Billy Bray

CHAPTER ONE

1809

BILLY

I haven’t killed anyone for months.

I should be happy, I know it, but I can’t even raise a smile. I’m as numb inside as I am out. War does that to a man. Of course, if I survive this, the killing will start again, although my tired brain can’t remember what this is. Cold and exhaustion have muddled my head. Only my memories are still where I stored them.

All I know is it’s snowing again. I can’t see anything in the pitch-black night, but flakes freeze on my face and slide below the collar of my shirt which hangs loose about my neck. The dull rumbling in the hollow of my guts is constant. When did I last eat? The day before yesterday, I reckon. My British redcoat hangs off me in tatters, patched so many times I look like a beggar. A mean biting wind whipping across the mountains hits the bottom of my lungs, making me gasp for breath, chilling me to the bone. I’ve tied scraps of cloth around my hands since I lost my gloves. My white shrivelled fingers look like they belong to the dead.

‘Billy, come here. We must keep each other warm.’

I shuffle over to him, my best friend, tripping on my boot soles that flap free, catching my head against my rifle, knocking loose a memory—of boot laces dangling free as a body swings back and forth.

He wraps his greatcoat around us both, my body shaking and shivering against his.

‘Hold on,’ he says. ‘For God’s sake and mine, hold on.’

‘Tell me, where are we? Hunger and fatigue have driven the wits from my brain.’

‘We are in hell, my friend.’

‘No, seriously. Where are we?’

He holds his hand to my forehead, wiping away droplets of sweat despite the cold. I imagine him frowning.

‘The French forced us to retreat over the Spanish mountains of Galicia. We’re heading to the port of Corunna. Once we get there, the army will have boats waiting to take us home. England at last. It’s been fifteen years since we set foot on English soil. And we’ll have fourteen days’ leave. We can both go to Cornwall, to St. Merryn. Imagine it. How we’ve talked of it.’

‘Nothing will have changed. St. Merryn is that sort of place. Made me long for excitement as a boy. Now I want to return to the past, to the people and places I left behind. I think the village is like a knot inside me, one I’m waiting to untie.’

‘Ah, but you forget. You left a boy and will return a man shaped by the army. Your family may not recognise you.’

‘True. And I still think of my sister as a child, but she will be twenty-three now, maybe married with children. I’d like to meet the man who thinks he can handle Lizzy.’

‘Soon you will. Corunna can’t be far now.’

He can’t see me smile, but I’m sure he can feel it. The way my body relaxes and leans into his. The way I wrap my arms around him, squeeze his chest.

‘How long have we been walking?’ I ask.

‘Long enough for our boots to fall apart, our clothes to turn to rags. My cock has shrivelled to nothing from the freezing cold. I’m afraid it may never recover.’

‘Mine too. Doesn’t matter. Its only use in the army is for pissing. Is our regiment nearby? I don’t hear the men.’

‘No, we’ve lagged behind with the women and children. Just as well. We haven’t eaten anything for days. If we catch up with Big Bob, I’m likely to kill him and eat him.’

I laugh and it feels good. This army life is hard, but the men here are my family, brothers forged in battle. There is no stronger bond. But I hated the redcoats when I first signed up, aged fourteen. When any of the soldiers asked me why the hell I joined, I didn’t say the usual, running away—even though I did. It’s that or hunger that mostly drove men and boys to join. I never quite told the truth either, blaming it instead on the first body in the woods. But now there are things I have to say, secrets buried close to my heart. The problem is, I might cry when I tell my friend my story and I’m afraid he won’t understand why. At least he is willing to listen. What can be worse than having no one to tell?

The ground beneath my feet shakes from the rumble of so many marching French boots. They are closing in. And yet I believe we will escape. We must. My past is calling to me. Fifteen years ago, guilt drove me into the arms of the army. Now I’m not so sure I was to blame. I need to return home and uncover the truth, deliver justice.

‘Remember I told you I saw a dead body when I was twelve?’ I say. ‘Not hanging from a gibbet, one I could reach out and touch.’

His shoulders move. A shrug. ‘And I said I saw mine when I was six. Probably earlier. I don’t recall the details.’

‘Well, I sometimes dream about that body and his distorted face. His death is important to me because it was the start of everything. Because it changed my life.’

‘So tell. We have all night with nothing better to do.’

And I do. Telling him everything. Even the parts I’ve kept secret all these years, and the things I’ve done I’m not proud of.

CHAPTER TWO

1792

There’s a body in Greenoak Woods. A goddamn dead body.

A shiver of excitement snakes down my spine because nothing ever happens in the village of St. Merryn. When I woke up yesterday morning, I wished something would.

And last night the villagers hunted the woods for a thief.

And today we have a body.

I should make wishes more often.

I don’t mean to eavesdrop. No… that’s a lie, I do. Snatches of a one-sided conversation are all I have, despite straining to hear.

‘… yes Ma’am… the woods… yes, murder… boys, I believe.’

Even though I’m stirred up inside, I stifle a yawn. September, the worn-out end of summer, means harvest time. I’ve been working all day lifting potatoes. No school today or the rest of the month. Everyone helps gather the crops, including children old enough to walk. Earlier, when the farmer’s wife rang her handbell to signal the end of the working day, I’d dropped my hoe and run, overtaking men in the lower field who shook their heads at me wishing they could run like that after a hard day’s work—but they weren’t twelve, it made a difference. Anyway, running’s my thing. That and swimming.

When I got to the farmhouse, no one was about. The partly open kitchen door revealed cool flagstones and whispered voices.

So here I am, pressed against the doorjamb, listening.

‘… yes Ma’am, a tinker… tomorrow, no one spare to do it see… it is, terrible…’

But where exactly is the body? Those woods are big, and I need to know if I’m going to find the tinker before he’s removed. I want to see because this will be my first body; one I can touch if I have the nerve. I’ve never even seen a body on the gibbet. Can’t quite make my head turn to watch a hanging. And because my sister Lizzy, who’s only six, has seen more dead bodies than I’ve got fingers to count. True, they’ve all been laid out in coffins in someone’s front room, not left to rot in the woods. The dead don’t bother my sister much, so maybe this will impress her when I give her all the details. But more than anything, I want to know how he died and why. Being a murderer myself, I have a right to know these things.

The farmhouse door jerks open. I collapse onto the flagstone floor, a tangle of arms and legs, while the farmer’s wife stands over me.

‘Billy, you got here quick.’

I shrug and scramble to my feet. She should know how fast I am by now, especially when food is involved. The pasty she offers me is still warm, but after grabbing it I dither, scuffing my worn boots against the floor, wiping one grimy hand on my trousers, not wanting to leave without more information.

‘Wait,’ she says.

She disappears into the depths of the kitchen. I stare into the cool gloom, trying to find the person behind the voice I heard. They might be a tittle-tattle, happy to tell me all the details. I crane my neck and spot a large scrubbed table, a fireplace with a coal-black lintel, a heap of furze beside a fire lit even in the heat of summer. A black pot sits on a trivet, the meal inside wafting my way. Rabbit, from the smell.

She returns, her plump body blocking my view, hands coated in a dusting of flour.

‘Here,’ she says, thrusting another pasty my way. ‘For Lizzy.’

This one’s hot, turning the palm of my hand red. I raise my eyes to hers and spy a blackened beam above her head, a line of nails fixed along the edge. One hat dangles from the first nail, a sprig of heather tied around the band. Now, who wears a hat like that?

She glances up at the ceiling, then back at me, and frowns. ‘Don’t you have somewhere to be?’

‘Yes, Ma’am.’

I know better than to ask her about the body. I’ll only get a cuff around my ears. Anyway, I’ve remembered where to go if I want to hear gossip, the type that will include dead bodies. Shouting out my thanks for the pasties, I sprint down the farm track and out the gate, across a patch of heathland where I jump over gorse bushes, down a lane and into the village of St. Merryn.

I skid to a stop and make sure the coast is clear. Not that anyone is looking for me. They never are until they see me and remember something they want me to do. The Smugglers’ Rest, my uncle John’s inn, takes up one corner of the square. I duck beneath grimy leaded windows and keep moving down a row of whitewashed cottages, nodding hello to a few old men slumped outside in rickety chairs. Sprinting past the fourth cottage from the end, my family’s cottage, I cross my fingers Ma isn’t watching from windows kept clean for that purpose. I race around a group of women gossiping beside the village pump, one eye in their barefoot babies play in the mud. Reaching a grassy bank, I stop.

Behind me—the village where nothing ever happens. Before me—Greenoak woods, hiding secrets and shadows and a dead body.

I run into the woods at full speed, telling myself this way is quicker than taking the winding village path, both leading to the crossroads where the four lanes meet, when the real reason means I get to keep a lookout for the dead tinker. I follow an animal track, deer most likely, dodging branches and jumping fallen logs, twisting around trunks thicker than my body. I emerge, panting, from a canopy of trees. The ground swells up a slope of grass to the crossroads. At the peak stands the gibbet, stark against the darkening September sky. A small crowd has gathered, mostly young men fresh from the fields, banging dust from their hats, wiping grime from their brows. A group of old ladies with nothing better to do than watch someone die, huddle together wrapped in dark coats and black silk bonnets, when here I am with my shirt wrapped around my waist, my back glowing from sunburn.

There’s a man in a yellow nankeen coat sprawled at the foot of the gibbet. A footpad, caught late last night trying to plunder the coach to Padstow. His plan, to overturn the coach by placing a waggon wheel on the road, foiled by the driver who reined in the horses. When the footpad ran, the driver set up a hue and cry. All the able-bodied men in the village downed tools and joined the hunt, my father included. He wouldn’t let me help though, saying, ‘twelve-year-old boys are not men, Billy.’ They found the would-be thief hiding in the woods, up a tree. And whilst searching for the footpad, they must have found the tinker. Makes sense.

The vicar and the executioner hoist the footpad onto their shoulders and carry him up a ladder, onto a platform. His knees buckle before they place the rope around his neck. I can’t watch. Not that I feel sorry for him, but I’m not here for the hanging, I’m here for the gossip. My father says hangings are not for women or children. Not even for men if he had his way.

I saunter across to the young men and circle around the pack, listening out for snippets about the dead body. One of them hawks. Spit lands on my boots. He laughs as I back away, hurling curses at him. Maybe the old ladies will be easier. I stroll over to them but get waved away before I’m even in earshot. I’m not so easily put off. Until I spot a linen cap atop raven black hair, a small body lurking behind a furze bush, watching the gibbet. My sister, Lizzy.

I creep up behind her and drop my voice. ‘Lizzy Bray, what’re you doing here?’

She jumps out of her skin and whirls around to face me. ‘You sound just like father,’ she says, holding her hand to her heart.

‘Well?’

‘Well yourself, why are you here?’

‘None of your business. This is no place for you. What were you thinking coming here?’

‘I wanted to be here after, you know, after it was over.’

‘Not dead bodies again. Lizzy, this has to stop.’ I grab her hand and drag her away as the trapdoor clunks open, the young men cheer and the old ladies sigh, quickening my pace even as Lizzy turns her head to see. Father will kill me if he finds out I let her watch.

I take the path through the woods again. Lizzy swinging her arm, hand in mine, untroubled so it seems. Her dark blue eyes search my face, her raven hair in a neat plait. We’re so alike—on the outside. With six years between us and no babies in between, her birth was ‘a little miracle’.

Whereas I was born a murderer.

I didn’t find this out until I was five years old. Overhearing a whispered conversation between my ma and her friends, I discovered the midwife found two babies when she delivered me. Only one alive. Seems I killed my brother before he had a chance to draw breath. Sometimes, late at night thinking of things I’d rather not, I wonder how and why I killed him. Did my ma, just for an instant, hate me for it? Or perhaps, being five, I misheard and his death wasn’t my fault at all. Mostly, I think of ways I can right that wrong.

‘The footpad was too small.’ She brushes a leaf off her dress. ‘A boy sized man. Could he have lifted a waggon wheel?’

‘He didn’t have to. He could roll it. Hell, even I can roll a waggon wheel.’

She furrows her brow, thinking. ‘How did he get it on the road? Where did it come from?’ And finally, the question playing on her mind. ‘What if he didn’t do it?’

‘They found him hiding up a tree. And the nankeen coat he wore? Stolen, probably the same way, from an overturned coach.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘It was too big for him; the cuffs reached his fingertips. He was a thief, and he needed to be punished. Why do you care anyway?’

She sucks on her bottom lip, thinking. ‘He had farm worker’s hands, rough and callsed—’

‘Calloused.’

‘Calloused. His coat was wrinkled like he’d been sleeping in it. His boots were muddy. He came here looking for work.’

‘And you don’t know that.’ I wipe my boots clean against a clump of stinging nettles. ‘What if he murdered someone and left their body in the woods? What if that body is still here?’

I hand her a pasty. She brings it to her nose and sniffs. Her other hand slips from mine and she skips on ahead.

‘And you don’t scare me with your stories. I’m not afraid of the dead.’

No, she’s not. Sometimes I think she prefers the dead to the living, my strange sister. I leave her in the village and take the headland path towards the beach, where a stony track leads to Treyarnon Bay and the rock pool where I like to go swimming. Beside the beach there’s a wall facing the sea where I sit and wait for Jago, my best friend. With my stomach grumbling, I bite into the pasty, gazing at the beach, lost in thought, making plans on where to start my search in the woods.

Boots crunch on the gravel behind me. Jago, he always looks unwell and in need of a good meal, being small and scrawny, his skin pale even in the summer. I hand him the remains of my pasty, which he grabs, nodding his thanks, his eyes alight with some secret knowledge. I’ve seen this look on his face before, like the time he told me where we could see the wreck of a sailing ship by walking along the coastal path.

‘What’s up with you?’ I ask.

He smiles and chews, saying nothing. I leave him to it. He’ll tell me when he can’t hold his secret in any longer. Anyway, his secret won’t trump mine.