The Devlin Diary

by Christi Phillips

  “I don’t know, but we can try.” Strathern silences any objections Hamish may have with a stern look.

  “I’ll send someone for her as soon as I’ve spoken to the priest at St. Clement’s.”

  There is nothing more to say. She gently brushes the hair away from Lucy’s face and chokes back a sob. Each time she witnesses death she is reminded anew how changed a body is once the soul has flown. The contrast between life and death is most apparent in those of tender years, as if when we age and lose the vital spirits of youth the distinction between this world and the next lessens and fades. And though she knows this Lucy of eternal repose is not really Lucy, she leans over and presses her trembling lips against the girl’s cold forehead.

  “May I see you out?” Edward asks. He walks Hannah to the anteroom and takes her cloak from the peg so that he may drape it over her shoulders. Outside, the rain is still falling. “I’ll have my coach take you home.”

  “I’ll make my own way, thank you.” By declining his offer, they both know she is saying no to more than that. When Hannah meets Edward’s eyes, he shakes his head as if he doesn’t believe her.

  “I must see you again.”

  Even now, face-to-face and alone, Edward says nothing about the status of his engagement, only that he wants to see her. Does he truly believe she will be his mistress? It would be no life for her; it would be unacceptable, really. That he finds it acceptable must mean that he does not love her in the way she imagined. The thought creates a pain in her chest that leaves her nearly breathless. Sorrow she’ll have to live with, now and forever.

  “Dr. Strathern—” With her formal address, Hannah puts more distance between them. “I see now that I have made many mistakes. Please let us not make another.”

  He leans toward her, his brow knit with confusion. “But we must see each other again—if for no other reason than to discover who is responsible for the murders of your father and my uncle.”

  She places her hand, softly but firmly, upon his chest, allowing him no closer. “Seeing each other will not necessarily help us find answers. What happened the other night should not have happened.”

  “Do you regret it?”

  Of course I regret it, she wants to say. I’ve fallen in love with you. “Don’t you?”

  “I cannot say that. I cannot say I regret it.”

  “Yet you are engaged to be married, Dr. Strathern. I will not see you again. If I discover anything that can help our mutual cause, I will write to you.”

  The depth of her resolve surprises him. He nods once, slowly, as if he does not completely comprehend, but he is a gentleman and presses no further. She raises her hood and heads for the door.

  “Mrs. Devlin,” he calls as she departs. “May I attend her funeral?”

  Something akin to a smile briefly haunts her lips. “That would be kind of you. I fear there will not be many people there.”

  Mrs. Wills’s wide, bony shoulders hunch forward, quaking with the cadence of her grief. Her openmouthed grimace buckles the sharp planes of her face, squinting her eyes until they’re little more than two swollen red crescents. The wail that issues from her lips is the primordial howl of a mother for its young. To see the starched, matriarchal Mrs. Wills collapsing under her own bereavement is almost as painful as the source of the sorrow itself. Next to her, Hester stands mute, frozen in her desolation, tears streaming down her face.

  Of all the times Hannah has had to relay the sad news of someone’s passing, this is by far the worst. She feels like the Grim Reaper for being the harbinger of so much anguish to the people she loves; and she is crushed by the possibility that they blame her for Lucy’s death as much as she blames herself. She lowers her face and presses her fingertips against the bridge of her nose. But the throbbing pain that started behind her eyes this morning has reached deep inside her skull, beyond appeasement from such a simple effort at relief.

  “How?” Mrs. Wills manages to say. “Why?”

  The how, at least, is straightforward. “It appears she has taken her own life.” This is, of course, no comfort to the goodwife or maidservant—their keening grief becomes all the more pronounced. The why is more difficult. “She and this young man must have parted ways or fallen on hard times.”

  “Then why didn’t she come back here?” Hester cries.

  Hannah shakes her head. “I wish I knew.”

  Mrs. Wills reaches out her long arms and pulls Hester into her chest, cradling her as if she were still a child. Hannah wishes she could join them; wishes she could be so consoled. Instead she rises from the kitchen table.

  “I’ll tell my mother,” she says.

  But when she reaches her mother’s room, Charlotte is happily playing with a black-haired poppet that was once Hannah’s own, and singing to herself in a sweet, breathy voice. Would she understand if Hannah explained it to her? What would be the purpose? Hannah cannot bear making her mother unhappy, too. Are there not enough oppressed and sorrowful spirits in the house?

  Hannah turns away to the stairs. With each step she feels a stab of pain, reaching deep and burning hot behind her bleary eyes. From habit she walks to the workbench in her room and the vial of laudanum waiting there. The amber glass is cool and smooth in her palm. Simply holding it is a comfort of sorts; but she knows now that she cannot be comforted. There is no consolation to be found in this bitter liquid. She has used opium to dull her pain, and it has dulled her senses as well. If she had been more attentive, more observant, she might have foreseen Lucy’s involvement with this young man; she might have prevented her from making such an ill-considered choice.

  She grips the vial hard, as if to crush it in her hand, then throws it across the room, where it shatters against the wall, leaving a ragged stain as dark as dried blood.

  20 December 1672

  For as long as he can remember, he’s believed that what he wants is exactly this, the continuation of the life he’s always known. But as Edward stands up from the Cavendishes’ dinner table and holds out his arm to Arabella, he is struck and disconcerted by the dull repetitiveness of his quotidian routine: the requisite formality of the midday meal; the polite, empty conversation; the short promenade to the withdrawing room. As he walks with his fiancée in measured pace behind his future in-laws, he cannot suppress an image of himself as a harnessed dray horse trudging unimaginatively along in well-worn traces. In the withdrawing room they will spend an hour or two in each other’s company for no other reason than that this is how people of quality organize their days.

  The Cavendishes’ withdrawing room is stiflingly familiar, not only because he has visited almost daily since his return from Paris but also because there is nothing within its tastefully and expensively well-appointed walls that hints at originality or invention. It is strangely austere, in spite of its efforts to the contrary: bright daffodil yellow damask-covered walls, gilt-framed Venetian mirrors, a ceiling swarming with pink-cheeked putti. Arabella and her mother sit down in their usual place on the French-blue silk settee. Sir William lowers himself into the large wingback by the fire, stretching out his gouty ankles and nestling his head into the crook of the chair. He’ll be asleep before the servants arrive with the wine and the fruit. Edward gravitates to the armchair nearest the window, where he can peruse the newest additions to Sir William’s library, stacked on a nearby parquetry table.

  No one except Edward ever reads them. Today’s volume, Observations on Monsieur de Sorbiere’s Voyage into England, seems pleasant enough. He opens the book and runs a finger over its smooth ivory pages. Even before he attempts to read he knows he is much too distracted to do so.

  Opening the book makes him think of Hannah. Not because of something specific in the book itself but because he cannot do anything anymore without thinking of her. When he looks out a window, any window, he thinks of her: maybe she will suddenly, magically appear. When he ties his cravat in the morning and stares into the looking glass, he thinks of her: would she approve? When he rides in
his carriage he thinks of her, of how beautiful she looked the last time she rode with him (fatigued and distressed, yes, but with more grace and strength than any other woman he has ever known), and imagines what they would say to each other. When he rises in the morning, when he goes to sleep at night, when he is alone, when he is with others. Yes, even when he is in his fiancée’s withdrawing room, which he knows smacks of betrayal, but he is not quite sure whom he is betraying: Arabella, Hannah, himself?

  All entreaties to his conscience and reason are useless. His desire for her is a constant sensation, like unquenched thirst. Something as subtle as a reflection on the river or a dried leaf scuttling across a barren field can set his mind afire with thoughts of her. Much more than his mind, if he is truthful. He finally understands what the poets have always known: romantic love, even the most noble, selfless sort, is a type of sickness composed of longing and continual sexual desire. It is not a quiescent or especially pleasant state. Memories of their passionate embraces keep him awake at night and preoccupied during the day. He cannot forget the sensation of Hannah’s body entwined and joined with his, her deep reserves of passion. He cannot close his eyes without thinking of her lips, her eyes, her voice, the sound of her, the feel of her.

  He experiences her absence most intensely at the anatomy theatre. He can no longer be there without thinking that he may suddenly see her as he did the other morning, framed in the doorway, just come out of the rain and stricken with the news of Lucy’s death. Or as he did the first time, when she told him the story of her past. But more often he pictures her next to him, working with him; which to some may seem a morbid sort of fantasy, but the thought gives him deep and satisfying comfort, even joy.

  Only a few months ago he could not have imagined sharing his work with a woman. Unquestionably he would not have believed that he would help a female surgeon amputate a man’s leg. He knew that midwives and female bone-setters existed, of course, as well as skilled noblewomen who ably practiced physick among their families, servants, and country-folk, but he never expected to meet a woman whose education rivaled his own and was, he would readily admit, a finer physician than himself. As an anatomist he has few equals, but she is the better healer by far. He has always believed that a man’s vocation is something separate from his marriage and family. The thought of sharing his work, his life’s passion, with a woman—a woman who could be his wife—is one of the most extraordinary and revolutionary thoughts he has ever entertained.

  But it is not to be. She refuses to see him. She refuses, even, to accept his letters; in the past two days since he last saw her, he has sent four, each one more desperate and imploring than the last, all of which she has returned unread. She has given him no indication that she would change her mind about him if he was free. She is independent and proud. He can’t imagine her marrying for anything other than the purest reasons. Wealth and position, two congenital traits he has always relied upon to recommend him, seem to count for little in her eyes. Take away wealth and position, and what does he have left to offer? Only himself. It’s a humbling thought. It occurs to him that if she can so easily stay away from him now, after what has happened between them, then she may not love him: a notion that falls just short of causing him physical pain.

  “Edward!”

  He looks up to see Arabella and her mother staring intently at him. The annoyance he heard in his fiancée’s voice is quite evident on her face. She must have called his name at least once already. “That must be a very engrossing book,” she says with a hint of the pretty pout she makes when she feels Edward is not being attentive enough.

  “Not really,” he admits.

  The effect of his honesty in place of the expected politesse is immediate and profound; at least, it is as profound as anything is allowed to be in the stultifying ambiance of the Cavendishes’ withdrawing room. Arabella looks at him with widened eyes, as if she’s just suffered a mild shock. Her mother becomes suddenly, pointedly attentive, like a hound that’s picked up a new scent.

  “What is wrong with you?” Arabella asks.

  He wants to say that he can’t breathe, that he is suffocating, that he did not realize until now that he is being smothered alive.

  “Edward, what is wrong?”

  Instead of answering, he closes the book and returns it to its place on the table. He considers how odd it is, that the one person who’s supposed to know him best doesn’t have a clue to what’s troubling him. His entire life is in turmoil, yet she hasn’t noticed. No, that isn’t entirely fair to Arabella, or entirely honest. He has allowed his life to go on in its smooth, calm, unruffled way, even though he of all people knows that everything’s changed.

  He rises and crosses the room to stand in front of Arabella. He thinks of the many ways in which he has already disappointed her and the many others in which he is sure to. He will be doing her a great favor, although she may not think of it as such, at first. “Arabella,” he begins, brought to a halt by her innocent, questioning gaze. His fiancée is completely unprepared for what he is about to say. Lady Cavendish, however, senses what is to come. She regards him almost mockingly, angry yet resigned. Think of all the trouble you’re going to cause, she declares with only the slightest tilt of her head and the minutest jut of her chin.

  “Arabella,” he begins again. “May I speak to you alone?”

  Chapter Forty-five

  21 December 1672

  SOON AFTER ITS excavation, the open grave began collecting rainwater. For three days now the storm has continued unabated, and the pale wood coffin nestled within the hollowed-out ground is already half-submerged. The storm’s initial bluster has given way to a monotonous, melancholy sort of downpour, the type that makes Hannah feel as if it’s always been raining, as if it always will be. A dreary daylight the color of a ripe bruise broods over the churchyard. The bell tower and the Gothic spire of St. Clement Danes stand out ominously against the sodden sky.

  The priest holds the prayer book so close to his face that she can see almost nothing of his countenance except for two shaggy black eyebrows, which rise and fall as he speaks. He is a Welshman with pockmarked skin and a timid manner whose voice is barely loud enough to carry across the gravesite. Nevertheless he drove a hard bargain before agreeing to bury Lucy face up, with her coffin oriented east to west, so that she might rise up with the other saved souls come Judgment Day and take her place in heaven. Mr. Ogle too had to be paid. He leans on a shovel at the foot of the grave, near a mound of fresh earth that’s already turned to mud.

  Hannah strains to hear the priest’s recital. “Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery,” he says. “He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not…”

  She keeps a protective arm around her mother, who whimpers and sobs. She suspects Charlotte knows not why she is crying, only that the churchyard frightens her. Hester and Mrs. Wills stand nearby, huddled together for warmth. They both appear stunned, as if they have no more tears left to shed. Edward looks on from the opposite side of the grave. They are the only mourners present. Although Hannah made a generous donation to St. Clement Danes, the cuts on Lucy’s wrists proved difficult to conceal and rumors of her suicide spread throughout the parish. It isn’t the rain that’s keeping the other parishioners away.

  “We have entrusted our sister Lucy Harsnett to God’s mercy, and we now commit her body to the ground,” the priest continues, “in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life…” Once the burial rites are concluded, he leads them quickly through the Lord’s Prayer and the final amen. Everyone except Edward is shivering with cold. Ogle begins shoveling mud into the grave, where it lands with a splash and a sickening thud, like a weighted body heaved into a river.

  Mrs. Wills discreetly leads Charlotte away as Edward makes his way over to Hannah. Before he says a word, his eyes search her face; discovering, she imagines, all the subtle and not so subtle signs there
.

  “You are unwell,” he states simply.

  “Not precisely, Doctor, but I have taken your advice. I’ve stopped using laudanum.” Three days now. Countless times she has longed to take refuge in it, but she has resisted. Her headache has been as unrelenting as the rain. She feels as though she’s hardly slept, but she has dreamt. Strange, disquieting dreams.

  “But you’re suffering, I can see.”

  With a single glance that encompasses Lucy’s grave, her goodwife, mother, and maid, she shrugs and says, “Does it matter?”

  “Yes, it matters. How long are you going to punish yourself?”

  She makes no answer.

  He lowers his voice. “You are not to blame for Lucy’s death.”

  “How can you be so certain? You hardly know me. Perhaps I’m a monster.”

  “Lucy made her own decisions.” He lowers his voice. “Why have you not answered my letters? There is something very important I must—” He breaks off in midsentence, his attention captured by something on the other side of the churchyard. Hannah turns just in time to see a figure slipping behind Ogle’s cottage and out of sight.

  “It’s Thomas Spratt,” Edward declares and races across the yard after him. Hannah follows, with Hester not far behind. By the time she rounds the corner of the cottage, Edward has the young man collared and one arm twisted behind his back. His felt hat has fallen into the mud, and his blond hair quickly darkens in the rain.

  Not only rain but tears also wet his face. He’s clearly overwrought, too much so to attempt to break free. Edward pushes him up against the cottage wall. “You have much to answer for, young Mr. Spratt.”

  Even if Hannah didn’t recognize him as the young man she saw the girls talking to weeks ago, she would know who he was just by the dumbstruck look of calf-love on Hester’s face. He does not appear to be the sort of boy who would lure Lucy away from home; but if he did not, why is he here, and why was he hiding?