October skies

CHAPTER 49

25 October, 1856

This morning, for the first time, I sense the others looking at us with distrust. I don’t know whether they have collectively discussed who or what killed Dorothy, Sam and Mr Hearst, and decided it is one of us, or whether they each privately harbour that suspicion, but I can see it in the quick, wary glances, the shortest possible exchange of pleasantries with us.

Keats spoke of Mr Larkin, their butcher, not wanting to work alongside Mr Bowen. And visiting Emily’s shelter this morning, I was silently watched by a group of five men gathered around their breakfast fire; watched intently. Moments after entering and talking with Mrs Zimmerman, Mr Vander stuck his head in and made it clear I was to check on her as quickly as possible, then leave.

I do wonder whether A buffeting wind shook and rattled the creaking wooden framework of their shelter, whilst the flap over their entrance, tied down against the gusting wind, rustled and whipped, complaining like a tethered dog. A blizzard was coming down almost horizontally, small, dry, sand-like beads of ice that stung against bare skin.

Above the rumpling thud of wind, he heard a muffled voice.

‘Mr Lambert?’

He recognised it as Preston.

‘Yes?’

‘A word, if you don’t mind.’

‘Uh, yes, of course.’ Ben closed his inkpot and put away his journal before readying himself to step outside.

‘I’ll come in,’ said Preston. Ben saw fingers work on the tie, and a moment later the wind whipped it open. Snow hurled in, chased by a vicious, biting blast of freezing air. Preston stooped down low, pushed his way through the flap and settled down on his haunches inside, securing the flap once more.

‘Are we alone?’ he asked quietly, squinting in the dark interior.

‘Mr Keats and Broken Wing are foraging for wood with some others.’

‘Good. I wished to speak to you in private.’

Ben felt his skin run cold, realising he was alone with someone who might just be capable of violent murder and barbaric mutilation.

He’d not do something to me here, now, surely?

Unlikely as that was, he found his hand subconsciously reaching for the handle of his hunting knife, tucked away under his poncho in his belt.

‘What do you wish to talk about?’

‘I… find the discomfort of my injury is continuing to be unbearable and I would like to take with me a complete bottle of your medication, that I need not keep bothering you to personally administer it.’

‘Well, it is no bother,’ Ben lied, his mind recalling the openly hostile glances he had drawn earlier this morning, approaching the Dreyton shelter.

‘That’s as may be. However, there are those amongst my people who would rather your party remain, from now on, on your side of the camp.’

‘Mr Preston, I think I should advise you that this medication is really best only prescribed a few times. There are unfortunate side-effects that can occur when used repeatedly.’

Preston’s face hardened. ‘Make no mistake, Lambert, I do need this medication. The discomfort is such that I am unable to lead prayers and services. My people need me to be strong more than ever now. Not for me to be laid up as invalid.’

Ben nodded. ‘Yes, well, I can continue to give it to you, but I think it’s best that I measure it out for you.’

‘I can manage well enough with the measuring.’

‘But it requires a steady reduction in measure, to ensure-’

‘Lambert!’

Ben hushed. There was a brittle anger in his voice that sounded like the fracturing of dangerously thin ice over a deep rushing river.

‘I will have a bottle… if you please.’

Ben could see something in the stern glare of his deep-set eyes.

‘You understand, I could return here with several of my men, and help myself to all of your medicines… don’t you?’

‘Y-yes, I… I suppose you could.’

‘There are those who think the butchering of our people was your handiwork, Lambert. They know you have training as a doctor and would have skill with a surgeon’s tools.’

‘What?’

‘There are those who think you were becoming unnaturally close with young Samuel.’

‘Unnaturally?’

Preston managed a humourless, predatory smile. ‘That’s what some of them are saying.’

‘But… but, what are they… what do they mean by tha-?’

‘I’ve overheard some of my men suggest you might have been rejected by Samuel. That you became enraged.’

‘And what? I killed him?’

Preston nodded. ‘And his mother. That Mr Hearst intervened, and that you took your surgeon’s knife to him too.’

‘That’s crazy!’

‘As for myself ’ — Preston’s smile softened slightly — ‘I don’t see that kind of evil in you. You are godless and arrogant; for that you are eternally doomed. But what I don’t see before me is a murderer.’

‘Then you must tell the others that!’

‘And I must have my medicine,’ he replied.

Preston stared in silence at him, whilst outside the wind buffeted and whistled impatiently, eager to get in.

‘I see,’ said Ben.

‘Good.’

The understanding was passed in silence. Ben turned around and rummaged in his medicine bag, a moment later producing a stoppered dark green glass bottle. ‘I have only this last bottle of the laudanum. That’s it.’

Preston reached for it, but Ben held it back.

‘Mr Preston, do please be aware of what this tonic can do. In some it can stimulate alarming visions, and an increasing dependency-’

‘I have had many visions before now.’

‘Visions of God?’

‘Yes. He comes to me, talks with me.’

‘Only he doesn’t, does he?’ whispered Ben, immediately regretting it.

Preston looked sharply up at him — a look that chilled Ben to the core.

That was very, very stupid.

‘You heard the things Dorothy heard?’ he asked.

Ben nodded. ‘Dorothy came to me, the night before she died.’

‘And what did she tell you?’

He wondered how much more to reveal. ‘That she had lost her faith in you.’

‘I see.’ Preston’s jaw set. ‘And you think I saw to it she was killed?’

Ben refused to respond. He found his hand tightening around the handle of his knife once more. Whether he’d be able to use it was another matter.

‘I loved her, Lambert. I loved her more than any of my followers. And I loved her children, too. They were mine.’

‘You… you mean, what? You were Sam’s father?’

Preston nodded. ‘And Emily’s. In fact, many of the children in my church are mine. I would never allow any of them to be hurt. My people know that.’

‘The other men, the “fathers”, they know this?’

‘Of course. They understand this as our way. I am the closest to God — on this evil world — the closest living soul to God. Who else would you rather have seed your child?’

Ben shook his head. ‘They… they would turn on you, wouldn’t they? They’d turn on you if they knew.’

The ice-cold facade slipped for a moment from Preston’s face, revealing, for only a second, fear.

‘If they knew what, Lambert?’

Don’t push him into a corner.

‘What exactly are you talking about, Mr Lambert?’

He realised it was already too late to back away now. ‘That you are a… a fraud.’

The word hung for too long on its own in the space between them before Preston spoke.

‘I don’t know what you know, or what you think you know. But you are no longer to visit our camp. None of your group, in fact, will be permitted to step beyond the dead oxen in the middle. Is that understood?’

‘What of Emily?’

‘She is being cared for well enough by Mrs Zimmerman.’

‘I must look in on her. Surely you’ll let me do that?’

Preston leaned closer to Ben, his long, slim nose only inches away from Ben’s face. He could feel the tickle of the man’s stale breath. ‘If I hear of you visiting Emily,’ he whispered, ‘who knows what will happen to you? Perhaps you will find yourself gutted and hung like so much butcher’s meat?’

Ben struggled to contain the trembling that coursed through his body. ‘M-my God… it… it was you, wasn’t it?’

Preston reached for the bottle. ‘We are two separate camps now. Be sure to tell Keats that. Be sure to tell him none of your people are to talk to mine.’

He pushed his way out through the flap, letting in a small blizzard of hale that veiled his exit.