by S K Rizzolo
“Leave her be,” said the woman. “She has done nothing wrong.”
The keeper nodded respectfully, but said in sullen tones, “Begging your pardon, mum, but we don’t hold with troublemakers here. She was trying to rouse the others to mischief.”
“No indeed, she was not. On the contrary, her words brought them great comfort. It was…quite extraordinary. Leave us now. I would speak to her in private.”
He looked as if he meant to argue the point, but, thinking better of it, shrugged and turned aside. “Suits me, if you want to give the time o’ day to a lack-wit.”
When he was out of earshot, the woman said, “I am Mrs. Gore, and this is my son. Tell me your name, please. I’ve noticed you before, and I do not think you are quite like the rest.”
Rebecca thought about this. No, perhaps she was not, though she didn’t really want to set herself above her fellow inmates. She told the kind lady her name, then found herself speaking of her history. She could not bring herself to mention her own child, but she spoke of having been a nursemaid and of missing the little girl who had been in her charge. And she told of Dora and the cruel family who had ripped her infant from her arms and taken it away.
Bitterness twisted Mrs. Gore’s lips. “I, too, know what it is to lose someone.” She glanced at the boy, and Rebecca thought she meant to send him out of earshot, but instead she tugged him closer in a fiercely protective embrace.
“Ma’am?” said Rebecca.
“The boy’s father. He was once a respected solicitor, but the authorities had him imprisoned for a six-month. Do you wish to know his crime?”
At Rebecca’s grave smile of acquiescence, Mrs. Gore continued. “He joined a reform society, and, together with his brothers, composed a pamphlet pointing out that true equality for all Englishmen requires that we have no king, only men working together for society’s betterment. For this he was locked up like a common felon. The disgrace and the barbarous conditions destroyed his health, and he has not since recovered. His wife does not visit him. He remains here, alone and ill.”
“There is no kingdom, save that of God,” said Rebecca. “I am certain he did right to speak the truth.”
Mrs. Gore reached out to clasp her hand. “I should like to help you if I can, Rebecca.”
Chapter XIV
A voice hailed John Chase as he strode toward Bow Street public office. “Will you step in, sir?”
Ezekiel Thorogood’s portly frame hung precariously from the door of a hackney which, blocking the carriageway, had already incited a stream of shouts and curses from other drivers. The angle made the old lawyer’s leonine head appear disproportionately large and heavy with its tufting wisps of white-gray mane, like a benevolent gargoyle with hair.
“A moment, sir.” Stepping to the horses’ heads, Chase instructed the jarvey to move the equipage to one side.
“No need,” the man replied and smacked his lips insolently at his beasts.
Chase frowned at him, but climbed in the coach nevertheless. As soon as he settled in the seat opposite, the lawyer took up his walking stick and thumped the roof. Immediately, the coach lurched off, throwing Chase back against faded, dusty squabs.
Startled, he said, “What the devil? Where are we going?”
Thorogood regarded him placidly. “In good time, friend. What do you know of a Miss Rebecca Barnwell, the Virgin Prophetess?”
“Why do you ask?” returned Chase, a shade too evenly.
Undaunted, Thorogood chuckled, his blue eyes gleaming in their wrinkled beds of flesh. “I’ve my reasons. Do you intend to answer my question?”
“I think not, sir.”
They exchanged a long look. Chase thrust aside the leather curtains so that he could see out the window. The carriage had turned off Bow Street onto Long Acre, heading for Drury Lane. Traffic was light. They made quick time, wherever they were going. But the weather had worsened, the sky suddenly a dirty, roiling gray with lowered clouds.
Thorogood said, “By Jove, I see why you and Mrs. Wolfe inevitably come to blows. You wore a softer aspect when you dined at my board on Christmas Day. In brief homage to the spirit of the season?”
Chase smiled. “How fares your gracious wife?”
An entirely new expression crossed the old lawyer’s face. “She is hale, thank God. I shall tell her you inquired.” He cleared his throat. “Well, I shall answer your question, sir, and willingly. I ask about Miss Barnwell for the simple reason that today was the third time in as many weeks that her name has been brought to my notice. I don’t need to tell you that I sat up and took heed, for there is always significance in such coincidence, as I am sure you know very well.”
“Go on.”
“I read in the papers of her imminent intention to present the world with a Savior. Then my friend Buckler told me of a curious conversation he had with a lunatic in Bedlam.”
Chase checked the window again. They now traveled east on High Holborn, heading in the same general direction from which he had just returned. He quelled his mounting exasperation with difficulty. “Do you intend to tell me where we’re going?”
“I can’t help but feel a certain curiosity about this matter, Mr. Chase. And I should like to help you get at the root of it.”
“Oh?” he said with soft menace. “Is that why I am here, sir? Then I presume you have no objection to describing the third string in your chord of coincidence?”
“None at all. It was Buckler’s clerk Bob who told me that Miss Barnwell plans to appear this afternoon at an assembly on Clerkenwell Green. I had thought you might wish to accompany me to see what knowledge we can glean of her. The opportunity seemed too good to disregard.”
Gesturing with his stick, Thorogood added, “I see the weather’s turned nasty. No doubt we are in for a good drenching.”
***
When the hack rolled onto Clerkenwell Green, Thorogood disembarked to pay off the driver. Jumping down in his wake, Chase stood gazing around. The promised squall had arrived. Water poured from the sky as if to deluge any faint balminess one might hope for on this chilly April day. Already slick under Chase’s feet, the paving gave off that peculiar London odor, half coal smoke and horse droppings, half rain freshness. He pulled his greatcoat tighter and wondered how long it would take the damp to penetrate his knee.
Several hundred people, mainly women, had massed in the large open space in front of the sessions house. The grassless and treeless “green”—a storm had blown down the trees some years back—was hardly an inviting spot for human habitation just now. Yet the people near Chase, though dripping and miserable, remained patient as if they had waited a long time and were content to wait longer that they might be satisfied. Their yearning surged forth every so often like a vast, exhaled breath, then was indrawn as the watchers sank back.
“Did their mothers never tell them to come in out of the rain?” murmured Chase. As he spoke, he caught the hungry look of a woman who smiled into his eyes as if they shared a great secret. Hastily, he turned back to the lawyer.
“A good wetting rarely hurts anyone, sir.” Obligingly, Thorogood angled his umbrella so that only half of Chase was subject to the elements. “If we are lucky, it shan’t be long in any case. What say we listen to this prophetess and afterwards seek her out?”
Resigned, he nodded. North and uphill from Smithfield meat market, ancient Clerkenwell village was a place of brewers, gin distillers, and innumerable clock, watch, and mathematical instrument makers, set amongst the remnants of a medieval priory and nunnery. Once a fashionable retreat for those seeking fresher air, as well as the medicinal benefits of spring waters, the area had grown ever more begrimed by a terrible poverty. As they waited, Thorogood beguiled the time by musing on the prospect the inhabitants must once have had of verdant, wooded hills in every direction but that of the City.
Not ten minutes later it seemed they were to be rewarded for their patience, for a current ran through the crowd, the onlookers stirring and jostling
for position. At first, Chase could not account for this shift in mood until, craning his neck, he noticed the open door of a house on the north side of the green. From this door had emerged a huddle of black-garbed figures that crept beetle-like toward the rough wooden platform erected next to the session house steps. Willingly, the crowd parted.
Once the men in neat suits had ascended to the platform with their charge, the attendants fell back, and the prophetess Rebecca Barnwell stood alone, a slight figure with a thick farm woman’s neck from which fell a heavy cloak that shrouded the rest of her form. Even from a distance, Chase thought her slightly protuberant eyes looked like two smooth, wet stones. Apparently, the roar of her audience fell pleasantly on her ears, for she lifted one hand and smiled.
Initially, she stumbled over her words, appearing confused, though the audience remained quiet and respectful. But after a time, the thoughts poured forth, a curious mixture of scripture, exhortations to remain steadfast in faith, and finally a series of obscure references to the wise Virgins waiting to enter heaven with their Bridegroom, which Chase, at least, could not retrieve from his fund of Biblical knowledge gleaned in childhood. After a while, he occupied himself with studying her figure, trying to discern some hint of the supposed pregnancy.
At length, she pronounced, “As man once clamored for the blood of our Savior, so must we now join hand and heart to clamor for Satan’s destruction. Be ready and watch for the Coming of the Lord, for it is imminent.”
The spectators roared their approval, chanting, “Blood. Blood. Blood. Show us the Blood.”
Smiling, she shook her head, but offered something else in return. Tenderly, reverently, she unfastened her cloak, pushing it back to expose her distended belly. Chase scrutinized her surprisingly frail wrists but could not see whether they bore the marks of restraint Penelope had noted. Barnwell threw back her head and lifted her hands.
“What the devil?” hissed Chase.
The lawyer spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Stigmata. She has prophesied that she will one day be marked by Christ’s wounds—and bleed. A miracle of faith. There are many such recorded cases.”
“Of all the absurd, lunatic notions.”
Thorogood only shrugged. On the platform, the covey of men had surrounded the prophetess to hustle her down from her perch. Again the crowd opened to receive her as she made her way back to the house on the other side of the green. When she reached the entrance, she turned and gave one wave of her hand before she stepped inside, closing the door behind her. The watchers groaned their dismay.
“Friends,” shouted one of her honor guard who had remained on the platform, “disperse now. Miss Barnwell must take her ease before returning to her many duties. I know you would not disturb her for the world.”
Chase glanced around with some anxiety, for a London crowd was always a chancy thing, especially when it had been thwarted of its will in some way. But here and there he could see the men in black circulating to call out words of reassurance as the dazed spectators mopped wet cheeks or remained talking together in low, exultant whispers.
“Come, Chase. Let us set about our inquiries,” said Thorogood.
“Not just yet. It will be easier to make our way across the Green in a few minutes, and the prophetess will no doubt stay comfortably holed up in that house until the traffic has dispersed.”
They waited perhaps a quarter of an hour until one of the attendants moved in their direction, and Chase stepped in front of him. “John Chase, Bow Street. Take me to your mistress.”
Blinking, the man spoke in a broad country accent. “Well now, I don’t rightly know.”
“At once, if you please, sirrah,” said Thorogood sternly. “Mr. Chase has urgent business with Miss Barnwell. I promise she will be most grateful should you do her this service.”
The man didn’t look as if the prospect overwhelmed him with confidence, but before he could respond a woman bustled up. Wearing a high poke bonnet with feathers that shielded much of her face, she was dressed in a blue gown that to Chase’s eyes appeared expensive and fashionable.
“Go and bring the carriage, Robert. We shall be departing in a few minutes.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He escaped gratefully.
The woman would have swept on, but Chase said again for her benefit, “John Chase, Bow Street, madam. Would you be so good as to escort me to Miss Barnwell?”
“Bow Street? Take yourself off at once. We want no dealings with you.” She drew back the fringe of her shawl as if he might contaminate her.
Chase stepped closer to her, allowing menace to surface in his voice. “Nevertheless, you will do as I ask. It’s not for you to refuse an officer on the King’s warrant.” This, of course, was pure fabrication, but he wanted her to pause and take notice.
It worked. As she turned her head to gape at him in dismay, he got a full look at her countenance. Perhaps five-and-forty, she was quite astonishingly beautiful with heavy-lidded, startlingly blue eyes, a decisive nose, and a richly sensual mouth.
“Whom do I have the honor of addressing?” he asked after a moment when she still didn’t speak.
“I am Mrs. Gore, sir,” she replied with cold dignity.
Mrs. Janet Gore. The woman who had provided the character of the footman Dick Ransom and who, according to the prostitute Belinda, was madam at the Westminster brothel. Turning to Thorogood, who watched him with a puzzled air, Chase smiled. “You were saying about coincidence?”
Just then a tall man in a beaver hat shoved his way through the press, shouting something unintelligible as he went. As people apparently began to absorb his urgency, they let him through, and a moment later he stumbled up onto the platform.
Once there, he tore off his hat and cried out, “Friends! Miss Barnwell has been attacked! The devil has done his work. Our lady is most grievously injured…”
A cacophony arose as the crowd bellowed its horror and disapproval, every man or woman turning to his neighbor with the question “What of the child?” on everyone’s lips. Bent over now as if gasping for breath, the man on the platform was so completely surrounded that nothing more could be seen of him.
Removing his baton from his greatcoat, Chase reached out to grip Mrs. Gore’s arm with one hand and brandished the baton with the other. She went with him passively, her face reflecting a powerful astonishment and anxiety.
“Make way for Bow Street,” he yelled over the din, nodding to Thorogood to follow and trying not to slip on the rain-wet pavement. After a few paces, Thorogood lowered his umbrella, which he used, as Chase did his baton, to help force their path through what seemed a solid wall of flesh. Slowly, they made their way across the green to the house.
“What has happened?” cried Mrs. Gore when they reached the door to find the black-suited men huddled together, conferring in whispers.
One looked up. “We’ve sent for the doctor, ma’am. The woman as owns this house is with Miss Barnwell. We thought it best to leave her to a female. You’ll go in now?”
“No sign of the person who attacked your mistress? Where were the lot of you?”
The man turned bleak, terrified eyes on Chase, which widened when they dropped to the Bow Street ensign of office in the Runner’s hand. “We were right here, sir, outside the door. Never stirred for a moment. No one could have entered without we should see him, except one o’ course, and nothing we could do would stop him, I tell you. How can it be thought our fault, and yet for all that it’s true that we have failed her.”
“No, no,” broke in Thorogood. “We do not seek to impute blame to Miss Barnwell’s loyal friends. But who is this mysterious assailant?”
The old lawyer’s measured tone had its desired effect, for the attendant sucked in air and cleared his watery gaze with some rapid blinks. But it was, after all, Mrs. Gore who spoke.
“Satan, sir,” she said flatly.
***
Chase did not await permission to enter the house with Janet Gore, and, surprisingly, she
did not object. Leaving Thorogood to continue his conversation with the Barnwellians, Chase accompanied Mrs. Gore through a cramped entryway and down a narrow, mildew-redolent corridor into a parlor.
A female in a crumpled apron looked up as they entered, but did not pause in her ministrations to the prophetess, who lay, eyes closed, on the needlepoint settee. The injured woman was deathly pale, and now without the cloak, Chase could see her belly thrusting against the fabric of her gown. One limp arm held in place the blood-spotted cloth draped across her middle. Bending over her, Chase peered at Barnwell’s wrists and was not surprised to discern a fretwork of scars, whitish with age.
Mrs. Gore rushed forward. “Has she spoken, Mrs. Croft? Rebecca, can you hear me? It is I, Janet.” She gazed down upon the blood, turning so pale Chase feared she too might swoon. “The baby,” she whispered. “Oh, dear God, someone must help the baby.”
“Here. Sit down for a moment, ma’am.” Chase led her to a chair some distance away, then turned back. “Mrs. Croft, is it? John Chase, Bow Street. I believe this is your house, ma’am? Tell me what you know of the attack.”
“Why nothing, sir, beyond what you see with your own eyes. She came in smiling, pleased by her speech and the love of her people. I bid her step into my parlor while I went below to make tea. When I brought it up, I found her on the floor. I gave a little screech, and her men friends heard me and ran to help me lift her.”
“Miss Barnwell never cried out?”
“No, sir, not so I heard.”
As Mrs. Croft leaned over to rinse her cloth in a bowl, several drops of water splattered the gleaming wood box that sat atop the table. Veneered in costly Brazilian rosewood and inlaid in brass with a fleur-de-lis and dot design at the corners, it looked as out of place in this room as a peacock in a chicken yard.
“Does the writing box belong to Miss Barnwell?”
Mrs. Gore stirred. “A gift from a supporter of our ministry.”