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

going to do if she caught him? The woman crawled around her house on all fours, so was hardly likely to rush out brandishing a weapon.

His sense of his own foolishness swelled inside him, mutating into a burning anger towards Quested’s departed soul. He cursed the day that he had ever met him. But now, his options were few. With his injured arm, there was no way that he could continue his former work as a labourer. If he couldn’t work, then he would be thrown out of the tied cottage. In his heart, he knew the future; could see it like a little galley on the distant horizon, bringing him and his family ever closer to their destiny, to the poorhouse.

Five days later, with no coal, candles or food and down to his last shillings, Sam Banister trudged through the gates of Ruffians Hill Farm, the humiliation of walking through them more injurious than the musket shot to his arm. In front of an open barn were some other men from the village: Thomas Chittenden, James Fry, Thomas Ashdown, Robert Butcher and George Horn. Men whose apparel—tattered and threadbare—revealed the desperateness of their situation. They looked up expectantly but their sudden switch to sullenness made explicit that it was not he for whom they were waiting. Most nodded or made vague murmurings of greeting, before settling their gaze elsewhere. Ruffians Hill Farm, run by the parish to provide provisional work for its unemployed men, was akin to a purgatory for the poorhouse. That the men and their families were just one step away from its doors was a fact implicit in their unsettled behaviour.

Sam moved closer to them but nobody engaged with him. He dug the heel of his right boot into the ground. The fact that it was still frozen from the night’s frost and, but for a few muddy crumbs, refused to budge, gave Sam a knotting sense of foreboding.

He, with his practically useless right arm, had much more to fear than the other men. If he could not work here, then he was finished.

‘Right!’ someone called, striding out from behind the barn. It was Mr Pilcher, tossing down the half a dozen shovels which he had been cradling in his arms. ‘Follow me.’

The men bent down, picked up a shovel each and followed him across a muddy yard. They passed other outbuildings and arrogant farmhands tending to the livestock, who turned their backs to the pitiable procession of the parish poor.

They silently crossed another field before reaching their destination: a large dug-out quarry. To one side were four carts with their tailgates open.

‘Them four carts need to be filled by the end of the day with good quality flint. It be going down to the new turnpike road, so we don’t want no rubbish, clay or mud,’ he bawled, ‘just good Kentish flint. Anyone not be understanding that?’

The men remained still.

‘Get cracking, then,’ he instructed.

Sam positioned his hands on the shovel and thrust it downwards, but the hard ground refused the lacklustre effort of his right arm. ‘Tarnal hell,’ he muttered, trying again. Back and forth he smashed the shovel into the ground, cracking only an inch or so of the icy topsoil open. Changing the positions of his hands, making his left dominant, made little difference.

After several minutes of futile attempts at digging, Sam stood up to take a breath. He took a quick glance over at the other men. They were struggling to break the ground, too but they were at least pulling out rocks and tossing them into the backs of the carts. As he returned his gaze to the ground beneath him, he caught Mr Pilcher’s curious stare.

With a redoubled effort, Sam plunged the shovel into the earth, managing to reveal a small nugget of flint. He dug the clay loose from beneath the stone then prised it free with his hands. Feeling a minor sense of triumph, he flung it into the nearest cart.

He poised the shovel, ready to strike again when an odd sound caused him to look up. It was Mr Pilcher, clapping his hands in Sam’s direction. Sam paused to blink the sweat from his eyes.

‘You be thinking we got four hundred years to finish the turnpike road?’

‘No,’ Sam answered.

‘So, you be thinking that the overseers be full of money, then?’

‘No,’ Sam repeated, about to explain about the weakness in his right arm but then thought better of it. Every man had a story, a reason for being here.

‘Then you best get digging, you little black-tan, or I be telling the overseers that you be owed nothing.’

Sam funnelled his anger into the shovel and plunged it hard into the ground. His endeavours, however, produced little effect against the mocking earth.

In a roar of frustration, Sam launched the shovel in Mr Pilcher’s direction. ‘Damn the overseers, damn the turnpike road and damn you, Mr Pilcher.’

Sam staggered into the Walnut Tree Inn, exhaustion having consumed every part of him. ‘Pint of ale,’ he stammered breathlessly.

‘Merciful Lord, Sam Banister—you be a-looking pretty nigh-ready for the grave,’ the landlord remarked.

Sam could not find the words to answer. He sat at the bar and slumped down into the crook of his elbow. Against the wooden bar top, he sensed the reverberation of his drink being placed down close to his head.

‘Six pence,’ the landlord said.

‘I be getting this,’ someone said from beside him.

Sam sat up and met with the inky eyes of George Ransley. ‘Thank you,’ he said, quiet suspicion rising inside him. He stared at Ransley. He had very dark hair and eyes, the ruddy complexion typical of a carter, and a grubby gabardine. The feature which most drew attention, and of which he was self-conscious, was his projecting upper teeth.

Ransley twitched, seemingly anxious. He glanced around him, catching the inquisitive gaze of the