Bruce Alexander - Person or Persons Unknown

With the Raker’s brief appearance in court and the judgment passed upon him, I became the beneficiary of ten guineas in reward for his capture. The sum was brought me by Sir John in a leather pouch quite like the one in which Poll Tarkin had kept her treasure. He offered it to me with a warm smile, saying he wished it were more.

“In truth,” said he, “I should have said twelve or thirteen guineas would have been a fairer division, but so it was decided.”

“I am most grateful, sir,” said I, weighing the bag in my hand.

“Do you wish to count them?”

“No, sir, I take the members of Parliament at their word.”

“Then perhaps I ought take it downstairs to Mr. Marsden for safekeeping in the strong box. It is not wise having a large amount lying about, as you yourself have cautioned me.”

“With your permission, I will keep it by me. I have need of it.”

“Oh? Already have it spent, do you?”

“In a manner of speaking, I do, yes, sir.”

“Hmmm.” He mused for a moment. “Nothing frivolous, I hope?”

“No, indeed not.”

“Well then, keep it, by all means.” He went to my door, then turned back to me. “May I ask on what you have set your mind? Perhaps it is something with which we should supply you. Clothes … books — whatever is in our means, we try to give.”

“I know that. Sir John, yet this is something quite apart. Trust me in this, please.”

“Of course,” said he, and with a firm nod he left me.

I sat in bed, a book and the bag of guineas before me. In fact I did open up the bag and look inside, though I did not count the coins. I closed it up and tossed it back on the bed, then did I pick up the book that lay open before me. It was a copy of Mr. Goldsmith’s gentle romance. The Vicar of Wakefield, brought me as a gift by Lady Fielding that very morning; she had suggested he might autograph it for me when next I saw him. I delved into it immediately and found myself quite captivated by Dr. Primrose and his brood. Yet now, with the reward in hand so much earlier than I had expected, I found I was unable to concentrate upon the pages of the book, so impatient was I for Mr. Donnelly’s arrival.

The day before, I had told him all of my relations with Mariah — from my first glimpse of her as an acrobat in Covent Garden to my last meeting when she laughed, seeing me in woman’s garb. I left out nothing, not even my foolish fantasies of escape to the American colonies. Mr. Donnelly did not laugh at me, neither did he sneer. He told me that, years before, when he was a lad of about my age in Dublin, he had formed just such a fascination for a girl of the streets; that he had gone so far as to steal money for her from his father’s shop in hopes of reforming her; that it had all ended badly when a shop assistant was blamed for the theft, and young Gabriel was forced to confess. His father, far from outraged, had taken him in hand and managed to convince him that the girl wanted only his money, for each time she asked for a sum, whatever the reason, it always was greater than the last.

“He was right,” Mr. Donnelly had said to me, “for when I told her I could give her no more, she refused even to speak to me.”

“I cannot say it was different with Mariah,” said I then. “But to see a life wasted, then taken even before there be hope of change — where is the justice in that?”

“Life is not just, Jeremy. It is simply a space of time that is given us. We do with it what we can.”

“Even so,” said I, “I should like to do something for her.”

That something I wished to do I left unstated, though I had formed a plan in my mind which was contingent upon the receipt of the reward I had been promised. Now that I had been given it by Sir John, I hoped that indeed it might be accomplished.

Mr. Donnelly did in fact arrive not long after Sir John’s visit. And. after a cursory examination — nothing so thorough as he had given me the day before — he pronounced me “coming along nicely.”

“May I leave my bed and walk about? I should like to dress and eat dinner with the rest.”

“That perhaps, but no more for today.”

There was silence between us. Then did I pick up the bag of guineas and give it a jingle.

“I have received my reward,” said I, “ten guineas in all.”

“Would that it had been more,” said he. “Would that there were not another murderer to be caught.”

“Mr. Donnelly, I should like you to take this money and arrange for Mariah to be buried properly.”

“Are you sure you want to do this, Jeremy?”

“I am sure. Will it be sufficient?”

“Oh yes, if — There are some difficulties.”

I had foreseen that. “She is from Italy and would be of the Roman faith?”

“Yes, there’s that, but there are priests here in Lx)ndon. They have no church and are here more or less in disguise, you might say.”

“There is no burial ground?”

“There is a field up above Clerkenwell whose purpose is kept in strict secret. There are no markers and no monuments, but it is hallowed ground.”

“What, then, are the difficulties?”

“Well, first of all, she would have to be buried at night, unseen, and without much in the way of ceremony.”

“Yes, but in a coffin and put where she would wish to be laid to rest.”

“There is, however, the priest to be persuaded. I know none of them here, yet back in Dublin I would say one would have difficulty convincing a priest that a woman of her profession should be buried alongside those who had had a fair chance of dying in a state of grace.”

All that was somewhat beyond me, yet I caught the sense of it. “Perhaps,” I said, “if you were to say that her last act was to refuse one who would have her — might that not make a difference? Perhaps show she was on her way to bettering herself?”

“Oh, it might. Jeremy, I’ll see what can be done. More than that I cannot promise.”

Thus it came about that next evening I was in the back of an open wagon riding on my way to Clerkenwell. Mr. Donnelly had taken care of everything — rented the wagon and the team from a livery stable, hired an Irish teamster, and found a priest who would officiate at the burial. He had even engaged a woman to come into his surgery and wash and dress Mariah’s body in a suitable way for interment. At my request, no rouge or paint was used upon her face. I was granted one last look before the coffin was shut. She looked quite as she had that first time I had seen her as a young acrobat in Covent Garden when she had smiled at me and kissed my shilling so prettily. So it was she would be buried. Bending down, I kissed her on the forehead, yet I had no tears as the lid was fitted over the simple oblong box and nailed down by the teamster. Then did he and Mr. Donnelly carry the coffin downstairs. It was of no great weight. The teamster claimed he could have managed it on his own.

The two of them sat upon the wagon box, and I, meaning no insult certainly, upon the coffin. I was dressed in my best and wore that bottle-green coat which she so admired. All that marred my appearance was the bandage wrapped round my head. I had thought my hat might cover it, yet it did not. I had expected questions when Mr. Donnelly called for me at nightfall, and I appeared as if dressed for a ball. But neither my appearance nor my unstated destination were remarked upon by any in the household. I strongly suspected that Mr. Donnelly had acquainted them with the purpose of our mysterious trip. In any case, all I received from Sir John and Lady Fielding, and even from Annie, were sympathetic looks and courteous wishes for a good evening. It was better so. I had no wish either to make explanations or evade them.

The teamster knew the way. He had been recommended to Mr. Donnelly by the priest as one who had made the trip many times before and could be trusted to keep the location of the cemetery secret. Through the thin evening traffic, he moved the horses swiftly at a light trot. Yet even so, we went a considerable distance. On St. John’s Street, we passed through Clerkenwell and soon found ourselves alone on IsHngton Road, passing through open fields. Here there could be highwaymen out on the scamp, looking to rob us of whatever was left in that leather bag of guineas in Mr. Donnelly’s pocket. Yet before we met any such challenge, the driver slowed the team and turned it to the left to take us down a country road like unto any one of a dozen I had seen us pass along the way by bright moonlight. How he could have told this one from the others was quite beyond me.