The Devil's Breath (8 page)

At first it seemed that he could not focus; his eyes were swimming in their sockets, but after a moment or two he appeared to understand where he was. When he opened his mouth to speak, however, his breath deserted him and he began to rasp in great heaving spasms.

Thomas poured some more of the syrup and held it to his lips. The gardener gulped it down and almost instantly his breathing was calmer.

“Do not try to speak,” the doctor told him, easing him down on the settee. “You must rest.”

Hannah was left in charge of the patients and given instructions to call Thomas if there was any change for the worse in either of their conditions.

Outside in the hallway, Lydia faced Thomas. “What is it that has done this to them?” she asked. “What poison is in this fog?”

The doctor could only shake his head. “I have no answer,” he told her earnestly. “But I intend to find one.”

“D
o you think this might be hell?”

The Reverend George Lightfoot stood by a window in the vicarage at Brandwick, contemplating the view. His long hair was parted in the middle and streaked with silver and his large nose twitched as he sniffed the air.

His wife, who had been writing letters at her escritoire, put down her pen and joined him. It was just past eleven o’clock in the morning and yet she had told the maid to light the candles. She stood at her husband’s side, towering over the wiry little man by at least three inches. Now she, too, considered what lay beyond the window, even though there was barely anything to see. The fog had enveloped not only the distant hills, but also the chestnut trees at the bottom of their garden. Strange flecks swirled about in the blackness and the smell of sulfur rankled in her nostrils.

“If this were hell, then we would not be here,” she told her husband in a matter-of-fact voice. “The Lord would have taken us up to join him at his right hand.”

The Reverend Lightfoot nodded, thoughtfully. “Oh, my dear Margaret. How right you are.” He felt embarrassed that he could ever have doubted their own salvation.

“The Lord may be showing his displeasure with those who do not seek him out, but we, the righteous, have nothing to fear,” she told him, her gaze remaining on the darkness. She has a fine profile, he thought, and a strong jaw to match. She always spoke with such conviction that he almost envied her steadfastness; her complete and utter submission to God’s will.

“Then we should pray for those who have caused him such displeasure, should we not?” he suggested. His eyes were stinging with the fog and he wiped them with his kerchief.

“Indeed, we should,” agreed his wife. Lifting her skirts slightly, she knelt down where she stood. The Reverend Lightfoot joined her and together they looked out over the blanket of fumes, and folded their hands in prayer.

“Dear Lord, in your infinite wisdom you have sent this great fog upon us, cloaking both good and evil alike. Let those who have provoked your wrath repent of their sins. Lift this veil of darkness from their eyes so that they may see the error of their ways and lead us all into the divine light of your kingdom. Through Our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”

“Amen,” echoed Mistress Lightfoot.

“There will be many who are afraid,” he reflected, rising and holding out a hand to his wife.

“And rightly so,” she retorted. “Brandwick may not be like London, but we have plenty of our own ne’er-do-wells.” She walked back to her escritoire and took up her pen once more.

“ ’Tis true,” acknowledged the vicar, “but perhaps . . .”

His wife looked up, irritated that she should be challenged. “Perhaps what?”

“Perhaps this fog, or whatever it is, will bring them back to the Lord,” said her husband, gesturing forlornly to the blackness outside.

Mistress Lightfoot smiled sourly, as if the taste of the vapor was tainting her tongue. “If the fog doesn’t lift, you’ll have an empty church this Sunday, George,” she told him, and with that she lowered her head to resume her correspondence.

 

The library at Boughton Hall was a place where Thomas felt at ease. If he could not be in his laboratory in London, surrounded by his gallipots and guglets and his scientific paraphernalia, then here was a good substitute. Lydia’s late father, Sir Richard Crick, had kept a good library and should he need references for his experiments, he would know where to look, while downstairs in the kitchen, Mistress Claddingbowl’s store cupboard wanted for nothing.

He had overseen the removal of Amos Kidd and young Will Lovelock into more suitable quarters below stairs. Will had shown a slight improvement. His breathing was easier when he had last seen him; but Amos Kidd still gave him cause for concern. His wife remained by his side. His breathing was labored, his fever high, and he seemed to be in considerable pain. The black sores around his eyes, lips, and hands also appeared to be worsening, despite the fact that Hannah had washed them and smothered them in some of her soothing unguent.

It was late afternoon in a day that had seen no shadows. It had remained as black as night throughout the normal daylight hours, so Thomas was forced to work by the glow of a lantern. Before him, on a saucer, was a small quantity of gray flakes that he had collected from the terrace. Next to the saucer, in a jug he had purloined from the kitchen, were a few teaspoons of rainwater, scooped from a stone trough. He had been swift in the taking of these samples. Wearing a scarf over his mouth, he had dashed out of the patio doors and, in barely a minute, had managed to collect what he needed. Now he sat contemplating the mysteries these granules and this rainwater held within them.

How he wished he had his microscope to analyze the grains, or his retort to evaporate the rainwater. As it was, he was forced to rely on the good nature of Mistress Claddingbowl, who had willingly supplied a set of spoons and custard cups and even a flint and spills. Fortunately—although it could be argued that fortune played no part in Thomas’s perpetual state of preparedness—he had packed several relevant utensils in his bag. First and foremost was his magnifying glass. It may have lacked the power of his microscope, having less than a two-hundredth of the former’s magnification, but at least its power would enable him to conduct a preliminary examination of the powder.

Next came his test tubes. He had brought four with him and now he carefully poured the murky liquid from the jug into one of them. Quite what he was looking for, he was not entirely sure, although he believed there could be a powerful substance at work. He recalled Amos Kidd’s face and hands. Those burns were the result of the scalding rain; yet he was convinced it was not the temperature of the rainwater that had caused such injuries but the elements within it.

He drew the lantern nearer and peered at the granules through the seeing glass. The flakes were sharp and angular, like fragments of broken glass, and there was a strange yellowish hue to them. But it was the smell, the acrid tang, that was most convincing to Thomas.

He reached for the custard cup. Mistress Claddingbowl had been most intrigued when he asked her if she could hammer at the sugarloaf in her store cupboard and give him a few ounces. Taking the test tube of rainwater he emptied its contents onto the sugar and waited. After one or two seconds the white granules turned first yellow, then black. Next it began to hiss, then vapor rose from it, until finally it erupted out of the bowl in a great pillar of carbon.

Thomas stared at the charred mass before him. It was as he suspected, but he needed to be doubly sure. He dipped a spill into the dish holding the gray particles, then using a flint lit another spill. As soon as the powder came into contact with the flame, it changed color from yellow to pale blue.

Engrossed in his experiment, the young doctor did not notice Lydia enter the room. She stopped in surprise. “What are you doing?”

He leaned closer to the flames and blew both of them out in a single breath.

“I have just confirmed what I feared since this morning,” said Thomas, propping his elbows on the desk and tenting his fingers.

“What is that?” asked Lydia, drawing nearer.

“I am afraid the rain is poisonous. It contains sulfuric acid. The flakes, too. They are molten sulfur. I believe they are mixed together in this deadly fog and until it lifts, crops, livestock, and people are in danger.”

Lydia shook her head as the implications of Thomas’s words sank in.

“So this acid killed the men on the Thorndike estate?” she blurted.

Thomas nodded. “They breathed it in and it burned their lungs.”

Lydia’s hands flew up to her mouth at the thought of it.

“Forgive me. I should not have been so specific,” he said, but his thoughts had already turned to Amos Kidd downstairs, the acid slowly but surely gnawing away at the soft tissue of his throat and organs.

Lydia read his mind. “Amos Kidd?” She eased herself down into a chair on the other side of the desk to contemplate the fate of the gardener. After a moment, she raised her head to look at the young doctor, who sat in silence, his hands clasped, as if in prayer. “But surely you must be able to save him, Thomas? You will find a way?”

 

The absence of the sun during the day made St. Swithin’s Church in Brandwick a gloomy place. Normally the light would filter through the magnificent medieval stained glass windows, casting cobalt blue shadows on the paving stones below. But that afternoon, the only light came from the few burning candles on the altar. The nave was dull and cold and Mistress Lightfoot was anxious to finish seeing to the floral arrangements as soon as possible so she could return to the relative warmth of the vicarage.

As she rearranged the hollyhocks in a large vase for one of the side altars, she mused on the effects of the fog. The stems had been picked the day before it had descended and were already looking a little jaded. She wondered how the flowers in her garden had fared, but had not wanted to venture around the beds for fear of breathing in the mist. So these hollyhocks needed to last as long as they could.

She had just finished topping up the other vases with water from a jug when she heard the heavy latch click at the far end of the nave. She glanced down the aisle and watched the door open slightly. Pushing his way through, a man stood briefly in the threshold, coughing, before he turned and heaved the door shut once more.

Mistress Lightfoot walked anxiously toward the stranger as he staggered in the aisle. Drawing nearer she could see he was a peasant sort. His clothes were soiled and torn. It was only when he was within a few feet of her that she noticed his head. It was swathed in a bright red bandana.

Wiping the phlegm from around his mouth with the back of his hand, the traveler gave her a smile.

“Begging pardon, madam,” he said. “But I’ve been out in this fog for two days now and ’tis hurting my chest.”

She looked at him warily, but mindful that she was in the house of God, she decided to be charitable. “You need water?”

“God bless you, ma’am,” he croaked.

“Please sit,” she told him, gesturing to a pew.

She fetched some water from a pail in the vestry and gave it to him in the jug she had used for her flower water. He drank the contents down in one.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, wiping his mouth again. Yet instead of leaving, as she had hoped he would, he remained seated, his palms planted on his thighs, looking about him as if he had never been inside a church before.

Mistress Lightfoot felt awkward. “You’d best be on your way again,” she snapped.

But the traveler smiled and shook his head. “I thought perhaps I could stay here the night,” he said, his eyes large and brown. “My lungs need a rest from the fog.”

The vicar’s wife straightened her back and clasped her hands at her waist. “I am afraid we cannot give shelter in the church,” she told him, forcing her mouth into a smile. “Why, all the vagrants of the parish would come,” she added.

The traveler eyed her for a moment, then nodded. He did not seem surprised by her reaction and rose to his feet slowly. Mistress Lightfoot was relieved that he did not make a fuss. She did not enjoy dealing with his sort but she was quite satisfied with the way she had handled the situation. He lolloped like a weary hound down the aisle toward the door, but just before he reached it, he stopped and the smirk returned to his handsome features as he faced her.

“I should’ve known better than to look for a little charity in a church,” he told her, his hands crossing over his heart in a mocking gesture.

She struggled to counter his logic. “Yes, but, but you do not belong here. You are a stranger . . . a . . .”

“I am a knife-grinder, lady. I make an honest living and I may be a stranger to you, but I have a name.”

Suddenly his face twisted and he was hissing at her through his white teeth. Margaret Lightfoot felt threatened. She crossed her arms defensively, but the stranger turned and walked to the door. Before he left, however, he wheeled ’round once more. “If you will not give me sanctuary, I shall look for it elsewhere,” he snarled. And he walked back out of the church and disappeared almost immediately into the fog.

T
hat night, as Eliza brushed her long chestnut locks, Lydia felt an overwhelming sadness. Each firm but gentle stroke seemed to cut into her flesh. The inconsolable despair she had felt in Hungerford on learning that her son had been taken by her cousin Francis returned, and with it came a sense of vulnerability.

Thomas had given her hope. Even on their journey back to Boughton he tried to buoy her spirits. “We shall find him,” he had said. “If he is alive, then we shall find him.” How she wished she could believe his well-meaning promises. She loved him so very much, but on this occasion she felt his optimism was misplaced. As an anatomist he, of all people, surely had to accept the inevitable. Just as we are born to die, surely there could be no hope of finding her Richard alive.

She put her hands up to her scalp and raked her fingers through her hair. “Please, Eliza, no more,” she snapped, turning to face the girl.

The maid immediately withdrew the brush, giving her mistress a startled look. “I’m sorry, my lady, I hope I didn’t . . .”

Lydia instantly felt even more wretched. “No. No, ’tis me, Eliza,” she said, waving a hand. “I am out of sorts. I need to rest.”

Eliza curtsied, returned the brush to the dressing table, and walked over to the bed.

“Is there anything I can get you, my lady?” she asked, turning down the covers. “A draft from Dr. Silkstone, perhaps?”

Lydia shook her head and in an unguarded moment she said, “Not even Dr. Silkstone has a remedy for a broken heart.” The instant she had let slip her deepest feelings, she regretted it. Eliza was unsure how to react. She did not lift her gaze, busying herself with Lydia’s pillows, but her mistress knew that it was too late.

“I know I can trust you, Eliza,” she said softly.

The maid stood still, clutching a pillow to her breast. “Of course, my lady.”

For the past four years she had been faithful. There was the matter of the court case, when she had testified against Captain Farrell, but she had only told the truth. To her mistress she had remained steadfast and loyal.

Lydia eased herself into the bed and patted the coverlet, bidding her maid to sit down in a gesture of intimacy she had never shown before.

“What I am about to tell you must never be repeated. Not to anyone.”

Eliza straightened her back, as if preparing herself to take an oath.

“Never. I swear,” she pledged.

Lydia took a deep breath. “I have a son.” The words cracked from her tongue like a whip. Eliza’s eyes widened and her head jutted forward, but she said nothing, waiting instead for her mistress to continue.

She went on: “Yes, Captain Farrell and I had a son. I do not know if he still lives.” She paused, as if allowing Eliza to take in the momentousness of what she had just divulged. Then, in a gesture that abandoned all decorum and propriety, she leaned forward and Eliza spontaneously put her arms around her mistress as she began to weep.

“Oh my lady,” she murmured, stroking her long chestnut locks once more, only this time with her hand.

After a moment or two, Lydia sat upright once more and composed herself. “He was born six years ago and we named him Richard, after my father, but I believed that he passed in his sleep a few days later. It was only after my husband died that I found out my son had been given to a wet nurse.”

Eliza shook her head in bewilderment. “So ’twas the captain who hid your child from you?” she asked incredulously.

Lydia nodded. “That is what Dr. Silkstone and I were doing yesterday. We were in Hungerford, because that was the last address we had for my son.”

“But you didn’t find him?” Eliza regarded her mistress mournfully.

Lydia stifled a sob. “No. What we did discover was that Francis Crick had taken custody of him. In my grief at my husband’s death I confided in him and he betrayed me. God knows where my Richard is now.” She choked back the tears and reached for her handkerchief, not registering the look of shock that had darted across her maid’s face at the mention of her dead cousin. The girl froze for a moment, as if adding up the information she had just received.

“Mr. Crick, you say?”

Lydia looked up. There was something in Eliza’s voice that told her there was more behind her question. “What is it?” Her maid’s mouth was pursed. “You know something. Tell me, Eliza.” She put her hands onto the girl’s shoulders, looking at her squarely. “Please, what is it?”

The color had drained from the maid’s normally rosy complexion. “It may be nothing, your ladyship.”

“But it may be something,” countered Lydia. “Please.”

Eliza’s shoulders heaved as she took a deep breath, as if she were about to embark on a long journey. “That time, the time when Captain Farrell was in pr . . .” She could not bring herself to say the word “prison.” Lydia waved her hand to show her she recalled the situation. “Well, Mr. Crick came to me one day and asks me if I knowed any good girls in London who were used to children.”

Lydia’s brows lifted in surprise. “So what did you say?”

The maid looked into the distance, as if recalling the incident in her mind’s eye. “I says, as it happened, my sister was not settled in her service in Southwark and may welcome a change.”

“And?” pressed Lydia.

“So I gave him her address and he thanked me.”

“What happened next?”

“My sister wrote to me a few days later saying that she was engaged by the Right Honorable Francis Crick to look after his London household.”

Lydia looked askance. “And have you heard from your sister since?”

Eliza shook her head sadly. “No, your ladyship. ’Tis two years now and I ain’t heard nothing.”

“But you tried to contact her?”

The maid nodded vigorously. “Mistress Claddingbowl helped me write. I’m not well learned in letters, you see. But she never replied, then when Mr. Crick . . .” Her voice trailed off wanly, but her mistress knew she was thinking of his execution.

Lydia rolled her eyes in frustration. Just when there was another thread of hope it had been broken. But a thought suddenly occurred to her.

“Do you still have your sister’s letter?”

Eliza looked at her mistress. “Yes, your ladyship. ’Tis most precious to me.” She did not say she slept with it under her pillow.

“And does it give an address?”

The girl’s eyes lit up like fires. “Yes. Yes, my lady. I believe it does!” she exclaimed.

Lydia clapped her hands gleefully. “Then that is where we must continue our search,” she cried. “We shall go to London, just as soon as this dreadful fog has lifted.”

 

Somewhere, in a cold, dark cellar in London, a boy was crying. He was young, probably no more than six, although he was not sure of his own age. His tousled brown hair was knotted and his breeches and jacket were too small for him, showing his bruised shins and wrists. He had boots on his feet, but there were holes in the soles.

There was no light in the cellar, so he sat huddled in the corner. Apart from his sobs, the only other sound he could hear was the squeaking of rats as they scrambled over each other in the darkness. Hunger pains stabbed at his empty belly and his lips were dry as coal dust. With his one good hand he wiped away the tears from his dirty cheeks.