Skin and Bone--A Mystery

by Robin Blake

  ‘How would she, Kathy? What have you done to threaten your uncle’s honour?’

  ‘I’ll tell you, Mr Cragg. I’ll tell you everything I know. But not now.’ She pointed to her basket. ‘I’m bringing my uncle’s tobacco from town. If I don’t come home with it now he’ll be very vexed.’

  ‘So when will you tell us, Kathy? If we wait here, will you return after you have taken home your shopping and talk to us then?’

  ‘I can’t. I’ve much work to do with the animals in the pinfold, feeding and mucking them out. If I don’t do it, I’ll surely be beaten. He always keeps an eye on my work.’

  ‘So when?’

  ‘Not today, any road. But tomorrow after church, there’s a chance. My uncle has quarrelled with the vicar and he stays away from the service. My aunty is poorly. So I’m to go in charge of my cousins, but I can give them the slip after.’

  I glanced at Fidelis.

  ‘In that case we could stay the night at the inn. Unless you have to get back, Luke.’

  Fidelis shook his head.

  ‘No, I will gladly stay.’

  So it was agreed that we would see Kathy at the churchyard in the morning.

  ‘You must not come near me outside church,’ she warned. ‘Just follow me and I’ll lead the way to a place where we can talk in private.’

  ‘Very well. But do not let us down, Kathy, or I shall be obliged to seek you in your uncle’s house after all.’

  Fidelis rose and approached Kathy.

  ‘You say your uncle will beat you,’ he said, ‘if you don’t do your work.’

  He reached out to take a gentle hold of her head, tilting it slightly to catch the light. Then he touched an area of faintly discoloured skin beneath her left eye.

  ‘I see he has already done so,’ he added. ‘Go now, quickly. We do not want to see any more such evidence tomorrow morning.’

  Chapter 10

  AT THE BEAR’S Paw Inn we were just in time to secure a room. Shortly afterwards, a coach from Yorkshire rolled into the inn yard in need of some repair, and the passengers, facing an unforeseen overnight stay in Wigan, snapped up the remaining accommodation. Coming out to the inn yard to see to the stabling of our horses, we found many of these travellers gathered around Freckleton, listening to his account of one of the curious sights of the region – a burning well that lay beside the road towards Warrington, yet within two miles from where we stood. Freckleton proposed himself as their guide to this marvel, in return for a small fee of threepence apiece, at which half a dozen of the passengers got out their purses.

  ‘The famous Burning Well of Wigan – I have never seen it,’ I told Fidelis.

  ‘Then you certainly must,’ he said. ‘It is a wonderful phenomenon.’

  So we were admitted to the party in return for our sixpence and Freckleton went inside, returning with a long-handled copper pan and a candle-lantern. Thus equipped, we set off on our expedition.

  The well lay a hundred yards from the road, and was constructed exactly as you would expect, with a low circular wall of dry stone around it. First, our guide invited us to gather around this parapet and look down into the well. Black water glinted back at us from about three feet down.

  ‘It’s not much, is that,’ said one fellow. ‘It’s just a water well.’

  ‘But notice the bubbles coming up from the depths,’ said Fidelis.

  ‘Is the water hot, then? Is it boiling?’ asked one of the ladies.

  ‘Try it,’ said Freckleton with a booming laugh. ‘Stick in a hand. Don’t be afraid.’

  She peeled off her glove and very gingerly did so.

  ‘It’s cold as ice,’ she reported and we all dipped our own fingers to verify it. I sniffed mine when it was still wet and fancied the moisture smelled a little like marsh water.

  Freckleton leant down into the well and scooped a panful, from which he drank a little before offering it around. Most of the party held back until Fidelis accepted his offer.

  ‘Delicious!’ he pronounced after taking a draught, with a smack of his lips.

  ‘Just so,’ said the landlord. ‘It drinks like normal water, with no ill effect.’

  One or two others took small experimental sips and agreed the water was indeed potable.

  ‘Now,’ said Freckleton, ‘if one of you gentleman would oblige by kindling a flame for the lantern, I shall kindle for you a singular surprise that cannot be obtained from your usual water well.’

  He bent to scoop several times more until he had lowered the well level by a foot. Then he took a rush from his pocket and, opening the now burning lantern, set the rush alight. This he flourished and told us to observe him closely.

  Very slowly he lowered the burning rush into the well until it almost touched the surface. All at once a ghostly flame licked upwards from the water and then stole across the surface until it was burning all over, with the dancing blue flicker of brandy flame. Several of the party gasped.

  ‘Suspend an egg in that, or a leg of chicken,’ announced Freckleton, ‘and it’ll cook it for you, will that.’

  ‘But how does the water burn?’ asked one of the ladies. ‘It is against nature. Is it bewitched?’

  Looking down in fascination, the same question came to me. I was reminded of the ‘lake with liquid fire’ into which Milton’s Satan plumps at the start of Paradise Lost. I even fancied I could see the miniature forms of tortured wraiths twisting in its flames. However, the smell was not sulphurous, as hell fire should be, but more like the iron smelters’ fumes we had met along Wigan Lane.

  For a whole minute the party stood entranced, except for Fidelis, whose attention quickly wandered. He picked up the saucepan in which the water he had drunk still remained.

  ‘See here,’ he said to get our attention. Taking the rush from Freckleton he reignited it in the fiery pool and applied it to the water in the pan.

  ‘As I thought,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Outside the well, it does not burn. However, if we were to empty the well of all its water, I fancy the earth inside the hole would burn, or seem to burn, just as much as the water. But let us confirm whether if this water will perform one of its more usual offices.’

  With a single jerk of his arm he threw the pan’s remaining contents back into the well. Immediately the flames were doused. Freckleton raised his voice.

  ‘Now, Sir, there’s no cause for that!’

  ‘I am sorry,’ said my friend with sardonic emphasis. ‘Have I broken the spell?’

  * * *

  On the return journey I walked with a young curate, who told me he was on his way to visit his sick mother in Cheshire. He was complacent about what we had just seen.

  ‘There is nothing new, Sir. The same is mentioned in De Rerum Natura, you know. Wells that bubble and generate fire.’

  ‘Lucretius?’

  ‘The same. The Epicurean.’

  ‘I don’t know much about him.’

  ‘He was a contemporary of Caesar. I fancy they were school-fellows. It is a while since I looked through the poem. A great work, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Utterly godless, mind you. He maintains the soul is made of atoms and not immortal – among many other impieties.’

  Seeing this clergyman was a reader I took the opportunity to ask him about the booksellers of York, and he told me that there were half a dozen of them, all with well-stocked premises in the city centre, close to the Minster. We chatted on about books and booksellers for the rest of our walk, until Freckleton led us through the arch and into the inn yard. At this moment I looked round for Fidelis and did not see him. I had been so absorbed in my conversation, I had not noticed that he had left us.

  ‘Have you seen my friend?’ I asked the landlord.

  ‘He wanted me to recommend him a good apothecary,’ said Freckleton. ‘Perhaps he’s gone there.’

  I could not imagine what Fidelis wanted with an apothecary, unless it was on some professional business of his own. He did not
enlighten me on his return after half an hour, but simply said he was hungry and strode ahead into the dining room, where we made good company with the Yorkshire travellers. Afterwards the landlord regaled us with the history of his inn, and in particular of the hirsute foot for which it was named, and which he kept pickled in a jar on the dining-room mantelpiece. Then his wife brought in a tray of locally made curiosities, carved out of the hard coal particular to the area, which they call cannel coal – little trinkets and pillboxes, and even a pen standish complete with inkwell and quill-box. In every case the objects were coloured deepest black, and highly polished.

  ‘These look exactly like jet,’ I said.

  ‘They are pure coal, Sir,’ said the landlady, now bringing out a spotless white cambric handkerchief. ‘And happen you buy, for instance, this necklace as a present for your wife, you’d be afraid it’d smutch her neck, wouldn’t you? Watch this then.’

  She picked up the necklace and rubbed it vigorously with the handkerchief, then showed him the result. He expected it to be blackened, but the white cloth was unmarked.

  ‘That is remarkable.’

  ‘So you’ll have it? Only fifteen shillings.’

  I whistled.

  ‘As much as that!’

  ‘Oh come, Sir! I bet it’s no more than what you spent on that wig you’re wearing. Just think how charming these will look around your wife’s neck.’

  I picked up the necklace and let it run through my fingers. Elizabeth had a most beautiful neck and she would indeed look charming wearing those glistening, faceted beads.

  ‘You are right,’ I said. ‘I’ll take it.’

  * * *

  Next morning, in the magnificent surroundings of Wigan’s Church of All Saints, I sat in a packed pew surrounded entirely by parishioners. Fidelis, as a papist, had taken himself off to find a mass somewhere else. When we reached the sermon, it became obvious that Pitt’s quarrel with the vicar was far from resolved.

  A thickset and combative sort, he preached on a text from Psalm 18: ‘Therefore hath the Lord recompensed me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands in his eyesight.’

  ‘How righteous are ye?’ he thundered. ‘How clean are your hands? Truly you must reflect on your lives. For all of us know there is one amongst us – one, at least! – who stands accused of unrighteous exercise of his authority in our town and of sullying his hands in the matter of fines and amercements. As a result, he no more comes to the house of God, but only the women and children of his family attend this divine service. I would remind him, and you all, of the words of the psalmist, “with the merciful, show thyself merciful, with the upright man show thyself upright”. But remember also,’ – and now he lifted an admonitory finger – ‘that these words are reversible; that under God’s adamantine law, the unmerciful man can expect only to be treated unmercifully and the crooked man crookedly.’

  At these words the congregation began whispering and many turned to look at the bench in which Kathy sat. There was, of course, no sign of Terence Pitt or of his wife. Like all preachers, and much envied by lawyers, the vicar enjoyed the luxury of conducting his arguments without answer or protest.

  As we spilled out of the church, I kept a close eye on Kathy. After lingering a minute or two to speak to one or two fellow worshippers – friends, perhaps, giving her words of comfort for the vicar’s wounding remarks – she spoke rapidly and vehemently to the children, and pointed up at the church clock. As her cousins began a game of hide and seek among the graves, she hurried out of the churchyard and I followed. I caught up with her halfway along a narrow weind or lane, where she ushered me into a damp and mossy ginnel between two backyards. Here we held our conference.

  ‘Now, Kathy,’ I said firmly. ‘Your story, if you please.’

  ‘I must be quick, Sir. I can only leave the children ten minutes, but I hardly know where to begin.’

  ‘Begin with what your mother told me. Is it the truth?’

  A bald question, but we had no time for nicety. She responded, to give her credit, in the same way.

  ‘Some of it. I admit I went with a man last year, but I learned my lesson after. I keep clear of lads now, I do.’

  She spoke quietly but in a rational, even way, and her hands moved and gestured precisely to emphasise her words.

  ‘But you ran away from the inquest. What other reason could there be to do that, if not that this dead baby was yours?’

  ‘One, Sir, and a very good one.’

  ‘What is it?’

  She thought how best to reply, mouth set, head still and expressive hands clasped together.

  ‘You must tell me, Kathy.’

  ‘It is that I don’t feel safe. I’d rather have the fists of my uncle, I think, than what certain people might do to me if I ever spoke out at an inquest about my time working at the Scroops’. I’m afraid all my plans and schemes’d be ruined for ever.’

  ‘Plans and schemes, Kathy?’

  ‘Yes, for my life, Sir. You see I know what I want and it’s not to be dipping hides in shit and paddling it for the rest of my days.’

  ‘Why, then, did you leave your job as a maid? Did you not like it?’

  ‘Oh, I liked it. To work in a fine big house was everything I wanted.’

  ‘Why, then?’

  She took a deep breath.

  ‘I will tell you my story, but you must not try to make me tell it in public. If you do, I’ll deny you.’

  She jabbed the air. Although her body ran a little to fat she had the neat, sinewy fingers of a seamstress, small-boned but capable and strong.

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘As you know I were maid at the Scroops in Water Lane. The eldest girl is Harriet and she’s fifteen. She’s very close, that girl, so you’d never know what she was thinking some days. But she seemed to like me. We used to play cards and laugh very merrily together. But one day Miss Scroop fell poorly and Dr Harrod came in from next door to see her. Well he spent an hour with her and came out saying she had the colic and a disordered stomach and prescribed some medicine. That wasn’t right, Sir, for truth to tell she’d got a babby starting.’

  ‘Good heavens! Are you suggesting that in reality Harriet Scroop was pregnant, that Dr Harrod did not spot it and so she gave birth in secret?’

  Her hands had made small fists. Now she opened them and showed me her palms.

  ‘I don’t know all that. But I do know she’d got a babby.’

  ‘Miss Scroop confided in you, I suppose.’

  ‘No, she never. But a few weeks later, after the bouts of sickness had passed and the family thought her cured by Harrod’s medicine, she told me privately of certain changes in her body. Well, she didn’t understand them, her, but I knew they meant she was carrying – I knew before she did!’

  ‘What did you do? Did you not inform her?’

  ‘I didn’t dare to, no, Sir. I thought she’d just have to find it out for herself. I gave notice of leaving instead. I couldn’t bide there, not with such knowledge in me. Now, Sir, I must go home. I have a story ready for why I’ve come away after church, but it will not do if I am missing too long.’

  * * *

  We were due to ride straight back to Preston, but Fidelis had still not returned. I went up to the room and, sitting down a little impatiently to wait, opened The Fable of the Bees. Twenty minutes passed, and another twenty. Then I read the author comparing ‘the virtues of great men to your large china jars; they make a fine show but look into a thousand of them and you’ll find nothing but dust and cobwebs’. I was still laughing when the door of the room crashed open and there was Fidelis. His face was flushed from effort, his clothing was disordered, but a wide triumphant smile lit his face.

  ‘Good God, Luke! What have you been doing?’

  He did not reply but, as he came into the room, I saw he was dragging behind him a sack, which seemed to have something alive in it, since it writhed and squealed as it slid across the floor.

/>   ‘Can you guess what I’ve brought you?’ he panted.

  ‘Whatever it is, there’s quite a stink off it.’

  ‘That is an ungallant remark to make about a young member of the fair sex.’

  The neck of the sack had been tied with baling twine. Fidelis undid the knot and was on the point of showing me what he had when, jerking and wriggling with new force, the sack slipped from his grasp. In a trice a round pink missile launched itself into the room. Its velocity was such that it skidded and skittered across the wooden floor until, finding its feet, it could turn around and face us with defiance in its eyes. Fidelis extended his arm towards it.

  ‘May I introduce our poor little princess of pigs, the kidnapped and abused Henrietta?’

  I pointed incredulously at his burden.

  ‘You mean this is Spungeon’s pig?’

  ‘Certainly it is. I have re-abducted her. I cannot find it in my heart to let that ruffian Pitt eat her.’

  ‘But what are we going to do with her?’

  ‘Return her to her master, naturally.’

  ‘Yes, but in the meantime, Luke?’

  As if wanting to know the same thing, Henrietta sat on her haunches, looking at Fidelis, then at me, then back at Fidelis. She had that appraising wariness common to the species. Fidelis stepped towards her making a high-pitched wheedling noise and, not for the first time, I saw the unusual rapport he had with animals. In the manner of someone taking an indulgence, Henrietta allowed him to scratch the back of her neck. Then she jutted her head forward to get him to tickle her chin.

  ‘She is really very tame,’ said Fidelis. ‘However, I have got a powder from the apothecary that will induce a deep sleep. She will give us no trouble on the way.’

  ‘Apart from the smell.’

  And so we smuggled a sleeping Henrietta out of Wigan in her sack, lying across the crupper of Fidelis’s horse. Having gone two or three miles along Wigan Lane we began looking out for Spungeon so that we could reunite them, but he did not appear.