The Wicked Trade (The Forensic Genealogist Book 7), Nathan Goodwin [little red riding hood ebook TXT] 📗

frame for support, as he slowly shifted his weight onto his weak legs and stood up.

‘What? I been doing laundry work—we been a-coping fine.’

Sam ignored his wife’s pleas and began to walk towards the door, his leg muscles tightening with each new step.

‘Sam!’ she protested.

‘Be looking at yourself, Hester—you be giving birth be Lady Day. Then what be happening?’

‘Then we be asking the overseers to be a-helping,’ Hester said.

‘The overseers?’ Sam begged. ‘Tell me you ain’t gone begging to them?’

Hester shook her head. ‘Bain’t me what went a-begging—it were Ann. It were when I were unwell; we were a-given some mutton, barley and flour.’

‘Happen she be saving all our lives,’ he muttered, continuing to the stairs.

‘You be thinking Mister Banks be having you back out on them fields like this?’ Hester scorned.

‘I bain’t going to see Banks—I be going to see Quested to be getting me dues,’ Sam snapped, stopping at the top of the stairs to confront his wife.

Hester reached out for his hand. ‘Quested be dead, Sam—he were hanged at Newgate.’

Sam felt his calf muscles recoil at the news and he reached out to the wall to steady himself. The events of that last night smuggling spooled through his mind at high speed, before slowing down at the moment when he and Quested had reached the village of Brookland. They had been hidden behind a wall, he remembered that clear as day. Then Quested had got up, handing a pistol to a man who had turned coat and then captured him. And there his memory stopped. Whole days had been irretrievably removed from him, when he had been under Ann Fothergill’s spell. He searched the murky blackness of his mind, trying to force himself to remember what had happened next, but his request was rebutted by darkness.

‘What were he hanged for?’ he asked, already knowing the answer.

‘Smuggling—for what do you be thinking?’ Hester answered.

With a renewed determination, Sam carefully made his way downstairs. His legs were cramping but he was becoming used to the pain. He hauled on his hat, coat and old boots, then pulled open the street door.

‘Sam—don’t be so dead-alive! It be a hell of a night out there—at least be a-waiting until mornin’,’ Hester remonstrated.

Without another glance back, he closed the door, his boots crunching down into the fresh white powder. Through the fissured grey clouds, a strewing of subdued stars and a thin-sliver moon gave him just enough light by which to make his way from Braemar Cottage.

The oppressiveness of the stark skeletal branches of the hedgerow, which lined the narrow lane, was softened by the pristine carpet of white upon which Sam walked. He lumbered along, without hurry, partly due to the resistance from his legs and partly to savour the return of his freedom. Breathing in long gulps of the chill air, he thought again on the fact that he seemed to owe his life to the benevolence of a stranger. A prickly qualm burrowed into his heart at the abruptness with which she had departed. He felt strongly that he owed her something, but then, what could he offer her in exchange for a renewal of his life?

He chewed on the thoughts as he continued towards the village, unable to reach an answer which satisfied him. He came upon his destination with gratitude, hoping that he would be afforded a few moments’ rest. Rapping the iron knocker, he stepped back, removing his sodden hat from his head and tapping off the fresh snow.

The door was pulled open by Quested’s widow, Martha, a small creature in her early thirties, whose efforts to conceal the grief from her puffy eyes had failed. ‘Hello,’ she greeted meekly. She took a step back and widened the yawn of the door. ‘Come on in.’

Sam entered the cottage, clutching his hat to his chest. The parlour, which he had entered, was tiny and lit by the orange glow of two reed candles on the side dresser. ‘I be terrible sorry to hear about your husband,’ he said.

Martha nodded but kept her eyes looking to the ground. She mumbled an answer which Sam failed to comprehend.

‘And…’ he began, but his words caught in his throat. ‘…with what they be doing with him—you know.’

Martha looked up, perplexed.

‘With his body,’ he explained.

Understanding pressed through the veneer of sorrow, enlightening her dark eyes and raising her frown. ‘His body be here,’ she said, tilting her head to the side.

Sam looked in the direction which she had indicated and saw the edge of a coffin.

‘It were old Knatchbull, the Ashford magistrate what saved him. Got him brought back to Aldington for a decent Christian burial.’

‘It be only right,’ Sam agreed, shifting his weight from one leg to the other.

‘He weren’t a God-fearing man, like. Church weren’t ever somewhere he liked to be, but still,’ she said. ‘Do you be wanting to see him? I be having a raft of folk wanting to pay their respects to him. Go on through.’

Sam baulked at the idea. Although it was normal practice to display the dead at home until burial, he felt his acquaintance with Quested to have been minimal. But now that he was here and now that she was staring at him, encouraging him through, he needed to view the body and pay his respects. Despite himself, he found that he was moving into the adjoining room, which was shrouded in darkness. A single rush light in the corner of the room painted ugly, harrowing shadows on Quested’s face.

Sam bowed his head and tried to search his mind for an image of Quested crouching behind the wall in Brookland. He failed. All that he could now see was the darkened soulless face in front of him, which looked to Sam as though it could never have been alive. His skin