At the jail, Sedgwick organized more men to watch the judge, to keep a presence close by both day and night. It would leave them stretched, but he knew the boss was right. Now Wyatt had failed to take the Constable, he’d be searching for some opportunity to grab Dobbs. They couldn’t afford to leave the slightest chance.
He understood how lucky the boss had been. One step another way and he’d have been gone. No one would even have known until night, and then they’d have been scrambling, lost.
He shook his head. If he’d been a praying man, he’d have given his thanks to God. For once things hadn’t gone Wyatt’s way. Maybe the tide was starting to shift, and they could gain a little headway.
Now they needed to find him. He wasn’t infallible. It seemed as if they’d searched everywhere, but Wyatt was hiding in some corner. All they had to do was discover it.
He was still thinking when Josh arrived. As always, he was out of breath from running along the streets, his shoes soaked, old stockings discoloured by damp. He shook his head, with nothing new to tell.
‘That message from the boss’s wife, it was a trick.’
‘What?’ Josh stood stock still, his mouth open wide.
‘It was really from Wyatt. He tried to grab the boss on his way home.’
‘The boss?’
‘It’s all right, lad, he didn’t get him. The boss is a little hurt, but nothing bad.’ He ruffled the boy’s hair.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Aye, I am. I saw him a little while ago.’ He paused, trying to sound casual. ‘Look, why don’t you go and see Frances? There’s nothing more you can do for now.’
‘Shouldn’t we be hunting Wyatt? After him attacking the boss.’
Sedgwick sighed, folding his long body awkwardly into the Constable’s chair. ‘Believe me, if I even had an idea where to look we’d go after him. But I don’t have a clue. Do you?’
‘No,’ Josh admitted.
A sense of failure hung in the room.
‘Look, lad, you go. If I need you for anything, I know where you’ll be.’
‘All right.’
Alone, Sedgwick listened to the city outside the walls. There was the creak of carts as they turned from Briggate on to Kirkgate, conversations of people passing like the soft drone of bees. It seemed as if the city was beginning to come alive once more, a gradual rousing as the snow started to disappear.
After shivering and freezing and false starts, the fresh hope of spring was welcome. There’d been so much death in the last months. Among the worst he’d seen were the twins, pretty girls no more than a month old, swaddled in old, stained linen and left out in a doorway with a note saying ‘I hav no muny. I hav no fud. I hav no milk.’ The babes were already dead when he found them, their flesh chilled and waxy against his fingers. For the first time since he’d taken this job, he’d cried.
For so many, the weather had meant no work and no money. They’d starved, trying to scavenge grass and roots from under the snow wherever they could. He’d seen men begging and pleading for something to eat for their families.
But the memory that stood out from all others had come in January, when the cold was deepest. An infant, barely old enough to walk and talk, had been toddling down the street, stumbling in the ice, falling and then standing again. He was dressed in a shirt that was too large for him and breeches with no coat, his thin shoes soaked and full of holes. When Sedgwick had asked where he lived, the boy had lifted one small fist. His knuckles white from the strain of grasping it tight, he produced a small piece of metal, rubbed shiny by years of use. It was a sign to hang over a bottle’s neck, reading Ale.
‘Mama gave me,’ he said proudly. ‘My name. Hungry.’
The boy had no idea where he lived or who his mother was. All he owned was this worthless piece of tin with a word stamped on it. Sedgwick had found the lad a home, but if he hadn’t he’d have taken him back with him, a younger brother for James. Within a day, frostbite started to blacken the boy’s toes and fingers. Inside a week he had died, his screaming hoarse and terrified.
The pictures were trickling through his memory when the door of the jail opened and a clerk from the Moot Hall entered. He was a small man, with an ungainly limp where a broken leg had once been badly set. He nodded briefly, took off his battered tricorn hat and in a friendly tone said, ‘Still getting a bit warmer. Happen we’ve seen the last of all this, eh?’
‘Maybe,’ the deputy agreed cautiously. He’d seen the man before, always ready with gossip or a lengthy joke in the Ship.
‘Mr Nottingham here?’
‘He had some things to do,’ Sedgwick lied. The boss didn’t need what had happened with Wyatt bandied around. ‘I don’t think he’ll be back today.’
The man shrugged. ‘Tell him his Worship wants to see him. Nothing too urgent. It’s about the Henderson brothers.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Be better if they just hung the pair of them. But you never heard that from me,’ he added hurriedly.
Sedgwick grinned and the other man turned to leave.
‘You got money in this city you can do anything.’
‘We keep trying,’ the deputy said.
‘You can’t fight wealth,’ the man told him with a shake of his head, as if the words had been written by the Church. And they might as well have been, Sedgwick reflected as the man closed the door. Money did what it wanted and walked roughshod over everything else. It didn’t care what bones it broke or the injuries it left.
He despised it. Once, back in the days when he was starting out with the Constable, he’d believed he could change that, that he might be able to bring proper justice to the poor. Time had kicked those ideas from under him. The rich made the rules. If those rules conflicted with the law, then all it took was a word, a little money, and the law was forgotten.
The Hendersons would walk free. It was as certain as tomorrow. All their evidence, their witness, it would mean nothing. He’d never paid much attention to Isaac the Jew himself, but letting them go would be the same as pissing on his grave. It wouldn’t be the first time, or even the second. And it certainly wouldn’t be the last.
He gathered up his coat, locked the door as he left the jail, and made his way up Briggate. Time to check on the men around the judge’s house. After what had happened to the boss, they couldn’t take any chances. Wyatt couldn’t be allowed to come close to Dobbs.
He felt the air against his face. It was warmer than it had been a couple of hours ago. Glancing up, the skies were still grey, but the leaden tinge had vanished. Perhaps things might improve, after all.
To his surprise, the men were set and alert. Only one had vanished to go drinking, and Sedgwick dragged him out of the tavern and back to his post, scarcely able to stand. There was just enough of a chill in the air to keep him alert and awake, especially after night fell.
Slowly he made his way home, walking the circuit of places to check every evening, from out by the old manor house to the banks of the Aire, under Leeds Bridge and along by the warehouses.
It added time to the day, yet he found satisfaction in it. Sometimes he felt like a lord, walking the boundaries of his property and exulting in all he saw. Occasionally, after the day had seemed like hour after hour of pain, it was a way to calm down, to let his long legs stretch and stride out. Somewhere in the distance he could hear a drunken voice trying to sing a verse of
The song dug up distant memories. He’d been thirteen, maybe a little younger, and up by the Market Cross with his father. They were part of a crowd watching a travelling troupe. Someone had sung that, and the story of a lady leaving her husband to run off with a Gypsy had seemed so wonderful. He’d hunted around until he found someone who knew the words, and then sung it for years when he was on his own, walking outside the city. Those days were long gone, but he found himself humming the tune again as he completed his rounds.
By the time he reached his room he was tired, ready to turn his back on the world for a few hours and enjoy his family. As soon as he opened the door, he knew that wouldn’t happen.
Lizzie rose from her stool, James quiet in her arms. Josh was kneeling by the bed, head in his hands, and the sheet had been pulled over Frances’s head. One more victim, he thought. Leave him a minute, Lizzie mouthed, shaking her head as he moved towards the lad, and he knew she was right. Everyone needed their own way to say
