The Wicked Trade (The Forensic Genealogist Book 7)

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  ‘He was one of the Battle of Brookland men?’ the doctor enquired.

  ‘That be right—terrible business,’ Hester confirmed. ‘Almost left me a widow.’ She began to run her hands over her protruding belly, as though trying to elicit the future from a crystal ball.

  ‘From the mess that I saw the following morning, he’s lucky to still hold his life. Many men on both sides fell that night.’

  Hester eyed Ann. ‘I be so sorry, Doctor, for not a-bringing you in sooner, only I were led to believe that this woman had dealings in medicine and could be helping him. Not to say that I bain’t been well meself of late.’

  ‘A doctor, are you?’ he asked, throwing a glare in Ann’s direction.

  ‘No, I-’

  ‘No, of course you’re not,’ he retorted.

  ‘Be a-waiting downstairs,’ Hester yapped at Ann.

  Ann was inclined to stay and argue but what was the point? She didn’t care a jot for the bruff opinions of the mistress, or the doctor for that matter. She nodded and flounced from the room, mimicking the theatrics of Hester’s arrival. As she descended the stairs, she heard Hester muttering, ‘She be on her way, soonest.’

  Downstairs, Ann knelt in front of the fire, raising her chilled hands to within inches of the flames. The pleasure of the heat stinging her skin quickly turned to pain and she dropped her hands into her lap, accepting the news that she was headed back to vagrancy with numb indifference. It was the only life which she had ever known. Truth be told, she would be glad to leave and get back to the uncontrolled and scabrous backstreets of town life. Country dwelling was not the life for Ann Fothergill.

  Movement outside drew her attention. It was the boy, John, playing some made-up game or other with another boy of a similar age. It had surprised her how fond she had grown of the lad, believing there not to have existed a single maternal bone in her body.

  ‘Ann!’ It was the mistress calling. ‘Be a-coming up here, dreckly-minute.’

  Ann heaved the blanket tight around her shoulders and began to climb the stairs, all the while readying herself for a berating.

  Hester, hands on hips, met her at the door. ‘The doctor be wanting to know what you be doing to my Sam. Three-week of fever like he got, he be a-needing his blood-letting.’

  Ann glanced past Hester’s dark eyes to the doctor, who was leaning over the bed in the process of removing the dressing from Samuel’s shoulder.

  ‘I be doing what I thinked best,’ Ann replied airily.

  ‘His wound—it’s almost healed,’ the doctor said, unable to contain his astonishment. His eyes narrowed suspiciously as he gazed at Ann, holding up the dressing. ‘Where did you learn to do this?’

  Hester gasped and ran a hand to her chest. ‘Witchcraft! Lord, what have I brung upon this house?’

  The doctor placed a placating hand on her shoulder. ‘Please, let her speak. Her answer rather intrigues me.’

  ‘My father—well, he bain’t my father, he be just the man what helped raise me—he were a travelling apothecary.’

  The doctor touched his neat beard, as if deliberating the truth of her explanation. ‘I see. My father was a surgeon-apothecary. Tell me your procedure.’

  Ann looked uneasily at the doctor, and then at Hester whose contorted face continued to express her disbelief. ‘I pulled out the shot, washed the wound with water then made him a poultice.’

  ‘From what was the poultice made?’ the doctor probed.

  ‘Some herbs. Few other bits and pieces.’ Ann shrugged indifferently.

  ‘Specifically?’

  ‘Comfrey root to slow infection. Sage for antiseptic. Bit of willow bark, which got traces of opium for the fever and pain relief.’

  ‘Very good,’ he praised.

  She noticed for the first time that the doctor’s face had softened. She gave him a soft smile, which he returned.

  ‘What of that foul-stenching tea you be a-making night and day?’ Hester snarled.

  ‘Willow bark tea with mutton broth.’

  ‘I think you have saved this man’s life,’ the doctor acknowledged.

  Hester turned resentfully. ‘If he be a-living, then it be God’s own wishes, not some travelling apothecary.’

  ‘Whether it be God’s work, witchcraft or this woman’s affinity for natural cures and medicines, the outcome will be that your husband lives.’

  ‘But the blood-letting for his fever?’ Hester demanded.

  ‘His fever is almost gone. I do not think blood-letting would advance his recovery. My advice would be to allow this woman to continue with her work,’ he said, picking up his case and making for the door. ‘See to it that she has all that she needs. Good day, Mrs Banister.’ He paused as he neared Ann and offered her his hand. ‘A pleasure to meet you, Miss..?’

  ‘Fothergill—Ann Fothergill,’ she beamed.

  The doctor nodded, ducked his head under the doorframe and ventured downstairs, closely followed by the mistress.

  Ann tossed her head back and grinned. She sat on Samuel’s bed—breaking one of the mistress’s rules—and waited. She heard more mumbled conversation, then the street door opening and closing. Then, the mistress appeared at the doorway.

  ‘So, what do you be a-needing?’ she asked.

  ‘A mug or two of rum,’ she began. ‘A nice bath—I ain’t got me numbers enough to know how many days be passing since the last one. And some new clothes.’

  ‘No,’ Hester snapped. ‘That bain’t happening. The doctor was a-meaning things to help my husband get better.’

  Ann gazed dreamily towards the shuttered window, as if she had all the time in the world. ‘Maybe my witchcraft be stopping to work, then, and your husband be dying.’ Ann shrugged her shoulders.

  With a dramatic huff, Hester turned from the room and stormed down the stairs.

  Ann grinned once more.

  ‘You be a-knowing this,’ Hester called, as she marched back up the stairs, ‘Dreckly-minute my Sam wakes from his fever, you be back out on them streets.’ Hester had reached the top of the stairs and stood with her hands on her hips.

  ‘I be welcoming it, Mistress, I really do.’

  ‘Back to prison. Oh, yes, I be a-knowing all about you. Thirty times in gaol.’

  ‘Thirty-six by my reckoning,’ Ann corrected with a half-smile.

  ‘Thievings, beatings, drunkenness, lewdness—God forgive me what I brung under my own roof. You just be a-keeping your distance from my boy,’ Hester bawled, with a glance upwards, before thrusting an open palm towards Ann. ‘Here.’

  ‘What be this?’ Ann asked suspiciously, seeing three guineas in her outstretched hand.

  ‘It be all I got. Be a-taking your bath and rum someplace else—not here.’

  Ann snatched at the money, barged past Hester and strutted down the stairs and out of the street door.

  Knowing that Hester was certain to be peering out through the cracks in the shutters, Ann did a fancy twirl, holding her skirt and circling round and round, just as she had once seen the Parisian dancing troupe doing at the Royal Theatre in Dover. She laughed gaily as she pirouetted from the cottage, clutching the guineas tightly in her fist.

  The cold cloaked and wrapped itself around her body just as assuredly as if it had been a layer of imperceptible clothing. Her fingers, having turned a peculiar hue of light mauve, were burning from where the blood had retreated, as she pushed down the iron latch to enter the Walnut Tree Inn.

  She walked haughtily inside, as though she were royalty, and marched towards the bar, where she propped herself up on one elbow on the wooden bar top. This being her first visit here, she took stock of the room. For such a rural tavern it was fair lively, the tables filled with the usual agricultural labourers cotchering over an ale or two. She inhaled blissfully, the hot smoky air thrusting out the last vestiges of the wintry outside from her lungs.

  ‘What do you be wanting?’ a short, bearded man asked from behind the bar. His hair was ragged and straw-like and he wore a
smock stained to such a degree that it was impossible to identify its original colour.

  ‘Three pints of rum and water, thank you, landlord,’ Ann ordered, stretching out her throbbing fingers, as the blood began painfully to restore them to life.

  ‘Three, you say?’ the man repeated, taking an exaggerated look around her. ‘You got two friends tucked somewhere I can’t see ‘em?’ he asked, cocking one eyebrow.

  Ann studied him for a moment. He was making no effort to get even one of the drinks, never mind the three which she had ordered. She had met men like him before now. He would most certainly be the landlord of this establishment. ‘Listen, I ain’t no lushington, I just be needing a drink, is all.’

  ‘That right?’ the man said, running his tongue over his decaying front teeth. ‘What be your business in Aldington?’

  Ann’s gaze shifted from the red brick floor to the beamed ceiling, taking her time to respond. She thought on giving any one of several answers that tumbled into her head, none of them true. Her propensity for lying stemmed from the triviality and tedium which often came attached to the truth. She doubted any story—true or made up—would sway this landlord from his decision; he was either going to serve her or he wasn’t. For no reason, other than it was the simplest answer in this case, she chose to relate the truth. ‘I been up at Braemar Cottage—Samuel Banister’s dwelling-house after he were shot smuggling at the Battle of Brookland.’

  The landlord scowled, turning his head this way and that. ‘Don’t be blethering so loud, Miss,’ he told her. ‘What do you be knowing about smuggling?’

  Ann raised her eyebrows. ‘Nigh-on all there be to know, I shouldn’t wonder. The loose tongue of a delirious man don’t be having no boundaries. I be knowing all about Cephas Quested and the Aldington Gang. The landing spots all along the Marsh. The lookout places from certain public houses perched high on the Aldington knoll. The landlords what be selling the contraband.’

  ‘Whist your tongue,’ the landlord hissed across the bar. ‘Three pints of rum and water and I want no more talk of smuggling—do you hear? You be having no business talking this way.’

  Ann nodded indifferently, passing a guinea coin across the bar, and waited for her drinks.

  ‘How does he fare?’ the landlord asked eventually, seizing the money and placing one glass of rum on the bar in front of her, before then placing down her change.

  ‘Who?’ Ann asked, knowing full well about whom his enquiry was directed.

  ‘Sam Banister,’ he said quietly.

  ‘He be doing well. Some fancy surgeon—Doctor Popham-Hopworth or some such—visited today and said he’d be out of bed soonest.’

  ‘Papworth-Hougham,’ the landlord corrected. ‘He said that, did he?’

  ‘That he did,’ Ann confirmed, sinking the first rum in one go and pushing the empty glass back across the bar.

  ‘Then you be moving on your way, I shouldn’t wonder,’ he said, holding a sneer, which exhibited his two black upper teeth.

  It was not a question, but rather a boorish statement, so she didn’t answer. ‘Don’t suppose you be having a bath here, landlord?’

  He looked at her silently as he poured the second pint. ‘You think this to be a public wash-house?’

  Ann placed another guinea down onto the bar and, using one finger, slid it across to him.

  ‘Rose!’ the landlord yelled through an open door behind him, placing the second pint of rum and water before her.

  A young girl, who Ann thought to be around seventeen and slightly younger than she, sauntered out and glowered at the landlord.

  ‘Run this lady an ‘ot bath, will you,’ he instructed, setting down the next drink.

  The young girl sighed, spoke no words and disappeared through the door.

  ‘Three rum and waters,’ the landlord said, placing the last one down.

  ‘One for each hand,’ Ann said, picking up the two remaining drinks and taking a gentle sip from each.

  ‘Hey, Miss!’ the voice repeated.

  The words barely filtered into her languid, soporific mind, as though they were trapped behind a net, just out of her reach. She turned listlessly. The room was angled incorrectly and her eyes refused to pull focus onto the origin of the speech.

  ‘You be brown-deep in thought, Miss. I runned you an ‘ot bath, like what you asked.’

  Ann’s mind assembled enough disparate pieces of information for her to understand. She was in the public house. Drinking rum and water. The girl had run her a bath.

  She squinted and saw her muddled outline. ‘I be wanting your clothes,’ she said.

  ‘Pardon me, Miss?’

  ‘Your clothes. One guinea for them,’ Ann said, attempting to stand from the bar. She picked up her one remaining drink and carried it towards the girl. She tried to ignore the liquid running over her fingers, intending to rebuke the landlord for daring to serve her drink in a glass pitted with holes. That tarnal rotten-toothed nabbler, she thought.

  ‘Here,’ the young girl said, taking Ann by the elbow and leading her into the room behind the bar. The windowless room was dark and lit by just one dancing tallow candle and a sedate fire grumbling in the grate.

  Ann’s vision was in perfect unison with her thoughts—both swimming in the abstract haze of inebriation. Feelings, worries and ideas all whirled together as insignificant as the items of furniture around the room, which her eyes recognised but which her brain failed to identify.

  Ann turned to face the girl. She was standing beside her bathed in soft amber light, entirely naked with her clothes pooled around her ankles.

  ‘A guinea,’ the girl said, unfurling her hand.

  Ann remembered and placed the remainder of her money there, looking the unabashed girl up and down. ‘Ever been with a man?’

  The girl shook her head. ‘You?’

  Ann sniggered. ‘One or two. None of them be worthy of a place in my memory.’ She smiled. ‘Now I got myself a surgeon. Doctor Popham-Hopham. Ralph. A real gentleman,’ Ann boasted, beginning to strip off her clothes.

  The girl said nothing more. She turned her back to Ann and disappeared through another door, which she locked with a clatter behind her.

  Ann stepped heavily down into the bath, wincing at the high temperature, giving her equal jabs of gratification and discomfort. She stood still for a moment, watching as the flesh on her legs that fell below the waterline turned bright pink, whilst the rest of her body erupted in tiny goose bumps.

  After several seconds, she sat down in the bath and shuddered as the water nibbled at her bare skin. Wrapping her arms around her knees, she laid her head to one side, allowing her hair to trail in the hot water, and her mind to begin to reverse its current state of disarray.

  Sufficient time had passed for the water to become intolerably cold. Ann stood from the bath and dried herself with a towel which the girl had left. The effects of the rum and water still blighted her thoughts but she was once again aware of herself. Aware, as she dressed in the girl’s clothes, that she was a slightly different person to the one who had arrived here. A cleansing, of sorts.

  She took her time in dressing, enjoying the discovery of the new clothes. Hems, seams and buttons in places not found on her own clothing. She looked at the discarded pile of her garments, carried them over to the fire and tossed them into the flames. The clothes writhed as though containing their own life source, then blackened, before fiery spikes rose and ravaged the material. It took just seconds for the apparel to be unidentifiable. It would have been easy to have simply bundled them up for cleaning, but that was not Ann’s way of life. She possessed nothing other than that which she wore.

  She ran her fingers through her damp hair, tugging as her nails caught on a knot. Then, she stopped. The low-level rumblings of talking, drinking and laughter, which had unified in providing the background noise to her bath, had altered, as though a maestro had entered the bar and suddenly changed the tempo.

  Ann hurried to the door which l
ed to the bar and pressed an ear to the oak frame. Yes, something had changed. There was a kind of excitement. Discussions had heightened. People were speaking over one another, throwing questions to one individual in particular. Ann failed to catch fully what he was saying, his answers being splintered and muffled by the intervening partition.

  Ann blew out the candle, pitching the room into near-darkness, then slowly lifted the latch and inched the door ajar. The conversations suddenly came alive, words crystallised. She arranged the sounds in her mind until she found the voice of the man who seemed to have drawn the attention of the inn.

  ‘He didn’t give none of you up,’ the man imparted. ‘He were a true Aldington smuggler to the end.’

  She heard murmurs of gratitude before he was questioned again.

  ‘So, do that be that, then?’ one asked.

  ‘Aye,’ he confirmed. ‘That be that; no more smuggling.’

  A general groan of discontent erupted from the men around the pub. From the sounds of their unified chorus, everyone had gathered around this news-bearing visitor and they were not happy with what he had come to say.

  ‘I ain’t told the worst of it, yet,’ the man relayed. The men fell silent to hear the news. ‘They tooked the poor bugger to the gallows, now they be wanting to hang his body in chains in the middle of Brookland to steer folk off following his path.’

  The news was met with gasps and tirades of incredulity.

  ‘Gracious heart alive!’ one shouted.

  ‘I bain’t standing to see old Quested’s body hanging in the middle of the village—bain’t right,’ another ranted.

  ‘Disgusting.’

  ‘He not be there long before folk cuts him down and buries him proper, don’t you worry.’

  ‘I best make this me last pint if I bain’t got no more tub-running duties,’ one jested, to the murmured agreement of numerous others.

  Ann continued to listen for several minutes more until the questioning of the visitor bearing the news of Cephas Quested’s death had ceased. She closed her eyes, fighting against the fog in her mind, trying to retain all that she had heard.