The Dead Shall Not Rest Read online

  “That matters not,” spat Byrne, spraying the dwarf with his saliva.

  The little man was taken aback. “Forgive me, sir.”

  The giant shook his head. “ ’Tis not wealth I am wanting,” he moaned.

  The crookback limped forward and put a hand on his shoulder. “ ’Tis justice he is after, sir,” said the boy.

  “Justice?” repeated the count. “How so?”

  Charles Byrne took a deep breath and motioned to the little man to sit beside him in a gesture of friendship. “I seek a royal pardon for my da.”

  The dwarf raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?” The count frowned, looking at Charles.

  “He says he does,” chimed in the crookback. “Says he needs to speak with King George himself.”

  Boruwlaski nodded sympathetically and then smiled. “You see this ring?” He held up his hand and pointed to a large diamond twinkling in the torchlight. “It was given me by the daughter of the great Empress Maria Theresa, Marie Antoinette. She is the Queen of France now.”

  The crookback lunged forward, grabbed the dwarf’s digit, and bit the diamond hard. “ ’Tis real,” he cried gleefully.

  The count rubbed his hand. “I do not lie,” he retorted, darting a contemptuous look at the ruffian who had yanked at his ring finger. “I enjoyed great favor in the courts of Europe.” Then, turning back to Charles, he said: “There are ways of gaining an audience with His Majesty King George.”

  The giant’s usually vacant face broke into a broad smile. “Then, sir, I will come with you,” he said, and he proffered his hand to the little man, whose own hand would have fitted inside at least a dozen times.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” came a voice from the entrance. All eyes turned to see the showman, dark circles of kohl under his eyes, standing, glaring at them. There was no trace of the broad grin he had worn on the stage and in his right hand he held a long cane. “Well, well, well: a giant and a dwarf. What a pretty pair you make,” he cried, his voice tinged with menace.

  Charles Byrne’s shoulders slumped and his head bowed instantly, as if he had become a child again as his master drew nearer. The showman rested his gaze on the count and looked him up and down mockingly.

  “So, dwarf, you would steal my giant for your own troupe, would you?” he sneered, stroking the count’s head condescendingly, as if he were a cat.

  Boruwlaski swallowed hard. “I did not know that you owned Mr. Byrne, sir.”

  The showman narrowed his eyes. “Indeed I do,” he said, circling the little man and throwing the cane from one hand to the other like a baton. But the count refused to be intimidated.

  “Then you must tell me your price,” he said, looking upward to meet the showman’s gaze.

  “So you would bargain with me, dwarf?”

  “Indeed I would, sir.”

  “But you are in a very weak position.”

  “How so?” asked the count disingenuously. The showman let out a cruel laugh and bent down so that his face leveled with the dwarf’s.

  “Can’t you count, Count?” he sneered. “There are three of us and,” he sniggered, “only half of you. We could feed you to that cat over there and it would still be hungry.” He pointed to the crate with his cane. The creature growled and the dwarf began to feel decidedly uneasy.

  “I have money, sir,” he blurted as the bully continued to circle.

  “I am sure you do,” the showman agreed, gesturing to the crookback, who limped forward and rifled through the count’s coat pockets. He pulled out a drawstring purse and held it aloft before handing it to his master. The showman tossed it in the air and caught it.

  “A goodly weight.” He smiled.

  “Twenty guineas,” informed the count.

  “Twenty guineas,” repeated his tormentor. “So you would buy my giant for twenty guineas?”

  At these words, Byrne, who had sat passively on the carpet until this point, looked up. “I am n-not your giant,” he said slowly, and with that he began to rise, uncrossing his legs and kneeling up, so that he was now the same height as the showman.

  “What did you say?” the showman asked incredulously.

  “I am not your giant,” he repeated, only this time more assuredly. “My ancestors were kings in Ireland, great leaders of men. I’ll be doing your bidding no more.”

  The showman sneered once again. “We’ll see who’s the master,” he cried, raising his cane above his head to strike. The giant, however, was too quick for him and stayed his hand. Then, taking the cane, he snapped it in two in front of his shocked master’s eyes.

  “You do not own me,” repeated the giant. “And Charles Byrne cannot be bought. I will go with the dwarf to L-London.” With those words he eased himself up, still bending forward so that his head did not touch the canvas of the tent, and began to walk toward the entrance.

  “Not so fast,” cried the showman, darting in his way. “Crookback, the cat!” he shouted, pointing at the crate.

  “Are you mad?” exclaimed the count.

  The boy, too, simply looked at his master as if he had lost his senses.

  “The cat!” he screamed. “Open the cage.” The animal let out a roar as if it scented blood, but the urchin remained transfixed. “Then I will do it myself,” shouted the showman above the creature’s tumult, and he strode toward the crate.

  He grasped the lever and was just about to pull up the hatch when suddenly there came a woman’s voice at the entrance of the tent.

  “I would not do that if you value your life, sir,” cried Lydia above the din.

  The showman stopped dead in his tracks and turned to see the gentlewoman, standing perfectly poised a few feet away.

  “And who might you be?” he asked, looking askance at the diminutive figure draped in a long, black, hooded cloak.

  “I, sir, am Lady Lydia Farrell, and I own the land on which you stand,” she replied.

  The showman began to walk toward her, smirking. “You do, do you?” he chided.

  “Indeed I do, and unless you go immediately, leaving the giant here, I will have you arrested for the theft of twenty guineas.”

  The showman unclenched the hand that held the purse and looked at it for a moment. He then leered at her before throwing it down hard to the ground. “Curse you,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Now leave, before I call the peace constables,” she ordered in a voice that belied her size. “Men have hanged for much less.”

  The showman began to mouth oaths. “A curse on you and your seed,” he said as he charged past Lydia, cuffing the count on the head as he went.

  “I want you off the Boughton estate within the hour, otherwise I will add assault to the charges,” she called after him as he stormed off to his wagon.

  The crookback began to follow sheepishly, but just as he was at the entrance to the tent, the count caught hold of him by the waist of his breeches.

  “Here’s two guineas, boy,” he said, shoving the coins into his dirty palm. “Use them wisely.”

  The startled servant smiled, showing a mouthful of yellow tombstone teeth, and limped off in the opposite direction to his master, leaving Lydia and the count with the giant standing in shocked silence, none of them quite believing what had just passed.

  Feeling a sudden shiver, Lydia drew her cloak around her.

  “You are cold, my lady,” remarked Boruwlaski.

  “Yes, a little,” replied Lydia, knowing that she was shaking with fear and anger rather than the chill. She looked up at the giant. He was, indeed, so amazingly tall and yet she could see in his eyes that he was so very vulnerable at the same time. “You are in good hands now, Mr. Byrne,” she assured him. “On the morrow, God willing, Dr. Silkstone will arrive and all will be well.”

  Wrapped in a shawl against the nip of an easterly wind, Emily O’Shea braved the labyrinth of narrow lanes of St. Giles. She ducked and dived her way under the dripping carcasses of meat strung across the alleyways of the butchers’ shambles and do
dged around the gaping hatches that opened up in the ground by alehouses. Overhead the signs of makers and shopkeepers were caught now and again by a brisk gust and creaked plaintively on their hinges. She was anxious to reach her home before nightfall. The messenger boy had said she was needed urgently and the housekeeper, Mistress Goodbody, had given her leave for the night, but she was to be back at work by first light.

  She reached her destination shortly before six o’clock and paused for a moment outside a dilapidated gate as if composing her thoughts before climbing a flight of rickety stairs into the rookeries. The walls were green with moss and the last vestiges of daylight could be seen through a hole in the roof. At the top of the landing she reached a doorway. Children were running hither and thither, one almost sending her flying. Yet above the general din she could still hear a baby’s cries from within. She knocked.

  “ ’Tis Emily,” she called, hoping her voice would be heard over the noise. A moment later a woman answered, the screaming baby firmly planted on her hip.

  “I came as soon as I could. What is it, Ma?” she asked anxiously.

  Her mother’s face was drawn and gaunt and her breastbone protruded from the top of her bodice. “ ’Tis your gran. She’s been calling for you these past few nights,” she shouted above the baby’s bawl. She opened the door wide onto a cramped, unlit room. Soiled rushes were scattered thinly across the floor. Another child, a boy of no more than six, played with a bone.

  “She’s been talking shite, she ’as,” mumbled a man, who sprawled in a chair in the corner, swigging liquor. When Mad Sam O’Shea wasn’t addled by strong drink he would hawk anything he could get his grubby hands on. He’d even have sold his own daughter if the price had been right, but thankfully for Emily she had found service before that could happen.

  “Rambling on and on,” said her mother, leading Emily over to a cot in the corner. The girl looked at the old crone. The woman lay on her back with her eyes shut and sunken into her skull. Her emaciated body was covered by a filthy sack. Emily stretched out a reluctant hand to touch her. Her skin felt like cold parchment.

  “ ’Tis me, Gran,” she said softly.

  At the sound of her voice, Grandmother Tooley’s eyes opened in an instant, startling the girl.

  “Thank the Lord you’re here, child,” she croaked, taking her granddaughter’s hand. “You need to know.”

  “Know what?” Emily frowned.

  The old woman tugged her hand so that Emily bent down low. Her grandmother reeked of piss.

  “He’s coming soon,” she whispered.

  “Who, Gran? Who?”

  “The tall man,” said Grandmother Tooley, lifting herself up on twig-thin arms.

  Emily’s mother now joined her daughter, the babe still screaming on her hip.

  “She makes no sense,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Who, Gran? Who’s coming?” repeated Emily.

  “The tall man from across the water,” said the old woman, looking at the young girl intently before dropping back into the cot and closing her eyes once more.

  Chapter 5

  Thomas arrived at Boughton Hall just as the last rays of the April sun were setting on the Chiltern Hills, turning them burnished gold. He had taken the coach from London to Oxford at first light, then been met by Lydia’s head groom, Jacob Lovelock, in a chaise. He was tired and sore from being jounced about in the carriage and anxious as to what he might find on his arrival. Lydia had not specified why she wanted to see him urgently, only that she had a special visitor who needed his help.

  The carriage turned into the imposing wrought-iron gates that marked the boundary of the estate and started up the long drive toward the hall. The long shadows of the trees began to mingle and dissipate into twilight. A week of dry weather had followed on from heavy spring rains, and the ruts in the driveway were deep and hard as clay, making Thomas’s ride even more uncomfortable. But the surroundings were reassuringly familiar to him and he relished the silhouette of the family chapel as it came into view, knowing that Boughton itself lay just over the brim of the hill beyond.

  He had just reached for his hat on the opposite seat in preparation for alighting when one of the horses let out a terrible whinny and reared up. He felt the carriage lurch and heard Lovelock try to calm the other three mares. But it was too late. The chaise veered off the drive and Thomas felt its back wheel drop into the ditch, knocking him sideways.

  Scrambling to his feet, he managed to haul himself up and look out of the window. Lovelock, who had been riding postilion, had jumped out of the saddle and was holding the bridle of the lead horse, trying to calm it. It still appeared uneasy, its eyes full of fear, and Thomas looked up the track to see what might have caused it to rear. He did not have to search long. Standing in the middle of the drive, a few yards away, was a huge figure of a man. He guessed he must have been at least eight feet tall and was as wide as a sedan. As he walked up to Lovelock, Thomas was amazed to see that this stranger’s hips were level with the groom’s head. He had never seen anyone like him before, not even in his medical books, and for a moment he abandoned all his professional training and allowed his jaw to drop open in amazement.

  “Calm yourself now, girl,” Lovelock urged the mare. He did not seem shocked or disconcerted by the giant apparition that stood a few feet away. “Perhaps you could give us a hand, Mr. Byrne,” he called.

  The figure approached slowly. “I-I am s-sorry,” he stuttered in a voice as deep as thunder. The mare champed at the bit once more.

  “Can ye get ’round the back? The wheel’s stuck,” called Lovelock, still holding on to the mare’s bridle as she sauntered and sallied on the spot.

  Thomas looked out of the carriage window in wonderment as he watched the man position his shoulder under the wheel arch and lift up the entire carriage out of the rut and back onto the driveway without so much as breaking into a sweat.

  “Will ye need a ride?” enquired Lovelock of the giant.

  “No. I’ll walk, so I will,” he replied, waving a large hand dismissively in the air.

  “All’s well, sir?” the groom called back to a bemused Thomas.

  “Yes. Yes indeed.” He nodded, leaning out of the window.

  Lovelock climbed back onto the lead mare, and with a gentle nudge the horses started off up the drive once more, leaving Charles Byrne alone in the encroaching dusk to make his own way back to the hall.

  Lydia had been watching for Thomas’s carriage from an upstairs room and saw it crest the hill, its shape silhouetted against an orange sky. She was seated in the drawing room, her skirts arranged in a fan around her, when Howard the butler ushered the young doctor in. She waited until he had left the room to fetch refreshments before rising and rushing forward to greet Thomas.

  “My love, it is so good to see you,” she blurted, burying her face in Thomas’s coat.

  “And you, my beloved,” he replied, holding her tightly, breathing in her scent. It had been almost five months since they had last held each other, and for a few snatched moments they simply found each other’s lips until Howard’s footsteps could be heard once more.

  Decorum quickly reestablished itself as tea was poured, but Howard was dismissed as soon as possible, leaving them alone to talk.

  “But is all well?” asked Thomas, remembering Lydia’s urgent note. “You have a visitor?” Her garbled message had simply told Thomas that she knew of someone who urgently needed his help.

  She nodded, as if suddenly recalling the reason for his arrival, which had been lost in the excitement of his presence. “A visitor. Yes. Indeed. I am most anxious for you to meet him.”

  “I think I may have seen him already,” said Thomas.

  “Mr. Byrne?”

  “He must be one of the tallest men in the world.”

  “Indeed so,” replied Lydia. “And cruelly abused.”

  “How so?”

  “By a showman at the fair.”

  Thomas knew of such cases where
nonconformity to nature’s norm meant curiosities would be exhibited. In inns and hostelries in his own homeland he had seen a dead whale caught in the Delaware River and a strange beast from Russia that was part bear, part camel. These were harmless distractions and amusements, but soon they had taken on a more sinister mantle. A Negro slave with a rare skin condition that turned him from black to white or a woman without arms or legs who could paint holding a brush in her mouth drew in much bigger crowds.

  “And you have freed him?” he asked her.

  Lydia smiled. “Mr. Byrne will be a guest here for as long as he wishes.”

  At that moment the door opened. “And here is another of my guests,” said Lydia. Thomas looked down in amazement to see a small figure approaching him confidently despite his bandied gait. He was dressed for dinner in a fine brocade jacket and a lace cravat all tailored in perfect proportion to his tiny frame.

  “Count Josef Boruwlaski, I would like you to meet Dr. Thomas Silkstone,” said Lydia.

  The little man stopped in front of Thomas, who was trying to hide his surprise. “Lady Lydia has told me much about you and your skills, Dr. Silkstone,” he greeted him cheerily, bowing low.

  “My late father and the count met in Warsaw many years ago and became firm friends,” explained Lydia.

  “I have decided to make England my home, and her ladyship kindly invited me to stay,” added the dwarf.

  “And I know her ladyship will do everything to ensure you are made to feel welcome,” replied the young doctor.

  Lydia could see that Thomas was still bemused by his extraordinary encounters all within the space of the last few minutes. “But you must be exhausted, Dr. Silkstone,” she said cheerfully. “Howard will show you to your room and then we can talk further over dinner.”

  Thomas smiled graciously. He hoped that after he had washed and changed his clothes he would be able to make more sense of the situation than he could at the present. There was obviously some good reason for Lydia to be playing host to these, the tallest and smallest of men, at Boughton Hall, and he was eager to find out more. He said simply: “Thank you, your ladyship,” and took his leave.