She begins fussing over him, cleaning his face and arms with cool water and a soft cloth. Despite her gentle touch, his skin still prickles and protests. There is a sour, feverish feeling in his muscles and he knows that while he is feeling better, the sickness is still at home in him.
“I have to look at the burn on your chest,” she tells him. There is sympathy in her eyes and he understands that it will hurt when she removes the old dressing and applies a new one. On the table next to her there is a bowl of grey-green paste that smells of fresh herbs and sweet rotting fruit.
“I will try to be as gentle as I can, why don’t you lay back and try to relax,” Isabella says to him. He is afraid to close his eyes, he is afraid his father will come to him again. The rotting, worm and rat infested flesh will consume him if he allows the spirit to come to close and closing his eyes will allow its return.
He trusts her though, her voice is kind and her touch is gentle. He lies backs, all is well and his father stays away. He hears her draw in breath through her teeth as she pulls the dressing away from his skin, then she begins to tut to herself. He is not even sure she knows she is doing it.
“This wound is not good, Davidson,” she said. “I have done my best to care for it while the doctor is away, but it needs his care. I fear Richmond has infected you with a spirit.”
He raises his head, just enough so that he can see the burn for himself. The act at once hurts him and causes his head to spin. The circular brand is raised and weeping a yellowish pus in three or four places. Its edges are puckered and angry. He feels faint just looking at this infection in himself.
“Lay back boy, I will do what I can to draw the poison out of you but the doctor needs to return soon,” Isabella says, wringing out a clean cloth and dipping it in to a steaming bowl of water.
“Where is he?” Davidson asks through gritted teeth as she begins to dab at the burn. He knows the answer will not change anything, the only thing that matters is that the doctor is not here, but it is something to think about besides the pain and fever that are eating at his will.
“He is on the other side of the island. There is a plantation there where people have begun to fall ill. The owner is a better man than Sir Thomas Richmond, he allows the doctor to visit.” She almost hisses as she says Sir Thomas’ name and Davidson feels something new invade him, over-powering the fever and pain, he feels hatred.
He slips back into a restless sleep from which he wakes only to empty his bladder. His father stays out of his dreams but the laughing face of Sir Thomas Richmond drifts in and out of his mind’s eye, taunting him.
When he awakes next it is dark. Davidson is so hot that he can hardly breathe. Smoke fills the air and he thinks for a moment that the hut must be on fire. He calls out to Isabella, but she does not come. He cries out to his father, before he remembers that he is dead. For the rest of his life he will wake to this realisation, remembering over and over that his father has been murdered.
Then, just as his panic is getting so strong that he is beginning to climb out of bed, a demon steps into his sight. Its leering face leans over him and pushes him back onto the bed, the boy is powerless to stop it.
The face is a mask, he knows this but it is a living mask. It stares at him, eyes boring into his soul. He tries to look away but the demon fills his sight, even with his eyes closed against the terror he feels.
He lays back and the demon blows coloured powder over him. The room fills with kaleidoscopic mist as it hangs in the air, red, green and blue. The powder coats his sweat soaked body. It smells sickly sweet and rancid, assails his nose and eyes, causing both to water.
The heat is building, growing overpowering. He is sure that he will pass-out once more, but his fevered mind clings to wakefulness, scared to sleep. The demon begins to chant, slow at first but with a rhythm that invades his mind. It builds in tempo, little by little, forcing him to feel its cadence and become part of the flow.
He feels his body rising and falling with the movement of the chant. The momentum rising and rising, pulling at him, drawing something out of him. On and on the chant drives him, unrelenting in is urgency and desire.
“Stop!” he wants to shout but his breath is gone, he is held together by nothing but the insistence of the pulsing beat. It sucks at him until he is sure he can take no more but still it attacks him, feeds him, calls him to his death.
His father appears behind the demon, standing and looking down on him. He has a raw, red band around his throat from the rope that took his life. Isabella is there, not as she is now but impossibly old and frail. Sir Thomas Richmond looks down on him and sneers. The boy understands that this man cares nothing for him, except as property. He cannot see the boy as a child, because he never saw the father as a man.
He sees other faces flash past him. Slaves he knew at the plantation, Whitchurch – the overseer, the other men who work for Sir Thomas. They all look down on him, showing him nothing, saying nothing.
“I can’t take any more,” his mind cries but his voice is in another realm now. His body is not his own. He feels it, knows it is there but this demon has infected it and taken it for its own. The boy has no power here anymore.
He stops breathing. He feels himself suffocating, but does not know how to prevent it from happening. He fights for a breath, one single lung full of air, but the demon has control over him and needs no breath.
One more face looks down on him, a face he does not recognise. She is beautiful, so beautiful that he is able to forget what is happening to him. He forgets the demon, forgets his asphyxiation and his fevered mind. For the briefest of moments that might stretch to eternity, she is the whole world. He thinks of a word, he has never spoken it, not once in his whole life, he has never had a need. He says it and his ordeal comes to an end. That one word is all he needs to free himself from the grasp of the demon.
“Mother.”
Blackness takes him into ecstatic relief.
“You’re a strong boy,” Isabella said. She placed a bowl next to his bed as he opened his eyes. Davidson looked about the room, seeing it properly for the first time. He had no idea how long he had been there, the previous days and nights had blended into a unfathomable riddle.
“I feel much better,” Davidson said, pushing himself up in the bed. His arms are so much weaker than he remembers, but the fever’s ache has left them. He looked down at his chest – the dressing is still there, covering the wound, but the pain and heat has left his chest. He touches the dressing with careful fingers but even a hard press gives him little discomfort.
“The doctor says you are stronger than any boy has ever known,” He says he wants to see you, when you are strong enough. I think he has chosen you to learn the ways of the conjuring, young Davidson. It is a high honour, you should be happy.”
“The conjuring?” he asked, already interested.
“You saw the doctor and what he did for you?” She asked.
“I saw a demon, he came to my room and cast spells on me,” he said, remembering the heat and smells.
“That was the doctor, young Davidson. He used the conjuring to help you. It is powerful hoodoo and he thinks you might be right to train in its ways. He will only teach one apprentice in his lifetime, if you are not good enough then he will never pass his secrets on to another. He must be sure you are the right person to teach.”
Davidson’s mind was filled with images from the previous night. The power he had felt was enormous, his body and mind had been impotent in its presence.
“I’m not powerful and magic, like he was though, I’m just a boy.”
“And that is why he will teach you his ways,” she said, smiling. She lifted a bowl of fish-smelling soup to his lips and he drank hungrily. It was hot and salty and his body yearned for it. “Slow down boy,” she laughed. “It will still be here in two minutes, take your time.”
***
Weeks have passed. Davidson is stronger and a little wiser than he was when he came to the
village. His life on the plantation was hard and simple. Down here in the village, he has begun to understand how much the British and the East India Company have taken from his people.
There are no men here, they are all slaves to the masters on the coffee plantations. Only the very old and frail are allowed to live their lives in the villages. He is told that the people here help to keep the slaves on the plantation in order. They are a stick with which to beat the working men. If the slaves ever try to rise up against their masters the people of the village will suffer retribution. It is a place of loss.
Isabella has kept Davidson hidden from the men of the East India. Sir Thomas has given his permission for the boy to be healed, but if they see he is well they will return him to the plantation. She wants him to stay for as long as possible. She says the doctor has asked about him again, he is ready to take him in, to teach him.
A month passes in this way, each day bringing the renewed fear that Richmond will think to send men, to take the boy back to the plantation. Each night, the sun going down brings relief to them both. Until eventually, the night comes when Davidson kisses Isabella goodbye and, using the darkness as cover, walks to the doctor’s hut.
The men of the East India do not stay in the village at night, fear and superstition keep them away, not that the doctor lives in the village. The boy walks into the wilderness, told only that if he is the right boy, he will find his way. The darkness does not scare him, neither do the animals he hears calling to one another. Only the white men and their rifles scare him, and they would never come here.
Soon he stands looking at the door of a hut, daring himself to knock and face the demon. He need not worry, the door opens and the doctor invites him in.
Chapter Twenty Seven
Liverpool 1856
Liverpool began to burn. Slowly at first, the people began to notice the rats on the rooftops, in daylight. The creatures that had begun to live in local legend were coming to life all across the town. Night time monsters started to stalk the daytime streets and alleys. What was once rumour and gossip became real.
Across the whole area offices and large houses became the targets for the monsters and the soldiers of Davidson’s army. He had done his homework well, picking his targets with precision and care. He attacked the wealth and power that ran the town, cutting deep into the flesh of the commerce that made the town one of the beating hearts of the British Empire.
At the Albany on Old Hall Street, so recently built to house the brokers and traders of the cotton trade, rats attacked in numbers. The lavish edifice with its carved stone adornments was the embodiment of everything on which Liverpool was built. The flow of money that had washed through its offices already dwarfed that of the rest of the town. Now its corridors and offices were washed in blood. People died and only the men of the Liverpool constabulary saved greater loss of life.
PC Jones led a team of ten men into the Albany. They fought hard, cutting down six of the animals, leaving two of their own number on the ground behind them. They rescued the brokers and clerks of some of the largest financial houses in the world, but the trail of bodies was long.
In the docks, warehouses were looted, fires were set and men died. Sailors rushed back to their ships to fight for their captains and for the wages they would never see if they did not returned home with their cargos. Men from across the globe, found themselves fighting to save a port that was no more their home than the hundreds of others they had visited in their time at sea.
It wasn’t just the rats, though they were the worst. Men, moving in gangs, looted shops causing chaos. At first the locals tried to fight against them but the gangs were organised and had the advantage of surprise. As day turned to night, flames began to spread about Liverpool and its surrounding areas, men turned their hands to fighting fires.
The fire police worked tirelessly alongside trucks from the West of England insurance company, but soon entire streets were aflame. Merryweather trucks drawn by hand, moved about the town with their bells ringing, followed by teams of men who were ready and willing volunteers.
Further out from Liverpool, it was the bigger houses that were troubled the most. Richard Watt, a sugar plantation owner was not home when his house was attacked. The local residents formed ranks with the house servants and saw off three of the rats, two men lost their lives.
Houses in Allerton were set about. Many belonging to shipping merchants and lawyers. By the time the sun went down, the flames could be seen three miles away on the banks of the Mersey.
Springwood House was thankfully empty when four rats appeared. The family and staff were away in the Scottish Highlands, game hunting. The Brocklebank family, owners of the Brocklebank fishing company, escaped the fires that finally consumed so many of the surrounding houses.
On the banks for the Mersey, Sudley House, a red brick mansion that was home to Nicolas Robinson, former Lord Mayor of Liverpool was the site of a pitched battle between staff, police, and a gang of looters.
The fight started soon after the first attacks began and lasted well into the evening. Davidson had not ordered the attack on Sudley House, in fact it was the first in a natural progression that he was sure would happen. There were always men who were willing to take advantage of chaos. They did his work without knowing it.
People died, women were raped, houses and shops were looted and robbed, men and women were mugged on the street, their attackers safe in the knowledge that they would not be caught. Liverpool descended into chaos and the chaos spread. Soon nowhere within five miles of the River Mersey was immune to the terror that the army of Davidson spread.
***
Harry Groves knelt behind a line of defence, an unfamiliar shotgun in his hand. To his right was Danny Jessops, the estate gamekeeper. Harry knew the man had something to do with looking after animals. He had never set foot in the countryside until now and the whole idea of having animals living in your garden was amazing to him, no matter how big that garden might be. At home they had a square yard out the back of the house, if two men lay down in it, it would probably be full. Here the green grass and greener trees seemed to stretch forever.
The three of the four other men who had arrived with Harry were spread out among the defenders, trying to keep everybody calm, and that included each other.
Danny had fought the rats already. By his own account, he had hunted one of them in the house after it had killed two women, then he had come outside and killed at least one more. They had lost lives here, and Harry was determined they would lose no more.
The owner of the house, Sir Thomas Richmond, was inside with the last of the officers. He had tried to come out and join the fight. They had managed to convince him that he would be in too much danger, in his wheeled chair. That had made him more determined than ever to stand and fight, or at least sit and fight.
Then, Harry had asked him if he had any maps of the estate. The old man had looked confused, but had agreed that he did have what they required. Soon they had installed him in the dinning room of the big house, with the maps laid out on the huge oak dining table, like a general before a battle.
He had insisted on having one of the constables as his personal guard. He also took one of the footman as his messenger. A general cannot give orders without someone to pass them on, he had insisted.
Harry, somehow the youngest of the officers and still nominally in charge, had begun to organise the defences. They decided that fortifying the house would remove any chance of retreat. Instead they built a barricade, a first line of defence.
Danny had organised the building of the structure – it really was no more than a double height line of hay bails, brought up from the feed barn by cart. It gave the men something to lean against when the time for shooting came.
The women were directed by the housekeeper, an elderly woman called Mrs. Overton. She had begun by making sure the men had enough water and other supplies close at hand. Then she had suggested that one or two of the men teach a
few of the girls how to load a shotgun.
In total they had eighteen of the weapons, most kept locked away for bird hunting season. Sir Thomas had balked at letting them into the hands of servants and the police, saying each had cost more than a constable’s wages, Harry was almost certain he was correct. Eventually the old man had relented and the guns had been brought out.
Nine men had been chosen to shoot, the four officers in the front rank, four of the servants and one for Sir Thomas’ guard in the house. So, eight girls had been chosen to be loaders.
At first they had giggled and acted like...well, young girls. Then Mrs. Overton had given them a stern lecture about what had happened to the two maids in the house, and how this might end up being their last day on earth. The girls had sobered up quickly, they had put their minds to the task and now they could load a shotgun quickly enough that a man who took his time aiming was almost never without a gun in his hand.
They had spent an hour practicing, each man firing down the lawn, while the girl behind loaded the second gun, then they would swap and repeat the exercise. It soon became apparent to Harry that the problem may not be the girls loading the guns but the men firing them. He for one, was not sure that his shots had ended up anywhere near the spot on the lawn he was aiming at.
Lastly, they had sent two of the youngest boys out to the furthest edges of the estate. Each of them had carried a white sheet, with instructions to climb the highest tree they could find. There they were to sit until they saw any of the creatures, or it came time to relieve them of their duty.
It was those white sheets that had informed the men who now crouched behind barricade that the house was under attack. The mischief came from the west, as it had previously. The evening sun was lowering toward the horizon, painting an orange and pink haze across the sky when one of the boys had waved his sheet high in the tallest tree.
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