Dowling sat up straight and regarded me with strange eyes. ‘We took an oath, Harry, before God, that we would not leave afore the plague was gone.’
‘Under duress,’ I replied, uneasy. ‘God will forgive us.’
‘As I live, surely mine oath that he hath despised, even will I recompense it upon his own head. Therefore saith the Lord God.’ Dowling shook his head. ‘We are bound to remain else we will break our vow. Surely the plague shall be unleashed upon us.’
He was serious, I realised. ‘We might be here for months,’ I pointed out. ‘In which case we will die of the plague, anyway.’ And I would lose my shop.
Dowling wiped the blade of his knife against his trousers. ‘In God shall we put our trust.’
I felt my throat constrict. ‘In God shall you put your trust, Davy. I share not your faith.’
Dowling laid the cleaver upon the ground and clambered to his feet. He wiped his hands on the front of his shirt and rubbed them briskly. ‘I have known it since we met, Harry,’ he said. ‘You think you don’t believe in God, so you say, yet how many times do you call upon him?’
‘It’s a habit,’ I replied. ‘God knows.’
Dowling laughed aloud. ‘So he does, Harry, if you do not.’ He folded his arms and stood afore me like a small mountain, bestowing upon me a saintly gaze.
If God sent a second son to this earth, why not a butcher this time instead of a carpenter? Surely he wouldn’t look like Dowling, though.
‘I will not stay in Shyam to avoid the plague,’ I said. ‘God or no God, it would be a nonsense.’
Dowling scowled. ‘God shall smite you down.’
‘With luck he shall overlook my innocent slight,’ I replied. ‘For the list of the condemned must be long by now. God is old, anyway; perhaps he will forget.’
‘God is not mocked,’ Dowling’s nose coloured. ‘For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’
I turned away. ‘Whatever God’s will, we cannot sit here waiting for death. Tonight we will search again for Josselin. Wherever Elks has been staying these last few nights, that’s where we will find James Josselin. He has taken him to a place where none will find him, the house of one already killed by plague.’
‘Aye,’ Dowling nodded. ‘And since two-thirds of the village is dead, that leaves many houses to search.’
‘As well the Hancocks explained where we might best focus our efforts.’ I calculated in my head. ‘If there are two hundred dead, then that is likely no more than fifty households. Of those no more than ten would suit Elks’ purpose.’
Though the sky was clear that night and the fields brightly lit by a well-fed moon, it was not so easy to navigate through the forest. The tunnel afore us was black as coal, oblivious to the moon’s fine efforts. A light wind rustled the leaves of the trees, whispering in our ears, imploring us to enter.
‘The house of Adam and Alice Hawkesworth,’ Dowling told me again. ‘Their cottage stands about a mile into the forest down this path, in a small clearing. They died there nine months ago. It was a while afore they were discovered. The man that found them was a farmer called John Wood. He died a week later, but not before recounting the horror he stumbled upon. The animals of the forest had already begun to dispose of the bodies.’
It could be no worse than Buxton’s cottage.
‘There are two more houses we may come to first,’ Dowling said. ‘The Mortens and the Frythes. They still live.’
‘Then we should count our footsteps,’ I suggested. ‘A mile is about two thousand paces.’
Dowling snorted. ‘The Mortens and Frythes will have candles in their windows. I think we’ll find our way easily enough.’
Stepping into the darkness was like taking off my clothes, so vulnerable I felt. I stared wide-eyed and unblinking yet saw nothing. A man might stand silent in front of us and we wouldn’t see him. Nor he us.
Thirty paces in, the forest canopy fractured, allowing thin shards of light to illuminate the scene about us. A few pale trees framed the way forward into another black void. Sudden rustles in the bushes, the mournful hooting of an owl high above us, only served to cultivate the panic that threatened to undo me.
Dowling pointed into the trees. ‘A flame.’ A small fire burning on level ground in front of a squat wooden cabin. What strangeness compelled a man to live in such isolation? I imagined all the creatures of the night poised in a wide circle about the dwelling, all sat just out of the light. We stayed on the path, crossing the front of the small house, behind a clump patch of trees. Our footsteps shattered the silence no matter where we placed our feet.
‘Hold!’ Dowling beckoned me again, crouched behind a thick bush. ‘Someone is busy.’
A hulking giant, broad and crouching, moved across a small square window.
‘Mary Hancock described the Mortens as an old couple without children,’ Dowling whispered, ‘I reckon this is their house.’
‘Then that is not Morten,’ I concluded.
A loud crash sounded from within the cabin, like a boulder fell through the roof, then three muffled blows sounded against the wall or the floor.
Dowling stretched his neck out further. ‘I think we have found our vandal,’ he murmured.
We sat listening to the violence, while I pictured the inside of Buxton’s house. The man I glimpsed was a giant, fully capable of pushing over a dresser or throwing a cot against the wall. A man to be avoided.
Then at last, peace. An unnatural silence while we waited for something to happen.
The front door opened and the big man emerged, leaning forwards, carrying a lamp in his left hand, tugging on a rope stretched over his right shoulder. I ducked behind the bush as he stepped into the clearing, facing in our direction. I heard a strange slithering noise, loud and rough, like a giant serpent wriggling on its belly.
A light shone between the branches of my bush, the lamp, flickering, swinging from side to side. As I watched, unbreathing, the giant walked past us, twenty yards to our left, pulling on the rope. Attached to the rope was a corpse, the body of a woman with a noose tied round her neck. I watched aghast, the vile beast tugging her body through the dirt.
The woman was old, her long grey hair spread loose. Her head strained against the rope as if her neck might snap off from her body at any moment. Her face was scarlet, eyes black and protruding.
‘What in God’s name,’ I whispered, my voice protected by the sound of the woman’s body sliding over the ground.
‘Marshall Howe,’ Dowling said. ‘He who buries the last corpse of every household. He ties the rope about their necks so he doesn’t have to touch their bodies.’
Marshall Howe dragged the dead woman six feet behind, her body shrouded in darkness.
‘How do you deduce that?’ I challenged him. ‘The fellow is a brute and a beast. How do you know he hasn’t simply robbed her of her
belongings and takes the body away for some nefarious motive?’
‘It’s Marshall Howe,’ Dowling repeated. ‘When Mary Hancock mentioned his name the boy cried. He ransacks the houses to claim his reward.’
‘A scavenger, then,’ I said. ‘The villagers praise him for his heroic deeds, yet he does it only for greed. Another evil demon with a black heart. He smashes dressers onto the floor when all he need do is open a drawer.’
‘He doesn’t want to touch the furniture,’ suggested Dowling, standing up and brushing the debris from his trousers. ‘Perhaps he is a good fellow, perhaps not. Only God knows which, for the dead do not miss their possessions.’
Howe plodded off into the distance, back towards the village. I watched the lamp swing and lurch, my courage wobbling with it.
Dowling headed off the other way, into darkness. ‘Come on, Harry.’
I hurried after him before we reached another black tunnel. This time I gripped a handful of sleeve. To bump into Dowling would be no less painful than bumping into a tree.
I counted aloud, another hundred paces before we again emerged into a ghostly circle. I breathed deep and placed my palm upon my beating heart. It was not the dark I feared, rather what lay beneath.