The Devil's Breath

by Tessa Harris

  Thomas did not reply, but he knew full well that either Master Richard was indeed at the workhouse or that the mysterious man had reached him before they had. He could hear shouted commands in the distance and a child calling out. There was the clanking of metal on metal and the scraping of chairs being dragged along stone flags.

  From behind the closed door, they could hear a man’s voice. It was raised in frustration or annoyance rather than anger. A few seconds later the door was flung open by the man Thomas assumed was the workhouse master.

  “Lady Lydia Farrell, I believe?” He addressed her with a curious regard in his eye, as if he recognized her from somewhere.

  “Yes,” she replied. Any previous strength in her voice seemed to have deserted her at the sight of the thickset man with his wide neck and large head.

  “Come in, pray,” he beckoned.

  Thomas and Lydia followed him into the room that, with only one small window, was dingy yet pleasingly cool. The flighty woman remained outside.

  Lydia sat on a chair in front of a large desk. Thomas sat behind her. Both of them regarded the master like children about to be chastised. A great book lay open on the desk, its leaves edged in red.

  “So, Lady Lydia,” began the master brusquely, his wig perched precariously on top of his head. “You are looking for your son.”

  “Yes, sir, I am,” replied Lydia breathlessly. “Mistress Pargiter, the nurse, said that she sent him here.” Her hands were shaking with anticipation. “Just over three years ago,” she added.

  The master nodded and hooked his spectacles over his ears. Consulting the great book, he pointed to an entry. “Yes, on June 10, 1781,” he replied.

  Lydia leant forward. “Then he is here!” she exclaimed. In her excitement she reached for Thomas’s hand, but the master looked grave and shook his head.

  “I am afraid not, your ladyship,” he said, removing his spectacles.

  Lydia’s mouth trembled. “What? Then where is he? Please . . .”

  The master lifted his great shovel of a hand up in the air and Lydia bit her lip.

  “He was here, your ladyship, but he left almost two years ago.”

  “Then where did he go?” A note of panic entered her voice and Thomas squeezed her hand.

  Again the master consulted the ledger. “A gentleman by the name of Mr. Francis Crick took him.”

  Lydia looked askance. “Francis,” she repeated incredulously. It was a few weeks short of two years ago that her cousin had been hanged.

  “He said he was his uncle.” The master peered at Lydia over his spectacles. “He bore a remarkable resemblance to you, your ladyship,” he observed.

  “Indeed,” snapped Thomas, annoyed by the master’s tone of familiarity. “Did he leave a forwarding address?”

  The master peered at the ledger. “Boughton Hall.”

  Lydia’s slight shoulders slumped in disbelief.

  “But he is not at Boughton. So where is he?” she wailed. “Where is my son?” The revelation was too much for her and she began to sob, reaching for her handkerchief from her bag. Thomas put a comforting arm around her.

  “Thank you for your time, sir. But, as you can see, her ladyship is deeply upset. We must go.”

  The young doctor felt nausea rising in his own gullet. This was a terrible outcome to their visit. It rendered their whole journey futile and, worse still, it meant they would have to begin all over again in their search for Lydia’s lost son. For the time being, however, the most urgent need was to return to the Black Bear as soon as possible. Helping Lydia up, he guided her to the door, but just before the master showed him out, he recalled the stranger who, according to Mistress Pargiter, was on a similar mission.

  “Sir, one more thing,” said Thomas, pausing at the door. “Has someone else, a clerk perhaps, made inquiries regarding her ladyship’s son, too?”

  The master raised an eyebrow. For a moment he was caught off guard, but then he let out a hollow laugh.

  “Why no, sir. Whatever gave you that notion?”

  Thomas flashed a look at Lydia. He hoped she would not protest. Thankfully she did not. The young doctor shrugged: “Oh, ’tis of no consequence,” he said, and he ushered Lydia into the corridor, where the nervous old woman was waiting.

  “Show this lady and gentleman out, will you?” the master instructed her. Nodding her gray head she gestured to the door, but as soon as she was sure no one else was watching, she beckoned to them both and moved closer.

  The woman’s breath smelled of bile and her hands were shaking, but there was a curious smile on her lips.

  “I knew you was the child’s mother as soon as I see’d ya,” she said to Lydia in a loud whisper. “Just like you, he was.”

  Lydia looked deep into her dull eyes. “You know something?” She clung to the possibility as if it were driftwood from a shipwreck.

  The old woman’s forehead wrinkled into a frown. “I know there was a man here last week, asking about the boy.”

  Thomas nodded and turned to Lydia. “I knew it.”

  “He gave the master a crown to keep quiet,” squeaked the woman. “I knew you was the child’s mother. So I’m going to give you this,” she said, fumbling in her apron pocket. To Lydia’s surprise, she brought out a single earring. It was gold and embedded with pink topaz stones. Lydia gasped at the sight of it as the woman held it up, like a prize or a trophy.

  “Where did you get this?” she asked, holding out her hand to take it.

  “ ’Twas the boy’s foundling token,” she replied, dropping the jewel into Lydia’s outstretched palm.

  Thomas gazed at the earring. “And you have the other one?” he asked Lydia.

  “Yes. Yes, I do. I thought it was lost, but Michael must have taken it.”

  A look of delight had settled on the old crone’s face, but the sound of footsteps in the hallway brought her back to reality.

  “Good day, your ladyship. Sir,” she squeaked politely as the door to the workhouse creaked open once more. “God grant you find the lad, my lady,” she said, bending her head low so that her shrill words barely caught the air. Lydia squeezed her thin hand before joining Thomas in the searing heat once more.

  Chapter 10

  It came upon Boughton in the twilight hours, when most God-fearing men were abed. Only those who were awake, like Amos Kidd, sensed the change in the air as it pressed hard against his chest. His head began to ache. It was a sure sign that a storm was on its way. A few minutes later and there it was: a long roll of thunder.

  He had been lying on the lumpy ticking, listening to the sound of his wife’s soft breath, into the small hours. His heart was filled with a great sadness and he wondered, as he so often did, whether if had he been able to give her children, mayhap she would have been different with him. Mayhap she would not give other men the eye at every turn. They had only been married a few months before an accident took away any hope of offspring. He wiped away a single tear with his grimy fingers.

  Another clap of thunder came, followed by a flash of lightning, then another and another, turning the night inside out, making it bright as day for a second or two. Then blackness. Blackness and silence.

  Rising to look out of the window, he noticed something strange in the sky. The waning moon was veiled in a strange haze. He opened the latch to sniff the air and caught a distinctive odor; a pungent, acrid smell like the tang of saltpeter, but not saltpeter. But there was more: it seemed to have been snowing. He could not see very far: a peculiar mist had draped itself, like gossamer, around the cottage, but what he could see—the ground, the blackcurrant bushes, the fence posts—were covered in a light coating of flakes. Snow in June? He frowned and shivered and as he did so he realized he was cold for the first time in several days.

  Slipping on his smock and breeches, he ventured out. His warm breath curled into the air like steam rising from a boiling kettle. At this hour he would normally hear a nightingale sing in the woods, or the rustle of badgers or th
e unearthly wail of a dog fox. But this morn was still as stone, and just as cold.

  He looked down on the ground where his feet had left footprints, clear as if he had trodden on virgin snow. Yet this was not snow. He bent down and ran his fingers across the grass. It felt spiky and was covered with a strange, powdery frost. He rubbed it between his fingers; it was coarse and grainy. He lifted it up to his nose and snorted. It was then that he remembered; the smell, the powder, the knife-grinder.

  Returning inside he grabbed a coat and scarf and lit a lantern. Dawn should have broken by now, but there was no sign of the sun. Instead this strange haze was thickening. He began to take hurried steps down the track toward the formal gardens; a rising sense of panic taking hold as he saw the powder had settled on the hedgerows and verges, too. His roses. What of his beloved roses? Could this be what the traveling knife-grinder called the devil’s breath? Was this what Dr. Silkstone had spoken of? He quickened his pace. His heart beat faster. His lungs worked harder, but he found it more and more difficult to breathe. The smell had rasped his nostrils and seared through into his gullet, so that now it was all he could taste. He clamped his scarf across his face to block it out, but the taint lingered.

  Looking left and right, he tried to find his bearings, groping sightlessly. Where was the familiar wall of the potager? The gate? The gate into his rose garden should be there. The blanket of fog was now so thick that he was completely disoriented. He stretched out his arms to the side of the track and felt an enormous sense of relief when his fingers touched the mossy flint of the wall. Blindly his hands skimmed across the top of it as he edged his way along the track; each stone a welcome marker. Not far now, he told himself; a few more paces and he should reach the rose garden. It was then that he felt it on his skin; one or two pricks at first, as if someone were sticking pins into him, but within a few seconds came more. Little stabs of pain were burning his flesh, stinging his eyes. He looked upward. It was raining, and each droplet scalded his skin like acid.

  It was noontide when Lovelock took the carriage carrying Thomas and Lydia over the Thames at Oxford and onward toward Boughton Hall. The young doctor was on edge, his nerves as taut as catgut. The expedition to Hungerford in search of Lydia’s lost son had thrown up more questions than it answered and had left her distraught. Yet there was something else; the matter of this impending cloud—this strange phenomenona that seemed to choke the very breath out of anyone unfortunate enough to be in its path.

  They had traveled at least thirty miles northeast from Hungerford without seeing anything more than the odd cirrus cloud in the June sky. It was still very warm, although Thomas had checked the temperature before their departure. The mercury had dropped by a full ten degrees, so the heat was much more bearable. Nevertheless, the carriage windows remained down to take advantage of the light breeze that had picked up during the course of their journey. Thomas noted, however, that it was blowing from a northwesterly direction and that, he knew, might not auger well.

  His gaze turned back to Lydia. She remained deep in thought, looking out onto a summer landscape that offered her no solace.

  “You will be pleased when we reach Boughton?” he ventured.

  She lifted her face and managed a muted smile.

  “I am sure I shall feel much better once we are home,” she replied.

  Thomas nodded. “Not long now.” He tried to comfort her, resting his hand on hers as Lovelock turned the horses on the road to Brandwick. “We’re at the crossroads.”

  Just as he had spoken, however, she jerked her hand up to her throat and coughed. Thomas whipped his head ’round and saw her swallowing hard. It was then that he first smelled it, the pungent mix of sulfur and metal that stabbed the back of his throat, making him gag. He lunged for the heavy leather curtains and drew them across the window as quickly as he could, then taking the tapping stick he signaled for Lovelock to stop the carriage.

  “Stay there,” he ordered Lydia as he opened the door and jumped down. Lovelock was also coughing in the choking air. Thomas could make more sense of it now. They were on top of the scarp before they began their descent to the estate and he could see that the whole of the valley below was shrouded in a thick blanket of cloud. Only the spire of the estate chapel pierced through like some great needle.

  “What is it, Dr. Silkstone, sir?” wheezed Lovelock. He spat on the ground, trying to gob away the bitter taste in his mouth.

  “I cannot be sure,” croaked Thomas, but he knew the longer they remained stationary, the longer the poisonous air would have to creep into their lungs. “Put your scarf ’round your mouth, man, and get us back to Boughton as soon as you can.”

  Lovelock obeyed, although the horses, too, were struggling to breathe. Back inside, Lydia had reached for the flask of lemonade and was drinking freely. She offered it to Thomas, who gulped down two or three mouthfuls to ease the rasping in his throat. The young doctor opened his medical bag and took out the gauze dressing he always carried. “Hold this over your mouth,” he told Lydia, handing her a square.

  All about them the fog swirled over a landscape that should have been so familiar and yet now seemed alien. The sun was completely hidden and the horizon had disappeared beneath a blackening sky. Walls and hedgerows became dark and brooding lines etched against the roadside. The harvest fields that were only yesterday golden with corn were now charcoal gray, the ears of wheat shriveled and dead. A solitary wagon stood by the roadside, grain spilled across it from an abandoned sack. Scythes and sickles lay in the fields, the laborers having fled.

  “What is it? What has happened, Thomas?” pleaded Lydia, her eyes smarting with the fumes.

  The young doctor shook his head. “ ’Tis worse than I feared,” he murmured, watching gray flakes swirl about like snow.

  “What is, Thomas? Tell me!” cried Lydia, her words dissolving into a cough as she spoke.

  “We must not talk,” he told her, holding her tightly. “Not until we are inside.” She buried her head in his shoulder. Thomas was thankful she was spared the sight of a dead ewe and her lamb on the verge.

  A few moments later they reached the Hall itself, but as Lovelock drove the carriage right up to the front steps, no one was there to greet them as usual. Even the house dogs seemed to have retreated. The place was eerily quiet. Thomas was glad to see that all the servants appeared to have taken refuge inside.

  Clamping the gauze over their mouths, he hurried indoors, taking Lydia with him, while Lovelock, his kerchief wrapped securely ’round his mouth, rushed to stable the horses.

  “Thank the Lord you are safe!” cried Howard as he walked swiftly toward them in an uncustomary show of emotion.

  “What has happened?” asked Lydia.

  The butler looked grave. “We awoke this morning to a strange fog, your ladyship. Everyone carried on with their duties as best they could until it seemed to thicken and we began coughing and choking and our eyes began to stream. I ordered everyone inside and all the doors and windows to be shut.”

  “You acted wisely. Thank you, Howard,” said Lydia. “Are all the servants accounted for?”

  The butler frowned. “The house maids, the kitchen staff, and the footmen are all safe, your ladyship, but I cannot speak for those in the stables or the gardens.”

  “Let us hope they have the sense to seek shelter until this fog has lifted,” she said.

  At that moment Gabriel Lawson appeared in the hallway, gray powder dusting his coat. In his arms he carried a young redheaded boy.

  “Help here!” he called.

  Thomas dashed toward him. “Will!” he cried as he recognized the freckled face of Jacob and Hannah Lovelock’s son. The child was pale and his breathing shallow. His thin limbs dangled limply as a marionette’s.

  “Lay him on the sofa in the drawing room,” ordered Lydia. She and Thomas followed anxiously.

  Lawson settled the boy as Lydia put a cushion under his head. Kneeling down beside him, Thomas opened his medical bag and b
rought out a glass bottle containing a syrupy liquid. He poured a little into a cup and held it to Will’s lips.

  “Drink this,” he coaxed. “ ’Twill soothe you.” He lifted the boy’s head gently so that he could sup. Instantly the child’s face screwed up in a grimace. Thomas understood that the Spanish liquorice and salt of tartar were not palatable, but he also knew the ingredients eased asthma attacks. He recalled Will’s raw skin when they had first met and how he suffered from eczema that was soothed by his mother’s unguents. The two conditions, in his experience, often went hand in hand. The boy’s natural susceptibilities must have made him even more vulnerable to this noxious fog.

  The sound of footsteps rushing into the room alerted them to the arrival of Hannah Lovelock, the child’s mother.

  “Oh, my Will!” she cried, heading straight for her son, forgetting all decorum. Rushing to his side, she stroked his carrot-colored hair, then seeing Thomas she fixed him with a pleading gaze. “He will be well, will ’e not, Dr. Silkstone?”

  Thomas replied honestly. “The next few hours will tell, Mistress Lovelock,” he said.

  Hannah nodded, running her hand over her son’s clammy forehead. “Thank goodness you found him, Mr. Lawson,” she said, looking up at the steward.

  “And what of the men in the fields?” asked Lydia.

  “All of them fled as the cloud approached, ma’am,” Lawson told her. “But I cannot say if they all made it to shelter. I know at least two men are dead on the Thorndike estate.”

  At the steward’s words the young boy opened his eyes wide, as if he had recalled an event or a situation. He opened his mouth and puffed out an inaudible word.

  “Hush now, my love,” urged his mother.

  “You must conserve your breath, Will,” Thomas told him.

  “But, sir,” the boy wheezed. “Mr. Kidd . . . he . . .” He broke off, coughing.

  Thomas darted a glance at Lydia. “Amos Kidd. Has anyone seen him?”

  Silence.