The young constable’s gaze suddenly shifted and his eyes widened. Hawkwood turned. Above him, the figure in the tower, hands clasped together in prayer, was sinking to his knees, head bowed. The voice boomed out once more.
“But in the guiding light of thy glory, o Lord, I have seen the error of my ways and I do earnestly repent my sins!”
“Uh, oh,” Rafferty murmured. “He’s off again.”
Hawkwood stared up at the tower. Smoke was continuing to vent from the opening. It was as if the priestly figure was kneeling at the entrance to the pit of Hell. Bathed now in the glow of the flames, the black robe shimmered like velvet.
Abruptly the figure lifted its head.
“I hear you, Lord! Blessed are they who have seen the way of righteousness! I deliver my soul to your bosom in the knowledge that I may be cleansed of all my transgressions!”
Above them, the dark silhouette rose unsteadily to its feet, bowed its head and slowly lowered its arms, palms outwards. Then, as if reciting a benediction, it spoke. The words rang out loud and clear.
“All that are with me, salute thee! Greet them that love us in the faith! Grace be with you all …”
Raising his right hand to shoulder height, the figure made the sign of the cross.
“Amen.”
Then, in a move that was as swift as it was shocking, the robed figure turned, spread its arms wide and pitched forward into the rising flames.
Shrieks of horror erupted from the women in the crowd. There were loud gasps and exclamations of astonishment from the men.
As the body disappeared from view, a single mournful clang echoed around the churchyard. Several people jumped. The body must have hit or become entangled with the bell rope on the way down, Hawkwood guessed. Either that or some unearthly force had used the bell as a means to summon the dead man’s soul into the afterlife.
Beside him, Hawkwood heard a groan of dismay. He turned. The constable’s face was ashen. “Why?” Hopkins whispered, staring at the church tower, now wreathed in smoke. “Why did he do it?”
“He was mad,” Hawkwood said bluntly.
The constable removed his hat. His lips began to move in silent prayer. Hawkwood could see that others in the crowd were similarly engaged. A number of the more devout had fallen to their knees. Hawkwood didn’t think it was the time or place to tell them that their prayers for Reverend Tombs were both misplaced and many hours too late.
Hawkwood’s eyes were locked on the tower and the empty window. The frames and shutters had caught alight and were burning fiercely. At the foot of the building, the fire fighters had been forced to admit defeat. Along with everyone else, they were standing in a state of disbelief, watching the church’s disintegration. Bathed in the glare, their faces glowed bright crimson. The heat was intense.
“What?” Hawkwood said absently, vaguely aware that the constable had spoken.
Hopkins blinked. “The Reverend’s last words. They were what my pa used to say.”
“Is that so?” Hawkwood said, not particularly interested.
Hopkins nodded, mistaking Hawkwood’s response for polite enquiry.
“Know them off by heart. Drummed into me, they were. It was the blessing my dad used to give at the end of every Sunday service. St Paul’s Epist—”
A crash from inside the burning tower drowned out the rest of the constable’s words, all except one. Upon hearing it, Hawkwood felt as if the rest of the world had suddenly stopped moving. He turned slowly. “What did you say?”
Hopkins looked embarrassed, intimidated by Hawkwood’s tone. “I was saying that I knew the reverend’s last words too.”
“I heard that part,” Hawkwood snapped. “What did you say after that?”
The constable hesitated, awed by the look on Hawkwood’s face.
“Um … that it was the last verse?”
“No,” Hawkwood said softly. “You said a name.”
The constable swallowed nervously. He realized his mouth had gone completely dry, as if his tongue had been dipped in ash.
As a child, Constable George Hopkins, like many young boys of an enquiring mind, had been an avid collector of butterflies and beetles, impaling their tiny thoraxes with pins and preserving them for posterity in small glass cases for the amusement of family and friends. When he felt those blue-grey eyes upon him, the constable had the distinct impression that this was how the beetles must have felt. He took a deep breath, found his voice.
“It’s from St Paul’s Epistle, the Book of …”
The constable paused, intimidated by the look on Hawkwood’s face.
“… Titus.”
Over the constable’s shoulder the church of St Mary continued to burn as brightly as a wrecker’s torch.
Apothecary Robert Locke stood at his window and stared out across the city’s rooftops. The clouds were the colour of gunmetal and it was difficult to see where the slates ended and the sky began.
Locke’s mind took him back to the horror that had been the colonel’s cell. He closed his eyes. A vision of the Reverend Tombs’s corpse swam into view. He saw again the shabby undergarments, the pale limbs protruding from them, and the bloody atrocity that had once been the parson’s face. He shuddered. It was a vision, he suspected, that would haunt his dreams for some time to come.
His thoughts turned to his recent visitor. Not your usual law officer. Well dressed – Locke knew good tailoring when he saw it – though the long dark hair tied at the back with a ribbon had been an interesting affectation, and there had been an arrogance and perceptiveness that Locke had found vaguely unsettling. Indeed, there had been times when Locke had found it hard to meet the man’s penetrating gaze. Brains as well as brawn. But then he had been a fighting man, an officer in the Rifle Brigade, no less; one of the most respected regiments in the British Army. Locke congratulated himself on his intuition at picking up on that aspect of Hawkwood’s background and wondered what had turned such a man from soldier to police officer.
Soldier. His thoughts drifted again.
From the violence of the American, Norris, to James Tilly Matthews’s bizarre conspiracy theories, Locke had seen many forms of madness. Now he was witness to another.
Colonel Titus Hyde: soldier, surgeon, priest killer.
His eyes dropped to his desk and Matthews’s representation of his Air Loom. Gazing at the illustration, Locke’s thoughts returned to the anatomical drawings in the colonel’s quarters. That the colonel should have such items on display was not unusual, given his medical background. Similar charts and diagrams could be found in any physician’s consulting room or any one of the city’s dozen or so anatomy schools. For centuries drawings of this nature had been the standard reference for physicians and surgeons. What Locke had found unusual – although it wasn’t an observation that he had thought to share with Hawkwood – was the one salient feature all Hyde’s selection of illustrations had in common. It had both intrigued and disturbed the apothecary, though he didn’t quite know why.
All the figures gracing the cell’s walls had been female.
6
In a corner of the smoke-filled taproom two customers were competing for the favours of a whore. Though she was well past her prime, overweight and heavily rouged, the duo engaged in the tussle for her ample charms were drunk on gin and, viewed through an alcoholic haze in the muted candle glow, her imperfections were less apparent than they might have been in the cold light of day.
The woman leaned across the beer-stained table. A pair of enormous milk-white breasts strained provocatively against her low-cut bodice. Placing her mouth against the ear of one of her companions, the whore dropped her hand on to the leg of the other and began stroking his inner thigh.