A Death Along the River Fleet

by Susanna Calkins

  After looking up and down the hallway, he shut the door behind him. “Miss Belasysse came to us at the end of June,” he whispered. “In 1666, a few months before the Great Fire. I was tending to a patient when she arrived. I never saw who brought her.”

  “She never told you?” Lucy pressed.

  He was quiet for a moment. “No. The last thing she remembered, as she told me later, was that she had been taking a walk near her family’s London home. I suspect that she suffered a seizure and likely lost any memory of how she came to be here. The epilepsia, you see.”

  Lucy frowned. Before she could ask another question, he asked one of his own. “What of Miss Belasysse? Has she recovered her memory? Is she well? Or is she still—fitful?” His eyebrows furrowed. “You have not brought her back here, have you?”

  Lucy regarded him closely. His concern for the woman seemed genuine. “No, she is still in the care of Dr. Larimer. I do not think she is well,” Lucy admitted. “She did take the tonic you sent easily enough, and that seemed to soothe her. But she is still melancholic and very anxious. Sometimes, she is quite gay, and she alarms me.”

  “But she is safe.” Nervously, the man began to quickly grind a few herbs together with the mortar and pestle, causing a strong aroma to arise from the basin.

  “St. John’s wort,” he said. “For melancholy. There are many who suffer from that same complaint here, and I seek to lessen the torments of anguish when I can. Is that why you have come?” He paused, licking his chapped lips. “Or did she send you to see me?” He looked hopeful.

  “Dr. Larimer needs more of the unguent you made for her. One of her physicians is here, speaking to the keeper.”

  “Oh, no!” he exclaimed, setting down the pestle. “I can supply him with the ingredients he needs. The keeper must not be informed of her whereabouts!”

  “Why not?” Lucy asked.

  “He is not a good man.”

  Distantly she heard a bell ringing.

  “What is that?” she asked. “It did not sound like a church bell.”

  Mr. Quade frowned. “We use bells to help our inmates remember what they are supposed to be doing.” Far off, she heard a man begin to scream. Miss Belasysse’s fearful whisper echoed in her mind. I was afraid to ring for her, she had said. Afraid of who might come.

  Lucy blinked. “What happened to Miss Belasysse here?” she whispered. “Was she … a prisoner?”

  “Not a prisoner,” he replied. When she waited, he threw up his hands in a helpless gesture. “Some inmates suffer from a great imbalance of the humors. Their spirits and minds are broken, and we can little understand how to help them.” He rubbed his forehead. “There are things we must do to help them heal, so that they will not bring harm to themselves or others. They are often allowed to roam freely about the grounds. Most of the time we only lock them up when we feel they are dangerous. I never believed Miss Belasysse would cause harm to others, but her fits…”

  “They tied her up,” Lucy said, thinking of the marks on her wrists.

  “May the good Lord show them mercy, they did. At first, I believed it was for her own good.” Mr. Quade rubbed his eyes. He began to rap his knuckles on the table. “The keeper kept her locked up. I never knew why. He would not say. I asked him once, but he said that she was of ‘special concern’ to them.”

  The man’s screaming grew louder. With great effort, Lucy turned her attention back to the apothecary. “I met a woman here who knew Miss Belasysse, I think,” Lucy said. “She called her a bluebird.”

  “Ah,” he said. “I daresay you were speaking to Lucinda. Mrs. Jamison, I should say. She and Miss Belasysse were fast friends, and she has been quite melancholic since she left.” He sighed. “Mrs. Jamison rather thinks she is a bird. I don’t know why. Harmless, though.”

  “She said a quail had helped the bluebird fly away. To escape.” Lucy paused, feeling a little ridiculous. “Are you the quail, Mr. Quade?” she whispered. “Did you help Miss Belasysse flee from this place?”

  He nodded. “Octavia, I mean Miss Belasysse, begged me to let her leave. She asked me to write letters to her brother and her family. I began to believe that they would never reply, as every letter she wrote went unanswered. For months. Only when she sent a letter herself did her brother finally come to fetch her.”

  “He did come? Henry Belasysse was here?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Quade replied. “A little over a week ago. Miss Belasysse was delighted when he came.”

  “When was this?” Lucy asked.

  The apothecary scratched his head. “That would have been Saturday, the thirtieth of March.”

  And I found her on the first of April, Lucy thought to herself. “Was she injured when she left here? Were her hands cut at all?”

  Mr. Quade frowned. “Injured? Of course not. She had, of course, undergone treatment during her time here. Bloodletting and the sort, but she had not sustained any injury. Why? Is she all right?”

  “She is fine,” Lucy said hastily, seeing the concern in his eyes. “Could you tell me, what was she wearing when she left?”

  “Her brother had brought her a blue dress so that she would not draw attention to herself when she traveled. I took the dress to her, and then led her to her brother who was waiting beyond the gate, so the keeper would not see them go.”

  “And did her brother say anything else about their journey? Where they planned to go?”

  “I assumed to their family seat. He was nervous, naturally, about her condition, but I gave him enough of the concoction to last them the journey home.” He paused. “But his worries seem to have been for naught, as he managed to get her to the care of Dr. Larimer.”

  Lucy shook her head. “No, I found Miss Belasysse wandering about, senseless, near Holborn Bridge, several days after she left here. I brought her to Dr. Larimer’s as I was concerned for her. Her brother has not been seen in over a week. His wife is quite worried.”

  He paled a bit. “I know he was afraid of someone; I do not know who. Please miss. I have told you all I know.” He opened the door.

  She pointed to the tract on the table. “I could not help but notice you were reading about the murder of the tanner for which Henry Belasysse was pardoned. Why is that?”

  “What?” he asked, following her gaze. “Oh, yes. Mr. Browning, the assistant keeper, gave the tract to me several months ago. He knows that I am interested in better understanding melancholy and self-murder, as well as the impulses that drive a man to murder.”

  “So the tanner’s wife killed herself? What a desperate act!” Lucy said.

  “If you spent more time here, you would see the toll that melancholia and desperation take upon a person’s soul.” He sighed.

  “But is it not an odd coincidence that Mr. Browning had this very tract in his possession?”

  “No, it was no coincidence. When Miss Belasysse first came here, Mr. Browning recognized her straightaway. Said he knew for a fact that her brother was not innocent, and that even though the king had pardoned him in this temporal world, there was no pardon to be had in the hereafter.”

  Lucy nodded. She understood the anger over the king’s pardon.

  The apothecary continued. “I am ashamed to say that he taunted her with her brother’s crime, from a place of deep anger. Even more so after the tanner’s wife took her own life. I caught him waving this tract in front of her, tormenting her with the knowledge that her brother’s thoughtless act had driven another to such a terrible end.”

  “Did he know the tanner’s wife?” Lucy asked, wondering. “His anger toward Miss Belasysse seems so personal.” Then a thought struck her. “Was she here, at Bedlam?”

  He shook his head slowly. “I do not think so. Although…” He paused, still thinking. “Now that you mention it, I am not certain.” He paused again. “I remember now there was a woman here for a short spell, shortly after the tanner’s murder occurred, whom Mr. Browning had taken a particular interest in.”

  “Do you rem
ember anything about the woman?” Lucy asked.

  “No, she was full of melancholia. A surgeon performed some bloodletting upon her, but when she did not respond and—I suspect—when she ran out of funds, she was released.” He rubbed his forehead. “Wait, yes! It must have been the tanner’s wife. I never realized—”

  “Why, what happened? What did you remember?”

  “She had a violent outburst—just once. In full hysterics, as I recall. She screamed that her husband had been deliberately killed, by two men, and that even the king had covered the crime.”

  “Yes, that must have been her! What happened to her?” Lucy asked, breathless now.

  Mr. Quade rubbed his eyes. “She was dragged into isolation, and that was the last I heard of it. She left shortly after that, but still well before Miss Belasysse joined us at Bedlam.”

  “So the two women did not know each other?”

  The apothecary shook his head. “I do not believe they did.”

  Lucy thought about the notes that Susan Belasysse said her husband had received. “But someone believed her story, I think.”

  “Perhaps.” He paused. “I only looked at this tract after Miss Belasysse left. This may sound pitiful, but I find I have missed her. It is the only reminder that I have of her time here.”

  He nodded toward the door. “I shall bring Dr. Larimer instructions for making up another batch. He could take it to another apothecary, if he does not wish to make it himself. Pray, leave here and do not come back again.” He turned away then, staring at his collection of amulets, looking lost and forlorn.

  Lucy left, moving quickly through the corridors, trying to keep her footsteps from echoing in the stone halls. Lost in her own thoughts, she almost moved into full view of Mr. Sheridan speaking to another man in the great hall.

  Squinting into the shadowy room, she could see it was the same man who had assaulted Miss Belasysse outside the physician’s house, calling himself her husband, Mr. Nabur. Ducking behind one of the great stone pillars, Lucy said a small prayer that no one would see her.

  They were evidently concluding a conversation. “Well, Mr. Sheridan, I thank you for your visit today,” she heard the man say to the physician. “As you can see, we do have room for a few more patients, provided they can pay their lodging and treatment fees. Any referral from you, we shall consider most closely. Good day.”

  After the man walked past, she was able to move through the great room and out the front door. Mr. Sheridan was outside the stone wall, looking about unpleasantly.

  “Who was that man you were just speaking to?” she asked breathlessly.

  “The keeper,” he growled. “Not a physician at all. He just manages the building and the inmates.”

  She pulled on his sleeve. “The keeper. He was the man who came after Miss Belasysse, earlier this week!”

  He shook his hand free of her and returned to walking at his usual brisk pace. “That does not surprise me.” He kicked a stone along the path. “They think they are doing right by the inmates. Tying them up is a very common treatment for those with afflicted minds, particularly those who are not easily controlled.” Mr. Sheridan continued to fume. “How could they have done such wrong to such a beautiful creature?”

  “I am certain that the keeper would have little qualms in keeping Miss Belasysse tied up, as some of the others were,” Lucy said. “It is shameful.”

  “You do not understand! They placed her there purposefully. Can you not see that?” Mr. Sheridan cried. “Where is that intelligence that Dr. Larimer and Mr. Hargrave purport you to possess?”

  “Who placed her there?” Lucy asked, stopping short. “I spoke with the apothecary. He said Miss Belasysse did not know who had brought her to Bedlam.”

  Mr. Sheridan rolled his eyes. “It was her parents, naturally. Lord and Lady Belasysse.”

  “He told you that?” Lucy stared at him.

  “He did not have to,” Mr. Sheridan replied. “It is not mumpers and mendicants who stay at Bedlam, but those who can afford the lodging and care. Is it not obvious? The keeper was being paid quite handsomely. No wonder he tried that ridiculous guise, to pass himself off as her husband. He lost a fortune when she escaped.”

  “Why would they put her there? Why would they lie about it?” Lucy asked.

  Mr. Sheridan was unusually forthcoming. “Her mother was ashamed of her, that was easy enough to see. Her father, too. Her brother was the only one to care a whit about her. His only redeeming quality, in my mind.”

  Lucy nodded. She had seen something of the mother’s vitriol toward Miss Belasysse herself. However, something still did not make sense.

  “Why then?” she wondered out loud. “Miss Belasysse told me that her mother had tried all kinds of healers and soothsayers and priests. Had she just reached a point of utter despair? Why would she have pretended her daughter was dead? Why have the funeral? It does not make sense.”

  “I do not know. And I do not wish to discuss the matter further.”

  They fell silent then, each caught in thought. For Lucy’s part, the shrieks of the man tied to the bed haunted her for the rest of the walk back to the Larimers’.

  22

  “I need to speak to the constable,” Lucy told Mr. Sheridan when they reached the Larimers’ home.

  “As you wish,” he said, without even glancing at her. He seemed distracted and tense. “No matter to me.”

  He went inside, and she continued on to Fleet Street, to see Duncan at his jail.

  “Constable,” she called when she arrived, “please do not arrest Miss Belasysse. I think there is more going on here than we realized.”

  “Lucy,” he said, pulling over a stool. “Pray, sit down. You look quite pale indeed.” He pulled over another stool so that he could sit across from her, his knees touching hers. “Tell me what happened.”

  In fits and starts she told him everything—everything that the apothecary had told her, even all that she had witnessed. He nodded when she described how some of the people lay tied and screaming in their beds. “But I do not think they were wholly untended,” she said, thinking about the apothecary. “There were many abuses to be seen, and it was shocking to think that Miss Belasysse, the daughter of a baron, should have suffered at their hands. It was rather like a prison,” she ended. “I cannot understand why her parents would have sent her there, to languish as she did.”

  She then described what the apothecary had told her about Henry Belasysse taking his sister away from Bedlam the week before. “We know, too, that he had made no plans to prepare the London house for their company,” Lucy added. “The servants seem to have been completely unaware of their arrival.”

  “A bad business, indeed,” Constable Duncan said. “I cannot imagine that Henry Belasysse would have sought to free his sister without a thought of where to take her. No matter how excited a state he was in when he left, surely he had time to form a plan.”

  “So, where?” Lucy asked.

  “Let us see what we can determine.” From the corner, he picked up a large roll of paper that was tied with a bit of a brown string. “Stow’s survey of London,” he explained as he unrolled it. “Here, hold that end down.”

  Lucy looked at the map, full of streets and lanes, dotted with houses and churches, cows in their pastures, and boats on the River Thames. She had seen such maps before. Master Aubrey had a rather tattered version that Lucy had consulted in the past, and Master Hargrave had a great map of London pasted to the wall of his study.

  “This map does not show the destruction from the Great Fire, of course, but it should suffice.” With his left forefinger, he pointed to a location on Fleet Street. “Here we are,” he said. Moving his finger a bit north and east, he continued. “And here is Holborn Bridge, where you encountered Miss Belasysse. Nearby this point, I found the body of the dead man. From the amount of blood on the ground, I feel I can say with some certainty that he was killed on that spot where his corpse was discovered.” With his right f
orefinger, he pointed to another spot. “This, here, is Bedlam.” He tapped both locations at once. “The question is, what happened in the two days between the time she and her brother fled Bedlam and the time you found her, a mile and a half away, alone and covered in blood?”

  Lucy continued to study the map. “Where would they have been going, though? Those pastures and lanes disappeared in the Fire. Even if they had sought hospitality with an acquaintance, all these homes were burnt up these seven months past. Surely Mr. Belasysse would have known this.” She looked up at the constable. “Would Henry Belasysse truly have taken his unwell sister through the remains, on foot?”

  “I do not know the man, but it hardly seems likely,” Duncan agreed. He traced his finger along a faint red line that had been colored on the map. “Here, to the best of my estimation, is the line of the Great Fire, before the wind shifted and the Fire turned back on itself. This area is all burnt. I hardly think they would be walking in the ruins. Even though you did find her there.” He pointed again to Holborn Bridge. “Quite a distance.”

  “They would have been seeking refuge,” Lucy decided. “A church maybe, or even an inn.” She put her hand to her head. “Or, Henry Belasysse had an acquaintance with whom he felt he could stop with his sister.”

  Duncan began to roll up the map. “Stow’s map, as useful as it can be, is at least a hundred years out of date. I know at least five taverns and inns that are not on that map. I will take Hank and make some inquiries. Perhaps they stopped somewhere along the way. The question remains, however—what happened to her brother?” A chill ran over Lucy when he grimly added one more thing. “Even a man fleeing from a tedious wife will not keep himself invisible to others. At least, that is not the action of an honest man. And we know, from his past actions against the tanner, that Henry Belasysse is anything but an honest soul. For all we know, Henry Belasysse killed that man and is now hiding from his crime. He has killed before, that much we know to be true.”

  “And Miss Belasysse?” she asked.