Beloved Poison (29 page)

‘And me?’ I whispered.

‘We don’t yet know what your fate will be.’ He patted my shoulder. ‘But we must live in hope. I am convinced the environment has nothing to do with the appearance, nor the progress, nor the cure of the illness, and so we must try other means. Dr Bain was to have officiated at this evening’s experiment. I suppose I might have asked Dr Magorian, or Dr Graves, perhaps, possibly even Dr Catchpole, but they have their own preoccupations and somehow none of them seem . . . suitable. Dr Bain was fascinated, as you might expect. He offered to share his own blood, as well as mine, so that as much as possible of your father’s might be drawn off.’ Dr Hawkins sighed, and shook his head. ‘But we will have to make do. We can do enough to make a difference, at least. And so, Jem, if you would be so kind? The collecting jar is here. This one is to gather my blood, the other is for your father’s. And then we will replace my blood with his, and vice versa.’

My father shook his head. ‘Dr Hawkins, I cannot allow—’

‘Shush, man,’ said Dr Hawkins. ‘We have already discussed the matter, and my mind is resolved.’ He sat on the couch and rolled up his sleeve so that it was above his elbow. ‘This is an extraordinary opportunity. The disease is deep inside the system. But is it in the mind, or the brain? The spirit, or the blood? Sedatives are all useless; the mind seems still to race no matter that the body appears unconscious. If we replace the blood, then the taint may be eradicated, or at least diminished—’

He talked on and on, but I was hardly listening. The evening had taken on a peculiar, unreal feeling and I moved as though in a daze. I did as Dr Hawkins instructed, inserting the cannula, drawing off the blood, swapping the flasks, feeding Dr Hawkins’s blood into my father, and my father’s into Dr Hawkins. I felt as though I was hardly present, merely going through the motions. The blood that leaked out of my father’s arm was no different to the stuff I took from Dr Hawkins: thick, scarlet, the colour of life itself. I thought nothing of it. I was numb, empty. I caught sight of myself in the mirror and I saw only a stranger: a madwoman disfigured by a red birthmark, with a flask of blood in her hands.

When I arrived back at the apothecary, the place was in darkness. A single candle burned on the table top – a night light left for me by Will. Beneath the table, on his truckle bed, Gabriel snored. The table itself was laid out neatly for the next day – the prescription ledger tidied away, a batch of new-made pills drying, the condenser set up ready for the following morning. The place smelled of citrus fruit and lavender, with a faint, underlying aroma of hops – clean, homely, reassuring. I sank into my father’s chair before the fire. I could not get the images out of my mind – the bottles of blood and the crimson connecting tubes; my father’s veins, visible beneath the skin like earthworms. Nathaniel crouched against the wall of his cell, the noise, that droning half-moan, half-sob, over and over and over as he rocked himself; his eyes, empty of everything but desperation – blind and tortured. Already, I could see that my father’s face had taken on the same gaunt and sunken look; his eyes, though still keen, had a gluey, viscous appearance. Would Dr Hawkins’s procedure work? If not, how long before my father took Nathaniel’s place? Before I met the same fate? Should I have to spend my days thinking about death? And yet, all at once it seemed as though I had hardly even lived. I put my head in my hands, and wept.

G
abriel woke me at half past five.
Father
. I seized my boots and dragged my coat on. ‘See to the morning purgatives, Gabriel,’ I muttered. ‘I’ll be back soon.’ I let the door slam behind me.

Mrs Speedicut accosted me at the entrance to the surgical ward. ‘You been up to Angel Meadow this morning? How is he?’

‘I’m going back there the moment I’ve been round the wards,’ I said. I couldn’t be bothered to ask how she knew. Perhaps, like Dr Bain, she had been in my father’s confidence all along.

‘And last night?

I shrugged. ‘He seemed as well as might be expected, Mrs Speedicut. No worse. Let’s hope for better things today,’ I added. ‘I’ll send your good wishes.’

Mrs Speedicut’s face was suddenly beet red. ‘I’ve got something for him,’ she said. ‘Something I made. Can you take it to him?’

‘Of course.’ No doubt it was one of her dreadful pound cakes, so dry and musty-tasting that I suspected her of using the sawdust from the floor of the operating theatre in place of flour. ‘Just leave it at the apothecary.’

‘I’ve got it here.’

‘Well, I can’t very well carry a cake about the wards, can I?’

‘It ain’t a cake.’

‘No?’

‘No.’ Her beady little eyes were tearful now. ‘I don’t know what ails him, Mr Jem, but I’ve seen him getting thin and pale and always in his chair. It breaks my heart to see him like he is. And then there were them coffins. And then Dr Bain.’ She fell silent, swabbing her face with a square of cotton cut from an old hospital bed sheet. ‘Well, I made him this. I thought it might be a comfort.’ From behind her vast skirts, Mrs Speedicut produced a bundle, tied with string. She unwrapped it and drew out a heavy patchwork quilt. The colours glowed warm as summer in the dismal light.

I touched the rich fragments of fabric, stitched together with tiny, almost invisible, stitches. ‘Mrs Speedicut,’ I cried. ‘I had no idea you were so skilled with a needle.’

Mrs Speedicut blushed. ‘Who else might I do things for?’

‘I can think of someone.’

‘Gabriel,’ she said. ‘I were wrong to treat him so harsh, to say those things. He’s just a lad, it ain’t his fault where he comes from or what his parents did.’ She looked left and right, and then leaned close to me. She stank of cheap candles, sweat and baccy. ‘Don’t you tell him.’ She looked up at me coyly. ‘I’m making one just the same for him.’

I tried to keep the surprise off my face. I failed. ‘Really?’

Mrs Speedicut nodded. ‘It ain’t ’is fault ’e were born.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Look, you don’t need to do the rounds with me, Mrs Speedicut. Why don’t you go over to the apothecary? Take your quilt. Gabriel will have made some coffee.’

‘D’you think he’ll speak to me?’

‘Gabriel?’ I said. ‘I sincerely hope so, or he’ll feel the yard rule across his backside.’

‘Oh, no, not that.’ I must have looked astonished at such unexpected soft-heartedness, for she changed the subject abruptly. ‘Think you’ll find out who did it? Who murdered him?’

‘You think it’s murder?’

‘Course it is. You know it as well as I do. That Dr Bain, he were too clever by half. And too clever to make a mistake like that. Poison himself? You watch your step,’ she said. ‘Doctors! They’re all the same. They looks after each other.’

‘I know that.’

Mrs Speedicut frowned. ‘You don’t know nothing! I’ve seen you, disobeying their orders with your rhubarb and your boiled water.
And
I’ve heard you too, answering back and showing them up an’ making them feel stupid. Well they might well be stupid, but no one likes to be made to
feel
that way.’

‘My dear lady—’

‘Don’t you dare talk down to me, Jem Flockhart!’ she cried. ‘You’re not too big to feel the yard stick across your own arse. And you’re not near careful enough, neither. Ain’t you seen them? Whispering together? Looking at you?’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘I suppose I have.’

‘No you ain’t.’ She jabbed at my shoulder with the stem of her pipe. ‘Think you’re so clever, but you ain’t
watchin’
. Not like you should be. You ain’t one o’ them – you never will be – and that means somethin’.’

‘I’ll find out who murdered Dr Bain, and then they shall hang for it.’

‘Not if they get you first.’ She backed away, her precious bundle now cradled in her arms. Her voice hissed out from the shadows. ‘You watch them. Don’t take your eyes off
any
of them.’

I left her then, to go about the wards. I was grateful for her warning. She was a busybody, and an eavesdropper, but her gossip’s eye was sharp, and she noticed everything. She probably knew more about St Saviour’s than anyone else. And yet still I paid no heed. I had worked with medical men all my life: I could see their weaknesses, I endured their arrogance and I knew they held no one in higher regard than themselves. But one of them, perhaps more, was a party to wilful murder. How long could they hope to hide such a secret? I had lived a lie for my entire life, I knew what it was to conceal, to dissemble, to pretend one was something one was not and all the time to be in fear of discovery. It was a difficult act to sustain. The urge to tell someone, to explain or justify oneself, was powerful and corrosive. They would make a mistake, I was certain, and I would see it instantly. None of them would get the better of me.

Nothing had happened on the wards during the night. The routine of the morning was a comfort, and I arranged for the usual bleeding and purging without thought. I felt calm by the time I left the place, and decided I would breakfast with Will and Gabriel, and perhaps Mrs Speedicut, when I came back from Angel Meadow.

My father was exactly where I had left him, sitting in an armchair in front of Dr Hawkins’s fire.

‘Did you sleep?’ I asked.

‘A little.’ No doubt he had not slept at all but did not want to worry me further. I looked at Dr Hawkins. Had my father’s raging blood, newly present in his veins, meant that he had paced the floor till dawn? If so, he looked remarkably fresh for it. The rose in his lapel was as yellow as clotted cream.

I did not linger. My father was no worse, and that would have to suffice. Besides, there seemed little to be said. Always taciturn, he was even more disinclined than usual to talk. Perhaps I might send Mrs Speedicut to see him. He always seemed to find her prattle soothing, and she was sure to be better company for him than me, with my searching gaze and bleak silence. His fate weighed heavily upon me so that I could think of nothing else when I was with him. What use was the present, when it would soon be gone? What use was the future when it held nothing but madness and death? And the past – we had neither of us ever had much cause to dwell upon that.

The attendant who led me away from Dr Hawkins’s rooms was new to me. ‘Might I see Mrs Catchpole?’ I said.

‘It’s early for a visitor,’ she replied.

‘I’m the apothecary from St Saviour’s,’ I said, deciding that impatience and manly arrogance would serve me best. ‘And a friend of Dr Hawkins. He says I may see the lady. The matter cannot wait.’

The attendant pulled out her keys. She did not care where she took me, and she did not want an argument. ‘This way, sir.’

She led me down the stairs and into the ladies’ corridor. In the morning light I could see that the tall arched windows I had noticed the night before looked out over a wide, well-kept lawn. The flower beds were filled with daffodils, the vegetable garden hoed and ready for spring planting. There were attendants everywhere; one of them at Mrs Catchpole’s door, a kettle of hot water in her hand. She jangled her bunch of keys and smiled at me as I came up to her. ‘Mornin’ sir,’ she said. ‘Back to see Mrs Catchpole?’ She knocked and listened, then opened the door, and stood back to allow me in.