Who Buries the Dead

Chapter 13

The royal residence of Windsor Castle lay in the provincial town of Windsor, some twenty miles to the west of London on the southern bank of the river Thames. Jarvis had dispatched one of his men that morning with a message warning the Dean to prepare for a visit to the royal vault. But by the time he arrived, the sun had long since slipped below the western walls of the castle.

The Honorable and Right Reverend Edward Legge, who served in the prestigious position of Dean of St. George’s Chapel, waited in the lower court to meet him, the ancient medieval battlements looming dark against a black sky. A ferociously ambitious cleric who’d long ago perfected the art of flattering and pleasing those in power, Legge was ponderous and fleshy, with startlingly dark, heavy brows and a weak chin. Now his jowly face showed slick with a nervous sweat despite the cold wind that whipped at his cassock and sent dried leaves scuttling across the castle’s wide, sloping lawns. At his side stood the chapel’s virger, Rowan Toop, with a horn lantern gripped tightly in one hand. The Dean might be in charge of the day-to-day affairs of the chapel, but it was the virger who oversaw the care and maintenance of the venerable old buildings and supervised the burial of the dead.

“My lord,” said the Dean, both men bowing low as a castle guard leapt forward to open the carriage door. “We are truly honored to-”

Jarvis stepped down with an agility surprising for one of his size and cut off the Dean with a curt, “I trust all is ready?”

“Yes, my lord. If I might be so bold as to offer your lordship a nice hot cup of tea? Or perhaps a glass of wine before we-”

“No.”

The Dean bowed again, his habitual bland smile still firmly in place as he held out a hand toward the chapel’s ornate western front. “If you’ll come this way, my lord?”

They followed the lantern-bearing virger into the medieval church’s vast, soaring nave, with its ancient stained-glass windows and elaborately carved ceiling and stately alabaster monuments. St. George’s was second only to Westminster Abbey as the burial place of kings and queens, princes and princesses-although over the years the precise location of certain royals had become somewhat fuzzy.

The entrance to the Prince of Wales’s new passage lay in the quire, guarded by a recently installed iron gate wrapped with a heavy padlock and chain. “Excuse me, my lord,” said the Dean, producing a large key. “This will take but a moment.”

Jarvis grunted, his gaze drifting over the colorful rows of helms and banners that hung above the intricately carved wooden quire stalls, for the chapel also served as home to the Knights of the Garter.

“As you can see, my lord,” said the Dean as he fumbled with the lock, “we’ve taken every precaution to ensure that there will be no repeat of the unfortunate scenes that followed the discovery of King Edward’s remains.”

“I should hope so,” said Jarvis. When workmen repaving the chapel late in the previous century had accidentally broken into the vault containing the seven-foot coffin of Edward IV, so many gawkers and relic seekers had managed to find their way into the crypt that they’d carried off much of what was left of Edward-one tooth, lock of hair, and finger bone at a time-before anyone thought to put a stop to it.

The chain rattled as the Dean unwrapped the heavy links, his breath forming a white vapor cloud in the cold. “There,” he said, swinging open the gate and stepping back to allow the lantern-bearing virger to precede them.

The narrow, nearly complete passage sloped steeply downward, so that they descended rapidly, their footsteps echoing hollowly, the cold air heavy with the smell of dank earth and old death. The small vault that had originally been intended as only a temporary repository for Henry VIII’s favorite Queen lay roughly halfway between the high altar and the sovereign’s garter stall, on the western side of the passage. Three days before, when Jarvis had last visited the crypt, the workmen had expanded their original, accidental aperture into an opening large enough to allow him to enter. Now all the rubble from that effort had been cleared away and a screen discreetly placed before the opening.

Jarvis waited, hands clasped behind his back, while the Dean shifted the screen to one side.

“Not exactly what you’d expect as the final resting place of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, now, is it?” said the virger, ducking inside with his lamp held before him.

The light danced around a crudely constructed vault faced with rough brick and measuring no more than seven or eight feet wide and ten feet long. The arched ceiling was so low, Jarvis had to stoop considerably as he entered.

The three coffins lay precisely as they had when he’d last seen them, with Henry VIII’s bones and bits of cloth showing quite clearly amidst the decayed wood and warped lead of his shattered casket. Beside him, Jane Seymour’s better-preserved casket rested at an odd angle against the far wall, as if it had been hastily shoved aside by frightened men working stealthily to bury a murdered king.

The coffin of the unlucky Charles I lay to the left of his predecessors, still covered with the original black velvet pall, which had been carefully replaced after Jarvis’s last visit.

The Dean said, “As you can see, my lord, nothing has been disturbed.”

“Remove the pall,” said Jarvis.

The Dean’s smile of gentle complaisance faltered. “My lord?”

“You heard me.”

The Dean nodded to the virger, who glanced around helplessly for someplace to set his lantern.

“Here, give it to me,” snapped the Dean, taking the lantern from the man’s grasp.

The virger swiped the palms of both hands down the sides of his cassock, as if reluctant to touch the dusty, threadbare old cloth before them. He was a skinny man well into his thirties, with straight, straw-colored hair and a long, bony face dominated by a protuberant mouth full of large, crooked teeth. Unlike the Dean, who was the seventh son of an earl and probably destined for a bishopric, the virger was a layman of far more ordinary origins. Moving slowly, he carefully folded back the pall to reveal Charles I’s lead coffin, white and chalky with age.

On his last visit to the vault, Jarvis had left strict instructions that the coffin was not to be touched; its lid was to remain soldered tight and the leaden scroll that encircled it kept in place to await the Prince’s formal examination. Now the scroll gaped open, its cut edges showing clearly where the section bearing the inscription KING CHARLES, 1648 had been removed. But rather than tackle the solder, the thieves had simply cut a large, square opening in the upper part of the lid-easy enough to do since the outer lead coffin was only a thin sheet and its wooden lining much decayed.

“Give me the lantern,” said Jarvis.

The Dean stood frozen, eyes wide, jaw slack with horror.

“Hand it to me, damn you.”

The Dean gave a start and held it out to him.

Jarvis raised the lantern high, so that the golden light played over the coffin’s interior. An unctuous, foul-smelling matter glistened from the cerecloth where it had been pulled back to reveal a large, bowl-like depression, of the size and shape of a head. But only a few darkened wisps of hair now clung to the stained, waxy shroud. The torso ended abruptly at the neck.

“Merciful heavens,” said the Dean, one hand cupped over his nose and mouth. “Someone’s stolen the King’s head.”