C. Harris: Who Buries the Dead

“A wise woman once noted that it is difficult to know the true sentiments of a clever man.”

Her small, dark eyes shone with amused delight. Then she shook her head. “Not so wise, given that I thought him another Colonel Brandon-staid, steadfast, and boring.”

“And how did Miss Preston receive this morning’s news?” asked Sebastian as they turned to walk along the garden path. “Do you know?”

“I don’t think she believes the reports in the newspapers either. But she is understandably relieved. She and Captain Wyeth plan to be wed as soon as possible, rather than wait for the passage of the customary twelve months of mourning.”

“Sensible. They’ve waited enough years already.”

Miss Austen glanced over at him. “I hear Lord Oliphant has disappeared.”

“So he has.”

“And you’re not going to explain any of it to me, are you?”

“No,” he said. “But I’m confident in your ability to use your imagination.”

Continuing down Sloane Street toward Chelsea, Sebastian turned his curricle to run along the square, then drove into the lane that led toward Bloody Bridge.

“What we doin’ ’ere again ?” said Tom.

The chestnuts snorted and tried to shy as Sebastian guided them across the bridge and into the fields that stretched away on either side of the rutted road. “I have an idea.”

He drove through market gardens fresh and green after the previous night’s rain, toward the tower of the small country chapel that rose above the elms and hawthorns of its churchyard. The way he figured it, Rowan Toop must have come upon Preston’s body not long after the killing and, in his terror, accidentally dropped whatever satchel contained the King’s head and coffin strap. The virger had obviously managed to retrieve the severed head. But he must have still been flailing about trying to find the coffin strap when he heard the approach of the young couple from the Rose and Crown. At that point, he had abandoned his search and-with the King’s head tucked under one arm-run in the only direction possible: across the bridge into Five Fields. Rattled by what he’d seen and terrified of being caught in possession of relics plundered from the royal chapel, Toop’s first instinct, surely, would have been to hide the item he’d hoped to sell to Stanley Preston.

And where better to hide a dead man’s head than in a churchyard?

A small, neoclassical structure, Five Fields Chapel was not old, having been built in the previous century. But its churchyard was already overflowing, for there never seemed to be enough room to bury London’s endless supply of dead.

After reining in beside the lych-gate, Sebastian handed Tom the reins and dropped lightly to the ground. “I won’t be long.”

Wandering paths overgrown with weeds and rampant ivy, past rusting iron fences and weathered headstones crusted with lichen, he found what he was looking for not far from the road: a neglected, crumbling tomb so old it was collapsing badly at one end.

Crouching down beside it, Sebastian peered into the tomb’s dank, musty interior. He could see decaying wood and the dull gleam of weathered bone, and a canvas sack thrust hurriedly out of sight by a frightened man who hadn’t lived long enough to retrieve it.

He lifted the sack from its hiding place to find the cloth wet from the previous night’s storm and stained a nasty greenish red. Working carefully, he untied the thong fastening. Then he hesitated a moment before peeling back the canvas to reveal an ancient severed head, the skin of the eerily familiar, oval face dark and discolored, the pointed beard still showing reddish brown.

But the hair at the back of the neck was stained black by old, dried blood and cut short in anticipation of the executioner’s blade.

Thursday, 1 April

“This is so exciting ,” said the Prince Regent, shivering with a combination of delicious anticipation and bone-numbing cold. He stood with Dean Legge, his brother the Duke of Cumberland, and two boon companions in the newly constructed passage that led down to the royal vault beneath St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. “But. . are you quite certain I won’t fit inside the vault itself?”

Charles, Lord Jarvis, stood near the crude entrance to Henry VIII’s small burial chamber. “I’m afraid not, Your Highness. The tomb is less than five feet in height and only seven by nine and a half feet wide. And with three burials-one of them extraordinarily large-there is barely enough room for Halford and the workman cutting an opening in the coffin’s lid.”

“They should have thought to build a larger chamber,” grumbled the Prince. Then excitement overcame the minor bout of petulance, and he brought up his clasped hands to tuck them beneath his chin. “Oh, I do hope the body is complete.”

“I fear the chances of that are unfortunately slim, Your Highness,” said Jarvis. “You must prepare yourself for the possibility that Charles’s head was in all likelihood not buried with his body.”

He nodded to Sir Henry Halford, the president of the Royal College of Physicians and a fawning sycophant who knew precisely where the real power in the realm lay.

The laborer-well paid to keep the truth of that day’s events to himself-stood back.

“I do believe. . Yes, I do believe. .,” said Halford, prolonging the suspense as he carefully separated the sticky folds of the coffin’s cerecloth.

“Yes?” Eager to see, the Prince thrust his head through the vault’s entrance, his bloated body effectively blocking everyone else’s view of the proceedings. “Is it there? Is the head there?”

“It’s here, Your Highness. Just look!” said the physician, smiling in stunned triumph as he held aloft the unexpectedly wet, dripping head of the long-dead King.

They buried Jamie Knox on a misty evening in the elm-shaded, medieval churchyard of St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, in the shadow of the moss-covered wall that backed onto the yard of the Black Devil.

Afterward, Sebastian stood alone with Hero beside the stark, turned earth of the new grave, his hat in his hand and his head bowed, although he did not pray. He could hear the raucous call of a blackbird somewhere nearby, smell the pungent odor of damp loam and old stone.

He said, “I’ve been thinking of making a trip up to Shropshire, to take the mechanical nightingale to Knox’s grandmother.” There was no need to state the other reason-perhaps the main reason-for his desire to visit the place of Knox’s birth.

Hero looked over at him, her eyes solemn and knowing. But all she said was, “I’m sure she would like that.”

He reached out to take her hand. “Will you come with me?”

“If you want me to.”

“I want you,” he said, his throat tight with emotion as a gust of wind shuddered the trees overhead and sent a scattering of leaves spinning down to lie pale and shriveled against the cold, dark earth.