by Jess Faraday
“You’re relieved, lad,” I shouted above the howling wind. “Go back to the tavern and ask Mrs. Dowrick for a hot drink. You can dry off by the fire.”
No one needed to tell him twice. He stammered his thanks and was off. Behind me, Guthrie’s house was dark. Any sound would be obscured by thunder, rain and wind. I walked around the barn until I found what I sought: a rotting plank along the barn’s back wall, held to by rusty, twisted nails. I pried it away with little effort.
“Who’s there?” Wallace demanded as I ducked through the gap, setting my sack on the ground inside.
I held up my lantern. His hands still bound, the prisoner had kicked a pile of loose straw into a pathetic bed. When he saw me, he scrambled backward through it until he hit the wall.
“Stand up,” I said.
He eased himself to his feet as I scanned the room. There, not far away, I found the other thing that I needed: a large, solid spade. I picked it up and crossed toward him.
“What are you…what do you….”
“Move,” I said, gesturing with the spade toward the gap.
I knew what I had to do. He was a murderer and a threat. He’d brought trouble and distress to people I cared about. He’d killed someone in my village. My village. And, having experienced, intimately, the shortcomings of the justice system, I did not trust it to adequately do its job with regard to Mr. Wallace.
It was a tight squeeze through the gap, and having his hands cuffed behind his back didn’t help him. But eventually he was through. I followed, swinging my sack over my shoulder. We walked down the path through Guthrie’s field, where this whole mess had started. We passed through the weeds, and by the place where Brewer had set upon Cora Stark and Wallace had struck him down. After a while, the farms and fields gave way to bare, rolling hills.
The rain was letting up by this time—a sprinkle now, instead of a deluge. The thick clouds parted, allowing a sliver of moon to light the countryside around us as we crested the hill. The moment had come. How strange that effecting justice would turn me into a criminal as well—a real criminal, not simply one whose affections the law deemed indecent. My fingers tightened around the handle of the spade. Wallace seemed to sense the import of the moment; he kept his eyes fixed on the undulating shadows of the horizon.
“Is this the end, Constable?” he asked.
“It is.”
He swallowed hard, but appeared determined to meet fate like a man.
I said, “Last night, in my village, you took a life, and for that, the law would have you swing.” His breath hitched, and though he didn’t whimper or weep, he wasn’t far from it. “But in that act, you spared a young woman a lifetime of ruin. And for that, I’ve resolved you shall not.”
He did turn, then, his expression a combination of confusion and dread. I unbound his hands and thrust the sack into them. Provisions for a day or two. The Dowricks wouldn't miss it. I pointed in front of us, where the emerging moon was turning the Camel river to silver.
I said, “Follow the river northwest a day or so to Padstow. A hundred ships go in and out of there every day. They always need men, and they don’t ask questions. Leave Cornwall, and never come back, for if you do, the law shall surely be waiting.”
He kept looking from me to the horizon, his mouth working, though emitting no sound. “Why?” he finally asked.
Why? I’d been trying to understand that, myself. Still, it was the right conclusion. The only one.
Wallace was a fraud and a burglar. Worse, whether he knew it or not, whether he cared or not, he still held a piece of Theo’s heart. But he’d put everything in the balance to protect Cora Stark from a brutal attack, not to mention from having to bear and raise her rapist’s child. Moreover, the indecency charges he faced would come out in the trial. Whatever heroism had motivated his acts, these charges would erase it in the mind of a jury. And no one deserved what happened to men like us in prison.
When it came to men like us, the law itself was injustice. I would not be its instrument here.
“Life offers precious few second chances, Mr. Wallace. Make the most of yours. Let the thief and swindler die on this hill tonight, and let the rescuer of innocents walk away a free man.”
“I…I will, Constable.” He stared at me, as if wondering whether my words were for real.
“Thank you. Thank you!”
I held the spade in both hands. I’d brought it to defend myself in case Wallace had turned on me. But he didn’t. As I watched him make his quick and careful way down the hill toward the river, my heart rose. I’d broken more laws that night than most people do in a lifetime—sodomy, breaking and entering, theft, abetting a fugitive—but I’d do it again. A copper’s job is to restore justice. And sometimes, I realized, what’s legal and what's just are, in fact, two very different things.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jess Faraday is an award-winning writer and editor of mystery and suspense. Her first novel, The Affair of the Porcelain Dog, was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award, and her third, Fool's Gold, won the Rainbow Award for Best Gay Historical and was a runner up for Best Gay Novel overall. Her novella, “The Strange Case of the Big Sur Benefactor,” was both a GCLS finalist and a Rainbow Award Winner for Lesbian Historical. When not writing, she moonlights as the mystery editor for Elm Books, chases cryptids, and runs the hills and trails of the Scottish countryside.
You can follow her adventures at:
Website: www.jessfaraday.com
Twitter: @jessfaraday
Instagram: jessfaraday
Facebook: Jess Faraday
Other Titles By Jess Faraday
Blades of Justice
The Affair of the Porcelain Dog
Turnbull House
Fool’s Gold
The Left Hand of Justice
The Strange Case of the Big Sur Benefactor
THE BLOOD IS THE LIFE
THE SHERIFF OF PENBREIGH
About the Author