Beloved Poison (46 page)

Eliza.

I tried to call out, but the sound was no more than a rasp. At the foot of the mound stood the tall, hooded figure of Dr Magorian; beside him, the small, boy-sized shadow of his wife.

‘Eliza!’ I heard the call once more, a high-pitched keening sound, followed by a terrible anguished sob. Mrs Magorian sank to the ground at her husband’s feet. I watched as he raised her up with both hands. She tried to pull away from him, but he held her close. He bent his head and whispered something to her; he smoothed the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs, and kissed her face. And then he too began to climb. Eliza stopped and looked back. I saw her start. Her foot slipped and she slid back towards him. The doctor put out a hand to seize her boot but Eliza scrambled away. I heard her shouting, screaming, but I could not hear what she said. If I followed them, I might bring the whole heap sliding down. And yet, if I waited – what then?

Even as I watched, the bones began to shift and fragment, arms projecting, legs extending, as if the Trumpet had sounded and they were compelled to rise up at once. I stood, transfixed. What could I do but watch? They moved out, and down. Slowly at first, but then faster. Mrs Magorian cried out. I saw her raise her arms, calling to her husband. He turned and reached out to her. But the landscape was changing, bones grinding upon bones, jostling, plunging, surging, down towards the hole from which they had come.

I saw Eliza standing tall, silhouetted against the dark glow of the vanished sun; and then she was gone.

‘Eliza!’ I sprang forward. But mud was upon me too now, and my feet were swept asunder. I tried to stand, but I could not. Ahead, I saw Dr Magorian leap towards his wife. He put his arms about her as if to lift her clear, to throw her out of harm’s way, but instead he held her close. For a moment they stood there, unmoving, clasped together as the bones seethed and rolled, and then they vanished from sight.

I cried out, but the rank earth stopped my mouth. And then all at once I was being pulled; someone was hauling at my arms, dragging me free. I choked and gagged, too weak to do anything but try to thrash my legs clear. The air was filled with an immense roaring sound, like a great shovelling of coals. And then there was only silence, and the sound of the rain pouring down upon a sea of bones.

I opened my eyes. Above me, I could see that the mound of excavated bodies had collapsed, surging towards the pit from which they had been removed. I turned my head. How it throbbed! Beside me, Will lay, unconscious. His temple bore a great dark bruise, his right eye swollen shut. But I could see that he was safe, and alive. For a moment, I watched him breathing, in and out . . . in and out. He had done so much for me that evening. I stretched out a hand, and wiped the dirt from his face. Some distance away, Dr Magorian was also visible, half buried beneath rags and mud. I saw his head move from side to side, and his arms rise up. His wife was nowhere to be seen. Someone would come, soon, and get us out. Someone would find her. I tried to shout for help, but my voice was gone.

I heard her before I saw her: boots floundering, slipping, slithering as she clambered across the wreckage; the slap of wet fabric as her heavy skirts dragged at her legs. I did not see where she had come from, and she had not noticed me lying there, covered in mud and unable to speak. But I saw her. I saw her run towards Dr Magorian. He was calling his wife’s name now, his voice desperate, frantic. He turned his head from side to side, trying to see where she was, trying to sit up, to pull himself free. He saw Eliza, coming towards him across the wreckage as quickly as she could, and he gave a sob and held out his arms.

She knelt down beside him. Once again I tried to call out; I tried to pull myself up, but my strength had deserted me. The moon slipped out from a break in the clouds and I saw her look down at him. Her hair was bedraggled, her dress torn at the neck so that both shoulders were exposed, her skin streaked with brown. She smoothed the dirt from his face with tender fingers, her expression unreadable.

‘Eliza,’ I heard him say. ‘My dear—’

And then, as I watched, her face resolved into an expression of such fury I could hardly believe that I was looking at the same person. She did not speak, did not make a sound, as she cupped her hands about the back of her father’s head, and forced his face into the mud. He gurgled and heaved beneath her, writhing this way and that, but he was trapped from the waist down in the grip of the graveyard and he could do nothing to escape. His arms flailed. I saw Eliza’s knees part beneath her soaked skirts, both hands now pressing hard upon her father’s head. I saw her arch her back, her eyes closed, all her weight bearing down upon him as he bucked again, and then again . . . and then was still.

I
hardly know what happened next. Beside me, Will groaned. I could not move to help him, could not move to help myself. I turned my head and tried to whisper something encouraging. When I looked back, Eliza was gone.

I heard the sound of voices echoing up from St Saviour’s, the porters’ lanterns bobbing towards us as they ran to see what had happened. We were dug out, and carried home. I can remember little but the touch of hands, the lights of the apothecary, Mrs Speedicut’s face rising up before me like a baleful moon.

Eliza had vanished. At first, it was assumed that she had perished, along with her mother and father. But I knew better. Only Dr Magorian and Mrs Magorian were unearthed, and a verdict of accidental death recorded. After that, events followed a logical sequence: the poisoned book was found in the herb drying room where I had left it. I gave it to the magistrate, along with a pair of gloves, and in its pages the truth was made clear. My father’s innocence, and mine, was established beyond doubt, and he was buried with little ceremony, beside my mother, in that undisturbed stretch of sunny earth at the southern wall of St Saviour’s church.

And I? Like Gabriel I too was now an orphan. I looked after Will while he recovered from his ordeal with Dr Magorian amongst the gravestones. The scar from that evening would stay with him for ever, a peculiar heart-shaped patch of raised, pink flesh at his temple.

‘You’re lucky not to have contracted septicaemia,’ I said. ‘Or brain fever. Or lockjaw.’

‘But I have the best doctor in you, Jem. And the best nurse. I have every confidence.’

I patted his hand. ‘And yet, I could poison you in fifty different ways, if I chose.’ It was true, it was in my power to preserve life, and to bring death. How omnipotent I was! And yet the one simple thing I could not do was forget – my father’s murder, Eliza – and the pain of their loss ate into my soul.

Once he was recovered, Will stayed with us at the apothecary while he completed his work at the graveyard. The hospital governors asked me to stay, to come to St Saviour’s new site across the river. And yet my heart was no longer in my work. I tried to carry on as usual, but every day I watched the crowds on St Saviour’s Street for Eliza’s face. I listened out for her voice, her laugh, though I knew, in my heart, that I would not hear either. In the herb drying room I looked down into the yard hoping to see her walking across it. But, of course, she was never there. I had told Will everything. What had happened between Eliza and I, what I knew of her past, how I had seen her force Dr Magorian’s head into the earth. How could I not have seen how unhappy she was? Why had she not come to me earlier? If I could but find her . . . Questions circled my mind like lazily flapping crows, dark and ragged. I would look up and see Will watching me. ‘There are some people who cannot be saved, Jem.’

The weeks lengthened to months. The graveyard was emptied. St Saviour’s, gradually, was emptied too. The railway company would not wait; the foundations for the new hospital were laid already, and St Saviour’s was to move to temporary accommodation out to the west. Would I follow them? I could not. Gabriel would manage well enough without me, and a new apothecary might be found easily enough.

Will alone seemed to understand. He had acquitted himself well amongst the corpses and his Master had decided he was to work on a less grisly project: the rebuilding of Brixton Gaol, out to the east.

‘Well done,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘And well deserved.’

‘Perhaps you might think of a new beginning too,’ he said.

‘With St Saviour’s?’ I shook my head. ‘You know my thoughts.’

‘No. Not with St Saviour’s. With me.’

‘You?’

‘We are both alone in the world. Do you not love me?’

‘As a brother?’

He smiled. ‘If that’s your wish, that’s what it shall be. As a brother. You might open an apothecary. Gabriel will be sure to come with us, and you don’t need to be part of a hospital to peddle your potions and pills—’

I shook my head. ‘Perhaps one day,’ I said. ‘But not yet.’

He put his arms about me then and held me close. ‘Well, Jem,’ he said, ‘then I will just have to wait.’

I had never had a friend, not truly, and Will’s loyalty amazed me. Every day, I walked down St Saviour’s Street to the physic garden, though I knew I was not going there to tend to the place. Will came with me. My mind was no longer concerned with physic, and plants and poisons held no savour for me. The gardener and his boy I laid off – if there was to be no hospital, what use was a physic garden? How quickly the place went to seed! We sat on the iron bench and watched the wind blowing the dandelion clocks over the wall and into the city. Would any of them take root in that unfriendly place? No doubt there was a welcoming dung heap somewhere.

Next door, Dr Magorian’s house stood empty. It could not be sold, as Eliza had vanished. She was the sole inheritor, but her death could not be proved, even if the fact that she was alive could not be demonstrated either. One day we saw some workmen boarding up the windows. Nothing had been removed, and the place remained full of furniture, specimens, books, surgical equipment. I looked over the wall, standing on the rusting garden roller at the foot of the physic garden. Dr Magorian’s lawn had become a meadow full of couch grass, nettles and dandelions; the beech hedge was a bristling monstrosity, the flower beds now wild clumps of weeds and overblown perennials. I thought I caught a glimpse of something; the flicker of a brightly coloured summer dress amongst the apple trees, but when I looked again there was no one. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a movement at one of the windows of the house. I shaded my eyes and peered up at that great black villa, but my mind was playing tricks and there was nothing to see. One of the panes had been smashed in the window to Mrs Magorian’s dressing room. No one would be coming to fix it. At length, the men boarded that one over too, and the entire house was closed off to the world.

We went back to the infirmary. The place was silent, the familiar noises – the coughing and hawking of the patients, the rattle of doctors’ carriages, windows opening and doors closing – all had gone for ever. Rooms I had been familiar with all my life, which I had always known as bustling, noisy places, were now shabby and silent. The operating theatre, where once Dr Bain had appeared with his spray pump and his white smock, was cold and dilapidated; the dissecting room nothing but an ugly brown chamber. One of the panes in the skylights was already smashed and the glass littered the floor in long shards, reflecting the grey clouds overhead as if the heavens themselves were falling in.

We walked the cold, silent wards. The wind blew through the building, gusting in at the open windows as if, having been denied access for so long, it was determined to reach every corner of the place. The fireplaces, which had burned constantly, summer and winter since the place was built, were now no more than ragged black holes, the grates and mantels torn out to be used elsewhere. I had not realised quite how filthy the place was, how stained and damp the plaster, how bowed the floors, how cracked and dirty the window panes. When the wards had been filled with noise and activity, these things had gone unnoticed. Now they were all the place had left.

I insisted on walking past Eliza’s house every day. One day I thought I saw her face, but it was only the girl selling watercress. On another day I thought I saw smoke rising from the chimney, but when I climbed over the ivy-twisted gate and ran across the wild meadow of the front lawn, the door was still boarded up. We walked the streets about the infirmary – up and down the length of St Saviour’s Street, past Prior’s Rents, along Fishbait Lane. I moved as if in a daze, following blindly where Will led, thinking of my father, of Eliza, of that night among the bones. All at once I realised he had turned into Wicke Street. At the steps leading up to Mrs Roseplucker’s front door, Will stopped. I looked up. The place was even more decayed than I remembered it: the gutters more bowed, the plaster more scabrous and soot-smeared.