Page 47 of The Widower Without a Will
Thanking the man, she walked back to her room on Seymour Street.There was plenty of time left in the day, but she needed a rest before she faced the next task on her itinerary.
The following morning, bolstered by a cup of boiling-hot tea and a bowl of lukewarm porridge, Martha found the coroner’s office in the Guild Hall.Here, a lone clerk who looked about the age of eighteen manned the desk.He greeted her with polite curiosity.“May I help you, ma’am?”
Martha had rehearsed her words as she walked over.Faced with a fellow human, however, her speech died in her mouth.
Was she really supposed to reveal to this child that her son had destroyed himself?
“I am looking for records of my son’s death in 1812,” she said instead.“Does this office have such records?”
The boy frowned.“What kind of records do you mean exactly?”
“I would like to know where he is buried.”
Now the boy leaned backward, judgment descending over his young face.“If we didn’t know his name, then he would be in the potter’s field.”
The shame that Martha knew so well, had lived with so deeply this past decade, surged up like floodwaters and almost overwhelmed her.A few months ago, itwouldhave overwhelmed her.
But Lord Preston had told her there was no reason to compound the crime with shame.
“The coroner knew his name.He was buried at a crossroads.I want to know which crossroads.”
The clerk gulped.“We don’t keep records of that.”
Of course they didn’t.They could not allow families to memorialize the suicides; they could not permit a mother to grieve her child.Martha lifted her chin in the face of his scorn.“But surely someone knows which crossroads they used.Or is there a body under every crossroads in this city?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“And you cannot think of anyone I should ask?”
He shook his head.“I’m sorry, ma’am.”
Another man lying to her, telling her what he deemed appropriate for her to hear.Or was he simply trying to defeat her?Was he so invested in the belief that Lucas deserved no mourners that he would engineer this outcome by declaring ignorance?
Martha couldn’t force him to tell her anything.But she was far older than this boy, and she knew he was not her last resort.
And, as Lucas’s mother, she wasn’t going to give up until she had exhausted every single option.
Martinhadgrownuphearing of the terrible fire in 1682 that had ruined the first Northfield Hall.His grandfather had shown him the smoke stains remaining on the ceiling of the dining room, in the only portion of the house that had survived, and told him of how proud the family was to have rebuilt an even better hall of England’s finest red brick.
He had long ago accepted that his grandfather would disapprove of what Martin had done with the barony.But he wasn’t prepared for how deeply he felt his grandfather’s disappointment as he took in the ruins of Northfield Hall.
This house—the title—the family legacy—they had all been entrusted to him, and here was proof of what he had done with them: burned them to ash.
He slept for almost a full day in the Chows’ cottage.Then he began his new life of wading through rubble in search of anything he could salvage.The first day, he found his steel safe tumbled out of its cupboard beside his desk.Though it was warped from heat, it still contained some banknotes, the family’s royal letters patent, and the deed to the property.His desk was burnt down the middle, the contents of its drawers melted or fused or charred.All his wonderful bookshelves were reduced to stumps, the books transformed to black husks and ash.
The second day, Caroline helped him inspect the furniture that had been rounded up and laid in the cold December sun.His mother’s rococo settees, ordered as a set from Paris, now stood on spindled legs empty of any upholstery.The long dining room table that his grandmother had commissioned when the Duke of Buckingham had come for a visit was now in three pieces, none of which could stand on their own.The mattresses were all burnt, the beds mangled from falling through the floors.Some things had survived: ivory chess pieces, the gilt frame of a looking glass, children’s books and old journals that had been relegated to the upper stories.
Not enough.
Sophia arrived on the third day and joined Caroline, Eddie, and the household servants in collecting the shattered window glass.Eddie would melt it down in his workshop to reuse it.They filled a wagon hitched to the gig with the glass, but while Martin was trying to help, he sliced open his palm on a sharp edge, and he was told to spend the rest of the day supervising.
Nate joined them on the fourth day.Almost immediately, he turned into the naval captain he had once been and started organizing their haggard crew: the housemaids were sent to the barns to wash what had been saved while the footmen began dismantling what remained, salvaging every possible brick for reuse.
On the fifth day, Ellen appeared with a carriage full of supplies: clothes for Martin and the servants who lived in the Hall, burlap and tarps and axes for demolition, crates for storing what had been saved.
And on the sixth day, surprising everyone, arrived Benjamin and Lydia and the three little grandsons Martin had never before met.“We were coming for Christmas,” Benjamin explained, “but now we are here to help.”
By the seventh day, they had pulled down the charred staircase and half-standing walls.They stored bricks and wood and anything else that could be reused in the back of the barn with the cows, chickens, and goats.Soon, there would be nothing left to do except make plans for what came next.Martin needed to hire an architect to examine the foundation, which remained intact, and recommend how they rebuild.He also needed to find better lodgings for the household servants than the spare beds in cottages across the estate; he would have to remove himself from the Chows’ soon, but he couldn’t retreat to London when there was so much salvaging to be done.Could he bear to live in the White Hart for months on end?
