A Death Along the River Fleet

by Susanna Calkins

  Duncan repeated her words. “How curious,” he said. After a short pause, he asked, “Didn’t Dr. Larimer say that the wounds on her neck indicated that someone had been letting her blood? Someone with great knowledge and skill? A surgeon, or even a physician?”

  “Yes,” Lucy said slowly. “What are you getting at?”

  Duncan scratched his forehead. “Is it a coincidence that this woman was found traipsing about near Dr. Larimer’s residence?”

  “Well…”

  Duncan did not wait for her to reply. He seemed to have seized on a new idea. “Mr. Sheridan has been acting familiarly toward this woman, which belies his usual manner toward his patients, does it not? He is certainly familiar with her treatments.”

  “If he knew her before—” Lucy paused, realizing the direction of his thoughts. “You think that Mr. Sheridan had something to do with her condition?”

  Duncan shrugged. “It is something we must keep in mind,” he whispered. “Let us catch up now with this woman. Perhaps she will say something that gives us more clues to her identity, so we can find out once and for all who treated her in such a terrible and strange way.”

  9

  When they reached Holborn Market, Lucy watched the woman’s expression to see if she recalled anything. But she seemed distant and uninterested in the market, if anything a bit disdainful of some of the cheaper wares. At one point she did whisper to Lucy as they looked at silk wraps. “They are trying to say that these silks come from China. But it is clear that they are from a weaver in Lyon, and should not command the price that merchant asks.”

  Lucy was not sure if that was true or not, but the woman clearly spoke with an unexpected knowledge of the quality of the silks and clothes being sold at the market.

  When the woman was sniffing some early flowers, Lucy tugged on the constable’s red sleeve. “I think we should lead her over to Holborn Bridge. Before she grows too weary. We might not get this chance again.”

  To the woman she said, “Miss, let us begin our journey back before you get too tired. We should not like for Dr. Larimer to refuse you such a stroll again.”

  “I am growing weary,” she murmured, grasping Lucy’s arm. Once again she had dropped her imperious manner.

  They left the market, and casually Lucy led them toward Holborn Bridge. She mounted the three steps. “Do you know,” she said, her voice even, “this is where I first encountered you.”

  Lucy pointed. “Just there, beyond the bridge. About thirty steps away. You appeared out of the fog.” She glanced at the woman, keeping her tone light. “You looked to me a most unnatural specter.” She smiled. “Then you sneezed, and I knew you to be flesh and blood.”

  The woman did not smile. Instead, she began to look about, a wondering expression on her face. Moving over to the stone bridge, she mounted the three steps before gazing into the muck and ill-flowing water below. Just then the wind picked up, and they all grimaced.

  “Oh, that smell!” She looked at Lucy. “I remember, I think, crossing this bridge with you?”

  “That is right,” Lucy said. She desperately wanted to ask more questions, but she remained silent, allowing the woman to capture what she could of her memory.

  The woman looked down at her bandaged hands. “You washed my hands,” the woman replied. “There was bl-blood on them?”

  “Yes,” Lucy nodded. “Not here. At a well outside of Holborn Market. Past the crowd.”

  The woman nodded, still seemingly lost in thought. “There was another woman, though? Someone who was with me?” she asked Lucy.

  Lucy shook her head. “I saw no one else.”

  The woman walked quickly across the bridge and down the three stone steps on the other side, carefully moving into the burnt-out expanse.

  Lucy exchanged a puzzled glance with Duncan, and then they both followed the woman over the bridge. “I wonder who was with her,” Lucy said.

  “People have been living out here, amid the rubble,” the constable replied, in a low tone. “Illegal, of course, but such activity is hard to contain.”

  He looked about, at the foggy gray expanse in front of him. “Not a day goes by that I do not remember the terror that the Great Fire brought. And when I first came out here to patrol the grounds, the destruction was so immense, I could scarcely take it in.”

  Lucy nodded. “I remember, too,” she said softly. A few days after the Fire had subsided, she—along with hundreds of other glazed-over Londoners—had been part of the brigade of laborers tasked with clearing away the rubble. For days, they had toiled, side by side, shoveling debris into buckets and wheelbarrows for hours on end, earning a few coins a day. A dead body had even been discovered, with a puzzle upon his corpse. That story had become From the Charred Remains, a tract that sold well among the Fleet Street sort.

  Now, the three continued to walk, carefully picking their way through the wasteland. Here and there they came across small stone circles, full of ash, soot, and charred lumber likely pulled from the remnants of shops and homes that had once lined the narrow streets. In a few places, whole stone walls remained, and by those there was usually a stamped-out campfire. Clearly, the walls provided some shelter from the cold for anyone unlawfully living in the ruins, and likely kept their campfires from being detected by any soldiers who might be patrolling the area.

  So far, though, the campfires they encountered were still cold. “Who knows when they were used last,” the constable commented.

  As they continued to move through the rubble, the woman suddenly stopped at the stone walls of an old shop or home and began to look about, a dazed expression on her face. “Oh!” she said softly. “Oh!”

  “Miss?” Lucy said, touching her elbow. “What is it?”

  “I remember being here,” the woman whispered, holding her hands to her head. “Recently.”

  Lucy came and stood beside the woman. Beyond the stone wall, she could see the remnants of a great hearth that had probably once been at the center of a kitchen. An old pot was still hanging from an iron hook at the center of the main hearth beam.

  Cautiously, Lucy stepped within the stone walls and sniffed the pot, which smelled faintly of leeks and meat.

  Bending down, Lucy touched the embers. They were still exuding the faintest bit of warmth. She looked around. Something about the way that the stones were arranged—two stones together, an old wooden beam balanced against half of an old three-legged stool. Clearly, they were being used as furniture. “Someone has been here recently,” she said to Duncan, who nodded.

  “Miss,” he said, turning to the woman, “do you remember anything of your time here? Who you were with?”

  Instead of answering the constable, the woman sank down in the soft mud by the wall. Burying her face in her hands, she began to moan softly.

  “Miss,” Lucy said again. “Please. We would like to help you. Is there anything you can tell us about how you came to be here, or who you were with?”

  At that, the woman opened her eyes and fixed her gaze on another part of the rubble, where there was a break at the location of the original front entrance.

  Following her gaze uncomfortably, Lucy could see a bit of blue cloth sticking out of the ground. “What is it?” she asked, but the woman did not reply.

  Lucy went over to examine the area. She could see that a pit had been made, now partially covered by a layer of blackened rocks laid in rows—possibly to keep what was buried from rising to the surface.

  She glanced at the woman, who was just watching her, with the slightest furrow to her brow. With some trepidation, Lucy knelt down and dug out a medium-sized clay jar that was partially sticking out of the earth. Hoping it was not the contents of a chamber pot or an offal pit, she opened the jar. A ferocious aroma from inside assaulted her nose.

  Gagging slightly, she dumped the contents on the ground. A dead bird and some dried herbs were inside, as well as a few other small bones, probably from a rodent.

  “A witch’s jar?” she
wondered out loud. She had heard of such things, often buried at the front of a house or above something precious, with the intention of keeping the object hidden below it safe.

  Removing the layer of stones, Lucy reached down and pulled out a wadded-up blue cloth, which was quite cold and damp to her touch.

  “What is that, Lucy?” Duncan asked, walking toward her. He was clearly trying not to alarm the woman, trying to keep her humors balanced and calm.

  “I am not certain,” Lucy replied, in an equally calm manner. She darted a quick glance over her shoulder. The woman was chewing on her thumbnail, her eyes wide as she watched Lucy.

  Carefully, Lucy stood up, shaking the blue cloth in front of her. “Oh!” she exclaimed softly.

  It turned out that the cloth was actually a woman’s dress, partially blackened by fire and full of charred rips and tears. It seemed that someone had tried to burn the garment. From a single glance she could see that the quality was clearly fine; this was a linen dress for a gentlewoman, not the woolen dress of a servant or a tradesman’s wife.

  Behind her the woman gasped a single word. “No!”

  When Lucy turned to look at the woman, she saw that she was staring at the gown in utter horror, tears silently streaming down her cheeks. Her cheeks were sucking in and out as she labored to breathe in short frantic huffs.

  Duncan’s eyes had widened when he looked at the front of the dress. Lucy turned it toward her. A long stream of something dark had cascaded down the fabric. Someone else might have mistaken the stain for mud, but Lucy knew exactly what it was. Dried blood.

  “Was this gown yours?” Lucy asked the woman, holding it up closer, her own hands trembling.

  At that the woman began to scream in earnest, full anguished cries that racked her entire body.

  “What in Heaven’s name—?” Duncan began.

  Without thinking, Lucy did as she had seen Dr. Sheridan do the day before—she slapped the woman hard across her mouth.

  The woman quieted down instantly, and once again began to just sob quietly into her hands.

  Constable Duncan stood up. “Stay here,” he said to Lucy. “Attend to her. I will look around. Maybe we can discover something of what happened here.”

  Lucy sat down next to the woman, her back against the low stone wall. She looked around. Had this been a house? A shop? Her knowledge of how the streets here had looked before the Fire was scant. If she had been a bookseller prior to the inferno, she might have been far more knowledgeable.

  Just then the woman let out a strangled sound, and her eyes rolled back in their sockets. Immediately she began to thrash wildly about, her body convulsing uncontrollably. Lucy knew that this time a slap across the mouth would not suffice.

  The devil has her, Lucy thought to herself. She could not refrain from touching a charred wooden beam. Even as she made the old superstitious gesture, she could almost hear the magistrate’s stern voice. Stuff and nonsense, she could hear him say.

  “She’s having another fit,” she said to Duncan, who had remained beside her when the woman’s fit started. “Help me hold her down, lest she hurt herself with all this flailing about.”

  Together, they knelt down beside the woman, trying to still her legs and arms. Lucy tugged the bloodied dress under the woman’s head, to soften the impact as her head repeatedly banged against the hard ground. Remembering what Dr. Larimer had done the day before, she reached for a small stick on the ground and forced it between the woman’s teeth. “Help me roll her,” she said to Duncan.

  Before long, the woman’s limbs stopped jerking violently. Her lips parted and, as she heaved a great sigh, her whole body relaxed.

  “I think the fit has subsided,” Lucy whispered to Duncan. Gingerly, they released their hold on her.

  The woman’s eyes opened, and, after looking about, she tried to sit up quickly. “What happened? Why are we here?” She looked back and forth between Lucy and the constable in despair. “What has happened to me?”

  “Shhh,” Lucy said, as soothingly as she could. Even though she knew the magistrate and Dr. Larimer would scoff, she peered deep into the woman’s eyes to see if she could discern someone else in there, as William Drage had recommended in Daimonomageia. She saw nothing, except terror and confusion.

  Without saying anything, Lucy put the remains of the dress into her sack. Standing up, she brushed off her skirts. “I think we need to return to Dr. Larimer’s,” she said.

  It was all Lucy and the constable could do to get the woman back to the physician’s home. Together they nearly carried the woman, who now seemed completely fatigued. When Mrs. Hotchkiss opened the door, Lucy bid her fetch the physician. Molly put her arm around the woman’s waist and led her upstairs to her chamber.

  Duncan’s face was speculative as he took his leave. “I do not like any of this, Lucy. I do not like that that man Nabur came after you today. And I like that bloody dress even less. I’m going to explore that area by Holborn Bridge a bit more,” he said. “Pray, send me a note, should you learn anything more about the identity of our poor lost woman.” He took a step closer to her. “There’s more to this, Lucy. I can just feel it.”

  * * *

  Once upstairs, Lucy poured the woman a bit of the mulled wine that was still on the side table. It had not been warmed, but Lucy thought it would soothe her spirits. The woman sank back into the bedding, closing her eyes.

  It was not long before there was a knock at the door, and the two physicians walked in. “Mrs. Hotchkiss said the poor lass was quite weary when you returned from your excursion to the market,” Dr. Larimer said quietly, glancing over at the drowsing woman. “At least she is resting well enough now.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lucy replied. “Although she had another fit by Holborn Bridge.”

  “At Holborn Bridge!” Mr. Sheridan exclaimed. “What possessed you to take her to that spot?” Was there a tinge of worry underlying his anger? It was hard to say.

  “Sounds like she suffered another epileptic fit,” Dr. Larimer said. “I can prepare another tisane for when she wakes. Unfortunately, we can only treat her symptoms. I do not yet know how to ward off the onset of her convulsions.” He looked down at the woman. “Her color looks good now, at least. The best thing we can do for her is to let her sleep.”

  “I do not know what you were thinking, taking her on such an exhausting walk!” Mr. Sheridan said sharply, crossing his arms.

  “I thought it a good idea for her to get some air,” Dr. Larimer told his assistant, a bit sharply. “And I agreed that bringing her to Holborn Bridge might help her regain her memory.”

  “And did it?” Mr. Sheridan asked, sounding more wary than curious.

  Lucy shook her head. “No, but something odd occurred before we even reached the bridge, when we first set out from this house.” Quickly she described the man they had encountered on the path. “He said she was her wife, and that her name was Erica Nabur. He knew all about her bad memory, and that she was being looked after by Dr. Larimer.”

  Mr. Sheridan frowned. “The man called her Erica Nabur?” he asked. “I just do not believe that to be true. I know she does not recall herself as Octavia Belasysse, but I have grown more certain of her identity with every passing moment. I am going to send another message to the Belasysses’ London residence. I will only be satisfied when one of her own family members looks upon her countenance and says yea or nay to her identity.”

  “If she is Octavia Belasysse, what did that man want with her?” Lucy asked, turning back to Dr. Larimer.

  “That, I do not know,” Dr. Larimer said. “But I believe that it is now our godly duty to protect her. Whether we want to or not.”

  “Did you learn anything else on your journey?” Mr. Sheridan asked Lucy. “Did you discover any other clue to what happened to her?” His tone was snide and dismissive.

  Lucy opened her mouth to tell them about the dress and then shut it again.

  “No?” Mr. Sheridan asked, rubbing his hands toge
ther. Did he look relieved? “So all this trouble to this poor woman, for a simple goose chase. I hope you do not take such liberties with her again.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lucy replied, gazing at the physician’s assistant. There was a flash of anger in his tone, and something else. Guilt. What are you hiding, Mr. Sheridan? she wondered, as she shut the door behind the two men.

  Crossing the room again, Lucy sat on the edge of the woman’s bed. “Miss Belasysse?” she asked softly.

  The woman’s eyes flew open. “Yes?” Her reply was natural, although heavy with sleep.

  Hoping she would not trigger another fit, Lucy carefully pulled part of the dress out of her bag. “Is this gown yours?” she asked.

  With a sigh, the woman leaned over and stroked the sleeve. “Such a lovely blue,” she said, her eyes fixed on the gown. “He said that he wanted me to look nice for when we traveled.” She rolled over in the bed, away from Lucy.

  “Who? Who said it?” Lucy asked. “Who gave you this gown? Where were you traveling?”

  But the woman did not reply. A moment later, Lucy heard a soft snore from the bed.

  Getting up, Lucy poked the embers in the fireplace a bit, and after throwing in a handful of twigs, managed to get a small flame flickering.

  Settling back in her chair, Lucy picked up the remnants of the blue gown again and began to examine the cloth more carefully. Like the underclothes the woman had been wearing, the gown was made of a fine woven cloth. The hand-stitching around the lace-holes and the embroidered sleeves suggested an expert seamstress had created the garment.

  Lucy ran her hands over the burnt parts. A goodly portion of the right side of the dress, from sleeve to the knee, had been burnt, but in patches. She glanced at the woman sleeping on the bed. If this dress belonged to this woman, she could not have been wearing it when it was on fire. Such burns would have resulted in terrible injuries, and this woman had no burn marks upon her person, as Lucy had seen for herself. No, it was more likely that the gown had been removed and set on fire, although, judging by the wetness, doused before being completely destroyed.