by Roz Southey
“Leave it, man,” Demsey said wearily.
“Leave it? When my friend cries out for justice? His reputation is ruined!”
It was damnably difficult to push past him; he seized my coat and for fear of tearing the cloth I was forced to turn back. His thin features were pinched, as if he had not slept nor eaten. But he had, by his breath, drunk a great deal.
“Condemned as a murderer!” he said shrilly. “For a dirty, poxed brat and a notebasher like you! Oh, you saw your way clear, didn’t you? You saw how to make your fortune at the expense of his!”
“Shut up, I say,” Demsey said through clenched teeth.
I tried to speak soothingly. “I had nothing to do with the matter.” I put a hand on Demsey’s arm, looking to deflect his rising anger, conscious of faces shifting behind windows, Barber staring from his shop door.
“Nothing to do with it?” Nichols shrieked. “Ord and Jenison are your cronies, the boy’s your apprentice. You arranged the whole thing. You killed the boy!”
Demsey swung his fist. I lunged to prevent him but too late – bone crunched as the fist connected with Nichols’s jaw. His grip on my coat loosed; he toppled into the mud of the churchyard, cracking his temple against a tombstone. Demsey was all for going for him again but I dragged him back and pinned him against the church railings.
“Leave him,” I said.
Nichols lay at our feet, moaning.
“He accused you of murder!”
“He is looking for someone – anyone – to blame. After all, his prospects disappear with Le Sac.”
“Damn it, Charles!” He rubbed at his bruised knuckles, and smiled sweetly at an elderly man who hovered in uncertain curiosity. The man hurried off.
“What do you say to a ride in the country?”
His brow creased. “Are you raving?”
“A trip to Durham.”
We left Nichols groaning in the mud and walked down the hill towards the Key. A curl of sulphurous smoke came up to meet us, yellowy-black like a bruise; the narrow curves of the Side seemed to sink into it, as if burrowing into a fragment of hell. Demsey coughed as we came into the first tendrils of the smoke but they curled up and away from us and left a mere thickening of the air, a haze as on the outskirts of a fire.
“Charles,” Demsey said, “do we go to capture Le Sac or to warn him?”
At the foot of Butcher Bank, a quack was trying to sell potions to a little cluster of women. The Row, climbing from our left up towards All Hallows Church, stank with decaying meat; a rivulet of blood came down the gutter to meet us. Demsey stepped fastidiously across it.
“Which do you suppose?”
“I suppose you’re a fool,” he said tartly. “I admit I don’t think Le Sac a murderer, but you will never persuade Ord and Jenison of that.”
“I do not look to save the man’s reputation. But his life is a different matter.” I stopped, astonished at myself. “Do you hear me, Hugh? Did you imagine you would ever hear me speak of helping Le Sac?”
“I wish I could decide who did kill the boy,” he said. He was still rubbing at his sore knuckles. “That’s more important than Le Sac’s affairs. For all you know, Charles, you might be the villain’s next victim.”
“Or you,” I pointed out. “If the villain is Nichols, for instance.”
We turned into the yard of the Golden Fleece, and Demsey went to bespeak two horses. I lingered under the arch on to the Key, watching the wisps of smoke drift along the river, hearing among the clatter of loading and unloading the whispers of spirits and their pleas for help, and involuntarily shuddering again at the thought of dying in that water, drifting in the mad babble of confused spirits, even being borne out by the tides into the desolate seas. The clatter of hooves behind me raised me from my reverie; I turned – and saw Claudius Heron outside Nellie’s. He nodded and moved on.
“That fellow’s haunting us today,” Hugh said, leading a pair of horses out to me. They were not the finest pieces of horseflesh I have ever seen but they looked sturdy enough. Hugh handed me the reins of a bay and kept a grey for himself. “This expedition has all the marks of a fool’s errand,” he said. “We are not dressed for riding, there’s a wind from the sea and a smoke coming with it – and rain too, damn it. We are not even certain the fellow went to Durham, or if he merely said so to deceive the ostler. And it’s so late in the day we will never get to Durham and back in the light!”
He hauled himself into the saddle of the grey. As in all things, he did it gracefully.
“I for one, Charles, do not intend to ride back in the small hours of the morning. The post boy was robbed of six letters beyond Chester le Street last week and I don’t want to meet the fellow who did it. I shall lodge in Durham overnight, at the Star and Rummer in the Market Place.”
I shuddered. “What, with that fellow Blenkinsop? Have you heard him sing, Hugh?”
“I don’t care how he sings. He does very good beef.”
I climbed into the saddle of my own horse, with rather less grace than Hugh. We rode up the slope on to the bridge and wound our way through the crowds of passers-by. A few raindrops splattered on my hand. “I told you!” Demsey said triumphantly.
We urged the horses up the bank in Gateshead, past St Mary’s church and its tilted, uncertain gravestones. From there, the roads diverged; we took one that led away from the town and climbed on to Gateshead Fell. We were above the smoke now; looking back towards the river, I saw it hidden beneath twisting yellow clouds. The houses on the bridge seemed to rise out of the smoke as if they floated upon it; all else was hidden.
We kept silence awhile, lost in our own thoughts. Then Demsey said, “I’m glad I hit him. Nichols, I mean. I have longed to do that for months.” I nodded absently, but my thoughts were elsewhere – wondering where poor George’s spirit wandered.
The rainstorm came upon us more quickly than we had anticipated. A great bank of dark cloud on the eastern horizon seemed to well up and race to overtake us. A blue-black pall flung itself across the sky and tossed driving torrents of water over us, stinging our exposed hands and faces. We galloped for a stand of trees a little aside from the road; the foliage had been thinned by autumn but kept the worst of the rain away. We shivered as water dripped from the trees and slid coldly down our necks. The horses shifted restlessly.
“This is dangerous, Charles,” Demsey said uneasily. “God knows what thieves might be lurking in this murk.”
“They won’t want to get wet any more than we do.” But I too fell to scanning the shifting shadows in the rain.
We sat on in gloomy silence, every so often imagining that we saw a lighter patch of sky behind the black clouds. The horses fidgeted and tossed their heads against the rain. I was inclining to Demsey’s view and contemplating a return to Newcastle when suddenly lightning streaked out of the clouds and thunder clapped hard upon its heels. My horse started and it was all I could do to prevent it rearing. I could feel it trembling between my legs.
“We can’t stay here! The trees will draw the lightning!” I jerked my head into the darkness. “Let us try to get to Gateshead. I teach the Hawks family there – they will shelter us.”
Demsey yelled agreement and we turned our horses into the fury of the rain. Then came another streak of brightness, simultaneous with the clatter of thunder, and Demsey’s horse reared up. He cried out, hauled back on the reins, fought the frightened brute. But it bolted away into the darkness, running like a pale wraith into the black moor.
I urged my horse after them, praying there were no hidden obstacles, no rabbit holes or abandoned mine workings. I could hardly see the ground beneath the horse’s hooves, reined him back to a canter. I felt him quiver as the thunder cracked overhead.
Then to my right, I saw a patch of even greater darkness. It puzzled me, even as the horse veered away from it. It was a pond, I realised, folded into a dip in the fell. Lightning flared over our heads again. A few bushes rimmed the edge of the dark water – and I
glimpsed something clinging to one of the bushes.
I dragged the unwilling horse towards the pond; reluctantly it stood shivering at the water’s edge. The object blown by the wind against the bushes was only part of an old sack, after all. I was turning away when the lightning showed me another object floating near the edge of the pond.
I dismounted, groped among the bushes for a fallen branch. Pushing the branch out into the dark water, I snagged the object, pulled it ashore. So familiar an object: a little box, of the type that violinists keep their resin in. And beneath the bushes that overhung the water’s edge bobbed a larger object, which came out only after a struggle.
Torn cloth, the dark edge of curved polished wood. A heavy object in which water sloshed. I tugged back the cloth and exposed the blackness within.
A black violin.
30
SYMPHONY
It was a dishevelled group that gathered at the pond the following morning. The day itself was bedraggled, overlaid by a blanket of grey cloud, damp with a drizzle that soaked our hair and clothes. The night before, we had ridden into Gateshead to David Hawks’s house and he had generously offered us shelter; we went to bed to the rumbling accompaniment of the thunder. In the morning we woke to find that Hawks had called out the constable, and we all rode back to the pond with a handful of Hawks’s servants.
Now one of the servants was venturing cautiously into the middle of the pond, testing his footing as he went, edging out until he was almost waist-deep. A thick rope about his waist was held by three men on the bank among the reeds; he clasped a second rope in one hand.
Suddenly he dipped, his hands splashing into the water as if he dived for a fish. But there was no silver flash of scales, no desperate flap of tail – merely a widening spread of ripples. He straightened and signalled to his friends on shore. He had left the second rope attached to something underwater. Another two fellows waded out to join him and together they dragged at the rope. It came up with a rush, water flooded away, and I saw hair hanging in rat’s tails from a lolling head.
“We were too late,” Demsey said laconically, touching the bruise on his temple where he had struck a branch during his horse’s mad flight the previous evening. “Is it just as well, I wonder?”
“Where is his horse?”
Demsey shrugged. “Gone back to its stable?”
“Nonsense. It would have been back before we set out.”
Hawks was calling to us; we went across to where the men were dragging the body on to boggy ground. The constable was bending over the body, turning the head this way and that, checking arms and legs for injuries. He, and I, saw none. Saw nothing but a parody of a man, a stocky figure hardened for ever into death, fashionable clothes torn and muddied, elegant clever fingers like claws. The constable heaved the body over; water dribbled out of the mouth.
“Drowned,” said one of the men.
“Never ride on dark nights,” said another, shaking his head philosophically.
Hawks nodded me to one side. He was a lean hard whip of a man, long past sixty but not looking a day beyond his prime. Every inch the gentleman.
“I have heard the rumours, Patterson.” Weak sunlight glinted off the silver buttons of his coat. “I saw Heron yesterday and he told me everything that has happened – the duel, the death of the boy, the suspicions of Le Sac. Do you think he was fleeing?”
I was conscious of Demsey hovering behind me. “I cannot believe him guilty of murder, sir.”
“Then what the devil was he doing out here?”
“I think he was on his way to Durham to speak with the organist there, to ask if he had anything to do with the duel.”
Hawks guffawed. “Hesletine? A miracle if he could get any sense out of Old Fusspot. Still, he might have thought to try. Don’t know when he left Newcastle, do you?”
“Late Wednesday afternoon, the ostler said.”
He pursed his lips. “Looks like an accident, then. Lost his way. Didn’t know the fell, I daresay.”
“I would have thought he did, sir,” I protested. “He gave lessons in several houses in the country.”
But it was plain he had already made up his mind. I glanced at Hugh; I was certain an accident was much too fortuitous, and Hugh seemed to agree. But what evidence did I have to prove it?
“I’ll have his body taken down into the town,” Hawks said, “and we can hold the inquest this afternoon. Might as well get it over and done with.”
My heart sank. The prospect of attending two inquests in two days was not enticing and would hardly do my reputation much good. But Hawks, scowling down at the body, went on. “Shan’t need you, Patterson. My men will bear witness to finding him.”
He strode off. Demsey came to my shoulder and together we watched the men struggle through the wet grass with their sodden burden. The body’s long fingers hung almost to the ground, the head drooped grotesquely. And at the end of the short trip, only an ignominious toss on to the back of a cart, which then bumped off across the fell.
“If Le Sac was killed on Wednesday afternoon, on his way to Durham,” Demsey said, “where’s his spirit? A day and a half is quite long enough for it to disembody.”
“He could have died on his way back – sometime yesterday. In which case, it may yet be a few hours before his spirit makes an appearance.”
“Do we still go to Durham, to find out if he was there?”
“We do,” I said.
We rode into the cathedral city two or three hours later, both tired and exhilarated by the ride. The horses were fresh and willing to gallop along the safer stretches of the road, and I almost – almost – rode out the frustrations in my mind and body.
Demsey insisted upon going to the Star and Rummer straightaway, for some of the famous beef, and the ride had stirred up my appetite to such a pitch that I was willing to fall in with his wishes. Durham is a tiny dirty town, full of colliers pushing through narrow streets, not troubling at all to get out of the way of the fastidious clerics who look down their noses at them. And above the thin houses crammed into their few streets looms the great church with its fortress-like towers, and the crenellations of the castle beside it.
In the Star and Rummer, Demsey was greeted like an old friend, shown to his favourite place by the window and supplied with beef before he had had time to ask for it. And before I could sit down, my name was shouted across the room and Mountier hurtled towards me, making the tavern seem half the size it had before. Behind him came a small man, dwarfed by Mountier but beaming. I had seen the small man once before, at a distance in the cathedral; the fellow was all nose, and I recalled that his voice came down that nose like a sheep bleating.
“Is all of Newcastle here?” Mountier cried. “We are overrun by you! Setting yourself up in competition, eh?” He ranted on while the small man smiled and raised his eyes to the ceiling.
“Friend of mine,” Demsey said to me, indicating the small man as Mountier rambled on unregarded. “Met, have you? No? Charles, this is our host, Peter Blenkinsop. Blenkinsop’s the best brewer of ale this side of York, you know. And the best singer in the cathedral choir.”
Blenkinsop hooted with laughter. Mountier flung his arms around him. “S’right. Sing, pretty Peter, sing.” And he launched into a rendering of Te Deum, Laudamus that was decidedly secular in spirit. Blenkinsop obligingly opened his mouth and good-humouredly joined in. I stared at Demsey, who was grinning; I had remembered correctly, for the man hooted through his nose like a penny trumpet.
“We are looking for someone,” I said.
Mountier stopped in the middle of an out-of-place Amen and looked reproachfully at me. “You mean you seek company other than mine, Patterson? You distress me beyond all measure.”
I recoiled from his breath. “Le Sac.”
“Oh, the French fellow.”
“Swiss,” Demsey said through a mouthful of beef.
“Seen enough of him.”
“He was here, then?”
&nbs
p; “Yesterday,” Blenkinsop said in his reedy voice. A girl slid a plate of beef in front of me. “At least, turned up late Wednesday night and was off again yesterday. And I don’t care if he never comes again. Upset the Lord and Master no end. Right after Evensong when he was looking forward to a quiet evening to himself.”
“Hesletine,” Mountier said in confidential explanation. “Deep in the throes of that Ode still and Le Sac bursts in and accuses him of some plot.”
Blenkinsop frowned. “There was talk of a duel.”
“A musical duel,” Demsey said, gulping ale. Mountier leapt up and pranced about the crowded room, in blundering imitation of swordplay. The serving girls fended him off irritably.
“Fiddlesticks at dawn!”
“The duel never took place,” I said. “And now both parties are dead.”
They were silenced, staring at me. The clatter of crockery and the raucous laughter of a party across the room seemed incongruously disrespectful.
“Who was the other fellow?” Blenkinsop asked, curiously.
“My apprentice.”
“The boy?” Mountier cried. “Alas, poor Richard.”
“George.”
“Did they stab each other with their fiddlesticks?”’
Blenkinsop, with a quick frown, tried to sober him but he was too drunk to take notice. Demsey speared meat with his knife. “The boy was murdered. Throat cut. Le Sac was found last night in a pond on Gateshead Fell.”
“Did he lose his way?” Blenkinsop asked. “There have been some devilish storms the last two nights.”
“That is the commonly believed explanation,” I said, exchanging a glance with Hugh.
“Poor fellow.”
We did not trouble ourselves to go up to Hesletine’s lodgings in the North Bailey. With the skill born of long practice, Blenkinsop banished Mountier to another party in the room and gave us a round account of what had happened on Wednesday.
Despite his voice, Blenkinsop was a sensible man. It had been his turn, evidently, to chant the psalms at evensong in the cathedral that night, and he had done so to a near-empty church, the Dean and prebendaries being at their other livings in more salubrious climes nearer London. Only the one prebendary required by statute was there, with a couple of the minor canons and Hesletine, who for all his argumentative nature was pious. On leaving the church, Hesletine had delayed Blenkinsop on some matter or other when Le Sac burst upon the scene, accusing Hesletine of all kinds of villainy.