Cheating the Hangman Read online

  She stared as if I was an imbecile. ‘Good God, with your only daughter ruined, a child not yet fourteen, drowning herself and her innocent babe, what would your reaction be? And your wife of twenty years dying of a broken heart?’

  ‘In childbirth, Lucintha,’ Miss Witheridge corrected her quickly.

  She ignored the interruption. ‘In his place, I am sure I would want my revenge on the vile seducer – or, more accurately, rapist! You say the poor man left the village for good – his conscience probably drove him, like his daughter, to a fast-flowing stream.’

  ‘And you are assuming that the man he killed was …?’

  She snorted with laughter. ‘Parson Coates, of course. The only thing that taxes me is how he managed to attach him to the tree. As you must have seen, he was scarce more than skin and bone. He must have had accomplices – but then, the vile creature had cuckolded many men, and then betrayed their daughters, for good measure. Some girls contrived, God forgive them, to take measures to rid themselves of the unwanted babe. You did not know this?’

  ‘I knew about Molly, of course – but how do you come to know this sorry tale?’

  ‘I do not always dress like this, remember. And when a woman finds a girl in tears, she may often engage in a conversation that no man might risk. I became fond of Molly, and despaired when she did not turn to me for help before … her end. I was taking food to Eliza when I realised how very ill she was. I wanted to find a midwife to help her, and set off to find one. But I was dressed as a man that morning, and it was clear that if I was observed someone would draw the wrong conclusion.’

  ‘Someone did,’ I admitted.

  ‘By the time I had flung on more appropriate garments and found a midwife, poor Eliza … And her baby had been taken in by Sarey, so I left well alone. I planned to do good by stealth, but later found that some good angel was already supporting the Tumps. I am helping another of the evil man’s cast-offs, however – I have despatched her to the home of a Quaker friend of mine, who will look after her and her child, and provide work when the mother is able to undertake it.’

  ‘May God bless you for your kindness.’

  She might not have heard my words. ‘Dr Campion, could you not see the evil in his foul eyes?’

  I held up my hands in mock surrender. ‘Alas, I never met him. Yes, it seems strange, but I have been much occupied with my own parish, and Mr Coates’s path and mine simply never crossed. If we were at the same Diocesan functions, then we were never introduced.’ For the first time I wondered if someone had taken measures to keep us apart. My heart was growing increasingly heavy within me, my suspicions so serious I did not want to articulate them even to myself.

  A period of quiet reflection might have helped me regain my equilibrium, but the road was too busy for me to allow Titus to pick his own way. In any case, having once encountered an aspiring highwayman, I was aware I could easily meet a much more efficient one than Dan, for whom I continued to pray.

  Why had we so strongly felt that Dan must be removed from the rectory? There was no logical basis, none at least that we discussed. Perhaps my own injuries had prevented any rational discussion, and we had simply followed Maria Hansard’s instinct that he was unsafe – a response to her meeting with Archdeacon Cornforth. Perhaps she had articulated her fears to Edmund and Toone, if not to me. But why should Cornforth constitute any danger at all to a sick man? Why should it matter to him that Dan saved me? It wasn’t his men who had set on me: the notion of an armed gang of vergers sallying forth to silence me brought a sardonic smile to my face. Perhaps, nonetheless, he feared that Dan would be able to identify someone. In the absence of the assailants I did not even know if they wished to kill me or merely deter me – though the events of my next visit to Clavercote rather suggested the former.

  My thoughts had strayed too far for Titus’s peace of mind. It was time to take control of him and head with more purpose to the location I dreaded and a task I dreaded even more, keeping my promise to confessed killers that I would forgive them and that their Heavenly Father would receive them as he had received the criminal crucified with Our Lord.

  Edmund had already arrived, the gaol gateman informed me, and would be found at a coffee house some two streets away. A coin persuaded him to offer Titus accommodation and refreshment while I sought mine. I saw Hansard before he saw me: he looked old beyond his years, as he stared at his cup.

  As he turned and recognised me, his smile was bleak. But he waited till I had sat down and had coffee in front of me before he spoke. ‘Do you know who confessed to murdering Coates? And who now linger in gaol?’

  ‘Eliza Fowler’s husband and his accomplices?’ I asked stupidly.

  His voice shaking with ill-controlled fury, he counted off the names on his fingers: ‘Ethan Downs; Luke Stokes; Josiah Stone.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The three men, two dying, were in the common cell, which stank with a vicious combination of rancid food, filthy bodies, dirty straw and human ordure. I had never come across Josiah Stone before, but it was clear that the old man had no ideas of his own in his head, and very few words with which to express those of others. He had found three pieces of straw roughly the same length and was engaged in trying to plait them between racking bouts of coughing. Dimly remembering his manners, sometimes he would cover his mouth with his hands: they would be speckled with blood, which he wiped on his rough breeches. Ethan and Luke lay side by side near the window, clutching pieces of dry bread but making no effort to eat them.

  ‘They should not be here! None of them!’ Hansard hissed in an undervoice. ‘Whoever got them to confess should be broken on the wheel. And Josiah—’ He broke off to speak to the third old man, ‘Josiah, why are you here?’

  ‘’Cos I was told to look after these poor gaffers, sir. Look, I’m making a little man.’ He held up the straw.

  ‘Good lad. You can have one of my buttons for a head if you like.’

  ‘I got a head, sir.’ He touched it in proof.

  I prayed aloud for all three Clavercote men, and Hansard persuaded Josiah to say ‘Amen’ when it was needful. Prompted by the familiar word, some of the other men gathered round in a loose but attentive semicircle, so I added a few words that I hoped might bring comfort, and asked them all to join with me as I repeated the Lord’s Prayer. Some knew the General Confession, others the Creed, and Hansard, borrowing my Bible, read the Beatitudes. That was enough – more than enough for some – so I gave a blessing and, pressing every hand that was thrust at me, left the terrible place.

  Hansard demanded to see the chief gaoler, insisting that the old men were moved to warmer accommodation. ‘Ethan and Luke are dying—’

  ‘Aye, with the Assizes starting next week, I’d say next Thursday at seven in the morning,’ the gaoler responded, quick as a snake.

  ‘They are very ill, in a great deal of pain.’

  ‘I know something that’ll put an end to all that,’ our kind host replied.

  ‘Josiah – he hasn’t committed any crime. He’s a simpleton. Anyone can see that. How can he be held responsible for murder?’

  ‘That ain’t for me to say, masters. That’s for the magistrate, who’s already said it, or he wouldn’t be here, would he? Josiah signed his confession, like the others, he did. All we need now is the judge.’ He drew a finger across his throat.

  In the face of such faultless logic, Hansard changed his approach. ‘Two of the men need regular draughts of cordial to help prevent their pain becoming intolerable. If the other prisoners knew you were giving them laudanum, there would be a riot – you would be lucky to get out alive.’

  ‘That’s why I shan’t be giving them nothing more than their prison rations.’

  ‘Other prisoners get food from outside: I know you allow them to buy in pies and ale.’

  ‘So I do.’

  ‘Only if they grease your palm first, I suppose,’ I observed.

  ‘Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But no
matter how you were to grease it, I could not give those two laudanum in front of the others. More than my life’s worth, as you yourself said, master.’

  Sighing, I tried a different approach. ‘When do you move them into the condemned cell? As soon as they’re condemned? Why not do it now, my friend, so that you could give them the medicine Dr Hansard prescribes?’ I shook my purse temptingly. ‘Some clean straw? A blanket or two? Some soup and fresh water?’

  ‘That halfwit and all?’

  ‘Unless you want the whole prison infected with consumption I would strongly recommend it,’ Hansard said. ‘And take care when he coughs blood.’

  Hansard was clearly preoccupied on our journey home, so I gave up any attempts at conversation. Much as I would have liked to regale him with my account of my morning, that seemed a lifetime away. Now I felt soiled, inside and out, and could think of nothing more satisfying than tearing off my clothes and plunging under the pump. That, however, would clean only the outside: what would wipe away the darkness that seemed to threaten my very soul?

  The question burst from me: ‘Why have they lied when they are so close to death?’

  Edmund reined in his horse. ‘I have been asking myself the same thing. Were they forced to, or did they offer?’

  ‘Forced by whom?’

  ‘An excellent question, Tobias. And it may be that we never find the whole truth, because if ever a village is good at closing ranks it’s Clavercote. We must ask some questions. But not, my friend, while our clothes, our very skin and hair, reek with prison miasma. Maria will already have given instructions to have a week’s hot water made ready for us. I dare swear that you would prefer the hair-shirt school of cleanliness, but a soak in lavender-scented water is just what this doctor orders. Our shirts can be boiled, and Marsh will hang our outer garments over a steaming tub. Will such precautions achieve anything? Toone yearns, as you know, to see inside our bodies. I long to look closer at the outside, to see what lies on our skin even when we think we have washed it. If only I had a son to pass my ambitions to … But I have Maria, and no man could imagine greater happiness. Not even you, when you win the hand of your inamorata.’

  We exchanged a smile. Something, however, was making Edmund’s horse fidget, and it seemed to be passing its anxiety to Titus. A glance at the horizon was sufficient explanation.

  ‘Will we beat the storm, or will it beat us?’ Edmund asked.

  ‘We’ll have a better chance if we take to the fields and give the horses their heads,’ I responded. ‘And it might make us feel a good deal better.’

  We arrived back at Langley Park drenched to the skin, something Edmund described, as we stripped off our clothes, as nothing short of the act of a hygienic God. The steaming hip bath waiting in front of a fire in my bedchamber was the act of a well-run household, but I thanked God for it. Will, a change of clothes in his saddlebag, had offered to ride to the rectory to tell them I was safe, an act I attributed less to his conscience for failing to deliver another message than to the fact that Susan had grown a very pretty smile. Young Robert and Mrs Trent herself, of course, would be there ‘just in case’.

  By the time I was dressed and had joined my friends for supper – Jem must wisely have decided not to brave the elements – the storm was truly raging. Rain slashed diagonally across the windows, and the wind howled as if we were living in Udolpho, making the candle flames dance and flare even when Burns drew the curtains as he left us to our dessert.

  ‘Your visit to the prison,’ Toone prompted us. ‘Clearly something has troubled you.’

  I let Edmund speak, hardly needing to prompt him. His narrative was received by Maria with gasps of shock. Toone, however, gave his most sardonic smile as, finishing, Edmund downed his brandy as if it were water.

  ‘You fear that these men are being made scapegoats? That they are old and innocent and are being sent simply so that the authorities, having a few to hang, will let the matter drop? Let me offer another theory. That— great heaven, what can be the matter?’

  Edmund and I responded as we always did when the bell pealed as if to announce the Last Judgement: we were on our feet, bidding Maria farewell and preparing ourselves for our work. As we stepped into the hallway, we almost collided with Burns.

  ‘The storm, sir – half the houses in Clavercote are blown down, and people have been hurt. Your horses will be ready in a moment – but it’s a foul night, sir. We’ve got lamps ready, and your bag, too, Dr Campion.’

  Toone, overhearing, joined us. ‘I’ll join you.’

  ‘Thank you. Send to Orebury, Burns, and to Lambert Place. Ask for the stewards – they’ll be a sight more useful than their masters.’

  We were greeted by the sight of Lawton and Boddice, struggling alongside the villagers to shift a roof beam, which had trapped a family inside a crumbling cottage.

  ‘Mud walls, you see, Parson, all washing away,’ Lawton yelled. ‘We’ve opened the church for the women and children that we’ve got out so far. All the men that are able are doing their best to anchor what roofs they can and pull down what they can’t.’ He peered into the swirling darkness. ‘Is that both doctors? Thank God for that. The church, good sirs, if you please. And Parson – can you lend a hand here? A man your height?’

  Should I comfort the dying or try to save lives? For a second I hesitated – then I heard a baby crying within. Thrusting my bag into Toone’s hand, I did as I was asked.

  I truly had no idea how long I spent with the villagers that night. At first I was indeed most useful with the rescuers; then I was summoned to sit with a dying woman. To my shame I thanked God that it was not Sarey, who, Joseph strapped to her back, was moving amongst the injured offering sips of water. As I watched, Toone summoned her – she was to hold a broken limb as he set it in a rough splint.

  Before I could reach the Lady Chapel, a small commotion broke out to greet Mrs Trent, soaked as a drowned rat, who staggered in with two full baskets. The wardens’ womenfolk followed.

  ‘They called for you at the rectory first,’ she called. ‘We’re all of us here, Susan, Robert and young Will. Susan and I have been helping Mrs Lawton make soup. Will and Robert will bring it along shortly.’ She looked a little guilty. ‘I came in the gig, Master Toby.’

  ‘You did well. Keep our brood safe, I beg you.’

  We had five bodies by dawn, two old women, one old man and two young men. We had some dozen walking wounded, but not all would survive, Toone said in an undervoice: they were too weak, too malnourished, to deal with the pneumonia and putrid throats he feared would follow their prolonged soaking.

  A fierce gale still blew, but the clouds had cleared to the east. The clear skies, the still feeble sun, showed the extent of the devastation. People who had had little enough now had nothing but the clothes on their backs, hardly more than rags in most cases.

  Boddice, bleeding from a cut over his eye, joined me by the lychgate. ‘All these good people thrown on the parish,’ he said. ‘And by law some should be sent back to their home parishes. But we can’t do that, Parson, can we? Can we? We all strove together; we should stay together.’

  ‘Indeed you should. You shall.’ I would approach every landed gentleman round here and beg, cajole and demand money from them. And I would start with Lord Wychbold, the master of Lambert Place, the man whose failure to provide properly for his tenants had resulted in this carnage.

  I encountered him rather sooner than I expected, as I headed with my friends for Langley Park. Toone and Edmund were as ready as I was for another hot tub and a change of clothing – looking at them I suspected that even their expert valets would be unable to rescue their coats and breeches from a whole palette of stains beside the predictable mud and blood. As for me, I clearly must make time to visit a tailor, even one who made me look like a provincial lawyer.

  The three of us, riding side by side out of Clavercote, encountered a very natty equipage so badly driven that we had to press our exhausted horses into the bank. It
was only as the phaeton passed us that I recognised the driver.

  ‘Hold!’ I shouted, bold as any highwayman. ‘Wychbold, I will speak with you this instant!’

  Perhaps his terror was genuine; perhaps he really thought we were footpads. He shouted something at his groom, who remained as impassive as a sphinx.

  Hansard was quick to disabuse him, courteously introducing us all. ‘My Lord, your presence is required in Clavercote. Now.’

  I moved to his side. With Toone in front, and Hansard bringing up in the rear, Wychbold could scarcely argue. His groom continued silent.

  We brought the little cavalcade to a halt beside what had once been the village green. Now it was a sea of mud, with reusable timber stacked to one side, and a great heap of rotten wood and straw on another. A muddy track led to the church.

  ‘What is all this?’ Wychbold gasped. ‘An insurrection? Call the militia!’ he squeaked.

  ‘I would if I could,’ I flared. ‘I wish I could demand that they arrest you.’

  Hansard coughed me to silence. Yes, I was making my attack too personal.

  ‘This,’ Toone said, gesturing expansively, ‘is what happens when landlords neglect their responsibilities. Half this village has literally been washed away, My Lord, and lives have been lost as a result.’

  Wychbold paled. ‘No court of law—’

  ‘Would do anything,’ Toone obligingly completed his sentence. ‘No. Because the laws are made by people like you to protect people like you. And just to make sure magistrates and judges are people like you. But these poor people’ – he pointed at a group demolishing another hovel – ‘are not like you. And I am very sure they would like to make your acquaintance.’