The Devil's Breath

Book 3: Dr. Thomas Silkstone Mystery

by Tessa Harris

Genres: Mystery; Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

Eighteenth-century anatomist Dr. Thomas Silkstone travels to the English countryside to unravel a tangled web of mystery, medicine, and murder in this captivating new novel from Tessa Harris.

A man staggers out of his cottage into the streets of Oxfordshire, shattering an otherwise peaceful evening with the terrible sight of his body shaking and heaving, eyes wild with horror. Many of the villagers believe the devil himself has entered Joseph Makepeace, the latest victim of a “great fog” that darkens the skies over England like a biblical plague. When Joseph’s son and daughter are found murdered—their heads bashed in by a shovel—the town’s worst suspicions are confirmed: evil is abroad, and needs to be banished.

A brilliant man of science, Dr. Thomas Silkstone is not one to heed superstition. But when he arrives at the estate of the lovely widow Lady Lydia Farrell, he finds that it’s not just her grain and livestock at risk. A shroud of mystery surrounds Lydia’s lost child, who may still be alive in a workhouse.

A natural disaster fills the skies with smoke and ash, clogging the lungs of all who breathe it in. And the grisly details of a father’s crime compel Dr. Silkstone to look for answers beyond his medical books—between the devil and the deep blue sea.

A Blackstone Audio production.

Release date: March 19, 2013

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 369

Sample

At first the horror of it stayed the bury man’s tongue. Staggering out of his cottage as dawn broke he did not shout or scream, but grunted like a half-wit, his arms paddling in the filmy light of the deserted street. As he zigzagged across the road the good people of Brandwick could be forgiven for thinking he was in the grip of strong liquor. He had certainly been full of it the last anyone had seen of him after the casting out.

It was only when the baker, rising early to fire his oven, saw him and went over to him that Joseph Makepeace began to cry out. The sounds he made were unformed, staccato. His arms jabbed at the air, pointing toward his home. His tongue may have been stopped but his eyes spoke; to anyone who looked into them they told of an unutterable terror—too awful for words. His body began to shake violently as his chest, loaded with breath, heaved and pitched like a storm-tossed barque.

Hearing the commotion, some of the villagers lifted their latches and opened their windows. Some came to their doors. Some of them wondered if the devil himself had entered Joseph Makepeace. After the events of the previous evening, there were many who thought the prospect not just possible, but likely. They had gathered in the marketplace to watch the laying on of hands. Evil was abroad, living in his fiendish children, and needed to be banished. There they had witnessed the boy and girl judder and jerk and scream in front of the clergyman. Foul oaths spewed from the girl’s mouth. She had lifted her shift, opened her legs. But the Reverend Lightfoot had called upon the Lord. Hymns were sung, prayers were said and he had seen to it that Beelzebub was cast out of Joseph Makepeace’s children. Could it be that the devil had now taken refuge in the father? they asked themselves.

Talk of such unaccountable happenings was becoming commonplace. The world was growing a more fearful place by the day. For the past two months, the village and the surrounding area had been held in the grip of a great fog that had blanketed the earth one night and poisoned people and plants alike. What any of them would not give to see a cloud, white and billowing, or a chink of blue sky, just a square the size of a shepherd’s smock. That would be enough to reassure them that all would soon return to the usual pattern of things. Yet still this great mysterium covered the countryside and the rivers, infecting everything that it touched just as surely as the devil spread his spore. With the strange haze came the signs; the bloodred sun from dawn to dusk, the raging storms and the balls of fire in the firmament. And with the signs and portents came a mounting sense of impending doom.

The times tested every man’s mettle. At first neighbors had helped each other, sharing bread and duties. Then, as more men doubled over in the fields and as more children began to cough and wheeze, some began to question. They all knew their Bible. They all knew that God sent the Ten Plagues to the Egyptians: He changed the water of the Nile into blood—were the rivers not now running with poison? He sent swarms of flies—there were flies that tormented both beast and man. He destroyed crops. Was the corn not withered and brown in the harvest fields? Worst of all, He killed the firstborn. Were not all the fine young men dropping like stones as they labored? The signs were there for anyone to read. These were times not seen since Moses himself walked the land and each day brought a new terror.

The baker put his hand on Joseph Makepeace’s shoulder, but it only served to agitate. He was soon joined by the blacksmith and the watchman and together they tried to steady him.

“Be calm, Joseph!”

“What ails you?”

“Best fetch the vicar.”

But Joseph Makepeace just stared at the men, too shocked to speak, so they led him back to his cottage to see whether some terrible fate had befallen his household. Inside they saw an upturned flagon of gin on the rush mat and a blanket by the hearth. They exchanged knowing glances. He had been too drunk to take to his own bed that night. But it was only when they opened the door into the back room that they saw the children. The baker turned away and retched and the blacksmith stood transfixed. It was the watchman, stout and worldly, who steeled himself to stoop for a closer look.

The girl was lying facedown across her pallet. Her long hair was streaked dark red. Her brother was by her side; his skull smashed like a marrow. Nearby lay their father’s shovel, its blade smeared with blood.

The others could see that the watchman’s arm was trembling as he stretched forward to turn the girl over. They flinched when she flopped to one side, her eyes wide open and her skin as white as milk. The watchman closed his own eyes, as if trying to blink away the sight, but when he opened them again a second later, he saw faces peering in at the window. A woman shrieked and ran off. The men, three of them, merely gawped.

“Away with you,” he shouted. “Be gone!”

“Who could do such a thing?” asked the baker, fighting back the tears. He turned to see Joseph Makepeace, crouched in the corner of the room, whimpering, with his arms cradling his head. “Who did this, Joseph? Tell me it were not you!” He marched over to him and aimed a fist at his face, but Makepeace’s arms flew up just in time and took the blow.

“Leave him be!” shouted the watchman. “He’s not done this. He was too far in his cups last night to stir.”

“ ’Tis the work of the devil,” the blacksmith reflected, his eyes fixed on the bloody flagstones.

The watchman clicked his tongue and shook his head. “Stop your foolish talk, will ye? We need to do something.”

“What?” the other two chorused.

“Go and fetch Dr. Silkstone.”

“The doctor from the Colonies?” asked the baker.

The watchman nodded. “He’ll find out who killed these two. God rest their souls.”

It had all begun when the first portent came, two months earlier. It happened just after the church bells had tolled noon in the county of Lincolnshire, one hundred and fifty miles to the northeast of Brandwick as the crow flies. The sound carried over the gentle wold, mingling with the song of the skylarks above. It signified to the laborers in the surrounding harvest fields it was time to break. A small platoon of men, armed with scythes, had advanced across three acres of barley, leaving a carpet of jagged stalks in their wake. Behind them came the women, sickles in hand, gathering up the fallen sun-ripe stems.

At the sound of the bells, they put down their tools and walked over to the field gate where one of the women was opening a keg of small beer. Filled jugs in hand, the men settled themselves down in the shade of the stooks they had cut that morning. The June sun was strong and their throats were corn-dust dry.

The knife-grinder collected the scythes to sharpen as they rested. While some of the reapers used a whetstone to hone their dull blades, others relied on his skill to peen out the edges. The young man, his dark head swathed in a bright red scarf tied at the nape of his neck, had driven his anvil into the top of a fence post by the wooden gate and had been doing a brisk trade since the early morning. His mule stood patiently nearby in the hedgerow’s dense shade, whisking away with his tail the black harvest flies that dotted the air.

The men drank so long and hard that it was the women who noticed first. One of them, younger than the others, had climbed on the wagon at the top end of the field to hand down hunks of bread and cheese. She was gathering up the baskets when she happened to glance beyond the wold toward the salt marshes. A great flat expanse of open country lay before her, stretching as far as the coast, and the sight of it barely registered at first. She had even continued to busy herself with the task in hand before she realized what she had seen. She looked up again a few seconds later and there it was—a thin bank of gray mist lying low across the horizon. A frown settled on her freckled brow.

“Sea fret’s coming in,” she called down to the other women below.

They all knew it was bad news. At least a day’s work would be lost once the heavy fog that rolled in from the coast had settled on the ripe barley crop.

An older woman hitched up her skirts. “Let’s see,” she said, holding out her arm to be helped up. She, too, now looked out across the flatlands toward the marshes from the wagon’s vantage point. After a moment’s deliberation she was satisfied the girl was right.

“Best tell Mr. Bullimore,” she said, adding: “He’ll not be pleased.”

The younger woman hastily clambered down and broke into a trot as she headed toward the cluster of men who sat around drinking.

“Where’s our grub then, wench?” shouted one of them. “We’re hungry as hawks.” The others cheered and whistled, but she ignored their childish taunts and walked straight up to the foreman who sat with his back against a stook, swatting away the harvest flies.

“Mr. Bullimore, sir,” she began breathlessly.

The foreman looked up at her, shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare.

“What is it, Hester?”

“There’s a sea fret coming, sir.”

Bullimore, a broad man in his middle years, rolled his eyes and scrambled to his feet. He turned to the east. The heat made the barley fields shimmer like burnished gold. He strained his eyes, squinting in the bright light.

“I see no fret, woman,” he chided.

“I saw it from the cart, sir, as God is my witness, and so did Mistress Pickwell.”

He eyed her skeptically. “Show me.”

She led him to the wagon a few yards up the slope and he climbed onto it for a better view. There was no mistaking what he saw.

“By the . . .”

The young woman clambered up to join him. There it was: a silvery ribbon that clung to the horizon, only now the clouds were more clearly defined than before. The fret was moving inland fast.

“ ’Tis a thick one all right,” conceded the foreman, then, cupping his hands around his mouth, he called out to the men below: “Get back to work, lads. Fret’s coming in!”

The reapers rose quickly and picked up their honed scythes with a renewed urgency. They understood that if there was no barley harvested, there would be lower pay.

“Put your backs into it,” shouted Bullimore, striding down the slope toward them. “I reckon we’ve an hour at the most.”

And so they began again, cutting the crack-dry stems of corn with great sweeps of their new-sharpened scythes. The women fell in behind, gathering the cut barley up in their arms in a wide embrace, before evening out the ears neatly to be twined by the boys.

As the men advanced through the crop, so the rabbits and hares scattered before them, running hither and thither. The harvest flies, too, rose in black columns above the barley and flew off. From out on the marsh, a curlew’s plaintive cry sounded.

“Hurry, men,” called Bullimore. He took off the kerchief he wore and mopped the sweat from his brow.

They made good progress. An hour later several dozen more stooks were standing sentinel. The boys had worked well, binding the stems tight, their young hands protected against the cutting twine by thick leather gauntlets. The barley heads sat drying in the sun, only by now it was losing its heat. The foreman had already noticed a change in the sky. He could read the clouds as if they were words on a page; wispy mares’ tails signified fine weather, while mackerel scales warned of a storm, but this sky was quite alien to him. It was as if the words were written in a foreign language. There was something strange; something unsettling about this sky.

It was then that he suddenly felt a cool breeze pique the hairs at the back of his neck. The wind was changing direction. He shivered and saw the goose bumps rise on his arms. The wind was coming about, turning northwest. It could hasten the arrival of the fret. He estimated it would take another two hours at least to finish the field, but he suspected they had half an hour at the most before the fog reached them. He walked up the slope once more to check on its progress. Climbing onto the wagon again, he looked out toward the marsh. The sea of shimmering corn had been dulled by the change in the light, smudging the horizon, making it hard to differentiate between the two. He narrowed his eyes, focusing into the distance, but to his surprise it appeared that the advancing bank of mist had disappeared. He frowned. Were his eyes playing tricks on him? He looked away, then looked back. No, he could see no fret, just an odd haze. It seemed that the fog had been dissipated by the heat, or perhaps by the change in the wind direction. Either way, he breathed a deep sigh of relief. But wait. Now he sniffed the air. What was that smell? Instead of the musk-sweet scent of new-mown corn, he sensed something else; something acrid and bitter. It reminded him of the saltpeter they used to cure the pork mingled with charcoal from the smithy’s forge, or perhaps even rotten eggs. He looked over to where the knife-grinder stood by the anvil. He’d heard tell of sparks from the clash of steel on stone setting light to stubble over at Fulstow last week, but he could see no smoke.

Jumping down from the wagon he turned his thoughts back to the men. He decided he would not tell them that the fret had lifted. He did not want to break their rhythm. It was amazing how quickly they could work when they put their minds, as well as their backs, into it.

Striding toward them again Bullimore saw the knife-grinder by the field gate. He was packing up his anvil and whetstone.

“And where might you be going?” he snapped as he drew near.

The young man cocked his head. “I be going the same way as the hares and the rabbits and the flies and the skylarks,” he replied.

“But there’s plenty more blades to sharpen afore we’re through here,” insisted Bullimore.

The grinder gave him an odd look. Then, realizing that he was the only person to know that the sea fret had now receded, the foreman softened his tone. Leaning toward the young man, he said quietly: “All’s well, now.” He reinforced this with a reassuring nod. “Fret’s gone.” But the grinder seemed unmoved and instead of gratefully receiving this information, lifted the corner of his fulsome lips in a smirk.

“The sea fret may be gone, but something much worse is on its way,” he countered.

“What do you mean?” asked Bullimore, puzzled, but the young man turned his back on him and mounted his mule.

“There are signs, sir,” he replied, settling himself in the saddle. “Smell the wind. Listen to the birds,” he said, and he lifted his black eyes heavenward. The foreman listened.

“I hear nothing,” he concluded after a moment.

The young man smiled. “Just so,” he said, and he touched his forehead with his finger and kicked his mule. “Good luck to you, sir,” he called as he headed off inland, away from the coast.

Bullimore looked grave. That smell was lingering in his nostrils. It was true, too, that the skylarks were no longer singing and the harvest flies that were such a plague to both man and beast seemed to have flown. But what of it? The threat of the sea fret had subsided. They could work until sundown—another seven hours. The cooler air was welcome. The breeze was picking up now. They would easily finish the field that day; perhaps even start on the next. He shrugged his broad shoulders, dabbed the cold sweat from his brow and began to walk toward his own scythe, which was propped against a sheaf nearby.

He looked up to the heavens once more, shaking his head. Where had the skylarks gone? Why had they flown? And what was that faint acrid whiff that clung to the air? Perhaps he should go and check, just once more. Another look to err on the side of caution. He tramped back up the slope again, his pace quickening with every step. Shaking his head he told himself that he never did like travelers: they’d put a curse on you as soon as look at you; make a man doubt his own judgment. They took pleasure in putting dread into the hearts of God-fearing folk.

Taking a deep breath, he heaved himself up onto the wagon once more. Looking down, he could see the men were making good progress. The women and boys, too. They were gathering and twining as quickly as he had ever beheld them. Needs must when the devil drives, as the saying went, but now the devil was gone.... Or was he? First a look of puzzlement, then of shock, then of fear scudded across Bullimore’s face. The fret was gone, true, but what was that looming over the horizon? Not mist, but a bank of billowing cloud, its great curves and sweeps and pillows of vapor easily visible, like the full sails of a galleon. It was heading straight toward them. Spread out across the entire skyline, it seemed to be traveling at speed, like an enormous wave blown by the gathering wind. It was rising high, above the skylark’s domain, and would soon block out the sun.

It was then that he felt something settle on his arm. Whereas an hour or so ago he had been swatting away the flies that plagued him about his eyes and nose, drops of water now fell on his skin. He looked up and saw the rain falling, mingled with flakes, settling like gray snow on the ground.

Rooted to the spot, Bullimore watched the approaching cloud roll in. He had never seen such a sight before, not in all his years in the wolds. His thoughts turned to the men and women below. He began to call to them, but when he opened his mouth, the sound did not come. There was a harshness on the air; the acrid stench had intensified and clawed at his tongue and inside his nostrils. The rain made his eyes smart and soon tears were streaming down his cheeks. The drops pricked his skin, too, stinging with a painful intensity. His breath no longer came easily. Gasping and spluttering, he staggered back toward the reapers. By now they, too, had seen the ominous cloud looming up over the fields and smelled the stifling vapors. The rain, mingled with the gray snow, was falling heavily, drenching the stubble and making it harder to see.

“Run!” one cried. “Run!” As panic took hold, they dropped their scythes and sickles and leather gauntlets where they stood.

“To the barn,” cried Bullimore above the din.

The threshing barn lay in a hollow, just beyond the field gate, and every man, woman, and child headed toward it as fast as they could. The vast bank of cloud seemed to be gathering pace, churning within itself, belching out a foul miasma.

One of the women stumbled. A man picked her up and carried her. Another remained transfixed with fear. Her eyes filled with tears as she watched the thick gray veil draw itself across the sun, blocking out the light.

Now many of the women were screaming, and those who were not screaming were choking and coughing. The men, too, found themselves fighting for breath as they staggered toward the barn in the mysterious half light. One of them, in his teen years, doubled over coughing and dropped to his knees before he reached the gate. But the cloud was almost upon them and no one stopped to help.

By this time Bullimore had reached the barn and, joined by two or three of the men, he managed to prize open the huge wooden doors, herding everyone in like sheep.

“Hurry, for God’s sake,” he gasped, pulling women and boys inside.

He could still see some fighting their way through the narrow field gate, jostling and pushing each other, but he feared it was too late. The young man he had seen fall was already swallowed up and he knew there were half a dozen others who would not make it to the barn before the noxious fog enveloped them, too. He had to think of those who were already inside.

“Close the doors,” he ordered. The men hesitated for a moment, and in that split second Bullimore looked out to see the terrified face of Hester, arms outstretched, groping her way toward them. He saw her body jerk backward, as if the very devil himself had gripped her for an instant, only to spew her out with such force a second later that she fell flat on the ground not twenty yards in front of them. Another second and she had disappeared, smothered by the advancing smog.

“Close them, I say!” cried Bullimore and in a trice they pushed the great doors to and let down the bolt with a thud just as the deadly vapors began to lick at the timbers outside.

“May God save us!” cried Mistress Pickwell before clutching her chest. They were the last words she uttered.

On a ridge half a mile or so away, above the hollow, the knife-grinder stopped his mule and watched with a morbid fascination as he saw the valley and the land below the escarpment disappear under the thick blanket of cloud. Licking his finger, he held it aloft to gauge the direction of the wind. A northwesterly. Next, taking his scarf from around his head, he covered his nose and mouth and secured it at the back with a knot. The hollow had slowed down the march of this monster, but he knew it would soon rise up the scarp and continue its relentless progress inland. He kicked his mule hard in the ribs and took one last look back at the scene below. The threshing barn had disappeared completely now, swathed in a mantle of deadly vapor. The dense fog muffled the cries of those trapped inside. He headed south.

Even before the first deaths, even before the fog, Dr. Thomas Silkstone detected a certain strangeness in the air. It was a strangeness barely perceptible to most; indeed it was only felt by those who knew the signs, men rooted in the ways of the land or of science. Some might call it a sixth sense or clairvoyance, others perception or intuition. The Delaware Indians of his native Pennsylvania even had a symbol for it—the bat. It helped their shamans see through illusion or ambiguity and go straight to the truth of matters. But, whatever the truth behind the small, and to most, insignificant, happenings that the young anatomist noticed on that bright June morning, he felt an acute disquiet.

The following day he would leave London for Boughton Hall, the Oxfordshire country home of Lady Lydia Farrell, the woman with whom he planned to spend the rest of his life. Theirs was not a straightforward relationship. He would be the first to acknowledge that. Lydia’s husband, Captain Michael Farrell, had been charged with her brother’s murder, but the captain had been found hanged as he awaited trial. A string of deaths followed and conspired to lead Lydia to attempt to take her own life. But it was only recently that she had revealed the real reason for attempting suicide. When she discovered she was pregnant with Michael’s child before their marriage, he had made her submit to John Hunter, an anatomist favored by ladies who found themselves in an undesirable predicament. But the barbarous bid to kill the child in her womb had failed. The son she bore, however, was left with a crippled arm. Then, shortly after the birth, Michael told her that the babe had died in its sleep and no more was said. That was six years ago. In the past few months, however, documents had come to light that gave Lydia hope that her son may still be alive. This was the mission that Thomas had promised to undertake; to track down Lydia’s long-lost child. That was why his excitement at the prospect of seeing his beloved once more was tempered with apprehension.

He had slept fitfully the previous night. The air in his room hung hot and humid. He had pulled down the sash in the vain hope that a cool breeze would waft through the opening, but all that permeated from the street was the stench of rotting rubbish and the cries of restless babes and stray dogs. It was only when he managed to turn his thoughts to Lydia’s loving smile, her gentle voice and her tender touch, that he felt a sense of calm wash over him and he finally drifted off in the early hours.

His sleep was short-lived, however. He rose at dawn to pack. Pulling out a large valise from under his bed, he began to muster a change of clothes and some toiletries. He hoped he would be able to stay at the hall for at least a month, possibly longer. The events of the past few weeks had left him drained, both physically and mentally, and he relished the idea of spending time with his beloved, away from the stinking dissecting rooms of London.

An hour later the sky was lightening over the rooftops to reveal yet another cloudless day. Thomas walked across the courtyard and down the short flight of steps to his laboratory. Inside it was pleasantly cool. The rising morning heat was kept at bay by the absence of large windows. There was only one, high up in the wall, facing the street. Even so, a shaft of strong light was already warming the stone flags. Thomas was grateful there was no cadaver awaiting dissection. For the last three or four days the city heat had been so stifling as to make any teaching, or indeed study, out of the question. Even he, with his cast-iron stomach and trusty clay pipe that was so often called upon to mask unpleasant odors, was inclined to feel nauseous in such circumstances. When the mercury on his wall thermometer rose higher than eighty degrees, even he found the reek of death intolerable.

Yet there were others who suffered a great deal more than he. The Thames, from which so many of the common people drew their water, was turning into an even more deadly stew of detritus and disease. Horse troughs were running dry and remained unreplenished and small beer was becoming scarce. At noon even the costermongers and hawkers around Covent Garden sought the shade of the Piazza’s cloisters and ladies with corsets laced too tight were regularly fainting in the street.

Closer to home, Mistress Finesilver, the housekeeper, complained that her pantry had been invaded by an army of red ants that had taken refuge from the scorching heat outside. Worse still, the milk was lasting no longer than three hours before it soured.

Thomas wondered how Franklin, his white rat, had fared in the stifling night. He walked over to his cage in the corner of the room, unfastened the door, and held out a length of bacon rind he had purloined from his own breakfast plate. Yet instead of the usual greeting from the rat that always jumped into his master’s hand, the creature darted out of his cage like a thing possessed and headed straight toward the closed door.

Strange, thought Thomas to himself, forlornly holding out the bacon as he approached him. But the rat ignored his master and simply scratched at the door, making loud squeaking sounds as he did so.

“What’s wrong?” Thomas asked out loud, frowning. “What ails you?” Bending down he cupped his hands and picked up the rodent by the scruff of its neck, but it squirmed round and promptly bit him, so that Thomas let out a cry and dropped him the short distance onto the flags. The rat scurried back to the door but, undeterred, the young doctor scooped him up once more and quickly placed him back in his cage, securing the door firmly.

“I shall have to tell Mistress Finesilver to keep an extra eye on you while I’m away,” he scolded, pointing accusingly at the rat as it scratched frantically at its cage door. As he did so, Thomas noticed a droplet of blood on his finger. It was the first time Franklin had ever bitten him. Something had, indeed, unsettled the creature. But he could not let the rat’s unpredictable behavior trouble him. His coach left in two hours and he had not begun to pack his medical bag.

He had just put the case on his workbench when, from somewhere in the deep recesses of the laboratory, a solitary bluebottle headed straight for him and began to buzz about his head. He swatted it away and it withdrew, but not upward toward the window as Thomas expected. This was where the flies usually gathered, attracted by the light. No matter how careful he was with his specimens, there would always be flies that laid their eggs in the tiniest of cracks and crevices. And yet . . . It was strange, he mused, that they seemed to be hiding away from the heat, preening themselves in the darkest, coolest corners. There was a constant hum and yet they were not flying. It was as if even they wanted to conserve their energy.

Thomas glanced up at the window once more, his eyes tracing the strong beam of sunlight up to the square of clear blue sky above. The flies were still dr. . .