Hearts of Darkness (13 page)

‘A fine story,’ Elks sneered. ‘Now tell me who you really are.’

‘We have told you already,’ Dowling answered calm. ‘He is Robert’s brother and I am his uncle.’

‘Aye, as you told me already.’ Elks turned to me again, sensing my lack of conviction. I loathed dogs. ‘What is your name, Robert Buxton’s brother?’

‘Harry,’ I replied, for it was easy to remember.

‘And tell me of Buxton.’ Elks let the dog slip another inch. ‘What did he look like? What was his trade?’

I recalled Mary Hancock’s words. ‘Taller than I, with a large nose and green eyes. He became short-tempered in later life, but was a good man beneath it.’

‘He was foul-tempered all his life,’ exclaimed the bald fellow. ‘Ever since I was a child.’

I frowned as if offended. ‘He was a weaver,’ I said to Elks, recalling the broken loom I saw smashed upon the cottage floor. ‘It was not easy for him when his eyes began to fail.’

Elks growled louder than his dog, suspecting he had been outwitted. Good luck more than wit, I reckoned, and prayed for the conversation to end.

‘Why else would they come to Shyam, Thomas?’ asked the ginger fellow.

‘It’s what I ask myself,’ Elks replied, ‘but this fellow doesn’t look like a relative of Robert Buxton.’ He shook his head, slow. ‘Him, yes.’ He cocked his head at Dowling. ‘But this fellow wears fine clothes.’

The ginger man wrinkled his nose, eyeing my ruined breeches, wet and wrinkled from lying on the forest floor for an hour.

‘Where do you live,
Buxton
?’ Elks demanded.

‘London,’ I replied, for I could spin few tales of any other place. Cocksmouth, perhaps. ‘I journeyed there when I was young. I became a cobbler.’

Elks looked down at my feet. ‘You make shoes?’

‘I do,’ I lied again, though I knew how to make shoes, having spent hours enough watching my father at his trade.

‘Well, we may put you to the test yet.’ Elks stared into my eyes. ‘Though I reckon you would pass it. You’re a sly fellow.’

‘I want to know how you persuaded them to let you pass through Colchester,’ the bald man pondered. ‘Mayor Flanner told us he would admit none. Yet in the last two days we have had four men on donkeys and you two.’

‘And James Josselin,’ I dared remark. ‘That is when I protested to Flanner and insisted we be allowed passage. Josselin may be well loved in this village, but he has no relatives.’

‘James Josselin,’ the bald man exclaimed with genuine puzzlement, exchanging glances with the ginger fellow. ‘James Josselin would be welcome, but he is not here, nor do we expect him. What reason would James Josselin have for coming to Shyam?’

‘Mayor Flanner himself confirmed it,’ I insisted. ‘Everyone at Colchester says it is so. We found trace of him on the road betwixt
here and there – a book with his name in it.’

‘Mayor Flanner may say as he wishes,’ said the bald man, ‘and for whatever reason it pleases him, but I assure you James Josselin has not come to Shyam. More’s the pity.’

‘Right,’ Elks agreed, heavy browed and solemn. ‘Josselin and I are not best of friends, but that is our affair. The rest of this village adores him. If he was here then we would know it.’ His eyes spoke of dark, murderous deeds, but he closed his mouth tight.

‘Well, Harry Buxton.’ The ginger man wrapped the leash another loop around his wrist, pulling the dog closer. ‘Now you’re here, you are in the same boat as us.’

Elks spat upon the floor. ‘And you will abide by the same rules. If you spoke to Mary Hancock then she should have told you to stay at home. We will deliver food after we collect it from the plague stone. If we find you loose again, we will lock you in the cage.’

The bald fellow frowned, taken aback, it seemed, by his companion’s anger.

‘You told us we may live freely,’ I protested.

‘You may live freely as us all,’ Elks replied, ‘which is not the same as roaming where your will takes you. If every man were to wander, then every man would die. There is plague in this village, and we will not survive it unless every man abides by the code.’

‘Except for you three,’ said Dowling.

‘Us six,’ Elks corrected. ‘There are three more wardens you haven’t met. We guard the boundaries to make sure no man escapes, in accordance with the oath every man has taken. We do so at great risk to ourselves.’

‘We understand,’ I assured him. ‘We will clean up Buxton’s house ourselves this very day.’

Elks scowled like he would gladly loose the black hounds. Indeed I saw his fingers twitch, but after staring at me for longer than I thought I could bear, he pulled in the leash and dismissed us with a curt nod of his head.

‘You betrayed Mary Hancock!’ I exclaimed as soon as the bald fellow left us alone in Buxton’s field. ‘And what about the man we followed? He may be innocent.’

Dowling poked a finger too close to my eye. ‘I told them nothing they didn’t know already, Harry, and saved our lives besides.’ He grimaced. ‘You must clear your head of morning fog, else we will not survive much longer.’ He shook his big head. ‘Elks thought he had you, Harry.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The dogs, Harry, the dogs. They followed our trail from here to there, every step we took. And if the dogs picked up our scent then they picked up the scent of the other fellow besides.’

‘Oh,’ I exclaimed, before falling silent. The dogs. ‘Well then,’ I said, pulling at my sleeves. ‘As well you were there.’

‘As well I was,’ Dowling declared, eyes gleaming. ‘For now we know where James Josselin is.’

I stared at him blankly.

He grasped my shoulders. ‘In the chest. I found a pair of leather boots, a long black coat and a monogrammed mouchoir.’ He shook me. ‘J.J., Harry, J.J.’

‘Judge John Jefferies?’ I wondered.

‘I think not, Harry.’ Dowling let me go. ‘Now I will go warn the
Hancocks they may expect a visit from Elks, while you start thinking how we’ll shift that cow.’

With which he stomped off into the orchard.

Why he left me with the cow, I couldn’t fathom. He was the butcher, not I. I sat down against an apple tree and lit my pipe.

Clambering through the window into Buxton’s house was like breaking into a mortuary. Flies swarmed about the eyes and mouth of the dead brown cow, and every other orifice besides. They crawled; fat, sluggish and oblivious, the low buzzing noise a sound of deep contentment. The air stank of turd and the sweet smell of corporeal decay. I held my arm to my nose and mouth so nothing could fly in.

Dowling threw the rope, broom and two sharp knives onto the floor, equipment he borrowed from the Hancocks. He rolled up his sleeves and nodded at the cow’s forelegs. ‘Come on, Harry. Hold your breath.’

The stink was too foul to bear, but I complied with his instruction and seized one of the cow’s legs. It slithered between my hands, covered in slime. The flies buzzed angrily about my head, bumping against my bare skin as we succeeded in shifting the beast clear of the
door with two almighty heaves. I caught sight of the cow’s dull eyes, sunken into their sockets, maggots writhing in great wriggling masses around one eyeball.

Dowling grunted, staggering backwards out onto the grass. ‘Fetch the rope and the knife.’

I hurried after him, rope in hand, sucking in great lungfuls of clean air to calm the cramping of my stomach. A shovel leant against the nearest tree. ‘You thought of everything,’ I said, the breeze cooling my prickling brow.

Dowling nodded. ‘The Hancocks were most helpful. They seem to believe we are Josselin’s disciples. When I told them we suspected Josselin might be here, they went to great lengths to describe the layout of the village, and where some of the more isolated houses may be found.’

‘Good work,’ I exclaimed, fresh hope of walking away alive sprouting in my soul.

‘Aye,’ Dowling muttered. ‘Now grab onto this rope and we’ll shift that cow.’

Once we removed the carcass the worst of the smell went with it from the house. All that remained was a wide sticky pool of putrid body fluids and a long smear of excrement.

Dowling was the butcher, so to him fell the task of disposing of the cow’s corpse while I set about tidying the cottage. Jane would be proud, I thought, else incredulous.

The front room was in predictable disarray. The kitchen table stood lopsided with one broken leg, pots and plates lay strewn about the floor, smashed and broken.

There was a pattern to the chaos, I realised as I swept. A tall, wide dresser lay face first upon the floor, but the drawers were flung about
all over the room. Papers, trinkets and some ancient items of women’s jewellery peppered the floorboards.

I ventured towards the back of the cottage into two small rooms. One room contained a bed and shelves, all destroyed. The other room was empty, save for rows of twine drawn across the beams from front to back. It smelt of rabbit.

I walked out into the sunshine. ‘It is not the cow that made this mess. The back rooms are as bad as the front, yet the doorway is too narrow for the cow and I see no dung.’

Dowling extracted his head from betwixt the cow’s ribs. A maggot wriggled on his hair. ‘Mary Hancock told me someone has been taking what they will from the houses of dead men.’

I was shocked. ‘Surely Elks could find out who is doing it.’

Dowling hacked at the cow’s spine with the cleaver. ‘Maybe Elks is in league.’

Which made grim sense. Another motive to dissuade the villagers from leaving their homes.

‘Are the Hancocks still intending to leave?’ I asked.

‘They say not.’ Dowling removed the cow’s head. ‘But I don’t know if they told me truth. Mary Hancock is a strong woman, but not her husband. He’s terrified of Elks.’

‘We must leave too,’ I determined, the stink of the house ripe in my nostrils. ‘I might sweep that floor a hundred times, but we’ll not be able to sleep in there, not without beds.’

Dowling sat up straight and regarded me with strange eyes. ‘We took an oath, Harry, before God, that we would not leave afore the plague was gone.’

‘Under duress,’ I replied, uneasy. ‘God will forgive us.’

‘As I live, surely mine oath that he hath despised, even will I
recompense it upon his own head. Therefore saith the Lord God.’ Dowling shook his head. ‘We are bound to remain else we will break our vow. Surely the plague shall be unleashed upon us.’

He was serious, I realised. ‘We might be here for months,’ I pointed out. ‘In which case we will die of the plague, anyway.’ And I would lose my shop.

Dowling wiped the blade of his knife against his trousers. ‘In God shall we put our trust.’

I felt my throat constrict. ‘In God shall you put your trust, Davy. I share not your faith.’

Dowling laid the cleaver upon the ground and clambered to his feet. He wiped his hands on the front of his shirt and rubbed them briskly. ‘I have known it since we met, Harry,’ he said. ‘You think you don’t believe in God, so you say, yet how many times do you call upon him?’

‘It’s a habit,’ I replied. ‘God knows.’

Dowling laughed aloud. ‘So he does, Harry, if you do not.’ He folded his arms and stood afore me like a small mountain, bestowing upon me a saintly gaze.

If God sent a second son to this earth, why not a butcher this time instead of a carpenter? Surely he wouldn’t look like Dowling, though.

‘I will not stay in Shyam to
avoid
the plague,’ I said. ‘God or no God, it would be a nonsense.’

Dowling scowled. ‘God shall smite you down.’

‘With luck he shall overlook my innocent slight,’ I replied. ‘For the list of the condemned must be long by now. God is old, anyway; perhaps he will forget.’

‘God is not mocked,’ Dowling’s nose coloured. ‘For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’

I turned away. ‘Whatever God’s will, we cannot sit here waiting for death. Tonight we will search again for Josselin. Wherever Elks has been staying these last few nights, that’s where we will find James Josselin. He has taken him to a place where none will find him, the house of one already killed by plague.’

‘Aye,’ Dowling nodded. ‘And since two-thirds of the village is dead, that leaves many houses to search.’

‘As well the Hancocks explained where we might best focus our efforts.’ I calculated in my head. ‘If there are two hundred dead, then that is likely no more than fifty households. Of those no more than ten would suit Elks’ purpose.’

Though the sky was clear that night and the fields brightly lit by a well-fed moon, it was not so easy to navigate through the forest. The tunnel afore us was black as coal, oblivious to the moon’s fine efforts. A light wind rustled the leaves of the trees, whispering in our ears, imploring us to enter.

‘The house of Adam and Alice Hawkesworth,’ Dowling told me again. ‘Their cottage stands about a mile into the forest down this path, in a small clearing. They died there nine months ago. It was a while afore they were discovered. The man that found them was a farmer called John Wood. He died a week later, but not before recounting the horror he stumbled upon. The animals of the forest had already begun to dispose of the bodies.’

It could be no worse than Buxton’s cottage.

‘There are two more houses we may come to first,’ Dowling said. ‘The Mortens and the Frythes. They still live.’

‘Then we should count our footsteps,’ I suggested. ‘A mile is about two thousand paces.’

Dowling snorted. ‘The Mortens and Frythes will have candles in their windows. I think we’ll find our way easily enough.’

Stepping into the darkness was like taking off my clothes, so vulnerable I felt. I stared wide-eyed and unblinking yet saw nothing. A man might stand silent in front of us and we wouldn’t see him. Nor he us.

Thirty paces in, the forest canopy fractured, allowing thin shards of light to illuminate the scene about us. A few pale trees framed the way forward into another black void. Sudden rustles in the bushes, the mournful hooting of an owl high above us, only served to cultivate the panic that threatened to undo me.

Dowling pointed into the trees. ‘A flame.’ A small fire burning on level ground in front of a squat wooden cabin. What strangeness compelled a man to live in such isolation? I imagined all the creatures of the night poised in a wide circle about the dwelling, all sat just out of the light. We stayed on the path, crossing the front of the small house, behind a clump patch of trees. Our footsteps shattered the silence no matter where we placed our feet.

‘Hold!’ Dowling beckoned me again, crouched behind a thick bush. ‘Someone is busy.’

A hulking giant, broad and crouching, moved across a small square window.

‘Mary Hancock described the Mortens as an old couple without children,’ Dowling whispered, ‘I reckon this is their house.’

‘Then that is not Morten,’ I concluded.

A loud crash sounded from within the cabin, like a boulder fell through the roof, then three muffled blows sounded against the wall or the floor.

Dowling stretched his neck out further. ‘I think we have found our vandal,’ he murmured.

We sat listening to the violence, while I pictured the inside of Buxton’s house. The man I glimpsed was a giant, fully capable of pushing over a dresser or throwing a cot against the wall. A man to be avoided.

Then at last, peace. An unnatural silence while we waited for something to happen.

The front door opened and the big man emerged, leaning forwards, carrying a lamp in his left hand, tugging on a rope stretched over his right shoulder. I ducked behind the bush as he stepped into the clearing, facing in our direction. I heard a strange slithering noise, loud and rough, like a giant serpent wriggling on its belly.

A light shone between the branches of my bush, the lamp, flickering, swinging from side to side. As I watched, unbreathing, the giant walked past us, twenty yards to our left, pulling on the rope. Attached to the rope was a corpse, the body of a woman with a noose tied round her neck. I watched aghast, the vile beast tugging her body through the dirt.

The woman was old, her long grey hair spread loose. Her head strained against the rope as if her neck might snap off from her body at any moment. Her face was scarlet, eyes black and protruding.

‘What in God’s name,’ I whispered, my voice protected by the sound of the woman’s body sliding over the ground.

‘Marshall Howe,’ Dowling said. ‘He who buries the last corpse of every household. He ties the rope about their necks so he doesn’t have to touch their bodies.’

Marshall Howe dragged the dead woman six feet behind, her body shrouded in darkness.

‘How do you deduce that?’ I challenged him. ‘The fellow is a brute and a beast. How do you know he hasn’t simply robbed her of her
belongings and takes the body away for some nefarious motive?’

‘It’s Marshall Howe,’ Dowling repeated. ‘When Mary Hancock mentioned his name the boy cried. He ransacks the houses to claim his reward.’

‘A scavenger, then,’ I said. ‘The villagers praise him for his heroic deeds, yet he does it only for greed. Another evil demon with a black heart. He smashes dressers onto the floor when all he need do is open a drawer.’

‘He doesn’t want to touch the furniture,’ suggested Dowling, standing up and brushing the debris from his trousers. ‘Perhaps he is a good fellow, perhaps not. Only God knows which, for the dead do not miss their possessions.’

Howe plodded off into the distance, back towards the village. I watched the lamp swing and lurch, my courage wobbling with it.

Dowling headed off the other way, into darkness. ‘Come on, Harry.’

I hurried after him before we reached another black tunnel. This time I gripped a handful of sleeve. To bump into Dowling would be no less painful than bumping into a tree.

I counted aloud, another hundred paces before we again emerged into a ghostly circle. I breathed deep and placed my palm upon my beating heart. It was not the dark I feared, rather what lay beneath.

Dowling stared into the trees, eyes watchful, face unmoving. He leant forwards, nose twitching. ‘They grope in the dark without light and he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.’ He thumped me on the back, his attempt to encourage me.

The track sloped gently downwards in a long curve. We stepped off the path into low, spiny bushes, thorns stabbing at my legs. If the house stood in a clearing, there must be an expanse of sky above it.
It shouldn’t be possible to walk past it in the dark. I couldn’t bear the thought we might get lost. How did we know we hadn’t passed a fork in the path that might lead us astray? A thick ball of fear threatened to burst inside my chest.

‘Ahead,’ Dowling exclaimed, excited.

I prayed his enthusiasm was not misplaced. Tears welled up in my eyes when I saw he was right. The cottage was a tiny grim abode, shrouded in shadow, sinister and mysterious. Yet I was delighted to see it.

Dowling pulled me forwards, faster than I wanted to walk. ‘Hurry.’

I dragged my heels in the dirt. ‘Why?’

‘Someone else is with us,’ he said, jerking me so hard I almost stumbled.

I flung myself behind the wall and stared across the grass. Nothing. I strained my ears, but again could hear nothing above the sound of Dowling’s heavy breathing.

I placed a hand against the stone wall of the cottage, cold as ice despite the warmth of the breeze that swelled through the forest. No sound from within, nor the slightest shard of light. If Elks lived here, why no light, no candle in the window to guide him?

Then a branch snapped, like a musket shot, clear and loud, cracking against the silent backdrop. Whoever followed tracked us by the sound of our footsteps. Elks wouldn’t be so subtle.

‘One of them and two of us,’ Dowling growled. ‘He’s followed us from the Morten house. I heard him when Howe reached the treeline.’

‘You didn’t tell me,’ I grumbled.

‘It wouldn’t have helped,’ he said. ‘You were shaking like an old woman.’

I clenched my jaw and scowled, furious.

Something rustled across the clearing on the other side of the path, an animal, something small.

I stared ahead while my mind absorbed the quietness of the surrounds, the likelihood we were at the wrong house. The possibility that this nightmare trek was in vain. I felt like punching something. Dowling’s chin.