Shadow of the Raven (10 page)

T
homas did not return to Brandwick village straightaway. Leaving London the previous day, he had stayed once more in Amersham. On the last leg of his journey he had turned off the Oxford road and headed up to Raven's Wood. He wanted to investigate not only the scene of the murder but the old ruins, too. He had been musing on the lights he had seen the other night from his window in the Three Tuns and wished to pursue a new line of inquiry. Perhaps, he told himself, there was a connection between illicit activities in the wood and the surveyor's murder. Until and unless he was able to speak with the surveyor's assistant, James Charlton, and he very much doubted he ever would, he would have to rely on his own intuition.

The steep slope was laced with a fretwork of pathways, well used by men, horses, and carts. During the day parts of the woodland were busy with the sound of industry—the crackle of wood burning in the charcoal kilns or the rasping of the sawyers' saws. In his native homeland of Pennsylvania, man held the vast expanses of forest that covered the landscape in awe. Here, however, it seemed that Englishmen had the desire to tame nature and make it their own. Its riches were commodities to be traded. In their eyes every oak was a ship's timber, every elm a dining table, every walnut tree a chest of drawers.

As he pressed on, he suddenly became aware of a low droning sound and realized it was the rush of fast-flowing water that filled his ears. He could not see the river. It was still obscured by the trees, but he could hear it. It drew him toward it. Making his way nearer the gushing rumble, he soon came to the edge of a steep cliff. It gave him a magnificent view: He could see the river as it tumbled down from the highest point in the forest, cutting its way through a shallow gorge. Pulling up his horse, Thomas peered down. The water was still high after the winter snowmelt. It powered the fulling mill at the head of the valley. The sight lifted his spirits a little, until he remembered that when the woods were fenced off it would no longer be available to all. He turned his horse.

Along the forest path he went, his mind still mired down in the resentment he felt toward Lupton. The beauty of the woodland seemed to be fading the deeper he went. Oaks and beeches and poplars gave way to more firs, their dark, brooding towers masking the sun. Suddenly he became aware of a change in the dappling of the light to his right. Looking 'round he saw the ruins of an old manor house. He recalled that Lydia had spoken of it, telling him that it once acted as a garrison for Oliver Cromwell's troops in the civil war more than one hundred and fifty years before. She said it had suffered severe damage at the time and had fallen into disrepair. The villagers had helped themselves to most of the stone and wood, crawling over it like busy ants, to build their own homes. Now all that remained was a ghostly footprint on the landscape. Here and there a jagged column might remain, like a stubborn tooth rooted so deep that it refused to budge. A mullioned casement was draped with swathes of ivy and framed a view of coppiced trees. There was a melancholy grace and beauty about it. He suddenly thought of Boughton Hall. Without Lydia, he only hoped it would not suffer the same fate.

He rode up to the ruin and tethered his horse to a young tree that had grown at an angle through a broken window. He had little idea of his bearings and he wondered how far from the murder scene he might be. Nevertheless, for now, he felt it of little consequence. This had to be one of the highest points in the wood, and if lights had been lit here, he may well have seen them from his room at the inn. He began to scrutinize the area for signs of recent human activity. Working methodically, he decided to examine within a twenty-yard radius of the ruin. With his eyes fixed firmly to the ground, he started to pace the circumference. In less than half an hour he had moved to within a yard of the curtilage of the old manor, and it was there, on the mossy earth, that he spotted the odd flakes, spilled near the outer wall. He bent down and picked up some of the strange brown fragments. They appeared to be shredded leaves, but it was only when he smelled them that he realized what they were.

“Tobacco,” he said out loud. The sound of his voice prompted a rustle of leaves, and for a moment, his heart missed a beat, until he saw a squirrel suddenly scurry along a branch and run off. This was an eerie place. He could understand why the landlord had told him no one would accompany him into the wood, yet the forest gave work to so many. He resumed his own travail, his eyes latching onto every blade of grass, every leaf in the immediate vicinity, to see if he could find any more shreds of tobacco. Sure enough, he soon found more, much more; a small, thin trail of it led up toward the wall and continued on the other side.

Taking a cotton bag from his pocket, Thomas began to gather up the flakes. In places there was but a sprinkling; in others it had fallen in small heaps. As he collected the shreds, it suddenly occurred to him that a sack must have burst to leave such an amount. He kept his eyes on the trail of flakes until he came to what seemed to be a dead end: a broken-off column of stone, no more than a foot high, where the trace stopped suddenly. Around it tufts of grass grew, but on closer inspection he saw that there was a patch that had been recently flattened. Bending low, he grasped the column with both hands and slowly but surely tried to pull it toward him. It resisted at first but then yielded, causing Thomas to fall back with the effort.

When he picked himself up, however, he was rewarded with an intriguing sight—what appeared to be a trapdoor. Taking a deep breath, Thomas tugged at the large metal handle in the center. To his relief, although the door protested loudly, it opened easily enough. Peering into the gloom below, he could make out a ladder that led into what seemed to be an old cellar. He lowered his head into the mouth of the opening and blinked away the darkness. It took only a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the light, and even then he could not see much, but he could certainly see enough.

Ranged along the nearest wall were wooden casks and barrels, piled high beside large wooden chests and bulging sacks. He craned his neck and strained his eyes. Could it be that he saw the word “Tea” printed on one of the crates? Here was his proof. The tobacco he had collected was not destined for the pipe of a passing traveler who had fumbled with his pouch and dropped a few flakes. This tobacco was contraband, smuggled before it was smoked. Tea, too, carried a hefty excise tax, as well as gin and brandy. There was much profit to be gleaned from the illegal sale of all these goods. Could it be that Mr. Turgoose and his party had inadvertently stumbled across this illicit stash and the surveyor had paid for the discovery with his life? The theory sounded plausible, but the only people who could verify it—Charlton and the guide—remained at Boughton Hall. It suited Malthus to keep the villagers under suspicion, and from what he had witnessed, there was no way of telling whether this smuggling racket was the work of locals or outsiders.

Suddenly there was a flapping overhead. Thomas looked up to see a large black bird settle on a branch nearby and remembered the words of the stable lad. He had warned of the Raven. Mayhap this was the scoundrel's hideout. Questions whirled around in his head like an eddy of leaves, but very few answers presented themselves to him. Nevertheless, he had evidence to prove that criminal activity occurred in the ruins. Armed with his samples of tobacco, he decided to make for Brandwick before the rest of the day's light was lost to him. His return to the scene of Mr. Turgoose's murder would have to wait.

 

Once more, to Mr. Geech's great surprise, Thomas found himself back at the Three Tuns, being shown into his usual room. No sooner had he climbed the stairs, however, than the lank-haired stable lad bounded up behind him and appeared at his door.

“Dr. Silkstone, sir,” he began breathlessly. “There's Mistress Diggott downstairs for you. She says she needs you.”

Thomas nodded thoughtfully. From the boy's tone, the matter seemed urgent.

Picking up the medical case he had only just laid on the table, Thomas followed the youth immediately as he hopped down the stairs. A woman was waiting for him. Her dark hair peeped from her cap to frame a face that bore the familiar lines of want and worry.

“Oh, Doctor, will you come?” she pleaded. “'Tis my son, Jake.”

Young Jake Diggott had lain on his belly for the past two days, barely able to move, as the fever raged. They had carried him home after the whipping and rubbed his wounds with salt to stop corruption, but still the ague came, and his mother was beginning to fear for his life. She had bathed the cuts with cold water, but they still wept as much as she did every time her son cried out in pain.

Old Abe Diggott had taken his grandson's punishment hard, too. He'd been so stricken with grief that he'd been unable to join Adam in the coupe since the whipping. He simply sat in his bentwood chair by the hearth. Gin was his only solace. He kept it by him in a large brown earthenware flagon and drank it as if it were springwater.

“ 'Tis the only thing that eases my pain,” he would moan to anyone who would listen.

That evening Rachel had been standing over the stewpot when Adam returned home from the wood.

“The boy any better?” he asked as soon as he stepped over the threshold.

His wife wiped her hands on her apron and shook her head. Adam walked over to the cot where Jake lay. Gently he lifted the covering over the wounds. A crust had not yet formed and his savaged skin still oozed like a swamp. Every time Adam looked at his son he felt the rage well up inside him. He turned away and kicked the wall. A clump of plaster fell away and crumbled on the ground like stale cake.

It was then Rachel knew she had to act. She had seen the American doctor pass their cottage as he rode down the track from Raven's Wood not an hour before. She understood that her husband remained wary of the colonist, even though she knew him to be a good man, so she slipped out of the house as he dozed with his father by the fire, to ask the doctor to ease her son's pain. He had consented and now stood with her in the cottage.

“Dr. Silkstone is here to help us,” announced Rachel. She spoke as if to reassure her menfolk.

Adam Diggott leapt up from his chair and stood to attention, although the angry look he flung his wife did not escape Thomas's notice. Such behavior made him aware that while he might have been a physician, he was first a stranger, and a foreigner to boot.

“I understand your son has been flogged, Mr. Diggott. May I see his wounds?” he asked. “There will be no charge,” he added. For a moment there was a stunned silence, until the coppicer bowed his head in a show of both gratitude and acquiescence.

“Thank you, Doctor,” he replied.

Relieved at her husband's assent, Rachel guided Thomas toward the cot where the boy lay prone. Damp cloths covered his flayed skin, but they did little to mask the smell of putrescent flesh.

Husband and wife exchanged glances across the room as Thomas gently peeled back the makeshift dressing. Adam clenched his jaw and moved toward the bedside.

“He were whipped through the street for firing a stack of fence posts, Doctor,” he said, staring at his son.

Thomas frowned and shook his head. So Malthus's barbarity extended to children now, he told himself. Crouching low, he examined the suppurating wounds. The lacerations were deep, administered with a great force, he surmised. Clearly no allowance was made for his age or strength. The young skin was gouged and puckered into great welts from the neck down to the coccyx. A foul-smelling, watery ooze seeped from the lesions.

Opening his case, Thomas took out a jar of aloe vera unguent. He had come to swear by it since he first used it in the treatment of infected wounds in London.

“Now, Jake, I am going to smear some ointment on your back,” he said softly. The boy grunted in reply and shuddered as Thomas began applying the cooling syrup, but he soon quietened as the soothing balm began to take effect. Thomas then covered the wounds in gauze. Next the doctor brought out a jar of willow bark. Knowing it to contain healing properties, he sprinkled the dried flakes into a flask of boiled water and urged the boy to drink it.

“The fever should be gone in the next few hours,” Thomas said, finally rising from the bedside.

He had repacked his medical case and begun to walk to the door when he caught sight of old Abe Diggott, sprawled in his bentwood chair. He threw a questioning look at Rachel.

“He is unwell?” asked Thomas.

Rachel regarded her father-in-law, a despairing look in her eyes.

“He's sharing the boy's punishment,” she said plainly. “All he's done since the whipping is drink gin to ease his own pain.” Her eyes wandered to the earthenware flagon at his side.

Thomas followed her gaze, then looked at the old man, half-awake, half-asleep, a string of saliva spooling from the corner of his mouth.

“Drinks the stuff like mother's milk, 'e does,” chimed in Adam, joining them.

All eyes had turned to the stupefied old man, as if he were some curiosity to be pitied.

It was Rachel who changed the subject. “We cannot thank you enough, Doctor,” she said, as if wishing to draw Thomas's visit to a close. She gestured him to the door.

Adam, standing at her side, managed a flicker of a smile. “We are grateful to you, sir,” he said.

Thomas nodded in reply and turned to go. Just as he did so, however, Adam called him back. “Is there any news of 'er ladyship, Doctor?” he asked.

Taken aback by such a question, Thomas stopped in his tracks. It was a mark of the affection the villagers felt for Lydia that her well-being should concern them even when their own futures were in jeopardy. He thought of her pained expression, her body sheathed in the restraint. The inquiry only served to strengthen his resolve. As he turned to face the coppicer, he felt a sudden surge of energy.