Chapter 1: Nemo Me Impune Lacessit

According to the Ancient Greeks each man has four humours: Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholic, and Phlegmatic. Each humour is the basis for one of our emotions, and for a man to keep in good health these four humours must be in harmony and balanced. However, there is a humour the Greeks failed to recognize, and one which not only overrides the other four but also completely upsets a man’s balance. A humour which focuses on one target, and exists only to attain one end.
This humour is Vengeance, and the end is retribution.
Vengeance is the reason I did not kill myself after the death of my family, and is the humour which causes me to rise each morning from a sleepless bed, the humour which has changed me from a middling kind, middling friendly, middling decent human being to an icy, cold hearted, killer.
The sole aim in my life now is to find and kill those responsible for the death of my beloved wife Caroline, my equally beloved son John-Jarvis, adopted daughters Molly and Domina, and the unborn child Caroline had been carrying when Hungerford Hall was set ablaze.

I had made a good start. I watched impassively as Daft Danny Dobson, kicking and choking at the end of a rope, made the slow, painful, journey to his death. He did not die at my hand but was convicted by due legal process to hang. Had I got to him first he would have died much more slowly, and in much more pain. I would have disembowelled him, then piled his entrails on his chest and set them afire. It was the death I envisaged for Silas Maddox, Sigismund von Metzendorf, Eloise de La Zouche, and anyone else who played a part in the destruction of my family.
There was a likely suspect in Hungerford – a magistrate who had knowledge of the black coach involved in the murders – and Rob Crawshay and I were on our way to question the man.

The first time I had met magistrate John Bailey he had kept me kicking my heels until he had finished his lunch, but now I was not so forbearing.
I hammered on his front door, and pushed past the servant when opened.

“Where is your master?” I asked, my voice toneless but menacing.

“He is in his study sir, but cannot be... “
I made my way to the study door, put my shoulder to open it and burst in. Bailey was sitting in a large armchair with a young housemaid on his knee. His hand was ferreting under her skirts and his mouth was at her breasts.
He looked around as I stormed into the room, his look of anger quickly replaced by fear. As he jumped to his feet the female slid off his lap and fell to the floor, her bare thighs and naked bosom getting no more than a passing glance from me, although I did notice the relief in her eyes at being freed from her lecherous employer.

“What the devil to you mean by...”
I shut Bailey’s gabbing voice by grasping him by his cravat and twisting until his eyes popped.

“Why did you not inform me of what Dobson told you about a black coach?”
He struggled to reply, and I loosened my grip so he could.

“Dobson is in a world of his own. I did not believe him,” he gasped.
The man was lying; I could smell his fear, and drew my skean dhu from my boot top.

“You knew about the black coach. Where do you know that coach from?”

“I don’t know what you...” His scream as I sliced off the lobe of his ear was like that of a gelded boar.

“I will ask you again, and this time if I do not receive a believable answer I will slice off your nugs — which at least will give relief to your female staff. What do you know of the black coach?”
This time he could not get the answers out fast enough.

“I saw it at Lord Lane’s house a week before the fire. I kept quiet about it as I did not wish to draw attention to what I and several other notables were doing at Taplow Court.”

“What were you doing at Taplow Court, and how was the owner of the coach involved?”

“I was attending an orgy. The coach’s owner, Sigismund von Metzendorf, had brought some young girls for our amusement. He also brought some... “
I had heard all I needed to know; Taplow Court indicated Rowley Lane was involved, and would be my next stop.
I put my blade to Bailey’s neck and was about to slice it when a woman pushed past Rob, who was standing by the door.

“If you kill him, sir, you will hang, and Bailey is not worth your life. I am his wife and know full well his value. A farthing would be too much.”
Mistress Bailey was a well-made woman, several years younger than Bailey, and her words stayed my hand.

“Madam, you have my deepest sympathy.” I put my blade away. “And I thank you for averting a murder, and my own death.”
She came and spat in Bailey’s face. “You knew who was responsible for the fire, other than Daft Danny, and yet said nothing, you scum faced turd.”
She looked at me with tear-filled eyes. “I often saw Lady Caroline in Hungerford; she was a lovely and gracious lady, and I am ashamed that my husband — a bag of offal and midden waste — had any part in her death. Spare him, sir, and I swear I will make him suffer every day of what remains of his miserable life.”
She kicked him in his nugs, and his howl of pain made me smile for the first time since seeing Hungerford Hall on fire.
I left the house content with the knowledge Bailey would live to regret his friendship with Rowley Lane, and his failure to tell me what Dobson had said about the fire.

After leaving Hungerford Rob Crawshay remained silent for some time; we had followed the Kennet and Avon canal eastward for well over an hour before he spoke.

“Jack, you came near to putting your neck in a noose. You cannot go around the country just slitting throats of any one you suspect of having anything to do with the death of your family. I know you have hatred and revenge in your heart, but you must temper it with intelligence.”
I rode silently for a minute as I digested what he had said. Rob was correct of course; continue in the way I had started and I would end up dancing at the end of a rope.

“You are right, Rob, and I thank you for the advice. Truth is I have scarcely slept a wink since...” I couldn’t say the hateful, hurtful words, and so continued, “and my mind is beginning to weaken. I have never been a violent man, but seem to have been taken over by a savage demon.”

“Not a violent man!” Rob’s voice rose in amazement. “You have killed God knows how many Frenchies, with axe, knife, bayonet, and musket. You have always possessed a demon, Jack, which you kept under control. Now the demon is controlling you. Keep your hate and anger dulled, and only sharpen them when you can exact revenge without it turning back on you. Use your intellect as the whetstone to your anger.”
I nodded my head in agreement, but wondered if I would be able to control my demon when face to face with those who had destroyed my family, and my peace of mind.

Lord Lane’s residence of Taplow Court was near the village of Marlow, a two-day ride from Hungerford, and we stayed the night at the Golden Cockerel at Theale. I slept in the stable, being too disreputable in appearance to be admitted into the hostelry. Since the funeral of my family I had not shaved or washed, or had a good night’s sleep. I looked like a tramp and stank like a ferret; even the horses in the stable shied away from me.
There were others sheltering in the stables of the Golden Cockerel besides Rob and I: a band of peddlers, with a drab who whored at the places they stopped. She came over, and would have opened her legs for me, and a shilling, if my stench had not caused her to gag.

“Fie! I’ve never seen a man who looks so in need of a good gallop, yet who stinks so high as will never get a girl to lie with him, lest she has no nose,” she said.
I was no way disconcerted by her words. Caroline was lost to me; no other female could ever take her place, and I was prepared to spend the rest of my sorrowful life as celibate as a eunuch.
That night I woke up screaming, as I had on every night since the fire. As soon as I fell asleep I would see, and hear, my darling wife and children being burnt alive, their terrified screams being echoed by mine. I tried with all my power not to fall asleep, but every night I failed, and moments later would wake shrieking. The pedlars and the drab swore at me for disturbing their slumber, so I took myself outside in the cold, first light, air, to compose myself. Rob followed me out, bringing a blanket to wrap around my shoulders.

“Do you want to tell me why you wake screaming every night, Jack? It might ease your pain.”
I nodded; sharing my nightmare might halve my agony.