The Devil's Breath

by Tessa Harris

“Oh my lady,” she murmured, stroking her long chestnut locks once more, only this time with her hand.

  After a moment or two, Lydia sat upright once more and composed herself. “He was born six years ago and we named him Richard, after my father, but I believed that he passed in his sleep a few days later. It was only after my husband died that I found out my son had been given to a wet nurse.”

  Eliza shook her head in bewilderment. “So ’twas the captain who hid your child from you?” she asked incredulously.

  Lydia nodded. “That is what Dr. Silkstone and I were doing yesterday. We were in Hungerford, because that was the last address we had for my son.”

  “But you didn’t find him?” Eliza regarded her mistress mournfully.

  Lydia stifled a sob. “No. What we did discover was that Francis Crick had taken custody of him. In my grief at my husband’s death I confided in him and he betrayed me. God knows where my Richard is now.” She choked back the tears and reached for her handkerchief, not registering the look of shock that had darted across her maid’s face at the mention of her dead cousin. The girl froze for a moment, as if adding up the information she had just received.

  “Mr. Crick, you say?”

  Lydia looked up. There was something in Eliza’s voice that told her there was more behind her question. “What is it?” Her maid’s mouth was pursed. “You know something. Tell me, Eliza.” She put her hands onto the girl’s shoulders, looking at her squarely. “Please, what is it?”

  The color had drained from the maid’s normally rosy complexion. “It may be nothing, your ladyship.”

  “But it may be something,” countered Lydia. “Please.”

  Eliza’s shoulders heaved as she took a deep breath, as if she were about to embark on a long journey. “That time, the time when Captain Farrell was in pr . . .” She could not bring herself to say the word “prison.” Lydia waved her hand to show her she recalled the situation. “Well, Mr. Crick came to me one day and asks me if I knowed any good girls in London who were used to children.”

  Lydia’s brows lifted in surprise. “So what did you say?”

  The maid looked into the distance, as if recalling the incident in her mind’s eye. “I says, as it happened, my sister was not settled in her service in Southwark and may welcome a change.”

  “And?” pressed Lydia.

  “So I gave him her address and he thanked me.”

  “What happened next?”

  “My sister wrote to me a few days later saying that she was engaged by the Right Honorable Francis Crick to look after his London household.”

  Lydia looked askance. “And have you heard from your sister since?”

  Eliza shook her head sadly. “No, your ladyship. ’Tis two years now and I ain’t heard nothing.”

  “But you tried to contact her?”

  The maid nodded vigorously. “Mistress Claddingbowl helped me write. I’m not well learned in letters, you see. But she never replied, then when Mr. Crick . . .” Her voice trailed off wanly, but her mistress knew she was thinking of his execution.

  Lydia rolled her eyes in frustration. Just when there was another thread of hope it had been broken. But a thought suddenly occurred to her.

  “Do you still have your sister’s letter?”

  Eliza looked at her mistress. “Yes, your ladyship. ’Tis most precious to me.” She did not say she slept with it under her pillow.

  “And does it give an address?”

  The girl’s eyes lit up like fires. “Yes. Yes, my lady. I believe it does!” she exclaimed.

  Lydia clapped her hands gleefully. “Then that is where we must continue our search,” she cried. “We shall go to London, just as soon as this dreadful fog has lifted.”

  Somewhere, in a cold, dark cellar in London, a boy was crying. He was young, probably no more than six, although he was not sure of his own age. His tousled brown hair was knotted and his breeches and jacket were too small for him, showing his bruised shins and wrists. He had boots on his feet, but there were holes in the soles.

  There was no light in the cellar, so he sat huddled in the corner. Apart from his sobs, the only other sound he could hear was the squeaking of rats as they scrambled over each other in the darkness. Hunger pains stabbed at his empty belly and his lips were dry as coal dust. With his one good hand he wiped away the tears from his dirty cheeks.

  Chapter 13

  On the third day of the great fog Mistress Lightfoot could bear it no longer. For the past two days each knock at the vicarage door had presaged another death. There had been six so far, all fine young men who had been out in the fields when the poison rain fell on that terrible morning. Her husband had been in demand to administer the final sacrament, but prayers at the graveside were foregone; standing outside while the noxious vapor persisted was clearly injurious to health.

  Mistress Lightfoot had comforted young widows and informed the parish board of the likely newest occupants of the poorhouse. There was much to be done and more to do in the future as the fog showed little sign of lifting. Many were falling ill. Breadwinners. Men with young mouths to feed. She could not sit idly by and watch the terrible events unfold with a resigned inevitability.

  “What are you about, my dear?” asked the Reverend Lightfoot as his wife donned her hat and put her shawl about her broad shoulders. He was in the middle of writing his sermon for Trinity Sunday, though not many would hear it. Most would wisely stay indoors if the fog persisted.

  “The Lord helps those who help themselves,” she replied enigmatically and, he thought, rather unhelpfully. Her chin was jutting out. It was always a sign that his wife had a plan, the vicar told himself.

  “I do know that, my dear,” he replied, a mild irritation sounding in his voice. “But where are you going in this fog?”

  She looked at him with eyes as bright as brass buttons. “I am going to see Lady Thorndike.”

  Reverend Lightfoot frowned. He was barely any wiser. He knew there was no love lost between the two women who were as different as chalk and cheese. His wife was a doer, a cog that turned wheels, whereas Lady Thorndike . . . There were many words to describe her ladyship and none of them was charitable. She treated most of those with whom she came into contact just as she treated her servants, with utter disdain. She seemed to be in a permanent state of ennui, except, that is, in the presence of virile young bucks. Her ailing husband, who was at least forty years her senior, seemed oblivious to her flirtations. If he was aware of them—and so blatant were they, how could he not be?—he showed no reprobation at all. Instead he merely humored his wife with yappy dogs and ridiculously fashionable clothes that were more suited to Paris salons than Oxfordshire drawing rooms.

  “And why, pray tell, dearest, would you want to see her?” His voice could not hide the contempt he felt.

  His wife, struggling to put on stiff gloves, stopped and sighed. Looking her husband squarely in the eye, she said, “Those men who’ve died, they were workers on the Thorndike estate. I am hoping we can make some sort of provision for their families until the parish hears their cases. There are upward of a dozen children now fatherless, with no one to put bread on their tables.”

  Reverend Lightfoot nodded thoughtfully. “And you would try and persuade Lady Thorndike to provide for them in the meantime?”

  “Exactly so,” said his wife, brooking no argument. “They are deserving of our charity,” she told him, adding: “not like that wretched vagabond.”

  The vicar admired his wife, but he worried for her safety. The episode with the knife-grinder the night before had been most unsettling for her and he worried that this varlet, who had been so impudent, was still in the vicinity. He voiced his misgivings.

  “I wish you would take more care, my dear. That rascal is still abroad and the fog is simply abominable.”

  From her desk drawer his wife produced a square of muslin with a flourish and held it up to her face, so that just her eyes showed, like a veiled woman from old Araby. The vica
r nodded his silver-streaked head and smiled.

  “But you think of everything,” he said, with a wry smile. He was not sure whether his wife had heard his last remark. If she had, she did not show it. She simply disappeared out of the door, headed for Lady Thorndike at Fetcham Manor, without another word.

  The vicarage lay on the edge of the Thorndikes’ estate and it was only a ten-minute walk along the lane to the manor house. Although it was not yet midday, Mistress Lightfoot took a lighted lantern with her. The route was very familiar, but even though she did not admit it to her husband, she was slightly apprehensive about venturing out in this damnable fog.

  The temperature had climbed steadily over the past two days and yet the grass appeared blackened, as if by frost. It crunched under her sturdy overshoes. She found it strange walking down the lane in silence. In winter the rooks croaked from high up in the copses and in summer the skylarks trilled and the cuckoos called, but this vapor seemed to have robbed the birds of their voices. The hedgerows, too, only last week bustling with butterflies and bees, were deserted. What was more, many of the hawthorn bushes were shriveled and brown; their leaves turned like claws. Worst of all, however, was the vapor itself. It seemed to inveigle its way into every orifice, so that by the time the silhouette of Fetcham Manor loomed large before her, her eyes were smarting and her throat was irritated. She had never been more pleased to climb the steps to the big house.

  Even though Mistress Lightfoot was uninvited, Lady Thorndike consented to see her. The vicar’s wife was received in the morning room, where she found her ladyship seated at a card table playing baccarat with only her two small dogs for company. When the butler announced her, the creatures came charging toward her, skittering across the polished floor. Lady Thorndike looked up.

  “Come here, darlings,” she called. “Here, to Mamma.” She patted her skirts and the dogs, no bigger than rabbits, bounded back to her and skidded under the card table.

  “What an unexpected pleasure, Mistress Lightfoot,” she said laconically, still petting the dogs.

  The vicar’s wife noted her disinterested hostess was wearing a very low-cut bodice and there was a patch in the shape of a heart on her left cheek.

  “It is kind of you to see me, Lady Thorndike,” she replied with a hint of irony in her voice.

  “Won’t you be seated?” Her ladyship motioned to a sofa and Mistress Lightfoot duly obliged. “Shall we take tea?”

  The vicar’s wife would have loved to take tea. Her mouth was as grainy as if she had eaten sand and the taste of rotten eggs lingered, but she had not come on a social visit, so she declined the offer.

  “You are most kind, Lady Thorndike, but I am here on a pressing matter.”

  “And what might that be?” came the imperious reply.

  “ ’Tis about the families who have been most grievously affected by this wretched fog.”

  Her ladyship reached for a plate of morsels on the card table and began to feed the small dogs that pawed at her skirts. “Yes, the fog. So tiresome. I should have gone riding today.”

  Mistress Lightfoot felt her hackles rise. Men are dying and yet all this woman can complain about is that she has had to forego her ride, she told herself. She forced her lips into a brief smile. “Yes, we are all suffering, your ladyship,” she acknowledged. “But some more than others.”

  Lady Thorndike looked up. Both dogs were on their hind legs in begging positions. “How so?” she inquired.

  Mistress Lightfoot shifted uncomfortably on her seat. Surely this woman cannot be unaware that her estate workers are dying, she thought. She watched her drop the morsels into each dog’s jaws and smile gleefully as they chomped. There was no polite way of putting it, so she cut straight to the chase. “The fog has killed six of your men, my ladyship, and several more are ill.”

  A look of vague concern manifested itself on the woman’s aristocratic features, but altruism was not its cause. “That is most troubling,” she agreed, adding disingenuously: “So who will collect the harvest?”

  Mistress Lightfoot felt a wave of mounting despair rise deep within her. Did this woman not possess a shred of humanity? “I was thinking more of the men’s families, your ladyship. For their food and shelter they are totally dependent on your estate, and now their men are dead. . . .”

  Lady Thorndike lifted her hand, stopping the vicar’s wife in mid sentence. “You are right, Mistress Lightfoot,” she nodded, as if she had just received a revelation.

  “I am so glad you agree,” retorted the vicar’s wife, relieved that she would no longer have to labor the point.

  Lady Thorndike smiled, too. “But I am sure our steward is already out looking for new men to take their place,” she added.

  In an instant the smile was wiped off Mistress Lightfoot’s face. How foolish she was to believe her task so easy. “I was thinking more of helping the men’s families, with parcels of food. Just to tide them over,” she suggested.

  Lady Thorndike’s lips curled into a smirk. “Parcels of food?” she repeated. A peevish laugh escaped from her rouged lips. “Oh really, Mistress Lightfoot, that sort of thing is best left to people like you. If those workers are dead, then their families need to vacate their cottages to allow men who can harvest to do so. That is why we pay our parish rates, is it not?”

  Feeling as if she had been dealt a punch to her ribs, Mistress Lightfoot rose quickly to her feet. The dogs reacted to her sudden movement and began to yap frantically. “I had hoped you would show a little Christian charity, your ladyship. But I see my faith was misplaced,” she said, raising her voice over the yelping.

  Ignoring her dogs, Lady Thorndike pulled the cord near the card table. “Charity begins at home, I believe,” she sneered, “so I bid you leave mine.” And with that, she signaled to her butler, who had just appeared at the door, to show Mistress Lightfoot out.

  “Good day to you,” she called as the vicar’s wife was led away, then bending down to stroke her dogs, she said to them: “We hope she has a safe journey home, don’t we, my loves?”

  It was obvious to Thomas that Mistress Claddingbowl felt a little uneasy allowing him into her kitchen. Using her ingredients and mixing them in her bowls was one thing, but rubbing shoulders at the table was an altogether different matter. He knew he would have to tread carefully. He had complimented her on the texture of her pastry the other night and thanked her profusely for the flask of lemonade she had provided for his journey from Oxford. He understood that she felt undervalued. He doubted whether Captain Farrell had ever praised her pies or puddings. Yet he did know one thing about the late captain’s tastes from Lydia. He had apparently insisted that the cook try her hand at a dish with strange spices so favored by the Indians. He had developed a liking for the flavors of Madras when he was serving in His Majesty’s Dragoon Guards. Mistress Claddingbowl had found a recipe for a chicken curry in a cookery book. Frying the poulets, she added the ground spices, beaten very fine, to the dish. A quarter of an ounce of turmeric, a large spoonful of ginger, and a teaspoon of milled pepper were all mixed together, along with a little salt to taste. She had finished it off with cream and lemon juice and the captain had pronounced it satisfactory—praise indeed for one so sparse with his kind words.

  So, when Thomas asked her whether by any chance she might have some turmeric in her spice rack, she was delighted to oblige. He was conscious of her watching him intently as he pounded the seeds in a pestle and mortar, then added the powder to a pint jug of milk.

  “The turmeric has antiseptic qualities, Mistress Claddingbowl,” he told her. “ ’Twill help heal any damage done to Mr. Kidd’s mouth and throat.”

  The cook nodded her head thoughtfully, then puffed out her ample chest. “If that is the outcome, sir, then you are most welcome to work in my kitchen any time you please.”

  Amos Kidd lay in a room a few doors away from the kitchen down a long corridor. This was where the under gardeners usually slept, but they had vacated it so that their mas
ter could be nursed more easily. Thomas found his patient conscious and coughing, and his eyes still glassy with fever. Susannah was by his side.

  “How fares he?” he asked, bending low and feeling Kidd’s pulse. He noted the burns around his mouth and eyes were crusting over, but there was a general listlessness that troubled Thomas. Kidd’s head jerked up in another involuntary spasm.

  “He coughs like this for much of the time, sir,” said his wife wearily. The vigil was taking its toll on her looks, too. Her eyes were puffy and her face was gray.

  “Then let us see if this will ease him,” said Thomas, pouring out a cup of orange-colored milk from the jug. He held it to Kidd’s lips and the gardener managed to take two or three sips before the coughing resumed. It was the doctor’s hope that the milk would neutralize at least some of the acid Kidd had ingested and the turmeric would help heal any of the internal blisters.

  “Make him drink a few sips of this every hour,” he instructed Mistress Kidd with a smile. He did not wish to cause her more distress. At the very least he hoped his remedy would relieve the constant coughing spasms and delay what Thomas feared was inevitable.

  Chapter 14

  It was market day in Brandwick, but the streets were strangely quiet. Most of the farmers and drovers had not dared bring their livestock to town for fear the journey would kill either them or their animals. Many of those who did brave the fog were in no mood to buy or barter. They had questions and they wanted answers. By ten o’clock small clusters of men could be found huddled in doorways, under cover in the butter market or in the porch of the church. In fact, anywhere that afforded a little shelter from the clawing fog, laborers were gathering and their mood was as bitter as the air they were breathing.

  Gabriel Lawson was resting his body up against the bar of the Three Tuns, a tankard of ale in his hand. He had decided to make the journey because he needed more supplies and could not wait another week. He had considered sending a man in his stead, but then he thought of the pleasurable female company that the inn afforded and decided otherwise. His spirits needed lifting and Molly or Jessie or whoever happened to be hanging around the bar that morning would suffice.