“The woman was described as young and pretty, with green eyes and brown hair. Tall. Slender.”
Cedric collapsed back in silence. It was as if he were slowly drawing into himself, trying to absorb the unbelievable. After a moment he said, “What happened?”
“She was at the Magdalene House when it burned.”
“Rachel?” He threw a quick glance around and leaned in closer to lower his voice. “At the Magdalene House?” Anger flared, brittle and blustering. “What the devil are you suggesting? That my sister was a—a—”
“I’m saying that a woman who fit your sister’s description died in that fire.”
Doubt and determination hardened Cedric’s face. “I want to see her body.”
“You won’t be able to recognize her. Most of the women were badly burned.”
“I don’t care. I want to see her.”
Sebastian hesitated. But after four years of war, there would be little in the way of horrors Cedric Fairchild hadn’t seen. He said, “The Society of Friends is planning to bury the women this evening. If we hurry, we should make it.”
Chapter 23
The Friends’ Meeting House in Pentonville stood at the corner of Collier Street and Horseshoe Lane, just beyond where the last straggling houses of the village gave way to fields of green growing barley and small garden plots. Roofed in thatch, it was a simple structure of coursed stone, with a small cemetery stretching out beyond it. Sebastian drew up his curricle in the lee of a spreading elm tree and turned to the silent man beside him.
“I can wait here, if you like.”
A cold wind blew over them, bringing with it the earthy scents of the surrounding fields and the song of a robin from somewhere in the distance. Cedric Fairchild sat with his shoulders hunched, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the small knot of drab-gowned women and plainly dressed men in collarless coats and broad-brimmed black hats gathered on the flagged walkway leading to the meetinghouse’s simple stoop. “No. Please, come in.”
“Walk ’em,” said Sebastian, handing the reins to Tom. As he jumped down, one of the men near the meetinghouse door detached himself from the small group and came toward them, his body tall and gaunt.
“Sebastian St. Cyr,” said Joshua Walden, “it is good of thou to come.” The Quaker nodded to Fairchild. “And thou, friend, welcome.”
“This is Cedric Fairchild,” said Sebastian. “It’s possible one of the women killed at the Magdalene House was his sister. He would like to see her body.” Sebastian paused, then added, “It’s the woman who was shot.”
Cedric cast Sebastian a look of surprise, while Joshua Walden’s smile faltered. “That body is badly burned. Very badly burned.”
“I’d still like to see her,” said Cedric, his jaw rigid.
Walden studied the younger man’s tightly held face, then nodded. “Very well. Come this way.”
He led them through the meetinghouse’s simple door into a large, plain room filled with benches and the softly glowing light of evening. The room smelled of freshly planed wood underlain faintly by the sweet stench of decay. Eight crude wooden coffins stood in a row in the center of the meeting hall. “The woman thou seeks is the second from the end on the left,” said Walden, pausing respectfully just inside the door. “The lids have not yet been nailed down.”
Cedric hesitated. When he finally walked forward, it was with the measured tread of a man who dreads what he is forcing himself to do. At the side of the coffin, he hesitated again, and Sebastian thought for a moment his courage had failed him. Then he grasped the edge of the plain wooden lid with both hands and thrust it up.
From where he stood beside the Quaker, Sebastian watched Cedric’s face blanch. He watched the man’s hands tighten around the edge of the lid, saw the quiver of revulsion and horror that swept across his face. Then Fairchild dropped the coffin’s lid back in place and bolted for the door.
Sebastian caught up with him just beyond the stoop. He stood hunched over, his hands on his knees, his body heaving with each successive shudder of dry retching. “Here,” said Sebastian, holding out his handkerchief.
Cedric straightened, his fist closing convulsively around the handkerchief. A cold sweat beaded the pallid flesh of his forehead and upper lip, and he dabbed at it. “You were right,” he said, his breath coming in strained gasps. “She was beyond recognizing. But I had to—” He broke off.
“I understand.” Sebastian studied the shaken man beside him. “You knew Rachel was in Covent Garden, didn’t you?”
Hot color flooded his pale face. “Good God, of course not. How can you even suggest such a thing?”
The denial rang untrue, but Sebastian let it slide. He said, “Tell me about your sister. What was she like?”
Cedric stared up the lane, to where a milkmaid in a white apron and a large-brimmed bonnet was hazing a cow toward home. The evening breeze ruffled his dark hair and his features softened with memory. “When she was a child, she was the sweetest little creature imaginable. Always bubbling with laughter and joy, yet so tender and loving. Whenever something happened—if Georgina or I were upset about something—Rachel would always come and put her arms around us and sing us a song.” A deep breath shuddered his chest. “She used to love to sing. She’d sing to her dolls, to our father’s hounds, to the stable cats.”
Sebastian tried to reconcile the laughing, loving child of Cedric’s memory with the cynical Cyprian Hero Jarvis had described. The two images refused to blend. “You said she used to love to sing. That changed?”
Cedric nodded. “Around the time our mother died. It was as if . . . I don’t know. As if all the joy within her just leached away. She quit singing, and then she—” He broke off.
