A Murder at Rosamund's Gate (25 page)

When a woman stood up and claimed that Bessie’s finger had appeared to point to Will, Adam tersely had Will read the original pamphlet, where that same woman claimed the finger had pointed to the magistrate’s son. Lucy could not believe that such an unnatural story could be used as evidence, yet it was duly entered into the court record, with the notation that the woman had switched her story.

Finally, Richard Cuthbert’s name was called. The onlookers craned their necks and began to whisper, knowing that he was the key witness. He was the one who heard Will say that he would kill Bessie with his own hands. He was the one they were waiting for, to condemn Will to his death.

Richard sat down, sullen and cocky. The constable asked him to explain what had happened the night of the murder. “Me and him got into a bit of a fight,” he said, nodding shortly at William.

“What were you and the accused fighting about?”

Richard grinned, smacking his lips. “I told him that I’d seen some pictures of the git he’d been keeping company with.”

“Is that when he struck you?” the constable asked.

Richard scowled. “No, it was what I said about the other one,” he muttered, losing his bravado.

“The other one?” Duncan asked. The conversation was clearly not going as he expected.

“Yeah. I made another comment about the other girl I’d seen him with. Quite a fine one. Didn’t know she was his sister.”

Lucy felt her face flush as a few people turned to look at her. She recognized some of her neighbors, their faces lit up by this tidbit. Gossipy old hags.

The judge leaned toward Richard, with a warning in his own voice. “Do you mean to say, young man, that you said something lewd about the defendant’s sister? Lucy? A lass that I know for myself to be a decent good girl? And that’s when the defendant hit you? In defense of his sister’s good name?”

“Yeah,” Richard muttered again. Seeing the disappointment on her neighbors’ faces, Lucy couldn’t help feeling smug about being in the judge’s favor.

“So,” Duncan continued, trying to bring the questioning back on track, “that’s when you got into the fight. What did he say to you afterward?”

“Nothing.”

The constable gestured impatiently. He pulled out a flimsy piece of paper. “Do you recall stating to me that the defendant had said, “‘I’m going to kill her, Bessie. Yeah, I’m going to murder that lying whore’?”

“No, I don’t remember saying that.”

William looked at Adam in surprise. Adam only lifted one eyebrow, his eyes steady on the liveryman.

The judge looked at Richard accusingly. “Do not mock this court of law, young man. Did you hear the defendant say that or not?”

“No. I didn’t hear him say it.”

The constable wiped his sweaty brow with his cap. “Richard Cuthbert,” he said sternly. “Did you or did you not see the defendant covered in blood later that evening?”

“Yes, I did,” Richard agreed.

The crowd looked eager. Now they were getting somewhere interesting. The constable smiled. “And where was that?”

Richard was silent.

“Where did you see the defendant?” the judge asked him. “Young man, I will hold
you
in contempt of court if you do not answer the question.”

Sullenly, Richard replied, “I saw him in my stable.”

“Your what? Your stable? What could you mean?” Duncan shouted. With a quick look at the judge, who was frowning, he said, “Beg pardon, Your Honor. That’s not what the witness told me!”

Opening the paper again, Duncan read loudly, “‘And then, that night, not a few hours later, I did see William, the blackguard, had fulfilled his promise, with blood all about his body, blood I knew had come from his unfaithful mistress, who to my mind he must have killed in the field near mine, that field they do oft call Rosamund’s Gate, where lovers do die.’ Do you deny seeing this?”

“I did not see this,” came Richard’s low reply.

“What, pray heaven,” Adam said, rising to his feet, “was William doing in your stable?”

The magistrate ignored Adam’s breach and looked expectantly at the man squirming in the witness chair.

Richard hesitated. “He was tied up.”

The crowd gasped. Adam continued. “And how did he come to be tied up in your stable?”

“I wanted to teach him a lesson. My men,” Richard said, looking somewhat sheepish, “tied him up. He came to me, drunk and swinging, ranting about that wench Bessie. I knocked him out and tied him up and then left.” He smirked then at Adam. “I had other things to attend to. A few hours after sunrise, we untied him and threw him in a ditch.”

The crowd began to buzz, and the judge held up his hand. He looked at Richard sternly. “Are you saying that the defendant was tied up from the time he came to you until the next morning? When he was found, with bloody hands, in a ditch?”

“I guess he didn’t recollect what happened after I knocked him out,” Richard muttered, both defiant and a little ashamed. “I was just funning with him. I untied his hands before we left him. Didn’t want him to rot there. I sure as hell didn’t expect him to swing for the girl’s murder. I’ve no wish to have a dead man swinging in my thoughts all the time. Burt and Joe, they’ll tell you it’s true.”

The constable, seeing the case slip away from him, spoke directly to the judge. “The defendant could still have killed her and crawled back—”

“Kill her in broad morning light? Then go back to that very same ditch, to be found by that tinker on his way to the market?” Adam asked, the disbelief clear in his tone.

The magistrate cocked his head. “Indeed, sounds far-fetched, but I must consider it—. What was that?” He turned to Richard, who was now looking more shamefaced.

“Saw that tinker,” Richard muttered.

“How’s that?” Adam and the magistrate asked simultaneously.

“After me and my mates unbound him, we saw that tinker on the road. I’ve done business with him before. I’m in livery for the Embrys. Sometimes they need something hammered out for the carriages and whatnot. So not more than ten minutes could have passed since we left him, when the tinker found him.”

The magistrate sighed. Lucy and John, and the rest of the courtroom, leaned forward.

The magistrate fingered his mallet. “As much as I hate to see the murder of a young lass go unresolved, I should hate far more to see an innocent man be wrongly accused and hanged.”

Lucy held her breath. The magistrate then said the words she could scarcely have dreamed he would utter. “The court thereby declares the defendant, William Campion, acquitted of all charges and set free.”

The crowd roared in approval. Londoners were a good-natured group; they were equally glad to see a man justly acquitted as to be sent to the gallows. The magistrate banged on his desk.

“Master Campion, it is in your right to have the court charge Richard Cuthbert with giving false testimony and assaulting you. If you choose to press charges, Richard will pass not less than three nights in jail, spending two hours each day in the stocks.”

Richard grimaced. William hesitated, then swiveled to look at Lucy. She shook her head. No need to renew Richard’s rancor against them.

William seemed to understand. Reaching for Lucy’s hand, he said firmly, “No, Your Honor. I should just like to put all this behind me.”

*   *   *

On the way out, Lucy held Will’s arm tight, sobbing with relief, the crowd around them still cheering.

A young lad darted up and pumped Will’s arm. “I never thought you did it!”

Will managed a weak smile. Adam and John flanked them both, pushing their way through the crowd. Within moments, the crowd that had gathered outside the Newgate prison door had sought other grisly entertainment.

As they passed, Lucy heard a bookseller selling chapbooks reading off another man’s last dying speech. A hanged man would have his “true confession” read before he was hanged; whether it was true or not mattered little. “He was very willing to die!” the bookseller cried out, trying to be heard over the growing crowd. He was a small man, with greasy hair and ill-fitting clothes. He looked tired but was working hard to earn a few pennies. “He did not live well, but his soul shall find redemption in death.”

“Aw, give us the good stuff!” one man called. The crowd murmured in agreement. Penitence was fine and good, and showed that justice prevailed, but everyone wanted to hear the more sensational details. They wanted to know they were right when watching the man die.

Adam had his hand on her back then and almost seemed to be pushing her. The ground outside the prison was rocky and rough, and she almost tripped. She looked up at him indignantly, about to say something, when she realized what he was trying to keep her from seeing.

A gallows had been erected at Tyburn, and there a man was swinging, still alive. His body was rigid, his face was blackened, and his head hung at a queer angle. He bobbed about. “Cut him down!” the crowd began to cheer, while others called with equal fervor, “Rack him back up!”

The executioner obliged both calls, cutting the condemned man down and putting another noose around his neck.

Lucy didn’t even know she was fainting until the ground rushed up to her. She felt strong arms swoop her up and carry her. When she opened her eyes, great tree branches waved gently above, and long grasses tickled her cheek. She could hear little of the hubbub and fuss of the town, and the executioner’s scaffold was nowhere in sight. Adam and William were talking in low tones. John was chewing on a stalk of grass, listening.

Seeing that she had woken up, William mustered a grin, a semblance of his cocky self. Yet he still looked wan and pale. “All right now, sister? John and Adam carried you near a quarter of a mile to get you away from that ungodly scene.”

“That man!” She gulped as the horrible image of the man’s bulging eyes and blackened tongue came to her. “It could have been—”

“Aye, lass.” John cut her off. “But your brother, he’s fine. Thanks to Master Adam here.”

Adam shrugged but still looked ashen from the trial. It seemed to have taken a lot out of him. “Let us say no more of it,” he said, stretching out his long legs. “Let us just breathe in this good clean air.”

And not think of the rotting stench of Newgate or the stifling tension of the courtroom.
Lucy still could not fathom what had nearly happened. “Richard? What about him?” she asked. “What could have possessed him to recant? He actually seemed … penitent?”

Adam looked at the palms of his hands. “I think he may have had, how shall I say this, a little Friendly persuasion?”

“Whatever do you mean?” Lucy asked.

“A week ago, I heard tell that Richard had been thrown in jail for a bout of public drunkenness. It was not too hard to grease a few hands to get the jailers to put him in a cell with three Friends.”

John guffawed. “The Quakers worked him over!”

Adam sighed. “Something like that. Except, of course, with words, not fists. I’ve no doubt that enough talk about conscience and hell will make even a hardened criminal confront his ways. Richard, for all his faults”—here he looked significantly at Lucy—“is not an evil man. Let us just thank God that he found his conscience before it was too late for Will.”

No one needed to say anything, but the enormity of what had almost happened was still overwhelming. In the distance, she heard the church bells toll two o’clock. For a moment, Lucy watched a bird making languid circles above them. Was it a hawk? No matter; at this distance, it was beautiful and free and as far removed from earthly desires and hatreds as Lucy could ever wish to be. She did not realize that tears were slipping down her cheeks until she felt a handkerchief pressed into her hand. Gratefully, she looked at Adam, but he was frowning, watching a distant figure stumble toward them.

“What’s this?” John asked.

Lucy squinted. It was a woman, running, clutching her skirts. Something was clearly amiss. The woman puffed heavily toward them where they stood on the hill, her gray hair falling messily from her cap. Judging from her dress, she was probably a merchant’s wife. The hill proved overmuch for her, and with a hand to her chest, she staggered a bit before falling to her knees.

Instantly, their small group was on their feet, racing toward her.

Adam, a half step behind, called to the woman, his voice imperious. “Woman! What is wrong?”

“Can we help?” Lucy asked at the same time.

The woman tried to catch her breath. “It’s happened,” she said, panting heavily. The others waited impatiently. She seemed unable to speak, her eyes deeply distressed.

“What? What’s happened?” Will asked, shifting his feet.

The woman threw up her hands. Her next words chilled Lucy to her very bones. “The plague,” she said helplessly. “It’s reached the west side.”

18

Lucy’s brief moment of happiness was cut short, a terrible sense of dread muddling her senses. Everyone knew that the last time the plague hit the city, thousands had died. There had also been Flanders and Paris.

“John,” Adam said, “you must escort Lucy home. I must go to the courts to see Father home safely. Will, you can come—”

“Will,” Lucy interrupted, “must go home, to mother and Dorrie.” She turned to her brother. “Promise me. I’ve got the protection of the magistrate and John, but they need you.”

“Mother, who did not even come to the trial,” Will said, kicking a clump of dirt.

Lucy embraced him, pecking his cheek. “Please,” she whispered, helping him swing his pack over his narrow shoulders. “You must give her the chance to make amends for the wrong she has done you.”

She watched her brother for a moment as he briskly walked off. No one would ever have known that he had been almost condemned to hang a few hours before or, seeing his jaunty step, that the world might be coming to an end.
Will I ever see him again?
She said a little prayer for him.

Turning back to Adam and John, she found Adam’s gaze on her. He looked away. “Well, I’ll be off,” he said. “I’ll see you back at the house. Take care.”

*   *   *

Indeed, their hurried journey home, no more than two miles, was strange. Just as the magistrate had foretold, all of London began to panic as the threat of plague, long hanging over their heads, finally became reality. Everywhere, people were running, crying, despairing—everyone trying to figure out what to do, where to go. Doomsayers and prophets wandered the streets, predicting God’s wrath.