Hessians and Hellhounds

by Tilly Wallace

  “Don’t make me regret keeping her on,” he murmured against her neck. How he wanted to linger and take her back to bed, but he didn’t need Higgs smashing a window to gain his attention.

  With reluctance, Wycliff dressed and set off on his black mare. He left her stabled at a tavern, where he changed to a hired mount to keep up his frantic pace. Hannah would collect the mare on her return journey to London. Wycliff rode the hired horses hard, before he handed an exhausted animal over at the next stables and leapt on a fresh one.

  Twilight hovered at the edge of the city as he reached London and rode directly for the Ministry of Unnaturals, leaving the sweaty horse at a nearby mews for a well-deserved rubdown and feed.

  Higgs looked up from his desk. A tawny feather sprouted in his hair with the change of light outside. “Lord Wycliff. You have saved me a flight to Selham to fetch you. Sir Manly is still upstairs.”

  Ignoring his own desk and the stack of correspondence accumulated during his month-long absence, Wycliff took the stairs two at a time. The sooner he sorted this business in London, the sooner he and Hannah could retreat to the coastal village of Selham and Mireworth.

  He rapped on the door and pushed it open on the command to enter.

  Sir Manly sat with his back to the window and regarded Wycliff over the top of a sheet of paper. “Wycliff. Excellent timing, man. You must have ridden as though a demon from Hell pursued you.”

  “I gather the matter is of some urgency.” Now that he stood still, his body protested the long hours in the saddle. He suspected he would awake in the morning to stiff muscles.

  Sir Manly nodded and twiddled one end of his ornate moustache. “Quite. I say, the country air must agree with you. You look positively— Is that a smile upon your face?”

  Odd. He was indeed smiling, despite riding all day with only minimal stops. Exhaustion should have been sweeping over him, but instead, he seemed energised. The sooner he dispatched whatever bother had arisen, the sooner he could carry Hannah back to bed in the old manor house. “Hannah and I have enjoyed our stay in the country and thought we might spend more time at Mireworth, once whatever matter you have for me is settled.”

  Sir Manly rummaged among the papers on his desk and extracted a page covered in a tight scrawl. “Well, we can talk about that later. I have a deuced odd case for you. Last night, several people saw a blue fire at Bunhill Fields, and a large dog. A Bow Street Runner by the name of Taylor was sent to investigate early this morning, and he found charred remains on a grave.”

  “Charred remains and blue fire?” Wycliff set aside the claims of a large dog. Many canines roamed London. He tried to think how flames might be turned blue, assuming the witnesses weren’t simply mistaken. It could be a simple case of low light, making them appear blue, or some sort of spell. Charred remains were harder to explain away. He scanned the notes taken by the Runner, who had passed the case up to the Ministry. It appeared very little remained of whatever had been burned, but someone had identified bone fragments.

  “Taylor promptly woke me up, muttering about how hellfire wasn’t his area of expertise. They swept the remains into a box, which I’ve had dispatched to Sir Hugh’s for examination. Someone was going to stay at the location until you had a chance to look at it.” Sir Manly placed his pen in its holder and swept all the papers into a neat pile.

  “I’ll head there now, before the light fades.” Wycliff nodded to his superior and trotted back down the stairs.

  He rode to Bunhill Fields, the cemetery that had served London for hundreds of years. The name derived from Bone Hill; the site was littered with ancient bones from burials performed there in Saxon times. Wycliff dismounted and tied the gelding to a nearby tree.

  When he stepped through the gates, a tingle ran up his legs. Whispers brushed over his ears. Some lost souls sought his assistance, while others hid from him. The dark souls who scurried away at his presence interested him the most. They were the criminals and miscreants who had escaped the void’s clutches and who roamed the earth. Those were the ones he could catch and dispatch to their rightful place and the justice that awaited them. He could not help the others—the souls who had lived honest lives but who were tethered for some other reason to the earthly realm. What he needed was another similar to himself, yet able to send the lighter souls on to a better place.

  He pushed the intrusions to one side and steeled his mind. Hunting the darkness could wait. Some souls had avoided their fates for hundreds of years. What was a few more weeks or months?

  The Runner waited at the sexton’s office, sitting on a worn bench outside. He leapt to his feet as Wycliff approached.

  “I’m Charlie Taylor, milord. If you’ll follow me.” He took up an unlit lantern and gestured down a wide path.

  Wycliff nodded. At least the man jumped straight to work.

  A tall and muscular man, Taylor wore grey knitted fingerless mittens, as though he felt the bite of cold in July. Admittedly, it was the worst summer on record. That sent Wycliff’s thoughts in an odd direction. Would Barnes feel the cold come winter?

  “Everything all right, milord?” Taylor asked.

  “I was admiring your mittens and thinking that a member of my household might need one come winter.” They passed between two rows of gravestones, each topped by an angel in a different pose.

  Taylor’s wool-covered hand tightened on the lantern. “My nan knitted these for me because I’ve always got icy fingers. Cold hands, warm heart, she says. Your man would need a pair, though, surely?”

  Wycliff huffed. “He possesses only a left hand.” And nothing else, he added silently.

  Taylor led him on a twisty path through the gravestones and toward a row of mausoleums encircled by large trees. These weren’t the ostentatious buildings the wealthy constructed on their estates to house generations of the dead. These tombs were modest, for the lesser nobles or middle classes, who lacked large country estates to retire to for eternity. Or perhaps temporary lodgings for those caught by death while in London for the season.

  An acrid tang lingered on the air that stirred old memories within Wycliff of the night his men had encountered the hellhounds. Burned flesh had an unmistakable aroma.

  “It was here.” Taylor stopped and gestured with his free hand.

  The grave looked something like a sarcophagus emerging from the ground. The stone slab, seven feet long and four feet wide, was large enough to accommodate two members of one family side by side, and more if they were stacked on top of each other. The gravestone jutted ten inches from the ground, high enough to bang one’s shins on. A diminutive iron fence enclosed it.

  “Did anyone investigate last night?” Wycliff surveyed the blackened marks etched into the granite, with spidery fingers reaching for the edges.

  “No, milord. Those that saw the fire were too scared and one sought me out just before dawn. I took my report direct to Sir Manly. Hellfire is Unnatural, and outside of my bailiwick.” He glanced around him, staring at the trees that huddled together.

  “I haven’t ascertained what caused the fire yet.” Wycliff ignored the reference to hellfire and continued his inspection.

  “The witnesses I spoke to reported hearing a howl of a large dog, around the time the fire broke out. Some said it was a hellhound with fiery eyes.” The man stood near a gravestone.

  Wycliff grunted, not yet ready to contemplate the involvement of a hellhound. He pushed the thought down while he conducted his examination. A flutter caught his eye. On one railing, a small scrap of black fabric responded to the light breeze. Wycliff retrieved the material. With a jagged edge, it looked to have been torn from some item of clothing. A feather embroidered in black thread and adorned with ebony beads created a border of some sort.

  Keeping hold of the scrap, he walked around to the other side of the grave and found flowers scattered in the grass, their bright orange vivid against the dull lawn, almost like sparks from a fire. He picked one up and turned the modest flower in his
fingers. A snapdragon. As a child, he had learned to squeeze the bloom to make it open and close its mouth.

  A search of the grass revealed a peach-coloured silk ribbon, with a single snapdragon still tied within its length. It appeared to have been used to hold together the posy. From his jacket pocket, he pulled an empty envelope. Inside, he placed the strip of material, ribbon, and the snapdragon.

  He carried on prowling the perimeter of the grave. Near the foot, the exposed dirt was scuffed and disturbed. Then a single undisturbed mark made him suck in his breath. He knelt down and his hand hovered above the impression—a large paw print.

  “People are whispering about some hound from Hell rising up and burning sinners who deserve it,” Taylor said. He glanced over his shoulder as if he expected fiery jaws to latch on to him and drag him into the shrubbery.

  Another one? Impossible. Wycliff rose on unsteady legs and told himself it was simply the effect of the hard ride, and nothing to do with the thought of a hellhound stalking Londoners. He’d believed himself alone in the world. That the creatures who had created him had disappeared back into the murk from whence they’d come without making another.

  He stood silent for a long time, gathering his thoughts. At length, the Runner coughed into his hand and Wycliff glared at him for the interruption.

  “Will you be needing me for anything else, milord? It’s just that I’d rather not be here after dark.” Taylor stood taller and broader than Wycliff, yet the thought of a night in the cemetery made his mittens tremble.

  Wycliff dismissed him with a wave. “Go. There is little more that can be done here. But leave me that lantern.”

  Wycliff had a few more things to do before returning to an empty bed in Westbourne Green. He pondered what had happened on the grave. At first he thought it might be a simple case of drunken idiots digging up a corpse and burning it. But that didn’t account for the scuff marks in the dirt. Unless they had struggled with their burden? A mourner could have dropped the flowers, startled by the gravedigger’s activities. The woman might have torn her skirt as she ran from the sight of a corpse dumped on the stone.

  Pulling free his notebook, he jotted down the family name on the grave used as a fire grate—Carlyle. The last burial in the family plot had been 1815, when a young child had joined his grandparents. Next, Wycliff considered the mausoleum that overlooked the grave. As the last of the light faded behind the trees, he moved closer to peer at the name carved in the lintel above the door. Albright.

  Memories flitted through his mind of the investigation that had brought Hannah into his life. A horrible series of murders had led to the happiness that now coursed through his veins. Briefly, he wondered if the mausoleum belonged to Lord Albright, whose wife had been struck down by the Affliction. A bitter man who made no secret of the fact that he would have preferred to inter his first wife and leave her to arise alone and with no escape.

  There was one other thing Wycliff needed to do. Drawing a deep breath, he reached out to the hound and altered his vision. The world around him shifted to the dreamlike world the creature perceived.

  Spectres watched him. Some peeked from behind gravestones, others gathered in groups like gossips at a dance. Some souls appeared fresh, their bodies distinct and their eyes wide with wonder. Others were decades old, their forms rubbed away by time until only the vague floating lights remained that some called will-o’-the-wisp.

  He hoped a soul might linger near the grave and provide a clue as to whether the victim was recently deceased or had been dug up from elsewhere in the cemetery.

  “Did any of you see who did this?” he asked.

  A few souls drew back and hid from his gaze. More shook their heads. Getting a sensible response from some souls was like trying to discuss philosophy with a madman.

  One soul stepped forward and pointed a finger at Wycliff. “Man,” it rasped in a voice that hadn’t been used for years.

  “A man did this? One alone, or more?” He focused on the soul. It appeared to be male and somewhat elderly, with straggly grey hair that brushed his shoulders.

  The figure gestured to Wycliff again and then floated backward into the protection of the trees.

  “Useless,” he muttered. The single word could have been a clue or simply the ghost making an observation about Wycliff.

  He let out a breath, but on the inhale, he froze. Something in the air struck him as not right. He drew another slow breath. There. Under the tang of charred flesh, another aroma. One of decay and rot that registered as foreboding in his brain. Did he scent a rotting body burned on the grave, or the odour of something evil that had committed the crime?

  With nothing more to learn from either the spectres clinging to the hallowed ground, or from his own investigation, Wycliff lit the lantern to navigate his way back to his horse. He could have used the hound’s vision, but he’d rather not know what hid from him. Deep shadows flitted at the edges of his vision, and a strain of the void’s music tickled his ears. Another night, he would hunt over Bunhill Fields and find those long overdue for their date with justice.

  5

  After Wycliff’s departure, Hannah made good on her promise and asked her mother to renew the spell keeping the curse at bay. Sir Hugh carried the mage up to the solar in the tower and then left the women alone. Hannah sat by a window and stared out at the rustling trees as her mother drew the chalk outlines and whispered to herself. A bundle of herbs burned in the fireplace and added a sweet fragrance to the air.

  At length, her mother motioned her over. “All ready, Hannah. We shall see what happens—there is quite a charge to the atmosphere from the resident below.”

  Hannah gathered up her skirts and stepped into the outline of the coffin. “I wish I could see the mist that Wycliff observed. How unusual for magical residue to linger after so many centuries. Does it happen to all mages?”

  “I had not heard of such a phenomenon before, but we rarely have hellhounds examining our remains. I always thought that on death, all our powers were removed and gifted to the new mage,” Seraphina mused out loud as Hannah lay down and crossed her hands over her chest.

  “But you gained a different sort of power after death,” Hannah murmured.

  “Yes. Perhaps I have something in common with the ancient mage of Mireworth, but we will investigate that another day. Hush, child, while I reinforce the spell.” Seraphina placed one hand on Hannah’s head and the other on her heart as she began the ritual.

  Once again, a spectral hand tightened around Hannah’s heart as her mother spoke words of power. Just as the crush became unbearable, it peaked and fell away. She drew a shallow sigh and cracked one eye open.

  Her mother placed both hands in her lap and stared at them, her head bowed.

  “Did the magical residue affect the spell?” Hannah whispered as she sat up.

  “No, or at least not directly. It swirled around us, offering itself if I wished to draw upon it. The phenomenon is most unusual. I must consult my texts for any information about the earthly remains of mages. As for the curse, it has altered a little, as though it seeks to reform itself into something that can slip through the barrier I erected.” Seraphina called over a squat footstool and with a gesture, raised herself through the air to take a padded seat.

  “It will yet be victorious. When Wycliff has concluded his new investigation, I shall ask you to remove your spell.” Hannah stepped out of the chalk outline and shook out her skirts.

  “I feel in my bones that we will find the answers we seek in the underworld.” The mage straightened her shoulders and turned to Hannah.

  “I will fetch Papa to carry you back downstairs. Then I must see to packing for our return.” Hannah glanced one more time around the tower and then trod the spiral stairs to find her father.

  Hannah lingered as she packed to leave Mireworth. While she wanted to join Wycliff in London, the old house wrapped invisible strands around her and whispered for her to stay. The tower and its slumbering reside
nt were a mystery she itched to solve. But given that the Egyptian mage had lain undisturbed for six hundred years, what was a few more weeks to uncover the secrets it held?

  She heaved a sigh and closed the lid on her trunk.

  “I’ll have Frank fetch that, milady, now we’re done,” Mary said as she wiped her hands down her apron and surveyed the morning’s work.

  Piece by piece, they had turned the impromptu bedroom back into Wycliff’s study—albeit one with a stripped bed and a pile of boxes in one corner.

  “Thank you, Mary.” Hannah picked up her bonnet and paused in the doorway. Much had happened in the cosy room. The nature of her marriage had changed. Wycliff had whispered that he loved her. She had voiced her decision to remove the spell holding her in time, and would pay the price of death to walk into the next realm beside the hellhound she loved.

  With a sad smile, Hannah closed the door. She marvelled at the landscape in the grand foyer and stepped over the shimmering bridge as the painted Nile flowed under her feet.

  In the kitchen, Mrs Rossett packed two large baskets of provisions for their journey. Sheba watched with rapt attention and her tail brushed back and forth over the slate in anticipation.

  “All packed, milady?” The housekeeper closed the lid on a basket.

  “Yes. I am sad to go, but already look forward to our return.” Hannah bent down to pick up the spaniel.

  “I shall miss you all.” A sad smile touched the older woman’s lips.

  Hannah reached out and took the housekeeper’s hand. “Just you wait and see, Mrs Rossett. This old house will once again ring with laughter and be filled with light. Then you will wish we would all pack up and go to London for the season, and leave you in peace.”