by Lynch, R J
A Just and Upright Man
By
R J Lynch
© R J Lynch 2013
R J Lynch has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by Mandrill Press www.mandrillpress.com
Chapter 1
There it was again. A shout of frightened girlish rage, carried on the frosty air. Kate Greener hugged her quilted woollen bed coat tight to her shivering body as she hurried between the bare trees of Derwent Wood with her brother, Ned. Their sister Lizzie should have been home an hour ago. Kate would rather have been indoors, huddled over the tiny fire, but Lizzie was never late. Something had happened to her. Kate urged the grumbling Ned on.
And then she stopped.
Less than a furlong away, a tall man in the uniform of an officer of dragoons sat his fine horse and held the reins of another while the dismounted Earl of Wrekin, son of the man who ruled their lives, circled a sobbing Lizzie and tormented her with the point of his sword.
Ned pulled Kate back into the shelter of a spreading elm tree. The coldness of the hard trunk bit into her almost as cruelly as the sight of her sister’s distress.
She tried to step forward, her face twisted in anger, but Ned held her, his hand over her mouth. ‘They have swords! They will have pistols. Do you want to get us both killed?’
Kate slapped his hand away. ‘Lizzie needs us.’
‘We cannot help her.’
Kate stared at her brother. The realisation that he was right roused her to helpless fury. She was two weeks short of her fourteenth birthday. Ned was only a year older, and Lizzie herself had turned sixteen only three months before. What chance had they against two grown men, arrogant in their wealth and hardened by time with their regiments?
Wrekin’s sword moved Lizzie as a dog moves sheep until her back was against the trunk of a broad oak. There was nowhere she could go. Moving closer, Wrekin rested the point of his sword against her throat. His free hand came up to touch her face. ‘This is Lizzie Greener, Liddell. A whelp of one of my father’s commoners. Is she not comely?’
‘Handsome indeed,’ said Liddell. ‘But you will not press this to a conclusion?’
‘Do you say not? She is old enough, and I have had no woman for two weeks.’
‘Your father…’
‘Will not know. You will not tell him. It is certain I shall not. And as for the wench…’ He squeezed her face in his hand and lowered his head to kiss her throat. ‘You know better than to speak of this, don’t you, my beauty?’
‘Please, my Lord…’
Wrekin stood back. ‘Undress, my sweet. Let me see what is to be mine.’
‘Oh, please, my Lord, spare me. Do not do this.’
The sword moved so quickly that Kate did not see the point disappear under the hem of Lizzie’s petticoat, lifting it an inch or two. ‘I shall not tell you again, hussy. Remove these rags or I shall cut them off you. And cut you, too, while I am about it.’
He stepped back. ‘Do it now.’
Lizzie looked to Liddell in silent supplication, but he turned his eyes away. Despairing, the girl began to fumble her way out of her clothes.
Wrekin put away his sword and began without haste to unfasten his breeches. ‘She has a younger sister, Liddell, who is quite exquisite. They call the child Kate. Where this beauty comes from in such a family I know not. Indeed, young as she is I wish it were Kate I had before me now. But if one must take the consolation, Lizzie Greener will more than suffice. Lie down, girl.’
Kate and Ned watched in tearful silence as the young earl pleasured himself with their weeping sister. When at length he rose from her, he turned to Liddell. ‘Will you take your turn?’
Liddell shook his head. ‘We are in the depth of winter. It is far too cold for outdoor fornication. Mount your horse and let us be off.’
Wrekin buttoned his breeches and straightened his shirt. He picked his coat from the ground and retrieved his sword. He reached into the purse tied around his waist, extracted a sovereign and threw it on the ground beside Lizzie. Then he climbed onto his horse and the two men rode away.
When the sound of leisurely hoof beats and companionable male laughter had retreated into silence, Ned and Kate crept to where their sister lay, her eyes closed, her body uncontrollably shaking. Kate took Lizzie’s hand in hers. For a moment it seemed as though the abused girl had retreated too far within herself ever to return to them. Then she opened her mouth and began to scream. She raised herself painfully to her feet. The screaming continued. Bending, she picked up the sovereign and hurled it as far as she could, and though Kate tried to keep track of such an immense sum as it glanced off rime-coated trees, she could not have said where it fell to earth. The screaming had not stopped.
Kate stared into Lizzie’s wide eyes. She tried to hug her sister to her, but Lizzie would not be hugged. Urgently, Kate said to Ned, ‘Fetch our Mam.’
The awful screaming fell to a desperate moaning as Lizzie sank to her knees.
‘Lizzie, man,’ said Kate, crying along with her sister. ‘You cannot stay here. You’ll catch your death.’
Lizzie pushed away her sister’s comforting arm. ‘Did you see what that man did to us? Did you see?’
‘Yes, pet. I saw. Please, Lizzie. Let me help you get dressed.’
‘Dressed? Why do I want to get dressed? Why don’t I stay like this in case some other gentleman comes along and fancies helping himself? Eh? Why don’t I...’ Her eyes widened. ‘It wasn’t me he really wanted. It was you.’
The tears pouring down Kate’s cheeks fell onto the threadbare neck cloth that served her as a shawl and soaked it. ‘I’m sorry, Lizzie.’
‘Did you hear him? Kate is exquisite. I wish it was Kate I had before me. What are you bubbling for? It’s not you that’s just been put on her back in the freezing cold and ridden like one of Eliza Swain’s.’
‘Lizzie, man, it’s not my fault,’ Kate sobbed.
‘And you want to better yourself. You want to learn to read and write. For what? To be a lady’s maid and live in a house with animals like that?’
‘All I want is to be able to read the Bible. And mebbes speak a bit nicer. And know what’s gannin’ on in the world. Get dressed, for pity’s sake. Oh, thank God, here’s me Mam.’
Kate watched Florrie wrap her arms round her step-daughter and hug her. As Lizzie struggled to be free, Florrie simply refused to be pushed away. Eventually, strength told. Lizzie’s head fell forward onto Florrie’s chest. Her body lost its rigid tightness. Her sobs became quieter.
‘There, pet,’ whispered Florrie, her hand gently patting Lizzie on the back. ‘Let’s get you dressed. Kate, pet, pass us Lizzie’s petticoat.’
Lizzie stood still, not hindering but not helping either, while Kate helped Florrie dress her. Florrie spoke quietly to Kate. ‘Is there to be no end to the trials God heaps upon us?’
‘I’m sorry, Mam,’ whispered Kate.
‘You haven’t done anything. You’re an angel, pet. But there’s your father in bed and months of nursing coming and after that it’ll still be the graveyard. And then the Overseers of the Poor on our backs, and you and Ned and our Lizzie shipped off to where I’ll likely never hear from any of you again. Is that not enough to bear at one time? Without this? We know God tests His people, but does He have to test one helpless woman quite so much?’
The walk h
ome was slow, and punctuated by alternating bouts of sobbing and screaming from Lizzie. Kate held tight to her mother’s hand while Florrie kept her other arm round Lizzie’s waist and let the tears and the rage wash over her.
‘We’ll make Lizzie a nice dish of soup, pet,’ she said. ‘And then we’ll heat some water, and wash her, and put her to bed.’
Chapter 2
Dick Jackson stirred on his straw mattress. The floor beneath the mattress was hard and uneven, but Dick slept here these winter nights to take advantage of the little heat his dying fire gave him, and it was fire that woke him now. But this was not his fire. Dick tottered to his door and opened it. His friend, cousin and neighbour, Jeffrey Drabble, had done the same. They stared at an inferno where a cottage had been.
The flames lit the dark night almost like day. The silence of a country parish after midnight was rent by the sound of cracking timbers. ‘Reuben Cooper is going to meet his maker,’ said Drabble.
‘It will be a black night in hell when that one arrives. The Devil will have a fight to keep his place.’
‘We should make a chain. Fetch water. Put the fire out.’
‘For Reuben Cooper?’
‘He may still be alive.’
‘Alive or dead he was everybody’s enemy when he lived and I’ll not help him now. I’m going back to bed. If you’ve any sense you’ll do the same.’
But Dick was not to go back to bed, and neither was Jeffrey Drabble, for James Blakiston arrived with other ideas on his mind. He set to work to rouse the whole village, pounding on their doors like the Devil demanding souls he was owed. Weary as he was, Dick might have ignored Old Nick or told him to come back when dawn roused him again to the fields; but his lordship’s land agent had a more powerful hold. The devil could not touch anyone till they were dead. Blakiston could destroy a villager right now. Protesting, Dick dragged himself forth with the others and took a bucket to the well. Before a human chain could throw water on the blaze, they had first to break a thick layer of ice.
Dick found himself next in line to Jeffrey Drabble. As he passed the heavy wooden buckets, he sucked on the clay pipe wedged empty and upside down between his toothless jaws. ‘Waste of bliddy time, this is,’ he grunted. ‘The bliddy house is well away. We’ll not get it out till there’s nowt left to burn.’
‘You think the old fool’s still in there?’ asked Drabble.
‘Bound to be, isn’t he? We’d see him, else. He’s a dead old fool by now, you may be sure of that.’
Blakiston kept them to their work, urging them on to greater effort, until it was clear that Dick had been right. The fire was out, save for a few smouldering timbers that would go on glowing and giving off smoke for hours yet, but it was not water from the well that had ended it. There was simply nothing left for the flames to feed on.
The men stood in silence for a while, surveying the grim scene. Blakiston said, ‘Whose cottage is this?’
‘’Tis Reuben Cooper’s, Master,’ said someone.
‘Reuben Cooper,’ said Blakiston. ‘I have met him. Where is he?’
Jeffrey Drabble pointed with his toe at the devastation before them. ‘I reckon he’s in there, your Honour.’
A second man on horseback had joined the group. ‘Good evening, Rector,’ said Blakiston. ‘I did not see you ride up.’
‘The benefit of a black horse and a dark cloak on a moonless night,’ said Claverley. ‘It will be like that when Death comes for us all. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God. I came to see whether my services might be wanted.’
‘I suspect there’ll be a funeral to perform,’ said Blakiston. ‘But the Constable will be needed before that. Should he not be here? Who is the Constable?’
‘George Bright was elected at this end of the parish. But he is a dissenter, and should not serve.’
‘Then he was obliged to pay someone to serve in his place.’
‘Well, well, Mister Blakiston, this is Durham County, not London. Things do not always go as they should.’ Raising his voice, the Rector said, ‘You men need your beds. We will want to talk to you later, when it is light.’ To Blakiston he said, ‘Come back with me to the rectory. I have some good brandy and Rosina will serve us something savoury.’
Dick Jackson and Jeffrey Drabble watched them ride away. ‘He that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God,’ said Drabble. ‘Where does the man think the likes of us find treasure to lay up?’
‘They’re gentry, man,’ said Jackson. ‘Nee bliddy idea at aal.’
Chapter 3
Blakiston accepted a glass of brandy but shook his head at the offer of tobacco. ‘I have never got the taste.’
Claverley filled a long-stemmed clay pipe. ‘My wife detests the smell in the house,’ he said. ‘But since I stink already of the fire, I can scarce make things worse.’
Blakiston sipped his brandy and looked around the Rector’s study. On the table beside his chair sat a plate of toasted cheese. ‘A good room, Rector. A man’s room.’
‘You have not visited me here before? My dear fellow. We must have this pleasure again, in happier times.’ He lit a taper from the banked up fire and got his pipe going nicely. Then he said, ‘This business will bear examination.’
‘How so, Rector?’
‘Cooper was an old man, and troublesome. He had three wives, all dead, and his children are scattered widely.’
‘I met him. He did me a kindness.’
‘Reuben Cooper did you a kindness? Good Heavens, man, are you sure? I’ll wager those are words no other body has ever spoken.’
‘Nevertheless, it is true. When I first came here, I thought to see what fate had put in my way. I left my traps at an inn in Durham and came on on foot, so dressed I wonder now I was not taken up for vagrancy. Cooper met me on the road. He had bread and cheese in his pockets. He shared it with me. When I offered him money, he refused it.’
‘Cooper had a son who died in the wars. It may be he took you for a soldier down on his luck and remembered his boy. Nevertheless, you astonish me, Blakiston. But why did you behave in that way?’
Blakiston shrugged. ‘My family would tell you I am sometimes of a curious humour. Perhaps more in former times than now.’
‘I know that you were born a gentleman. I know also that you must have expected more than a land agent’s position. But of course I know no more.’
Blakiston smiled. He was used to people prying into his affairs, wanting to know why a man so clearly well born now lived as he did. ‘It is true. I had once a good family, and expectations, and a woman I thought to spend my life with. I have those things no longer. But I do not dwell on what is gone. I still have my pride. James Blakiston slinks for no man. When I know you better I may tell you more. In any case, I have always craved entertainment. It pleased me to see my new home when it knew me not. Now, please. Tell me more of Reuben Cooper, and why you find his death suspicious.’
‘Cooper was reputed rich. He was a Yorkshire man, and a seafarer. They say he was once a pirate, or at least a privateer. They say he had gold in that house.’
‘They say. Do you believe it?’
‘Others believed it. Ours are simple people. Some will have coveted that gold, whether he had it or not.’
‘You say Cooper was murdered?’
‘I cannot say that he was not.’
‘Well, Rector, I shall tell you this. Whatever his actions in relation to others, Cooper served me well. If I find that his death was not a natural end, I shall wish to find the person who killed him, and I shall wish to bring the old man justice.’
‘Ah, Blakiston. Justice. Job tells us that the
just and upright man is laughed to scorn.’
‘That is something that happens to me but rarely, Rector Claverley. And never twice from the same man.’
‘Pride goeth before destruction, Blakiston, and a haughty spirit before a fall.’
Blakiston took a bite from his toasted cheese and looked around the room. The plate he fed from was English delft. The table it sat on was English elm, a cricket table, plain and honest. The gate leg chairs, also elm, were built solid to take the beam of straightforward and well-fed Englishmen. The study was panelled in oak, with none of this modern paper on the walls.
But into this firm English harmony, something unwelcome had intruded.
In the light of day, Blakiston stood with Claverley and watched men from the castle sifting through the burnt rubble of Reuben Cooper’s hovel. It was a cottage like any other lived in by Ryton’s poor. The walls were stone to the level of a short man’s waist, with wood above. Downstairs, one room with a floor of beaten earth and a fireplace in the same end wall as the door. Against the longer wall, stairs to an upstairs room too low for a man of normal size to stand upright in. But now there were no stairs, no ceiling, no wooden walls and no roof. The fire had destroyed them all.
It was not long before there came a shout from the corner closest to the fireplace.
The two men picked their way across the ruin and looked down at what remained of Reuben Cooper. The rector lowered his head and closed his eyes in silent prayer.
‘There is a hole in his skull,’ said Blakiston. ‘This is no accidental death.’
‘We cannot say that yet. He could have caught it on a table. A falling roof beam might have hit it. Let us wait till the body has cooled and we have examined it more closely before we make charges like that.’