Shadow of the Raven

by Tessa Harris

  Bart Bailey, the fuller, was a solid, practical man and as reliable as the cuckoo’s call in April, yet even he found it difficult to rise the following morning after a broken night’s rest. Along with most of the other residents of Brandwick, he had been kept awake by the buffeting wind and driving rain, not to mention the rolls of thunder. That was why the villagers were not in the least fazed when the stocks at the fulling mill had not begun pounding when the bell of St. Swithin’s tolled six. Yet it was not Bailey’s tardiness that was the reason for the silence of the valley. The heavy rain meant that he had opened the sluice gates during the night, and not even a mere three hours’ sleep could keep him from starting up the stocks. On this particular morning he had risen as soon as the day dawned and walked the few yards from his cottage to the millhouse. He did so eagerly. The storm had been so fierce that he knew the surge of water from upstream would be great. The river would be in full flood, no doubt, and the mill wheel would be turning at a fierce speed. The heavy overnight rain that had drenched the valley meant the water flow should have been particularly good that morning. He would open the sluice gates fully to allow the river to thunder through and power the paddles. But once inside the millhouse he saw that for some reason the flow was down to little more than a trickle.

  “Jack,” he told his boy, “go walk upstream to see if there’s a tree down.”

  “Aye, sir,” replied the gangling youngster, and he bounded off, up the course of the river, to investigate. It would not be the first time an oak or a beech had come crashing down into the river and swept downstream. In the meantime, Bailey checked the frame and the shanks of the stocks to make sure that the fault was not mechanical. He suspected the rack and pinion might have been damaged. On inspection, however, he could see they were not.

  By this time the workers, mainly women, were arriving for their daily shifts. They filed into the millhouse expecting to see the stocks pounding away at the cloth, but the great wooden boots were motionless.

  Bart Bailey, standing on a low wall, addressed them. “There’s trouble with the waterwheel,” he told them. “Young Jack has gone to look upstream. He’ll be back soon, but we may need some sturdy hands to move a trunk or suchlike.”

  The fullers nodded. They’d seen debris clog up the wheel workings before. Two men stepped forward for the job should they be needed to clear the water channel.

  Seconds later, Jack, red-faced and out of breath, delivered his verdict to his master. “River’s clear, sir, save for a few branches, and there’s nowt to stop the flow.”

  The head fuller grimaced. “Very well. We’d best look at the sluices. You two come with me.” He beckoned to the two men, who followed him out onto the footbridge to check the shutters. The river was rushing at full pelt toward the wheel, but something was damming its flow so that the water was building up behind it, threatening to burst over the banks and flood the racking close. Bailey’s son, Charles, volunteered to see what, if anything, was jamming up against the gate. He was young and fit and as strong as an ox, but as he tied a rope around his waist, his father felt even more apprehensive.

  “Take good care, now,” said the fuller, watching his son wade into the turbulent river. The two men kept a firm hold of the rope, slacking it off only a little to allow Charles to ease himself closer to the sluice. In his hand the youth held a long staff, using it to prod under the water.

  “I feel it,” he shouted after only a moment. His voice was drowned out by the sound of the gathering waters behind him, but the fuller could see by his son’s reaction that he had found the obstruction. He continued to watch as Charles prodded further with his stick, then looked up once more at his father. This time the bravado and the determination had been replaced by another expression: one of terror. He began wading back toward the bridge as fast as he could.

  “What is it? What have you seen?” questioned Bailey.

  Wet through and barely able to catch his breath, the young man bent double for a moment, before straightening himself. Fixing his father in the eye, he pulled his features into a grimace. “There’s a blockage down there right enough,” he cried above the water’s roar. “ ’Tis the body of a man.”

  Thomas had packed his belongings and was making ready to leave the Three Tuns for his homeward journey when he heard a shout go up in the High Street. Soon there were more calls. Although he could not make out what was being said, there was an urgency in their tone that spoke of something serious. He rushed to his window to see a crowd gathering around a young man. He recognized him as the fuller’s son from the mill. He was trying to reach the door of the inn. It was then, as he approached a little nearer, that Thomas could hear what he was saying.

  “Dr. Silkstone. I am to fetch Dr. Silkstone!” he cried out above the furor that engulfed him.

  Making haste down the stairs and out into the street, his bag in his hand, Thomas presented himself.

  “What is it, Charles? What’s happened?”

  Breathless and distracted, the young man suddenly seemed relieved to have found the doctor. “Oh, sir,” he cried. “My father says you’re to come straightaway. There’s a body, sir. Stuck in the sluice, it is.”

  The crowd suddenly parted, allowing Thomas to follow the youth up the High Street, past the racking close, and into the mill. Several women were clustered at the entrance; one was in tears. When they saw the doctor approach, they drew to one side to allow him access.

  Inside Thomas saw the fuller and another, much younger man with wet hair and clothes, crouched over something on the flagstone floor.

  “I believe I am needed, Mr. Bailey,” called Thomas as he approached.

  The fuller wheeled ’round. “Thank the Lord you are here, sir,” he blurted, taking Thomas by the arm and guiding him closer. “You’ll need a strong stomach.”

  What Thomas saw, lying on the cold flags, was indeed a most unsettling sight. He had witnessed many a man mangled under cartwheels or crushed by a millstone, but this was a particularly vicious incident, where the paddles of the mill wheel had repeatedly struck the young man’s torso and the back of his head. Half the body remained only as a fleshy, bloodied pulp. The face, too, was grazed and bruised, and an open eye bulged reproachfully at any onlooker. Thomas took a deep breath but regretted it immediately. His lungs were now filled with a noxious reek that made his stomach lurch for a moment. He had been caught off guard, and as he knelt down to inspect the corpse he breathed through his mouth. As soon as he did, he felt a terrible charge surge through his entire body. It was the tattered black frock coat that confirmed to Thomas that he was dealing with no ordinary mill accident.

  “What happened?” he asked, his eyes playing on the flayed face of the victim.

  “We found him stuck in the undershot of the wheel, sir,” explained Bailey. “It seems he’d been washed downstream in last night’s storm.”

  Thomas nodded and swallowed hard. “I believe I know him,” he said finally.

  Bailey slid his men a sideways glance and leaned closer to Thomas. “It looks like the young chainman, sir.”

  The doctor rose to his feet. For a moment he felt light-headed for want of fresh air, but he forced himself to give orders. “You have a room? Somewhere I can examine the body, Mr. Bailey?”

  The fuller, who had deliberately turned his back on the corpse so that he did not have to look upon it, nodded and directed his horrified men to move the body, which they reluctantly did.

  “To the storeroom, lads,” he said, a look of apology etched on his face.

  “You’ll need to notify the Oxford coroner, Sir Theodisius Pettigrew, too. Get word to him as soon as you can and tell him I am examining the corpse,” Thomas instructed, as he followed the men and their stinking and bloodied cargo into a storeroom at the far end of the millhouse.

  On one side of the wall were stacked bales of woolen cloth that were awaiting scouring. There were barrels of urine, too, collected daily from the villagers by the piss cart, that gave off the sharp t
ang of ammonia. The stinks combined to produce an overpowering reek, while the resultant vapors brought tears to Thomas’s eyes, but it was still infinitely preferable to the stench that rose from poor Mr. Charlton.

  On the other side of the room lay a long plank supported at either end by trestles. It was here that the men deposited the corpse with indecent, yet understandable, haste, then retreated to the door. Thomas dismissed them with a nod before beginning the task in hand.

  A shaft of bright morning sunlight pierced through the narrow window and shone directly onto the body, making inspection slightly easier, although no less traumatic. Here lay the tall, thin, young man, so neat and formal, a model assistant surveyor, no doubt, yet so timid and reticent. His experience in the woods had taken a terrible toll on his mental faculties, as was patently clear by his performance in court. What had become of poor Mr. Charlton that he had ended up in such a vile state? His corpse bore the marks of countless glancing blows and buffets as it made its way downriver over the rocky bed, only to be pinioned by the waterwheel and crushed. Had someone wanted him dead? If so, why? These were pressing matters, the anatomist told himself, that would need to be addressed later. For the moment, the cause of death must be his focus.

  It was immediately clear to Thomas that some of Charlton’s injuries had been sustained at the millhouse as his body was struck by the paddles of the waterwheel before it had finally stopped turning. Yet how had he been washed downstream in the first place? Moreover, had he been alive when he entered the water? Was James Charlton’s death an unfortunate accident, a tumble in the woods, perhaps, or had he fallen prey to the same villains who had killed Mr. Turgoose? Could it be that the Raven and his gang had added a third murder to their tally? Those were the questions that Sir Theodisius would put to Thomas as soon as he heard of the corpse’s discovery, and it was to these pressing issues that the anatomist now turned his undivided attention.

  Looking at the corpse, Thomas let out a faint sigh. In life Mr. Charlton had struck him as quite tall, yet now his remains seemed so very slight and fragile as they lay on the table. The smart black coat was left a bundle of shredded rags. The breeches, too, were all tattered and torn, and the stockings muddied and bloodied. He would strip the body of its clothes to give himself the entire picture before going any further.

  Before he did so, however, there was an obvious clue to the manner of the surveyor’s death, one that Thomas noted immediately. From his mouth there exuded a fine white foam. It was a sign that Mr. Charlton had been alive when he hit the water.

  He began divesting the corpse. A few seconds into his task, however, he heard the mill wheel crank into action and the pent-up water start to gush and roar once more. A little later and the fulling stocks began to pound, slowly at first, then gathering pace. Thomas found the sound almost unbearable. He had previously conducted postmortems in the most undesirable circumstances, but he felt this noise all but intolerable. He would request that Mr. Charlton’s corpse be removed to the Three Tuns for further examination. He was about to give orders to that effect when the sound of men’s voices outside rose above the roar of the water.

  “Sir, I beg you. No!” Mr. Bailey was pleading with someone.

  Seconds later Nicholas Lupton came barging through the door and stormed toward Thomas.

  “You have Charlton?” he barked, before pulling himself up suddenly within a few feet of the cadaver, driven back by the stench.

  Thomas, momentarily caught off guard by the intrusion, composed himself. “I believe so, although no formal identification has been made,” he replied, his voice raised over the rhythmic thud of the stocks.

  Lupton, struggling for breath in the foul-aired room, reached for a kerchief from his pocket and clamped it over his mouth. “I feared this would happen,” he cried. “Now all hell will break loose. He’ll hang for this and not before time!” Incandescent with rage, he strode back toward the storeroom door.

  Perplexed, Thomas called out to him. “Who, Lupton? Who will hang?” he asked.

  The steward turned. “Diggott, of course. Who else could have killed Charlton?”

  The anatomist frowned. “Adam Diggott? But I thought he escaped.” Thomas recalled yesterday’s commotion and seeing the coppicer fleeing into the forest.

  The steward clenched his jaw. “My men found him cowering in Raven’s Wood in the early hours,” he replied. “He’s as guilty as sin.” His voice was tinged with a victor’s disdain.

  Thomas felt suddenly roiled. He did not believe for a moment Adam Diggott could be capable of murder, and yet, admittedly, he was the most obvious suspect, and his capture fitted Lupton’s plans so perfectly. Too perfectly.

  Just as the steward began to make his way out once more, Thomas called to him.

  “One more thing, Lupton.”

  “Yes?”

  “When did you last see Mr. Charlton?”

  Lupton frowned. “After I returned from Oxford. Midafternoon, I suppose.”

  “And what sort of state was he in?”

  “The man was a wreck, as usual,” came the barked reply.

  “Thank you,” said Thomas. Such information might not have been specific, but it might prove helpful in pinpointing the time frame of death. It might also prove invaluable in solving this particularly unsavory death.

  Chapter 52

  Word had been sent ahead to prepare a room at the Three Tuns to receive Charlton’s body. Geech had offered the game larder, a cold room with a flagstone floor that could easily be sluiced. The lack of a good source of daylight was a concern to Thomas, but a plentiful supply of tallow candles had compensated. By now Walter Harker had been informed of the death, and he joined Thomas for the postmortem examination. In his capacity as village constable, he had seen some grisly sights over the years, but still, he was shocked at the severity of Charlton’s injuries.

  The back of the young man’s skull had been smashed to a pulp by the mill wheel, and his left leg, what remained of it, was mangled and broken. Normally in such cases, Thomas would look for signs of a struggle: bruising to the face or skin under the fingernails. As he examined the arms, however, the doctor’s attention was immediately drawn to the left wrist. Taking his magnifying glass, he peered at a deep laceration. It was recent, but not so recent. The wound had been sutured and was possibly no more than a week old. Yet while the outward appearance of the corpse was most shocking, Thomas knew it was its inner workings that held the key to the chainman’s death. That was why he wasted little time in incising the chest cavity. He retrieved a small saw from his medical case. Beginning at the clavicle, he made a Y-shaped incision and opened the rib cage so that he could examine the lungs. They appeared heavy and overinflated, a sure sign of death by drowning. Slicing through the trachea, he found what he suspected: more of the fine foam he had seen oozing from the young man’s mouth.

  “It seems that Mr. Charlton was alive when he hit the water,” he told Harker, who was peering over his shoulder.

  As Thomas pried further into the lungs, there was more evidence to back up this theory. A quantity of silt and some splinters of twigs were also present. The river was a raging torrent after last night’s storm, full of mud and debris. If Charlton had been in the woods during that storm, he may have stumbled and lost his footing, sending him plunging into the water.

  Thomas knew three options now presented themselves: firstly that the chainman had slipped and fallen into the water, in which case his death was an accident; secondly that he had jumped into the water with the intention of killing himself; or thirdly that he had been pushed into the water, in other words, that he had been murdered, whether by Adam Diggott, or by a person or persons as yet unknown. Yet there was one more avenue Thomas wished to explore.

  “The candle, if you please, Constable,” he said, directing Harker to position the taper so that its light was directed toward Charlton’s left ear, the one least damaged. Bending low, his magnifying glass in hand, Thomas inspected the auditory canal. It was bl
oody. He motioned to Harker to raise the candle over the nose. The nasal cavities were filled with blood, too.

  He stared once more at the dead man’s face and tried to remember it in life. He recalled seeing Charlton less than twenty-four hours before, at the inn, as he witnessed Adam Diggott being arrested. The thundery air had been still and close, and his freckled face had been moist with sweat. He had mopped his brow with a kerchief. It was then that Thomas remembered the patch that had covered his right eye. There was no trace of it. The force of the water must have swept it away.

  “More light, if you please, Mr. Harker,” he called.

  The constable held the taper just above Charlton’s head so that the light fell directly onto his forehead.

  “Interesting,” muttered Thomas, scrutinizing the area. The tissue surrounding the socket was bruised, yet it was clear to the doctor that the injury was not postmortem. He lifted the lid. The white of the eye was bright red, and there was yellow discharge exuding from the tear duct.

  “I need to remove the eyeball,” Thomas announced. “Will you hold the candle steady for me, Mr. Harker?”

  The constable nodded. He seemed unfazed by the request.

  Selecting forceps, Thomas eased the gelatinous ball out of its socket and snipped the stalk of the optic nerve before dropping the eye into a dish. It was as he suspected. A small piece of metal had pierced the cornea. Using tweezers, he teased out the offending shard, no wider than a fingernail. Nevertheless, it was big enough to cause serious damage.

  Thomas held the foreign body up to Harker’s candle. “Mr. Charlton had been blinded,” he said.

  The constable frowned. “By the attackers in the woods, sir?”

  It was a reasonable supposition, but Thomas could not be so sure. He peered at the shard again with his magnifying lens, then handed it to Harker.