by Tessa Harris
A few yards on, he suddenly spotted great clouds of bluish gray smoke, billowing through the trees. At first he thought he had come across a smoldering forest fire, even though the ground was damp. Quickly he dismounted and, shielding his nose and mouth from the clinging smoke, he approached on foot. It did not take him long to realize his mistake. In the clearing he could see through the gritty haze a huge round mound raised on an earth platform. From it rose plumes that swirled around it and filled the air with the tang of burning wood. Covering the mound were clods of clay and slabs of turf, and at its center stood an odd-looking chimney out of which most of the smoke was escaping. A lone man with a shovel seemed to be tending what appeared to be some sort of kiln, lifting sods of moss and patting them down over vents, choking off the smoke, trapping it inside.
Thomas took the man to be one of the charcoal burners who lived and worked in the wood. He was small but solid in build, and on his head he wore a strange kind of leather bonnet with flaps that covered his ears. It was tied by laces under his chin. His face and hands were so deeply ingrained with soot that he looked as though he had been dipped in tar.
The workman did not notice his visitor at first, or if he did, he did not acknowledge him. He seemed too busy with his shovel, firming down the clods, until after a few moments he stood back to take stock of his work. He coughed and spat forth sooty spew. It was then that he caught sight of Thomas out of the corner of his eye.
He looked at him warily. “Yes?” he grunted.
Thomas urged his horse forward. “Good day,” he said, doffing his tricorn.
The man’s eyes looked bright white set in his blackened face, but they narrowed as he studied his visitor. “You come about the mapmaker?” he asked. He had obviously heard of the murder. “I don’t want no trouble.”
Thomas shook his head. “No, sir, I am not,” he replied politely, aware that he needed to tread carefully. “I am a surgeon and physician.”
The charcoal burner straightened his grimy neck. “I may have a cough, but I’m not sick,” he replied.
Thomas smiled. “I can see that,” he conceded, but he refused to be put off. He went straight to the point. “I understand you know these woods.”
The charcoal burner shrugged. “As well as any man.”
Thomas pried a little deeper. “Did the mapmakers come this way?”
“What’s it to you?” came the crabby reply.
“I am sent by the coroner. I need to find out more about how the man died.” Thomas did not mean to be officious, but he feared he might have sounded that way. “Do you know the place where he was shot?”
The charcoal burner shuffled his feet and let his shovel take some of his weight. “What if I do?” There was a defiance in his manner that Thomas had not anticipated.
“Then I would ask you to take me to that place,” Thomas persisted.
The charcoal burner paused for a moment and eyed the doctor with a simmering resentment. It was plain he did not trust this stranger.
“I will make it worth your while,” said the doctor, delving into his pocket and bringing out his purse. “A guinea for your pains,” he offered, tossing a silver coin into the air. It landed on the carpet of dead leaves by the man’s boots. He picked it up and bit into it as if it were an oatcake, before tossing his shovel to the ground, like a surly child.
“I’ll take ye,” he conceded, but still under sufferance. “ ’Tis a good walk from here.”
The man led the way north through the forest, tramping along leaf-strewn paths and through muddy ruts. Thomas followed on horseback, dipping low under overhanging branches, until eventually they left behind them the coupe full of squat, coppiced hazel and entered the thicker forest. Walking over to a deep depression in the ground, scantily lined with leaves, the workman pointed to the steep-sided pit.
“Here.”
Thomas dismounted and skirted the hole. He recalled that Sir Theodisius had told him that the horse had stumbled into a pit before the murder. It was not much deeper than a man’s waist, but judging by the fresh spade marks at its sides, it had been quite recently dug out.
“And where did the surveyor fall?” he asked. He glanced at the man, but seeing his reaction, it was obviously a question too far. The charcoal burner shook his head vigorously.
“I dunno,” came the quick reply. “Near,” was all he would say.
“Yes,” said Thomas with a knowing nod. For the woodsman to pinpoint the exact spot would be to incriminate himself. “Thank you. You have been most helpful, Mr. . . .”
“Godson. Zeb Godson,” came the reply. “But folk call me Black Zeb.”
Again Thomas smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Godson,” he said. “I shall find my own way back.”
The charcoal burner needed no further encouragement to leave. He disappeared into the trees within seconds, leaving Thomas alone, deep in the woods. He knew the exact site of the murder would be within a radius of a few yards, so he tethered his horse and began pacing along the track that led away from the deep pit. All the while he kept his eyes trained on the ground, following a set of recent hoofprints.
Within seconds, he arrived at what he knew must be the place. Several flies had discovered a cache of blood on top of the leaves, a thick dried pool of dark red, barely discernible among the russets and gold. Thomas crouched down. A small fragment of brown material fluttered among the rest of the leaves, its edges jagged and ripped. Thomas picked it up. It was fustian. His mind flashed to poor Mr. Turgoose’s frock coat, torn at the pocket. It was easy to see where he had fallen and lain for a moment or two in this woodland grave. There were gouge marks in the mud where the leaves had been disturbed and the deadweight of his body must have been dragged out and heaved onto the horse.
Thomas looked about him. The clearing was small and surrounded by thick bushes, many of them evergreen. It would be easy for men to lie in wait here, unseen and ready to pounce. He pushed his way into the thick undergrowth, looking for signs, footprints in the mud, scraps of clothing, any clues left behind by Mr. Turgoose’s attacker, or attackers. Despite his best efforts, he found nothing and decided to return to his horse. It was just as he put his foot in the stirrup and grabbed hold of the saddle to heave himself up that he noticed his right sleeve. It was covered in what appeared to be black dust. He inspected it more closely but did not brush it off. He dismounted and returned to the bushes from whence he had just come. Peering at the waxy leaves of a large holly bush, his eyes scanned the foliage, looking for something out of the ordinary. It was then he spotted it: some type of blight, he thought at first. When he touched what appeared to be the black mold and rubbed it between his forefinger and thumb, however, he was not so sure. He needed to take a sample.
Meanwhile, less than half a mile away, Maggie Cuthbert, or Mad Maggie as most people called her, sat in her tumbledown cottage nestled among the beeches. Although she was a cunning woman, gifted with certain powers, or so she said, she had not needed any shew stones to tell her that something was wrong in the woods the afternoon the surveyor was killed.
For as long as anyone could remember, she’d hawked her herbal remedies and her hag stones in Brandwick. For the soothing of stomachache, Brandwick belly as it was known, her lavender water was proving particularly popular these days. And for the few who’d cross her palm with silver, for amusement or mere curiosity, she’d read her shew stones. Rolling them on the flat ground with a shake and a flick of her scrawny wrist, she’d study them carefully. Sucking at her gums, she’d either shake her head solemnly or twitch her lips into a smile and nod, depending on what she said she saw. A few people believed her. Many did not, but on this particular afternoon she hadn’t needed her powers to know something was amiss. Her fowl had told her, her chickens and turkeys. They’d clucked and squawked and gobbled, and above their din she had heard a horse whinnying. She’d been sitting by a hissing fire at the time. The logs were damp and the room was smoky. Using the last remnants of daylight, she’d been threading a
chicken feather through the memory cord that hung by the door; each one marked a week since her husband passed. She’d not wanted to lose track of time, so every seven days she looped another feather into the yarn, just to remind her of her old Jack. She counted the quills. It had been thirty-six weeks since he’d died, choked by the Devil’s Breath, like so many others. The monstrous fog had scoured his lungs and caused him to cough blood. Soon she’d have to start a new cord.
At the sound of her hens’ clamor, she’d craned her scraggy neck to look out of her window. It was then she heard the noise that caused her most alarm. It had split the peaceful air with a mighty crack, like lightning cleaves a sturdy oak. It was the blast of gunshot; of that she was certain. Her first thought was that the Raven and his men were abroad, out to prey on innocent travelers. She’d drawn her bolts, blown out her candle, and kept low. It was then, from her window, that she saw the bushes shake and the dark shapes of men race away from the thicket. There were three, or maybe four of them. She watched them charging down the track as if the very devil himself were in hot pursuit. She had a good idea who they were, so she was more curious than afraid.
The next time she opened her door was on the following day. Three sidemen in Boughton livery dismounted on the dead leaves outside her cottage. They knocked and called her name. A gentleman had been murdered, they said. Had she seen or heard anything? they asked. She shook her head. She did not like this new breed at Boughton. They would have to break her old bones on a rack wheel before she’d tell their sort anything.
“An old woman like me lives in fear,” she cried, spittle flying from her gums. “There’s always footpads and highwaymen abroad.” She pulled her shawl over her baggy breasts as she spoke. “And there’s my hens. Not laid today, they haven’t,” she told them, even though, in truth, she hadn’t ventured out to look.
One of the men, their leader, she guessed, built like a brick barn with not a hair on his head, barged past her and cast an eye around her room: the dried herbs hanging from the rafters, the kettle by the hearth, the filthy rags on the bed, the dark corners festooned with webs. “You heard no men? No gunshot?”
Maggie shook her frizzy gray head. “I heard nothing,” she replied. She knew if she told them she’d seen a huddle of woodsmen up ahead fighting their way out of the thicket like things possessed, no matter what their purpose, they’d be hauled over the coals.
Chapter 11
Returning to Brandwick later in the afternoon, Thomas intended to go straight to the Three Tuns. He did not wish to be interrogated by Geech, or anyone else for that matter, on what he had found in Raven’s Wood. Circumstances, however, conspired against him. As he rode into town at the top of the High Street, he could see that a crowd of people had gathered ’round the square. He urged on his horse.
“What goes on?” called Thomas to a man on his way to join the throng.
“Commoners’ meeting,” he yelled over the din.
The commoners—there were one hundred and three of them—were congregating. Their rights were ancient, set in the stones of the common, stored in the sap of the woodland trees, and cut into the boggy turf of the marshes. Had not the Lady of Brandwick herself bestowed the gift upon them? And now they were being challenged. Covering an area two miles to the north of the market cross and three to the east, Brandwick Common spanned grassland and scrubland, a river and several ponds, hillocks and downs, hollows and ridges. An elected council met every year to distribute plots of land and set the stint for pasturing animals to prevent overgrazing. Since time immemorial, each allotment had consisted of long strips of land, often separated from one another so that no one received more than their fair share of the best parcels. And when the harvest was gathered in, the poorer families could glean the grain that remained on the ground. It was then the turn of the horses, cows, and sheep to move in and graze, depositing manure to nourish the earth for the next year’s crops. Where the soil was too poor to support such workings, then flocks of turkeys and geese would be set loose to peck and roam as they pleased, while the pigs were put to pannage in the woods. Thus it had always been and thus it would always be, if the commoners had their say. But now that way of life was being challenged, and where better to meet and discuss the matter than on the common itself?
Thomas looked around him at the growing crowd. They were mainly men, although a handful of women, a few with babes in their arms, had come to offer support. Some of them he recognized from his ministrations during the Great Fogg: Maggie Cuthbert, the cunning woman; Will Ketch, the cowherd; Abel Smith, the fowler; and Joseph Makepeace, the bury man. Together they would march toward their meeting place at Arthur’s Hollow on the common.
Despite being an outsider, Thomas knew he had a duty to attend this villagers’ gathering, for Lydia’s sake, if not his own. If the Boughton Estate was to be enclosed by Sir Montagu, then Lydia, as its rightful custodian, must be informed. As the ragtag band started to move off, he decided to leave his horse at the Three Tuns and follow them at a respectable distance on foot.
Arthur’s Hollow lay on the southern edge of Brandwick Common. The short walk passed peaceably, but Thomas noted that most of the people wore a slightly bewildered look on their faces, like passengers about to embark on a voyage to they knew not where. Their clothes and general demeanor marked them out as the poorer sort. There were plenty of men in ragged coats with frayed cuffs, their hats dusty and moldy, and women in soiled bonnets. Those from the woods gathered, too, men like the coppicers—the Diggotts, all three of them—and Josh Thornley and his moribund son, Hal.
A stink of sweat and dirt and toil hung about them all, so that those of middling rank who came to see what all the fuss was about held their scented kerchiefs to their noses and stood slightly back from the general melee. But among the poor it was their faces that spoke loudest. Hunger and cold had ploughed deep furrows on foreheads and under eyes. They had little in life, and they feared what little they had might soon be taken away from them. Nevertheless, the atmosphere was fearful rather than angry, curious rather than belligerent. Walter Harker, the watchman, was there to keep order, his cudgel in his hand, but it would be used only to tap unruly apprentice boys rather than to bludgeon honest men.
The rumors they’d heard about the Act of Enclosure were true, and now the proclamation was nailed on the church door for all to see. If their rights and liberties were to be upheld, then they would need to put up a united front against the Boughton Estate.
Will Ketch spoke first. He heaved himself up onto an old tree trunk so he could see above the crowd. His herding dog, a shaggy-coated bitch who’d been with him since she was a pup, sat by his side. He lifted his arms, and, after a moment the crowd fell silent. He was a commoner. He, his wife, and their six children lived in a messuage about a mile away from the village. He’d dwelt there these past ten years and eked out a living with a cow, two pigs, and half an acre of land. He was just thirty years of age, but his hunched shoulders, stooped back, and craggy face, weathered by the bite of so many cold winters, made him look more like a man of fifty.
“Good people of Brandwick,” he began. He had heard them addressed as such before by the vicar, or some such dignitary. “We are here today because our livelihoods are threatened.” There were grunts of approval from the crowd. “The very land that our fathers and their fathers and their fathers before them lived off may be taken away from us.”
A shout went up. “We won’t let them!”
Heads were shaken, voices raised.
Buoyed by the response, Will Ketch continued. “Boughton’s new masters would turn us out and fence off the land that is our birthright. We must not let them.”
“We’ll fight!” came a voice from the crowd. This time fists were lifted. “Tear down the fences,” someone called, and another took up the chant. “Tear ’em down. Tear ’em down.”
Another shout went up. “We want compensation!” But Jed Lively’s was a lone voice. He was a tenant farmer who worked ten acres
. No doubt Boughton would negotiate with him, apportion him a good-sized allotment, but most of those gathered stood to lose everything. Lively was shouted down and the atmosphere was turning ugly.
Adam Diggott wanted his voice to be heard, too. He’d been readying himself for this moment. His blood was stirred, so, elbowing his way through the gathering, he made his way to the front and stood on the tree trunk to address the crowd.
“I have lived in the forest all my life, and I’ll die there,” he began. “And I swear on the life of my son, Jake, that I’ll not be turned out of my home.”
A chorus of approval followed. He scanned the sea of expectant faces, but just as he was about to rouse them even further, a great rumble sounded from somewhere behind him. Turning ’round, he saw horsemen galloping over the ridge from the direction of Boughton Hall. There were four of them, and they pulled up just short of the crowd, sending men and women scattering to the left and right. One of the riders was recognized by some as the bailiff, Marcus Jupp, a gruff, unforgiving man, who would countenance no challenge to his authority. In his hand he held a scroll. Another of the horsemen shouted for silence, and the gathering suddenly fell still.
In a loud, clear voice, the bailiff began: “Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the Act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God Save the King!”
The crowd remained silent, stunned by the reading of the Riot Act. They knew what it meant. They needed to be gone within the hour or face the death penalty. With these words the official folded up the scroll and surveyed his audience, watching for their reaction.
