vault: A small mahogany coffin covered with crimson velvet and containing the stillborn child of Queen Anne was found resting atop Charles’s coffin (which tells us that at the time of Queen Anne, the exact location of Charles I’s body was known).

  The description of what happened to the remains of Edward IV when his tomb was discovered in St. George’s Chapel in 1789 is based on fact; even Horace Walpole bragged about having managed to snag a lock of the King’s hair.

  For the colorful history of Oliver Cromwell’s head, see Beales, The Posthumous History of Oliver Cromwell’s Head, and Howard, The Embalmed Head of Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell’s head was recently reburied; the fate of the rest of his body is unknown.

  For the history of Henri IV’s head, see Gabet and Charlier, L’énigme du roi sans tête. Henri IV was originally buried at Saint-Denis, but his head was reputedly stolen in 1793 when the revolutionaries broke into the royal tombs and tossed the Bourbons’ bones into a common grave. When that grave was opened in 1817, Henri IV’s head was indeed found to be missing. Forensic reconstruction of a head currently held in a Parisian bank and long believed to be the one taken from the grave confirmed that it belonged to Henri. Recent DNA testing on the same head cast doubt on that authentication, as its DNA reportedly did not match that of a living Bourbon who provided a sample. However, the paternity of a number of Bourbons has always been cloudy, and the accuracy of the test is also in dispute.

  Henry Addington, First Viscount Sidmouth, was a former Prime Minister and Home Secretary in 1813. His father was indeed a simple physician, although of course he had no cousin named Stanley Preston.

  The Irish Dullahan is essentially an embodiment of death and is most likely derived from some forgotten, ancient god placated with human sacrifices in which the victims were decapitated.

  Lord Mansfield’s famous decision in the 1772 Somersett case is generally considered to have essentially ended chattel slavery in England and Wales, although emancipation came gradually enough that advertisements for “runaway slaves” were still occasionally seen into the late 1780s. The decision did not apply to Scotland, where colliers and salters were still held in conditions of slavery until 1799. Although Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807, slavery still flourished in its colonies, and there was little opprobrium attached to those—such as Sir Galen Knightly and Stanley Preston—who owned slaves. The wealthy family in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park owned plantations worked by slaves.

  The number of works written about Jane Austen is staggering. For my portrayal of Austen, I have relied, among others, on Le Faye’s A Chronology of Jane Austen and Her Family; Byrne’s The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things; Honon’s Jane Austen: Her Life, and of course Austen’s own letters and novels. The biographical information given for Jane Austen’s brother Henry and her cousin and sister-in-law, Eliza, is largely taken from those works. Eliza Austen died of breast cancer on 25 April 1813.

  There really was a Bloody Bridge that spanned the small rivulet running along Five Fields. There was an ancient tavern in the area called the Monster, a corruption of the Monastery, but it was not precisely where I have placed it. The Twentieth Light Hussars served in both Jamaica a
nd the Peninsula, although not precisely in the years I have used here. Basil Thistlewood’s coffeehouse in Cheyne Walk is patterned on the very real curiosity shop in Chelsea owned by a man who called himself Don Salerno.

  While today we tend to think of butter as a luxury item, the poor of London actually ate a great deal of bread and butter; the fat it provided was an important part of what kept them alive. Hero’s articles on the poor of London are inspired by a similar work carried out several decades later by Henry Mayhew, and Mayhew is the source for Hero’s interviews with the various costermongers.

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