Shadow of the Raven (18 page)

A
rmed as he was with Sir Theodisius's letter of authorization, it did not take long for Thomas to gain entry into the jail. Not that he welcomed having to return. Even after all this time, the memories were still raw. The sounds, the smells, the sights, all conspired to remind him of his visits to see Lydia's late husband as he, too, wallowed in a stinking cell in Oxford Jail awaiting trial for murder.

Captain Michael Farrell had been kept in relative luxury. At least he had not been forced to share his cell with other criminals; at least he had his own pot to piss in and had not been shackled to the wall, the irons chafing his flesh. Abe Diggott had been accorded no such niceties. Three other men and a boy were crowded in with him, not to mention the cockroaches that scurried and scrambled across the floor.

The door groaned open and the turnkey allowed the doctor entry. One of the prisoners rushed up to him and tugged at his topcoat. The jailer fended him off with a quick clip of his cosh and the man retreated, whimpering.

“Anyone else?” growled the jailer. He flexed his muscles and slapped his palm with his cosh. “There he is,” he said to Thomas, using his weapon as a pointer. “There's your man.”

Abe Diggott was lying in a crumpled heap on the slippery cobbles, manacled at the ankles.

“ 'Tis Dr. Silkstone, Abe,” he said softly, kneeling down beside the woodsman. Diggott lifted his head slowly, as if waking from a dream. Thomas noticed that his eyes were swimming in their sockets as he tried to focus. His cheeks caved inward and his shirt draped itself as loose as a shroud over his torso.

“Here,” Thomas said, holding up a cup of a draft he had prepared to give the old man energy.

Diggott lifted his hands slowly upward, but as he tried to hold the cup, his fingers seemed to freeze.

Thomas frowned when he saw that he seemed unable to grasp the vessel. “What is it?” he asked.

The coppicer fixed him with a blurry gaze. “ 'Tis my fingers, sir. I can't move 'em,” he moaned, studying his hand like a curious child might look at a strange, alien object.

Thomas reached out. The digits were icy cold. Holding them between his own palms, he began to rub the fingers, trying to encourage the blood to circulate, but with little success. “How long have you suffered like this?” he inquired.

The old man shrugged. “ 'Tis hard to say. A few days now,” he replied with little conviction. “I ain't been able to hold an ax or a knife for a few weeks—I know that much,” he added.

“Enough now,” shouted the turnkey. “Your time is up,” he told the doctor.

Thomas protested. “I have had no chance to examine the prisoner properly.”

“He'll be dead soon enough, anyways,” came the crushing reply.

Abe Diggott shook his head resignedly. “He's not wrong,” he groaned.

“But you are innocent, are you not, Abe?” asked Thomas.

The accused man shrugged. “Makes no difference, Doctor,” he replied. “If Sir Montagu wants me dead, then I may as well put the noose 'round me own neck.”

Thomas gave no reply. He could not counter the man's words because he knew them to be true. It was left up to him to prove otherwise.

“I will not abandon you, Abe,” he assured the woodsman. But Diggott simply rolled himself into a ball once more, his head in his hands, seemingly accepting his fate.

Returning immediately to the anatomy school, Thomas found Professor Hascher hard at work in his laboratory. In fact, such was the Saxon's enthusiasm that he had even donated the last of his bottles of finest-quality schnapps to act as the controlled element in the experiment he was conducting.

“I have forfeited it to ze greater cause,” he announced dramatically, brandishing an empty bottle. Thomas cast an eager eye over the various paraphernalia that had been assembled for the test. “It is to your satisfaction, yes?” asked the Saxon.

“Most definitely.”

“Zen ve begin?”

Thomas nodded and, slipping off his coat, he rolled up his sleeves and set to work. First he soaked a clean piece of paper in fifty drachms of Professor Hascher's schnapps, then another in the suspect gin. Next he took a flask containing a volatile tincture of sulfur, produced by dissolving crystals in a measure of warmed aniseed oil, and exposed the papers, one at a time, to the fumes. The results were rapid, if not instantaneous. The paper soaked in schnapps remained unchanged. However, the sheet soaked in the gin turned much darker in color before their eyes.

Thomas turned to Hascher. “An encouraging start,” he said.

“Ve certainly follow ze right path, Dr. Silkstone.” The professor nodded. “Vhat next?”

“Hepar sulfuris?”
suggested Thomas. When added to lead, it was known to discolor.

“A good choice,” agreed Hascher, and he scanned his shelves for a bottle. “I prepared zis myself,” he said, recalling with great pride how he had saved discarded oyster shells after a particularly good college dinner and burned them before adding pure flowers of sulfur. “Let us see if zey—how do you say?—do ze trick.”

A few drops of the substance were added first to the paper impregnated with schnapps, then to the gin-soaked piece. The men stood back to watch. They did not have to wait long. Within four minutes the gin sample had turned a murky gray.

The professor clapped his hands. “I believe ve have our proof, Dr. Silkstone. Zere is lead in ze gin.”

Thomas, however, did not share his colleague's enthusiasm. “This sample does indeed contain lead, Professor, and it would certainly explain some of the chronic symptoms that seem to afflict the residents of Brandwick.” Thomas thought of the discolored teeth, the strange hair loss, and the gripes that, according to Mr. Peabody, regularly troubled the village imbibers. He went on: “I am afraid, however, it is in an insufficient quantity to cause the kind of symptoms I have seen in the accused man: the paralysis; the befuddlement. It would take a much more concentrated amount of poison to result in his severe reaction.”

Hascher suddenly looked crestfallen. “So ve have vasted our time?”

Thomas did not wish to dishearten the professor. The discovery of lead in the liquor was only the first step in what he knew would be a long and no doubt hard-fought battle to prove Abe Diggott's innocence.

“Let us just say, we must continue our mission.” He gave a reassuring smile. The problem was, he knew the trial would be held within the next few days and he was rapidly running out of time.

T
he men met under cover of darkness at Maggie Cuthbert's cottage in Raven's Wood. Despite Abe Diggott's arrest, Lupton's lackeys still patrolled the streets of the village to enforce the curfew. More important, however, they were on the lookout for Adam Diggott, also wanted for the brutal murder of Jeffrey Turgoose. Will Ketch and Josh Thornley had made good their escapes from their cottages unnoticed. Zeb Godson, living in the forest as he did, had not needed an alibi.

“You seen him?” Ketch asked Godson.

The charcoal burner's eyes seemed to glow white from out of his grimy face. “He'll be here.”

They were sitting on the floor in front of a blazing fire that threw long shadows across the room. Nevertheless, the light was sufficient to allow them to see the fear on one another's faces well enough. In the forest silence they heard an owl hoot. A few seconds later its call was answered by another. It seemed that even the night birds were mocking them, this party of fools, this band of Davids who would take on the might of Sir Montagu Malthus and his ilk.

Suddenly Thornley straightened his back. “Footsteps,” he whispered. The men froze, held their breaths. Maggie Cuthbert went to the window and lifted a ragged drape.

“ 'Tis him,” she said, and the men exhaled as one.

Adam Diggott stood in the doorway and was ushered in quickly. The other men rose to greet him, like a long-lost friend or a hero returning from war. He strode to the hearth and held his hands to the fire.

Maggie Cuthbert joined him, a red-hot poker in her hand. She laid it in the embers for a few seconds, then thrust it inside a tankard of gin. The liquid inside fizzed and hissed, and she handed it to Diggott. He downed it in one.

“What news from Oxford?” asked Will Ketch.

Adam Diggott wiped his mouth with his sleeve and scowled. “They've charged him,” he grunted.

Josh Thornley shook his balding head. “Then 'e's as good as dead,” he muttered unthinkingly.

Barely had his words left his mouth when Adam dived at him, grabbing him by his jerkin, his fist primed to land a punch. Widow Cuthbert came between them.

“Stop that!” she cried. “Save your fighting for Lupton and Malthus or I'll box your ears myself!”

The two men pulled away from each other, knowing what the old woman said to be true. She may have been as wizened as a willow trunk, but she was wise with it.

Thornley looked to her for guidance. “What's to be done, then?”

The widow eyed the circle. She set down the poker and planted herself in her customary chair at the hearth, cradling a tankard.

“First we need to know where we're at,” she told them plainly. “You can't start a journey, not knowing where you're coming from.”

The men nodded at the logic of this statement. Adam Diggott was the first to proffer information.

“The American doctor has gone to Oxford to see my pa,” he said.

“The knife man?” Thornley mocked. “And what good can he do?”

Maggie Cuthbert held up an admonishing hand. “Dr. Silkstone's a good man. He's helped young Jake, and he'll help Abe, too, in whatever way he can.”

Thoughts turned to the young boy who'd been so cruelly whipped along the High Street and whose wounds still oozed pus two weeks on. No one knew when or if he would be able to work again.

“Damn them at the hall!” cried Adam, suddenly leaping up and hurling his tankard across the room so that it hit the wall. “I say we get our revenge. I say we march up to Boughton and burn the house to the ground!” His eyes were aflame as the anger inside him bubbled over.

Will Ketch tugged at his arm and pulled him down into the circle again. “We know you're angry, Adam. But 'twould do no good.”

“ 'Twould do me good,” he growled, giving the hearthstone a hard kick.

Zeb Godson had remained silent throughout the exchanges, save for the odd phlegmy cough. With a long stick he had been making patterns on the earth floor. He addressed his fellows for the first time. “Them up at the hall are still going to rob us of our land. Even if Abe is spared the noose, all of us will go on suffering.”

His words hung on the air for a moment before the silence was filled by the hoot of another owl.

“He's not wrong,” said Will Ketch, slapping his thigh. “We must further our cause. We can't let them take our ancient dues. I say we carry on fighting!”

Widow Cuthbert snorted. “Like ya did before? Let your boys set fire to fence posts or black your faces and make noises in the woods? Look where that's got ye.” She fired her words so quickly that her spittle hit Adam Diggott in the face. But they knew she was right.

“You got a better idea, old woman?” sneered Josh, leaning forward.

The widow chewed her gums as she eyed each man in the circle at her feet. She knew she had more balls than all of them put together. But it did not need brute force to overcome the powers at the hall. What was needed was cunning and guile.

“As a matter of fact, I have,” she told them.

“You'll put a curse on 'em, yes?” jeered Josh Thornley.

The other men laughed, but Maggie Cuthbert tut-tutted at them as if they were small boys.

“No curses. No witchcraft,” she said, lifting her gnarled finger up to her temple. “Just my head.”

Will Ketch leaned forward. “And how might that be?”

“You heard what they did at West Haddon?”

The village lay only a few miles away over the county border, but news of what the residents did had traveled the length and breadth of England. It was the talk at markets, fairs, and water pumps up and down the land. It was talk of how the calling of a football match had gathered together a great mob that trampled down fences and set light to them in defiance of the landlord who wanted to enclose the commons.

The men slid each other sideways glances. They had heard all right.

“But we don't need no football match,” said the old woman, shaking her head.

“No?” pressed Josh Thornley.

Maggie Cuthbert smirked and let out an odd chuckle. “No,” she said, shaking her wiry old head. “We got the beating of the bounds.”

“But Sir Montagu has banned it,” protested Zeb Godson.

The old woman shook her head and fixed him with a wry smile. “If every man, woman, and child of this parish comes together, there ain't nothing we can't do,” she said.