by James McGee
Hawkwood lit the lantern and handed the tinderbox to the constable. Holding the lantern over the hole, he looked down. A set of grey stone steps came into view.
If Hyde had taken shelter in the crypt, how had he been planning to get out? There would have been no guarantee he’d be able to open the trap again. The two collapsed roof beams, which Hawkwood, Hopkins and the sexton had just moved, were proof of that.
“There’s another entrance,” Hawkwood said. He turned to the sexton. “Isn’t there?”
The sexton’s head came up. “Aye, that’s right.” His eyes narrowed. “’Ow come you know about that?”
“Where is it?”
The sexton nodded back the way they had come. “There’s a tunnel. Comes up in the corner o’ the burial ground. Inside the old dead house.”
Hawkwood recalled seeing the small stone structure, shaped like a miniature castle keep, complete with crenellated battlements, while he’d been waiting for Hopkins to excavate the grave. Common to a few churchyards, they were used to store coffins. Increasingly, they were also used to store bodies, sometimes for weeks, in the hope that the resulting putrefaction would prevent grave robbery. Hawkwood wondered if Foley’s body had been stored there. He didn’t know enough about the deterioration rate of bodies after death to know if the cadaver he’d seen in the mortuary had begun to putrefy before it had been consigned to the flames. Quill hadn’t said anything, but then even if it had been in storage, the extent of decay might not have been noticeable because of the fire damage. Not that it mattered now.
Hawkwood considered the distance between the nave and the dead house. It meant the tunnel had to be close to eighty or ninety paces in length.
The sexton read Hawkwood’s expression. “It’s old. They reckon there was another tunnel, once, which came out nearer the river. They say it was used for carryin’ the dead to the plague boats for shippin’ downstream. Not there now though, if it ever was. Probably one o’ them fairy tales told to scare the little ’uns.”
Hopkins, who had been listening to the exchange, took a step back.
“Don’t worry, Constable,” Hawkwood said softly. “It was a long time ago. It’s probably safe enough.”
“You might need this,” Pegg said.
Hawkwood looked down. The sexton was holding out a key.
“What’s this for?”
“Key to the dead-’ouse door. Didn’t think you’d want to come all the way back again in the dark. You can let yourselves out and bring it back to me later.”
Of course the place was going to be locked, Hawkwood thought. They wouldn’t store fully laden coffins in the place and then leave the bloody door open, would they? But then Hyde would have had to open the door to gain his freedom, and the sexton had just handed him the key. Which must mean …
“How many keys are there?” Hawkwood asked.
“Two. Vicar kept the other one.”
“In the house?”
“That’s right.”
“Is it still there?”
“’Ow the ’ell should I know?”
“Find out.”
“Eh?”
“I want to know if the other key’s still there. Do you know where it was kept?”
“With the rest of ’em. They’re all on hooks behind the scullery door.”
“Won’t take you long to check, then, will it?”
“But the place is locked up,” the sexton said. “On order of the bishop.”
“Break in, then,” Hawkwood said, putting his foot over the lip of the trapdoor.
Pegg stared at him, his mouth opening and closing like a fish as Hawkwood sank from view.
Hopkins was still thinking about Hawkwood’s use of the words “probably safe enough” in relation to the amount of risk involved in treading in the footsteps of plague victims. It was the “probably” that worried him. If I don’t get a commendation after this, he thought dolefully, there’s no such thing as justice. Lighting his lantern, he returned the tinderbox to the sexton.
“Was ’e serious about breakin’ in?” Pegg asked hesitantly. “Not sure I should do that.”
“Put it this way, Mr Pegg,” Hopkins said, “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes if he finds out you haven’t done it.”
“But –”
“Do it, Mr Pegg. Don’t think about it, just do it.”
“Right, well, just so you know, it ain’t my responsibility, is all I’m sayin’.”
“Understood, Mr Pegg. Best not waste any time though, eh?” The constable smiled. Then, gritting his teeth and leaving a reluctant Sexton Pegg to investigate the vicarage, he pressed his cap firmly on to his head and followed Hawkwood down the stairway.
Hawkwood could see immediately that the chamber was very old. The walls, from what he could make out in the darkness, looked to be a mixture of ancient brick and crumbling stone. The roof was low and curved. It reminded him of Quill’s mortuary, though a less well-lit, smaller and more claustrophobic version, and it undoubtedly predated the remains of the church above them, if not the one that had gone before, and, quite possibly, the one before that. He heard Hopkins’ boots clumping down the steps behind him and moved aside to give the constable room.
Holding his lantern at shoulder height, Hopkins surveyed his surroundings. Shadows played across his pale face. “What are we looking for, s—, Captain?”
Maybe I’ll know it when I see it, Hawkwood thought. He left Hopkins’ side without answering and moved away from the steps, following the line of the wall. The roof wasn’t much more than a foot or so above his head. The urge to tuck his neck into his shoulders increased with every step he took. As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom he saw there were cavities along the walls. Some of them held stone coffins. There were carvings on them: skulls, leaves, crosses, Roman numerals. A few of the lids carried effigies, some in ecclesiastical dress, others in what appeared to be military garments. Like the crypt that housed them, they appeared ancient.
He heard footsteps behind him and saw that Hopkins had also begun to explore. At the bottom of the steps they’d had the advantage of daylight slanting through the open trap, but the further they moved away from the point of entry, the darker their surroundings became. The lanterns only served to illuminate a few yards on either side of them. Nevertheless, they cast enough of a glow to reveal that Hawkwood and the constable were not the only ones down there.
Hawkwood had spotted several rats out of the corner of his eye, their sleek fur rippling in the candlelight as they scampered for cover. He’d felt more than one brush past his feet. Judging from the expletives voiced by Hopkins, the constable had felt them too.
But he could not see any evidence of recent human occupation.
He heard a faint skittering sound close to the ground and felt the contact of tiny claws running across the toe of his boot. Instinctively, he kicked out and heard the high-pitched squeal as his foot made contact, accompanied by the brittle sound of glass striking stone.
He looked down. There was no sign of the rat. The rodent had survived to fight another day. What the lantern glow did pick up was a reflection. He squatted down, thinking it might have been a trick of the eye, but then he saw it, lying on its side at the base of one of the stone coffins: a long-necked bottle, lying on its side. A little further back in the alcove he saw a tin plate and a cup. He picked up the bottle and brought it closer to the lantern. It was corked and there was liquid inside it. Hawkwood put the lantern down and levered the cork from the bottle. Pouring a small measure of the contents into the mug, he took a sniff, then a tentative sip. Wine; still drinkable.
He straightened as he heard Hopkins emit a sharp intake of breath.
The constable was standing a few yards away with his back to him. He was motionless, staring at something ahead of them. Hawkwood put the mug and bottle down, picked up the lantern, and walked forward cautiously.
’Ceptin’ a few bones, the sexton had told them.
Only there weren’t a few.
There were hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, rising out of the earthen floor; a wall of bones, as wide as a door and piled as high as a tall man, extending down the centre of the chamber as far as the light could reach, like the fortifications of some ancient underground citadel. There were more bones in the side alcoves. Every available space, recess and shelf was crammed with them. Skulls, large and small, so many that from a distance they would have looked like pebbles on a beach, the empty, eyeless sockets and hollow nasal cavities black with shadow in the lantern glow. And alongside them, thighbones, stacked from floor to roof, like stored winter logs.
The constable was rooted to the spot, as if he couldn’t quite take in what he was seeing. Hawkwood moved past him. As he grew closer to the bone piles, he realized their sheer volume was reflecting the light, extending the radius of illumination. The chamber was more than a crypt. It was a charnel house.
The place must have been in use for centuries, Hawkwood realized. As the burial ground became clogged, the older remains would have been relocated by generations of gravediggers, transferring the bones direct via the tunnel from graveyard to crypt without the need to carry them through the church. The skulls and thighbones were the most prominent because superstition dictated they were necessary for the Resurrection. He looked to his right. The constable’s hand was twitching.
“They’re only bones,” Hawkwood said. “They won’t bite.”
“There was a charnel house beneath my father’s church,” the constable said hoarsely. “There were men working. One day the floor gave way and two of them fell through. They landed on a pile of skulls. It collapsed on top of them. They were down there in the darkness for hours. It was said that by the time they’d got them out, they’d both lost their minds. They wouldn’t stop screaming.” The constable’s voice faded away.
No wonder Hopkins had shown reluctance to accompany him, Hawkwood thought.
They moved on, following the bone wall. Occasionally there would be a crunch underfoot as a boot heel bore down on a stray shard of skull. The crypt was a lot bigger than Hawkwood had expected.
He estimated they had travelled about sixty or seventy paces from the entrance when the bone wall came to an abrupt end. He saw that the section of crypt that lay ahead had begun to narrow. There was a muttered oath from Hopkins as the top of his cap grazed the chamber roof. Hawkwood suspected they were probably about to enter the tunnel leading to the burial ground entrance. Both men were forced to lower their heads. Their shadows formed strange humpbacked silhouettes on the walls as the earth pressed in around them. Transporting the bones of the dead down the tunnel and into the charnel house must have been like working in a mine. But at least those involved in the grim work would have had some light to guide them. A series of eye-level niches had been hacked into the walls on either side of the shaft. Set into the base of each one was a short stub of unlit candle.
Hawkwood was reminded of the shafts he’d seen during his army days, dug by engineers to undermine enemy ramparts by means of well-placed explosive charges, where the men doing the excavating had been forced to crawl on hands and knees. Sometimes mistakes were made and charges had been detonated before all the sappers had made their withdrawal, burying the men alive. It had been a terrible way to die.
The tunnel floor began to slope upwards. A break appeared in the floor ahead. Hawkwood could see the base of another set of stone steps, rising towards a closed wooden door. They moved in that direction.
Hawkwood went first. The door was unsecured and opened outwards and he found himself emerging into the dark confines of the dead house. The relief at being able to stand upright once more was almost intoxicating. The lantern glow revealed a square, windowless storage space containing six wooden trestles. Four of them held cheap coffins, all with lids closed. There was a smell to the place that he couldn’t identify, like sickly, sweet incense. He suspected that at least one of the coffins held a body that had started to putrefy. With the vicar dead, he wondered how long it would be before the bodies were consigned to the ground. And what would the smell be like then? He crossed the room quickly, inserted the key in the lock of the outer door, and hauled it open.
Inhaling the cold fresh air, Hawkwood felt a surge of excitement. The cup and plate and the half-finished bottle of wine were an indication that the crypt had been visited recently, although there was no proof they’d been placed there by Hyde. Still, it was a possibility, and it meant he at least had something to take back to the Chief Magistrate other than the dried mud and rat shit on his boots and the streaks of ash on his face and cuffs. But was it enough to convince James Read that the colonel might still be alive?
He heard a sigh of relief as Hopkins emerged into the room behind him. Followed by an exhalation of air as the constable’s nose picked up the smell from the dead house’s other occupants.
Hawkwood turned. As he did so, the corner of the nearest coffin lid, trapped by the light spilling through the open doorway, caught his eye. The lid was not lying flush, he saw, as if it hadn’t been fastened down securely. He could also see there was something poking out between the coffin and the lid. Curious, Hawkwood moved closer. It looked like material of some kind. Lining perhaps, although the coffin didn’t look to be of good enough quality to warrant a lining. Hawkwood reached out and rubbed the dark cloth between his fingers. It felt too coarse for a lining. It felt more like …
Placing the lantern on the top of an adjacent coffin, Hawkwood hooked his fingers under the lip and lifted the lid.
He heard the constable gasp in surprise.
The faded white dress showed that the body was female, as did the slender form beneath it. The crumpled black coat and matching breeches lying across the body and head as if they had been thrust there in a hurry, however, were undeniably male. By the light from the lantern, Hawkwood could see that they were heavily stained and speckled with what looked like white dust. He lifted the clothes from the coffin and stepped away, taking them towards the open door. They felt slightly damp to the touch. Hawkwood turned the coat over in his hands. There were more marks on the sleeves and on the coat tails. He held the coat up to his face. The smell was instantly recognizable. It was smoke. He knew then that the white marks hadn’t been caused by dust. They were minute flakes of ash.
And then from what seemed a mile away, he heard Hopkins say in a small, very still voice, “Officer Hawkwood, there’s something here I think you should look at.”
Hawkwood turned. Hopkins was staring into the open coffin. “Sir?” the constable said again. There was a new urgency in his voice.
Hawkwood walked back. Hopkins was leaning over the coffin, his lantern held close to the body. He was peering at something. His eyes were narrowed, as if he couldn’t quite make out what he was seeing. Suddenly he straightened. Sensing Hawkwood beside him, he turned. His face was transfixed, an immovable yellow mask. Then his lips parted. They continued to move in silence, his throat constricting, as though he was about to disgorge something recently swallowed. No words were uttered. It was the expression of horror in the constable’s eyes that compelled Hawkwood to look down.
“Look at her face,” Hopkins whispered.
Hawkwood did so.
Affixed to the front of the corpse’s skull, in perfect alignment with the eyes and nose, cheeks and jaw, was what appeared to be some kind of visor. It was the nature of the material the visor had been fashioned from that had caused the tremor in the constable’s voice. The visor was not made of metal, neither was it cut from cloth or hide, though it did bear some semblance to seasoned leather. It also gave the impression the deceased had suffered from some terrible flesh-wasting disease. It was a mask of human skin.
12
“Very well, Hawkwood. You’ve convinced me.”
The Chief Magistrate pushed himself away from his desk and moved to the window, hands clasped behind his back. “Even though you saw him fall. You and a hundred others.”
“No,” Hawkwood said. “We didn’t see
him fall. We saw him jump. He didn’t trip. He didn’t overbalance. He bloody jumped. It was deliberate. He knew what he was doing and he fooled us all. That’s why we heard the bell toll. He used the rope to lower himself to the ground. Then he climbed down into the crypt, closed the trap after him and made his way through the tunnel. Came up inside the dead house and made his escape. It would have been a close-run thing. It would have taken exceptional timing, but he did it. It was bloody clever.”
“And he is not a young man,” Read said.
“No, he’s not, but Apothecary Locke told me he’s an athletic man who kept himself in good physical shape by performing regular exercises.”
“In other words,” Read said flatly, “he was preparing himself.”
Hawkwood nodded. “He planned everything, even down to the theft of the scalpel and the laudanum. The apothecary said that Tombs was a regular visitor to the colonel’s cell. Hyde used the visits to bleed Tombs for information. He’d have found out about the church, the charnel house and the tunnel, even the spare bloody key. Tombs probably made him laugh with a story of some poor bugger getting locked in, which was why they had another key made. The sexton checked the house. The second key was missing. I’ll wager the bastard even got the parson talking about recent burials during each of his visits and timed his escape to coincide with the burial of someone close to his own age and size. He knew if he could fake his own death and make us all believe he’d done away with himself, we’d give up the chase. So he waited until the right corpse came along and then made his move. Dug the poor sod up, maybe even dressed him in some of the parson’s spare clothes – he’d have found them in the house – and placed the body in the church, then he lit his funeral pyre. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d been wearing Foley’s burial suit when he made his escape. Probably stowed it in the crypt in preparation. The shine I saw on his clothing before he jumped would have been water. He’d doused himself as a precaution. That’s why the jacket and breeches I found felt damp. They hadn’t had time to dry.”