by C. S. Harris
Sebastian waited. A quiver of revulsion bordering on horror passed over the girl’s face. “He wanted me to go with him to make sure he bought the right size. He said she was tall, like me. But he made me look at her, so I’d be sure.”
“You went with him to Long Acre?”
She nodded. “That green gown, I told him it was too small, but he was that set on buying it. He said it was just the thing for—” She broke off.
“For a lady to wear to the Brighton Pavilion?” Sebastian finished for her.
Her head bowed until he could see the crooked white line of the part in her hair, her hands clutched together on the worn tabletop. “He said it’d fit, that her ladyship weren’t such a strappin’ wench as me.”
“Only you were right, weren’t you? It was too small. Did they make you wash her ladyship’s body and dress her, as well?”
Amelia’s gaze flew to her mother. Mrs. Brennan pressed her lips together, then gave a barely perceptible nod of her head.
Amelia sucked in another shaky breath. “Mum does most of the laying out round here. While Mr. Carter and I was gone, he had Mum brought in to see to the lady.”
Sebastian glanced at the woman who stood beside the empty hearth, her thin shoulders hunched, her hands clutching her elbows close to her sides. “Did he tell you what they intended to do with the body?” Sebastian asked.
It was Amelia who answered. “No. But we heard them talkin’. They was at the other end of the room, arguing, while Mum and I got the lady dressed and finished cleanin’ up the mess.”
“The mess?”
“In the room where she died.”
“And where was that?”
The girl’s forehead puckered with confusion, as if she’d expected him to know this, since he knew so much else. “The best upstairs parlor.”
Sebastian set aside the untouched pot of ale and pushed to his feet. “Tell me about the necklace,” he said. “The silver necklace with the bluestone disk. Was her ladyship wearing it when you first saw her?”
Again, that furtive exchange of glances between mother and daughter. “No. It was on the floor, underneath her,” said Amelia. “Mum found it when she was cleanin’ her up. The clasp was bent a bit, but I was able to straighten it out enough so’s we could get it back on her.”
“And then what did you do?”
Amelia swallowed. “We rolled the lady up inside a length of canvas, and Mr. Carter and me carried her down the back steps and out into the alley. They had a cart waitin’.”
“What kind of a cart?”
Amelia lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Just a cart, like the ironmongers use. It was empty ’cept for some canvas bags filled with ice, and a big chest.”
“A chest?”
“That’s right. One o’ them fancy Chinese chests, with black lacquer work all covered with paintings of dragons and trees picked out in yellow and red.”
Sebastian gave a wry smile. He remembered noticing the chest when he’d looked around the Yellow Cabinet in the Pavilion. He’d seen the chest, and hadn’t given it a second thought. The Prince was always ordering cartfuls of oddities and trifles for the Pavilion. No one would question or even remember the delivery of yet another Chinese lacquered wood chest, while the ice…
The ice could very well have come from the inn’s own cellars. It wasn’t so uncommon these days. The extra cold would have delayed the onset of rigor mortis enough for Guinevere’s killers to haul her body down to Brighton in the cart, then stuff her into the chest and carry her into the Pavilion.
Yet all those hours in the cart had left their mark in the pattern of lividity Paul Gibson had identified so accurately on Guinevere’s body, just as the passing of the hours had left their own signs, signs that could be read by those who knew how to interpret them. But whoever had killed Guinevere Anglessey and conspired to implicate the Prince Regent in her murder hadn’t known about those signs, hadn’t known that their victim’s very body would betray them.
“Who else came to the inn that afternoon?” Sebastian asked aloud. “Do you remember?”
Amelia shook her head, her face confused as if she couldn’t quite understand where he was going with the question. “The usual crowd. The common room was full.”
“I’m not talking about the common room. I’m interested in anyone who might have gone upstairs.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. Like I said, we was busy.”
“You didn’t see a young gentleman? A handsome gentleman with dark eyes and light brown hair?”
“No. I told you, I didn’t see nobody!”
The girl was becoming agitated, her back held tight, her eyes wide. Sebastian eased up on her. “Several nights ago, some men unloaded a cargo into the inn’s cellars. One of them was a gentleman, a thin man with longish blond hair. Do you know who he was?”
“No.”
Sebastian pressed his hands flat on the tabletop and leaned into them, his arms straight. “The woman whose murder you helped to conceal was a marchioness. The Marchioness of Anglessey. Did you know that?”
Amelia looked up at him, her chest rising and falling with her quick breathing. “But we didn’t do nothin’!” She scrambled up from the bench and backed away from him. “We only did what we was told.”
“It’s enough to get you hanged. You and your mother both.” Sebastian’s gaze swept the huddled, silent children. “And then what will become of them?”
The woman beside the empty hearth let out a sharp cry. Sebastian didn’t even glance her way.
Amelia covered her mouth with one hand, her eyes squeezing shut. Then her hand slipped away and her eyes opened slowly. “I’ve seen him around the inn a few times,” she said, meeting Sebastian’s compelling gaze. “But I don’t know his name. I swear to God I don’t. He usually comes with his lordship.”
“His lordship?”
“They was both there that day. I thought you knew. He’s the one brought the cart.”
Sebastian searched her face, looking for signs of deceit. “You’re certain this other man was a lord?”
Her head nodded vigorously up and down. “A tall gentleman, with red hair. Lord…I can’t remember it exactly. It’s like that stone they use. You know the one? They use it for all the grand buildings.”
“Portland?”
“Yes. That’s it. Lord Portland.”
Chapter 60
Intent on intercepting the Home Secretary before he left Whitehall for the Regent’s fete, Sebastian directed his coachman toward Westminster.
The shadows were only just beginning to lengthen toward evening; the Regent’s first guests wouldn’t be arriving for hours. But the streets were already packed with crowds surging toward Carlton House in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the exiled French royal family and two thousand noblemen and -women arriving at what was being called the grandest, most extravagant sit-down dinner in the history of the European monarchy. By the time Sebastian’s carriage had passed Temple Bar and swung onto the Strand, the horses were barely moving. They sidled nervously in their traces, the lightly sprung coach rocked from side to side by the jostling crowd.
Sebastian threw open the door. “Get the carriage out of this,” he shouted to his coachman. “I’ll make better time on foot.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Leaving the carriage awash in a sea of ragged humanity, Sebastian threaded his way through a crowd that grew increasingly surly as he neared Somerset House. “They say they’s gonna let us in tomorrow to look at the place,” yelled one man. “Them nobs, they get to eat and drink their fill. All we getta do is look.”
“Hear, hear,” murmured a score of men near him.
Sebastian pushed on, aware of the sullen looks being cast his way. He found himself regretting the exquisitely cut coat of fine blue cloth, the skintight leather breeches and shining top boots that unmistakably marked him as a gentleman. Prinny had planned this fete as a grand celebration of the inauguration of his Regency. But it occurred to S
ebastian as he looked into the sweating, bitter faces around him that the Prince had misjudged his populace. People were angry, resentful. Tomorrow, the Prince would again leave London for Brighton. What better time, thought Sebastian, to stage a coup?
Someone up ahead began to sing, “Not a fatter fish than he/Flounders round the polar sea….”
An ugly chorus of jeers swelled through the crowd. A dozen more voices took up the ditty, “See his blubber and his gills/What a world of drink he swills….”
“Oy, who ye think yer shovin’ there?” growled a voice behind Sebastian.
Sebastian threw a glance over his shoulder. A dark-haired man with a craggy face, lips peeled back and jaw set in determination, was pushing his way through the crowd, his gaze fixed on Sebastian.
The mob surged, hemming in Sebastian. Craggy Face lunged, his right hand fisted around a dagger. Sebastian tried to feint to the left, but the crowd was too close. The searing edge of the blade slid across his ribs, slicing through coat, waistcoat, and shirt to nick the flesh beneath.
“Every fish of generous kind,” sang the throng, “scuds aside or shrinks behind….”
“Bloody hell,” swore Sebastian, bringing the edge of his hand chopping down on the man’s wrist. “You’ve ruined another of my coats!”
Craggy Face yelped. His fist reflexively opened to drop the knife into a scuffle of rough-booted feet.
“But about his presence keep,” roared the crowd, “all the monsters of the deep….”
The man grabbed for Sebastian’s arm. Cupping his left hand over his right fist, Sebastian drove his elbow back into Craggy Face’s stomach. The man’s eyes flared wide, the breath gusting out of his pursed lips as he doubled over. He stumbled back, careening into a carpenter’s apprentice in a paper cap.
“’Ey, what the ’ell?” the apprentice swore, his fists coming up.
Twisting around, Sebastian scanned the sweat-sheened, hostile sea of faces around him, lit now by the rich golden light of a fading day. His head swam with the close-packed odors of sunbaked stone and brick, of hot men and foul breath. He saw a clean-shaven man with dark hair and a patrician nose, and recognized him from the alley near the Norfolk Arms. Then Sebastian’s gaze locked with the hard gray stare of a man whose auburn head towered above the ragged crowd.
The Earl of Portland wore the dark, unassuming coat of a man who has dressed with the intent of not calling attention to himself. At his side Sebastian glimpsed a familiar, half-grown lad: Nathan Brennan from Ha’penny Court.
“Bloody hell,” Sebastian swore under his breath. How many more were there?
A fat baker with graying whiskers threw back his head and sang, “Name or title what has he? Is he Regent of the sea?”
Sebastian cast a quick glance up the Strand. The crowd ahead was too thick, too hostile for Sebastian to have any hope of pushing his way through it. He began to slip sideways, edging his way toward a narrow lane he could see opening up just beyond the alehouse on his right.
“By his bulk and by his size,” sang the crowd, their voices swelling toward the punchline, “by his oily qualities…”
Slipping between a fishmonger and a tattered begger, Sebastian reached the corner. The side streets here lay in shadow, the shops already shuttered out of fear of the restive throng. Without looking back, Sebastian darted down the lane.
“This or else my eyesight fails,” roared the mass of voices. “This should be the Prince of Whales!”
Sebastian heard a shout go up from behind him, followed by a chorus of angry protests from the crowd as his pursuers pushed their way forward.
Chapter 61
The cobbled lane stretched straight before him. Throwing a quick glance over his shoulder, Sebastian took the first alley that opened up to his left. Already he could hear the sound of running feet behind him. He quickly ducked down another byway.
He hoped to lose himself in the warren of mean streets that ran between Bedford Street and St. Martin’s Lane. But the area was unfamiliar to him. Dodging the low-hung, swinging sign of a shuttered gin shop, he rounded a corner and found himself in a cul-de-sac. Ancient, soot-stained brick buildings rose around him three and more stories. He was trapped.
He spun around, his breath sawing in and out of his heaving chest. Several doors opened onto the pavement, but all were padlocked from the outside. The slap of running feet grew nearer. Impossible to go back now.
His gaze fell to the arched entrance of the culvert at his feet. Once, the arch had been barred by an iron grill, but now the grill was rusted and broken, the bars twisted apart to make a space wide enough for a man to slip through.
He’d heard tales of men who made their living by scavenging the honeycomb of ancient viaducts and sewers that ran beneath the streets of London. Toshers, they were called. The work was dangerous. The vaults flooded quickly with the rising tide of the river into which they emptied, or even from a heavy storm that could pass unnoticed by those toiling away belowground. There were deadly gasses, too, that could overcome the unwary. Sometimes the floor of one tunnel would collapse into an older vault that ran below it, the sinkhole covered by deceptively flat expanses of silt that only betrayed themselves when a man stepped onto their smooth, deadly surface.
“This way,” someone shouted.
“Bloody hell,” swore Sebastian.
Rolling into the gutter, he squeezed his way through the grill, the rusted bars scraping his wounded side as he lowered himself into the shaft. He felt his coat catch on one of the bars and pulled it sharply, swearing again when he heard the cloth rip.
Scrabbling around for the iron rings driven into the brickwork of the shaft, he lowered himself into the darkness. Some six or eight feet down, his legs plunged into the void of a vault. He let go, dropping the last four or five feet into a noisome stretch of mud and muck that splashed beneath his feet as he landed.
The close, foul stench of the place pinched at his nostrils, roiled his stomach. Panting heavily, he paused to give his eyes time to adjust to the darkness and heard a voice from the street above say, “Where the devil did he go?”
Sebastian held himself very still.
“There,” he heard Portland say. “He’s gone down the culvert. See—” There was a dull twang of metal. “He’s torn his coat. You, Rory, fetch some lanterns, and be quick about it.”
“Sweet bleedin’ Jesus,” said a man’s gruff voice. “I ain’t goin’ down there. People die down there.”
“You fool,” spat Portland. “If we don’t find him and stop him, we’ll all be dead. Now get going!”
Setting his teeth against the stench, Sebastian slipped away from the shaft. He could see better now, his eyes growing accustomed to the dim light that filtered down through the occasional grates. He was in a brickwork tunnel that arched so low over his head he had to stoop to keep from scraping his crown against the curving roof. A slow trickle of water ran down the center of the tunnel, but he suspected it wouldn’t be enough to wash away all trace of his footprints. If Portland and his men could find lanterns, the direction Sebastian had taken would be all too easy to see.
The uneven, muck-covered bricks were treacherous beneath his feet. Moving as quickly as he dared, he followed the water downhill, hoping to come across another open grate that would give him access to the streets above. But he’d gone no more than a few hundred feet when he heard the sound of splashing and men’s voices behind him, followed by a wavering gleam of light. Rory had found lanterns far quicker than Sebastian would have expected.
“Devlin.” Portland’s voice echoed through the shadowy tunnel. “Devlin? I know you can hear me.”
Sebastian paused, listening.
“You won’t get far down here, Devlin. Not without a lantern. It’ll be dark soon. Is this what you want? To die in a sewer like a rat? For what? For a shrieking madman of a king and his bloated buffoon of a son?”
A silence fell, filled with the drip of water and the furtive scurrying of unseen rats’ feet.
Portland’s voice came again. “You know what we’re doing is right, Devlin. You saw what it was like up there. The people of England have had enough. They’re restless, angry. If we don’t act now, the people themselves will bring down the monarchy. Only, they won’t just sweep away this king, this regent. It’ll be the end of us all. We know what happened in France. Is that what you want? To see England a Republic? With a guillotine in Charing Cross and every man, woman, and child of noble birth a target?”
Sebastian could feel the damp chill of the place seeping up through the soles of his boots and wrapping around him like a fetid embrace. He glanced up at the rough bricks overhead and tried not to think about the crushing weight of the tons of earth above him.
“Join us,” Portland was saying. “You want what we want. A strong England, a strong monarchy. It can happen. All it takes is a few selfless, determined men in the right places. Tomorrow the Regent leaves for Brighton. We will simply seize control in his absence. Declare for Anne of Savoy and her husband, and present the world with a fait accompli. What can Prinny do? March on London? It won’t happen. What regiment would follow him? It’ll be the Bloodless Revolution of 1811. Join us, Devlin. It will be a historic moment.”
The Home Secretary fell silent.
“There!” said a man’s gruff voice, cutting through the darkness. “See the footprints? He’s headed toward the river.”
Sebastian splashed forward, heedless now of the noise he made. His feet slipped in the muck, his head brushing the rough bricks above. He could hear Portland and his men behind him, their feet slapping in the mud, their voices breathless. The feeble light from their lanterns bounced and flickered over the tunnel’s damp-stained walls, chasing him.
Rounding a long bend, he came upon another tunnel that angled away uphill to his right. This tunnel was both higher roofed and broader than the one he followed, and for a moment he considered taking it.