Lady of Ashes (31 page)

How strange. Susanna had never shirked from a dead body before. Surely a skin disease wasn’t enough to frighten the girl. She shook her head. How very little she understood about children.

She lifted Mrs. Atkinson’s dangling arm and placed it back on the bed before rolling the moth-eaten blanket down farther. The woman wore a typical ivory nightgown with lace details at the neck and wrists, although it was bunched up around her thighs. There were more of the round, decayed spots farther down on her legs. Was it some kind of unusual rash? Had Mrs. Atkinson scratched the bumps to the point that her nails had broken the skin and dug small holes?

It didn’t seem likely. Yet the doctor had seen her and declared nothing out of sorts. If a doctor found a death to have been the result of natural causes, an undertaker was in no position to suggest an autopsy. Dr. Beasley’s findings were unquestionable, unless the family requested an autopsy.

Violet continued looking at the round holes on Mrs. Atkinson’s legs, trying to puzzle out what they were. At least Susanna’s teeth had stopped chattering, and she was sitting quietly in the corner.

She continued puzzling over it while preparing Mrs. Atkinson’s body, working as best she could to give the poor woman a flesh-tone color to her skin and arranging her hair into something more fashionable than the long tendrils that were matted under her body. Finally she gave up thinking about it. She was no doctor.

As she and Susanna prepared to leave, the landlady rushed to greet them again and accompany them down the stairs to the door.

“I know we all feel better now that Mrs. Atkinson is ready for visitors. Everyone here will want to pay their respects, and I’m sure Mr. Atkinson will appreciate what you’ve—”

“Mrs. Saunders, you say Dr. Beasley determined no autopsy was necessary on Mrs. Atkinson?”

“That’s right. He said he saw no sign that it was anything other than some unfortunate illness she must have had. He was a very nice gentleman, very kindly with such a gentle manner. If I wasn’t still so attached to my Martin, gone all these years but still my one and only—”

Martin had undoubtedly been talked into an early grave. “Thank you, Mrs. Saunders. Mrs. Atkinson is prepared. When will her husband be here? Shall I take possession of her until that time? I can send one of my assistants around with a hearse.”

“Oh no, he’ll be here tonight and wants to see her himself. Maybe you can return tomorrow to see what arrangements he wants to make?”

“I’ll do that.” It would be an excellent opportunity to discuss with him what she’d found and recommend that he ask for an autopsy on his poor wife.

It was a wasted trip. When Violet arrived the next day, Mrs. Saunders explained—at great length—that Mr. Atkinson had come in a large carriage in the middle of the night and whisked his wife away to be buried back in York.

How very curious.

V
iolet stared at the letter in her hand, which had arrived during the morning post as she ate breakfast. Finally Graham had communicated with her, but the contents of his missive made her stomach roil.

Really, Graham?

She reread the letter. There was no inkling of an apology in it.

“So let me understand this, husband,” she said aloud to the walls of the drawing room. “You deceive me, abandon me, and leave me to fend for myself, and now you instruct me to further ruin my life? I believe I’ll manage quite well on my own, thank you. Nothing will ever, ever make me part with Morgan Undertaking.”

With that, she angrily shredded the letter in her hands and threw the pieces into the fireplace, deciding as she did so not to share the fact that she’d received it with anyone.

Not even Sam.

 

 

 

Violet was surprised to receive yet another summons so soon from the queen. This time, she took Susanna along with her.

The servant who came to escort her looked askance at Susanna. “I’m not sure Her Majesty wished to see both of you.”

“The queen has nine children of her own. I imagine she would enjoy meeting a well-behaved girl like Susanna.”

The servant seemed doubtful, but permitted it.

Violet should have paid attention to his hesitation, for the queen was not at all pleased that Violet had brought Susanna along.

“Mrs. Morgan, who is this, your daughter?”

“Not exactly. She’s an orphan from a workhouse that I found. Or rather, she found me. She’s my apprentice now.”

“Like
Oliver Twist
.”

“Except that she’s like a daughter to me.”

“I see.” Her tone suggested that she didn’t. “Perhaps she would like to play with one of the palace dogs.” The queen rang a bell, and a servant appeared to take Susanna away to play with the royal dogs, a ménage of spaniels, terriers, and greyhounds. At the same time, a maid appeared with a tray heaped with sandwiches and cakes, along with a pot of tea and cups. She poured two cups and silently disappeared.

“Help yourself, Mrs. Morgan. Our appetite has not quite recovered yet.” Indeed, the queen was still pale and ashen.

Violet nibbled at a smoked salmon sandwich. It was delicious.

“You are probably wondering why we called you back again so soon.”

“I am honored to be called, no matter what the reason.”

“You sound like one of my ministers, Mrs. Morgan. Come, have we not had frank conversation in the past?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“I’ve been reflecting upon our last conversation, and realized what a sympathetic soul you are. You truly understood our pain, and shared our deep and abiding grief. The prince was correct in his assessment of you.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“This is why we knew you would enjoy another opportunity to reflect on the prince consort’s passing and the momentous occasion surrounding it.”

Unfortunately for Violet, the queen wished to go over the funeral once more in fine detail, even to the point of asking how well polished the mourners’ boots were.

This was going to require more sandwiches in order to maintain fortitude.

After an hour of this, a servant scratched at the door. “Dr. Jenner to see you, ma’am.”

“Dr. Jenner, you have an uncanny talent for appearing when Mrs. Morgan is here. Come, we are having the most pleasant
tête-à-tête
about our dear prince. Join us.”

Jenner poured himself a cup of tea before sitting down and crossing his legs. “Now, madam, please tell me you’ve not allowed Mrs. Morgan to disrupt your tranquility. I’ll not have it, you know.”

Victoria broke into a tremulous smile. “To the contrary, Dr. Jenner, she brings us great peace. We’re even considering offering her a place here, to work with Mr. Rowland.”

Violet nearly dropped her fourth sandwich. The pleasurable thrill at the thought of a royal appointment was immediately replaced with the terror of what such an appointment would mean. “Your Majesty, I—”

Dr. Jenner interrupted. “What ho, madam, are you reduced to finding comfort in dredging up gloomy doings? In walking in a black cloud? How can our great and noble queen recover her firm constitution by engaging in these conversations?”

“We find Mrs. Morgan to be a woman of gentle spirit. Despite her unladylike profession, she is quite devoted to our prince and her conversation is a balm to our soul.”

Jenner focused on Violet. “How long have you been an undertaker?”

“Almost ten years. I joined my husband in his business upon our marriage.”

“Have you any children?”

“None of my own, no.”

“That’s because of your unnatural work outside of your natural sphere of domesticity, my dear. The queen shares my aversion to women usurping the role of men.”

Unnatural?
“But I don’t—”

“We’ve made an exception for Mrs. Morgan,” Victoria said. “Our dear prince respected her.” The warning in her tone was unmistakable.

Dr. Jenner, however, seemed to take no offense. “The prince was always insightful and the greatest judge of character, wasn’t he, madam? Therefore, I now renounce my previous statement and offer my hearty welcome to our dear Mrs. Morgan.”

Was the man being sarcastic, or merely bluff and hearty?

“Thank you,” Violet said, unsure what else to say.

“Well, well, then, Mrs. Morgan, tell us more about what you do. Since the prince thought so highly of you, you must not be one of those unscrupulous types who starts a burial club that never pays when needed.”

“Of course not. Such practices are blights on my profession.”

“You pride yourself, then, on being a paragon among undertakers.”

“No, just a respectable tradeswoman.”

“Yes, quite. You’ve been recently involved with an American agent, haven’t you? No need to bristle, madam, I am merely wondering if you know whether their funeral practices equal ours.”

“Well, one thing I admire is that the Americans are widely using embalming techniques prior to burial. It extends visitation time and enables them to ship their soldiers home across great distances.”

“Interesting. Don’t you think that it’s unnatural, though, to commit a body to the earth when it is saturated in chemicals?”

There he was with that word again.

“Embalming preserves our loved ones. That’s all that matters to me.”

“Enough!” Victoria said. “Such talk is revolting. We insist that you take it elsewhere. Dr. Jenner, we’re sure Mrs. Morgan misses her daughter and would like to be reunited with her.”

Taking the queen’s direct hint, Jenner escorted Violet back to the reception room where she’d entered, his attitude more congenial now that he wasn’t near the queen, protecting her. As they walked, he spoke of his own profession, his investigations into causes of various fevers, and his opinion on how long the prince’s condition had existed prior to his diagnosis of it.

“The queen has named me her physician-in-ordinary now that Dr. Clark is retiring. I suspect a title will be forthcoming.”

“A singular honor for you, sir.”

“Yes, and my singular goal is making the queen well again. Somehow your depressing talk of her husband’s death is pleasing to her.”

“I don’t know how helpful it is to her, though, Dr. Jenner. Does it seem to you that the queen is overly . . . obsessed . . . with her husband’s death and funeral?”

“She was deeply in love with him.”

Violet tamped down her impatience. Did the man think an undertaker had never witnessed a widow passionately committed to her recently deceased husband? “I know the queen and the prince consort were very devoted to one another, but most widows return to some form of a normal life within a couple of months, no matter how deep the mourning. The queen seems mired in an unhealthy way, don’t you think?”

“I think you have no concern in the matter, Mrs. Morgan. I have the queen well in hand.”

The subject was closed with the finality of one of Mr. Dickens’s thick books slamming shut. Dr. Jenner left her in the reception room to wait for Susanna.

When Susanna was brought to her, she carried a new doll—a gift from one of the attendants who had watched over her—while a yipping pack of puppies followed at her feet. Susanna was entranced by her visit to the castle and talked at Mrs. Saunders speed about everything she’d done at the castle, finishing up with a plea for a dog.

“Susanna, what would Mrs. Softpaws think?”

This caused the girl consternation and she ceased that line of thought, returning instead to a monologue about the sandwiches and cakes she’d had during their visit, a topic in which Violet could happily participate.

 

 

 

Controlling his great desire to shiver in the frigid air, Graham peered through the twin telescope lenses at the darkening scene in Sewell’s Point before handing the brass and copper telescope to Fletcher. “It’s been two hours since the final cannon firing. I think it’s over for good.”

Fletcher looked through the lenses at the place where a sea battle had been raging just a few hours earlier. “What do you think? Is it the North or the South that’s won?”

“Hard to tell.” Graham and Fletcher had kept
Lillian Rose
hidden from the fracas, which had started earlier the previous day, but watched everything from the deck through their telescope. An ironclad ram, CSS
Virginia,
accompanied by several wooden ships, entered Hampton Roads, which connected Virginia’s James River with the Chesapeake Bay, in an obvious intent to smash through the blockade. The air was soon filled with smoke, shouting, and a never-ending barrage of cannon fire. The brothers and their crew had rocked gently in the water as they watched chaos and destruction from a distance, the rhythmic slapping of water against the hull punctuated by tremors as each combatant fired upon its enemy. Even with the telescope, the smoke had prevented them from seeing much.

Surely it was as blazing hot in the battle as it was bitterly cold from their vantage point, especially now that the sun had set.

After the debacle with Samuel Harper, and with Queen Victoria’s recent prohibition against the export of armaments to the United States, Graham and Fletcher decided to stick to what Fletcher knew, which was liquor. They off-loaded most of their original cargo of weapons on several passing commerce raiders, then sailed to Jamaica with their profits to buy sugar to exchange for rum in Boston, then sailed down to Hampton Roads to sell the rum to the Confederate army, since there was no safe way to return to England with it, not with the government succumbing to the Americans’ demand to hunt them down like they were rabid dogs. The brothers had originally planned to slip through the blockade themselves after dark with their load of rum they’d picked up in Massachusetts, but the unexpected battle caused them to give the area a wide berth and hide to the east side of the fracas. Now the crew slept below while Graham and Fletcher kept watch.

Thus far in their adventures, they’d eluded any sort of notice on the seas, and now assumed that the British government had forgotten all about them.

Or perhaps they were simply too clever to be captured.

Graham gripped the rail tightly as he thought of his wife for the hundredth time that day. Had Violet received his letter? Had she done as he instructed and sold Morgan Undertaking? Was she back in Brighton with her parents?

With his free hand he scratched at his full beard. It had grown in quickly, and both it and his hair already had gray streaks in them.

Living a clandestine life took its toll on a man. Not that Fletcher seemed disadvantaged at all. Not a line on his face nor a wisp of silver anywhere.

Graham’s mind continued wandering over familiar territory. What would he do over again? Probably nothing. Things might have turned out differently if Fletcher hadn’t put his trust in Samuel Harper. Who could trust an American? And Violet’s carping over every little thing was enough to drive a man to Bedlam. If she’d been a better wife, maybe Graham wouldn’t have felt a need to actively involve himself in the affairs of North and South.

Surely his great misfortunes were Violet’s fault, weren’t they?

He wasn’t sure anymore. Living this scraggly, flea-infested,
ungentlemanly
life made him pause.

Fletcher elbowed him and pointed. “
Virginia
hasn’t fired in over an hour. I think she might be done.”