The Devil's Breath

A DR. THOMAS SILKSTONE MYSTERY

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

Oxfordshire, England,in the Year of Our Lord 1783

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

It was only when the baker, rising early to fire his oven, sawhim and went over to him that Joseph Makepeace began to cryout. The sounds he made were unformed, staccato. His armsjabbed at the air, pointing toward his home. His tongue mayhave been stopped but his eyes spoke; to anyone who lookedinto them they told of an unutterable terror—too awful forwords. His body began to shake violently as his chest, loadedwith breath, heaved and pitched like a storm-tossed barque.

Hearing the commotion, some of the villagers lifted theirlatches and opened their windows. Some came to their doors.Some of them wondered if the devil himself had entered JosephMakepeace. After the events of the previous evening, there weremany who thought the prospect not just possible, but likely.They had gathered in the marketplace to watch the laying on ofhands. Evil was abroad, living in his fiendish children, andneeded to be banished. There they had witnessed the boy andgirl judder and jerk and scream in front of the clergyman. Fouloaths spewed from the girl's mouth. She had lifted her shift,opened her legs. But the Reverend Lightfoot had called upon theLord. Hymns were sung, prayers were said and he had seen to itthat 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 becomingcommonplace. The world was growing a more fearful place bythe day. For the past two months, the village and the surroundingarea had been held in the grip of a great fog that had blanketedthe 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'ssmock. That would be enough to reassure them that allwould soon return to the usual pattern of things. Yet still thisgreat mysterium covered the countryside and the rivers, infectingeverything that it touched just as surely as the devil spreadhis spore. With the strange haze came the signs; the bloodredsun from dawn to dusk, the raging storms and the balls of fire inthe firmament. And with the signs and portents came a mountingsense of impending doom.

The times tested every man's mettle. At first neighbors hadhelped each other, sharing bread and duties. Then, as more mendoubled over in the fields and as more children began to coughand 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 riversnot now running with poison? He sent swarms of flies—therewere flies that tormented both beast and man. He destroyedcrops. Was the corn not withered and brown in the harvestfields? Worst of all, He killed the firstborn. Were not all the fineyoung men dropping like stones as they labored? The signs werethere for anyone to read. These were times not seen since Moseshimself walked the land and each day brought a new terror.

The baker put his hand on Joseph Makepeace's shoulder, butit only served to agitate. He was soon joined by the blacksmithand 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 tospeak, so they led him back to his cottage to see whether someterrible fate had befallen his household. Inside they saw an upturnedflagon of gin on the rush mat and a blanket by the hearth.They exchanged knowing glances. He had been too drunk to taketo his own bed that night. But it was only when they opened thedoor into the back room that they saw the children. The bakerturned away and retched and the blacksmith stood transfixed. Itwas the watchman, stout and worldly, who steeled himself tostoop for a closer look.

The girl was lying facedown across her pallet. Her long hairwas streaked dark red. Her brother was by her side; his skullsmashed like a marrow. Nearby lay their father's shovel, itsblade smeared with blood.

The others could see that the watchman's arm was tremblingas he stretched forward to turn the girl over. They flinched whenshe flopped to one side, her eyes wide open and her skin aswhite as milk. The watchman closed his own eyes, as if trying toblink away the sight, but when he opened them again a secondlater, he saw faces peering in at the window. A woman shriekedand 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 backthe tears. He turned to see Joseph Makepeace, crouched in thecorner of the room, whimpering, with his arms cradling hishead. "Who did this, Joseph? Tell me it were not you!" Hemarched over to him and aimed a fist at his face, but Makepeace'sarms 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, hiseyes fixed on the bloody flagstones.

The watchman clicked his tongue and shook his head. "Stopyour 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 inthe county of Lincolnshire, one hundred and fifty miles to thenortheast of Brandwick as the crow flies. The sound carried overthe gentle wold, mingling with the song of the skylarks above. Itsignified to the laborers in the surrounding harvest fields it wastime to break. A small platoon of men, armed with scythes, hadadvanced across three acres of barley, leaving a carpet of jaggedstalks in their wake. Behind them came the women, sickles inhand, gathering up the fallen sun-ripe stems.

At the sound of the bells, they put down their tools andwalked over to the field gate where one of the women was openinga keg of small beer. Filled jugs in hand, the men settled themselvesdown in the shade of the stooks they had cut thatmorning. The June sun was strong and their throats were corn-dustdry.

The knife-grinder collected the scythes to sharpen as theyrested. While some of the reapers used a whetstone to hone theirdull blades, others relied on his skill to peen out the edges. Theyoung man, his dark head swathed in a bright red scarf tied atthe nape of his neck, had driven his anvil into the top of a fencepost by the wooden gate and had been doing a brisk trade sincethe early morning. His mule stood patiently nearby in thehedgerow's dense shade, whisking away with his tail the blackharvest flies that dotted the air.

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

"Sea fret's coming in," she called down to the other womenbelow.

They all knew it was bad news. At least a day's work wouldbe lost once the heavy fog that rolled in from the coast had settledon 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 outacross the flatlands toward the marshes from the wagon's vantagepoint. After a moment's deliberation she was satisfied thegirl was right.

"Best tell Mr. Bullimore," she said, adding: "He'll not bepleased."

The younger woman hastily clambered down and broke intoa trot as she headed toward the cluster of men who sat arounddrinking.

"Where's our grub then, wench?" shouted one of them."We're hungry as hawks." The others cheered and whistled, butshe ignored their childish taunts and walked straight up to theforeman who sat with his back against a stook, swatting awaythe harvest flies.

"Mr. Bullimore, sir," she began breathlessly.

The foreman looked up at her, shielding his eyes from thesun's glare.

"What is it, Hester?"

"There's a sea fret coming, sir."

Bullimore, a broad man in his middle years, rolled his eyesand scrambled to his feet. He turned to the east. The heat madethe barley fields shimmer like burnished gold. He strained hiseyes, 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 didMistress Pickwell."

He eyed her skeptically. "Show me."

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

"By the ..."

The young woman clambered up to join him. There it was: asilvery ribbon that clung to the horizon, only now the cloudswere more clearly defined than before. The fret was moving inlandfast.

"'Tis a thick one all right," conceded the foreman, then, cuppinghis hands around his mouth, he called out to the menbelow: "Get back to work, lads. Fret's coming in!"

The reapers rose quickly and picked up their honed scytheswith a renewed urgency. They understood that if there was nobarley harvested, there would be lower pay.

"Put your backs into it," shouted Bullimore, striding downthe slope toward them. "I reckon we've an hour at the most."

And so they began again, cutting the crack-dry stems of cornwith great sweeps of their new-sharpened scythes. The womenfell in behind, gathering the cut barley up in their arms in a wideembrace, before evening out the ears neatly to be twined by theboys.

As the men advanced through the crop, so the rabbits andhares scattered before them, running hither and thither. Theharvest flies, too, rose in black columns above the barley andflew off. From out on the marsh, a curlew's plaintive crysounded.

"Hurry, men," called Bullimore. He took off the kerchief hewore and mopped the sweat from his brow.

They made good progress. An hour later several dozen morestooks were standing sentinel. The boys had worked well, bindingthe stems tight, their young hands protected against the cuttingtwine by thick leather gauntlets. The barley heads satdrying in the sun, only by now it was losing its heat. The foremanhad already noticed a change in the sky. He could read theclouds as if they were words on a page; wispy mares' tails signifiedfine weather, while mackerel scales warned of a storm, butthis sky was quite alien to him. It was as if the words were writtenin a foreign language. There was something strange; somethingunsettling about this sky.

It was then that he suddenly felt a cool breeze pique the hairsat the back of his neck. The wind was changing direction. Heshivered and saw the goose bumps rise on his arms. The windwas coming about, turning northwest. It could hasten the arrivalof the fret. He estimated it would take another two hoursat least to finish the field, but he suspected they had half an hourat the most before the fog reached them. He walked up the slopeonce more to check on its progress. Climbing onto the wagonagain, he looked out toward the marsh. The sea of shimmeringcorn had been dulled by the change in the light, smudging thehorizon, making it hard to differentiate between the two. Henarrowed his eyes, focusing into the distance, but to his surpriseit appeared that the advancing bank of mist had disappeared.He frowned. Were his eyes playing tricks on him? He lookedaway, then looked back. No, he could see no fret, just an oddhaze. It seemed that the fog had been dissipated by the heat, orperhaps by the change in the wind direction. Either way, hebreathed a deep sigh of relief. But wait. Now he sniffed the air.What was that smell? Instead of the musk-sweet scent of new-mowncorn, he sensed something else; something acrid and bitter.It reminded him of the saltpeter they used to cure the porkmingled with charcoal from the smithy's forge, or perhaps evenrotten eggs. He looked over to where the knife-grinder stood bythe anvil. He'd heard tell of sparks from the clash of steel onstone setting light to stubble over at Fulstow last week, but hecould see no smoke.

Jumping down from the wagon he turned his thoughts backto the men. He decided he would not tell them that the fret hadlifted. He did not want to break their rhythm. It was amazinghow quickly they could work when they put their minds, as wellas their backs, into it.

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

"And where might you be going?" he snapped as he drewnear.

The young man cocked his head. "I be going the same way asthe hares and the rabbits and the flies and the skylarks," hereplied.

"But there's plenty more blades to sharpen afore we'rethrough here," insisted Bullimore.

The grinder gave him an odd look. Then, realizing that hewas 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 reassuringnod. "Fret's gone." But the grinder seemed unmovedand instead of gratefully receiving this information, lifted thecorner of his fulsome lips in a smirk.

"The sea fret may be gone, but something much worse is onits way," he countered.

"What do you mean?" asked Bullimore, puzzled, but theyoung 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 liftedhis 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 hisforehead with his finger and kicked his mule. "Good luck toyou, 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 singingand the harvest flies that were such a plague to both man andbeast seemed to have flown. But what of it? The threat of the seafret had subsided. They could work until sundown—anotherseven hours. The cooler air was welcome. The breeze was pickingup now. They would easily finish the field that day; perhapseven start on the next. He shrugged his broad shoulders, dabbedthe cold sweat from his brow and began to walk toward hisown scythe, which was propped against a sheaf nearby.