Page 39 of Who Will Remember (Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery #20)

S ebastian found the small cobbled court with its row of stone horse troughs empty. His knock on the old arched wooden door in the corner went unanswered.

Returning to Deadman’s Place, he found a toothless, aged Irishwoman selling lace from a battered tin tray on a nearby corner and asked if she knew where he might find the priest. She screwed up her face with thought, then said, “Ye might be tryin’ the Cross Bones. Saw him headed that way a while ago, and I didna see him come back.”

“And where precisely is this Cross Bones?”

She jerked her chin toward a nearby mean lane. “?’Tis down there.”

Sebastian assumed he was looking for a public house of that name. But as he rounded the lane’s long, sweeping curve, he could see in the distance a wretched open space rank with overgrown weeds and surrounded by a low wall topped with broken glass. Within the wall, the bulging earth rose some three to four feet above the level of the pavement; an open trench ran along one side of the enclosure, and amongst the raw earth thrown up at its side Sebastian could see a jumble of dirt-stained long bones, vertebrae, ribs, and skulls.

The French priest stood in the center of the crude, overflowing burial ground, his head bowed, his eyes closed, his lips moving in silent prayer as his fingers shifted over the beads of his rosary. And it occurred to Sebastian as he paused in the graveyard’s open gateway that he seemed to be making it a habit of intruding on such private moments.

Then Father Ambrose tightened his fist around the rosary and opened his eyes.

“Monsieur le vicomte,” he said. “Looking for me, were you?”

Sebastian nodded, his gaze drifting around the bone-strewn wasteland. “What is this place?”

“This? They call it the Cross Bones burial ground. For centuries, it’s been the final resting place of those whom the good citizens of Southwark have rejected.” He swept his arm through the air in a wide arc that took in not only the crude graveyard but also the crowded streets and alleyways that stretched beyond it to the river. “There was a time when almost everything you see here belonged to the Bishops of Winchester.” He nodded to a distant church tower. “I’m told their palace was there, beside what is now St. Saviour’s.”

Sebastian had heard of the once-grand palace of the Bishops of Winchester, with its private wharf, stables, brewhouse, tennis courts—even its own prison, the notorious Clink. In those days Southwark had been outside the control of London, so the various forms of entertainment that were forbidden in the city were set up here—everything from theaters such as Shakespeare’s Globe and gaming houses to whorehouses. And all of those establishments, including the whorehouses, were licensed by the bishops, who collected a tidy sum in fees from such lucrative dens of sin. The bishops also owned the buildings along the river that the brothels used, which meant the houses paid the bishops rent, too. Eventually, the brothels came to be called “the Stews” because that was the name of the bishops’ nearby fishponds. And because so much of what they earned made its way into His Excellency’s coffers, people took to calling the prostitutes who worked in those wretched establishments “Winchester Geese.”

The priest tucked his rosary into a pocket of his worn robes. “You know about the Winchester Geese?”

“Yes.”

The priest nodded. “Despite the fact that their work helped make the bishops rich, when the women died, those fine holy men in their grand palace refused to allow prostitutes to be buried on consecrated ground. So the women’s bodies were dumped here.” He paused, his gaze drifting to the open trench. “Now the parish uses it for their poor hole.”

“It’s still unconsecrated?”

“Officially. Most of the area’s poorer French refugees and Irish immigrants end up here, so I come once a week to pray for them—for them, and for the Winchester Geese of long ago.”

Sebastian studied the priest’s weathered face, the deeply incised lines of his forehead and cheeks, the thick gray eyebrows and blobby broken nose. “Tell me about Angélique.”

A flare of surprise flickered in those kindly soft brown eyes. Surprise and something else that might have been alarm. “Angélique? What do you know of Angélique?”

“Very little. Virtually all I know is that Lord Preston was obsessed with finding her. That he saw her as a threat to society.” And that you were once lovers, but he didn’t say that. Yet.

“And what makes you think I can help you?”

“I’m told you were once an ardent revolutionary.”

The smile lines beside the priest’s eyes deepened. “I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that, but I certainly believed France needed to change.” That hint of a smile faded. “Unfortunately, things got out of hand, as they often do.”

“Yes,” Sebastian agreed. Then he said it again. “Tell me about Angélique.”

“There is not much to tell. At one time she was a nun at a convent in Liège. Then the Revolution came.” The priest let out his breath in a long, painful sigh. “It was much like what happened when your King Henry VIII went after church property here in England two hundred and fifty years before. The monasteries were seized and pillaged, irreplaceable manuscripts and works of art destroyed, and tens of thousands of cloistered men and women cast penniless out into the world.”

He fell silent, a sad, faraway expression creeping over his features. Sebastian waited, and after a moment the priest continued. “By that time Angélique’s mother and father were dead, but she managed to make her way to her brother, Jean-Pierre. He was in Paris as a delegate, first to the Estates-General, then to the National Convention.”

“He was a revolutionary?”

The priest shrugged. “He was a Girondin. At first the Girondins favored a constitutional monarchy, but after the attempted flight of the King, they became republicans. Angélique shared many of her brother’s beliefs and worked with him.” He paused. “Even when the Revolution grew increasingly darker and more violent, she kept hoping that in the end good would triumph. But the day came when she could no longer make excuses for the horror of what was happening, and she turned away from it—as did her brother. When Robespierre moved against the Girondins, Jean-Pierre was arrested and guillotined, but Angélique managed to flee France.”

“For Spain?”

“Yes.”

“Is that where you were lovers?”

Father Ambrose sucked in a deep breath. “Who told you that?”

“Jarvis.”

“Ah.”

“Is it true?”

“It is.” He paused, his eyes narrowing as if he were looking into the distant past. “At that point we were two very…troubled souls. We took comfort in each other. Gave each other a reason to keep living. And eventually helped each other find a way back to our vows.”

“That’s when you came here?”

“Yes.”

“Why do the Bourbons want to kill her?”

“That is because of Marie-Thérèse.” His lip curled. “It’s the Most High , Most Potent and Excellent Princess Marie-Thérèse who wants her dead.”

Sebastian was only too familiar with Marie-Thérèse, the sole surviving child of the ill-fated Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette. As such, she was the niece of the current, childless King of France; she was also the wife of his nephew and eventual heir, which meant that someday she, in turn, would be Queen of France…

If the Bourbons lasted that long.

Sebastian said, “She wants Angélique dead because her brother was a regicide and she supported him?”

“Ostensibly. But in reality?” Father Ambrose shook his head. “It’s because of something Angélique knows.”

“Something about Marie-Thérèse?”

The priest nodded. “You see, in the convent, Angélique was a nursing sister. And there were times when Marie-Thérèse was held prisoner in the Temple that Angélique was asked to…to tend to her.”

“Ah,” said Sebastian. Marie-Thérèse had always vehemently denied the persistent rumors of rape and secret childbirth in her Temple prison. But Sebastian had never believed that the men who treated her younger brother, the little Dauphin, so cruelly would have been any kinder to his beautiful sister. And that meant the unknown French nun was the custodian of a very dangerous secret indeed.

He said, “Where is Angélique now?”

The priest gave him a long, steady look. “At this moment? I have no idea.”

Sebastian swallowed a spurt of annoyance. “You do realize that she is in danger?”

“Yes.”

“So tell me this: How did Farnsworth come to know about her?”

“Lord Preston worked closely with the Home Office for years, helping to destroy those the government considered Radicals.”

“And Angélique is a Radical?”

Father Ambrose huffed a soft laugh. “Well, she does still believe in the need for reform. But I doubt those such as Farnsworth and your Lord Jarvis know the reality of why Marie-Thérèse wants Angélique dead. They simply assume she was and is a dangerous revolutionary.”

“?‘A threat to society,’?” said Sebastian.

“Yes.”

Sebastian again let his gaze drift around that mournful burial ground, to the carelessly unearthed skulls with their bared, grinning teeth and vacant, staring eyes. “You need to tell me where I can find her.”

“I told you, I don’t know where she is at this moment.”

“At this precise moment.”

Father Ambrose shrugged and said nothing.

And Sebastian knew he would get nothing further from the priest.