Read Accidents of Providence for Free Online

She accompanied them freely. Bartwain let them in and showed her to his chambers.
    His suspect was no more remarkable in feature than any of a thousand other women he had seen, though if pressed he would have conceded she was attractive enough for her age. Her green eyes compelled him forward. She stood taller than he preferred in a member of the feminine sex—of course, that was not her fault. A fringe of dark ringlets escaped her head covering. She wore a tradeswoman’s gloves, the fingers of them cut off for sewing.
    He ushered her inside and closed the door. Two candles provided the only light. Motioning toward the stool, he invited her to sit. “I assume you know why I have asked you here.”
    “Yes.” She tucked her skirt and sat. “Elizabeth Lilburne told me about you.” She did not seem to know what to do with her hands. Bartwain looked on as she fidgeted and plucked at her sleeves, pulling the material over her wrists until her hands nearly disappeared.
    “I would like you to tell me what you did on the nights of November first and second. If you do not, and I think you know this, the law compels me to charge you under the Act to Prevent the Destroying and Murdering of Bastard Children.”
    “You will do what you want whether I speak to you or not.” She tilted her head to the side as she spoke so that a vein in her forehead stood out.
    Bartwain was having a hard time reading her expression. “I have brought you here as a courtesy,” he told her. “I am giving you the opportunity to tell me why I should
not
have you arrested and charged. The evidence does not fall in your favor.”
    “By evidence you mean gossip and rumor.”
    “You are the one to address that. Go ahead. Set the record straight.” Bartwain did not feel like matching wits with anyone that evening, let alone another woman, let alone an unmarried woman of a certain age with a vein in her forehead and a tilt of the head that confused him.
    “I have been wrongly accused,” she told him.
    “Of what? Of harming that poor infant?”
    “I tell you I have been wrongly accused!”
    “Was the child yours?”
    “I had not been well in months.”
    “Were you with child?”
    Silence.
    “Was that child yours?”
    “God gave it to me.”
    Was this an admission? “You know what I mean,” he said. “Were you in labor on November the first?”
    “Sir, I have labored my whole life,” she said.
    He frowned. “So you will not tell me what happened?”
    “I cannot say what happened!”
    “You cannot say, or you cannot remember?”
    “I cannot say! I cannot make it out.” She looked ill, or at least ill at ease.
    “Did you bury an infant outside the slaughterhouse, and if so, was it yours?”
    “I found a child,” she told him, growing hoarse. “I buried the child that I found.”
    “Whose was it?”
    “It belonged to God.”
    “Every child belongs to God,” Bartwain muttered.
    “Do you think so, sir? I hope so.” She leaned toward him; she leaned so close Bartwain leaned backward. He hoped she was not about to begin weeping. He could not bear it when his suspects dissolved into tears.
    “Was it of your womb?”
    “My womb is old and decrepit.”
    “You have some trimmer’s mouth,” he grumbled. “Your answers are slipperier than a rock at the bottom of the creek.”
    She bowed her head. Bartwain did not trust the posture.
    “You might be interested to learn I saw the Leveler William Walwyn this morning. He was certainly uneasy when I mentioned your name.”
    Her back stiffened but she said nothing.
    “I interviewed him,” Bartwain went on, trying to gauge her reaction. “Do you want to know what he said? You have not seen him in nine months, from what I gather. You must be desperate for a word from the magnificent William Walwyn, even though he has not been able to leave his house long enough to inquire after your welfare. Something about fourteen children to care for now that he is out of the Tower.”
    “He lives his