The Devlin Diary (35 page)

18 December 1672

T
HE JOURNEY TO
the College of Physicians on Warwick Lane is slow, held up by the pouring rain and an accident on Fleet Street. Hannah rides alone in the hackney coach, staring out the windows at the inclement weather but taking little notice of what she sees. She has thought endlessly on what happened two nights ago. Even now, after receiving such terrible news, she cannot stop thinking on it. What she tried to forestall has come to pass: she has fallen in love with a man who cannot marry her because of money, rank, and duty to family. Or
will
not marry her, Hannah reminds herself, because of all those considerations and more. Perhaps Edward has no wish to change his life. Now that she has given herself to him, perhaps he erroneously believes that she will become his mistress. Edward does not seem the type of man to seek that sort of arrangement, but he has given no indication that he has broken off his engagement, or is even considering doing so. He has written to her three times in the past two days, letters she has read but not answered, letters full of passionate feelings but empty of promises. Her mind tells her that Edward will need time to think before making such a dramatic change in his life. She does not want him to make a hasty decision that he might
later regret. Yet in her heart she expected him to fall to one knee to proclaim his love and eternal fidelity and ask for her hand as soon as their love was consummated. If she could laugh at herself today—if she could laugh at anything right now—she would be amused by her emotions. In some respects, she is forced to admit, she is very much like all other women.

The coach comes to a halt on Warwick Lane outside the front door of the College. The door opens and Hannah steps down, bowing her head against the storm. Rain falls so fiercely that the lane’s muddy surface appears to quiver under its assault. She quickly walks past the college’s white stone façade, turning into an alley that runs along the back of the building and leads to the anatomy theatre entrance. Overhead, a carpenter’s shop sign depicting a row of coffins swings madly in the wind, each movement of its rusting hinges accompanied by a lunatic screech.

She enters the theatre’s anteroom, a small, high-ceilinged chamber filled with a sedimentary light and the soft echo of rain drumming above. It’s reminiscent of being underwater. But then, ever since receiving Dr. Strathern’s urgent letter, she’s felt weightless, floating, blank. As though she can only register impressions: her shoes gliding over the marble floor, the animal scent of her rain-heavy cloak as she hangs it on the wall, the alien feel of her leather gloves brushing the rain from her cheeks. She removes her gloves and rubs her hands against her wool-clad arms; the theatre’s sepulchral chill is palpable even in here.

A hazy sphere of incandescence illuminates the center of the theatre, courtesy of two chandeliers and a few stout-columned standing candelabra. All else—the perimeter of the operatory floor, the spectator galleries, the paneled walls—falls away into a black eternity. From the doorway she glimpses the dissection table and a few strands of long, sinuous hair hanging down as carelessly as a dress tossed over a chair. She finds herself unable to go any farther.

Dr. Strathern approaches her silently, a dark omen in mourning clothes. He looks at her with a practiced delicacy, such as a warden might eye a resident of Bedlam prone to sudden violence. Behind him
stands another doctor, scrawny, ginger-haired, young. She can sense his melancholy mood even before she can distinguish the features of his face; it’s in the resigned slant of his shoulders, his disheartened air. Perhaps he is too sensitive for this work.

“This is not the way I would have wanted us to meet again,” Edward says, the emotion in his eyes quite evident but his manner restrained in the presence of another. “But I knew you would want to see her.” His gentle touch on her arm propels her forward into the room and up to the table.

Hannah brushes her fingers against the girl’s cheek, still petal-soft but as pallid and bloodless as an eggshell. “Oh, Lucy,” she murmurs. The girl is dressed in a long white garment that gathers at the neck and wrists and extends beyond her feet so that it can be tied at the bottom, like a sack: the flannel robe of death. Hannah’s throat tightens painfully, and she is unable to hold back her tears. She brushes a few away, then dabs at her face with Edward’s proffered handkerchief. Both men regard her with slight trepidation, such as men often exhibit in the presence of female emotion, as if they fear she will begin to weep copiously, or scream and rend her clothes. It crosses her mind that such histrionics must be consoling in their own way—certainly more satisfying than restraining grief; but for now she has too many questions to give herself over to her sorrow.

“Where was she found?” Her voice sounds so rough that she hardly recognizes it as her own.

“Dr. Hamish, will you please tell Mrs. Devlin”—at the slight pause in his speech, she knows he nearly called her Hannah—“everything that the watchman told you.”

“He discovered her in an alley in Southwark. In the area with all the—” He stops, remembering that he’s speaking to a lady.

“With all the bawdy houses,” Hannah finishes for him. “There is no need to mince words with me, Dr. Hamish.”

He colors slightly but continues on. “She was without any effects, or, I’m sorry to say, any clothes. Whether she was left there in that condition or later robbed we do not know. He reported that he saw no blood near the body, by which we believe”—he glances at his superior—“she
died elsewhere. He said he inquired of people in the parish, but no one recognized her.”

Meaning that the watchman had put Lucy’s body in a cart and wheeled it around to all the neighboring shops and houses. Hannah hoped that he’d had a blanket or at least some straw with which to cover her body. It pained her to think of Lucy being so vulnerable, even in death. Perhaps especially in death.

“She might have been brought to Southwark from anywhere in London,” Hannah surmises. “Why did the watchman not take her to a church?”

“Because of this,” Edward replies. He rolls a sleeve back from her wrist and nods to Hamish to do the same to the other. He steps back to give Hannah a clearer view. Across each of Lucy’s wrists are two deep red gashes.

Self-murder. Something terrible indeed must have happened to provoke Lucy to it. Perhaps she and this young man had run out of money, or he had abandoned her. Either of which would have made her prey to the city’s madams and bawds, always on the lookout for girls like her: young, destitute, and alone. Whatever happened, it was dreadful enough for Lucy to die outside of the comforting embrace of the church. Such obvious sinners as self-murderers aren’t readily granted a church burial. It will require substantial greasing of palms just to get Lucy admitted into St. Clement Danes’s churchyard, and even then the best she can hope for is to be buried facedown on the north side, the least hallowed ground. It’s cold comfort to know that it could be worse; suicides are still sometimes found at lonely crossroads outside the city walls with a stake in their hearts.

“The watchman brought her here hoping to earn a few extra shillings,” Edward says. “Dr. Hamish was disinclined to subject her to any trials but paid him just so she might not fall into less restrained hands. When I arrived I recognized her from the dance—and the rest you know.” He seems relieved to be finished telling this sad tale. “What would you like us to do?” he asks.

“Do you truly believe she is a suicide?” Hannah asks.

“There are no other marks of violence on her body.”

Her stomach turns at the thought of it, but she must know if Lucy was ravished or hurt. “None at all?” she asks.

“No, I assure you, nothing of that nature.”

Small relief, but it is something. She runs her thumb over the ridged cuts on Lucy’s wrists. “How well can you disguise these?”

“I don’t know, but we can try.” Strathern silences any objections Hamish may have with a stern look.

“I’ll send someone for her as soon as I’ve spoken to the priest at St. Clement’s.”

There is nothing more to say. She gently brushes the hair away from Lucy’s face and chokes back a sob. Each time she witnesses death she is reminded anew how changed a body is once the soul has flown. The contrast between life and death is most apparent in those of tender years, as if when we age and lose the vital spirits of youth the distinction between this world and the next lessens and fades. And though she knows this Lucy of eternal repose is not really Lucy, she leans over and presses her trembling lips against the girl’s cold forehead.

“May I see you out?” Edward asks. He walks Hannah to the anteroom and takes her cloak from the peg so that he may drape it over her shoulders. Outside, the rain is still falling. “I’ll have my coach take you home.”

“I’ll make my own way, thank you.” By declining his offer, they both know she is saying no to more than that. When Hannah meets Edward’s eyes, he shakes his head as if he doesn’t believe her.

“I must see you again.”

Even now, face-to-face and alone, Edward says nothing about the status of his engagement, only that he wants to see her. Does he truly believe she will be his mistress? It would be no life for her; it would be unacceptable, really. That he finds it acceptable must mean that he does not love her in the way she imagined. The thought creates a pain in her chest that leaves her nearly breathless. Sorrow she’ll have to live with, now and forever.

“Dr. Strathern—” With her formal address, Hannah puts more distance between them. “I see now that I have made many mistakes. Please let us not make another.”

He leans toward her, his brow knit with confusion. “But we must see each other again—if for no other reason than to discover who is responsible for the murders of your father and my uncle.”

She places her hand, softly but firmly, upon his chest, allowing him no closer. “Seeing each other will not necessarily help us find answers. What happened the other night should not have happened.”

“Do you regret it?”

Of course I regret it,
she wants to say.
I’ve fallen in love with you.
“Don’t you?”

“I cannot say that. I cannot say I regret it.”

“Yet you are engaged to be married, Dr. Strathern. I will not see you again. If I discover anything that can help our mutual cause, I will write to you.”

The depth of her resolve surprises him. He nods once, slowly, as if he does not completely comprehend, but he is a gentleman and presses no further. She raises her hood and heads for the door.

“Mrs. Devlin,” he calls as she departs. “May I attend her funeral?”

Something akin to a smile briefly haunts her lips. “That would be kind of you. I fear there will not be many people there.”

Mrs. Wills’s wide, bony shoulders hunch forward, quaking with the cadence of her grief. Her openmouthed grimace buckles the sharp planes of her face, squinting her eyes until they’re little more than two swollen red crescents. The wail that issues from her lips is the primordial howl of a mother for its young. To see the starched, matriarchal Mrs. Wills collapsing under her own bereavement is almost as painful as the source of the sorrow itself. Next to her, Hester stands mute, frozen in her desolation, tears streaming down her face.

Of all the times Hannah has had to relay the sad news of someone’s passing, this is by far the worst. She feels like the Grim Reaper for being the harbinger of so much anguish to the people she loves; and she is crushed by the possibility that they blame her for Lucy’s death as much as she blames herself. She lowers her face and presses her fingertips against the bridge of her nose. But the throbbing pain that started
behind her eyes this morning has reached deep inside her skull, beyond appeasement from such a simple effort at relief.

“How?” Mrs. Wills manages to say. “Why?”

The how, at least, is straightforward. “It appears she has taken her own life.” This is, of course, no comfort to the goodwife or maidservant—their keening grief becomes all the more pronounced. The why is more difficult. “She and this young man must have parted ways or fallen on hard times.”

“Then why didn’t she come back here?” Hester cries.

Hannah shakes her head. “I wish I knew.”

Mrs. Wills reaches out her long arms and pulls Hester into her chest, cradling her as if she were still a child. Hannah wishes she could join them; wishes she could be so consoled. Instead she rises from the kitchen table.

“I’ll tell my mother,” she says.

But when she reaches her mother’s room, Charlotte is happily playing with a black-haired poppet that was once Hannah’s own, and singing to herself in a sweet, breathy voice. Would she understand if Hannah explained it to her? What would be the purpose? Hannah cannot bear making her mother unhappy, too. Are there not enough oppressed and sorrowful spirits in the house?

Hannah turns away to the stairs. With each step she feels a stab of pain, reaching deep and burning hot behind her bleary eyes. From habit she walks to the workbench in her room and the vial of laudanum waiting there. The amber glass is cool and smooth in her palm. Simply holding it is a comfort of sorts; but she knows now that she cannot be comforted. There is no consolation to be found in this bitter liquid. She has used opium to dull her pain, and it has dulled her senses as well. If she had been more attentive, more observant, she might have foreseen Lucy’s involvement with this young man; she might have prevented her from making such an ill-considered choice.

She grips the vial hard, as if to crush it in her hand, then throws it across the room, where it shatters against the wall, leaving a ragged stain as dark as dried blood.

20 December 1672

For as long as he can remember, he’s believed that what he wants is exactly this, the continuation of the life he’s always known. But as Edward stands up from the Cavendishes’ dinner table and holds out his arm to Arabella, he is struck and disconcerted by the dull repetitiveness of his quotidian routine: the requisite formality of the midday meal; the polite, empty conversation; the short promenade to the withdrawing room. As he walks with his fiancée in measured pace behind his future in-laws, he cannot suppress an image of himself as a harnessed dray horse trudging unimaginatively along in well-worn traces. In the withdrawing room they will spend an hour or two in each other’s company for no other reason than that this is how people of quality organize their days.