A Death Along the River Fleet

 

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To my family

 

LONDON

April
1667

 

1

Lucy Campion slipped toward the vast wasteland where London's busy markets had once bustled. Since the Great Fire some seven months before, the region was silent, lifeless—the ash-covered rubble and charred tree stumps were a grim reminder of all the city had lost. The mumpers and beggars who had sought refuge in the area had been removed before the winter had come, and the burnt ruins had been steadily cleared away by soldiers and conscripted Londoners.

As the sleet-filled wind picked up a bit, Lucy shivered. The winter that had just passed was the coldest anyone could remember—even the Thames had frozen over in January—and there were many times throughout that winter when Lucy had wondered if she would ever be truly warm again. Spring had not come easily to this region; there were no trees, and the chill morning air was strangely silent from the lack of birds trilling. Far off in the distance she caught the crunching sound of a cart making an early delivery somewhere. It brought to mind the strange journey by cart that she herself had made, just two weeks before, on a wild search to locate a dear friend who was caught in the grip of a murderer.

Without thinking, Lucy rubbed her knee, which had been hurt most dreadfully during the encounter, and still pained her from time to time. Master Aubrey, the printer who had taken her on as an apprentice after the Fire, had bid her make several deliveries this early morning.
Best get used to walking again, Lucy,
he had told her in his usual gruff way.
I have no place for you in my shop otherwise.
So she was up before dawn to make her deliveries, even before the other printer's devil, Lach, had got up to piss in his pot. Several books had come for Mr. Oldham, a private tutor who lived just beyond the northwestern part of the burnt expanse. Indeed, his home had been spared, having been just beyond the Fire's reach.

Unlike most of the books they sold, which were made of a flimsy paper, these three books were hefty, clad in leather, and—to Lucy's disappointment—written entirely in Latin. Although she had learned to read and write when serving in the household of Master Hargrave, a London magistrate, she had never learned a foreign tongue, let alone a language of the ancients.

As she neared Holborn Bridge, the wind shifted and the nauseating smell of the old Fleet River assaulted her. Master Hargrave once had told her that, long ago, the river had flowed easily, allowing barges and ships to move without difficulty through its winding course. Such a thing was hard to believe; it was now more ditch and drainage than a true river, full of excrement and animal parts from the Smithfield markets, decaying in ill-flowing streams. The houses and sheds that had long lined the river—an open sewer truly—had been pulled down and cleared to keep the Fire from spreading farther west. Just beyond the bridge, civilization could be viewed again—lanes and paths leading north and west, with church steeples and markets just beyond.

Now holding her nose with her free hand, Lucy mounted the three steps on the ancient stone bridge, her eyes averted from the muck and squalor that lay beneath. She peered across the bridge, trying to see through the gray mist that swirled above the rubble. Even in the early dawn light, it was hard to see much more than shadows in the mounds of debris.

As she reached the end of the bridge, for a moment the fog parted, and she froze.

There, looking unearthly and strange, a specter of a woman in white was moving toward her. Clad in a long white gown, her hands pressed to her head, the specter was approaching with a strange and jerking gait. Dark hair streamed wildly past her waist, and her face was as pale as her gown.

Her heart pounding, Lucy stepped back.
A ghost?
She had never seen a ghost, but tales and stories abounded of the mischief and evil that some might bring upon earthly inhabitants.

She looked about. Was she near a crossroads? She'd heard tell how the Ghost of Dorchester had gotten confused at the crossing of two roads, not knowing which direction to turn, and had simply disappeared forever. But the rubble from the Fire made it impossible to discern the original roads. Perhaps if she moved back across the bridge?

The apparition continued to advance. Lucy pressed against the stone wall of the bridge, hoping that it would pass her by. A ghost could not harm her, surely that was true.

Then, as her heart beat even faster and she felt a cold chill snake along her neck, the apparition sneezed.

An everyday, common sneeze, nothing otherworldly about it. The sneeze of a human.

Relieved, Lucy chuckled, even as she admonished herself.
Such a fool you are, Lucy. She is of flesh and bone, same as you.

Still, though not a specter, there was something very odd about this woman. Clad only in a torn white shift, the woman seemed oblivious to her bare feet and wild hair, which Lucy could see was full of burrs and ashes. Her hands, still pressed to the side of her head, were filthy, as if she had been digging in mud. Her eyes, fearsome and dark, were unfocused, as if she were looking into another world.

Feeling goose bumps rise all over her body, Lucy took another step back, and then another. Since her eyes were fixed on the woman, she did not realize she was stepping on a patch of unstable rocks, which caused her to slip.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, then clapped her hand over her mouth.

But the damage was done. At her voice, the woman whipped her head toward Lucy and stared directly at her. “Has the devil come?” she whispered to Lucy in a harsh, strained voice, before looking frantically behind her. “Did he follow me?”

“Em-m—” Lucy gulped, peering out into the sprawling wasteland that lay before her, half expecting to see a horned figure in black striding forward on two cloven hoofs, pitchfork in hand, his pointed tail waving behind him. Such was the image of the devil she would set in the penny pieces back at Master Aubrey's.

But there was no dark figure. Indeed, no movement at all could be discerned on the barren landscape. “I see no one,” Lucy whispered.

“You lie!” the woman hissed. Then, without warning, she grabbed Lucy's arm. “Are you in consort with him?”

“Let me be!” Lucy cried. She shook her arm free with a violent move, causing the woman to fall heavily to the ground, far harder than she expected.

Lucy turned to run back across the bridge, but before she had taken two steps a bright flash of pain in her knee stopped her from fleeing. Grimacing, she put her hand on the edge of the bridge, still trying to move away as fast as she could.

From behind her, Lucy heard the woman start to weep, loud desperate cries. “Please, miss! Please!” the woman called out to her. “Please do not leave me.”

Against her instincts, Lucy turned back around to face the woman. She was still crouched on the ground where she had been pushed.

It was then that Lucy noticed something new. What she had assumed to be mud on the woman's shift and hands was, in truth, the deep reddish-brown stain of blood.

After a cautious look around, Lucy knelt down a few steps away, still keeping a little distance between them. She had heard of thieves and highwaymen pretending to be ill so they could catch a victim unawares. Yet this woman looked genuinely distressed. “Miss, please,” Lucy said. “What is wrong? Are you injured? Did someone hurt you?”

Without speaking again, the woman began to sway back and forth, murmuring to herself, a great dullness to her expression. For a moment, Lucy was reminded of another dull-witted person of her acquaintance—a gentle soul named Avery who had been injured by an exploding gun in Cromwell's wars.

Edging closer, Lucy looked again at the woman's bloody hands. She had small cuts all over them, but the blood was no longer flowing. Her wrists were covered with purple and yellow bruises. Lucy sighed, looking at the woman's blue lips and ashen face. She knew she could not in good conscience leave her on her own. What injuries she had sustained surely would only be worsened by lying on the hard frozen ground.

Lucy picked up her book-filled sack. “Come with me. I will take you to someone who can help you.”

The woman made no move to stand. Lucy took off her own warm cloak and flung it around the woman's frail shoulders. She extended a hand, half expecting her to rebuff the gesture. To her surprise, the woman put her hand in Lucy's own, allowing Lucy to pull her to a standing position, like a docile child with her mother.

“The physician Larimer is a good man. He will help you,” Lucy murmured to the woman, more to assure herself than the other. To be honest, she did not know what Dr. Larimer would think. Good man or not, he might not appreciate being asked to attend to a woman who had no coins to cover the cost of his service. But Lucy could not just abandon her. She felt that in her bones.

The wind picked up as they walked, the woman clinging tightly to her arm. Shivering, Lucy berated herself for her folly. Why had she given the woman her cloak? Indeed, why was she helping this odd woman at all? This was the kind of impetuous act that always got her into trouble.
No matter now,
Lucy thought.
The gesture has been made. I will have done my duty when I leave her with the physician.