The Devil's Breath

by Tessa Harris

  Candles were blown out and young Richard was patted and caressed. Lydia was beaming and Thomas could not remember when he had seen her so full of joy.

  “He is a fine young man,” remarked the vicar, packing away his flasks and candles. “And yet . . .” He broke off.

  “And yet?” queried Thomas.

  “There seems to be something wrong with his arm.” He turned away from the bed as he said this, so the boy could not hear.

  Thomas looked uneasy, but thought quickly. “An accident, I believe. A fall from a pony.”

  Turning ’round, the vicar looked at the boy. “So he is a cripple?”

  The sudden change of tone shocked the doctor and he shot back, “That is a harsh word, sir.”

  The Reverend Lightfoot, however, seemed unfazed. “Come, come, Dr. Silkstone. In our line of work we deal with such infirmities all the time. There is no need to be precious about them.” Then to Lydia he added, “I am sure he has come to a good home and that you will look after him well.”

  She nodded. “That is why we are going to spend a few days in the caves. Richard will be able to regain his strength there.”

  The vicar arched his brow. “Ah, yes,” he said. “I have heard that many are returning fully restored after a week or so there.” Reaching for his hat and his cane, he walked over to the door, but paused at the threshold. “Oh, and when you have examined the bodies of those dead children, will you let me know what you find, Dr. Silkstone? I would be most grateful. I will show myself out.” And with that he bid both of them a good day.

  Left alone once more, Thomas went over to Lydia.

  “I know I did wrong, but I could not face having to tell the reverend the truth just now,” she said, shaking her head.

  “He will understand when you do decide to. The idea is still strange to you,” he told her softly.

  From out of the corner of his eye he could see Richard was watching them. “So, young man, you are looking so much better,” said Thomas, smiling. He settled himself on the bed and was just beginning to talk to his new godson, when a tap on the door interrupted the conversation.

  “Come in,” called Lydia.

  Howard stood stiffly on the threshold, looking a little uncomfortable. “I am sorry, your ladyship, but there is a messenger downstairs for Dr. Silkstone.” Turning to Thomas he added, “He says he has been tasked to deliver his message into your hands, sir.”

  Following the butler downstairs, Thomas saw the courier waiting in the hallway. The man’s coat and hat were covered in dust and he smelled of sweat and leather.

  “Dr. Silkstone?”

  “I am he.”

  The messenger held out a rolled piece of parchment. “I am to give you this, sir, and await your reply.”

  Thomas opened up the scroll. It read:

  Dear Dr. Silkstone,

  I am afraid to inform you that Dr. Carruthers is seriously ill. Please return to London as soon as possible. God’s speed.

  Sir Peregrine Crisp,

  Coroner

  Westminster.

  The doctor frowned. It was as if he had been dealt a swift blow in the guts. “Please tell Sir Peregrine that I will be on my way within the hour.”

  “Very good, sir,” replied the courier, bowing low.

  Thomas’s heart, that only five minutes ago had felt so much at ease, now ached. He thought of his mentor, obviously close to death. Could it be that he, too, had been struck down with the fog sickness? He had heard reports that all London was still in its grip.

  As soon as he reappeared at the threshold of the bedroom, Lydia knew he was the bearer of bad news. “What is it?”

  “ ’Tis Dr. Carruthers. I need to go to him.”

  “He is sick?”

  Thomas nodded. “I fear the worst. I need to leave this afternoon.”

  She wrapped her arms around his waist. “Take care, my love,” she said.

  “Have no fear for me,” he retorted, kissing the top of her head. “ ’Tis Dr. Carruthers who needs our thoughts and prayers.”

  Still with her arms around him, Lydia nodded. “I shall pray for you both.”

  He pulled back so that he could look into her eyes. “And you must take care, too,” he told her. “Richard should be very much recovered when I return.”

  Lydia smiled. “Yes, and the Reverend Lightfoot will see to it that no harm comes our way,” she assured him.

  Thomas returned her smile, but her words reminded him that he was leaving her at a time when a vicious murderer, or murderers, were on the loose, seemingly killing at random. He felt he was deserting her and yet his mentor and the man who had been like a father to him for the past nine years was close to death.

  Returning to the game larder, he covered the children’s corpses and entrusted Jacob Lovelock with the task of seeing that they were transported for burial. Then he packed his case, making sure that he took with him the four phials of material he had collected from around the wounds of all those murdered. At least in his own laboratory he would be able to carry out tests on them to ascertain their origin. He was convinced they held the key to whoever was behind these heinous acts. For the time being, however, his priorities lay with the man to whom he owed so much. He just hoped his arrival in London would not be too late.

  Word had spread like wildfire across dry gorse brush. Joshua Pike was holed up at the Kidds’ cottage. He was the murderer. He was the fiend who had killed not only Lady Thorndike and Gabriel Lawson, but two children as they lay in their beds. He was a monster! The devil incarnate! He had caused nothing but trouble since the day he arrived in Brandwick, terrorizing the vicar’s wife and stirring resentment among the laborers in the fields. Justice had to be done, and if the law failed them they would take it into their own hands.

  The men gathered by the market cross. They had armed themselves with whatever they could lay their hands on: pitchforks and rakes and shovels. The butcher carried his meat cleaver and the farrier his clincher. The master of the hunt gave permission for the hounds to join in the search. The constable, Walter Harker, came as well, carrying chains to restrain the quarry. Abel Cross, the fowler, had brought along his flintlock, too. It had a short range, but it could blow a hole in a man’s gut if it was fired close enough.

  Ned Perkins took the lead. This time there was none of the reticence he had shown in his dealings with Gabriel Lawson. His jaw was set determinedly and his eyes were on fire. The fog sickness had taken both his sons that week. He had nothing more to lose. Barging through the men, he rushed up the steps of the market cross to address the crowd.

  “Today, brothers, two children were slain as they slept. Two more have been murdered. And still the killer is at large. Yet the powers that be in Oxford are sitting on their fat backsides doing nothing. ’Tis time we acted, brothers.” He clenched his fist and punched the air. “ ’Tis time we meted out our own justice; time we hunted down Joshua Pike!”

  The crowd roared their approval and the dogs began to bark in the excitement. Torches were lit even though it was only the early afternoon, and those few who had horses swung up into their saddles.

  From a good distance the Reverend Lightfoot watched the proceedings. The Lord had revealed to him Joshua Pike’s whereabouts. A look of disgust distorted his features as he recalled the knife-grinder’s rough hands on Susannah Kidd’s body. There had been no question in his mind. He had acted in the best interests of the villagers. They were feeling threatened. They were the ones who could not sleep soundly in their beds at night. And if the law of the land appeared powerless, then they had every right to rise up and dispense their own form of justice.

  He watched them from the saddle of his mare as they came toward him, past St. Swithin’s on the road to Boughton. They were three abreast, with Ned Perkins at the front; a column of men as eager for blood as the baying hounds they mustered.

  “You joining us, reverend?” asked Perkins as the men passed the church.

  “Most certainly,” he replied with a s
light bow of his silver head. “I will bring up the rear.”

  And so the angry mob marched on, out of Brandwick toward Boughton, to Susannah Kidd’s cottage. Their voices were raised, excited. Now and again a shout went up. The names of Joseph Makepeace’s children were invoked, as if their death had turned them into saints. But the name of Joshua Pike was spat out like snake venom above the barking of the hounds.

  Susannah Kidd was in her garden, scattering corn for the few chickens that remained. She heard the slathering dogs first, followed by shouts, then the sound of a hundred boots tramping along the track. Panic seized hold of her and, dropping her bowl of corn, she fled toward the cottage.

  “They’re coming,” she screamed. “They’re coming.”

  Like a shot, Joshua Pike ran out and over to his mule that had been grazing in the orchard at the rear. He hurled the saddle onto its back and began fastening the straps. Meanwhile Susannah walked to the front gate as the men drew level. She tried to compose herself, but she could not hide the fact that she was trembling.

  “Where is he?” barked Ned Perkins. The men behind were jostling him; jabbing their pitchforks in the air. His voice was almost drowned out by their growls.

  “Who?” was all she could ask weakly.

  But the men would not wait. The first few jumped over the fence, then another simply hacked at it with an ax, clearing the way for all the rest to spill into the garden.

  Susannah screamed. Her hands flew up to her face and she ran after the invading mob as it trampled over Amos Kidd’s precious roses and flooded into the back orchard. The men arrived just in time to see Joshua Pike heave himself onto his mule and spur it into a trot.

  “After him!” cried Ned Perkins. Some of the younger ones began running through the orchard toward the woodland where the fugitive was headed. Those with snarling hounds unleashed them and set them on his trail, bounding furiously through the long grass. But Abel Cross simply stood still. Cocking his musket he steadied his own arm, aimed, and fired. A shot ripped through the air and the knife-grinder jerked backward, as if pulled by an invisible rope. But his mule, terrified by the loud noise, trotted even faster. The young man slumped forward for a moment, then righted himself. In an instant he had reached the canopy of leaves at the edge of the wood and, in another, the flash of his red bandana had disappeared altogether.

  Susannah was left distraught in the garden as the men surged forward toward the woodland’s edge. Her sobs came in great waves, overwhelming her slender body. Dropping to the ground, she pummeled the dirt with her fists and let out a fearful wail.

  The Reverend Lightfoot studied her from a few yards away. He watched the tears roll down her cheeks and saw the look of utter despair etched on her features. This was her agony as surely as if the soldiers at Calvary had driven nails through her hands and feet. The corners of his mouth curled into a smirk. Susannah Kidd’s demons had finally been banished. Even if Joshua Pike was not torn limb from limb by the baying hounds, even if he did escape, he had been shot. His death could be quick or it could be slow: either way it would be agonizing. But as for Mistress Kidd, he had other plans, and they involved a short spell in prison followed by a dance at the end of a very long rope.

  Less than a mile away, Thomas’s carriage had turned out of the estate and onto the main Oxford road. He would spend the night at the Black Horse before taking the coach to London at first light. The fog was still lying low over hills and treetops, but it no longer deadened sound as it had before. The dry crack of a gun’s report could be heard quite clearly. The noise sent the crows, huddling on low branches, scattering across the sky like musket shot. It also made the horses drawing Thomas’s carriage jolt suddenly. He put his head out of the window.

  “Everything all right?” he inquired of his driver.

  “Sounded like a fowler’s musket, sir,” came the reply.

  Satisfied with this explanation, Thomas settled himself back down, staring out of the window once more. The thought of the next few days filled him with dread. He did not know how he would find his dear Dr. Carruthers. The message had said his condition was serious. What if he arrived too late? There was so much he had left unsaid. He sighed deeply. The only hope he did carry with him was that in his own laboratory he could analyze the samples in his bag. At least surrounded by his own paraphernalia he might finally draw closer to finding the murderer, or murderers, stalking Brandwick.

  Chapter 42

  The men spread out, worming their way ’round trees and bracken. The hounds had the mule’s scent and followed it eagerly. There was blood, too. Luke Kipps spotted a splash of it on a boulder. But they soon came to the river and the trail went cold. The dogs circled helplessly, yelping and whining. They were losing the light, too. The dense tree cover made it hard enough to see, but now tracks were difficult to follow.

  “No matter, men,” called out Ned Perkins. “He’s shot. He’ll not get far. We’ll be back at first light.”

  So they wended their way back toward the cottage and to Susannah Kidd. They found her sitting quietly on a bench in the orchard with the Reverend Lightfoot at her side. She seemed calmer, almost resigned to her fate. She did not protest when Walter Harker came forward and told her that she was under arrest. She simply looked up and, in a bewildered state, offered her hands to him, so that he could bind her wrists. Then some other men led her from the bench and lifted her into the saddle of the Reverend Lightfoot’s mare.

  The long procession wound its course down the lane and into Brandwick once more. The mob no longer shouted and waved their weapons. Their thirst for blood seemed to have been quenched thanks to Abel Cross. They slapped him playfully on the back, or shook his hand. He was the hero of the hour. They talked excitedly among themselves, spoke of the blood on the stone that Luke Kipps had spotted, spoke of the brave way they had hacked down the fence and trodden across the garden. Most of them wore expressions of contentment on their faces, as if they had just finished gathering in a good harvest. Some of them gloated. Now and again one would shove Susannah Kidd in the back with a pitchfork handle. Others spat at her from time to time. “Whore!” one shouted. “Traitor!” called another.

  Constable Harker allowed such behavior. It was only right that the men should be able to vent their spleen, letting off a little steam after all their efforts to bring justice to Brandwick, when the magistrates in Oxford had clearly failed.

  The vicar followed on at the back of the throng. As he watched the young woman ahead of him, her hands shackled, her shoulders slumped forward, her head bowed, he could not help but think there was something almost biblical about the scene. In the fading light there sat Eve. There sat Rahab and Mary Magdalene. There sat all the evil, vile and sluttish women in the world and they were vanquished. In his own small way he had scored a victory for righteousness and it gladdened his heart.

  As they entered the village, the women came out of their cottages, some clutching their children. They had not vented their rage in the chase and when they saw Susannah Kidd, they shook their fists at her. Raising their voices, they taunted her with more shouts of “Whore!” and “Harlot!” Some threw rotten tomatoes or plums at her. One of them hit her on the shoulder and it left a round crimson stain like a gunshot wound.

  The procession halted outside the lock-up, to one side of the market hall. Constable Harker unhitched the large key from his belt and opened the low door into a space of no more than four feet square.

  The mare carrying Mistress Kidd was brought forward and she was shoved and jostled down to the ground. She stumbled and the constable helped her to her feet, then led her to the cell. Teary-eyed she looked at him for a moment, then ducked her head into the space. The door clanked shut and, as Harker locked it with his great key, a cheer went up from the assembled throng.

  The only opening in the lock-up was a small grille. A few men and women jostled to catch a glimpse of the accused woman as she sat huddled in the semidarkness. There were more insults and gobs of spittle, bu
t when all the commotion finally died down, the Reverend Lightfoot chose his moment. As soon as the square fell silent once more and the good residents of Brandwick took to their beds knowing they would sleep much more soundly that night, the vicar approached the lock-up. Standing up against the door, he put his face to the grille, so that his nose wedged between the bars. He sniffed. Oddly enough the young woman still smelled of roses, only now the enticing scent was mixed with sweat. And what was that he could detect? He sniffed once more. Could it be fear?

  “You are afraid, Mistress Kidd?” Now that his eyes had adjusted to the dark, he could see her crumpled on the floor, her knees clasped to her breasts.

  Without looking up she said, “ ’Twas what you wanted.” Her voice was as brittle as a cut reed.

  “I want you to repent, as any man of God would,” he replied, looking down on her cowering in the cell.

  Suddenly she lifted her gaze and hissed at him. “I have done nothing wrong.”

  Her response seemed to disappoint the vicar. He let out a bemused laugh and said, “Then let God be your judge.”

  Surprised that after all he had tried to teach her she still could not see the error of her ways, he backed away from the bars. “So be it,” he told her. He would leave her fate to the Almighty, he told himself. In the meantime he had work to do. There was one other woman who needed to be taught a lesson before the Day of Judgment dawned.

  Chapter 43

  A small crowd of street urchins and apprentice boys had been milling around the lock-up since the early hours. They were lobbing rotten eggs and dog shit through the grille and shouting taunts. No one stopped them. In fact now and again a passing woman would add her voice to the jeers and insults.