When Gods Die

The house was neat and tidy, the dirt floor swept, the walls scrubbed clean. There were two rooms, one above the other, with a steep set of steps along one wall leading up to the second floor, where the children doubtless slept. It was a luxury for a family to have two rooms. In some parts of London families slept twenty and more to a room.

Shoving the baby into the arms of a girl of about seven, Amelia’s mother showed Sebastian to a settle beside the empty hearth. Fronted by a crude trestle table with benches, the hearth took up most of the back wall. A box bed stood in the far corner, where in the dim light Sebastian could make out the huddled shape of a man lying on one side so that he faced the wall.

“He hurt his legs some months back,” said the woman, following Sebastian’s gaze. “His legs and his head. He hasna been able to work since. He cain’t even walk.”

Which explained the rotting eave and broken hinge on what had once been a well-tended cottage, Sebastian thought. Without its major wage earner, this was a family sliding toward the edge of disaster. Through the open door at the rear, Sebastian could see a small yard with a washhouse and a big copper kettle steaming over a brassier. According to the man at the Norfolk Arms, Amelia’s mother worked as a laundress. When she brought him a pot of ale, Sebastian’s gaze fell on her cracked, raw hands. A woman could scrub clothes until her hands bled, and still she wouldn’t be able to earn enough to feed a family of ten.

“Our Amelia’s a good girl, truly she is,” Mrs. Brennan said again, her red hands twisting in the cloth of her apron. “She was only doin’ what she was told.”

“Which was?” Sebastian cradled the ale pot in his hands, but he was careful not to taste it. Not after what had happened to Guinevere Anglessey in this neighborhood.

The click of a woman’s pattens on the muddy cobbles outside brought Mrs. Brennan around, her face pinched and anxious. Amelia paused on the threshold of the open door, her hands gripping either side of the frame, her pale eyes widening. At the sight of Sebastian, she whirled to run, then let out a soft cry when Andrew, one of the strapping footmen Sebastian had brought with him, stepped forward to grasp her by the arms.

“There, there now, miss,” said Andrew. “I believe his lordship was wishing to speak with you.”

Chapter 59

“Amelia, please,” said Mrs. Brennan. She reached out to loop an arm around the neck of one of the younger children and pull him closer to her, as if she might somehow protect him from what was about to happen. “Please.”

Amelia’s pale gray eyes met her mother’s darker, troubled gaze. She hesitated, then bent to unstrap her pattens. When she straightened, her face was carefully wiped clean of all expression.

She came to slide onto the bench on the far side of the table. Four of the younger children crowded around her, their faces solemn as they stared at Sebastian. The girl with the baby hung back against the far wall, but her gaze, like her siblings’, was fixed on Sebastian. Only Amelia refused to look at him, her gaze on the table before her.

“I want you to tell me precisely what happened at the Norfolk Arms last Wednesday,” he said to her. “I already know about the murder. All I need you to do is confirm the details.”

She brought up both hands to smooth her lank hair away from the sides of her face. Her expression might be calm, but her hands were shaking. She sucked in a deep breath, her teeth working her lower lip. “I didn’t know nothin’ about it till it was all over.” She glanced up at him once, quickly, then away. “I swear I didn’t. We was busy that afternoon and I was workin’ the common room. Then Mr. Carter, he comes to me and says he wants me to help him buy a dress for…for the lady.”

Sebastian waited. A quiver of revulsion bordering on horror passed over the girl’s face. “He wanted me to go with him to make sure he bought the right size. He said she was tall, like me. But he made me look at her, so I’d be sure.”

“You went with him to Long Acre?”

She nodded. “That green gown, I told him it was too small, but he was that set on buying it. He said it was just the thing for—” She broke off.

“For a lady to wear to the Brighton Pavilion?” Sebastian finished for her.

Her head bowed until he could see the crooked white line of the part in her hair, her hands clutched together on the worn tabletop. “He said it’d fit, that her ladyship weren’t such a strappin’ wench as me.”

“Only you were right, weren’t you? It was too small. Did they make you wash her ladyship’s body and dress her, as well?”

Amelia’s gaze flew to her mother. Mrs. Brennan pressed her lips together, then gave a barely perceptible nod of her head.

Amelia sucked in another shaky breath. “Mum does most of the laying out round here. While Mr. Carter and I was gone, he had Mum brought in to see to the lady.”