Cold Cruel Winter

by Chris Nickson

  ‘Aye, I am. I saw him a little while ago.’ He paused, trying to sound casual. ‘Look, why don’t you go and see Frances? There’s nothing more you can do for now.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we be hunting Wyatt? After him attacking the boss.’

  Sedgwick sighed, folding his long body awkwardly into the Constable’s chair. ‘Believe me, if I even had an idea where to look we’d go after him. But I don’t have a clue. Do you?’

  ‘No,’ Josh admitted.

  A sense of failure hung in the room.

  ‘Look, lad, you go. If I need you for anything, I know where you’ll be.’

  ‘All right.’

  Alone, Sedgwick listened to the city outside the walls. There was the creak of carts as they turned from Briggate on to Kirkgate, conversations of people passing like the soft drone of bees. It seemed as if the city was beginning to come alive once more, a gradual rousing as the snow started to disappear.

  After shivering and freezing and false starts, the fresh hope of spring was welcome. There’d been so much death in the last months. Among the worst he’d seen were the twins, pretty girls no more than a month old, swaddled in old, stained linen and left out in a doorway with a note saying ‘I hav no muny. I hav no fud. I hav no milk.’ The babes were already dead when he found them, their flesh chilled and waxy against his fingers. For the first time since he’d taken this job, he’d cried.

  For so many, the weather had meant no work and no money. They’d starved, trying to scavenge grass and roots from under the snow wherever they could. He’d seen men begging and pleading for something to eat for their families.

  But the memory that stood out from all others had come in January, when the cold was deepest. An infant, barely old enough to walk and talk, had been toddling down the street, stumbling in the ice, falling and then standing again. He was dressed in a shirt that was too large for him and breeches with no coat, his thin shoes soaked and full of holes. When Sedgwick had asked where he lived, the boy had lifted one small fist. His knuckles white from the strain of grasping it tight, he produced a small piece of metal, rubbed shiny by years of use. It was a sign to hang over a bottle’s neck, reading Ale.

  ‘Mama gave me,’ he said proudly. ‘My name. Hungry.’

  The boy had no idea where he lived or who his mother was. All he owned was this worthless piece of tin with a word stamped on it. Sedgwick had found the lad a home, but if he hadn’t he’d have taken him back with him, a younger brother for James. Within a day, frostbite started to blacken the boy’s toes and fingers. Inside a week he had died, his screaming hoarse and terrified.

  The pictures were trickling through his memory when the door of the jail opened and a clerk from the Moot Hall entered. He was a small man, with an ungainly limp where a broken leg had once been badly set. He nodded briefly, took off his battered tricorn hat and in a friendly tone said, ‘Still getting a bit warmer. Happen we’ve seen the last of all this, eh?’

  ‘Maybe,’ the deputy agreed cautiously. He’d seen the man before, always ready with gossip or a lengthy joke in the Ship.

  ‘Mr Nottingham here?’

  ‘He had some things to do,’ Sedgwick lied. The boss didn’t need what had happened with Wyatt bandied around. ‘I don’t think he’ll be back today.’

  The man shrugged. ‘Tell him his Worship wants to see him. Nothing too urgent. It’s about the Henderson brothers.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Be better if they just hung the pair of them. But you never heard that from me,’ he added hurriedly.

  Sedgwick grinned and the other man turned to leave.

  ‘You got money in this city you can do anything.’

  ‘We keep trying,’ the deputy said.

  ‘You can’t fight wealth,’ the man told him with a shake of his head, as if the words had been written by the Church. And they might as well have been, Sedgwick reflected as the man closed the door. Money did what it wanted and walked roughshod over everything else. It didn’t care what bones it broke or the injuries it left.

  He despised it. Once, back in the days when he was starting out with the Constable, he’d believed he could change that, that he might be able to bring proper justice to the poor. Time had kicked those ideas from under him. The rich made the rules. If those rules conflicted with the law, then all it took was a word, a little money, and the law was forgotten.

  The Hendersons would walk free. It was as certain as tomorrow. All their evidence, their witness, it would mean nothing. He’d never paid much attention to Isaac the Jew himself, but letting them go would be the same as pissing on his grave. It wouldn’t be the first time, or even the second. And it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

  He gathered up his coat, locked the door as he left the jail, and made his way up Briggate. Time to check on the men around the judge’s house. After what had happened to the boss, they couldn’t take any chances. Wyatt couldn’t be allowed to come close to Dobbs.

  He felt the air against his face. It was warmer than it had been a couple of hours ago. Glancing up, the skies were still grey, but the leaden tinge had vanished. Perhaps things might improve, after all.

  To his surprise, the men were set and alert. Only one had vanished to go drinking, and Sedgwick dragged him out of the tavern and back to his post, scarcely able to stand. There was just enough of a chill in the air to keep him alert and awake, especially after night fell.

  Slowly he made his way home, walking the circuit of places to check every evening, from out by the old manor house to the banks of the Aire, under Leeds Bridge and along by the warehouses.

  It added time to the day, yet he found satisfaction in it. Sometimes he felt like a lord, walking the boundaries of his property and exulting in all he saw. Occasionally, after the day had seemed like hour after hour of pain, it was a way to calm down, to let his long legs stretch and stride out. Somewhere in the distance he could hear a drunken voice trying to sing a verse of Black Jack Davy as a fiddle scraped along after a fashion.

  The song dug up distant memories. He’d been thirteen, maybe a little younger, and up by the Market Cross with his father. They were part of a crowd watching a travelling troupe. Someone had sung that, and the story of a lady leaving her husband to run off with a Gypsy had seemed so wonderful. He’d hunted around until he found someone who knew the words, and then sung it for years when he was on his own, walking outside the city. Those days were long gone, but he found himself humming the tune again as he completed his rounds.

  By the time he reached his room he was tired, ready to turn his back on the world for a few hours and enjoy his family. As soon as he opened the door, he knew that wouldn’t happen.

  Lizzie rose from her stool, James quiet in her arms. Josh was kneeling by the bed, head in his hands, and the sheet had been pulled over Frances’s head. One more victim, he thought. Leave him a minute, Lizzie mouthed, shaking her head as he moved towards the lad, and he knew she was right. Everyone needed their own way to say farewell.

  Instead, Sedgwick took James, feeling the life of the boy as he wriggled in his grasp, smiling and happy to see his father. The joy flowed through him, a contrast to the scene across the room. Lizzie drew him aside and whispered, ‘I’ll wash her and prepare her. Poor mite wouldn’t have a clue what to do.’

  He didn’t need to ask if she’d done it before. By her age almost every woman had. They’d buried parents, husbands, babes, and seen the cruel endings of life. He kissed her on the forehead and let James slide gently to the floor. The boy wandered to the corner to play with a wooden horse that Sedgwick had awkwardly carved.

  ‘Can you make sure she’s buried soon?’ Lizzie asked.

  He nodded. The boss would look after it.

  He held Lizzie tenderly, her warmth comforting against his body. Josh had barely moved, but it was time. Time for him to go home, to see that life continued. The deputy took him softly by the shoulders, raising him to his feet. The lad’s face was wet with silent tears, and Sedgwick wiped them away with his sleeve.

&
nbsp; ‘Come on,’ he said tenderly. ‘She’s gone now. There’s no more pain for her.’

  Josh gave one long, last look as the door closed.

  They walked, absorbed in their thoughts. Sedgwick kept his arm draped over the lad’s shoulder, for the contact, to keep him close to this world. When they reached the room, Josh’s hands shook so much that he couldn’t push the key into the lock. The deputy took it from him, turning it, knowing how Josh would be fearing the night ahead, and the procession of days to follow.

  ‘Make sure you’re at work tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We need you.’

  He lit a tallow candle, its acrid smell quickly filling the place with a circle of light. Shadows clung to the corners, the inviting places outside time. The lad was sitting on the bed, his face stunned, gazing around the room as if he hoped to find Frances alive there.

  ‘Look,’ Sedgwick began. ‘It hurts, I know that. It’s going to hurt. But all you can do is face it.’ He paused. ‘Come in to work in the morning,’ he repeated. ‘It’ll be better than being here by yourself. Trust me.’

  He waited until the boy nodded absently. Maybe he’d heard, maybe he hadn’t. The morning would give him the answer. He patted Josh’s shoulder sympathetically, then left.

  Twenty-Seven

  He raged around the room. In his fury, he kicked over the desk and an inkwell spun into the corner, spraying a crazed blue stream. He picked up the small knife he used to delicately remove skin and plunged it into the table.

  The veins in his neck were bulging, the way they always did when his temper flared. He let out a long yell of frustration, knowing none could hear him. After his failed attempt to ambush the Constable he’d bolted back here, to the one place he was safe.

  The weather, the fucking weather. He’d fooled Nottingham so perfectly. He’d have him strapped to the chair now if the man hadn’t slipped on the ice, if the girl hadn’t appeared in the doorway.

  If.

  The Constable had been completely unprepared. He’d expected more of him than that. It had taken so little to convince him, to catch him off his guard. Those hours spent watching quietly, of asking small questions to learn names and relationships, they’d all paid off.

  Now he was here alone. All his planning had crumbled, and his anger filled the room like water, roaring loudly between the walls. He couldn’t come close to the judge for all the men around him, but the Constable had been so cocky . . .

  He closed his eyes and laid his left hand on the table, pushing the palm against the wood. He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, forcing everything from his lungs before he drew air back in. With his right hand he drew the knife from the table, holding it lightly.

  He waited until his breathing had steadied, until he began to feel in control again. The knife was firm in his grasp. Lovingly, he stroked the blade lightly across the back of his left hand.

  He didn’t even feel it cut the skin. The pain arrived with the first ooze of blood. He gasped for a moment, the way he did every time. He’d let it flow for a minute, then staunch it with a cloth.

  This was his ritual of failure, his way to chastise himself. Every scar on the back of his hand was a reminder of a time he hadn’t succeeded. Some were for things so small he could no longer recall them, while others held deeper, harder memories.

  He’d begun it in the Indies. He’d watched an overseer slice open a slave’s back to serve as a bloody reminder that he’d failed to escape. In the heat and sweat there any wound could quickly fester. That was part of the attraction. Every failure brought the possibility of death. Each cut was a lesson, and he’d try to learn from every one.

  The blood had trickled over his hand and on to the table in a dark, tiny puddle. The red stood out, garish, against his flesh. Finally he reached out for the cloth and pressed it on the wound, watching the rich colour spread.

  He felt calmer now. Nottingham was still out there, rather than here, where he should be. At least he’d hurt the man, he knew that. It was some tiny consolation. And he’d have him here, sooner or later, just as he’d have the judge. He already had much of the third volume of his book written, the sheets now scattered across the floor.

  The isolation of the house helped him. Down in the cellar they could scream as loud as they liked and no one would hear, no one would come. Charlotte had done well to find this place. He’d managed to send her money he’d embezzled from his masters in the Indies. They were just small scraps, irregular, but she’d hoarded them with care.

  She’d kept her faith in him. She’d always believed he’d return. She was the first woman to return his trust, to love him completely. When he reached Leeds after his long journey from Jamaica she’d been exactly where she promised she’d be every night, waiting for him and nursing a single glass of gin in the Ship.

  Wyatt had never asked how she’d survived all the years he’d been gone. He was scared that he’d hate the answers, that he’d look at her differently. She’d be back soon with food, walking the half-mile out from Leeds to this place in the empty valley below Woodhouse Hill. There was a grand house farther up the slope, but its owner had closed it up for the winter.

  The Bradford road ran a quarter of a mile to the south, distant enough that no sound could reach it. From there a track led to the house, running across flat land. No one could come close without being seen.

  He heard the solid clunk of the door and knew Charlotte had returned. She’d hurry down, eager for a view of the captive Constable. Her footsteps rang over the floor above his head and he imagined her putting things away, her eyes alive with anticipation.

  When he’d explained to her about the revenge he’d planned, she’d gripped his hand tightly, smiled, and hissed, yes. The hatred on her face as he listed their names, counting them off on his dark fingers, had seemed like love to him. It was worth every second, every drop of sweat under the sun on the other side of the world.

  She’d helped him with Graves and Rushworth, taking delight in their torment. She enjoyed hurting them; she revelled in their screams and cries as much as he did. But she gave him the pleasure of the death and then left him to cut and cure the skin. And she’d been the one to dispose of the bodies. She was far stronger than she appeared. No one looked twice at a woman helping her drunk man home in the early morning. All it took was a few scolding words to the corpse if she saw anyone. Then she’d lay the body down, take his coat and hurry away.

  He righted the desk and gathered the papers, sorting them into order. The bleeding had stopped, and he peeled the cloth from his hand.

  ‘Do you have him?’ Charlotte shouted from upstairs. He could hear the eagerness in her voice.

  ‘No,’ he yelled back. ‘The bastard got away.’

  ‘What?’ She hurried down to him, and he saw the anger flash bright across her face. ‘I thought you said you had it all planned.’

  ‘I did. He slipped on the ice as I hit him. Then when I was ready to finish him, his daughter came out of the house.’

  She slapped him hard across the face, the sound echoing around the thick stone walls. Colour rushed into her cheeks, darkening her skin even further. It had always been this way when he displeased her. She’d lash out until her rage had run. He stood still, letting her hit him again and again. He’d had worse from the overseers. Telling her it hadn’t been his fault, that the Constable had had luck on his side, would make no difference.

  She’d always angered quickly. But she loved him later. In the silent aftermath she’d bathe the scratches she’d left, kiss the bruises and the welts. She’d trail her hair, still black and lustrous, across his chest.

  Finally she stopped, panting for breath, her lip bleeding slightly where she’d bitten it.

  ‘So what are you going to do now?’ She spat the words out so he wasn’t sure if it was a serious question or a taunt.

  His face stung from the blows, his cheeks burning from pain and from shame. He let his hands hang by his sides, the cut on his hand still a vivid slash.
r />   ‘Nottingham’s going to be prepared now,’ she continued. ‘He’ll be wary. And he’ll have more men on the judge, too.’

  He nodded. She was right, every word was right. It was going to be difficult now.

  ‘You’d better think,’ she told him, her voice suddenly becoming husky and intimate. ‘We need to finish this.’

  Twenty-Eight

  By morning the snow and ice had melted into soft, mushy pools. At first the Constable tried to pick his way around them, but he gave up long before he reached the Parish Church. His boots were sodden, his feet cold and wet.

  He could move the fingers on his left hand, but he could still barely raise his arm. Mary had helped him dress, fussing when he winced as the coat touched the wound. His shoulder throbbed, the pain sharp when he moved it. But he’d survived worse before. A pistol was primed and ready in each of his coat pockets, next to the knives. He’d not be a fool again.

  Sedgwick was already at the jail when he arrived, the signs of a sleepless night heavy under his eyes. He stood up hastily as Nottingham entered.

  ‘Are you all right, boss?’

  ‘Just walking wounded, John.’ He grinned. ‘I’ll be fine in a few days. How’s Frances? Is there any improvement?’

  The deputy was quiet for a long, awkward moment before he answered.

  ‘She died.’

  The words hung in the air. Nottingham shook his head sadly. ‘Oh Jesus. I’m sorry. How’s Josh?’

  ‘I took him home last night. Told him to come in this morning. It’ll take his mind off things if he’s busy.’

  The Constable nodded his agreement. ‘If he doesn’t come in, go and check on him.’

  ‘I will.’ He sighed. ‘By the way, someone from the Mayor’s office was here yesterday afternoon. The Mayor wants to see you. About the Hendersons.’

  ‘More trouble there. Wait and see, we’ll be lucky if it comes to court.’

  ‘Boss?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lizzie asked if you could arrange the funeral for Frances.’