by Tessa Harris
“I have forfeited it to ze greater cause,” he announced dramatically, brandishing an empty bottle. Thomas cast an eager eye over the various paraphernalia that had been assembled for the test. “It is to your satisfaction, yes?” asked the Saxon.
“Most definitely.”
“Zen ve begin?”
Thomas nodded and, slipping off his coat, he rolled up his sleeves and set to work. First he soaked a clean piece of paper in fifty drachms of Professor Hascher’s schnapps, then another in the suspect gin. Next he took a flask containing a volatile tincture of sulfur, produced by dissolving crystals in a measure of warmed aniseed oil, and exposed the papers, one at a time, to the fumes. The results were rapid, if not instantaneous. The paper soaked in schnapps remained unchanged. However, the sheet soaked in the gin turned much darker in color before their eyes.
Thomas turned to Hascher. “An encouraging start,” he said.
“Ve certainly follow ze right path, Dr. Silkstone.” The professor nodded. “Vhat next?”
“Hepar sulfuris?” suggested Thomas. When added to lead, it was known to discolor.
“A good choice,” agreed Hascher, and he scanned his shelves for a bottle. “I prepared zis myself,” he said, recalling with great pride how he had saved discarded oyster shells after a particularly good college dinner and burned them before adding pure flowers of sulfur. “Let us see if zey—how do you say?—do ze trick.”
A few drops of the substance were added first to the paper impregnated with schnapps, then to the gin-soaked piece. The men stood back to watch. They did not have to wait long. Within four minutes the gin sample had turned a murky gray.
The professor clapped his hands. “I believe ve have our proof, Dr. Silkstone. Zere is lead in ze gin.”
Thomas, however, did not share his colleague’s enthusiasm. “This sample does indeed contain lead, Professor, and it would certainly explain some of the chronic symptoms that seem to afflict the residents of Brandwick.” Thomas thought of the discolored teeth, the strange hair loss, and the gripes that, according to Mr. Peabody, regularly troubled the village imbibers. He went on: “I am afraid, however, it is in an insufficient quantity to cause the kind of symptoms I have seen in the accused man: the paralysis; the befuddlement. It would take a much more concentrated amount of poison to result in his severe reaction.”
Hascher suddenly looked crestfallen. “So ve have vasted our time?”
Thomas did not wish to dishearten the professor. The discovery of lead in the liquor was only the first step in what he knew would be a long and no doubt hard-fought battle to prove Abe Diggott’s innocence.
“Let us just say, we must continue our mission.” He gave a reassuring smile. The problem was, he knew the trial would be held within the next few days and he was rapidly running out of time.
Chapter 33
The men met under cover of darkness at Maggie Cuthbert’s cottage in Raven’s Wood. Despite Abe Diggott’s arrest, Lupton’s lackeys still patrolled the streets of the village to enforce the curfew. More important, however, they were on the lookout for Adam Diggott, also wanted for the brutal murder of Jeffrey Turgoose. Will Ketch and Josh Thornley had made good their escapes from their cottages unnoticed. Zeb Godson, living in the forest as he did, had not needed an alibi.
“You seen him?” Ketch asked Godson.
The charcoal burner’s eyes seemed to glow white from out of his grimy face. “He’ll be here.”
They were sitting on the floor in front of a blazing fire that threw long shadows across the room. Nevertheless, the light was sufficient to allow them to see the fear on one another’s faces well enough. In the forest silence they heard an owl hoot. A few seconds later its call was answered by another. It seemed that even the night birds were mocking them, this party of fools, this band of Davids who would take on the might of Sir Montagu Malthus and his ilk.
Suddenly Thornley straightened his back. “Footsteps,” he whispered. The men froze, held their breaths. Maggie Cuthbert went to the window and lifted a ragged drape.
“ ’Tis him,” she said, and the men exhaled as one.
Adam Diggott stood in the doorway and was ushered in quickly. The other men rose to greet him, like a long-lost friend or a hero returning from war. He strode to the hearth and held his hands to the fire.
Maggie Cuthbert joined him, a red-hot poker in her hand. She laid it in the embers for a few seconds, then thrust it inside a tankard of gin. The liquid inside fizzed and hissed, and she handed it to Diggott. He downed it in one.
“What news from Oxford?” asked Will Ketch.
Adam Diggott wiped his mouth with his sleeve and scowled. “They’ve charged him,” he grunted.
Josh Thornley shook his balding head. “Then ’e’s as good as dead,” he muttered unthinkingly.
Barely had his words left his mouth when Adam dived at him, grabbing him by his jerkin, his fist primed to land a punch. Widow Cuthbert came between them.
“Stop that!” she cried. “Save your fighting for Lupton and Malthus or I’ll box your ears myself!”
The two men pulled away from each other, knowing what the old woman said to be true. She may have been as wizened as a willow trunk, but she was wise with it.
Thornley looked to her for guidance. “What’s to be done, then?”
The widow eyed the circle. She set down the poker and planted herself in her customary chair at the hearth, cradling a tankard.
“First we need to know where we’re at,” she told them plainly. “You can’t start a journey, not knowing where you’re coming from.”
The men nodded at the logic of this statement. Adam Diggott was the first to proffer information.
“The American doctor has gone to Oxford to see my pa,” he said.
“The knife man?” Thornley mocked. “And what good can he do?”
Maggie Cuthbert held up an admonishing hand. “Dr. Silkstone’s a good man. He’s helped young Jake, and he’ll help Abe, too, in whatever way he can.”
Thoughts turned to the young boy who’d been so cruelly whipped along the High Street and whose wounds still oozed pus two weeks on. No one knew when or if he would be able to work again.
“Damn them at the hall!” cried Adam, suddenly leaping up and hurling his tankard across the room so that it hit the wall. “I say we get our revenge. I say we march up to Boughton and burn the house to the ground!” His eyes were aflame as the anger inside him bubbled over.
Will Ketch tugged at his arm and pulled him down into the circle again. “We know you’re angry, Adam. But ’twould do no good.”
“ ’Twould do me good,” he growled, giving the hearthstone a hard kick.
Zeb Godson had remained silent throughout the exchanges, save for the odd phlegmy cough. With a long stick he had been making patterns on the earth floor. He addressed his fellows for the first time. “Them up at the hall are still going to rob us of our land. Even if Abe is spared the noose, all of us will go on suffering.”
His words hung on the air for a moment before the silence was filled by the hoot of another owl.
“He’s not wrong,” said Will Ketch, slapping his thigh. “We must further our cause. We can’t let them take our ancient dues. I say we carry on fighting!”
Widow Cuthbert snorted. “Like ya did before? Let your boys set fire to fence posts or black your faces and make noises in the woods? Look where that’s got ye.” She fired her words so quickly that her spittle hit Adam Diggott in the face. But they knew she was right.
“You got a better idea, old woman?” sneered Josh, leaning forward.
The widow chewed her gums as she eyed each man in the circle at her feet. She knew she had more balls than all of them put together. But it did not need brute force to overcome the powers at the hall. What was needed was cunning and guile.
“As a matter of fact, I have,” she told them.
“You’ll put a curse on ’em, yes?” jeered Josh Thornley.
The other men laughed, but Mag
gie Cuthbert tut-tutted at them as if they were small boys.
“No curses. No witchcraft,” she said, lifting her gnarled finger up to her temple. “Just my head.”
Will Ketch leaned forward. “And how might that be?”
“You heard what they did at West Haddon?”
The village lay only a few miles away over the county border, but news of what the residents did had traveled the length and breadth of England. It was the talk at markets, fairs, and water pumps up and down the land. It was talk of how the calling of a football match had gathered together a great mob that trampled down fences and set light to them in defiance of the landlord who wanted to enclose the commons.
The men slid each other sideways glances. They had heard all right.
“But we don’t need no football match,” said the old woman, shaking her head.
“No?” pressed Josh Thornley.
Maggie Cuthbert smirked and let out an odd chuckle. “No,” she said, shaking her wiry old head. “We got the beating of the bounds.”
“But Sir Montagu has banned it,” protested Zeb Godson.
The old woman shook her head and fixed him with a wry smile. “If every man, woman, and child of this parish comes together, there ain’t nothing we can’t do,” she said.
Chapter 34
The thought had come to Thomas just as he was about to retire to his bed at the Jolly Trooper in Oxford that night. The room was stuffy and he had poured himself some small beer from a jug on the nearby nightstand. As he looked out the window onto a starless night, his mind returned to Abe Diggott. He thought of the whites of the man’s eyes, fretted with red veins, of the strange bluish hue of his skin, and of his hands unable to grasp a cup, let alone fire a gun. He knew there had to be some reason why this malevolent gin was affecting him so badly, why his symptoms were so much worse than anyone else’s in the village. True, he drank as much, if not more, than any other man, but for the spirit to have such a dramatic effect there had to be something more, by Thomas’s reckoning. He drained his cup, and that’s when it hit him. He suddenly remembered the earthenware flagon that he had seen at the old man’s side in the Diggotts’ cottage. The gin was stored in the vessel for days on end. What was more, it was glazed inside. It occurred to him that perhaps the spirit might have reacted with an ingredient in the coating. He remembered, too, Adam’s words about his father’s reliance on gin: “Drinks the stuff like mother’s milk, he does.”
If he could prove that this poisoned liquid had rendered Abe Diggott incapable of the most straightforward of actions, let alone firing a pistol, then a court might be persuaded of his innocence. To test his theory, however, he needed to obtain the flagon itself. He would have to return to Brandwick straightaway.
Zeb Godson could not be sure what woke him that morning in his makeshift shelter in Raven’s Wood. Was it the sound of wood cracking and spitting above the usual dawn chorus of birds, or perhaps the strange smell like roasted meat that wafted up his nostrils? Either way, as soon as his eyes had steadied themselves after his deep sleep and as soon as he had planted his feet on the rush mat by his leaf-stuffed mattress, he decided something was amiss. His head ached so badly from the gin the night before, it felt as if it had been cleaved by an ax. The act of rising caused him to grab his temples and press them hard with his knuckles to ease the pain. But it was not until he had stamped on his boots and pulled on his hat before venturing out of his hovel that he knew exactly what was wrong.
The charcoal burner had spent the previous day stacking wood in the nearby kiln. He’d laid the first layer of seasoned timbers in an open cartwheel shape to allow the air to enter at the base. That way there’d be a good first burn. Next he’d begun placing cut logs around the circumference of the kiln, before spiraling them inward, leaving a hole in the middle for a stack where the smoke could escape. It was then that he gathered together the tinder and stuffed it down the central hole. This was the secret to a good, strong fire, a dry charge that would burst into flame as soon as it was lit, as if with one smoldering look from a wanton woman. By the time he’d stuffed the stack, the light was fading, so he’d decided to finish laying down the rest of the logs on the morrow. He’d killed a pheasant for the pot, roasted it on a spit, then spent the rest of the evening downing Geech’s gin in Mad Maggie’s cottage before somehow managing to return to his shelter for the night.
Now, as he stood stretching his aching limbs at the entrance of his humble abode, the rays of the rising sun lanced through the leafless trees onto the forest floor, forcing him to blink. He blinked again, only this time not to fend off the piercing light, but to satisfy himself that his eyes were not deceiving him. From out of the half-made kiln in the clearing, smoke was dancing like feathers in the gentle breeze. Black smoke.
“No!” he shouted out loud. His lone cry sent roosting crows to flight.
His first thought was that the sun’s rays must have been so powerful that they’d set the tinder alight. He rushed over to the kiln. Flames! The logs were well alight. How could this be? He’d lose the whole batch; all his hard work was going up in smoke, literally. He reached for his beater and, leaning over the rim of the kiln, started flaying the flames as if they were hissing serpents rising and trying to bite him. But it was no use. The smoke filled his lungs and the flames leapt at him, forcing him to retreat. He grabbed a flagon of small beer he’d left by the kiln and downed it quickly, as if to douse the burning of his own lungs.
The fire had a good hold, hungrily feeding off the energy the logs gave it. He guessed it must have been burning at least an hour. But there was something else, too, a trunk toward the center of the kiln, near the stack. He had not put it there. It was too large. It would not burn well, and yet the flames seemed to relish it, caressing it with long tongues. The familiar cracks of the wood were punctuated by an odd sound, like the spitting of a hog roasting. He watched transfixed as now and again the fire flared around this large log, as if fat had been poured into the blaze. Soon, however, his puzzlement and fascination turned to anger. Someone must have started the fire deliberately. Hal Thornley sprang to mind. Perhaps he’d acquired a taste for making fire and not learned his lesson in the pillory. Or mayhap it was someone with a grudge. He wondered who might wish him ill. The new master at Boughton. Yes, that was it. He wanted to enclose the woods, and this was his way of telling Zeb that he and his sort were no longer welcome. Next his men would come to tear down his home. But if this firing of his kiln was meant to frighten him, well, the new lord would have to think again. He’d stay rooted to this woodland like the very trees that he lived among. No Act of Parliament could rob him of a way of life that had been his father’s and his father’s before him.
A small explosion suddenly jolted him back to the moment. In reality it was more a loud pop, but it made him curious. He shielded his eyes and braved the smoke. It seemed the end of the trunk had detonated itself and exploded into hundreds of pieces. But what was that? Strange. He peered closer. Something burned red hot. Metal? Surely not? He could wait no longer. He took a pail and headed for the nearby stream. Filling his bucket, he returned and splashed its contents over the trunk. He repeated it a second and a third time as the wood hissed in protest at the water and finally acquiesced.
For a moment the smoke defeated him once more, but it soon dissipated, and taking a long-handled rake, he reached across the rim of the kiln. Leaning over at full stretch he prodded the trunk with the end of his rake. It did not feel like wood; it was soft. He prodded again, bringing the rake down on something hard that gave out a hollow clank. It was metal. Then it struck him. His eyes ran down the length of the trunk to the tip of a bar that glowed red in the heat, returning thrice more, out of a compulsion, a need to be sure, and with each sweep of his eyes, his body tensed more. A sense of panic rose from inside his chest and struggled out of his throat in a strange half cry.
The flames had all but gone now, but the heat remained intense. Still he could not venture nearer to inves
tigate, but in truth he did not need to. The horror had already dawned on him. He was not looking at a charred, oversized hunk of wood that had somehow strayed into his charcoal kiln, and whoever had set the blaze had done so not to intimidate him, or to spite him. No, the person or persons who had torched his half-laid batch of wood had done so with the sole intention of incinerating a human corpse.
Chapter 35
That same day at the Jolly Trooper, shortly after noon, Thomas was making ready to leave for Brandwick. He needed to retrieve the earthenware flagon from the Diggotts’ cottage in order to prove his theory, which would, if all went to plan, save the old man’s life. He was therefore not prepared for an urgent message he received from the coroner’s office. A breathless courier handed it to him as he was about to leave the inn. He recognized Sir Theodisius’s hand immediately. The note read:
My Dear Silkstone,
I regret to inform you there has been another murder in Raven’s Wood. I ordered the immediate recovery of the body and it will be at the anatomy school later today. I would ask that you conduct a postmortem on it with all haste.
Very sincerely,
Theodisius Pettigrew
Once again Thomas found himself in the company of Professor Hascher in the small mortuary, and once again the tang of death was in the air. Only this time there was another element added to the stench.
Thomas sniffed the fetid air. “Burn?”
Professor Hascher, leading him toward the dissecting table, nodded. “Ja.”
“Where was the body found?”
“In—how you say?—a kiln. A charcoal burner found it.”
Thomas thought immediately of Zeb Godson and his hovel in Raven’s Wood.
Hascher nodded. “Ze body vas half-incinerated,” he said, pulling back the sheet to reveal the ghastly, blackened corpse.
It was a sight that even Thomas found shocking. The victim had been reduced to little more than a blackened shell on the left side of his body, while his skull had been shattered in the blaze, ridding the brain of what little protection it had from the flames. The face was charred beyond all recognition. A greasy residue covered what remained of the flesh, while both arms were oddly contorted, the hands clawed and the thighs raised. The cadaver was bent in a posture of agony that told of tormenting flames.
