Instruments of Darkness (35 page)

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Authors: Imogen Robertson

Tags: #Historical fiction, #Crime Fiction

BOOK: Instruments of Darkness
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The forecourt was full of injured men, groaning and bleeding, waiting their turn with the surgeon. Some of the women of the town moved among them, offering water, the fringes of their long skirts reddening. One girl had turned away into a patch of shadow, her handkerchief at her mouth; even in the dark he could see the whiteness round her lips, one hand pressed against the stone wall. When she moved away it left a rust stain of some man’s blood behind her. He wondered whose last minutes she had watched over.
He fetched water from the drinking butt and distributed it; the calls for water came from every side. Some asked after his company, others put a black and red hand on his sleeve and tried to stop him long enough to tell their own stories of the slaughter they had seen around them on the hill. Howe’s entire staff dead or wounded, half the companies of Grenadiers down to single figures like his own. A victory, but a disastrous one.
If they had grown less sanguine about their powers on the retreat from Lexington, they were as sober as hell now. A marine was curled up next to the wall, sobbing, and trying to stop his tears with a fist in his mouth. Another young woman tried to approach Hugh, make some move towards his wound; she carried a cloth and basin already pink and dirty. Hugh pushed her away, saying nothing, then heard his own name called, and looked up. A young man from Hawkshaw’s company lay propped up against the white wall. Thornleigh walked towards him. The lad’s face was grey and waxy. Thornleigh let his eye scan down his body. It was a stomach wound. There was nothing the surgeons would do for this one. Without speaking, Thornleigh crouched beside him and drew out a hipflask from under his jacket, still half-full of his father’s celebratory brandy. He put it to the man’s lips. The latter drank and grimaced as the heat of it reached down his throat.
‘Thanks, Captain. Tastes good.’
Thornleigh did not smile. ‘Only the best.’
The man laughed; it pulled at his wound and became a cough which spat a thick red from his mouth. Thornleigh gave him the flask again. He drank, and tried apologetically to wipe the opening clean with his sleeve before Thornleigh gently took it back.
‘Don’t know if you’ve heard, sir. I’m afraid Captain Hawkshaw is dead.’
Thornleigh felt it in his own gut like a soft blow of the fist. He bowed his head.
‘You saw?’ he managed to say.
The man nodded. ‘Second wave, he was upfront and charging. The skinny bastard he was bearing down on waited till he was almost there and got him right in the forehead. He just dropped.’ The man paused again. ‘Got nerve, these little shits, some of them at any rate. I did for him a minute later, then . . .’ he put his hand on the red mess at his middle . . . ‘then his mate did for me.’
Thornleigh nodded his throbbing head. The man looked at him. ‘Musket blow up on you, sir?’ Thornleigh put his hand to the right side of his face. He felt flesh rather than skin. The touch seemed to wake the wound; it burned across his cheek in a wave, exploding in a spasm of pain under his eye, scrabbling at his vision until it seemed he could see the pattern of it. He steadied himself. Willed it down.
‘Yes. Mine was shot from my hand in the first wave. Made do with a dead rebel’s till I could get it back. I suppose it did not like me for a master.’
The man smiled. ‘A rebel gun, you see?’ He laughed at his own joke, repeating it with a shake of his head. ‘A rebel gun. Sorry about Hawkshaw, Captain. He was a good sort of bloke.’ The grin became a little lopsided. ‘So was I.’
Thornleigh put the hipflask back into his hands and stood. The man looked at it.
‘You’ll never get it back, Captain.’
Thornleigh waved his hand. ‘Drink to Hawkshaw.’
‘Will do, sir. Good luck to you.’
Thornleigh stood. The light was softening into the evening of another beautiful summer’s day. He turned into the building itself. The groans became screams in the shadows, the smell rank and rusty. The surgeon was hard at work with the saw, the ground below him a swill of blood and vomit. Just visible behind them was a wide barrel; over its edge hung a bloody hand, bent at the wrist, oddly perfect. Thornleigh wondered if the rest of the man had survived.
Moving past them into the wide open space of the hospital itself, he followed the route he had taken with Hawkshaw and Wicksteed into the main area. It was as lofty as a church. The howls from where the surgeon did his work were a little deadened by the stone. The men here were mostly quiet, content now, it seemed, to wait quietly until death took them, or their bodies showed themselves willing to recover. He found three of his men, and heard news of two others who had died under the knife. Two he found with their wounds dressed, but telling him, in dubious tones, that the balls that had wounded them had been left intact rather than dug out. Thornleigh was not fit to talk surgical fashions. The straw scattered between the bedrolls was slippery with blood. He fetched water again. Sat and let the others talk, told the story of his own wound, and heard it being repeated between beds. It began to darken, and the pain was making him sick. He needed to think about Hawkshaw and use all the drink he had to wash some of the day away. He could feel the energy that had carried him through the action retreating, leaving him hollow and sounding to the horrors. He was already on his way out of the doors when he felt a presence at his shoulder and turned to see Wicksteed beside him, washed to his elbows in blood.
‘Captain Thornleigh!’ Wicksteed came a little closer and peered up at his wound. ‘You should let the surgeon look at that, Captain Thornleigh, before you go.’
‘He has more pressing business.’
He turned to go again, but Wicksteed’s fast right hand caught him on the sleeve and detained him.
‘Captain Hawkshaw?’
‘Dead.’
Wicksteed plucked his hand back.
‘Shame. He was a friend to me. Thought he might think of me, when this is all done.’
Thornleigh stared at him with his one eye. Wicksteed looked at the ground a moment then drew himself closer to the larger man’s side, like a girl who needs a partner at a country ball. His hand rested on Thornleigh’s sleeve again. His fingers were black with gore.
‘Let me wash the dirt out of that wound, Captain Thornleigh.’
Thornleigh didn’t reply, simply shook the hand from his sleeve and walked on. The need to escape was becoming a pressure behind his eyes. He was five minutes clear of the yard when a young ensign called him from across the street.
‘Captain Thornleigh! Request from the Governor. Soon as you’re cleared up, could you go to Stone Gaol and see what you can get from the prisoners.’
Hugh frowned. ‘What nonsense is this? Pulling information isn’t my style. Why do they ask for me?’
The boy looked confused, he’d got his message the wrong way about.
‘There’s a prisoner says he knows you. Name of Shapin. Asks for you. Governor hopes he might get chatty with you.’
Hugh remembered Hawkshaw’s story, nodded wearily and turned again. The Ensign looked nervous, but lifted his voice.
‘Sorry, sir, but soon as you can, they said. Don’t know how long he’ll last.’
Hugh kept walking, the pressure behind his eyes continuing to build.
PART V
V.1
Tuesday, 6 June 1780
 
‘
O
N WHOSE ORDERS? On whose orders, I say?’
The shouts came from the side of the house, and with only a look between them Harriet and Crowther turned off the path to the front of Thornleigh Hall and made their way in that direction. Their feet made very little noise on the gravel. They turned the corner to see Wicksteed with his back to them, one arm raised, a crop in his hand, his other hand fastened round the wrist of a maid about Rachel’s age. One of the doors to the kitchens in the basement was open; a number of the Thornleigh domestics crowded round it, watching. She must have fallen as Wicksteed dragged her out and up the steps. Some of her hair had escaped from under her cap and she was crying. The hand that was free she held up, ready to ward off the crop. She spoke in a high shriek as he lifted his arm still higher.
‘I thought it best! He was drunk! You’d gone to bed, Mr Wicksteed!’
Wicksteed pulled her up to her knees.
‘Thought it best! A thinker, are you? You think you can lock your master in his rooms, for the best?’
He twisted her wrist and she squealed again.
‘He was drunk, sir! I don’t have the key to the gun room, but the key to the salon was in the lock! He had a fire in there! I thought I could open it in the morning, and no one would know! I’m glad I did it!’
Harriet and Crowther could see the spittle from Wicksteed’s mouth hitting her in the face. His voice was almost a scream.
‘Glad, are you?’ He brought the crop down. The girl squirmed but he had her firmly enough. It struck across her cheek with a slapping crack that rebounded off the walls. Harriet recoiled. As Wicksteed raised his hand again, Crowther closed the last few paces between them and lifted his cane so it held Wicksteed’s right arm in the air.
‘Little trouble with the domestics, Wicksteed?’ he drawled.
Wicksteed whipped round, his breathing hard, his face scarlet.
‘My own business,’ he hissed.
Crowther smiled thinly at him, kept his cane where it was.
‘Come now. I think you have made the girl sorry enough, don’t you?’
He kept his eyes on Wicksteed’s face, but the latter glanced down at the girl at his feet. The blow showed as a dead white line on the unnatural red of her face. The skin had broken by her eye. Wicksteed spat on the ground.
‘Release her, please.’ Crowther spoke very softly, very slowly. Wicksteed let her wrist go. She began to massage it. ‘Run along now, my dear,’ Crowther added, without moving.
She seemed to waken, and scuttled off her knees and back towards the kitchen, where she was hauled in through the door by her fellow servants like a shipwreck victim gathered into a lifeboat. Crowther waited a long moment before moving his cane. Then he set it back on the ground and leaned on it. Wicksteed stared at the space in front of him where the girl had been, his chest rising and falling, then without looking again at Crowther or Harriet, he turned on his heel and marched away.
Harriet took a few steps to bring her to Crowther’s side.
‘You don’t need that stick at all, do you, Crowther?’
He watched Wicksteed’s retreating figure.
‘I needed it yesterday. Today I am just enjoying its company.’
He offered his arm and they turned back towards the front of the house.
‘He wants to be a gentleman,’ Harriet commented.
‘Wicksteed? Horsewhipping women hardly seems the way to go about it.’
She smiled. ‘No, I’ve had no chance to tell you as yet. I visited yesterday, had a look through his desk.’
‘I take it you didn’t find the notebooks detailing all his crimes?’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘No, one of his desk drawers is locked. I did find drafts of a rather unctuous letter to the College of Arms, though. And we have just seen that he is capable of violence against a woman.’
Crowther murmured, ‘There are times when we are all capable of that.’
Harriet chose to ignore him and continue her own train of thought. ‘I am sure that he has some hold over Hugh.’
‘You think he sent the bottle to Cartwright by Hugh’s hand, too?’ Crowther gave a slightly exasperated sigh.
And when she nodded: ‘Why, though, Mrs Westerman? There is no sense in it. If he has this hold over Mr Thornleigh, then his wishing to remove the threat of Alexander’s return, or that of his heirs has some logic to it. But if that is his wish, then he would surely not want Hugh to be hanged for his crimes. And why would he want the man to have the freedom to shoot himself? There can be no other interpretation of the scene we have just witnessed. He was angry that his benefactor could not shoot himself while drunk because of the actions of that little maid. That hardly suggests his fortunes depend on Hugh.’
Mrs Westerman did not look dismayed.
‘Perhaps his allegiances are elsewhere now, Crowther. If both Hugh and Alexander are removed, then the control of the family wealth falls to Lady Thornleigh. He may think her a better patron.’
The remark made Crowther stop, then with a shrug he moved on.
‘There is no proof,’ he said. ‘Nothing. Speculation and gossip and a bottle of poison is all we have, and they point clearly at Hugh.’
‘Isn’t the proper scientific method to suggest a hypothesis and then look for the evidence to support it?’
‘No, it certainly is not. It is to observe, gather all the information one can, then hypothesise with a great deal of circumspection and care.’
Harriet shrugged. ‘I like my method better.’
Crowther did not reply, only gave a speaking sigh as they approached the entrance to the house.
They were not the first visitors of the morning. As they waited under the heavy ornament of the hallway, they saw Squire Bridges pause on the stairway, taking, it seemed, a very friendly farewell from Lady Thornleigh. He bent low over her hand, his eyes looking up into her lovely face with great warmth. She was smiling at him, with her head a little to one side, and with some last word turned from him and made her way out of sight towards the state rooms above. The Squire began to descend the stair, then caught sight of them, and his step faltered a little. The lines on his forehead deepened.

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