The Devil's Monk

by Sara Fraser

  The gunpowder charge was exploded, the winch brake released and the balloon rose, accompanied by a roar of cheering from the spectators and the Yeomanry band playing the National Anthem.

  In the gondola Vincent Sorenty was telling Amy, ‘If you don’t feel fully confident then all you need to do is the one touch.’

  Amy’s eyes were gleaming, her cheeks flushed, her heart thudding. She was totally in the grip of the adrenaline coursing through her body. ‘I’m confident, Vince!’ she declared forcefully. ‘I’m very confident!’

  Standing before the grandstand, Mario Fassia was using the brass speaking-trumpet to inform his audience of Gentlefolk: ‘My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen. What you are about to witness has never before been performed anywhere in the world. I pray you to keep your gaze fixed upon the gondola so that you do not miss a single second of this world-first performance.’

  On this second ascent the balloon rose much higher than the first, and onlookers were speculating aloud: ‘Must be up a hundred yards or more?’ ‘No, got to be nearer two hundred!’ ‘How far is it up, d’you reckon, Charlie?’ ‘Looks like a good half a mile to me!’

  Tom Potts could only stand with his fists clenched, silently entreating over and over again, ‘Dear God, I beg you, keep her safe! Dear God, I beg you, keep her safe!’

  Suddenly a white object plummeted from the side of the gondola and bounced to a halt to swing wildly on the end of a rope. A concerted outcry of shock erupted from the watchers. In rapid succession three more white objects toppled from different sides of the gondola to bounce and swing on ropes, and each time the outcries and roars of the crowd intensified in noise and wild excitement.

  After a few brief seconds the sharper-eyed onlookers realized: ‘Theym sheep!’

  ‘Theym all bloody sheep!’

  Mario Fassia was screaming through his trumpet, ‘Oh my God! Bo Peep’s sheep are running away! Bo Peep, where are you? Your sheep are running away! Bo Peep’s sheep are running away! Bo Peep! Bo Peep! Bo Peep!’

  The Gentlefolk in the grandstand took up the shout. ‘Bo Peep! Bo Peep! Bo Peep!’

  And like a wildfire the shout flashed through the concourse and thousands of voices were bawling, shrieking, screaming, ‘Bo Peep! Bo Peep! Bo Peep!’

  In the gondola, Amy was having a harness fitted around her waist and shoulders, which was then secured to the end of a rope being held by the two crewmen.

  ‘Now try to keep all your moves as smooth as you can. Remember, it’s got to look graceful,’ Vincent Sorenty was telling her repeatedly.

  ‘Graceful, graceful, graceful.’ Amy muttered the word to herself as Vincent Sorenty opened the large, wide rectangular trapdoor in the middle of the gondola floor then took his place on the rope with the crewmen.

  Amy sat down on the edge of the aperture, her legs dangling in the air. She gripped her shepherds crook tightly to her chest and said, ‘At the count of three, Vincent!’

  ‘All right.’ He nodded. ‘Take your grip, lads. Good luck, Amy. One! Two! Three!’

  She propelled herself into the void; fell only a yard and was jerked to a stop then slowly and evenly lowered down, swinging gently from side to side, waving her multi-tasselled crook at the roaring mass of upturned faces below.

  ‘Here she comes, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen! Here comes Bo Peep to drive the flock back where they belong. Here comes Bo Peep!’

  Again the Gentlefolk took up the cry. ‘Bo Peep! Bo Peep! Bo Peep!’

  Again the concourse followed suit. ‘Bo Peep! Bo Peep! Bo Peep!’

  Amy’s descent halted when she was at the level of the noisily terrified, wildly wriggling sheep. She drew a series of deep breaths and began her performance.

  Tom was physically and mentally transfixed as he watched Amy swooping and circling, going from sheep to sheep, using the crook to pull and push them in different directions. Drawing them after her. Clasping them close to her. Spinning them with her. Swooping and circling beneath them as, one by one, they were drawn upwards to be taken back into the gondola.

  Mario Fassia screamed, ‘There now, another runaway sheep is sent back to the flock. Bo Peep is a truly wonderful shepherdess, is she not?’

  The answer roared back from a thousand throats. ‘Yes, she is!’

  The final sheep began its rise upwards, frantically wriggling and struggling to be free. Amy began swooping round in increasingly wide circles, waving the tasselled crook and glorying in the tumultuous applause from the crowd.

  Then suddenly the final sheep was toppling downwards and a shouting, screaming uproar erupted as those beneath its fall path scrambled and fought to get clear. It crashed on to the ground, bounced once only and lay motionless.

  Mario Fassia reacted instantly, running into the crowd shouting through his speaking-trumpet, ‘That sheep is Bo Peep’s present to the Poorhouse, to give the paupers a fine, fresh meat supper!’

  A storm of appreciative cheering erupted and people resentfully made way for Tom to push through towards the dead sheep.

  Vincent Sorenty released gas through the top valve and the balloon began to slowly descend. The Yeomanry band struck up the tune ‘Rule Britannia’. Interest in the dead sheep almost instantly evaporated and the crowd began to crush as near as they could to the launch site.

  Tom was standing staring down at the bloodied, bulge-eyed sheep when another man pushed through the crowd to join him.

  ‘Well, this is a stroke o’ luck for my lodgers, aren’t it, Master Potts?’ Edwin Lewis grinned happily. ‘And the other stroke o’ luck is that I’ve got the horse and cart wi’ me. I’m too long in the tooth now to tote a heavy pack o’ rations like this ’un all the way to Webheath.’

  ‘Indeed it is a stroke of luck, Master Lewis,’ Tom replied, not taking his gaze away from the sheep. Then, kneeling down, he pressed his hands on different parts of the animal, kneading the flesh with his fingers.

  When he stood upright, he was so deep in thought that he appeared to be unaware of anything around him.

  The Poorhouse Master regarded Tom curiously for some moments, then queried, ‘Am you all right, Master Potts? Only you don’t seem altogether like yourself today.’

  There was no reaction from Tom, and Lewis waited several more seconds before touching Tom’s arm and asking in a louder voice, ‘Am you hearing me, Master Potts?’

  Tom blinked hard, shook his head, turned to face his questioner and asked, ‘Will you be butchering this beast today, Master Lewis?’

  ‘Oh, yes. My lodgers aren’t tasted a bit o’ fresh mutton for a month or more, so this ’ull be a nice treat for their suppers.’

  Tom coughed to ease the tightness which was gripping his throat, and requested hesitantly, ‘Will you please allow myself and Doctor Laylor to butcher it for you, Master Lewis? We’ll do it in his dispensary this very hour, and I can guarantee it will be done very neatly, with not a morsel of edible flesh being lost to you. I do assure you that I have a very good reason for making this request, which at a later date I will fully explain to you.’

  Lewis emitted a shout of laughter and answered, ‘You don’t have to explain, Master Potts – it’ll save me a bloody, messy job. So you and Doctor Laylor am very welcome to do the butchering. But there’s one condition on me letting you do it! You both must come back wi’ me to the Poorhouse to have some of it for supper wi’ me and the Missus, and our lodgers.’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll both be very happy to do so, Master Lewis, and many thanks for your kind invitation,’ Tom instantly agreed. He called to a nearby Special Constable, ‘Please go to the grandstand and tell Doctor Laylor that I need him to come here to me straight away.’

  FORTY-ONE

  Tardebigge Churchyard.

  Sunday, mid-morning, 6 September, 1829

  ‘What’s this, Constable Potts?’ Joseph Blackwell exclaimed incredulously. ‘Are you drunk? Is that your excuse for having me summoned out from church in the middle of My Lord Aston’s sermon? Certainly My Lord Aston will be e
xtremely displeased with you for this blatantly insolent discourtesy.’

  Tom shook his head. ‘Indeed, I’m not drunk, Sir. I’m come here to tell you that yesterday I discovered the true cause of the Haystack Woman’s death.’

  ‘But we already know that she was battered to death!’ Blackwell now stared at Tom in utter disbelief. ‘I do declare, Master Potts, if it’s not the drink that’s addled your mind then you’re afflicted by a brainstorm!’

  ‘In that case, Sir, Doctor Laylor is also suffering from that affliction, because he is in complete agreement with what I’m trying to tell you.’ Tom’s manner and tone of voice abruptly hardened. ‘I don’t give a damn for Lord Aston’s displeasure! But I do expect you to have the courtesy to hear me out. Will you do so, Sir? Without further insult or interruption?’

  After a long pause, Joseph Blackwell bowed and said quietly, ‘Firstly, allow me to apologise for my own churlish rudeness, for which I do most sincerely beg your pardon, Thomas Potts. Secondly, I will listen without interruption to all you have to tell me. So please, will you be good enough to do so without further delay.’

  Tom bowed to acknowledge the apology, then began, ‘It was the sheep that fell from the balloon yesterday that enabled me to discover the true cause of the woman’s death.’ He went on to describe in detail how he and Hugh Laylor had carried out a post-mortem on the animal and discovered that many of its skeletal, muscular and internal organs injuries coincided so closely indeed to those of the Haystack Woman, that it was beyond all doubt. ‘The woman’s injuries can only have resulted by her falling from a considerably greater height than even that sheep did.’

  ‘Will you please walk with me, Thomas Potts, while I give consideration to what you’ve told me,’ Blackwell requested, and the pair went side by side out from the churchyard and along the neighbouring lane exchanging no words, both wrapped in their own thoughts.

  The lane eventually took them downwards to the canal, and as they slowly strolled along the towpath, Joseph Blackwell remarked reflectively, ‘And now you believe that the Haystack Woman must have fallen from a balloon, do you not?’

  ‘I do, Sir,’ Tom confirmed. ‘We’ve already established that she had only been dead for a matter of hours when she was discovered by Corporal Maffey. The type and extent and gravity of her injuries can only have resulted from a very great height of fall. To my knowledge there is no man-made edifice or high place of such a great height that lies close enough to Redditch Town to have enabled her to be transported and discovered here with her body still in the process of Rigor Mortis.’

  ‘So tell me, Thomas Potts, how do you propose to identify this particular balloon that you believe she fell from? How do you persuade me to pressure the Vestry into allotting sufficient money to finance any continuance of investigations?’

  The question triggered immediate waves of successive relief and elation pulsing through Tom’s mind. He knew from experience that the simple asking of it signalled that Joseph Blackwell had already decided to pressure the Vestrymen into financing that continuation. ‘Well, Sir, because of my late Father’s, and my own, lifelong interest in the science of Aerostation, I do believe I know someone who can advise me on how I might identify that particular balloon.’

  ‘That will be this fellow, Sorenty, of course,’ Blackwell accepted.

  Tom hesitated momentarily, then shook his head. ‘No, Sir, I think not.’

  Blackwell frowned interrogatively.

  Tom again hesitated before stating bluntly, ‘Because I’m jealous and resentful of the close relationship he has formed with my wife, at present that would influence my judgement of whatever he told me. I’m hoping to obtain sufficient information from the Gentleman I am proposing to talk with so as not to be unduly influenced by my personal feelings should I find cause to ask Master Sorenty any questions concerning the Haystack Woman. So, I’m asking for your permission, and the necessary help with funds and transport, to enable me to travel to London.’

  ‘Humph! That will deprive me of the services of my best mare and cost the Parish Chest a small fortune,’ Blackwell grumbled and sighed resignedly. ‘Ah, well, I can at least draw comfort from the fact that My Lord Aston and myself shall take full credit for the successful conclusion of this new direction of investigation.’

  ‘Of course, Sir,’ Tom agreed. Then ventured, ‘When might it be possible for me to go to London to make a search to find this Gentleman I spoke of?’

  ‘Come and see me tomorrow at noon, Thomas Potts. Money and my mare will be waiting for you.’

  When Tom returned to the Lock-Up, it was Amy who was waiting for him. He rang the bells for entry. The front door opened and she was facing him, angrily demanding, ‘Where’ve you been? I’ve been in here for hours waiting for you! Why didn’t you come and talk to me after I finished me performance, like you promised you would?’

  Tom knew well that he had made no such promise, but such was the hold that this young woman still had on him, he instantly lied. ‘Oh Amy, I wanted to with my heart, but …’ He gestured to the row of barred cell doors. ‘I’ve got a pickpocket, two pedlars who were selling stolen goods and three brawlers in these. I was so busy with them that by the time I came to look for you, you were already abed. I feared you’d be very angry with me if I’d had you woken up to speak with me.’

  ‘Oh, no, Tom.’ She shook her head and her blue eyes moistened. ‘I’d not have been angry.’

  Vincent Sorenty brought his gig to a halt outside, and shouted, ‘Amy, we have to go right now. If we’re late for the meeting with His Nibs there’ll be hell to pay.’

  ‘I have to go, Tom. We’ve got to meet a noble lord in Brummagem. I’ll send word to the Fox where we’ll be performing next, and you must come and see me there. Promise you will!’

  ‘I promise.’ Sadness overwhelmed Tom, but he managed to force a smile. She pulled his head down and kissed him on the lips. Then, dabbing her eyes, she ran to the waiting gig.

  With tears stinging his own eyes, Tom watched the gig until it had gone from sight.

  FORTY-TWO

  Highgate, London.

  Wednesday, 16 September, 1829

  Tom reined in by spiked railings enclosing a villa fronted by a large, well-kept garden where a rubicund-featured, stocky man dressed in the blue apron, breeches and gaiters and straw hat of a gardener stood smoking a cheroot.

  He stared hard at Tom, and then called, ‘Excuse me, Sir! I beg you to oblige me by being so kind as to dismount.’

  ‘Very well, Sir,’ Tom agreed. Grimacing from the pain of sore buttocks and inner thighs, aching muscles and joints, he clumsily levered himself off the horse.

  Famed Aeronaut Charles Green chuckled and slapped his thigh. ‘I thought so when I glimpsed your face, and now I can see your length I know it’s so. What a very pleasant surprise to encounter the son of an old and very dear friend again after all these years. I sincerely hope this encounter was not merely by chance, Tom Potts?’

  ‘Indeed no, Master Green!’ Tom was suffused with pleasure at this recognition. ‘I set out more than a week since to come and find you. I’m in sore need of your help.’

  ‘And you shall have it and welcome, Tom Potts, because I owe my very life to my dear friend, your father, for the caring and curing of me all those years ago – at great sacrifice to himself, I might add.’ He pointed to the portmanteau bag tied behind Tom’s saddle. ‘I trust that contains your spare clothing and necessaries.’

  ‘It does,’ Tom confirmed.

  ‘Excellent!’ Green smiled, and roared at the top of his voice, ‘Lucy! Betsy! Martha! We have an honoured guest! Prepare his bedroom and some refreshments immediately, and don’t forget to lay an extra place for dinner.’

  FORTY-THREE

  Redditch Town.

  Thursday, 24 September, 1829

  It was late at night when Tom reined in and dismounted in the dark shadows of the Red House stable yard. He stroked the travel-jaded mare’s neck and apologised sincerel
y aloud: ‘I’m truly sorry for having ridden you so clumsily these last weeks, but I beg you to draw some comfort from the fact that God is punishing me for doing so by lacerating my arse and joints with flames of fire.’

  ‘And that’s exactly what My Lord Aston is lusting to do to you as well. Before throttling you with his own hands.’ Joseph Blackwell emerged from the shadows. ‘I was leaving the privy, Thomas Potts, and heard you entering the yard. Have you called at the Lock-Up?’

  ‘No, I’ve come directly here,’ Tom answered.

  Blackwell turned his head and shouted, ‘Jenkins! Come and tend to the mare.’

  When the stableman appeared, Blackwell beckoned Tom. ‘Come into the house. Jenkins will deliver your baggage to the Lock-Up.’

  In the study, Blackwell ushered Tom to a chair and placed a large, full glass of brandy on the small table to the side of it. He handed Tom a filled pipe of tobacco and a box of Lucifer Friction Lights and said, ‘I truly want you to enjoy this refreshment before I give you the final gift of the evening.’

  Tom blinked in bewilderment at this sequence of behaviour.

  ‘Do as I say, Tom Potts! Smoke, drink and enjoy until we’ve finished the bottle,’ Blackwell insisted. ‘And no talking until I say so.’

  Tom willingly obeyed, greatly savouring the fragrant Egyptian tobacco, finest French brandy and the balm of mental and physical inertia.

  They sat in companionable silence, heads wreathed in the smoke from their pipes, sipping their frequently replenished drink.

  When the bottle was finally empty, Blackwell queried with a flicker of a smile, ‘Tell me now, Thomas Potts – was your journey worthwhile?’

  ‘Very much so, Sir.’ Tom smiled back. ‘Charles Green is a veritable fount of knowledge concerning balloonists and their flights – not only in this country but abroad also. He has given much information which I’m convinced will greatly aid me.’

  Blackwell’s manner became grave. ‘I’m glad to hear that, because I fear when you read this you may feel somewhat demoralized.’