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

gunfire continued, punctuated by the odd cry or yelp of an injured man.

‘I bain’t got a shilling to my name,’ Samuel countered, clasping his hands together to stop the acute shaking.

Quested fell quiet, then faced Samuel: ‘I can be a-telling you of the place of two barrels full of gold guineas if you be pledging to see my Martha right.’

‘Gold guineas?’

‘Aye—hundreds of them. What say you?’

‘Alright…’ Samuel found himself answering.

‘Right. In the woods on me old aunt, Widow Stewart’s farm be a pigpen—under the floor be a cellar—a tub-hole—that be where you find the barrels. She don’t be causing no fuss—she be hockatty-hick and don’t be a-leaving her house.’

‘From where have they appeared?’ Samuel asked.

‘Gold speculation during the French Wars,’ Quested replied haughtily.

‘And what be that, justly?’

‘A-buying gold in London for price and a-selling it in Paris for price and a quarter.’

‘You be once being a gold speculator?’ Samuel questioned. He knew little of Cephas Quested, but his reputation was as an uneducated labourer who was always concerned in liquor and never to be found in church save for weddings and funerals.

‘Well, no. One night a-fishing off Folkestone my uncle happened upon one of the galleys on its way out to France and, well, he nabbed the lot. He be telling me of it on his deathbed last winter. Then I gets into smuggling and here we be.’

Samuel realised then that the guns had, at some point whilst they had been talking, fallen silent. There were the sounds of men moving, some shouting.

Quested turned and peered up over the wall. ‘Here!’ he called, leaping over.

Samuel watched as Quested approached the man, offering him the dead smuggler’s musket. ‘Take this and blow some bloody officer’s brains out.’

The man, dressed like his fellow smugglers in a dark gabardine, took the musket, flipped it around and held it to Quested’s head. ‘In the name of the King, I am apprehending you under the Smuggling Act. My name is Charles Newton and I am a deputed Officer of Customs. You are to come with me.’

Despite the darkness of the night, Samuel could see from Quested’s posture that he had given up the fight.

‘What is your name?’ Newton demanded.

‘Quested—Cephas Quested.’

 ‘Treader!’ the blockade man called. ‘Take this wretch to the watch-house and see that he makes no trouble.’

Samuel watched as another blockade officer—this time dressed in the uniform of his station—arrived and grabbed Quested by the collar.

Quested flicked a final glance in Samuel’s direction before being led off into obscurity.

Samuel was alone.

His thoughts were swathed in a thick, mulish fog, interwoven with the distancing echo of ricocheting pistol shots and muffled shouts. The torturous pain had returned to his shoulder. He knew that he needed to move on from here, but his shuddering legs refused to bear his weight.

Samuel slumped down onto his side then began to crawl through the damp grass on his knees towards some kind of building which he had spotted in the distance.

He made it a good many yards—how many, he could not tell—before collapsing back onto his front.

He closed his eyes, welcoming the numbing distraction that delirium offered. He was at home with Hester. She was sitting beside the fire smiling. John was there, too. Then, the welcome pull of anaesthetising darkness.

He was floating—in the air or in water—he didn’t know which. Something was moving underneath him—something constant like a millstone. Scratching, hurting his legs and lower back. And the pain in his shoulder! Even through the mask of hallucination, he felt the excruciation of the open flesh.

He opened his eyes to discover the sky full of shooting stars—each and every one was racing through the blackness above him. Then they vanished. Not one single star remained in the sky. And the millstone had stopped grinding beneath him. And a vice under his armpits, of which he had been unaware previously, released.

Light! Terrible, terrible bright light. Samuel threw his left arm over his face to shield his eyes.

‘Hello,’ someone said. A girl or woman. Hester? It did not sound like her. ‘What be your name?’

‘Sam,’ he answered, drawing the words from within. He slowly pulled his arm from his face and saw an upside-down young woman staring back at him holding a candle. Not Hester.

‘You be in a bit of bother, Sam,’ she said. Her voice was soft, gentle.

Samuel tried to sit up. ‘I need to be a-getting the guineas,’ he muttered, before falling back down onto what he realised was a pile of straw. He looked around him, lucidity touching the edge of his addled thoughts. He was in a barn.

‘Oh. And what guineas do they be, then?’ the woman asked.

‘The barrelful beneath Widow Stewart’s pigpen,’ he managed to say.

The woman laughed. ‘I don’t be thinking you’re going anyway soonest,’ she said.

His eyelids began to close, sleep pulling him back in.

‘My name’s Ann, since you ain’t be asking—Ann Fothergill.’

Chapter Two

1st March 2018, New Romney, Kent

Morton Farrier was intrigued. On the table in front of him was a collection of documents pertaining to the life of one Ann Fothergill—the great-grandmother of the elderly man sitting opposite him. Morton glanced over the final record, then met the old man’s enquiring eyes which had lit up his pallid face in anticipation. Arthur Fothergill was, as he had declared proudly upon opening the front door to Morton, ninety-five years of age. Sitting beside him, in the protective role of mildly mistrusting family member, were his nephew and niece, neither of whom had contributed anything during the half-hour that Morton had been there, and who clearly held no interest in what was being discussed.

‘What do you make of it all, then?’ Arthur asked.

‘She certainly sounds as though she lived a colourful life,’ Morton answered. He glanced to the nephew—sour-faced