C. Harris: Who Buries the Dead

“Rage, or madness,” said Sir Henry.

“True.”

Sebastian went to study the ground near the bridge’s old brick footings. He carried no torch, but then, he didn’t need one, for there was an animal-like acuity to his eyesight and hearing that enabled him to see great distances and in the dark, and to distinguish sounds he’d come to realize were inaudible to most of his fellow men.

“What is it?” asked Sir Henry as Sebastian slid down to the water’s edge and bent to pick up an object perhaps a foot and a half in length and three or four inches wide, but very thin.

“It appears to be an old metal strap of some sort,” said Sebastian, turning it over in his hands. “Probably lead. It’s been freshly cut at both ends, and there’s an inscription. It says-” He broke off.

“What? What does it say?”

He looked up. “It says, ‘King Charles, 1648.’”

“Merciful heavens,” whispered Sir Henry.

Every English schoolboy knew the story of King Charles I, grandson of Mary, Queen of Scots. Put on trial by Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan cohorts, he was beheaded on 30 January 1649. Only, because the old-style calendar reckoned the new year as beginning on 25 March rather than the first of January, chroniclers of the time recorded the execution date as 1648.

“Perhaps it’s unrelated to the murder,” said Sir Henry. “Who knows how long it’s been here?”

“The top surface is dry, so it must have been dropped since the rain let up.”

“But. . what could a man like Stanley Preston possibly have to do with Charles I?”

“Aside from sharing the manner of his death, you mean?” said Sebastian.

The magistrate tightened his lips in a way that whitened the flesh beside his suddenly pinched nostrils. “There is that.”

A church bell began to toll somewhere in the distance, then another. The mist was beginning to creep up from the river, cold and clammy; Sebastian watched as Sir Henry stared off down the lane to where the oil lamps of Sloane Square now showed as only a murky glow.

“It’s frightening to think that the man who did this is out there right now,” said the magistrate. “Living amongst us.”

And he could do it again.

Neither Sir Henry nor Sebastian said it. But the words were there, carried on the cold, wild wind.

The smell of freshly spilled blood had spooked the horses so that Sebastian had his hands full as he turned the curricle toward home.

“Is that really an ’ead on the bridge?” Tom asked as they swung into Sloane Street. “A man’s ’ead?”

“It is.”

The tiger let out his breath in a rush of ghoulish excitement. “Gor.”

Small and sharp faced, the boy had been with Sebastian for more than two years now. Not even Tom knew his exact age or his last name. He’d been living alone on the streets when he’d tried to pick Sebastian’s pocket-and ended up saving Sebastian’s life.

More than once.

Sebastian said, “It belongs-or I suppose I should say belonged-to a Mr. Stanley Preston.”

Tom must have caught the inflection in Sebastian’s voice, because he said, “I take it ye didn’t much care for the cove?”

“I barely knew him, actually. Although I must admit I have difficulties with men whose wealth comes from sugar plantations in the West Indies.”

“Because they grow sugar?”

“Because their plantations are worked not by tenants, but by slaves-mostly Africans, although they also use transported Irish and Scottish rebels.”

They bowled along in silence until they’d passed the Hyde Park Turnpike and were weaving their way through the quiet, rain-drenched streets of Mayfair. Then Tom said suddenly, “If ye didn’t like ’im, then why ye care that somebody offed ’im?”

“Because even those who own West Indies plantations don’t deserve to be brutally murdered. Apart from which, I find the idea of sharing my city with someone who goes around cutting off the heads of his enemies somewhat disconcerting.”

“Discon-what?”

“Disconcerting. It makes me feel. . uncomfortable.”

“I reckon it was a Frenchman,” said Tom, who had a profound suspicion of foreigners in general and the French in particular. “They’re always cuttin’ off folks’ ’eads.”

“An interesting theory that certainly merits consideration.” Sebastian drew up before the front steps of his Brook Street town house. The oil lamps mounted on either side of the door cast a soft pool of golden light across the wet paving, but the house itself was dark and quiet, its inhabitants still sleeping. “Take care of the horses, then go to bed and stay there. It’s nearly dawn.”

Tom scrambled forward to take the reins as Sebastian dropped lightly to the pavement. “Ye gonna ’ave a lie-in?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t reckon I will,” said Tom, his chin jutting forward mulishly.

Sebastian grunted. The lad’s grasp of the concept of obedience was still rather shaky.

He watched Tom drive off toward the mews, then turned to enter the house. Moving quietly, he stripped off his clothes in the dressing room and slipped into bed beside Hero. He didn’t want to wake her. But the need to feel her warm, vital body against his was too strong. He carefully slid one arm around her waist and pressed his chest against the long line of her back.

Her hand came up to rest on his, and in the darkness he saw her lips curve into a soft smile as she shifted so she could look at him over her shoulder. “You were a long time,” she said. “Was it as bad as Sir Henry’s message led you to expect?”

“Worse.” He buried his face in the dark, fragrant fall of her hair. “Go back to sleep.”

“Can you sleep?”

“In a while.”

“I can help,” she said huskily, her hand sliding low over his naked hip, his breath catching in his throat as she turned in his arms and covered his mouth with hers.

He came downstairs the next morning to find Hero in the entryway wearing a hunter green pelisse and velvet hat with three plums. She was pulling on a pair of soft kid gloves but paused when she looked up and saw him.

“Well, good morning,” she said, her eyes gently smiling at him. “I didn’t expect to see you up this early.”

“It’s not early.”

She shifted to adjust her hat in the looking glass over the console. “It is when you’ve been up most of the night.”

She was an extraordinarily tall woman, nearly as tall as Sebastian, with hair of a rich medium brown and fine gray eyes that sparkled with an intelligence of almost frightening intensity. She had the kind of looks more often described as handsome than pretty, with a strong chin, a wide mouth, and an aquiline nose she had inherited from her father, Lord Jarvis, a distant cousin of the mad old King George and the real power behind the Prince of Wales’s fragile regency. Once, Jarvis had tried to have Sebastian killed-and undoubtedly still would, if he found it expedient.

“Another interview?” he asked, watching her tilt her hat just so. “What is it this time? Dustmen? Chimney sweeps? Flower girls?”

“Costermongers.”

“Ah.”

She was writing a series of articles on London’s working poor that she intended to eventually gather together into a book. It was a project that disgusted her father, both because he considered such activities unsuitable for a female, and because the entire undertaking smacked of the kind of radicalism he abhorred. But then, Hero had never allowed her father’s expectations or prejudices to constrain her.

She said, “Stanley Preston’s murder is in all the morning papers. Was he truly decapitated?”

“He was.”

She pivoted slowly to face him again, her eyes wide and still.