The Devil's Breath

by Tessa Harris

  The damnable fog meant that the wheat could not be harvested. Not that there was much wheat left that had not been scorched. He had been unable to count how many acres they would have to simply plough in again, but there were many. The other crops, too, had all fared similar fates: the barley, the turnips, and even the apples in the orchards. Worse still, the men who had been picking and digging had also fallen ill after a few hours’ exertion. Four of them now lay in their beds coughing their lungs out, no good to man or beast.

  He turned his gaze outside toward the market square. It, too, was wreathed in mist and was almost deserted. He could barely see to the other side of it. The traders had not even bothered to set out their stalls. Three or four women scurried from shop to shop, their mouths and noses swathed in stoles or shawls. One of them caught his eye. Even though her face was covered, he liked the way she moved her hips. He smiled. It was then that he saw them: a group of men, he could not say how many. They were a dark smudge that spread across the square, then suddenly stopped.

  Intrigued by the throng, Lawson downed his ale and walked out onto the street. He wrapped his scarf around his mouth and traversed the road toward the din. Now he could see the men were laborers. Although he did not recognize them he knew their sort. They were gathering around a man, his head trussed in a red scarf, who was shouting on the steps of the market cross. He clenched a fist and punched the air and several of his audience made the same gesture. From the corners of the square, from the doorways and the porches, more and more men braved the fog to swell the number, until the count was at least sixty.

  Lawson moved closer. He could hear snatches of the man’s words, punctuated by choruses of “aye” every now and again.

  “And I ask you, how are you going to feed your families if there is no corn? You will starve. We will all starve, while the lords and masters will take what little there is for themselves!” cried the swarthy speaker.

  Lawson kept his distance, but listened intently to the man’s words. A troublemaker, he thought to himself. He had dealt with many such in Ireland. They’d died in the thousands in the famine not thirty years before, then, quite recently, when the landowners switched to growing grain for export, the men and their families were forced to eat potatoes and groats.

  It all gave rise to the Rightboys, the Hearts of Oak, and the Steelboys, the peasant secret societies that would kill and maim livestock and tear down fences to redress their grievances against their landlords.

  When the worst had come and the men refused to work, he’d been ordered to call in the King’s militia rather than accede to demands for better wages or living conditions, or both. Blood was shed. It was never a pretty sight. It spilled on the very dirt that was being fought over. He hoped it would not come to that, but the longer this wretched cloud hung over the land, spreading its poison and killing the crops and those who harvested them, the more likely it seemed.

  Thomas had not seen Dr. Felix Fairweather since their encounter in court more than a year ago. Then he had shown himself to be an arrogant ass, the very epitome of everything he hated about the medical profession. While Thomas did not follow the fashion of prescribing purgatives for every ill, he had sometimes mused that a good purge would work wonders for the likes of Felix Fairweather. Yet when he presented himself in the drawing room at Boughton Hall, the physician’s arrogance seemed to have dissipated. In its stead there appeared a genuine concern, even fear.

  “How may we help you, Dr. Fairweather?” inquired Lydia as he stood before her, his shoulders hunched.

  “I am afraid it is a most grave matter, your ladyship,” he replied. Gone was his courtroom conceit. His manner seems almost humble, thought Thomas. “Mistress Lightfoot has taken ill. She has succumbed to the fog and is finding it increasingly difficult to breathe.” There was an uncustomary meekness in his tone.

  Lydia frowned. “I am so sorry to hear that, Dr. Fairweather, but what is it that you would like us to do?”

  The physician looked over to Thomas as he stood by the fireplace. “I would ask you, sir, to see if you can alleviate her distress.”

  The young doctor could have taken satisfaction from such a request. Instead he saw courage in the statement from a man so previously prejudiced against him and his fellow countrymen. “I am flattered you ask, sir,” he replied. “And I will, of course, do anything I can to help.”

  Stopping off at the larder to collect a flask of milk and turmeric that was already mixed, Thomas climbed into the waiting carriage with the physician. The fog felt less moist than it had the day before and the sun seemed to be trying to break through, but the stench still clung to the hot air.

  The ten-minute journey took them along lanes and fields that were empty until they reached St. Swithin’s vicarage in Brandwick. It was a solid, square house on the edge of the town, just a few yards from the church. Even though it was only early afternoon, a single lamp that burned in an upstairs window was clearly visible through the gloom.

  Dr. Fairweather led Thomas upstairs into a large but sparsely furnished room where Mistress Lightfoot lay in bed. At her side, on a chair, sat her husband. He was holding her limp hand, studying it as if it were a precious object. He raised his head at the sight of the two doctors.

  His wife coughed and moaned slightly on hearing the men enter the room and the Reverend Lightfoot rose to his feet. “All’s well, my dear,” he comforted her. “Dr. Silkstone is come to make you better.”

  Thomas smiled awkwardly. Such an expectation never sat easily on his shoulders. Now that he knew this deadly fog contained droplets of sulfuric acid, he was uncertain as to the efficacy of any remedy. “I can only do my best to alleviate your wife’s discomfort,” he told the vicar, sitting down by her side.

  The woman wore a lace cap, but Thomas could see that the hair that showed beneath it was plastered to her head by the fever. Her skin was grayish in hue and around her mouth and nose were the telltale acid burns that marked Amos Kidd’s face. The blisters looked like yellow-crusted sequins as they scabbed over, but they still needed attention.

  “I take it your wife was caught in a rainstorm?” said Thomas, opening his medical bag.

  The vicar frowned and sucked deeply, as if recalling a moment with so much concentration that he was actually reliving it. “She went visiting in the fog, Dr. Silkstone,” he began. “I asked her not to, yet she insisted. On the way back it began to rain and even though she wore a scarf over her face, the water soaked through and burned her skin.” His mouth pursed into a grimace and he turned away, stifling tears.

  Mistress Lightfoot began to cough again, in long, fluid notes that concerned Thomas. It was obvious to him that there was already liquid in her lungs. Holding the flask of milk to her lips, he tilted it back and she supped a little.

  “She must drink this every hour,” he instructed. “It will help heal her burned throat.”

  Yet, just as soon as the woman swallowed the milk, it returned once more in a single spasm, splaying out across the counterpane. It was then that her coughing resumed, the sound of phlegm and mucus rattling ’round in her lungs like beer swilling in a barrel. Her husband held her upright so that she could breathe better between the coughs, which were now almost incessant. It was then she began to retch. She managed to hold a handkerchief over her mouth the first time, so that Thomas could examine its contents. The mucus was dark brown and smelled vile.

  A few seconds later, however, after a brief respite, the coughing began again. This time the spasms were even more violent, so that Mistress Lightfoot’s shoulders were heaving in great waves with every ferocious contraction of her diaphragm. Her languid lids now opened wide with fear.

  “Can you not do something, doctor. Please?” pleaded her husband, trying to steady his wife as she jolted and lurched on the bed like a woman possessed. But Thomas knew that it was hopeless and he dreaded what would come next. He prayed it would be over sooner rather than later and in another three or four minutes his prayers were answered.<
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  With one final great judder, frothy pink foam spurted from the woman’s mouth, spraying out over the coverlet and over Thomas. Her husband cried out in terror, but from his wife there was no further sound. She slumped back on her blood-flecked pillows and closed her eyes as the life ebbed away from her.

  The somber journey back to Boughton Hall was spent discussing what, if anything, could be done if the fog persisted much longer.

  “Men and women are dying daily from this poison, Dr. Silkstone,” said Dr. Fairweather. “I’ve lost three of my patients in the last two days.”

  Thomas thought of Amos Kidd and the outcome that awaited him. He nodded gravely. “There is sulfuric acid in the air, doctor.”

  Fairweather’s expression grew even more troubled. “Sulfuric acid?” he repeated. “How so? You did your tests?” He emphasized the word “your” as if Thomas were the only scientist to entertain such examinations.

  Thomas’s methods were often regarded with suspicion by most of the physicians he had encountered in England so far. Yet, on this occasion at least, Dr. Fairweather seemed curious rather than skeptical.

  “Yes, I carried out experiments,” he replied. “There is sulfur in the rain and in flakes in the air, but I have no idea how they came to be there.”

  The physician shook his head and sighed deeply. “Then it seems as though all we can do is pray that this fog lifts soon,” he said.

  Thomas nodded. He thought of the Reverend Lightfoot, lost and bewildered at his wife’s side. With his shortcut to the Almighty and his capacity to conduct funerals, he feared that the services of the recently bereaved vicar would be in fierce demand.

  As soon as the carriage drew up in front of Boughton Hall, Thomas saw Lydia open the door and begin to hurry down the front steps.

  “No, stay there!” he shouted as he jumped down and ran up the steps to greet her. “You must not come out here,” he scolded, taking her arm and leading her back inside.

  She looked up at him anxiously. “Thank God you have returned,” she cried breathlessly. “Amos Kidd has taken a turn for the worse.”

  Thomas hurried through the hallway and down the stairs to the servants’ quarters. He could hear the rattle of Amos Kidd’s cough a few doors away and arrived in the room to find him convulsing violently, just as Mistress Lightfoot had. His young wife was standing a little way off, wringing her hands anxiously, not knowing what to do.

  Rushing in, Thomas sat the gardener upright, so that he could breathe more easily between spasms. Dr. Fairweather had followed behind and now held Kidd as the young doctor reached for the flask of milk in his bag. Just as he did so, however, the final convulsion surged. Kidd’s wife screamed as the blood sprayed out of her husband’s mouth. It came like a summer rain before thunder, in large droplets. The irony of it was, Thomas noted, it was the same crimson as the fairest roses in his beloved garden.

  Chapter 15

  Gazing into the fire at Boughton Hall later that evening, Thomas imagined he saw the Reverend George Lightfoot. Flames licked at his anguished face, and his mouth was wide open in a scream. He’d seen that tormented expression so many times after a bereavement and yet never on a person of such great faith. Such people had always displayed an inner calm, their belief in God and the promise of eternal life appearing to offer them comfort. The Reverend Lightfoot’s despair at the loss of his wife was so tangible that he seemed beyond consolation.

  Sitting in the drawing room, thoughtfully cradling the large glass of brandy that Howard had poured for him, Thomas felt a deep sense of foreboding. Lydia sat on the opposite side of the fireplace, working on some embroidery. The traumatic events of the afternoon meant neither of them was in a mood for light conversation, yet they could not bear the thought of being alone. They took mutual solace from each other.

  Over the years, Thomas had tried to desensitize himself to death. He had seen so much of it and in so many guises: in disease and in injury, in suicide and even in murder, and yet dealing with it still affected him. He might feel sadness, or sorrow, or sometimes, when the victim’s pain was unbearable, relief, but more often he felt a sense of inadequacy. Such feelings were certainly to the fore that evening as his mind replayed the terrified expressions on the faces of both Mistress Lightfoot and Amos Kidd. What agonies must they both have suffered as the acid gnawed away at the lining of their lungs? He gulped down his brandy and shuddered as he felt the liquid burn his own throat.

  Glancing over at Lydia, he could see she had retreated into her own world again, as she so often did. The difference now was that he could read her thoughts. Now he knew why, at times, she seemed so melancholy. Now he understood why her eyes would sometimes mist at the sight of a babe or a young child at play. She was in mourning for lost memories, lost embraces, lost time that should have been spent with her son.

  “I have not forgotten our search,” he said suddenly, his gaze fixed on her face.

  She looked up from her sewing, paused, then smiled wistfully. “I know you would not do that,” she replied softly.

  “ ’Twould take us half a day to reach Oxford in this fog, but I’ve heard it is clear a little way south of the city.” His voice carried a timbre of hope. Lydia nodded, but said no more, returning to the gauze wrap she was embroidering.

  Left to his own thoughts once more, Thomas turned to Kidd’s wife and the memory of her standing frightened and helpless as she watched her husband in his death throes. What would become of her?

  “Did Kidd have any children?” he asked a few moments later.

  Lydia put down her needle and thread. “No. I don’t believe he and his wife could,” she replied thoughtfully. “He used to say his roses were his children.”

  “And what of his wife?” he asked. “Will she have to leave the cottage?”

  A look of disapproval crossed Lydia’s face. “Michael would have made her go, but I will not,” she said firmly. “I shall not be in the business of turning widows out of their homes.”

  Thomas was assured. “If only all landowners thought like you, there would be fewer souls in the workhouses.”

  He rose and walked over to the sideboard to help himself to another glass of brandy from the decanter. On his way back he walked over to Lydia and laid his palm gently on her shoulder. She put her own hand on top of his and tilted her head toward him, so that he kissed the top of her hair gently.

  Their moment of intimacy was short-lived. Howard’s entrance into the room brought them both back to the present. “I have a message for Dr. Silkstone,” he announced formally, holding a silver tray on which lay a letter. He proffered it to Thomas, who glanced at it quickly.

  “That will be all, Howard,” he said, dismissing the butler and opening the letter.

  Lydia was looking at him anxiously. “Not more bad news?”

  Thomas shook his head. “No. It is more positive,” he replied. Earlier that afternoon, shortly after Kidd’s death, Thomas had decided that in order to find out exactly how the noxious fog was killing its victims, he needed to carry out a postmortem on the gardener. He had therefore dispatched a messenger to Oxford with a letter to the coroner, Sir Theodisius Pettigrew. The reply had been immediately forthcoming. Permission was granted.

  “Tomorrow I shall be examining Amos Kidd’s body,” he told her. “It may well hold the key to so many questions about this fog.”

  The cloud of poison had not yet reached London, but the usual pall of foundry smoke combined with the detritus of humans and animals living cheek by jowl still hung over the capital. The miasma of rotting meat and human waste stewed gently in the summer heat, causing many to gag and retch as they ventured out.

  The notary found the whole ambience most unpleasant. His stomach was not used to being assailed in this vile way and he purchased a nosegay from a street seller in an attempt to ward off the stink. He was on his way to an address in the west of the capital, in Seymour Street. It was not a bad area, not for London at any rate. There were many tall, elegant town ho
uses here, newly built in the last decade he would guess. They stood in neat rows with freshly painted doors and windows. The mud on the roads had been hard-baked by several days of sun, making it easier underfoot.

  He stopped at a house that looked exactly the same as every other house in the street, tall and thin with long casements. He mounted the steps up to the door and pulled the bell. A neat-looking, plump-faced woman answered, her cap completely obscuring any hair she might have had. Her apron was starched and pristine and she had a matronly air of authority about her that said she would not stand any nonsense.

  “Good day to you, ma’am,” greeted the notary, raising his tricorn.

  “Good day, sir,” she replied guardedly.

  “I was hoping you could help me,” he began, and he produced a sheet of paper and showed it to her. “I am at the right place?”

  “Yes, sir, you are,” she confirmed.

  “Good,” nodded the notary. “Then this must be the former abode of the Right Honorable Francis Crick.”

  For a moment the woman froze, then grabbed the door and started to shut it. “You have the wrong house, sir,” she cried. But the notary was too quick for her and put his foot over the threshold, jamming the door open. He fixed her in the eye and saw that she was afraid. “I want no trouble, sir. I keep a clean house.”

  The notary could tell by her demeanor she was a simple woman who, through no fault of her own, had happened to take a lodger who turned out to be a murderer. Of course at the time she had no way of knowing his vile inclinations. Francis Crick had presented himself as a student of anatomy at St. George’s Hospital, not half a mile away. He seemed a sensible, clean young man of noble birth. He always paid his rent on time and kept civil hours, but, according to his landlady, he had a sorry tale to tell.