Cold Cruel Winter

farewell.

Instead, Sedgwick took James, feeling the life of the boy as he wriggled in his grasp, smiling and happy to see his father. The joy flowed through him, a contrast to the scene across the room. Lizzie drew him aside and whispered, ‘I’ll wash her and prepare her. Poor mite wouldn’t have a clue what to do.’

He didn’t need to ask if she’d done it before. By her age almost every woman had. They’d buried parents, husbands, babes, and seen the cruel endings of life. He kissed her on the forehead and let James slide gently to the floor. The boy wandered to the corner to play with a wooden horse that Sedgwick had awkwardly carved.

‘Can you make sure she’s buried soon?’ Lizzie asked.

He nodded. The boss would look after it.

He held Lizzie tenderly, her warmth comforting against his body. Josh had barely moved, but it was time. Time for him to go home, to see that life continued. The deputy took him softly by the shoulders, raising him to his feet. The lad’s face was wet with silent tears, and Sedgwick wiped them away with his sleeve.

‘Come on,’ he said tenderly. ‘She’s gone now. There’s no more pain for her.’

Josh gave one long, last look as the door closed.

They walked, absorbed in their thoughts. Sedgwick kept his arm draped over the lad’s shoulder, for the contact, to keep him close to this world. When they reached the room, Josh’s hands shook so much that he couldn’t push the key into the lock. The deputy took it from him, turning it, knowing how Josh would be fearing the night ahead, and the procession of days to follow.

‘Make sure you’re at work tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We need you.’

He lit a tallow candle, its acrid smell quickly filling the place with a circle of light. Shadows clung to the corners, the inviting places outside time. The lad was sitting on the bed, his face stunned, gazing around the room as if he hoped to find Frances alive there.

‘Look,’ Sedgwick began. ‘It hurts, I know that. It’s going to hurt. But all you can do is face it.’ He paused. ‘Come in to work in the morning,’ he repeated. ‘It’ll be better than being here by yourself. Trust me.’

He waited until the boy nodded absently. Maybe he’d heard, maybe he hadn’t. The morning would give him the answer. He patted Josh’s shoulder sympathetically, then left.

Twenty-Seven

He raged around the room. In his fury, he kicked over the desk and an inkwell spun into the corner, spraying a crazed blue stream. He picked up the small knife he used to delicately remove skin and plunged it into the table.

The veins in his neck were bulging, the way they always did when his temper flared. He let out a long yell of frustration, knowing none could hear him. After his failed attempt to ambush the Constable he’d bolted back here, to the one place he was safe.

The weather, the fucking weather. He’d fooled Nottingham so perfectly. He’d have him strapped to the chair now if the man hadn’t slipped on the ice, if the girl hadn’t appeared in the doorway.

If.

The Constable had been completely unprepared. He’d expected more of him than that. It had taken so little to convince him, to catch him off his guard. Those hours spent watching quietly, of asking small questions to learn names and relationships, they’d all paid off.

Now he was here alone. All his planning had crumbled, and his anger filled the room like water, roaring loudly between the walls. He couldn’t come close to the judge for all the men around him, but the Constable had been so cocky. .

He closed his eyes and laid his left hand on the table, pushing the palm against the wood. He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, forcing everything from his lungs before he drew air back in. With his right hand he drew the knife from the table, holding it lightly.

He waited until his breathing had steadied, until he began to feel in control again. The knife was firm in his grasp. Lovingly, he stroked the blade lightly across the back of his left hand.

He didn’t even feel it cut the skin. The pain arrived with the first ooze of blood. He gasped for a moment, the way he did every time. He’d let it flow for a minute, then staunch it with a cloth.

This was his ritual of failure, his way to chastise himself. Every scar on the back of his hand was a reminder of a time he hadn’t succeeded. Some were for things so small he could no longer recall them, while others held deeper, harder memories.

He’d begun it in the Indies. He’d watched an overseer slice open a slave’s back to serve as a bloody reminder that he’d failed to escape. In the heat and sweat there any wound could quickly fester. That was part of the attraction. Every failure brought the possibility of death. Each cut was a lesson, and he’d try to learn from every one.

The blood had trickled over his hand and on to the table in a dark, tiny puddle. The red stood out, garish, against his flesh. Finally he reached out for the cloth and pressed it on the wound, watching the rich colour spread.

He felt calmer now. Nottingham was still out there, rather than here, where he should be. At least he’d hurt the man, he knew that. It was some tiny consolation. And he’d have him here, sooner or later, just as he’d have the judge. He already had much of the third volume of his book written, the sheets now scattered across the floor.

The isolation of the house helped him. Down in the cellar they could scream as loud as they liked and no one would hear, no one would come. Charlotte had done well to find this place. He’d managed to send her money he’d embezzled from his masters in the Indies. They were just small scraps, irregular, but she’d hoarded them with care.

She’d kept her faith in him. She’d always believed he’d return. She was the first woman to return his trust, to love him completely. When he reached Leeds after his long journey from Jamaica she’d been exactly where she promised she’d be every night, waiting for him and nursing a single glass of gin in the Ship.

Wyatt had never asked how she’d survived all the years he’d been gone. He was scared that he’d hate the answers, that he’d look at her differently. She’d be back soon with food, walking the half-mile out from Leeds to this place in the empty valley below Woodhouse Hill. There was a grand house farther up the slope, but its owner had closed it up for the winter.

The Bradford road ran a quarter of a mile to the south, distant enough that no sound could reach it. From there a track led to the house, running across flat land. No one could come close without being seen.

He heard the solid clunk of the door and knew Charlotte had returned. She’d hurry down, eager for a view of the captive Constable. Her footsteps rang over the floor above his head and he imagined her putting things away, her eyes alive with anticipation.

When he’d explained to her about the revenge he’d planned, she’d gripped his hand tightly, smiled, and hissed, yes. The hatred on her face as he listed their names, counting them off on his dark fingers, had seemed like love to him. It was worth every second, every drop of sweat under the sun on the other side of the world.

She’d helped him with Graves and Rushworth, taking delight in their torment. She enjoyed hurting them; she revelled in their screams and cries as much as he did. But she gave him the pleasure of the death and then left him to cut and cure the skin. And she’d been the one to dispose of the bodies. She was far stronger than she appeared. No one looked twice at a woman helping her drunk man home in the early morning. All it took was a few scolding words to the corpse if she saw anyone. Then she’d lay the body down, take his coat and hurry away.

He righted the desk and gathered the papers, sorting them into order. The bleeding had stopped, and he peeled the cloth from his hand.

‘Do you have him?’ Charlotte shouted from upstairs. He could hear the eagerness in her voice.

‘No,’ he yelled back. ‘The bastard got away.’

‘What?’ She hurried down to him, and he saw the anger flash bright across her face. ‘I thought you said you had it all planned.’

‘I did. He slipped on the ice as I hit him. Then when I was ready to finish him, his daughter came out of the house.’