A Murder at Rosamund's Gate Quotes

“To live and to dream, to study and share her thoughts, to ponder the words of great men...To be a man, to be a scholar-she could only imagine the freedom and the headiness of reading and writing without being encumbered by scullery duties.”
― Susanna Calkins, A Murder at Rosamund's Gate

“Adam frowned. "What possessed you to come to Newgate? 'Tis no place for a woman, especially one as young as you, and unaccompanied to boot! You're lucky you got out alive."
Lucy scowled back, "I think it is my right to visit my own brother! Anyway, 'tis no matter to you!" Resentfully, she recalled herself, "Sir.”
― Susanna Calkins, A Murder at Rosamund's Gate

“As the prisoners saw Lucy, they reached their hands out piteously to her, some begging her for food, others merely mouthing their pain, not even realizing that their lips no longer made sounds. When one of them grabbed her arm as she passed, Matthews raised his baron and swiftly brought it down on the prisoner's head. Lucy winced as the prisoner fell back to the floor, blood gushing from his brow.
Even as Lucy turned her head from the horror of human misery, another sight caused bile to rise in her throat. She vomited right there in the corridor. Two corpses, beheaded and dismembered, lay strewn about the floor of a small room that led from the corridor. The stench of human flesh and something else violated her nose. She dimly wondered what the sickly, spicy smell could be, and she began to sway.
Dimly, she recollected John telling her once how the hangman would boil the heads of men who had been drawn and quartered in a mixture of bay-salt and cumin seed, to keep them from putrefying before their relatives could claim their bodies for burial. Why had he told her that? she wondered dully. Why had she wanted to know?”
― Susanna Calkins, A Murder at Rosamund's Gate