he knew, but he suspected their effort had been halfhearted, their explanation for the invalid officer’s death already running to seizure or heart failure.
It was some minutes before he found what he was looking for: a light blue bottle some four inches high, its stopper gone, but with the dark yellow label proclaiming LAUDANUM: POISON still largely intact. Reaching down, he picked it up, the silt-laden water lapping cold against his hand as his fingers closed around the bottle, empty now but for a faint, reddish brown smudge in one corner.
There was no way of knowing how long it had lain here; an hour, a day, a week? It suggested everything but proved nothing. Sebastian felt his fist tighten around the heavy glass with an unexpected surge of raw anger. Drawing back his arm, he hurled the bottle far out into the waterway.
It hit with a plopping splash, then sank quickly out of sight. Sebastian stood and watched the ripples fade to stillness.
Then he turned and walked away.
“Do you blame him for what he did?” Hero asked.
She was seated in the armchair beside the fire in her chamber, with Sebastian on the rug beside her. “Wilkinson, you mean?” He leaned his head back against her knee and drew in a deep breath. “I’m still not convinced he went there to kill Eisler. He could have had some other scheme in mind.”
“A way to bell the cat?”
“Perhaps. Only, events got away from him—as they have an unfortunate tendency to do.”
“And then he killed himself,” she said quietly. “To spare his family the shame of the trial, and to give his wife and child a chance at a better life without him.” He felt her fingers playing with the hair that curled at the nape of his neck. “We don’t take good care of the men we ask to risk their lives and health for us, do we? We use them, and then when they’re no longer of value, we toss them away.”
“‘King George commands and we obey,’” quoted Sebastian. “‘Over the hills and far away.’” He turned to face her, his hands coming to rest on the growing swell of her belly. “Lately, I find myself wondering what the world will be like when she grows up.”
“He,” said Hero firmly.
Sebastian laughed. “You’re certain of that, are you?”
Her lips curved into a slow smile, and he thought she’d never looked more beautiful. “Yes.”
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Author’s Note
T
he theft of the French Crown Jewels from the Garde-Meuble in Paris in September of 1792 was essentially as described here, although the involvement of Danton and Roland, while suggested, has never been proven. Napoléon’s determination to recover the French Crown Jewels, as well as the ruthlessness of the methods he employed, was likewise real.
The identification of the Hope Diamond as the recut French Blue is now generally accepted. An old lead cast of the French Blue with a label saying it belonged to “Mr. Hoppe of London,” recently discovered in a drawer in the French National History Museum in Paris, was donated in 1850 by a descendant of the Archard family. Interestingly enough, Charles Archard was both a close associate of the Hopes and one of the lapidaries tasked by Napoléon to recover the French Crown Jewels. How Hope acquired the diamond is not known, although multiple theories exist. I have chosen the one best suited to my story. It is significant that Napoléon, who surely knew more than we do about the events of September 1792, always believed that the Duke of Brunswick (father of the Princess of Wales, Caroline) had been bribed with the diamond not to attack Paris. There is also considerable evidence to support the belief that Brunswick sent his jewels to Caroline when his duchy was threatened by Napoléon, and that she sold them after his death.
Hope and Co. did indeed run into financial difficulties as a result of the war and was sold to Barings in 1813.
The recut blue diamond reappeared, briefly, in London in September 1812, exactly twenty years after its original theft, when a Huguenot lapidary named Francillon drew up a sales prospectus for a London diamond merchant named Daniel Eliason. Since that gentleman did not meet a violent death (and was as far as I know nothing like the nasty character here portrayed), I have changed his name to Daniel Eisler in making him my murder victim. What happened to the diamond after September 1812 is not known, although there is considerable evidence that it was acquired by the Prince Regent and was in his possession until his death in 1830. At that point it reappeared in the possession of Henry Philip Hope, although he always refused to divulge its origins.
Numerous books have been written about the history of the Hope Diamond; arguably the most useful and current are Patch’s Blue Mystery, Kurin’s Hope Diamond, and Fowler’s Hope: Adventures of a Diamond.
Blair Beresford is of my own creation. However, Thomas Hope’s marriage to Louisa de la Poer Beresford was much as described here. After Hope’s death, she married her cousin William Carr Beresford, the illegitimate son of her uncle the Marquess of Waterford. A general under Wellington, he was eventually made Viscount Beresford. Interestingly, he was the commander responsible for the unauthorized, disastrous attack on the River Plate region in Argentina that played a part in Where Serpents Sleep.
The Walcheren Expedition and the deadly fever that resulted from it are both real.
The grimoire known as The Key of Solomon is real. Probably written in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, it became hugely popular, although it continued to exist largely in handwritten manuscript form until late in the nineteenth century, when it was finally printed. There was a very real upsurge of interest in grimoires, or magic handbooks, in the nineteenth century. Most of those that became popular dated back to the Renaissance, for reasons Abigail McBean explains to Hero.
London’s vibrant molly underground—with its accompanying dangers of extortion and prosecution—was essentially as described here, although more vibrant in the eighteenth century than by the early nineteenth.
The Black Brunswickers were a real volunteer corps raised by Duke Frederick William, Princess Caroline’s brother, to fight in the Napoleonic Wars after the French occupied his duchy.
The life of London’s crossing sweeps was as described here, with these biographical portraits being loosely based on some of those recorded by Henry Mayhew. Mayhew’s work, which appeared midcentury, also serves as the inspiration for the collection of articles Hero is writing. Some of the crossing sweeps did indeed go to the Haymarket after dark, where they played a part in supplying girls to gentlemen in carriages.
The Abbey of St. Saviour in Bermondsey, Southwark, had almost entirely disappeared by the beginning of the nineteenth century. Besides the lay church (which still stands), all other traces vanished somewhere between 1804 and 1812. Since there is some dispute as to when, precisely, the gatehouse and its attached structures were demolished, I have taken the liberty of using them here
The Sebastian St. Cyr SerieWhat Angels Fear
When Gods Die
Why Mermaids Sing
Where Serpents Sleep
What Remains of Heaven
Where Shadows Dance
When Maidens Mourn
Table of Contents
Also by C. S. Harris
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
About the Author