Now, Dear Hart—
As the poet says, come to the garden in spring. There’s wine and
sweethearts in the pomegranate blossoms.
Remember!
If you do not come, these do
Not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.
My rose will bloom, among the
Hearty pineapples,
even in the first freeze of autumn.
Rose, my love—
Even kings can wrong a fey duet.
“N-A-S-R-I-N-I-M-H-E-R-E,” Lucy spelled out loud. “I still don’t get it.”
“‘Nasrin, I’m here.’ That’s what it says. He was speaking to me.” Seeing Lucy’s puzzled look, Miss Rivers continued in a more hushed tone. “My name is Nasrin, in Persian. You see, my name, ‘Rhonda,’ actually means ‘wild rose’ in Welsh. My parents’ tribute to my Welsh lineage, I suppose. When I told my sweetheart that, he wanted to give me a special name, which also meant wild rose, which only he and I would know.”
“Nasrin?” Lucy tasted the name. “How did he come up with that, I wonder.”
Miss Rivers smiled slightly, her voice thick with tears. “You see, my sweetheart he is—was—Persian, from the land of the Shah.” She shook her head. “He must have traveled here. ‘Nasrin, I’m here.’” She dabbed at her eyes. “He must have been hoping to surprise me. Now he’s gone!”
“Yes, it would seem so,” Lucy said, chewing on her lower lip. “However, the poem was only published by mistake—because I had asked Master Aubrey to include it in the London Miscellany. Why didn’t he just tell you he was here? Why did he need to inform you by poem?”
Miss Rivers was silent for a moment. When she spoke, it was with the air of someone seeking to share a heavy burden. “My father would never allow him to see me, I’m afraid. Certainly, he would not let me be courted,” she said. “I met Darius, you see, in the court of the Persian shah. My father, an Oxford scholar, wanted me along because of my expertise with languages. Not that he would admit to that completely, of course.” She took a sip. Revived, she continued. “Even though we lived graciously, my father could never quite view the Persians as his equals. I am ashamed to say it. He was keen enough to study their culture and their literature, but become connected by blood? This he could not do.” Her voice shook a bit. “We had traveled to Persia with another of my father’s colleagues from Denmark. I think my father may have hoped the Danish gentlemen would become smitten with me, or I of him, to keep that valuable connection close to our family.”
Lucy grimaced. She knew well of the expectations that gentry had about marriage. They married for property and connections, usually giving little thought to love and friendship.
Miss Rivers continued. “Instead, I met Darius, one of the translators at court. We fell deeply, madly in love. From him, I learned about life, love, and the poetry of the great mystics.” She gulped. “We often wrote poems to each other. My sweet Darius must have intended to send this poem to me. To let me know he was here.”
“So he wanted you to know he was here in London,” Lucy said gently. “Yet he doesn’t say where he is, or how to meet him.” She paused. “Or does he?”
Miss Rivers studied the poem again. “I’m not entirely sure. In the first part, Darius is referring to the words of Rumi, an ancient poet. This passage was one I loved most deeply. When I heard the poem read, I just knew he had written it.” Closing her eyes again, the woman recited, “‘Come to the garden in spring. There’s wine and sweethearts in the pomegranate blossoms. If you do not come, these do not matter. If you do come, these do not matter.’” She smiled at the distant memory, perhaps remembering her love-drenched days in a garden with Darius.
“You did not say the word ‘remember,’” Lucy noted, dragging Miss Rivers from her reverie, having followed the words written on the paper with her index finger. “That’s what Darius wrote in the poem.”
“No, I supposed Darius must have added the word to make sure my name was easily spelled in the acrostic.”
“Was this second part also written by this poet, what did you say his name was, Rumi?”
Miss Rivers frowned. “I don’t know. It doesn’t sound familiar.” Musing, she read the last line of the poem again. “Even kings can wrong a fey duet. I wonder.”
“Wronged by a king.” Lucy repeated. “You said ‘land of the Shah’ before. Is the Shah a king? That’s what he must have meant, don’t you think? And a ‘fey duet.’ That must be you and him. Rather sweet, truly.” Though she tried to sound comforting, Lucy could not help but blink away tears thinking of poor Darius spilling out of the barrel, knife through his chest. Perhaps he had come to London to challenge Miss Rivers’s father and seek her hand in marriage, only to wind up murdered in an old seedy tavern. She looked away.
“Yes, you must be right,” Miss Rivers said, but she didn’t seem convinced. Lucy was thankful when she passed Lucy a coin for the mead. She pressed Lucy’s hand. “Lucy. Dear. Thank you.”
Lucy found herself unexpectedly drawn to this dignified and sad young woman. “I think you should tell the constable about,” she hesitated, “your young man. Darius.” Seeing Miss Rivers’s mouth turn down in protest, she added, “Constable Duncan does not know who this man is. The law should be apprised.”
“Lucy, I can see you mean well, but talking to the constable will not bring my Darius back. Nothing will bring him back to me.”
“Surely you would want his murderer brought to justice?!” Lucy said. To think otherwise was too painful. She herself had spent more than two years trying to bring a monster—the murderer of her most dear friend—to justice.
“I cannot explain. Pray, do not press me any further.” With one final sob, Miss Rivers fled from the Golden Lion. This time Lucy made no attempt to follow her, stunned and saddened by what she had just learned. It wasn’t until much later, when it was far too late, that Lucy realized she had not asked Miss Rivers about the other items in the leather bag.
4
“His name was Darius,” Lucy said. Duncan looked up from a stack of papers, squinting at her in the bold streaming light of the setting sun. In the hours since she had last been on Fleet Street, the constable had made a sort of makeshift jail near the site of the Cheshire Cheese. It looked to have once been a candle-maker’s shop. She remembered now a chandler had worked there but had succumbed to the plague or the ague, or some other such malady rampant in London before the Fire. Evidently, the City had appropriated the shop as one of the many jails temporarily designed to hold criminals while they figured out what to do without Newgate or Fleet Prison. She could see they had lost no time, however, in putting up bars across one side of the old workroom, to lock up the riff-raff and other nefarious sorts that the constable wanted off the street.
“What?” Duncan asked.
“Darius,” Lucy repeated. “The dead man. In the Fire. His name was Darius. He was Persian.”
The constable stared at her. “How on earth do you know that? Lucy, tell me you haven’t been doing something foolish!”
Quickly, she related her encounter with Miss Rivers.
“Although I don’t believe that’s her real name,” she added. Then she showed him how the acrostic spelled the woman’s name. “Nasrin.”
Duncan gave a low whistle. “I would never have seen that.” He read the poem again. “Persian,” he mused. “That makes sense, actually. Dr. Larimer thought the victim’s features looked like those of a man from the Near East. He thought he might have been Arabic.”
Lucy nodded. “Part of the poem, Miss Rivers said, was also written by a poet they both enjoyed. She thought it was a bit of a message for her. Rumi, I think she said his name was.”
“I’m not familiar with that verse-maker,” Duncan admitted. “Well, truth be told, I only know the Bard and Marlowe. But Miss Rivers didn’t think the second part was from this Rumi fellow?”
“No, she seemed confused by the poem. If there was a message there, she didn’t know what
it was.”
“Let’s think about this for a moment.” Duncan paused before rereading the first part. ‘Come to the garden in spring. There’s wine and sweethearts in the pomegranate blossoms. Remember, if you do not come, these do not matter. If you do come, these do not matter.’”
“It sounds to me like he’s inviting her to meet him. In a beautiful garden. If she doesn’t come, she won’t see the beauty of the garden, and neither will he, since he will miss her. If she does come—”
“He will revel in her beauty, and hers alone,” Duncan finished. “No mere flowers will be able to compare, when she is beside him. A lucky man that.” Lucy looked at him in surprise. He looked lost in thought, as if thinking of someone far away. Then, he caught himself. “Well then,” he added brusquely, “a shame the poor fool is dead. He had a romantic soul.”
“His name was Darius,” Lucy reminded him.
“So you say.” Duncan sucked in his cheeks. “Well, did you ask her about any of the other things in the bag? Whether they meant anything to her?”
Lucy felt her moment of triumph rapidly deflate. “No,” she said, hating to disappoint him.
“Ah, no matter that. I should, of course, like to be able to inform his family, but no one else has come forward. If they’re all in Persia, ’tis hardly likely we will locate his relations.”
“We could look up the coat of arms on the ring, don’t you think?” Lucy asked. “Darius may have been connected with that family?”
“I doubt it,” Duncan answered. “I’d wager that’s an English family emblem.”
For a moment, Lucy looked out the window, watching the men dump buckets of ashes into the waiting carts. Just then a strong breeze came by, causing the top layer to swirl about the air and choke the men standing nearby. Sometimes she wondered if the ashes would ever be gone, whether the ever-present filmy grime could ever be lifted. When some ashes blew inside, Duncan shuttered the window, making the room seem much darker.
Coughing a bit, Lucy turned back to the constable. “I know we do not know Darius’s last name. However, there cannot be so many scholars at Oxford who study the Persian language. His name could be Rivers, but all we know for sure is that his daughter’s name is Rhonda. Perhaps we could learn who Darius was if we could identify the scholar. I could ask the magistrate?”
But Duncan was not listening, hearing a clamor at the door of the jail. A bellman popped his head around, tipping his cap. He may have been twice Duncan’s age. Once again, Lucy noticed the respect the constable had garnered in his men.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” the bellman said. “There’s a doxy, er, a woman outside, demanding to see you, sir. Says you’ve got something of hers. From the Fire.”
“This is why we need the Fire Courts in place! I can’t look into all these claims!” He half-rose in his chair. “Hey! What do you think you are doing?”
The woman had burst in, pushing past the bellman as he attempted to block her.
“Alright, Hank. It’s all right.” He turned to the woman, taking in her wild red hair. “Woman! What do you want?” Duncan asked. Unlike his bellman, who could not keep his eyes from the woman’s rather ample bosom, the constable directed his gaze toward the woman’s face.
To Lucy’s surprise, the woman pulled out the London Miscellany and pointed to the very poem they had just been discussing. “This! This is what I’m here about!”
Duncan’s eyes widened slightly, but he did not otherwise betray his surprise. He did, however, smile at the woman. He had quite a friendly grin, when he wanted. “Sit down.” He pulled a bench toward her. Lucy moved to go, and without looking at her he said, “No, Lucy. Why don’t you stay?” Turning back to the woman he said, “Now first things first, my dear. What is your name and occupation?”
“Tilly Baker, since the day I was born and until the day I marry,” Tilly simpered, warming under Duncan’s attentions. “Although I’m still quite young, so that day’s likely some time off. Not that I don’t have my fair share of suitors, don’t I?” She looked at Lucy then, as if daring to be contradicted. Since Tilly was well into her thirties, a spinster now, Lucy doubted this statement. “You can call me ‘Tilly,’” she said, fluttering her eyelashes.
“Thank you,” Duncan said. He took out some paper, and began to sharpen his quill, with careful deliberate strokes of his knife. “Tilly, you must have them dancing on a stick. Tell me, my dear, where do you live and work?”
“The Fox and Duck. Over in Smithfield. Before that wretched man set fire to London, I was tavern maid at the Cheshire Cheese, wasn’t I?” Tilly had a funny way of ending her statements with questions. “I had a room there, just above the tavern. Didn’t I just?”
Lucy found herself leaning forward. That’s where the body had been found.
Tilly’s face darkened. “Now I’ve nary a coin to speak of, my fortune and dowry all burned up.” Having arrived at the heart of the matter, her fawning manner ceased. “That’s why I’ve come. To get what’s mine.”
Duncan’s smile remained friendly, but his eyes narrowed. “What, pray tell, Tilly, would that be?”
“A small leather bag, full of belongings valuable only to myself, I can assure you. I know that you have it. I heard her”—she bobbed her head at Lucy—“say so. And I can see my poem has been printed too. I aim to get my fair share for that, don’t I?”
“You wrote the poem?” Lucy asked, trying to hide the disbelief that threatened to creep into her voice.
“Nah, I didn’t say I wrote it now, did I? ‘Dear heart,’ it says, right? That’s from one of my suitors. I put it in a bit of oilskin and silk for safekeeping. And my brooch in the wool. And my coins. And my ring.” Reading their exchange of glances correctly, Tilly added, “You didn’t think I’d know what was in the bag, did you?”
Duncan was silent a moment. He appeared to be thinking. Lucy waited for him to tell Tilly that knowing the contents of the bag did not mean she was the bag’s owner. Instead, his reply was mild. “Yes, of course. It sounds like it must be your bag.” Duncan said. “Perhaps you’d care to explain first how your bag came to be found with the body of a murdered man?” Tilly opened her mouth, and then promptly shut it. Duncan continued. “Because I can’t think of many good honest reasons why the belongings of one person might be found on the corpse of another? I’m sure my bellman can’t. I wonder how the magistrate would look up such evidence. It doesn’t look good, hey, Lucy?”
Lucy solemnly shook her head.
Tilly began to look afraid. “Whatcher mean? I ain’t have nothing to do with no murder! I don’t know nothing about no dead man, do I?”
“Well, let us start from the beginning, shall we?” Duncan soothed her. “Tell me what you know about this bag and the contents.”
Somewhat mollified, Tilly sniffed. “I saw the bag during the card game. Someone read the poem out loud. That’s when I heard it. That’s all I know.” She stood up. “I’ll be off now.”
“Hold on a moment, Tilly.” The constable’s voice was mild, but firm. “I need to understand this. So, there was a game of cards being played at the Cheshire Cheese?”
Tilly rolled her eyes. “Yeah. The night of the Fire. A few hours before the bells.”
“September first,” Duncan said, scratching something down on the paper. “So you were serving ale, I take it? Not playing? And a few people, what—three, four, five?—were playing cards at the table?”
“’Twas four or five, though I’m not sure if they were all playing. A few others just drinking their pints, weren’t they?”
“The items that were in the bag were—what?—the winnings?” Duncan asked. He furrowed his brow. “Someone wagered a poem? That doesn’t make sense.”
“They were playing for what was in their pockets. The poem was wrapped up. Later, one of them opened it up and read it.” Tilly explained as if to a dullard.
“Can you tell us anything about these men?” he asked. “Did you know them?”
Tilly cons
idered for a moment. “One didn’t speak English right. He was a foreigner.” Tilly hesitated. “Probably a bloody papist, wasn’t he?”
“Foreigner?” Lucy glanced at the constable. “Did he have darker skin, and black curling hair?” At Tilly’s muttered assent, she went on. “Could he have been Persian, do you think?”
“From Perton?” Tilly shrugged her shoulders. “I dunno about that. Staffordshire’s a while away, isn’t it? I got a niece who works at the manor there.”
“No, she meant Persian,” Duncan clarified. Seeing Tilly’s uncomprehending look, he tried again. “From the East?”
Tilly yawned. “Now how would I be knowing that? He looked Italian-like, but not too, you know what I mean. I just heard him say that where he came from, the game was an-nas. Nasty, I say.” She chuckled at her own joke. “Bloody foreigners. Not taking to our English ways. What do they expect? No wonder he got himself killed.”
“How did you know he was the one who had been killed? This foreigner?” Duncan countered. “I thought you didn’t know about ‘no dead man.’”
Tilly shrugged again. “I just guessed. That’s all.” She rushed on. “I don’t know who killed him now, do I?”
“Tilly, this is important,” Lucy looked sideways toward the constable. He shrugged slightly, which she took to mean he didn’t mind her asking the woman questions. “You must know something; you just don’t realize what you know. Who called him a ‘bloody papist’?”
“Don’t remember,” Tilly said sullenly. Lucy wasn’t sure if she believed her.
“Well, you were right about which man was killed. How did you know that?” Lucy pressed. “Did you hear something?”
Tilly shook her head. “No, I figured it out. He was the only gent I didn’t see later. You know, when we were all mad to get out when the church bells started ringing fire.” For a moment her face took on that same dull glazed look common to those who’d suffered through the blaze. “Dreadful that was. I lost everything, except for a few meager belongings I could carry on my back.”
From the Charred Remains (Lucy Campion Mysteries) Page 6
