In the gathering storm before the French Revolution, a quiet English city is beset by intrigue, corruption and violence.
With help from his friend and researcher, Frank Barber – Dr Johnson’s former manservant and a manumitted slave, and from his watchman, Dudley Netherford, down at heel thief-taker Samuel Kinsman must untangle the threads of conspiracy, patronage and prejudice if he is to avoid humiliation, or worse, and save his family from the threats that confront them.
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© John Davies 2025
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Epigraph
‘Morae pretium est scire’.
The reward of delay is knowledge
Tomb of Bishop Hackett, Lichfield Cathedral
Lich. n.s. [lice, Saxon.] A dead carcase; whence lichwake, the time or act of watching by the dead; lichgate, the gate through which the dead are carried to the grave; Lichfield, the field of the dead, a city in Staffordshire, so named from martyred christians. Salve magna parens.
A Dictionary of the English Language 1775 Samuel Johnson
Chapter 1
Lichfield, July 1758: Sarcophagus
Fettiplace Brougham hands his son Jeb a spade and watches him scrape the earth away from the hollow centre of the stone box.
Jeb is glad that huge piles of white cloud drift across the sky. Every so often they block out the sun and plunge the landscape below into cool and pleasing shade. He turns his head to look at his father through narrowed eyes. Small and wiry, Fettiplace lies on the grassy bank below the hedge, smoking his pipe.
Amidst the sounds of cattle in a nearby field and the dome of birdsong, the tinny jingling of a small bell is carried on the light breeze. Jeb stops his digging, listening. A small dog trots past along the track beside the field. Jeb takes off his coat and shirt, and puts them on the ground near his father, before picking up his spade again.
‘That’s it, lad,’ says Fettiplace, eyeing his son’s body. ‘Work away.’
The day before, Jeb discovered the stone tank half buried in one of the fields his father recently acquired near Wall, along the old corpse road that runs towards Watling Street and the Roman ruins.
‘Let’s dig it out then,’ said his father. ‘Might be worth a guinea or two.’ He grins. ‘Could be your birthday present, eh?’ Jeb will be twelve in two days’ time.
That morning, they returned to the site with the old dray horse and the hay wagon loaded with shovels and spades, pick axes and spikes, and block and tackle.
Fettiplace takes off his shirt too and picks up a spade. Father and son, smeared with sweat and clay, labour to release the stone box from the earth. It is some six feet in length, two feet deep.
‘A cistern perhaps?’ Fettiplace says, when Jeb questions what it might be. ‘Could be Roman. Not worth much. No carvings. I thought it would be prettier than it is.’
‘Prettier?’ asks Jeb.
‘Yes.’ His father squeezes the back of his son’s neck and let his hand glide down his back. Jeb tenses.
‘Prettier. You know, with decorations. Nymphs. Cherubs. That kind of thing.’
‘Imps?’ Jeb says, angling his head to look at his father through squinting eyes. ‘Devils?’
Fettiplace flicks his hand against his son’s face. His sharp nails scratch the skin, draw blood. Jeb snatches in his breath and rubs his cheek with his hand, then looks at the smear of blood on his fingers.
‘It’s just a trough,’ says his father.
Jeb scowls. ‘Looks like a coffin to me,’ he mutters.
Later, Fettiplace organises six men to help move the box. After much heaving and pulling with the block and tackle, it now stands on the ground in the yard of his house in Shaw Street.
‘A water trough for the horses,’ says Fettiplace, after thanking the men, but not paying them. ‘Or a container for your mother’s plants.’
‘Still looks like a coffin to me,’ says Jeb.
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Chapter 2
London, November 1784: The Fall
The February rain gusts across the river and the docked ships in the congested Upper Pool, pushed by a biting easterly. The figure scampers across the decks, moving swiftly, jumping with ease and precision. One of Mr Fielding’s men, Samuel Kinsman, follows but watches his step on the wet and slippery boards.
The figure stops and turns to look back, then turns again and runs on towards the black silhouette of the brig tied up beyond the lighters and wherries. The narrow masts and shrouds of the smaller boats clatter like saplings blown together in a woodland. Ships’ bells, near and distant, clang randomly and discordantly.
When the fugitive begins to climb the rope netting on the main mast of the brig, Kinsman looks up into the rain, steeling himself to overcome his fear of heights in the interests of justice. His aim is to apprehend the rascal he believes to be the leader of a gang of cargo pirates who raid the docked lighters for sugar and other produce. The criminal wields a short cutlass with deadly skill and has already wounded the Revenue officer who was ahead of Samuel when they first gave chase.
The figure climbs the mast, casting off its hooded cloak. There’s something familiar in its shape and the sway of its movement that goads him. Samuel pauses to watch, assessing his ability to catch up. But already the swimming in his brain has begun as the vertigo takes hold.
He struggles higher. His quarry has clambered onto the top yard and is walking out to starboard. Samuel looks down. He is higher than he has ever dared climb in his life before. The pool, its ships and boats veer up towards him in a giddy swirl. He murmurs a curse and freezes to the mast.
The criminal walks back towards him along the yard, then swings down beside him. Samuel gasps with shock and apprehension. His eyes flick to and fro across the woman’s face, sailcloth pale in the moonless dark. A matted lock of wet hair hangs down across her cheekbone.
‘Know thyself, my sweet,’ she says with a cruel smile, her face close to his, the familiar bloom of her breath in his nostrils. She raises a dagger towards his eyes.
He parries her arm away with his right hand, but his left arm loosens its hugged hold round the mast, slipping on the wet wood. She slashes towards him as he falls away from her. The blade stabs into his shoulder. He drops away backwards, making a spread eagle with his arms and legs.
‘Stay away from the other world.’
He hears her fading voice on the wind, as he flies away from her, falling through the rain and night.
Chapter 3
Shoreham, Sussex, March 1789: The Black Musketeer
Playing the part of a sailor down on his luck, Gondrin has watched the river mouth at Shoreham for four days and still the Little Owl hasn’t appeared.
He begins to doubt whether the information the tide surveyor has given him is reliable. He watches and waits, sometimes from the bridge across the river, sometimes from the shore, but most often from a window of the King’s Head that looks out across the harbour. On the second evening he has to avoid the gang pressing men for duty on the Hound, a Revenue cutter. On the third day, he thinks himself watched by two men who follow him along the shoreline.
‘Be very careful. There are so many factions seeking to undermine the king’s authority, to subvert our realm,’ the Maréchal, his old commander, warned him a month before, when giving him his present, private commission, albeit service on behalf of the king. ‘France must stand firm against all kinds of clandestine insurrectionists intent on undermining our way of life, corrupting our customs and traditions.’ He paused, looking Gondrin in the eye. ‘Heretics and atheists, Freemasons and libertines.’ He spat the words out as if they had a foul taste in his mouth. ‘Republicans. Members of the Paris parlement. Jesuits. Huguenots.’
The Maréchal touched his elbow and drew him to one side as they watched the soldiers on the parade ground at the Palais Royal.
‘Blaise, the Black Musketeers are to be reformed.’
‘Yes?’ Gondrin turned his head to the Maréchal, remembering when the Black Musketeers had been disbanded by the king in 1776 and he had lost his commission. It still rankled.
‘But sadly, Blaise, I cannot re-enlist you. Your role now is far too important.’ The Maréchal smiled. ‘Your mother was English? Yes?’
Gondrin nodded.
‘We shall put your mother tongue to good use, then. And your skills in the arts of war are…’ the Maréchal flicked the tip of his tongue across his upper lip, ‘…are exquisite.’
‘What will be my mission?’
‘Weapons are being brought into France from England. You must find out who is organising these shipments and why. Your mission is to eradicate this treachery.’
‘I will do that.’
‘Then, perhaps, we may consider your re-enlistment.’
‘As you command, sir.’
Before they parted, the Maréchal asked, ‘Are you still in contact with the Marquis?’
Gondrin surveyed the parade ground and paused before speaking. ‘You mean De Sade? No. Not for many years.’
‘I hear you attended the same school, the Lycée Louis-Le-Grand.’
‘Yes.’
‘You were friends?’
Something flickered in Gondrin’s eyes. The rumours are true then, thought the Maréchal. ‘Close?’
‘Not really.’ That flicker again.
‘He’s in the Bastille now, you know.’
On his fifth day at Shoreham, Gondrin catches sight of the lugger, Little Owl, low in the sluggish grey water, tacking in from the south. A few hours later there it is at the Shoreham quay, tied up next to a collier.
It doesn’t take long to loosen the tongue of one of the deckhands over a pint of ale in the snug of the Crown and Anchor.
‘We come over from Fecamp,’ the man says, wiping his mouth on his knuckle. ‘Monday, outbound, word was we was headed for Jersey or Lorient. Got no nearer there than we did to Hamburg. Fecamp it was. Out in a day, back in a day. And plenty of drinking time. Easy.’
‘Carrying wool for the French weavers?’ asks Gondrin, adjusting the ribbon on his queue.
‘What’s it to you?’
‘Just wondering if they have want of a tar?’
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Chapter 4
Lichfield, May 1789: The Children in the Churchyard
At St Michael’s, Green Hill, the grey twilight seems to seep from the gravestones. Alma Kinsman sits with her friends on the thick slab of stone over the vault of a family named Sage or on the grass beside it.
‘You’re making all this up, Tris,’ she says to the oldest of the group, Tristram Brougham, who is telling his small audience stories about Lichfield.
‘No, I’m not. Major Morgan showed me. It’s in Mr Johnson’s Dictionary so it can’t be wrong.’ He smirks at Alma then turns back to the group. Her young brother Josh sits on Alma’s lap. Mary Kinsman, Elizabeth Barber and Alice Netherford are making daisy chains as if they are not really listening. Tristram’s younger brother Daniel stands at the edge of the group, swirling a piece of string with an anxious, fretful rhythm.
Tristram looks up at the full moon rising behind Green Hill and continues in a louder voice. Mary, Elizabeth and Alice look up.
‘Imagine the pagan warriors running up this slope to attack the Roman Christians who lived there.’ He sweeps his hand to point towards the church at the top of the rise. ‘They were clustered at the top, spears held outward like… like a great hedgehog. Imagine the noise. The clangs of metal on metal. The screams. See the pierced flesh, the steam rising from the turmoil of bodies, the trampled guts, the torrents of blood that flowed down into the valley, into the Moggs, turning the waters of Stow and Minster Pools muddy red like melted sandstone.’
He pauses, to judge the effect on his friends. His teacher, Mrs Kinsman, says he has a talent for telling stories.
‘That’s too much, Tristram,’ says Alma. ‘You’re frightening the others.’
A smile of satisfaction glimmers on Tristram’s lips.
‘Thousands died here, felled by axe or sword. Men hacked to pieces, limbs scattered beneath the trees, headless trunks of men bleeding beneath the trunks of ash.’
“That’s enough, Tristram,’ shouts Alma.
Tristram spreads his arms. Open-mouthed, fearful, his audience look around.
‘See before you,’ he announces, ‘Lichfield. The Field of the Dead.’
Chapter 5
Recognition
Light from a lantern dapples the red brick wall of the old outhouse. It’s a warm evening, swathed in the scent of honeysuckle. Thomas Newton is waiting for his host to bring another bottle of wine.
He hears a door close, the sound of footsteps approaching.
‘A better bottle than the last, I hope,’ says Newton.
‘Too good for the likes of you. I’ve a mind to throw it in your face. Why is it so impossible for you to recognise me for who I am?’
“Please. Not again,’ says Newton, tipping away the dregs from his glass onto the ground near the outhouse. ‘This is very tiresome.’
‘It’s my identity. I’m entitled.’ The other man’s voice is a harsh whisper. ‘Why will you never recognise me? Recognise me. Recognise…’ He bangs his open hand hard onto his own chest. ‘…me.’ A thread of spittle falls from the man’s lip.
‘I don’t know why you are so obsessed…’ Newton begins but the other man cuts him off.
‘After everything I have done for you, for your wife.’ The man is trembling.
Newton shakes his head. ‘I have never asked for anything from you. Why would I?’
‘What about the guns?’
‘Guns? What guns? Don’t be absurd,’ says Newton, turning away.
‘Absurd? Absurd? You arrogant bastard. I’ll give you absurd.’
Newton is about to turn back but reels under the heavy impact of a blow to the head.
He stumbles, drops to his knees. He holds his arms up to fend off the stone block he sees fall and rise and fall, again and again and again.
His hands paddle empty air. He tries to speak but his words are slurred. He falls forward and still the blows land home.
‘Recognise me now, Newton?’ The man bends low to breathe the words through clenched teeth as Newton’s life pools around him.
‘Jesus! Why wouldn’t you recognise your own flesh and blood?’
To be continued…
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