The Devil's Breath

by Tessa Harris

  Once out into the fog again, he mounted his horse and started off at a furious gallop down the drive. He was angry, both with Lady Thorndike and himself, for not reading the situation sooner. How could he have allowed himself to walk into such an obvious trap? He should have known better. If word of this ever got out his reputation, and with it his career, would be in tatters.

  Chapter 17

  Gabriel Lawson recognized the man with the red bandana from two days before in the marketplace. Now he was standing by the foreman, Ned Perkins, looking a little too confident for his liking. The man’s eyes were jet black and he had an air of insolence; a direct gaze and a square-set jaw told him he would be trouble. He and Perkins had approached him in the tithe barn as he was checking on feedstuffs. There was no one else in sight.

  “We wondered if we might have a word with you, sir,” Perkins began diffidently enough. He had the weathered face of a man who lived on and for the land.

  Lawson eyed his companion suspiciously. “And who might this be?” he replied brusquely, knowing full well.

  The man bowed low. Too low, Lawson felt.

  “My name is Joshua Pike, sir, and I speak on behalf of farm workers and tenants.”

  The steward raised his brow. The young man’s insolence surprised him so much that, for once, he was momentarily lost for words, so Pike continued. “This fog is killing many men in the fields, sir, so I plead for those who are left standing.”

  The knife-grinder waited for a reaction from the steward, but when it came, it was not the one he had anticipated. Lawson simply threw his head back and roared with laughter. “You?” He pointed mockingly. “A spokesman? On whose authority, pray tell?”

  Perkins shifted uneasily from one leg to the other, his head bowed, but Pike simply smirked. “Many of your men have asked me, sir,” he replied.

  Lawson looked beyond the young troublemaker, shading his eyes in an exaggerated gesture, as if scanning the horizon. “Many of my men, you say,” he sneered. “ ’Tis strange I can only see one.” Ned Perkins fingered his hat nervously. “Is this true, Perkins?” barked the steward. “Can you no longer speak for yourselves? Do you need this . . . this”—he sneered at Pike contemptuously—“this troublemaker to speak for you?”

  The foreman lowered his eyes. “Some of us got to thinkin’ . . .” Lawson shook his head. “You are not paid to think, Perkins. You are paid to work and this fog means there’s more work to be done than usual.” He turned his back on them, but the young man silently urged the foreman to press ahead, gesturing the older man to follow his master.

  “S-sir,” Perkins stuttered nervously.

  Lawson turned and sighed theatrically. “Tell this scoundrel to go away and we will forget about this incident.” He flapped his hand scornfully at Pike.

  “And what if I don’t go away, Mr. Lawson?” asked the young man impudently.

  The steward stiffened. “Then I shall call the other men, the ones who know who pays their wages, and they’ll run you out of the shire!” he shouted, the color rising in his face. He stepped toward Pike and only a few inches now separated them.

  The young troublemaker kept his ground. His expression did not change, but he wiped a fleck of Lawson’s spittle from his cheek. “Very well, sir. I shall leave for now, but as long as this fog hangs around, then so shall I.” He was smiling as he said this, but there was a note of menace in his voice.

  His tone made the steward clench his fists, but he resisted the urge to hit out. “Be gone!” he cried.

  Joshua Pike walked to his mule in an unhurried fashion, still wearing a smirk on his nut-brown face.

  Ned Perkins, on the other hand, was left cowering in the corner of the barn. “I don’t want no trouble, Mr. Lawson,” he pleaded meekly. “He just came up to me in Brandwick and asked me to name my master.”

  Lawson nodded. He knew Perkins to be a loyal worker who had farmed Boughton estate land for at least twenty-five years, and his father before him. Now his two sons lay in his home, fighting for their lives. “This fog is making it hard for all of us. Just remember that,” he told him. The foreman nodded contritely and planted his hat back on his matted head. “Now get back to work with you.”

  The driver had questioned whether he really wanted to be taken to St. Giles. Not being au fait with this particular London district, however, the notary had taken his query as an impertinence. It was not until they were well into the journey east, and he could see the landscape of the streets changing, that he understood the man’s reluctance to take him to such a place. The pleasant boulevards and new brick terraces gave way to the ramshackle old town. Houses and shops of varying heights and sizes in divers states of decay were crammed next to each other like an old crone’s teeth.

  The carriage pulled up outside a narrow entrance at the mouth of a courtyard. The notary smelled the air as he dismounted, then quickly sniffed his nosegay. He did not relish his task on such a day as this, or on any day for that matter. This area was altogether less agreeable. As well as the stink, there were the shouts of hawkers pacing the alleyways and of urchins ducking and diving through the throng. There were whores, too. Temptation and the clap at every corner. The streets were so constricted that most carriages could not pass and some of the top gables almost joined above his head, blocking out the sunlight.

  Most disconcerting of all, he did not know where to begin his search. He was looking for a proverbial needle in a haystack. He headed up the thoroughfare, which quickly narrowed. Wet shirts and petticoats were festooned from rafters and over newel posts drying in the hot air. A cat that was making a meal of a bloodied dead pigeon on one of the treads hissed at him and fled with its prey in its mouth. All around he could hear children crying and women shouting. A man with a tame crow on his shoulder held out a hand for alms, while a stick-thin boy spat on the cobbles as he passed. This was no place for anyone, let alone a young nobleman, to be reared, the notary thought to himself.

  There were no street names here, no numbers, either. Sometimes there weren’t even doors, just panels of wood that screened entrances. He was afraid he would never find Agnes Appleton and even more afraid for his life in a hellhole such as this. His courage was quickly deserting him. He had turned tail and was halfway down the steps when he heard a voice crackle behind him.

  “You lookin’ for someone?”

  He turned to see an old woman, as gnarled as one of the newel posts, sitting on the stairs on the landing above. She had obviously been watching him in his fruitless efforts. The notary allowed a smile to flicker across his lips. At last there was hope in a place that the Lord himself had abandoned many years ago, he told himself.

  “Yes. I seek a woman and a boy.”

  The crone huffed and held out a grimy hand. “Buy this and I’ll think on it.” Several strands of dark hair were gathered together and tied with a piece of twine. “Belonged to an Irish giant,” she croaked. “ ’Twill help you find what you seek.”

  The notary balked, but decided not to protest too loudly for fear of attracting attention to himself.

  “Here’s a farthing,” he said, throwing a coin into her lap and taking the hair.

  The crone seemed satisfied. “Tell me more.”

  “The woman’s name is Agnes Appleton and the boy has a withered arm.”

  The old woman put her gnarled fingers to her forehead and puckered her face, as if experiencing some sort of vision. “A boy with a withered arm, you say? Yes. ’Tis coming back to me.”

  The notary stooped low. “You recall them now?”

  The crone opened her eyes and chuckled. “Mayhap, but Grandmother Tooley’ll need another farthing to help her,” she said, holding out her hand once more.

  Another farthing duly crossed her palm. “Yes. Went to Covent Garden, she did. To the Rose and Crown. And the boy, too.”

  “Why would she go there?” asked the notary in all innocence.

  Grandmother Tooley let out a phlegmy cackle. “Why would anyone go there?”<
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  Chapter 18

  The Reverend George Lightfoot sat at his desk at the vicarage, his face as worn as a well-rubbed penny. His eyes were fixed on a shoddy copy of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane on the wall. In the little-known Renaissance painting, Jesus was on his knees, praying on the night before his Passion. Around him were his sleeping disciples, the ones who promised faithfully to keep awake in their master’s hour of need.

  The vicar sighed deeply and his thoughts turned to his own agony. Watching his wife cough and splutter through the night, he had witnessed her fever rising and her mind wandering. Yet he had kept awake. He had kept awake and he had prayed. He had prayed harder than he had ever prayed in his life that she would be saved. He had asked the Lord to take him in her stead. She was the truly good person; the one who never wavered in her faith; the one who was always there for others. Not him. He was weak and ineffectual. Worthless without her. But to no avail. She had been taken. And now, without her by his side, his own agony was only just beginning.

  It had been less than a week since his wife’s passing, but the trauma had aged her husband by a decade. Gone was the spring in his step; the litheness of his movements. He had always walked out with a cane, but that was only an affectation. Now, drained of energy, he almost felt that he really did need it to steady his shaky steps.

  There had been no time for proper mourning. He had been kept busy by the steady influx of bodies. There had been four burials on Thursday and four more on Friday. That meant that eight widows had to be comforted and upwards of twenty children were left fatherless. The parish had to be informed and the bereaved cared for in practical as well as spiritual ways. Before this would have been Margaret’s domain. She was so well-grounded. Her determination to act had been the reason for the fateful visit to Lady Thorndike that led to her death. She only had thoughts for others and paid the ultimate sacrifice for her selflessness.

  Suddenly he was reminded of Amos Kidd’s widow. He had only spoken a few words to her at yesterday’s funeral. He dare not engage with her more. She was so young. So beautiful. He recalled her head on his shoulder in her cottage. Her musky scent, tinged with roses; her rhythmic sobs; the thrill that ran through his body at her touch. It was a sensation that was new to him. His heart beat faster at the recollection of the moment, but he quickly shook his head. He would banish her from his mind.

  A blank sheet of paper lay on his desk. He needed to write his Sunday sermon, but the words did not come. Usually he found it so easy to trot out helpful platitudes; to philosophize and eulogize; to castigate and berate. But now life was changed. Now he knew how the people of Egypt felt as the Angel of Death passed over their land or the vicar of Eyam when the plague had visited upon his community just over a century before. The villagers of Brandwick and beyond felt besieged, trapped in a prison not of their own making and only the Lord Himself knew when he would raise his hand and lift this cruel cloud.

  He glanced at another sheet of paper on his desk. On it were written the names of the dead men. He scanned the list. They were all good and honest. Jed Burrows and Gil Herbert drank too much on market days. Seth Kipps was a gambler and none of them was averse to poaching the odd pheasant or rabbit for the pot when times were hard. But they were family men. All they did was toil in the fields only to be struck down by this murderous fog. He seized the paper and crumpled it roughly into a ball, hurling it into the corner of the room. He then clenched his fist and hit the desk. There was no justice in their deaths.

  The maid knocked on the door, but did not wait for a reply. “I heard a noise, sir. Can I help you?”

  The vicar looked up from his desk. His hands were shaking. “No. No, thank you,” he said slowly, as if the girl had woken him from a bad dream.

  Once she had gone, he allowed himself to sink back into the morass of despair. It sickened him when he thought of Lady Thorndike. What a contemptible woman she was. Margaret had told him about her refusal to help the sick and bereaved and now this—her disgraceful behavior with Dr. Silkstone. Poor Sir Henry had been most distressed by the incident, but not surprised. He had of course berated the young doctor. “That bastard colonist!” he had called him as they sat and drank sack afterward. But he knew, deep down, that his wife constantly played him for a fool. He had said as much on a number of occasions. “She’s a temptress, vicar,” he confided once. A temptress.

  Fingering his Bible unthinkingly, he recalled the look of disgust on Dr. Silkstone’s face. The grotesque smears of bright red lipstick on his cheek looked so like blood. He remembered darting him a disapproving look. In reality, however, he knew very well who would have been to blame for the compromising position in which the young colonist had found himself. If that was the case, then he was sure Dr. Silkstone would be feeling utterly wretched. He would be worried sick for his reputation.

  Physicians and priests were in an oddly similar position of trust, he thought to himself. The stories they were told in confidence, the confessions made at moments of anxiety and vulnerability, the secrets they had to keep—they all weighed heavily on their shoulders. The sorrows and woes of others made up the cross their respective callings had to bear. Yet whereas Dr. Silkstone put his faith in science, he had to put his trust in the Lord. He thumbed through the leaves of the Old Testament and opened it at the Book of Job. Yes, Job, he told himself; the man whose righteousness was tested by Satan; the man who lost his livestock, his home, his children, and yet did not reproach the Lord. He read the passage about the fire that fell from the sky. It killed his sheep. He read about the mighty wind that caused houses to collapse. The words gave him a new confidence and he felt a surge of energy. God was testing him and testing his people. And he took up his pen and began to write the first words of his sermon: “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

  Even if Thomas had been minded not to tell Lydia of Lady Thorndike’s attempt to seduce him, she would have sensed something was terribly wrong. The evening before he had stormed into the drawing room with a face like thunder, poured himself a brandy and paced up and down. Within a few seconds, however, he was relating the afternoon’s events with a fury that Lydia had not seen before. She listened sympathetically, knowing that the fault lay with Lady Thorndike.

  “You must not blame yourself for this, Thomas,” she had soothed, walking over to him as he stood in front of the mantelpiece. She stretched out her hand to lay it on his shoulder, but he turned away.

  “But I do blame myself, Lydia. How could I have been so blind? I should have seen. I should have known.”

  “You know now,” she countered softly. “You have learned your lesson. No harm has been done.”

  Thomas, on the other hand, could not be so sure.

  The following morning, when Thomas awoke and looked out of his bedroom window, he could see as far as the rose garden for the first time in ten days. The fog had lifted sufficiently for him to make out the blurred colors of the flowers, although not the individual blooms. Looking up at the leaden sky he could also see the sun rising behind the fog. The trees were stirring slightly, too. There was a whisper of a breeze blowing from the west. He suddenly felt that perhaps the cloud was dispersing, or moving; perhaps there was just an inkling of a return to normality; to the rhythm of the seasons and the natural order.

  Quickly he dressed, hurried downstairs, and ventured outside. But he returned almost immediately. The sulfur was still in the air, lurking in the mist. It remained unsafe to be outdoors for any length of time. A plan. That was what was needed, he told himself; a logical way of tackling the problems that presented themselves. First and foremost the men’s lungs needed to be protected; their mouths and noses needed covering. Next, their skin. It must not be exposed. Gloves should be worn. Sturdy boots, too. And wide-brimmed hats to shield the eyes and mouth should more rain fall. The men must work in shifts. Prolonged exertion in the foggy atmosphere seemed to exacerbate breathing difficulties.

  In the study he fou
nd Lydia and told her his thoughts. She listened earnestly. She would have to find the money for new hats and gloves, she pointed out, but she could see that in the long term, such financial outlay would be well worth it. They had just begun some calculations when Howard knocked on the door.

  “Mr. Lawson wishes to speak with you, your ladyship,” he informed his mistress.

  “Show him in,” replied Lydia, seated at the desk.

  Thomas had encountered the steward only once or twice before and had taken an instant dislike to him. There was something about his manner that irritated him. Perhaps it was the way he almost swaggered into a room, or the way he smiled at Lydia. Either way, it seemed to Thomas that he was a little too cocksure.

  The steward acknowledged Thomas but spoke directly with Lydia. On this occasion, however, he seemed unusually tense. “Your ladyship, I am come about the men,” he began.

  “What is the trouble, Mr. Lawson?” asked Lydia, gesturing to the chair. She saw the steward glance at Thomas. “You may speak freely in front of Dr. Silkstone,” she added.

  “They are growing restless,” he began. “There’s a troublemaker, a stranger, who is stirring discontent.”

  Lydia looked disconcerted. “In what way?”

  “They want more money to work in the fields. We’ve lost four good men and at least a dozen more are struck down and they are afraid, your ladyship.”

  “And they have every right to be,” interjected Thomas. “The more they are exposed to this fog, the greater the chances of them being poisoned.”

  Lydia shook her head. “Dead men can’t spend money,” she said wryly.

  Lawson looked puzzled. “I do not follow, my lady.”

  Lydia smiled and pointed to the paper in front of her. “What good would more money be if the fog strikes them first?” She did not wait for a reply. “Dr. Silkstone and I have drawn up a set of proposals to help protect them.” She slid the paper across the desk so that Lawson could read it.