She continued to read, occasionally glancing at the woman lying on the bed. As if sensing her appraisal, the woman began to stir, anguished lines appearing on her forehead. “No, no!” she murmured. “Devil take you!”
Lucy felt a tingling on her skin. Who could say for sure that the woman was not possessed? Setting aside her jangling nerves, Lucy grabbed her by her shoulders and shook her hard. “Miss!” she cried. “Miss, please wake up! You are having a nightmare.”
The woman’s eyes flew open, and she pulled herself away from Lucy. “Where am I?” she asked, her eyes darting around the bedchamber. She stared at Lucy. “You. I remember you.” She looked at her bandaged wrists. “You brought me to the physician who tended my wounds.”
“Dr. Larimer asked me to tend to you, for a short while,” Lucy explained, her voice still a bit hoarse. “I am staying in the chamber next door. You have been asleep for much of the day.” She hesitated. “You were speaking in your sleep. Do you remember who you were dreaming about?”
“Nothing that concerns you. My head pains me, and I am hungry,” she said, a bit petulantly. “If you are indeed here to nurse me, as you say, then I require some victuals and something for my tender pains. If you cannot provide me with such relief, then pray, leave me be.” She sank back into her bed, clearly spent by her outburst and the general fatigue that had not yet lifted. She began to stroke her amulet.
Seeing that she would not get any further with the woman, Lucy edged out of the room and headed down to the kitchen. There was a great kettle in the hearth, and when she peered inside, she could see that a venison or rabbit stew was bubbling away.
Molly looked up from chopping vegetables. “Hungry?” she asked.
“Would you please take a bowl of the stew to the woman upstairs?” Lucy asked.
Molly’s smile fell away. To Lucy’s surprise, the maidservant crossed her arms. “No,” she said.
“Of course she will,” Mrs. Hotchkiss said, frowning at Molly.
“Something not natural about that woman,” the maidservant sputtered. “Her shaking and contorting, not to mention all that wailing. There’s a demon inside her, trying to find its way out. Don’t want it finding its way into me!”
“You are paid to tend to Dr. Larimer’s guests,” Mrs. Hotchkiss reminded her. “Do not forget that, lest you are thrown out on the dusty road, with no coin in your pocket! Do you understand that, Molly Greenbush?”
Molly stretched her lips into a smile, though her manner remained sulky. “Yes, Mrs. Hotchkiss.”
When Lucy left to go speak with the physician, the maid came trotting down the corridor after her. “Lucy, a she-devil she is! Did you not see her eyes? She is accursed, likely by the devil himself!” Molly looked around, and took a step closer. “What if she puts the curse on me?”
Lucy thought of the tract she had just read. With a tug of her lips, she said, “Yes, but according to the Daimonomageia such a thing cannot pass.” Seeing Molly’s eyes grow wider, she could not help herself. “If she be be-deviled, then she may not be the be-deviler. Or perhaps she is be-witched, not the witch herself. We must look elsewhere for such a being and rout it out—”
“Lucy Campion!” came a roar behind her. It was Dr. Larimer. “Such words I should never hear in this household! I thought you knew better than to spew such nonsense. Be-deviled and deviltry indeed.”
To her chagrin, Constable Duncan appeared from behind the physician, looking fine in his customary red coat. From his slight grin, she could tell that he had heard every word she had just spoken.
“Nay, sir, I was just teasing the lass. Pray forgive me, Molly,” Lucy said contritely. “The poor creature upstairs is not be-deviled or accursed, though sickly she may be.”
“That will be all, then, Molly. Please take the bowl up in a few minutes’ time. Miss Campion will spoon it to our patient herself.”
The physician gestured that Lucy should follow them both back into his study. “I asked Constable Duncan to come around, to speak to the woman,” he said. “Maybe there is more he can learn about her.” He gestured to a bench against the wall. “Go talk while I prepare another tincture. The other did not calm her as I would have liked. I should not like people to think the woman is bedeviled, especially the servants in my own household!”
“Yes, sir,” she said, catching Duncan’s eye. He winked at her.
The physician began to mix different ingredients in a small stone bowl. “Any illness she has is natural, I can assure you. Not brought on by deviltry and foolishness.” He wagged his finger at her.
“Yes, sir,” Lucy said again, more sincerely this time. Although she knew that the physician was not actually angry at her, he did care about his patients, and he did not like to see them mocked. He also cared greatly about the dignity of his profession, and she did feel a bit ashamed about the teasing he had overheard.
“Enough of that,” Dr. Larimer replied. “Now tell the good constable how you came to find her.”
Taking a seat on the bench, Lucy related to Duncan how she had come across the woman and everything the woman had said.
“Has she truly forgotten everything? Her name? Her family?” Duncan asked in his Yorkshire dialect. “Could she be lying?”
Lucy sighed. “I do not know. I do not think so. She seemed genuinely agitated and confused when I met her. If you had seen her as I did—” She broke off, recalling the woman’s distraught and undressed state, her amulet her only possession. “I know it sounds foolish, but when I found her, she told me the devil had been chasing her.”
Duncan did not laugh. “Do you think someone was chasing her?”
Lucy closed her eyes, imagining how the woman had drifted toward her, in and out of the fog, like an apparition in a dream. “She did not move with the haste of one being followed,” she said. “She moved through the rubble as one in another world. Her eyes, I thought, seemed without vision, and it looked as if an unseen force were working upon her.” When Duncan raised an eyebrow, she gave a short self-mocking laugh. “Heartily, I do admit this. I did believe her to be a ghost, and I hoped to trick her by leading her to a crossroads.”
She saw Dr. Larimer roll his eyes at her words, and she continued. “But then she sneezed. It was all quite strange, to be truthful.”
Duncan nodded. “It is all very strange indeed,” he agreed. “I wonder what it was that frightened her so?”
Lucy could not help but think of the cuts on the woman’s hands, the rope burns on her wrists. What had the woman gone through? “You believe that she sustained a fright so great that she lost her memory?” Dr. Larimer had said something similar.
Duncan considered her question. “Yes, she may well have experienced something that has destroyed the natural balance of her mind. I have witnessed this deep loss of memory for myself, usually after a terrible battle.” For a moment, a shadow passed in front of his eyes. Lucy knew he had fought in the King’s Army, from a regiment outside York, but she knew little else about that part of his military experience. She touched his arm, and he smiled down at her.
“What do you make of her amulet, sir?” Lucy said, looking back to the physician. “You mentioned before that rosemary was for remembrance. Could someone have been trying to help her regain her memory? Maybe someone gave it to her?”
“That may be so. The ancients were convinced that convulsions, hysterics, and vertigoes were caused by mischievous—even evil—spirits and demons,” Dr. Larimer explained, still carefully grinding something with the pestle. “So they tied amulets with such herbs as rosemary, along with rue, birch, and peony, about their necks, with the hopes of keeping such malice at bay.”
“And there is nothing you can do for her?” the constable asked. “Nothing that may be administered to revive her memory?”
“I am certain that we shall hit upon some concoction in time that will stir her mind. For now, this tincture will have to do. If you will excuse me, I must confer with Mr. Sheridan about another matter.” The physici
an left then, the aroma of herbs still filling the air.
“He is a generous man,” Constable Duncan commented. “To do all of this for an unknown woman, brought to him under such circumstances.”
“This woman puzzles him,” Lucy said. “I think that he feels responsible for her, too, even if he does not yet know how to make her well. Being that she is a woman of quality, he cannot just take her to the local parish as he would someone of my ilk—or yours.”
Duncan turned back to her, his hazel eyes intent. “What makes you think she is a woman of quality? After all, this would not be the first time that we have seen others try to pass themselves off as someone they are not.” Indeed, she had written of this in a recent tract that she had titled The Masque of a Murderer.
“I know,” Lucy said. “I suggested as much to Dr. Larimer. When I first met the woman, I was of a different mind altogether. She seemed wild and strange, and more than a little touched by poverty. Her speech was so odd, I scarcely understood her. But later, after she calmed and the fervor left her words, her speech was that of a gentlewoman.” She laughed. “Not like me or mine, that is certain. A woman of Quality.”
He shrugged. “There is Quality and there is quality,” he said. “Some may not understand that distinction, but I do. I can assure you, I am not so impressed by the former, especially when unaccompanied by good sense and a courageous spirit.”
Lucy coughed. He had taken her far more seriously than she had intended, and the conversation was bringing them along a path upon which she did not wish to tarry, at least not at this moment. “There were other things, too, that made us suspect that she is gently born. Not just her voice.”
“Such as?”
“The amulet she was wearing is surely dear, and her shift was of a fine linen. And the lace was of a superior nature.”
At his interested look, she continued. Although she should have felt embarrassed speaking about the woman’s undergarments with the constable, she found she was not. She explained about the nature of the stitches, and the kind of tailor who must have made them. Despite not having been employed as a lady’s maid for overly long, she had learned much about such things in the Hargraves’ employment.
“Mrs. Hotchkiss agreed with me as well. The most telling thing, I find, is that she seems to carry herself as a woman of quality,” Lucy said, thinking of the woman’s haughty and arrogant tones. “She knows how to give orders, as if she was born to it.”
The constable listened carefully. “I should speak with her now,” he said. “I hope she will be more forthcoming with me.”
* * *
A few minutes later, the woman balked when Lucy explained that the constable had come to ask her questions, and was now waiting outside in the hallway.
“I do not think so, Lucy,” she said, accepting the tincture that Lucy handed to her. “It does not seem proper for me to speak with a constable.” She took a long sip and then frowned. “How can I remember this feeling, but I cannot know my own name?”
“I cannot tell you,” Lucy said as pleasantly as she could. “I do assure you though, that Constable Duncan wishes to help you. He might be able to help discover what happened to you. He is a good man, committed to his work.” Spying a bright wrap on the chair beside the bed, Lucy pulled it around the woman’s shoulders. “There, that looks nice.”
The woman began to rub the bandage that covered the cut on her hand. “Maybe I do not want to remember,” she whispered. “The memory of the just is blessed: but the name of the wicked shall rot.”
Lucy shuddered. She had heard the minister at St. Andrew’s say those very words before, standing righteously at his pulpit, but never had Proverbs 10:7 sounded so ominous.
Soon the mixture of opium and wine had its desired effect, and the woman waved her hand at Lucy. “You may summon him.”
Opening the door, Lucy found both physicians waiting with the constable. “She does not quite think it proper that she speak to you,” she said, giving Duncan an apologetic glance, “but she has agreed to do so nevertheless.”
“I see,” he said. “Let us proceed.”
When the men entered the room, Dr. Larimer presented the constable to her.
Constable Duncan gave her a clipped military bow, the likes of which Lucy had rarely seen him do. The woman inclined her head graciously, much as Lucy had seen other gentlewomen do to acknowledge a gallantry. The gesture had seemed natural, not forced, and indeed, the woman drew herself up to full stately bearing. There was no evidence of yesterday’s downtrodden state, or even the terror she had shown a half hour before.
Dr. Larimer pulled the chair away to the edge of the room and gestured for the woman to sit down. “If you would, miss.”
“Constable,” she said, sitting down grandly. “You have questions for me, I presume. I am doubtful that I have answers.”
At her voice, he looked at her in surprise. “You speak as someone from my own region. Have you lived near York, miss?”
“How can I know?” She shifted impatiently. “I knew there was no use speaking to you. Until I remember who I am, there is nothing I can do.”
“Octavia! I know it is you!” Mr. Sheridan burst out. “I am certain this is true.” He knelt by her bedside. “Can you not remember me? James Sheridan?” When she continued to stare at him blankly, he said again, “You are Octavia Belasysse!”
The woman gulped. “That name! I do not know. Am I she? I do not know! I do not know!” Tears began to stream down her face, and she pressed her hands to her head. Suddenly, her eyelids began to flutter. “Help me!” she whispered. “I beg of you—“
“What is happening?” Duncan asked. Lucy did not reply, watching as the woman’s eyes rolled back into her head.
“She is convulsing!” Mr. Sheridan cried, grabbing the woman as she slumped to the ground, her body still contorting and shaking wildly. Gently, he laid her head atop a pillow that he pulled from the bed.
“Grab that comb. Place it between her teeth so that she does not bite off her tongue,” Dr. Larimer instructed with absolute calm.
Seeing where he was pointing, Lucy grabbed the short wooden comb from the table and handed it to Mr. Sheridan, who inserted it between the woman’s teeth.
“Roll her on her side, with her knee out like so,” Dr. Larimer said to the younger physician as he positioned the woman’s legs. “This way she shall not choke on her spittle or bile, should her mouth grow filled.”
For a moment, they all watched the woman shake uncontrollably. At last her terrible shaking subsided, and her cheeks were no longer so sallow.
“Let us get her back into her bed,” Dr. Larimer instructed.
Before anyone could step forward, Mr. Sheridan scooped the woman into his arms and, with a great grunt, managed to pick her up and lay her heavily onto the bed. The gesture was protective, intimate even. “I will tend to her,” he said, without meeting anyone’s eyes.
Dr. Larimer gave his assistant a curious look as he sat beside the woman on the bed, but only said, “As you wish.”
“I shall take my leave as well,” Duncan replied, moving toward the door. Lucy found herself accompanying him down the hallway.
At the front door, the constable stopped and looked down at her. “If she is indeed Octavia Belasysse, we should know that soon enough. If she is not, well, I scarcely know where to start. I hope to know something soon, although a bootless errand I fear this may be.”
6
The rest of the afternoon passed painfully for Lucy. Miss Belasysse, as Lucy had taken to calling the woman in her mind, barely slept. When she was not weeping, she would rage around the room until she grew unnaturally calm. Underneath the woman’s rage, however, Lucy could sense a great despair and frustration at her inability to remember, and a great fear that underlay everything else. Finally, the woman’s fatigue overwhelmed her, and she seemed to drop off into a great sleep once again.
Around seven that evening, Molly tapped on the door. “If you would, miss, you h
ave a visitor. Mr. Adam Hargrave.” The servant’s eyes were wide with curiosity about the magistrate’s son coming to call so late in the day, and seeking the company of a nursemaid at that.
Lucy took off her apron and smoothed her hair. She knew she looked tousled, but she did not wish to keep Adam waiting. He has seen me look worse, she thought to herself.
Fortunately, the Larimers were dining at a friend’s house, and Mr. Sheridan seemed to have retired for the evening, so she did not need to explain Adam’s presence to anyone else.
Not feeling comfortable greeting him in Dr. Larimer’s drawing room, she drew him out into the courtyard, ignoring the curious eyes of Molly and Mrs. Hotchkiss as they passed through the kitchen. She pulled her cloak on as they went.
They sat down on the bench under the apple tree. It was a little chilly, but the garden smelled sweet, no doubt from the herbs that Dr. Larimer kept on hand.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, smiling up at him. She could still remember the first time she looked into his deep blue eyes, when she was still a servant. How he had wiped away the blood from her nose—an unexpected gesture that always reminded her of his sense of compassion and justice for those less fortunate than himself.
“I could ask you the same thing, Lucy,” he replied. Though he returned her smile, there was a serious note to his words. “I stopped by Master Aubrey’s earlier this evening, hoping to see you, and that printer’s devil told me that you were living here.” He paused, looking slightly hopeful. “Have you left Master Aubrey’s employment?”
“Oh, no!” she exclaimed. A quiver had pierced her heart at the thought of leaving the printer’s shop permanently. “I do love printing books. I should never wish to leave my employment. Master Aubrey has been ever so good to me.”
Seeing the slight shadow that crossed his face when he heard her words, she began to hastily explain all that had transpired over the last two days.
“How curious,” he said when she was finished. “Why did you not tell me sooner?” Then, before she could answer, he touched her hand. “Never mind about that. It’s all very strange, is it not?”
A Death Along the River Fleet Page 5