The Wicked Trade (The Forensic Genealogist Book 7) Read online

  Fearful of the freezing water below, Samuel tottered carefully onto the wood, trying to ignore the groaning bounce that occurred as he made his way across. Just three more steps and he would be on the other side.

  Then, more gunfire. Musket balls passed overhead.

  ‘Hurry!’ someone shouted. The voice did not belong to Quested; Samuel guessed that the batmen had caught up to them, which meant that the blockade officers were almost upon them, too.

  With one final spring, Samuel pushed off the plank to the relative safety of the dark field beyond. There, he could just make out several silhouetted figures: tubmen, by their lumbering appearance.

  One by one, the batmen crossed Pig’s Creek Sewer. Cephas Quested was the last man to cross and the plank of wood was hastily retracted through the swampy water, out of reach of the blockade men.

  ‘Come on—there be no time to—’ Quested began, but his sentence became lost to a barrage of angry pistol fire from across the water.

  Something with the force of a stampeding ox smashed into Samuel’s right shoulder, sending him crashing to the floor in agony. Reaching across with his left hand, he touched what felt like a pulpy sponge; his arm was full of shot and was bleeding profusely into his smock-frock. The pain, like a dozen tiny daggers piercing his flesh, was unbearable.

  ‘Be keeping low,’ someone behind him yelled.

  Despite the agonising pain in his shoulder, Samuel lay still. Around him were other men—he could not see them but he could hear their heavy breathing, hear their bodies shuffling on the cold, damp field beneath.

  Samuel lay still, gripping his shoulder, for what felt like hours, praying that time would speed up.

  After a while, the gunfire ceased.

  Fragments of broken discussion reached Samuel’s ear from the other side of the embankment. Mumbled snatches of blockade men’s conversation. But what he heard was enough; they had been ordered to cross the dyke by any means.

  He had to escape.

  He stood awkwardly, a rush of fresh pain firing out from the wound. ‘They bain’t giving up,’ Samuel whispered, ‘we need to be a-running.’

  Men rose from the ground around him with grunts and moans. Evidently, he had not been the only one to sustain an injury.

  ‘This way,’ Quested’s voice said definitively from the dark.

  The group—numbering half a dozen—crossed the field at a fast pace, before passing through a low hedge and entering another field.

  ‘What way you be a-bringing us, Quested?’ one of the men barked when they reached the edge of the field to be confronted by yet another water-filled ditch. ‘Wainway Petty Sewer? If we cross this one we bain’t got no choice but to cross Lower Agney Sewer, then Horsehead Petty Sewer. This weren’t the plan, Quested. There be nobody waiting to help us cross.’

  ‘Then be going your own tarnal way,’ Quested shouted. ‘Go on!’

  ‘I just be asking because why,’ the man responded.

  ‘Stand whist and you be hearing why,’ Quested said.

  The group fell silent, as instructed.

  Samuel heard it: the unmistakable sound of the blockade men, still in pursuit.

  ‘They bain’t letting go this night,’ Quested said. ‘We be tarnal fortunate to make the night alive or untook. Now, I be going across here—you be a-pleasing yourselves.’ He turned his back on the men, sank down onto the bank and began to slide down into the water.

  For Samuel, no decision existed. He moved to the edge of the dyke, sat and used his heels to pull himself down the bank. He retched at the foul smell rising from the disturbed water, as it clawed its way painfully up his legs and around his abdomen. The coldness—for the water was near to freezing—quickly penetrated inside him, causing an acute shaking in his limbs. Samuel continued to wade across the ditch, always checking the depth of his next step with an extended foot. The water was just a couple of inches from his injured shoulder and he knew that if its filth touched it, he would be finished.

  At last, his foot met the sloping edge of the opposite bank. Quested offered his left hand and heaved Samuel to the top. He collapsed to the ground, shivering.

  ‘We be warm, soonest,’ Quested said, ‘when we be a-moving again.’

  They waited for the other four men to join them, then followed Quested’s lead across another field.

  Samuel didn’t know if the pace had been slowed for him in particular, or if the whole group was suffering as was he, but he was grateful nonetheless. Somehow, the freezing water had dulled the pain in his shoulder—perhaps masking it with the addition of an overall discomfort throughout his body.

  When they reached Lower Agney Sewer, they stopped again to listen. Sure enough, the blockade officers were still in pursuit. They had no choice but to cross it.

  The ditch was shallower than the previous one and only reached just above their waists. Yet, despite this, the temperature of the fetid water seemed to syphon more of the men’s energy, and once they had crossed it, progress for the next two miles was hampered by a waning, sluggish pace.

  The six men reached Beacon Lane, on the outskirts of the village of Brookland, some three hours after their retreat had commenced.

  ‘You made it,’ a voice called from the darkness.

  ‘We beleft you dead or captured,’ another added.

  ‘Merciful Lord!’ Quested blurted at the sight of five batmen, perched at the side of the road with their blunderbusses fixed on Quested’s position. ‘There be a whole bunch of blockade officers just yards behind us. Be a-readying yourselves!’

  Exhaustion consumed Samuel; his muscles were taut and his resolve weak. He spotted a low stone wall and slouched down behind it, beginning to shake all over. He touched his shoulder and held blood-wetted fingers up to his face. He knew that if medical help were not forthcoming quickly, he had seen his last sunrise. ‘I be a-needing a doctor,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Soonest—we only be a few mile from home, now,’ Quested answered, dropping down beside him. ‘Amputation, I don’t wonder.’

  A cold realisation washed over Samuel. ‘I don’t be a-wanting no amputation,’ he said, as insistently as he could.

  ‘That be for the surgeon to decide.’

  ‘The heart-grief this be giving my Hester…’ Samuel uttered, his voice quivering.

  ‘The same from my Martha—I be set for such a bannocking in the morning.’

  A short moment of silence that descended over the men was sharply snapped away by the firing of many guns.

  Without warning, the body of a tubman fell backwards over the wall, landing lifelessly beside Quested.

  ‘I be thinking it’s over,’ Quested mumbled, prising the musket from the dead man’s hand. ‘Sit whist—there be more pistol shooting from the blockade men than what we got to fire back.’

  Samuel tried to steady his shaking limbs and listen. Though his mind was listless, he counted the pistol cracks, estimating there to be at least twenty men from the blockade—possibly more.

  ‘If I get took tonight or be killed, be making sure this gang bain’t done with—you hear?’ Quested said.

  Samuel, not liking his own chances of surviving the night, couldn’t entertain the idea of another smuggling run. ‘Happen it bain’t in my blood…’ he responded quietly.

  ‘Contrariwise—be thinking of your Hester and what you can be a-giving her. Tidy money this trade be a-bringing.’

  ‘But the boat?’ Samuel said. ‘There be no way she be sitting on the shore a-waiting us tomorrow.’

  Quested laughed, as he fiddled with the dead man’s musket. ‘Buy another boat—heavens, buy two boats.’

  The volley of 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.’r />
  ‘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 and staring at the wall clock—then to the niece, who vaguely returned his smile.

  ‘I’m not sure if it’s colourful or jolly strange,’ Arthur disputed, seemingly critical of Morton’s choice of adjective to describe his great-grandmother. He began riffling through the paperwork, his jittery hands scattering the documents across the table. In his left hand, he held aloft a newspaper report printed from the internet. He clearly knew the report well, for he quoted from it without hesitation: ‘1820. Ann Fothergill…an illiterate vagrant… sent to prison no less than 36 times…’ Arthur said, speaking more forcibly, but without letting his gaze fall from Morton’s eyes. ‘His Worship expressed his regret that the Court could not dispose of her permanently, for she appeared to be a perfect pest to society… committed once again to prison for two months.’ Without pause, he reached for another piece of paper, this time reading it verbatim: ‘22nd July 1827. The Bell Inn, Hythe. Dear Sam, I do hope that you are well and that you have settled out there. I must again refuse your offer. My life, with this inn and the boy, is here and after all the difficult years in this area, things have returned to the quietness of the old ways. It is an opportunity to leave behind the wicked deeds of the past. In answer to your question, and with the imposed distance between us I may now tell you that the barrels of gold guineas were hidden below ground in an outhouse close by, and that is the way they shall remain, being of little use to anyone now. I beg that you will settle your mind on the matter and look instead to your new future. Your ever-loving friend, Ann Fothergill.’ Arthur cleared his throat and asked quietly, ‘From perennially drunk, illiterate vagrant to an articulate businesswoman in seven years. A bit more than colourful, wouldn’t you say?’

  All three sets of eyes on the opposite side of the table came to settle firmly on Morton, awaiting his response to the nonagenarian’s diatribe.

  Morton considered the question carefully before answering, much to the chagrin of Arthur’s nephew who emitted a large sigh at the unnecessary hole in the conversation. ‘Yes, she certainly does sound enigmatic,’ he admitted.

  ‘And worthy of your investigation?’ Arthur pressed.

  ‘That depends on what you want to know about her,’ Morton replied.

  Arthur shifted around in his
chair, as if he had not considered the question before now. ‘Just a picture—as detailed as possible—of her life during those intervening seven years to understand that shift in her character… Where she lived, who she was associated with and, if it’s possible, to know the identity of my grandfather’s father.’

  ‘The period that you’re talking about isn’t exactly brimming with archives,’ Morton warned, ‘there might literally be nothing to find in the 1820s about Ann.’

  ‘Will you at least give it a go?’ Arthur pushed.

  The case intrigued him, he had to admit it. Before he could answer, the nephew, whose name Morton had already forgotten, waded in with another question: ‘And what about these golden guineas, then? Any truth in that?’

  ‘Truth?’ Morton questioned, unsure of what was being asked of him.

  The nephew picked up the envelope—clearly not the original, Morton noted—which had contained Ann’s letter and tipped the contents out onto the table: one golden guinea. The coin performed a short pirouette before settling in front of Morton.

  ‘How much do you reckon that’s going for on eBay?’ the nephew asked. ‘Go on, take a guess.’

  ‘Well, a guinea, I suppose,’ Morton said with a wry smile. ‘So, one pound five pence?’ His humour fell flat.

  ‘Nope,’ the nephew said. ‘Try again—my sister’s husband looked it up, didn’t he, Clara?’

  The niece nodded her agreement.

  ‘Two hundred pounds?’ Morton guessed, hoping that this game would be a short one.

  ‘Nope. Average—,’ he said, stretching the word out. ‘Average—six hundred quid, though if they’re in good nick like this one, about a thousand quid.’

  ‘Right,’ Morton said flatly.

  ‘For one,’ the nephew clarified needlessly.

  Arthur smiled and patted his nephew on the back. ‘I think what he’s trying to understand is whether these barrels of coins mentioned in Ann’s letter might still be hidden?’

  Morton laughed, presuming it to be a joke. When their expressions told him otherwise, he tightened his face into seriousness and said, ‘After a hundred and ninety-odd years? I’ve no idea, but I doubt it.’