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The Devil's Acre

An Unlikely Mystery

St. Martin's Press

"VAGES!"

Darkness fell on London, easing its inky fingers along the dust and filth of the streets of Westminster. Throughout the daylight hours (if that can be called day that only sees the sun through a thick and virulent haze), the city had been engulfed in a flood of noise, the surge of activity, the human neap and ebb of commerce swirling past houses and storefronts, up and down lanes, swamping market stalls and shops, pulsing to the frantic rhythm of a million hearts' desires. June was creeping toward July upon a fetid wind, and the very air that day had held an unwholesome flavor of grit and decay that made the whores on the street smack their painted lips and gentlemen cluck desultorily to themselves. Even the blackened sweeps found the outside air no less oppressive than that within their suffocating world. It had been, as many reported that night, cringing in their homes with a shake of the head and a woeful gaze, "a particular London-y day."

The crowds were gone now, and even the watch had left the streets abandoned to the dark. Yet the flavor remained to taint the breeze blowing up from the Thames. Like a woolen blanket left too long out-of-doors, the wind laid a thick, wet heat over the city that drove away all comfort. Such palpable weather might have led one to believe that night itself could congeal into a solid form, the shadows taking shape and substance to pass unseen through the streets of Westminster, past Abbey and Cathedral, Palace and Hall. The washing of the waves against the filth-encrusted banks of the Thames might have sounded like the steady plod of hooves pulling their weary weight along the earth. The lazy moaning of the wind over chimney pipes might have sounded like the creak of a carriage lumbering along. On such a night as this, who knows what one might imagine to inhabit the darkness?

A coach was making toward the river in fact, not fancy. Moving past buildings that were merely dark smudges upon a dark canvas, guided only by the sound of the sluggish waters, a black coach behind a black horse made a somber procession down, down into the lowest quarter of Westminster. The momentary flash of sulfur, the striking of a match, revealed two figures atop the box. One leaned forward in a black cloak, upright and alert as he clasped the reins. The other lolled beside him in a dirty shirt and no collar, a rounded hat with a dented crown balanced upon his knees, a blunt cigar clenched tight in his teeth. He leered out at the night from a single bright eye, the other being dead and milky white like the underbelly of a fish where a jagged scar creased his face. This fish-eyed man waved the match flame back to darkness, puffing easily so that the cigar's fiery tip glowed with each slow drag as he fanned himself lazily with his hat.

Suddenly he leaned forward and grasped the reins, pulling the horse to a complaisant halt.

"Ssst!" he hissed to his companion, and listened. For a tense moment his one eye peered into the blackness, and nothing but the blackness looked back. "Close on by the place, I'd vager." He spoke with a thin, whispery voice in the thick accent of the streets.

"Then get down and lead the rest of the way," the cloaked man commanded.

The other turned his one eye upon his partner with a look of cold calculation, but only for an instant, and then a smile of genial camaraderie graced his stubbled chin. With a flourish he popped the hat onto his head. "Right you are, Mistah Vick," he crowed, and leaped down into the dust.

Taking the bridle, he led horse, coach, and all for another several dozen yards, before coming to a stop.

"Are we close?" the cloaked man asked from his perch above, unable to penetrate the black.

"The vaters is lickin' my boots as ve speak."

"Is the boat by?"

"Right 'ere as I said it vould be." The soft sound of a boot knocking against damp wood confirmed the fish-eyed fellow in his answer.

The cloaked man waited grudgingly for a moment, then descended the box and walked toward the other until his own boots splashed in the wash of the river. He was shorter than his companion by half a head, though his formality added a certain presence to his stature. "All right," he admitted at last, tying the horse to a rotting post. "Go get it."

The fish-eyed man took the cigar from between his teeth and snuffed it against the top of the post. Placing the twisted weed in his pocket for later, he gave a nod and a horrid wink, then strolled back to the coach, reached inside, and emerged cradling a heavy sack. This he carried in his arms down to the water before dropping it into the bottom of the boat with a dull thud.

"Quiet!"

The fish-eyed man grinned rudely in response to this harsh command, but said nothing. He merely bent to gather stones from the shore, dropping them into the sack's gaping mouth.

"What are you about?" the cloaked man demanded, passing a hand across his sweated brow. "Hurry!"

"A little assurance," the other answered, not ceasing in his labors. "Vouldn't like to see this'n pop up in a for'night to go peachin' on us." He chuckled at the thought, and continued to add weight to the sack, testing the heft of it occasionally until he was satisfied. Producing a length of rope from somewhere unseen, he tied up the package into a lumpy, shapeless, but governable bundle. Even then he was not quite finished with his ministrations, for he suddenly pulled a knife from his boot, a thin stiletto.

"Here!" the cloaked man uttered in surprise, taking an involuntary step backward into the water. "What's this?"

"More assurance," the fish-eyed man clucked, and cut a few slits in the sack. "A bit o' wentilation. To let the airs escape." He leered at his companion. "Bubble, bubble, eh, Mistah Vick?"

The cloaked man shuddered. "You know your business well."

His partner in these proceedings stood up with a groan. "They say it's visdom in a man as knows as much," he asserted with a sage look. Setting one foot into the boat, he steadied it while the cloaked man stepped in and sat as far from the sack as he could position himself. "Aye, they say it's a vise chap knows 'is own business," the other repeated, pushing off smoothly and taking the oars.

The boat flew silently into the night, setting barely a ripple across the flowing surface of the Thames. "Labor and vages, that's all it amounts to these days," the man went on, quite as though he were at home before his hearth instead of pulling across a river of darkness. "A family as kep' at farmin' for ten generations gives it all up so as to labor in the city and earn better vages. And vhat's the end? Only pain and 'ardship from not knowin' their business."

"Hush, can't you, man?"

"You sees vhat I'm gettin' at?" the fish-eyed man went on, oblivious to the importunate request. "The trick to livin' a fine life, as it were, the sort o' life your master lives, is to do the least labor for the best vages. See? And that comes o' knowin' your own business, as I said."

The other man produced a green kerchief from within the folds of his cloak and began to mop the streaming sweat from his face. Yet he made no move to discard his heavy garment, pulling it tighter about his throat, as though he could protect himself from some contagion on the wind. "It's a vile business," he whispered in disgust, peering into the blank face of the water.

"That it is, that it is. Wile and shameful." The fish-eyed fellow grinned. "O' course, for the right vages, a man might never be forced to it again."

"You'll get your wages," the cloaked man snapped.

"But you see, there's vages, and then there's vages." The oarsman paused in the easy flow of his narration and glared with a bright eye and a livid scar at his cloaked companion, demanding attention.

Slowly, the cloaked man ceased his mopping and returned the fellow's stare. "Go on," he muttered.

The fish-eyed man stopped rowing and let the boat drift into the stream of the river. "Your master knows 'is business, Mistah Vick. Vell, ve knows 'is business, too. Vages might be had o' such knowledge. Fine vages."

The cloaked man seemed confused by this observation at first, then affronted, and finally he leaned back in the boat and fell deep within himself. His fish-eyed partner was silent now, letting the lapping waves against the hull do his work for him.

At last, the cloaked man spoke. "My master places great trust in me."

"O' course 'e do. That's vhy you makes such 'igh vages. And that's vhy you finds yourself 'ere this night vith me, attendin' to 'is business. The thing to ask yourself is, can 'igher vages be got from such trust as 'e places in you, eh, Mistah Vick?"

Again they were silent. For five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour the only sound was the water of the Thames and the occasional dip of the oars as the boat held its place on the river.

The cloaked man sat upright at last. "How far out are we?"

"Far enough to be rid o' this." And without another word, the fish-eyed man heaved the bundle into the blackness below. A small patch of bubbles rose suddenly, white against the dark of the water as if to mark the place, but it soon dispersed.

"Good," said the cloaked man, clearly thankful to be relieved of his charge. "Then let's continue this discussion elsewhere." He shuddered. "I don't like the river at night."

"Nor do I, Mistah Vick," the fish-eyed fellow chuckled, pulling hard back in the direction of the shore. "No more do I."

The boat and its occupants disappeared into the blackness. Behind them, the last white bubbles erupted on the surface of the water and danced about, drifting on the tide.

ON THE LONDON ROAD

The raven circled twice into the highest reaches of Bellminster Cathedral, its form a black mark upon the prismatic stream of light flowing through the stained glass windows. It was morning, just that time of day when the first rays catch the dew still upon the glass, and suddenly the air swims in a sea of blues and greens, reds and ambers hung in ethereal suspension, bold, pure, honest color. The raven folded its darkling feathers as if in defiance of such splendor and dropped like a millstone to earth. But at the last moment, it spread its wings wide to alight gently on Tuckworth's knee. The dean of Bellminster Cathedral eyed the bird calmly, as though there were nothing so unusual in its presence there, or in his being seated in his usual pew in the empty nave, his usual spot for reflection and solitude.

Ridiculous creature, you're dead, he thought, with that uncanny clarity that he brought even to his most outlandish dreams. When did your wing mend?

The raven cast a black, lifeless eye at Tuckworth and opened its beak. "Go home, old man," it squawked.

Tuckworth reached out a hand and suddenly the pew shook him like a puppeteer dandling a marionette, and then the bird was gone and the color was gone, and Tuckworth again found himself traveling south inside the shade-drawn shadows of the London coach, being jostled in his unforgiving seat.

How he hated travel.

Some stone or hole in the hard, dry road had bounced the coach as it raced along, startling Tuckworth back to his senses. The bird was dead, of course. He had known as much, even in the dream. It had been murdered months ago by a madman. (Was it proper to say a bird was "murdered"?) Why did he still dream of the creature? He'd never felt any great affection toward it, had cared for it only because no one else in the world seemed to want to. (Wasn't killed a likelier word?) A bird with a twisted wing was a pathetic sight, after all. Still, why did he miss it so?

Tuckworth pulled a red kerchief from the pocket of his black coat, removed his spectacles, and mopped the rivulets of sweat from his cherubic face and from around his sad, glistening eyes. The stagnant air of the coach with its shades pulled down against the dust, the mildewed odor of the straw littering the floor, the constant banging and knocking of the road combined to make him feel, not quite ill, but far from well. He hoped for a stop soon where he might step out and have a pint.

Tuckworth knew why he dreamed of Bellminster Cathedral. It had been his home for three decades, had seen his years pass by lazily, his marriage to Eleanor ripen, his Lucy grow from child to woman, his life settle into a comfortable round of habit and regularity. Then it had stood by silently while his wife wasted from the cancer. Its cold walls watched her agony, heard her screams, and witnessed his one unforgivable act of love, the dreadful night he ended her suffering when God would not. And the cathedral finally sat idle as Tuckworth's faith shriveled inside him like a dried flower pressed hard by pain and loss, God now as dead to him as that black bird.

He was vicar then, only lately under the authority of Reverend Mortimer, Bellminster's young and ambitious rector. Now Tuckworth was dean of the cathedral, under the authority of no one but the bishop, who lived a casual life in London, rarely bothering himself with his see. But dean was a ludicrous post. The cathedral was nothing more than an ugly hole in the sky, destroyed by the same madman who had murdered the bird. Perhaps that was it, the reason bird and cathedral were so closely associated in his memory.

He looked across the close confinement of the coach to where Mortimer was trying to read a religious tract in the half-light, looking properly austere and evangelical in his clerical black, stained even darker under the arms and about the collar. Tuckworth noted the droplet of sweat forming slowly on the end of the rector's long nose. Mortimer would never lift a hand to wipe it away, or admit that the air in the coach was anything but the freshest. They had shared words before embarking from the Granby Arms to leave Bellminster behind in the dust. Tuckworth had wanted to sit on top of the coach with the more common throng, where the breeze might relieve the heat of the stifling day. Besides, it was cheaper to ride on top. But Mortimer would hear none of it.

"Scandalous, for a man of the cloth to expose himself to the public highway in that manner," the younger man had pronounced under his breath. "To arrive with the filth of the road upon you when there are perfectly respectable accommodations within."

"Oh, good heavens," Tuckworth said, exasperated at such posturing. "The day is hot for everyone, and I don't see how it's a scandal to be comfortable."

"Need I remind you, Mr. Tuckworth, that we are not everyone, and you are no longer a poor vicar? We are men of God, and so must find our comfort in Him."

Tuckworth was confounded if he knew what that had to do with the weather, and he might have climbed to the top regardless. In fact, he was prepared to do so, but Mortimer held the coach door open for him, forcing him either to step inside or to cut his traveling companion before the entire coach yard of people, including Lord Granby. Tuckworth sighed and got in.

Only one other passenger now shared the space with them, a beefy man who had joined the coach at Morley, just beyond the dark reaches of the Estwold. He was not much company, however, a seasoned traveler who had no trouble sleeping in the coach. Left to his own dreary thoughts, Tuckworth opened the shade, just a crack, and looked out the window at the passing green of the British landscape, a green that was slowly turning to dull yellow under the searing heat of the sun. A cold, wet winter followed by a hot, dry spring. Hard times ahead, he thought. Where had he heard that? Hard times ahead.

"Hard times, Tuckworth," Lord Granby had told him as they walked to the Granby Arms that morning. "The mill in danger of closing. Farms failing. Hard times ahead for everyone, and that includes our little church." His lordship had taken to calling Bellminster Cathedral "our little church" now that it was nothing more than a burned-out hovel, its naked walls reaching vainly to heaven.

Tuckworth shook his head. "I can't say that I feel right traveling all the way to London so I might squeeze out some contribution for the Cathedral Fund," he admitted. "If times are so hard, a cathedral seems like a great empty waste."

Granby, tall yet stooped, aged yet active and alert to everything, glanced sideways at the dean. "Now," he said, half smiling, "if I thought you meant that, I'd be disappointed in you."

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Excerpted from The Devil's Acre by David Holland. Copyright © 2003 David Holland. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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