The Masque of a Murderer (7 page)

When the service concluded, Will pecked her cheek and bid her farewell. Off to see one of his ladyloves, Lucy thought, eying him as he ambled away. As always, he had dressed on the fine side, looking more like gentry every day, and less like a smithy. A journeyman now, he no longer had to report to a master as he had when he was an apprentice. This meant he could set his own hours and work at his own pace, a fact of his life that Lucy very much admired.

On their way back to the printer’s shop, Master Aubrey halfheartedly asked them questions about the minister’s sermon. As head of the household, his duty was to make sure that all members of his family—in this case, his servants—were leading good and virtuous lives. That he was looking forward to his ale and a bit of stew was clear, however, because he accepted any answer they dutifully shared. When Lach solemnly informed him, with a mischievous glance at Lucy, that the most important thing he’d learned was that women should never be trusted, Master Aubrey did not even bat an eye. “Yes, yes, very good,” the printer had muttered, much to Lucy’s chagrin and Lach’s obvious delight.

Ladling out the stew, one of the few dishes she made truly well, Lucy told Master Aubrey about Jacob Whitby and the Quakers’ request that they publish the man’s last dying words. Naturally she didn’t say anything about his final wild accusation.

“I know that it can be dangerous to publish or sell Quaker tracts,” she added, watching the printer’s face. “I shouldn’t like to get us in trouble.”

“You shouldn’t like to get us in trouble,” Master Aubrey repeated, looking heavenward. “I suppose I should be grateful that my apprentices don’t
want
to get me in trouble.”

“No, sir,” Lucy said, still trying to gauge what the printer was thinking.

From across the table, Lach grinned. Playfully, he made a sign of a knife across her throat.
You are in for it now,
he mimed.

Master Aubrey took a bit of his bread. “How’d you haggle?”

Lucy smiled. Though his tone was even, she could tell he was interested now. Her years dickering over prices with merchants at market had finally come in handy. She and Sam had had a quick conversation while the other women were still consoling Esther Whitby. She named the sum, a goodly amount. “They want thirty copies to distribute among themselves. The rest we could sell.”

“Just so, just so,” Master Aubrey said, trying to keep his mouth from twitching.

Lach mouthed a word at her when the master wasn’t looking. She just grinned.

“I was thinking, sir,” she said to Master Aubrey as she ladled more stew into his bowl and added a touch more salt, just the way he liked it. “Perhaps I could get a little more for the story. Find out more about Jacob Whitby’s early life, talk to his widow. Add a little flesh to the bones, as it were. If I called on her today, it should not keep me from any work I need to do tomorrow.”

Lucy held her breath. Truly, she was not supposed to be doing work on the Lord’s Day, but she also knew from the yawns that the printer kept attempting to hide that he would far rather take a nap than continue to read the Bible aloud, as he really ought. She was not too surprised when he waved her off with his approval, much to the avid disappointment of Lach.

5

Standing now at Esther Whitby’s front door, Lucy hesitated. Normally she would use the servants’ entrance, except on the few occasions she was accompanying a member of the Hargrave family somewhere. But the Quakers seemed to eschew such formality. With a quick decisive knock, she rapped on the door, holding forth a small jar of stew intended for Jacob’s widow, which she had ladled out under Lach’s annoyed gaze.

From within she could hear some muffled comments before the door was cracked open. Theodora peered out cautiously. Seeing Lucy, she frowned. “Yes?”

Lucy held up her heavy basket with a slight smile. “I’ve brought a good warming stew for Mrs. Whitby,” she said. “I thought she might be in need of some nourishment.” When Theodora did not say anything, Lucy faltered even further. “I thought it would be all right to come here, but perhaps—?”

To her relief, the Quaker opened the door wider, although she did look furtively up and down the street before she moved aside. “Come in,” she said.

After Lucy had stepped inside, Theodora shut the door firmly behind her. The house was warmer than it had been the day before, a fact for which Lucy was grateful. The long walk in the slush had made her toes painfully numb, although she would never admit as much to anyone. Her brother had given her new shoes for her birthday, back in October, and with all the walking she’d done, the timber heels were starting to wear down. Still, they looked nice, and they were among the finer things she owned. She smiled gratefully at Theodora.

Theodora did not return her smile, and instead appraised Lucy from head to toe. “There are few who would venture to a Quaker household alone,” she said, taking the basket from her and pulling out the jar of stew. Lucy wanted to protest but instead just watched as Theodora opened the lid and took a deep sniff.

“Might have brought some for the rest of us,” Theodora commented, refastening the lid. Still holding the jar of stew in her hands, she handed the basket back to Lucy and opened the door. “Good day to thee.” And somewhat more reluctantly, “God bless.”

Her response was more abrupt than Lucy had expected. “Perhaps I may pay my respects to Mrs. Whitby myself?” she asked, not wishing to leave the house without speaking to Jacob’s widow. “Master Aubrey would like to print this piece about Jacob Whitby, but he said it would sell better with more details about his early life. Before he became a Quaker. Sinner turned saint, and all that.”

Theodora’s features hardened noticeably. “I should not like to bother Esther right now.” She took a step forward, forcing Lucy backward so that she was on the threshold and practically back onto the front walk. With her hand on the knob, she clearly was about to shut the door in Lucy’s face. “I will extend thy respects to her.”

As Theodora swung the door shut, Lucy put her foot out to stop it, still smiling in what she hoped was a calm and friendly way. “I spoke to your husband about this yesterday.”

Theodora frowned at her more fiercely. Lucy did not know what the Quaker would have done if Sam Leighton had not appeared then behind his wife. Clearly he had heard their exchange.

“Theodora,” Sam said, “Sister Joan and I believe that it was Divine Providence that Sarah brought Lucy along yesterday. I believe the Spirit is moving through her, to bring Jacob’s last words to light. It is God’s Will that this lass print his testimony.”

Theodora sighed as she deferred to her husband. “I will alert Esther to thy presence. Come with me.”

Lucy followed Theodora just as she had done the day before. As she moved through the great hall, she could see no evidence of mourning or death. No crepe silk hanging in the shuttered windows, no black cloth draped over mirrors. Although, Lucy supposed, Jacob and Esther had possessed no lavish decorations that needed to be subdued in honor of the dead.

As they moved toward the steps leading to the bedchambers above, Theodora shut a door leading off to the drawing room, but not before Lucy caught a glimpse inside. Four or five people were all quietly assembled around the table.

Seeing this, Lucy felt her stomach lurch uncomfortably. Was this one of the Quakers’ secret conventicles? What would Master Hargrave say if he knew what was going on here? Whatever would he say should the authorities break into the house and arrest them all under the Conventicle Act?

Sam and Theodora both glanced at her. Sam’s eyes held a question, while Theodora’s held a clear warning. The presence of these people might explain Theodora’s earlier reluctance to let Lucy enter the house.

Lucy pretended she had not noticed the meeting, which she was sure was illicit. To calm her escorts a bit, she asked, “Is Mrs. Whitby upstairs, then?”

“Esther is still sleeping. We will bring you to the others,” Theodora replied, her voice still tense as they mounted the stairs. After bringing them to the door of Jacob’s bedchamber, she continued down the hall toward Esther’s chamber.

All thoughts of the conventicle flew out of Lucy’s mind as she and Sam entered Jacob’s bedchamber. An eerie sense of repetition washed over her as she looked about. As on the day before, Jacob’s still form occupied the great bed in the middle of the room, again with several mourners seated around him. The room was more crowded, though, with four mourners she recognized and three others she did not know.

Gervase was there, in the same chair he’d occupied the day before, and Deborah was again perched on the wood stool by the fire. Sarah was there, too, sitting on a chair next to Joan, across from where she’d sat yesterday. She had looked up with a sorrowful and perhaps resigned expression when Lucy entered the room. She did not seem angry, though, which was good.

Lucy nodded at Sarah, trying to convey that she would not share what Jacob had told her. To her disappointment, Sarah looked away, and Lucy felt a strange sense of isolation.

This sense only heightened when Sam edged out of the room, disappearing down the same stairs they had just mounted. For a moment, Lucy just stood there, wishing Sam had done more to explain her presence, particularly when one of the women whom she did not recognize eyed her garb suspiciously. Lucy began to feel very conscious of the blue ribbon attached to her cap, the bright scarf around her neck, and the brooch that secured her cloak together. Fortunately, they could not see her fine Sunday dress, and she twisted her feet inward so that they would not notice her nice shoes.

Spying the same bench she had occupied yesterday, Lucy crossed the room and sat down in silence. Looking around, she felt shut out of a circle she could not see. The mourning had created an intimacy among them that she could not enter. Indeed, by thrusting her way into their presence, Lucy felt she had violated that closeness.

Trying to avoid the gaze of the others, Lucy could not keep her eyes from flickering to Jacob’s corpse. Since she had last seen him, someone had crossed Jacob’s arms and shut his tortured eyes. Lucy could see that his clothes had been changed, too, but they did not look particularly fine; indeed, the clothes he wore looked homespun and a bit cheap. A far cry from the burying suit that even poorer families could usually muster, and unrecognizable to a family of Jacob Whitby’s ilk. What had happened to his fine clothes? Apparently not even a single scrap of cloth remained from his former gentry life.

This meant there would be no Sunday burial for him, of that Lucy was certain. Most likely, his corpse would remain in the bed for several days, until his neighbors and friends had finished paying their respects. At that point, Lucy suspected, the Quakers would have the corpse carted off to Bunhill Fields, just north of London. There, it would be buried alongside other deceased nonconformists in the unofficial and unsanctified graveyard known commonly as Tindall’s Burying Ground.

Lucy sighed. So far, she knew a great deal about Jacob’s death, but next to nothing about his life. As quietly as she could, she pulled out a jar of ink and a slightly crumpled sheet of paper from her small sack. Expectantly she waited, quill in hand, for someone to speak of Jacob’s life.

Except no one did. For the next twenty minutes, the mourners only made utterances when the Spirit moved them, lamenting in strange bursts of tears and incomprehensible murmurings. At one point, Deborah sang a snatch of song and Gervase laughed deeply, as though someone had spoken an uproarious jest. Nothing occurred, though, as wild or as exultant as the day before, for which Lucy was secretly grateful.

However, the longer Lucy sat, the more uncomfortable she felt. What if no one ever spoke about Jacob’s life? What if no one ever said anything useful? Could she ask a question? She did not want to anger the Quakers by interrupting their mourning, but she was rather afraid of returning to Master Aubrey without anything to show for her afternoon away.

She was about to speak when at last she caught Sarah’s eye. To her surprise, Sarah seemed to understand her dilemma and unexpectedly decided to help her out.

“I have been moved by the Lord to speak,” Sarah said loudly. A few people looked up, startled by the break in the stillness. Others continued to keep their heads bowed in prayer. “I am moved to give testimony about the life of Jacob Whitby. Let us speak, so that our friend here, Lucy Campion, might record our words, and be faithful to how his life is rendered in print. It was Jacob’s own dying request that his words be recorded that has brought Lucy here today.”

The heads turned toward Lucy, and she gestured weakly with her quill. Her presence finally explained, she seemed to be accepted by the other Quakers.

Sarah then went on to speak about how she had met Jacob, and their early friendship, Lucy scratching furiously the whole time. Truth be told, she could not write all that easily, as a quill had come to her hand long after she was a child, but she hoped her memory would help fill in any gaps later.

After about five minutes, Sarah looked around the room. “I bid thee, Friends, to speak thy pieces as well. I should like to know how my friend became instilled with the love and life of the Lord. How he moved from being a young man of raucous pleasures to a man with a most devoted and serious spirit. The answers to these questions, I beseech thee.”

She looked at the middle-aged woman sitting on the bench at the foot of Jacob’s bed. “Sister Katherine?”

The woman nodded. She was the one who had regarded Lucy with suspicion when she first walked in. “Yes, I will speak. My name is Katherine Barnes, and this is my husband, Devin.” She pointed at the middle-aged man who was standing by the wardrobe. Like Gervase and Sam, he had not removed his hat. “I can share the story of how Jacob converted, which he told Devin and me when we first met, some fifteen months ago.” Katherine then proceeded to relate much of the same tale Jacob had told Lucy before he died.

“Had he already been married then?” Lucy asked, looking over what she had just scrawled.