Free The Black Book of Secrets by F E Higgins Page B

hill. How could this stranger help him? In fact,
how did this stranger even know he needed help? He
remembered how Joe had looked at him. Had he sucked his
thoughts out of his head?
    Horatio raised his fist, but before he could strike the
wood Joe opened the door.
    ‘Horatio, come in,’ he said warmly. ‘We’ve been
expecting you.’
    He led the silent butcher into the back room, where the
fire was blazing. Horatio lowered his sturdy frame into the
offered chair and frowned as it creaked alarmingly. Joe
handed him a glass of the golden liquid and he took a long
draught, then another. His cheeks flushed and his eyes
shone.
    ‘A powerful drop,’ he said and drained his glass.
    ‘I believe you have a secret you’d like to pawn,’
prompted Joe.
    Horatio’s eyebrows met in a quizzical frown. ‘What do
you mean?’
    ‘It is what I do,’ explained Joe. ‘I buy secrets.’
    Horatio considered the proposal for a short moment.
‘Then buy this,’ he said.
    Ludlow was already settled at the table, the Black Book
open before him, and Horatio began.

 
    Chapter Eighteen

Extract from
The Black Book of Secrets
    The Butcher’s Confession
    My name is Horatio Cleaver and I have a dreadful
confession.
    Guilt has driven me to the brink of madness. I cannot
sleep. Instead I pace the floor until dawn, going over
and over in my head what I have done. I desire only
one thing: to be freed of my terrible burden.
    I know people think I am a fool, both as a man
and as a butcher. I lack the talent that my father,
Stanton, had and I am the first to admit it. He wasa true master of his trade. His skill with a cleaver
was unrivalled and he won every butcher’s competition
in the county for his speed and precision. They
called him Lightning Stan. To Pagus Parvians he was
the greatest hero since Mick MacMuckle, the one-armed
blacksmith who could shoe a horse blindfolded.
    To me he was a beast.
    When my mother was alive I was spared the worst
of his excesses, but she died, still a young woman, and
I was left at his mercy. He was a sly fellow, you see.
To the villagers he was a cheerful chap, always ready
to flatter the ladies and joke with the gentlemen. But
away from the counter, out the back in the cold store,
he was a different man. He was a monster. He beat
me every day with anything he could get his hands on:
pigs’ legs, rump steaks, even chickens with their
feathers still on. All the time he told me I should be
grateful to him for teaching me his trade.
    ‘Nobody else would have you,’ he said and I began
to believe him.
    I was so nervous that I made even more mistakes
and he became angrier. He laughed at my spelling, yetwouldn’t allow me any schooling; he mocked my
stammer, knowing that only made it worse. As for my
work, I did my best but I’m no carver – I’m all fingers
and thumbs, what’s left of them. As punishment, or
for a joke, he would lock me in the ice store until my
hands were so stiff I couldn’t bend them around a
knife.
    My life was miserable. At night I slept on the sawdust
behind the counter while he snoozed upstairs in
front of a warm fire with a glass of whisky. I wanted
to run away, but he had me so scared I couldn’t think
straight. So I suffered the lashing of tongue and belt,
and inside I seethed like a mountain about to explode.
    And then there was Jeremiah Ratchet. My father
saw in Jeremiah a kindred spirit – namely a glutton
with an insatiable appetite for money – and the two
would sit by the fire in the room above the shop well
into the early hours sipping ale and brandy while I
waited on their every whim.
    ‘P-p-pour us another p-p-please, Horatio,’
Jeremiah would say mockingly and the two wouldburst into throaty laughter. Or ‘Remind me, Horatio,
how much is your lamb?’
    ‘Twelve p-p-pennies a p-p-pound.’
    One day Jeremiah came in laughing. ‘I see you
have a new product,’ he said pointing to a sign in the
window, a sign I had written. To my shame it read:
‘Micemeat Peyes –