Come the Fear

by Chris Nickson

  ‘Quiet morning?’ the Constable asked.

  The deputy sighed.

  ‘Anyone would think they wanted us out of a job. Someone had his pocket picked up by the Market Cross and that’s been it.’

  ‘Did you catch the thief?’

  ‘Long gone, of course. Didn’t even have a description.’

  ‘Take a look around on the other side of the river this afternoon. See what’s going on over there.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘Meanwhile I’ll go and find this new pimp of yours and make sure he understands how things work here.’

  The food arrived and he ate in silence, surprised to find himself so hungry. He wiped the plate clean with his bread and downed the last of the ale.

  ‘We’d better do some work,’ he said finally, and they rose together to walk back out into the bright daylight. Sedgwick stopped and sniffed the air.

  ‘Something’s on fire.’

  ‘Where?’ Nottingham asked urgently. ‘Can you tell?’ They stood still, listening, then began to pick out a clamour of voices down towards the river. Together they began to run.

  Two

  The noise became louder, people shouting in panic then the frantic, outraged roar of a blaze. As they neared, the Constable could see dark smoke pluming low above the Calls before tailing into the sky. Christ, he thought, running faster. So many of the houses there were built from timber, old, dry and run down, crammed with the poor and hemmed tight between tanneries, dye works and cloth finishers. If the fire took full hold the whole block could catch in a moment.

  Close to, he could feel the fierce heat and glow as the ancient wood caught and burned. So far it was just one house. Small tongues of fire flicked out through gaps in the woodwork, like a hunger that demanded to be fed. The sound around him filled his ears and the thick air made his eyes water, tiny crumbs of hot ash floating to leave him coughing and spluttering.

  People had gathered at a distance, pushed away by the heat, already speculating on the dead left inside and taking wagers on the damage. Angrily he pushed his way through them and into a ginnel barely wider than his shoulders, darting along it to the thin, dusty ground of Call Brows and the river.

  Men had already set up a bucket line and more rushed to join them, hauling water from the Aire to try to douse the blaze. They worked with quiet, desperate intent; it wasn’t just a house up there, it was their own homes and businesses they wanted to save. Without a word Nottingham shouldered his way in, squeezing between Hammond the tailor, face full of fear, eyes wild, needles still sticking from his shirt collar, and a muscled man he didn’t know who’d thrown off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, his mouth set grimly. For a full hour the Constable bent his back, moving buckets to and fro, pausing only for quick glances towards the building. There was a sharp, shattering explosion of glass as the heat blew out a window, followed by the slow, menacing rumble of a floor giving way. Anyone trapped inside had to be dead, he thought, and prayed God they’d all managed to escape.

  The men battled together, throats too rough and dry from the smoke to speak. His muscles ached and there was pain in his arms and fingers with each movement. Sweat stung his eyes. But he carried on, just like all the others around him. They had no choice. He was sure he could take no more when a yell rose from the house. The Constable jerked his head up, fearing that the fire had started to spread.

  Instead there were hoarse cheers and shouts, ragged at first, then growing. They’d won, they’d beaten the blaze, taken the life from it to leave it hissing and steaming. He let the bucket drop to the ground and scooped up handfuls of water to drink and splash over his face, the river coolness like balm on his skin. He straightened up slowly, pushing at his spine with his knuckles as he stretched. Like his neighbours he was grinning wide, pulled and buoyed by victory.

  But he didn’t have their time for celebration. He made his way back through to the Calls, legs cramping and protesting at each step, hands rubbing at the ache in his shoulders. The crowd was still outside the house, more of them than before, still lively and laughing now the danger had passed. He spotted the deputy, a head taller than the others, and waved him over.

  ‘Get a couple of the men here to watch the place and make sure it doesn’t start up again,’ he ordered, his voice low and scratchy. He nodded towards the people milling around. ‘They’ll keep this lot out of the place, too. Make sure Rob knows to have someone guarding it all night, too. It won’t be cool enough for us to look inside before the morning.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  Someone was passing a jug of ale. Nottingham quickly reached for it and took a long, welcome drink before handing it on. ‘That was warm work,’ he said wearily. ‘At least we managed to save it. Did you find out who was living there?’

  ‘No one,’ Sedgwick answered. ‘It was empty. There’d been a family but they left last week.’

  ‘Lucky for them,’ the Constable said. He looked at the wisps of smoke still curling up from the blackened wood and the dark patches of soot bright against old, stained limewash walls. The air was acrid, rasping like a file against the back of his throat.

  He turned away, staring at the damage, the heat still strong enough to keep people back, and wondered how the blaze had started. It could have been anything, any spark would have ignited a place like this.

  The Constable walked down the street towards the Parish Church, where the air smelt cleaner. He rested against the wall of the graveyard where fresh spring moss covered the coping stones, hawked up phlegm, breathed deeply to clear his chest and wondered. Perhaps they’d understand more tomorrow. The odds were that it had been an accident.

  By the time he reached his home on Marsh Lane he could feel all his years in his muscles. The sweat had dried prickly and salty on his flesh. The back door was open, sun coming in to warm the kitchen. Over in the fields white linen like ghosts was spread over green bushes, still drying from yesterday’s wash. He poured a full cup of ale and downed it rapidly, scarcely noticing the taste, then followed it with another. The coat and breeches felt heavy against his tired body. He watched Mary working in the garden, planting the seedlings she’d carefully coaxed through the late winter.

  She was bent in concentration, her fingers moving in the dirt with quick certainty. Nottingham couldn’t see her face but he knew her eyes would be bright in the sunlight and her mouth curved in a tiny smile of pleasure at her work. The older he grew, the more he understood that death came closer each day, the greater the tenderness and love he felt for her.

  She turned as he came outside and stood, her eyes widening with worry.

  ‘My God, Richard, what happened to you? You’re all covered in dirt and soot. You smell like—’

  ‘—fire,’ he told her. ‘It’s all right, it’s out now.’ She opened her mouth to speak. ‘I was just part of the bucket chain,’ he said. ‘Nothing dangerous.’ He held out his hands, palms upwards to show the redness and blisters from the handles.

  ‘Was anyone hurt?’ she asked.

  ‘Evidently the place was empty. We managed to put it out before it could spread.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’ She licked her thumb and rubbed a smudge from his cheek. He grinned at the gentle roughness of her fingertip against his face. Her hair was greyer each year and the pain of Rose’s loss still lingered in her eyes, but he held her closer to his heart with each season, even after more than twenty years together.

  ‘You’d better go and wash and put on some clothes that don’t stink,’ she told him. ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘I’m fine for now. How’s the garden coming?’

  Mary smiled.

  ‘I’ve put the herbs over there.’ She pointed to a cleared corner where the earth looked dark and rich. ‘And I’m just planting the onions.’

  Clean and in a fresh shirt and breeches, he sat and read his way through the new edition of the Mercury. As usual it was filled with news taken from the London papers, things that didn’t concern or interes
t him. The great men would do their damnedest in the capital, but all that mattered in his world was here in this city. He skipped past the advertisements offering outrageous claims for efficacious pills and potions to thumb through the Leeds announcements and their snippets of scandal and innuendo. There was nothing he didn’t already know or hadn’t proved for a lie.

  By the time he’d finished, Emily was lifting the latch with Lister just behind. He smiled to watch the lad trailing her like an eager pup.

  ‘Hello, love,’ he said. ‘How was your teaching?’

  She untied the bonnet and shook out her hair.

  ‘I wish Mrs Rains would let me try some new things,’ she replied with a small pout. ‘I think we could have the girls reading and counting much better if we did.’

  ‘If anyone can persuade her I’m sure you can,’ he offered, hoping the girl hadn’t been too insistent.

  ‘We were talking about it on the way home.’ Emily reached out and took Lister’s hand, squeezing it tightly. ‘Did you see there’d been a fire on the Calls, Papa?’

  ‘I was there,’ he told her and turned to the lad. ‘Rob, talk to Mr Sedgwick when you go in tonight. Make sure you keep a couple of men standing guard on the house that burned. We don’t want it flaring up again or anyone going in. You’ll have to move the others around so everything’s covered.’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ he answered, and Nottingham saw the quick flash of relief at the change of subject. ‘I’d better go. I need to eat and be ready.’

  ‘Better not be late for work.’ They grinned at each other in brief shared understanding before Lister left. They were a good couple, he thought. He was a solid, steadying influence on Emily, tempering her away from wilder moments. And she brought something out in him. He’d come to care about people. Between the job and courting, he’d become a very likeable young man. She could do a great deal worse than end up with him.

  The Constable didn’t want to enter the house until full light. It was simply too dangerous to risk blundering around among shadows and debris. Rob had stayed on to help and two of the men were hauling ladders. Yesterday’s sunshine had given way to high pearly cloud, but the soft spring warmth remained in the air.

  ‘I heard something odd after you’d gone yesterday, boss,’ Sedgwick said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A woman thought she saw someone coming out of here before the fire.’

  Nottingham turned sharply. ‘What? Someone set this?’

  The deputy shrugged.

  ‘We’d best see what we can find, then,’ the Constable said grimly.

  The walls still stood, damaged and scarred, but solid. Inside, though, there was little left. Holes in the roof let light pour in like water. The floors had given way in places, fallen all the way through to the cellar where beams lay broken and burned.

  ‘See if there’s anything upstairs,’ Nottingham told the deputy. ‘Watch those steps, though. Lizzie’ll kill me if you end up hurt. Rob, you come with me.’

  They lowered one of the ladders and the Constable climbed down to the cellar warily, turning slowly and picking his way across patches of the beaten earth floor, stirring up a fog of fine ashes with every step. The cloying smell of smoke filled the place, rubbing his throat raw as he breathed. The fire had done its work well. Apart from the wreckage there was little to see, just a few small pieces of rubbish pressed down into the dirt, the detritus of lives that had been lived there. He wondered again how the blaze had begun. Had the woman really seen someone leaving here? Why would anyone want to burn this place?

  He moved on cautiously, hands exploring under timbers that were still warm to the touch. He’d almost finished when his fingertips pressed against something. He felt slowly along the shape, pursing his lips, his face grim.

  ‘Some light over here,’ he ordered briskly. ‘Get Mr Sedgwick down here and let’s get this shifted. I want to see what’s underneath.’

  The wood had collapsed to make a roof over her. Without that she’d have burned like everything else, the house her funeral pyre. Lister and Sedgwick worked slowly and methodically to pry away each piece, gradually uncovering her as the Constable watched.

  Even with the shelter there wasn’t much left, little more than a husk of who she’d once been. What remained of her flesh was cooked crisp, all blistered and cracked with the smell of roasted meat. Her hair had been scorched to the scalp, the bone showing through in awful, vivid white. The features of her face were almost all gone; the only things left were her nose and mouth; there was a split in her upper lip, and a jut of bone that could have been a break or a cleft palate. Only her shape gave away her sex, with a mound on her belly. Had she been pregnant?

  ‘Let me take a look.’

  Nottingham crouched and moved closer to see her. Her hands were crossed over her breasts, the skin of her arms fused to her sides by the heat. It all seemed wrong, he didn’t understand it. He reached out to what remained of her fingers, feeling the brittleness of her flesh crumble under his touch to leave hard, opaque bone. Someone battling to live, to escape, wouldn’t have ended up like this, in this position of grace, he thought.

  Slowly, gently, he blew the ash off her stomach, brushing away small fragments as he tried to make out what was there. Then he understood. The colour left his face. He stood abruptly and walked across the cellar, pushing his hands against his head, taking short, painful breaths, as if all the air in the place had withered. He squeezed his eyes closed to try and force the vision away. He believed he’d seen all the images of evil in his time, counted and stared deep into them to know them. But he’d seen nothing like this. This was beyond nightmare. A baby, and too small for a newborn. Whoever did this must have ripped it out of her body.

  ‘What is it, boss?’ the deputy asked.

  ‘See for yourself.’ The words came out as a croak and he hawked to clear the bile out of his throat. ‘Look at her, John.’

  He watched as the deputy bent then backed away suddenly as he realized what he was seeing. He stood, shaking his head helplessly. It was beyond all comprehension.

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Rob, go and fetch the coroner.’ He paused to glance at Sedgwick. ‘Send the rest of the men away.’

  Lister dashed off, just leaving the two of them to wait with the body.

  ‘How?’ the deputy asked, unable to take his eyes off her.

  ‘I don’t know.’ The Constable’s face was dark, his gaze returning to the body. ‘I thought I’d seen it all, but this . . .’ He didn’t own the words to describe what he felt. ‘If the wood hadn’t fallen that way we’d never have known. There’d have been nothing left.’

  They stood with the perfume of the destruction filling their nostrils.

  ‘Seems like that woman who thought she saw someone leaving the house before the fire might have been right,’ Nottingham said.

  ‘I know.’ Sedgwick’s voice was empty.

  Nottingham knew he couldn’t pause to think too deeply yet about what was in front of him. He needed to keep his mind working.

  ‘You’d better talk to her again. See if you can get anything more from her.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘We’ll take the body back to the jail ourselves. For right now I just want us and Rob knowing about this.’

  The light filtered down on them, so pale it seemed unnatural, something from a tale of ghosts and devils. Finally Brogden the coroner arrived, Lister at his side. He climbed down to the cellar awkwardly, testing each rung of the ladder before trusting his ample weight on it. At the bottom he stopped to inspect his costly clothes, brushing away a few flecks of dirt.

  He could afford to dress well. In addition to being Coroner of Leeds, Brogden was also the city’s Sergeant-at-Mace and Clerk of the Market, all titles that lined his purse deeply for little work, bringing him more than most people would earn in five years.

  He picked his way fastidiously through the rubble and wreckage, careful not to scuff his freshly-shined shoes with
their glistening buckles.

  ‘Where’s the body?’ he asked, and the Constable indicated with his head. Brogden didn’t move any closer. ‘Was she burned to death?’

  ‘We don’t know yet.’

  ‘No matter.’ He waved his hand idly. ‘She’s dead, anyway.’ He turned to leave and stopped. ‘Was there something else?’

  ‘Take another look, Mr Brogden,’ Nottingham told him. ‘See what’s on her belly.’

  The coroner peered for a moment, then pulled back, horrified, looking mutely at the others before leaving. That would live on in his dreams for many nights to come, the Constable thought.

  ‘Right, let’s get her back. Rob, you go and get a sheet so we can cover her. We’ll find something to put her on.’

  They were careful moving her, the body fragile as ash, so light she might have been made of smoke. But lifting her from the cellar was difficult, slow work that brought the taste of vomit hard into their mouths.

  Finally they had her on a door that hadn’t been damaged too badly, just scorched on its edges, and carried her up Kirkgate to the jail where they put her in the cell they used as a mortuary. The Constable lit two lamps; even on the brightest day the light in the room was dim.

  He set up a mug of ale, a bowl of clean water and a cloth, tied a kerchief around his face and took a deep breath. Slowly, gently he eased the cover from the corpse. Then he soaked the cloth and tenderly began to wash away the ash and grime from her belly.

  He worked silently, stopping only to spit and rinse the taste from his mouth with small sips of beer. Finally, with the water in the bowl death-dark and thick, he stood back.

  The foetus rested on the girl’s stomach. It was tiny, hardly any longer than his hand, but there was no mistaking the babe. Its head was large, almost too big for the fragile body; he could discern the features, the eyes and mouth, the fingers and toes, the chest now empty of all life, legs bent and stopped as if the boy had been trying to push his way up to her breast.

  He saw the black line where the girl’s belly had been slashed open and the child torn out. The cord had been raggedly cut and they’d both been left to vanish in the blaze, to become no more than cinders. He gazed at them again with a deep, overwhelming sorrow.